Darkness falls OOC

Yup, setting up a new admin access is a piece of cake and it goes smoothly.

*cough* *cough* Check the personel files and think this through before doing that Mokoto. *cough* *cough* Think about the number of cars Aretmis saw in the parking lot. *cough* *cough*

Yeah, 24 cars in the lot after normal business hours. But for a building that size, that likely means night security guards and janitorial staff, along with possibly someone manning a call center. Add in technical support, and any third shift researchers, and 24 cars becomes really light, really fast.

But unless something jumps out at her as a reason not to do that, she sees this is the best way to get the team in, without anyone knowing the run's happening. Security guards, janitors, and IT folk are the three types of people who aren't out of place in a secure facility after dark.

She wasn't going to suggest doing the run the first night, or anything. This is to give the team a way in, to reconnoiter and gather intel for the actual run, in a way that won't arouse suspicion.

Or were you suggesting she add them on the day shift?

*shrug* Your call. I'm not going to him more then I already have and if it weren't the first run, I wouldn't have hinted even that much...

Edited. Changed it to day shift.

The problem is that getting in and out without getting caught is one thing. Getting in and out without getting caught and no one even knowing the run took place? That takes a lot more work, especially when we don't even know where in the building Project Falcon is, whether the data is on a subnet or hard copy only, or any of that. And since the project isn't on the building node, and they don't have time to develop an insider to flip on it, they need to go in and get the info themselves. And inserting themselves as legit employees will make that easier.

Of course, she plans to erase all their records when the job's done, including editing the security feed. She hasn't decided whether she's going to copy the payroll information of the entire building on the way out, yet.

But think about it, in any building you've ever worked in, what are the three types of people who are essentially part of the scenery? No one pays attention to janitors, or security guards unless they're in the way, and who really pays close attention to the IT guy working on a computer, unless they're slacking instead of working?

As I said, not saying anything more. As it happens, I can see your character approaching this the exact same way you are, for the same reasons. So it makes sense to do what you've done in character.

Yeah. If it was just a simple data extraction, then it would be simple. The fact that it is a place crawling with Star, and they need to leave no evidence of a run taking place makes it more difficult.

After she has a chance to rest, she'll get back in, and insert a subroutine she can activate on a moment's notice, so that if things go south, she can set off every alarm simultaneously, as well as setting an obvious program into the payroll system, that would send 20% of every employee's pay to a random bank account, to make it look like a hack that got seriously glitched, complete with a ready made suspect, whoever's on the other end of that bank account.

DaVinci I'm not, but here is the layout Mokoto snagged for the group:



Hmm, the text is a little hard to read -sorry. The key says (in order)

Hallway
Armory
Offices
Classrooms
Bathrooms
Supply Closet
Mess
Rec Room
Kitchen
Drone Maintance
Trainee quaters
Door, no locks
Door, maglocks
window
alarm
laser grid
camera

And the little mark by the back door on the first floor is an a for alarm that got cut off.

shouldn't all this talk about the wisdom of motoko's actions occur IC? After all, she doesn't yet know what Artemis has seen (although she probably DOES know how many people are scheduled to work the night shift, and whether or not a few more would be noticed). Besides, if it turns out not the be the best plan, then a handful of "new employees" simply don't show up for work, and end up being rather difficult to track down.

You can (and probably should) discuss it IC, yes.

If no one posts prior to this evening, I'm going to advance to a group gaterhing to discuss strategy, the later in the evening of the same day (currently the day after you got the run) after Mokoto does her thing and Artemis finishes her spying.

Yeah, unfortunately Twitch ain't got much to do at the moment.

Motoko has done her bit. Can't do much more until they go in, and get some intel.

Did we lose the matron?

Yeah, phantom bowed out, though he might be making npc cameos here and there. I'll be writting her out of the story shortly.

So at the table, we've got 4 characters (3 players), is that right?

Correct.

If there is nothing else to add in character... please let me know when/where you would be picking up your uniforms and ids (wherever you would normally get your packages), when you will be arriving at the facility, and also if you are arriving as a group or individually.

Post office drop off box.

Arrived seperately so we are not picked as a group.

Arriving 20 minutes before shift start, pan broadcasting the new ID and his internal commlink on hidden and his public one goes sinless after he picks up his gear.

He makes sure to go over his regular clothes and body with a tag killer on principle when he leaves for work, as well as coming up with a few answers to questions like where has he worked before and preparing for his role incase he gets grilled.

Needle changes his hair style a bit with a bit of curl.

He's traveling light, carrying only his legal tazer for this mission - which he dutifully hands over to his employer when he arrives at work - it's not worth trying to smuggle in a pistol on a recon run, and if he has to fight his way out, he might as well just surrender.

