Agree it's reasonable they wouldn't share full details of how we're going to find things, but some idea of what's involved would be relevant for pricing, as would an idea of expectation for travel.  And certainly who the other player(s) that we should expect to encounter.

Don't forget to probe more on our shadow guy.  It would be good to know if other players are expected, who they are and how assertive we can/should be in dealing with them.

I'll leave that info up to White Duck, since it deals more with negotiating type stuff, and White Duck is taking the lead during this negotiation.  Caduceus doesn't want to step on his toes. ;)

But yes, that info would be handy to have.

Bear in mind also, Copperhead can't communicate with the inside team. So even if he had cause to ask, you can't use it in determining how to respond to current events.

Likewise, Caduceus would probably be much more concerned about getting answers about the shadow guy if he knew he was outside the building right now.  The cape guys too, whoever they are.  But Caduceus has no clue they are even present.  He just knows that the room they are in with the Johnson appears to be safe and secluded at the moment.

I wouldn't worry about the cape guys.  Probably just slummers.  Even not knowing the shadow dude is outside, you'd probably want a bit more info than the answer that's been given so far - the man is inconsequential but the employer may be a threat.  It'd be reasonable to follow up who the employer is, what kind of threat it is and what sort of actions we might reasonably be able to take.

On the off chance the guy ends up being a mage or something, we may want to ward a barrier to keep between him and us while we interrogate him.  Or at least a barrier to keep him astrally contained.

Sounds like a good idea.  Can you do the warding Caduceus?


But I still think that after stripping him of all his stuff and killing some of his senses, we should question him somewhere private and NOT in Copperhead's vehicle.  This is just in case the team is against killing him after the interrogation and decides to let him go.  By showing him that we operate out of a certain vehicle, we are leaving it to chance that he might come back later to cause trouble.  I would rather like to leave as little clues as possible regarding our identities.

<orange>If he's magically active, we can ward.  If not, no need.  If he's not magically active, probably easiest to do the interrogation in the van.  He'll go unconscious again about 10 minutes after we stim him awake (and take some physical damage in the process).  So long as he's blindfolded, he won't be able to pick up on much.  Challenge with taking him outside is if he's got DocWagon or a head-phone, it's hard to blcok those without attracting a lot of attention - Dropping everyone's cell calls in a 1km radius tends to make you unpopular with the locals and LoneStar.  And if you don't crank the jamming to max, there's a risk the signal will get through.

Also, we've got sub-vocal mikes, so unless the guy has audio enhancements (which we'll presumably pick up with the astral scan), we should be fine to talk to each other without him hearing us.

Yeah, Caduceus can do warding if necessary.  He brings basic warding supplies with him in his satchel bag.  I believe White Duck mentioned that his guy has astral sight as well, so I think he technically can as well since astral sight is the only prerequisite from a rules standpoint.  Don't know if he knows from an IC perspective. (Although Caduceus would be willing to teach him the basics sometime if he doesn't already know.)

As long as we are parked and the guy stays blindfolded, I think the risk of him finding out too much about us is pretty low.  He may already know Copperhead drives a camper anyway.  And if he does have enhances hearing, I have a mind link spell we can use if needed.  I have a thought-probing spell too that we may want to utilize if he doesn't cooperate.

Didn't catch the note that our target was magically active.  That does add a bit of complication.  However, he'll be at a +3 target number.  If White Duck can devote his spell pool to blocking successes, that would be good.  Biggest issue is elementals.  If he's got a couple of force 6 elementals on standby, it doesn't really matter how well drugged he is or what sort of headache he has or even how well warded the van is, he can summon them.  The good news is that it's an exclusive complex action to summon.  So long as White Duck is keeping an eye on him in the astral, we can cause sufficient pain/distraction to keep him from reaching out.  But it does mean he'll need to be watched continuously from the astral by White Duck while he's conscious.

I meant White Duck has astral sight, not the creeper.  We don't know yet if our prisoner has astral sight, etc.

Ah, right.  Yes, we're blessed with two party members with astral sight, which is quite handy.

