I think I will name the new thread "Breaking down Bricks", if that's okay.

I would like it to be a quick scene of the characters investigating the blast sight. Then we could split up (we're novas, after all) and check out the morgue (for the identity of the guard and any leads that way), track the movements of the guys who left (Jager has Bloodhound and a really sharp set of senses), and tracking down the call.

While as players, we all know this will run down to either dead ends, or the CZM, I would like to do this to see us "on the streets". Also, during this time, Damanor can head off for "personal business", bringing him up to the events at the start of "The Optimal Solution".

I was hoping Digi could take the morgue detail (morgues are almost his second home ) then follow up on the street-end of talking to the dead man's former associates.

Damanor could follow up on the phone call, which leads to a dead lieutenent in the CMZ (how convenient and further cementing his personal problems with the CMZ - especially if it looks like Damanor murdered the guy).
What if the 'poisoning' of Damanor's sister looks like payback?

Jager will follow up (if he can) on the guys who were supposedly in the site, but I need April to let me know what I find and were the trail dead ends.

Bandwidth can both run down the numbers and start backtracking everything about the warehouse. Who owned it, who was shipping in and out of the area, and anything else he can think of. Maybe looking into Chicago Transits network of highway cameras might help. Then there are other on-line security camera systems and ATMs.

Rose can go with whomever she feels most comfortable with. Any one of the investigators could end up in a fight against non-superpowered but lethally armed foes), so help could be needed anywere. Also, there is a matter of complimenting the skill sets of the various members. At some point, intimidation, rapport, streetwise, investigation, and bureacracy are all going to be needed.
Also, lets not forget Rose's abiltiy to sense imminent danger. Jager can do that as well, but I don't know if anyone else can.
If Rose ends up going with Damanor, this could also lead her to a tie-in with "The Optimal Solution" as she would have to stick with Damanor since she has no authority on her own (tricky how that works out).

Sound good?

Heh. starting to sound like CSI: Windy City Knights now.

I'm loving this. I'll do exactly what was prescribed. Might be a little odd seeing the WCK's resident dead-man sniffing around the Morgue, before heading off to the streets.

I would assume the "dead man" in qustion is the security guard offed in the explosion, no?

Correct. He was the guy that April spotted outside before she went in. I assume he was killed in the explosion.

By the time we get to the blast scene, he has probably already been taken away by the coroner. I also am assuming that the fire department has also already departed as the explosion was designed to implode the building and not to rain down much rubble in a wide area. I still figure their are over a hundred cops on the scene.

Damanor and Digi, there may even be a few mobsters in the crowd, trying to figure out what happened here. Just a thought.

Rose will go with Damanor, as everyone else seems to have protective capabilities.

The guard at the warehouse might even be relatively intact. Dead, but intact. April dropped him into a dumpster to get him out of view, so he could have been sheltered a bit when the concrete blocks started raining out of the sky. Cause of death would probably be massive blunt trauma from when the dumpster got thrown by the explosion.

Tracking the men on site and whatnot could work out one of two ways, depending on how careful Our Mysterious Antagonist was on this:

If he was pretty careful, the men would probably be various thugs hired through a number of intermediaries. In this case, they could be tracked down and brought it. Working out who was actually responsible from that point would require going through several layers of middlemen, but could actually bear fruit.

In this case, we'd eventually work out that the person who is our Antagonist was probably responsible, but the connection would be so distant and well-buffered that we wouldn't be able to prove it. He would effectively be showing off - letting us know who is responsible while knowing that we can't really do anything about it. At least, not legally, and our public presence makes anything else very, very dicey.

However, if he was being really careful, he could have no connection whatsoever to the crime. He picks a competitor and arranges for information to be leaked about this competitor's distribution network. After setting up a target, he goes in and fixes up the entire operation on a no-hands basis.

