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Old 11-20-2019, 09:37 PM   #1
Agemegos
 
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Default [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

Setting: Flat Black, Fureidis

In a TL 10-ish very-limited superscience interstellar setting, there is a coolish planet with Earthlike gravity and a rich volatiles budget. Its barometric pressure is 1.5 bars and it is 97% covered by oceans. The average temperature is 10 C, which is about 7°C (13°F) cooler than Earth, but the thick air and deep water transport heat effectively, so that the polar regions are frozen only in winter and the tropics are even milder than you might expect.

The population is human, has been on planet for seven hundred years, and has an idiosyncratic culture. The planetary government is an hierarchy of representative republics (like, but not historically, a federation). The development level is pretty typical for the setting (TL 10 Struggling), and local industry etc. produces TL9 (mature) output, importing anything more sophisticated than that (up to TL10 (advanced)) at premium prices. Weapons cannot be imported.

Social features include a nudity taboo from the nipples to the knees, fanatical cleanliness, and a puritanical streak that has given rise to a bunch of laws against drugs (such as alcohol), pornography, prostitution, and gambling. This has given rise to an underground counter-culture, organised crime, and a degree of police & government corruption.

The place is rather overpopulated, with crowded high-rise cities, floating suburbs on moored boats and huge pontoons, and people everywhere except at sea.

Situation

You are a field manager for an extremely secretive clandestine operations outfit. Doctrine for your organisation is that ideally, after one of your operations, no-one ought to realise that anything has happened. Or if they do realise that something has happened, they ought to believe that it was ordinary happenstance, not the result of a clandestine operation. Or if they do realise that spooks have be sneaking around doing stuff, they ought to conclude that it was some other clandestine agency. Not even other clandestine-ops organisations ought to discover that your outfit exists.

You have come to Fureidis with two effectives: one field operator and one asset. The asset believes that she is working for the Planned Progress League. The operator has good interpersonal skills and was trained as a military officer, so he has stealth & slaughter capabilities and is a useful analyst. He is accustomed to serve as a face man for dealing with contacts, handler for local assets, cuckoo, muscle, and occasionally a wet worker. The asset has good technical skills, but no combat training and almost no experience. Doctrine is for you never to go into the sovereign territory of the colonies that you team are operating in, but to stay in the extraterritorial environs of a spaceport.

You have come to Fureidis to kill two birds with one stone. The first objective is to have your technical asset surgically transformed from a coyote-woman back into a normal-looking 23-year-old woman. This will (a) make her inconspicuous enough to employ in clandestine operations, (b) deal with the crippling body dysmorphic reaction she had to being turned into a coyote-woman in the first place, and (c) make her feel grateful to the outfit for her rescue. The second objective is to neutralise Jeysunu Naboo, a poet/prophet/political reformer/ex-con/reformed brothelkeeper who is starting to build up a violently puritanical populist movement.

But shortly after you arrived, with your asset in hospital awaiting surgery, and with your operator not yet in contact against Naboo, you were asked to undertake a rush job.
  1. There is a powerful local crimelord named Oosi Vanoom, who
    • supplies vice services near the major downport at Mansurah (not a problem to your outfit)
    • organises pilferage at Mansurah downport (naughty, but beneath your notice)
    • runs protection rackets that raise the launch and landing costs of cargo at Mansurah by 3%, and
    • has evaded prosecution by the Imperial law enforcement authorities because (it seems) the Imperial judge for the bailiwick that the downport is in (Jubal Julilla) is protecting him from an unknown reason.
  2. There is a local investigative reporter named Abseid Kantorre, who
    • seems to be getting close to exposing dealings between Vanoom and Julilla
    • would likely publish in such a way as to have a slight long-term effect on political attitudes on Fureidis that the outfit would approve of
    • has recently been expelled from the interstellar Reporter's Guild for an ethics breach, which is a result of doing a favour for one of your outfit's other field managers. He therefore no longer has political protection from the Guild.
    • has been jailed on flimsy charges by Ampel Corasek, captain of the Mansurah station of the Therampulau regional police. (Corasek is known to on the take from Vanoom, but is believed to be not yet complicit in any murders.)
    • is being held in the cells at the Mansurah police station pending arraignment, whereupon he will be transferred to Therampulau Jail. Vanoom almost certainly has enforcers in the jail, but is less likely to have one in the police cells
    • has the attention of the Reporter's Guild and the College of Archivists.
  1. It would be officially desirable if Kantorr were to get out of jail free without being shivved to death by one of Vanoom's "death row" enforcers, suffering an unfortunate fatal accident, or being killed while assaulting a guard during an escape attempt.
  2. It would be officially undesirable if Kantorr were to report that he had been busted out of jail or protected while in jail by a mysterious secret agent with an off-world accent.
  3. It would be officially most undesirable if either the Reporter's Guild or the College of Archivists were to notice that Kantorr has been assisted in any way by a mysterious organisation and not come to the conclusion that it was one of the other mysterious organisations that they already know about.

