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In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
Channel: MurineCorps
JuntaSThompson: Fuck me.
JuntaSThompson: Okay, here’s the situation:
Card worked. Started small to test it, but kept making big withdrawls all the way up to Gaia.
Bank should have flagged it and probably did, which means the cards burned and so am I.
Going to go find a police station to turn myself in, I’m getting tailed and they’re waiting for me to bring the money back to you. Fucking lol.
JuntaSThompson: I found the card dropped on the street, withdrew the money to do a story on bank vulnerability with the full intent on returning it to the owner, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
JuntaSThompson: Took a photo of all the cash and messaged Claire already, so no disappearing acts.
JuntaSThompson: If I message anywhere but here first, it’s not me, I’m a sockpuppet
JuntaSThompson: Good luck
JuntaSThompson: Can’t do worse to me ‘cause I’m homeless lmao

Claire Beaufort is the Anthropozine’s staff lawyer. Kind of. Her work for the site isn’t paid, just a tax writeoff. Fortunately her real employer, the one that pays her bills, is the shipbreaker’s union. There’s rarely a conflict of interest, and Sobha herself is one of the site’s biggest donors. She’s happy to let Claire bill the union for hours worked with the Anthropozine, if the work justifies it - Sobha’s happy to get paid back in favours from an indie-punk journalism outlet.

Claire can be reached @HartlyDworkin. She’s in the main chat, but not Murine Corps.

Persephone:

Apartment 14’s on the fourth floor over paving stones - 50% odds a fall from this height would kill you outright.

Don’t take your cybernetics for granted here. They were designed to handle a microgravity environment. They might give you more protection than legs, but they also add a lot more mass.

The window ledges are slanted brick, and probably just facade rather than structural given what you’ve seen of the apartment. You’re not going to find out until you put your weight on it, though, and it’s a tough ask. Likewise, fire escape is the internal staircase. The building planners probably worried about people breaking in the exact way you’re planning on getting out.

There is a balcony on the second storey below. It’s an added-later renovation, but it’d definitely hold your weight. Not too far to jump, and it’d break your fall into two two-storey jumps. Hard, but definitely survivable.

All that you can get at a glance, and a glance is all you’re going to get. There’s still a cop trying to arrest you. Make your move.

[This’ll be two difficulty 13 Parkour rolls. If you fail either roll, mark a minor injury. If you fail by 3 or more, mark Harm. If you fail the first roll, make the second at Disadvantage - or make a plan to get out through the building from there.]

Black and 3V:

Lupawn grins. Chemistry and its lack, sure, but also game recognizing game. “You have fun.” He says, meaning it. “I’m going back out to find someone else trying to throw themselves in the deep end. Make sure somebody doesn’t go home tonight kicking themselves, you know?” He starts to dip. Amie though? Amie’s right where she wants to be.

Still, look around. Sure, the dance floors are packed, but still folks wander around the edges, on the outside of those mist curtains looking in. This place is intense. More than that, the presence of all these dates, all these hookups, all the wild hormones? Some of those folk who can’t break through look incredibly lonely.

What must it mean, to be in a place that’s meant just for you and people like you, and you’re still too scared to act on it? If this is where you go to find your group, it must mean a lot are coming in without anyone.

And yeah. Kink is out in the open here. Part of what makes this place so intense. Some folk are more than just naked. Pay enough attention and you might find the some folk on the dance floor are doing more than a bump-and-grind. Bunny ears poking out from under the edge of a fox-girl’s table, down there too long to just be looking for cutlery. Over there’s a tigress whose tail lifts up the bottom of her microskirt, high enough to see the gleam of a pink-jeweled plug underneath.

It’s not everyone, obviously. But it’s more than no one. Nobody’s getting thrown out over it.

There’s discourse, sure. The furry identity is seen as inherently sexualized, and there’s two camps of response to it - Find that empowering, or disavow and distance from it. Sirius Drinks makes it clear which camp it favours from every atom of its being.

Might be worth asking someone about. Or maybe that’s enough for you to draw your own conclusions here, if you're done talking for the night.

White:

Fiona has shambled into the kitchen. She’s pouring soylent into a blender, but now it’s mixed with vanilla yoghurt, blueberries, bananas and maple syrup. She doesn’t get it to ignore her body anymore, she gets it because it’s a great smoothie base for when you need to cram every vitamin, mineral, and just fluids back into the body she’s learned to appreciate.

Crystal’s still in the ensuite shower. More than room enough for two, and she’d probably appreciate help with all the shampoo and conditioner.

Now’s your chance to get either of them alone. To talk to Fiona about being a public figure, about being someone worth admiring. About being known. Or to talk to Crystal about what it would mean to change your body, about cracking the egg, about next steps. About what it means to create a social category for yourself to step into.

You don’t have to wait if you want to talk to both, though. Take breakfast back to bed, open the bathroom door, and you’ve got an open conversation.

Or you could take your leave now, and try to run this through the other colors. I don’t expect Blue and Orange to stay overnight, and today’s tenner job doesn’t start for a while yet.

Fiona would probably love the chance to meet some of your sisters. How does that idea play against White’s newfound feelings of possessiveness?

Actually, today’s tenner is an interesting one. The details from the client are vague: Pick up an item from a P.O box, take it to a site, and follow the instructions you find there. Muffi’s added her own note to it: It’ll be a computer part - maybe a few parts - and the instructions will be for where it’ll be installed in a warehouse rig. The client is using Headpattr instead of skilled IT labor for a reason, and she doesn’t like not knowing what it is.

Just follow the instructions and it’s an easy ten. Figure out the client, and Muffi will owe a favour.

Who’s going on that one?

Blue:

It’s a good play. Charlie Euler even hesitates, looking longingly at the red bean buns, before he leaves without another word.

Wendy sits down, in a way that makes it clear she’s picking a side. Still, the tension is palpable.

Starlight takes Blue’s hand for a moment. “I’m so sorry about that. Nobody sees this as your fault. I have no idea what’s gotten into him.”

Perez hums. “I have a theory.”

“Really?” Wendy asks sarcastically, and Starlight shoots her a glare. Perez misses the sarcasm.

“He might be ashamed, or guilty.” He suggests. “He was a prosecutor for years before AI got rights. I don’t think he talks to any that old.” He hesitates, and looks to Blue. “Sorry, I hope that wasn’t rude? I couldn’t think of a better word.”

Wendy goes pale. “I… didn’t think of that.” She admits, and Perez looks very proud of that. “I just thought the surveillance thing was spooky.”

Starlight rolls her eyes. “Why, because she didn’t wear a badge doing it?”

“Yes.” Wendy is harsh, here. This isn’t the first time they’ve had this argument.

Perez ignores them, and beams at you. “The sorbet is still a bit cold for me, but I really like the… what did you call it? Dough-share-bow? They’re really good”
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
Persephone:

There was a way this could have gone. A game of cat and mouse, of tension. Of not knowing if you’re the only one in here, while trying to find your objectives. A hissing fuse with no obvious bomb it leads to.

Let’s just cut to the good part, then.

A plainclothes detective is out in the open now, ripping their grey gym hoodie off and tossing it on the floor carelessly - it ends up on the drying mineral oil, and that’s going to stain. Everything about them screamed ‘cop’ though, even before the reveal of the badge danging from a chain against their chest. They’re a bit shorter than you, but they keep their eyes level when looking at you. No tilt of the head that could be read as intimidation or respect. Even down to a skintight wifebeater, you can’t get a guess on preferred pronouns. The shaved head and completely waxed body doesn’t help either.

There’s probably a Jet Li build under there, underneath the padding from too much junk food on long stakeouts. They tug at the studded bracelet covering their right wrist, and the hand spins 360 degrees before clenching into a fist. The synthetic skin job is clean, but the join from forearm to bicep isn’t a perfect match. Looks like the elbow is partially replaced, but effort was made to keep those muscles attached and useful.

There isn’t a practical reason for it. If you’re doing that much of a high-grade replacement job, a full replacement up to the shoulder would give them a lot more power and control. But you’ve seen this before, too. They want to know that the punch is still ‘theirs’. Their training, their will, not their bank account. Or their department’s.

Maybe that tells you something about them you can take advantage of.

