The Found Arcana – Chapter 6 [IC]
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The Found Arcana – Chapter 6 [IC]
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Stepping on thin air to change the chip, AM turned around to find a man standing in the door, wearing nothing but a very skimpy speedo and a leering grin. He was about 180cm tall, buff, but with a bit of a belly and salt and pepper hair and neatly trimmed beard. And pretty hairy all over.
With the slightest hint of a Russian accent he said: “What have we here? You must be a new girl, da? Care to join me for a swim?”
Meanwhile Brad shrugged:
“No need. I’ll take your shooting right now. There. You just got yourself a newly authorized gun. Keep it online except in the case of a real emergency. We don’t want a gun going missing around the house.” -
AM continues to replace the AR chip and responds without much attention “Sadly no, I need to work but you can help me align the AR view if you are up to it. “ she responds, and continue working on carefully aligning the display to look as realistic as possible.
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“What I see from here looks mightily fine”, the man said while gliding into the water. AM was surprised that he didn’t draw an oil slick behind himself for all the greasy banter he brought forward. Profound unease took hold on her as he swam closer and closer.
Finally, the chip was aligned correctly, while he was still in the middle of the pool.
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I hate this place AM thinks, she misses the boyish oversized clothes that get her ignored at most places. She moves away to the edge of the pool and raises her steps as if hurrying to the next job.
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“Without a trigger, it won’t do much good offline,” Mato agrees. “At that point I’d just be… throwing it at someone.”
He holsters it and leaves to conduct his review of the house, using his radar scanners along the way to explore the gaps and ‘wide walls’ that he and Jawsey identified.
Guess I have a tracking beacon in my holster, he thinks. It rubs him a bit the wrong way – going against instinct as it does – but he writes it off as the cost of the job, the price of doing business. Hmm… would it fit in his Faraday pocket of his tuxedo? Maybe he would experiment with that later.
He then heads to the servant’s kitchen for second breakfast, knowing that it might be a long day on his feet.
Hmm, I think I have a spare corner or two of capacity left in the legs, he thinks to himself. Should I invest in a Nutritional Storage System? They’re not very expensive. I always thought of them as mostly for snipers, but it could be very valuable for a situation like this. Well, let’s see how the day goes.
He mentally daydreams about other things he could invest in now that he’s paid off his debt. An orientation system? That could help too.
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The luxury of this place had been obvious, but Jawsey hadn’t fully appreciated it until he sunk into the recliner. The chair expertly adjusted until it provided even all over support, and then an AR menu came up suggesting that he enable the rejuvenating micro-adjustments, if he’d be in the seat for over 30 minutes.
Jawsey reluctantly admitted that he didn’t need such a chair at SIS, but a life of true luxury suddenly had a lot more appeal. He found it easy to relax into the chair and cast his consciousness into the astral. From there he ran a grid search through the house, trying to quickly identify the areas he could and could not access, and to note the hidden spaces in the walls where he could access them — no doubt there would be more that were protected from the astral as well as normal access.
He was tempted to start following hidden corridors to try to find entry points, and to explore the grounds, but he had a couple of reasons to stop this exploration so he forced himself to cut it short. Returning to the comfort of the chair he amended that he had three reasons: he needed to go get breakfast, he shouldn’t exhaust his astral projection time as he may need it later, and to that he added ‘check how comfortable his body was in that chair.’
Indeed he was less stiff than usual for returning from an astral jaunt, and he was nearly humming as he got out of the chair. This job was looking up.
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Mato’s radar sensors did indeed pick up a few hollow walls and the like, but not nearly as many as he had expected. By the radar echo, it seemed like quite a few of those walls had been treated with a metal mesh that prevented deeper penetration – and incidentally would turn a hidden passage also into a Farraday cage.
Down in the kitchen he found a pretty comprehensive buffet for the servants. His colleagues flogged in one by one or in small groups to sit themselves along the two tables.
Light breakfast didn’t seem to be a trend around here. Their superiors didn’t seem to join – besides the Chef Armand Corix, who watched over the proceedings while his underlings took care of providing a steady flow of food.
There seemed to be a clear divide – the maids as well as the wire maids and boys sat on one side while the gardeners and the stable hands sat at the other.
Of the chasseurs, only Mato was present.
