5punk

Whilst people deal in stuff and things, Frank shall stock up on bug killing stuff. Some ex amoo for things, possibly a flamer, and some hollow tip bullets filled with that super insecticide that fucks bugs right up. Maybe some incendiary grenades too.

I'll post prices and whatnot so Joose can yay or nay them when I'm less likely to fall asleep at the 'board.

HereComesPete wrote:possibly a flamer

We've already established that Leland isn't coming.

Chopper shall be preparing a last will and testament.

Ahem.



*throat clearing noises*






DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANTS!

You going to offer your hacker some moolah, or not?

Grimmie wrote:Shall we get a quote from a hacker, and then get a quote from N-zo, see who's cheaper, and get this show on the road?

T'was Grimmie, not me.

I don't know what could have given me the idea you were the one doing the talking.

Anyway, as the utter inability to make a decision is getting silly now, I'll assume you settled on the standard fee. Works out to 2500. Yes, I've rounded up a bit.

Right, so, here's what N-Zo dug up for you:

The body was never ID'd, hence being referred to as Jane Doe. In itself, that is not too weird. If she was a SINner it would be a simple matter of checking DNA, fingerprints, or any number of other identifying qualities against the SIN database. If she wasn't a SINner, or if she was a runner and had stuff hidden, there would essentially be no official record that she exists. The Seattle morgues are stock full of JD's. Course, most of them don't look like she did.

Slightly more usefully: she was picked up in the Redmond Barrens. Apparently she was picked up by a couple of Star officers who were on their way back from some work out there. There is a standing deal between Lone Star and DocWagon that DocWagon will patch up suspects/witnesses and the like to a minimum degree, and the Star pick up the tab (of course, there is then the inevitable legal team working for the Star that go around trying to recoup their losses afterwards). This does imply that she might not have been quite dead when she was picked up. The record of the incident is pretty light on details, possibly because of the third thing uncovered by the hack...

All the results of tests run on her in the morgue, and records of treatment she may have had before ending up in the morgue have been moved off site. Theres no indication of exactly how much info has gone, or what that info was, but there are notes in its place that say its been moved to a Knight Errant data facility. A little extra poking by your hacker shows that, in fact, the data now sits in the main Ares site in Seattle. You aint paying enough to hack that.

For those of you confused by the last part: Knight Errant Security is a law enforcement corp (direct competitors of Lone Star), and are actually part of the AAA class megacorporation called Ares (CEO is one Damien Knight, hence the name). Firewatch, the sort of famous black ops style anti-bug spirit group, is part of Knight Errant.

Interesting you should highlight that post of mine. The whole rent-a-hacker thing was confusing and since everyone else seemed to have a better grasp of it than me I figured I'd let them deal with it.

Anyway, now that's sorted, onwards. Looks like we have a few leads;

Unsurprisingly, she was probably a Runner. We might be able to find out who hired her. I'm thinking Ares, but they're just the most likely candidate at the moment.
We can go check out where she was picked up, see what there is to find there.
There's the Lone Star officers who found her, if we can track them down.
Then of course there's Ares/Knight Errant. I'm sure there's a load of information with them, but I doubt we'll ever get to see it. At least not through conventional means.

What do you guys reckon?

The silence is deafening.

Okay, well I'll get onto my contacts. I'm thinking my cop and Mr J for starters, see if I can find out where the (soon to be) corpse was found and if there's been any Runners disappear in that area of the Barrens.

I've had a thought while writing that actually. If Lone Star picked her up while she was alive then presumably she looked pretty normal. You wouldn't drag a disgusting mutant bee-lady into your squad car.

How strange, this wasn't here last night for me.

Regardless - the idea of talking to the lone star is a great one Pants - if Al does this he can likely get who she was and what she was doing out there out of them.

The fact that knight errant are involved - could be used to sway any tight lone star tongues, get them to help us get one over the competition.

I would imagine at some point we could trade what we know to Firewatch?

The Redmond Barrens isn't a small place - do we have an exact location where she was picked up Joose? If yes I'll head out there, if not I'll hang back whilst Al gets the gen.

HereComesPete wrote:I would imagine at some point we could trade what we know to Firewatch?

That's the idea, or at least to a mediator. I think my contact is a cop though, not Lone Star, but she might be able to help anyway.

Lone Star are the Cops by and large.

The Shutting Downs wrote:Lone Star are the Cops by and large.

Yeah, within Seattle Lone Star = Cops. Law enforcement around the world is almost entirely privatised, with Lone Star and Knight Errant being the big boys, but Lone Star have the exclusive contract within Seattle.

Yeah, I wasn't entirely sure so I didn't want to raise hopes.

Dog Pants wrote:Okay, well I'll get onto my contacts. I'm thinking my cop and Mr J for starters, see if I can find out where the (soon to be) corpse was found and if there's been any Runners disappear in that area of the Barrens.

The Mr J doesn't come up with much. No runners have gone unaccounted for or anything like that. He has had a couple of street level contacts (street corner drugs pushers, low level gangers, that sort of thing) go oddly quiet in the barrens recently though.

The police contact is a bit more useful, managing to pull the report filed by the officers who found the woman. According to the report, the two officers were returning from a call when the woman staggered out of a side alley and collapsed almost in front of them, still on fire. They stopped, put her out, and administered basic first aid. At that point, although badly burned, she appeared normal. She was babbling in a slurred voice about "them" who would "not let go", but she didn't answer any questions as to who or what was after her. They took her to the nearest clinic, but she was DOA. It was at that point that the changes to her physiology were discovered, presumably having happened at some point during the journey. It was also at that point that it was discovered that she was SINless, which meant that the case dropped in priority like a stone and the Star were no longer interested. The body was moved to the clinic you found it in for post-mortem, due to the Barrens clinic she had been taken to having an over capacity morgue.

The report includes the exact location she was picked up (just off 208th Ave NE, in an area called Bargain Basement), and the names of the officers. Your contact would rather you didn't bother them though, she is not keen on getting too much attention to her extra-curricular activities.

When you mention Knight Errants involvement, she goes off on one for a bit about "jurisdictional issues" and how Firewatch act like Team America (although she uses a more up to date reference )

Ares, fuck yeah!

We have a location. Shall we go take a look?

Who is going with you then? How you getting there? What you taking with you?

Well it looks like me and Frank. Do we have a Frankmobile or should we roll up in the limo?

Chopper is around, but he doesn't have a fucking clue what's going on. He wasn't really paying attention to the whole Firebrand or Knight Errants part. In many ways, Chopper's world is beautifully simplistic, like a child's.

An angry, axe wielding child.

Joose, I assume I have to redo my character sheet? Point me at the bit that's wrong and I'll try to update it in the next couple of days.

Cool, good to have a fire-and-forget lunatic on hand for when Jeff Goldblum shows up.

We should have a Nik too.

Franks purchases that I mentioned I'll get some ex-ex ammo.

Shotgun - 4 drums 90¥ ammo 432¥ total- 522¥.

*********************************************

The limo would stick out. We can take Nik's van. Well, you others can. Frank will not be, he shall taxi/walk/whatever.

I'm thinking another low key entrance initially, to scout around the place and watch if anyone watches you.

Or the limo might work for that - if you go in the limo, make yourself obvious with Chopper or Frank as a BG then the other can hold off and watch along with Nik's drones?

Wow, I really spazzed that out into random thoughts.