hexarchate_rpg | Move 3 (Chapter 1.3)

yhlee posting in

Time: 361 (high calendar)
Place: out-rift near Station Moongray

[Edited to add: NOTE: I'm flying back home tomorrow but will be keeping an eye on this move or any questions you might have. I should be able to resume normal GMing activities starting Wednesday. Sorry about that!--YHL]

[GM's note: feel free to continue to wrap up any last business in Move 2.]

Whoever is monitoring the Wasp notes that there are no major issues emerging from the rift into the target place and time. The visuals show strange energies crackling around the moth as it passes back into normal space-time. For days afterward, the energies' patterns haunt your dreams, as though conveying a coded message in a language you knew before your birth.

It doesn't take long for someone to notice your arrival. A transmission arrives from the direction of Station Moongray. The Wasp's mothgrid asks for your attention, and plays it. The message is given first in the high language, then repeated several times in other "low" languages: "Greetings, travelers. This is Station Moongray of the heptarchate, under the command of Administrator Nirai Paerani. Do you require an escort to the station?" It is accompanied by a local starmap giving coordinates to the station and the identifying information of a proposed escort, a non-combat research moth called the Butterfly Lens that has been patrolling the rift. The transmission goes on to offer succor in exchange for information about the other side of the rift.

[Players should feel free to discuss their response then, possibly, open communications with the station. The administrator will repeat the greeting message until someone responds or the Wasp attempts to approach the station.

Yehan will notice that someone has taken the task of translation very seriously--the heptarchate doesn't have the greatest track record in this area, but the low language translations are extremely competent, fairly polite, and convey a sense of eagerness for contact with people who can bring the station information about other times and places.

The Wasp's more advanced scan functions can verify the presence of the Butterfly Lens about a half day away and whoever queries scan will be almost certain that it only has the kind of light armaments that you'd use to defend against local debris.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

smokedetective

[Let's face it. We need to get these straight. Fake names, fake professions, fake interests, when and where the people are from... Plus it's good to have a reference post to look back on later. We haven't really talked about individual cover stories yet, so I think this would be a good place to discuss anything.]

Edited Date: 2017-07-20 08:38 pm (UTC)

From:

smokedetective

Ashari's current vague plan for cover stories:

-The Wasp, while in possession of contraband and manned by smugglers, also takes on multiple over-board jobs to look clean. This includes ferrying goods and passengers to wherever (destination decided by whoever will pay the most).

-Ashari poses as a rich but lazy Andan artist and fashion designer from vaguely around this time. Their main wealth comes from their family and from good investments. Their current aesthetic obsession is the minimalism, and their interests include rifts and other space phenomena, though they're not very knowledgeable about anything other than how those things look.

-Kaliyan poses as the actual captain of the ship who defers to Ashari only because she's getting paid.

- 2-3 people pose as Ashari's assistants. They suggest Virmad, Istradez, and Mikodez.

-Alaric, Sasha, Ankat, Sulen, Yehan, and Iawa pose as crew members. (Special private request to Iawa to stay on board the ship.)

Edited (minor changes to idea) Date: 2017-07-20 08:59 pm (UTC)

From:

mercuryhatter

[I am good with this and will make a full post working out stories when I get to my computer later today.]

EDIT: RESPONSE

Istradez snorts a little at the comment about fashion, impressed as everyone else is by the loom.

"That all sounds reasonable," he says. "I've been reading up on the period which did include some fashion, but not too much art. I think I could pull off a personal assistant fairly easily, though. Scheduling and so on. My name should work fine unless we need to signal something specific with the false names; it doesn't mean anything in this time and place anyway." He means the name he gave to the crew, which he assumes Ashari will understand.

He notes that the plan as is has himself, Ashari, and Avrayen working together. He plans to try speaking with Avrayen one on one when possible to try to figure out what's going on with him.

Edited (added response) Date: 2017-07-21 05:37 am (UTC)

From:

smokedetective

"Of course," says Ashari. "And your grasp of fashion and social navigations seems pretty good."

From:

venndaai

Sulen shoots a look at Virmad.

"Actually, I was thinking I might wander about," they say. "As a Rahal. With a contemporary uniform, if the matter printer can manage it, but if not mine should probably do, it isn't as though our fashion sense ever changed in seven hundred years. I can get a sense of public opinion here, and maybe even bluff my way into the magistrate's office, get a look at how they're managing the calendar. I know I'm... not ideal for undercover work, but I'm good at being a Rahal. I think I can do this for you."

They look at Ashari. "It's up to you," they say.

From:

smokedetective

Ashari's face sets into a perfectly neutral expression, and then they give a pleasant smile that stays firmly in place.
"I'd like to request that you stay away from the magistrate's office and bluffing," they say. "Though I won't complain if you can manage it."

They pause to move a few things around on their desk, outwardly looking deep in thought.
"If the matter printer can manage an appropriate uniform, go. If it can't, don't risk it. Please. This is a simple mission."

