"Well... Right, then. You can dance with me. Just the once."

(COMPLETE deadpan, total reprise to the 'don't fuck with me' demeanor from a minute ago. See what he makes of it. :) )
This message was last edited by the player at 19:17, Sat 05 Mar 2022.

Still holding advantage from the first intimidation roll, so...

"Ok, ok, be chill." he replies flipping open his PocSec. "Lemme see if he is around." A few long moments pass and he locks the PocSec screen. "No joy, probably at Burnt Node."

{OOC: Wow, this guy really didn't want to see how well or badly Venom dances, huh. :) }

"Right, then. Any little shibboleths I ought to know? Passwords, secret handshakes, things of that kidney?"

"Nah, nothing like that. Burnt Node is a legit club. Music and simsense programs tuned for dopamine release without straying too far into the big dumps like a BTL." he replies truthfully, "You never been there? Need the LTG?"

[OOC: He hasn't, so he does.]

ToxSix beams the LTG to your PocSec. ”You have it now.” he says over the thumping music.

Anything else for ToxSix?

If not, anything before you jack in and hit Burnt Node?

Find someplace that isn't here to jack in. This place seems like a Bad Idea.

Q. Given Venom's knowledge of the area, is there a good place that isn't just going home?

Finding a possible jackpoint isn’t a problem. The night time streets of Berkeley-Westbrae are teeming with a rowdy weekend crowd of party goers. Any number of coffee bars and entertainment arcades have open terminals where you can jack in. Nothing secure enough to run anything that might get the attention of corporate countermeasures or GOD, but for a night in the town, these public terminals will do nicely.

Picking a place that looks like he won't get his stuff jacked while he's "away", Venom gets to work. (He also swaps out for his non-club clothes, unless something looks cool to keep. Sweet backpack.)

He simply doesn't have the rep, yet, to have to decide on which icon to wear. So he goes with blandguy. (That's the guy in his portrait). If he had to change out to Big Ugly, he could do that as a surprise.

With that, he goes in.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:18, Wed 16 Mar 2022.

The exterior of Burnt Node is a simple flat diamond spinning on its bottom point.

The interior is a psychotronic kaleidoscope of blinking computer consoles, clumsy robots and buxom green aliens. As you move through the host, you notice the deliberate flatness of many of the constructs. Intentionally devoid of texture, depth and shadow giving the place the feeling of a bad sci-fi B-movie set.

The weekend crowd is a dense collection of noobs who know only enough to find this host, script kiddies, seasoned console cowboys and elite deckers. The problem of course is telling one from the other.

Well, then time to Check The Situation.

Venom isn't the most experienced at being virtually online, but being online (in general) is kind of his Gig.

Filter out the most off-the-shelf icons

(It's possible that this kid is hiding as one of those, but if he really wanted to be inconspicuous in an online way, he'd just log off. Also... these kids don't seem to be acting like people who have pissed off the Yakuza, in general, so Venom would either expect no camoflage or something extravagantly overdone in an "ain't I clever?" sort of way. "Off the rack" icons don't seem to be It.)

If possible, let's filter out any connections coming from a suburb or corpville.

This is, basically, to try to rule out anyone posting on their parents' accounts. This will probably overlap a lot with the first one, but it pays to be thorough.

Look for a herd of groupies
Just playing a hunch, it's possible this kid has the same setup as the last guy.

Is anyone trying TOO hard to be inconspicuous?
the real big guns probably don't want to be bothered, but Venom wouldn't even be seeing them if that were the case. Everyone here wants to be visible, or at least make contact. There's no equivalent of "I just want to drink my rye and not be bothered" in a public forum like this. So, anyone who wanted to come out, but also didn't wanna be seen to be here, might go on the list.

Once he does that, we'll see what we've got.

Filter out off the shelf icons
With a few quick keystrokes and a flick of the mind, tags begin to appear over each of the avatars, giving you a bit of information about the code behind them. It’s easy to find the ones that are custom, but as you might expect in a club of deckers, most of them have been highly modified. Not much about this place is ‘out of the box’. From here, it’s all relative; some avatars are heavy custom jobs, others tweaked just enough to make them look sick all day.

