[DH] A Wretched Hive (IC)

[Thragka]

A Wretched Hive

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
– Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

OOC Thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?613774-DH-A-Wretched-Hive-(OOC))

Barely a dozen levels below the hiveskin, the ramshackle alley leading to the Scaldbat's Rest was baking in the dry heat. Picking cautious steps along the uneven floor, it occurred to Nuala Sayed that she might want to alter her plan for the evening. In this weather, dehydration would multiply the effects of even just one drink, and if it was still so hot this late in the evening, getting home might be a challenge. A sudden creak in the superstructure above her was followed by a hissing rattle, like thunder to lightning: a reminder that the Season of Winds was already wreaking havoc on the poorly maintained outermost layer of the Hive above the Cauldron district. Getting caught in an unexpected sunblast while drunk could be fatal.

Nonetheless, there she was. She swept aside the thick leathery curtain into the bar and stepped into the welcoming breeze of a buzzing electric fan. The air was cool and relatively dust-free. Heads turned to check the newcomer framed in the doorway, but nothing was amiss. They returned to their muttered conversations in the corners and alcoves of the reclaimed ruins.

She was idly staring at the ceramic rifle hanging behind the bar, still debating her next step when a meaty hand grasped her arm and tugged her sideways.

"Sayed."

It was her Magistratum contact – not that he looked the part, dressed down in labourer's togs and stinking of rotgut whiskey. Even if any of the other patrons knew he was an Enforcer, she had the suspicion he'd been drinking in this den years before she ever discovered it, and probably counted as more of a regular than she did. He paid no notion to her complaint, his hand still uncomfortably tight. "Just come on, come here," he said. He pulled her again, in the direction of a table, and let her go, slumping down into one of the chairs. A half-full bottle of rotgut explained the foul odour on his words. Less easily explained was the second glass, already filled. To Nuala's utter shock, he slid it over to her, and gestured at her to take the other chair.

He poured and drank himself another glassful before he responded to her any further.

"I'm not gonna be your handler any more," he said, breaking the silence between them. "New instructions for you." Reaching into a pocket, he slid a thick iron key across the table to her. He gave her directions in the midhive below, and made her repeat them until she had them memorised. “Laxday noon. Go there. You’ll be told what comes next.”

He wouldn’t or couldn’t tell her much more. “Vane. He’s called Vane.” That was all he said of her new handler. There was a hard sobriety in his eyes, staring out bizarrely between his flushed cheeks and sweating forehead. “Do what he says.”

He poured himself another glass, downed it, and pushed the bottle over to her as he stood up. He seemed to pause.

“I don’t think it’s House Krin you need to worry about any more.” Then he was gone, bustling out through the curtain, into the heat and the dust of the evening, leaving Nuala with the key and the end of the bottle of whiskey.


~

It was already late afternoon when Nathias Falkner happened to glance across the room and see the tall envelope just inside the door to his small hab. When had that arrived? It certainly hadn’t been there this morning. But he’d heard nothing at the door all day, and he’d barely moved from his desk. He brought it over now, pushing his other work aside to make room before he opened it.

It was something of a shock to see the papers that spilled out – forms, passes, licenses, certificates. He’d created all of them, over the past few months, and certainly no two of them had gone into the hands of the same customer. They did have something in common: all purported to be officially notarised by the Administratum.

Last to fall from the brown envelope was a dark iron key and the single item written by a different human soul – a brief note, with the characteristic ink markings of an autoquill. On one side was a date, time and address. The other held the message.

Any one of these would be sufficient evidence to justify a lengthy interrogation at the hands of the Adeptus Arbites before sentencing for defrauding the Administratum. I suggest you destroy them now.

I have done you a very great favour, Falkner. You shall repay me in kind.

Vane


~

They must have been interrogating her peers in the trainee cohort. Lyra Thebe was rapidly running out of boltholes in the upper layers of the hive. In retrospect, it had been stupid not to be more secretive about her trips into Tarsus to the other junior troopers. She’d nearly been caught in a couple of the lodging houses she’d used previously, and only a gut feeling had got her out through the basement of the third minutes before she heard the near-silent flutter of a grapple-hawk landing on the roof.

Thankfully, she didn’t think she’d told anyone about these digs: an abandoned habblock, whose long-term squatters would leave you alone on the lower floors if you didn’t trouble them on the higher ones. Nonetheless, she was certain she was still being hunted. She’d sworn she’d caught a hovering shape at the edge of her vision several times already this evening. Now she was hunkered down in a back room in the block, trigger finger twitching as she kept the shotgun pointed at the only door in.

A low drone echoed up the corridor, getting louder. Not a grapple-hawk, this time, far too noisy for one of those. It was still a surprise when the servo-skull hovered into view through the doorway. Some deep instinct stopped her from pulling the trigger half a second before she was about to blow it out of the air

She’d noticed, before she was even conscious of noticing it, that the typical Arbites crest was not emblazoned onto the dome of the skull. In fact, most unusually, there was no identifying mark at all. A heartbeat after she realised this, the servo-skull turned to her and spoke.

“Deputy Homicide Investigator Thebe,” a man’s voice said through the vox-unit. Something about it sent a shiver down her spine, tweaking at strands of memory, but even her unconscious could not figure out when she’d heard it before.

“That was your rank when I first took note of you,” the skull’s recording continued. “Perhaps I should have laid claim to you then. No matter. Training with the Arbites has done you no harm. At least, if you’re hearing this message, that means you have survived so far.” There was a cruel humour to the mystery speaker’s words.

“They think you are a traitor. I do not agree. I think you and I can help each other, Lyra Thebe.” The skull hovered closer. A small mechadendrite arm extended towards her, holding a key. “Here is how …”


~

The grand avenue was thronged, with pilgrims and those who made their living off the pilgrims – street food purveyors, trinket-merchants, children offering to hold your place in the queue when you needed to relieve yourself, any and all services one could imagine selling or swindling to those pious souls who’d crossed the Calixis sector for the hope of entering the Cathedral of Illumination. That complex was many miles ahead of them yet, but the road was almost as well lit. The ceiling of this level some twenty metres above carried a brilliant rod bathing all in light the spectrum of Scintilla’s sun. The beampipes carried molten light by the grace of the God-Emperor, so it was said, strongest near the Cathedral, and inside of which they were allowed to vent brilliant flame. Of course, Titia knew by now that the beampipe network ran throughout the hive, not just around the Cathedral, and was probably most impressive and reliable where they sank deep into the dark and chilly depths of the nobles’ subterranean districts. But even she had to make a living off the travellers.

Titia wandered the line, trying to swing closest to those in the crowd who looked like they wouldn’t mind the effort of taking a shortcut as she advertised herself as a guide. She’d written off the tonsured man whose robes marked him more as a monk than a mendicant – he looked like a local, come to preach or maybe just fraternise to the crowd, rather than a visitor. But he surprised her by catching her eye and waving her down.

“Do you know the best way to get to the twenty-seventh level of the Cauldron from here?” he asked brightly. He saw her evaluating his robes and smiled. “I don’t mind a climb,” he added, rolling up his sleeves to reveal strong, tanned arms.

She led him away from the crowd, though he stopped to buy a couple of savoury pastries from a vendor's cart, and gave her one. He walked in silence as he ate, following her lead down side streets and utility stairways towards an access shaft. But before they reached the grand column that would lead them up through the levels of the Hive, he stopped her.

"A direct climb from here," he said. It didn't seem like a question. He already knew the way. "But you're familiar with the area, Titia." She hadn't told him her name. He reached into his robes, withdrawing two objects. In his left hand he held a thick metal key, which he passed to her. In his right hand was a sort of ornate badge marked with an I.

"You've helped many a wandering soul already. Do you want to serve the Throne?"


~

The smell of lho and recaf, the clicking of typewriters and skittering of autoquills: the ambiance of the Tarsus Inquirer newsroom. It was familiar to Carys Callaghan, but not conducive to work today. Her attention had been on the meeting room since this morning. She'd arrived at her desk, and seen her editor and Father Hussain watching her through the panel windows. The Ecclesiarchy representative seemed prim and disapproving, his lips pursed like he'd eaten something sour. The look the editor gave her was indescribable – and he hadn't broken it as he reached under the table and hit the switch that frosted the glass partition. She could guess what they were discussing.

Plus, the contents of her desk drawers were missing, so it wasn't as if she had much to work on even if the conference room hadn't held her attention hostage.

Eventually the glass defrosted and the editor walked to the door. He opened it, and gestured at her to come over. Her colleagues tried very hard not to watch as she crossed the room and joined the two men. Many succeeded.

Hussain looked even more unctuous than usual, if such a thing were possible, although his thinning hair hadn't been spread across his knobby skull with as much care as usual, and strands were escaping the tyranny of wax to point in various directions. She noticed the editor had dried recaf foam on his moustache.

"It seems your … temperament has caught the attention of one of my colleagues, Callaghan," the priest said. "Why they think you can be useful to them is known to Him on Terra, I'm sure, but not to me." He sniffed. The editor very explicitly did not roll his eyes before speaking. "You'll need to hand over your outstanding projects to someone else – that Bloodsquares piece, wasn't it? You're not going to be working from here for the foreseeable future, I don't think."

"We'll see," Hussain muttered. But even that barb wasn't coated in his usual oily tone. There was an expression on his face that Cary's didn't think he'd ever directed at her before. It almost looked like concern.

"If you can submit your regular column, we'll keep publishing that," the editor continued. He shrugged. "And anything else you happen to get to us. You still have a job here, as far as I'm concerned." He glanced to Hussain. The priest cleared his throat.

"However, your, ah, assistance is requested by a … colleague of mine called Vane," Hussain said. His words seemed cautious. "Callaghan. I … must recommend that you don't let your usual reckless manner –" The editor interrupted with a pointed cough. Amazingly, Hussain took a breath and paused. He reached to the table and picked up an iron key, turning it over in his hands a couple of times before speaking again.

"You and I may have often disagreed, Ms Callaghan. But I hope that doesn't prejudice you towards Mr Vane before you meet him. That would be a mistake. He is a different creature altogether."


~

I. The Informants

The keys opened the apartment on the second floor of a brick building on the edge of the Arnest Cauldron district, in a strip of residential buildings between the industrial zones of the Cauldron proper and the broad commercial/tourism neighbourhood surrounding the Cathedral of Illumination. Although the door appeared to be wood, it was far heavier than it ought to be, and when the key turned the simple mechanical bolt, other things clunked in the thick door frame, whirring back into place when the door was closed again.

As the door swung shut for the fifth time, an electronic tone sounded through the flat. One of the cogitator banks in the large study was coming to life. Its vox unit crackled, and the vidscreen flickered on.

“Good,” said a voice that was familiar to Lyra. “You are all here.” On the screen, an abstract waveform pulsed in time to the words. Beneath it blinked a few short letters.

CONNECTED: VANE

“I can not be with you in person today. We likely will not meet at any time in the near future. There is to be an element of trust in our relationship. But since you are here, I expect you are convinced of my bona fides.”

The waveform disappeared from the screen. It was replaced with images of a middle-aged man in the robes of a cleric. LEONOR RIGG, blinked the display. Small spectacles sat on a thick nose. The man’s angular jaw was coated in dark salt-and-pepper stubble, and his receding hair of the same colour was shaved almost as short.

“There is a man I require you to observe. Father Leonor Rigg, late of Sisk. He arrived on a pilgrimage around the new year, and has since taken to ministering to the pilgrim crowds as they pass through Arnest Cauldron, typically near Grand Urbis Plaza. He has gathered a small following of zealots. It is rumoured that he has taken to leading them on expeditions into the dangerous upper layers of the hiveskin, on the hunt for mutants and heretics. Possibly, he has fallen in with the Red Redemption. If these rumours are true, he may be implicated in the recent disappearances of several pilgrim visitors of status exceeding his own, as well as a firefight which killed a craftsman and damaged his workshop in the midhive.” The images of Rigg were replaced with an autopsy photograph. HAX GURNER (DECEASED) said the onscreen letters, followed by an address several levels higher. A dataslate docked in the cogitator winked into active mode, cycling through the same information that the screen had shown on Rigg and Gurner. The waveform returned as the voice spoke again.

“I would like you to investigate the true extent of this personal crusade of his, and determine whether it is a threat to the Emperor’s Peace in the Hive. The misguided faith of one man can not be permitted to interfere with the orderly well-being of the greater Hive. I expect a preliminary report two weeks from today.”

The modulations of the wave fell still. DISCONNECTED, the screen blinked briefly, and then it went blank.

[Bennosuke]

s the door swung shut for the fifth time, an electronic tone sounded through the flat. One of the cogitator banks in the large study was coming to life. Its vox unit crackled, and the vidscreen flickered on.

“Good,” said a voice that was familiar to Lyra. “You are all here.” On the screen, an abstract waveform pulsed in time to the words. Beneath it blinked a few short letters.


Lyra had worn her largest and heaviest coat, paying no mind to the weather. She eyed the others in the room with cold hard eyes, refusing to let them see how confused or out of sorts she was with this strange meeting. In a moment, she did her best to take her measure of the others, common thugs from the looks of it, and sauntered in to the back of the room, putting herself behind the others to the best of her ability.


“I would like you to investigate the true extent of this personal crusade of his, and determine whether it is a threat to the Emperor’s Peace in the Hive. The misguided faith of one man can not be permitted to interfere with the orderly well-being of the greater Hive. I expect a preliminary report two weeks from today.”

The modulations of the wave fell still. DISCONNECTED, the screen blinked briefly, and then it went blank.

Once the communication ends, Lyra spits on the ground and growls, "Anyone else just having the strangest day? At the very least should we introduce ourselves?"

[Haval]

When Laxday comes Nuala will make a point of showing up to the Cauldron early to have a look round. This probably wasn’t an ambush. If anyone had a problem with her then they likely already knew who she was and where she lived, but she had already considered hopping a trading caravan out of Tarsus just to be on the safe side.

As each of the others came inside she'll only watch them suspiciously without saying anything. They didn't look like much of a threat. The angry looking one maybe being the exception. The tech did interest her in spite of herself. In other circumstances she might have considered bringing some friends back here and taking whatever they could carry.

The voice finished speaking and Nuala will let out a relieved laugh. She'll reply to Lyra, ‘You have no idea. Was anyone else expecting a job offer?'

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias had almost not come. After receiving the envelope filled with many documents he had forged, he had even entertained the idea of assuming his backup identity of Kurt Henneker and disappearing into thin air once again. But if the mysterious sender had both the means and the determination to track down several of Nathias' clients, he or she would surely find him again. Besides, Nathias stood a little too much to lose, now that both of his careers (cabbie and forger) were getting off the ground and finally earning him decent money. And so he had come prepared—with a loaded revolver in his cabbie's jacket. He was a decent marksman on a shooting range, but had never been in a proper firefight, and hoped he would never find out how he fared in one.

He listened to Vane in silence, his bespectacled eyes flicking from the screen to the faces of the others. They seemed just as confused as he was about this strange meeting, which made him feel a little bit better.

"Anyone else just having the strangest day? At the very least should we introduce ourselves?" said the tall, dark-haired woman in a heavy coat who had taken Nathias' desired spot at the back of the group.

Why don't you set an example, then? thought Nathias.

"I'm Nathias," he introduced himself. "I work for the Northwind Transportation Guild. And I don't know what I was expecting."

His full name and the logo of his guild were stitched at the front of his cabbie's jacket, so it was no use trying to keep his identity and affiliation a secret.

[Burden King]

Titia had almost made a run for it as soon as the nice man had made it clear that he had not sought her out for her services, but that brief hesitation allowed him to show her a symbol she recognized, one given to her by one of the travelers she had met in the past, and hand her the key. The key she had used to enter this apartment that was way nicer than what she had herself lived in for most of her life, and likely far better than anything her parents had been allowed to view.

As she walked in, she carried with her the chemical smell that seemed stained into her body, one she had long ago forgotten about as her body simply ignored it. She had been ready to open fire on anyone with her hand cannon if this proved to be some plot or ganger scheme, she had once heard of a gang that stole people to sell to the mechanicus. But, she stayed her hand, and she listened to the voice that had startled her, and soaked in all the information before she was left alone with the rest of the people in the room.

One suggested they introduce themselves to each other, while another obliged and provided their name and occupation. ’A cab driver? I’ve always wanted a car, would make guiding people easier, though I wouldn’t be able to get into the secret areas with a bulky vehicle.’ she thought to herself, before reasoning that she should introduce herself as well, especially if she was going to be working with these people. The God-Emperor has called on her, the throne had called upon her, and she hoped that her devotion would be seen.

“My name’s Titia, I guide pilgrims and other people through the city. Kind of like transportation....except with walking.“ she said, raising her hand in a meek wave to the others in the room.

[Bennosuke]

"Nice to meet you. Lyra," she says flatly, spitting her name out like just like the saliva before bitterly adding, "and I can't say I do much of anything these days."

[Haval]

Nuala listens to the cabbie and the guide introduce themselves. 'Nuala. I'm between jobs at the moment.' She had to wonder what she had in common with these people. 'Did they ask whoever they had available to come down here?'

[LeSwordfish]

Tarsus Inquirer
Carys sat straight-backed and prim, her body language a lid tightly screwed on. The "reckless" comment had not been unwarranted, but it still stung a bit, and made her all the more inquisitive as to precisely what they were doing that warranted taking her job from her.

"Your... colleague?" she asked, with just a touch of ice in her voice. "The Ecclesiarchy?"


Arnest Cauldron
This was an area of town that Carys had spent very little time in before, and so she had come uncharacteristically prepared for trouble: her long coat with armor-weave weighing it down, her cut-down autopistol, the arbite-surplus baton and the can of Stagger-spray that certain mid-hive women referred to as the "Lady's Maidservant" in her little purse. She stood out like a sore thumb amongst these strange people - petite and carefully put-together, hair and nails done to the best of her ability, more dressed for a secretarial role or the more dignified kind of party than... a factory, surrounded by outhive strangers, shivering in discomfort as

"Carys Callaghan," she volunteered. "Tarsus Inqui- well, no."

She looked around at the assembled group. "We are a strange gathering, aren't we? You could come to all sorts of conclusions about what our dear mister Vale was looking for."

[Bennosuke]

"Carys Callaghan," she volunteered. "Tarsus Inqui- well, no."

She looked around at the assembled group. "We are a strange gathering, aren't we? You could come to all sorts of conclusions about what our dear mister Vale was looking for."

Lyra grinned mirthfully at the woman's slip up. The Inquisition was a boogeyman, a warning to Arbites trainees to file their paperwork properly and promptly, lest the Inquisition comes after you. And even if they did exist, they wouldn't be so careless as to slip up like that.

But she let that slide, instead beginning to let her mind slip into the mysteries of the case.


I don't know if either of these are appropriate but I will roll anyways, and then the GM can ignore or modify them as needed.

Lyra is going to use CL Arbites and Imperium to see if she has heard anything about the disappearances in Tarsusor this Father Leonor Rigg. Perhaps she had seen some files in the Arbites offices, or heard something during her time in exile in Hive Tarsus. Both rolls will be against a base of 37.

CL Arbites: [roll0]
CL Imperium: [roll1]

[Haval]

She looked around at the assembled group. "We are a strange gathering, aren't we?"

Nuala takes note of the woman's appearance, 'You especially Miss. What did you say you did again? When you're not doing whatever this is.'

She had to wonder if they found out anything useful on this Father Rigg would they be left alone afterwards.


Common Lore (Imperium) to have heard anything about Rigg
vs. Int 34
[roll0]

[LeSwordfish]

Carys hesitated. "I'm a journalist. For the Inquirer."

OOC
Common Lore (Tarsus Hive) - have I heard of either of these people, or anything else about these deaths? [roll0] vs 39

Wow, I think that means I was there for the deaths.

[Burden King]

Titia kept her eye on the growing conversation, noticing that the fancier looking woman was part of a local publication that handled rumors and the various goings on in the hive. She had read it a couple times, and could almost live vicariously through it to enjoy some lower hive life, even if she didn't have the context for much of the scandal.

Guess I'll do the same, i wanted to do so earlier but doubt it was applicable.
Int is 35, CL Imperium skilled
CL Imperium: [roll0]

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias snapped his fingers. "That's where I saw your name before. The Inquirer. I knew it sounded familiar." He paused. "I... don't read it, myself. But my guild keeps copies in the back of their vehicles. Makes customers less chatty when they have a paper with eye-catching headlines. Your copy-editing leaves a lot to be desired, though. Or so I'm told."

He did read the Inquirer once in a while, despite his distate for gossip and scandal. The crime stories provided a good primer on what not to do when living on the wrong side of the law, and the obituaries were an endless source of faces and names for forged identification papers.

"So. You're asking what Mr. Vale is looking for in us. I think he mostly wants... a bunch of nobodies, or people who are good at acting the part."

[Thragka]

The Tarsus Inquirer, previously

Hussain frowned. The Editor was already reaching under the table for the control panel. He activated the glass frosting – and the stummers. The background noise from the newsroom was instantly replaced with a light hummm from the partition.No noise from the outside was getting in, and no noise from the inside was getting out.

“Yes,” Hussain said, in answer to Carys’s question, “and no.”

“You know that there’s a cost to doing business,” the Editor said. “Everything we print has to get signed off on. Occasionally we have to do a favour for the powers that be. Some of whom … ask more nicely than others.”

“And some of whom,” Hussain said, “could ask anyone in the entire Calixis sector for a favour. In which case, it would be a very bad idea to turn them down.”

I haven’t given the Editor a name, just because I thought you might want to have some input on fluffy details of the Inquirer rather than me deciding everything.


~

Arnest Cauldron, presently – Laxday of the 25th week

Lyra
The name Rigg didn’t ring a bell, and neither could Lyra recall any disappearances that seemed out of the ordinary in recent Arbites files. She’d heard of the Red Redemption, though – a loosely organised sect of vigilantes that raided the upper levels of the Hive with fire and sword, looking for mutants and blasphemers to ‘redeem’. She felt lucky that she hadn’t run into any roaming bands of them in the months she’d been skulking in Tarsus so far. Their ferocity could be unpredictable.

The Arbites sometimes kept an eye on the Redemption, particularly in Tarsus, where groups of pilgrims often formed impromptu groups of Frateris Militia and took it upon themselves to enforce law and order, to the chagrin of the Magistratum Enforcers. One of these days, the Arbites would have to step in to untangle a conflict between the zealots and the enforcers, possibly with arbitrator squads taking over Magistratum duties. Neither organisation particularly wanted that to happen. The Arbites viewed enforcer duties beneath them, and the Magistratum would take it as a grave insult to their independence and jurisdiction.

Nuala
Nuala didn’t know the name Rigg, but she’d heard of the Red Redemption. She was lucky enough not to have ever run across them, but she knew people who had. They could be single-minded in finding sinners and blasphemers in the hiveskin who needed to be purified by fire and blade - sometimes, ‘sin’ looked an awful lot like it just mean ‘flammability’ …

Carys
Carys was surprised to realise that two things the faceless voice had said tugged at memories. A new preacher from Sisk – someone from the newsroom had done a puff piece, or a vox pop profile, on a preacher who’d arrived on a pilgrimage and decided to stay in Hive Tarsus rather than go home. Was it Rigg? She couldn’t be sure off the top of her head, but she new it had been published six or seven weeks ago.

“Of status exceeding his own” wrenched her thoughts in a new direction. That sounded an awful lot like a story a colleague had been looking into before the line of inquiry was unceremoniously quashed by t.f.i.t.n. about three weeks back. He was following a source that an off-planet cousin of the Ibn Rasheeds had vanished shortly after arrival in the Hive. Supposedly the young rake had wanted to fit a visit to the Cathedral into a Grand Tour. Smart money was on a quick hush-hush after a tragic accidental death – even the best liver genemods couldn’t handle all the drugs creative chymists high and low in the hive could come up with – but Jamal Bey Ibn Rasheed had visited the Inquirer in person, and that was the end of that …

Titia
The name Rigg didn't ring a bell. She knew Grand Urbis Plaza well, though, a favourite for demagogues looking to snare a crowd from the pious masses, particularly on Shrivedays.

[Haval]

Nuala does not know what to make of that, 'The Inquirer? I think I've seen the billboards.' Newspapers had never interested her enough to pay much attention to them.


"So. You're asking what Mr. Vale is looking for in us. I think he mostly wants... a bunch of nobodies, or people who are good at acting the part."

She'll nod in agreement, 'People who no one will see coming.' Nuala could hardly take offense at that characterisation. 'The only thing is, if this Father Rigg is friendly with Redemptionists then he might have people close to him keeping watch for anyone who is a little too interested in whatever they're doing.'

[Bennosuke]

She'll nod in agreement, 'People who no one will see coming.' Nuala could hardly take offense at that characterisation.

"Or perhaps we're just people no one would miss if things spiral towards The Eye," Lyra says with an eye roll.


'The only thing is, if this Father Rigg is friendly with Redemptionists then he might have people close to him keeping watch for anyone who is a little too interested in whatever they're doing.'

But to this Lyra nods her head in affirmation, and adds, "And this does smell a bit of Red Redemptionist... strategy. Perhaps their camps might be a good place to start. Would it be too hard to pose as interested recruits?"

[LeSwordfish]

The Inquirer
"So in this case, the favor is... my secondment?"

She found herself curiously unable to concieve of what they were implying. Working for... them?



Arnest Cauldron, Laxday of the 25th week
"For... some of us more than others," Carys said carefully. "Two stories that crossed the newsdesk recently were related to this: someone did a profile of this chap, and I think one of these related deaths might have been on our radar too, before word came down from above to drop it. I'd bet someone's still got notes on those cases that didn't make it to print. And we might be able to find about other pilgrims dying by asking around the local ecclesiarchy - seems likely some of the less fiery priests would have a strong opinion about him.

[Thragka]

The Inquirer, previously

The Editor interrupted Hussain before the priest could reply. "As I had been saying, it's too soon to tell." Hussain shot back a combative look, but stayed quiet. "'Cooperation and assistance'," the Editor continued, "'which may keep you from your regular work for some time.' That was our brief. I don't think we should jump the gun here, Father."

Hussain effected a put-upon look. But he nodded in resigned agreement. He opened his hand, offering the key in his palm to Carys. His eyes asked: what do you say?

"Your possessions from your desk are in my office," the priest said in his trademark sanctimonious tone. "You may take them back. Except for the Cadet's Ball photographs. I have destroyed those. You certainly knew better than to think those would ever be in the public interest, Ms Callaghan."

[Bennosuke]

Lyra's scowl softens to an amused grin. "Fine," she says with a chuckle, "I suppose we can go with the more reasonable, safer option. I'd be happy to go investigate the Ecclesiarchy."

[Haval]

"Or perhaps we're just people no one would miss if things spiral towards The Eye," Lyra says with an eye roll.

'And if it gets that bad?' Nuala felt that someone had to say it. 'I wouldn't say I'm here by choice. How far do we think Mister Vane expects us to take this?'



