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Project Dark Salvation Quarterly Board Meeting
11 AF
Firewall Investigation Team Investigation Conclusion—
Proxy Summary Report

The team was shot out of the atmosphere of earth by killsats. The pulsing beacon placed on the ship ensured destruction. A nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere did attract a lot of attention unfortunately. The team’s consciousnesses have been placed in cold storage and their current ones’ will never make it off earth.

The Prometheans are being held at bay by our ‘friends.’ They will be interrogated once they have been contained. Our contacts throughout the system have been placed on alert to find any copies of the teams consciousnesses that may have attempted to escape our influence. Their knowledge will never come to light and Firewall can ensure the future of mankind.

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Sentinels, given the data that we recovered from the meeting you infiltrated we are sending you to Earth to investigate the anomaly in the Chicago-Milwaukee area. You have been given an unlimited budget for this op. You have three months to prepare as we currently prepare your ship to help you survive the defense grid. The ship will be a small courier transport with a fusion drive. Any upgrades or modifications to the ships systems will need to be instructed to the engineers before you leave Mars so it will be ready when you arrive. You will leave from Luna as soon as your ship has been completed and you have been sleeved in the body you desire. The ship will be stealthed to help you avoid the killsats. From the discovered data they were found to be Factor in origin so we are not sure if this will allow you to sneak past them. Please prepare all the gear you wish to bring in a list for the mission and it will be waiting on Luna for the launch of the mission. Good luck.

Audio Log
Firewall Secure Meeting
Location: Unknown

Begin Log:
[Voice 1]: Well this certainly looks… interesting. There seems to be a great deal that is missing from this report. I thought we had recovered more?

[Voice 2]: So far we have managed to retrieve one body as well as what we could scavenge from Mr. Orzco’s mansion. The data seemed intact, however when we attempted to recover it much of it was corrupted. We have agents continuing to search for additional data.

[Voice 3]: Can our “friends” recover any of the data? And my god is all of this data correct? The abilities that were recorded are unimaginable.

[Voice 2]: They are reluctant given its origin and association with one of the TITANs. And yes the data has been triple checked and confirmed. Seems they know much more about async abilities that we could ever hope to know.

[Voice 4]: Do we have any leads on where this thing many have gone or its intentions?

[Voice 5]: Yes. Some of our agents have heard whispers that it is moving through space currently. On a trajectory with Earth. This correlates with one of the fragments of data we recovered. There was much discussion about the Chicago area and a facility holding the ship that Q arrived in.

[Voice 6]: What are we doing about that ship? It is far too dangerous to exist. I suggest immediate action to terminate it before [transcript redacted].

[Voice 1]: We should not be so quick. It contains many advanced systems that would aid us against TITAN incursions. It being in the hands of the Consortium is a problem, but one I think we can deal with.

[Voice 3]: That can be discussed at a later date. The Firewall agents involved in this mission, what should be their assignment after this incident? They are obviously a blunt instrument given everything they have been involved in. Though we might consider carefully sending some of these agents. Q is has a questionable loyalty given his past and potential capabilities. Kira is also a concern given her being an async. She may be more susceptible to coercion that others.

[Voice 4]: What you say is true though I doubt we could find another team. Q and Kira are concerns but not enough to side line them. They have accomplished the tasks set before them. Sometimes with more collateral damage than we expect. At least they didn’t crack Mars apart with antimatter. We do need to investigate this data that something is happening in Chicago. They are well suited to the task given their propensity for violence.

[Voice 6]: A vote then. All in favor: [jumble of I’s approximately 9]. Against: [silence]. It is agreed then. Inform their proxy to give them anything they want for the mission. It is likely suicide. Inform them as well that they won’t be allowed farcasters, the risk of infection is far too great.

End Log

An unprecedented opportunity has arisen for Firewall. Though information gained from analysis of the Ozma Facility, we have learned of an elite meeting of the Hypercorp Council to take place here on Mars. We have agents in place that will allow us to infiltrate the meeting and actually participate in the discussion. The CEO of Experia and her entourage will be uploading their consciousnesses in Olympus for the meeting. We have social engineers and vectors in place to allow us to co-upload our sentinels consciousnesses with that of the Experia party. The sentinels egos will remain dormant until after their hosts mind has been scanned to avoid detection. Once inside the sentinels will perform recon and report back after the meeting has finished. We expect there to be vital details as to some of the strange events as of late. We also anticipate the major hypercorp players to be in attendance. Their profiles have been uploaded and should be reviewed. Of course we only are aware of 83% of the Council’s membership so the sentinels will have to make these identifications rapidly once in the meeting to avoid suspicions.