Ok guys, run just went south, big time. Assuming Mokoto gets away and warns the others, you will manage to get away before being ambushed yourself. But both Mokoto and Artemis's primary residences have been burned and are going to be watched by the star from here on out - your experienced shadowrunners, so I'm going to assume you are able to get back in and get portable gear, but the lifestyle is gone and anything big/non-portable is gone. And at least until you find a new place to crash, you're out on the street. I'm going to juggle the planned order of runs around to help you guys out - the next run should be profitable enough for you to replaced everything you lost and still make a decent profit. But you still have to get through this run first.

As for what happened - the plan was good and would have worked perfectly against a typical megacorp cube-farm. Which is what I mean when I said I could see Mokoto doing just what she did - against many targets it would have worked fine. And no one else spotted it either, so it's not just her fault - the map gave you a clue to spot it too. But you weren't hitting a megacorp cube farm, you were hitting a small subsidiary corp office in the boonies. The problem basicly boils down to two questions:

How many people work in the building (offically - not counting out mystery targets)?
What are their jobs?

The answers are 12, and they are the directior, assistant director, 6 trainers, the armory officer, the drone maintance officer, the receptionist, and a part time cook.

Janitorial servies are contracted out, so no janitor (though you could have gone in by replacing the contractor). At any given time, they have between 20-30 cadets sleeping on site who are being trained in security - why would they pay for night watchmen when they can just assign a cadet the duty? And any IT needs the drone maintence officer can't take care off, they send for someone from a larger office in downtown Seattle to deal with.

All the jobs exist in TacTech, but none at this office. And while the computer files were perfect and Mokoto didn't leave a trail, a 33% increase in the workforce, all of them with jobs that don't exist, is still going to throw up ALOT of red flags.

Once Mokoto escapes (or is caught) its up to you guys if you want to press on and try and complete the run, realizing that their guard is going to be up and the higher bonus is no longer a possiblity, or if you wanna call Zeke and let him know the run's a bust, in which case you'll be expected to return the advance and we'll move on to the next run. (not, expected does not mean you actually DO return the advance, but that's your call. Could lead to problems of its own.)

Uh, hit an alert corp after this frag up for 5K? No. No thank you.

Needle sends back the money.

He's not very likely to want to work with the Major after this one either, I could happily make a new character though.

Actually, Motoko would just get Lady Godiva to 'sanitize' the record. Erase any criminal SIN, and drop the watch order on the addresses, or have them sent to watch someone else. Along with planting evidence to make it look like she was set up. So they'd be able to come away with relatively little lasting effects. This is part of the reason she has an AI as a contact, afterall. Of course, she'd owe Godiva big time.

But as for getting away? How's she going to do that, on her lonesome, against three guys with guns? She's a technomancer, not an adept. So if you like, we can fast forward past her going along quietly, and then getting bailed out, and using her contacts to clean things up for everyone.

Time for me to make a new character, it seems.

Though honestly, I don't see how you expected a team that isn't stealth-based to pull off that mission. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this run seems less like a team shadowrun, and more like a recruit one covert ops specialist with a couple other people to sit on their hands, waiting to come in if something goes wrong. Since no one on the team, to my knowledge, is a covert ops type, this looks rather impossible, given that there's no way to get the team in undercover.

Feminine wiles?

They don't know she's a technomancer, so you might get lucky with some hacked guns / cyberware / cars.

Nah, I'll just make a new character. Don't know what, though.

Although, I've been kicking around an idea for an AI character...

I think one of the problems with this one was the limitation of the PBP system - in RT a hacker could ask the GM continual logical questions like
"how many devices are attached to the system" and that sort of thing in response to each segment, where as PBP posting all that in text is a pain in the trog.

Everything you convey to the GM and vice versa has to be typed and read, and getting responses from each takes hours (as opposed to seconds) which makes doing legwork a HELL of a lot harder then in a normal game of shadowrun.

- - -

Anyway,

I was trying to brainstorm some ways we could have gotten out of this better.

We don't know what kind of information a really good matrix search would have gotten on the 3 guys. Again, don't know if we could have found anything, but we never tried. (only the GM can tell us now)

Even assuming we couldn't get those three on a random matrix search, we could have gone through the employee records and put the lean on one of the existing employees - a little hitting into their background and we could have found the one that owed some money to the mob, or had a family in a low security
area of town, maybe bribe them or blackmail them into helping us. Or just put a gun to their back.

If push came to shove we could have gone in as trainees or electronics contractors and then hacked whatever internal security they had.

Hard with a face, a rigger and a techno though and no mage.