But to this Lyra nods her head in affirmation, and adds, "And this does smell a bit of Red Redemptionist... strategy. Perhaps their camps might be a good place to start. Would it be too hard to pose as interested recruits?"

'Maybe. Just pretend to be mad at the right kind of people. I can't say I know enough about them to lie properly though.'

[Bennosuke]

'And if it gets that bad?' Nuala felt that someone had to say it. 'I wouldn't say I'm here by choice. How far do we think Mister Vane expects us to take this?'

Lyra ***** an eye at Nuala. "I would assume the expectations are rather... extreme. Let's just say I wasn't looking to be found when Mr. Vane's servo skull came to me. Damn thing seemed to know everything about me. Whomever this is has power and money; maybe a Noble family head or the like. I don't know what game we've been roped into playing, but I'd bet we're the pawns." There's genuine concern as well as disdain in Lyra's voice, but ultimately resignation.


'Maybe. Just pretend to be mad at the right kind of people. I can't say I know enough about them to lie properly though.'

Lyra replies offhand, "They're religious nutters who organize into raiding parties to go up to the Hiveskin to redeem it of mutants and heretics; which sounds pretty in line with Rigg's MO."

[LeSwordfish]

The Inquirer
That, at least got a smile out of Carys, and she took the key. "What's in the public interest and what the public finds interesting are two very different things."

She stood. "I'll collect what's left, then. And I'll come and visit for the Candlemas party, at least."

Arnest Cauldron, Laxday of the 25th week
Carys kept her own speculations as to their masters secret, but felt the comforting weight of her pistol. She had been threatened before but... wouldn't be expected to fight. Obviously.

"I'm sure we're just expected to ask questions. Whoever this is will certainly be able to afford a few sellswords for any... dirty work. Look, I'll go back to the Inquirer, get the notes on those old cases. If someone else talks to the preachers and we meet back here tomorrow evening?"

[Burden King]

Titia stayed mostly quiet as the other spoke, not sure what she could add as it seemed they each had their own methodology of finding information, with the woman from the Inquirer possibly having the most concrete information out of everyone. However, when she heard questions of just who it was that had called upon their service, she looked at the symbol she had been given long ago "I don't think he is a noble, at least not one of this Hive." She said, presenting the symbol for the other's to see "His representative that found me says we serve the Throne, so I think we are to do whatever we can." She said, looking to the others.

"In any case, meeting up tomorrow should be easy enough for me, though should we stick to groups just in case?" She asked, a little worried as most lower scum were about any paranoid fear, but their target was violent and growing a following "We might be able to avoid him until he comes back to recruit on Shrivday, but it's better safe than sorry."

[Haval]

To Lyra ‘A noble household interfering in other people’s business? Sounds about right. I have to wonder then if someone might have an issue with Rigg that they’re not telling us about.’ Titia seemed more optimistic about whoever they were working for. 'If it is like that maybe it'd make things easier on us. Seems to me like it's very easy to claim to work for the Throne. I want to keep an open mind until Mister Vane sees fit to show us some ID.'

On meeting with Redemptionists Nuala tries to think about how she would prepare for this if it was a normal job. She'll reply to Lyra, ‘Yeah but it’s best to know what not to say if you can avoid it. Just to avoid upsetting people. Maybe I just claim to have got religion for the first time.’ She's not ruling it out.

After Carys speaks, ‘Do we want to have a way of getting in contact with each other otherwise. I can’t say I trust any of you either but...since we’re all stuck with each other for the moment.’

To Titia on staying in groups, 'Not against it. It's not like I have much to do at the moment, but the Enforcers don’t usually like my sort being this far down hive.' She rolls her eyes, 'Scared we're going to steal stuff.'

[Bennosuke]

Lyra shrugs and says flatly, "Why don't we break up into a couple of groups? Some of us can go talking to some up spire ecclesiarchs, and see if they can dig up any dirt on Riggs. Another group of us can go pose as would be redemptionists learning to find out more about their workings, and see if Riggs comes up. Carys can go look into the newspaper records... and maybe some muscle can accompany her." Lyra pauses here to give the Society Correspondent a concerned once over, before continuing, "And we can all meet back here tomorrow night to discuss what we find. It was my bright idea to go say high to the Redemptionists, so I suppose I should volunteer for that gig."

[-Sentinel-]

"Do we want to have a way of getting in contact with each other otherwise. I can't say I trust any of you either but...since we're all stuck with each other for the moment."

"I have business cards from my transportation guild, if you need to contact me," said Nathias, handing out a few cards to the others. "If we do try to infiltrate the Red Redemption, I... know someone who can forge cover identities for us. No need for them to be elaborate; I don't think cults tend to examine people's papers too closely. But it's a good idea to have nothing that links you to your real name and hab."

"Why don't we break up into a couple of groups? Some of us can go talking to some up spire ecclesiarchs, and see if they can dig up any dirt on Riggs."

"You'll need a cover for this, too," interjected Nathias. "I don't think the Church is too forthcoming about any information that may reflect badly on them. Any ideas? Let's decide what questions we even want to ask them, and work from there."



Lyra ***** an eye at Nuala.
Apparently you triggered the profanity filter. You may want to fix that.

[Haval]

To Lyra. 'You might want a second person if you're going to talk to the Redemption.' She gestures at the others, 'Might as offer to come along. I might look enough like the sort of person that'd join up anyway.'

Nuala will take Nathias' card with a grin, 'Now I only have to find a working phone. There's a bar called the Scaldbat's Rest near the Hiveskin where I go if I have to call anyone. Someone in there can probably get a message to me if there's a need.' The mention of a forger was interesting, 'Never had papers in the first place, but if your mate does good work.'

On the question of the Ecclesiarchs. 'Maybe we tell them we're worried this Rigg is the wrong sort of Priest. He's only here to scam the gullible out of their thrones.'

[LeSwordfish]

"I have a microbead," Carys said, "you can contact me by that. I can't imagine I'll need any muscle, I used to work there, they're all dears."

[-Sentinel-]

"I'll come with you, Miss Callaghan," offered Nathias. "I believe I can be more help questioning priests than infiltrating cults. I may be able to get us the papers we need to make ourselves look official sorts."

[Burden King]

"And we can all meet back here tomorrow night to discuss what we find. It was my bright idea to go say high to the Redemptionists, so I suppose I should volunteer for that gig."

Titia raised her hand, volunteering "I should probably go with you then, as much as I want to visit the church and set foot in the temples of the emperor, I wouldn't exactly fit in." She said, sounding a bit resigned to it. "Plus, I know the hive pretty well, and can get us to their camp, or help escape if we need to." Titia said, looking then to Nathias " Having papers in general would be nice, though it'll be odd I think if someone like me has access to that."

[-Sentinel-]

"I'm not the best at deception or investigation," admitted Nathias. "Miss Callaghan, would you mind meeting up with me later so that we can go question a priest? I'll be getting us cover identities in the meantime. Probably best if we don't pretend to be Ecclesiarchy, though. Perhaps tax officials, concerned about a priest abusing his tax-exempt status to run businesses not related to the church?"

[LeSwordfish]

Carys seemed a little taken aback. "You mean you can arrange us... whatever we need? I... suppose yes, administratum officials?"

[Bennosuke]

"Alright," Lyra says with a satisfied grin, "it sounds to me like we've got a plan. We can start by making our way up and just asking around. I guess we should try not to make too much of a scene." She pauses for a moment then asks the two going with her, "Do either of you need to grab anything before we head up, or are we good to go?"

[Thragka]

The five impressed companions left the apartment. The heavy front door performed its usual whirring as it shut behind them, with extra clunking as they locked it from the outside. Whoever was pulling their strings, the mysterious Mr Vane had the budget to turn this unassuming hab into a safehouse. That could be a comforting or a worrying thing, depending on how you looked at it.

The group made their way roughly north, passing from the modest brick-built residential blocks to smaller homes above rockrete lock-ups on busier streets. The crowds grew as they approached the district commanded by the Cathedral and the economy it generated. Entering a broad, well-lit avenue – phosphorescent tubing running overhead on each roadside footpath, a clear sign of the relative wealth of this neighbourhood – they divided for their different tasks.

Carys

It took an hour and a half to get to the Inquirer offices in the middle depths of Borsen Spire. While Carys wasn’t familiar with, or totally comfortable in, the Cauldron, as soon as she approached the channel between the cathedral district and the gargantuan Goldenhand complex, the familiar standardised signage gave her back her bearings and her confidence. A cramped tramcar on the Goldenhand ring road took her skirting around the outermost layer of warehouses and logistics operators. Carys watched the hive go by outside the grubby window, mostly to ignore the grizzled, weatherbeaten fellow in a tattered tunic who was forced to stand so close to her that he was practically leaning on her. Looking inwards on their curving route, the same prefabricated blocks stretched on interminably down every street, from hive-floor to -ceiling. Industrial servitors loaded and unloaded long trucks, overseen by site forepersons, mechanics, and smatterings of adepts.

From the tramcar, she swapped to a more comfortable trolleyvator for the more vertical portion of the journey from the hiveskirt down into its central column. She looked far less out of place in the clean and well-maintained cab. She held a column for balance, sharing it with three other passengers, spaced around it equally – the model of public transport etiquette.

The temperature shifted cooler as the cab dropped. When she stepped out at the mid-depth station, the air on the public highway smelled fresh. This level was lit by a beampipe; a signature technology of Hive Tarsus, this archaeotech network somehow siphoned the very sunlight from broad solar farms on stable sections of the hiveskin. It was directed down into the wealthiest and most important levels of the deep hive, and emitted from overhead cables in brilliant bursts from long sequences of focal points attached to the ceilings. The illuminated locations slowly varied throughout the day, from east to west along each level, following the path of the Scintillan sun overhead – though far safer than being exposed to that direct searing heat. Compared to the artificial, blue-tinged fluorescent lights of the upper levels it was like – well, night and day.

Her cognomen let her into the Inquirer offices without complaint. Many of her colleagues stopped to briefly gawk at her as she crossed the newsroom. From his glass-panelled office, the Editor looked up and gave her a brief fraction of a nod, before returning his attention to his desk.

It’ll be an Easy (+30) Inquiry test to look through back issues &c. for the old article on Rigg and possible drafts that didn’t go to press. The same single test can also cover asking around about the quashed story on the Ibn Rasheed cousin, but that will need RPing out a conversation – the only reason I haven’t started it myself is because, again, I want to give you the chance to potentially fix some details of Carys’s colleagues in the newsroom or what have you before I fully takeover the NPCs that might be there.


Nathias

Even without the navigation cogitator in his taxi, Nathias could plot an efficient route home. He was back to his hab in under an hour, having neatly avoided the busiest thoroughfares as he headed roughly east. His neighbourhood was on the northern stretch of the boundary between the Arnest Cauldron and the Eckerhand Ovens, just a little south of both the cathedral district and Stanstud spaceport; a perfect market for cabbies. The phosphorescent lighting quickly became less frequent, replaced with smaller electric lamps. Their uneven coverage left plenty of shadows lingering even in what was nominally the brightest part of the day. Ascending several levels towards the hiveskin, even those were replaced in some places with gaslamps and lanterns. The structure of the uppermost layers of this area was far from perfect, and even though the hottest months were still ahead, it was growing unseasonably, swelteringly hot this afternoon.

In the desk in his workspace were all the materials he needed to fake up some identification papers – at least, non-photograph IDs. Now, he just needed inspiration …

The mechanics of forging some ID papers will be according to the Crafting rules on p.245 of the Inquisitor’s Handbook, assuming you have it. To make papers for the whole group, I think the best time interval is hours, and the base difficulty would be Ordinary (+10) – though the exact details of what you want to create may modify that, particularly the level of authority you’re faking.

I’m inclined to handle this by secret rolls, so that there may be (f)unexpected consequences if Nathias doesn’t realise he’s made a terrible fake – would you be alright with that? I can tell you how far you’re getting after a few hours so you can judge how long the whole process will take, and I’ll apply as many Fate re-rolls as you’re willing to allocate.


Lyra, Nuala & Titia

As Carys and Nathias peeled off in different directions, the remaining trio pressed on into the Cathedral district. The street-level lockups went from personal workshops and makeshift offices to local craftsmen selling tasteful souvenirs and tacky gewgaws, and convenience stores full of on-the-go food, hats, cloaks, ponchos, prayer beads, carved icons of saints, and utterly false tickets to the Cathedral and permits to jump the line. Titia knew the area best, and skillfully guided Nuala and Lyra through the swelling crowds, years of experience helping her predict the currents and fronts in the flows of pilgrims and locals alike.

Coming into a broad plaza at the junction of two thoroughfares and a cloister compound, the others separated from their guide and began trying to pick up rumours on the Redemptionists. Nuala hovered on the outskirts of small groups of pilgrims, trying to inject herself subtly into their conversations – without much luck. At best she was waved away, but a number of times she was told in no uncertain terms that the pilgrims had no truck with “those nutters” and that she’d better make herself scarce before she landed them all in trouble. A band of shaven-headed men in dark robes were slowly patrolling the plaza: impromptu Frateris Militia. Nuala didn’t want to run the risk of finding out exactly what they thought of the Red Redemption, and allowed herself to be shooed away from the people she’d annoyed.

Lyra put her training to good use, with much better results. Perhaps it was the hard and unflinching look to her, in contrast with Nuala’s flimsier figure. After an hour or so of wandering the plaza, eavesdropping on different cliques, she subtly struck up a conversation with a local behind a kebab cart.

“For all the off-worlders we get coming here for the Cardinal’s blessing,” her new acquaintance said, “you’d think more of them would walk the walk instead of just talk the talk. Emperor knows we’ve as many heretics lurking up in the hiveskin as anywhere else. Blasphemers, aye, and worse,” she said with a knowing nod. Lyra helped the conversation develop further in that direction. “If you wanted to meet some like-minded souls in the community,” the vendor revealed, “there’s a canteen that serves free evening meals to pilgrims three levels up. You might find some friends there.”

Of course, if anyone wants to do anything else around the apartment, as Lyra suggests, before you leave, you’re welcome to timesplit that.

[Haval]

Earlier


"Do either of you need to grab anything before we head up, or are we good to go?"

'From here? If our mysterious boss has left us anything useful.' Nuala will have a look around the safe house before they leave.


Going to investigate all the rooms in the safe house for anything interesting.

Lyra, Nuala & Titia

Nuala preferred to avoid talking to people like the robed pilgrims if she could help it. She wasn't the most pious person and assumed that people like that could tell and would judge her for it. Eventually she'll go looking for the others to see if either had had more luck.

[-Sentinel-]

Carys seemed a little taken aback. "You mean you can arrange us... whatever we need? I... suppose yes, administratum officials?"

"I know... the right people," said Nathias evasively. "Might take a little while to arrange, though. And our identities can't have a high security clearance, because the higher the clearance, the higher the scrutiny."



It was almost a relief for Nathias to plunge himself into the tedious work of ID-forging. This was something he knew; something he was good at; something that was rarely a cause for surprises. He grabbed his autoquill and began drafting Administratum identities for himself and Carys Callaghan.


OOC

The mechanics of forging some ID papers will be according to the Crafting rules on p.245 of the Inquisitor’s Handbook, assuming you have it. To make papers for the whole group, I think the best time interval is hours, and the base difficulty would be Ordinary (+10) – though the exact details of what you want to create may modify that, particularly the level of authority you’re faking.

I’m inclined to handle this by secret rolls, so that there may be (f)unexpected consequences if Nathias doesn’t realise he’s made a terrible fake – would you be alright with that? I can tell you how far you’re getting after a few hours so you can judge how long the whole process will take, and I’ll apply as many Fate re-rolls as you’re willing to allocate.
I'll craft ID papers for only two people at first. Since we're not talking about photo ID, the one meant for Carys could be reused later by another PC if needed, assuming we're not trying to deceive the same people as before. The papers don't grant a huge amount of authority; they just state that the person carrying them is an Administratum bureaucrat. They're meant to be flashed quickly in front of someone's eyes while making a fast-talking Deceive or Inquiry check, not to undergo a huge amount of scrutiny.

Secret rolls do make a lot of sense here. Nathias has an autoquill for an extra +10 to Trade (Copyist), meaning he will roll vs. 64. He is willing to use one Fate re-roll. Is a test required for each identity being forged? If so, give priority to the papers for Carys, since she will be doing most of the talking and drawing the most attention to herself.

Nathias' alias will be Reza Shumar. Carys' alias will be Livia Aventine.

[Thragka]

The Safehouse

The layout of the apartment suggested that at some point it had been a family home. It took up the entire second floor, save the building's main stairwell, and a utility stairway tucked into one corner. The big cogitator bank via which Vane had instructed them was the main focus of the wood-panelled study, along with a broad desk with room for six people to comfortably sit and work at. The cabinets were sparse, except for a little stationery: a small packet of paper sheets, quills and ink, and a broad plastic box almost full of loose paper clips. A scrap of paper was tucked under the lid. Somebody had handwritten the number 8,867.

The hallway featured a couple of small framed icons of saints on the wall, painted on thin canvas. They hung between brass sconces surmounted by lamps of yellow-ish stained glass. On a thin drawer table, a small pewter figurine with angel’s wings held aloft a gun and a sword.

There was a living room with comfortable, if somewhat old-fashioned, armchairs and settees. A phonograph stood on a hexagonal side table; the mounted record was labelled Songs of the Illumination Choir, Vol. LXXXII. Bookshelves were set into every wall, filled with small, leatherbound volumes, their pages browned and yellowed with age. Almost uniformly, they were reader’s digests of literary classics.

The kitchen had a fridge, an oven and hob unit, and a sizable recaf maker, with a cupboard full of sachets ready to be rehydrated. A few hardy vegetables also lingered behind cupboard doors. A cardboard box contained a small crockery set – just about enough to prepare a meal for five people – as well as two pots and one pan. There were six bedrooms. Two of them had double beds, while the other four had singles. All were made up, the linens smelling fresh. The chests of drawers and closets in the bedrooms were all empty. The glass in all the windows was thick, like the front door.

In the larger of the two bathrooms, Nuala found a first-aid kit. Lyra found a number of other useful items in the small utility room.


The first aid kit contains a medikit, six doses of stimm, two doses of De-Tox, and [roll0] single-use syringes for the drugs. You also find:

Two portable and rechargeable lamp packs.
A clip/drop harness and a grapnel.
Nine filtration plugs – no sign of the presumed tenth.
A set of five microbeads on the same channel.
A box of Ecclesiarchy rosaries.
A compass with minute, unreadable characters etched onto the bottom. It points in a direction which is not north.

[Bennosuke]

“For all the off-worlders we get coming here for the Cardinal’s blessing,” her new acquaintance said, “you’d think more of them would walk the walk instead of just talk the talk. Emperor knows we’ve as many heretics lurking up in the hiveskin as anywhere else. Blasphemers, aye, and worse,” she said with a knowing nod. Lyra helped the conversation develop further in that direction. “If you wanted to meet some like-minded souls in the community,” the vendor revealed, “there’s a canteen that serves free evening meals to pilgrims three levels up. You might find some friends there.”

Lyra grins coldly at the woman and bows her head shortly in gratitude for the information. "Thank you my compatriot," she says leaning in to speak furtively, "would you be so kind as to help a like minded soul by providing her with a name that she might ask for at this canteen?"


Of course, if anyone wants to do anything else around the apartment, as Lyra suggests, before you leave, you’re welcome to timesplit that.

Would it be possible for Lyra to get a hold of a small hand held mirror? I don't know if you want me to roll for it, or just assume such a small trinket could be easily obtained.

Upon leaving the small shop where Lyra had gathered her vital information, Lyra gathers her compatriots and says to Nuala & Titia, "I think I have a lead. There's a canteen a few levels up where apparently the Redemptionists meet. I'm ready to go if you two are, but we are gonna have to be careful."

[LeSwordfish]

Carys returned Lenkman's nod and let herself into the records room with every appearance of being allowed to be there - which, she reminded herself, she was. It seemed entirely absurd to be automatically thinking in terms of subterfuge and deceit already: this was her workplace, throne's sake. Quelling down the thought - had that young man been offering forged documents? gracious - she began rifling through the filing cabinets, looking for the article on Rigg, and anything that might be cross-referenced to it. Hopefully it wasn't far enough ago to have been moved to the microfiche yet.

OOC
Inquiry [roll0] vs 46 Fel +30 Difficulty.

With as much information from that as she could gather, she sought out Timon - as best she could remember, he was the one who had been working on the Ibn Rashad story. One of the more junior reporters, his desk was tucked away at the back of the newsroom, far away from the editor's office and the windows, which for the moment meant that there was at least a certain amount of privacy, and she perched herself on the desk next to him and cleared her throat politely to draw his attention away from his lunch.

"Timon, darling, how've you been? I was wondering if I could ask a tiny favor."

[Haval]

Nuala will borrow the medikit and the microbead on the basis that Vane shouldn't leave useful stuff lying around if he didn't want them to use it. She fully intends to bring it back when she's finished. She'll also take a rosary in the hope that it'll make her more convincing as a potential Redemptionist recruit.

Later

Nuala nods in agreement, 'If they're mates with Rigg I don't think they'll like us coming round asking questions.'

[Burden King]

Upon leaving the small shop where Lyra had gathered her vital information, Lyra gathers her compatriots and says to Nuala & Titia, "I think I have a lead. There's a canteen a few levels up where apparently the Redemptionists meet. I'm ready to go if you two are, but we are gonna have to be careful."

Titia nodded “Agreed, not just from them but whoever else owns those territories. I’ll figure out as much as I can about the area, whatever we can use will help.” she said, thinking on the various avenues and districts of the redemptionist territory.

Navigation (Surface) [roll0]
Common Lore (Imperium) [roll1]

[Thragka]

Carys


It wasn’t difficult to find the recent templates that the copy desk had sent to be typeset. The fluffy sort of article she was looking for normally went out on Gravendays. It took about twenty minutes to comb through the relevant section of every week’s issue, scanning for a mention of Rigg – but the paper copies only went back six weeks, to the start of the Season of Sands, and the preacher wasn’t in any of them. That didn’t spell complete failure, though. These vox pop profiles and feel-good public interest interviews passed under the eye of Eloise Magrin at the copy desk, and Carys knew the copy editor was always banging on about one day collecting and publishing them as a compendium. But Magrin’s book, working title Profiles of Pilgrims, was never going to get off the ground until the woman stopped thriving on chaos and learned to actually organise for the long term.

With some trepidation, Carys opened a drawer and found the file where she knew Magrin kept the layout clippings of the profiles that she deemed worthy. It was as messy as Carys expected. Clippings of all shapes and sizes had simply been stuffed into transparent plastic sleeves, which themselves had just been dropped sideways into the overall folder. Many of the smaller pieces had spilled out of the wallets to one end of the folder. The pandemonium was made all the worse by the fact that any of the articles which awkwardly spanned multiple columns had necessarily generated multiple clippings, and of course none of them had been stapled together or marked to indicate sequencing.

Taking the folder to her desk, Carys set about the thankless task of trying to do Eloise’s job for her. After another half hour or so she’d found a snippet that mentioned Rigg. It was presumably only a fragment of the original full piece. The one piece of salient information she could take from it was that the preacher maintained humble lodgings at a pilgrim’s inn run by one Brother Hector, to be found “a mile out of Grand Urbis Plaza”. Carys called that a win.

Timon didn’t seem to see her approach until she was sitting at the desk, although perhaps he was trying a little too hard not to see her approach – certainly, as soon as she cleared her throat, he leaned back in his chair almost too coolly and gave her his full attention. “Carys! Glad to see you’re still with us,” he said. There was a speck of mustard under his lip. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”



Nathias

With a little prompting, Nathias’s autoquill set about the task of outlining some reasonable-looking borders around a small section of card, and then the Administratum logo of the bookstand in the column in the background. Satisfied with the layout, he began filling it in. It was slow work, but straightforward, and gratifying. He took his time for the first hour or so, tracing the whole way around the border in a sensible crosshatch, and filling in the logo in halftone. Taking a ruler, he laid out spaces like a standardised form, and printed the fake name and details of Livia Aventine with a set of small, hand-movable type. Finally he cut the card out, and placed it behind a simple layer of plastic in a small leather wallet.

Looking at the finished result, he was satisfied. Of course, if anyone got a close look at it, they would realise there was no stamp or seal, but often people didn’t tend to notice that sort of detail when you just flashed a wallet in front of them. Setting that one aside, he repeated the process from the start.

By the end of three hours work, Nathias has successfully forged the two IDs. By default, unless I specify otherwise, they can be used to add a +20 bonus to an appropriate Deceive or Blather test. However, if an NPC gets their hands on one of the fakes and is allowed to examine it, they’ll get a big boost to Scrutiny to realise it’s a forgery.



Nuala, Lyra and Titia


Lyra grins coldly at the woman and bows her head shortly in gratitude for the information. "Thank you my compatriot," she says leaning in to speak furtively, "would you be so kind as to help a like minded soul by providing her with a name that she might ask for at this canteen?"

The kebab vendor gave Lyra a once-over. “Well, compatriot,” she said calmly, “I ain’t in the habit of giving out anyone’s personal details to strangers, even if I did know exactly who you should talk to. You never know who’s asking.” It wasn’t unfriendly, and she didn’t seem to be blowing Lyra off. “I’m sure you understand.” The kebabs on the grill sizzled as she rotated them.

Lyra can easily buy a handheld mirror from one of many shops in the area for the low, low price of 2 thrones.

With those rolls, Titia unfortunately doesn't know much about where exactly local Redemptionists might hand out.

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias pocketed the two newly-made pieces of forged ID, glanced at a copy of the Inquirer to remind himself of the newspaper's address, and set out in search of Carys Callaghan to plan a visit to some people who might know useful information.


OOC
Not sure if the timelines line up.

[Bennosuke]

I've gone ahead and subtracted 2 thrones from my character sheet, dropping Lyra to owning 20 thrones, and added the small hand mirror. Thank you.

Lyra is going to go for an unskilled Charm roll at 17, which I'm sure she will fail. [roll0]

Lyra does her best to give the female kebab vendor a warm smile and replies, "Understood sister. Though any help would be in the name of His assistance. And those Kebabs do look good."

And since Lyra failed, and I assume she gets no further information:


Nuala nods in agreement, 'If they're mates with Rigg I don't think they'll like us coming round asking questions.'

Titia nodded “Agreed, not just from them but whoever else owns those territories. I’ll figure out as much as I can about the area, whatever we can use will help.” she said, thinking on the various avenues and districts of the redemptionist territory.

Lyra nods her head. "Very well," she says flatly, "then we'll just ask around about the Redemptionists, as far as I know, it's really one of their haunts. Titia, we can meet you back here in about an hour or so? Or do you want to come with us?"

[LeSwordfish]

Carys furnished Timon with her number two smile with extra sparkle. "Only briefly I'm afraid, been asked to pick up some paperwork... You handled the Ibn Rashad story, right? Do you still have the notes on that? I know it never went to print but it might be a little related to something else i'm looking at - could I take a copy?"

[Haval]

Lyra nods her head. "Very well," she says flatly, "then we'll just ask around about the Redemptionists, as far as I know, it's really one of their haunts. Titia, we can meet you back here in about an hour or so? Or do you want to come with us?"

