[X] titanic armor-alloy mace, a memento of your service in Special Operations on the first Odani Power Armor Teams.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] titanic armor-alloy mace, a memento of your service in Special Operations on the first Odani Power Armor Teams.
Agrh.... I want the contacts and other gear, but how can I say 'no' to being a ex-SF one-female-tide-of-destruction with a fuckoffhuge mace?
Agrh.... I want the contacts and other gear, but how can I say 'no' to being a ex-SF one-female-tide-of-destruction with a fuckoffhuge mace?
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Titanic armor-alloy mace, a memento of your service in Special Operations on the first Odani Power Armor Teams.
Because much like people, walls, small vehicles, large vehicles, and space stations; some genre conventions were just made to be broken.
Because much like people, walls, small vehicles, large vehicles, and space stations; some genre conventions were just made to be broken.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
... read the damn spoilers. What the fuck? This is our backstory choice, for fuck's sake, what you choose has massive sweeping impacts on our past. Why the hell would you not read the spoilers?
Okay, after some actual analysis, it appears that we have a choice between a fairly subtle and slightly dodgy ex-pirate, a slightly less subtle and entirely-above-board ex-cop, and a hilariously illegal ex-super-soldier who had a falling out with subtle some years ago and now lives on the other side of the fucking universe.
After some careful thought, I think +dodgyness and +subtle is probably the best combo, since this is not Ravana Quest and having massively illegal and incredibly obvious gear will mean that we either never use it or use it once and then get arrested and shot. Thus, I'm voting for...
[X] nine-pointed hat, memento of your days as a pirate.
A plus for the super-soldier is the fact that she is an incredibly good deterrent against violence. Ironically the best combat character actually has the best chance of avoiding it.
- Location
- Somewhere
[X] nine-pointed hat, memento of your days as a pirate.
Because pirates are cool and subtle and dodgy are good traits in a noir detective.
Because pirates are cool and subtle and dodgy are good traits in a noir detective.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Which we. Can never. Use.
Like, I get that people are going "wheee, power armour", but this is not Ravana Quest. This is Space Noir. It is literally right there in the name. The people voting for SPESS MAREEN are letting their desire for bling blind them to the fact that most of it is illegal. We are Odani. If we were a Pamna and getting this choice I might go for it, but Odani are not liked by the dominant culture. If we make trouble, if we get caught with illegal goods - let alone illegal high-powered weapons - it won't be an obstacle or a problem, it will be an immediate risk of death. We are a discriminated-against underclass in this setting, and fucking about with things that are flashy, obvious, dangerous and illegal is going to get us a lot of attention from people who will, without batting an eye, kill us. The law amongst them.
I mean, for fuck's sake.
We are not liked. You know what reactionary majority groups do when a member of an underclass that they both fear and dislike starts waving big weapons around? They kill them. And then go "look, see? We were right about them!" And then feel like their fears and dislike have been vindicated and reinforced.
Subtlety is our friend in this setting. Blatant threat displays of illegal weaponry will get us killed.
Basically, I'm assuming that the state of Odani in society is something similar to, if not worse than, the state of black people in modern America. That means more police attention, higher conviction rates, getting stopped or searched or arrested for things a white person would have got off, much quicker use of lethal force, much more negative outlooks - a human committing a shooting spree is "mentally ill", an odani is a terrorist or a cannibalistic monster - and harsher punishments. Having ridiculously illegal stuff that will invite such things and make us an instant threat to police vehicles means that they're going to escalate to lethal force that much faster if we ever get into an altercation with them. Or to put it another way, "if we ever go outside with it and someone sees us and calls the police and babbles about a heavily armed odani criminal rampaging around".
Chargen End - Turovind Dass
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Turovind Dass
Your name is Turovind Dass. You're an Odani Female, Twenty Eight years old, hailing from a border colony of what is now the Glorious People's Democratic Republic of Greater Orozvhad. Your family were office workers on a border colony, but the war resulted in the conquest of the colony. You and your family successfully evacuated and were picked up by the pirate ship Karek, where you and some of the other evacuees were recruited into the pirate crew.
As a pirate on the Karek you served as a fighter pilot and raider throughout the course of the war. You targeted human supply lines, devastating convoys moving through the sparsely populated fifth and sixth expansion regions. You facilitated many of the early smuggling operations that brought earth-sphere technology from Brazil and the Sultanate to Akhuv. As a result you had a lot of contact with humans during the war and understand them reasonably well.
