Session 104a: Backdated Code Cracking

[icastsword]

Can we study the journal Remy gave Shane? Yes. Let's study that. The last time we looked at it we learned that it was a super fancy cypher. This is a code that no one has ever seen before.

We start off with just Shane: He rolls an 18 Investigation on this journal. He goes through Interplay records to research known ciphers that Interplay agents have used in the past. There is no cypher in Interplay that match this one.

What did LaRue do before he was hired by Interplay? He was a detective. So this cypher is unusual regardless.

Can Shane go visit Charlotte LaRue? Can he go touch Remy LaRue's stuff? Let's put a pin in that for now, Shane doesn't want to bother Charlotte.

Griffin picks up the book and looks through it. He rolls a 2 Investigation. This is a weird book, guys!


He hands it to Jericho.

The cypher is a mix of symbols. Jericho is going to brute-force it. Roll Athletics. No, he's brute-forcing it with his brain meats. Jericho rolls Insight with Disadvantage. He rolls a 14 Insight. Not great, but not absolutely shit-for-dick. He's able to see some repeating patterns. LaRue has obviously written actual words - this isn't gibberish, there are actual words in here. Something is being noted here, but it looks like what we need is a cypher wheel. There is likely a physical key, but it is not with the journal.

Where's our crime child? This is a job for Crime! Crimeny Bethesda-clips into the office from the floor.

Crimeny's turn: He eats the journal and walks away. Nah, they're going to make notes too, looking at word length, frequency, also comparing it to other languages. Nellie taps Crimeny on the shoulder and casts Guidance on them while she IDK goes into the kitchenette to make tea. Crimeny rolls a 15+10 + 1d4 for a grand total of 26 Insight.

Based off of what Crimeny knows of common word length, they notice that certain words have one extra character, while others have one fewer character. So he was changing up the cypher midway through.

Are there any patterns before or after that would signal the altering of a word? Every page it alternates.

So the first page reads "NEVER", the second page reads "GONNA"...

Every first page has each word with one fewer character and the following page has words with additional characters, and it alternates from there.

Crimeny's going to upload a page from this journal to r/cryptography

No, they don't do that.

Can Crimeny tell what language this was written in? English, French, Spanish…? Yeah, Crimeny can at least tell that this is a Romance language.

Nellie has the Divination spell she can do as a Ritual. We just need an offering…well, we have our fully restocked liquor cabinet.

Divination (4th Level Divination)
Your magic and an offering put you in contact with a god or a god's servants. You ask a single question concerning a specific goal, event, or activity to occur within 7 days. The GM offers a truthful reply. The reply might be a short phrase, a cryptic rhyme, or an omen.

The spell doesn't take into account any possible circumstances that might change the outcome, such as the casting of additional spells or the loss or gain of a companion.

If you cast the spell two or more times before finishing your next long rest, there is a cumulative 25 percent chance for each casting after the first that you get a random reading. The GM makes this roll in secret.

We pour one out for Remy and Nellie does this ritual. Who are we going to try to contact? It doesn't matter, Kojima is going to interrupt. Wouldn't it be hilarious if we used this spell to contact Morpheus instead of just calling him and being like, "Hey what's up?"

Nellie just opens her mouth and a codec sound comes out. She covers her mouth in surprise. Then she opens her mouth again and more codec sounds come out.

Shane doesn't like where this is going. Instead of looking horrified he looks like he's accepting his fate.

Griffin picks Nellie up to make the codec sound stop. A voice starts talking out of her mouth. Kojima intercepted the call because he thought he could be helpful.

Kojima reminds Shane that he made a game where you're like a spy? He's read the wikipedia page on codebreaking. Shane! I can help you! :D

Shane tells Griffin to set Nellie down. Griffin tries to set her on the floor but he experiences the sensation of two magnets repelling one another. He lets Nellie go and she just floats. She floats over to Shane and hovers uncomfortably close.

KOJIMA: Hey Shane, guess what? I'm the Sorrow! :D

Crimeny hands over the journal. Kojima in Nellie's body pages through the journal. This is a very elaborate cypher, I have no idea what it says! This is very fascinating to look at, a lot of great care went into this!

Maybe Remy wanted Shane to do his chores?

No one would give anything to Shane with the expectation that it would be done.

The crew rolls Insight.

