December 1997 Responses

From:  Andy Campbell (Urugg)

Holy plot-twists Batman! Well, it looks like we have no lack of leads to
pursue this time around everyone... I expect a voiceover from those old
1940's serials to pop into my head any moment now:

"Mysterious Black Ops personnel from Streel attacking their own security
investigators?"

"Spider - just another alias for the Most Wanted Man on the Frontier?"

"Selson Streel - a puppet for forces beyond his control, destined to take a
fall?"

"Maxim Zek'Ket - frustrated terraformer pulling strings behind the scenes?"

"Simeone Arielle - doomed by anoxia to life as a transient?"

Yikes! We certainly have our work cut out for us. I'd say that background
checks on Selson, F'lexx (sp?), Selson's assistant (concubine? handler?)
Alicia, and Simeone Arielle are in order. 

Also, I don't remember if Kare found anything juicy last month in Streel's
office regarding Streel Black Ops teams, but if so now might be the time to
reveal such if she is so inclined. If there are Streel Black Ops personnel
working against us, and if Selson is what he seems (if Kare passes on that
info to us she got from her chronocom that is), then either someone within
Streel wants Selson personally out of the way, or wants the Metrosphere
project to fail for some other reason. The whole food raid scenario may be an
elaborate ruse / cover action to conceal what the Black Ops guys are really up
to.

Maybe worse, there's always the possibility that a Black Ops team either
defected to another corp or a criminal group...

Hmmm. I'll definitely have to chew this update over further. More to come
over weekend.

Andy / Urugg 

From:  Ruben Rivera (Kare)

> project to fail for some other reason. The whole food raid scenario may be an
> elaborate ruse / cover action to conceal what the Black Ops guys are really up
> to.
> 
> Maybe worse, there's always the possibility that a Black Ops team either
> defected to another corp or a criminal group...

I belief that it may be obvious that we are looking at two different
opponents, 
1) stars arm and their food raids, any slopy explosion should be
considered their handy work.

2) or, either Lost point boys, or a blackbag team here to make mister
Streel look bad. Anytime volence is a factor, we should blame this new
threat...these antaginist

> Hmmm. I'll definitely have to chew this update over further. More to come
> over weekend.
> 
> Andy / Urugg

Ruben

From:  John Groszkiewicz (Tork)

Greetings,

I have not seen any Unity messages, thought maybe it was because I changed addresses but 
there isn't anything posted in the responce sections on the Unity page. I guess that 
means its up to me to get the show on the road. ;)

For now I just have some general questions and observations:

How far ( in days ) are we from the nearest port with a UPF presence?


>From Kare's report to T'Klikk and Urugg:
> Kare continues. "It turns out there's an entire network of these shafts,
> especially among the older buildings near the Spire. In the early days of
> First Landing, they were used to transfer life support to main buildings.
> These days, life support is transmitted through a more complex network of
> smaller tubes--only centimeters wide. But most of the larger shafts from
> the old days are still around--just sealed off." 

Is it possible for the team to get maps of where these shafts are? We should check out 
to see if any others have been broken into. Also, the shafts may prove useful in moving 
our team(s) around the city undetected.


>From Tork & Zane's conversation with Loer:

Loer states: "Someone has to stand up and regulate the damage that Streel is doing!" 
Has Star's Arm taken any moves to "contact their congressman" ( or whoever ) in the UPF 
to try and get environmental regulation passed? Actually, does the UPF even care? Is 
environmental protection under the jurisdiction of the UPF?


On the boots used to attack Syzygy:

> "I have the information you wanted," says Kare. "The bootprint pattern
> matches a number of high-end Streel military suits, most of which are
> still in the experimental stages. Several of these suit designs match
> the pattern, so it's hard to say exactly which one the attackers were
> using. Even a bigger mystery is how they can afford such nice equipment
> when they have to spend all of their time stealing water and food rations. 

Were any of the boots used at the time of the original founding of Metrosphere, i.e. 
could the boots have been stolen in the 'revolt'? Oh Bother, I don't have the previous 
story sections here. How long have the food raids been going on? Could the raider's 
supply shipments dried up forcing them to steal food to survive? No battles going on 
(yet) so they have not ran out of ammo.

TTFN
John johngroz@velocity.net

From:  Albin Johnson (Syzygy)

Syzygy looks skyward to the forces that rule and govern the passage of time
in his universe:

"Oh, please turn back time 24 hours so that I may initiate these moves, oh
Great One!" :)

(i.e. sorry this is late - got a game of my own to catch up on)



John Groz said:
>Could the
>raider's
>supply shipments dried up forcing them to steal food to survive? No battles
>going on
>(yet) so they have not ran out of ammo.

Yeah, and remember they have all the weapons and ammo Syzygy was carrying
with him when they knocked him out.


