A Walk in the Woods
| A Walk in the Woods | |||||||||
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| Part of String Theocracy | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
| ShadowHaven | Renraku | ||||||||
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Moth Night Claws Santesso | Angela | ||||||||
Summary
Angela and Moth were seeking help to investigate a mysterious series of kidnappings in the Redmond area that had particularly gotten Moth's attention because whoever was hiring the kidnapping gangs - the Cutters, the Yakuza - was giving them Laes to dose the victims. And that Laes was not coming from the Laesa Syndicate, which was very upsetting to her and her father, King Midas. Angela was concerned because several of her technomancer students had been kidnapped in the process. All from Redmond.
The runners made their way into the Renraku global corporate library host, with Angela's help, and used a combination of technomancy, social infiltration, good old fashioned investigative skill, and common sense to uncover all the related secret files.
The mystery is just getting bigger! But the runners have some key leads to pursue in the next chapter...
Background
Moth knew that Angela was actually a sentient AI, though Renraku thought she was just a library agent. She didn't knew the history of how Angela had emerged.
Both Angela and Night Claws are teachers for schools of technomancers.
A number of kidnappings have happened in the Redmond area, including several of Angela's technomancy students. Some had been rescued. Some were still missing.
Moth helped rescue a technomancy student, Rose, (see report) and learned in the process that someone had hired both the Cutters and Yakuza to kidnap people in Redmond, and had supplied them with Laes to dose the victims. This is extremely interesting to Moth because Laes is an exclusive product of the Laesa Syndicate, run by her father King Midas, and for which she is a made man. The Laesa have an exclusive contract with the government of Tir Tairngire who are thought to have the only laesal trees in the world, in their government-controlled orchard. It is absolutely unacceptable for anyone else to be distributing Laes! She researched this issue, worked with her father to verify that they had not sold the Laes in question, and worked through his contacts in the Tir Tairngire government to learn that a laesal tree had been stolen eight years ago. The Syndicate must find that tree and cut off the supply. Moth assumed from all the detail she had learned so far that the laesal tree was somewhere under Renraku's control, and this dive into the matrix host would reveal where, so they could plan to extract it.
Moth had also learned that both gangs involved in kidnappings had unusual drones hovering over their operations. Mysterious VTOL. The appearance of these strange drones had been reported in the news (see report.)
The Meet
Moth invited Night Claws and Santesso to her home to explain the background before they met up with Angela. She thanked them for their help, and shared with them what she knew.
The runners met with Angela at the Renraku global corporate library host, on the public destination layer. She gave them marks for the next layer - the employee only section. She shared that there were still students missing, and provided their names. She gave them information about how employees typically dressed - their matrix avatars - on the host. She let them know that she suspected, but was not certain, that there was a secret host with information not available to all employees beyond the employee-only layer. She gave them employee ID information for four employees presently using the host - two of whom were more junior, and two of whom were more senior.
The Plan
The runners planned to quickly find the employee files, on the employee layer, and edit the files to make themselves employees with legal access to the employee-only layer. They would search for the information they could find on the employee-only layer, and find out if a secret layer existed. If so, they would socially infiltrate that secret layer. Angela did not have the ability to give them access to it, but a security spider likely would. So long as they maintained legitimate access, they could take the time needed to search thoroughly, read the files found, and determine what was most important to search next.
The Run
Night Claws quickly found the employee files - including a list of employees, their security access to the non-secret host layers, and access logs. He successfully edited the files to add all three of them as new employees with legitimate access to the employee-only layer.
All three were skilled at matrix perception, and they quickly learned how to combine their efforts, working as a team, for the best result, with Santesso,