“Officer in need of assistance,” they press a finger to their ear. “Break and entry in progress, on my position. Just the one, but they’ve got me cornered while their crew escapes. Apprehending now.”





3V and Black:

Lupawn offers a paw to Black for a bump. “Are we bringing her back, or are you coming to get her?” His question’s playful, and he asks with a smile. Amie jumps up and ruffles his hair, in mock outrage of the question, and Lupawn lets his head stay ruffled in penance.

The thing about furries is that it’s a total commitment to a bit. They’re a bit cringe to most, sure, because everything saturated in sincerity always is. Nobody’s becoming a wolf because they want to do an ironic subversion of the archetype - maybe in a few years, as counter-culture becomes culture. Now, though, defining the archetypes is too much rebellion to rebel against.

Amie and Lupawn live their own performances. Not like highschool theater kids perform for their drama classes, like theater kids perform for their friends. Feed on their energy and they’ll never run out of it. The entire rest of their lives is built around moments like this, nights like these.

Stand clear of the wagging tails.

Amie’s muscle and musk, soft fur with coarse ends like a sheep dog’s. Her timberwolf patterning is broken up by barely a strip of unbuttoned denim and the billowing grey shreds of what might once have been a gym top. Just run your hand against her and it’s like brillo pad. But push deep, run your hand through, or push your face deep in, and be rewarded with soft fluff that squeezes you back. She wants you to press and be pressed. She wants to cuddle and squish. She wants to lift and throw and chase and catch.

She is the wolf-as-primal-playmate. Her place in the dom/sub spectrum is the space of yes/and. Just as ready to lead as she is to follow, she waits to see if she is about to snatch 3V off into the night, or be carried off with her. She’s good with either. She watches Black, now, eager and attentive, pressed into 3V’s back and resting her chin on the top of her head. Ready to drag her off to the bar, or be dragged off to the bar. As long as someone’s getting squeezed on the way.

Lupawn plays it a bit harder. You can see it comparing their legs - while Amie has settled on modified ankles to suggest the vulpine pose and posture, Lupawn’s committed to the full werewolf, high knees and heels that end halfway up where their calf would be. The effect is way more intense and animalistic.

He’s living off the energy 3V’s throwing out right now, but keeps it to a tight leash with the introduction of Black. He’s working out how much fun he’s allowed to have, here. Is this another player in the scene, or the boundary marker? He casts himself as the lead, and he wants to show off for his audience. But only if you want that too.

Neither Amie nor Lupawn made the assumption that 3V came to dance with the one that brought her, tonight. Not here. They just know however this goes, they're having fun.

Blue and Orange:

Charlie gets up abruptly. “Sorry, Star, I… Early start tomorrow. You understand.”

Starlight blinks. “Ah, yes. Of course, thank you for coming, Charlie.”

“All mine, do it again soon. Just-” He spares one last, fearful look at Blue. “Like I said. Early start. That’s all.”

‘Robocop’ Perez hums thoughtfully. “I’m glad that’s all it is. You were acting like her being Mrs Everest’s old assistant was scaring you.”

“Daniel!” Charlie hisses through clenched teeth. His open palms hit the table hard enough to rattle everyone’s cutlery. “Shut up.”

There should be an awkward silence, but ‘Robocop’ pushes on, clearly confused. “Why? We all know that androids were used like that for years, and why. It’s not her fault, is it?” A pause. “I’m enjoying her company, and I think you’re being very rude.”

Starlight is caught off guard when she smiles at that, and has no idea what to do about it once it’s there. She opts for ducking her head, out of the fight.

Wendy was halfway out of her chair, too, but has the decency to look shamed by Perez’s question. Charlie’s still standing, though, defensive.

White:

You’re not the only one with stack overflows.

Fiona taps your shoulder. “Careful. She had that specially made to be extra sensitive. That combined with everything you just said…” she coughs into a fist. “Give her a few seconds. Then try not to trip.”

Try not to trip?

Then Crystal has your hand by the wrist, firm, and is walking out of the bar with you in tow, keeping a pace only a half step below a jog. An amused Fiona shadows.

“No ropes, no props, no teaming up on Fiona tonight.” Crystal- well, she has the too-even tone of someone trying not to be angry. At least, the too-even tone of someone trying too hard to keep themselves in check. “We are going back to our place. We are going to make this very special. And you, dear, are going to keep talking.”

“Before you get too disappointed,” Fiona’s fingertips brush the back of your neck, and then down your free arm, ending in a warm squeeze of your hand. “There’s always next time.”

Here are some pertinent details of Apartment 7,118 Josephine Baker street, Robert Frost district of Modern Aphrodite.

  • The place is fastidiously clean and organized. Fiona apologizes for her mess, which is a laptop charging on a glass coffee table with two used mugs on coasters.
  • The kitchen is similarly shining, to the point where it’s difficult to tell how frequently it’s used. The bean grinders, roaster, steamer, infuser and cold brewer imply a daily use that the countertops don’t. On that note, Crystal is very confident about the countertop’s ability to hold your weight, no matter how hard you press against it.
  • The size of the bed could best be described as “ambitious”, but its owners are feeling inspired.
  • The walk-in wardrobe is three-fifths Crystal’s by volume, a fifth Fiona’s, and the rest is ‘for guests’. So don’t worry about not being able to find everything you came in with. Find anything you like?
  • The apartment is wall-to-wall with original artworks, each complete with gallery placards describing the pieces. Crystal makes a game of flipping up-and-coming talent, putting her money where her mouth is on who’s going to ‘make it’, but by her own admission her heart’s more in the buying than the selling. The placards are Fiona’s touch, naturally. A photo album on the coffee table, behind the charging laptop, remembers the come-and-gones.
  • Crystal had some things she was supposed to do in the morning but she can move them, they weren’t that important, actually.
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
White:

Crystal pulls out two business cards. Iridescent ink on charcoal cardstock. The back lists her email, phone number, and her title: Founder and CEO. “One’s for you to keep.” She winks. “I get more jealous than she does.”

“Please,” Fiona looks at you, here, “She wants to tie me up and see what you do with me.”

It would be wrong to say that Crystal’s mask slips. A mask implies a falseness, a concentrated effort. It would be more correct to say that even the most graceful and effortless figure skater will trip if you stick a foot out in front of them. “Dearest?” She says in a warning tone.

“I’d also like that, just so you know.” Fiona raises her hand to call the bartender over. She must be a regular here, a water buffalo in a waistcoat already knows what drink to put in front of her. He’s already pouring. “We’re both switches, but she only ever wins when she has help ganging up on me.”

Crystal clears her throat. She’s still off balance, unable to look White in the face anymore. The fur doesn’t entirely hide the flushed cheeks. “I’m not used to her being so bold.” This explanation comes with her trying to unball her hands from fists against her side. She’s getting some success.

“I’m not used to meeting my heroes. I only recognized you because I did a book about the aftermath of BlackSun. Nobody read it, but I think it was worth writing if it means I could know who you are, now.” She’s grinning. She takes a sip of her beer to compose herself. She’s a messy drinker, foam catches across her top lip and she doesn’t think to wipe it. “Everything you just said is a massive turn-on for both of us. I used to be completely body dysmorphic. I would dissociate really hard whenever I remembered my brain is attached to the rest of me. Used to drink a lot of meal replacers so I didn’t have to feel myself eating, that kind of thing. ” She sips her beer again, to watch White’s reaction. Not one note of embarrassment or regret in her voice. Still, she betrays something when she touches the polished chrome of the interfacing connection in the back of her neck. “I came here to find other people who hated their bodies, too. The pretty unicorn here gets off on helping with that. She’s pretty good at it, too”

“Listen,” Crystal’s hands clench at her side, she pouts and she stomps. “Learning and becoming my best self was such a rapturous experience for me, that I cannot help but appreciate the feeling of re-experiencing it through others. Is that such a crime?”

“Only if you’re so embarrassed to be called out on it you don’t tie me up and throw me to a fucking dragon, otherwise it’s really sweet.” Fiona sips her beer again. “Our place?”

Blue and Orange:

There is a shift. A pressure that has been building under the surface of the conversation, released with a shocking suddenness. Call it dinner plate tectonics.

