Fwurg

[Dragonmaster352]

An ominous wind blew through Unity City. There was a mysterious presence in the Force.

After a few days the Council suddenly summoned a few jedi to Master Leithor. What exactly prompted the sudden jump to action was unclear as of yet.

The jedi were told to come to an empty classroom in the temple. When they arrived Master Leithor wasn't there yet.

((OOC: Entries are now possible. I'm looking for two or three jedi. Posting frequency will be once per week. Most likely I will post on friday.

Reward will be between 2 and 4 depending on how you all perform. I wish you all the best of luck.

Note: if there are too many entries I will ask people to not participate. Sorry, but I am not confident enough in my storytelling to storytell for more then three people.))

[Ariana Danacia]

((OOC: There is really not much to go with here. OOC what type of mission is this? IC is this really all that we get, we get summoned? Still if we are actually summoned Ariana can't refuse... :P))

Ariana was not used to being summoned like this anymore. Since most missions these days are voluntary with detailed information on the goal of the mission this was clearly different. Her sense of duty was strong and the mystery of this sudden call was alluring enough to show up.

Ariana arrived in the classroom. She was suspicious by the fact that there was nobody here. However this wasn't the first time for a Jedi Master to show up later. Ariana waited in a corner of the classroom with a good vantage point.

[Tera Inogo]

((OOC: Slightly more OOC information might have been useful -- but that would ruin the atmosphere of intrigue and mystery. Regardless, I'm happy to finally join a mission with this "reintroduced" character (whose reintroduction was foreshadowed in a different mission a year ago!)

I've included some background information on the character, as this is the first actual mission she goes on. For reasons that will quickly become obvious, Ariana already knows her. Yet Master Leithor knows more about her current circumstances ^_^))

While not new to being a Force user, this is the first time in her life that she has been summoned to a mission. A year ago, Tera Inogo had arrived at the temple under mysterious circumstances, and was promptly taken away by master Screetor and master Qun Treen. Only days later was she seen again, and assigned a room in the temple.

The other masters on the council were informed by Master Qun Treen and Master Shebi Ajava that the recent arrival was the young sith apprentice Tera Inogo, who was captured by the jedi during the investigation into the disappearance of Murrah. She broke free during a prisoner transport before she was incarcerated, but has returned her own free will. She had asked to be allowed to train as a Jedi to redeem herself. Given her past, there was consensus among the council that she should be given a second chance.

Tera studied many texts in the library under the visible, and sometimes invisible, watchful eye of several Jedi Masters. Seven months passed before she was allowed to wield a training saber, and she immediately showed capability with the weapon. Two months ago, she has been taken away from Unity by Master Screetor and Master Shebi. When they returned, she carried actual lightsabers, and was allowed to go on missions.


Just before she enters the room she spots Ariana, and remembers the praetorian from her fight on Dromar VI with the jedi Ariana and Ajava, who were still padawan at the time. She remembers the viciousness that the two jedi displayed during the fight... 'Maybe this is not the best plan...', she starts to think. Yet she collects her courage and enters the room.

"Greetings, knight Danacia.", she starts, "I am padawan Tera Inogo."

Not really knowing how to continue given their history, she decides that it is best simply wait for the jedi knight to acknowledge their past, or to let it be water under the bridge.

[T'Sal]

T'sal has received the summon. The mystery that surrounded this mission had drawn her interest and she could not resist. She had not been on a mission for quite some time and she wants a change from her teaching activities.

T'sal walks into the meeting room. She sees someone in Jedi robes standing and later she spots Ariana Danacia in the corner. Curious she waits to see what happens.

[Jaicen Hedoss]

((OOC: I am too late, can I still join?))

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: @Jaicen: Sorry you were to late. As I said the limit is three. Sorry.))

[Jaicen Hedoss]

((OOC: No problem, I could always try :D, have fun!))

[Master Leithor]

The three jedi that had gathered heard Master Leithor approaching. He was talking to someone.

