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   Adventure Text: The GearHeads

Munar

Most of the action takes part in Munar, a big city built just outside the Trafe spaceport.
Munar has 15 millions inhabitants, and is an important business and industrial center. Play it up for atmosphere... both Gotham City in The Dark Knights Returns and NightCity from the Cyberpunk 2020 rpg could be of inspiration.

A message out of the blue

A member of the party will receive an e-mail message on his/her PDA. Which one of your PCs will be contacted depends on their past careers and qualifications. In order of preference choose one of the following: Agent, Military, Bureaucrat, TAS member.
Here is the message: 
Dear [...PC name...]
Please, meet me privately at 10 p.m. tonight at The Bridge, in
the Azure Area.  You may bring with you one or more of your
associates, if you prefer.

I have a job for you.
The message is anonymous, but the PCs may try to use their expertise to trace the sender. With a (Computer, Difficult) roll they will be able to discover that the message seems to originate from somewhere inside the CCC datasphere.

CCC

The following info are easily obtained (no roll required): Consumer Cyberware Company, or CCC, is one of the main corporations on Trafe. Ten years ago they struck a deal with Naasirka which allows them to locally manufacture and sell TL12 Naasirka mainframes under license.
The CCC management likes to diversify, so they have plenty of high-income consumer goods to sell (videogames, stereos and VR appliances), and recently they created an industrial SW and HW division.
All in all, imagine IBM, Sony and Bang&Olufsen all rolled in one...
If the PCs wants to dig deeper, they will have some difficulties finding more, and will probably alert CCC security. Unfortunately, their patron will not be able to stop this, and the PCs will be discretely tailed and investigated.

The Bridge

The Bridge is a large disco bar in one of the fashionable parts of Munar. It's main attraction is a 0-g dance floor which attracts a lot of the more adventurous dancers in Munar.
People on Trafe like to show off, so many of the people inside the disco will sport outrageous combinations of dress, makeup, haircut, tattooing, cyberware, bodybuilding and body sculpting. Customers must pass through a TL10 metal scanner at the entrance and leave any weapon in a locker. People with cyberware are usually admitted, but anyone who starts a fight inside will have to face the well armed private security.
The Azure Area is a private section where the roaring music coming from the dance floor is conveniently muffled and people may converse at normal voice level.
Around 10:15 p.m. a loudspeaker will announce a call for the PC which received the invitation: the videophone is at the Azure Area bar.
When the PC reaches the bar, the Bartender will inform him that the caller hung up. The call was just a stratagem to check the identity and position of PC(s) in the bar. Seconds after the PC returns to the table, a woman will reach him and sit down.

Meeting the Patron

The woman has black hair, dark eyes and a dark-copper complexion. She wears a jade-green evening dress which is considerably less outrageous than the ones the PCs may have seen inside the locale. The woman seems to be around thirty and is good looking. She speaks slowly in a quiet voice, with a typical Trafe accent
"Good Evening. You can call me Danee", she says, and then proceeds with her offer. She shows the PC a data module. "Inside you will find some info on two men. They both work for CCC. I need you to check them out. I have no reason to believe they have something to hide, but I need proof that all is ok.". The terms of the job are as following: During the conversation, any PC may attempt a (Psychology, Average) roll. If anyone succeeds, inform players that the lady seems determined, self assured, and she is probably speaking for herself, i.e., she does not seem to be an agent for someone else.
If they suspect that she is wearing a disguise, allow them an opposed Disguise/Perception roll. Her assets are Int (9), Disguise (2) and an additional +1 for careful preparation. Success merely shows that the woman wears a disguise, but PCs will not be able to guess her real appearance.

If the PCs accept, she gives them the data module along with the advance money and then leaves. If someone tries to follow her, she enters the ladies bathroom, and promptly disappears. The PCs will discover too late that the toilets have two entries: one in the Azure area and another in the disco part.

The Dossier

Inside the data module the PC will found info on two men, complete with 3-D images of both.

