The Found Arcana [IC]
-
The Found Arcana [IC]
[Placeholder]
-
291 Replies
-
[moved from Shadowgrid due to yet another crush]
Gao answered “Don’t rob the buyer… dammit! Rob the asshole that is strongarming me and is going to show up to the meeting pretending to be my representative. If he plays dirty to me, why should I play nice in return?
You really have little choice there. Imagine what happens if both of you show at the same time at Taco temple,
do you trust a ganger to be civilized about it? Do you imagine an auction? The man might open fire at you in the middle of a public place killing all sort of innocent people. Criminals…He curses and continues Lay low, watch the meeting, trail the buyer into some place where you can rob him without killing innocents. You have many options, not all of them are violent, you have a mage, a trog, the shapechanging bear and a face. A good team, anyhow you acquire that card from the buyer. Leave me with some deniability, I don’t mind him suspecting it was me. You sell it you get 25k this is your wage.
Now, I am loaning you the 15k because what would you do if the fragger does not show up, or show up late? In that case, you may need to buy the card for yourself. So here is the 15k to do so, but if you just bought the card and took it to the other part of town to sell it – nobody molested you and you did not have to do detective work… In that case, you made 2.5k each for a simple delivery job. Hardly worth complaining.
It is a reasonable job, the only reason I can afford you is because the stupid fuck cannot reschedule the meeting, he’ll show up to the meeting I intended to show. He does not know who the seller is. Before we continue, is everything clear?
-
Bobby nodded at Jawsee’s explanation but smiled at Gao’s reply:
“Why didn’t you say so from the beginning. Whack the guy who’s buying the card and take his money. Do you have a description or photo of him?” -
“At least we are clear now: you do want us to be criminals, and stake much of our pay on not just preventing the other party from making the deal, but catching their purser so we can extract the money. Were you just paying us 25k I’d call the offer acceptable, but with the risk it needs to be sweetened a bit more.”
“But tell you what, we know cash is a precious thing. It happens that we were looking to set up a lodge. How about this: When we come to buy, you upgrade the materials by a couple of grand, letting us set a real solid lodge. You agree to that little detail and we have a deal.”
He gives a quick aside to Bobby and Mato “A lodge will let AM perform rituals more quickly and cheaply, which could really help in our ability to track things down.” He doesn’t mention how it is also needed for learning new spells and the like.
Spoiler: -
Mato folds his arms and nods in agreement with Beta. He does his best to look stern, but he really doesn’t have the personality to make in convincing.
These jobs that involve robbing people always seem questionable at best. If the job is to rob someone, then why doesn’t Mato just rob people on his own? Skip the Johnson, cut out the middleman. In this case its helps to know who is going to be walking around with ¥15K in their pocket, but still. For all Mato knows the target could be a Mafia soldato or a Yakuza shategashira or a Triad heung chu or someone else who might take affront at being mugged and might have the street rep to firmly object. Still, that’s life in the shadows: there’s always a bigger fish, and you just had to be smarter and faster to eat without being eaten.
-
Mr. Gau says “Alright, I am willing to give you 2k extra in lodge materials, or other magical goods, providing you spend at least 1k in addition. Does that settles the negotiations? “ He looks around to see if there are no objections.
Providing you are in agreement, Gao responds to Mato’s question Yes, I do have a photograph, a physical one. He walks to the back and opens a drawer. Returning shortly with a few physical photos from the security cameras in his shop. Mundane, human male wearing an armor jacket, and no distinctive gang marks. He is armed with a pistol, and his hair is neatly ordered into a long black braid. Recall that the goal is to acquire the card. I hire muscle but I also hire brains, you don’t have to beat the crap out of that guy… he said, but from his tone, it is evident that Gau wouldn’t mind if the man did not survive the encounter. He places a burner link on the table Use it to contact the seller but be polite. .
-
<<Works for me>> Mato DNIs to the rest of the team. <<Let’s go make some cred.>>
-
<<Dito>> Bobby replied, but added: <<Are we in agreement that we take this Thug’s cash? How we do it can be discussed, but I’d certainly prefer him never making it to the meet… or any meet ever after again.>>
-
Gao grins Alright, so it seems like an agreement good. So the meeting is this evening at 18:00 at Taco Temple downtown. They have basic security, but it is a public and lively place with cooperate employees finishing work and doing shopping and everything. Expect a lot of traffic. The seller has a reserved booth under the name Ronna, so just say that you are there for Ronna to get to the meet.
The agreed price is 15k in a single platinum credstick. Use this one if you buy the card. he hands them a credstick.
