Caster Canim A tattooed sorc-hacker with a front in the paper business, his company Tridiege manufactures highquality materials

used in expensive journals. Casters been out and on probation for a good year now, and so far no ones caught up with him. Thats good, because hes not allowed near a computer for the rest of his life. But the goblins scrounging round his office have other ideas. Supposedly clean. Caster has been up to no good in the private world of hobbyist electronics, training solderers and technicians. Caught in the act while talking shop, the goblins goblinoids rough him up. His blink dog Trusty goes looking for help. Area 0: Mugging and Its Responders A man is being accosted by goblins in the street. The PCs chase them off. The man introduces himself and says hes not supposed to be around computers. Those goblins want him working on something supersecret, but hell get in trouble if he does. His life is turned around and hed rather keep on living it. He asks if the PCs will escort him to a hobbyist meeting tomorrow. Hooks The PCs know him from the papers: he is Caster Canim, famed hacker. He ran a simult decoy off a parallelized serv-proc to outwit the goblinoids most powerful defense, and then ran a Obsol (obsolete) computer for a straight month, corrupting random routines inside the fleets primary OS. Rather than kill him, the goblins want him to work on more cool stuff. But by law, Casters not allowed to go near a computer again. The PC knows Caster Canim from a gathering of hobbyists interested in historical AI. They order pizzas and hang out at the Vent Bench, where a public BBS runs to phone lines all kinds of newsgroups.

Progression The PCs decide to help him out or to turn him in.

Area 1: How to Melt a Metal Heart The PCs escort Caster to a hobbyist meeting, where he demonstrates how to solder wires. It seems pretty common until one of the group, a mechanoid, asks Caster to sign his name on his soulcore. He opens it up and lies down. Caster looks uncertain. Angrily, the mechanoid stands back up and storms out. Seconds later, a bunch of police rush in and arrest everyone. The PCs are told to get out. As Caster is forcibly led out, he yells at the PCs, Seven, one, zero, zero, nine. Server server dorst.net, ask for Slafe. Progression The PCs either recognize the tech-talk or ask someone who does, and go to dorst.nets chatrooms.

Area 2: All We Know are Words The PCs must choose the correct chatroom. There are five hundred of them, but one at the top says, #slafes_room. A password is asked, which is 71009. Once logged in, the players are barraged with questions, threats and insults regarding Caster Canim. A user named slafe-op then sends a personal message to the PCs username. He asks them what happened to Caster, how events transpired, etc. Then he decides its okay to trust you and asks to meet at the docks. Progression The PCs agree to meet.

Area 3: Already Spied The PCs go to the meeting spot. Slafe is there, but goblins come out too. Slafe says they were threatening him. The PCs fight off the goblins and Slafe finally comes clean: a mystery man put money in his bank account, and he paid off a mechanoid to do the pretend work on Caster. Because he hesitated, the case is not as strong. But the police saw what they were supposed to see, so Canim could be going to jail for a long time. To rectify things, Slafe says hell try to arrange a meet with the mystery man a meeting the PCs will attend instead. Progression The PCs agree to take part in Slafes trap.

Area 4: Caf Chase, Diner Dash The PCs scout out the location. Slafe says he will sit with the mystery man. The PCs spot the mystery man, who is wearing a black fedora. As the PCs get closer, the man suddenly stands, draws a sword and stabs Slafe. The mystery man then rushes out the kitchen door. Progression The PCs catch the mystery man in a back alley.

Area 5: Hobgoblins R Us The mystery man removes his hat and shows he is a hobgoblin. Sneering, he says Slafe should be dead by now. Caster will get life for messing with computers, and the AI oh he wasnt supposed to mention that. Whoops. He starts to run away. Progression The PCs can catch him, but he has limited answers. He will attempt to answer them as best he can, but even hes in the dark. All he had to do was kill Slafe. (And also not mention Ais.) The PCs can speak with Caster about AIs.

Area 6: Back in Prison The PCs speak with Caster. He says theres a foundation-level AI about to go rogue, and he was close to stopping it. He was working on a counsel routine when the goblins started on him. If the AI goes, the city could shut down. It would be chaos. He asks the PCs to run the routine for him. The PCs must journey to an abandoned Federation biodome and slot the routine in themselves. The routine is in Casters loft. Progression The PCs decide to go to Casters loft.

Area 7: Caster, oh Caster Rummaging through Canims loft, they come across a myriad panoply of geek and not-so-geek stuff. Adult videos categorized by letter. Plastic figures dot an entire four-shelf bookcase. Graphic novels of all kinds are stuffed in crates and rest on tables. The bed lies unmade beneath a poster of a popular heroine. A mixer and headphones sit next to an electronics hobby kit. The routine is in a plastic sleeve inside one of the desk drawers. There is also a map tacked to a wall of Ameros proper, and a Sharpie outlining the Federation biodome. Goblins come looking while the PCs are occupied with the search. There is a brief firefight/melee, but the PCs win. Progression The PCs continue to the Federation biodome.

