Your team is sent to Metal Sector, to a shop several blocks away from Stark Industries. Though small, the shop is well financed and well patroned, and owned by a woman named Xinhi with her wife Oyora. Xinhi is the smith, while Oyora is originally from Earth Sector and handles the business. Both of them are very solid people who don’t ‘act’ so much as approach the game and any clues given as if they’re extra tasks on their list of daily chores, with the unexpected side-effect of authenticity.
Xinhi has been building a motorcycle which has vanished. She can provide sketches and plans for it, while Oyora will provide copies of receipts and names of employees, of which there are two.
One of the employees, Lanza, claims that a customer has been in and out regularly under different guises, but recognisable because of a pale birthmark on her neck. He remembers she bought a set of basic tools on one visit, and some oilskin leather, and has a habit of being there right at closing, forcing those on staff to hold open the store until she’s done. Lanza will tell the team that this happened, with him as witness as the storekeeper, the night the motorcycle vanished.
The presence of this customer and her purchases can be confirmed through receipts, but tracking her down will be the next big task.
The customer with the birthmark can be pursued in any combination of the following ways.
• Talking Oroya can give a name from a custom order sheet, Nuzi, and an ‘address’ which will turn out to be the kedanese equivalent of a ‘postbox’. • The box-keeper will recognise the description and be able to point the team in the direction Nuzi usually goes when she leaves. • Canvassing the area where the box-keeper indicated will eventually hit on one of Nuzi’s neighbours, and the block where she lives. • Asking other local store-owners about the customer with the birthmark will reveal that she is a regular in the area, frequently just to window-shop. • Persistent canvassing will turn up a description of a uniform from one of the shopkeepers. • Pursuing the uniform’s description will turn up with the area where Nuzi works, just over the border into Fire Sector. She’s part of a maintenance team which keeps track of the heatless fires in the sector’s ‘fountains’.
CRIME #2: THEFT
Xinhi has been building a motorcycle which has vanished. She can provide sketches and plans for it, while Oyora will provide copies of receipts and names of employees, of which there are two.
One of the employees, Lanza, claims that a customer has been in and out regularly under different guises, but recognisable because of a pale birthmark on her neck. He remembers she bought a set of basic tools on one visit, and some oilskin leather, and has a habit of being there right at closing, forcing those on staff to hold open the store until she’s done. Lanza will tell the team that this happened, with him as witness as the storekeeper, the night the motorcycle vanished.
The presence of this customer and her purchases can be confirmed through receipts, but tracking her down will be the next big task.
The customer with the birthmark can be pursued in any combination of the following ways.
• Talking Oroya can give a name from a custom order sheet, Nuzi, and an ‘address’ which will turn out to be the kedanese equivalent of a ‘postbox’.
• The box-keeper will recognise the description and be able to point the team in the direction Nuzi usually goes when she leaves.
• Canvassing the area where the box-keeper indicated will eventually hit on one of Nuzi’s neighbours, and the block where she lives.
• Asking other local store-owners about the customer with the birthmark will reveal that she is a regular in the area, frequently just to window-shop.
• Persistent canvassing will turn up a description of a uniform from one of the shopkeepers.
• Pursuing the uniform’s description will turn up with the area where Nuzi works, just over the border into Fire Sector. She’s part of a maintenance team which keeps track of the heatless fires in the sector’s ‘fountains’.