hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2444.txt

Episode: 2444
Title: HPR2444: Interface Zero Play-through Part 4
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2444/hpr2444.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 03:10:47

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This in HPR episode 2444 entitled Interface Nero Playthrough Part 4.
It is hosted by Klaatu and in about 32 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is Klaatu, Loma and I'll play the Interface Nero RPG.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthos.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at Ananasthos.com.
Hey everyone, this is Klaatu and this is Hacker Public Radio.
This is our playthrough of the Interface 0 role playing game based on the Pathfinder
rule system.
And by hour, I mean Taj, and Lobath.
Hey everybody.
When we previously ended the session, the party had split.
Sid went to go to talk to Tina Tamatsu, who may or may not know Peter, or actually she's
admitted by now that she does know Peter.
And Chai Wei went to go monitor a meeting between an IT worker named Yazid and who we thought
was going to be Elizabeth, but turns out to have been an assassin.
So Sid, Tina has sort of sat back and is thinking about what you've said.
And she says, have you ever heard of the tinkerers?
No, I have not.
The tinkerers, they're a group of hackers who are dedicated to avenging workers who have
been wronged by various corporations.
And Peter learned of the tinkerers.
He started getting very interested in their work.
It was like he was a completely changed man.
This was about a year ago when he stopped coming over to see me.
He just got obsessed with this group and I can't be sure.
But I believe that Peter might have contacted the tinkerers in an effort to help them
bring global Omnium digital down to its knees.
What reason would he have to bring them down?
Did he express displeasure with them or is it regret of what he had done?
I mean, do you have any reason to believe?
Why do you believe that?
I guess that's what I was what I'm asking.
I think Peter thinks that global Omnium digital has it out for him.
He had gotten very paranoid just before finding out about the tinkerers.
And I think he probably did research to find some protection for himself.
He was convinced that everyone at global Omnium digital had turned against him.
And he needed to, I believe, he thought he needed to fight back in some way.
And when he found out about the tinkerers and discovered that they were trying to take
down corporations.
He felt I think that they could possibly help him by harming his enemy, which he thought
was global Omnium digital, the company that he helped manage.
When I came in the room, you closed all the blinds.
Do you think the company is surveilling you at this point?
I know they're surveilling me.
I've been visited by several different people, much like yourself, trying to find out
where Peter was.
Have they ever given you any indication that they were going to threaten you or anything
like that?
Or are they just looking for information?
They're always looking for information.
They always throw around vague threats and try to make me feel like I'm in danger and
that if I don't help them, no good will come of it.
I don't believe them.
I know better.
I've been in a couple of tangles with security corporations, security franchises.
I'm not really concerned.
I have very powerful friends.
Do you think Peter can pull this off?
If that's what he's really trying to do, do you think that he could find the means
to make it happen?
Peter was a very, very good and strong man.
If he puts his mind to it, yes, I think he could do it.
And if he does, I'll be right there by his side.
Okay.
All the information you've told me has been very helpful in me trying to find him and offer
him some protection.
Is there anything else that you could tell me that could help me in any way, anything
you know, any small things that I could give to him or say to him or get communicated
to him that would let him know that we are on his side and that we are trying to offer
a protection at this point.
I'm sorry.
I wish there was, but he hasn't been in contact with me in a year.
I don't know how to reach him.
I don't know where he is.
I'm concerned about him, but I wish I could help him, but I don't know how.
If you find him, you can't tell Elizabeth that you found him.
What happens to you in this situation if we do find him?
If you tell me that you found him, I'll go join him.
But if they're surveilling you, that would lead them right to him.
I can take care of that.
My character just raises a Nibral Spock style at that.
She just smirks at you.
Outstanding.
Do you have any idea of how he contacted the Tinkers or where we might find Tinkers at
this point?
I have no idea.
She says, okay, if we need to contact you in the future, what would be the best way to
keep you out of hot water and to just kind of keep an open line of communication?