Anyhow, before we interrogate the fellow, probably best to crack his phone.  No point wasting his limited awake time getting answers to questions we can find other ways.  Plus, it'll let us know more quickly if he decides to lie to us.

It may make sense to save the healing until after he's awake.  As a bit of a "good cop" aspect as well as to make clear he's faced with magic users.

Astral sight AND verbal interrogation at 4. I can good cop it up all day.

After we're finished grilling him, I say we let him phone the orc and say that she and her boss left by chopper.  If the orc says "thanks, now frag off", then this dude's of no more use.  If the orc says "come to location such and such, I've got more work for ya", then he's probably worth holding on to.  In the first case, my leaning is to send him on his way with 100 nuyen and instructions to call us if the orc calls him again, with the caveat that if we learn he hasn't, the next time he gets shot while walking down the street, it won't be a stun round.  (Yeah, I know we don't have to pay the dude, but he's street trash and we messed him up pretty good and $100 is peanuts when compared to the money for this run.  Plus a little honey never hurts when building rep.)

Sounds good to me!

Hmm, actually, I think we may get a better result if we bug his phone during the interrogation, ask him a few more inane questions while we compromise his personal privacy, then cut him loose with a bunch of penises drawn on his face. Sure, drawing a bunch of penises on his face seems unrelated, and maybe it is, but it *would* be quite hilarious to my still-young and somewhat juvenile Ducky-Poo.

Anyway, if his phone's bugged unwittingly, he's less likely to tip off Junior. If we bribe him, we're paying for the same guy who just spilled the beans on his old employer, so he can't exactly be trusted for subtlety and discretion.

If we cut him loose, he'll either throw the phone in the sewer and run (if he's got any brains, which seems unlikely) or he'll call the orc and blather about what we did to him.  I don't see either of those things as being in our interest.

I don't object to bugging his phone, but I don't have the necessary hardware.  And to be honest, I'm not sure the gaming system supports the notion.  Listening in on calls is done by hacking in real-time, though I guess in theory Noruas could try to install an agent that would route a copy of any calls to that number to a number of our choosing - though agents get introduced in a later release.  presumably he already has all the device details needed to make that happen.  From a practical perspective, I'm not sure how you'd get a bug into a mobile device anyhow.  Unless you replace the guts of the phone with a compromised version for that specific device model (which I'm sure the NSA has perfected), I'm not sure you could pull it off.

I'm ok with drawing penises on faces, but I think it'd be more fun if it was florescent tattoos and the target was our cape-wearing orc friend.

Oh yeah, we *have* to get the chance to beat the smithereens out of that guy at some point. I just hypothesize that this mook might be dumb enough to not know his phone was tapped and keep using it. If he stays in Junior's employ, it could tip us off to something vital going on down the line.

Good point on whether or not the system permits it. I'm used to playing VERY late edition SR3, and there's all sorts of cool stuff to do in those editions, but I'm not certain if that kind of surveillance equipment is available/exists yet in the setting as it was.

It's not his phone - he was given it.  And we've just given him incentive to have nothing to do with it - or the Orc.  It's not like they have a deep relationship (provided what he's telling us is true.)

I played SR3 too, and I remember phone taps from the matrix, but not taps you could install - at least not in a mobile.

We'll have to evaluate whether dealing with the Orc is appropriate or not.  If he's Junior, then presumably his dad is Senior, who's likely a powerful bigwig - hard to be an orc and get away with that sort of flash otherwise.  So we'll have to figure out whether the pleasure of messing him up is worth the heat that's likely to come from the dad.  I'd rather not be on a megacorp hit-list.  Especially one where someone senior at the corp has a personal interest in it.  That doesn't mean we can't cause him grief, just have to think carefully about what kind based on the ramifications.

I'm definitely not giving him his shoe back.

I thought I stripped him naked and tied him up?

I'm assuming he's naked - hard to threaten his gonads otherwise.  However, we can play it that you left his shoes on.  More effective to be almost naked and start losing the last protection you've got . . .