Then he handles them a card This is what your card looks like, and it should have a distinct aura of its own. This one is a simple print out I made to research an hypothesis, take it you may have a use for it. He hands them the fake card.Once you acquire the artifact, your next meeting is in room 2018 at the new Hilton hotel where Ms. Green’s representative will buy the card from your hands. I am giving you the frequency link of the buyer as well. Once all is concluded, I expect you to show by my shop with my 15k back.
-
Ginsburg takes the replica card from Gao and tucks it into turns to regard the rest of the group. “Well, looking forward to working with you then.” He tips his hat as it were something far classier than an old baseball cap and moves towards the door as he examines Gao’s duplicate card.
-
The card is a picture taken by a cheap comlink of (likely) the original card. Perhaps Gao wanted evidence for the existence of the artifact before agreeing to buy it. It illustrates a woman dying by many blades and swords.
#LoreBane – do you have the picture available? If not I’ll go look for it in my messages.
-
“Alright, so Taco Temple tonight during the dinnertime rush. Wiz.
“Fun fact: Taco Temple is not owned by Aztechnology. That’s not what you’d expect, given the cuisine and Aztechnology’s control of food supply chains, ne? Taco Temple doesn’t correct anyone probably because they enjoy the perception of being protected by Aztechnology. I’m not sure why Aztechnology doesn’t just take them over. My best guess is that Aztechnology thinks that they already own them. You get an organization that big and one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing.”
Mato heads back toward the office to get ready.
“This is downtown so let’s not go full thug. I’ll wear a suit, maybe pose as a bodyguard. Break out your good SINs, ne?”
-
Bobby shrugged and nodded. Since no-one had answered his question he just assumed that they were in agreement over the point he had brought up.
“A good suit? If no-one minds, I’ll accompany you as a snake. If need be, I can just poison whoever we want gone.” -
On the way back to their office/residence, Jawsey comments to Bobby and Mato “Maybe it is just me, but the picture on that card bothers me. It is like everyone in the world stabbed her in the back. I can’t think that carrying that card could be good for anyone’s trust in metahumanity. I’m not saying it would make people betray you, but I think looking at that card for long would make anyone paranoid. Add in how valuable and contentious these cards seem to be, and I’m going to guess everyone we deal with on this one will be ready for betrayal. Maybe that is all just superstition, but I just don’t think a ‘friendly’ style con will go far.
“Which kind of touches on Bobby’s point earlier. It probably has to be a take down, not a scam or the like. And we only make this work if it is not a bidding competition, so yah, I think we have to intercept, incapacitate, get the card and the cash, and do all of that with a low enough profile that we can still make the meet with the seller.“
-
“Not gonna argue that. But it’s better to be the stabber than the stabbee. Speaking of which, I could just turn the guy into a fish and we flush him down the toilette. We get his gear and whatever else he carries.”
Bobby replied with an evil grin. -
Mato heads back to the office, where he digs his Zoé Executive Suite suit out of the back of the closet. It fits like a glove, mostly because Mato’s dimensions are set in stone, or metal as it were.
Mato nods appreciatively at Bobby’s creative solution. “I like it. We just have to figure out how to execute without drawing undue attention. How do we get this guy out of sight of the public so that we can bonk him over the head? Or turn him into a goldfish.”
He looks over to Ginsburg. “What about you? You got any tricks up your sleeve? Can you make this guy invisible so that nobody notices when Bobby here turns him into a carp?”
-
“Most people who can afford to spend 15k on à card can afford security. I’d expect we aredealing with multiple targets, some hard. Maybe we get lucky and not so much.”
After a moment of thought he asked Ginsburg “Do you have magical disguise ability?”
-
Ginsburg perks up. “Actually, I do. A basic illusion spell that can mask your appearance, and fool footage as well. I don’t know how to make people invisible – yet – but I can mask sounds. I’m partial to grifts myself – big fan of the Kansas City Shuffle and the Bavarian Fire Drill, but I’d need to know more about the target before we can plan for that sort of thing.”
-
Ginsburg rattles off the names of a couple wild dance moves that Mato has never heard of; he presumes they were popular back in the 2050s, or whenever Ginsburg was young.
“Let’s see if we can do any basic Matrix recon on this target,” he says, referring to Gao’s physical photo of the goon they want to intercept. “Is AM available for some deep-dives or do we need to put Jawsey on that? Bobby and I can help, but we’re about as useful as apes pounding on our commlinks with rocks.
“We can also go scout the terrain in advance.”
-
Ginsburg grabs his hat and yanks it down over his brow. “Well, I wound up in the clink the day of the last crash, so this wireless stuff is new to me, but I’m always down for a meatspace stakeout.”
Log in to reply.