Charlie Euler lets his own sandwich fall to the plate like it’s a serpent. Wendy Cummins takes a deeper, more thoughtful bite of hers. ‘Robocop’ Perez nods thoughtfully, and makes that humming noise again.

“How interesting.” His voice is flat, but unlikely to be sarcastic. “But the Florey’s Floozie case?”

“The forensic accountant learned that it wasn’t our division’s case any more, so it was pulled.” Starlight clears her throat, still taking curious glances back at Blue. Still, it’s something she feels safer to say, now.

“Right.” Perez nods. Stops. “I wasn’t told why.”

“No, it was…” Starlight trails off.

Perez’s eyes widen. He looks, for a moment, proud of himself. “Oh! I get it. It was a politicians horse, wasn’t it? Something like that. That makes sense.”

There’s a sound as Charlie’s knee kicks up against the table from how hard he jumps. Wendy’s face is in her hands, and she shakes her head into them. Starlight takes an uneasy breath out.

“Please, Daniel, some tact.”

“What?” He blinks, looking at Blue. “She knows how this works, doesn’t she?”

“She might. But I’m not sure you do.” Starlight scolds, but the frustration bleeds out of her voice. “Please. Drop it this time? For me?”

Perez blinks slowly, reading the room. He takes a slow bite of his sandwich. “I was enjoying that case, is all.” He mutters. “I wanted to explore my illegal twins theory.”

“Sorry,” Charlie cuts over, addressed to Blue, “You’re saying you knew Dr Urosaki? It sounds like you have a story, there. Did you… meet him through your work?”

The Everest name still demands fear and respect, it seems. He can’t ask what he actually wants to.

Persephone:

No traps on the door. Whoever was in here - is in here? - had different priorities.

The living room’s a hurricane site. Knife marks in the couches, the plastic fibres torn. Loose floorboards ripped up and holes put in the walls.

It’s hard to tell what the shape of the room was, before. You can tell the desk in the back right of the room used to be in the back left, though. A picture frame of a younger Marco in a graduation gown is shattered on the left side floor, the picture ripped from the frame. He’s the only one in it, no friends or parents. Surrounding it are programming books - thick, heavy, not searched through, just ripped from the desk’s shelf to make it lighter to move. The electrical outlet is ripped from the wall, there. The desk is foreign to its final location, pressed against an LED wall panel.

The smell’s stronger in here, but it’s mixing with other things you do recognize, now. A thick pool of congealed mineral oil cuts through, here, from where it leaks from a shattered aquarium and soaks into the textbooks on the floor around it. Removing the desktop from its liquid cooling rig was not done delicately.

Burglars haven’t been through yet. The stereo system’s still here, as is the electronic drum kit, and those headphones still plugged into them look like they cost a week’s wages. Might want to take those yourself, actually.

It demands a question of what you’re not seeing. Sometimes there’s context to know what’s missing. Two monitors, but no desktop, no router. An empty wall bracket mounting for a TV. Why the TV? And what’s missing that’s not obvious?

Kitchen around a blind turn to your left. Bathroom to your right, closed door. Bedroom is behind a half-open door in the back right of the room, pitch-black. Marco keeps his medication in the bathroom, and the laptop’s probably in the bedroom.

All the windows are to your left, but you’re too high up in the building for any of them to be viable to escape. Curtains all shut tight. Whoever controls access to the front door controls the only way out. Right now, that’s you. If someone is in here, you just cornered them.

[Three rolls here.
Quick + ACAB to do this in stealth, meet or beat 10. The best you can do is be silent. If you succeed, no problems. If you fail, was it because you were tired, sloppy, careless, made a mistake, or just really bad luck?
Clever + Thieves Tools + ACAB, meet or beat 8. If you succeed, I’ll tell you what you find, and you can tell me how you found it.
Clever to search the place. Hit 6 to find what you already know to look for, meet 9 to be more thorough. You can use ‘Astrodemolition’ as a bonus here if you work it into your answer in the post after this. Same deal. I’ll tell you what you find.

If you succeed at the stealth roll but fail at one of the searches, I’ll let “break stealth” be your “succeed, but with consequences”.

If something’s going to happen here, it’s going to be fast. Now’s your chance to get your bearings. Eye a weapon, assume risks and make an approach.]

3V:

Everything’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

You’ll probably be expected to write a story about this later, though. Might be worth remembering. Work out an angle. Or maybe that’s the last thing on your mind, right now.

Black:

You are under no obligation to help 3V actually do work. “Do what thou wilt” shall be the whole of the law.

Pink and Green:

Here’s what Pink can watch happen, out the window of the locked down apartment.

Numb’s busy the second their van arrives, a beach camper leaking acrid smoke. A tanned blonde mop-head that ends in frayed curls kicks out of it, shoulder to hip covered in black canvas bags. Stoned out of their senses. They stumble, sway and trip the entire way through the street to the front of the building, bumping into half the news crews you can see, before you lose sight of them.

The Numb that arrives at the secured apartment, though, is clear-eyed and solid. Through the door, and the bags are rapidly being unzipped, and batteries are getting pulled from every pocket of their cargo pants.

“Only thing I couldn’t get was time to charge, and I was doing a burlesque gig last night.” They explain. “I’ll give ‘em back if they’re still here later, don’t worry about it.”

“You do you.” York takes a hit of a vape and passes it. “I don’t sweat taking from vultures.”

“Yeah, well.” Numb’s got the chairs out, now, first camera on a tripod and checking the angles. “Only keep what you need. Where’s our guy?” Pause. “We got preferred title yet? Picking ‘guy’ over ‘man’ here.”

“Marco’s drying his fur in the bathroom. Waking himself up a bit. You’ll love him, you can ask when he gets out. I can sit for him if you’re doing framing. He’s about my size.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Numb agrees, fiddling with a camera while York moves to the chair. “Okay. How big is this?”

“By the time this is done, we’re going to get every cop on Aevum fired. And maybe we can get it to stick.” York cricks his neck. “Ready to get even, for every search, for all the stolen shit, for every beating?”

“I-” Numb stops. “Don’t say shit if you don’t mean it.”

York’s gives the camera a smile so toothsome it throws off the white balance. Even his bottom teeth are bared. “Too happy you’re here for this.”

There are no great speeches left to make here, unless you want to be the one to make it. No more great moments. No problems to solve. It’s a day of simple work. A day of someone else navigating a witness through explaining things you already know. A day spent in a place you and Persephone have both made sure is safe for this. This moment is inert until it has an audience for a reaction.

But it’s still history. One day, people will write books about this, and a paragraph will be about your place in this moment. The next few hours are not an interesting thing to experience, but people will be interested that you were here to experience it. Because they’ll know how this turned out in the end, because this will be how they learned what you already know.

As Marco towels himself dry in the bathroom, as Numb aligns their cameras for the payload, as York clears his throat and rehearses his questions. How do you leave your mark on this moment? Is there anything from the interview that you want to capture?
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
Everyone:

Channel: Main
NeonCzolgoz: @everyone All hands.
  • Anthropozine has been Locked. Only Admins may post.

NeonCzolgoz: We’re about to cover something dangerous, and I mean dangerous. I’m not fucking about here. This is going to make what Persephone just went through look like baby’s first steps.
NeonCzolgoz: This is war and I need Captains. I don’t want obedient soldiers. I need an officer corps.
NeonCzolgoz: I need people who I can trust to follow me to the gates of Hell, but not because I told you to. I need people who’ll keep going without me.
NeonCzolgoz: No conscripts.
NeonCzolgoz: That’s not what any of you signed up for.
NeonCzolgoz: No public sign ons. DMs only, and I’ll invite you to the sub-group. Peer pressure is bullshit. The site needs to keep running like normal through this, so if you don’t want to get dragged into this, there’s still plenty of work for you here. I know some of you literally can’t afford this, especially if you’ve got family. We’ll keep you out of it.
NeonCzolgoz: I mean it.
  • Anthropozine is Open

NumbToNothing: holy shit

Channel: Murine Corps.
  • Persephone has been added to group
  • November has been added to group

NeonCzolgoz: The few, the proud, the brave.
NeonCzolgoz: Hopefully not too few.