Jawsey found himself on the astral in a surprisingly grey environment. Barely any emotions had seeped into the building, indicating that there was no great attachement to the building as a whole – and that it wasn’t particularly old.
Moving through walls and corridors, he soon found the hidden ways and chambers, connecting different rooms discreetly.
The first thing he noticed was, that his access to the house was limited to the public parts – the barriers around the family quarters, living room and library did not give way when he encountered it. The walls not only had a barrier but also awakened moss on the inside.
AM fled the Spa and soon got a call from van der Bloom: <<Good work, everything is back in order. Get some breakfast while you can. Your colleagues are already up there.
Just so you know: There is no lunch for the servants, only a short tea break around 2 and dinner is after the family and guests have eaten. So tuck in whle you can.>>
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Emma… Emma Miller – AM mentally phrases, as she approaches the dining room looking to socialize with her peers a little bit. She responds to Kurt with a thumbs up. It is a bad design to place the chip there, on the other hand – perhaps it is the reason why it wasn’t replaced by now.
>> Jawsey – any chance you present Trouble as your spirit. I want him to be recognized as friendly.
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Basic scouting done, Jawsey decided that he’d better get to breakfast, whether or not his boss had said anything about it. As he hurried down he hoped that he wasn’t too late, and wondered about the possibility of pocketing something for later, and maybe taking some tea or caff for later?
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Mato grabs breakfast and joins the gardeners and stablehands, reasoning that he should not broadcast his relationship with AM more than necessary. He expected a gender divide but wonders if the divide us actually indoors vs. outdoors, or high tech vs. low tech.
Given his cyberlimbs, his caloric needs are somewhat different, but twelve hours is still a long time to go without eating. He debates sneaking something non-perishable into his snuggling compartment while wondering if he should send some inquiries to his street dox about the nutritional storage system, hoping the installation would be plug-and-play.
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There is quite a bit of chatter going on and Mato is greeted friendly by the oudoors crew and immediately peppered with questions. Especially Sabine, the single female stablehand, takes the helm of directing the questions:
“You must be quite the hotshot if the Cunning Man has selected you personally. Mind you, the Chasseurs were stretched enough with all those guests that even we had to take turns with guard duty. Any good warstories from the other side of the border?”Trouble meanwhile had found a way in – somehow, despite not being authorized already. Having the form of a cat seemed to confer other abilities as well…
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Mato appreciates the friendly greetings. His instinct is to demur when it comes to storytelling, but eventually decides that answering Sabine’s questions would be a good opportunity to build rapport. Having friendly relations with the staff could make life much easier this week. He picks a story that’s less about his personal involvement and more about interesting NAN details that Anglos usually eat up.
“So there’s a tradition in the NAN of ‘counting coup’, which is anything you do to win prestige over an ‘enemy’. It doesn’t have to be killing someone, or even hurting them. It could be stealing their weapons or their vehicles, anything that involves risk of injury or death.
“The NAN uses this as a training exercise, not just between units but also between nations. Relations between the Salish-Shidhe, Sioux, and PCC are all pretty friendly right now, so patrolling the ‘internal’ borders can be dull. But we liven it up by conducting ‘raids’ across the border and ‘counting coup’.
“The most prestigious thing to do it to touch the ‘enemy’ with your hand or a coup stick and then escape unharmed. It establishes dominance, like a ranking or a pecking order. So when someone is sleeping in their tent at night and they wake up to find someone tapping on their forehead…” Mato mimics tapping, and leaning over a sleeping foe with a rakish grin. “… they know that person could have killed them. That’s the prestige. That person will always know you’re the better warrior. Provided, of course, that you can get away.” He adds a knowing wink, with the implication that he’s still here so he must have gotten away. “And you usually need to haul hoop out of there because the only way for it not to count – for the enemy to regain the lost prestige – is for them to chase you down and beat the drek out of you.
“After an exploit, the band gets back together to swap stories and shoot the drek. Coups were counted by putting notches in a coup stick, or tying a feather in your hair, or putting ‘coup bars’ on your sleeves, almost like medals or rank insignia.
“So watch out for the natives with honor feathers in their hair! They know more ways to kill you than there are to die.”
