Outside the club

A few minutes later, Sam and Sato arrive in the hallway and see Tetsu, carrying his bundle.

((assuming Sam fills Sato in on Tetsu's situation))

Sato doesn't hesitate.  "Gentlemen, I know a guy who can take care of this...he even makes housecalls.  All we need is a suitable...container...and we need to get it out of the hotel. I will need to borrow your commlink to make a call though."

"Sam, do you have a way to check what their janitorial service looks like and what their hours are?"

((Sam doesn't know Tetsu's situation. Only Tetsu does at the moment. All Sam and Sato know is that Tetsu called Sam for help, and seemed panicked. And now what they see))

"Hey Tetsu!" Sam says when he sees Tetsu wandering the hall. "What, uh. What you got there?" He motions to the bundle. "How, uh... Did that lead pan out? You seemed. You seemed stressed? You need some help?"

Tetsu is clearly stressed out.

"Thanks for coming guys. There was a bit of a... complication with my lead. Seems like I was drugged, and, well... I screwed up and killed this girl. And now I need to figure out what to do."

((This seems like the appropriate place for Sato to jump into action, as he posted earlier. Let's proceed as if that post of what Sato said and does came here?))

Sam checks for a way in to the hotel's host. I'm going to assume that the hotel is on the grid and Sam can somehow hack in to it.

"I'll give it um. The old college try," he says. "We should," he glances around, "Probably get, uh, out of the um hallway?"

((Sato: I thought that your commlink took a bunch of matrix damage and was bricked, and that's what dumped you out. But that was wrong. Your commlink is fine.))

The doors to all the rooms are locked. They do not have keys but are instead opened by credstick from the outside if the inside is vacant. The door then cannot be opened again unless a payment is made for the time spent inside. That said, the hallway is not especially busy. You see no one around and everything about the hotel is designed to allow admittance without you ever having to meet another person, including staff.

Sam can see the hotel's host system on his deck. There is a general user area where customers can order services like food, special costumes and toys to be delivered to their rooms. More secure systems like cameras would require some hacking, though neither Sam nor Sato noted any cameras on the way in. Given the hotel's focus on privacy, it is possible that there are none inside the hotel, or they may have just been well hidden. But should there be an investigation, there are most certainly some street cameras outside that could provide evidence.

Okay. Let's start by entering cold sim and hacking I'm to the hotel host system.

Deck: D7 F7 S5 A4
Init (if needed) 3d6+12
Sam Dekker carried out 3 launched of one d6 :

, ,

Deck S7 F7 D5 A4
hack on the fly ((Okay... So now that we're starting to use the correct hacking mechanics, how many marks do I need, here? How many would I need to see if there are cameras, how many would I need on the host to edit the cameras, how many would I need to search for the janitorial info Sato asked for? If any of that, except for the camera editing, requires more than 1 mark, subtract the last four dice for a two mark roll.))
Sam Dekker carried out 17 launched of one d6 :

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

((one mark is good enough for the vast majority of actions. the only things you really need more marks than that for are taking control of a particular system either to operate, reboot or reformat it. But we'll say you went for 2 marks, just in case you decide you need to control a minor system or something while you are in))

Sam easily hacks into the system and checks out the admin systems. He finds no cameras attached, just an emergency release on the doors in case of fire or other emergency. Taking a look at the staff, it seems that the hotel typically operates at 400% occupancy, meaning that each room is used, cleaned and then used by another customer at least 4 times a day. The staff has no specific schedule but instead go to clean each room whenever a previous customer has left the room. The room Tetsu was standing near when you found him appears to be scheduled for cleanup. Staff should be sent to come straighten up the room any moment.

Sam removes that room from cleanup schedule and unlocks the door. (In that order. Lmk if you need a roll)

He jacks back out safely.
"I unlocked the room you, uh. That one." He points to the room that it seems Tetsu came from.
"Sato, janitorial staff seems, uh, ad hoc? They come right after you leave."

