Fair question... I tend to push a lot of info rather than have PCs roll for every tidbit, so take that into consideration regarding your unprecedented streak of successes in finding information that should be difficult to find.

Shadowlands is not really public knowledge. It’s like the dark web. Most people don’t even know it exists and about 90% of what is out there is garbage. Maybe even the stuff you found is lies...

OK, cool. If the more mundane methods of turning stuff up don't turn stuff up, I think I'm good to proceed, then. :)

Great. I'm not sure how you intend to arrive at the meeting though, you gave me three options on how Venom will try to blend in. How do you arrive at the meeting?

Public transit, such as it is. I don't believe he lives walking-distance.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:34, Tue 01 Feb 2022.

can you pick up the thread with a post of Venom arriving at the student centre? It seemed like you had an idea of different ways Venom would approach this and being out in public is an aspect of the character we won’t see often since he will mostly hang out online.

The meeting isn’t a trap or anything.

Now that I’ve said that it probably seems like a trap. But it’s not. Really. No trap.

Absolutely. Hang on. I have an idea.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:21, Tue 01 Feb 2022.

Venom, despite being rusty with them, remembered his seven Ps. (“Prior planning & prep prevents piss-poor performance”).

Which is why, when he was called by Sunan Pranee to meet, in person (rather than via a secure connection, like the last time he did an odd-job for The Circle), he did his homework. It screamed either “this is a trap”, “this is Amateur Hour”, or both.

He thought all this as he threw on a disguise. That wasn’t the hard part- he tied on a headkerchief to hide the ‘trodes and hair, got some second-hand clothes from a vendor to so’s not be dressed in his usual, stored his leg prosthetics in a duffel bag (with spare clothes and The Sign), and crutched his way to a bus stop. On the way, he mentally reviewed what he knew.

He wanted to know what the problem might be, before he set foot in the meeting- that way, he’d hear Ms Pranee out, and see how much of the truth he got out of her without trying.

 A little digging found that the Black Chrysanthemums were snapped about some clever-clogs messing with their gambling business online. A little dip into the Shadowlands suggested the cause was local talent, from the vicinity of Berkeley. So, Venom suspected that this was the Circle having bit off more than they could chew.

Panicked people postpone proper planning, he joked to himself, and set out to do some proper recce before charging in- even if the Circle weren’t planning to do something stupid to Venom, he figured, someone might be watching them, and it might give him a good idea of how much trouble he was diving into. He hated being forced to go out in public, like this, and he’d inevitably figure out some appropriate payback, but he owed them his best work.

The next inconvenience was that he was supposed to meet Pranee at “the Student Centre”. Getting off the bus at what he thought was a close-but-not- too close stop, he realized there were easily a half-dozen places that could be ‘The’ Student Centre, on this campus. There was something he liked about these Circle kids- some of ‘em, anyway- but sometimes there was the damndest gaps in assumed knowledge, dealing with them.

After checking out the likely candidates, he sat on a short wall and unfurled The Sign:

"ALL HELP APPRECIATED-

I am in needing of 500¥ for train fare back to San Diego.

I have until FEBRUARY 2nd to see my brother before they foreclose on his dog

Combined with a ball-cap for the (never-coming) donations and shades, that little slab of handwritten cardboard  might as well have been a cloak of invisibility.

Still a bit early. Good. Venom wanted to see where Pranee came from, who was with her, what her demeanor was, and- if any- who seemed to be watching her. He was sure this wasn't a trap- for him. He wanted to be sure about them.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:05, Wed 02 Feb 2022.

[Once he was sure that there'd be no surprises (someone else on lookout, third parties watching either Venom or Pranee etc) anything like that, he hid The Sign, found a restroom (the Center would have them), reattached the legs, folded and duffel-bagged the crutches, changed into appropriate clothes (Still keeping the hair under wraps and wearing a 'coughing mask' to hide most of the facial scars), and approached her in time for the start of the meeting.

He was packing, under his outfit.

He let her take the first move, (introducing herself, seeing how she verified it's him- this was their first time meeting in person- etc) so he can read her mood and any other information she gave off. And let her talk.

OOC: It was all a big "Check the Situation" (on different fronts, up to how she seemed coming up and if she was alone, followed etc), with a tiny bit of "Make them Sweat" (he's letting her take the lead, see how she handles it, etc). I'm not sure what Move the research was, but he's leaning on that.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:31, Tue 01 Feb 2022.

Hit the Books

It's not that The Circle are bush-league, it's just that they are fish out of water. Smart kids playing shadowgames. Maybe they have bit off more than they could chew here, but there is so much raw potential that playing on their side might be a good long term investment.

The Black Mums are the biggest organized crime outfit in the 'plex. That's pretty common knowledge. Being the biggest makes them dangerous, but it also means that they ain't got no friends. Smaller yakuza clans, Russians, Tongs, Triads, the Blindfish and all manner of smaller upstart outfits are all biting at the giant's exposed flanks trying to get their piece. The Circle is small, agile and unpredictable. That just might be enough to get them out of this mess.

