Scouting Group for Winter Wonderland

[initiates]

The results are in, and after a trip over to Random.Org the following 25 names have come out on top. Congratulations!

Abbey Bominable
Asch the Bloody
Belle
Carlos
Caspian
Chris Pratt
Christopher Chareau de Red
Cross Marian
Elissa Cousland
Elmer C Albatross
Hitsugaya Toushirou
Irisa Nyria
Joy P Buckhead
Kallen Kouzuki
Kili
Leaf
Mai
Merrill
Nathan Sumers
Noh-Varr
Oerba Yun Fang
Raiden
Rinth Ghostshot
Travis Marks
Zelos Wilder

You all have the dubious honor of scouting out the situation Earth-side, and reporting back what it is you find to the people up at the Moon Base. You leave 11/27 0300, arriving planetside at 0800. Gotta love that trip back down.

All those on the scouting mission will need to scavenge supplies beforehand from the Moon Base. They will be told about the temperatures, and as of tonight, the AI has successfully hacked some of the satellites in orbit around Earth to get good imagery of what the ground looks like. Based on heat signatures and taken images, the AI suspects they're dealing with snow, and smaller numbers of people living in scattered groups, centralized around one large, city-like group it plans to land the scouts.

Mission objectives are simple. Locate the Initiative and begin a dialog. It's suggested everyone make use of the holographic technology still maintained on the Moon Base in order to blend in with the locals. Be warned, the holographs don't hold up under actual touch, and they don't change what your footprints look like outside of immediate physical range.

Any and all non-humans will be met with fear, up to and including violence.

Be careful, and be on the lookout. This iteration of the Initiative works on the extreme keep their heads down side. Talk to everyone, and be as subtle as you can be. That's the best way to flush them out of hiding.

Plotting and questions invited below (questions to the questions thread only, please, to not be missed!). The game at large will go down to Earth the first week of December.

Edit: The Scouting log is now up here!

Comments

QUESTIONS

[initiates]

Please ask here!

[falla]

Have the Transports at wide been made aware of this mission? I know they all know about the terrain being clean and all, but if Ella knows about the group leaving she could get them all sorts of equipment (clothes and gear mostly) to make it through the weather, if needed.

[initiates]

Yes. Ella is more than welcome to help on request to make sure no one goes down dressed in shorts and tanktops!

[inhumanity]

and here representing 1930s Chicago: so how do things look in new Exsilium for organized crime? Particularly with hiring of assassins and the smuggling of weapons and the like?

PROPOSED IT'S-KIND-OF-A-SCENARIO, AS ADVISED BY ISH TAKING MY JOKES SERIOUSLY: Christopher's thinking is that an underground organization needs supplies, whether it's people to keep them running or weapons to keep them armed. And they can't get either by legal means! So he would want to get down with the criminals and find out especially about smuggling operations to see if they could follow anything back to the Initiative.

Am I doing this right? We just don't know.

[crocodilesmiles]

Organized smuggling is the thing, okay! Weapons and the rest are not. These are very closely watched, so finding any hint of them in the time of the scouting mission is highly improbable, since signs of such things can get entire villages disappeared. Politely. By the United Earth.

They will need smuggled tech parts, and be taking up lots of diverted power, and require all sorts of odd supplies. Follow those sorts of lines to end up crossing pathways with the Initiative!

(And remember that almost anything can be weaponized... it's just a question of making it as obtuse a process as possible.)

His best bet is to stalk any/all he pegs as part of a smuggling operation based on overhearing or being told (from loose lips) a shipment's getting moved in that week. By himself or with others along, he would then be able to intercept or approach the receiving party.

Again, hope you talk fast or have good bargaining skills, because the Initiative will need wooing as to why they let you near at all, strangers who might as well be a United Earth spy!

[inhumanity]

I didn't think I saw this said anywhere: are they cut off from network communications while scouting like they are on other mission? eg, no texting to friends' inboxes found u great souvenir on earth hope u like yeti fur xoxox, right?

[initiates]

They are not, but the AI will warn that it's not sure it can encrypt the feed from Earth to the Moon in real-time, so there's a chance of being hacked by the United Earth on those transmissions.

