[ june i event results ]

[barrayarmods]

Quick links: Team Rosters / PVP: Informants / RNG results & LP gains
BARRAYAR: Death Offerings / Scouting: Perimeter / Scouting: Shipyard
CETAGANDA: Star Gate Construction / Eavesdropping / Recon: Sabotage / Recon: Countermeasures / Lab Notes / Gene Therapy / Undercover

TIMELINE
6/5 Eavesdropping
6/12 Recon: Sabotage
6/14 Scouting: Perimeter
6/16 Scouting: Shipyard
6/17 Recon: Countermeasures

Death Offerings Miles Vorkosigan Lavernius Tucker Agent York Nash Latkje Agent Carolina Scouting: Perimeter Lakshmi Bai Nash Latkje Miles Vorkosigan Benjamin Sisko Scouting: Shipyard Agent Washington Agent York Lavernius Tucker Agent Carolina PVP: Informants Miles Vorkosigan Agent York Byerly Vorrutyer Lakshmi Bai

Star Gate Construction Pearl Tarn Kaidan Alenko Whirl Eavesdropping Lapis Lazuli Vex'ahlia Recon: Sabotage Deanna Troi Julian Bashir Recon: Countermeasures Kaidan Alenko Pearl PVP: Informants Symmetra Tarn Deanna Troi Kaidan Alenko

death offerings
It takes several days to collect all the death offerings submitted by the soldiers in all three camps, plus several from the village as well -- mostly clippings of hair, but there's the occasional scrap of clothing or something a little more obscure. What they don't tell you before a Barrayaran death ritual is that the smell of burning hair is awful, and the large brazier spits out wisps of acrid smoke until it's all burned away. Those who helped assemble the offerings have the somber gratitude of most, though many still resent the outsiders.

+1 LP to Miles, Tucker, York, Nash & Carolina

scouting: perimeter
Roll 1: Assess the Cetagandans' reinforcements and new patrols and avoid detection - SUCCEED
Roll 2: Assess any recently-installed security upgrades - SUCCEED

Between the four of them, Miles, Sisko, Lakshmi and Nash do a pretty bang-up job of assessing the new manpower conditions on the Cetagandan base. After some careful and lengthy stakeouts, they manage to conclude that the Cetagandans have upped their patrol deployment by about 50%, which gives them at least a rough idea of how much in the way of reinforcements they've received. They also get a pretty thorough look at the guard shifts, and manage to chart the guard patrols for both the ground and upper perimeter patrols, as well as the shifts for the gates.

They can also see that the Cetagandans have made some security upgrades -- before the security gates were opened with a combination of a palm lock and the corresponding badge of an on-duty guard. However, it looks like they've beefed it up and done away with the security badges altogether; now it takes a palm lock and a retinal scan -- as well as a set from a second guard within five minutes, unless an emergency override is triggered, which would of course set off alarms and do the opposite of what they're trying to accomplish. This means the guards need to be alive for the retinal scan, so try not to kill them first. However, the shipyard itself is in the landing zone area of the base rather than within its walls. Getting into the base proper will still be a concern when it comes to putting their plan in action, though.

Unfortunately, after their scouting is complete, Miles winds up separated from the rest of the party and is captured by Cetagandans, who have been looking for the distinctive-looking little time traveler. Nice, Miles. Nice.

+2 LP to Lakshmi, Nash, Miles & Sisko

scouting: shipyard
Roll 1: Assess shipyard security - SUCCEED
Roll 2: Find the Star Gate ship - SUCCEED

The Barrayarans are making a new field map for laying out their strategy, which means as much scouting as they can get away with. Now that they have the low-down on perimeter security, they can get around the perimeter patrols and into the shipyard. Unlike the rest of the base, the landing zone is not walled in, but manned with foot soldiers and armed groundcars. Their security assessment is less thorough than the perimeter party's, but they still get a general sense of the patrol shifts and the scope of what they'll have to deal with.