Take 1 Prep

Check the Situation

You post up with a good line of sight watching the doors of the student center...

18:48, Today: Mr. Johnson, on behalf of Venom, rolled 8 using 2d6+1 ((5,2)).
Weak success

You've never met Sunan in person, but you catch sight of a petite woman wearing a longcoat and mirrorshades entering the student centre. Instinctively, you know it must be Sunan as you watch her through the glass door...

"San Diego?" a passerby slurs slightly, "Why don't cha go back to Azzieland, ya traitor? Fought 'gainst yer kind in the war of '36... damn vampires, always sneakin' up on ya..." he continues to mutter, stumbling off.

Dammit, she was out of sight for only a moment... where did she go? Despite the fact that the old rummy's disturbance caused you to lose sight of her it's pretty clear that she is either paranoid, or prudent. Arriving incognito is a sure indication that she is afraid someone might be watching her or that she is trying to shake a tail.

Playing it cool, you saunter past the study room door.  Glancing inside, you see that it is empty with only an LTG number scrawled on a whiteboard.

995 (345-4895)

Hmmmm, nice bit of trade craft there. Maybe Sunan isn't quite as bush-league as you initially feared, or maybe she just watches a lot of James Bond trids.

Venom checks the telephone number before dialling it, using whatever indices are available to him.

[OOC: I did it, myself, IRL. The Area Code is Georgia, but the telephone number's an Equine Veterinary center just outside Salinas, CA, near Monterey.]

Checking Dewey led to books about Papua New Guinea- Venom doubted that this would lead anywhere important, but he did suspect that going to that section of the library would show him to somewhere quiet enough to call the number in peace.

[Just dialing it. If initial research makes it seem like it leads to a BBS or something, do it online] :)

The LTG hits some kind of veterinary set up in the CAS. Node as boring as hell, just a trid clip showing a couple of black horses standing in front of the old red barn and a beat-up Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit.

Confounding...

Maybe you’re tempted to walk, call this one a bust, but then you notice the name of the campus bar... Black Horse Saloon

[OOC: Sweet, I was supposed to notice. :) ]

And so, he made his way toward said bar.

Also, run the plates on the Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit, using my DMV backdoor? (Barely seems worth a jack-in, but...)
This message was last edited by the player at 05:54, Thu 03 Feb 2022.

The old picture of the Jackrabbit shows a plate from another country (the Confederate American States) so CalFree DMV won’t be any help to you

Through the old time saloon style double swing doors, it’s a step into the faux plastic old west. Cowboy kitsch and old bar room neon compete for space on cluttered pasteboard walls while an old electric bull sits idle in the corner.

The winter break crowd is thin and the orc bartender is distracted by something he is watching on his PocSec. It’s a good place to be nondescript, but no sign of Ms Trenchcoat Mirrorshades.

You do notice that across the bar, painted on a mural of a big red barn, a sign flickers lifelessly ‘Parking at Rear’...

Naturally, Venom makes his way out back.

[Is it the same barn as in the picture?]

Just to be careful, as he goes out the back door, he "slices the pie" (An old CQC room-entry maneuver he has somewhere in his permanent memories: https://sofrep.com/gear/basic-tactics-slicing-pie/)

It’s a vinyl transfer of a cartoonish looking barn. Not at all the same as the barn in the picture.

Through the barn doors there is a short hallway. At the end of the hallway, an exit sign hangs uselessly, broken from the wall above a heavy steel door that someone had scrawled ‘follow the white rabbit’ across in haphazard graffiti.  You slice the pie and find no threats, only a VW Messenger painted in the blue and orange Zipcar paint scheme sits in the lot.  Across the street, a white Jackrabbit pulls away from the curb and starts heading off campus toward Hearst Avenue.

Clever college kids, annoying but clever.

Right.

Seeing as Venom's on foot, an auto chase is right out at this phase.

Quick reachout, is it possible to see if the car has a functioning GPS tracker?

Zipcars are cars for hire. Just slot a cred stick and away you go.

[OOC: I get what a Zipcar is- they're also GPS-tracked, can be remote-stopped and "go ahead... take this car, mister" is running against basic security instincts. ("You wanna get carbombed? This is how you get carbombed".)]

If no other prospect for stopping them or tracking them presents itself, he begrudgingly takes the Zipcar before the trail runs cold.

I’ll always try to give you an option to avoid leaving the PC standing around wondering what to do, but you have the option of doing something else as long as it isn’t wildly out of character or defies the laws of reality.

Maybe I misunderstood the question about the GPS tracker. Worried about being tracked? Tell me what Venom would do about it and I’ll tell you how it plays out.

