[NBA] - (S)Entry

[mudbunny]

Table of Contents


______________________________________
______________________________________

Hung-Ke opened up his website and, as was his wont first thing in the morning, spent some time trawling through Craigslist for giggles. Mainly looking at the personals section. Some of those people are really, really freaky.

The following ad, which he found in services wanted, seemed out of place for the proper use of punctuation and grammar

Landscapers Wanted

I am currently searching for a team of landscapers to take care of a pest that appears to be trying to get into my garden and abscond with some of my more precious plants. Your team must be independant, inventive, and willing to do whatever it takes to prevent this pest from succeeding. I am very proud of my garden, as would anyone, and will pay $100 (USD) for each member of your team, half upon arrival, the rest upon removal of the pest.



Should you be from outside the local area, I will provide both transport and lodging at the Hotel Dubrovnik.

Should local transport be required, it can be acquired at no additional cost to you or your team. You are responsible for providing your own drivers with acceptable international drivers licences.

 

[Hypersmurf]

OOC: We're obviously not gardeners, and even if we were, we wouldn't get out of bed for fifty bucks... so is this where Hung-Ke points to Investigative skills like Cryptography, Photography, and Data Recovery, to see if his trained eye can spot hidden messages embedded in the overly-large image file, etc? I'm not sure how much of the Investigative mechanic is "I know you have Photography, so I'll tell you this clue", and how much is "If you explain to me that you're using your Photography skill, I'll tell you this clue".

 

[Committed Hero]

Hung-Ke plays with the image for a few minutes before firing off an email to Mace.

"Hunter, I shudder to think I'm so predictable that this was designed to catch my attention, but take a look at this image. My algorithm picked up a statistically significant variation in the LSBs of the red pixels. If it's worth following up on, I will contact our mysterious Mr. McGregor.

OOC: As I have all three I ran with it.

 

[Piratecat]

Gabriella wanders into the room, yawning, wearing an oversized t-shirt and with a cup of coffee in one hand. She crooks an eyebrow at Hung-Ke, starts to say something, and yawns again instead. Clearly it was a late night.

"Hung-Ke, where were you last night? You stood me up. I waited more than an hour for you to show up for our date."

OOC: Date? What date?

Gabriella pads over to look at the photo on the wall monitor. "Where is this? Reminds me of Croatia." She pauses. "They sure did know how to build gun turrets in the old days."

 

[Kaodi]

The scene changes to the inside of a rundown looking military bar. At the bar there is an older man with receding hairline of steel grey hair and a thick horseshoe mustache to go with it. The camera slowly pans around the man as he picks up the glass of rum in from of him and tilts in back. He sets it back down with a heavy thud when suddenly a poor-quality recording of Danger Zone begins playing.

The man quickly glances in either direction before reaching for a smartphone inside his beat up leather jacket. The music is clearly his ringtone, and it shuts off as soon as he activates his phone. The camera zooms into the phone screen as he quickly gives the picture a one over, looking for anything out of place or signs of tampering, before quickly sending an e-mail back to Hung-Ke: "Roger. Dubrovnik? I think that is where they shoot some of that show with the knights, dragons, and backstabbing."

Camera zooming back out, Mace Hunter slides his smartphone back into a pocket in his jacket. He takes out some cash and puts it on the counter to settle his tab and stands up to leave. He has probably learned as much as he is going to for one morning of drinking.

 

[Piratecat]

Gabriella leans on H-K's shoulders, glancing at Mace's incoming email. She notices the time stamp. "Is Mace in Australia again?" She pauses. "A lot of poisonous animals in Australia."

She smiles, and heads to the kitchen to grab Hung-Ke some coffee.

OOC: I just remembered; if you can, kill your sig when posting. I could not love more the fact that Mace uses "Danger Zone" as his ring tone.

 

[mudbunny]

OOC: When Hung-Ke examines the picture, he sees that there is a message embedded in the picture from Georg Rudek (well known in the shadows for both functioning as an intermediary and for always playing it straight, not settinig people up for double-crosses, etc). Rudek is looking for a team to take care of a unspecified job. He reached out to Hung Ke due to previous work that Hung Ke has done for him. There is contact info provided. As for how much info I give you, I come from D&D, where not getting the info due to a bad roll is a normal occurance. Here, if I understand it right, if you say you are looking for the info, you get the info. This being play by post, I am going to try to find a nice balance between requiring you to say you are looking for something and giving you the info. I think I will end up, because of the limitations of PbP, in giving you the basics of the info in OOC chat, and then allowing you guys to decide what investigative skill you want to use, which will alter the info you get back.

 

[Piratecat]

Gabriella reemerges from the kitchen carrying her own coffee -- black -- and a latte for Hung-Ke. She slips it onto the desk in front of him and leans close to look at the photo. "Nothing cooler than steganography," she says, "although you could have encoded it more efficiently. I hope it's Rudek. He pays well, and the travel is always nice. I'll give Ashcan a ring."

OOC: Gabriella is loaded down with points in Notice and Photography. Anything else encoded there? Is the photograph relevant to our destination, and if so, where is it?

 

[mudbunny]

OOC: A quick search on Google shows that it is a generic photograph of the fancy gardens outside the city walls of Dubrovnik. The quality of the picture is very high, very professional, like what one would find in a tourist brochure or something. Working together with Hung-Ke, you determine that it means nothing, and was put in just to ensure that casual gardeners (who are actual gardeners) would not call to ask about the job. The hotel mentioned (http://goo.gl/maps/B2DSb, http://www.hoteldubrovnik.hr/) is a well-known chain hotel of fairly decent quality. Not the level that ambassadors would go to, but high-level functionaries would routinely stay there. All of the regular amenities are located there. Dubrovnik is fairly close to Bosnia, and the border crossings are still guarded.

 

[Piratecat]

Gabriella's head cocks as Ashcan answers. "Hej, idemo u Dubrovnik! Komercijalnog leta. Zgrabite svoj opreme i došli ovamo."* She pauses. "Seriously? You don't speak Croatian? Well, we're going on holiday. You may retire in a week, but that's just enough time for one more trip!"

* Hey, we're headed to Dubrovnik! Commercial flight. Grab your gear and come on over.