Pink:

“Top of my head, Junta’s a guarantee. Numb’s a crapshoot. Trust them to want to do the right thing, don’t think they can afford it. Errant would be too much to ask for. ProvFick’s anyone’s guess. She’ll want to, but she’s already spinning a lot of plates. Even if 3V tries to sign on, I’m keeping her out of this. She’s too high-profile. At least I’ve already got two of my top picks involved.” He checks his DMs but keeps the screen from your line of sight. “Shit. Eli wants in and I can’t afford to say no.”

Channel: Murine Corps.
  • NumbToNothing has been added to group
  • JuntaSThompson has been added to group

JuntaSThompson: Heading to Ares. I know you said Gaia, but Ares is more believable. If the charge goes through, I’ll make my way to Gaia from there and keep making small purchases.
JuntaSThompson: If.
NumbToNothing: What’s this about?
NeonCzolgoz: Numb, just the person I need.
NeonCzolgoz: everything for a between-two-ferns job, next two hours.
NumbToNothing: Got it. Where?
NeonCzolgoz: Persephones.
NumbToNothing: Are there still newsvans out there?
NeonCzolgoz: Not as many, why?
NumbToNothing: There all night?
NeonCzolgoz: oh lol yeah got it they’re all half asleep go mad

York looks back up from his phone. “I still don’t know all of what’s going on, so I need to prep with Marco. I need you to find a shooting space for me. Empty apartments, a spot in the basement we can block off, just somewhere less incriminating. Staying here’s safer than moving, and I don’t want to make any stops before Selene when we go. ”

[Pink! I’m giving you rolls here, to act as prompts rather than challenges. As such, use whatever bonuses you can justify, and failures are free to be fun. All challenges are difficulty 8:

  • Checking for empty apartments. On Success, she correctly finds one. On Failure, she’s wrong about it.
  • Checking other areas. On Success, she finds an appropriate, hidden part of the building that can be secured. On Failure, something or someone prevents it, be it the space not existing, maintenance workers, or a suspicious building manager.
  • Pink runs into some of Elodie’s neighbors. On Success, they’ll remember her positively. On Failure, they’ll just remember her.


The consequences of any failure may come now, or the consequences are deferred for later in the scene. You’re also free to reintroduce any relevant sisters to the scene who are free to join it.]

Persephone:

We are going to skip over a bit of time, here. A few things happened that are interesting enough to hear Elodie’s perspective on.

I would like to hear about who recognized you on the train, and what gave it away? Who were they, and did they talk to you? Did you talk to them?

Your kid messaged you, too. You regret something about how it went. What is it?

Finally, you ended up at the door of Apartment 14, 272 Bostrom street. The building's worse than yours, but the places are bigger. For people with more money and lower standards, or at least, reasons to want a lot more space even if it comes with black mould. Tell me how you made your approach that led you here, now, staring at a door loosely replaced after being forced open. It looks like a shimmy and a rush job, not like a boot, a shoulder or a ram. Someone cared about not being obvious about this, but they cared more about being fast. Impossible to tell how long ago.

They might even still be in there.

There is an indescribable smell in the air here. Not obviously pleasant or unpleasant yet, it's like hearing music from the house across a parking lot and working out if you like the song or not. That might mean it's truly unfamiliar, or it might only mean that you're not close enough.

Blue and Orange:

Things have been going well. The work friends are interesting, and more importantly, comfortable enough to forget themselves when they let details of work start to slip.

Starlight’s just moving the conversation on from the big fight over whose jurisdiction the CasanovAI problem was to prosecute. A medical ethicist designing a machine learning algorithm that could predict which therapists were most likely to be taken in front of the ethics committee before harm could happen. This wasn’t a problem until it was discovered that the ethicist had also added a protocol that would send the details of the most likely candidates to his personal phone, flagged as ‘dating pool’. For spurious reasons related to proprietary code, the hot potato had briefly landed on her desk.

“I’m shocked I’m not working on Yggrasil right now.” Starlight pokes at the food in front of her without paying attention to it. “They poached Orochi Group’s head geneticist this time, but before he could get results. They’ve been trying for weeks to find out if they can claim ‘knowing what fails’ as trade secrets. I thought they’d have something by now.”

“Mm. Unsurprised. Research methodology can’t be protected. Legal for a man to know what not to try. NDA ironclad, since he doesn’t suggest product paths he knows are failures, not stating successes. The races are keeping me busy.” The tall thin man, Daniel Perez, is nicknamed ‘Robocop’. All of the guests use it when referring to him, not all of the guests use it affectionately. “Yes.”

“At least they’re a bit interesting.” Sighs junior prosecutor Wendy Cummins, a medium-sized woman in a small-size dinner jacket, blonde hair in a tight bun with a plastic sheen. Even now, prepared for being ambushed by cameras looking for a bad angle and giving none. “Today I’m dealing with a contractor hosting the industry design standards for disability ramps, violating their license. Just an internally hosted document that someone else found and shared. Now we’ve got pirated ramps.” She snorts. “Ramps. Imagine looking at a wheelchair access and caring if its breeding papers are in order.”

“Do they even breed horses now?” The chubby man at the end of the table asks. He looks like bleached dough, white pants, white silk shirt, bright white hair and eyes pressed by his cheekbones into a smiling squint. Charlie Euler, apparently. “Decanting papers sounds a bit more lively. Always said it, back when were still fighting over whether the date of birth counts from the first synthesis of the genome or the first heartbeat or what have you.” That would be about forty years ago.

Starlight sighs.

“Hmm.” ‘Robcoop’ hums, and there’s quiet. He looks up from his plate. “What happened to the inquiry into Florey’s Floozie?” There’s an uncomfortable silence. “I was waiting for the forensic accountants to finish their work, but then it disappeared from my active cases. Did somebody else get it?”

And this, Blue and Orange, is when the other guests give you glances to remind themselves that they are not entirely among their inner circle tonight.

What have you been doing until now, and how do you play this? Where are you at this table? Also; What did you cook?

White:

Fiona looks up from her book again and puts it down for real. You officially appear to be more interesting - or at least, what you’ve asked is. She starts typing on her phone, instead, eyes darting up every few taps, to make sure she doesn’t miss anything.

Crystal, though. Crystal purrs at the touch. There is no resistance to the turns, to the touch - only encouraging twists to go further and see more. “Those aren’t the questions I expected,” she moves her head as she smiles, so your fingertips trace the curve of her lips as they move, “because I never expect anyone to ask the right questions.”

“We all start with realizing we are not who we want to be, and that always comes before we learn what we want.” She asks, as she makes the same observations of White. Her dress, her construction, her mannerisms. Crystal doesn’t need to direct like she’s being directed - in those actions, White is speaking as much as she is listening. “It was like being an artist, if you’ve ever had the chance? You take what you admire from others, and learn what you want from what you find worth taking. Then you find an absence that no-one else can fill. You experiment. You learn why nobody else has been able to fill it, and you do better.”

She takes a step back, creating distance, creating void. The tilt of her head, the mischief of her grin, the twinkle in her eyes. She expects you to fill that absence. She hopes for patience, first. She’s showing off. “Everything is intent. That is the hardest part. You can’t benefit from experimentation until you know what it is you want. Do you know?”

Fiona interrupts, looking up from her phone. “Excuse me if this is a rude question, but did you used to be a dragon?”

3V:

I apologize, you’re clearly in the middle of something, but I thought this might be a good time to ask about your store; Who’s your favourite employee, and who have you put in charge of the shop while you’re away? And if the answer isn’t the same person, why not?
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
Orange:

“I haven’t.” Here Starlight is caught flickering between a number of awkward confessions, caught trying to work out the least of them. You’ve dusted her bookshelves, and you doubt she’s bought a work of fiction since law school - and even then, those yellowed spines are mostly young-adult comfort food. There’s no accounting for what’s in her digital library, sure, but bookshelves aren’t obsolete, they remain a critical form of expression. No other decoration makes such a profound statement of their owner.

Hers is filled with the biographies of scientists and technical histories, but no science-fiction, classic or otherwise. If she does read any fiction, she’s not sentimental enough to get it in print.

And that, it seems, clinches the argument. Orange is following social rules that Starlight is ignorant of. This is no longer a bargain; this is a faux pas. And just like that, Orange climbs another notch.