Each sentinel should review the members of the Experia group for their infiltration. These members include: Maria Holder, Rebecca Holder, Juliana Sol, Selena Flex, and Jarvis Cortez.

After extensive study of the facility and the contents within, name redacted has ordered the complete destruction of the AI referred to as Unity. Its base code was constructed of similar code to that of Q. This raises a series of questions that many will not like the answers to. The proxies must meet to discuss the outcome of the Quetzcoatl’s fate within the organization. The AI’s threat could outweigh its usefulness especially if it is more susceptible to the exsurgent virus’s attacks. Further investigation of forks are currently being interrogated and analyzed to see direct interaction with its alien coding.

Either way the virus is playing a strange game with these events. The proxy council is not sure what to make of the events we now assume it created. Given the history it has with Q, we are keeping a close eye on the Sun.

Three agents of Firewall, Kira, Q and Melchon, were contact to investigate some data that had been stolen from a secure Firewall server. The source of which seems to be the Intelligent Design Crew. They decided to track down the individual who had stolen all of the data. The agents were traveling by train when they realized that they were being tracked. The agents immediately traced the signal and realized it was coming from the train itself. They eventually found the man hiding in a box on train. They interrogated him intensely and learned that he delivered the data to a remote abandoned terraforming facility.

The team arrived there and began investigating but a nanoswarm suddenly came upon them and they were forced to retreat into the dome structure at the site. They were immediately accosted by a naked man that held them at gunpoint with a railgun assault rifle. He lead them over to a collection of vats that had strange monsters and exhumans in them. The agents reported hearing a strange collection of voices that they described as being a group of “people” speaking in unity. Then after the so called “unity” said that the agents would join them. Then the vats opened and various creatures came forward as well as the activation of two head hunter drones. The team immediately engaged the all hostiles eliminating the head hunter drones quickly. The creatures however proved more difficult to kill. One was a strange exhuman that had incredible async abilities that warranted the classification of a new ability class that Firewall will now classify as epsilon psi abilities. It managed to diffuse a plasma shot that was shot directly at it. However this appeared to be some strange mind game as the agents soon discovered that the weird monsters were not hostile and were in fact ego copies of themselves. This raised a lot of questions as to what the intention of sleeving copies of their egos in bodies could be.

After regaining their wits, the team and their copies decided to explore the connected areas of the dome as they had not recovered that data that they were sent their to retrieve. The ego copy of Q attempted to hack the system console that controlled the vats their while the copy of Melchon followed the bundle of control wires down a shaft into the ground. The copy of Q suddenly suffered an extreme seizure while interfacing with the system. While this was occurring nats were sent to investigate the two connected structures to the main dome. The nats discovered additional vats with creatures in one of them as well as what appeared to be a secret elevator shaft the other. Upon enter the one with vats however the creatures were awoken and one was clearly an exhuman vampire. It proceeded to consume a strange 4 legged 4 armed creature before destroying the drone in the room. The agents immediately took action to prepare to fight the vampire knowing that it could be quite deadly. They were surprised however when the vampire talked to them proclaiming that he knew them and was the ego of John Smith. After some tense negotiations the team eventually accepted John Smith’s story and decided to work together. During this time however the nanoswarm that was outside had penetrated the vat structures wall and was beginning work its way into the dome. The team also picked up Varika since she too was sleeved in a strange morphs as well as another form of John Smith as a dog.

The team thus decided to see where the elevator shaft would lead them. They descended this shaft for approximately a mile before coming to a long hallway that was covered in dried blood. The agents took great caution to advance down the hallway before noting the sign that stated “Ozma Facility.” Kira immediately searched here memory for Ozma and noted their scary reputation. The group entered the facility and found what appeared to be some sort of underground research facility. Though they were unsure of what had happened there since there was a lot of blood and the computers stated protocol guillotine was in effect. After doing some digging around in the office the team got a basic idea of what was going on in the facility. Which included research into everything from dark matter to teleportation. They also found that the AI research and main computer storage area was on the bottom floor of the facility.

The team thus decided to take the stairs the 4 floors down to the mainframe to see if they could retrieve the data. On the second floor down they encountered huge tanks of raw elemental material as well as huge assemler machines to fabricate whatever the facility need presumably. Q decided to manufacture some of the high density processing material that was in the computer’s database before proceeding on.