Filter out connections
Scanning more passively isn’t possible, pinging avatars for their source is the same as running Trace. In this culture, that kind of thing is epically uncool at the best of times and will trigger a straight up attack at the worst.

Look for a herd of groupies
This crowd just isn’t the type to attract groupies, and Ferriz dumping a system on what should have been a simple job doesn’t seem likely to attract that kind of affectionate attention. If he is anything like ToxSix, he is probably hanging out with a cooler scene and trying to up his rep through association.

Look for someone trying to be inconspicuous
Inconspicuous is definitely not the aim here. Every icon and avatar is a custom job and it seems like everyone is vying for attention by showing off their coding skills. All over the club, at any given moment, it looks like I do usual magic shows as code snaps, crackles and pops in laser light shows and showy fireworks.

Check the Situation
20:50, Today: Mr. Johnson, on behalf of Venom, rolled 10 using 2d6+1 ((3,6)).  STRONG SUCCESS Hold 3. Spend Hold to ask a question or add a useful detail.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:52, Tue 22 Mar 2022.

So, it's more likely that Ferriz would be in with the groupies than one of the groupies. Got it. So maybe it becomes a matter of, from what Venom knows about Ferriz, the sort of person he'd be at all likely to try to glom onto. ]

That changes the parameters a little. Venom tried to remember if anything ToxSix said about Ferriz would be any kind of telltale,in this crowd. (Unless by 'cooler scene', this means Tox sent Venom on a wild goose chase, in which case, he may have to add charges.)
 
This message was last edited by the player at 21:35, Tue 22 Mar 2022.

Spend 1 Hold

Tox didn’t give any clues to help find Ferriz. In his defence, you did shake him down a bit and that made him a tad hostile. Not the type of trusting relationship that you could count on for him to volunteer information…

…you do remember that you have Sunan’s system logs. What are the chances that Ferris uses the same avatar here as he does on a run?

Worth a try.... :)

Setting up a partition on your deck, you dive into the system logs from just before the crash. You're standing on the SAN with a four-armed man with glowing green skin and a wolf-headed druid wearing a white cloak covered in microelectronic schematic patterns.

After a few seconds, the wolf druid disappears for a long moment, then returns...

[OOC: Sorry to ask this, but I'm sure I lost track of something of my situation in passing. Venom is in this virtual space looking for Ferriz, to hear his version of the story about the wreck, and how close am I to finding him, more or less?]

Well, now you know Ferriz uses an avatar that looks like a sort of druid werewolf so you are that much closer (assuming of course Ferriz uses a similar avatar in social circles.)

In for a penny, in for a pounding- Venom approaches the first Druid Werewolf thingy he sees and greets them.

sorry about the misunderstanding, the druid werewolf is in the copy of the logs from the botched Ferriz/ToxSix run on the gambling node... not unlike watching surveillance footage from an earlier incident you have learned what Ferriz 'wears to work'... in the here and now, you're in Burnt Node searching for a lead on Ferriz (who you now know uses a druid werewolf avatar)... although no one you can see here right now has the same avatar, you can still investigate the club a bit further.

Okay, then!

Venom, making some effort to be unobtrusive, investigates the club further- though with a time limit, as it's starting to feel to him like a possible dead end.

I thought Venom was going to give the club a once over or start asking around after Ferriz?

But, if you want to call this a cold trail, it kind of works if Venom comes up empty and begins to suspect something is off with the Ferriz lead.

Was Ferriz snatched by the Black Mums?

Was it an inside job and now Ferriz is gone to ground?

Is Venom just paranoid and seeing threats behind every corner?

That works. Also, the sooner Venom gets this resolved, the fewer people get hurt.

I've been calling the upcoming online investigation into what happened a "wreck dive", but what sort of preparation would be reasonable for him to take?

[Just bumping- still interested]