He takes whoever is in charge of this chunk of the distribution network and takes the guy over - either with Telepathic Channeling and Dominate/Hypnosis or straight-up maxing for Parasitic Possession. He arranges everything in the ranks below, and implants simple (and thus nearly undetectable) memories in the ranks above in which they recall passing down the order. He gets the explosives from a contact of his, but the only person in the organization who could identify the dealer is himself.

Once everything is done, he arranges for his tool to be killed and implants memories in the higher ranks about passing that down as an order too (in order to insure that the warehouse explosion never gets back to them). Even if we get a telepath on the case, only two very simple memories have been implanted in anyone, and they were carefully reinforced over a period of time so as to be nearly invisible.

In this case, we get an idea for what organization is responsible (and are wrong, if we believe what we discover). No strings lead to anyone else because everything was done within this competitor organization. Later, we go through 'The Optimal Solution' and clean up the organization we believe is responsible. We interrogate some people, and they believe they were responsible, if only through proxy.

All is well for Antagonist, and we don't even know that he exists. At best, we are wondering about how a random lieutentant managed to pull off such a masterful scheme. Some things don't add up, but we can't put any connections to them for the time being.

Oh, and April might as well be still in the infirmary at the beginning of 'The Optimal Solution.' That's about the right timing for her being done, and she might prevail upon Alchemist to let her get get up and help now that something's come up.

At "Breaking Bricks", Didge is going to break off and follow an angle. See if he can't take a side-door to finding out some info.

Particularly, he'll be searching for residual evidence. Enought o figure out the type of C4 used. Might narrow down possibilities.

Anybody object to my invoking a cliche to explain how our bomber(s) swapped the drugs with explosives and got out without being seen? The only ways I could figure out were a warper (seems unlikely, but possible) and an underground tunnel (so ridiculous it might work - and nobody would seriously expect it). Of course, if we go with the tunnel, all is not as it appears...

It's a warehouse - the simple explanation is just that they switched cargoes around. Officially, a front company stored Product A for a few days. In fact, Product A got switched with the drugs, and was still sitting around the warehouse when it blew (bobble-headed dolls or something - doesn't matter). Then, the explosives came in labeled as Product B. They later blew up.

It wouldn't be legal to search the contents of the containers without a warrant, so there isn't any way the cops could check cargos to make sure they are what the manifests say. Since a short-term storage warehouse has stuff coming in and out every day, it would be child's play to move drugs/explosives in and out without question.

By the by. Is everyone done with 'The Insulted and the Injured?' If so, someone could end it properly, just to make it more readable for the nonparticipants. If nobody else beats me to it, I can do that - it'll just be a few days before I get around to it.

No problems on my end. Call it when you have some time.

The Optimal Solution is officially up and running. If anyone wants to be present at the mall, go ahead and say how you'll react. Please don't kill Damanor's little sister, though.

Optimal Solution Story Notes:
Warning: Spoilers!
For writers' eyes only (in theory at least).

I already PMed this to some of the participants, but I thought I'd make this part of it public. There are a few additions, noted in brackets.

The people involved in the fiction can change it to suit their own characters and make it more interesting - I won't be offended in the slightest.

Continuity: This takes place about a week after “The Insulted and the Injured”. C-Z drug traffic has been reduced or halted by the Knights, and a rising underworld figure named Damien Matthews wants to fill the power vacuum with new drug that just reached Chicago called Optimal. Unknown to Matthews, he is a pawn in the power game being played by our evil genius. The Mastermind has arranged for some of the Optimal to be poisoned, in order to draw the Knights' attention to Matthews.

[One of the poison victims is Damanor's adoptive sister, Natasha Walker. Three low-level mafiosi kidnapped her this morning and brought her to the mall, where she was injected with an Optimal/Heroin/Hallucinogen cocktail, and left to run wild. When she appears, she is not at all rational, and the only way to subdue her is to knock her out.]