Griffin rolls a 9. He recognizes the name Hideo Kojima from his video games! Holy shit, Shane knows Hideo Kojima!!

Jericho and Crimeny roll actual good numbers and start to put the pieces together.

Nellie is completely conscious for this. How is she feeling? This is uncomfortable. She's also frustrated because she can't speak, because her voice is being written over right now, and the idea was to ask Kojima where the decoder for this book was. She's perfectly aware of what's going on and is trapped in her own head. She hears the Snake Eater theme from MGS3 in the background. It's on loop for the duration of this conversation.

Jericho finally asks Kojima if he can tell us where the translator for this cypher is. But then they get distracted talking about games. Jericho has played some of Kojima's titles. He purchased them new, he doesn't patronize fuckin' Gamestop. The games were very entertaining. He was a little confused by the piss grenades.

Kojima assures Jericho the thing with Ocelot is going to get explained.

Shane has to redirect the conversation back to the location of the cipher's decoder.

One of you noticed that there are two ciphers! He points to Crimeny. There are two keys, then. Kojima tells us our detective friend would make sure that one key was kept close to him at all times. The other key…who knows! Kojima doesn't know! Likely they would be similar in design.

Would he have left it with his wife? It is entirely possible, but he feels that would be the first place anyone would look.

LaRue liked to talk about how he and Charlotte met on a case, but he never really specified what she was doing.

I guess we moved Charlotte to the LA house. Crime Haus is no longer Crime Haus. So what happened to the old LaRue house? Charlotte sold that house and put the money away for the baby.

Are we done with Hideo Kojima? He's still floating there in the body of Nellie. Griffin manages to ask for an autograph. He hands Kojima a pen and a little notebook. Kojima gives Griffin his autograph and Griffin is delighted. :D

Wasn't there an offering involved with this spell? Yes. The bottle of booze is handed to Nellie-Kojima. But how is he going to get the bottle to where he is? No problem. Kojima goes outside, sets the booze down, and a little Fulton recovery balloon erupts out, and the booze floats off into the sky.

Nellie has her body back. She's going to see if she can get a trade-in on that spell.

Now we all finally know who Shane's patron is. :D

Now what? Let's research LaRue's old house to see who owns it. We Investigate. Griffin rolls a 3. He is admiring his new autograph. Shane rolls a 6. He's cranky.

The rest of the crew know how to use Google. The house was purchased and is currently in the process of being renovated. All the innards are being torn out, the outside is being redone. No one is living there currently. Time to wait for the renovators to go home. Then Jericho and Crimeny can do something illegal.

Side Note: IC Performance Reviews from Jericho at some point, Pls.

When does Operation It's Always Sunny go down? After dark. Ant determines we're a couple days away from the full moon. Nellie, Shane, and Griffin will hang out in the van with Kug while Jericho and Crimeny break in. Kug parks, kills the engine and the lights, and we proceed.

Time for Stealth from the crime lads. Crimeny rolls a 25, Jericho rolls an 18. Actually, you know what, Ant's going to make Jericho roll with Disadvantage because it's close to the full moon. With disadvantage, Jericho rolls an 18.

Crimeny is slinking from shadow to shadow, and cannot be seen. Jericho realizes this is the middle of the night in suburban New Orleans, he can just walk down the street and no one will bother him. He could be Michigan J. Frogging it down the sidewalk and no one would bother him.

The house is obviously still there, the outside is just as they remember it. The house is locked up. Crimeny Investigates for a security system: 24. There's no security system. Crimeny tries to open the door but it's locked. Ant insists Crimeny roll Sleight of Hand. They roll a 17 to unlock the door. This is a baby lock to Crimeny, they unlock it effortlessly. They enter with Jericho.

The carpeting and tiling has been ripped up, the downstairs is pretty barebones. They're just putting up new sheetrock. Upstairs is more of the same.

The guts of this house are really nice old hardwood as opposed to concrete. It's not filled with asbestos.

Let's think like a dude who wants to hide some shit somewhere. Basement or attic, possibly in the walls…There is an attic. There's a bedroom and a guest room upstairs, along with a room that LaRue used as his office. There's a pulldown staircase to the attic up there, also.

The crime team starts at the top and works down. Jericho will go into the attic, Crimeny will check out the old office. Ant requires more stealth rolls. Jericho I guess is permanently disadvantaged because Goose. He still rolls a 22. He rolled higher than Crimeny, who rolled a 19. Next is time for Investigation: Jericho rolls a 14 to poke around in the attic, and Crimeny rolls a 31 to snoop in the office.