First of all, don't.
And second of all, just show up like you have people show up to my house a lot.
It's a pretty common thing, so it's not suspicious.
Okay.
Good to know.
Well, I'm going to take my leave and go back to trying to find Peter.
If you find out anything, please let me know and I leave her a card.
She says she'll do that and she shows you the door.
And right as you're on at the doorstep, she leans over and kisses you.
Presumably as a display for security and she sort of lets you go with a cutesy way
of that sort of thing.
And let's go back to Chai Wei.
So Chai Wei, what's your line of action here?
What's your course of action here?
All right.
I'm going to, let's see, got a dead body and a briefcase, so I need to find out what's
in the briefcase.
Yeah.
I'll take a look over the briefcase and pop it open.
There are several microchips or USB drives or whatever we're using in this future.
So lots of little data dumps in the briefcase and that's pretty much all there is.
All right.
I'll take a look at a couple of them and see what's on them.
I'm assuming he's being framed here, so it's probably nothing really important.
Is there some corporate IP or something like that?
Well, there are, yeah, it's mostly, exactly.
It's corporate nonsense that presumably a low level or a mid-level, whatever he was,
IT worker should not have in his possession.
So yeah, it's information about global volume digital, but nothing that you would deem
very, very relevant to what you're interested in.
It's just names and numbers and statistics and things like that.
All right.
I will search over the Yazeed's body as well, see if he had anything on him.
Yeah.
So let's see.
Yazeed has the typical stuff on him, you know, IDs and wallets and things like that, but
in his shirt pocket, there is a microchip and it's the only microchip that he has on his
body.
And I will take that with me, anything else in his pockets around him, of interest.
No, he didn't even have a weapon, he was, he was here expecting, expecting payments
of some kind.
All right.
Let's see, probably just drop the briefcase then and, well, clean it off first and then,
then get out of here, maybe call this into record and let him know that.
I found the body during my investigation.
Nice.
So your contact is quite pleased that you gave him a free tip like that because now he
looks good.
Hey, good score.
Thanks.
We don't know who this guy is or why he got his brains used for abstract art, but that's
another one of the books for me.
So thanks, Chai Wei.
So he's quite happy with that one.
Yep.
Yep.
A good report for him.
Yeah.
Do you head back to the headquarters then for your, whatever, safe house?
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you both sit in Chai Wei, meet back up at the safe house and you brief each other on
what you discovered, what's next for you.
I'm going to look over that data chip that you Zed had on him.
Okay.
And on the data chip that you Zed had on him, there is me look, so there are some, some
files and text files and there, they appear to have been grabbed off of.
Some computer and it, you read the first one and it says, I'm getting a bad feeling
about what we spoke about yesterday, I fear you may be correct about her.
The bigger this gets, the more difficult it's going to be to put a stop to it.
But if she knows that I suspect anything, things would only get worse for me.
Need your advice, respond to drop location alpha and then it's, it's signed Peter.
There's no response to that or anything, but there's another text file and it says it's
not safe to go back to my apartment.
I'm holding up with the T in section drossiff.
I think it's safe there.
I don't know anymore, respond to drop location delta ASAP.
If I don't hear from you by tomorrow, I'll stay in drossiff and check in as soon as I
can.
Drossiff is secure enough.
I could work from there for years, but it may, and it may just come to that and that
is also signed Peter with, with no real response.
All right, so assuming the T is Tina and Drossa would be the Delphere district.
Drossiff, oh delta, yeah, possibly.
Drossiff, Drossiff thing is not a word that you are familiar with.
All right, and I don't know where any of the drop locations are, so I don't can't communicate
with him that way.
But so he was working with Peter as well.
All right, come back out and talk to Sid about it, I guess.
So what do we found so far, Sid?
I think that if this guy was working with him on the slide and Peter was making contacts
in this hacker collective, that might be a good next step, because if he's there, we
may figure out what's going on there and it sounds like there's a chance that Peter
could actually take down the company if he wanted to.