You're prototypical for an Orozvhadi native, not that a human would notice. You're dark skinned and incredibly tall (A rare trait in a fighter pilot). Odani think that you look bold and heroic while Humans (And most aliens) think you are fundamentally intimidating and monstrous. You have a large array of excellent hats due to your captain's obsession with the things. She kind of rubbed off on you, and as a result you too have a mild obsession with headwear.
You flew Kettch-series Snubfighters and performed many boarding actions during the war. You can probably pilot any snubfighter built for Odani or Humans and were an ace pilot. Your piracy also means that you're competent at skullduggery and practical military skills. You aren't particularly well educated but in addition to knowledge necessary to be a pirate your captain was obsessed with military strategy, as such you have some familiarity with military science and many related board games.
You tend to be cynical, methodical, subtle, and supremely confident in your skills. You have many contacts in the criminal underworld, Odani community, and corporate hierarchy (Often functionally indistinguishable from the criminal underworld) and are adept at living in Human society.
Your savings total to about Twelve thousand Dinars, two thousands of which are saved for your portion of food and living expenses each month.
Your name is Turovind Dass. You're an Odani Female, Twenty Eight years old, hailing from a border colony of what is now the Glorious People's Democratic Republic of Greater Orozvhad. Your family were office workers on a border colony, but the war resulted in the conquest of the colony. You and your family successfully evacuated and were picked up by the pirate ship Karek, where you and some of the other evacuees were recruited into the pirate crew.
As a pirate on the Karek you served as a fighter pilot and raider throughout the course of the war. You targeted human supply lines, devastating convoys moving through the sparsely populated fifth and sixth expansion regions. You facilitated many of the early smuggling operations that brought earth-sphere technology from Brazil and the Sultanate to Akhuv. As a result you had a lot of contact with humans during the war and understand them reasonably well.
You're prototypical for an Orozvhadi native, not that a human would notice. You're dark skinned and incredibly tall (A rare trait in a fighter pilot). Odani think that you look bold and heroic while Humans (And most aliens) think you are fundamentally intimidating and monstrous. You have a large array of excellent hats due to your captain's obsession with the things. She kind of rubbed off on you, and as a result you too have a mild obsession with headwear.
You flew Kettch-series Snubfighters and performed many boarding actions during the war. You can probably pilot any snubfighter built for Odani or Humans and were an ace pilot. Your piracy also means that you're competent at skullduggery and practical military skills. You aren't particularly well educated but in addition to knowledge necessary to be a pirate your captain was obsessed with military strategy, as such you have some familiarity with military science and many related board games.
You tend to be cynical, methodical, subtle, and supremely confident in your skills. You have many contacts in the criminal underworld, Odani community, and corporate hierarchy (Often functionally indistinguishable from the criminal underworld) and are adept at living in Human society.
Your savings total to about Twelve thousand Dinars, two thousands of which are saved for your portion of food and living expenses each month.
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Well, the Hat was really the best shiny. I'm kind of disappointed that we're not well-armed legally, but the hat collection seems worth it.
Last edited:
- Location
- Somewhere
This is totally worth power armor.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
On this subject!
The best equivalent to Black people in the US would be the Pamna (who could also be Indians in Imperial England). Race relations are more 50s than 2000s, though. Alien Rights movements are only now really coming into vogue, and the radical idea that aliens are people is, well, radical. Discrimination, shitty press, a rigged system backed by hundreds of years of people kicking you in the face to keep you from climbing, all of those come in in full force for the Pamna.
The Odani don't have a direct analogue in human history. The equivalent would be if Imperialism ended when a venture (Say, the Opium Wars) went so badly that most Imperial Powers had much of their projection power broken and the target of the !Opium Wars was now a regional power in-and-of itself, tempting its neighbors with overtures like 'We didn't kill 70% of your entire species' and 'We never sold literally billions of you into slavery for profit' and 'we don't have a black market for your internal organs'. While the outcome is often similar (Paranoia, escalated lethal response, shitty media coverage, etc.) the driving motivations are different. Maybe...Red Scare/Terrorism Scare+Modern fears of China as a new superpower after what is basically Space World War 1?
The Varit are also hard to place. I drew on orientalist ideas about the east (Especially 'mystic east' pap that pops up pretty often) and pop knowledge about Native Americans for them, then combined it with arabic folklore about Jinn. A lot of their stuff is about how society is sympathetic but only if you fit into a pretty specific archetype, and how the utter horror committed against your people has a bad tendency to be kind of...glossed over. That sorta thing. They're welcome in the box, and often enough seen as a model minority if they're in the box, but generally leaving the box or, say, being consistently pissed about the fact that seventy percent of your fucking species is dead isn't taken very well.
