Patron: Claims investigator/ISS Agent
Required Skills: Investigative skills and a total lack of psionic abilities.
Required equipment: None.
Players’ Information:
The characters are approached at any starport by a middle aged man in good quality casual attire. He has grey hair and an easy confident gait.
The man introduces himself as Gaillard Igsnakiir and says he has a job to offer. He says he is an agent of a legal claims company called “Spin for a Win”. He explains it is a small company and he is very stretched and needs some immediate help to tail and gather information about a man suspected of defrauding the company. He shows the Group a picture of a strange scrawny man wearing a Psi Shield helmet with a “lived-in” but intelligent face. The psi-shield has an unusual protrusion on the right hand side. He says the man is travelling under the name Eneri Fortune, but suspects that the man has used more than one identity.
He goes on to explain that the man took out a claim against the Imperial Secret Service for false imprisonment. The case went to imperial tribunal and Mr Fortune was awarded a large sum of money. During the tribunal Mr Fortune called a man named Liskaguur as key witness.
Gaillard Igsnakiir thinks he has been compromised and that Mr Fortune knows he is following him. The job is for the players to continue the investigation.
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Referee’s Information:
Eneri Fortune also sometimes travels under the name Luck Handi. He is likely to switch identities at any time and carries all the relevant papers. He presents as being mentally somewhat unstable and is only just able to function in imperial society. He is paranoid about “The Zhodani” reading his thoughts and almost never takes off his psi-shield. The protrusion from the psi helmet is a “magic 8 ball” which gives random answers to questions. Mr Fortune follows this advice when it suits him. He has recently wired this device into his psi-helmet apparently believing that this intensifies the functioning of both. He is a keen gambler.
1. Mr Fortune is in fact quite sane and a highly accomplished confidence trickster. He was never actually imprisoned but kept in comfort in a cell for a few weeks by others involved the scam, including the witness, Mr Liskaguur. He will know he is being followed. He has deposited his share of the tribunal winnings (Cr350,000) in an account which is well hidden and difficult to trace, but could be retrieved by very crafty players. He will try to behave in such a way as to convince the characters that he is too insane to have pulled a complicated scam, and will go to the length of admission to a psychiatric unit if necessary.
2. Mr Fortune’s mental issues are very real and are partly as a consequence of his imprisonment by the ISS. He was innocent but was imprisoned because the ISS needed to be seen to convict somebody at the time. Gaillard Igsnakiir is an ISS operative assigned to gather information for an appeal against the ruling.
3. As 2 but while in custody he was implanted with an experimental micro device which the ISS hopes will allow the users to detect and listen in to psionic conversations and thoughts of psionic individuals without revealing the user. The user need have no actual psionic power or abilities and does not develop any while using this device. Gaillard Igsnakiir is actually a top secret ISS Psionic officer, unbeknownst to his immediate superior in the ISS who gave him the assignment. He fears being snooped upon by Mr Fortune with his implant, hence the need for the characters.
4. As 3 above but the device allows Fortune to hear thoughts from non-psionic individuals and this is what has caused his sanity to suffer. Most of these are very boring so he wears the psi-shield to block the constant noise of them out.
5. All is as presented. Mr Fortune was fully justified in his claim. Gaillard Igsnakiir knows this and wishes to spend his time on more important (or more personal) matters while hiring the players to carry out his assigned duty.
6. The whole thing is a set up by Eneri Fortune and Gaillard Igsnakiir (not their real names) to lure the adventurers into a dark alley, so that they and their gang can rob/kidnap them.