[Icelander]

Originally Posted by safisher

No, it's just Armoury (Body Armour).

Okay. Would you use Armoury (Body Armour) even for the Invention rolls?

What about the rolls to adapt the flash bainite process to harden steel pieces of the size and shapes required for body armour?

That's probably mechanical Engineering and maybe Metallurgy for the Invention rolls, Machinist for doing the work.

Originally Posted by safisher

At TL8, Yes. And even at TL4.

Fair enough. Though I've always had some difficulty imagining how someone at lower TLs would learn how to make swords or plate armour without learning anything else about using a smith's tools. Since there is only a default from Blacksmith to Armoury and not vice versa, the RAW theoretically lets someone be a master armourer who can make the finest articulated plate armour, with duplex plate, fluting and various flourishes, but couldn't make a nail or a hatch from iron or steel.

I figure realistic armourers at lower TLs must learn some Blacksmith skill as well, as part of a basic apprentinceship. I guess I'm just wondering what kind of foundational knowledge of a similar sort you might pick up in the process of learning to make steel alloy armour at TL8.

Originally Posted by safisher

These guys would be, in my game, just Contacts (Body Armor).

That doesn't give me the information I need to come up with plausible backgrounds for the NPCs the PCs might encounter in the part of Vargas' lair where they've been working on finding a way to make armour to Vargas's exacting specifications or what kind of clues to Vargas's history, contacts and operations the PCs might discover from the computers there (or if they manage to convince an armourer he doesn't want to work for a lethal sociopath anymore and turn him into an informant).

The PCs are meant to offer Raul Vargas conditional amnesty if he'll work for Onyx Rain, their bosses, but chances are he'll decline, politely or otherwise. He might kill the PCs or the PCs might kill him, but ideally, considering that he's excellently suited to be a long-term villain/rival/other NPC, everyone (or almost everyone) will survive their encounter. And in that case, especially if Vargas comes to believe that Onyx Rain is prepared to use the frightening resources of the United States, such as JSOC, to kill or capture him, he might well abandon his territory in Chihuahua.

In that case, the PCs might have to track down another of his properties in Mexico, either an existing one or a newly acquired hideaway. Assuming that Vargas, at some point, wants to continue his hobbies and dream projects, he might well try to contact someone who assisted with the armour project before, but wasn't at his home in the Juarez Valley, Chihuahua, when the PCs might visit.

So I'll try to figure out any skill set or arcane knowledge that might have been necessary, even if the someone who provided such aid isn't currently living with or near Vargas to work on the armour, because details on any known acauintances might come in handy if PCs do well exploiting the site for intelligence.

Yes, I'll need to do this for a lot of other things as well, but I don't figure it will be as hard to work out details about the people involved in the methamphetamine production, drug transport and wholesaling, prostitution, kidnapping, paramilitary operations, logistics, training and personnel, intelligence, counterintelligence and all the other fields the CT cartel requires, if only because I've read a lot more fiction and reference works on such subjects.

Even with the cooks, servants, gardeners, field hands, grooms, stable hands, veterinary, IT people, roofers, carpenters, plumbers and other support people trusted enough to be allowed at the hacienda, I feel more confident about making up plausible backgrounds. But for this sort of specialised work, in a field I know essentially nothing about, I'm trying to learn more from the forumites. Help me come up with what kind of experts are required for the project and where such people might have been found. What their degrees, if any, are in. Where they learned their skills.

Considering that one PC visits people's dreams and can roam their subconscious, one PCs has supersenses and is pretty good at sensitive sige exploitation and two PCs are federal agents with investigative skills, I expect the the PCs will learn a lot about the Caballeros Templarios on their visit. Have to be prepared with a lot of background.

Especially as the two PCs who are federal agents are very familiar with Mexican DTOs and have been assigned to the Vargas case for a long time. Both of them are very good at criminal intelligence and analysis. One is a former SOF support HUMINT specialist and then DEA undercover agent in border areas and Mexico. The other is from CBP intelligence and has been assigned to the El Paso Intelligence Center for the past two years and his primary focus has been gathering and analysing all-source information on the Caballeros Templarios cartel, and Vargas, specifically.

The PCs might be able to turn up some of this information on sufficiently good rolls on Area Knowledge, Carousing, Criminology, Elicitation (Diplomacy), Expert Skill (Drug Trade), Intelligence Analysis, Streetwise and other skills they have, not to mention reaching out to their local contacts.