- Location
- in the trash
Do we have a fedora?
Why am I asking of course we have a large collection of fedoras.
Case One: The Disappearance of Balogun Tracer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Case One: The Disappearance of Balogun Tracer
You grab a nine-pointed hat from the closet, a memento of your days as a pirate. You take a moment to adjust it, changing the angle ever-so-slightly until you are satisfied that it is sufficiently rakish. "House, I'm going out," you say, "Lock up."
You step out the door, which snaps shut behind you with a series of muted clicks. The hallways of your apartment complex are cramped, the ceilings low, the walls close enough to make passing someone else an awkward affair in the best of circumstances. Your neighbors largely stay out of your way, they're not as visibly terrified of you as they were during the first months of your stay, but they're still obviously uncomfortable with your existence. The sole exception is Miss Smith, an elderly Goblin woman of about thirty two who claws her cheeks bloody and bellows "IVORY CITADEL!" every time you pass her. You return the yell, but punch the air instead of self-mutilating.
Goblins regenerate their wounds. You don't.
The elevator's a massive, transparent cylinder that runs down the side of one of Market Garden's walls. Half the view is taken up by your apartment complex's hallways, not a thrilling sight at the best of times. The other half, though, is the interior of Market Garden, and there's a view you're not getting tired of any time soon.
Market Garden was once a Garden Ship. A massive civilian ship filled with plant life of all sorts, cavernous bays flooded with artificial light and overgrown with vegetation. It got added to the Graveyard near the end of the war, and though they ripped out her innards, the roof, and the bow the interior's still beautiful.
To the right of you, past the other elevator tubes, countless vines carpet the walls. They're a riot of color, heavy with grapes and dragonfruit and berries and exotic things for alien diets.
Below you is the Green Deck of Market Garden, covered in groves of trees and various shops. Fruit groves stretch across the length of the deck, melon-vines covering maglev tunnels, trees shading stores and walkways. To the left of you is the ship's bow, open to the void, atmosphere contained by redundant shielding and station-gravity. You can see the Pendulum Dock through the gap, fleets of ships arriving and departing from the converted space station at all times.
Across from you is the far wall, rather like the wall on your side save that the view is marred by graffiti, a hundred-foot-tall "فيهم روح؟" slathered over fruit-vines in white paint. You snarl when you recognize it, it's a slogan for human supremacist organizations across the galaxy. It doesn't translate well, if you're to be honest. "Do they have a soul?" is the literal meaning, but the grammar and phrasing don't transfer in the slightest.
The answer to the question is no, by the way. Or at least it is in the minds of anyone asking that question in that language with that wording.
Above you is the dorsal hull of Nine Eyes Gleaming, a Texan heavy cruiser. She's a resort now, you can see the gleam of dozens of windows where her thousand hull breaches have been converted to hotel rooms. The sight makes you smile. You'd helped kill that ship, in the closing weeks of the war, and getting to see your war-trophy gutted and disarmed never stops massaging your ego. You kinda want to rent a room there for a weekend some day, see Market Garden from above, tour the corridors you'd fought through, see if they'd let you look at the bridge you'd bombed. It's expensive, though. Maybe when you've built up some savings.
The elevator takes you to the Green Deck, where the trees hide the graffiti from view. A short walk brings you to the mag-lev, and the mag-lev takes you into the depths of the station proper.
Someone calls the cops on you on the ride over. The entire train stops while a single police officer, a female Pamna, boards and sweeps the train. She locates you, sweeps you, and starts asking questions. Nothing out of the ordinary. "Why are you on the train today?" (On my way to work) "Any weapons on you?" (Knife and a RigRun. Need them for work.) "What's your job?" (Private Detective, here's my badge) "Any other weapons to declare?" (No) "We have our eyes on you, don't cause any trouble." (When we own this station, I'll remember your face. And the man two rows ahead of me who called you.). She doesn't catch your shredder and eventually, devoid of anything to hit you with, leaves. The mag-lev continues and you get some glares for the delay. You ignore them, eye boring into the neck of the man who made the call. He gets off the train early, antennae quivering in what you think is the Hanbar equivalent of panic. The rest of your ride is uneventful.