"... there as soon as possible, sergeant. Leithor out." Was all they could hear clearly, just before the jedi master entered. As he walked through the door he put a holocommunicator into his pocket.

"Good, you're all here." Master Leithor started. "The three of you have undoubtedly felt the unfamiliar presence in the Force. Because of this disturbance the council has kept a close eye on everything that is happening on Unity. About an hour ago our efforts paid off. We received a report from the Unity City Police Department about a multiple homicide and we believe this is connected to the disturbance."

The jedi master spoke with concern in his voice.

"Five victims, all killed in the same manner, were found close to the Purgatory nightclub. UCPD has already secured the scene and have started making scans, but they have agreed to wait further investigation of the scene until a group of jedi investigators have examined the scene. That will be the three of you.

Investigate these murders, find the perpetrator or perpetrators and report any clues about the unfamiliar presence. Gather your equipment and go to the crime scene. Are there any questions?"

((OOC: Please post the equipment you want to bring with your next post. Note: you will stay in Unity City during the mission. If you have any important IC questions ask them in your next post.))

[Ariana Danacia]

Ariana had a strange feeling the moment Tera Inogo walked into the room. She quickly felt an urge to draw her lightsaber. However the only thing she did was tap on her lightsaber as a reflex to feel it was still there.

After Tera's introduction Ariana relaxed and turned towards her.

"I did not know you are a Jedi now. The last thing I heard was something about an escape. I am pleased that you are back and have changed your ways. How does your training progress?"

After the introduction of master Leithor Ariana was eager to find out what had happened. "I have no questions."

Ariana waited for the others to go and fetch their equipment. "Let's meet outside the temple in 5 minutes and head to the crime scene together."

When everybody was ready to leave Ariana fetched some basic equipment and met up with the others.

((OOC: Equipment for Ariana:

• Dagger blade and regular blade lightsabers with short handles
• Communication pad (A very advanced touchscreen computer device for communication and interfacing with larger systems)
• Aerodynamic Backpack (containing First Aid Kit, Engineers Kit and the communication pad), worn
• A wireless communicator headset, worn

))

[Tera Inogo]

"Thank you master Danacia", Tera Inogo replied politely to Ariana's statement that she is pleased. "I have been diligently studying Jedi scripture under masters Shebi and Screetor. And they have deemed me capable of participating in simple missions."

After Master Leithor explained their mission, Tera Inogo bowed and stated that she had no questions.

She then followed Ariana's instructions, and appeared an accurate 5 minutes later, outside the temple. She had only the bare minimum of equipment, as she took Ariana's suggestion to meet in 5 minutes as an order, and made sure not to displease the higher-ranking Jedi.

((OOC: Equipment for Tera Inogo:

• Tera's lightsabers: two yellow, short-bladed, regular hilt lightsabers.
• A lasercutter for slicing into computer cables, a set of small crocodile clamps, and an assembly level interfacing module. (i.e., her low-level slicing kit)

))

[T'Sal]

Before they could get to know each other, master Leithor was already entering the room. T'sal listened carefully to what he had to say and she nodded at the end as she had no question for him.

T'sal looks to Teru and bows "Goodday, my name is Jedi Knight T'sal, nice to meet you."
T'sal was curious to know more about master Shebi's pupil. She waits for her reply and then quickly goes to get her stuff as Ariana Danacia suggested.

T'sal goes to her room and quickly downloads a map and information on the area near the Purgatory and the club itself. While it is uploading she uses her telekinetic power to summon everything she needs. She thinks for a moment, looking at her engineering toolkit she decides that it might be too much, but you never know. Her shoulderbag was now quite full.

Time to go

Jumping to take a short-cut down, she arrives at the entrance just in time.

((OOC: T'sals equipment:

• Her green light saber
• A wireless communicator headset
  
  In her shoulderbag
• Datapad (with slicing tools, translation matrix and downloaded files)
• Scanner (basic analyzes)
• Visual and audio recorder (can function as binoculars with quite some range)
• Engineering toolkit

))

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: Sorry for the late post. Anyway, Equipment: approved))

Having gathered their equipment the three jedi met up outside the temple. From there they proceeded to the scene of the crime.