There are about ten armed guards per armored groundcar spaced out across roughly 50 meters, each of which is mounted with a pair of small, high-precision plasma cannons. The guards are all wearing tactical gear and are equipped with the standard stunner, nerve disruptor, and plasma rifle. After the last attack, the Cetagandans are clearly nowhere in the realm of fucking around.

Thanks to the recon efforts of the exotics, they have some intelligence on what to look for when it comes to finding the Star Gate ship, but it's one of many ships in the landing zone. The party will eventually locate the ship the Star Gate is being built into deep in the shipyard -- it's pretty easy to identify once they get to it since it's still under construction, but there's a fair bit of security to wade through to get there from the outside.

+2 LP to Wash, Tucker, York & Carolina

star gate construction
I am too lazy to make a table with all the numbers so you'll just have to check out the spreadsheet for the deets BUT GOOD NEWS: everyone did (mostly) great, except for Tarn and Pearl on the engineering front, you guys are an embarrassment. But thanks to the efforts of the exotics plus the Cetagandan construction crew, by June 18th the Star Gate is roughly half-completed.

+1 LP to Pearl, Tarn, Kaidan & Whirl

eavesdropping
Roll 1: Avoid detection - SUCCEED
Roll 2: Gain additional intel - SUCCEED
While sneaking around the gene labs one evening, Lapis and Vex will witness the following…

At this hour, the gene labs are empty; indeed, Sei had been sure to send them all back off-duty once their shifts were over. Sometimes, even without Diya here now -- especially so, even -- sometimes she simply needs to be alone in this place. Aside from Ba Talim, of course, who is so often at her side.

At this hour, the gene labs are empty; indeed, Sei had been sure to send them all back off-duty once their shifts were over. Sometimes, even without Diya here now -- especially so, even -- sometimes she simply needs to be alone in this place. Aside from Ba Talim, of course, who is so often at her side.

Her force bubble hovers before a comconsole in the very room Lapis and Jasper witnessed Amai and Sei's conversation not too long ago, the glow of the screen reflecting back on the surface of the bubble. She must be using some kind of remote terminal from within the force bubble, because the screen on the comconsole is changing, but she's a good half a meter away. After a few minutes, however, the force bubble shimmers into nothingness, and Haut Sei Navarr sits naked on her float chair.

Figuratively speaking, of course. She wears the long, flowing white robes reserved only for the haut, gathering at her feet along with her even longer hair, never once cut. Unlike Diya's sleek dark hair, Sei's tumbles in waves to lap at her feet, a pale blonde that seems to shimmer like gold in the light of the comconsole. She shares with Diya that stunning preternatural beauty of the haut, although it seems fresher on Sei somehow, like a painting untouched by the sun. She reaches to remove a data disk from the comconsole and sits back, examining it in her hand.

"I do wonder where she got this," she murmurs, seeming to muse aloud to herself, though Ba Talim pays rapt attention. "I doubt she thought to look for it on her own. But the data is quite -- hm -- complete." The word sounds more like incriminating, only Haut Sei would never be so indelicate. Her gaze drifts down to Ba Talim, who only looks back at her with large, unblinking eyes. Her eyes return to the data disk in her hand. "I suppose it is possible that ghem-Soren saw more than I estimated. I was unsure as to where her loyalties laid, but perhaps they truly did lie with the Snowdrop Queen."

There's a strangely ironic lilt to her voice, much easier to hear now. Without the force screen, her voice comes through as clear as a struck bell, oddly musical. Sei regards the data disk through slitted eyes and then holds it out for the ba to retrieve.

"Dispose of this, please. And I would like for you to keep a closer eye the young doctor. See if you can find out what she knows." Sei brushes a long, dangling lock of hair from her face and tucks it behind her ear. The small movement seems to be art in motion. "It is a shame Natasha fled before we could stop her. If Doctor ghem-Soren is a problem, she would simplify it greatly. I suppose it was something of a shock to her, what happened, but I did intend to spare her the memory of it. She would have forgotten in a matter of a few hours."

