Part 6: The Fragrance of Dark Coffee
Part 06 - The Fragrance of Dark Coffee

Burakgazi runs a pretty cozy and well-equipped little cafe here, they got hookah pipes and everything. The merry dwarven man at the counter seems to be having an especially good time.



[Goldschmidt responds with a raucus belly laugh; apparently he finds the shopkeeper's insults to be hilarious.]



Goddamn, have some mercy on the poor guy. If the soykaf here is even half as hot as the proprietor's burns, a lawsuit is only a matter of time.
[Goldschmidt smiles up at you, his small eyes glittering.]







It's nice to see at least a little bit of cheer from somebody after all the recent doom and gloom.

Eh, not big on the flavored stuff.



[The cafe owner looks you in the eye. The tone of his voice grows low and serious.]




This guy's one hell of a salesman. So this is how it feels like when someone succeeds at a Charisma check against you.


¥50 a cup? Forget God, with that kinda price this stuff had better conjure up an entire damn pantheon.


[Burakgazi hands you a ceramic travel cup, which he then fills to the brim with dark, steaming liquid. The scent is intoxicating.]

We paid so much for this that even drinking it feels like a waste now. Let's just hold on to it for the time being, as a grim reminder about the dangers of impulse purchasing.


[When he hears Amsel's name, the Turk's voice lowers and his accent becomes less exaggerated. His eyes take on a knowing look.]





I don't know, we've done a lot of running around today already. Maybe if we had some extra motivation...

[Altuğ smiles big. The Turkish vendor again.]


This is a Charisma check of 3, otherwise you need to cede his point (or try and refuse which doesn't work since he'll simply refuse to give you the information in turn).

[Burakgazi rummages through his pockets and fishes out a crumpled 100 nuyen bill. He thrusts the coffee-stained wad of paper into your hands.]

That's double our coffee money returned and we even get to keep the coffee! Things are finally looking up.




I'll believe it when I'll see it, the way things have been going at least one of these taps will end up summoning an insect spirit or something.

Presumably there's a "flush data tap" button on each of the things because this stuff isn't exactly our field of expertise. Ah well, let's get this done.

The first data tap can be found up north, near Herbert's "Tribute to Victory".

The second one is right outside Dr. Ezkibel's clinic. The purpose of this quest is basically to show you around the Kreuzbasar in case you headed straight for the cafe.

Like the man said, the third and last data tap is right outside the cafe itself. But there's something unusual about this one.

Oh? Only one thing to do with mysterious street earplugs, let's give it a listen!
[The sound of heavy machinery makes it difficult to hear the words that are being spoken. After a moment, you find you can make out two distinct voices - a nasal woman who sounds like a heavy smoker and a man who speaks in a high-pitched, breathy tone.]


[A sound like a conveyor belt starting adds to the noise of machinery, and you cant make out anything else until it comes to a stop a minute later.]


[More conveyor belts start up. All you can hear is the sound of machinery. Some sort of motorized vehicle then starts up, drowning out everything else.]
[A bell rings loudly again and again. It sounds like a telephone.]
[You then hear the sound of a door slamming shut, and the noise of machinery is suddenly muffled. Theres a rattle of plastic, and the ringing stops.]

[Her tone changes, becomes more businesslike.]



Wonder what that was all about. By the sound of it they already knew about Monika, so things sure don't stay secret in this place for long. And something about a council? Altuğ will probably want to know about this, so let's head back.

[Burakgazi smiles at you from behind the counter.]





Having some Decking skill allows for some extra options here. Decking 1 allows you to blackmail Altuğ about keeping quiet about the taps' existence for an extra ¥100 (¥150 if you also pass a Charisma check of 3 afterwards) whereas Decking 3 allows you to give him advice on hiding the taps better for ¥300. Not bad this early on.




Uncle Taydemer needs to come up with more creative sayings.
Also since it has now come up several times, lemme briefly cover what is meant by the Flux State. February 7th 2039, which came to be known as The Night of Rage, was the culmination of a long period of anti-metahuman hate crimes by human supremacists which escalated into massive riots and violence between humans and metahumans on a global scale.
Now this had all kinds of consequences in both short- and long-term (some of which we'll probably come back to later), but what's relevant here is that in Berlin an organization called Anarchist Movement Berlin or AMB managed to rise up and successfully take control over the city, subsequently declaring independence from the German state and turning Berlin into the "Greatest Experiment in Anarchist History" - the Flux State.
As an anarchist state, the Flux has no set power structure nor governing body and people are theoretically free to live as they please with no higher authority to control them or tell them what to do. Of course this also means that if you can't swim, you'll sink real quick - at the end of they day there's nobody but yourself to keep your head above water. Due to the constant change in the state of things, information (together with connections) is the most powerful floating device of all.
Now obviously corporations and dragons (primarily Lofwyr) do hold some sway in Berlin just as anywhere else, but not nearly to the degree that they do elsewhere. All in all this makes the city a very attractive place for those who, either for ideological or practical reasons, want to avoid the long hand of the law and attention of authorities. A lot has happened since in the tabletop version of course, but that's more or less where we stand at the time of this game.







I'm starting to get the sense that you really don't want to get on the bad side of Herr Burakgazi here if you want to have a good time in this neighborhood.



[Kami hands you a folded piece of paper. Inside is a memory stick.]