You glance up and to the left as you step off the mag-lev. 6:30 AM. God above that took a while. Jackadee Station's not as nice as any of Market Garden's mag-lev stops, but the ships that made up Jackadee Junction had never been as nice as Market Garden, even when they were Jackadee Squadron, so you suppose you should be merciful. The station used to be a hangar bay, one of the small, cramped ones in freighters and the like. It's worse now, they cut it in half for the station, added concession stands and the like, and the local landlord had his janitorial staff at half-strength as a cost cutting measure. The result was cramped and distinctly unsanitary.
You use your trenchcoat as a shield as your push your way into Jackadee Junction proper. The halls are a bit better, the warship halls were made with multiple people in mind and the stores and homes didn't protrude into the halls. You bypass a demagogue at an intersection, bellowing about how the aliens mean to subvert Human society from within, and how humans must unite and drive them from the 'civilized galaxy'. He has a bit of a crowd, but Jackadee Junction doesn't like crowds much. They'll disperse before the morning rush, or be dispersed by a mildly annoyed crowd. Either way works for you.
Your office is built into what was once a sloop's bridge. It's plain on the outside, no windows, minimal decoration, a plaque that says "D and D Detective Agency" and a wooden door with a delivery chute instead of the synth-glass most businesses use in Jackadee. There's a delivery man outside your door, a young Hanbar man by the name of Githr. His uniform hangs loose on him and a water collar, surprisingly fashionable, fits snugly around his gills. His rami hang loosely over the water collar and his lower pair of arms is bare, which you understand is in fashion at the moment. His skin is mottled brown with flecks of gold, though his rami are a deep blue at the ends, as if they were dyed (They aren't, you asked.). Young Hanbar are often described as reminiscent of arudae or axolotls, but you don't agree with the description. It's like describing Infant Humans as reminiscent of howler monkeys.
"Dass!," says Githr. He pulls a flyer out of his satchel, handing it over with his lower two arms. "We're doing, we're doing a thing," he says, "An event. It'll be...read! Please read." He's excited, damn-near giddy and tripping over his speech more than normal. He lapses back into a Hanbari tongue you don't understand twice before he manages to stop talking. You go ahead and glance over the flyer while he practically bounces in place.
It's for an alien rights rally, a demonstration in Vertigo district. Date and time are included, and evidently there'll be refreshments for all. "Githr," you say, "Be careful, yeah? These things end with goo-guns and truncheons more often than not."
"You're not coming?" says Githr. His brow furrows and his rami quake a little. Maybe betrayal or anger? Hanbar emotions are hard.
"I didn't say that," you say, "But you should be careful out there. Vertigo's not like Jackadee. Locals won't care if a little Hanbar boy loses his collar." His hands, all of them, go straight to his water collar, rubbing it nervously. "Bring a spare, be careful, and tell your mother."
He wiggles his rami, another gesture you don't understand and scoots off to finish his deliveries. A supervisor bot emerges from some nook and follows him as he leaves. You wait till they round the next corner before entering the office.
Your office is a pretty small affair. You have an entry hall and two offices (One each for you and Jane), plus a large washroom meant to deal with most anything that could walk through the front door. The entry hall contains a small desk, formerly a bridge-terminal for the sloop. VVX, your secretary, mans it basically twenty-four seven.
VVX is an Android. Her body's a tall Vuroot female, all green scales and musculature that looks like she's been shrink-wrapped, and she's wearing a plain red blouse. The body's popular among Android's, Vuroot went extinct three hundred years ago and no-one's properly resurrected the species, so an Android in a Vuroot body doesn't need the normal visible identification. You call her Vivi, which she appreciates.
Currently she's smoking, and judging by the state of her ashtray and the smoke filling the room she's been doing it for a while. Bad habit, probably your fault. But hey, you never claimed to be a good influence. She throws you a lazy salute and says, "Turovind" as you enter.
"Hey Vivi," you say, "Be a doll and throw me a cig, would you?" She pulls a cigarette out of her desk and flicks it at your hat, you catch it out of the air en-route and light up. You take a deep drag and breath out, the smoke making the room that tiny smidgen more unpleasant. "Jane in?" you ask.
"Jane is out," says Vivi. She pulls a red folder out from under her desk and hands it to you, "She met with a client shortly after Four AM and left approximately twenty minutes ago. She told me to give this to you, and was rather smug about taking the car."
"Of course she was," you reply, "Thanks Vivi."
You retreat into your office, a cramped, dimly lit thing with one desk, a chair, and a window overlooking Jackadee Junction, then open the folder. It's a case file, obviously. Missing person. You give it a quick skim, mentally sorting wheat from chaff, then give it a second, proper, read through.