[oldsoldiersneverdie]

1) How far away from civilization are they setting down?
2) For Transports who had to leave things behind - stuff still there, or no? (more specifically, Nate had a motorcycle he rebuilt out of parts that he left out on the edge of the ruins pre-nuking)
3) What sort of information would he be able to lift from the minds of ordinary citizens?

[initiates]

1) 1 Mile away from the major city, coincidentally known as Exsilium.

2) Nothing left on Earth that was left behind by Transports remains.

3) He'd be able to get the paranoia about people disturbing things over UE frustrations, concerns over UE spies, and general day to day living thoughts, as well as spikes of suspicion about who people are if the wrong kind of too obvious or too out of place questions are proposed at the normal citizens. He'll learn about food markets and sales and who is sleeping with who and the other usual surface chatter of a large human settlement.

Re: QUESTIONS

[keep_smiling]

Are our characters building a camp down there, or will they be returning to the base when they need to?

ALSO Elmer is heading straight towards any locals he can find to chat their ear off. He'll try to act like he's from somewhere further off (but not TOO far). What can he learn from them? Can we get some general info to thread it out or will mods be tagging in for stuff like that? 8|a

Thanks all!

[initiates]

1) All characters on the scouting mission are down there for the duration. The space shuttle remains with them.

2) We will give general information! Get me a list of questions he'll ask, or he would ask, and I can start working on those answers for you.

[commentboxtroll]

Rinth is going to work her way into town as a hunter looking to trade off dead stuff (possibly more for fur than for meat, but whatever), then take whatever she traded for and just... keep going deeper and deeper into the bigger city-ish places.

Mostly she'll be asking about power supplies like some backwater yokel. Would she turn up anything particularly useful? Would her questioning while being some unknown new person garner any attention? :|a

[initiates]

She will learn about the general layout, how most power is solar or geothermal based, and that the smaller towns run on energy efficient means, with the large city (or largest city, also called Exsilium, the one that will be closest to where the space shuttle hits ground) being the biggest power source. Excess power is converted into heat and channeled into an off-shore vent on the (former) English Channel side of things, meaning it extends miles outside the city to dead-end off in the waters.

She'll get lots of teasing and ribbing, but as long as she holds violence in check, she will get explanations.

so questions

[inhumanity]

erm so

1) what flowers are there around?
2) also how about books?
3) ...also how would it go if you murdered an Exile (discretely!!!) and then took...their organs and teeth............ to bring back to your boss who is a really horrible person and gives the creepiest orders............

much sorry

[initiates]

1.) Extremely hardy ones, quick bloomers, and none appear to be ones recognized earlier in history. Chris can be taught their common names; he's unlikely to come across a true botanist this week. Most bloom in the short lived spring/summers, and some are extremely pungent.

2.) Books by and large do not exist. Paper is reserved for letters and notes; books are published on electronic copies that can be bartered for by anyone with a technological hot-spot. (Short range information cloud sort of deal.) Journals do exist!

3.) Chris no! It would go poorly -- most these communities are tight knit enough that if people go missing, and they're not extreme loners who don't provide much of worth or often disappear for great periods of time, then the new people in the area will immediately become suspect, and all energy will turn suspicious and angry toward said new faces. Be careful, and only take the wise sort of victim. They can and will put up a fight!

[aequivoci]

So, what kind of information can Cross obtain from some casual flirting-while-questioning? Like simple surface information, or something deeper than that?

[initiates]

Simple surface information. The kind of deeper information he might be looking for won't be given up to casual anything; it's too dangerous for the Exiles. Now, if he wants an idea of sentiment over various groups, such as the UE and Initiative, casual flirting will give a sense of what people's general outlook is!

i'm sorry for the level of questions I end up asking STARTED OFF OKAY and downhill from there

[inhumanity]

1) what kind of delicious fruits and berries can you find?
2) also desserts?
3) also are there persimmons?

hahahaha it's all good

[initiates]

1) Various which are usually sold by individual trading groups who move between settlements, or larger interior markets in Exsilium (the big city). They will look similar, but be different from anything previously know, either smaller or hardier in order to survive in this current landscape. Nothing is fruiting in the wild right now.