The attic is pretty clear, there's nothing really of note. Crimeny goes into the office. All the sheetrock has been removed. It's down to the framing. At the back of the room they see LaRue's gun safe, still set into the wall.

It's a keypad lock. Unfortunately his stuff's all gone, so Crimeny can't look at the computer monitor for the post-it note with the combo written on it.

If you put the wrong combination in, the gun safe transforms into a GUN.

Crimeny looks at the make and model of the safe and researches security flaws on Google. They roll a 17 to Google.

Remy LaRue was not an idiot, so when it came to purchasing a gun safe, he purchased a top-of-the-line safe. There is a way to get in without the code, but it requires contacting a customer service rep of the people who made the safe. They would have to give a passcode to reset the code.

We could just take the safe.

Meanwhile, what are the four chuckleheads in the van doing? Playing poker. No, Shane and Griffin are watching Crimeny's live crime feed.

Can Nellie ask LaRue's ghost the combo?

She can whip out the weggie board…

SHIT yes, let's ouijia!

Kug wants to know what we do if we summon an evil spirit? If we summon a boss battle, don't worry about it. It'll be fine. Time to weggy.

If Ant rolls a 1, he summons Tetra.

NELLIE: Oh spirit, we are seeking the key to decoding this book! Do you know where it is? Can you help us find the keys? We've lost the keys, where are they?

The planchet starts to move. HELLO
Nellie asks if it knows much about this house. NO.
Nellie asks the ghost's name. RAMON.

Ryo rolls to learn if we know a Ramon. She rolls a 17+2 Wis. Shane knows a guy named Ramon, but that Ramon is alive. But actually it's been a while, maybe he should call Ramon.

Did Ramon ever see the people who lived here? YES.
Did Ramon ever go into their house? NO.
Did he ever take a book to a nearby Cafe and do some work on it there? WHO?
Detective LaRue: YES.
What kind of work did you see Detective LaRue doing? DETECTIVE.

I like this ghost.

Did you ever see him using a decoder ring? YES.
How old are you? DEAD.
What did you see him checking: RING.
Was it his wedding ring? YES.
Are we on a wild goose chase? HA HA HA HA HA.

While we mull this over, the planchet starts moving again: It spells out RUN.

We look out the windows. Griffin rolls an 11 to Perceive. Shane rolls a 19. Shane brought his nerdy night vision goggles. We both look down at the opposite end of the street. We notice a couple of cars that were not there prior. Because of Dark Vision, we see a group of about 10 people moving in the shadows in our direction.

Between us and these men are the house our good boys are in.

Shane texts Jericho and Crimeny in the group chat: BOGIES INCOMING, GTFO. He describes the men approaching the house.

MEANWHILE, Crimeny has found the gun safe and has established that they can get into it if they contact customer support and reset the keypad.

So this house is being renovated, right? How sloppy are these construction lads? Have they left tools laying around? Crimeny rolls a 19 Investigation. There are a couple of big pieces of machinery, like table saws. But in terms of stuff like drills and hammers? Those go home with the workers at the end of the day.

Crimeny has a screwdriver in their thieves tools, so they just unbolt the safe from the wooden frame.

How heavy is this thing? Time for Athletics, Crime-boy. That's a 0.

Jericho hears a "Thump!" downstairs, and through the rockie talkie: "I lost my arms…Found the safe, tho."

Crimeny's arms absolutely fell off. Their arms fall through the gutted walls to the bottom floor. The safe is still in the wall. Crimeny will wait for Jericho. "Can you get the safe? I'm gonna go grab my arms."

Shane's texts come through as Crimeny's going down the stairs to retrieve their arms. Roll a quick Perception to locate your arms: 19. Crimeny katamaris over their dislocated arms, and they reattach.

Jericho rolls Athletics to carry the safe: Unnatural 20. He hoists the safe out of the wall and yells CROSSFIIIIT! Once he is holding the safe, he casts Invisibility.

The rest of us in the van see these shadowy guys fan out and form a perimeter around the house. Shane is starting to recognize these guys as some plainclothes agents. They're after the same thing we are: Our Lucky Charms.

Nellie thanks Ramon for all his help and lets him go. The planchet says, "OK BYE."

