Who: Shaun Hastings, Yvette Moore, Desmond (but not for long) When: Current Where: At Assassin HQ, common room What: Yvette's chatting about games on her laptop from home. Rating/Warnings: Faint references to police violence? Videogame violence? Status: Complete
They were testing a new power supply on Yvette's laptop, and it seemed to be working. Shaun had a mug of soup, and Yvette had slippers (it was pouring when she got in to the courthouse and teleporting to Scotland had not helped for the rain situation.) She at least no longer felt so icily cold.
"There's a couple of programs on there - that one's the educational game? I showed it to Desmond." Yvette says from her cozy pile of blankets.
Shaun laughs a bit. “Is that the one he mentioned with the controls he couldn’t figure out intuitively?”
"No? The only thing he really needed help with was when there was cultural stuff. He picked the daughter of a military family, so there were some questions about the rules." Yvette smiles. "It's not aimed for someone that old. The rough one is the Underwild. It's an ancient RPG. Reynard loved it."
“Oh that sounds worth having a look.” Shaun grins. “I can’t imagine the differences all translating well, but perhaps SOME have a way of working.”
"Underwild, as far as I know was Lorenan only? We found a FAQ for it in German, and that was it." Yvette eyes his mug. "Eat though? How's your day been?"
The laptop had a sort of Amiga style graphical interface, but was mostly a DOS style machine. Clicky keyboard with matte keys, and a fair amount of stuff on there. There was notes from Reynard about the educational game, and about the RPG.
“It’s been..” Shaun considers. “A day, I suppose. No one came to office hours, so that was actually nice. I may have gotten a few things done instead of the usual distractions.” He leans in to get a better look at the keyboard. “Bex would get SUCH a kick out of this,”
Yvette leaned to bring up the weather. Chunky little pixels and a streetmap, mostly blank, of Lorena, and the last few things popping up. Patrol boat spotted heading up main main canal, rain near the subway tunnel on the dockyards. "That's what I'd usually have it on. But - I guess it's sentimental. Something from home that got brought over."
“I can see where that’d be nice.” Shaun nods. “You miss the little things and all.”
"Even when it wasn't great at home. Though Reynard loved the lack of Abstergo." Yvette leans to top off her cup. "So, anything neat in there so far?"
“I can imagine that’d be a nice thing.” Shaun smiles. “Admittedly, I’m a little struck by the design. Kind of retro. Interestingly so.”
"This isn't top of the line, but it'd be common? The phone's modern enough by Lorena standards. It's a nice laptop though."
“I’m sort of struck by the fact that...I feel like you must have been onto some of this stuff a LOT sooner than we were, given the design. You can see where older INSPIRED it, but…”
"I'd say that -" Yvette hms. "Outside technology looks to be ten to twenty years out of date? I'm not sure though. I didn't leave Lorena often."
“I’d wondered if it was the whole world or just Lorena for you.” Shaun nods. “Interesting.” and he’s pulling up a program with an interesting icon.
"That's one of the exploration ones, but it's for adults, instead of students. If you want the stuff that Reynard loved, picked any options to go into the tunnels?" Yvette scoots over to watch. "Oh, interesting. You've got a holiday start."
The game has slightly blocky text and options to be in German, English, and French. The initial picture is some banners and a Venice like city.
“Oh nice, options.” Shaun’s grabbing the English version, just to make things easier, though he COULD do the French. “So, what do we do here?”
The game describes a party going on in the city, and some VIPs will be heading up the canal soon. The police is on edge, and you're being nudged to go toward the bars, or there's some kind of noise going on farther down the street.
"Noise options can be - do you want spoilers?" Yvette's watching fascinated. "What's your character like? Use think to check it out?"
Shaun’s moving over to the think control to give that a shot. “I’ll confess, instinctually, I want to get to high ground.”
"You've got two fake IDs, one real one," Yvette hms. "Ration card. Some money. You look like you're more of a brawler. I'd guess head toward to the bars to see if there's an option to get higher? Or you could follow the noise? Sometimes you can click on the picture and head toward something."
“The bars work.” Shaun muses, “More people, more conversations to listen to. In theory. Do people DO that or is it risking too much?”
"It's not too risky. Risky would be picking a fight, or flashing a fake ID at the wrong person. You could buy dinner or food at the bar." Yvette's watching him head over. "Newstand's still open. That's interesting."
“Seems like a reasonable plan, depending on the budget.” Shaun’s moving over to take a look at that. “You don’t say. Real news, or state mandated?”
"State mandated, usually. If there's pictures on the covers, you might have illegal books." Yvette leans to look. "Looks like they're all legal books. And there's an invite to take a tunnel. There's a rumor that there'll be a patrol after the VIP goes by."
“THAT sounds interesting, illegal ones.” Shaun grins. I”ll have to keep an eye out for those. And tunnels...tunnels work. The patrols mean you’ve got to be totally off the streets, but not in larger groups?”
"Off the streets or have a valid ID. And carrying illegal ones isn't great for that." Yvette watches as thought brought up that they might hear the radio to see how tense things are if they got near the bar. The sketch for the bar area is done a lot darker than the main street, with very film noire style patterns of green.