So, given that you are the NPC boss of the field operator, who is a PC, what mission are you going to give him?
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Last edited by Agemegos; 11-21-2019 at 02:36 AM.
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Old 11-21-2019, 01:58 AM   #2
johndallman
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

Quote:
Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
is being held in the cells at the Mansurah police station pending arraignment, whereupon he will be transferred to Therampulau Jail. Vanoom almost certainly has enforcers in the jail, but is less likely to have one in the jail
Jail/Jail? Is he safer in the police cells, or Therampulau Jail?
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Old 11-21-2019, 02:21 AM   #3
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Jail/Jail? Is he safer in the police cells, or Therampulau Jail?
Fixed. Thanks.
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Old 11-21-2019, 09:42 AM   #4
ericthered
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

Does Kantorr have any Allies who could be subtly strengthened or possibly mildly framed? His escape becomes a lot less mysterious if he's got allies who want him out.

How difficult is it to masquerade as a different clandestine organization? I suppose you'd have to masquerade as two different clandestine organizations, so they think each framed the other. And would such clandestine organizations want the reporter free? Or possibly want the crime-lord gone? For that matter, could you tip off a rival crime lord about what's going on?

Is there someone else in Jail whose escape can be used as a cover for Kantorr's? You break them out, and they obviously have the resources and allies, but Kantorr just "happens" to make it out as well.

Can you arrange for Kantorr to be jailed somewhere else, or possibly be placed in solitary confinement? Publishing from prison is a long and venerated tradition. What does he actually need to be effective?
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Old 11-21-2019, 02:19 PM   #5
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

Kantorr's best bet for rescue would have been the Reporter's Guild, but they have just publicly expelled him for an ethics breach that we tricked him into. They are likely now to find him useful mostly as an example to encourage others to toe the line and keep their dues up to date.

His next best chance for a white knight would be some anti-corruption agency or anti-booze agency of the world government, but the would most likely start with a legal process equivalent to habeas corpus. That's what puts Vanoom under time pressure.

The is an interstellar outfit call Amnesty that occasionaly executes jailbreaks, but they tend more to be interested in political prisoners. Democracy Unlimited is pretty quiet about Fureidis, which is well above average for democracy score. You framed the Planned Progress League for framing the Alliance for Independent Development on the last job, but they both had operatives on the scene; this issue doesn't push their buttons.

One really alarming thing (from Kantorr's point of view) is that the charges he is arrested on are really flimsy. Possessing alcohol, debauchery, consorting with a burlesque dancer, indecent exposure (to police officers, while being arrested at home), offensive language (to arresting officers), and resisting arrest aren't serious crimes, and convictions on some of them couldn't survive appeal. They won't get him a long term for publishing from jail. The bright side of that is that you could just bodyguard him in jail for a few weeks. The dark side is that Vanoom is exposing his control of Julilla and Corasek to Kantorr, so he can't be planning on Kantorr surviving.
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Old 11-21-2019, 03:17 PM   #6
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