'Don't they have those shiny red robes? Shouldn't be that hard to find.'

[Bennosuke]

Lyra grinned at the comment and replied, "Let's hope it's that easy."

(OOC: Ready to move on to the canteen whenever everyone is ready)

[Thragka]

Carys

"The – oh, the Ibn Rasheed stuff? Ah ..." Timon's face fell. "I, uh, sort of destroyed those, after Mikael nixed it. Hussain was pretty clear about eliminating loose ends." The young man looked utterly crestfallen that he couldn't do better. "It was only a few weeks ago, though. What exactly were you looking for? I'm sure I remember most of the details." His face lit up in eager hope.

[Haval]

Since they left the safehouse Nuala has been keeping an eye on their surroundings. That Vane knew who she was at all made her uncomfortable. He had found her through the Magistratum, but if you wanted someone to work for you you would probably check them out first. Had his people been watching her, and if Nuala and the others were expendable hirelings, did Vane have other people still watching them to pass on news of their success or failure?

She'll also look for the sort of people who might be preying on the pilgrims to take their money. Even though she's been to this level of the Hive before Nuala has never had reason to visit the Cathedral district, but she assumed that with this many people packed close together there was always going to be pickpockets and beggars who weren't put off by the dangers posed by the more aggressive pilgrims. If Lyra's lead didn't pan out Nuala believed she might have an easier time of it with people like that.


Awareness to be paranoid
vs. Per 35 (Awareness +10)
[roll0]

Search to look for pickpockets or beggars
vs. Per 35 / 2
[roll1]

[Burden King]

Titia racked her brain trying to find memories or images in her head that would lead to the redemption it’s, but eventually she had to admit defeat with a sigh. “Yeah nevermind, I think I might be drawing a blank, or I’ve just never ran into them before. Some guide I am.” She said, shaking her head as she looked to her companions. “So I’ll go with you, staying here for an hour wouldn’t be very helpful in the slightest.” She said, feeling a bit useless for the moment.

(Ready for move forward myself)

[LeSwordfish]

Damn. Carys wasn't entirely surprised, but had still been hoping Timon was as lasseiz-faire with document security as some. "Run me through the basics, darling, and maybe it'll jog my memory."

OOC
Some specific follow-up questions:

Was there any hint of any related deaths or any kind of pattern?
Who was with him when he died? Any witnesses?
Do you have the name/contact details for the Magistratum officer handling the case?

[Thragka]

Carys

Timon nodded earnestly. He began rooting around in his desk drawers as he spoke. “Maybe there’s something I missed … anyway. The departed was one Nazif Ibn Rasheed, from the branch of the family on Alactra. Pretty close to the main line, I believe – obviously they’re based here, with Jamal Bey’s household, but the dynasty has a lot of holdings in the Malfian subsector. And Nazif had grown up very close to Afet Beyzadi, the Bey’s daughter, you know. She was our in. Obviously we’d covered her before, in the Society pages – oh, I mean that would have been you, wouldn’t it? Of course. Yeah, really a quite popular young woman, classy, philanthropist, photographs well, favourite daughter of one of the sector’s premiere mining magnates. Occasional hints of wilder parties but nothing that’s turned public interest against her yet.

“Um, so Nazif had got here late Orisons, I think. Showed up at a few social functions with Afet. Had his own retainers, I think they already had a press packet prepped, you know, a profile for him. He was on a bit of a tour of the sector, nominally checking in with a lot of different Ibn Rasheed honchos, to see what aspect of the business he’d move into. But of course it was more for leisure, bit of a Grand Tour, and it seems the main focus was to spend some time here with Afet. There were hints from their PR people that she might go with him when he moved on, actually. It was a bit – well, they were second cousins, ish, I had it written down, worked out. Second once removed on one side, third on the other …

“No, can’t find it. But it seemed possible we were gonna hear about an engagement sooner or later. You’d have to talk to, um, Gert, in Business, but word is Jamal Bey wants to consolidate some holdings. So it looked like I might get a story out of it, either for Business or Society. Just tried to keep my ear to the floor about both of them, Nazif and Afet. And I heard he’d been seen a few times in the Cathedral district, trying to keep a low profile. It seemed on the straight and narrow, I thought he might actually have been trying to do the pilgrim thing, you know, slum it, actually queue for a bit before getting to visit. Apparently he really was quite faithful. And he didn’t want that side of him getting a lot of attention – I know, right, very specific type of humility – so I never actually got a confirmation, or a photo or anything. But I had some people keeping an eye out.

“Then a source calls, tells me Nazif’s been seen in the District, on an upper level, but there’s something a bit weird about it, he’s got odd company. Says she’ll follow him but I should get there. I head over, can’t find either of them. Hours later the Ibn Rasheed household sends the death notice to us. So I tried to ask the Magistratum, and get a hold of my source, you know, a skulker I’d just been using occasionally to follow people around. Try to fit together the details I had, see if I could still make a story out of this, even if it’s not at all what I thought it would be. I mean my first thought was a drug deal gone wrong, or something, but why would he be out here buying stuff himself? He’s got enough people for that. But I can’t get a rat’s whisker out of the usual leaky seals in the Magistratum. I mean, half of them are sponsored by the noble houses anyway, aren’t they … in any case, barely a week later, obviously the Ibn Rasheeds get word I’m digging around – and then one morning bloody Jamal Bey himself is in Lenksman’s office. I tell you, when I saw him there, I nearly shat myself.”

Timon suddenly looked very self-conscious. Perhaps in front of Carys Callaghan, one ought to aspire to a more delicate turn of phrase. “Obviously that was the end of it, whole thing shut down. It was a tragic, accidental death and it would be uncouth and disrespectful to the family to pry. Frankly I was a bit spooked, it was a relief to just wash my hands of it. But you want to know what the weirdest thing is?” The young man rapped his pen against his desk. “My skulker’s gone too. That call she gave me, telling me she was gonna follow Nazif, as far as I can tell that’s the last time anyone’s seen or heard from her. Whatever accident befell the late gentleman, it was awfully contagious.”

I hope that’s a satisfactory response to Carys’s questions, to the extent Timon’s able to answer them. Of course, he’ll give Carys the contact details &c. of the missing skulker.


Nuala, Titia and Lyra

The kebab seller had given Lyra vague directions, but the canteen didn’t turn out to be too difficult to find once the three of them had climbed to the right level. The main trouble was actually getting through the crowds at their starting point. The afternoon was coming into its height and the hive corridor was getting even busier than it had been when they first arrived. It was slow going, navigating between the stolid clusters of pilgrims that flowed viscously down the avenue. Even though Nuala kept a practised eye out for any petty thievery, they were simply passing between so many people – and seeing any individual so briefly – that she could barely keep sight of anyone for long enough to see anything interesting happen to them.

Having hiked their way to a broad junction, they followed a marginally less busy road to a ramp shaft. The vertical cylinder was perhaps twenty metres in diameter, and dropped down into the depths of the hive; its bottom was invisible behind the mists that lingered by the exits to the deeper, colder, richer, levels. Around the circumference, two interlocked spirals wound around and around, completing a revolution every two levels. Each ramp had one vehicle lane in each direction, and a pedestrian path that could fit six or eight people abreast. Although the pace here was still slow, it was at least less chaotic. People kept to the order that they had when they entered the ramp; nobody wanted to risk pushing into someone else, when a chain reaction could so easily lead to an unfortunate soul tumbling over the edge.

Three levels up, the pilgrims were fewer, though still the dominant demographic out in public. These ones looked wearier, rougher; more beaten down, physically and mentally, by the harsh reality of a long pilgrimage across the sector. There was a hungry look to the dozen or so that were sitting around, idly, outside the canteen hall. They were gathered in a collection that was not quite yet a queue. Lyra passed them and stuck her head through the door to the canteen. Inside were five long rows of plastic tables and stools running the length of the space, at the other end of which was the serving counter. There was no food yet – the vats and troughs were empty, and a couple of boys were ferrying piles of bowls and plates from a back room.

A large man stepped through the swinging doors behind the counter, watching his sweating brow. “Too early!” he called across the room to Lyra. “We’re still cooking. We open in an hour.”

[Haval]

Nuala will go to what seemed to be the back of the queue. She'll smile and politely ask one of the pilgrims how the food was.

[Bennosuke]

As the three begin to make their way upspire, Lyra begins practicing with her mirror. The higher up they went, the more blinding rays of sunlight cut through the sky above. Whenever she got the chance, she would use the mirror to redirect the light, aiming it at various targets; the face of a looming gargoyle, a boarded up window and the like. She would need to practice her accuracy if she was going to get good at weaponizing the very light around them.

Not sure what your thoughts are on this, but I figured it would be a fun little idea, since my understanding of the Hive Skin is that it's a hellish sunscape with sunlight so powerful it can cook you pretty quickly. I don't intend on using the mirror like this to do damage, so much as just use it to blind opponents, maybe use it to signal to the others at times while they are up hive. Let me know if you think this is okay, and what sort of a roll you would want for such actions. If you are opposed to the idea, we can just ignore the part above, though Lyra will keep the mirror ect.

--------------------------------------------------------


A large man stepped through the swinging doors behind the counter, watching his sweating brow. “Too early!” he called across the room to Lyra. “We’re still cooking. We open in an hour.”

Lyra doesn't budge from her spot, grinning confidently at the man, and keeping her arms crossed across her body. "My apologies she says flatly." Rather than allowing the man to intimidate her, she steps forward, and places a hand on his large bicep, saying in a low voice, "My friends and I are not actually here for the food. You see, we were told we might be able to find some like minded individuals, and that these individuals may want to recruit us to help with the mission." She raises an eyebrow at the man, and does her best to get a good look inside while she's close.

Going to put in for a Scrutiny/Awareness roll to see if there's anything about the canteen that screams Red Redemptionist Cult, trained with Perception 35 [roll0]

[Haval]

Seeing that Lyra wasn't turning away Nuala will move back to join her. She hadn't expected the woman to be so direct. She'll stand behind Lyra to see how the man reacts.


Awareness vs. Per 35 (Awareness +10)
[roll0]

[Thragka]

Lyra, Nuala, Titia

The gaunt woman Nuala approached outside the canteen turned and levelled an intense stare at her. Her cheeks were sunken; dark circles haunted her eyes.

"It's free," she said flatly. "I'm not complaining."


Lyra doesn't budge from her spot, grinning confidently at the man, and keeping her arms crossed across her body. "My apologies she says flatly." Rather than allowing the man to intimidate her, she steps forward, and places a hand on his large bicep, saying in a low voice, "My friends and I are not actually here for the food. You see, we were told we might be able to find some like minded individuals, and that these individuals may want to recruit us to help with the mission." She raises an eyebrow at the man, and does her best to get a good look inside while she's close.

One of the boys carrying crockery out stopped and looked curiously at Lyra. The man – presumably, the cook – waved him away, and the child scampered back into the kitchen.

"You were, were you?" he asked, folding his meaty arms. He looked Lyra up and down, then glanced at Nuala and Titia. "Who told you that?"

[LeSwordfish]

Carys took careful notes through Timon's explanation, double-underlining both the name of his source and that of Afet as possible leads: she knew Afet to talk to and suspected she could probably get some information out of her.

"And where were you meeting your contact?"

[Haval]

Outside, Nuala smiles and thanks the gaunt woman. She fully intends to take advantage of any free food if it's on offer.

Inside she'll respond to the large man. 'You know the Bell over by Stanstud spaceport?' She'll name a real bar that Nuala had had occasion to drink in before. 'There was a Friar in there holding forth about sinners and mutants in Tarsus.' With any luck the existence of a wandering Friar would be hard to verify. 'Anyway, we got to talking and he said he said he'd heard that there were good people in Tarsus who take the sort of actions that need taking. The sort of thing that the whole Ecclesiarchy should be doing anyway. He said he'd heard this was the place to start looking if we wanted in'


Just noticed the names of all the spaceports :smallsmile:

Deceive vs. Fel 33
[roll0]
Fate if failed
[roll1]

[Thragka]

Carys

“Sola was a regular at a public house in the Cathedral district,” Timon said. “The Blind Bishop, off Goldengate. She knew the owners. That’s where I’d meet up with her.”

Lyra, Nuala, Titia

The cook’s face was impassive during Nuala’s explanation. “The Bell,” he repeated. “Yeah, think I’ve heard of it.” He unfurled his arms. “Well, we get a lot of passionate folk here. Some of my regulars might be who you’re looking for. But, as I said, you’re too early.” He jerked a thumb back to the kitchens. “We’ve to finish setting up before we start letting anyone in. If you hang around til later, though, maybe I can point you to the right people.”

Let me know if you do want to hang around – we can skip forward an hour if there’s not much you want to do in between.

[Burden King]

Titia made sure to keep a mental map drawn up as she followed her compatriots along through the winding tunnels and towering spires, always keeping an eye out for anyone trying to steal from them or if anyone in particular had been following after them.

awareness check time see if anyone was following us or stole from us. Perception 35
[roll0]

Titia heard about the free food, and got visibly excited when there was a mention of free food, and stood in line at the ready while she listened to her companions try to lie, and immediatly tensed a little as she listened to them. “By the throne,” she said, preparing for any confrontation, placing her hand on her hand cannon beneath her parka so as to hide the motion.” Yeah, we felt the fervor of the man, and I had heard of the passion a similar priest would bring to the masses of Shrivdays.“

Gonna try to help the desceive check of Nuala. Might not work, but worth a shot. Fellowship is 47, trained in deceive

[roll1]

[LeSwordfish]

"The Blind Bishop," Carys said carefully, writing it down. "And the magistratum... did you feel like they were blanking you specifically darling? Or were they not investigating at all?"

"Just your intuition, of course. Did you know who the investigating officer was?"

[Haval]

Nuala will thank the man and leave. Maybe the cook didn't have a reason to care about her explanation one way or the other.

After they're at a safe distance from any eavesdroppers outside, 'Do we need to get our story straight? Just in case.' She looks rueful, 'I'm sorry if either of you had any better ideas there. I don't think telling the truth is going to help somehow.'

[Bennosuke]

Titia heard about the free food, and got visibly excited when there was a mention of free food, and stood in line at the ready while she listened to her companions try to lie, and immediatly tensed a little as she listened to them. “By the throne,” she said, preparing for any confrontation, placing her hand on her hand cannon beneath her parka so as to hide the motion.” Yeah, we felt the fervor of the man, and I had heard of the passion a similar priest would bring to the masses of Shrivdays.“

Lyra could feel the group digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole, and so she quickly says, "Many thanks my brother. We would appreciate the... introduction." She smiles at him coyly, then gives him the two handed sign of the Aquila, before turning and following the others away from the canteen.


After they're at a safe distance from any eavesdroppers outside, 'Do we need to get our story straight? Just in case.' She looks rueful, 'I'm sorry if either of you had any better ideas there. I don't think telling the truth is going to help somehow.'

Lyra shakes her head in the negative, "No, it was good improvisation. But yes, let's make sure we have a story straight... and lets maybe take a walk around, see if there isn't anything more we can't discern through observation."

Oh well, looks like the dice might be falling out of our favor, though I really did like the improvisation. I'm going to throw in one last Awareness/Scrutiny roll for good measure, to see if Lyra can't gather anything more by essentially walking around and "casing the joint"

[roll0]

and apologies for the delays in posting. Packing up this weekend is taking a major priority right now!

EDIT: Now that's what I'm talking about!

[Thragka]

Carys

“I don’t think it was anything specifically about me,” Timon replied. “I don’t know who was in charge of it. I asked a fellow called Cecum, Sergeant Cecum. He knows how the world works – he does me a favour, I do him a favour, you know the sort of thing. Not like him to shut me down so abruptly, he's normally good for a scoop. So I’d guess the Ibn Rasheeds were putting a lot of pressure on the greencoats to keep the whole thing quiet.” He shrugged. “Whether the Magistratum are still silently looking into it or not, it’s definitely the Ibn Rasheeds pulling the strings.”


~

Nuala, Titia, Lyra

The cook didn't spend any time watching Lyra and the others exit. Almost as soon as the conversation ended, he was heading back into the kitchen and yelling instructions to the boys helping.

Outside, the pilgrims already gathered watched the trio leave the canteen. A small number looked wryly amused at how the newcomers had got the system wrong – one or two seemed vehemently annoyed at this arrogant attempt to skip the queue – but most simply glanced over and then returned to quietly waiting.

The paving rockrete of this hive corridor looked like it had originally had a detailed mould, but whatever design had once existed had long been worn smooth by the impact of feet over the years. As the three wandered a little route across and along, not straying too far from the canteen, Lyra kept a wary eye out. The clump of people outside the door was shaping into more of a queue as the minutes passed, and it probably would be a good idea to join it before too many more tired and hungry people beat them to it. The new arrivals came in ones and twos. Some looked more worn and less healthy than others, in labourer's gear or filthy, ragged clothing. Others were like the offworlder crowds of the lower levels, dressed in simple pilgrim's tunics, with traveller's cloaks or backpacks slung across their shoulders. There were none of the wealthier pilgrims that were obviously visiting the atmosphere of the pilgrim queues and crowds rather than staking a place in it: this was for the poorer sort, visitors and locals alike. Beyond those details, Lyra saw nothing that told of obvious fundamentalism among any of the people gathering outside the canteen. The only thing that distracted her from watching the crowd was, fifteen minutes or so after they'd spoken to the cook, one of the boys rushing out a back door of the canteen. The youth deftly navigated around adults in the street, clutching something in his hand and jogging away with the single-minded purpose of a child on an errand.

[Haval]

Nuala will lean against a wall and try to look inconspicuous. In her shabby factory workers coveralls at least she looked like she belonged here.

'Right then. My sister is the one who usually does the talking but I pay attention.' She wondered if she was admitting too much to people that she'd just met. 'She would say keep things simple so you don't have to adapt as much on the fly. People can usually tell and will start to wonder what you aren't telling them. Anyone who doesn't have anything to hide might just tell you to **** off. Anyone who does might jump to conclusions and want to know what why we're really here. For all they know we're working for the Enforcers.' Before her recent troubles with the Magistratum she would have found that funny. 'So I'd say we're mostly exactly what we look like, poor people that are in need of some religion that we're not getting anywhere else. I live up near the Hiveskin, so it's not much of a stretch to say that I know a lot of people that the Redemptionists might have a problem with. It'd barely be a lie.'

[Burden King]

Nuala will lean against a wall and try to look inconspicuous. In her shabby factory workers coveralls at least she looked like she belonged here.

'Right then. My sister is the one who usually does the talking but I pay attention.' She wondered if she was admitting too much to people that she'd just met. 'She would say keep things simple so you don't have to adapt as much on the fly. People can usually tell and will start to wonder what you aren't telling them. Anyone who doesn't have anything to hide might just tell you to **** off. Anyone who does might jump to conclusions and want to know what why we're really here. For all they know we're working for the Enforcers.' Before her recent troubles with the Magistratum she would have found that funny. 'So I'd say we're mostly exactly what we look like, poor people that are in need of some religion that we're not getting anywhere else. I live up near the Hiveskin, so it's not much of a stretch to say that I know a lot of people that the Redemptionists might have a problem with. It'd barely be a lie.'

“And I mostly help pilgrims and tourists through the city routes and hidden passages ways, so me having been witness to a sermon or two isn’t to out of the ordinary.” Titia said, happy she herself fit in well thanks to her rags and likely some people even recognizing her if they bothered to pay attention beyond the line and food.

[LeSwordfish]

"I'll bear that in mind, thank you," Carys said, making a final note of the magistrate's name and tucking her notebook away. "That should definitely be enough to go on, but I shall give you a call if I need anything else."

She stood. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment to make."

OOC
Nothing more here - going to meet Nathias at the appointed place.

[Haval]

“And I mostly help pilgrims and tourists through the city routes and hidden passages ways, so me having been witness to a sermon or two isn’t to out of the ordinary.” Titia said, happy she herself fit in well thanks to her rags and likely some people even recognizing her if they bothered to pay attention beyond the line and food.

Nuala looks at Titia quizzically, 'And who did you upset to end up on this job? Assuming you're serious.'


I have no reason to think that boy leaving the kitchen was important, so I'm just going to wait for the place to open up.

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias and Carys


A cab in the burgundy-and-white colors of the Northwind Transportation Guild was parked in front of the Inquirer's door when Carys came out. Sitting at the wheel, Nathias slid the window open to let the journalist know it was him. He waited until she was seated and the cab was in motion before he spoke of the investigation.

"I got us some ID," he said, handing Carys the card of one Livia Aventine, an Administratum bureaucrat with a low-level security clearance. "It should pass muster, as long as you're a good talker. And in your line of work, I assume you are. Where am I driving us?"


OOC
The card provides +20 to appropriate Deceive and Blather tests.

Edit: Just noticed Carys doesn't actually have either skill trained, so that bonus will certainly be welcome.

[Burden King]

Nuala looks at Titia quizzically, 'And who did you upset to end up on this job? Assuming you're serious.'


I have no reason to think that boy leaving the kitchen was important, so I'm just going to wait for the place to open up.




Titia stood a little more proudly, thinking she had actually done well to get this work "I think I helped the right pilgrim or priest one day. I don't charge members of the ecclesiarchy for my services, and one time I was handed a piece of paper with a ornate "I" printed on it. I must have helped out a servant of the throne, and they remembered me." She said, feeling happy she was doing some good "Maybe, not that I need a reward, but if they do... Maybe they can help me to enter the great Cathedral, maybe even help me live a little better." She said hopefully, fantasizing about sleeping somewhere without having to keep her pistol trained on a choke-point.

[LeSwordfish]

"Did you have any specific clerics you wanted us to talk to?" Carys asked, inspecting the card. "Is this... is this real, mister Falkner?"

OOC
I think talking to the clerics as taxmen was Nathias' idea? So I'm happy to let him take the lead on the specifics - if not, we can go looking for one of Timon's contacts.

[Haval]

Titia stood a little more proudly, thinking she had actually done well to get this work "I think I helped the right pilgrim or priest one day. I don't charge members of the ecclesiarchy for my services, and one time I was handed a piece of paper with a ornate "I" printed on it. I must have helped out a servant of the throne, and they remembered me." She said, feeling happy she was doing some good "Maybe, not that I need a reward, but if they do... Maybe they can help me to enter the great Cathedral, maybe even help me live a little better." She said hopefully, fantasizing about sleeping somewhere without having to keep her pistol trained on a choke-point.

'Huh. I would have said we were all here because someone was holding a gun to our heads. Someone must think you do good work, but if someone in the Ecclesiarchy likes you why hide it?' Nuala isn't sure what to believe.

[-Sentinel-]

"Did you have any specific clerics you wanted us to talk to?" Carys asked, inspecting the card. "Is this... is this real, mister Falkner?"

"No and no," said Nathias. "And my plan is a bit fuzzy, if I'm being honest. Anyway, consider this—members of clergy are exempted from taxation, but only as long as they live off the Ecclesiarchy's generous allowance. They may keep other sources of income on the side, but if so, they must pay taxes on them. As tax officials, we could claim we have reason to suspect our man of running secret businesses or accepting undisclosed donations. Just throw legalese at their faces and hope they give you the information you want about Rigg's whereabouts or personal character, just to get rid of you faster."

He shrugged. "Just a suggestion. If you have a better idea or some sort of lead, I'm all ears."


OOC

I think talking to the clerics as taxmen was Nathias' idea? So I'm happy to let him take the lead on the specifics - if not, we can go looking for one of Timon's contacts.
Correct, it was Nathias' idea; taxmen have all sorts of excuses to be asking questions, and I'm not willing to take the risk of trying to impersonate law enforcement or fellow clergy. (Note that Carys has not yet mentioned Timon's contact to Nathias.)

Sorry for taking so long to respond, I missed your post somehow.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra listens intently finally adding in, "I think your covers sound good. I'm just gonna tell them I don't want to talk about my past. That way I don't have to lie, and won't put my foot in my mouth later. I'm sure there are plenty of people who did bad things they don't want to talk about who are now looking for a little extreme religion."

She shrugs and says, "But I'm ready to move on if you two are."

(OOC: Sorry everyone for the delays! Glad to be back)

[Thragka]

At the canteen

Nuala, Lyra and Titia completed their loop of the local streets and joined the back of the queue for the canteen. It was remarkably orderly, relative to the usual buzz of this neighbourhood; there was none of the jostling and manoeuvring in which the three of them had been immersed in the crowds a few levels below. The patrons seemed content to mind their own business as they all waited for the time to pass. A few talked in low voices in huddled pairs, while most were silent. Others joined the queue behind them, the end of the line starting to pick up acceleration as it grew. As Nuala looked back every few minutes to watch it grow, she guessed it was quickly getting to the point where the hungry indigents outnumbered the seating space at the tables inside. It was a good thing they’d slotted in when they had.

A small number of the folks turning up didn’t join the end of the queue, but wandered up along it, occasionally greeting some of the waiting individuals and stopping to exchange a few words, before turning and disappearing down the alley that led to the back entrance to the kitchens. Nuala overheard part of a conversation one queuer had with a middle-aged man thick woolen jumper who was making his way up the line. He, and presumably the others by extension, were volunteers, arriving to work their shift, familiar to the regulars. After some time, the kitchen boy returned in the company of one such volunteer.

It was the best part of an hour of waiting in line until the double doors to the canteen opened, each pulled and then jammed with a doorstop by one of the two young lads, the hearty smell of some warm stew being released to the crowd. An eagerness rippled back along the line as it started moving. It took only a little over five minutes from then until the three suddenly-invested investigators were through the doors and into the canteen hall. They followed the people ahead of them, who clearly knew what they were doing, hugging one of the long walls of the dining room as they approached the counter at the end opposite the doors.

A plastic bowl and plastic plate on a plastic tray were handed out to each person at one end of the counter. Sliding it along the stainless steel rack, patrons received a hunk of hard, dark bread, with a scraping of oily margarine spread optional, before coming to the bubbling vats of thick, dark brown liquid. A generous ladling of the stew was slopped into the bowl. It seemed to consist mostly of squat beans, layers of their skin disintegrating in the mixture, and chunks of root vegetable, but the sauce smelled rich and a little peppery. On top of this was deposited another spoonful of boiled green legumes from a trough slick with the same margarine. The cook was manning this trough. He nodded to them in recognition as he dolloped the vegetables into their bowls, but said nothing else.

After receiving their food, the patrons began filling the long plastic tables, taking seats in order from the end closest the doors. Lyra, Nuala and Titia ended up sitting near the serving counters at the end of the first table. They ate and watched others getting their portions. The bread was tough and grainy, and the green veg was completely tasteless, but the stew, despite its simplicity, was warm and nourishing. The atmosphere in the hall picked up as the tables filled, a convivial buzz growing as people chatted while they ate. When the tables were full up, patrons carried their trays back out into the street to eat. Some of the volunteers who weren’t serving behind the counter paced along the lines, quickly collecting trays and empty bowls and plates, and politely but firmly encouraging people to get up from their seats and leave the hall once their food was finished. The elder of the cook’s young helpers was bussing the table the three women sat at, and he avoided asking them to leave, despite a few looks they were getting from folks carrying full trays away from the counter.