Prologue/Scene 1
Damanor and maybe one or two others are at a local mall for a public appearance – generally trying to hype the Knights and give people a chance to meet a real, live nova. There's a disturbance at the Goth Boutique – somebody goes nuts and throws a table through the window display and into the waiting crowd, tossing a couple of neo-goth employees out after it. The Knights who are present get into a brawl with a seventeen-year-old girl, with a typical “novas doing cool things with their powers” sequence. The girl is knocked unconscious, and Damanor insists on taking her to the infirmary, ignoring any suggestions to the contrary. If pressed, he reveals that the girl is his sister, Tasha.

Tasha has taken a new Nova-derived drug called Optimal that gave her enhanced strength and speed. (I was going to use it in Sam Grey's story, but Sam sort of disappeared.) Unfortunately, this Optimal has been cut with poison.

Game notes: Optimal is derived from pure nova adrenaline (straight from the gland), cut with heroin, and when injected into a subject, the effects are: in baselines, to raise physical attributes by 2 (maxed at Mega level 1) and allow them to completely ignore pain; in novas, a high and the ability to completely ignore pain, along with the belief that it increases physical ability. Optimal's effects last an hour, and it's extremely addictive.

[Because of the drugs, Tasha has physical stats of Str: 4, Dex: 5, Sta: 4. Her mental and social attributes are basically nonexistent right now, and the hallucinogens give a +3 difficulty to mind control and telepathy, because she's pretty much incoherent right now.]

[While Tasha goes on her drug-induced rampage, the three guys who kidnapped and injected her are trying to escape out the back of the store. They know very little about what is going on - only that a dealer friend with "connections" named Matt Green offered them each three hits of Optimal to kidnap her and inject her with the drug. (One hit each payable in advance, the rest after the job is done. Their drugs are in their car out back, if anyone would think to go there.) One of them was injured by Tasha when the Optimal kicked in faster than they intended - she hits pretty hard for a teenage girl. Anyone is free to develop the three kidnappers as little or as much as you want - for me, they exist to explain how she got there.]

Hope this gives everyone more to work with. More to come when we get there.

Optimal Solution Story Notes - Part 2

At this point, the story splits. Damanor returns to our HQ with Tasha, and puts her in the infirmary next to April. I'll be having a flashback/monologue scene, and I'll keep it short because I hate the things.

Simultaneously, the regular field team tracks down Matt Green in what will hopefully be a brief conversation. Green leads them to his distributor, Charlie Olsen, who sets up an ambush for the Knights. I'm sure I don't have to say this, but keep it straightforward and give everyone a chance to do something interesting with their powers (either taking someone down or in the post-battle detective work).

Scene 2
Tasha is in stable condition, and Damanor talks with Tasha or another Knight about where Optimal comes from. This is tied to Damanor’s eruption and how he came to “adopt” Natasha as her stepbrother and legal guardian. The story begins with the C-Z trying to make artificial Optimal, and ends with D and Tasha going into hiding from the C-Z. (This is the reason for Damanor’s hatred of the Megasyndicate and the drug trade.) D insists on staying with Tasha for the time being, though he will join the team partway into the final act.

Scene 3
(Concurrent with Scene 2)

Matt Green is a dropout who distributes drugs to pay for his own habit. We have several options on how to approach him. If we come in as full-blown superheroes and catch him or threaten him, he’ll rat out his distributor, Charlie Olsen, either to save his own neck or take Charlie down with him. If we come in and casually question him as members of the Knights, but don’t do anything to him, he won’t talk, but he’ll go visit Charlie as soon as our visit is over. If we’re subtle about it and visit in the guise of other criminals, Matt won’t tell us anything, but he’ll call Charlie and tell him what is going on. Charlie demands a face-to-face meeting with Matt.