Or skip the ZipCar altogether and try to find another way to track the Jackrabbit.

Get the plate and run it through a tracking system using Gridlink?
Get into the campus network and track it on traffic cams?
See if the car itself is in the network and hack it or track it?

All that to say, don’t feel constrained if you think Venom would do something differently.

Or... *evil grin* let’s do a car bomb where Venom narrowly escapes unharmed!
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:46, Fri 04 Feb 2022.

Nah- at first I wanted Venom to see if the Circles' car had a tracker on it, so he could casually sort of toddle after it. Or use the "LoJack" to shut the car engine off until he comes over to say "hi". The "honestly? You want to put me in a box?" thing jibes with his PTSD-jitters, but I could just as soon have him do the ZipCar thing. Whichever moves things along quickly, I suppose?

I soooo want the car bomb, but no need to make Venom even more paranoid!

After a quick exchange of cred and a brief explanation to the dogbrain in the Volkswagen, you're off. The micro-compact sluggishly accelerates onto the Gridlink and falls in behind the Jackrabbit.

The cars fall into the light mid-morning traffic around Berkeley and start making their way through the residences of Northside and off toward Berkley. Outside the grimy window of the Zipcar, the residential B-zone gives way to more densely urban downtown that has gobbled up the city out to Westbrae. Compared to the campus, abandoned for winter break, the downtown is a bustling hub of traffic and people.

A good place to try and blend in.

Also a good place for an ambush.

As a city bus pulls in front of the Jackrabbit, forcing it to slow down to yield, a black and yellow Shin-Hyung pulls in front of your hired VW. A black clad man leans out the passenger side window leveling a sub-machinegun at the Jackrabbit, about to open fire.

[OOC: Hopefully this comes off as funny, or at least absurd. :) ]

Venom had a good idea who this was- it had "Black Chrysanthemums" written all over it.

Now Venom knew the triad by reputation- it was hard not to. And he had no interest in making enemies of them, for free and for no reason. But at the same time, it just didn't do to let people kill paying clients.

So, here was his plan: This little ZipCar didn't know what was going on, the dog just knew to follow the rabbit. Venom intended to just let it keep on doing what it was going to do. People did that, just... sunbathed, while the car did the work.

The man in the car, with the gun, had no reason to spot Venom yet. But it wouldn't be long before he got to work. He was planning to hit and run, from the looks of it, because public attention was bad. (And not just cops- the longer you hung around in public, you also lost... mystique.)

So, he'd pop off a quick shot with his pistol (aiming calmly for shooting-range accuracy, for once, since they hadn't made him yet). "Shoot the gun out of his hands" wasn't good- it was a low-percentage shot and a miss could hit a civilian. "Shoot out a tire" was better- a miss would skip the tank, ricochet up into the car's undercarriage and hit the transmission, which would achieve about the same goal.

So- in as few motions as possible, this was the play: Before they shot the Rabbit, shoot the tire. Pull the seat recline with the other hand. Be a sunbather. Lie on the gun (hidden, but drawable).  They (hopefully) get out to look for where the shot came from (which should keep them busy for a few minutes), or flee the "unexpected ambush". Get some sun. Roll on past them.

[OOC: I'm banking on it being 'lateral thinking', because nobody would actively make this plan. :)]
This message was last edited by the player at 18:56, Sat 05 Feb 2022.

Taking careful aim, tiny red dot of the laser sight dancing across the Hyundai's tire before the Colt barks...

Rock and Roll
19:04, Today: Mr. Johnson, on behalf of Venom, rolled 10 using 2d6+1 ((6,3)).
Strong Success

...and the tire explodes.

You lay back, out of sight as the shooter drops back into their seat. Your hired car passes the wounded sedan just as it limps off to the side of the road coming to a stop near a steaming noodle car.

After a few moments, the Jackrabbit pulls into the parking structure for the Berkeley Pyramid MegaMart. The car finds a spot tucked between two large concrete pylons, out of view of of any passersby.  A good place to lay low for a meet...

In what he hopes is an impressive fashion, Venom pulls the lever to make the seat go up.

(If what he sees- straightening up- is the client, he pockets the gun, and gets out of the car. His plan is still to have her "Take the lead" in this conversation, so he can figure some stuff out- like how much she's telling the truth, for instance.)

[OOC: Incidentally, cover aside, how far are we (in minutes) from the car Venom just shot? I'd feel pretty silly if he got down to business and they just pulled up!]
This message was last edited by the player at 05:44, Sun 06 Feb 2022.

The garage is about ten minutes drive from where you left the Black Mums assassins... but in dense urban area, you might as well be on the moon... it's very unlikely that they would stumble onto you here... if they are tracking the Jackrabbit though, that's another matter...

"Sorry about the goose chase," Ms Trenchcoat Mirrorshades says opening the passenger door. "Couldn't be sure I wasn't being followed."