“Definitely not.” Shaun nods. “And there’s only so many places on your person to stash the fake sort. “
There's a party going on, spilling into the street and a cop is trying to break up excessively large groups of people who aren't officially "in" the bar any more. There is a fire escape available to get up higher, and a wind kicking up in the air.
"So, one reason why this game wasn't very popular was that you could download scenarios to add to the randomizer. So stuff like this where the cops are applying the laws but also kind of threatening, or carrying illegal things on your person when you start? That wasn't popular with the government." Yvette points out. "But you get a feel for how the game works?"
“I can see why not.” Shaun nods. “That’d be admitting to that sort of thing, even in fiction. VERY dangerous. And definitely so.” he’s moving around a little, trying out the controls.
The game is offering a couple of options. He could check out the fight, or listen to stories in the bar. There's the tunnels stuff.
And then, just when he goes toward the fire escape, he's stabbed and instantly killed.
"Oof," Yvette says quietly. "I wonder what the odds were on that."
“Ooouuch.” Shaun groans. “What did I miss? Is there some factor I ought to have looked out for?”
"I'm not really sure? You were getting a lot of warnings about high violence - wow, okay, look at your stats." The end stats said the city was at a ninety out of a hundred for violence potential.
“That WOULD do it.” Shaun agrees. “Alas. Proof that random violence can be a problem.”
"So probably something violent would've broken out no matter what. High chance of weird as well. Low energy level of the city, which I hadn't seen, but that tends to effect running from things." Yvette leans a little on his arm. "Want to try another run?"
“Weird, huh?” Shaun blinks. “Are we talking Cthulhu flying into the chaos weird or...Definitely.” He smiles. “I’m up for seeing how it goes this time.”
"You can hit - uh - this key and zed and eight to replay the seed? But you won't necessarily get the same results. And weird's usually stuff in the tunnels. Ghost stories. Spooky stuff. You can also get high luck. Or well -" Yvette waves her hand.
“Sounds interesting. “ Shaun considers. “And the other will randomize it?”
"Oh yes. I've got a ton of potential scenarios installed as well." Yvette hms. "I guess this is a bit like a party game? You'd play this in college, say, and see if you could get an interesting scenario."
“Interesting. And so you’d compare results or something?”
"Well, sometimes you just die. There's also a - some scenarios can have you getting in danger, and there's a key combination for putting you on any other scenario. For say, if you don't want to end up flirting with someone, or getting grevious non-fatal injuries, say. Usually those modes give you the key combination warning if you hit a scenario like that." Yvette leans to open up another file. "This is a sample one, so you can see what the code is like? Reynard said it reminded him a bit of lua gone strange."
"It's also rebellious, since it uses current events, stuff the city doesn't want you to talk about, and so on." Yvette smiles. "And since it's easily moddable, people could swiftly make new scenarios."
“Nice.” Shaun snorts a little. “I bet the government loved that. It’s a fantastic way to communicate ideas, I’d think, if you were careful enough.”
"And you just filter out a few scenarios and bet people that they can't find them." Yvette tucks her feet up.
“Fantastic.” Shaun cackles a bit. “The possibilities seem ENDLESS. I like it.”
Yvette grins back at him. "I thought you'd enjoy it."
“The possibilities are amazing.” Shaun looks really pleased. “You could mount a bloody revolution with this, really.”
"Admittedly, part of that was helped by Sonata's coming with 'A Short Walk' and the university culture encouraging it, but -" Yvette waves her hand. "That's the sort of thing you'd do. Build some scenarios. Record some radio broadcasts. Write some pamphlets."
“Fantastic.” Shaun’s nodding along. “It’s perfect, really. I like it. Very much the sort of thing we’d want to have been doing, once.”
"Want a refill on soup?" Yvette's getting up to get herself some more. "And I thought you'd enjoy it."
“I’m good.” Shaun says. “And that’s incredible. I really do.”
Yvette hmms. "Want to write down that seed you had, and I can try one?"
“Sure.” Shaun moves over to grab the file notes so he can select that. “It’ll be interesting to try again at some point. Or to see what you do.”
The next run, Yvette ends up as a very old gang member, with no valid ID or fake one. She ends up heading for the docks and asks around about getting a fake ID, but ends up listening to stories in a bar until sunrise. Zero weird, high energy level, low violence potential, and very high weather.
Shaun’s hopeful at first that something will come up, though he does snort as time goes on. “Doesn’t it always turn out that way when you’re trying to pick up information, though? My LAND, there were so many days as the Abstergo Barista that I just wanted to scream. You’d think they’d learn to ignore the coffee guy, but…”
"This'd still tick off the government. If I'd spent more time pushing the lacks an ID issue or the gang connections, I bet I would've gotten into more politics." Yvette offers him the computer back. "Unfortunately, I know that - you know how you got stabbed? There's a lot of options for that, especially if you go down to the docks to avoid the police."
“I can imagine it would.” Shaun nods slowly. “And ah well. I suppose you’d assume the docks anywhere had that potential. Does anything good besides, well, slave liberation, I suppose, ever happen down at the docks? Anywhere? People like Jacob go to docks.”