As they neared Purgatory they noticed the flashes of light from police vehicles, making it easy to find the scene. The UCPD had cordoned off the immediate area and had set up screens to hide the scene from public eyes. Officers in uniform were busy keeping bystanders from crossing the police lines.

Behind the police line an old human man, wearing a grey trenchcoat and a matching hat. When he saw the three jedi he waved them over.

"My name is Dekok, with k-o-k. You must be the jedi investigators." The man, apparently named Dekok, said to them. "Other then a few scans we haven't touched the scene, I figured you'd want to have first go. A quick word of warning though, it's quite the horrific sight. Not something for those with a weak stomach."

[Ariana Danacia]

Ariana takes some plastic gloves from the UCPD supplies and puts them on her claws.

"Let's see what we got here."

After that she enters the crime scene to take a look. Ariana carefully walks around the crime scene to make sure she does not disturb the evidence. Ariana is not focused on details yet she wants to start with an overview of the situation.

((Check: 20 = 10 Force Level + 7 Fitness + 3 Stealth -- Carefully minding her steps to ensure she does not disturb the evidence. (Stealth sneaking training should apply here in my opinion for situational awareness.))

[T'Sal]

"Thank you, mister Dekok."

T'sal bows and follows after miss Ariana Danacia. She takes a look around to find a central point at the crime scene. She walks there carefully and grabs her scanner. First, she makes a good holoimage and then starts doing various scans (scanning the physical state body, other body fluids at scene, scan materials around etc.) as to analyze the scene.

((Check: 14 = 9 Force Level + 4 Fitness + 1 Stealth -- Carefully walking at the crime scene.))
((Check: 16 = 9 Force Level + 3 Vision + 4 Physicist -- Taking a good look around the crime scene and analyzing it.))

[Tera Inogo]

Tera does the same as Ariana, and takes some gloves from the UCPD. She makes sure to observe the scene from different vantage points than Ariana uses; both to stay out of the Praetorian's way, and to see if she can find any indication that other's might have witnessed what happened here. As she looks around, she makes sure not to disturb the scene.

((Check: 7 = 4 Force Level + 3 Vision -- Looking for clues at the edges of the scene, and to see if there's any indication someone might have witnessed the crime))

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: @Ariana: I disagree with your reasoning that stealth is applicable here. Without stealth this results in a score of 17 which is plenty. Ariana check: approved
@T'sal: Same as Ariana, stealth does not apply for walking around a crime scene. Your score: 13. Carefully walking around check: approved Your second check has physicist, which doesn't apply to looking around. Your score: 12. Looking around check: approved
@Tera: A score of 7 is a bit low, luckily some things are easy to spot. Tera check: approved))

The detective hadn't been exaggerating when he said the scene was horrific. Five victims lay slightly scattered. Each victim had their stomach cut open, their intestines spilling out. They had been laid in the shape of letters. One in the shape of a U, one as an I, one as an O and two as Ns. Each victim was from a different race.

What immediately caught the eyes of the jedi was the wall next to the scene. Something was written in red, most likely blood. It said the following:

75 73 62 73 65 20 6a 68 7a 75 6e 6e 62 7a 6d 20 66 69 68 74 67 20 74 69 20 6a 69 7a 78 20 76 72 62 6b 72 79 61 20 62 76 72 20 62 62 75 73 66 20 75 6a 69 6d 20 73 6c 62 75 20 76 62 67 72 20 77 74 20 66 6e 6e 7a 67

Apart from the writing on the wall there was a distinct lack of blood around the bodies.

T'sal noticed the victims had their throats cut as she carefully moves around the scene. Her scan didn't show an awful lot she couldn't observe with her own eyes. It did tell her the temperature of the bodies was slightly below the ambient temperature.

At the edge of the scene Tera noticed some lines in some dirt, like something was dragged through it.

All in all the scene posed many questions and offered few answers.