Your client is Johnathan Tracer, a mid level executive in Droszczy Interstellar. Rich, reasonably successful, in charge of some of their facilities on The Graveyard. He's pale, blond haired, average height, wears a fancy suit in the photo he attached. Looks forty, but with drugs he may well be eighty. Probably scum.
He's looking for his son, Balogun Tracer. The kid looks nothing like him, tall, black, broad-shouldered, bald. Maybe seventeen. He's wearing a suit and frowns heavily. Spoiled brat.
Evidently Balogun's been acting out for a few years. Joined an ink-gang, made some friends his dad didn't approve of, active in an alien rights group at his high school. You revise your opinion of the kid upwards a notch. His Johnny boy doesn't outright say it, but you can read the disapproval in how he wrote the dossier. He does say that he doesn't think the acting out is involved with the disappearance.
Balogun disappeared two days ago, he was meeting some friends to watch a WarBots match adjacent to the empty quarter. His friends claim that they lost track of him during the match and that he just never showed up again. He claims to have already gone to the police but says that they aren't taking him seriously enough. He wants you to find his son and bring him back home alive and safe, or else give solid, actionable information on his whereabouts. And he's offering a flat fifty seven thousand dinars for the job.
Johnathan thinks that Balogun's been kidnapped by agents of a rival corporation aiming to strike at him, though he doesn't say why he thinks that and doesn't have any useful leads to offer you regarding possible kidnappers.
That said, you don't think much of his kidnapping theory. It's the sort of bizarre, self-centered bullshit you're expecting. You think one of four things happened:
A. The boy hit up the empty quarter. He was in the area, one of the ink-gangers sends him a text, they decide to explore, or loot, or bone, or whatever. Don't pay enough attention, aren't warded properly, and bam. Jinn grabs them. They're probably safe if this is the case, Jinn's probably just scaring the shit out of them, or invited them home and is making them its guest for a while.
Or, you know, it's an actual Ghul and it ate them. Either one.
B. The kid ran away from home. Disaffected kid, has some friends outside of the compound, obvious alien sympathies? He legged it and is sticking with his ink-gang. He'll make his way home on his own eventually, but you get paid if you go grab him.
Hey, fifty thousand dinars is fifty thousand dinars.
C. Random crime. Traffickers thought the human kid would sell well, he got mugged, freak accident. Shit happens. Maybe shit happens because Dad paid for it to happen to his rebellious son. Who knows, but it does mean you might have issues getting paid.
D. Dad's telling the truth. At least one corp wants this kid's head. And if that's the case...well, it's probably for something more interesting than wanting to get a blow in at dear old Dad. And that means that the case is going to be...interesting. In the Remeri sense, with all the violence and shit.
There are a few leads scattered among the case files, and a few more you can put together based on your own knowledge of the station. Whatever the truth is, you need to figure out what you think's correct, pick a string to pull, and see what happens.
Pick One
[ ] The father. He's bound to know something useful about the kid that isn't in the folder.
[ ] The grocer the ink-gang's associated with. This entire thing's probably a spat of teenaged rebellion and hitting up the grocer will clear it up quickly. It'll also let you meet up with Jane, which is convenient.
[ ] The empty quarter. It's probably not the empty quarter, you hope it's not the empty quarter, but you should eliminate it from the list first.
[ ] The cops. See what they know about it. Though you probably want to have Vivi call with you prompting her.
[ ] Hit up your contacts. If the kid is being disappeared, or under threat of being disappeared, then someone knows something. And if the kid was the victim of chance, well...someone will have seen it.
[ ] See if anyone at the WarBot arena saw anything.
You grab a nine-pointed hat from the closet, a memento of your days as a pirate. You take a moment to adjust it, changing the angle ever-so-slightly until you are satisfied that it is sufficiently rakish. "House, I'm going out," you say, "Lock up."
You step out the door, which snaps shut behind you with a series of muted clicks. The hallways of your apartment complex are cramped, the ceilings low, the walls close enough to make passing someone else an awkward affair in the best of circumstances. Your neighbors largely stay out of your way, they're not as visibly terrified of you as they were during the first months of your stay, but they're still obviously uncomfortable with your existence. The sole exception is Miss Smith, an elderly Goblin woman of about thirty two who claws her cheeks bloody and bellows "IVORY CITADEL!" every time you pass her. You return the yell, but punch the air instead of self-mutilating.
Goblins regenerate their wounds. You don't.
The elevator's a massive, transparent cylinder that runs down the side of one of Market Garden's walls. Half the view is taken up by your apartment complex's hallways, not a thrilling sight at the best of times. The other half, though, is the interior of Market Garden, and there's a view you're not getting tired of any time soon.
