I want to run a mission where the characters have to find a murder in a habitat with around 3000 inhabitants (nearly all are Argonauts and are working for Firewall (the Singularity Foundation-part…). The murder is an Exhuman infected by the Exsurgent virus (something similar to haunter) and is already in Phase 3 for a month or 2 (and has therefore access to PSI-Epsilon Sleights)
My only problem is: how can someone do it by not being watched?
There won't be cameras because everybody is trusting everybody but I guess that they'll have their Mesh ID tracked all the time. As far as I know my players they will check the log-files for that (and probably local "security" will have done that as well) and then it should be rather easy to find the one person. Just check whose Mesh IDs were at the apropriate time together.
What can I do against this with a good explanation why it won't work finding him (a good explanation why they do not have their mesh IDs tracked would work as well but something that would let them find a hint in the Mesh would be nice :) )?
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How to murder someone w/out having someone watching?
Wed, 2010-03-24 15:19
#1
nielsk
How to murder someone w/out having someone watching?
Wed, 2010-03-24 17:12
#2
King Shere
Re: How to murder someone w/out having someone watching?
Perhaps culprit doesn't give a correct mesh id? Piggy backing on others, spoofing, regularly altering it, switching it with someone else.
Hints of the unaccounted "guest" would still possible to deduce from "witnesses" present in vicinity at the appropriate time.
Is it known that its a exurgent infected culprit? Erasure section & its squads might want to cauterize the entire habitat (kill everyone) & replace its personnel with "clean" backups. Especially since the habitat seems to consist of firewall personnel (that should have "clean" backups)
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Plutarch
Wed, 2010-03-24 17:51
#3
nielsk
Re: How to murder someone w/out having someone watching?
That is a good idea. They uses a fake-id of themself which lies/moves around somewhere to fake his presence somewhere. In the same time they uses a fake-id of someone else to commit the murder.
The players can then ask the people whose ids where used and can find then hints.
I am not yet 100% sure. The good thing is that my players are pretty uninformed about the EP-universe. They have access to the rule book but no one bothers to read it…all expect from me (the GM) that I will explain everything necessary……anyway, has its merits too because the players are easier to surprise and I have control of the flow of information. And in the last session they stated that they do not want spoilers from the GM-chapter in the core rule book :)
Three possibilities are in my mind:
a) Firewall knows that the murder is an infected but they actually do not want revert everybody to backups because a lot of knowledge would be lost. The proxy gets one chance to detain/eliminate the infected (for finding out how infectious the virus is) and if it fails they will clean that place anyway.
b) Firewall doesn't know that the murder is an infected and as soon as the players find something out that the murder is infected, they will seal the station and send an erasure team (players will be "happy" that their characters are switching morphs again ;))
c) Firewall doesn't know that the murder is an infected, players figure out that he has some strange powers but actually do not tell. One or more of the players might get infected (I plan to make an infection test at least once w/out letting the players know why they are doing a mox*3-test)
Thu, 2010-03-25 00:22
#4
Decivre
Re: How to murder someone w/out having someone watching?
Remember that it is relatively easy to create a new MeshID whenever you want to. It's about as simple as creating a new e-mail address, and would make your actions more difficult to tie to your normal MeshID. If that's not effective enough, then shutting off their ectos and inserts will also pull the trick off. MeshID is one of the least easy ways to identify someone for the purpose of criminal activities... it's primary purpose is for mesh authentication (someone can't claim they are a specific MeshID without having that MeshID's private key). Unless they are a total fool, anyone who is trying not to get caught will change to a different MeshID while they are doing things they aren't suppose to.
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Thu, 2010-03-25 02:45
#5
nielsk
Re: How to murder someone w/out having someone watching?
It seems to me that it is more as "easy" as creating a new MAC address because of its uniqueness. In addition in a small habitat with not a lot of traffic and people that are all/majorly willingly to share their position and stuff, the creation of new Mesh IDs would be pretty obvious. Especially when you use the Mesh ID for authentication. I see it as an easy task for anonymization in larger habitats with tens of thousands of inhabitants but not in a habitat with a couple of thousand people which is rarely visited and people trust each other.
3000 people is a village and most people will know each other (doesn't mean that they stay within the Dunbar number)
I would tie the Ego ID to the Mesh ID in the database and then you have a pretty simple but effective authentication system in a habitat where people trust each other (and it works great for my plans ;) ). The action of conduct for the murderer will be to pass someone, already logged into the database and switch then Mesh IDs (because tracking is accurate to within 5 meters. Then it seems in the logging system that another person will be in the vicinity of the victim. After the murder he passes the person again and switches the data in the database again.
I already have an idea when and how the culprit will do a mistake for bringing the spotlight on them if the players won't find anything.
Thu, 2010-03-25 04:25
#6
Decivre
Re: How to murder someone w/out having someone watching?
Usernames, rather than MAC addresses, are similarly unique as MeshIDs, with the big difference being the cryptographic data that is tied to a MeshID (rendering it near impossible to act like someone else). The big difference is that unlike a MAC address, a MeshID is a digital piece of information. It is not tied to your hardware. It can be changed, and muses are fully capable of doing so for you. To that end, you don't necessarily have to tie your Ego ID to your MeshID. I'd imagine that many people would not. It'd be akin to opening a Facebook page but putting false information. The problem being that someone could, if they found out who you really were, put two and two together... however, this becomes less of an issue in a world where bodies can be bought, sold, and swapped essentially at will. Further obfuscating that issue would be if people use fake ego IDs.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
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