"Danee"

Her real name is Lara Rameris, and she is a middle-level employee of CCC internal security. Her age and good looks are genuine, but her real face is quite different from the one she showed to the PCs.
Deela Ryhan, her best friend, has fallen in love with Ran Ulag, a CCC engineer. Recently Ulag asked Deela to marry him, and Lara started a discreet probing on this guy. She didn't want to launch a full-scale investigation on him, because this could jeopardize his position inside the company, so she limited herself to some fairly generic checks.
The only thing she was able to discover was that Ulag had been seen fairly often with Rohm Konis, which seemed odd to Lara, given that the two have very little in common. Again, she couldn't investigate further without risking repercussions on their careers, so she decided to look for outside help. She choose outworlders to minimize the risk of alarming either CCC or one of the rival Corps

Studying the dossiers

The PCs should start suspecting something about their job. The dossiers seem quite complete and up to date. If the players don't get it, allow a roll (Streetwise, Average) to realize that their patron seems to have quite good connections. So good, in fact, that they should wonder why she called them in the first place. The dossiers could have been stolen (at high risk or price) from CCC, or perhaps the two men have been under surveillance for a lot of time. "Danee" actually downloaded both from a CCC database, and then deleted some minor stuff. Among the other data, she erased any reference to her friend Deela. Anyone tailing Ulag should find this a little strange, because the guy spends a lot of his time with her, they often spend the night together and their relationship seems quite steady.
Other interesting leads your players would probably like to investigate:
The Grav Car accident.
A search in the newspapers databases (Research, Average) will uncover the full story. Ulag was studying Gravitics as an hobby and had bought a severely damaged air raft which was sold as scrap metal.
After many weekends of patient work, he tested the refurbished vehicle in what he thought was just a brief flight. Unfortunately the drive malfunctioned and the trip ended inside an art gallery, destroying many valuables. There were no victims, but the damage costs were so high that he had to ask CCC for help. An Average Law or Administration roll will reveal that the "loan" from CCC will probably have to be repaid with some kind of contract bonding. In fact, Ulag can't leave CCC nor ask for a raise until his debt has been fully repaid. At the present rate, it will take another 4 years.
Katel Neusham
This piece of news didn't make to the press. The girl has married, left Munar and lives in another city. Getting to her would prove a little difficult (there are at least three other Katel Neusham in the public files, roleplay it) but her current PDA address may finally be traced (Research, Difficult, plus 50 cr. in expenses/bribes). She will agree to tell something about it over the phone. According to her, Konis was a violent son of a *, I did get some dough from him for dropping charges, that *, and left him for good. I do hope he is in deep *, that cheap *-*!!!
Kombo-Tak
Anyone doing a EDU+Brawling, Average roll will recognize this as an "hard" style (like Karate or Tae-kwon-Do). The strange part is that Konis prefers to train in a small town just outside Munar city suburbia. There are at least two other schools which are much less distant from his home or office.
Checking out the main Kombo-Tak schools in Munar will reveal that Konis was thrown out a couple of the more serious places because he was "too violent". The Body Zenith school is directed by a retired Army sergeant who believes that "Kombo-Tak has lost its edge in the hands of those sissies in the PDTA!". Konis is a good fighter, at least for a white collar guy, but in the last six months he trained less regularly than before.
Marine Corps records.
These are *very* well guarded. Hacking the Navy Base computers is a Staggering task, and their computers are built at Imperium Military TL, so enlisting a local hacker will not be of great help. Ex-Navy or ex-Marines characters may obtain these as a favor. The files note that the young Konis had a mild cardiac problem which could have put him in danger during the severe Marine training.
Konis was furious at this, and was convinced that someone blackballed him during the first months. Believing that his heart problem was not real, he never considered surgery. In fact, he continued to have an highly active lifestyle and he is in good shape.
"Trafelian Space Delvers"
This is a club of people which like to organize inter-system space voyages and activities.
They are a little like a speleologist club, but instead of spending their time (and money) under the planet surface, they prefer renting shuttles and other space vessels and spend some time on the moons or other planetary bodies of the Trafe System.
The club is still active, and some of the current members may remember Ran Ulag, even if he is no more part of the club. They have no important info on him. "He was an ok guy..., a little too serious, perhaps, but he was level-headed and a good techie, a real asset during our escapades"
He finally dropped out because he didn't want to start a space-based career, and he was pursuing other interests, i.e. his Gravitics experiments.
The jack
The idea of having a direct interface to your neural system is something that your average Imperial citizen wouldn't really consider.
The technology is quite promising, and may give an edge for some very specialized activities, but VR interfacing is not very popular. You can use it to fully immerse yourself in data patterns so complex that they cannot be represented with holographic displays, and you can actually train yourself in using it to become faster and more productive in using your computer, but the concept is tinged with the morbid rumors about people using the jack to braindance with cheap porn sensory tapes.