[If anyone's watching, Ashari's signifier was previously Kniferose Unsheathed, but is now wavering heavily on Kniferose Unblooming.]

From:

lleullawgyffes

“It might be easier if I were to accompany Sulen,” Virmad says, looking over at them briefly, then turning back to Ashari. “Two of us might be able to get further than one alone. It sounds like the magistrate’s office is in the market for Rahal at the moment — I suspect they won’t ask us as many questions as they would normally be inclined to. Either way, whether Sulen and I are acting together or not, I think I’m probably most useful to you” — that is, Ashari specifically — “as a Rahal.”

From:

zuhrovet

"I'll be a really boring IT person," explains Sasha. She is sad for a moment, as nobody seems surprised [if your character objects to this characterization they will be Sasha's new and perhaps first best friend]. Then her enthusiasm for THE FUTURE re-asserts itself.

"On the name front, Yehan made a list, right? She'll be the best at characterizing what names are in and out of fashion. Sasha's a common nickname back home, and none of your identities should be recognizable in this time period, but we won't want our true names in heptarchate records later."

From:

slybrarian

"We're posing as disreputable "legitimate space travelers"," Alaric says, complete with exaggerated air quotes. "That's hardly boring. Especially since disreputable spacers tend to do things like bar-hop and drunkenly meander around the docks, while listening for useful gossip and scoping out security. You can learn a lot of useful information by planting a few bugs in the local dive bars."

From:

zuhrovet

"That reminds me-- the teenager was playing with this really cute sticky tape. Avrayen, you wouldn't mind if we borrowed some of your bugs, right?"

From:

pengwern

If Mikodez got back to Shuos Academy, he was going to have to overhaul his course schedule for the next three years in order of “most useful to stranded undercover agents”. His suitemate who was already in that track had entire lectures on “Never Freeze”, so he looks up with a quizzical head tilt, and tries to not show too many teeth when he smiles.

On the bright side, sticky tape might mean that his roverpedes escaped the count.

“Not at all, if you can get them to work.” He had to wonder if she was why the swathe of tapes by the gunroom and cockpit went dark 34 hours ago. But when in doubt, blame the quartermaster. “I haven’t been on a station in a while, so good testing conditions for temperature and pressure are hard to come by where I’m staying. My cousin sent me this monitoring kit from out of system, and the instructions were really useless.”

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha had nothing to do with the fate of that tape. Ankat might have cleaned it up-- he seems thorough-- or it might genuinely have failed. Sasha is, however, the reason Mikodez' tablet powers on for thirty seconds at 6:00 every morning.

[For the sake of Mikodez' honor, I'm going to assume that although Sasha's aware of the stream of data from the roverpedes, she hasn't actually seen one, and hasn't broken their encryption. She cheerfully compromised Mikodez' grid account, so she can see whatever roverpede-provided information Mikodez has accessed himself, but she won't know what else is in their feed unless she spends some time trying to hack it. Also, the tablet's weird behavior will stop if Mikodez takes it off the Wasp: consistent queries like that are their own security liability.]

From:

pengwern

[With the tape recorders - maybe half are nicely reusable, and the rest perforated like tamper proof labels? So unless Sasha has the patience to take a razor to the walls, there might only be a handful of bugs to use for Station Moongray.
And re: the tablet, so right at the tail ends of his late night Elite Thundersnake 20000 marathon sessions, then. (Mikodez will be sad only if Sasha turned off his tablet in the middle of a game.)]

Edited Date: 2017-07-25 02:50 am (UTC)

From:

zuhrovet

[Ah, I see Mikodez' plan to turn his tablets off was hypothetical. If they're already on, he shouldn't notice a power cycle.

I wonder how obnoxious ad-tracking is in the heptarchate. It would be fun if we could just advertise Ashari's art show, and see who paid attention.]

[ad-tracking in the heptarchate]

From:

yhlee - Date: 2017-07-25 09:50 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: [ad-tracking in the heptarchate]

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2017-07-26 02:08 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: [ad-tracking in the heptarchate]

From:

yhlee - Date: 2017-07-26 02:15 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: COVER STORIES - Ashari's ideas - paging pengwern

From:

pengwern - Date: 2017-07-26 03:06 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: COVER STORIES - Ashari's ideas - paging pengwern

From:

yhlee - Date: 2017-07-26 03:41 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: COVER STORIES - Ashari's ideas - paging pengwern

From:

pengwern - Date: 2017-07-26 04:42 am (UTC) - Expand

[spy gadgets]

From:

yhlee - Date: 2017-07-26 04:44 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: [spy gadgets]

From:

pengwern - Date: 2017-07-26 06:21 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: COVER STORIES - Ashari's ideas - paging pengwern - all time travelers are pirates

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2017-07-26 11:39 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

vass

[Like, OOC private response for Iawa to volunteer to stay behind? Or does Ashari privately request for Iawa to stay put? I can do either but need to know which so I can decide how Iawa reacts to this.]

