Data Dumpster Diving

So I said that I'd talk about what we found in the foundation. One of the reasons why I hold off adding it to the last post is because, well, there's a lot of it and a lot of it ties into other stuff that we did, and that last post was already as confusing as all get out. So here we go.

No good can ever come of this

The first run where Me, Freddie and Neon worked together had the three of us head to MCT's Cavilard Research Facility to take out one Dr Shin Okabe. This was not an extraction or anything; this was all wetwork and ensuring that he was dead. However, in retrospect, it seems that was what got the whole damned ball rolling and started us on this mess that has gotten us where we are now, fighting a Crazy Digital Murder God and his Bug Shaman allies. No, really.

In order to explain things a bit more, I need to quickly cover a bit more about Dr Okabe. See, the Doctor was not only an expert in computer software design and development with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and behavior, but he was also a Technomancer. (Geez, this sounds good, doesn't it? Read on, it gets better). But before that, he was one of those creepy-as 'Otaku' guys. Oh, and he used to work for Renraku. Oh and guess where he was during the late 2050s. If you answer involves a certain arcology that was taken over by a Crazy Digital Murder God, then you're correct. I told you it got better.

At any rate, Dr Okabe was forcefully extracted by MCT at some stage (I think after his Technomancer powers fully blossomed, but don't quote me), and put to work building software for them. He didn't like this, and so embarked on a revenge plan that is so many levels of insane that I don’t know where to begin.

Renraku had tasked him with building a 'social engineering' program, one that would actively seek to manipulate social media and perceptions in order to promote their products and build their market share. It was the reason why MCT extracted him, and they repurposed his research to selling their junk instead. What he actually built was Pierce, knowing full well that he would go nuts and turn full  Crazy Digital Murder God (It's that Renraku experience talking, you can tell) and execute MCT's plans in such a way that it would prove to be incredibly destructive to the company when everything blew up in their faces. His death, by the way, was just a part of the plan. Yes, one of those. And yes, Pierce was the one who organised the Run, so I can only suspect that was a part of the plan all along

So he got himself geeked courtesy of us and Pierce was now free to engage in his part of the whole scheme. That plan was to do the most damage to the Seattle Corporate Council as he could (except MCT, of course) in such a way that would leave them all devastated and MCT dominant in the region. Of course, any idiot could see that the blame would fall squarely on MCT for what happened, especially in the destructive way that Pierce planned to execute that attack. Yes, this was all Okabe's plan.

Pierce made an alliance with a faction of Salish members who wanted to seize control of Seattle; specifically one that had fallen under the sway of Bug Spirits and, as such, their plan was less "remove the stain of the white man from these lands" and more "lots of food for our insect overlords".  While their original leader (A Salish council member and powerful Bug shaman himself) had gotten himself killed, his replacement, Dusty Novak, had proven to be rather amenable to Pierce's support.

So the pair of them were working together to smuggle dormant bug spirits into Seattle and place them at key locations. When the time was right, they would perform a magical ritual that would activate the bugs and then have them run rampant. In order to control the situation, Pierce had also tried to acquire a prototype Ares anti-bug weapon so that MCT could put down these attackers and come off as the heroes of the day. However, our alliance with Ares Johnson had thrown that off, which is why Pierce had decided to take him out.  

(It appears that Sabery and the Tir princes who got in on this plan were less a key part of it and more of opportunistic allies who saw a chance and jumped on it. Pierce clearly figured that they were useful to his plan as well and kept them in the loop)

Another key ally group he'd managed to attach to was a team of crazy supertech augmented soldiers, each one with their own specific functions and roles. One of them was trying to take out Wraith for reasons that we've since figure out (more on that below) while another one which was equipped with advanced disguise technology, was used to impersonate Pierce for those days that he needed to appear somewhere in person rather than his usual trick of meeting people via AR or in the matrix or whatever else. Oh, and the tech in these freakjobs could be traced back to an Evo subsidiary, so that's another step towards obscuring his origins and role.

He'd covered his tracks by taking out the Calivard research facility's staff as well as destroying all the data on his design. This meant that nothing he did could be traced back to MCT while also ensuring that nobody would be able to destroy him. He managed to succeed at both, burning the data down to the ground to a level that meant we needed to go into the Calivard facility's foundation in order to get the info we needed - hence our trip to Spookyville I discussed before. I have no doubt that his Crazy Digital Murder God logic was able to rationalise killing MCT personnel and destroying MCT assets as being a small price compared to the predicted net gains from his plan. Or something.

So what's his next step? Activating the bugs is the endgame goal here, although we’ve now got their locations and sent it to Theresa so she can get one into the ‘win’ column. It requires a ritual, but we don’t know who's going to be performing it (Given that Dusty’s brain was scattered across the wall), or when they’re going to do it. We do know that they have a 'host' (or sacrifice; it’s a bit of both) planned for the Queen's spirit, which has added both a layer of complication and also explanation to things; that host is Snow Fox, Wraith's missing fiancée (or something) and the reason why somebody's been going around killing off the members of his old team.

All up, a lot of unknowns. But there is one bit of good news in all this mess. See, as a Crazy Digital Murder God, Pierce is functionally immortal; if we 'kill' him in the Matrix, he'll just retreat to a designated haven and recompile. The good news is that we now know where that is, so now we have a way to make him dead and end this whole mess. It can’t happen soon enough.