Moving forward, (and assuming that all of that just went off without a hitch... If problems arise at any point of this outlined itinerary, I'll edit this post) I'll assume that we head back in to the room to regroup and have Sato help clean up the mess. When we get back in the room, Sam will try to check for external cameras. Which I imagine will be a whole thing.

Sam manages to cancel the cleaning and unlock the door with little issue. He also changes the room's status to "occupied" to avoid any interruptions. To check the icons outside, he will have to send his avatar out there, something that is best done from within the privacy of the hotel room.

When you all enter the room, the tatami floor is a wet mess. While a civilian might not realize what they are looking at (other than some kind of stain), you suspect a forensics expert might. Tetsu has done his best with the supplies available to him but it will take some extra effort to get this tatami floor clean and better cleaning supplies than the hotel room comes stocked with.

((Since Nobu is done with his thing in the other thread, and because it's been a full day, and because it seems pretty reasonable that both Sato and Tetsu will agree with this plan of having Sam take care of the cameras while they take care of the body/room, and to get things moving, I'm going to move forward with the camera hack.))

Sam finds a comfortable chair or seat of some sort as out of the way as he can, and jacks in to cold sim. He sends his icon outside to see about the camera situation between here and the bar.

Hopping about from host to host, Sam can see that there are street traffic cameras, as well as the private cameras of tons of private businesses along the route between the club and here that likely picked up Tetsu and his date as they walked down the street to this love hotel. Checking them all and ensuring the footage is deleted without leaving obvious signs of tampering will take a lot of time and effort in the best of circumstances. With his deck damaged as it is, it will make things even more difficult...

((rather than going through the motions of hacking through each and every host with a camera in it between here and the club and logging out so as to clear your overwatch score each time which will take a million years even in a live game, tell me how thorough you want to be and we will make an extended hacking on the fly check. You'll be getting a -2 due to the matrix damage to your deck and the time per check will be 10 minutes. The threshold you need to complete the job depends on how thorough you plan on being.

I won't tell you what the threshold is per thoroughness level, but here is how thorough you can be, ranked from least to most thorough:

1) scrub just the traffic cameras in front of the hotel
2) scrub all traffic cameras
3) scrub all traffic cameras and the club's private cameras in the alley
4) scrub all traffic and private cameras between here and the club

As a refresher on how extended checks work, each check represents a certain amount of time worth of work, in this case 10 minutes, but that can be any time I decide to assign to it. You count up your hits each check and reduce your total dice by 1. If you get enough hits to reach the threshold, you are done. If not, you try again until either you have enough total hits (success), or you run out of dice to subtract (failure). So with the penalty, I think Sam has like 15 dice? That means the longest he can spend working on this without just plain failing is 150 minutes.))

((Unless you're giving the -2 as a workaround to account for the possibility that more matrix damage would happen if we played this all out instead of doing an extended test, matrix damage doesn't give any penalties until the deck is bricked.))

Trying for 3 and rolling without the -2 penalty (ignore the last two if you decide to keep the penalty)
With deck at S8 F6 D5 A4
Sam Dekker carried out 17 launched of one d6 :

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

((Yeah, I am putting in the penalty to account for any combat you might see as you hack your way through. You didn't say how thorough you plan on being. I should mention that if you fail whichever task you choose, it means you alerted security that will then go to figure out what you were doing, so you should pick how far you are willing to bet on.))

Sam manages to get into the the traffic camera system. After checking through their feeds, he finds that several cameras connected to the system have footage that needs editing... ((next check))

((Ah okay, I see it now))

((10 hits so far))

Sam manages to scrub about half the footage in the traffic cameras, looping the empty parts seemlessly so as to avoid suspicion unless an expert examines extremely closely. Still a little bit more to do though... ((next check))

((16 hits))


Sam has been at work for about a half hour now and has managed to get the most of the traffic footage altered. He is now making sure he didn't miss any... ((next check))

((you're right, 20 hits))

Sam is still going strong 40 minutes into his work. He is fairly confident that the traffic cameras have all thoroughly been dealt with as much as reasonably can be expected before he gets to work on the club's cameras. The club's system is a bit more robust, given their clientele, but there is less to do... ((next check))