[Ariana Danacia]

"This clearly is an act of terrorism directed against the Union. I am guessing these bodies are planted here since they did not bleed out around here.

The fact that these bodies are brought here and each victim is of a different species we are dealing with a planned event.

This message on the wall must be a code. We need to find out what it means to prevent the next attack. This is most likely just a start, however gruesome this scene is, this is only the beginning I assume.

We are on a clock people!

We need to identify the victims, decrypt the message and look for evidence that might lead us to the perpetrators.

Tera, coordinate with the police to identify the victims. They might be another part of the message.
Tsal, coordinate with the medical examiners and police investigators to look for the cause of death and possible evidence that the perpetrators left.
I will communicate with the Jedi temple and police intelligence to communicate the message. Hopefully they can help decrypt it.

Any other ideas or questions?"

[T'Sal]

"The bodies temperature are just slighting below ambient temperature. So there are lying here quite recent. At what time where they found exactly?" T'sal ask at a officer nearby.

"Let's search the nearby area as the trail might be warm. Miss Ariana Danacia maybe you can fly around."

T'sal takes her datapad and puts the code in a slicing tool, maybe that can decipher it. While the program runs on the background T'sal makes pictures/videos of the scene. She waves one medical examiners and one police investigators, so they can come and help investigate the crime scene and take evidence.

[Tera Inogo]

Tera goes over to the medical examiner to help them determine the species victims. Which, given that the species were not immediately visible from looking over the crime scene, must mean that that would involve a lot of checking of identity cards and medical records.

((Check: 6 = 2 Untrained Skill Force Level + 4 Reason -- For checking identity cards and records))

[Ariana Danacia]

Ariana quickly takes her datapad out of her backpack, she quickly makes a scan of the code on the wall and than types the sequence on her datapad. She adds a small message to it and transfers it to the Jedi Temple research lab over the holonet.

Dear Jedi researchers,

Five victims, credible threat against the Union. High priority.

Code found on crime scene:
75 73 62 73 65 20 6a 68 7a 75 6e 6e 62 7a 6d 20 66 69 68 74 67 20 74 69 20 6a 69 7a 78 20 76 72 62 6b 72 79 61 20 62 76 72 20 62 62 75 73 66 20 75 6a 69 6d 20 73 6c 62 75 20 76 62 67 72 20 77 74 20 66 6e 6e 7a 67

Any assistance on cracking this code is appreciated. Please contact us with any information regarding the code.

Greetings,
Jedi Knight Ariana Danacia

"I will see what this place looks like from above, we might get lucky or possibly have missed something that is hard to see from this vantage point."

Ariana quickly moved away from the bodies and jumped into the air just outside the crime scene. Spreading her wings with force too get a jump start. She quickly flapped her wings and swiftly moved between the buildings. Ariana looked around for anything suspicious and other things that could only be noticed from above.

((Check: 21 = 10 Force Level + 7 Fitness + 4 Flight -- Swiftly flying between the buildings and looking for clues from above.))

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: @T'sal: You need to take a check to use a slicing tool. Your score for a slicing check: 15. A wise jedi master once said: "What is the meaning of a problem if you can't solve it yourself." Check: denied
@Tera: Check: approved
@Ariana: Check: approved))

The officer T'sal asked about when the bodies were found, took out a datapad and looked something up. "A call was made to the emergency services about three hours ago, by someone named Vigenère Caesar. Nobody was present when we got here though." The officer told her. After getting the go ahead from her, the medical examiner and the investigator started their processing of the scene. T'sal's datapad couldn't make heads or tales out of the code. All it did was give an annoying pop-up window that said: 'input error'.

With some help from the medical examiner, Tera managed to figure out the races of the victims. A human, an ehmet, a skulddaran, a theelin and a zabrak. She also found out there were tiny particles of vegetation in both the stomach wounds and the neck wounds and that the stomachs of the victims had been cut open before their throats were cut in a very precise, almost ritualistic, way.