And if we play our cards right, we may get to pick what side of that battle we fall on.
And so I think finding him and talking to him is probably the best next step.
Now I think we're going to have what was what was the name of the hacker group again?
The tinkerers.
So we need to do some research about them.
Okay, yeah, and figure out where this Drossiff is and maybe that's related with them.
Yeah, I don't have any contacts that would know anything about that.
Is it something that maybe your police contact wouldn't know something about?
I'd be surprised if the police knew much about them, but let's see.
What else do I, and my other contact wouldn't be very helpful.
I don't think we could hit the streets and kind of ask around, but I figure a secret
hacker group probably isn't going to be something we could just ride a lot of some people.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm kind of stuck where do we go from here?
It's my other contact, Johnny.
He's just a patch man.
I don't think he would have, I don't think he would have anything.
But I'll, I guess, send him a note and see if he's heard of the tinkerers.
And the patch man, like he's a, he's kind of an underground patch man.
Or what is what kind of he's not like, he's not a corporate guy, right?
Let me double check his story, but I called him out of the, the, the beta or whatever.
Yeah, he seems kind of, he's kind of a shady character, I think.
So he may, I guess he might have some information, but we'll, we'll see.
I'm going to send a message to him and see if he has anything.
And what level, what level of trust is he with you?
He's a three, so a considerable trust level, I think is what it was.
Okay.
And yeah, he, he knows about my bio right secret as well.
So we're, we're pretty close.
All right, yeah, I'll send him the message.
And I guess I will send it to record to see if he knows any, has heard of a place called
Drossiff, I'm kind of grasping it here, but okay.
Well, while you're sending messages to your contacts, give me a fortitude role.
Fortitude role, okay.
Seven plus two is a nine.
Okay, it's not going to do it again.
So that program that you got attacked with back at the apartment, and I think episode two,
seems to not have been completely cleared from your, from your system.
And you feel in hyper reality, some, some application taking a swing at you.
And you take, I think it's for, no, it's actually one damage today.
So one non lethal damage, right.
But after that, you, you realize that there is a, a new file out on, in hyper reality,
sort of that wasn't there before the attack.
All right.
Guess I will, yeah, let's take a look at it.
I'm a little skeptical and it, you know, hopefully it doesn't hurt, but we'll see.
Okay.
So you, um, you go out into hyper reality and you take a look at this strange new file that's
sort of appeared in your head space and it is, um, labeled, um, as, you know,
it's got a bunch of ASCII art naturally, um, and it's labeled as a tinkerer update,
uh, news bulletin, and it says tinkerer, uh, news bulletin for, you know, whatever the date is,
I have tonight, I have tinkerer.
I'm all aware.
Nice.
You have, um, it says meeting tonight, 11 p.m.
Drassif, come one, come all, be there with as much information as you can gather.
And that's all it says.
Well said, I think we have a place to be tonight.
We just have to figure out where it is.
Is there any way for you to hijack that malware and maybe track it back?
Um, yeah, I don't know.
I think that would be a, well, I think that'd be a cool, let's try that.
Yeah, let's try to go for hacking, though, hacking them all where.
See if I can reverse engineer it, see where the update came from.
I do have to look that one up, but I like the, I like it.
So let me look it up.
I'm going to go ahead and get my mid kid out and just lay it on a table, just in case.
Yeah, that's probably a good idea.
So it's, it's, be like, uh, other hyper objects trying to edit it.
What level of, um, yeah, what, what level of hyper object would this be?
Yeah, um, let me check because it's, well,
I'm not going to say, yeah, hold on probably government military, but, you know,
maybe not, but no, yeah, it's definitely not that.
Okay, actually, so let me look, hold on.
Yeah, there's the hacking table in the book.
That's where I'm trying to get to.
What, what page is that on 135?
Thank you.
Yeah, cool.