Market Garden was once a Garden Ship. A massive civilian ship filled with plant life of all sorts, cavernous bays flooded with artificial light and overgrown with vegetation. It got added to the Graveyard near the end of the war, and though they ripped out her innards, the roof, and the bow the interior's still beautiful.
To the right of you, past the other elevator tubes, countless vines carpet the walls. They're a riot of color, heavy with grapes and dragonfruit and berries and exotic things for alien diets.
Below you is the Green Deck of Market Garden, covered in groves of trees and various shops. Fruit groves stretch across the length of the deck, melon-vines covering maglev tunnels, trees shading stores and walkways. To the left of you is the ship's bow, open to the void, atmosphere contained by redundant shielding and station-gravity. You can see the Pendulum Dock through the gap, fleets of ships arriving and departing from the converted space station at all times.
Across from you is the far wall, rather like the wall on your side save that the view is marred by graffiti, a hundred-foot-tall "فيهم روح؟" slathered over fruit-vines in white paint. You snarl when you recognize it, it's a slogan for human supremacist organizations across the galaxy. It doesn't translate well, if you're to be honest. "Do they have a soul?" is the literal meaning, but the grammar and phrasing don't transfer in the slightest.
The answer to the question is no, by the way. Or at least it is in the minds of anyone asking that question in that language with that wording.
Above you is the dorsal hull of Nine Eyes Gleaming, a Texan heavy cruiser. She's a resort now, you can see the gleam of dozens of windows where her thousand hull breaches have been converted to hotel rooms. The sight makes you smile. You'd helped kill that ship, in the closing weeks of the war, and getting to see your war-trophy gutted and disarmed never stops massaging your ego. You kinda want to rent a room there for a weekend some day, see Market Garden from above, tour the corridors you'd fought through, see if they'd let you look at the bridge you'd bombed. It's expensive, though. Maybe when you've built up some savings.
The elevator takes you to the Green Deck, where the trees hide the graffiti from view. A short walk brings you to the mag-lev, and the mag-lev takes you into the depths of the station proper.
Someone calls the cops on you on the ride over. The entire train stops while a single police officer, a female Pamna, boards and sweeps the train. She locates you, sweeps you, and starts asking questions. Nothing out of the ordinary. "Why are you on the train today?" (On my way to work) "Any weapons on you?" (Knife and a RigRun. Need them for work.) "What's your job?" (Private Detective, here's my badge) "Any other weapons to declare?" (No) "We have our eyes on you, don't cause any trouble." (When we own this station, I'll remember your face. And the man two rows ahead of me who called you.). She doesn't catch your shredder and eventually, devoid of anything to hit you with, leaves. The mag-lev continues and you get some glares for the delay. You ignore them, eye boring into the neck of the man who made the call. He gets off the train early, antennae quivering in what you think is the Hanbar equivalent of panic. The rest of your ride is uneventful.
You glance up and to the left as you step off the mag-lev. 6:30 AM. God above that took a while. Jackadee Station's not as nice as any of Market Garden's mag-lev stops, but the ships that made up Jackadee Junction had never been as nice as Market Garden, even when they were Jackadee Squadron, so you suppose you should be merciful. The station used to be a hangar bay, one of the small, cramped ones in freighters and the like. It's worse now, they cut it in half for the station, added concession stands and the like, and the local landlord had his janitorial staff at half-strength as a cost cutting measure. The result was cramped and distinctly unsanitary.
You use your trenchcoat as a shield as your push your way into Jackadee Junction proper. The halls are a bit better, the warship halls were made with multiple people in mind and the stores and homes didn't protrude into the halls. You bypass a demagogue at an intersection, bellowing about how the aliens mean to subvert Human society from within, and how humans must unite and drive them from the 'civilized galaxy'. He has a bit of a crowd, but Jackadee Junction doesn't like crowds much. They'll disperse before the morning rush, or be dispersed by a mildly annoyed crowd. Either way works for you.
Your office is built into what was once a sloop's bridge. It's plain on the outside, no windows, minimal decoration, a plaque that says "D and D Detective Agency" and a wooden door with a delivery chute instead of the synth-glass most businesses use in Jackadee. There's a delivery man outside your door, a young Hanbar man by the name of Githr. His uniform hangs loose on him and a water collar, surprisingly fashionable, fits snugly around his gills. His rami hang loosely over the water collar and his lower pair of arms is bare, which you understand is in fashion at the moment. His skin is mottled brown with flecks of gold, though his rami are a deep blue at the ends, as if they were dyed (They aren't, you asked.). Young Hanbar are often described as reminiscent of arudae or axolotls, but you don't agree with the description. It's like describing Infant Humans as reminiscent of howler monkeys.