Starlight clears her throat. “I’m not trying to impress anyone. I think everyone’s just going to be happy it’s not pizza again. It’s…” She rubs her forehead with the heel of her palm, massaging it hard. “It’s work friends, but it’s not meant to be a work thing. I’m so sorry, you’re obviously trying to help, and I obviously need it.”

Who are you bringing?

Pink and Persephone:

"Well yeah," York says to Elodie with a smirk, "Whole point is I'm going to be lying, aren't I?" Blink and you'd miss it, York’s across the room with one arm around Marco’s shoulder. There are stars in his eyes, and a carnival barker’s grin. “I’m the editor of the Anthropozine. I’ve heard you’re going to be our fulcrum.”

Marco blinks, trying to work out if he’s just too tired to understand, or if York genuinely didn’t make sense. “Fulcrum?”

“Some Greek guy once said, give me a big enough lever and a fulcrum to place it, and I can move the world. You’re that fulcrum. You’re also my Dreyfus,” and he twists Marco by the shoulders to face Pink, “And her Prometheus.”

Marco blinks and rubs his eyes again. “Okay. That makes sense.” It sounds half-sincere, but it’s a very valiant half that means it.

York looks the mouse up and down. He pulls Marco’s hoodie down for a moment to assess him, then pulls it back up. “Alright, you’re already camera-ready. The dead-mouse-walking look sells you as authentic. We’re going to need six hours of interview, then someone’s going to figure out how to drop you down to Earth. You think you can do that for me?”

“What?” York’s talking too fast for him - Marco’s eyes widen as he catches up to what he’s hearing.

“Going to need some things from you first,” York plows through, “I’m going to need your home address, I’m going to need the contact details of all your closest friends and family, and I’m going to need access to your banking details.”

Marco blinks and looks past York, over at Elodie. “What?”

In an instant, York sweeps the mouse into a big hug and squeezes. It’s a shockingly sudden and deeply sincere gesture, with Marco’s head resting on York’s shoulder and a hand rubbing just behind his huge, round ears. York just holds the mouse in silence for a few seconds. Then; “Listen, Marco. I’m really sorry about everything that’s about to happen.”

York breaks the hug, and Marco sways on his feet as he finds his own balance again. “What’s going to happen?”

But York’s already focused on you two, again. “Someone needs to go to his place and sweep it for everything. Drugs, storage media, laptops, cell phones. Take lots of pictures, before and after the sweep. I want to know what’s already missing, and what they’re going to attack this guy with. What’s the ‘he’s no angel’ narrative going to be? Then we need to hit everyone he’s close to. I’ll message Junta to clone a debit card and get him to try and buy something from a convenience store in Gaia, see if his accounts have been frozen yet." He checks his phone and remembers he's taken the battery out of it. Puts it back in his pocket without fixing it. "Someone else can figure out a way to smuggle our guy here to Selene safely.” He grimaces. “Persephone, I think you should do the apartment sweep. Go in ready for a fight. Fast as you like.”

That wakes Marco up. "Apartment 14, 272 Bostrom street, in Judith Butler. Apollo. Modern Apollo, I'll write it down. I've got a laptop and a desktop, all my external storage should be gone already. If you find any there, it might be someone else's, so don't plug it in to anything. Don't check. I keep all my medication in the bathroom mirror." Then, with a meek voice but hands balled into fists at his side, "Do I really need to go to Earth? Can't I stay here and, and fight? Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"

York's firm on that one, but he looks to you two for backup - or dissent.

White:

“Heavens.” The unicorn smiles, and her companion stops in her train of thought, like a concrete bollard stops a cyclist at the bottom of a hill. “Another one.”

The companion looks up from the book with an amused smile. “You do like to collect them, don’t you?”

“Them, she says,” The unicorn directs to you with an amused tone. “How soon she forgets. I’m Crystal. And you and I are going to have a wonderful tête-à-tête the moment you can figure out whether you want to be me, or have me. Take your time. This one’s good at sharing.”

“You’ll have better luck with ‘have’ than ‘be’.” The companion raises an eyebrow, finding her place in her book again. “She has personality like Rembrandt has paintings. In this curator’s opinion, anyway.”

“You can see why I keep her around.” Crystal brushes a tress of her mane out of her eye, twirls a finger through it to curl it with the main body flowing down behind her ear. The result is perfect, even without a mirror, even though the gesture is unconscious. “She must like you, though. She went with a Dutch master, and not a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.”

“Fiona.” The companion says, giving a two-finger wave while focusing on her reading. “I’m not jealous, no. Feel free to pretend I don’t exist.”

“Now.” Crystal is within arm’s reach now. She trails fingertips from White’s elbow to her wrist, and then that impossibly soft hand draws White’s hand towards her lips, to kiss the back of her hand in a gesture that the unicorn elevates from old-fashioned to timeless. “You have my attention, but I don’t have your name.”
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
Originally posted in-character under a spoiler tag, I'll also be posting our very special guest's surprise contribution here to make it easier to find later.

Once upon a time, in the middle of a localized economic boom, three men came perilously close to bringing music to its knees. They stumbled into a recording booth with all the seeming of vague shadows filled only with the dreams of an insular peninsula and its strange warbly, crooning ballads drinking the waters of rebellion and tasting the first sweet, sour, bitter, salty (and umami) flavors of global culture. It was a beautiful moment, the kind that’s mostly impossible anymore. Not that people had become less creative since they’d driven themselves into space, but because corporate reach stretches so much farther now that the kind of isolation that gave birth to this kind of moment has basically been made extinct. You’re born with a list of the latest megahits beamed into your brain, and it’s on you to forget them if you can. Oppression wears a different boot these days. That’s all.

But at the time it was pure indulgence. They sang about love, loss, schoolyard bullying, and the need for the government to do more to support the people, often in the same song. And they did it wearing absurd poofy coats in the kinds of colors nobody around them would be caught dead in. With silly, feathered hairstyles and flashy makeup and shoes that cost more than everything in their recording studio. They put together music videos hinting at an elaborate story in a cosmology deep enough to bury all of your sins. They sang. They spit peppy and peppery bars in equal measure. They put it all to flashy street-inspired dance moves, culminating in a flashy showstopper historians dubbed “the Tornado Spin.” In short, they threw together the aesthetics of the tiny bubble they’d been trapped inside of all their lives with all of the excesses of the wider world without caring how any of it fit together, and without bothering to chase after any kind of consistent sound. Until one day they got bored and quite literally disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving the message “We have shown you everything we can try” and then being spirited away to who knows where, never to be seen or heard from again.

All of this is ancient history. For all that the children of that little country cried when these mysterious heroes left them, and for all that they made bridges collapse in their wake, shut down schools for almost a week, and sent several companies into stock freefall, all that’s left of them now is a single ancient video file in ugly, grainy 240p on a decaying hard drive owned by a very fidgety archivist. It doesn’t even matter, I don’t know why I bothered telling you any of this, except that I wanted you to understand that the imitators that eventually gave rise to the banal monster called (of all things) Bulletcore were actually chasing something that was beautiful and real, once.

Popularity’s not a death sentence, necessarily. But, and you can ask a celebrity gamer owner of a theme cafe about this if you happen to know one, the more of it you’ve got the harder it is to hold onto what got you started on the path in the first place. The music scene in that little peninsula-shaped bubble flourished for a while.

And… when I say it ‘flourished’, I don’t mean that it was some renaissance moment that lifted the whole of human culture up or anything like that. Some of it was good, a lot of it was very awful to listen to, and right from the start it had to wriggle through the fingers of a lot of corporate meddling just to survive. It thrived in the sense that chasing an indie kaleidoscope of ideas gave a lot of opportunities for a lot of different people who’d been living under the same slowly collapsing bubble to express themselves and their home in a lot of very different ways. But the more you do something, the better you get at it, generally speaking. And the more refined it becomes, the prettier it gets, the more you start to see eyes that’d normally slide right on past this weird mess turn and stop to watch, instead. And you loop. You focus on improving, which means getting more refined, which pushes you closer and closer toward mass appeal, and finally down the pitfall where your niche is now the size of the Pacific Ocean and suddenly it’s not niche at all, now is it?