  1. Is the legal system such that a top end lawyer could get him out right away? If so, could one be procured through various baffles and blinds to obscure the source of the money?
  2. Are there other local criminal elements that could be encouraged to inconvenience Vanoom by protecting Kantorre?
  3. Ruthless option: Get the incriminating docco, arrange for it to fall into another suitable writer's hands, then attempt to manipulate data leaks to the media so that Kantorre dies a martyr and his untimely snuffing amplfies rather than smothers his story when the new author publishes it.
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Old 11-21-2019, 04:27 PM   #7
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

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• Is the legal system such that a top end lawyer could get him out right away? If so, could one be procured through various baffles and blinds to obscure the source of the money?
If the judge were honest any competent lawyer could get the several of the charges dismissed at the committal hearing (arraignment), and Kantorre released on his own recognisance pending trial, or enter a guilty plea and pay a fine. But the judge is not honest. Normally the Reporters' Guild would fill the public gallery at the committal hearing with journalists and senior judges, but they won't do that for a non-member because they want reporters to (a) keep paying dues, and (b) adhere to their standards for professional ethics.

Still, the danger that the local judge might not want to be so blatant as to commit Kantorre for trial and remand him in custody is a reason to fear that Vanoom will act before the committal hearing.

Quote:
• Are there other local criminal elements that could be encouraged to inconvenience Vanoom by protecting Kantorre?
Maybe there are and maybe you can find out about them. Your unusual position as a field manager for the men on the stairs gives you access to a lot of information (and other things) that has been transmitted interstellar, and you can probably get information that local criminal intelligence divisions have either shared by indiscreet means or stored on compromised data units.

Quote:
• Ruthless option: Get the incriminating docco, arrange for it to fall into another suitable writer's hands, then attempt to manipulate data leaks to the media so that Kantorre dies a martyr and his untimely snuffing amplfies rather than smothers his story when the new author publishes it.[/LIST]
Another team has that in hand as a fallback. But there are reasons not to rely on it as the A plan:
(1) that some opposition else might get the incriminating documentation first, having the advantage of knowing what it is;
(2) that Kantorre's compromat might consist not of material evidence but of data files, audio, or video. That would not be useful evidence without the testimony of a witness to their recording. If Kantorre is dead there might be no way to testify that his records are not fakes.
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Old 11-22-2019, 09:43 PM   #8
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

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The place is rather overpopulated, with crowded high-rise cities, floating suburbs on moored boats and huge pontoons, and people everywhere except at sea.
Submarines! The adventure has to feature shenanigans in or with TL9 submersibles!
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Old 11-23-2019, 02:03 PM   #9
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

Thanks you John, Eric, Martin. I started the adventure last night.

I couldn't get the scenario above to work out right, so I have changed the situation so that the journalist has been abducted by Vanoom's human-trafficking division and taken to his macabre Isle of the Dead for a gruesomely lingering demonstration of frightfulness.

The (NPC) field manager looked up some other person who has recently been made to disappear by the Vanoom Machine, choosing a young offworld crusader who had links to Amnesty and the Sons of Patrick Henry but was not an effective of either. He sent a message to her grandfather on Tau Ceti that is phrased as an offer to rescue her for a large fee, but which comes across as a veiled ransom demand.

The operative is going in hot and heavy under cover as a privately-contracted hostage rescue expert. He'll go all John Wick on Vanoom's organisation, but loudly searching for Horeisha Hahn. On Fureidis he will be assumed to be hired by Hahn's grandfather, Horeis. On Tau Ceti he'll be assumed to have been a free-lance HRT working on speculation. The timing doesn't actually work, but with a bit of luck no-one will compare notes about when the message was received. If he creates enough chaos (and, let's face it, this is a PC we're talking about) then the journalist can easily be included in a mass escape/rescue. The story will be a remarkable one containing bizarre anomalies, but even anyone who guesses that the rescue of Horeisha Hahn was cover for the rescue of someone else is unlikely to pick the journalist out as the real objective.
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Old 11-25-2019, 02:55 PM   #10
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

Sounds like glorious chaos.
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