"Dass!," says Githr. He pulls a flyer out of his satchel, handing it over with his lower two arms. "We're doing, we're doing a thing," he says, "An event. It'll be...read! Please read." He's excited, damn-near giddy and tripping over his speech more than normal. He lapses back into a Hanbari tongue you don't understand twice before he manages to stop talking. You go ahead and glance over the flyer while he practically bounces in place.
It's for an alien rights rally, a demonstration in Vertigo district. Date and time are included, and evidently there'll be refreshments for all. "Githr," you say, "Be careful, yeah? These things end with goo-guns and truncheons more often than not."
"You're not coming?" says Githr. His brow furrows and his rami quake a little. Maybe betrayal or anger? Hanbar emotions are hard.
"I didn't say that," you say, "But you should be careful out there. Vertigo's not like Jackadee. Locals won't care if a little Hanbar boy loses his collar." His hands, all of them, go straight to his water collar, rubbing it nervously. "Bring a spare, be careful, and tell your mother."
He wiggles his rami, another gesture you don't understand and scoots off to finish his deliveries. A supervisor bot emerges from some nook and follows him as he leaves. You wait till they round the next corner before entering the office.
Your office is a pretty small affair. You have an entry hall and two offices (One each for you and Jane), plus a large washroom meant to deal with most anything that could walk through the front door. The entry hall contains a small desk, formerly a bridge-terminal for the sloop. VVX, your secretary, mans it basically twenty-four seven.
VVX is an Android. Her body's a tall Vuroot female, all green scales and musculature that looks like she's been shrink-wrapped, and she's wearing a plain red blouse. The body's popular among Android's, Vuroot went extinct three hundred years ago and no-one's properly resurrected the species, so an Android in a Vuroot body doesn't need the normal visible identification. You call her Vivi, which she appreciates.
Currently she's smoking, and judging by the state of her ashtray and the smoke filling the room she's been doing it for a while. Bad habit, probably your fault. But hey, you never claimed to be a good influence. She throws you a lazy salute and says, "Turovind" as you enter.
"Hey Vivi," you say, "Be a doll and throw me a cig, would you?" She pulls a cigarette out of her desk and flicks it at your hat, you catch it out of the air en-route and light up. You take a deep drag and breath out, the smoke making the room that tiny smidgen more unpleasant. "Jane in?" you ask.
"Jane is out," says Vivi. She pulls a red folder out from under her desk and hands it to you, "She met with a client shortly after Four AM and left approximately twenty minutes ago. She told me to give this to you, and was rather smug about taking the car."
"Of course she was," you reply, "Thanks Vivi."
You retreat into your office, a cramped, dimly lit thing with one desk, a chair, and a window overlooking Jackadee Junction, then open the folder. It's a case file, obviously. Missing person. You give it a quick skim, mentally sorting wheat from chaff, then give it a second, proper, read through.
Your client is Johnathan Tracer, a mid level executive in Droszczy Interstellar. Rich, reasonably successful, in charge of some of their facilities on The Graveyard. He's pale, blond haired, average height, wears a fancy suit in the photo he attached. Looks forty, but with drugs he may well be eighty. Probably scum.
He's looking for his son, Balogun Tracer. The kid looks nothing like him, tall, black, broad-shouldered, bald. Maybe seventeen. He's wearing a suit and frowns heavily. Spoiled brat.
Evidently Balogun's been acting out for a few years. Joined an ink-gang, made some friends his dad didn't approve of, active in an alien rights group at his high school. You revise your opinion of the kid upwards a notch. His Johnny boy doesn't outright say it, but you can read the disapproval in how he wrote the dossier. He does say that he doesn't think the acting out is involved with the disappearance.
Balogun disappeared two days ago, he was meeting some friends to watch a WarBots match adjacent to the empty quarter. His friends claim that they lost track of him during the match and that he just never showed up again. He claims to have already gone to the police but says that they aren't taking him seriously enough. He wants you to find his son and bring him back home alive and safe, or else give solid, actionable information on his whereabouts. And he's offering a flat fifty seven thousand dinars for the job.
Johnathan thinks that Balogun's been kidnapped by agents of a rival corporation aiming to strike at him, though he doesn't say why he thinks that and doesn't have any useful leads to offer you regarding possible kidnappers.