Shadowing the suspects

Rohm Konis is the only one of the two who owns a ground car, a spiffy sport model which is easily recognizable. Ulag sold his cars one year ago, and now uses public transports to go to work, and his girlfriend compact to drive around in the evening and during weekends.
If the players want to follow their targets, they may want to rent one or more vehicles. As a rule of thumb, make them pay 1/200 of vehicle cost per day (i.e. an 8000 cr. car will be rentable for 40 cr./day) Neither of the two men suspects anything, so they will be easily tailed with no need for great care or skills. Every time a PC follows one of the two, impose a Stealth, Easy task. Special Failure will mean that they loose sight of their target.

Metropolis Residence

This is a large condom in a moderately fashionable part of Munar, not far from the CCC Citadel; a lot of CCC people lives there. There are two kinds of apartment: B (for Business class) and V (for VIP). The cost-conscious Ulag choose the former arrangement, which gives him a smaller living area. Each apartment in the building is protected by a TL10 alarm system.
If your PC decide to rent an apartment in the same building, they will be able to get a minisuite (B Class) just 3 doors to the left from Ulag's home for 200cr./months plus a 400cr. advance. If they do so, give them a +2 bonus in trying to bypass internal alarms, having the chance to practice in their own apartment. The suite is small so no more than 2 people may live inside.

The Ugly Truth

Rohm Konis is an intelligent man, but he has a violent, sadistic streak in him. He does not fear pain, or bodily harm, but he fully understand that CCC prefer to keep engineering and security duties separate, so to speak.
More than a year ago he came in contact with Zaran Horas, a member of the criminal underworld and started to work on a project which could help him satisfy his taste for bloodsports... and Horas' taste for money.
Here is the idea: allow "players" to remote-control "pawns" trough a VR interface jack. Each player will sit in a VR pod and use the body of a pawn to fight against another similarly equipped duo in a secret arena. The fight will be without rules, of course, and will often end with the death of one of the pawns. The player will be able to feel most of the pain and other physical stimulations of his pawn, but after the fight he will not suffer any physical consequences. The pawns, on the other hand, still feel the pain, obviously, but their motor centers are controlled from the player brain.
The pawns are selected among the truly desperate inhabitants of the Munar slums, and undergo the jack implant in a gangster controlled clinic... some of them will already have some kind of VR jack, being burned up drug addicts just rejected from VR porn production.
The fights take place in a secret arena under "The Hyperspace", a large disco owned by Horas. The matches attract gamblers, onlookers and "players", and have proved to be a good source of income. Fights are staged every two to three weeks, depending mostly on availability of suitable pawns, number of paying viewers and police activities in the area. Most of the technical problems were solved directly by Konis himself, except for the bi-directional transmission of signals between the pawn and the controlling player. Usually the VR interface is connected directly through a physical medium (a cable) and Konis was not able to solve the problem... until he found and contacted Ran Ulag, who could provide the solution and also help him designing a damper system which could avoid casual detection of signals from outside.
Ran Ulag knew that the job was illegal, but he needed the money, and asked not to be involved in it beyond the technical part. Konis agreed, and described the project with vague hints about a kind of collective sex-theater for perverts without mentioning the real scope of the project.
Ulag forced himself to believe the story (the stuff he helped design seems focused on just two VR participants, and upgrading it for a larger group of people would require substantial redesign), he really needed the money to repay the CCC and marry Deela, so he tried to put his doubts away and just do what he was asked to.

What happens now?