Fifteen or twenty minutes after getting their meal, Titia saw the cook looking over at them and nodding in their direction. The man he was serving turned away from the food counter and also looked towards them. He was a large, shaven-headed fellow, his work clothes still covered by a thick, industrial leather apron. He paused and looked them over, emotionlessly, for a long moment, before turning and carrying his food to a different table. The cook waved a hand over to Titia in a “stay put” gesture.

After another five minutes, the cook handed over his ladle to another volunteer. He locked eyes with Lyra and nodded to the door through to the kitchen. At the other table, the big bald man, as well as a man and a woman beside him, also stood, and started walking towards the kitchens.

This is written to say what will happen assuming that you don’t try to talk to the big fellow before the cook invites you to the back, but of course you’re welcome to interact with them or do something else in between.

[LeSwordfish]

"Best I have is the contacts from the Ibn Rasheed death," Carys said. "Which could be illuminating but is going off on a tangent a bit, and I'm not especially hopeful - one poor dear is incommunicado, the other's apparently a magistratum officer who's usually good for a few facts but is refusing to answer about this case."

"You've gone to all the bother of these... well, I suspect we've all been recruited for our unusual talents, haven't we? Let's try the clergy. Lay on, Macragge."

[Bennosuke]

(OOC: assuming the other players are okay with letting things play out as Thrag posted)

Upon locking eyes with the big cook, and getting his signal, Lyra rises from her seat and says to the others, "Let's go," indicating with a nod the big bald man, his companions and the direction of the kitchen.

She had been happy for the meager food, though she had found it relatively unpalatable. She had only finished about half of it, and before leaving, she finds a hungry looking urchin sitting near her, and hands the girl her left overs.

With that, Lyra heads towards the kitchen, trying her best not to look like she is studying everything that is happening around her.

[Haval]

Outside, from habit Nuala will continue to watch the crowd just in case anyone was a little too interested in them.

Inside, she'll be distracted for a moment by the food. She's not eaten since before she came down to this level of the hive and will eat it with obvious enjoyment. After, she'll try to look as impassive as possible as if she was doing this for real and will follow Lyra with a nod.

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias and Carys

"Let's try the diocese that Grand Urbis Plaza is in," offered Nathias, setting a course in that direction. "Remember to smile and be obsequious. 'Pardon me, do you have any knowledge of Father Leonor Rigg's activities or associates? There are discrepancies in his revenue stream that have raised some red flags, but the man himself is hard to get a hold of.' If there is any dislike for him among the local priests... and there likely is, since he is a rabble-rouser disturbing the peace of their diocese and herding the flock to strange new doctrines... they'll volunteer any possibly damning information they have on him. But we'll likely have to go through a few underlings before we get to someone who can't easily pass the buck to someone higher up."


OOC
Grand Urbis Plaza is the place near which Rigg preaches.

I'll be honest, now that it's time to enact my plan, I'm having serious doubts it leads anywhere useful. But let's try it all the same.

[Thragka]

Nuala, Lyra, Titia

The tiny girl Lyra gave her leftovers to was frozen in surprise for a moment – then she dragged the bowl towards her with both hands and began shovelling forkfuls of stew into her mouth. She glanced up and made a noise that might have been thanks.

The cook waved the three women of them past the volunteers manning the counter and through the double-hinged doorway. The kitchen was relatively small, for the size of the canteen, divided into two aisles by an island of oven units, surmounted by tall pans of the green legumes boiling. The vegetable smell was intense, making Lyra wrinkle her nose. Too long in here would have it tickling the back of her throat.

Racks and counters lined three of the four walls, interrupted only by two doorways. To the left, the exit that presumably led to the alley they’d looked down earlier, while at the back of the right aisle, a door to a storeroom was open.

Two volunteers stood by a sink, washing and drying a stack of empty bowls. At a look from the head cook, they made themselves scarce. They returned to the canteen hall just as the others were joining them. The man in the apron and his two companions entered confidently, filling the space between the door to the canteen and the side exit. Titia noticed with some discomfort that Nuala, Lyra and her were almost being forced into the aisle leading to the storeroom, with both exits now blocked.

The cook nodded to the newcomers, and nodded towards Nuala. “She said a preacher in the Bell sent them our way,” he said. The woman in a drab tunic scowled, eyeing Nuala intensely. The shorter of the two men blinked and pursed his lips.

The bald man was silent for a moment, taking a good look at the three informants. His eyes rested on Lyra in particular. Then he cleared his throat. “Tell me about this preacher,” he said. His voice was deep and slow. “When did you meet them?”

Carys and Nathias

The diocesan house for Arnest Cauldron was to the east of the safehouse, almost within Nathias’s regular cab territory. It was deep enough in the middle-class residential levels to chill exposed skin when they stepped out of the cab. An iron fence badly in need of a new coat of paint enclosed a small yard of mostly fake shrubbery, with one or two actual thin trees given pride of place beneath the beampipe running parallel to the front gate. The facade of the house appeared to be constructed between tall columns a foot in diameter. Carys strongly suspected they were simply plaster affectations.

In the black-and-white tiled hallway through the wooden front door, a middle-aged adept sat at a desk. Exoskeletal supports were grafted to the back of every finger, trailing thin wires up his forearms which converged into cables and dived beneath the skin in the bend of his elbows. He looked up at Carys and Nathias as they entered. “Can I assist you?” he drawled emotionlessly. It didn't sound like he had much faith in the possibility.

[Burden King]

Titita felt bad taking up space in the canteen when all was said and done, she had been one of those people stuck waiting for a seat to open up, and she could tell from how filling the food was here that it was made even worse. When the cooked motioned for her to stay put, Titia's shame made her shrink a little bit as she waited patiently, and tried not to look at the glares. When they were finally called back, she was relieved and left her seat as soon as possible, though looking in surprise when one of he companions had given her left overs to a nearby child. She smiled at them, and felt a bit more comfortable walking around with the member of her party that was slightly better off than most.

[Haval]

'Met him last week sometime, maybe on Laxday? He looked a little ragged but he was enthusiastic. Never heard anything like it. He said he was a brother of St. Thor.' Nuala hoped it would be hard to find a single missionary in all Tarsus.

[Thragka]

At the Canteen

The cook moved around into the aisle that the dishwashers had vacated, his hands hidden under the countertop.

"Strange," said the bald man. "What with the Bell having been closed for the past eightweek, and all." The shorter man smirked. The woman kept up her intense stare.

The bald man put his hands together in front of his chest. Thick knuckle-dusters adorned each. "Why don't you tell us who you really are, before things get unpleasant."

This is where those six degrees of failure on that Deceive test come back to bite you!

[Haval]

Sigh. To the Cook, 'No need for that. Assuming you have a gun under there.'

Nuala will turn back to the bald man and speak carefully, 'I'm from the hiveskin. In my experience they tend to arrest my sort just for being down this far. People are usually nicer to me if I keep that to myself, so I apologise for the lie.' Nuala tries to look contrite, 'I heard that your lot have been going upstairs lately to clean up the place. If that's true I was wondering if you needed more people?'

[Thragka]

The Canteen Kitchen

There was indeed a gun under there – a big rifle, with a prominent lever action built into the trigger guard. "I'll decide what there's a need for," the cook said as he pulled it out. He held it across his chest with both hands – for the moment. The short man sneered again, one hand dangling by his hip. The woman glanced to Nuala, then fixed her gaze on Lyra. "That one's no skinner," she said softly.

"I don't have a 'lot'," the bald man said. "I'll ask again: who are you?"

[LeSwordfish]

Carys and Nathias

The diocesan house for Arnest Cauldron was to the east of the safehouse, almost within Nathias’s regular cab territory. It was deep enough in the middle-class residential levels to chill exposed skin when they stepped out of the cab. An iron fence badly in need of a new coat of paint enclosed a small yard of mostly fake shrubbery, with one or two actual thin trees given pride of place beneath the beampipe running parallel to the front gate. The facade of the house appeared to be constructed between tall columns a foot in diameter. Carys strongly suspected they were simply plaster affectations.

In the black-and-white tiled hallway through the wooden front door, a middle-aged adept sat at a desk. Exoskeletal supports were grafted to the back of every finger, trailing thin wires up his forearms which converged into cables and dived beneath the skin in the bend of his elbows. He looked up at Carys and Nathias as they entered. “Can I assist you?” he drawled emotionlessly. It didn't sound like he had much faith in the possibility.

Carys broadened her face into a smile. "Good afternoon! My name is-" whoops whoops what was it "-Livia. I'm from the Administratum: we're hoping to discuss some discrepancies in the reported revenue stream. Who is it we can speak to about that?"

[Thragka]

Arnest Cauldron Diocesan House


Carys broadened her face into a smile. "Good afternoon! My name is-" whoops whoops what was it "-Livia. I'm from the Administratum: we're hoping to discuss some discrepancies in the reported revenue stream. Who is it we can speak to about that?"

The adept cocked a bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrow. "Some discrepancies? Of what nature?" He slid his chair sideways, away from the ledger he'd been poring over, and gave the pair an inquisitive look.

[Haval]

'Nuala Sayed, if that's what you're asking.' Was the man being cagey or did they genuinely have the wrong place. 'If you aren't who people say you are we can leave you in peace. I'll help you with the dishes if you want as payment. Haven't eaten so well in a while.'

[Bennosuke]

Lyra grins, putting both hands up to show she meant no harm (of course if she needed to she could have her side arm out as fast as the cook could pull the trigger). She steps forward, next to Nuala and says, "My dear companions, I think you mistake our precautions for malicious subterfuge. While not locals per say, we are an admittedly motley group of individuals who believe in the righteous fury of the Emperor, and who were told we might be able to learn more if we found Father Leonor Rigg." She pauses for a moment before adding, "My name is Lyra, if that matters to you, and a kabab vendor told us we might be best served by coming to this tavern. I did not catch her name, but she was kind enough to direct us here."

[Thragka]

The Canteen Kitchen

"Liars," the scrawny woman whispered. The bald man seemed to take Nuala and Lyra's words into consideration for a few moments, before sending a glance to the cook.

"A mistake, maybe," the cook said carefully. "Well, we wouldn't want that to happen. But since you understand the need for caution – hand over your packs and empty your pockets. Then we'll see if you are who you say you are. And if this is all a misunderstanding, I'm sure we can put it to rights."

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias and Carys


"Some discrepancies? Of what nature?"

"Not concerning your diocese," Nathias said quickly, cursing his companion for forgetting the key part of the script. "It's about an independent priest that you might have knowledge about. One Leonor Rigg. He's been evading our inquiries, and so we are looking into other avenues to fill gaps in our files."

[Bennosuke]

Lyra keeps her hands up, making no move to either draw her weapons or hand them over. Still grinning she replies, "Would it be safe to assume that we are in the right place then? Otherwise you would tell us we were mistaken and just send us packing... and besides, you probably wouldn't have brought us back here in the first place if the kabab vendor gave us bad info. Besides, it's really her you should be upset with."

She narrows her eyes, enjoying watching the woman squirm. "Look, tell me I am right, and we will happily hand over our weapons... in the name of new allegiances; though perhaps it would be polite to share with us who you are, since we've already done the same."

[Haval]

Nuala followed Lyra's lead in putting her hands up. The other woman seemed far too comfortable in this situation. She'll wait to see how these three responded.

[Thragka]

Diocesan House

"Mmm-hmmm," the adept said. "And what do this Father Rigg's revenue discrepancies have to do with this diocese?" He leaned back in his seat. "Which branch of the Administratum did you say you were from? I'm sure you have some identification."


Canteen Kitchen

The locals didn't seem to like the way Lyra brought up weapons. The cook raised the rifle to his shoulder, lining the barrel up with her abdomen. "You need to start answering our questions like you've nothing to hide," he said.

"Hand over your weapons now," the bald man barked. Both of the other two tensed, hands hovering around their midriffs ...

[Haval]

Nuala is going to prepare herself to get out of the way if they were going to fight. **** Vane for getting her into this situation.'Course I have a gun. You ever been to the hiveskin? You ever see a scaldbat? Not to mention the mutant packs and all the people likely to rob and murder me just for the chance of a few thrones. It's for protection. I'm not the best shot and having a little gun doesn't make me a threat to anyone who can afford to carry something like that rifle.' She'll try to talk quickly as getting into a gunfight was never a good idea. 'If you can promise not to shoot me I'll very carefully give you my pack.'

[Thragka]

Canteen Kitchen

The bald man waved a finger towards Nuala and Lyra, and his companions stepped forwards. The shorter man reached around Nuala's overalls for her holster, while the woman cautiously pawed at Lyra's coat.

As per initiative order in the OOC, Titia and Lyra have a chance to act before the NPCs can try to search them, but any reaction by Nuala will come afterwards. If you don't resist, they'll start removing your weapons.

[-Sentinel-]

"Mmm-hmmm," the adept said. "And what do this Father Rigg's revenue discrepancies have to do with this diocese?" He leaned back in his seat. "Which branch of the Administratum did you say you were from? I'm sure you have some identification."
"We do," said Nathias, quickly flashing his forged credentials. "We're with the tax and revenue department. And as I said, we know Rigg's not one of yours, but you may know something about him worth investigating... Anything, really... Powerful friends of his, secret affiliations, and the likes. Anything that could explain unreported income."


OOC
Guess I'll be the one rolling the test. Really wish it were Carys.

Untrained Deceive 19 + 20 (forged docs) + 10 (ordinary test) = 49. [roll0]
Fortune: [roll1]


Aaaaaah crap. So much for that plan.

[LeSwordfish]

"I'm sure you're hoping to see justice done... and to see him out of your hair." Carys said, taking a quick look around at the man's desk. He didn't seem like the revolutionary firebrand. "A... strong personality like that, he's going to be causing all sort of commotion and that kind of thing has consequences for good honest people as well, right?"

Charm test maybe? Assist on the Decieve? [roll0] vs 46 for Charm

[Thragka]

Diocesan House

The adept was temporarily nonplussed. "What?" he managed. "Justice? Commotion? Is this some sort of joke? I've no idea who this Rigg fellow is!" As he lapsed into silence, Carys took the opportunity to scan his desk. From the look of it, the man's main role was secretarial. He'd been working on a ledger book before they'd arrived, writing details into some pre-printed columns in a blocky script. There were a couple of diaries in different colours sitting closed on the desk, in- and out-trays for memos, and a box of files visible in the open cabinet behind his seat.

From the adept's face, his curiosity appeared to be battling his affectation of prim decorum. "I'm sorry, does this Father Rigg actually have anything specific to do with our diocese at all? He sounds like an utter gadabout! If not, well, I'm really not sure how I could possibly help you." He shook his head, muttering to himself for another few moments. "Powerful friends ... secret affiliations ... Emperor on Earth!"

The man clasped his augmented hands together as he looked back up at Carys and Nathias expectantly, waiting to see if they had anything else ridiculous to say.


Canteen Kitchen

Nuala and Lyra had their autopistols confiscated in short order, the hivers keeping hold of them. The short man found Nuala's knife, placing it on the countertop to his right alongside an assortment of kitchen cutlery. With a strength Lyra might not have expected from the woman's scrawny frame, the ex-trooper's pack was wrenched from her shoulder. The hiver woman squeezed the obvious shape of the shotgun, and began opening the pack up to look inside.

The cook released a breath he'd been holding. "Throne! Was that so difficult?" he asked, lowering his rifle slightly. The bald man nodded to Titia over the intervening heads. "You too, please."

[Bennosuke]

Lyra reaches over to release the lock holding the pack sealed for the woman, saying loudly, "Here. Yeesh, forgive a woman for trying to stay protected when strangers are pointing guns at her." She rolls her eyes and to the man who they had initially met, she says, "And on that note, now will someone tell us if we've come to the right place for Throne's sake?"

[Haval]

Nuala nods in agreement with Lyra, 'You have to excuse us for being nervous for having guns pointed at us when you've taken ours away.' She's gesture towards the dining room, 'You realise the good people through there are probably going to be upset if they hear gunshots.'

edited for spelling

[Burden King]

The cook released a breath he'd been holding. "Throne! Was that so difficult?" he asked, lowering his rifle slightly. The bald man nodded to Titia over the intervening heads. "You too, please."

Titia held up her hands, then slowly so the cooks could keep an eye on her movements. She removed her hand cannon, the large gun a bit big for her, but the silence barrel showed that she used it enough to warrant modification. She handed the pistol to the nearest person, visually uneasy “I do want that back, it’s the only thing I have to deal with thieves.” Titia didn’t make a motion, or even look at it, but the knife she kept hidden in her boot she purposefully failed to mention, hoping to have some method of protection.

fellow ship is 47, trained in Decieve.

[roll0]

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias and Carys


"Well, that's a few hours wasted," said Nathias dejectedly, walking away from the Diocesan house towards his cab. "I'll hold onto the IDs, though; we might find another use for them elsewhere. Should we look for the others and see if they've had more success, or do you have another idea?"

[Thragka]

Canteen Kitchen

The big bald man's face softened, he still didn't look exactly happy, but a shield had come down. "You're right, we don't want to upset any of Hank's patrons." The cook rolled his eyes and stashed the rifle back under the countertop. "Go on then," he said to the big man, "talk to them outside. I've dishes to wash." He pushed the back door to the hive alley open. The bald man led the way out. His companions followed with the confiscated items.

From the folds of his apron, the bald man pulled a pack of lho-sticks, placing one to his mouth and offering the pack around. "Name's Lem," he said, as he lit a match and took his first drag. "Sid and Genya," he added, indicating the man and the woman respectively. Sid twitched a little. It might have been a greeting. Genya was still rooting through Lyra's bag, but briefly glanced up to acknowledge her name.

"Think Hank got a bit rattled by your Bell story," Lem continued. He shrugged. "Not that you don't got the right to be careful. But he's got his business and family to worry about." He shook his head. "It's a damn shame, but there are those who don't like the service he provides, looking out for the Emperor's faithful. Helping those of us who really believe in spreading the Light of the Throne come together. Some people only pay lip service to Him on Terra, talk the talk but don't walk the walk. I ask you" – and here, he was again peering down at them coolly and carefully – "what's to be done?"

[Haval]

Nuala lets out the breath she'd been holding as it seemed like no-one was going to try shooting them. She will gratefully take a lho stick. 'Causing trouble for this place is the last thing I'd want. I've been hungry before. A lot actually. Everyone should get to eat if they need help.'

'As for the rest, I can't say I've ever had the chance to learn to be properly faithful. Mom only taught me the basics, but I know there's a lot wrong with the way people do things in Tarsus, so I'd like to be useful if you'll have me. Or you could just direct me to a decent preacher and keep me in mind if you ever need any machines fixed.'

[Bennosuke]

Lyra takes a lho stick hesitantly, eyeing Lem and the others with suspicion. She never lights it, but fiddles with it as Nuala talks. Getting back to the introductions she says curtly, "Lyra. Sorry for the fuss."

In reply to his question about what's to be done, she says, "Anyway, we heard that there was a group making righteous explorations in the name of the Emperor, and we thought we might be of service. We want to be of service for His glory."

Her cold expression cracks into a wry grin as she says to Genya, "Can I help you find anything?"

[LeSwordfish]

"Well, if you can't help us out on an official basis, perhaps a slightly less official one?" Carys said smoothly. "If there are no official records perhaps there could be... gossip? Speculation? On a personal level, what do you know about Leonor Rigg?"

It had felt undignified to use her less subtle means of persuasion on such Official Business but if it was necessary... Carys leaned forward at a precisely calculated angle, and rested a hand on the functionary's. "I'm sure you'll agree that everyone wants a friend in the administratum."

OOC
Charm test for Feminine Wiles: [roll0] vs 46

nope! even worse than last time!

[Thragka]

Diocesan House

The adept snatched his hand back from Carys, and sniffed. "I've already told you, I haven't the faintest idea who this Rigg is." He stood up from his seat, and indicated the door. "I assure you, the Bishop is in the highest esteem of the Administratum. Now I think it's high time you bothered someone else with your inane questions."


Upperhive Alley

"No," Genya said, scowling. She pushed the bag back into Lyra's hands. Taking a quick glance inside, it looked like all her belongings were still there – just tossed about by rifling hands. Her Arbites badge was face-down at the bottom.

Lem smiled, his eyes still warily flicking across the investigators, but he seemed to like what he heard. "Well, it's always good to meet good folk who want to help." He flicked some ash from his lho-stick, and nodded. "Tell you what. You go about a mile, mile and a half down the main road," he said, pointing the direction from the top of the alley, "there's a small cluster of abandoned warehouses that been taken over. We use some of the store rooms as a chapel. You want to meet some like-minded people, you come to the Shriveday evening service. I'll introduce you."

[Bennosuke]

"Thank you," Lyra says, her face softening as she gives the man her best attempt at a warm smile. She looks to her two companions to see if there is anything more they wish to bring up before departing.

After her quick perusal of her backpack, Lyra throws the bag over her shoulder, an impatient eye now on the individual holding their confiscated weapons.

[Haval]

Nuala will finish her lho-stick, 'Thank you.' Maybe an introduction was as much as they could hope for here, even if it meant that they'd have to listen to a few sermons. 'I'm sure I'll be back through here at some point.'

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias and Carys


Nathias winced in second-hand embarrassment at the failure of Carys' attempt at seduction.

Well... I think that's the final nail in the coffin of this plan.

It was always poorly thought out, anyway.

[LeSwordfish]

Bidding an embarrassed farewell, Carys beat a hasty retreat. On reflection there were some obvious flaws in her plan to seduce a vicar.

"So... looking for one of my colleague's contacts then?" she asked. She pulled her notebook out and flipped through the pages. "Sargeant Secum at the Magistratum is usually good for a scoop but this time round didn't give any information... I wonder if we could still get some use out of these administratum passes? Or ask around at the Blind Bishop for my colleague's downhive contact, who probably won't be blanking us but does appear to be missing..."

[-Sentinel-]

"Let's try the Blind Bishop," said Nathias, unlocking his cab and getting inside. He had never driven anyone to the Blind Bishop yet, but his car's route-finder would point the way.

[LeSwordfish]

"If you say so... the magistratum have the better Amasec but they keep it for themselves."

OOC
Ready to move there when needed. I think Carys has the name of the missing contact, so here's a pre-emptive Inquiry roll looking for them: [roll0] vs 46

[Thragka]

Nuala, Lyra, Titia

Lem nodded. "See you there." He exchanged a wordless glance with Sid and Genya. Stubbing out the end of his lho-stick, he slipped back inside the kitchen – closing the door behind him.

Sid laid the jumble of weapons in his arm out on the alley floor as gracefully as he could. "Mmhm," he said, and with that he turned and walked away. Genya said nothing as she followed him. Lyra couldn't help but notice the woman kept turning to look back at them – or was it specifically to look back at her? – before she reached the mouth of the alley and disappeared into the wider street.

You get all your weapons back, they've not kept anything.

It's mid- to late evening now for these three PCs – crowds are dying down as people prepare for the resumption of the working week tomorrow morning. Let me know if there's anything left to do today or if they have an immediate next move.


~

Nathias and Carys

Goldengate was the eastern end of one of the main avenues that ran from the Cathedral district all the way into the illustrious trading floors at the centre of the Goldenhand complex. Rather than the gigantic convoys of goods and machinery that Carys had seen earlier from her tram, this was a thoroughfare for the affluent and the aspirant classes. Sleek towncars conveyed the wealthy and powerful, whose daily routine took them from the hub of the Calixis sector's trade to the environs of its most important spiritual see; vast megabuses and clunky, noisy, fuel-inefficient personal tractor cabs were the domain of the office-workers and engineers, bleeding from this spinal column into the network of midhive roads threading the forests of middle-class habtowers where the educated adepts and specialised labourers kept indistinguishable households. Thankfully, from the Diocesan house, Nathias's cab was going against the prevailing commute. At times, Carys could watch through the window as they passed thousands of vehicles a minute, frozen in standstill on the opposite levels of the thirty-two-lane highway.

The cab trundled to a halt alongside a sprawling commercial plaza in the shadow of the highway, the human hubbub staging a brave defence against the meteorological roar of the road tens of metres above. The bar was opposite a stone statue of a figure in priestly vestments, with a tall mitre surmounting a partially destroyed head. The only facial feature surviving whatever vandalism or desecration had been visited upon the statue was a single carved ear. The atmosphere inside the bar was taciturn, almost morose. Neither bright lighting nor cleanliness could be very high on the patrons' priorities for a drinking establishment. Nathias and Carys seemed to be among the youngest of the present clientele.

The flagship libation was a tankard of rotgut, tasting a bit like soap but otherwise fairly inoffensive. The bartender was a man with uneven shoulders. His left arm ended in a crude mechanical claw of three equilaterally-placed talons, which handled the drinkware with a deftness speaking to long practice.

"I know the woman you mean," he said, when Carys mentioned the description Timon had given her of the skulker Sola. "Can't tell you much more than I've said to others who came asking after her, though. Haven't seen her in a few weeks now." There was a resigned sadness to his tone. "Clients of hers, were you?"

[Haval]

Nuala will retrieve her gun. As they were walking away, 'That could have gone better, but it could have gone worse' she'll say quietly. 'If we're going to that chapel on Shriveday we might want to bring the others with us. Strength in numbers and all that.'

[Bennosuke]

Lyra chuckles, though there is something deeply mirthful to it. She replies, "The way that went, we'll probably want to let them know ahead of time we are bringing extra people. They may just assume we are trying to start another fight." After a moment's contemplation Lyra adds, "Feels like there's got to be a way we can make the most of our time before Shriveday. I don't know if we want to try to stake out Lem and his companions, and see what we can find, or if there's another trail we can follow..." She lets her words trail off as she turns the puzzle over in her head.

[Burden King]

Titia thought on what she herself could contribute to the operation as it would begin, and besides her own skills at Navigation, she might not have much to offer "I could try to map out all the routes to and from the Chapel, incase we decided to sneak in or have to make an escape. "Titia offered, tapping her chin as she shifted her feet to be comfortable "Other then that, I can't offer much."

[Bennosuke]

"Probably a good idea. Better than nothing," Lyra says with a shrug.

[Haval]

Lyra chuckles, though there is something deeply mirthful to it. She replies, "The way that went, we'll probably want to let them know ahead of time we are bringing extra people. They may just assume we are trying to start another fight."

'We're not that intimidating are we? Or at least I'm not.' Nuala asks rhetorically. 'I suppose if we want to keep an eye on our new friends maybe it's better to have someone who they haven't met before do it, but we can let the others decide that.'

She'll try to make sure there were no pedestrians around before speaking, 'If we want to come at this from a different angle we can see if there's anyone down here who might be upset with the sort of thing the Redemptionists get up to. They must have been fighting with someone in that gunfight that killed Gurner. I'm a little out of my element down here or I might know which bars to go to to ask. Or we could always go speak to Gurner's people instead and see if there were any witnesses.'


