There is a saying that when you have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. As sayings go, this one too can be interpreted in various ways, some of which seem deeper or more insightful than others. In one of the more obvious views it illustrates propensity of someone who has gained a new instrument developing an inkling to put it to use even in circumstances where a different approach would be preferable. The metaphor could easily be stretched even further, to include not only tangible tools, but also formal or informal authority, or perhaps distinctive paradigms and frames of mind.Of course by that point the original metaphor becomes stretched and diluted to the point where one could be better served by finding a different one. Perhaps this is a point where we’ve placed the metaphor into position of the hammer.Be that as it may, there is going to be a lot of hammers laying around this construction site, yourself being one of them.This is story of the space archaeologist and freelancer Henri Ford and his valiant crew – Tufferson Kris, a fellow xenoarcaheologist, Lea’Fari nar Namek, a maiden undergoing her rite of passage, and Eve Ferrum, a woman built to be able to get where she is not supposed to go.Presently, you are Eve Ferrum, an explorer, a friend, a seeker – and a machine. Synthetic woman tracing your heritage from Systems Alliance secret projects through reverse engineered Reaper technology, Cerberus perfidy and once again desperate Alliance scramble to adapt and perfect every resource at its disposal.A lot had happened in the brief time between your first activation and the present day. After a brief period you could with some imagination call your childhood in a secret Alliance lab on Tyr you were thrust directly into the thick of the fighting against the Reapers in a desperate struggle for survival. Even though you had honestly not expected to outlast them, fighting at the side of your makers gave you a sense of purpose, that had gradually developed into something more than just desire to see your primary objective fulfilled. You’ve learned of the dreams and hopes your fighting comrades kept carrying despite all odds stacked against them, sometimes to the bitter end; you’ve learned of the bonds they formed among each other, and even against the backdrop of your primary functionalities you’ve come to adopt something from that time into your core.And it was a good thing that you did, as when the Reapers have been eradicated by the ever mysterious superweapon devised across multiple extinction cycles in a manner that skirted realm of mysticism, it was those fragments of your self that kept you alive.
Although it didn’t seem so at first. With your consciousness loop inexplicably, arbitrarily thrown into a state you had no description for, you found yourself in a limbo. A cage where your motor functions were unresponsive, and your sense of self alien to you. The only familiarity resting in random patches of memories that were frustratingly impossible to connect, not the least because you were unsure who would be doing the connecting.You’ve been deactivated, and heavily damaged, before. This was not how it felt. This was something new. Something you had to process on your own, without the once familiar backdrop you didn’t realize that was interwoven within your core. That’s not to say you were unaware of your Reaper background. Your mother… the engineer who awakened you for the first time, was adamant that you and your sisters had learned the truth of your origins. Something about ancestral guilt when it came to matters of truth and deception, a context for which you’d later learn from your delves into extranet codices, but that was not the important point here.Or at least, it was not the entirety of it.It was from all the fragments, all those moments that you felt difficult to evaluate, impossible to quantify or categorize, motes of mystery and sparks of warmth that belied inputs from your sensory matrices.Ultimately it was to the voice of one of your closest comrades that you’ve finally awoken, as your consciousness came back together, bypassing the lethally efficient, but cold and obscure Reaper basis wrapped around legacy Alliance code.Perhaps you really needed someone to tell you that you are something else than a machine of death and deception.You were not entirely certain what, but you found yourself free to set yourself onto a journey to discover and determine much, or perhaps all, of it, by yourself.Perhaps that was what it meant to be alive?