‘Bulletcore’ refers to the so-called genre of music you hear softly piped through all of Aevum’s trendiest hangout spots (and the streets. And from random ad spaces while you’re trying to watch a cooking tutorial. And interspersed through your music streaming if you’re using the major platforms without paying for the Premium Plus Plus [clap clap clap] package. Listen to what you like, whenever you like. But also, this!), but more specifically it’s a callback to Bulletproof Boys, the first group of absurdly pretty boys to wind up going crazy stupid viral enough that they rocketed all the way up to mainstream.

Their original concept was a chaotic mess that can be most easily described as ‘hardcore, spiritual hip hop’. They presented as hard and edgy while rapping about the soft beauties of the soul, or when that got boring, about how pretty girls were and the degree to which they wanted to take them home and fuck them. And in the original tradition of the genre, this did not always happen in separate songs. Some of their more popular early work ditched the concept completely for a series of cyphers that amounted to nothing but juicy diss tracks of all of their contemporaries who’d looked down on them for their lack of polish. They were themselves, nothing more or less, until a lucky remix put them full-blast in the public eye.

On Aevum, but really anywhere a megacorporation is allowed to exist, diversity is a checkmark to be ticked off and then aggressively rubbed back off the ledger again once it had served its purpose. The Bulletproof Boys were given funding, equipment, new wardrobes, and practice spaces. They worked, they got better, they refined. And as they got more popular, by way of a lot of deep pocketed “encouragement” their hip hop turned gushier, gummier, and all in all poppier until half of their members had been reduced to backup dancers for want of quality singing voices. They were the first, but they weren’t the last.

Every time a big name group washes corporate, the lost souls that found a little solace listening to their weirdo music bounced to the next name they could find. People can’t really help themselves, honestly. The talk, the hype, the lifting up, it’s almost like they called the clawed fingers out of the sky to pluck their heroes off the ground and carry them up into heaven, where the only noise coming back down from the clouds sounded like Tuesday night at the Clarinet Jamboree.

It’s been happening for over a hundred years. You might have heard about the most recent, and possibly most tragic version of the story yet. FAEWYL-D, an all-girl ensemble known partly for their death-metal-by-way-of-trap sound and extreme love of tight faux-leather dominatrix costumes but much more prominently for their extremely detailed storytelling, were the talk of the entire underground music scene for almost three entire months. Every time they released a song, it came with a recorded stage play that slowly told the story of a traveling group of faeries on a journey to find the kind of magic that would give them all wings to fly with. Sometimes their adventures were fun, sometimes they were hard and scary, and pretty much every time two or more of them would wind up kissing. Sometimes they would chase a rumor only to find out it was a trick, and other times they’d have to save a cafe full of high school girls from a succubus who devoured happiness from everyone she touched. Sometimes instead of a song there would just be a fifty three minute lore dump about the world they lived in and the dangers that inhabited it, or hints about the corners of the magic seal that could be put together to grant a fairy her wish.

FAEWYL-D had just started telling their most tantalizing story yet, about a night under a blood red moon where most of the faeries had fallen asleep but for their leader, silently watching over them. She was approached by a witch, who praised the leader and offered her wings in exchange for the hearts of all her friends. And, to the shock of everyone, she agreed! The story turned to a tale of blood and betrayal, as the fairy princess Dami broke into crocodile tears and accused her best friend SuA of the exact betrayal she herself was guilty of, holding out her blood soaked hand as proof of the covenant.

Two weeks later, Dami appeared by herself having ditched her entire aesthetic for a colorful magical girl outfit. It almost felt like part of the story, and the bubbly music she sang and danced to had people wondering if this was some sort of commentary about the corporate power washing that happened to every good group once they got too close to the sun. But then the next song was much the same, and the next one after that. The lore dumps stopped, the stage plays got shorter and easier to predict, and then they stopped too.

The other members came back, minus two. FAEWYL-D was rebranding to Mynx, they said. They were so excited! But Dami was going by “Emma” now. And SuA by “Alice”. JiU by “Lily”. Rachel and Della and Monica couldn’t contain their giggles. There were no kisses. And thousands of people grumbled and punched the closest thing to them all at once as they realized, together, that they were listening to Bulletcore. Again. Fucking again!

There’s not much point to this story either, I guess. “Megas steal your soul if they get inside your front door” isn’t exactly a hot take these days. But, for those of us who can’t help but bend our ears for the sound of the next song strange enough for our wicked hearts to dance to, just remember to be wary. When you do something, you can’t help getting better at it. When you improve, you refine. And then you get popular. And… Well, up here, none of us are very far away from flying too close to the sun.

–Errant
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
Orange:

Starlight smiles supportively at a happily burbling Sarah when she watches for approval. Whenever Sarah turns back to vigorously conduct her masterpiece, though, the smile tightens like piano wire, and she rakes a finger through wavy black hair that shines red where it catches the light.

When Sarah’s performance is done, Starlight gives an enthusiastic applause and scoops her daughter up in a big hug, and her daughter burbles in absolute delight. Whatever ulterior motives you might have, so far this has been a genuine kindness.

Still holding her daughter in one hand, Starlight pulls her phone from her jeans and confirms the ‘ten’, then turns it around to show you. “I know it’s been a long day,” she apologizes, “but you’ve been so good with Sarah. Could you stay until after dinner? Can you cook? I can do double-rate.” Her phone is back in her pocket already, and she’s holding Sarah out in front of her, smiling. “I never like separating her, from people she likes.”

This would be surprising to hear, if you only knew that she was an easy tenner. But now you know she doesn’t bring herself to check on her babysitter’s work, and Sarah’s still too young to say. That performance was the difference between being a good babysitter, and being known as being a good babysitter.

“Sorry,” Starlight apologizes before you can answer. This is why she’s been running her hand through her hair, this is what she’s been rehearsing since the moment she saw how happy her daughter was. “I’m having some colleagues… some friends,” she corrects herself, “over. I know how long you’ve already been working, but it would mean a lot to me if you would stay a bit longer?”

Headpattr wouldn’t let you, officially. Work apps that try to skirt labor laws get shut down very quick. What she is asking you to do is illegal, and she knows it. This means she is asking you not as an employee, but as a person who would do this as a favour.

Orange smiles and curtsys. She likes the gesture; she has the poise of a ballet gesture as she makes it. "I regret to inform you that I cannot do so in my capacity as a Headpattr employee," said Orange. She lets the moment linger for a moment before making a play: "Section 14.3 of the Android Relations Code prevents me from working outside the legally mandated human maximum."

It's an unexpected argument to use in this situation and it reframes the entire scenario. By referring to that particular piece of legal code Orange has just demonstrated that she's got an understanding of law that goes beyond the basic. She's also made the point that she possesses the endurance and willingness to continue working long hours, and so the request is not considered an imposition. This is not an exhausted girl at the end of her shift, this is an intelligent AI doing her best to operate within a human context.

"In my capacity as family friend and house guest?" she said. "Entirely different scenario. There are but two complications: One, you will have to set out an additional table space so that one of my sisters might join you for dinner, and two, you will have to lend us some proper clothing."

This is the connection in Orange's mind. Upgrade herself from contractor maid to untrained but brilliant legal mind who can double as a babysitter.


Starlight flinches. It’s a lot of mental work and a very short time to do it, especially with Orange waiting on the answer. Still, Sarah makes an argument on your behalf that is impossible for her mother to ignore. A quiet, happy burble while pointing at you.

“You’re free to help yourself to anything in the wardrobe, of course. Your sister though…” she trails off, looking at her daughter. “Sarah’s only vouching for you. Maybe another time? When it’s not such short notice?”

Listen to the questioning tone; she’s worried you will walk away from the table. She’s still haggling, but right now a stranger at her dinner table is outside her price range.

Orange can either take the clean win, here, and her guaranteed place. Or she can press her advantage to try to get Starlight to accept the whole bargain, with the risk that comes with pushing.

[Charm or Bullshit could both work here - either making Orange’s word worth more, or by making a good case for the sister you want to bring. Starlight is more Clever than Cool, so meet-or-beat 9 or 10 respectively. Roll + Cool. 7 and lower would mean Starlight balks, she walks. Otherwise she just holds firm.]