And with that, we're done in the Kreuzbasar for now. Let's make our way back to the safe house right away, Paul's probably getting impatient what with all our sidetracking.
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Seems like everybody's all gathered up already.



[Amsel snatches the memory stick from your hand and slots it into his computer terminal. He navigates a series of command line menus and a wall of amber text floods the screen. Paul scans it, mouthing the words as his eyes flit back and forth.]


"Drogenkippe" and "Das Kesselhaus" translate as "Drug dump" and "The Kettlehouse" respectively. Sounds like a charming place.


[Eiger slings her rifle over her shoulder with a single, spare motion.]




Ohhh boy.





[She shakes her head.]



Aww, you guys...

[She sounds tired. Resigned. But above all, disappointed.]

[Dietrich reaches out. Puts his hand on her shoulder.]


Eiger's really been having it tough. While everyone else can take some degree of comfort in the knowledge that they did everything they could for Monika, she's still clearly haunted by the idea that she could've maybe saved or stopped her had she just been there in that basement instead of us. Feeling so helpless about the whole thing must be immensely frustrating for a person like her.
[She straightens to her full height.]


Meanwhile Dietrich continues to be pretty much the best.
[Eiger sighs. The tone of resignation returns to her voice.]



[She stabs an armored finger into your chest. Hard.]
Hey!



Man, we probably don't deserve you two. Or Dante for that matter.

[Amsel speaks softly, but his tone is firm.]

We can make some cool statement as the new team leader here, though one of the options is instead telling Eiger to fetch us a soykaf. You can be a real jerk in this game if you want to, definitely a much worse one than you could in DMS.





[She shakes her head in exasperation. Her voice is heavy with defeat.]

Now if only she dropped the whole "rookie" thing already... But one step at a time I suppose.






Again we could say that if we wanted her opinion we'd ask for it, at which point even Dietrich would suggest against us putting her down in front of the team like that.

Back in control, we now have our first chance to talk to Paul and ask him about various things relating to the Kreuzbasar, but almost all of it is stuff we already know. The only real exception is when we ask him about purchasing medical supplies and cyberware:




There really are people from all over Europe here. Wonder what happened for him to come all the way here from Spain though, you'd think skilled surgeons were in demand everywhere. Something shady probably, or maybe he screwed up operating on someone important.



He has nothing else interesting to say, so let's go check out Monika's workstation before we head out.


So, the mission computer. This is another feature which was carried on to Hong Kong pretty much unchanged. Let's take a look at what we can do here.

We have neither new messages nor jobs as of yet, so the only things we can do here for now is accessing Shadowland and reviewing the team personnel files. Let's go over the latter first, see what Monika has to say about our little ragtag squad of misfits.
First up, Paul:

Dietrich:


[She pauses for a moment. Whe she speaks again, you can hear a hint of guilt in her voice.]

Glory:





Eiger:




And of course, us:


[She smiles.]

Damn right.


Next, let's access the Shadowland BBS. There are two things we can do here, with the first being posting paydata we've picked up during missions in order to sell it to the highest bidder. We snatched the Seattle antiquities delivery schedule during our ill-fated Hartfeld run, so let's put it up and see if we can get something out of it.

Of course we'll have to wait for someone to buy it before we get the money. The second thing to do here is searching the BBS for relevant keywords, which in practice means a pastime we're all very well-versed in around here - reading the various threads people have posted. For now there are two we can look at.


Ah, memories of more innocent times. Note the dates - these posts are from July whereas Dragonfall takes place in November, which at least partially explains why they're not yet aware of the Ripper's demise.
- Tolstoi <04:15:29/07-24-54> [Who says it's a "he"? They don't have any leads.]
- ProShot <04:15:18/07-24-54> [Hah. I'll be in Seattle next week. FWD any info you have about this "Ripper" and I'll see about taking him out for a date with my Walther MA-2100. I'm sure Lone Star will have a fat reward waiting for whoever blasts this goon.]

He was actually called "Blartz" in the localization.

- Tolstoi <04:13:58/09-26-54> [Step up your security. Write some white IC programs if you can, at least make the kid's hair stand on end for a few hours next time he tries it.]
- Clockwork <07:03:13/09-26-54> [Just make sure that your IC is quick! Heavy-hitting IC is no good if it can't catch up with an intruder... a fact that I take advantage of on a regular basis.]
- The Smiling Bandit <Strikes Again!/Ha-Ha-Ha> [Always running, eh CW?]
- Clockwork <07:17:51/09-26-54> [Like clockwork!]
- Lumens <01:50:10/09-27-54> [If you two are finished... I *did* have IC on the thing. Tracked the hole down. Grocery store across the street was piggybacking on my LAN and they left an unsecured jack point in a bathroom stall. Old as hell maintenance jack in a fusebox, and my security ignored it. Mystery solved.]
- Maelstrom <01:58:19/09-27-54> [Shadowland isn't your personal tech-support board, Lumens. Glad to see you fixed your own problem. Only way you're going to learn.]
Alright, that's enough browsing for today, we have work to do and a subway train to catch.

It's a little hard to see in the more zoomed-out images but there's a lot of cool details in the environment, including all sorts of graffiti and other street art.

We are in charge now, and we're about to turn up the heat high enough on Green Winters to turn him into Green Summers.
Let's roll.