LogDead Drop Vienna-Jason-8

Game log for the 2020-10-04 session of Dead Drop: Vienna, as taken by Jason

So, our heroes have just schwacked Ratzinger, and regroup in Vienna. Wilmer finds a note in one of our dead drops asking for a meet at a proposed place and time, with a signal to be given if we accept. The proposed place is a cafe at the plaza of St Stephens cathedral. Wilmer recommends taking the meet, with precautions.

Winston goes to stake the place out early. Mirabelle and Ditch will provide an exit strategy. Wilmer and Angel will take the actual meeting. A dishevelled-looking man comes up and thanks the two of them for saving a seat. He exchanges small talk, mentioning that he first thought Ditch was just incredibly suspicious. Wilmer parries that given the efficiency of the established opposition, anyone who blends in would probably be on their side. Their conversation reveals that Thomas, as he calls himself, represents the Bishop of Rome, and has access to major resources, but not a lot of information.

Mirabelle, in the getaway panel van, sees another panel van drive past. The guy in the passenger seat is pulling on a balaclava. Wilmer starts to warn Thomas just as the waiter's chest explodes. Whatever weapon killed him was clearly suppressed. The shot might have been aimed at Angel or Thomas. Winston tries to blend in by acting confused. Ditch triggers the smoke device he'd placed under the table just in case. A black van pulls up and guys in black BDUs begin piling out of it into the plaza. Wilmer had previously scouted multiple escape routes from the meet, and leads Angel and Thomas through an employees-only area of the kitchen, swiping a wine bottle on the way. Their Hurtle succeeds but Wilmer traumas out and goes paranoid. In the haze of the smoke he loses everyone, good and bad alike, and isn't seen again for a few days.

Angel leads Thomas out the back and doesn't notice right away that Wilmer's gone. She gets a brief look at a guy in hostile uniform carrying an MP5 trying to chase them throught he crowd. Winston take the subway out, and sees a couple guys in black leather jackets hanging out by the turnstiles, with earpieces and radios. These guys are obviously checking out everyone who goes past. He tries to sneak past, putting a larger traveller between himself and the watchers, but he stumbles and ends up creating a disturbance in traffic. The watchers spot him easily.

Mirabelle knows exactly where she needs to be and steps on it. Ditch loads his AK.

Angel's pursuer makes it into the kitchen and opens fire, destroying ingredients and kitchen equipment with his first burst. She takes cover and shouts out that she wants to talk, but the guy keeps firing. She takes a shot at him but misses, or maybe he's wearing armor and isn't hurt, but his return fire wounds her. Her lightweight armor protects her, so she's just bruised.

Winston pulls a pistol and opens fire. He misses, but everyone who isn't a pro hits the ground, flees, or otherwise tries to not get shot. It's pretty much down to him and the bad guys.

When Angel doesn't come out of the cafe on time, Ditch goes in after her, using his AK to do reconaissance by fire. Thomas takes a round in the commotion, but everyone gets to the van and they're bugging out.

Winston legs it and makes his way down to the lower level of the terminal, still pursued.

Ditch shoots at the enemy van and sees sparks, which seems to deter pursuit. They're gone and gone and gone.

Winston hides behind a pillar, hoping to avoid detection until a train arrives. One of the hostiles barrels down the escalator, gun in hand. Winston takes a shot but it's a squib. That's going to need bench fixing. He reverses his grip so he can maybe use it as a club. The other guy's using a silencer, which means the incoming fire he's narrowly dodging makes quiet "phut" sounds. The train approaches, and Winston re-holsters so he can look more like a victim than a combatant. People start leaving the train, then pull up as they wonder why there aren't people waiting to board. Winston takes advantage of the brief crowd to sneak aboard. The hostiles also board, but lose track of him, and get off at the wrong time. Winston traumas out, and realizes that if he'd just killed those guys quicker, he'd have had a little less trouble.

In the van, Thomas seems oddly happy to see Ditch, who starts performing first aid. They go to a hideout that Ditch knows of, and he calls Grace for help. Mirabelle will go pick Grace up, so that there's no way anyone can overhear the location. Mirabelle swaps vehicles so that nobody following the van can keep up. Grace and Mirabelle exchange bad small talk in the van. In French, Mirabelle says, "you ask too many questions." In English, she says, "Vienna is beautiful in the springtime, isn't it?" Grace points out that it's October, but Mirabelle doesn't speak again.

This hideout is a flophouse, and if the team stays for more than a day, they'll get compromised.

Ditch and Grace get high together after she finishes treatment, and they both wake up in the drunk tank. Luckily, they aren't brought in because they've been spotted, they're brought in because they're users. Ditch ends up bribing some people to make sure her arrest doesn't go on her record. She finds his willingness to do that kind of hot.

Winston breaks that code he was working on.

While Grace treats him, Thomas explains that he's a Jesuit priest, and there are an increasing number of people in the Vatican who believe in the vampire conspiracy. Only a relatively small number of people are commited to opposing the conspiracy, but they do have resources. Thomas tries to find out more about the group, but they're not forthcoming. Mirabelle offers him a lift, but he prefers to walk out under his own power.

The day's adventure does generate headlines about how elements of Austrian intelligence tried to arrest members of Bader-Meinhoff in Vienna. Winston got a good look at the hostiles and they didn't seem like government or LE types. They didn't move like people who'd been intensively trained as a group for CQB.

Winston's decoding finds out that the code is a way to store data within the Arpanet network and retrieved later, like a sort of very early distributed file system. This is a hack - Arpanet users will not know someone is storing data on their systems. Arpanet is a closed system, so this isn't precisely a backdoor, but it is a means of illicitly using the system.

We decide to flit across the Atlantic, because using a private aircraft can really reduce your customs problems. Ditch goes surfing. Mirabelle and Wilmer get Franco-Vietnamese. Our objective is to gain access to Arpanet and run a dump program to gather and export information stored using this hack.

Wilmer watches the way campus security operates, looking for patterns the team might be able to exploit. He identifies the Center for Supercomputer Applications and gets a student to hold a door open for him. Inside, there are locked doors, campus cops, and through one door he sees an MP. He comes away with a layout of where security is and how it moves, shift change points, etc. Campus cops are on four hour shifts, people come and go at all hours, some areas have more traffic than others, and some lines of approach will make the team harder to spot than others.

Winston figures out the operating methods for the computer system, leveraging an old buddy who works on a UK Arpanet node and who is willing to send him an operating manual for an IMP.

Mirabelle picks a mark and surveils him over the course of a few days. He's a Rainn Wilson-looking grad student who's been foolish enough to wear his badge outside. She points him out to Angel.

The mark hangs out at video arcades and mostly lives off Chinese take-out. Angel adjusts her appearance to look like someone who might be interested in a CS grad student. She gets next game but then asks the guy if he can teach her to play the game. He's toxic and tells her this isn't a game for girls. She slips his key anyway, though he'd notice that next time he went to work.

Ditch thoughfully offers to hurt the guy a bit so that he maybe won't want to work the next day. He stages a mugging, hurts the guy up, taunts him for being a nerd, and takes his money.

Winston fails the engagement roll. Our infiltration through the front door, equipped with a key card, will place us in desperate position.