…And that's about as much as they get to hear before it's time to high-tail it out of there.

+2 LP to Vex & Lapis

recon: sabotage
Roll 1: Assess shipyard security and number of functional ships and avoid detection - SUCCEED
Roll 2: Discover means of sabotage - SUCCEED

Deanna and Julian do an excellent job of sneaking through the shipyard undetected. Unlike the Barrayaran scouting party, whose purpose was to determine an external infiltration route, Deanna and Julian's task is to see how many spacecraft, especially jump ships, are operable in the shipyard. The answer is: a lot -- the Cetagandans seem to have at least 50 ships capable of leaving Barrayar's atmosphere and potentially pursuing them. On top of that, they're all different models, with no universal failsafe or easy means of sabotage short of physically damaging them.

Julian and Deanna discover that they do all have one thing in common, however: an accessible engine room. It is possible, with Micah's help, that they may be able to secretly plant short-radius EMP devices set to a single detonator in each ship, so that when the time comes, they can knock out the engines for at least enough time to buy them a head start. This would be a delicate operation that would take time. Another alternative would be to grab a bunch of plasma arcs and see how much property damage they can cause on their way to the Star Gate, but that is a bit more of a gamble, and puts the Star Gate ship itself at risk.

+2 LP to Deanna & Julian

recon: countermeasures
Roll 1: Find all the anti-aircraft weapon installations on the base and avoid detection - SUCCEED
Roll 2: Find disable protocols - SUCCEED
No doubt that when they try to take the Star Gate, the Cetagandans will try to shoot them right out of the sky. Pearl and Kaidan are tasked with locating all of the base's anti-aircraft weapons and finding a way to disable them when the time comes. Luckily, they have great success and they are able to pinpoint the locations of all six anti-aircraft installations, as shown on this map.

They will also discover that while each anti-aircraft installation can be manually disengaged onsite, there is a central disabling protocol that requires a higher level of military clearance. Between Kaidan and Pearl's tech skills -- and creative thinking -- they may be able to find a way to steal high-clearance credentials. Or, if Pearl is aware of Jasper and Lapis's ongoing blackmail against Amai, they may be able to convince a certain ghem scientist to steal the credentials for them.

Pearl and Kaidan's search is unexpectedly extra successful when they discover, in the process of looking for the anti-aircraft installations, where on base the Cetagandans keep their nuclear arsenal. According to Micah, the use of nuclear devices could prove useful in further deterring the Cetagandans from being able to utilize the Star Gate tech...so it's handy information to have.

+2 LP to Pearl & Kaidan

pvp
Roll: Avoid detection
EVERYONE - SUCCEED congrats

This PVP mission is pretty loosely structured and doesn't take place on any one day, but rather over the course of the first several days of the month. As both sides try to establish steady contact so they can plan a cross-faction operation, the village remains the best meeting grounds, with the exotics getting the regular opportunity to accompany Cetagandan patrols to Riverfall. Of course, both sides must take care not only to choose who they speak to wisely, but also to avoid the notice of the Cetagandan soldiers present. Villagers who trust the exotics and outsiders will help to cover them, but luckily, no major suspicions are raised.

Not with regards to secretive contact, anyway. The Cetagandans know well by now that outsiders and soldiers from the Barrayaran camp regularly turn up in the village, and ever since the Riverfall villagers have started taking in refugees from elsewhere in the mountains, they've been under heavy scrutiny. The Cetagandan patrols have been getting increasingly aggressive with the villagers, almost interrogating them about their fellow citizens, and for the first time the occupying forces seem to be trying to force a census. They want every single resident of that village accounted for so they can know who to look for -- who doesn't belong.