It's time to leave. To the waffle house?

Shane and Griffin roll Insight: 20 and 18. They notice that a couple of these guys have taken note of the van that we're in. We leave. But like, in a chill way.

We roll further Insight to figure out why these interplay clowns showed up CONVENIENTLY on the same night as us. Shane and Nellie roll real good. Watkins knows he sent Shane to kill LaRue because LaRue was snooping around. They're keeping LaRue's house under surveillance in the event somebody should come to retrieve whatever LaRue left behind.

Kug casually starts the van up. Griffin climbs into the front seat to talk Kug down and keep him calm, because he tends to freak out in these situations. Kug rolls to drive with Advantage because Griffin is helping keep him calm. This is good, because his first roll was a 4. His Advantaged roll was a 19. Griffin is your good emotional support tiefling, here for all your emotional support needs.

Jericho rolls a 24 Stealth while Invisible to ease open a window and fly out on silent invisible wings. Like an owl, but he has more room in his head for brains than owls do.

Crimeny is alone in this house. Interplay agents are closing in and they have a propane tank. They roll Perception to hear the window opening: 30. Even if they hadn't heard that, Jericho would have let them know he was taking off.

Crimeny climbs out the window onto the roof. They shimmy out and climb up silently. The agent in the back rolls butts to Perceive. Crimeny doesn't even have to roll stealth to climb. Once up on the roof, they use their cloak of gliding to get away. Some of the agents see this figure gliding outlined against the nearly full moon and freak out: It's the Bat Man of Bourbon Street! He's real! He's real!

Crimeny has no problems getting away.

We all escape with little issue.

We meet up at the Waffle House. Jericho stashes the safe in the van. Griffin buys Kug's dinner. We all order waffles and eggs and breakfast and shit. We chat about Ramon the Ghost. Nellie tells Jericho all about our new friend Ramon.

We make small talk while we finish our waffles before heading back to the office to continue this conversation. We sweep the office for bugs, both magical and mundane.

Shane casts Detect Magic and sees no new magical office bullshit. We know we can be scryed upon, so we speak in code. We refer to the safe as tickets to the Backstreet Boys Reunion Tour.

We assume the following conversation takes place in code: Jericho confesses that he nicked a gun safe. He doesn't know if there are guns in it, he hasn't gotten it open yet.

Now that we're not under time pressure, Crimeny can sit down with this safe and just dismantle it. They roll Mechanics. Nellie the Artificer assists, so they roll with Advantage, thank god: 17 to dismantle the safe. It would have been a 6 without the Advantage.

With a 17, it takes some time, but Crimeny slowly dismantles the safe. When they're able to finally get into it, they do find one thing: This particular safe has a false bottom. There is a little ring box in the false bottom, and in the box is LaRue's wedding band.

I'm so glad we don't have to go grave robbing in New Orleans.

Let's inspect the ring. Crimeny goes first. They roll a 22. On the inside of the band are a number of the symbols that match those in LaRue's notes. One symbol doesn't equal a letter, one symbole equals another symbol, so this is at the very least a two-step cipher. We can at least partially decode something. Is there any magic in the ring? There is no magic in the ring. But there's magic in the cypher???

We may need to pay Charlotte a visit. Do we want to do that IMMEDIATELY after LaRue's old house was broken into, or do we want to wait a couple days? Let's wait a couple days. We'll give her a call first and give her a heads up that we're gonna come out to visit in a bit.

Who's going to go visit Charlotte? Griffin wants to see her. Jericho will also go. That's probably a good small number of people to go visit. Jericho and Griffin head out for a weekend. Charlotte welcomes them, she's happy to see them, it's been a few months since we got her set up out there.

Jericho somehow takes over the host role and makes coffee and gets Charlotte some water. Griffin has brought a box of baked goods. He hands them over to Charlotte and she immediately eats some. She has been jonesing for some delicious homemade baked goods.

Jericho asks Charlotte if any of the Interplay fellows have been bothering her. She tells them one of those agents was in touch about a month ago. Real nice man named Caleb. He was a perfect gentleman. He told Charlotte he was doing his best to find out what actually happened.

Jericho remarks that Mister Wilkins is a very thorough man.

:)

Charlotte asks if Jericho knows Caleb? It sounds like he's met him. A few times. Caleb was very driven in his investigation, she'll say that much. Jericho agrees that he is a very determined sort of man, like a dog with a bone. Once he's got his teeth into something he won't let go. In that way, he reminds Charlotte of Remy.