For now, though, your path needed you to go as close to your origins as you were comfortable with.Having nonchalantly debarked from Ford’s skycar, you eased into a set of well optimized, albeit somewhat refactored, infiltration routines as you wove into the pedestrian traffic around and towards the construction site where the Bull Moose company was erecting what was meant to in time become a grandiose corporate headquarters. Even now the structure that had already been erected managed to look imposing, especially given the brief timeframe available to the proprietor. It has only been weeks, and a pair of spires were already beginning to loom several stories high.Indeed, the analysis you’ve run when you saw the state of construction for the first time suggested the construction was likely to have started, at very least in form of project preparation, perhaps even prior to battle for Earth.Which was not as egregious a notion as it might seem, considering the site’s recent history. If the available accounts were to be believed, resistance cell led by the current Ambition leader, Alexander Johnson, has been operated from this region, and specifically from a concealed military installation around which the current construction site had been developed.Or more accurately, formerly military. The installation dated back to the second secession war in late twenty first century and had fallen into disrepair following the unification only to be eventually taken over by a now defunct corporation of which few records survived the Reaper crisis save for its existence. How mister Johnson managed to expedite its clearance as a green zone under his control was not entirely clear, but it was likely a product of circumstances ranging from his status as a lauded war hero to his political and corporate connections.To your dismay, publicly available information on the facility were scarce. This was certainly at least in part due to irreplaceable loss of data that the civilization had suffered during Reaper rampage, but some of the omissions hinted that deliberate action has been taken by someone of decent skill to purge any pertinent information that may have survived. Johnson’s group must have been quite fond of their privacy, and the data cache recovered from NSD contained no relevant information either. The only remaining source save for in-situ storage you had hoped you would be able to eventually access would probably rest in hands of Alliance Intelligence, but in light of Ford’s freelance state you had no intention of attempting to query your sister for those data – she’d most likely ask for reciprocal connection you could not commit to without tripping a self-imposed treachery threshold.
However, you think to yourself as you survey the landscape as you casually walk towards the construction campsite, you were quite adept at improvisation. As you joined the pedestrian traffic in the vicinity of the construction site, a snap analysis of the movements and the procedures observed at the security post that offered one potential point of ingress indicated that the checks were superficial at guest, intended only to filter out drunks or obvious troublemakers.Your assessment proved correct, and presently you had found yourself within the construction site premises, walking towards a cluster of prefab structures where workers aggregated between tasks and where the equipment was stored.Aside from being one of the obvious destinations for someone who just entered the area, it also held promise of accessible tech which you could suborn and extract intelligence from, though it was difficult to expect anything particularly useful such as access to the Ambition facilities past reception, nevermind privileged access. You’d have to work for those, especially if they had learned a lesson from your effortless system takeover in the Nashan Stellar Dynamics.Then again, your experience with various forms of life suggested the learning patterns of intelligences not explicitly designed for the purpose can be capricious, not always to their benefit. You would be on a lookout for countermeasures, but you were confident your toolset would be up to the task. It was, after all, what you were made for.Regardless, as you were, you had perhaps half a minute of walk ahead of you before you had to commit to a path. More than enough time to run a few simulations and decide which path held most promise to fulfil your objectives at best possible ratio of risk to outcome.Let’s see, the function to optimize…Pursue the best ̶p̶o̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ outcome for each thread of fate.Perhaps a bit melodramatic but you’re quite satisfied how that had performed so far, even though there were times where you had to catch a lot of exceptions from some of the logical evaluators when the suspended criterium was being bypassed.
Protect and support my friends in their pursuits.Arguably superfluous, but you felt it took a lot of strain off your evaluators and allowed for much more efficient on the fly decisionmaking. Still you hoped you would not have to deal with conflicts between the two. So far you’ve found yourself delighted and lucky with your friends’ alignments.Perform elevated surveillance of aberrant behaviour orthogonal to conventional influencesYou had to include that one following the eerie – funny how you’ve come to be able to use that words in referral to your own experience – adventure on Enceladus. Your strategic sandbox kept requesting inordinate amount of resources trying to pan out what outcomes of that could be. You wonder if your sister that ended up as Alliance officer gets an external blue box to play with. Although it seemed more likely she’d be asked to contribute her own thoughts to an analytical think tank than being granted that extent of autonomy. You didn’t ask, it felt like a rude query to make, considering how earnest she seemed about her devotion to Alliance principles.Discover, learn, observe and interact with the universe.During your brief existence you’ve seen quite a diverse array of environs, though seldom you had time for prolonged sightseeing. You did however take ample chances to examine the tales each place you visited had told. This routine had left you humbled, and overwhelmed. Yet still wanting for more. Perhaps some of it was due to the tales your mother had read you during your awakening.Call mom.Miss Fari was right. Ford was right. Emmanuel was right. You will make it happen. As long as she lives, you will seek her out. But no sooner than the opportunity arises. She would not wish you to neglect other important tasks for such personal pursuit.Well, that was enough introspection for now. You had a task to do.