So that's just a, um, that's, yeah, yeah, give me a roll for, for hacking that.
I rolled a nine and I have a 12, so 21 hacking.
Oh, I just did it.
Yes.
Okay.
So you, uh, crack the malware finally, um, rendering it useless and also scrubbing through
its code and you realize that drosseth is, is not a physical location, but a location
in hyperspace or hyper reality.
So with a little bit of searching, you can, uh, discover a server out there called
drosseth.
It, it just seems to be a, a general sort of chat room type set up.
Uh, so yeah, that's, that's drosseth.
All right.
Um, guess that will get on there and create an account and start looking through
some chat rooms, see what to have for listed rooms.
Yep.
And after you get on to drosseth and you sort of infiltrate it, one of the,
the chat rooms is called tinkering.
It's got mild encryption on it, but nothing really severe.
I don't even think it's going to be a role.
Um, so yeah, you can sign into that chat room.
And if we fast forward a little bit to 11 o'clock, um, which probably isn't far
now because your meeting was at nine o'clock.
So the, the chat room starts to become populated with, with various handles or icons.
They, they start talking about, uh, data dumps that they've, that they've gotten
and, um, where they're going to have their next physical meeting and they
throw out an address, which is, um, Edward Street, 99 Edward Street.
Um, and the icons that, that are there are all, they all have appropriately,
uh, obfuscated nicknames.
So none of them mean anything to you whatsoever, but, but they all clearly know
each other.
And yeah, they're, they're arranging a meeting, uh, tomorrow, uh, at this location.
All right.
Um, all right.
Do I have any information to drop on the channel?
Um, I don't think so.
Um, did I know Yezzie's handle from the message at all?
Um, yeah, yeah, you would.
Um, that was Wi-Faz.
Okay.
Um, maybe I'd be using that as the, my handle for today.
Uh, that would make sense.
Yeah, they don't, they don't appear to, to recognize you.
They're not addressing you personally.
So, okay, yeah, it's not, it doesn't seem to mean anything to them.
All right, um, right.
Yeah, I don't think I have anything else.
Um, we'll just, uh, yes, since I can't figure out who's who, um, probably just go
to this, uh, IRL meeting tomorrow, but I'll hang out.
Stay, I'll stay signed in in the chat in the background.
Just leave, uh, you know, leave it open, running somewhere.
Okay.
Uh, well, the next day rolls around and in the morning, you get up, have some
breakfast wherever you, you each live.
And on the weather report, the, the, the weather person says that there's a
front moving in, uh, and, and the rain, the acid rain content has actually gotten
a lot worse, uh, and is going to get worse as the days go on.
Yesterday it was, I think, 18% today.
It's up a rear around 22%, uh, meaning that if you stay outside too long,
you actually physically start to hurt, like it, it hurts your skin when the,
when the rain is pouring down on it and dripping on it.
You just can't stay out that long without some kind of cover.
You know that 99 Edwards Street is way out in this brawl.
So, uh, is that where you want to, you want to head there now?
Yeah, what, uh, what's the location like?
Nothing you guys can't handle, obviously, but, um, yeah, it's, it's more or less,
you know, your original meeting in the junk or cafe.
It's, it's kind of like that sort of feel gutted outbuildings, um, things that
are just kind of thrown together by, by squatters.
So 99 Edwards Street appears to be, um, maybe like a hack space or something.
It's got a bunch of, from, from where you can, from where you are, when you
approach it, you kind of see that it's, it's, it's, it's, it is, it has doors and
windows so that people can't get in, but it's not, you know, it's not super high
security or anything.
I think the, uh, it, it looks like they, they assume that people aren't interested
in whatever they're doing because they're just another bunch of, um, you
know, hackers, it looks like, uh, in, in a tech space.
So yeah, and it, and it's open right now.
The door is open.
Uh, it, it, it seems to be, um, come one, come off.
All right, Sid, what do we want to do here?