Charlotte tells Jericho that Watkins wanted to know how much work Remy tended to take home with him. That man could never really leave anything at the office. Did he keep taking stuff home even when he started working with Interplay? He tried not to, but Charlotte says that he did a couple of times.

When Remy met Charlotte, he was on a case pursuing a killer that was leaving messages. The messages were in a cipher that he had no idea how to crack, so Remy went to an expert in cryptanalysis. The expert in cryptanalysis happens to be his wife.

Was Watkins asking Charlotte about notes that LaRue might have left? He did ask if Remy kept notes.

Jericho is only asking because we found a few things that used to belong to Remy, and if you could, we'd like you to take a look at them.

Jericho hands her the journal. Charlotte recognizes it immediately. She carefully takes it and it's pretty obvious that she recognizes it. Jericho asks if she might be able to read it. She nervously opens it. She notices that the cipher is familiar and unfamiliar. She looks a little flummoxed. She pulls off her wedding band and looks at it and says, "Oh…I need Remy's."

Jericho hands over Remy's wedding ring.

She wants to know how we got this. There were a few things left behind at the house. We wanted to get it before the renovators got to it. Jericho rolls Persuasion with Disadvantage: 21. Charlotte gives him a Look, and tells him she'll take a look at this, but when she's finished, she wants Jericho to be square with her. Charlotte asks for a notebook - there should be one by the phone.

Charlotte ties her hair back and starts working on this cipher. About partway through, she tells Jericho that something's missing. The cipher is complete - she designed this cipher for her and for Remy, but there's another element here that's missing. She shows what she has: She's getting full words, but it's gibberish. It doesn't make any sense, and it's likely because the symbols keep shifting.

She has four results for the first word that she's able to decode with her cipher, and it's still gibberish. She knows Jericho and crew were into some hocus pocus. Whatever's going on here, Remy must have had something that could dispel this, or at least make it so that the true characters came to the surface. But she's getting four to five words for each specific instance, and they're not making any sense.

Was there anything else that Remy kept on his person all the time?

Charlotte crosses her arms and leans back, and thinks.

He had a pair of reading glasses. Hold on!

She gets up and goes into one of the rooms where she's unpacked a lot of Remy's belongings. She's kept a lot of this stuff for the baby. There's newspaper clippings, a filing cabinet…She's set up a desk. She goes up to it and discovers that his glasses are gone. The last time she saw them was before Watkins was here.

Charlotte looks at Jericho and nods.

Jericho might have to pay a visit to our mutual friend.

There is a lot going on with Watkins, and we have only scratched the surface.

Charlotte asks what Jericho means.

Jericho tells her that he thinks Watkins knows a lot more about the circumstances of what happened to Remy than what he is letting on.

Charlotte has to sit down.

CHARLOTTE: Jericho, what did Remy find?
JERICHO: That's what we're trying to figure out. We think those notes of his might tell us what it is, and that's why our friend Watkins wants them so bad.

Charlotte stands up and takes off her wedding band, and puts it in the ring box with Remy's. She hands the box to Jericho. Before he goes, she makes a copy of the journal. Roll Perception.

Griffin rolls an 8: The coffee is really good. :)

Jericho rolls a 21: As Charlotte is making this copy, she is subtly changing things. Good. Clever girl. It looks like she's adding in another two step cipher. When she's finished, she hands over Remy's notebook. She's going to hold on to this little notebook. In case anything should happen, we've got a backup.

Jericho warns her to be careful. There's no guarantee Watkins won't come sniffing around again. Charlotte assures him she's not as helpless as she might seem.

We spend the weekend with Charlotte, partially because it'd be weird if we came out to visit her and then IMMEDIATELY LEAVE, but also just because this good lady deserves some company.

She tells us about how she and Remy met, about how she used to make ciphers for fun just to see if Remy could solve them - it's something Remy used to like to do to keep his mind sharp. He liked to try to challenge her. They would write each other messages in their own ciphers. Griffin and Jericho take Charlotte out to dinner, they take her out to a show, and just make sure Charlotte has a nice time.

We're one step closer to solving Remy's cipher. Now hopefully Shane doesn't get murdered stealing Remy's glasses back from fucking Watkins.