I'll ask this in IC as well

And in case it's useful, Common Lore (Imperium) to know a down hive bar where criminals might hang out
vs. Int 34
[roll0]

[LeSwordfish]

"Sort of - she worked for a friend, we're trying to track her down as a favour... he's worried the worst has happened. If you don't mind my asking, who's been looking for her? Her other clients? Where did she live? When was the last time you heard from her?"

OOC
Her last communication was while doing her skulking - do we know where and when that was?

[Bennosuke]

She'll try to make sure there were no pedestrians around before speaking, 'If we want to come at this from a different angle we can see if there's anyone down here who might be upset with the sort of thing the Redemptionists get up to. They must have been fighting with someone in that gunfight that killed Gurner. I'm a little out of my element down here or I might know which bars to go to to ask. Or we could always go speak to Gurner's people instead and see if there were any witnesses.'

"That doesn't sound like a bad idea," Lyra replies, "Or at the very least a bar might be a good place to find a little more information. Perhaps we can go at this from both angles?"

Happy to roll whatever is needed assuming this is a rout we also want to take.

[Thragka]

The Blind Bishop

"Other clients," the barman said. "Sola didn't have many friends." He sighed. As Carys asked more questions, he put the stein in his claw down and took a good look at the newcomers.

"What's your angle here? She left a few people on the hook for jobs, but most folk just called it money burnt and left it at that. What makes you care so much?"

A Charm test would be appropriate here – modifier depending on how you phrase it.

Timon's last contact with Sola was Shriveday of the 21st week (this calendar is starting to feel a little stupid, might re-jig it) via a vox-network call – you wouldn't know from where.

[Burden King]

"That doesn't sound like a bad idea," Lyra replies, "Or at the very least a bar might be a good place to find a little more information. Perhaps we can go at this from both angles?"

Happy to roll whatever is needed assuming this is a rout we also want to take.

Titia nodded, liking the idea of gathering further information as well as preparing as much as they could “That sounds as good as anything else. Should we let the others know?”

[LeSwordfish]

"She was doing some work on a story for a journalist friend of mine," Carys explained uncertainly, cautious of how people here might see journalists. "Just as she seems to be onto something juicy, she vanishes. The case came up again recently, so he's called me in to see if I can find her, or at least the lead she was following."

[Haval]

“That sounds as good as anything else. Should we let the others know?”

'Probably should compare notes. And maybe we talk about what happens if we don't have anything useful for Mr Vane when the deadline comes.'

'I don't know where the rest of you stay normally but it might be easier if I sleep at the house tonight.'

Going to call the others and see if they want to get a drink somewhere.

Not sure how the times lines compare here so maybe after their current scene.

[Thragka]

The barman digested this for a moment in silence. Carys got a good look at his craggy face as he considered it. His rough and weathered features spoke of a life of hard work, though he wasn't quite yet at the age when most manual labourers would be forced into retirement.

He sighed, brows rippling like geological formations sped up. "Damn. Sola was a friend. When folks in her line of work go missing, it's even chances they've got out, or been bumped off. You always hope for the former. I knew it didn't feel like it this time, though."

He picked up another stein in his mechanical hand and began cleaning it. "If she's mixed up in something serious enough that people are still looking for her, though ... well, whatever it is, at least if you folks are chasing it, maybe it leads to her. However she's ended up. Can't deny it would mean a lot to me to know. Look, I've got to keep this place running for the rest of the night, but if you come back round tomorrow afternoon, I'll take you too her digs. How's that sound, Ms ...?"

[LeSwordfish]

"Aventine," Carys said, deciding she'd rather not be notable for the moment. "Livia Aventine. That sounds very good, Mister...?"

OOC
Ready to move on.

[Thragka]

The Blind Bishop

"Jakes," said the barman. He nodded. "See you tomorrow, Ms Aventine."


~

All

The Cathedral district was subdued, and Arnest Cauldron was quieter still, as both groups converged back on the safehouse. The beampipes overhead were fully extinguished, with the only illumination outside the hab-blocks provided by small utility fixtures in the hive ceiling, and lambent coronas escaping around blinds and curtains on building windows.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra took a sip from the tin mug the bartender had served her. The drink was supposed to be some sort of rotgut, but it tasted darn close to motor oil, and she grimaced as the first sip went down. Placing the acrid beverage on the table before her Lyra says to Carys and Nathias, "Well... I sure hope you two had better luck than us." She lets the statement hang in the air, hoping one of the two takes the invitation to go first and hopefully share some good news.

[Haval]

Nuala is always impressed to be in a place where the lights seem to work. Must be nice to be someone who had that kind of pull with the Mechanicus.

In the bar, 'Hey now. No one shot at anyone. I've had worse days.'

[-Sentinel-]

"Well... I sure hope you two had better luck than us."

"'Fraid not," sighed Nathias, sipping a mocktail (what did they call it again? 'Virgin Emperor'?). "We tried to get intel from church authorities with false credentials, but turns out neither of us is a very good liar. Carys is pursuing the barest shadow of a lead. What about you? Did you try to infiltrate the cult?"

[Haval]

"Did you try to infiltrate the cult?"

'Just don't let them hear you call it that. The people we met were a little jumpy, but they gave us an invite to a meeting next week anyway. Hopefully someone there will know something useful.' To Carys, 'You need any help with this lead. Given we have a deadline we should probably see what else we can dig up.'

[LeSwordfish]

"I've got a little more than a shadow - a contact at the Magistratum as well, we can use your excellent documents. I looked into this poor dead noble pilgrim - seems his house came down pretty hard on any kind of publicity about it, which almost certainly means that something's skew-whiff. Nazif Ibn Rasheed was last seen up at the top of the Cathedral district, before vanishing along with his stalker. We're checking her place out tomorrow, so i'm thinking of having a little poke around in the uphive then as well. Get my nose for news on the case."

[Bennosuke]

Lyra leans forward and with a sly grin says, "Perhaps I can lend an extra pair of eyes for your... snooping?"

[Haval]

'Nobility throwing their weight around. What are the chances.' Nuala mutters 'So is it the Redemptionists disappearing people or could it be someone else? Hopefully this Sola is only hiding out somewhere, but if we assume she's at least still alive there may be people looking for her.'

[Burden King]

Titia listened to the reports of her compatriots, and tried to think of what she could do to help. These servents of the throne all held skills and abilities that she lacked, education that allowed them to better grasp the high functions of Imperial society, Connections with the various levels of society that allowed their easy movement and gathering of information, and the ability to be in certain areas without drawing notice which may have been the most important. She listened as they spoke about a current lead they were chasing, as well as a plan to investigate the residence of a citizen of higher standing.

"While you are investigating the lead, and the residence, I can scout out the area around the congregation, maybe find some structural weaknesses or hidden paths that'll give us an advantage. I'd offer to investigate, but I doubt my likes will be welcome so deep in the hive." Titia said, reasoning that she would have to double her efforts to pay her personal tithe to the throne.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: permission given to re-open thread.

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. Scheming was not his forte, despite spending the last couple of years on the wrong side of the law. "If we ever need to abduct or interrogate a cult member, my cab would be perfect for the task."

He was reluctant to suggest this, as using his job as a cab driver to snatch people up could lead to a whole lot of trouble. But if they pulled this off, perhaps he would not need a day job anymore.

[Haval]

Nathias drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. Scheming was not his forte, despite spending the last couple of years on the wrong side of the law. "If we ever need to abduct or interrogate a cult member, my cab would be perfect for the task."

Nuala grins, 'Well they wouldn't see that coming.' Nathias didn't seem like the type to interrogate anyone. 'Maybe if we could make certain it didn't get back to you. Does your boss know where you live?'

[-Sentinel-]

"He does not. I'm quite private."

[Thragka]

Arnest Cauldron, Laxday, 4th week of Winds

Titia excused herself early from the gathering in the tavern, seeming a bit drained from the events of the day, as the others compared what they’d found out so far and made rough plans for their next steps. They outlasted the other patrons of the bar. The barman seemed happy to leave them to sit at their table as he cleared the others and then poured himself a drink in silence. Around midnight, he politely told them it was time to leave.

It wasn’t a long walk back to the safehouse for Nuala. She saw perhaps a half dozen other people in the streets, most of whom had the air of locals making their way home after a similar evening celebration. Other than one drunk woman who mumbled at her for a couple of seconds, the overhiver was entirely undisturbed between the tavern and the apartment.

The unseen mechanisms in the thick door whirred at the touch of her key to let her in, and clunked reassuringly back into place when she closed it behind her. Picking a bedroom – and noticing that it also locked from the inside – she settled in for a night’s rest.

~

Hewday, 5th week of Winds

By broad strokes, the investigators’ immediate plans for the next day had them all in the volume of the hive where the humble residential zone of the Cauldron transitioned into the echelons of commercia in the Cathedral District. Grand Urbis Plaza was a convenient place to congregate to start the day. By the time they passed through it, it was already thronged with offworlders and the locals who made offworlders their business. Pilgrims milled around and vendors plied their wares in the impressive morning glow from the fat beampipes overhead. Their mechanical magic made it seem as if the light really did shine from the east, bathing the plaza in a golden light that seemed to emanate from the horizon roof of the grand avenue that would inevitably end at the Cathedral of Illumination.

Lyra showed Carys the way to the vertical access shaft she and the others had taken the day before. This morning, the double helix winding through the levels of the hive was busier with vehicles than with foot traffic. After all, it was hours into the start of the working week – most pedestrian hivers had commuted earlier. Now it was cargo’s turn to be distributed across this volume of the hive.

A turn and a half around the shaft took them three levels up from the Plaza, where the refectory could be found. Lyra left Carys to decide how much further up to go for herself, while she split off in a horizontal direction.

Lyra

Falling back on old habits, Lyra wandered near the streets she’d been down last night, as if she were still a trooper walking her beat. She made sure to stay a road or two away from the canteen at all times as she considered her next step. Staking out the canteen itself was a possibility, although the dinner service was still the entire day away. She couldn’t remember anything obvious about Sid or Genya that would suggest where they might be found; Genya’s shabby clothing and jumpy attitude suggested the upperhive, but nothing more specific than that. Lem’s heavy leather apron, though, had been industrial gear – the sort of thing a furnace worker or forge labourer would use as protection if they spent all day around heat or chemicals or molten metal. It stood to reason that he’d gone from his work straight to the canteen, without going home to change first.

Not entirely sure how Lyra wants to go about tracking down Lem et al, but I thought this seemed a sensible area to start – up to you how to proceed.

Carys

Carys went another full turn around the ramp shaft, and began to wonder how high it was safe to get in this region. Even the level that the Cauldron apartment and Grand Urbis Plaza were on was higher than she was used to. Obviously the others seemed to think nothing of it, the local economy was healthy and the hoi polloi seemed to be thriving, which spoke to it being perfectly safe, but she couldn’t help but notice how it was always that bit warmer and that bit louder than her usual domain. It just left her a little unsettled.

She was contemplating risking another half turn when she saw the painted icons above the exit gates on the present level. Thick white icons stencilled directly onto the shaft wall depicted an Aquila, a man in robes, and a profile of a gothic building that could only be intended to mean the Cathedral. Judging that that was enough of a sign, she shuffled over into the short queue to get out of the shaft.

She almost changed her mind when she felt the stale, hot air she emerged into – at least the access shaft had also served as a massive ventilation tunnel, plunging down into the misty depths. Unbelievably, it was even hotter up here. The beampipes still ran east to west, but nowhere near as brilliantly as below. Buzzing electric lamps supplemented the dull glow from above.

Still, her trust in her gut was rewarded when she saw more of the same icons on a street corner sign ahead – and this time, even accompanied by the written word. Old Mendicant’s Way, the sign read, pointing east and west out of a junction. High as they were, if this level was attracting a literate class of pilgrims, it was surely the right place to be. She turned west down the road. Goldengate and the Blind Bishop were many miles away towards the centre of the hive. If she had a chance of finding a hint of Sola or the late Nazif, it would be to the west, rather than closer to the cathedral.

The Old Mendicant’s Way was half-pedestrianised, the road portion too thin for anything heavier than a light van. Most of the traffic, in fact, was bicycle rickshaws. The rockrete underfoot was patterned to look like cobblestone paving, although the effect wasn’t very good – just the shape of uniform mounds rising from the grey expanse of one continuous slab, save for the cracks and faults where hivequakes had split it. That seemed to be the essence of the entire character of this route. Shop facades were made to look like brick constructions, though again most could be easily identified as just shaped rockrete. Statues of saints and revered clerics at a first glance could be mistaken for copper or pewter, but that was just gilt which in many places had rubbed off to reveal thick plastic underneath. The local breed of pilgrim didn’t seem to mind. Again, it was instantly obvious to Carys that these offworlders were as inauthentic as the avenue: too fit, too healthy, too happy; their robes too sleek and comfortable and well-fitting; too willing altogether to pay exorbitant prices for tacky knickknacks from the shops or for the rickshaw taxis to pedal them slowly along as they chatted and pretended to be impressed by the architecture and the sculptures. Rich offworlders could pretend to be pilgrims here, act out the fantasy of spending years slowly inching closer to the Cathedral, and even bring home a souvenir. There were very few of the sort of street rabble one would expect to see looking to take advantage of rich strangers, thanks to pairs of Magistrates patrolling lazily in their dark green greatcoats. More than once, Carys saw a duo of constables forcefully shoo off beggars or itinerants that were trying to muscle in on this territory, although a handful of the cleaner sort of urchin were permitted to sell baubles and trinkets under their watchful eyes.

A mile or so along from where she’d joined, Carys even found a small restaurant opening up for the day. They weren’t seating patrons yet, but a young employee was selling hot sandwiches from a front window. He smiled and laughed easily when Carys pointed out how ridiculous the upper-class visitors were.

“People like it, though,” he said. “We do good trade. A lot of them seem to be in on the joke, sort of, they just don’t care either way. I’ve seen local bigwigs showing offworld visitors around. It’s a talking point, I guess.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t make much difference to us what they really think of it. They keep buying.”

The Ibn Rasheeds? “Oh yes. Afet, the, uh, Beyzadi, a few weeks ago. She was showing a family friend around. With an entire entourage, of course. But she seems like such a genuine person.” His face was lit up; he had obviously been enchanted by the heiress. “So charming. Her companion was polite, but he didn’t seem taken with the whole show,” he added, gesturing around at the street. “Although –”

The young man paused in thought. “Now that you mention it, he came back after, by himself. I didn’t recognise him at the time, thought he was just another tourist. But it was definitely Afet’s friend. He was asking where he could find … a bookshop, I think it was?” He nodded. “Yeah, he wanted to buy books. I told him he was in the wrong place, he’d need to go a few miles further that way.” He pointed further west.

Nuala

The cogitator dataslates in the apartment study had a map to the late Hax Gurner’s workshop, which Nuala managed to access without too much difficulty. It was south of the apartment, further into the Cauldron, where manufactoria and generator complexes began to compete with the habblocks for real estate. The directions led Nuala to a small industrial estate, a small two-storey square complex partitioned into about two dozen units around a broad yard. It seemed Gurner had rented one as a workspace. As she entered the yard, Nuala could see one of the rolling shutter doors on the right side had a band of green Magistratum tape pulled across it, as did the smaller door beside it – but there didn’t seem to be any current constable presence.

A middle-aged woman in a navy outfit sat in the booth by the gates at one corner of the square. She looked up from desk and watched as Nuala passed into the yard, but didn’t leave her seat.

[Bennosuke]

(OOC: Let me know if the below is unreasonable or if I am missing something)

Lyra was glad to see the streets were so busy. She milled about, fliting from the well trafficked and brightly lit streets to some of the darker and more narrow side streets and alleys. Though she tried not to be too obvious, Lyra kept an eye out for those down trodden and hungry looking vagrants; the types who had waited in the long line outside the Canteen. If anyone was likely to have heard something, if anyone was likely to give Lyra something she could sink her teeth into on Lem or Genya or Sid, it was going to be one of those poor souls. And perhaps with the right question, and maybe sweetening the deal with the promise of a throne, Lyra could find a lead.

[Haval]

'Given what we're doing now that's just as well.'

On the way to the safe house Nuala will watch for anyone who might object to an overhiver like her being this far down hive. She wasn't exactly hiding, but at this time of night the streets were empty enough that she might see an Enforcer coming before they saw her. She'll ignore the drunk.

At the safe house she's not entirely comfortable with spending the night here but at least the house seemed secure. The bedroom was likely the nicest she had ever slept in though so there were some fringe benefits to being here.

---------------------------

The woman had the air of security for something. She'll smile politely at her, 'Excuse me ma'am. What exactly happened over there?' She'll point towards the obvious crime scene.

[Thragka]

Lyra

Though nowhere near the Hiveskin yet, this volume of the Hive clearly catered less to the flow of pilgrims and more to the working poor; it seemed most buildings were put to an industrial use of some kind, from the larger factories belching out thick smoke from the cracked chimney pipes that ran up through the hive ceiling, to the smaller material workshops squeezing in along the tighter alleys. It wasn't difficult to find down-and-outs in the streets: they were some of the only souls loitering outside at this hour. Some ignored her, whether out of disinterest or chemical stupor. In the larger streets, some sat with begging bowls or cups, calling to the handful of white-robed pilgrims that had business here. Those in the smaller alleys tended to focus hungrily on Lyra as she passed nearby.

An Inquiry test would be appropriate here, I think, with some specific info about what Lyra wants to ask – it'll depend on her approach.

Nuala

The woman in the dark blue jumper and trousers looked Nuala up and down. She didn't appear impressed with what she saw. "Some uphive thugs jumped the man who worked there. Killed him. Constables looked into it, but haven't come back." She frowned at Nuala. "You got some reason to be here?"

Reading back, I realised what I wrote yesterday was probably a bit misleading – by navy outfit I meant "dark blue uniform", not "naval uniform". My bad!

[Bennosuke]

Lyra will focus her efforts on those most destitute, those poor souls most likely to frequent the Canteen in need of a generous meal. She will inquire about the the three from the standpoint of a curious and devout individual desperate to know more about the saintly figures in charge of the Canteen. Lyra will put herself forward as someone who wants to meet Lem or Genya or Sid, and wants to know of a place they might find them, other than rudely waiting outside The Canteen. She'll even sweeten the deal by offering a throne to anyone who can give her useful information (assuming that might give her a bit of a bonus on the roll).

Lyra is skilled at Inquiry with a Fel of 34 [roll0] Fingers crossed!!!

[Thragka]

Lyra

A homeless woman sitting on a plastic sheet in the rockrete corner of an alley elbow was more than happy to answer Lyra's questions at the prospect of a reward. "Course I know the canteen," she said, practically snatching the throne from Lyra's hands. "That's one meal a day sorted, even if I go hungry the rest of it. Still wake up with my stomach hurting more often than not though." She listened to Lyra's description of the cook's associates and shook her head. "Dunno who they are. Don't think you know either, doesn't sound like they work there. It's a big bloke with two young lads runs it. You have to pay for food during the day. But some volunteers help out with the free food in the evening, and he gets donations from the churches and pilgrims and them to do the evening meals. They probably just help out, them people you're looking for. If he wears a big apron, maybe you want to try the steel mill."

The woman tucked the coin away into a pocket of her filthy tunic. Satisfied, she fixed her piercing gaze on Lyra again. "Hey, tell you what, we go there now, you get us some food, I'll ask the cook, yeah? I'm in there every night, I'll talk to him, yeah? I'm starving."

[Bennosuke]

"The steel mill?" Lyra asks with guarded curiosity. She gives the poor soul a smile and says, "Thank you dear. Emperor's blessing." She pauses for a moment as if considering the lady's offer, then replies, "I appreciate it, but I am quiet busy. Perhaps would you be able to point me in the direction of the steel mill though?"

[Haval]

Do you have a reason to be here? Nuala will suppress the urge to say that out loud. 'This is the place then. Only I heard it was the Red Redemption. Seems like a long way to come down here if anyone from the hive skin had a problem with him. I don't suppose you were here to see it?'



Whoops. i don't know what I was thinking. Will edit that out.

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias and Nuala


Parking spots were few and far between in this part of town, so Nathias let Nuala out of his cab to start reconnoitering the area without him. Once his cab was parked a couple of hab-blocks away, he ditched his cabbie's hat and swiftly caught up with the young woman just as she was about to speak with the official-looking lady.

"Some uphive thugs, you say. What was uphive about them? Was it the way they were dressed? Or the way they talked?"

[Thragka]

Lyra

The woman looked contemptuously at Lyra. Her jaw had been badly broken at some point, and had never set properly. Her sneer accentuated the awkward asymmetry.

“It’s the buildings with the bloody big chimneys, isn’t it?” she said, pointing out of the alley and over rooftops to where gargantuan exhaust pipes were leaking out thick grey-white smoke which hovered under the hive ceiling, perhaps a couple of kilometres distant. “Stupid woman,” she muttered to herself. Evidently, she was aggravated that the prospect of a free meal had disappeared.

Nuala and Nathias

A truck had finished being packed up from one of the units in the yard, and pulled up to the gateway as Nathias joined Nuala. From the cab, the driver gestured at the pair of them.

“Step off the road please,” the woman in the booth said, getting out of her chair and waving them onto the pavement. She stepped out to join them as the truck passed. The driver gave them a quick bip from the horn as it turned onto the main road.

“I wasn’t here, I don’t do the night shift,” she said in answer to Nuala and Nathias’s questions. “But yeah, might have been the Reds, that’s what the guard on duty said. He didn’t get a good look at them though. Obviously we’re not as far down as we thought from those nuts,” she said, sharing an exasperated look with Nuala.

She looked the pair of them up and down again, trying to get their measure. “Look, did you know him? I don’t know if I can help you. This is a working yard.”

[Haval]

“Look, did you know him?”

'I doubt we've met, but I'll try not to keep you much longer. You know if anyone one else was here on the night it happened? Maybe the dead man had employees.' Nuala will take the opportunity to check for any security cameras that might have had line of sight on the crime scene.

[LeSwordfish]

"Came back after, by himself?" Carys said, milking the scandal for all it was worth. "Why, what kind of book could he have possibly wanted to purchase that he didn't want his young lady seeing?" She quirked an eyebrow at that, then furrowed it, more serious. "He didn't say what he was looking for, did he? Were you able to send him to a specific place?"

[Bennosuke]

Lyra

The woman looked contemptuously at Lyra. Her jaw had been badly broken at some point, and had never set properly. Her sneer accentuated the awkward asymmetry.

“It’s the buildings with the bloody big chimneys, isn’t it?” she said, pointing out of the alley and over rooftops to where gargantuan exhaust pipes were leaking out thick grey-white smoke which hovered under the hive ceiling, perhaps a couple of kilometres distant. “Stupid woman,” she muttered to herself. Evidently, she was aggravated that the prospect of a free meal had disappeared.

Lyra simply lets the woman's insult slide off her back as she leaves. The crone had gotten her throne and Lyra had gotten the information she needed.

She heads in the direction of the "bloody big chimney" that the woman had indicated. As Lyra gets closer, she makes sure to put her energies into drifting around the perimeter, watching for anyone in a familiar leather apron and industrial gear.

[Thragka]

Carys

The young man's eyes fluttered for a moment, as if suppressing some emotional reaction. He managed to keep eye contact with Carys. "Couldn't say. He wanted something that had been written in the Hive, or about the Hive. I suggested he try Borsen Bluff." He indicated down the road again. "West end of the Way comes out there. There are some social clubs there, you find a lot of artsy types. And yeah, bookshops."

Lyra

Navigating by the chimney, Lyra began picking her way through the small streets. Once she found her way out of the ramshackle neighbourhood, she discovered a main road leading all the way to the metalworks. The air got hazier as she walked along, the hydrocarbon fumes from the road traffic mixing with the steam leaking from the cracked pipes.

The complex occupied a couple of acres, bordered with chain-link fencing around the perimeter, although that seemed more just to demarcate the lot rather than to be an effective security measure. It took a little over a quarter of an hour to wander the whole way around, and get a look in from all angles. There were a mixture of buildings of various sizes: small offices, larger warehouses and garages, and then the furnace house from which the massive chimney rose in the centre of the plot. Almost all of the workers going in and out of that structure were wearing thick industrial aprons over their boilersuits. From outside the fence, tens of metres across the complex, they did look to Lyra like they matched the one Lem had been wearing pretty closely. She didn't catch sight of anyone who looked like the man himself, though, at any point on her loop around the works.

Nuala and Nathias

Nuala caught sight of a couple of cameras fixed on a perch above the guards hut. They spanned an arc bisected by the gateway: one pointed out onto the roadside outside the gate, while the other looked inwards across the yard. If the inner one even caught the unit with the strands of Magistratum tape, it wasn't going to record much detail at that distance. The outer camera looked like it could pick up anyone and anything going through the gate, and possibly a bit of the road beyond. On the opposite side of the road was a six-storey habblock. The windows of the upper levels certainly had a view down into the square.

"I don't think so," the guard said to Nuala's question. "I'm sorry, who did you say you were?"

Nuala should make an Ordinary (+10) Tech-Use test.

[Haval]

Nuala nudged Nathias and pointed to the cameras. 'Doesn't mean it saw anything useful but it's worth a look.' Then she sighs as she notices that they aren't even connected. To the woman, 'Ma'am, you really should get some working cameras in here.' Nuala will answer her question though, 'Someone's a little upset with the way that the Redemption has been behaving lately. I suppose we're a fresh pair of eyes in case the Magistratum miss something.'

[LeSwordfish]

Thanking the man kindly, Carys headed off in the direction he indicated. She would be more at home amongst the bookstores maybe. Even if they did tend to look down on short-form journalism, she could still ask around for if they had seen a man by his description.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra

Navigating by the chimney, Lyra began picking her way through the small streets. Once she found her way out of the ramshackle neighbourhood, she discovered a main road leading all the way to the metalworks. The air got hazier as she walked along, the hydrocarbon fumes from the road traffic mixing with the steam leaking from the cracked pipes.

The complex occupied a couple of acres, bordered with chain-link fencing around the perimeter, although that seemed more just to demarcate the lot rather than to be an effective security measure. It took a little over a quarter of an hour to wander the whole way around, and get a look in from all angles. There were a mixture of buildings of various sizes: small offices, larger warehouses and garages, and then the furnace house from which the massive chimney rose in the centre of the plot. Almost all of the workers going in and out of that structure were wearing thick industrial aprons over their boilersuits. From outside the fence, tens of metres across the complex, they did look to Lyra like they matched the one Lem had been wearing pretty closely. She didn't catch sight of anyone who looked like the man himself, though, at any point on her loop around the works.

Lyra did her best not to sigh. A bit of knowledge had been gained. She knew where Lem likely worked. About to call it quits, an idea suddenly struck Lyra, causing a small grin to spread across her face. If all of the workers were going in and out of the same building, perhaps Lyra could find a place to watch the entrance to the furnace house. She'd have to first identify if there was a way in, and assess what sort of security she would have to skirt.

