Monday, August 25, 2014

Jenkins' Story - Part 4

Jerry Jenkins was kidnapped and killed. Police investigation concluded it was a robbery gone wrong, as so many that happen in the spaceport district.

Viper, Jenkins' associate, knows there is more to it. Not that her statement to the police made any difference. She wants to find out what really happened and be sure it won't bring her any more trouble. Based on the previous games, I "promoted" Viper to a Rep 5 star:

Viper (real name: Lucy Sharp) - Rep 5 star ganger
Fitness 5 / People 4 / Savvy 3
Cruel, Sure handed
Home: Lower Polariston

She has done some jobs for a private investigator... mostly following people, stealing useful evidence, asking some questions. So she will be running this on her own. Her case notebook starts like this:

"Jerry Jenkins, former clerk at a holovid rental shop, has been murdered. Someone, seemingly a hired thug, ambushed him and Viper in an alley at the Midland Terrace district, knocking out both. Days later, Jenkins' body showed up in the spaceport district. This was two days ago. The body was found in the morning, the crime might have happened during the night."
[Case difficulty: level 4, requiring 8 clues to solve. It is not a time-pressed investigation, so Viper will have 8 days counting from the first clue found to solve it.]

Day 1:
Viper took a regular shuttle to the spaceport. It was almost lunch time so there weren't many people aboard. She hoped that the police had done a sloppy job and there was still some clue to be found in the alley where Jenkins' body was found.
[I rolled for the first clue, getting a "find an item" mission. Since it was the first item, the location is the crime scene -- the alley at the spaceport. I decided to go during daytime.]

Looking for meaningful clues in a dirty alley proved harder and more frustrating than Viper expected. As she walked away, however, she spotted a security camera of the Green shop across the street. It took some cajoling and a generous tip but she left with a copy of the footage. It showed someone in a dark blue trenchcoat, right arm around the waist of another person seeming very drunk (or hurt...) entering the alley and leaving alone a few minutes later. Viper wondered if the police had seen that video.
[I got a success on the Find an Object table, meaning it was found -- and thus the clock started ticking: eight days from now to complete the investigation...]

Finding that video footage gave Viper an idea. In the evening, she went to another Green shop in the Pub & Rec area, where Jenkins was a regular. There was no use asking the clerks about him or suspicious people. However, she remembered that Jenkins once mentioned hiding a data module in a bathroom stall. Many places in New Hope City had universal bathrooms as an easy solution to conform to different, possibly multi-gendered alien species, androids and so on. Green, however, catered to Basic culture and maintained separate restrooms for ladies and gentlemen. With a combination of stealth, patience and nerve, she checked the stalls of the men's room and actually found a data module. Later that night, she discovered it contained lists of names and codes, but they meant nothing to her.
[This was another close call, where I almost failed at finding the object. The location was randomized by the rules, and I just tried to fit it in the context.]

To be continued...

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