The PCs investigation will probably give very little fruits. Ulag spends most of his free time with his girlfriend, Konis sporadically visits his Gym and will spend a night or two in the _HyperSpace_. The following events don't follow a rigid schedule, and I strongly advise you to have things happening in the order that best suits the situation.
First of all, the e-mail address given by their patron will become inoperative. The first time they try to reach her by e-mail inform them that the message bounced. Any attempt to reach a postmaster or any equivalent figure will give no result: the address they had was not valid, "... you must have the wrong address altogether: the username does not exists, and it's not similar to any other name we currently have on record. Sorry. Perhaps someone played a joke on you...
In fact, Lara Rameris is facing some problems at her office, and she has dropped the false account in order not to jeopardize the PCs investigation. She will call them as soon as possible... but not before Konis death. The PCs may start getting paranoid when the patrons becomes unreachable: tell them that, at least for now, they aren't in any trouble. At worst, they will spend a little more than they got in advance.

A Grand Night Out

Choose a night for the following events. It's fine if the PCs are following Konis, but feel free to adjust timings to your needs. Konis leaves his apartment at 8 p.m. after a light dinner. He drives directly to the HyperSpace and parks his car in a nearby street. The locale has just opened, and if someone follows him inside, he will be seen chatting a little with the bartender and then disappear behind a door with a conspicuous "private" sign.
The HyperSpace closes at 3 p.m. Nobody will see Konis getting out of there. If the PCs get back at his home, they will find his car parked outside the Metropolis building. His suite seem to be deserted, and he does not answer to the doorbell or external calls (see below for what they will found just outside his door). If they wait till the morning and call him at the office, one of his colleagues will tell them that he is probably at home.
They have a full day to try and enter the apartment: after 24 hours a CCC security officer (*not* Lara) and a policeman will force the door and search the apartment.

Inside Konis apartment

In the corridor just outside the apartment lays a small datacard. It will be removed by the cleaning crew if the PCs don't get at it before 9 a.m.
If the PCs gain access to it, they will found a large and quite comfortable apartment. A large room has been devoted to a small training gym, complete with weights, a small mat and a padded, crudely humanoid robot which is programmed to act as a sparring partner. The robot is currently deactivated and will not do anything... if your players really deserve it (by poking around the robot, trying voice commands like "Attack" and so on), it will wake up, raise his guard and start fighting. Fortunately, it's not very dangerous. See NPCs Stats.
There is plenty of other expensive stuff inside. Immersive stereo deck. VR player. TL 11 Home PC. If the PCs have already visited Ulag's place, they should note the dramatic difference in lifestyle between the two engineers.
Konis naked body will be found in his tub. He apparently died while taking a bath. There are no obvious signs of violence; (Forensics, average) or (Perception, difficult) to notice a small bruise on his chin.

The Datacard

It's shaped like a contemporary Credit Card, made of dark green plastic. There are no symbols or other drawings on the surface. An analysis (Electronics, difficult) will discover that it's a kind of key, just like the one used in hotels or in the Metropolis Residence. The format is standard, but it does not match any door of the residence or any other place the PC may care to check.

After Konis' Death

According to the Police, the death was due to natural causes. The man had a congenital heart defect, after all. There is no sign of violence, no money is missing and CCC has no reason to suspect foul play. The PCs may confront Ulag and try to make him confess. If they don't ask specifically about the HyperSpace he will be nervous and obviously scared, but will deny any involvement. He will throw out an hasty lie about the time he spent with Konis ("...he asked me to work with him on ... on a project involving Gravitics, yes, but I dropped out of it because I felt I didn't like working on these things anymore... I had a lot of trouble with this type of tech, and I don't want to touch it anymore...)
If they insist and start questioning him about the HyperSpace, he will finally give in. He admits helping Konis in his project, and from the money he received he knows that it must have been something illegal. He will tell them everything, and ask them not to involve his girlfriend in this.