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

“That so?” the woman asked, her interest piqued. “Huh. In that case, if you want to have a look around you can go ahead as far as I’m concerned. The Magistratum have done sod all, to be honest. After it happened, they came, had a look at the unit, then taped it up and said they’d be back – and they haven’t been. So I couldn’t be arsed if they want people to stay out, it’s been weeks now. You want to have a look, be my guest.”

The site guard went back into her gatehouse kiosk, rummaging in the desk inside, still speaking over her shoulder to Nuala and Nathias. “Yeah, the cameras are just to scare hooligans off. There’s always the odd break-in, of course, but as far as I know nobody ever had to worry about a murder before.”

She found a ring of keys in a drawer. “And it’s a bit hard to imagine old Gurner picking a fight with the Reds. I’d’ve thought he was totally harmless. Doesn’t make any sense why they’d want to kill him.”

Carys

“It’s a bit of a walk,” the young man said as Carys was taking her leave. “You might want to take a rickshaw.” She could tell he was watching her go after she turned away from him.

Deduct yourself a couple of thrones if you do take a rickshaw. You can walk it, if you want, it’ll just take a good deal longer – it’s coming up on midday around now.


~

The Old Mendicant Way was surprisingly long. Although its essential character never changed, its aesthetic façade did vary a little: further west was closer to both Hyperthrow spaceport and the all-important Goldenhand complex. Local craft shops and souvenir hawkers were replaced by a class of “hostels” that claimed to be pilgrim’s inns but were obviously quite discerning in their clientele. One such inn was practically annexed to a small abbey, sharing one half of a private temple across the cloister wall with the monastic community. Absolution within arm’s reach for the interplanetary business traveller had never been more convenient.

Finally, the pedestrianised street died off, the roadway swelled, and the bicycle rickshaws were replaced by the familiar tram network. Borsen Bluff was the bank that jutted out from this side of the spire of the same name, far lower down inside of which was the Inquirer newsroom. Carys had heard of this area as something of a dilettante’s playground. Although it was at an incredible elevation – heavens, probably barely twenty levels below the Hiveskin – the proximity to both the spaceport and the economic heart of Tarsus made the hive administration ensure the infrastructure here was maintained to a high standard. Younger nobles, or those not in the line of inheritance, had started flocking to the volume several decades back, as a place to be free of their dynastic shackles, or to pursue passion projects until their real lives began. With them had come the sponsored cadres of Magistratum, who had quickly set about clearing the neighbourhood of riff-raff. These days Borsen Bluff was chic and gentrified, full of bright young things who exalted themselves as counter-culture and never knew want.

Carys had heard of a couple of clubs where her name would doubtless be enough for someone to sign her in as a guest for the day, where she could be both a fashion statement to show off and a prole to impress until the socialite grew bored with her. A bookshop wouldn’t be difficult to find, regardless – from fluff in the T.I.’s Society pages that she hadn’t written herself, she was led to believe that there were some charming streets that should be quite pleasant to amble along. She had an inkling, though, that one way or another, she’d need to have someone in the know educate her as to what literature was currently the trendiest.

Lyra

The main entrance to the metalworks complex had a gatehouse with turnstiles for pedestrians and rising barriers for vehicles – no doubt they checked for some sort of identification there. She had passed a couple of spots on her loop of the grounds where she’d had an angle on the entry to the furnace building, but neither had been fantastic: one was obtuse, and missed one half of the wide doorway, and the other gave her a look at only a few yards of ground before other buildings obstructed the view. Of course, the chainlink fencing was nothing special, and surely wouldn’t hold up to a pliers. She’d seen only one security guard patrolling inside the complex on the entire loop around.

Opposite the main entrance, across the busy carriageway, was what looked like a manufactory built into a long six-storey block: she could see workers sat at textile machines through the windows. That building would also give her a good angle down on the entrance to the steel mill furnaces, she reckoned – her Arbites training hadn’t worn off yet.

[Haval]

'Yeah that's the Magistratum for you.' Nuala said with feeling. 'And I don't think the Reds need a reason to act like that, but we should check to see if he owed them money or something.' Nuala will take the keys if offered or else will go with the woman to Gurner's part of the yard.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra scowls, trying her best not to let frustration set in. If she had honed her skills in sneaking and picking locks, perhaps she could manage her way in, but Lyra didn't have those sorts of skills. She was going to have to do something a little drastic... maybe a little stupid. She froze that scowl on her face, straightening her posture and taking on the familiar persona of a hardnosed hardline Arbitrator. Keeping the hard look on her face, Lyra marches to the main entrance. Meeting the eyes of one of the guards with the same hard apathetic scowl she says, "I need a moment of your time," before quickly flashing her Arbitrator badge, and doing her best to hide her name on the badge with her thumb. "This is official business and we need to keep things quiet," she orders.

[Thragka]

Carys

It didn’t take long to find an elegant little boutique with a display of softbacks sitting within the bay window – on a table that looked like actual wood, at that. Inside, a motley collection of wares was tended to by a man of indeterminate age but undeniable breeding. He looked down his long nose through his huge round spectacles at Carys, smiling in the manner of a childless uncle waiting to see how intelligent a young relation was. He held his arms crossed, thrumming his heavily ringed fingers on the puffy sleeves of his black tunic.

“My dear! How might I assist you this afternoon?”

Nuala and Nathias

“No rhyme or reason to what the Reds do,” the guard agreed. “But I can’t deny I’d feel better if there was at least some reason for whatever happened to Mr. Gurner.”

She walked them across the yard to the closed unit, and turned a key in the lock of the door. She paused for a moment, looking at the green CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER tape still stretched across the frame of the door. Then she shrugged. “Sod it, they’re not coming back.” With a final quarter turn of the key, she pushed, and the tape snapped as the door swung inwards.

Immediately inside was a small hallway, occupied only by a coatrack with a single thin plastic jacket fluttering in the gust from the door. On the right, an open double doorway led into the main workshop, which from the look of it took up the ground floor of the unit. Nuala and Nathias could see some worktables and cabinets spaced out on the floor in the gloom. After those doors, the hallway became a stairwell, leading up to the higher level. The air was stale. It had been weeks since anyone was inside.

The guard reached for a light switch within arm’s reach of the door they were coming in by. Nothing happened when she flicked it. “This unit’s probably been turned off at the box,” she said. “I’ll go switch it back on. Just don’t run away on me, alright?” She shot the pair of them a grumpy look, and stepped back out, walking across the yard towards the gateway again.

Lyra

The pudgy plant guard sitting behind the raised desk in the gatehouse looked entirely disinterested in Lyra’s appearance, until she flashed her badge – then it was if she’d set a fire under the seat of his trousers. He jumped to attention, giving a spluttering cough as he tried to quickly clear his throat.

“Of course, uh, officer!” he said, eyes wide. Lyra’s demeanour was certainly having the effect she’d intended. “What, I mean, how can I help you, sir, ma’am, sir?”

[LeSwordfish]

Carys brought out a medium-grade smile. "I was hoping you could help me find someone - a friend of mine came through this area a little while ago." She described her quarry. "Apparently he was looking for local history books, or something on the history of the hive? Am I in the right place where he might have been looking for that?"

[Haval]

Once the guard had gone Nuala will tell Nathias, 'If anyone bothers to check maybe you're the one in charge.' She would have to see if he would make her one of those IDs at some point. She'd even pay him.

It was dark, but until the guard put the lights on she'll have a look round to see what Gurner actually had made for a living.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra

The pudgy plant guard sitting behind the raised desk in the gatehouse looked entirely disinterested in Lyra’s appearance, until she flashed her badge – then it was if she’d set a fire under the seat of his trousers. He jumped to attention, giving a spluttering cough as he tried to quickly clear his throat.

“Of course, uh, officer!” he said, eyes wide. Lyra’s demeanor was certainly having the effect she’d intended. “What, I mean, how can I help you, sir, ma’am, sir?”

Lyra stifled her grin, keeping her satisfaction inside. "Arbiter will do just fine, sir," Lyra orders flatly. She leans in towards the pudgy officer, darting her eyes from side to side furtively as if she were afraid of being overheard. In a near whisper she says, "My office has reason to believe that a small number of workers at this plant are members of a heretical seditionist cult. You will give me access to whatever form of employee records this factory keeps so that I can conduct my investigation, necessary to rooting out this... evil."

[-Sentinel-]

'If anyone bothers to check maybe you're the one in charge.'
"Sure thing," said Nathias.

He turned on his data-slate just to have a bit of light to see by.

"Before you move anything, let's try to see if it looks like someone's been searching the place before us."

[Haval]

'Other then the Redemptionists. Do we even know how Gurner died?' Had the Magistratum even cleaned up the mess?

[Thragka]

Carys

“You are in the right place he might have looked, though not the right place he would have found such texts,” the proprietor said, a playful spark flashing in his eyes. “If indeed he were looking for them. My catalogue is more literary than factual. I imagine, though, that such a friend as you describe could be pointed in the right direction. If he asked the right questions.”

Nuala and Nathias

Between Nathias’s dataslate and the light getting around the edges of the large shutter door at the front, there was enough light in the workshop to make out the contents of the room in broad details. It was the size of a very large home garage; to measure it another way, it was probably slightly larger than the entire parlour that Nathias used as both his living room and workspace in his small hab. The two worktable islands were in the rear half of the space, mostly clear save for some loose wrenches and the odd piece of what looked like scrap metal. On the back wall and around the sides were a couple of small countertops in front of perforated panelling. Small tools – screwdrivers, drill bits, rods and measuring tapes – were hung neatly from the slots. There were a number of cabinets of various shapes, and some plastic barrels under one of the counters.

The front end of the workshop was somewhat messier. Even in the shadows, the light from Nathias’s dataslate reflected off the warped circular crater in the back of the shutter door. A plastic barrel like the ones in the back was on its side off to the right side, spilling taped rods of multicoloured wiring out onto the floor. A drill lay on the ground, close to a broken clock. In the centre of the floor, the absence of a body, a rich dark stain on the concrete, and a smell that hinted of iron.

The door in the hallway opened again. The site guard flicked the light switch again. After a protracted hum, they came on this time, overhead fluorescents lending a burgundy colour to the stain on the workshop floor.

The guard looked in through the door from the hallway. “Constables took the body away, but didn’t do much else. There’s a broken window upstairs in his office – that’s how they got in. Reg, who was manning the gate at the time, said he thought he saw people on the roof after he heard the gunshot.”

At least in the workshop on the ground floor, it doesn't look particularly like this place has been disturbed recently. You can make a Search test at +20 now that the lights are on to look more specifically.

Lyra

“Uh … let me call someone for you,” the guard said. He lifted a vox handset from the desk. “Ms Amin?” he said into it. A muttered conversation followed. Lyra caught the word “Arbiter”, and then several times “cult”. He flashed Lyra a nervous smile as he put the handset back down. “One of our admin will be along shortly, ma’a- uh, Arbiter.”

Lyra spotted the woman coming to meet her almost as soon as she had stepped out the doors of the small office block on the west end of the site – she had the walk of somebody serious on the way to sort something out. Professionally dressed in a dark blue skirt and matching jacket, as she got closer Lyra could make out thick black hair whose curls had been forced into a neat, tight bun. She stepped into the gatehouse and treated Lyra to a sterile smile. “Arbiter. I am Puan Amin, assistant site manager. Please, come with me. Thank you, Simms,” she said said, twitching the briefest glance towards the guard behind the desk as she turned and led Lyra into the complex. She set a quick pace. They cut across the painted lines on the tarmac guiding vehicles around the plant, heading straight back for the office block Ms Amin had appeared from. Lyra could see the doors of the furnace house directly as they swung wide past it. A few workers in jumpsuits were staring, though whether it was at Lyra or at Amin, Lyra wasn’t sure.

“I understand from Mr Simms the reason for your being here is quite serious, Arbiter …” she said as they walked, waiting for a name. “Esmark-Berzelius Metalworks will assist you in any way we can, of course. I am having the records you requested brought to my office.” Her tone was neutral, as if this was just another professional obligation in a day’s work. When they entered the reception at the ground floor of the office block, fewer people inside bothered to take notice. Most people in the lobby were dressed more like Amin than the labourers outside.

They took an elevator up to the fifth floor, and walked along a carpeted floor, past conference rooms to a large office. Amin’s desk was at the far end; near the door, a young woman in a white shirt and a thin headdress was placing a box of files on a low recaf table, on which already waited a carafe of water and drinking glasses. The employee nodded briefly at Amin and exited.

“Mandi,” Amin called. The younger woman stopped. “How many more?” the manager asked.
“Just one other box, Ms Amin.”
“Thank you,” Amin said. The young woman gave her another nod and went to get the rest of the records. Amin turned to Lyra. “Please let me know what else you might need. Are there specific names you’re looking for?”

Titia

Titia returned to the level of the canteen, and picked her way along the road Lem had pointed them down until the lock-ups transitioned into large warehouses. Every building seemed to have something wrong with it, from broken windows to missing sections of roofing. Some had chains across the door handles, plastered with papers Titia knew marked them as condemned, even if she couldn't read the words; some were just carcasses gutted by fire. Signs of other people got fewer and fewer, but when Titia did see other souls, they were people like her: scroungers and squatters who had nowhere better to be than abandoned storehouses and empty shells of manufactories.

She walked for a while, and was beginning to wonder how she would find the chapel, when she saw down a side street the small squat building whose doors had been daubed with a crude red Aquila. An exterior panel that might once have displayed the business's sign was empty on the wall. In front of it stood a plaster cast of a clerical figure in robes. Its blunt features had been coated in the same red paint used to mark the Aquila on the doors beside it.

[Haval]

Nuala wrinkled her nose at the smell. She wondered if Gurner had known what was about to happen. The workshop suggested he had been a man after own heart. 'Did he fix things?' She'll look at the workstations to see if there was anything that stood out to her among the tools. There was always the chance that he was doing something that the Mechanicus might disapprove of.

To Nathias, 'If there's any paperwork in the office you'll have to take it. I probably won't be able to get anything useful out of it.' Nuala was a little embarrassed to admit to her illiteracy especially with the guard here.


Common Lore (Imperium) in case Gurner was some sort of Heretek
Vs. Int 34
[roll0]

Search vs. Per 35 / 2 (+20)
[roll1]

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias and Nuala

Nathias put his data-slate away and joined Nuala in searching the room for clues.

Untrained Search 22 + 20 = 42. [roll0]

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

To Nuala, this seemed to be a perfect little tinkerer’s retreat – at least at first glance. From the scraps on the worktables and the tools hanging on the walls, she could make a confident guess that Gurner had been a technomat. The plastic barrels were packed with bags of bits that she guessed had been sorted by hand – screws of similar lengths and gauges, washers of almost but not quite equal width. The broken clock hadn’t been the only thing Gurner had been working on. There were a handful of simple devices in a halfway state of repair on the counters, including a bulky, old-fashioned handsfree vox earpiece (a very cheap alternative to a microbead) and the chassis of a residential ventilation unit, with its fan and some misshapen internal piping laid out beside it on the workstation. One of the things Nuala had taken for a cabinet at first glance revealed itself to be a disactivated fridge. But the more she looked, the more she couldn’t shake that there was something that just seemed off about this little scene. The property was too big of an investment for a technomat to get by on the sort of small repair odd-jobs that the work in progress represented, Nuala reckoned. Some of the tools seemed a bit too specialised to see very much use, either.

This sort of mechanical tinkering wasn’t explicitly tech-heresy, although who knew – on a bad day, a coghead might take enough offence to write a layman up for it. Still, she hadn’t seen everything – the largest of the cabinets was held closed by a padlock half the size of her fist.

Lacking Nuala’s background, nothing Nathias looked at stood out for him. Instead, he found his attention repeatedly drawn to the impact crater on the inside of the rising shutter door. Standing in front of it, he turned around and looked back into the workshop.

A mark on one of the wooden countertops caught his eye. Coming closer, he saw a deep rip had been cut into the table’s edge. It was smooth down one side, but periodically jagged on the other. There was a dusting of sawdust near it on the wooden surface. Looking down, there was more dust clumped on the floor beneath the damage.

[LeSwordfish]

Longform writers, they think they're so smart. Carys thought. "And who would you recommend for the best non-fiction around here?"

[Haval]

Nuala wonders if she could get away with taking the tools with her. Probably not with the guard here.'He was definitely a technomat, and I think someone was paying him well. Some of this gear ought to be expensive.'

[Bennosuke]

“Uh … let me call someone for you,” the guard said. He lifted a vox handset from the desk. “Ms Amin?” he said into it. A muttered conversation followed. Lyra caught the word “Arbiter”, and then several times “cult”. He flashed Lyra a nervous smile as he put the handset back down. “One of our admin will be along shortly, ma’a- uh, Arbiter.”

Lyra spotted the woman coming to meet her almost as soon as she had stepped out the doors of the small office block on the west end of the site – she had the walk of somebody serious on the way to sort something out. Professionally dressed in a dark blue skirt and matching jacket, as she got closer Lyra could make out thick black hair whose curls had been forced into a neat, tight bun. She stepped into the gatehouse and treated Lyra to a sterile smile. “Arbiter. I am Puan Amin, assistant site manager. Please, come with me. Thank you, Simms,” she said said, twitching the briefest glance towards the guard behind the desk as she turned and led Lyra into the complex. She set a quick pace. They cut across the painted lines on the tarmac guiding vehicles around the plant, heading straight back for the office block Ms Amin had appeared from. Lyra could see the doors of the furnace house directly as they swung wide past it. A few workers in jumpsuits were staring, though whether it was at Lyra or at Amin, Lyra wasn’t sure.

“I understand from Mr Simms the reason for your being here is quite serious, Arbiter …” she said as they walked, waiting for a name. “Esmark-Berzelius Metalworks will assist you in any way we can, of course. I am having the records you requested brought to my office.” Her tone was neutral, as if this was just another professional obligation in a day’s work. When they entered the reception at the ground floor of the office block, fewer people inside bothered to take notice. Most people in the lobby were dressed more like Amin than the labourers outside.

They took an elevator up to the fifth floor, and walked along a carpeted floor, past conference rooms to a large office. Amin’s desk was at the far end; near the door, a young woman in a white shirt and a thin headdress was placing a box of files on a low recaf table, on which already waited a carafe of water and drinking glasses. The employee nodded briefly at Amin and exited.

“Mandi,” Amin called. The younger woman stopped. “How many more?” the manager asked.
“Just one other box, Ms Amin.”
“Thank you,” Amin said. The young woman gave her another nod and went to get the rest of the records. Amin turned to Lyra. “Please let me know what else you might need. Are there specific names you’re looking for?”

Lyra felt near immediate disdain for Puan Amin, her finer than midhive garb, and her sterile attitude. It made it easy for the ex-officer to give the woman an impassioned "thanks" and follow her without a desire to smile or make small talk. She said little as the administrator spoke, offering the smallest of nods in affirmation or denial. She thanked the woman finally, "Thank you for arranging these for me. I hope you understand that it is best that I say as little as possible. We have... suspects, but need more information before anyone deserves to be accused. However, there is one individual whose full file I need pulled. Goes by the name 'Lem'." She proceeds to describe the man in as much detail as possible. "I know it's not much to go on, but all information on this man will be necessary," she adds.

[-Sentinel-]

Nuala wonders if she could get away with taking the tools with her. Probably not with the guard here.'He was definitely a technomat, and I think someone was paying him well. Some of this gear ought to be expensive.'
Mathias pointed at the gouge in the table. "Do you think a chainsword did this?"

If so, the murderers were well-armed.

[Haval]

Mathias pointed at the gouge in the table. "Do you think a chainsword did this?"

If so, the murderers were well-armed.

Nuala will take a look, 'Maybe. I don't like to get too close to anyone who has one of those.' If Gurner had had an accident with some tool wouldn't he have cleaned up the sawdust? 'So if someone swings one of those things at you, you get out of the way as quickly as possible. The chainsword messes up Gurner's table and then someone else finishes him off with their gun. I don't think a chainsword's the sort of thing you could just buy in the main hive, so many we can work out where it came from. Course it could be some souvenir from service in the PDF.' There was probably no way to track that.

'Still doesn't tell us what the Reds were doing here or whether anything's missing.' Nuala will check upstairs to see if she could find a key to that cabinet.

[Thragka]

Carys

The proprietor thrummed his fingers on his crossed arm again. “An odd question, by its nature, at least in the genres your friend asks about. Historical records, one should think, are mostly kept by the noble houses – charting their lineage, confirming their pedigree, and so on. I’m not aware of a, hm, working-class market for historical analyses. On the other hand, technical records would be the provision of the Administratum, or the Mechanicum, depending on the subject matter. The former, I suppose, are mostly public record, for anyone resilient enough to mire themselves in the bureaucracy. The latter would be more difficult.”

He seemed to sense that Carys was not entertained, and took on a stiffer tone. “For general non-fiction, I suppose you could try Bergmann’s. They have no sense of taste, or perhaps are simply incapable of judging based on merit; what you can find in there is mostly dross, I’m sure.” He waved a hand dismissively, and then reached onto a stack of papers on a side table, flicking through the leaves until he drew out the print he wanted. “But for your friend who has come here, of all places, to seek history … I might suggest a playwright. Historical fiction is à la mode at the moment. Quite exaggerated, naturally, but they say the legends always have a basis in truth.”

He handed Carys the flyer. It was a maroon half-page print advertising a performance by masked figures. The Hellions of Arlecchinius present THE COMEDY OF THE CROOKED SPIRES, it read. Calmo’s Recafé, Laxday of 7th Forges. “I saw that performance,” the shopkeeper said. “The Hellions show promise. Their playwright is excellent, a very bright young mind. He may be of interest to your friend.”

I originally meant to run this much quicker as a blow-by-blow conversation, but I got quite busy at the end of last week, apologies.

Nathias and Nuala

The stairs got dirtier as they rose, clumps of what looked like dried greasy mud on the uppermost slats. The dirt took shape into messy footprints on the landing, emerging from the small room at the back. A flutter of cold air blew from the open doorway. Through it, they could see nothing but a small cot-like bed, covered in more footprints and shards of glass from the broken window.

Other doors off the landing lead to a storage closet and a tiny toilet, and the office space that took up most of the first floor. It surmounted the front half of the workshop, looking out over the yard. A plastic desk served as a centrepiece, with the contents of another toolkit spread across it. At one side of the room were a stack of empty boxes and paper wrapping; on the other, under a shelf of leatherbound ledgers, a black matte safe with a huge dent to the door. A large hammer was on the floor in front of it – but it didn’t seem to have been enough to crack open the door.

Lyra

“Of course,” Amin said. “We at Esmark-Berzelius will do everything we can to facilitate your investigation. As for this name, Lem, it rings a bell.” She flicked through the folders in the box on the desk. “But I don’t believe it’s in this set.” After a few moments, the assistant, Mandi, appeared with the second box. She set it down in front of Amin and Lyra, and then, as if at some unspoken command from her boss, stepped back to the wall and waited in silence.

Amin opened the box and pulled out a folder. “Yes. Bozidar Lem,” she said, handing the folder over to Lyra. She continued speaking as Lyra glanced through the papers filed inside. “He’s been a fine employee in the furnace house for a number of years, as I recall. Capable and responsible. Perhaps lacking in initiative.” Lem’s papers seemed to bear this out. His reviews seemed to indicate he’d been a model employee, but had passed up opportunities for promotion. The personnel overview also had Lem’s home address, in a nearby hab-block, and other details.

“Will you be requiring a copy?” Amin asked. “Mandi will get you one immediately.”

[Haval]

After a quick look around Nuala will take a look at the safe to see if she had any idea how to open it. At least there were a lot of tools lying around. 'You know, I could probably find someone to open this if we really needed to.' Hopefully what ever Gurner was keeping in there was more interesting then money.


If possible I'm going to have a go at Tech-Using the safe open. Maybe with a penalty. Security is a rank 2 skill for Scum.
vs. Int 34
[roll0]

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

The blow from the hammer had damaged the numeric keypad over the safe lock, but a few firm prods suggested the locking mechanism was still intact, and still holding firm. Whoever had whacked the door hadn't put any real technical thought into how to accomplish their goal. Nuala reckoned that, with the tools at hand downstairs, a combination of repairing and bypassing the circuits in the keypad would eventually get the door open, but it would probably take her about an hour and a half.

[LeSwordfish]

"Oh no, he's not-" Carys began, and paused for thought. "This is a gentleman of means, put it that way. So, perhaps he's specifically looking for something outside the house's history. Religious history in the hive? Political? Architectural?" She gave the bookseller a wary eye, wondering if he could add to that. Or, of course, a man who doesn't want his family to know he's snooping about them.

[Thragka]

Carys

"Well," said the gentleman, removing his spectacles, "one runs into rather the same sort of publication bottleneck, I should think." He paused to breathe heavily on the lenses. "Of course the Ecclesiarchy facilitates the publication of countless tracts of religious history through her printing houses – there will always be a market for that in Hive Tarsus." He picked the rim of his tunic from where it hung below his waist, and wiped his glasses on a section of the fabric. "I don't doubt that there are scholastic texts on architecture, too, for the next generation of adepts to study in the Colleges. But the purpose of such histories will demand that the finished products –" he raised the spectacles back to eye level, and looked through the clean glass at Carys "– are necessarily sanitised."

He paused. "Thus I suppose that if those disquisitions do not satisfy, a friend is perhaps forced to flirt with docents who cleave less rigourously to truth when they see the same appeal in beauty."

[Bennosuke]

“Of course,” Amin said. “We at Esmark-Berzelius will do everything we can to facilitate your investigation. As for this name, Lem, it rings a bell.” She flicked through the folders in the box on the desk. “But I don’t believe it’s in this set.” After a few moments, the assistant, Mandi, appeared with the second box. She set it down in front of Amin and Lyra, and then, as if at some unspoken command from her boss, stepped back to the wall and waited in silence.

Amin opened the box and pulled out a folder. “Yes. Bozidar Lem,” she said, handing the folder over to Lyra. She continued speaking as Lyra glanced through the papers filed inside. “He’s been a fine employee in the furnace house for a number of years, as I recall. Capable and responsible. Perhaps lacking in initiative.” Lem’s papers seemed to bear this out. His reviews seemed to indicate he’d been a model employee, but had passed up opportunities for promotion. The personnel overview also had Lem’s home address, in a nearby hab-block, and other details.

“Will you be requiring a copy?” Amin asked. “Mandi will get you one immediately.”

"Thank you," Lyra says, finally allowing a hint of gratitude to creep into her words, "your assistance is much appreciated." She begins to lay out some of the documents before her, taking her time with the first one as she meticulously scans it, but turning before Amin leaves the room to add, "But may I again emphasize the need for prudence and silence about this investigation. No one is proven guilty yet, and it will be easier to do His work if our targets don't know that they are being hunted yet."

(OOC: Don't know if you need me to make a roll here. I think Lyra is going to try to gather and copy as much relevant information as she can, making sure to take files that would be considered important for her fabricated investigation, but leaving with the files rather than spending hours at the factory where more people might ask more questions.)