"Well, there's some neat stuff down there, but it depends. There's access to the tunnels under the city in that area. It's sort of - in Lorena, the docks were more or less where everyone who wasn't rich lived. So it's also a class indicator." Yvette brings up the weather map, "That's the high town. You can see how small the functional area is." The laptop's not big, but she could cover the area with her thumb.
“So more common than the...well, we’ve got a stereotype about docks. Earned through history, really.” Shaun shrugs, waving a hand. “But yeah that’s VERY small, with what you’re talking. Makes it a shame that you had Int Sec handling so much that you couldn’t...given the area if you had been able to seize some kind of control…”
"It was more of a shifting sort of thing? If IntSec was there, they had control, because we parted out of the way, or blended in, and everyone did that. Rich families quietly protected their own, gangs ran radio broadcasts to warn people, and so on. But actually grabbing control? It'd be -" Yvette taps her fingers. "Imagine me stealing six blocks in North Korea, to make a bad political example. What do you do then?"
“Mm.” Shaun winces. “NOT a very good outcome, I should suspect, in those straits.” He frowns a little. “A bit much to consider, maybe.”
"Lorena's got stuff blocking a lot of tech, so we're downgraded and we're proprietary tech. Primary economy is tourism, exports, and sending out military forces or selling military technology. It's pretty small. I'd guess under two hundred thousand people? So splitting off, ignoring the military push to keep it united -" Yvette shakes her head. "You'd run the risk if you run a coup of just becoming as bad as the old country, and splitting might make you a target from outside. That's one reason why we were pushing to educate about why IntSec was abusing their powers and to help protect and build industry?"
Shaun winces. “In that case, education does seem like the reasonable path to take. Sometimes that’s what you have. Before I knew about what we did, that’s what I tried. Wikileaks, everything else. Putting the information where people could get it.”
"We were also doing things like running free healthcare clinics, education for poor families, and things like that." Yvette taps the screen. "And protesting stuff that needed to be protested."
“There you are then. Enjolras approved.” Shaun grins. “Sounds like a plan, when something is well known enough. That is a thing I’ve noticed in our age. It’s curious how likely people at home, and here, are to just...let things happen. I’ve seen a few exceptions, but…”
"And well, you've seen me here. Getting a safe place for us, helping out with kids, quietly being a grain of sand in the gears of a company." Yvette smiles back at him. "So, is there work to do? Or would you like to nap?"
“Not a lot of work right now.” Shaun says. “Pondering a few of the problems we’re working with, but school work...that’s settled. I have to give an exam next week, for which I want to shoot myself ahead of time, but…”
"Nap? I've got a bit of dishes, but I could settle in while you get comfortable with something. We could see if stuff that worked on Reynard works on you."
“Not a bad idea.” Shaun says, smiling a little. “I could use that.”
"Admittedly, with him it was often poking around on my laptop and falling asleep. We could try the start of the dungeon crawl game. Last time, I made a pirate and that was ridiculous." Yvette's putting away the soup and labelling it carefully and then working on the dishes.
“Oh wow. I’m picturing a lot of madness straight away from THAT.” Shaun’s stretching out a little, and slowly getting up. “Want some help first, then we can head back to this?”
"Are you sure you want to help out?' Yvette offers him a towel for drying stuff off. "If you want? And it'll - I can imagine the sort of thing on the net stuff. It's interesting, but we basically got lost in an endless dungeon crawl, which I know was what it said on the tin, and the FAQ hinted at a lot of other options out there. In well - super unhelpful German. They claimed the pirate became amazing later, and that the Chevalier was fantastic once you had a horse."
“Sure.” Shaun takes that. “Seems fair. And that’s…” he snorts. “Seems worth considering to me. I’m willing to do the investigation necessary for figuring that out. I’m willing to make the attempt. Can’t be worse than the first couple levels in world of warcraft, right?”
"You know, I've never seen the game." Yvette dries off her hands. "Shall we see about that nap for you?"
“Seems like a decent plan.” Shaun’s heading off to handle that.
Desmond’s heading in a little later, clearly exhausted, but happy enough, and he’s glancing in, curious if Shaun’s stuck around or not. He’s seemed more on the verge of losing it lately, so anything that’s got the guy resting works for him.
“Hey.” He calls cautiously. “So I had the WEIRDEST customer tonight…”
"Soup's in the fridge and there's coffee on the stove, if you want it?" Yvette smiles at him. "Shaun's napping, I think."
“Yeah?” Desmond crosses over closer for a quick kiss. “Soup’s fantastic. And good. He could use that. Think we can manage to keep him here all night?”
Yvette leans up to kiss him back. "We can ask?" She gets up from what she's working on. "Tell me about your customer?"
“Sounds good to me.” Desmond laughs. “I didn’t think he EVER slept. But, so, I think there’s actually some kind of convention and it’s not a new person because they obviously weren’t used to the fact that they were wandering around in steampunk gear...and kept trying to fake the steampunk thing the ENTIRE time...it was so bizarre.”
"Prithee, sir, do you have the Pabst of the blue ribbon?" Yvette smiles at him. "Sounds interesting."