On the third floor down the team immediately encountered problems. The copy of Kira’s ego began screaming and levitating particles in her immediate vicinity. The team soon discovered the source seemed to be from some kind of teleportation system that was vibrating. The agents also found strange creatures there that seemed to be moving in and out of the solid matter of the containers. John shut down the system trapping some of the creatures in the walls as well as seeming to agitate them because they soon began to try to circle around him. The copy of Kiras ego continued scream even after the system was shutdown. The blob people eventually circled around her before one of them was shot and caused a large explosion. During this time Q explored other areas of the facility and discovered a physical ton of antimatter being stored there. It disconnected the controls as best as it could to break control of it from the facility. However when the explosion of the creatures occurred the controlling AI became active as was clearly shown by a massive power spike on the deepest floor of the building.

This caused the team to go down and investigate the computer center and discovered a great deal of high density processing material as well as strange zombie like creatures hiding among the hardware. The team interrogated the AI as to its knowledge and purpose. It was surprisingly unintelligent for the large amount of processing power at its disposal. The AI called itself Deep Light. It stated that it was currently the controller of the nanoswarms and other hostile things in the base and that it was currently fighting another intelligence in the system. Q at this time raced back to the second subfloor and attempted to retrieve its processing material but discovered that a nanoswarm was present and destroyed his material. It quickly rejoined the group to tell them of the new threat but the ego copy of Melchon had gone crazy and was now in the basement eating the zombies as well as Varika. The team quickly dispatch the blob monster and used scour rings to demolecularize the bits as well as the pieces of the blob people. Soon however Deep Light lost control of its system and a new entity call Unity informed the team that it was in control now. It was very strange and informed the agents that it was created by the alien intelligence that created Q and that it wanted them to join it. The agents decided to take the entire facility offline by destroying the main power cables. This allowed everything to be powered off except for the computer systems as they were ran by a backup RTG. The team also disconnected that and then left the facility and let Firewall conduct our own investigation of the facility.

After further study Firewall determined that the AOK, Apple Of Knowledge, hack that infected Q was only able to due to its extensive knowledge of programming and nanofabrication. Q’s wide knowledge base will make it more susceptible to such attacks than the other agents. Its involvement on future missions where its knowledge could compromise it to additional AOK hacks must be considered before deploying it on future missions. The Song Cai Flower has now been quarantined for future study as authorized by name redacted.

After the events at Beatrix Redemption the team took the opportunity to train up. During this time though they were contacted by a different Firewall router known as Magnus who had a mission for them in the outer system. An agent, Tara Yu, had gone missing during the course of an investigation and it was sensitive material. This sensitive material was a fragment of TITAN hardware that may contain part of a TITAN known as Myrmidon. Thus he instructed them to use extreme caution in dealing with this investigation.

After some initial searches on the mesh the team decided they needed to go to the missing agents last known location on Locus. The team egocasted using Firewall resources and were accommodated with standard morphs though these lacked their additional enhancements. They began searching the public mesh for data related to Yu and known associates. They discovered two main contacts in Locus, Mason Wang and Morteza Bey. The agents attempted to make contact with these individuals but had a great deal of trouble seeing as they had apparently disappeared after an attack on a greenhouse that Yu had been seen at. The team went to investigate this crime scene and discovered that a gang attack had occurred there. Though this was odd since the gang had no interest in a greenhouse and the gang members also seemed to be behaving in a primal manner. Almost like animals. At the warehouse they also found Wang and learned some important details. He build Yu a custom robot and AI package, Achilles and Tortoise. He had last heard that she was on Casa Arturo habitat. The gang that attacked was also identified as the White Kahns.

Q is interested in the White Kahns and their part in all this and thus commences a search. In querying the Kahns however he is contacted by a mysterious individual who wants to know it interest in the gang. After much negotiation the individual provides some additional information on the gang and where Yu may have disappeared to. The individual identifies her self as Patrona Vasquez. She tells the agents that the White Kahns operate a vessel that they use as a private casting facility call the Song Cai Flower. This ship however has recently been out of contact with everyone.