That said, you don't think much of his kidnapping theory. It's the sort of bizarre, self-centered bullshit you're expecting. You think one of four things happened:
A. The boy hit up the empty quarter. He was in the area, one of the ink-gangers sends him a text, they decide to explore, or loot, or bone, or whatever. Don't pay enough attention, aren't warded properly, and bam. Jinn grabs them. They're probably safe if this is the case, Jinn's probably just scaring the shit out of them, or invited them home and is making them its guest for a while.
Or, you know, it's an actual Ghul and it ate them. Either one.
B. The kid ran away from home. Disaffected kid, has some friends outside of the compound, obvious alien sympathies? He legged it and is sticking with his ink-gang. He'll make his way home on his own eventually, but you get paid if you go grab him.
Hey, fifty thousand dinars is fifty thousand dinars.
C. Random crime. Traffickers thought the human kid would sell well, he got mugged, freak accident. Shit happens. Maybe shit happens because Dad paid for it to happen to his rebellious son. Who knows, but it does mean you might have issues getting paid.
D. Dad's telling the truth. At least one corp wants this kid's head. And if that's the case...well, it's probably for something more interesting than wanting to get a blow in at dear old Dad. And that means that the case is going to be...interesting. In the Remeri sense, with all the violence and shit.
There are a few leads scattered among the case files, and a few more you can put together based on your own knowledge of the station. Whatever the truth is, you need to figure out what you think's correct, pick a string to pull, and see what happens.
Pick One
[ ] The father. He's bound to know something useful about the kid that isn't in the folder.
[ ] The grocer the ink-gang's associated with. This entire thing's probably a spat of teenaged rebellion and hitting up the grocer will clear it up quickly. It'll also let you meet up with Jane, which is convenient.
[ ] The empty quarter. It's probably not the empty quarter, you hope it's not the empty quarter, but you should eliminate it from the list first.
[ ] The cops. See what they know about it. Though you probably want to have Vivi call with you prompting her.
[ ] Hit up your contacts. If the kid is being disappeared, or under threat of being disappeared, then someone knows something. And if the kid was the victim of chance, well...someone will have seen it.
[ ] See if anyone at the WarBot arena saw anything.
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LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
[X] The grocer the ink-gang's associated with. This entire thing's probably a spat of teenaged rebellion and hitting up the grocer will clear it up quickly. It'll also let you meet up with Jane, which is convenient.
Meet up with another character, and get another viewpoint on what Balogun was like. That sounds like a good deal to me.
Meet up with another character, and get another viewpoint on what Balogun was like. That sounds like a good deal to me.
What does this equate to in the modern world?
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...She's an android. We gave an android a smoking problem.
How!?
[X] Hit up your contacts. If the kid is being disappeared, or under threat of being disappeared, then someone knows something. And if the kid was the victim of chance, well...someone will have seen it.
It'll help give us a feel for the case, the players, and the general stakes involved beyond "payday". We shouldn't go to daddy dearest unless we have some stuff we really need to press him on since he's unlikely to be all that forthcoming, he's an exec type. He gave us our job, he expects us to do it. Jane's already handling the grocer. The empty quarter really shouldn't be our first choice. One does not head into a monster infested zone in a noir thing as the literal first option. Going to the police has the potential to be pretty lel but, uh, institutionalized racism and all.
WarBot arena's going to be a lot of work for maybe scraps. At least with contacts we'll know if this was an organized thing so we can rule that out (and present it to the dad if he bothers us about it).
- Location
- Somewhere
[X] The empty quarter. It's probably not the empty quarter, you hope it's not the empty quarter, but you should eliminate it from the list first.
[X] The empty quarter. It's probably not the empty quarter, you hope it's not the empty quarter, but you should eliminate it from the list first.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fifty seven thousand dollars, more or less.
Alright, so a decent chunk of change for one case, do we split all jobs 50/50 monetary wise with Jane?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You get 25 percent, Jane gets 25 percent, Vivi gets 10% (Legally she's property and doesn't get paid, but you give her a paycheck and mark it up as maintenance. She spends most of it on smokes.), 40% goes towards the business.
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
Because we are stylish as fuck and make smoking look hellishly sweet.
[X] The grocer the ink-gang's associated with. This entire thing's probably a spat of teenaged rebellion and hitting up the grocer will clear it up quickly. It'll also let you meet up with Jane, which is convenient.
Meet up with the partner, check up on what leads she's already looked at so we don't waste time and then hash out who is doing what for maximum efficiency.
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