I think we just go in and try to make like, we belong there and see, see what
happens if we get called out, we can improvise from there at this point.
Yeah, nobody knows us from anybody else, so we might as well.
Yep.
So they, um, when you go in, there's a group of people there and they don't
really appear to be hostile when you enter.
They all do look at you and kind of notice that they don't know who you are, but
they don't, they don't appear to be at all territorial and within minutes of
a right, oh yeah, I was going to say I'll, uh, talk to them about joining up
their hackerspace, but looking for some space, uh, and see, see what they have
available.
Yeah, one of the people approaches you when you start asking around and, and
he says, yeah, we've, um, we've got a lot of openings.
What, what are you, what are you good at?
What do you do?
Um, let's see, don't want to flash my badge here.
I've just been, uh, hacking for a corporation for a while and, uh, just
looking for some personal space.
He looks a little bit concerned about that and he says, yeah, we're not too
fond of the corporates around here.
Uh, you're looking to get out of that line of work or, yeah, I've been thinking
of what, thinking about doing freelance work.
Interesting.
Get out, get out, get out of my job.
Okay, yeah, we can probably help you, um, do that actually, but the, um, the
usual way that we run this place is that to sort of have access to it.
You pay in, we're not really that big on crypto dollars.
We're more interested in other kinds of payments.
Oh, I do a sense motive on him.
See what he's looking, see what I think he's looking for.
Okay, yeah, go for it.
13 and 12, so 25.
Very nice.
Okay.
So you get the impression that he's probably a suggesting payment in forms
of, uh, information where data is probably what they prefer.
Um, what do I have to offer him for data?
I want to give up Yazeed yet.
We get dumped the pictures we found on that first server.
Just say we found these when we were looting around.
And if Peter's here, he's probably going to hear about the fact that somebody
found photos of him.
Sure.
Now that might get his attention.
All right.
Yeah, uh, give him a dump of the surveillance, uh, footage I found of Peter.
Okay.
And all the pictures of him and Tina.
Yeah.
So you transfer that over to him and he looks at it, you know, you know, pretty, pretty
promptly.
He sort of looks through just absolutely everything you have.
He looks over back at you and says, that's a lot of, uh, that's a lot of
stuff.
Um, who is it?
Um, see what I tell him.
I will say he's, uh, or he was a pretty major player at the global
omnium corporation.
We've got quite a bit of dirt on him that we'd be interested in seeing if you
had any use for.
He says, yeah, we could be, we could definitely be interested in that.
What are you, you're trying to take him down or, or you just, you just happened
to cross this stuff and, and figured you'd trade it to us.
Um, I'm, I'm going to bluff them and tell them I, the we just came across, or I
just came across it and, uh, don't really have a use for it.
So maybe I thought maybe you might find it useful.
Where did you find it?
Did I find it?
That's a good question.
Um, let's see.
While he's thinking about a location, I'm going to kind of angle myself over
a little obliquely and just going to sit down right there and start
tinkering with my arm, just kind of keeping an eye on the situation,
setting up a little triangle there.
Okay, good idea.
Um, I guess here I will, yeah, I'm going to play like I worked for global
omnium. I'm going to say I had a coworker Yazeed who, who found it.
And I thought it might be useful.
Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to play a global omnium and play.
Okay.
Yeah, give me another bluff roll.
Okay.
Uh, 19 and 13.
So 32.
Okay.
So he says, um,
so this was, uh, this was from Yazeed, a guy named Yazeed and he gave it to you.
Where did he find it?
I don't know.
Really don't know.
Who's he work for?
Who's Yazeed work for?
I tell him Yazeed works for global omnium.
Yeah, I know.
Like who?
Like who's his, who's his manager?
Um, I think he was working with,
Oh, what's her name?
I'm going to play a little dumb.
Elizabeth, I think I can't remember though.
He nods and he says, well, this is all, this is all really interesting.