Kveldulf said:
>A simple way [if the tech is available at
>this point in Frontier time] would be having several teams of techs use
>spraycrete (from Zeb's Guide) to seal off the tunnel exits

I disagree with this. Why not rig up some chronocoms with motion detectors
like the one on the monorail? That way we can bait the trap and wait for
whoever to strike again. In fact, if we have a good idea where they'll hit
next, we can bait-and-switch. (e.g. If Selson is a target, get a holovid of
him runnng that shows him at work in the office but prevent anyone in the
office from knowing about it (in case Alicia or someone else is in on it)
by keeping the hologram from direct contact. Should be easy to do for
three reasons:

a) Selson would understand the threat and likely work with us on this
b) holograms are easy to make and maintain, especially in this
holo-vid-friendly city environment
c) in this age of advanced data-handling, Streel can still do his work from
a remote location, even cuing the hologram to do things by watching the
office via a remote camera, stepping over to a holovid recorder, and taping
the appropriate response within seconds go give his cover a life-like
interactive flair



>Urugg will offer Loer his phone # / email address (whatever's appropriate on
>the Frontier - the equivalent of "leaving your card") if she would like to
>meet again, or comes up with new info on Spider

OOC: I proposed an 'internet' system of sorts that can be spread across the
Frontier and isn't geography-based. Centers on settled worlds can send and
recieve gigabytes of information and compress it into a single tachyon
pulse that is delivered to the next star system each day. Each Frontier
citizen has his own account and can look up his or her 'mail' using their
I.D. card (described in the basic rules) to access whatever is waiting for
them. Since the Frontier is an archetype of the Old West, this is the
equivalent of the Pony Express. Users can go to one of these centers,
called a Message Relay Bank (MRB for short) and for a fee send, recieve, or
store postings for any length of time. For instance, one can leave a
message at a specific MRB for someone they know will be there in a week,
leaving it under their account name. There can be secure lines for sending
messages. One can pay to have the same message sent to another system
every day for a month, etc. The only hitch is that there is a record of
your accessing your account, when, and where. This is watched (with little
interest outside of tracking criminals) by the UPF Data Bureau, but a good
hacker can be hired to cover your tracks! :)


I'm mostly worried about the risk Syte poses as a computer terrorist loose
in a heavily-computer-controlled city like Metrosphere. Too many
'glitches' occurring to be a coincidence.

From:  John Groszkiewicz (Tork)

> Subject: [Unity] Taanik's OFFICIAL response
> << Snip >>
> 
> 2. Taanik thinks that if we go to Lost Point, we should do so in force
> andf take Cimmy along with us. Maybe hypnosis can be used to get some
> more info out of her. (Who's go the psyche skills? Urugg?)

Tork will speak up against taking Cimmy to Lost Point. "We are going into the Lion's 
Den, there is no reason to take a sheep with us. I have not seen any evidence that 
Cimmy would be able to take care of herself in a firefight. When a fight breaks out 
Cimmy will become a liablity to the team. I doubt that taking her to Lost Point would 
gain us any more information than we could gather questioning her here."

> 3. Seems like Selson's on our side after all. We need to keep a close eye
> on this Alicia woman - if there's a "sleeper" agent I betcha it's her.
> Taanik thinks we should warn Selson (even if we don't stick around to
> protect him), but won't unless the team agrees it's the right thing to do.

Maybe Selson would agree to a barium inplant so we could track him if something 
happens. ( Or perhaps something else is barium has ill side effects. )

Albin Johnson wrote:
> 
> Syzygy looks skyward to the forces that rule and govern the passage of time
> in his universe:
> 
> "Oh, please turn back time 24 hours so that I may initiate these moves, oh
> Great One!" :)
> 
> (i.e. sorry this is late - got a game of my own to catch up on)
> 
> John Groz said:
> >Could the
> >raider's
> >supply shipments dried up forcing them to steal food to survive? No battles
> >going on
> >(yet) so they have not ran out of ammo.
> 
> Yeah, and remember they have all the weapons and ammo Syzygy was carrying
> with him when they knocked him out.

Hmm, any way we could detonate Syzygy's TD-19 remotely?

> Kveldulf said:
> >A simple way [if the tech is available at
> >this point in Frontier time] would be having several teams of techs use
> >spraycrete (from Zeb's Guide) to seal off the tunnel exits
> 
> I disagree with this. Why not rig up some chronocoms with motion detectors
> like the one on the monorail? That way we can bait the trap and wait for
> whoever to strike again. In fact, if we have a good idea where they'll hit

Could we place the spraycrete in the middle and then trap both ends to seal if someone 
trips a sensor? That way whoever tries using the tunnel will be trapped between two 
walls of spraycrete awaiting our arrival. :)

Albin Johnson wrote:
> 
> - compile a database on Syte and prepare this for distributing to the
> others in the team for their use. This will include everything from his
> picture (and aliases) to his favorite movie to every girl he took out
> during college. The information will be prepared to download into anyone's
> chronocom or a portable datapad.

With the number of computer 'glithches' we found and not being able to find any 
information on "Chimmy" Tork does not trust the integriety of Metrosphere's computer 
files. I suggest we look into ways of using 'off world' computers to verify any 
information we are looking for.

TTFN
John johngroz@velocity.net