[Thragka]

Lyra

"I can personally assure you of the total discretion of the management," Amin said, "as well as my staff whom you've interacted with. You are welcome to wait here while our copyists duplicate the file, if you like. Or I can have it forwarded to your precinct – by this afternoon, of course." She paused. "I'm sorry, Arbiter, I realise I didn't catch your name."

Up to you whether you want to wait for a full copy, or just leave with your own quick copies. Depending on how many people Amin puts to the task, waiting for the full copy could take as little as twenty minutes or as much as a couple of hours.

[LeSwordfish]

Carys

"Well," said the gentleman, removing his spectacles, "one runs into rather the same sort of publication bottleneck, I should think." He paused to breathe heavily on the lenses. "Of course the Ecclesiarchy facilitates the publication of countless tracts of religious history through her printing houses – there will always be a market for that in Hive Tarsus." He picked the rim of his tunic from where it hung below his waist, and wiped his glasses on a section of the fabric. "I don't doubt that there are scholastic texts on architecture, too, for the next generation of adepts to study in the Colleges. But the purpose of such histories will demand that the finished products –" he raised the spectacles back to eye level, and looked through the clean glass at Carys "– are necessarily sanitised."

He paused. "Thus I suppose that if those disquisitions do not satisfy, a friend is perhaps forced to flirt with docents who cleave less rigourously to truth when they see the same appeal in beauty."

Carys smiled. This she was familar with - sanitisation was crucial to keeping the wheels of society running. "Of course. Beauty can't be ugly but truth can be a lie."

She opened the flyer, scanning it for the name of the playwright. "Thank you, you've been most helpful."

OOC
Carys is going to head to Bergmann's first, on the basis that it's probably pretty close.

[Haval]

Nuala and Nathias

The blow from the hammer had damaged the numeric keypad over the safe lock, but a few firm prods suggested the locking mechanism was still intact, and still holding firm. Whoever had whacked the door hadn't put any real technical thought into how to accomplish their goal. Nuala reckoned that, with the tools at hand downstairs, a combination of repairing and bypassing the circuits in the keypad would eventually get the door open, but it would probably take her about an hour and a half.

Nuala will take some some work gloves out of her pocket to avoid electrocuting herself. To Nathias, 'I think I saw pliers and a screwdriver downstairs. I could probably get this open eventually if we have the time. Hopefully there's something more interesting in there then his money.'

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

The guard watched Nuala examining the safe. "Wow, you're, uh, really settling in, huh?" She looked between the two of them, again with the calculating expression she'd had at the gate. "Look, do you have any sort of ID? In case the greencoats do come back and ask what happened. Or anyone else, really."

To answer Haval's OOC question, she is still in Gurner's unit with you, but more than anything else still a bit perplexed about Nuala and Nathias rather than unhappy.

[-Sentinel-]

"Look, do you have any sort of ID? In case the greencoats do come back and ask what happened. Or anyone else, really."
Nathias quickly flashed his forged Administratum ID. "Reza Shumar, of the Taxation and Revenue Bureau. This is a bookkeeping investigation for estate tax purposes. Incidentally, if you know anything about the next-of-kin of the deceased, that information would be welcome."

He figured the guard would not pry too deep if their line of work sounded boring.


OOC
Fel 37 + 20 = 57: [roll0]


Uuuuugh. :smallsigh: I don't suppose we could regain Fate Points after each day, instead of each chapter?

[Bennosuke]

Lyra

"I can personally assure you of the total discretion of the management," Amin said, "as well as my staff whom you've interacted with. You are welcome to wait here while our copyists duplicate the file, if you like. Or I can have it forwarded to your precinct – by this afternoon, of course." She paused. "I'm sorry, Arbiter, I realise I didn't catch your name."

Up to you whether you want to wait for a full copy, or just leave with your own quick copies. Depending on how many people Amin puts to the task, waiting for the full copy could take as little as twenty minutes or as much as a couple of hours.

Lyra stiffens slightly, allowing real frustration to spread creep her face to aid her in avoiding the second question. "I would rather wait. I can start going over files in the meantime." she says flatly, and with more than a hint of impatience adds, "How long will it be?"

(OOC: Regardless of how that moves plays out, I'll have Lyra just wait, and maybe start pouring over documents).

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

The guard looked pensive for another short moment, and then her face cracked into a smile. “The Revenue, huh? Not surprising you folks do better work than the greencoats. You know what they say about death and taxes.” She winced. “Though I imagine poor ol’ Gurner would have preferred the latter. As for his next of kin, I dunno. He’s been renting – well, had been renting this unit for a year or two, I think, and had the occasional client, but I wasn’t close to him. Seemed like a friendly chap though. But, uh, if you want the records of his lease and stuff, you probably want to talk to Trev in the yard office.”

Nuala slipped back downstairs as Nathias was talking to the guard, and collected a handful of useful-looking tools from the workshop. She carried them back up to the office, and lay them out in front of the damaged safe. This was going to be a process of trial and error …

Nuala’s going to be working on the safe for quite a while, so it’d be good to have an indication of what Nathias will be up to in that time before advancing the time any further for this scene.

Carys

The playbill was a one-sided print, offering very little information beyond the name of the play and the company. There were selected quotations from reviews of this and their previous work: “The Hellions continue to impress,” said the Sabbatical, while the Bluff Voxgraph referred to “a tragedy to rival any in Catuldynus’ repertoire”. Carys didn’t recognise the names of either of these publications: local circulars, perhaps.

The proprietor saw her examining the print. “I’ve heard rumours they’re being considered for membership of the Peregrines Society,” he said. “You might catch word of them in the clubhouse – if you can get in on your own merits, of course.” He gave her directions to Bergmann’s, and smiled politely as she departed.

It was a pleasant walk to get to Bergmann’s. Despite the altitude of the Bluff, the streets were clean, the ceilings were high, and the ventilated air was cool and pure. There were even beampipes overhead at regular intervals – although they hummed, just on the edge of hearing, suggesting they weren’t in perfect condition. Regardless, Carys found this region of Borsen’s Bluff to be entirely tolerable. It was almost a shame when, after fifteen minutes or so, she reached the large bookshop. It was less eclectic, and far more functional, than the nameless boutique she’d been in: rows of identical shelves were packed with books from floor to ceiling. It became clear to Carys that most of the stock was second-hand, at least. Heavily damaged tomes had tape across the spine or were bound almost entirely in plastic oversleeves, while those in better condition were still stained and dog-eared. Nonetheless, quantity had a quality all of its own.

The ordering system that was being employed was obscure, if indeed there was one. The staff in their drab fuchsia uniforms did their best to hunt for the topics Carys asked for.

Can you give me a Routine (+20) Inquiry test please. I think Carys seems to be looking broadly for histories of the Hive and histories of its local nobility, reading between the lines of what you’ve said, is that right? Let me know any other specifics.

Lyra

Amin remained silent for a few moments longer than it seemed she really needed to. “Of course, Arbiter,” she said, eventually. “Please, make yourself comfortable in my office. Feel free to work at my desk. I shall use a temporary office while Mandi is seeing to the duplication.” Her young assistant stepped forward keenly, almost swiping Lem’s file off the recaf table from under Lyra’s hands and disappearing down the corridor. Amin collected a few things from her desk and then left the office without another word.

Lyra was left without much except the information she’d quickly scribbled down on her first skim through the folder: Lem’s address and an overview of his employment history. He had worked in the furnace house for seven years; his training had been financed by the DeVayne Incorporation, who held a seventy-year mortgage corvée on his right to work. Few upper-hivers ever lived long enough or earned enough money to pay off that sort of mortgage.

After about forty-five minutes, Mandi and Amin returned. Amin handed over a full copy of Lem’s file. “Is there anything else I can help you with today, Arbiter?” she asked.

Skipping over the time interval, but all the other personnel files are still in the room – up to you if you want to e.g. look through them, or otherwise root around Amin’s office, in the intervening period.

[Bennosuke]

While she waits, Lyra will review the files available to her, making sure to take notes for herself. As she is not sure what sort of security is in the office, and she has no reason to suspect Amin of anything, she makes no attempt at snooping around.

She wondered if there was any benefit to investigating the DeVayne Incorporation, but thought it was most likely a non-starter.

When Amin does finally return, Lyra thanked the woman for her help. "Your assistance has been of great benefit to the Adeptus Arbites, mam. You have aided in the Emperor's work, and I am sure it will not go unnoticed by Him," she says as she meticulously begins to gather all of the files, notes and data that serves her. She gives Amin a short smile, before allowing her cold mask of indifference to return. She adds, "I may come by again if we need anything more, but will contact your office before hand if I do. Shall I see myself out?"

(OOC: Assuming we are nearing the end of this scene, should I come up with more investigation for Lyra to do, or are you looking to bring the acolytes back together to regroup?)

[Bennosuke]

Lyra quickly exits the factory, walking with purpose to show authority while still trying to blend in with the crowd. Once she's gotten away from the spire, she takes the files back to her dingy hab, to begin pouring over her find. She reads everything she can about Lem. Memorizes the names of his family, his address, and sifts through the data looking for any information that she might use against him. Fueled by cheap caf, and the burning desire for revenge after what happened before, she works until she hears from the other acolytes.

[-Sentinel-]

“But, uh, if you want the records of his lease and stuff, you probably want to talk to Trev in the yard office.”
"Yes, I'll do so," said Nathias, nodding. "Thank you."

He had little hope this would turn up anything useful, but he had to maintain the charade while Nuala cracked the safe.

[Thragka]

Carys

None of the staff Carys spoke to could remember anybody matching Nazif’s description. Asking after recent customer interest in historical texts didn’t produce much of a response either, other than to put her in front of a small table with a stack of paperbacks. None of them looked particularly relevant to finding Nazif’s trail. A History of Efficiency – The DeVayne Incorporation Story was glossy, written in large font and full of pictures of happy-looking hivers; Collected Folk Histories of the Scintilla Wastelanders Vol III: Oral Almanacks of Ambulon was mildewed and dog-eared, the stained pages filled with handwritten commentary in a tight script; ASTARTES OF CALIXIS, WHEN ANGELS WALKED AMONG US looked like the passion project of someone with a single-minded focus, a little too much free time, and a blasé attitude towards such inconveniences as historical research.

Nothing here was scratching Carys’ journalistic itch for a lead. The day was ticking on: she’d have to start travelling back down through the Hive soon if she wasn’t going to keep Jakes waiting for their meeting.

Lyra

Lyra read and reread Lem’s file over a couple of cups of recaf, hoping some detail would leap out to grab her attention. She knew his home address. He was paid in cash once a month, with the DeVayne mortgage automatically deducted, like the vast majority of his co-workers. Over the seven years he’d been at the metalworks, he’d had a small handful of reprimands, for occasionally failing to check equipment back in before clocking out. But none of it had ever been stolen; his appraisals put it down to occasional carelessness after long shifts, and remarked that he’d never cut any more serious corners. As Amin had pointed out, he’d been longlisted for promotion a couple of times. He’d even been shortlisted for a minor supervisory position within the past year, but he’d explicitly turned that down, citing work-life balance.

Lyra shuffled the papers, battling ennui at the prospect of starting from the top again. She had the file now, at least, and a lot of basic information about Lem, even if it wasn’t exactly a smoking gun.

Nuala and Nathias

As Nuala got to work on the damaged safe, Nathias followed the guard back out and across the yard. She led him to the site office and introduced him to the slim, fair man by the name of Trevelyan who occupied it.

“You’re shaking us down over an account after the client died?” Trevelyan asked when Nathias’ Taxation and Revenue Bureau credentials were introduced. The manager raised a dirty blond eyebrow, but didn’t seem particularly interested in hearing a response to his question – he was already digging into a filing cabinet. “Well, you’re going to be bored,” he continued. “I can tell you everything about Hadrian Gurner’s lease from memory. He’d been renting that unit for a little under two years. Standard rate, semi-furnished. The countertops and free-standing tables in the workshop are ours, and the office desk and chair upstairs. Everything else, he brought in. Actually, you said you’re here for his estate? You can clear that stuff all out then if you like, gets it out of my hair. He paid cash every four weeks, the exact amount, midday on the dot. I could always enjoy a nice lunch,” he added wistfully. He found the file he was looking for, and handed it to Nathias. “He was practically my favourite tenant,” he continued. “Won’t get another one like that.” He sighed light-heartedly. “No next-of-kin, but we had his home address, of course,” Trevelyan finished, pointing it out on the paper.

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias wrote the address on his data-slate. Perhaps they could turn up something useful about the man's background and why people were after him.

[LeSwordfish]

Paying brief obeisance to some of the sketched images of His Holy Angels, Carys tore herself away from the book on Astartes, thanked the shop assistants for their time, and headed off to her appointment with Jakes.

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

It took a lot of guesswork before Nuala began to make headway with the safe. Gurner’s toolkit, though, was well-stocked. Everything she could think of that she might need, she was quickly able to find in a relatively sensible location. It remained a minor curiosity that a tinkerer whose work appeared to be so pedestrian would have invested so much effort into a professional’s collection of gadgets. Nuala quickly stopped dwelling on that, though, as she got into her stride, manipulating the broken components with comfortable ease.

A satisfying hour and a half later, she reconnected the last wire behind the keypad. The LCD screen blinked into life. She pressed the circular rune on the keypad four times. The lobotomized machine spirit had no memory of a life before this moment: innocent as a babe, it engaged the safe’s motors at the sudden stimulus. The lock churned, and the door shifted as weight was transferred onto its hinges.

The safe opened at Nuala’s touch. Inside was a small notebook sitting on top of a lopsided stack of printouts that looked like a technical manual at first glance. Underneath where the pile of paper had collapsed, Nuala drew out a wallet and a ring of keys; her eyes, though, were drawn to the sleek, black object that looked like a fat dataslate without a screen in a pleather sleeve. Tell-tale grooves gave away its true nature: a stylish combi-tool, beyond a shadow of a doubt the prize of the collection.

Leaving the spoils for the moment, Nuala picked up the keyring and returned to the workshop downstairs. The first key she tried opened the padlock. Yanking the lock off the cabinet, she got the heavy door open. The cabinet was full of guns. A dozen or so bloated, unwieldy automatic pistols were racked up on the upper shelves. No two were exactly alike. Barrels and grips and muzzles varied in size and texture and colour. But the slides and the hammer mechanisms behind the trigger were all identical. Those components looked like the newest part of each of them – and they looked awfully like the funny-shaped metal pieces in the bottom compartment of the cabinet, right beside the small canisters and the tiny pistons and the flexible tubing organised into neat arrays.

The wallet in Gurner’s safe contains [roll0] thrones.


~

Lyra

Something jolted Lyra’s attention away from Lem’s file as she waited in her hab. For a moment, she couldn’t figure out why the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. Then she heard it again – a tapping sound, skit skit skit. Was it her imagination, or had it come from the grille over the ventilation shaft into the wall?


~

Carys

Traffic on the gigantic highway stretching above the Blind Bishop was only just starting to pick up when Carys made it to Jakes’ establishment. The light in the window was turned off, but the door was open, so Carys let herself in. The room was empty, but Jakes stuck his head out through a doorway at the end of the bar.

“Wasn’t sure you’d be back, Ms Aventine,” he said, as he walked out to her. “No offence to yourself. Just wasn’t sure. Kinda hoped this whole thing isn’t as serious as you made it out to be.” He looked away. “Still. Best get going. Lock the front door from the inside, we’ll head out the back.”

Carys followed Jakes’ lead out through the corridor he’d appeared from. He shrugged a long trenchcoat on over his uneven shoulders; the left sleeve was frayed and torn where his tricuspid mechanical hand emerged. He locked the back door behind her with his prosthesis, the claw holding the key delicately and rotating smoothly about the wrist.

They walked in silence – or rather, they were silent, while the suspended thoroughfare above them howled. It seemed worse as they actually emerged from its shadow; at least directly underneath, the layers of rockrete and the support pillars had dulled the roar a little. She could still hear the hum after it vanished behind brutish habblocks. Other than noting that, Carys kept her eyes to herself; the few shambling, huddled figures that she happened to make eye contact with did not seem to appreciate her attention.

The residential block Jakes led Carys into stank of soot and lho among other sharper scents. On the way up the dark stairwell, Carys had to choose her footing carefully to avoid shards of broken glass and, at one point, a puddle of something that smelled unpleasantly fresh. She could hear a wheezing cough coming from the first landing they passed. An infant wailed somewhere on the second floor. Jakes led her down the third-floor corridor. They stopped in front of a nondescript door. Carys was aware of the barman’s discomfort as he paused. Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a key. He turned it in the lock – this time with his right hand – and pressed down on the handle, opening the door a jar. “Hello?” Jakes called. “Sola?”

“Hello,” Carys heard a tiny, soft voice say, or thought she heard. She shuddered, a sudden chill passing through her body. Jakes didn’t seem to have noticed anything.

[Bennosuke]

Tamping down her anxiety and forcing herself to slow her breath, Lyra gently draws her trusty Mark Talon III short Autopistol. Her gloved hand tightens around the rubberized metal grip as she keeps the weapon hidden under the table where she sits. She takes one last breath in and out, then kicks out her chair as she stands up, and spins to point the weapon at the grate ready. If given the time, she will slowly back away, putting distance between her self and the grate while still keeping her weapon trained on the aperture.

If still nothing happens, Lyra will growl, "Whose there? Show yourself?" But if still nothing replies and the sound stops, Lyra will cautiously move to the grille to inspect.

(OOC: Hope you are okay with the "if-then" style post. I figure it helps keep things moving rather than saying Lyra waits, then you post, nothing happens, then I post ect)

[LeSwordfish]

Carys held up a hand to stall Jakes. "Wait. Did you hear that?"

[Thragka]

Lyra

The noise continued as Lyra drew her gun, skitskit skit skit-skit, now with no apparent pattern. There was no change when she gave her warning.

Stepping closer to the wall, she realised she could see hints of movement behind the thin overlapping vents. A whisker poked out of the grille, and then hurriedly retracted, replaced by tiny claws scrabbling in panic from the other side.


Carys

"Hear what?" Jakes asked. "You heard something?" He knocked hard on the door with his mechanical hand. "Sola? You in there?"

The impulse from his knock was enough for the door to swing open a few degrees. The hinges squealed, but Carys could have sworn she heard something else through the metallic whine. "You in there?"

[Haval]

When she finally gets the safe open Nuala will look greedily at the combi-tool. 'Now where did you come from?' Her teacher Adelaida had had something similar but Nuala had never been allowed to use it. The money was nice, assuming Gurner didn't have an elderly mother out there somewhere that she could leave it with, but the combi-tool was actual treasure.

At the sight of the guns Nuala will go looking for Nathias to speak to him in private. 'You know anything about Tranters?' The man didn't look like a gun person, but she wouldn't have taken him for a forger either. 'They don't always work very well, but when they do they mess people up. I think Gurner was modifying them for the Redemptionists. Question would be who they intended to use them on. It's not like they don't already have other guns, at least judging from the ones we met. Maybe they intend to take up armed robbery?' Nuala could see them doing almost anything if they thought that their beliefs justified it. 'We probably should pass this on. Maybe it's the sort of thing Vane would be interested in.'

[LeSwordfish]

Carys slipped her hand into her coat's pocket and gingerly prodded the cut-down Arbites-pattern baton that she kept in there, as if it were a live thing, or if it might be red hot. Still, the door was open now... she gingerly reached out and pushed it open. "Ms Solas? My name's Livia, I was hoping to talk to you?"

Expecting no response, she slowly proceeded into the room.

[Thragka]

Carys

The door opened into a dull and dusty room. On the wall opposite the entrance, dark blinds were pulled down across each of the two broad windows. Sheets of light sliced past the edges, illuminating the many suspended particles that dangled in the air – and the tiny flies that zipped across the room frenetically. Against the far wall, a minimalist metal futon supported a tangled sheet, and one of the many piles of clothes that were heaped about the room. A low table in the centre of the space was messy with empty bottles and food packets, and a few pieces of dirty crockery – it was hard to make out all the details in the gloom.

Immediately to Carys's right, a wall ran from the doorway she'd just come through to the outer wall. Halfway along that, through the doorless gap between two jambs, she could see conduction hobs in a tiny kitchen. In the far left inner corner, the main room led into a vestigial corridor, where Carys could see a couple of closed doors.

Jakes stepped into the flat after her – but this time, with him behind her, Carys definitely heard a voice coming from somewhere to her left. "In here."

Please roll a Perception test along with whatever Carys does next.

[Bennosuke]

The noise continued as Lyra drew her gun, skitskit skit skit-skit, now with no apparent pattern. There was no change when she gave her warning.

Stepping closer to the wall, she realised she could see hints of movement behind the thin overlapping vents. A whisker poked out of the grille, and then hurriedly retracted, replaced by tiny claws scrabbling in panic from the other side.

Keeping her weapon pointed at the grille, she draws closer trying the best angle to see what animal was pawing at the grate.

[Thragka]

Lyra

From close up, Lyra could see a tiny pink nose pressing against the grille from the other side. All signs pointed towards a rat. The question was how it had got behind that grille in particular – if Lyra recalled correctly, the vent turned into a vertical shaft that ran all the way up to the building's roof.

https://i.imgur.com/DkgPiCz.jpg

[Bennosuke]

Very puzzling. What would drive rodents up to the roof? As far as Lyra knew, rats normally fled the sun and preferred to come out at night. But this was near the spire and coming from the roof meant that the rodents must be exposed to quiet intense sunlight. Lyra throws on her protective shawl, and heads for the roof to investigate.

[Thragka]

Lyra

The elevator in her hab block was slow and noisy, but it worked. Lyra pulled her shawl close around her as she climbed the last set of stairs from the top floor to the roof access. The atmosphere was thick and humid as soon as she stepped out through the door. Although this wasn't the nicest part of the hive, she wasn't in such dire straits that she was forced to live in the Hiveskin itself: there was still an arcology shell above, keeping the worst of the Scintillan desert atmosphere at bay. Despite that, it was still uncomfortably hot, and the air was choked with pollution lingering under the shell. It tickled her nose and throat almost instantly – from experience, she knew it would end up irritating her all day if she stayed out here for too long.

Across the roof, roughly above where she figured her own hab must be, a cluster of boxy steel pipes sprung up to waist height, capped with slanted cast-iron hoods. Two russet-furred forms were perching on top, starting suddenly at the noise of the door opening – bats, the size of small dogs. They pulled themself upright, glaring at Lyra with ugly fox-like faces. One shrieked hoarsely, and stretched its leathery wings out – the span was at least as long as one of Lyra's arms. The other turned its attention back down to the vents. Something had broken the cast-iron hood off of one of the pipes. The bat pressed its snout down into the pipe, as if seeing if its head would fit in, and issued a series of clicking chirps. Its companion kept focused on Lyra, flapping and stretching its wings out territorially, and calling hoarsely at her again.

[LeSwordfish]

"You really can't hear that?" Carys asked, "That voice?"

She paused for a second to let Jakes listen in the silence.

OOC
Perception vs 39: [roll0]

[Thragka]

Carys

"What voice?" Jakes retorted, clearly annoyed. "If this is your idea of a joke, Ms Aventine –" He fell silent at Carys's indication.

There was no more noise from within Sola's hab. Jakes's expression dissolved from irritated to just unhappy. "I don't hear anything," he breathed.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra grinned. She had been in stranger situations for sure; that time when she had burst into an apartment sure to catch a serial killer, only to find a group of toddlers ravenously feasting on the corpse of a feral cat came to mind... but she certainly had not expected to find herself facing down a pair of bats.

It was clear that they were after something, and her mind immediately raced to the thought that some sort of body part had been forced down the pipe... but Lyra was not certain she wanted to waste bullets or even draw attention to herself up on the roof with gunfire. So keeping her weapon trained on the animal, Lyra took several slow unthreatening steps over to a shaft of sunlight that had managed to penetrate the arcology shell above, and with her free hand withdrew her pocket mirror. After all, bats were supposed to be nocturnal animals that hated sunlight! So Lyra caught the light with her mirror, and slowly angled it's reflective surface to flash a beam of bright light into the winged rodent's face.

[Thragka]

Lyra

The posturing bat recoiled as if she'd physically struck it. It gave another hoarse howl, and half-hopped, half-flew a few feet back across the pipe cluster. Lyra angled the mirror so the light still caught the bat, and this time it flexed its wings and took to the air, screeching.

The second bat pulled its face out of the open vent to see what was going on. Getting a blast from Lyra's mirror, it took wing too. The pair circled the roof for ten seconds so, but Lyra's constant assault convinced them that the prey they were after wasn't worth her attention. They departed into the hazy air, leaving her alone on the roof.

[Haval]

Nuala will go and pocket the combi-tool as soon as there's no one watching. She knew roughly how it worked and it would only go to waste sitting here. It wasn't like anyone else knew it existed. Otherwise, using Nathias' borrowed authority, she'll requisition the ledgers from Gurner's office and the written materials from the safe so that they could read them over later. Getting to do this as if she was in the Magistratum or something was frankly very satisfying. If she can find any way of carrying the dozen pistols unnoticed she'll take them with her as well. Appearing that obviously well armed in the Cauldron might attract the wrong kind of attention. If nothing else they probably shouldn't leave them lying around.

Before they leave Nuala will have a brief check to see if there were any other business owners who may have been working here on the night of Gurner's death. Anyone with any sense who had heard gunfire would have likely kept their head down, but maybe someone had seen something. Maybe someone had seen a face? Perhaps the Magistratum had this information already but Nuala wasn't really in a position to ask them. Eventually she'll call up whoever answered the microbead first so that they could compare their findings.


So taking the guns and the written material. Some of it might be important.

Inquiry test to canvass for witnesses in the yard. Leaning on Nathias' authority as a member of the taxation and revenue bureau. Nuala is the hired help.
vs. Fel 33 / 2
[roll0]

[LeSwordfish]

"Fine, then," Carys said, tense and testy. "I'm going mad."

Moving ahead of Jakes, she opened the door to the corridor and started checking the rooms beyond.

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

Nathias got his cab and drove it to Gurner’s unit. Together, they loaded it with the guns from the workshop, the ledgers from the upstairs office and the contents of Gurner’s safe. Trevelyan almost seemed disappointed that they weren’t taking more out of the unit.

Before they left, Nuala asked around about the night of the murder. Many of the employees at other businesses based in the yard remembered Gurner fondly, and mentioned their shock at what had happened, but it seemed nobody had been on site when it happened. The units were leased predominantly to small businesses that needed the industrial space, which all seemed to shut down early in the evenings. Even the self-employed tenants in similar workshops to Gurner’s said the older man had been a bit of a night owl. “It wasn’t really a business, Hax’s shop,” said a scrimshawer a few units clockwise of Gurner’s. “It was more like his little shed for passion projects. He was retired from a big factory, far as I know. Got a nice little settlement package around ten years ago, after a workplace injury, something like that. So he didn’t need the money. He leased the place so he could keep tinkering around for his own enjoyment. Sometimes he’d still be working when I was leaving at night, and he’d still be there in the morning when I got back in.”