2) Desserts are any sort that seems "almost like" something else, while using usually basic supplies! Not a lot of cream, butter is also a luxury, and most of either could be made from any milk in the world (reindeer is popular).

3) Yes, something persimmon-like may be found, a tree that's been adapted to survive in this current climate, blooming an fruiting in a much shorter period of time than the modern day tree does!

Re: QUESTIONS

[aequivoci]

Back!

1) What sort of answer(s) would Cross receive for asking about the scattered city ruins?
2) Will the scientists in the ice box allow him to ask questions about what they're doing and the animals under the ice's surface?

[crocodilesmiles]

Wait who are you...?

1) "Who knows, that's ancient history, are you one of those history people? Dangerous, be careful around there, the ground's as likely to drop out under you as anything else. Not much to scavenge! Mostly empty husks of buildings, sometimes we take stone and reuse it in our buildings." Anything along those lines! It's not recent, those ruins, and no one appears to be actively interested unless they're a creative mind, in which they'll spin all sorts of silly possibilities with Cross.

2) Sure! They'll be happy to talk him to death, as long as they don't need silence for some purpose related to what they're researching!

hello modness my old friend i've come to talk with you again

[inhumanity]

as per here, it seems we have

1) some people for getting info
2) some people for intercepting the smugglers
3) ...adequate talkers who might need to roll, like, a seven maybe to success?? I don't know. It's possible but also they're a bunch of screw-ups.

So anyway! If this is cool with all y'all (??) I suppose what we might do is get two groups going for getting info (one for time, one for place?), and then split up into two/three groups for intercept the smugglers (one for taking out lookouts, one for getting to the smuggled goods themselves?? and... an extra one?? who knows), and then Efforts on making contact with the Initiative.

Is this plan okay? What do you need us to do? What can we do? Do I really just like asking questions? Yes.

rolls in the darkness like a warm blanket

[crocodilesmiles]

YES GO FOR IT!

The rest I can answer soon but know that GO FOR IT first, and what can we do is a bit too broad -- tell me what you guys want to do, I can let you know how well it works/if anything needs revising!

Re: QUESTIONS

[ringthenoise]

NOW THAT WE'RE DUE BACK

-Raiden's AR vision can see structures beneath the snow and ice (if any) but not in detail. Would he see anything?

-What sort of environmental details can his visual analyzers pick up? (IE average temperature over their time there, unusual chemicals or substances in the ground/ice/air, etc). If there is nothing particularly unusual other than a cold climate that's fine!

-What do you suppose the endgame for this is, when we find the Initiative? DO we find them? We have a lot set up right now but it'd be useful to know this!

-Remember the holographic data chip in Raiden's left arm? What if-WHAT IF-he showed this Initiative that data (it records most of Raiden's work-related shenanigans since his canon update up through events on the moon).

Re: QUESTIONS

[crocodilesmiles]

1.) Yes! Bits and pieces of crumbled structures, things that look worn down by time, evidence that some may have fallen during bombings in the past.

2.) At this point in history, there's nothing overtly unusual except for the yetis, the temperatures are uniformly cold and most the area seems to be permanfrost inclined over anything else.

3.) Based on what you guys have been working up, my answer is yes -- my question is will anyone of the Transports seek to bargain for their services to be contracted to the Initiative in turn for access to a power source and area for the Transport Pad to be stabilized in? Rinth was tracking down the power source used by the major city, which funnels excess power out into the English Channel right now. For this, what I will assume if I don't hear back otherwise is that the Initiative is working with the Transports in hope of some unknown tool or weapon being used in their favor to work against the United Earth and break their chokehold on the world and it's remaining resources. If the Transport Pad isn't explained, then the Initiative will want a demonstration of what exactly it can do! (So let me know what you guys would want your characters to be offering. They're kind of unwittingly forming the initial contract simply by making contact. What are their basic terms?)

4.) If he does, it'll be convincing that there's a possibility they're being told the truth, if the Transports are being forthright with their time traveling abilities.