+2 LP to Miles, York, Byerly, Lakshmi, Symmetra, Tarn, Deanna & Kaidan

lab notes
Symmetra, Kaidan, and Deanna, as lab assistants, will be privy to the following information about the Star Gate Project:

The theoretical work on the Star Gate is more or less complete, and construction is now underway. They have been granted the use of one mid-sized transport ship largely used for personnel and scientific purposes. The ship has limited defense and weapon capabilities, but it is a powerful ship -- just what the good doctor ordered for a project like the Star Gate. The Necklin rods are being stripped off another, somewhat smaller ship to make for a double-pair in order to generate both Niadem and Necklin fields. Micah has been instructed to make sure all flight mechanics are disabled (the ship hardly has enough power to run both the Star Gate and its propulsion systems at once), but due to the way the ship is configured, they cannot simply be removed: they are fundamentally tied in with the ship's jump drive, which they'll need to connect to in order to operate the Star Gate.

Between Kaidan, who has been acting as an informant for the Barrayarans, and Micah, the whole lab team should soon be aware of the plan to hijack the Star Gate, use it to send everyone home, and then ensure the Cetagandans will never be able to use it themselves. If they can detonate a nuclear bomb inside the wormhole, it should cut off all access to the wormhole completely, at least for a time. Right now Micah is asking that Deanna, Kaidan and Symmetra share the plan with those they believe they can trust enough to cooperate and not rat them out to the Cetagandans; they'd like to see everyone get home, and the more people they have on the same page, the better their odds of success. Whenever Micah discusses the ongoing plans to hijack the Star Gate, they always refer to it as the midnight shift. It's not the most opaque code word, but it's better than none.

Micah is taking measures to sabotage against the Cetagandans. They plan to destroy all their research once the deal is done, but they aren't there just yet; however, in the meantime, Micah and Symmetra are working on installing a failsafe into the Star Gate without the notice of any of the Cetagandans. The failsafe, when triggered, would overheat and fry the entire circuitry of the Star Gate and everything attached to it, including the jump drive and neuro scanner, as well as its connections to the ship's power. And of course, Micah wants to make sure those flight mechanics aren't completely disabled…

Vex'ahlia, the other remaining informant handled by Lakshmi, provides the other point of contact to try and bring the other exotics into the fold. Lapis has also been in direct contact with Sonia in order to spread the word.

gene therapy
Pearl's case continues to show improvement: her skin is now eight times as resilient as the average human being's, with increased durability against projectiles in particular. Even better, her neuropathic pain all but disappears.
Lapis's case shows slightly less improvement, but improvement nonetheless. The volume of water she can effectively control at once expands by about 25%, and she has partially regained the ability to alter the temperature of the water -- just short of freezing and boiling points. Her headaches gradually get better, and are only triggered by longer periods of active power use.
Tarn's case might as well be a control case. There are absolutely no changes to what effects his voice has on others -- it remains nothing more than an ordinary human voice -- but he develops a case of moderate but persistent laryngitis.
Jasper's case shows further promise; recent testing shows that she is now about 50% stronger than a human in peak conditions, and she suffers no complications.

Suck it, Tarn.

undercover
Kaidan Alenko
Roll: Maintain cover - SUCCEED
Vex'ahlia
Roll: Maintain cover - SUCCEED

Please comment if you have any questions! NPC starters will go up for each mission top-level with the IC log as usual, and, as always, here are the rolls for this event. All rolls are d20 unless noted otherwise; the skill ratings of 1-4 are converted into modifiers of -1 to 2. The number of people in each group is also added to the total modifier.

And don't forget to take down your new LP! As of this post, event LP is immediately granted and you can go hit up the loyalty perks page if you so choose.

+5 LP	Agent York Kaidan Alenko Miles Vorkosigan
+4 LP	Deanna Troi Lakshmi Bai
+3 LP	Agent Carolina Lavernius Tucker Nash Latkje Pearl Tarn
+2 LP	Agent Washington Benjamin Sisko Byerly Vorrutyer Julian Bashir Lapis Lazuli Symmetra Vex'ahlia
+1 LP	Whirl