From:

smokedetective

[In-character request from Ashari that Iawa stays put. They're uh. Being overcautious with the little information that they do have.]

From:

vass

[Hmm. So I'm thinking Ashari asks Iawa to come to their quarters for tea and asks them to stay behind. Does that sound okay?

And depending on how tactful Ashari decides to be, Iawa might be proud to be trusted to guard the ship while everyone else goes on the mission, or hurt that Ashari doesn't want to use them for the mission.

And depending on what works with the GM's plans and what the rest of the crew are up to, Iawa may therefore be free to come running if the rest of you get in trouble, or might get into trouble with NPCs while alone and unarmed back on board, or might decide to disobey Ashari and visit the station without permission.

Because, um, whatever we decide to do, like fuck am I spending the next however many moves liveblogging Iawa reading philosophy books back on board while you peeps have all the fun.]

From:

yhlee

[GM policy on splitting party: I agree that having anyone's character sit out while others Do Things is generally not fun, and that I want to avoid that happening unless it's prearranged (e.g. someone is on vacation for a couple weeks and needs their character to be off doing other things). If you choose to have Iawa stay behind,

vass, I will make sure that there is stuff for you to do. From my perspective splitting the party for any length of time is not ideal simply because it reduces inter-player interaction and the more independent plots there are, the harder it is for me to coordinate them. But if that's how you want to handle it, I will definitely make sure (say) Iawa gets juicy plot time.]

[ETA: General policy/guidelines post reiterating this, and for further OOC discussion if desired.]

Edited (drat those tags) Date: 2017-07-21 09:04 pm (UTC)

From:

vass

[*nodnod* Thank you.

@

smokedetective: I am still interested in knowing where you want to go with the potential party split.]

From:

venndaai

[Sulen's interested in recruiting Iawa to help with their and Virmad's plan, but they're not going to challenge Ashari's authority on it.]

[Also Sulen and Virmad don't have to split from the party if that would interfere with the story, we could stick with the others and pretend to be Rahal and just try to get information out of whoever the party comes across. I think it'd be fun to give Sulen and Virmad and Iawa a small plot where we try to find ways to cause some havok, and maybe later mess up the local calendar a bit right before we take off with Remi, but idk if that would be too complicated.]

Edited Date: 2017-07-21 10:24 pm (UTC)

From:

smokedetective

[Splitting the party probably isn't the best idea, but Ashari still definitely asks if Iawa, but feel free to say no. I think it would be interesting if Iawa disagreed.]

From:

vass

[Okay, let's go.]

Iawa arrives at Ashari's office promptly, and tries to be subtle about looking around. Is the blue-eyed frog statue some sort of Andan joke? The scattered hairpins might be carelessness, but more likely are some sort of carefully coded signal.

"You asked to speak to me privately?" she says.

From:

zuhrovet

[Sasha spent a fair amount of time on the voyage optimizing the encryption on the Space Radios, so we should be able to set up scenarios where some of the party members go do something and others act as mission control from the Wasp, lurk in a nearby coffee shop as backup, or what-have-you, without losing contact. Obviously any particular player should pick where their character goes, but I like the fact that we can share information without all eleven of us tagging along together like a Space Bachelorette Party.]

From:

slybrarian

[Sometime we are going to run out of Space Phone minutes at an inconvenient moment.]

From:

pengwern

Swearing was a universal language that even small dogs could understand, so Mikodez refrained, sliding up front to the tapestry instead. Ducking Ashari every time after their drink session the first day kept him from having to invent more plausible family details, and foxes willing, there would be less time on Station Moongray for enthrallment-backed Rahal interrogations, but really, how much youthful incompetence did he have to feign before they’d ask him to stay behind, like Iawa? He had already sliced up two fingers while sculpting lotus shot glasses from a sack of red onions, which he had paired with starbloom cordial. If only he hadn’t maintained that this was the actual winning combination in the Great Crescendo March Mix-off.

He needed another plan for sneaking away, unless he could manage it before the Wasp reached the station. Almost idly, he reaches a hand out to pluck at the edge of the fabric. There were a few ways to handle Andan. Withholding the adulation their egos craved annoyed them, but it also meant that they might refuse to move on until you appreciated them sufficiently, and maneuvering them just shy of the line of enthrallment was fun, if slow. Ooh and ahh enough and they would think you sufficiently pliable to proceed with their agenda, which could be inconvenient, but if he couldn’t stay behind with Iawa, then he had to stay with the project. Then he could wait until Ashari went to hobnob with the Nirai administrator and go exploring solo.

“Ashari, how did you get the color to project like this? I almost missed the repeats until I moved my head.” Mikodez moves to take an image on his tablet, but stops after five pictures. He looks up, bright eyed, like this was enough to distract him from the mission ahead. “And, can I stay with it when we’re bringing it over later? It doesn’t work as well on camera.”