Monday, September 8, 2014

Jenkins' Story - Part 5

This post continues Viper's investigation on Jerry Jenkins' death as part of the "Jenkins' Story" campaign.

Day 2:
Viper woke up, checked the stashed clues hidden under a floorboard and left her place. She knew Tanya, an "entertainer" who used to hang around the Magic Seven, a gaming house at the spaceport. And Tanya knew lots of people, so she might recognize some names in the list stored in the data module that Viper retrieved.

[Using the investigation rules, I rolled a "Get info from a person of interest" mission: a farmer (female) - Rep 4 Fit 2 Pep 3 Sav 4 - in a Gaming House at the Spaceport district, during the day. I guess I could have set up a table and played this like a Chillin' encounter but instead I skipped straight to the gaming house.]

Viper arrived early in the afternoon, so there weren't many patrons around. She found Tanya and called her to talk in a corner. "Do you know any of these people?" Viper tone was demanding, and it seemed to bother Tanya. She looked the list up and down, then sighed. "No, I don't. What's this anyway?" Viper frowned, "I'm trying to help a friend, that's what," and left.


[The questioning roll was not a failure, but it also did not reveal any clues. Rolling again to advance the investigation, I got a new person of interest: a power supply worker (female) - Rep 3 Fit 3 Pep 2 Sav 1, armed with a BA pistol, in a No-tell Motel, again at the Spaceport, in the evening.]

Despite knowing it was a long shot, Viper was feeling frustrated after the meeting with Tanya. She spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the Spaceport. As the sun set and automatic lights started to activate, she spotted Brianna entering a seedy motel. She was a technician that also did some smuggling. Jenkins had introduced them to each other. Viper entered the motel and found Brianna, along with two other technicians -- they had been called to fix some problem in the building. Viper asked about Jenkins but got nothing.

[Again, a weak questioning roll. Since Viper is a ganger (and thus, from the Criminal Element circle) she already starts at a disadvantage in these rolls...]

Day 3:
The previous day had been very frustrating. Even the chance encounter with that technician didn't turn anything useful, so Viper decided to start looking for the people in that list of names she had found. The first one she found was a Terry Gardner, engineer properly registered in the New Hope City citizen records. From that information, it wasn't hard to find his workplace, some office in the Financial district.

[My roll to advance the investigation led me to another person of interest: Engineer (male) - Rep 5 Fit 5 Pep 3 Sav 4, armed with a BA pistol, in an office building at the Financial district with two co-workers. Unfortunately, this was followed by another bad investigation roll.]

Viper reached the office in the afternoon, said she had a delivery for Mr. Gardner and went to his office. He was discussing something with two co-workers and wasn't very happy to be interrupted by a stranger. Viper could only manage to ask if he knew Jenkins -- to which he said no, with a puzzled face -- before one of his colleagues left the room to call building security. She left before they came back.

Terry's puzzled expression intrigued Viper, so she waited outside the office to follow him after work. However, the man must have been wary, as he quickly noticed her following him and ran into a crowd, disappearing.

[After this failure, I decided to try my luck with the Tailing system. However, I rolled no successes (on five dice) and the NPC had one success -- enough to notice he was being followed. A dead end and a person who will refuse to be re-questioned...]

Conclusion of part 5
After a good start, with two clues gathered in the first day, the investigation has halted, with a growing list of "persons of interest" that might reappear later. Viper has five more days to find out who was behind all this or Jenkins' death will remain a mystery...

1 comment:

Sean said...

Too bad about the bad rolls, but it is making an interesting story. Congratulations on your paper cut win. I think your models are very nice. Keep up the good work.