Bear with me on this one because it is cobbled together from a few weeks out...
CUPBEARER DOSSIER 002
We picked back up with the players in mid-conflict with the strange masked beings on the subway platform. The two plasma-toting goons were dispatched while Beatle struggled against the red-robed masked figure who had branded If.
If slunk up to the dying goon and tried to coax some information out of it, making it credulous (sticky). Iffemeral learned that 1) the goon's body was actually fused into the strange armored suit it was wearing, its spine growing into the circuitry in a gigeresque amalgamation, and that its life support system was failing, and it was dying, and 2) that it seemed confident it would be reborn, that its consciousness would be collected by whatever force had given it life initially. With the dying thing's instruction Iffemeral was able to access a panel on its back that administered some sort of sedative and helped it pass on peacefully.
Learning that the goons were weird biomechanical constructs, Judy jacked open the compartment of the one whose cerebro-fluid she had spattered over the floor the session previous and used her specks to hack into its residual short-term virtual memory drive. She saw strange images of a masked nun blessing the goon before it piled into a combat transport that resembled the unidentified mechs the squad had seen in Prim's footage—it seemed they belonged to the same mysterious unit that was fighting alongside the CUPBEARER unit against BEHEMOTH. Then she saw herself killing the goon mercilessly.
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| Stace Forand |
Meanwhile Beatle was engaged in a messy confrontation with the masked red-robed figure. Heated words were exchanged. With the assailant held fast, Beatle dangled them over the subway track as the wind of an approaching train picked up, demanding their cooperation. A crack split the mask of its brass smile and from it poured a stream of crawling insects at fire-hose intensity directly into Beatle's face, choking them. In response Beatle thrust their cyberarm into the face-wound—finding it almost seemed bigger on the inside than it appeared—until they found some strange pulsing fleshy core, which they touched. This seemed to render the being helpless and it sank into their arms (yaoi). When questioned, the dying assassin spoke cryptically about its masters—"Who sent you?" "Who sends the rain?" "The serpent swallows its own tail. None send the first serpent. The dreams you seek you may find only in the depths of the Citadel itself." It stopped speaking and died.
Following that, the crew split up. Beatle went to Iola for information while Iffemeral and Judy went to keep following the located signal of the account that uploaded the BEHEMOTH propaganda video.
Beatle milled through the regular crowd and found Iola behind the counter at her diner.
CONTACT - IOLANTHE ARLETH
Iola didn't expect to end up a criminal. An ex-army medic, she settled on Azimuth after being discharged with an injury, finding a job at an old butcher shop on the corner. Her bleeding heart soon had her doing favors out of the back, providing free medical services and leftover cuts to refugee families, disgruntled veterans screwed out of their pensions, gutterpunk street kid rejects, and alien exiles. By now she's built up a precarious network of interdependence on her block—along with the muscle and shrewd judgement necessary to protect it.
FAVORS: shark, splice
Iola was looking busy, tense, and tired as always, her alien frond hair a mess, her cut-up naval jacket vest stained with grease, all four arms at work.
After exchanging pleasantries Beatle mentioned the brand that the assassin had used on Iffemeral and Iola responded with grave concern. “How long? Where is she? How fast can you get her here? I can meet you out back in 10 minutes, tops. We gotta cut it out.” She said, “I can’t believe you’re fucking with the Second Groom Thesis. Are they at least paying you well?”
Beatle (lustful of their employer Three Pisces): “it’s a particular job, for a particular employer.”
“So they’re not. Christ.”
THE HACKER'S TRAIL
Meanwhile Judy and Iff followed the located signal to FreshDev Complex QUARD 32, a subbasement apartment beneath a robot-staffed convenience store. Inside Judy spent the rest of her kreds on a remote-controllable camera spider drone and unboxed it in the alleyway behind the building before sending it in through a ventiltion shaft. It followed the trail to a boarded-up unit where a small figure crouched in front of a terminal screen. The apartment was stark and bare except for some scattered mech parts, computer equipment, and weaponry. Against the walls were stacked twenty or thirty assault rifles. Behind a false panel at the end of the ventilation shaft, Judy's drone discovered a niche holding a valuable brick of solid aluminum.
With delicate manuevering Judy guided the camera drone toward the figure at the terminal and successfully acquired a full facial recognition scan without being noticed, allowing them to run the hacker's identity against the social IDplex mainframe. A blonde bowl cut with moon-shaped glasses—they were none other than Diddolis Jennix, a hotshot underworld tekker with a lengthy history of cybercrime. According to the records, Diddolis was currently being held in the depths of the Silver Citadel for questioning… but here they were, soaking up scrolling matrix-style data from their three surrounding gigamonitors in this strange basement laboratory.
What happened next?? Find out next time on BEAM WORLD. Life has been happening and I missed a few weeks of gaming but we are locked back in for next time—stay tuned! 😎
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