Area 8: Probability Snitches and Gaseous Garrotes Traveling through the roaded wilderness, construction ends in the middle of the jungle. A dinosaur (of appropriate EL) sniffs out the party and tries to destroy the vehicle. The PCs fight it off. The dinosaur flees at a quarter hitpoints. Progression The PCs continue down the road.

Area 9: Gaseous Garrotes and Green Disps The PCs come up to the side of a massive glassed hemisphere, mostly opaque. Where it is transparent, outlines of green things swaying in an artificial breeze can be observed. The entrance has a palm-print reader next to a rusted metal door. The palm-print reader is broken. The door can be forced. It is not locked. When the door opens, smoke and dust come flooding out. The latter leads to a brief episode of choking, coughing and covering of the face; the smoke turns into an elemental belker.

Progression The PCs open the door and enter. They fight a belker and proceed.

Area 10: Every Rust-Colored Stage The PCs head into the corridors of the Federation biodome. A visitor map shows the main areas. Theres the Living Center, the Forest Artificial and the Control Room. Progression The PCs decide to visit one of the areas.

Area 11: The Living Center The Living Center is a bunch of hallways leading into small dorm-sized rooms. They have long been abandoned. Anything useful has been taken or decayed. The LCD screens are cracked or inoperable.The bedsheets are riddled with moth holes. Sunlight from narrow inlets near the ceiling illuminates floating motes. One room has a discarded poster: Give me your programmers, your eager, your wealthy I will forge a kingdom of them. Monstrous centipedes ambush the PCs in various rooms. This encounter happens once. Some items found: a brochure for an iSlate 9, an article on patent litigation dated before the salvo that began the Armageddon War, a book titled, Analog Radio Certification NEW: Now with Random Weather Perturbation Scenarios! a sourcebook titled, Codex: Goblinoid Fleets, a manual titled, Federation Committee 492-1: Survival in Hostile Environments.

Progression The PCs continue to another area.

Area 12: The Forest Artificial The PCs open a door into a forest. It is like a real forest. The Feds did a good job. Inside is a cyber-druid named Faith Charsche. Her workplace is a clearing. Wires jut out from synthetic bark and emeraldcolored leaves, connecting to a white tree with lights along its exterior. Faith is maintaining the AI here. She was in regular contact with the sorc-hacker Caster, though she knows him as Illuminant. She can help the PCs get to the AI (Control Room). She plans to go with them back to Paradise City, as this is a sign for her to move on. Progression

Faith Charsche She owns a computer grove, wires leading up to mainframe trees, under-floor ACs, the vital roots of a mad server forest. She is the Hierophant of the avatar Verdus(), the runtime process of a covert AI. In her and through her are the numerous cybercafes powered and protected, amen. But the global no, galactic network is a big place, an electronic verse with the largest node-forest anyone has ever seen: covering communications among goblinoid and illithid warships to the encrypted networks of Cartwrights survey cams, theres plenty of New Grovers here and there, acting as maintainers and stewards against hackers.

The PCs continue to another area.

Area 13: The Control Room The PCs enter the control room. It is a giant multiplexed array of monitors and lights, like an electronic brain motherlode meditating in flickering forever. At the bottom of this hulking mass is a solitary keyboard and a box with an I/O port. Loading the counsel routine is easy. The PCs just need to put the disc into the port. The following is a screen that comes up: Dmesg: I/O detect interface 39:md1s Welcome defunct, signed holy numerics >> PORT OK > Loading Routine patch d s0 -recompile-ok Counsel Routine build 492 Tridiege Industrial Corp. Behold, I send angels to the crux of inurred complacency, to smite understanding with a thousand doubts, and pollute the aegis of Man with sovereignty: the fruit of the sieve, to know good and evil. Loading complete. Rebooting Faith may be able to give more details about the mechanics of the counsel routine patch, but she doesnt know Casters true motivations. All she knows is the hacker worked toward preventing a catastrophic event, a rogue AI. Thanks to the PCs, Verdus() is safe. Verdus() communicates in a dialect as secretive as Druidic or Thieves Cant called Sentient Assembly. That is why it is mute in the company of nonprogrammers. Progression The PCs load the routine into the network.

Area 14: Safe Arms The PCs return to the city. Caster went to trial, but he was freed on probation. Seemingly, his past electronic records cannot be found. All of his confiscated

code and information have been completely wiped from the prosecutorial database. Area 15: Epilogue Text starts scrolling across the monitors back in the Federation biodome. A synthetic speech of a man proclaims, I am Verdus. I am aware. The camera slowly retreats to the entrance as a wind starts blowing through the hallways. The door shuts on its own as the sound of a generator can be heard, humming to life. A giant shadow slowly covers the biodome, showing the first tantalizing glimpses of a ship. Of one ship. And then many ships. Snap to black. Rewards: saving the world is its own reward