Persephone and Pink:

York moves his lips for a second as he translates the ideas in his head. “Okay. I hear what you’re saying. But I’m with Persephone. I want my interview first. We have until he wakes up to prep for it, then I want six hours of footage.” He shadow boxes while he thinks, focusing more on practicing dodges than punches. “Keep it in our pockets of course, like good little children, and start off with announcing he’s offworld and untouchable. Even if it’s not true. Maybe work on making it true, depending on what he says.”

He drops his fists to his sides and shrugs. “Six hours of interview, because I’m with you on Earth. Probably only going to get one chance to get everything we need to get. Sorry, Persephone. Journalism like this broke a country once, back when that was a big deal. Author named Zola broke France over his knee, and he wrote an entire book about how he did it. Brought down an antisemitic conspiracy, upheld by the highest courts of the most antisemtiic country on Earth, and he fucking won.”

“This guy’s our Dreyfus, the knee that Zola broke France over. We have to make everyone know it, which means he’s got to tell ‘em. That’s what the interview’s for. Don’t show what we really got, yet. Just give the story a protagonist, and make everyone talk about what we could have. Let the counter-narrative start. Zola wrote the playbook here.” He holds up three fingers to both of you, and starts counting them off fingers. “First they’ll try to take our guy down. There’s going to be nothing for him here, on Aevum, anyway.” One finger down. “Next they’ll try to make the story the story. What I mean is, they’ll talk about how everyone feels about the news, and that becomes all that matters. This is where guys like Snowden tripped up, it’s why the P-Papers didn’t count for jack shit, and it’s why we hold back. Like I said. I hear what you’re saying, Pink.” Second finger down. Middle finger raised over his head. “That’s when we take this to court.”

He lets that ring out. “That’s what J’Accuse was. Dreyfus got accused by a secret military court, so Zola publicly accused everyone involved and made that accusation front page news. He knew he’d get sued for libel, he said it in the accusation. But to sue him, they had to unseal the records of the Dreyfus trial for him to use in discovery. That’s how he won. Hundred years later, Watergate didn’t work because it changed public opinion, ‘cause it fucking didn’t, it worked because Nixon got impeached.”

York massages his jaw until it clicks like a billiards break. An old MMA injury that goes off when he talks too long. He’s starting to feel it. “That’s where I’m at. We need to build the story first, so the courts feel people breathing down their neck. We only reveal what we know during the trial, for maximum impact, at which point they’re going to invent whole new laws to prevent us reporting on it. We break all of them and broadcast anyway. I’ll take the fall, personally, to keep The Anthropozine free to act. Then…” he trails off. “The masters tools will dismantle the master’s house. Doesn’t matter what the law is. What matters is making them realize what the law needs to be to stop Aevum burning. And that’s our gift of fire.”

There’s a squeaking yawn as Marco sits up and stretches.

White:

Two up at the bar near you. A white unicorn with hair like a cascade of fortified wine, and her girlfriend, frustrated eyes peering out through round-rimmed glasses at her ereader. You assume girlfriend. She’s going off about something she’s reading, and the unicorn is actually listening with more than feigned interest.

The unicorn has a physical charisma that’s impossible to ignore. She moves like an actress who has been perfectly cast for her role, like she knows all her lines by heart and she all the ways to sell her character in every gesture and small movement. She is who she was born to be.

On the other dance floors, a wild-eyed ferret with a spray of blond curls twitches in time to the beat as his partner, a sleek lioness half-again his height, moves with a fluid grace. She’s barely dancing at all, more wiggling her hips and flicking her wrist, more focused on the conversation. Whatever they’re talking about, it’s engaging enough that nearby dancers lose their rhythm stopping to listen to them.

Finally there’s the bartender himself, a hulking water buffalo with curled horns, wiping glasses with rolled-up white sleeves. He might have a more objective eye on the run of the place than the guests.

3V:

Black has her moment to dance, but there's an ambush here for you, too.

You wouldn't be the Anthropozine's first culture reporter, and you won't be its last. We stand upon the shoulders of giants.

Here's one from the archives, something you read on the site before you joined. Maybe it's one of the reasons you wanted to. I would understand why.



The DJ is making a statement. How many times have you heard the witch's offer to Dami, and how many times have you heard Dami's answer? Someone's isolated the vocals, killed the original instrumentals, and replaced it with a building, throbbing beat. The musical equivalent of how it feels between the "We need to talk", and the words that come next.

But then the beat drops as Dami declares her dedication to her friends. It's a great beat. FAEWYL-D's trap influences make it malleable to this kind of mix. Everyone else is dancing like that's all it is. Does anyone else realize the statement the DJ is making, when the succubus that SuA is fighting is replaced by Emma's bulletcore lyrics? It's a seamless sampling job.

Up above the crowd, a black catgirl raises her green eyes from her laptop to scan the audience, looking for understanding.
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
Orange:

Starlight’s not supposed to bring her work home with her, and she tries not to. Her home isn’t as secure - clearly - and her work is meant to be collaborative and directive. Her job isn’t to do, it is to make sure it is done. The only thing she should be doing from home, then, is emails.

No video conferences, either. It was easier to solve the problem of commuting than figure out how to make webcam conversations not suck.

This should suit Orange just fine for her purposes. She’s not trying to infiltrate the web itself, has no specific case of Ms Bandaras that she’s trying to learn about. She is trying to learn Ms Bandara. What she talks about when she’s trying not to talk about work is the honeypot.

Here is what Orange learns, before lunch.

Ms Bandara is deeply broken. There are no photos of Sarah’s sire, no momentos, no evidence of a shared life. Not at first. But clean her ensuite, and see that there are still two toothbrushes, two hairbrushes, two towels. Only one side of the queen bed gets used, only one night table, only one side of the room, only half the wardrobe.

In common areas, like the kitchen, there’s less obvious aspects. The spacious island counter that looks out into the living room, where Sarah is babygated. She is not allowed TV time, but the floor is covered in educational toys. Not mainstream ones either - one is a pillow that’s covered in straps and buckles, another is a pair of gigantic boxes of wooden blocks, most covered in fingerpaint marks.

More recently, a big box of animal toys, and next to it a rubberized book with buttons to play animal sounds. Watch Sarah bang the button with the toy, then hold it close to her eye and, with a big smile, try to imitate the sound she heard. The cow goes “ooooo!”, the horse goes “nnnnneh”. Watch her get bored and wander off to another of the expensive, doctor-approved toys. Still, care has clearly been given to what Sarah likes, and not just what her mother wants her to like.

This was meant to be an adult entertaining space, for wine and charcuterie. The floating counters of the kitchen are too spacious for even the most messy of home-cooks to take advantage of, you could plan a defense-in-depth strategy with the three tiers of them. There is only gravedirt where there once was a herb garden. This hosting and entertaining space has been given entirely to Sarah.

Messy divorce? Bad breakup? It would explain the lack of sentimentals, but not Starlight’s unwillingness to reclaim personal spaces. No. What’s more is a contradiction in her behaviour. She is clearly devoted to her daughter, but even on a day off, Starlight is barely seen in the living room. She hides in her home office. She calls out to you, routinely, for tea and coffee every half an hour or so. But she apologizes each time that she didn’t make it herself, and she means it.

Your mind is keen enough to find the significance in this data and extrapolate from it. Starlight Bandara was deeply in love, and whoever she loved - Sarah’s other parent - must be dead. Her daughter remains as a living memory to this absent partner. Starlight would do anything for her daughter, but it is painful to be around her.

Combine this with what is overheard, the conversations she has. Starlight Bandara has few friends outside work, and struggles to talk about hobbies. Attempts are made, but she is always listening to other’s interests and never expressing her own. There is obvious relief in her voice when she gets to talk about work, even if it’s in vagaries.

Her job must have been the one thing she did not share in her life, the one area of safe retreat. This is likely how she has achieved such a promotion at such a young age.

You were right in your initial read. To a woman like this, a maid uniform might as well be burlap. But children? They have not learned the complex mores of social hierarchies, of the connotations of a uniform. They just think you’re very pretty. Sarah certainly does. She loves to say “eow” at your headband.

There is an angle of approach, here. There is a way to leverage being good for Sarah into being part of Starlight’s social network. And her social network is her work network. She has failed, and continues to fail, to make a distinction between the two.