The group decides to continue on Yu’s trail and goes to Casa Arturo and learns that Yu left from there to the Song Cai Flower. The team departs on a vessel from Arturo in search of the Flower thanks to some help from some locals. They eventually manage to find it as well as the ship that Yu had taken there the Kesyrah. The Kesyrah is a stealth ship that is highly valuable to Firewall. The group decides to board the Song Cai Flower and investigate further seeing no signs of life from the vessel. Upon entering it they see that something has gone horrible wrong here. The vessel has strange grows in it as well as blood floating around much of the visible area. They stealthily enter searching for signs of Yu. They see what appears to be strange biped creatures roaming the ship eating bits of what are presumed to be people. See that this infection of TITAN technology is clearly out of control the agents decide that the vessel must be destroyed. Kira is cut off in the vessel and attempts to manual breach the fusion reactor of the ship in the hopes of destroying everything aboard. Her attempts however were not successful completely as she melted her own hands off in the process before succumbing to radiation and heat. The other agents managed to disable the ships engines by crashing the vessel they had taken there into the aft section of the Song Cai Flower. During the process however Q interacted with the mesh aboard the Song Cai Flower and was infected with a AOK hack. This was quickly realized by the remaining crew members and they took precautions before returning to inform Firewall to take more permanent action against the Song Cai Flower.

After the incident Firewall delved deeper in the events at Beatrix Redemption. They discovered that many of the individuals in the town were Fall criminals as well as criminals from various other factions. Beatrix had apparently altered their minds to pacify them. Some to the point that they were reverted to children. Beatrix’s abilities were quite impressive as some additional data was logged in the computers displaying her skill at levitating objects. Even, in one account, levitating entire an entire house. There is no record of Beatrix’s infect with the Watts-McLeod strain of the Ex virus. DNA analysis shows she was infect though its origin remains unknown.

After a brief respite in Noctis, the agents were again contacted about a new mission. Three Firewall agents had gone missing in the vicinity of a town called Beatrix Redemption. The team left after supplying up. On their way to this settlement they encountered a pack of robotic animals that attacked them but were quickly dispatched thanks to a plasma rifle. Upon arriving at the dome the team requested entrance to the structure but was informed that their weapons would not be allowed. Reluctantly they surrendered their weapons to enter the dome. Upon enter the group decided to send Q in a new dragonfly morph high above on scout duty. The town however had watch towers that, despite Q’s camouflage, noticed him and opened fire with rifles. They nearly killed him but only asked that he remain in the village while they had negotiations. The group decided to stay in the village to help determine if anything had occurred there even though Beatrix herself had explained to them that the agents in question had visited but had left sometime ago. Q decided to stay outside the city as he was not welcome in his synthetic morph. The town gave the team an eerie feeling and they slept uneasily. Being disturbed during the night by strange occurrences such as the the scarecrow robots running around the town and the kidnapping of the woman whose house they were living in.

The next morning they continued their investigation of the town and everything seemed normal as ever much to the agents surprise. They were only allowed to stay two days so the group took their leave of the town. However two members decided to remain behind and do further investigations. Upon reaching the outside and having their weapons returned, they resolved to go back in with force. The group attempted to drill into the dome hole to enter in, but Beatrix was there quickly and insisted they stop. She seemed to influence Kira by shaking her hand though Kira realized the powers of an async like herself and knew she must be quite powerful. Beatrix left attempting to have the group come peacefully with her to join their lifestyle. Once they refused and again attempted to break into the dome by blasting a hole with Kira’s plasma rifle, the mood suddenly changed. The dome was blacked out and the scarecrows all began to roam the cornfields causing the group to reconsider their plan of attacking. Instead they opted for an insertion through the top of the dome.

The two members still in town were now in danger and barricaded themselves in the church until reinforcements could arrive. The townsfolk were trying to break in but before they could Q flew additional armaments to the two and they managed to hold off the townsfolk. The rest of the team used a combination of weapons and nanites to open a hole at the top of the dome and began to rappel down inside to the center of town. They engaged the townsfolk in the towers as the rappelled killing anyone who shot at them with amazing accuracy. Upon landing the synth scarecrows attacked them and nearly killed one of the members before being overcome by plasma and traditional munition. Now Beatrix was angry and displayed a true show of her power by levitating a large amount of rubble around her using it as both armor and munition to attack the party. But before she could do much Kira shot an incredible shot that threaded the needle and vaporized one of Beatrix’s arms causing her to retreat to the church which was now opened thanks to some of the scarecrows. The two members who were in there had retreated deeper into the church watching as the robots and Beatrix opened a passage that descended below. The party pursued carefully and saw a huge psychosurgery lab as well as massive computer banks with a storage of many morphs. The party engaged the remaining hostiles and defeated them after a brief but fierce fight. The additional exploration of the area showed that they computers had many egos stored on them and that two tunnels ran from the area. One went to a fusion reactor to power the dome and additional systems. The second went far underground into the TQZ and the agents lost contact with their drone that explored that direction.

From among the egos recovered the agents managed to get a large reward for one notorious Fall criminal known as Emmanuel Hyved. These egos included the missing Firewall agents as well though they had undergone extensive psychosurgery.