Difference between revisions of "Cabinet Man (Run)"

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| image      =  
| image      =  
| caption    =  
| caption    =  
| date        =  [[hasDate::2080-11-12]]
| date        =  [[hasDate::2080-11-15]]
| gm          =  [[hasGM::Purkinje]]
| gm          =  [[hasGM::Purkinje]]
| place      = Seattle, Shattered Haven, New Haven
| place      = Seattle
| coordinates =  
| coordinates =  
| map_type    =  
| map_type    =  
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| map_label  =  
| map_label  =  
| territory  =  
| territory  =  
| result      =  Night Claws reassembled an entropic sprite and learned Overclocker.
| result      =  [[Cabinet Man]] revealed the information the team was looking for.
| status      =  
| status      =  
| combatants_header = Factions Involved
| combatants_header = Factions Involved
| combatant1  = [[Night Claws - John Holis]]<br>
| combatant1  = [[HasRunner::"Dandy" Dale Hardin]]<br>[[HasRunner::Kani]]<br>[[HasRunner::Night Claws - John Holis]]<br>[[HasRunner::Queen]]
Night King<br>
| combatant2  = Cabinet Man
Night Knight
| casualties1 = Queen almost died.
| combatant2  = Shattered Haven
| casualties2 = Cabinet man was injured.
| casualties1 = Night King (1.0) sacrificed in reassembly.
| casualties2 = 3 entropic fault sprites
| notes      =   
| notes      =   
| campaignbox =  
| campaignbox =  
}}
}}
==Background==
==Background==
Seeking to expand his power, Night Claws looks for a submersion task to learn the secrets of the Overclocker echo.
The matrix legend researcher c1ph3r has found what he believes to be the truth behind the legend of Polybius 2, and he wants a team to investigate.
==Meet==
==Meet==
Night Claws knew that time passes strangely in the resonance realms and called his fixer to arrange a hospital bed so his body could be taken care of while he was away. She got him a spot in a hospital in Tacoma that didn't ask questions, and as soon as he showed his SIN, he was in. They hooked him up to an IV, and he drifted off into the matrix. As he searched for the door to the resonance realms, he spent hours looking at nodes and icons until he found an icon of a door that led somewhere it should not have. Inside was a dungeon, stone and lit with flickering torches. Sprites wandered the halls, and one led him to a ritual chamber with a powerful lich sprite. The sprite analyzed Night Claws' code and told him he had a bug where he couldn't handle the task load as he was trying to prioritize it. He wanted to save everyone, but his processor would only allow him to do so much. The lich opened a portal and told him to seek out a sprite in need.
c1ph3r met with the team on the Emerald City grid. He explained the context of Polybius and Polybius 2, how it was a matrix game developed by the UCAS government in the early days of full-dive VR as part of MKULTRA, which didn't actually end in the 1970s but continued in secret. He had discovered a derelict building in Redmond, a place where drone traffic had been going in and out, but there were no signs of anyone ever leaving. The place had once been flooded with radio frequency waves, but it was now silent. The team was made an offer of 10,000¥ apiece, with an extra 2,000¥ if they found particularly compelling information.
==Run==
==Run==
After entering the portal, Night Claws found himself in Shattered Haven, the remnants of the once-shining city that welcomed all visitors to the resonance realms. Night King told him he had once lived there, and knew where he was supposed to go. Sneaking through streets full of entropic sprite patrols, the two found their way to an apartment building in which a sprite similar to Night King was hiding. Night King explained this was his "brother," which he struggled to explain meant they were part of the same generation of sprites created by a celestial machine learning algorithm to produce better and better fault sprites. Night Claws took a look at Night Knight and saw that its code was infected with dissonance, soon to take it over. Night Knight was aware of its disease and told Night Claws they needed to head for the citadel in the center of the city to find its source code for reassembly.
Matrix searches revealed the derelict building was an abandoned arcade owned by a shell company that was eventually traced to Ares Macrotechnology. The company hadn't done anything in years, seeming to have forgotten about this property entirely. Sensor sweeps didn't reveal anything outside the building. Kani picked her way in, at which point the team's wireless signals cut out - they were in a Faraday cage. Queen picked up a few ultrasound signatures that were moving around, which Dandy discovered to be a couple of Aztechnology Crawlers with motion sensors. As soon as he picked one up, it made a screeching sound, and the arcade lit up. The front door was barricaded by a thick shutter, and there was a small army of drones inside, including a squad of Steel Lynxes with machine guns. A booming voice came over the speakers, demanding to know who everyone was. The team identified themselves, and Night Claws negotiated for the voice to tell them everything if they played his game, Polybius 2. The team accepted these terms and entered the machine, which was an offline host.