No matter how we end up meeting Charlie Olsen, he’s smart enough to set up an ambush for us. (He knows Matt is an idiot and plans accordingly. If Matt agreed to give information to save his own neck, Charlie hears about it through his numerous street connections.) The general layout in this scene is a dock on Lake Michigan, one of several Chicago-area distribution centers. The drugs have been shipped into the area by boat (in greatly diluted form), and the latest shipment is nearly unloaded into a tractor-trailer rig. It’s a standard gunfight against five street thugs, and the Knights should win with little difficulty. It’s complicated by the fact that Charlie takes his boat into the lake as the Knights arrive, and we need to catch up to him. Interrogating any captured criminal yields minimal results – only that Charlie had them there to ambush any unexpected visitors, and Charlie works for someone named Damien Matthews. Whatever happens, this scene is intended to lead the Knights to the final scene, a showdown with would-be drug lord Damien Matthews. This could happen in any of several ways, depending on the methods of the novas present.

(1) Somebody catches Charlie on the boat and interrogates him; he tells them about Damien’s warehouse. (3 successes on Interrogation.)
(2) Somebody traces the registration of the boat or truck. If they can get through three or four front companies and a Post Office box, they find that the registration goes back to a warehouse near the dock. This also leads to the complete exposure of Matthew’s distribution network. (5 successes on Computer, or 4 if a dedicated Cyberkinetic. This aspect of things was hidden by our mastermind, so it will be hard to track.)
(3) If all else fails, say that Charlie left his jacket behind, and his cell phone was in the pocket. One of the numbers in Memory is labeled D. M. Warehouse, and tracing it reveals Damien’s warehouse, recently acquired for drug-dealing purposes. (3 successes on Computer, or police contacts, allies, or influence can get a trace done for us.)

The trace? Easily done on my end. With the natural hacking skills and CK on Didge's part, the cookie crumbs will attract ants, as it were. Namely Didge and whoever comes with to shut these dealers down.

(what follows is assuming that we want to portray the CZM as really tough customers based on the models of the Russian Mafia and the earlier Sicilian mob in the US.)

Maybe Digi, Jager and Rose talking to Mr. Green, while Damanor, Alchemist, and April deal with Tasha and Damanor's backstory. That leads back to Olsen, whom the Streetwise crowd would know has C-Z protection, thus heavy implications for the Knights to involve themselves.

This is the point were the team has to look at itself. Is it a bunch of novas playing at crime-fighting and heroics for a Reality show, or something more substantial and harder-edged. Tangling with the Mega-Syndicate is not something that gets happily resolved at the end of Season 1. It is something that haunts the characters for some time to come. The C-Z survives because it engenders fear in those who oppose it. They punish severly those who oppose their plans, operations, or associates.

Not that this is terminal either. A pack of dedicated novas can put a real hurting on the C-Z, enough so that if the group survives long enough the C-Z backs off because the cost is too high to continue a vindetta ... for the present.

Of course, the team can decide they don't want to buy into a grudge match with an international criminal organization as well. It is one thing to join a Reality Show with the intent of foiling a bank robbery, or two and saving babies from burning buildings, and increasing one's fame and fortune. It is quite another to take on the Underworld were you are risking not only your life, but that of your family and close associates.

Most likely, what we're doing will be turned over to the FBI and Interpol and or the Directive.

Question by the way, is the Directive now the new version of Interpol? Just curious. I don't have EVERY single book.

I was looking at it as shutting down a small, semi-independent branch of the Chicago CZM, nothing more. Seems unlikely that a group our size would be able to do much to a worldwide Megasyndicate, at least for a while. (Though drawing their attention to us could have some interesting plot ramifications...)

Not sure on the Directive-Interpol connection. As far as I know, they're unrelated to each other (aside from their common involvement in international law enforcement).

The Directive is independent of Interpol and vice-versa. Also, the Directive's influence is only in the small number of member countries (the US, UK, Germany, Russia, Japan - I think that's all). The Directive's function is to counter-act nova and nova-related crime. Thus, they would be called in if novas were involved, or in the case of things like SOMA, or Optimal(both nova-related drugs), but not necessarily against the CZM.

Sorry about the lag, Damanor - it's been crazy.