The HyperSpace

It's a big Disco, even bigger than The Bridge. Here, too, weapons must be checked at the entrance, but the scanners TL is only 10, so a TL 11+ Body Pistol may easily be smuggled inside. Problem is, the staff has something much bigger than Body Pistols.
An Average Streetwise task is required to get some info on the place. It is owned by a man called Zaran Horas, which seems to be a middle level businessman with some shady contacts in the underworld. Horas owns The HyperSpace, two or three apartment buildings, some shops, stuff like this. He had a clinic, some years ago, but he was smart enough to sell it just before the Police had it closed for some strange stuff they found inside.
The place stays closed from 3 a.m. and 8 p.m.; staff leaves around 4 a.m. and gets back to work around 7 p.m. The building was originally an industrial plant, and it is enclosed by a large parking lot surrounded by an high fence with sensors and alarms. During the closing hours three security robots patrol the lot. If they are attacked they will broadcast an alarm to the gang, but *not* to the police, which has been extensively bribed to stay clear of the place.
In playtest, the PCs used an AirRaft, parked it directly over the building and entered from the roof, after having disarmed the TL 10 alarm. This was done with considerable panache at around 11 a.m., under the eyes of any passerby, and proved to be less difficult then expected. The PCs put on some coveralls and pretended to be a working crew.
The "private" doors opens on a small corridor which leads to a dead end where a couple armchair and a small abstract sculpture are. At both sides of the corridor there are two small offices with computers and a couple desks (in one of them there is a loaded autopistol). The computer files have minimal security and details the ordinary activities of the Disco. PCs my try Administration, Research and Computer rolls, but they will not be able to get anything useful from these.
Examining the sculpture (Perception, Difficult) the PCs may find a small opening which will fit the datacard. Using it will reveal a small panel in the wall. Inside there are some simple controls which may be used to activate an elevator hidden in the last part of the corridor. The last part of the corridor (with sculpture, armchairs and all) slides silently down and anyone inside will found himself at the end of a short tunnel, leading to a large underground room. When the elevator is activated, the "Private" doors is automatically locked.

The Arena

Inside the basement there is a small arena, complete with rows of benches, a bar, a big holoscreen which may replay parts of the fight, a small infirmary and, at the two extremes of the arena, two VR pods.
In the wall at the opposite side of the elevator tunnel there is a large door, which may be easily opened from the inside. It leads to another secret tunnel which goes westward for half a mile. The passage ends inside a small garage a couple blocks from the Disco. This secondary exit is used in emergencies and to bring in the "pawns", or carry out their bodies.
Konis was a good player, and rarely lost. Having built the complex, he had free access to it (while other players and onlookers had to pay a steep fee) and plenty time to practice. Unfortunately, the night of his death, he didn't simply lose, but was still connected when his pawn died. The massive sensory shock triggered an heart attack, and the small infirmary (which is used mostly to patch up the surviving pawns after the fight) was not equipped for this kind of emergencies. The bruise on his chin was caused by his death spasms.
Zaran Horas instructed his men to take the corpse back to the apartment. Three men carried the body to his car, drove to the residence and prepared the scene of his death. They lost the datacard while fumbling in the dead man pockets to find the keycard for his apartment.
Horas decided to lay down for a little and the matches have been suspended for at least a month.

Wrapping it up

After the death of Konis the patron will try to get back in touch with the PCs. The GM should wait a little before having Lara call them, though, and wait until the PCs have got some evidence regarding Konis project. During playtest, the PCs were convinced that someone was trying to frame them for the death of Konis, but they kept working on it, hoping to find out something useful about the death.
When Lara calls, she will probably agree to meet them without disguise and explain her real motives. If at all possible, she would like to arrange things so that neither Ulag nor CCC will be involved. If the PCs agree she will arrange things to put the blame on Konis. She will give them the rest of their money and try to give them some other kind of reward (for example she could supply them another mission, this time an official CCC job with suitably higher pay).

Possible complications

If you and your players prefer a more violent and spectacular finale, you may stage a battle inside the HyperSpace by having some thugs inside when the PCs arrive. Another idea is that after Konis death the gang wants to kidnap Ulag's girlfriend and force him to look after the VR system, or perhaps the gang just decides to have him killed to cut off any leads.
In this second case you may play out a series of ambushes and chases while gang members try to kill Ulag and the PCs. The police, as usual, has been bribed off, but just when the PCs are facing their final battle, sieged in a downtown motel, trying to protect the engineer and his fiancee against hordes of cyberenhanced goons, have a full squad of CCC security rescue them and save the day.
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