Outside the apartment complex, there was a commotion in the street. A gang of entropic sprites was attempting to kill a small sprite. Night Claws threaded a powerful Resonance Veil to make it look like a small army of sprites was on his side, and he successfully intimidated the group of entropics into running away before they could kill it. The smaller sprite identified itself as a courier sprite from New Haven, the resonance realm formed by the sprite refugees who fled Shattered Haven when it fell to dissonance. It said that there were a number of spies throughout Shattered Haven, but they struggled to find anything. Night Claws had it pass along a message that he was in Shattered Haven, and it went home.
The team found themselves inside a UV node. It seemed hyper-real. [[Cabinet Man]] told them to choose their weapons and proceed onto the battlefield, but he warned them not to cheat. They were armored in black suits with circuitry patterns and allowed to choose from an arsenal of virtual weaponry. They loaded themselves down with grenades and rockets and made their way onto level 1, a labyrinthine landscape full of obstacles and wireframe humanoid enemies. The team snuck up on this squad and obliterated them with the help of Queen's PI-TAC before they could put up much of a resistance. They proceeded to the exit, at which point [[Cabinet Man]] congratulated them and told them the first level is easy.


Sneaking through the streets again, the team learned that the sprites of Shattered Haven had locked the city down into a sort of martial law. It was filled with color-coded sectors that needed keycards to access them. The outermost layer was protected by green keycards. Night Claws hid near a checkpoint and waited until a sprite attempted to enter. He snooped on its code, then made his own copy. He then sought out a checkpoint with only one guard, then threaded a Resonance Veil on the guard to make it look like his team were all dissonant. This ruse worked, and they were let into the green district.
After making a few arsenal adjustments, the team proceeded to level 2, a gauntlet full of acid pits and swinging axes. Night Claws got the idea to edit files to eliminate level elements, at which point Queen realized they were inside a host. She gave in to her dissonance and began trying to edit every file in sight. [[Cabinet Man]] caught her and descended into the gauntlet to take her out. A battle ensued, and with a horrendous data spike, Queen suffered a massive biofeedback stroke. She was knocked out of the game, at which point [[Cabinet Man]] disengaged and warned the rest of the team this would happen to them if they cheated. They estimated Queen only had a couple minutes left before she succumbed to her stroke, so they raced against the clock to complete the game. Night Claws was able to guide the team through the traps, the wind from the axes swinging in their faces and the toxic gases of the bubbling acid pits below hot on their simsense modules. They made it to the other side and proceeded immediately to level 3.


The green district was overflowing with entropic sprites going about their inscrutable business in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city. The checkpoints were harder to crack here, so Night Claws found a free sprite and attempted to negotiate with it. The sprite accepted his lie that he was a dissonant technomancer doing the work of someone deeper in the city, but then gave him an extensive form to fill out if he wanted his card upgraded to yellow clearance. He bribed the sprite by "providing the contact info for a technomancer," which was just himself. The sprite accepted this in trade for an immediate upgrade.
Level 3 was a vehicle course. Night Claws took the wheel of a personnel carrier, while Kani took the mounted machine gun and Dandy took the cannon. Working together, they were able to destroy elements of the field to create driving hazards for a convoy of enemy vehicles. Night Claws outmaneuvered them and drove away as Kani laid down suppressing fire and Dandy created the environmental hazards. Finally, they crossed the finish line. [[Cabinet Man]] informed them they won level 3 and had completed the trial version of the game. They declined to buy the full version for the moment.


In the yellow district, he saw that there was an orange-clearance district that would be required to get into the citadel, which itself required red-clearance. Growing tired of the bureaucracy, Night Claws found a public help terminal left over from the pre-war days. It was still functional. It gave him a map of the city, which confirmed his suspicions. He tried to get a map of the city's subterranean infrastructure, but it refused based on his clearance. He called forth his crack sprite to help him hack the terminal, succeeding handily. He tried to get information on the citadel's defenses as well, but the crack sprite was unable to do this. It managed not to set off an alarm, however. Night Claws chose not to push his luck and instead charted a path through the sewers that would lead into the citadel.
The front door shutter opened, and Dandy ran to his truck to retrieve a medkit to stabilize Queen. It did so, and she was saved. The team spent time talking to [[Cabinet Man]] about what the game was. He told them it was created by the new UCAS government as part of a secretive program he hadn't fully been informed about. They noticed that the housing on the machine was unusually large for what it should contain, however, and with his permission, they unbolted the screen, revealing a life support system keeping alive what looked to be a set of various human remains that included a nervous system, most of a skeleton, certain internal organs, and chunks of muscle. [[Cabinet Man]] explained that he was killed by an explosion in the Ghost Dance War, and he was kept on life support this way by the government and Ares Macrotechnology. He hadn't been able to learn anything new about the world since he was put in the arcade cabinet in 2033, and he hadn't seen anyone come inside in decades. The team took pity on him and established a matrix relay he could use to connect to the outside world. They discussed renovating the arcade to raise money for an augmented healing treatment.
 