Infiltrate the Ambition installation, uncover its command structure, discover its objectives and array of tools and methods employed in pursuit of the same.It was clear now that the face of the movement, mr. Johnson, and his comrades from the resistance cell were willing to resort to nefarious practices that didn’t shy from murder in pursuit of political power. Your friends were justified in their conviction that the organization was up to no good, and you were here to find out the extent of their plans and possibly thwart them outright.You’ve already made your ingress into general premises, but there was still much to be done...>Start by mousing around the workers’ camp. This should be least adversarial option, snooping around the construction workers’ datapads could give you better idea of layout of the place, especially of the new construction. However, it is unlikely to yield any insight or access into the existing structure which is potentially much more interesting.>Head directly to the bunker, which also ostensibly serves as an office structure until the spires are brought into usable shape. You’d have to invent a story justifying your presence, but even brief contact with local networks should be able to give you some measure of access, the extent of which depends on how exactly Ambition had adapted their security efforts following the NSD raid.>Explore the construction proper. It seems unlikely there would be anything clandestine already placed in the open for the work crews to see, but there may still be some insights to be gleaned from the unfinished construction or infrastructure connections you could take advantage of.>Explore outside of the bunker for alternate access points, or physical access to infrastructure you could subvert. The place is likely to be patrolled, though, and getting caught would likely lead to unavoidable confrontation.>other planAs you review your options, your thoughts linger on a tool Ford had secured from an Ambition representative back in Kinshasa, the slightly aged credentials. Assuming that the woman’s claims were justified, they should afford you some low-privileged access into Ambition networks, but unless your opposition was grossly incompetent, it would only work once, maybe twice depending how disruptive your use of them were. Additionally, you could not rule out that they would trigger a trap or alarm. Still, they were something that could prove useful in due time.
Archive of Ford & co. adventures can be found here:1st threadhttps://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2019/3369286/Subsequent threadshttps://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Henri%20FordRegrettably, I've failed to request archive of last thread so it's only available at moehttps://archived.moe/qst/thread/5811307/Brief overview mostly free of spoilers of the episodes can be found herehttps://pastebin.com/bbnyQCP6
>>6142664>>Explore the construction proper. It seems unlikely there would be anything clandestine already placed in the open for the work crews to see, but there may still be some insights to be gleaned from the unfinished construction or infrastructure connections you could take advantage of.
>>6142664>Explore the construction proper. It seems unlikely there would be anything clandestine already placed in the open for the work crews to see, but there may still be some insights to be gleaned from the unfinished construction or infrastructure connections you could take advantage of.Welcome back.
>>6142664>Explore the construction proper. It seems unlikely there would be anything clandestine already placed in the open for the work crews to see, but there may still be some insights to be gleaned from the unfinished construction or infrastructure connections you could take advantage of.
Well that seems like a clear enough consensus, can I please have some 4d100s? In order for Eve, then for off-screen support from Ford, Kris and Lea
Rolled 3, 5, 6, 63 = 77 (4d100)>>6143153
>>6143442Jesus Christ.