I presume you move the evidence back to the safehouse. Feel free for Nuala and Nathias to pick up there, if you like – think we’re just waiting to hear back from Bennosuke as to where and when Lyra will join up with those two.


~

Carys

The corridor extended from the main living area of the flat with no transition, although it may as well have been blocked by a door in terms of how little of it Carys could make out. Around a corner from the covered windows, and with the front door blocking any light from the hab-block landing corridor outside, all it took was Carys herself occluding space to completely drench the hallway in darkness. She could make out the barest glint of two doorknobs as she shuffled forwards carefully, paired like reflections on the walls adjacent to the far right corner.

A foul smell lingered, inflating Carys’s throat. She reached out to the door facing her, at the end of the corridor, and pressed on it. It swung open to reveal a tiny water closet – a toilet, and nothing else. It didn’t smell clean, but human excretions weren’t the stench that was starting to make Carys’s stomach turn. She opened the door to the right, and the putrid odour redoubled.

It was taking her eyes a moment to adapt to the dark.

Shapes began to take form in the shadows. To the left, against the wall separating this room from the toilet, was a small desk and chair. On the outside wall, a large wardrobe had been pushed over, blocking another covered window. In the far corner from the door, there was a bed. The blanket was cocooned thickly around a lumpen form.

Bile was starting to rise in Carys’s gullet.

[LeSwordfish]

Carys clasped a hand over her mouth "Throne of terra-"

"Mister Jakes! I think she's -"

Horrified, but unable to drag herself away, Carys stepped forward and dragged back the sheet by its nearest corner.

[Thragka]

Carys

The rancid foeter sharpened. Carys pulled the blanket off the bed to reveal a slick jumble of bones and viscera, too many to belong to a single person, on a mattress soiled with blood.

The door moved behind her. A chill swept Carys as every hair on the back of her neck stood up.

She turned from the bed just in time to see the figure jump at her from where it had hidden behind the door. In the splt second before it was on her, she saw a hairless, emaciated humanoid, clothed in rags and tatters, limbs and fingers unnaturally long. Even in the dark, she could see its huge lidless eyes were uniform black, and its jaw opened impossibly wide. It lunged, trying to bite her with row after row of spindle-thin teeth. She stumbled back against the bed, half in instinct, half in terror, and its ferocious jaw only tore strips of fabric from her coat instead.

"Ms Aventine?" she heard Jakes call from elsewhere in the apartment. "I'm coming!"

Carys takes no damage in the Surprise round, but I think this warrants a Fear test with a -10 modifier.

[Bennosuke]

The posturing bat recoiled as if she'd physically struck it. It gave another hoarse howl, and half-hopped, half-flew a few feet back across the pipe cluster. Lyra angled the mirror so the light still caught the bat, and this time it flexed its wings and took to the air, screeching.

The second bat pulled its face out of the open vent to see what was going on. Getting a blast from Lyra's mirror, it took wing too. The pair circled the roof for ten seconds so, but Lyra's constant assault convinced them that the prey they were after wasn't worth her attention. They departed into the hazy air, leaving her alone on the roof.

Lyra allows her grin to spread across her face into an unselfconscious smile. She keeps her pistol at the ready, but crosses the roof to the open vent where the bats had been perched, and cautiously peers over the lip to see what the giant winged rodent had been after.

[LeSwordfish]

Carys screamed, and kept screaming. She managed not to fall into the horrifying mess on the bed, instead collapsing sideways as the thing snapped at her. She scrabbled for her gun, missing her coat pocket on her first and second tries, then managed to pull it out with shaking fingers - it caught on the pocket's lip and was tugged from her hand, bruising her kneecap painfully on the way down. Instead she grabbed the baton and pulled it out, clutching it artlessly in her fist, and swiped desperately at the creature as it clawed at her face.

OOC
Carys draws her Baton, giving her a ...4% chance to Parry.

[Thragka]

Lyra

Examining the vent, Lyra realised the bats couldn't have been responsible for damaging the cap. Large they might have been, but their claws wouldn't have ripped through a centimetre of cast iron. The damaged merlon-like contacts which the cap should have sat on had been torn clean through, a splay of deep scratch-marks slicing into the pipe around them. An image sprang to Lyra's mind, of augmented talons directed by a raptor brain.

The shaft grew dull as it sank into the building, but with the use of her mirror, Lyra could direct the light down it. At the bottom, several levels below, Lyra could see a confused and terrified rat.

In case you missed the OOC discussion, Nuala and Nathias are looking to meet back up with Lyra. If she's comfortable telling them the location of her hab, they can join this scene here and now. Otherwise, feel free to move Lyra to the safehouse to join them.


~

Carys

The creature seemed almost indifferent to Carys's attempts to defend herself. Its inhuman fingers closed around the baton and pushed it aside, pinning Carys's arm back against the bed with a strength which was belied by its atrophied frame. She slapped and whacked at it with her free hand as it took a moment to regard her, its distended, slavering jaw morphing in a way that should have been biologically inconceivable to reveal concentric rings of pointed teeth. Ignoring her struggle, it lowered her head and bit into her forearm. A deep, sharp pain erupted as those terrible teeth shredded cloth, skin and muscle. The monster tilted its head backwards as it withdrew, and Carys saw its neck pulsate as it swallowed.

"What's going on?" Jakes was stamping heavily through the apartment. He pushed the bedroom door open, and then froze in place as he took in the tableau. A formless noise emerged from his throat.

[LeSwordfish]

"Help me-!" Carys began to shout, a shout cut off by a screech of pain as the monster bit clean through her armoured sleeve. It was, by a considerable way, the most painful and horrifying thing that had ever happened to her. Her gun was dropped, her baton was pinned - she tore her arm from the jaws of the creature, adrenaline giving her strength, and threw herself towards the door.

OOC
Can I make a Move action around the monster to clear my route to the door? If so, that.

[Thragka]

Carys

The monstrous humanoid finished swallowing and snapped its attention back down to Carys as she threw herself sideways from it. She scrambled back from her haunches to her feet, baton still in her hand, and fell back to the doorway. Jakes, still immobilised by fear, was blocking the only way out.

The creature's maw seemed to split from ear to ear. A wet, rasping noise exuded from that dreadful throat. It reached at her with both arms and suddenly darted forwards, too quick to block. Instinctively, Carys turned her head. The monster's teeth impaled her cheek by her temple. Its neck writhed powerfully, like a hunting dog's; Carys's vision dulled on one side as its jaw separated from her, and through the pain, she could feel hot blood dripping down her cheek.

"Ohhhhhh," Jakes managed, finally reacting by backing down the corridor – and then, to Carys's dismay, turning, almost clambering around the furniture in the living room to get to the door out of Sola's hab, disappearing into the landing beyond.

[Bennosuke]

Examining the vent, Lyra realised the bats couldn't have been responsible for damaging the cap. Large they might have been, but their claws wouldn't have ripped through a centimetre of cast iron. The damaged merlon-like contacts which the cap should have sat on had been torn clean through, a splay of deep scratch-marks slicing into the pipe around them. An image sprang to Lyra's mind, of augmented talons directed by a raptor brain.

The shaft grew dull as it sank into the building, but with the use of her mirror, Lyra could direct the light down it. At the bottom, several levels below, Lyra could see a confused and terrified rat.


'Most peculiar', Lyra thought as she peered down at the terrified rat. Still didn't explain how or why the rodents were down there, though it did confirm her suspicion that something other than animals were responsible. As much as she hated to admit it, she might need some help with this, and it was worth updating them on what she had so far found. Lyra uses her vox to reach out to Nuala and Nathias.

Sounds good. Hope that works for you?

[LeSwordfish]

At least Jakes was out of the way now. Blood streaming from her wounds, Carys fled, crashing into the wall and tripping over furniture in her haste to leave the apartment. As she reached the front door she scrabbled to close it behind herself, hoping to trap whatever this creature was inside.

[Haval]

Nuala and Nathias

Nathias got his cab and drove it to Gurner’s unit. Together, they loaded it with the guns from the workshop, the ledgers from the upstairs office and the contents of Gurner’s safe. Trevelyan almost seemed disappointed that they weren’t taking more out of the unit.

Before they left, Nuala asked around about the night of the murder. Many of the employees at other businesses based in the yard remembered Gurner fondly, and mentioned their shock at what had happened, but it seemed nobody had been on site when it happened. The units were leased predominantly to small businesses that needed the industrial space, which all seemed to shut down early in the evenings. Even the self-employed tenants in similar workshops to Gurner’s said the older man had been a bit of a night owl. “It wasn’t really a business, Hax’s shop,” said a scrimshawer a few units clockwise of Gurner’s. “It was more like his little shed for passion projects. He was retired from a big factory, far as I know. Got a nice little settlement package around ten years ago, after a workplace injury, something like that. So he didn’t need the money. He leased the place so he could keep tinkering around for his own enjoyment. Sometimes he’d still be working when I was leaving at night, and he’d still be there in the morning when I got back in.”

Nuala would be willing to take the rest of Gurner's gear herself but didn't exactly have the time to carry all the best equipment uphive. After talking to the other employees in the yard she doesn't believe a word of it. It wasn't that they were lying but maybe Gurner wasn't telling them everything. Everyone needs the money. So maybe he had debuts to pay or he was sympathetic enough to the Reds to want to work with them.

To Nathias once they were in the cab, 'You know you're very useful to have around.'

Once Lyra was the first to vox her back, 'We can meet you there? Did you hear from Carys?'

[Bennosuke]

Once Lyra was the first to vox her back, 'We can meet you there? Did you hear from Carys?'

"Haven't heard anything," Lyra replies flatly, not really yet concerned and asks, "not with you?"

[Haval]

"Haven't heard anything," Lyra replies flatly, not really yet concerned and asks, "not with you?"

'No. I suppose she looked like she could take care of herself, but she didn't answer when I tried to call her.' Nuala didn't particularly want to worry about one of their allies going missing. 'Anyway, Gurner was probably a gunsmith, which might have had something to do with him getting shot. We're bringing the guns with us for what it's worth.'

[Bennosuke]

"Sounds good," Lyra replies, trying to ignore the suddenly growing knot of anxiety in her gut, "I'll try to give her another call later I guess. For what it's worth, I've got a whole stack of files on that SOB Lem; probably more information in 'em than we really need. I'll show you when you get here... and there's something funny going on as well... but I'll show you that too once you're here."

[Thragka]

Carys

Carys was aware of the slender form following as she rounded the low table in the living room to get to the door. She wasn't sure – she wasn't focused on anything but the exit – but she thought it might be holding back from the light coming in from the hallway outside. Jakes was leaning in through the doorway, the prongs of his bionic hand gripping the handle fast. Carys tumbled past him, out of the apartment, and he slammed the door shut. His right hand fumbled with the key, but got it in the lock, and turned.

There was an eerie howl from the other side of the door as the grizzled barman staggered backwards. "Sorry about that," he said meekly, between deep breaths. "I ..." He trailed off

A clatter sounded from the hab. Jakes tensed, but the door didn't move. In fact, it sounded as if something was being pushed up against it from the other side. Jakes shook his head. "We should get you out of here," he said.

End of combat time for Carys.

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias


'You know you're very useful to have around.'

"Thanks," said Nathias without any sarcasm, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove the cab. Being unobtrusively useful was more or less the goal of his existence. It seemed the best way to have a long, stable and relatively comfortable life in this hive, especially when one had some secrets about his past.

"When we have a chance, I'll see if any of those guns is better than my old revolver. I get the feeling we're getting involved in something that'll make us some enemies."


OOC
Sorry for the radio silence. My level of motivation has ups and downs these days.

[LeSwordfish]

"We need... we need to call the Magistrates," Carys said, slumping against the wall. Blood was soaking her shirt front and sleeve. "What... what the hell was that thing?"

"It killed her... maybe more than one person... there was, in the bed..."

Abruptly, Carys bent forwards and vomited onto the ground at her feet as the horror of the situation caught up with her. She spat, trying to get the taste out of her mouth, tried to speak, and vomited again. It took her a few minutes to recover, and she wiped her mouth on her undamaged sleeve.

"The Magistrates. The hospital," she managed to get out. "And... I need to tell my colleagues about this."

OOC
I think Carys's response here would be to throw herself on the support structures of the hive society - the police, the hospital, etc. I don't know how you're picturing that working - I like to think Carys is sufficiently comfortable and uphive to have "health insurance" or a GP or whatever - up to you how much detail we need to play that out in.

I wanted a fun Peelers-style name for the Magistratum but I don't think Carys is the sort of person to use that name.

[Haval]

Nathias
"Thanks," said Nathias without any sarcasm, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove the cab. Being unobtrusively useful was more or less the goal of his existence. It seemed the best way to have a long, stable and relatively comfortable life in this hive, especially when one had some secrets about his past.

"When we have a chance, I'll see if any of those guns is better than my old revolver. I get the feeling we're getting involved in something that'll make us some enemies."

Nuala was pretty sure she already knew the answer to that, 'Depends on what you want it to do. It's a better gun but it's amateur work really. It won't always shoot properly when you need it to and it's the sort of thing you'd want to replace if you ever got anything nicer.' Might as well be honest at this point, there didn't seem to be much point in hiding that after she had opened the safe. 'That's an educated guess, but you can mostly tell to look at it. I know machines.'

'Did anyone official ever come see you about those IDs?' Maybe he didn't want to talk about it but she's honestly curious about Nathias' side business.



I wanted a fun Peelers-style name for the Magistratum but I don't think Carys is the sort of person to use that name.

Maggies?

[Thragka]

Carys

Jakes stood watchfully while Carys voided her stomach, scanning up and down the hab-block hallway. When she was done, he held an arm out to help her right herself. "Look, Ms Aventine, it doesn't take a coghead to know you're from lower, colder parts than this. That ... mutant, whatever it was, if it was in your neck of the woods, I'm sure the magistrates would smoke it out. But they don't want to be here, and I doubt the locals wants them here either. Look around you – nobody's come out to help us. In this sort of situation, people 'round here know to hunker down and look out for themselves. No-one else is."

He looked past her, grey eyes unfocused, seeing something very, very far away. "Whatever she got caught up in, Sola's dead now," he said wistfully. "I can't do anything for her. So I'll keep my nose out of it – and I want the greencoats to keep their noses out of my bar." He shrugged.

After a few moments, he picked up on something she'd said. His weathered brow furrowed like a hydroponic being raked. "Your colleagues? What line of work are you in, Ms Aventine, that's interested in this?"

The above isn't to say Carys can't go to the Magistratum – just Jakes's reaction to the idea. I agree that if Carys wants to find a hospital or a private clinic, she probably has the insurance to get treated.

"Greencoats" is mentioned in the core DH book, I think, as a term for the Magistratum; I've also been using "Constables" so far. But there might well be another even less formal name for them!

[Haval]

When they eventually get to Lyra's hab Nuala will go looking for the other woman who was presumably still on the roof. The building was likely fairly basic by the standards of the lower hive, but was still a lot nicer looking then the hiveskin. I never did ask her want she did for work?

The roof wasn't in direct sunlight but it was still hot and dusty. Nuala is used to worse though and will pull up the hood on her coveralls that had been originally made for those who had to work outside. To Lyra as soon as they meet up, 'So what do you need to show me that you couldn't tell me about over the microbead?'

[Bennosuke]

The roof wasn't in direct sunlight but it was still hot and dusty. Nuala is used to worse though and will pull up the hood on her coveralls that had been originally made for those who had to work outside. To Lyra as soon as they meet up, 'So what do you need to show me that you couldn't tell me about over the microbead?'

Lyra sneers ruefully, at Nuala's question. "Well I really wanted to show you all the files I grabbed on Lem. We know where he lives now, where he works, his family, what time he takes a piss... should be able to use it all somehow," she replies with a shrug. She pauses for a moment before pointing out the exhaust pipe where the top has been sheered off likely by some sort of machine and says, "But this is just a curiosity. Don't know if it's connected, but it looks like someone's removed the top of that pipe, and rodents have been flooding into the ventilation. My gut says they might be after something tasty shoved down there... like body parts."

[Haval]

Nuala will look at the pipe to judge for herself. Maybe it had just rusted enough for a determined animal to force it's way in there. 'If someone left an arm down there there's only one way to find out. Do you think anyone will mind me climbing around in your vents?'


Nuala has a clip harness so should be able to have a go at investigating

[Bennosuke]

"Not sure if you can go down the chimney like Saint Nixus," Lyra says flatly, "but even if you could, I don't know if you'd want to. If there is a limb down there, it's got plenty of hungry rats keeping it company."

[Haval]

'Then maybe we go in through your place? Normally I'd be ok with leaving the rats to it, but this seems a little odd to be happening now.' She gestures at the chimney. 'Unless you know someone who might want to lead a load of rats to where you live?'

[Bennosuke]

"I can't say I don't have enemies," Lyra says, letting a grin return to her face, "but that would be a pretty inventive way of lashing out." Slightly more seriously she says, "We can try from my place, though the whole reason I cam up here is because I saw a rat scrabbling through my ventilation shaft."

She leads Nuala back down to her dingy and poorly furnished excuse for a hab, and takes her to the vent in question. If there are no rodents crawling through the duct, Lyra will begin the process of unscrewing the grille.

[LeSwordfish]

Carys thought it over. "We can't just leave that thing there. What if it kills someone else?"

She stepped forward cautiously towards the door. Her nose for news - her instincts that had made her such a good journalist - was smelling something strange, even beyond the bodily fluids in the corridor.

"The window was blocked. And it knocked something in front of the door..."

Her curiousity was warring with her fear. Very cautiously, she reached out and tried to open the door, very slowly.

[Thragka]

Lyra's hab

The rat was still clutching the bars of the grille from the inside when Lyra brought the others into her home. It retreated into the corner of the vent when Lyra took her screwdriver to the stained iron. It began to hiss when she removed the grille from the wall. Lyra noticed it was holding one foreleg up off the floor of the vent, curling the paw under its chest.


~

Carys

"I locked the door," Jakes said, giving Carys a calculating look. He took the key from his pocket, and pointedly transferred it to his left hand, clamping it in his vice.

"Who the hell are you, Aventine?"

[Bennosuke]

Lyra draws her pistol, turning to Nuala and says, "Hungry," as she turns back to eye the rodent.

[Haval]

Lyra draws her pistol, turning to Nuala and says, "Hungry," as she turns back to eye the rodent.

'Can't see there being much to eat in there.' Nuala isn't a good enough shot to expect to shoot the rat if she needed to but she'll draw her own pistol. After a closer look at the rat whose leg was presumably broken, she go and look to see if Lyra had any food.


Just in case
Awareness vs. Per 35 (Awareness +10)
[roll0]

[-Sentinel-]

'Did anyone official ever come see you about those IDs?'
"I can neither confirm nor deny," said Nathias dryly. His tone grew more serious. "I wouldn't be much of a forger if I discussed my clients outside of a need-to-know basis. I'm sure you understand."



Nathias almost drew his revolver too, then decided he would be more of a danger to himself. He had never fired the thing in anger and was not sure he had the nerve to not accidentally discharge it at the first surprise.

[Haval]

"I can neither confirm nor deny," said Nathias dryly. His tone grew more serious. "I wouldn't be much of a forger if I discussed my clients outside of a need-to-know basis. I'm sure you understand."

'Yeah, I'm the last person who'd pass that on. It's just that if your work is good I can always put you in touch with a few people up nearer the hiveskin.'

[Thragka]

Lyra's hab

Ignorant of the danger that the guns represented, the rat cautiously stepped forwards to the mouth of the vent, and took a leap of faith. Unperturbed by an awkward landing at the base of the wall, it righted itself, and skittered across the floor around Lyra's legs. Glancing into the vacated vent, Lyra saw nothing as interesting as a severed limb: only oblong faecal droppings, smeared up against the back of the vent where the rodent had been lingering.

If you want to interrupt the rat's escape, you can try with a combat action (no need to roll initiative). Otherwise, if you let it go, it soon disappears around a skirting board.

Bennosuke, I'll leave the contents of Lyra's hab up to you, vis-à-vis food that Nuala might find.

[LeSwordfish]

Carys couldn't help but laugh. "A gossip journalist!"

She turned away from the door. "Alright, no Greencoats. Whatever it is seems to have shut itself in, so... fine. The door's locked. It can starve for all I care."

She swayed with nausea and had to rest a hand on the wall. "But I am going to the hospital."

[Bennosuke]

Lyra's hab was little more than a cot, a shelf and a large work desk covered with papers, parchment and data slates. A single candle had nearly gutted at he corner of the work table, and the only other light came from a flickering fluorescent overhead lamp as there were no windows. A small cube shaped refridge sat open and empty in the corner of the room, and it was to this that the rodent likely scurried.

Initially Lyra paid the intruder no mind as she studied the inside of the ventilation shaft. Scowling at it's empty content, she turned, but by then the rat was already gone, having squirmed its way through one of the many growing cracks in the hab wall. Frowning Lyra says, "Well that was a waste. Anyways, as I said, got plenty of dirt on Lem now. Not sure how we want to use it, but I think it's a start."

(OOC: So sorry for the delay)

[Haval]

Nuala briefly investigates the fridge but isn't quick enough to go after the rat. She'll let it go but is still frankly suspicious. 'Maybe it was nothing, but someone was presumably on your roof. For all we know Vane had people looking into all of us.' How paranoid did the woman want to be? It wasn't as if it would be easy to keep watch on your own building given what Vane had them doing.

On the dirt that Lyra had gathered on Lem, 'Dirt. Do we want to blackmail him then? Even if we get him alone he doesn't seem like someone who would take that well.'

She'll also elaborate on Gurner, 'As I said he was a gunsmith of some kind. Probably as a side business. I brought some of his papers with me just in case he keeps a record of who he was dealing with. I'll need you guys to help me with that. Never actually got round to learning gothic properly.' Nuala decides to shrug that off. So far she had got by well enough without learning to read. 'Maybe none of it is important, but there was a technical manual hidden away in his safe. I think he might have been building something for the Redemptionists and they killed him over it. Someone had a good go at breaking open the safe anyway.'

'The guns are all in Nathias' taxi if you want to take a look. Maybe that was all they wanted, but then I'd be interested what they wanted them for. I imagine if they were going for quantity over quality it probably isn't that hard to find someone to sell you a load of cheap guns even down here on the civilised levels. They go missing from the PDF all the time.'

[Bennosuke]

Nuala briefly investigates the fridge but isn't quick enough to go after the rat. She'll let it go but is still frankly suspicious. 'Maybe it was nothing, but someone was presumably on your roof. For all we know Vane had people looking into all of us.' How paranoid did the woman want to be? It wasn't as if it would be easy to keep watch on your own building given what Vane had them doing.


Lyra grimaced, failing to hide her irritation. 'How had she not thought of that!' she thought, 'was her hab even safe?'


On the dirt that Lyra had gathered on Lem, 'Dirt. Do we want to blackmail him then? Even if we get him alone he doesn't seem like someone who would take that well.'

Lyra shrugged, replying flatly, "Information is information. We went to that canteen hoping to get information on Father Riggs and the Red Redemptionists. I think our lead was good there. Things went to **** there for sure, but ya, maybe getting him alone and defenseless, maybe we can... twist some info out of him." She shrugs again, trying to show that it didn't bother her.


She'll also elaborate on Gurner, 'As I said he was a gunsmith of some kind. Probably as a side business. I brought some of his papers with me just in case he keeps a record of who he was dealing with. I'll need you guys to help me with that. Never actually got round to learning gothic properly.' Nuala decides to shrug that off. So far she had got by well enough without learning to read. 'Maybe none of it is important, but there was a technical manual hidden away in his safe. I think he might have been building something for the Redemptionists and they killed him over it. Someone had a good go at breaking open the safe anyway.'

'The guns are all in Nathias' taxi if you want to take a look. Maybe that was all they wanted, but then I'd be interested what they wanted them for. I imagine if they were going for quantity over quality it probably isn't that hard to find someone to sell you a load of cheap guns even down here on the civilised levels. They go missing from the PDF all the time.'

Lyra nods, a grin returning to her face. "That's a good lead," she says, "Let's get out of here and take a look at those weapons. I'll bring my files. Let's regroup and discuss as a... team. I'll be happy to help you look over Gurner's papers with you once we're all together."

[Thragka]

Nuala's comment kept tumbling around in Lyra's head. Maybe it was nothing, but someone was presumably on your roof. After months of staying one step ahead of the Arbites, it was hard to shake the habits which had made that possible. The instinct to cut and run from a compromised hideout kept rearing from her hindbrain as she watched her hab-block recede into the distance from Nathias's cab.

When they got back to the safehouse, it took a couple of trips to carry the guns from the car up to the first floor. Nathias felt a little exposed, standing by his conspicuous taxi while Nuala and Lyra went too and fro. He tried to look for anyone who might be watching from the surrounding buildings, but perhaps he needn't have worried. There were no onlookers. The world didn't seem to care a jot for a small armoury's worth of weapons being moved into the run-down hab in Hive Tarsus. Nonetheless, the whirr of the mechanisms in the thick front door was soothing when they were all inside.

Nuala broke through Lyra's worried rumination by showing her the documents from Gurner's shop. At first glance, the technical printouts from the safe looked like a hodge-podge of incomplete copies from manuals. There were several pages that described proper installation of coolant pipes at the rear of domestic refrigerator; without warning, these segued into a troubleshooting flowchart for repairing an air conditioner. After that was an inscrutable excerpt from a text on some huge piece of industrial machinery that Lyra couldn't make head nor tail of without context – the print was denser, and filled with hypertechnical jargon she couldn't parse.

Gurner's accounts in his ledgers seemed scrupulously kept going back several years, as Lyra flicked through the pages. The scratchy handwriting and heavy ink deposit matched the notebook from the safe. Within the small and slightly yellowed pages, entries varied between customer and job details, notes about corrections to his accounts, and hand-drawn technical sketches of household items, including a fridge and a ventilation unit. Nuala couldn't help but be impressed by their aetheric quality; Gurner clearly had a keen grasp of the interior workings of the devices he drew, highlighting and detailing the parts he was most concerned about, while letting the rest of the structure fade away into the background. Lyra reopened the ledger, comparing an entry at random in the accounts with a comment in the notebook. It wasn't clear if that "correction" had ever made it into the official ledger.

Some hours later, Carys arrived back to the safehouse, a line of stitches down her swollen right cheek, and a sling for her left arm which was thickly bandaged around the bicep. The four investigators waited into the night, but Titia did not return.

[Bennosuke]

After several hours of Titia not returning, and no one bringing it up, Lyra sighed and looked up with a scowl. She had spent hours pouring over Gurner's ledgers, and didn't feel much farther along, and that was after all the work with Lem that hadn't born fruit. Lyra was frustrated and on edge. She was worried that her old home was compromised to, and that any moment the doors here would be burst down in a hail of arbites gunfire. AND Titia wasn't back; and no one could get a hold of her.

"So what do we do now?" Lyra growled, rising from her bench, throwing the question out almost rhetorically, "and where in The Warp is Titia?"


(OOC: Apologies since it has been a while, but am I correct in reading through your post to infer that Lyra was not able to get much useful out of her research?)