Along the way through the sewers, Night Claws was jumped by a gang of ghoulish fault sprites. They were powerful and very nearly destroyed Night King and Night Knight, and they hurt Night Claws quite a bit as well. Ultimately, they pushed themselves instead of fighting defensively and destroyed the ghoul sprites. Night Claws took the time to rest and heal the sprites with Stitches. After they were ready, they surfaced inside the citadel through a grate in the floor. A giant, horrifying abomination patrolled the vaulted halls. Working together, they barely managed to evade its gaze as they searched for the source code. This lead them to a library in a room full of toxic gas. They took time to search it, fighting through the poison. It sapped them of their health, but ultimately, they were able to find a file that Night Knight recognized as the correct one. The giant abomination almost spotted them on the way out, but fate was on their side. Night Claws took a second to analyze it and found it was a Level 10 entropic fault sprite.
==Aftermath==
==Aftermath==
After safely exiting the city, Night Claws and the two sprites traveled to New Haven. They met a technoshaman and many sprites who clamored to know what they recovered. Inside was the code to apply Overclocker to Night Claws' living persona as well as the source code for Night King. Night Claws learned that to reassemble it and purify it of dissonance, one of his registered sprites would have to be lost permanently. Night King volunteered, explaining they were brothers, and it was only right to do so. The two sprites fused into an even greater sprite, fulfilling the directive of their machine learning algorithm to become a Level 8 fault sprite that retained the code from both of them. The new sprite explained that knowing its source code allowed Night Claws to find it any time, as well as register it. He chose to register it right away and thread Sprite Pet so that it would remain with him always like Night King had. He named it Night King as well. On the way out, the lich sprite stopped Night Claws for reassessment. It was satisfied with his progress, having increased his processing power and imparted knowledge of how hard it is to save even one person from the horrors of the matrix.
The evidence was passed on to c1ph3r, who was satisfied and gave the team a 2,000¥ bonus. [[Cabinet Man]] was given connection to the wireless matrix, and he is now bewildered at how the world has changed. What will become of him and his medical condition will have to be covered in a future run.
==Rewards==
==Rewards==


*8 Karma
*12,000¥
*8 Karma spent on a Level 8 sprite pet
*4 Karma
*The source code for Night King 2.0
*New Contact: [[Cabinet Man]] (Connection 2, Loyalty 3)
 
==Player AARs==


==Player AAR==
*Kani - This was one of those thinks I wish I hadn't seen... We went in and found somebody who'd gotten blown mostly to smithereens in the Ghost Dance War, not a whole lot of him left. Apparently he'd been in a VR video game system since then, running this arcade for the better part of half a century... Must have gotten shut down shortly after the first Crash, and he's been using drones to go out and pick up everything he needed to keep living. If... you can call it that.


<br />
<br />
[[Category:Runs]]

Latest revision as of 18:54, 13 March 2021

Cabinet Man (Run)
Date2080-11-15
GMPurkinje
LocationSeattle
Result Cabinet Man revealed the information the team was looking for.
Factions Involved
"Dandy" Dale Hardin
Kani
Night Claws - John Holis
Queen
Cabinet Man
Casualties and losses
Queen almost died. Cabinet man was injured.

Background

The matrix legend researcher c1ph3r has found what he believes to be the truth behind the legend of Polybius 2, and he wants a team to investigate.

Meet

c1ph3r met with the team on the Emerald City grid. He explained the context of Polybius and Polybius 2, how it was a matrix game developed by the UCAS government in the early days of full-dive VR as part of MKULTRA, which didn't actually end in the 1970s but continued in secret. He had discovered a derelict building in Redmond, a place where drone traffic had been going in and out, but there were no signs of anyone ever leaving. The place had once been flooded with radio frequency waves, but it was now silent. The team was made an offer of 10,000¥ apiece, with an extra 2,000¥ if they found particularly compelling information.

