LogEclipse Phase: Profits of Doom-Prophet-1

Game log for the 2016/10/02 session of Eclipse Phase: Profits of Doom, as taken by Prophet

Daryl and I are sitting in the Forbidden City, a sleazy dive bar, watching augmented reality porn stream across the wall as we sipped our watered down drinks and nibbled out our dumplings. Business is slow, so I let the alcohol hit me and it hit me hard.

Daryl’s drinking whiskey rocks but I’m putting back shots of snake whiskey. I laugh as the server keeps telling me how hard my jībā[1] is going to be but she mutters “lǎo bù sǐde”[2] under her breath as she fades back into the bar’s gloom. Daryl nudges me and I squint to make out a dolled up cougar come through the door with an escort.

The cougar (Lady Hortencia del Toro) has long, shiny black hair. The gigolo (called Fernando) on her arm was wearing some telenovela sleeve, but he’s wearing sunglasses. They approach a tall wispy thin looker (Lady Selina) with long dark auburn hair wearing a green cheongsam that might’ve been painted on.

They order phizz and I kick the toxin filters to try and pull myself out of the snake whiskey haze I put myself in. The looker takes the gigolo over to a booth while the cougar goes to powder her nose.

The cougar approaches my table and I recognize Lady Hortencia del Toro. I introduce Daryl and offer her our services. Following her to her table, we watch as Ferndando makes space and we are introduced to Lady Selina. -- Text Daryl “Do we know her?” His muse, Tinkie Winkie, has a good run down on Selina as new to town but well connected. Callisto drags up the regular newsfeed drivel. -- Selina’s muse, Cleo, hits a home run remembers that Prophet was a client from way back and had good credit.

Hortencia mentions that I could help Selina with some problem that she’s having. Selina is skittish but admits that she’s getting threatening messages over the last six months. She thinks that they’re more than harmless trolls making noise. Our muses collaborate and we set up a meeting for tomorrow. -- Daryl notifies Edward that we’ve got a gig and throws him a pic of Selina to get him started.

Hortencia talks about AF199, a local telenovela serial that’s shot in one of Erato’s many parks. The conversation veers off to the long-running series and everyone’s favorite starlet, Patti Phucdahl.

Selina drains her champagne and says her goodbyes.When I ask Hortencia about Selina, it turns out that Selina had been friends with one of her sons and they’ve known each other for years. Fernando drifts back to the table, the cue for Daryl and I to say good night.

Edward is hard at work while the party breaks up. The messages are all about telling her to leave, that she’s not from “here”. He hits a dead end on the threats, which makes him think that whoever is doing this knows what he’s doing. He knows Selina’s background. Hell, he’d arranged for her to have the new morph and identity workup!

Selina heads home but dreams keep her from sleeping soundly. She wakes in the middle of the night. Looking at the foot of her bed, she sits up straight when she realizes that the shadowy lump on the floor is really a dead body! She chokes down a scream, a cold sweat running down her face and calls Clio.

The dead woman is propped up against the wall, her arm is outstretched pointing at Selina. Clio tries to tap the building’s vid system but can’t make her way through the data in realtime. Selina tries her hand and manages to ID the corpse as Ming Hiowei wearing a Pleasure Pod. She had been calling herself Yi Hua (Cherry Blossom) in the eroto-dance hall called Haze where she’s a headlining dancer.

Selina grabs a robe and checks the apartment. The place is still locked tight. Clio is still overwhelmed but Selina looks in all the usual places where someone might’ve forced their way in. She has Clio call Prophet. He tells her, “Put the coffee on, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

In the taxi, Prophet conference calls with Daryl and Edward. He tells them that the engagement with Lady Selina has just heated up. She’s got a dead Pleasure Pod at the foot of her bed. Edward checks the police net and discovers that the boys in blue are already on their way.

I knock on the door, trying to figure out whether it would be better to face the cops or make a run for it. Selina answers as Edward feeds me the exit. Daryl moves to support my hasty departure. I pull the memory chip on Selina’s servitor unit while she gets dressed. Edward works the exit route and we head for the door.

Selina and I jump into Daryl’s waiting taxi and we make it to the Peacock Tower. Madame Ting[3] greets us and tells me that Cao Shujuan is in. The three of us retire to Shujuan’s room while Tinkie Winkie scans Selina for any tags. Shujuan takes some convincing but I talk her into a little party while we wait for the initial police attention to fade.

Edward can’t join us, so I ask him to monitor the police band until we can escape. I upload what I saw in the apartment and the servitor’s memory. He researches Haze, the latest “place to be” in Erato. Its owners are kind of hinky, but that’s no secret. The only thing he can discover is that Long William, one of the bartenders, sells the best weed on Luna.

Selina tells me about her nightmares and how she saw the body from the bed. The Pleasure Pod had been top shelf but was probably killed elsewhere then moved. The knife was inserted simply to cause the blood pool effect and make the scene more dramatic.

I start thinking about where such a high end phuc-doll might be found. The Pod is an outlier, too expensive for Erato, not something you’ll find in a public house. It’s out of place. This points to a person with a special kink for Pods.

Edward concludes that the Pod’s Ego is fake. Maybe indentured servitude. Daryl thinks she might be a snuff puppet. Edward goes to run a skip trace on Ming Hiowei but has to go flip his brisket and checks out.

Daryl peeks into the underworld to see what he can find out about the pleasure pod. He’s talking to Ernest, one of his scum buddies. Ernest doesn't know much about that sort of thing but he'll ask around.

NOTES: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity#Penis [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity#Age [3] http://www.jiawen.net/Chinesenames.html