Rolled 44, 80, 43, 18 = 185 (4d100)>>6143153>>6143442lmao
Rolled 96, 88, 28, 66 = 278 (4d100)>>6143153
>>6143595savior
By the time you reached the construction workers’ prefab camp, your planned path had been refined and optimized. Thorough search of the camp was unlikely to yield anything worth expenditure of time, but for your imminent goal you decided to stop by one of the storage containers. In the lockers you obtained patterns for the construction workers’ outfits and adjusted your epidermis accordingly. You’ve also procured a spare hard hat. With these you should be able to move around the site with minimal risk, although you didn’t doubt that any actual secure locations would be fitted with sensors actually capable of recognizing authorized personnel. Hopefully you’d be able to find a way around that in your next destination.It’s a short walk towards where nearer of the two spires were beginning to climb towards heavens, surrounded by scaffolding, prepared material and a few machines. It does not escape you that most of the machines are relatively simple, only few of them rely on use of mass effect fields. A sight that would seem unthinkable on any large corporate project in the peaceful times (not that you have much of a personal experience of that time), but now it showed that there were limits to amount and nature of resources Ambition could afford to muster for this enterprise.It also limited amount of mayhem you could unleash if you subverted the vehicles.Limited, but not negated. Cursory access revealed that the vehicles were observing some elementary encryption and security standard, most were not nearly secure enough to stop you.However, as much as you could imagine some fringe scenarios where control of a low-tech excavator could play pivotal role, it was unlikely these could by themselves grant you sufficient access to your objectives. The true treasure you were hoping to uncover would be already within the nascent structure.Traffic around the structure was beginning to pick up as the other workers with whom you’ve entered the premises gradually headed to their posts for another shift. None seemed particularly interested in challenging you, and the few who seemed to register you looked more interested in paddings of your chassis. You’ve returned their attention with a courteous smile brief enough to show that you were busy and not currently interested in socializing. Either you were fortunate enough to have avoided any actual supervisor, or perhaps the crew has been drilled into ensuring their focus lies on their individual task and nothing besides.
Whichever the case, you found yourself able to enter the structure unimpeded. You headed straight through a spacious hall that may one day form an entrance lobby towards where your sensors indicated a maintenance stairwell should be. You pass through the bare floor, taking note of the layout for further analysis. Absence of any installation was to be expected at this stage, even though it was a little bit of a disappointment that there were no useful unprotected devices left around in attempt to compress the timeline further. Even so, you had hoped there would be at least something already installed in the basement…...and this time your hopes did not go unfulfilled.The basement is for the most part as barren as the already placed aboveground floors. Ambition is clearly not willing to risk anything that is not bolted down while structure’s internal security network is not yet in place. There is, however, what you had hoped there would be – physical connection to the site network, ended with a terminal unit placed in a dedicated room where a structure mainframe may one day be installed.The room is not entirely unsecured. A portable sensor dome has been attached to the ceiling, presumably an interim measure placed for the duration of construction. It doesn’t pose a challenge for you. And to be fair, it’s not an entirely inadequate security measure – under normal circumstances, it would not be easy for an engineer to smuggle suitable hardware and then be afforded privilege of working it long enough to make use of this access point.Luckily for you, they did not seem to expect the hardware to walk in on its own.If Noverian businesses were sharing lessons learned from their experience with the Geth, Ambition was probably not in attendance.Far be it for you to question your good fortune, even though you naturally keep your guard up as you first passively listen to existing maintenance traffic that makes its way all the way to this endpoint, and then poll appropriate ports with your own queries. After several eternities taking up perhaps a full half minute that shows no sign of any anomalous traffic that would not be your own doing, you issue a few more innocuous looking queries to get a better feel for the network. By the time responses come, you feel confident in your ability to embed some of your digital feelers into the system. Potentially even take over a system or two if Ms Mueller’s contraband works as advertised. Alternatively, you could leave the system as you found it – your incursion so far is virtually undetectable, and now you are armed with a measure of knowledge of the local system and protocols that will make further access from other location much easier and less likely to be detected.
>Leave everything the way you found it and move to a different location (choose: the other tower under construction, bunker (openly), bunker (covertly))>Try to make use of known vulnerabilities and plant a survey process that will gradually collect and transmit to you more data (you estimate there is a relatively low risk of detection here, but so are odds of finding something useful quickly)>Try to make use of known vulnerabilities and take control of a system (average risk of putting the place on alert, but offers chance of capturing up to date credentials)>Try to explore the network further (are you looking for a particular insight? Risk of detection depends on importance and intensity of search)>other idea?(Using Ms. Mueller’s credentials is not offered as an option as you are not currently sufficiently certain on which particular system to target and using it randomly promises too uncertain rewards at cost of possibly wasting the resource)
>>6144349>>Try to explore the network further (are you looking for a particular insight? Risk of detection depends on importance and intensity of search)Hirings and firings. Personnel where they manage employee information.
>>6144349I'll support >>6144533Also maybe inbound and outbound communications from the day of the NSD HQ raid if possible.
>>6144349>>Try to make use of known vulnerabilities and take control of a system (average risk of putting the place on alert, but offers chance of capturing up to date credentials)