Run

Matrix searches revealed the derelict building was an abandoned arcade owned by a shell company that was eventually traced to Ares Macrotechnology. The company hadn't done anything in years, seeming to have forgotten about this property entirely. Sensor sweeps didn't reveal anything outside the building. Kani picked her way in, at which point the team's wireless signals cut out - they were in a Faraday cage. Queen picked up a few ultrasound signatures that were moving around, which Dandy discovered to be a couple of Aztechnology Crawlers with motion sensors. As soon as he picked one up, it made a screeching sound, and the arcade lit up. The front door was barricaded by a thick shutter, and there was a small army of drones inside, including a squad of Steel Lynxes with machine guns. A booming voice came over the speakers, demanding to know who everyone was. The team identified themselves, and Night Claws negotiated for the voice to tell them everything if they played his game, Polybius 2. The team accepted these terms and entered the machine, which was an offline host.

The team found themselves inside a UV node. It seemed hyper-real. Cabinet Man told them to choose their weapons and proceed onto the battlefield, but he warned them not to cheat. They were armored in black suits with circuitry patterns and allowed to choose from an arsenal of virtual weaponry. They loaded themselves down with grenades and rockets and made their way onto level 1, a labyrinthine landscape full of obstacles and wireframe humanoid enemies. The team snuck up on this squad and obliterated them with the help of Queen's PI-TAC before they could put up much of a resistance. They proceeded to the exit, at which point Cabinet Man congratulated them and told them the first level is easy.

After making a few arsenal adjustments, the team proceeded to level 2, a gauntlet full of acid pits and swinging axes. Night Claws got the idea to edit files to eliminate level elements, at which point Queen realized they were inside a host. She gave in to her dissonance and began trying to edit every file in sight. Cabinet Man caught her and descended into the gauntlet to take her out. A battle ensued, and with a horrendous data spike, Queen suffered a massive biofeedback stroke. She was knocked out of the game, at which point Cabinet Man disengaged and warned the rest of the team this would happen to them if they cheated. They estimated Queen only had a couple minutes left before she succumbed to her stroke, so they raced against the clock to complete the game. Night Claws was able to guide the team through the traps, the wind from the axes swinging in their faces and the toxic gases of the bubbling acid pits below hot on their simsense modules. They made it to the other side and proceeded immediately to level 3.

Level 3 was a vehicle course. Night Claws took the wheel of a personnel carrier, while Kani took the mounted machine gun and Dandy took the cannon. Working together, they were able to destroy elements of the field to create driving hazards for a convoy of enemy vehicles. Night Claws outmaneuvered them and drove away as Kani laid down suppressing fire and Dandy created the environmental hazards. Finally, they crossed the finish line. Cabinet Man informed them they won level 3 and had completed the trial version of the game. They declined to buy the full version for the moment.

The front door shutter opened, and Dandy ran to his truck to retrieve a medkit to stabilize Queen. It did so, and she was saved. The team spent time talking to Cabinet Man about what the game was. He told them it was created by the new UCAS government as part of a secretive program he hadn't fully been informed about. They noticed that the housing on the machine was unusually large for what it should contain, however, and with his permission, they unbolted the screen, revealing a life support system keeping alive what looked to be a set of various human remains that included a nervous system, most of a skeleton, certain internal organs, and chunks of muscle. Cabinet Man explained that he was killed by an explosion in the Ghost Dance War, and he was kept on life support this way by the government and Ares Macrotechnology. He hadn't been able to learn anything new about the world since he was put in the arcade cabinet in 2033, and he hadn't seen anyone come inside in decades. The team took pity on him and established a matrix relay he could use to connect to the outside world. They discussed renovating the arcade to raise money for an augmented healing treatment.

Aftermath

The evidence was passed on to c1ph3r, who was satisfied and gave the team a 2,000¥ bonus. Cabinet Man was given connection to the wireless matrix, and he is now bewildered at how the world has changed. What will become of him and his medical condition will have to be covered in a future run.

Rewards

  • 12,000¥
  • 4 Karma
  • New Contact: Cabinet Man (Connection 2, Loyalty 3)

Player AARs

  • Kani - This was one of those thinks I wish I hadn't seen... We went in and found somebody who'd gotten blown mostly to smithereens in the Ghost Dance War, not a whole lot of him left. Apparently he'd been in a VR video game system since then, running this arcade for the better part of half a century... Must have gotten shut down shortly after the first Crash, and he's been using drones to go out and pick up everything he needed to keep living. If... you can call it that.