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AM fills her plate and then searches for a place to seat. She is happy to see Trouble inside – wondering how he managed to get in. “So glad you are here,” she mentally communicates with him. She looks for her colleagues to seat/chat with them.
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Sabine – now that Mato looked closer – wasn’t a beauty per se, but she had a natural athleticism about her that showed her active lifestyle of handling bales of hay and dodging ill tempered mares for a living. And the look that she gave Mato now had just the right mix of enthusiasm and infatuation, that could boost a man’s ego a mile high.
“That’s so cool. So how many counting coupses have you managed? Damn shame the uniform doesn’t allow for feathers and notched sticks.”
AM meanwhile also faced alongside Jawsey the choice of where to sit. The wire maid and boys beckoned her to sit with them, but the gardeners also winked at her to come over.
Jawsey though found far less attention, but still gained interested glances from the maids table.
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The attention is going to Mato’s head a bit. He’s used to the elves being the center of attention. He resists the urge to brag about exploits (i.e. crimes) which would be better unpublicized.
“Public sector – that’s classified,” Mato demurs. “Private sector… let’s just say some men’s sticks are longer than others.”
A young man – perhaps jealous of Sabine’s attention, makes a crack, “If you’re so good, what happened to your arms? Didn’t run fast enough, eh?”
“Voluntary replacement,” Mato says, holding up a black matte titanium-and-carbon-fiber hand and turning it around for everyone at the table to inspect. “Ever wonder what kind of man goes into the doc and says, ‘Here, cut off these perfectly good arms I’ve had my whole life’?” He raises his eyebrows, leaving the question unanswered. Of course, his arms hadn’t been perfectly good, but nobody else is going to know that without a serious search of the Sioux Nation Health and Welfare Bureau’s databases.
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While Jawsey grabs food, he glances around to see if there is anyone eating on their own. Becoming the friend of someone without much of a support network opens up some good social manipulation possibilities.
In the end, however, he decides that for now he should cast his net wide, and he heads over towards the maids. Pulling out a bantering tone he teases “Will I be committing a horrible faux-pas if I sit here? Be shunned at recess for weeks? Not get invited to birthday parties?” As he pulls out a chair and sits down his smile and cocked eyebrow invites return banter. Trying to be fun and funny this early in the morning could be a bit risky, but hopes he can tempt at least some of them to come play. Not only is it one of the quickest ways to break the ice, this gig will be a lot more pleasant if he gets some opportunity to joke around.
He also looks them over to try and guess native languages. Giving someone a chance to chat in their native tongue can be a great way to get some private conversation time.
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AM seats with the wire boys/girls and introduces herself as “Emma”. Under normal circumstances, she would perhaps choose the gardeners but she does not desire that kind of attention currently.
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Sabine recoiled a bit at the idea of cutting off ones own limbs but got over it quickly. The next few minutes were filled with introductions of the other outdoor servants – most of them unremarkable and in service between six months and two years when Pike first came to Seattle and had Cunningham look for servants.
Jawsey had – as his elven charisma does its work – no trouble to get the maids to open up to him. They all are in their 20ies and pretty pretty.
Masha, the most senior among them, was especially attentive as she asked about his abilities as courier: “So, you are a mage, aren’t you? The Mackerel has been asking for an assistant for so long now. Is it true what they say about elves and their… magic wands?”
AM learned that Wesley was the most senior wireboy and pretty open, about what’s going in the building: “At breakfast we turn off wireless – Wonder Plum likes to listen in from time to time. And you never know if there isn’t a bug somewhere around.”
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Jawsey wasn’t about to give her that easy of a point. “Wands? I prefer a sword. And elves might have a bit of an advantage there … more height and all that. Of course, then so would orcs. And definitely trolls.” He makes a display of looking around, “there must be some working here surely, you could ask them…”
Actually, the staff mostly seemed to be human, now that he thought about it. It would be interesting to see what they said on the subject of orcs and trolls.
After a bit he cuts in “Sorry to change topic, but while I’m thinking of it, anything to look particularly forward to, or to avoid, with meals?”
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Mato is pleased to have walked the fine line of attraction and revulsion. Love and fear is a powerful combination, he thinks to himself.
“Where are the rest of the chasseurs?” he asks. “Is this a class divide or are they that busy?”
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