Y'know, we are legally officers of the law (at least some of us - I know April popped for that), so we shouldn't really need to play shenanigans with our witnesses/evidence. Or are we assuming that the WCK has a sketchy relationship with the boys in blue? Though I suppose the feds would probably make an issue of it regardless, from jurisdictional matters.

Even then, we probably wouldn't need to worry about what our cameras catch. After all, we're not doing anything illegal, and it's not like our sponsors would make an issue - a little bit of playing the bad kids is good for ratings.

Actually, I think Jager's take is more realistic. We're emergency relief, and private citizens under contract. At best, I think we'd be sworn in as sheriffs, which still means we turn over evidence and suspects once we've caught them.

I think it works best if we've only got as much power and leeway as we're given. That way, we can be flexible in stories and situations, giving us the leeway to play 'fast and loose with the law' when that's thematically appropriate and acting as 'boys in blue' when that's what the story needs.

At the moment, I'd bet our arch nemesis is pulling strings to have us reigned in and questioned on jurisdiction whenever he can manage (or whenever it benefits him).

DigiGeist still has a few connections. Ones that could slow down the cogs of justice enough to allow the Knights to interrogate their "Guest", but after that, he'd have to turn him over.

He has ways of making people talk that are unorthodox, but they work. Although he perferrs the "Good Cop" role. Then again, I think Jager is good at getting information FASTER.

Rose is returning to Argus and if you guys don't mind, will ask John if he's had any visions over this. Consider her more of an occasional ally rather than a full-time member - she's got bills to pay, a family to raise and is doing an alright job as a search-and-rescue elite.

Sure.

Damanor is going into hiding for a while; please feel free to continue the investigation as planned, or change it if you like. He'll be back for the finale.

IRL, I'm going to take some time off (as if I haven't taken enough already ). Hope everything works well as planned, and all that.

I'm swapping DigiGeist out for Sakurako. This won't happen though untill after the Optimal story-arc is concluded.

I still need to feel DigiGeist out, and hiving him be independent for a bit will help me "find him" as it were.

I do think that Sakurako would be a great addition as a permanent member of the team, though. Digi is just a weaker Jager clone....

I would assume, since we're not REAL interrogators, we can't get much of anything from our guest, right? We have to find the info on a different route.

Digi, you probably don't want to be in the room when Jager goes to work on this guy.

Also, you are not a weaker Jager clone. As you yourself pointed out, you are an investigator.

I don't think anyone would mind if you had both characters over. Digi would probably work better going solo and having you write solo stuff from time to time.

True. It's just I don't want anyone starting to hound me if a chance interaction occurs. I don't want anyone accusing me of playing with myself like I actually was earlier when I first came on.

But, I'm still considering things, really. I'm just trying to find some different way for Endeavor to interact with the players here at NPrime in general, and to find something for her. As for DigiGeist... I just gotta find my way.

If I stay, I just ask for people to give me the benifit of the doubt.

Oh. If DigiGeist starts dating Endeavor in her current fragile state, Jager will break every bone in Digi's body , but he will call an ambulance afterwards. Endeavor is something of a kid sister to Jager, and woe to the one who plays with her emotions.

Don't worry, it won't come down to that. Although he has a weakness for women, Pink just don't seem to be a color that attracts him...

Roll Call!!!

Who is left standing on the field team?

*looks at feet*

I think I am.

More or less, if April gets doctor's permission. OOC, my posting is kind of impaired right now. Probably not enough to prevent me from keeping up.

Could someone summon Dr McCoy over here and clear the kid?

I'm not going to introduce Endeavor untill this current story arc concludes. So both my characters will be involved.

Here comes the test to see if I can indeed keep Didge and Saku-chan seperate in my head.

"OOC, my posting is kind of impaired right now. Probably not enough to prevent me from keeping up."

Ok, so it was, and it is. My life will be cooling off from this point, and I should be back at it by next weekend, at latest.