From on high Ariana could see a great many things, but nothing that struck her as suspicious. She saw the Purgatory club, with people crowded around even in the afternoon. A deserted alleyway close by, right next to the main street. More in sight of the public then the slightly obscure location of the crime scene. As she started to return, Ariana received a message.

Dear Knight Ariana Danacia,

The code you sent looks similar to the code used for the names of the IO Protocol. Though it is highly unlikely they have anything to do with this matter.

Unfortunately it would take a very long time for us to decode this. If you need to decode it quickly, you will probably have better luck trying it yourself.

Regards,
Jedi Knight Winston Gibraltar
Jedi Research Centre

[Ariana Danacia]

Ariana was considering the fact that this was an encoded text as well. She quickly converted the pairs of characters to text using a program on her datapad.

Code: Select all

75 73 62 73 65 20 6a 68 7a 75 6e 6e 62 7a 6d 20 66 69 68 74 67 20 74 69 20 6a 69 7a 78 20 76 72 62 6b 72 79 61 20 62 76 72 20 62 62 75 73 66 20 75 6a 69 6d 20 73 6c 62 75 20 76 62 67 72 20 77 74 20 66 6e 6e 7a 67

Code: Select all

usbse jhzunnbzm fihtg ti jizx vrbkrya bvr bbusf ujim slbu vbgr wt fnnzg

"A direct translation gives us some text. I believe we are on the right track since the '20' corresponds with a white space and all these other pairs correspond with basic letters. This just seems to match too well to be a coincidence. However I still don't understand what it means. I believe we are missing some kind of key to decrypt the message."

[Tera Inogo]

((OOC: So, that only took six hours of my life to decode ~_~

I wrote a whole bunch of code to do all kinds of smart analysis... I'd already excluded normal substitution ciphers before the actual clue was posted; and then I noticed it only after rereading the whole blood thread five times -- mostly because all NPC names used by Dragonmaster are bogus, so one more bogus name did not draw my attention... (On a related note, those gimmicky names are kinda immersion-breaking for me, like I'm playing in a bad children's cartoon instead of a serious Jedi mission with serial killers in it...)

Also, I know that we have a nice OOC-IC concept naming filter; But I still doubt how concepts named after not one, but two real-life people from earth history should be translated.))

"While waiting for the medical examiner to finish up, I wrote some small programs to try basic cyphers. I agree that the basic character encoding seems to be hexadecimal, which gives us a text message. First I tried all simple rotations -- that is, to rotate the basic alphabet such that a becomes b, b becomes c, etc. -- which did not give a more readable message.

Next, I tried to determine if it is a substitution cipher -- that is, assign to each letter another letter in the alphabet so only those that know the substitution key can translate the message. I did so by building patterns from the encrypted words to match against a word list of the 95% most common words in galactic basic. There is no substitution that makes all the words in the message readable words. Nor is there a substitution that works when only trying to match 11 out of the 13 words."

"But then I remembered the officer telling T'Sal that someone called the crime scene in. And they gave the name "Vigenère Caesar", which is also the name of a very basic encryption scheme. So I wrote some code to decrypt the message, using the most obvious key available: "union"; though I have to admit I tried "htesz" and "hzest" first since those are the starting letters of the species of victims, ordered as if spelling out UNION.

Anywa, if you use "union" as key, and then run my decrypton code you get this: "after purgatory souls go walk between the homes away from home of stars"

I have no idea where "homes away from home of stars" is, but I'm reasonably sure that we will find the next batch of bodies there."

[Dragonmaster352]

((OOC: Uhm...

Not sure if your OOC post is just a rant about yourself or if it's directed at me.

Also, I don't really get what you mean with:

Also, I know that we have a nice OOC-IC concept naming filter; But I still doubt how concepts named after not one, but two real-life people from earth history should be translated.

To avoid clogging the mission thread please PM me the answer.))

[Tera Inogo]

((OOC: OOC part meant in the nicest of ways and is mostly me ranting about myself; it was not intended to carry negative meaning towards Dragonmaster or the mission...))