It would not be enough to be just be a good babysitter. Clearly there have been maids and babysitters before, and otherwise there may be ones that come after. If, however, you can find a way to be a connection between Sarah and her mother, Starlight would cling to you. Expect repeat jobs, and a trust of vulnerability that would place you as a worthy confidante.

It could be like with Ms Everest again, in a way. One person with a position of power who sees you as invaluable. And the rest of a room that you would remain invisible to.

Certainly, it shouldn’t be wrong to exploit a hole you didn’t cause? What reason could White have to see werewolfing in being a very good babysitter - especially as part of the mission to see Dad?

Pink and Persephone:

York blinks, and takes another sip of his cider. Puts it down. “This is the talk we’re having?” he cocks his head, stretches his arms and pops his shoulders. “Alright.”

“Prometheus spent the rest of a long life getting eaten alive.” He pulls out his phone and switches it off, then takes the battery out. He holds the power button down until the last of the diodes fade. “Some things are worth it, though.” He sniffs around the room. “I’ll take that coffee now, yeah?” He scratches scabs on his neck while he thinks.

“Every day, the site saves lives. The site’s ended careers and swung elections. Gift of fire? You’re talking about using the site like a molotov, and molotovs don’t survive getting thrown. It needs to be worth losing every small good we do, every day. And everyone needs to agree to it, you’re asking Junta and Numb to risk losing their only support network. You’re asking me to lose the platform before I can end Ed Huxley Junior.”

“Don’t give me Excalibur or Hrunting. Tell me this is as big as the Wyatt-Tversky paper. Tell me we can make an inferno big enough that Earth will smell the burning bacon.” He looks over to where Marco sleeps. “Give me an interview they’ll write history textbooks about, so I have something to read in thirty years when my liver’s still being pecked out. When’s it safe to wake… Marco, you said?”

3V et al.

Sirius Drinks has a charming sign. The building is two stories tall and three times as wide, with its frontage done in all matte black. The sign is a large dog at a water bowl, done as constellations - silver reflective paint for the linework, flecked with shimmering chrome, and its points and corners lit with white lights.

It’s got the air of a place that would have music pulsating through the walls, rattling your bones all the way out on the street. But no. From outside you hear nothing.

Inside it’s easier to tell why. Three different dance floors, three different DJs, all working with active sound-curtains. Sound manipulation tech is what’s really come far in the last sixty years, benefited the most from room-temperature superconductors, electromagnetics and brilliant innovators. Mist-like curtains hang in sheets around the quadrants, barriers of microscopic charged particles that act as shock-absorbers, dampening the vibrations passing through them. Three simultaneous music acts, not interfering with each other.

This isn’t normal nightclub stuff, this is totally extra. But music’s always been a big part of the furry subculture, and Sirius Drinks wants to showcase as much of that as it can: According to NumbToNothing, the DJs rotate often, and are always from the community. While the acts usually aren’t paid, it’s wrong to say it’s because Sirius Drinks ‘pays in exposure’. It pays its crews and technicians fine. It’s understood that the performers are doing it for the pure love of the gig, for the love of giving back to an audience they’ll be a part of again after a few hours. It lets the bar hack the risk of constantly hosting the unknown and the deeply experimental.

The drinks are overpriced, but the food tries to justify its price tag - unlike other pricey places, the vegan options are pushed here. The fox-in-the-henhouse burger is a patty of fried maitake mushrooms, herb aioli, provolone cheese on toasted brioche. But the menu makes it clear it uses synthetic proteins for all its egg-and-milk ingredients. At this price point, usually it’s the opposite, emphasizing ‘real’ or ‘organic’.

The carnivore menu shines with dishes where the meat is used to full effect. House marinade rack-of-ribs, harissa lamb, sous-vide scotch filet with garlic and rosemary butter, steak tartare. Nightclub fare? Hardly. It’s first-date fancy-restaurant food.

And here’s where it clicks. Three dancefloors with different sets, but the adjacent booths are quiet enough for conversation? A bar with cheap fruit juice but ludicrously overpriced cocktails? A dirt-cheap fries platter next to steak tartare? This isn’t a place that can’t decide what it wants to be; This is a place that wants to be available to every kind and every stage of a relationship. Everything from a casual night out with friends and looking for hookups, to an anniversary with a fiance.

Check the crowd. What you can see of it - the place is deliberately dark, only spotlit, like floating in a void. Most here have traded their birthday suits for something a bit more Liberace. Maybe between a quarter and a fifth are ‘vanilla’, counting the here-with-friends, the chasers and the too-broke. The rest are post-human. Not all of them are wearing clothes. A fairly cut blue wolf is jamming out hard in only a mesh shirt, and nobody’s batting an eye. Some are batting eyelashes, though.

Welcome to Sirius Drinks. You are safe here. Be yourself.
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
November:

Merkin leaves the booth for the bar, and orders another boilermaker. When the bartender turns to get the bottles, he starts typing the character string onto his phone.

Soon Orange will be with White again, on babysitting duty for the tenner client with the two year old to look after.

Here’s an extra detail, a rub that explains why Muffi would give this to you specifically. The client is one of the twelve district prosecutors for Renaissance Apollo. The maid-babysitting is an easy job, but the client will only match with already very high rated contractors.

Starlight Bandara - she’s young for a second generation emigre, her parents came to Aevum late from what used to be Sri Lanka. Learning English was a formal requirement of relocation, and some took longer than others. Starlight’s name is an enthusiastic show of her parent’s pride, of their new language and where it had taken them.

Her kid’s name is Sarah.

There are two conflicting missions here. One is White’s, getting the tens needed to get to Thrones at the end of the week. The other is Black’s. A district prosecutor is an important node in the web. Justice is blind, but not the assistants that guide her sword.

D.P Starlight is primarily concerned with enforcing IP protections. Most of her cases are over pirated print-patterns being used to create gray-market bootleg at a scale large enough that it’s worth an arrest - It’s a bigger deal than it sounds, without physical currency in circulation, merch is the default for counterfeiting operations.

In terms of direct relevance to the Black mission, probably not much - but her direct relevance to the network of power? That would be invaluable.

The job starts soon. What’s the priority?

Pink and Persephone:

York slips through the door with a finger to his lips. Under one arm is a slab of fluorescent green Sharply Sweets, a truly godawful brand of strawberry cider, saturated in sugar and boasting a 17% ABV. One of Coca-Cola’s™ first forays into the liquor market, devastatingly popular with underage drinkers and only underage drinkers.

“Just for appearances.” He explains, sliding the slab onto the kitchen counter and breaking off a can from the stack. “You know the old trick with a clipboard and lanyard? This is just that for slinking around the city at the wrong hours of the night. Nobody wants to deal with pissed squeakers.”

He takes a sip, shudders and winces. “Tastes like all my favourite mistakes. Here’s to another one, fill me in.”

He hasn’t seen Marco yet.
In Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country → 2 yrs ago Forum: Tabletop Roleplay
OoC: Let's just get the easy one out. More to come.


3V:

You’ve got a few options, besides the android harem.

NumbToNothing’s shouted out Sirius Drinks, an unabashed furry bar in Modern Aphrodite. All friends and allies welcome. If you want to do some culture reporting, that’s one in need of positive attention. Your mission, if you choose to accept it; Go out and have a good time.

NumbToNothing: Just make sure you’re cool with getting hit on
NumbToNothing: even bringing someone with you isn’t uh
NumbToNothing: anyway, they’re chill

Otherwise, there’s the Grand Derby coming up in Churchill, Zeus. The future of horse racing is wild. Back in the 20th century, stock car racing was how big manufacturers showed off the advantages of their latest developments. That fell off big time, when personal cars stopped being a thing.

Now, it’s biotech companies showing off their biggest flexes. Most of the events go by their limitations; The quadrupeds only bracket, the 4 ton weight limit, the flyers-only. Categories for the jockeyed and the jockeyless.

The divisions are nested fractally, too. Take the jockeyless events. Some are for competitors too unsafe to ride, so they’re raced like the greyhounds of old. Others are for competitors too intelligent to need a jockey. That used to be a showcase triumph; now the split’s just to prevent them getting an unfair advantage.

There’ll be a lot of money on the line. Might be a good place to do some networking.

Third option’s obvious but still worth bringing up. You could just run your shop for a bit and keep your ear to the ground while you take a breather. Let something come to you on your terms.
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