Um, and you're just looking for space to, to tinker around.
Yeah, my friend and I were looking for a place to hang out just to tinker.
Okay.
Yeah.
I don't know.
You should, um, you should stick around.
Just stick around and see, um, see how you like it.
I mean, we're about to have a meeting.
So just kind of hang out, um, and see what you think.
All right.
Yeah.
Was it all right if we joined the meeting?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'd like you to actually, all right.
Walk back over to sit until we have an invitation to the meeting.
So once, um, once everyone has apparently gathered inside, they do start to sort of close up the doors.
And, um, I mean, this is not super secure.
They don't have a whole lot of covering for windows and everything.
But they, they kind of, they close up shop as if to, to sort of discourage any uninvited, um, visitors off the street.
And I'm going to do a little hacking.
Actually, um, I'm going to see if there's a local network.
Yeah.
There's definitely a local network.
Okay.
And is there a way I can see if anyone else is on that network?
Um, yeah.
They're all here.
Okay.
Oh, it means outside.
Yeah.
I mean, if you take a head count, uh, that's, you know, as like, let's say 14 people, that's how many people are on the network.
So it doesn't, it, assuming they are all on the network, there's no one else on, on the network.
So the meeting sort of commences and they start talking about a bunch of stuff that's kind of flying over your head, you know, just referring to, you know, by names and places and things that they are just throwing out.
Um, that they clearly have all been discussing for a long time now and, um, and that mean nothing to you.
But eventually they get around to, um, to the, the matter at hand.
They say, and they say, um, they say, let's, um, let's wait for, for, for the, the leader on the project to arrive.
And then we'll, we'll start talking about that.
I think he's, he's almost here.
Um, so let's just, just wait for him.
And a couple of moments later, the, the front door opens and in steps, a guy who looks exactly like the guy in the photographs and the videos.
And, uh, they look at him and they sort of, you know, wave at him and he nods at them and he goes up.
And the guy you've been talking to says, Peter, um, we've got some guests and they've taken an unusual interest in you.
So you might want to talk to them and he kind of looks at you and obviously doesn't recognize you from the next guy.
So he says, okay, what's going on?
Um, I ask him if we could step somewhere private.
We have a couple things to discuss with you.
He kind of looks back at his friends and he says, uh, we can go right back there.
So he just points to a back corner, like not out, not out, out of sight of still, still in view.
13 other people, yeah, or 14 other people, but yeah, so, so then he, he accompanies you to the back corner of the room.
Um, Peter, it's a pleasure to meet you.
Great to meet you. Who are you?
Oh.
Were you working for Elizabeth?
Yeah, she sent us to come and find you.
Oh, I bet you did.
I have some bad news for you.
Uh, is he, uh, was killed by Elizabeth just yesterday?
I don't know who that is.
You don't.
No.
Should I?
I give him the data chip that had the communications on it on that he had on his body.
He seems to have known you.
That's not unusual for Elizabeth.
I've, I've long suspected her digging around in my, on my network back at the, at the company.
So I'm not surprised.
I'd look at him and say Tina misses you.
That seems to truly affect him.
Um, he, he's sort of hopefully he doesn't take it as a threat.
No, he seems to really, he takes it at face value.
Like she misses him and he, you, from the look on his face.
He's the most kind of a cross between guilt and, and just deep regret and, and he says,
thanks.
Thank you for, for letting me know.
If you, if you see her, you tell her that this isn't over.
I look at him and I tell him after talking to her, she thinks you can pull this off.
Can you?
He sort of straightens up a little bit almost as if though that has almost given him sort of a boost
and he didn't even know he needed.
He says, I know we can.
And if you two are looking to help, then I'll take your help.
But if you've got anything else going on, then you have no place here.
And you may not be walking out of that door.
I think that's a great place to stop.
Yeah, I'm not sure what to do about that.
That does seem like a good, good ending.
Yeah, let's, let's, let's, let's into there for today actually.
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