(The Zero Protocol) White Knight Errant (Private)

**Samaritan** · Jul 21st, 2014 10:15 AM

For all intents and purposes, this is a solo run for Zoey ( Zodiac Djinn ) - she may enact any and all merits, skills and magic at her disposal - involving other characters should be discussed with ST in my opinion ( Casitive )

The world consists of layers - and since the full mapping of the globe, the physical realm in which the laws of nature are strict (well, for most people anyways), it has become quite crowded. Other layers were discovered by select individuals or groups. The shadow realm, the spirit realm and other, much darker places and spaces have been discovered to be the retreat of stranger things, than mankind has been able to imagine. And as distances vanish, apartments become scarce and living space comes at steeper and stepper prices, the ordinary, mundane, salt of the earth humans without superpowers, dormant monsters or tainted souls seek for places, where they can escape.

Such is the nature of the internet - a recluse for the quiet, the odd men out. A reprieve for the weak from their day-to-day encounters with school-yard bullies, loud-mouthed co-workers and abusive others. A place, where you wear the face, that you create for yourself. And as a digital reflection of the physical world, the virtual world has developed its own layers.
For so many people, the internet ends, where google will not take you. Not looking beyond what your browser and search-engine show you, the majority of users has never left the shallow waters, that consist of user-friendly, fully interfaced websites designed to be browsed with one hand by point and click. Only a few have taken to the sea, challenging deeper waters and venturing into what is only known as "the deep blue" - the primal network, where in the beginning, newsgroups, message bulletins and image boards formed the thicket of the fledgling, anarchic and darker net.

Zoey's initial scans using only top layers of the net revealed - nothing. Zero.net was not found by google. Zero.net was not an active host, broadcasting live into the shallows. She had to venture deeper.

The cold depths awaited.

**Zodiac** · Jul 21st, 2014 08:03 PM

There were many things online that she found of interest, and there were many things in general that she found to be fascinating. As fascination went, however, puzzles and games sat among the things she found most fascinating altogether. It didn't take very long after her meeting with Bishop and their discussion for the Warlock to set herself up at home, making herself comfortable at her rather basic computer. Admittedly, had she a better set-up this would likely go much quicker and be much easier to handle... of course, if with her own set-up and know-how if she were able to crack through this, Bishop would have a lot of things to be concerned about regarding Zero.Net.

A cup of coffee sat at her desk beside her, the room fully soundproofed and the locked doors that would generally lead into the less office-like space of her room were locked, her intention being to keep the others out while she concentrated on her work. Work that wasn't even business, so to speak, simply work. Simply a game. Win or lose, there was information to be gleaned from this, and while her attire would seem casual and amock even for her, it was as it was for a reason.

Apprentice Forge-Coal Masque Applied

First point of order was the all important need to cover her tracks before she began anything. IP Masking was set in place and many contingencies were set up as well, protecting the computer, IP, and information on location as she did. For all anyone searching needed to know, she was in Singapore and using Linux. She was giving Bishop's skill the benefit of the doubt, here, there was no reason to take chances or make any risky mistakes, even if it was simply a game. She was a professional. She was a Guardian. Caution was the important thing, no matter how she looked at it.

After doing the initial searches online, out of simply curiousity, Zoey chuckled absently to herself and sipped at her coffee for a moment. Very well, she was fine with the notion of it being more challenging than simply that - she would have assumed as much based on the way Bishop had spoken of the project. She dug a little deeper than simple Google searches or Bing, though, seeking out any information on forums and the like, before finally typing in the Zero.Net address itself.

Time to play. The White Knight had made her first move.

-1 mana Augment the Mind Effective Int 5

2sux initial prodding and research

**Samaritan** · Jul 22nd, 2014 05:08 AM

The sea was rough. But slowly, Zoey began to see patterns and currents, so she could venture through the seemingly endless number of webspaces without any navigational beacons except tables of postings, pictures, thumbnails and the odd typographical nonsense that came from using a proxy gateway in a country that did not necessarly cherish english as the primary language of commerce.
It took a while to get used to it, but the White Knight advanced on the board. Two things were found. There was a gateway dubbed zero.net. It consisted of a registration form, where a user could register with a valid Email address and a username of his choice.

The second item of interest was a message board for conspiracy theorists, where one user claimed, that there was an artificial intelligence hidden on some local intranet host. As conspiracies went, this was nothing out of the ordinary, the only striking mark in this was the claim, that it resided somewhere in California.

Penetrating the zero.net host would require an extended roll of INT + Computer (Spec: Hacking) with a success threshold of 10. Following the message board lead requires a simple roll of INT + Investigation (Spec: Data Search) in order to find out something about the user making the claim. More research can also be done by another research roll, this time at -1.

**Zodiac** · Jul 22nd, 2014 01:59 PM

Debating between the two for a moment, Zoey's first instinct was to gather more information on the matter before pursuing a hacking encounter with Bishop's site. Fishing to the side, the woman withdrew a familiar, comforting book and settled it in her lap as she took a deep breath, then exhaled and smiled a little to herself. Oh this was going to be fun.

Zoey adopts Runehold Masque

This kind of thing really was a piece of cake, and something she had all the patience in the world for. She was interested. Fascinated. It took her a moment before she really got into the groove of this research, following the patterns she knew well and gathering what information she could. It was about forty minutes in when she hit a stump, taking a moment to refill her coffee to get her brain back in working order. With that refreshed she found her focus was a lot more readily available.

By the end of the first hour, she'd lulled a little bit while trying to figure out where best to look next, but finally made a bit more progress, jotting down some notes on a piece of paper as she went along. She was in her groove, she was prepared to focus on this, she was determined...

It was nearly two hours after she'd begun that she set aside the work, finishing off her coffee and stretching a little. Her book was set aside as well, for only a moment, as she took the time to gather up her notes, then gathered up her book again before heading downstairs and off to the kitchen to make something to eat while looking over the notes and drawing what connections she could.

31 sux / 11 rolls

Date	Action	Roll	Result
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[11] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	5, 6, 2, 10, 6, 1, 8, 9, 5, 5, 3, 9	4 successes
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[10] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	6, 7, 4, 5, 7, 3, 6, 10, 5, 7, 10, 1, 3	2 successes
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[09] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	3, 3, 10, 3, 3, 5, 8, 6, 1, 3, 10, 8, 9	5 successes
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[08] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	8, 3, 3, 3, 1, 5, 5, 4, 5, 2, 8	2 successes
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[07] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	9, 9, 6, 7, 2, 3, 4, 8, 7, 6, 4	3 successes
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[06] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	7, 10, 7, 1, 3, 5, 2, 5, 2, 1, 7, 7	1 success
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[05] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	3, 10, 10, 7, 5, 7, 1, 4, 2, 3, 8, 5, 3	3 successes
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[04] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	6, 1, 3, 5, 6, 4, 1, 2, 6, 7, 2	failure
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[03] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	7, 10, 5, 4, 5, 10, 5, 9, 3, 5, 1, 9, 8	5 successes
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[02] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	1, 8, 4, 9, 1, 1, 8, 9, 5, 10, 2, 4	5 successes
2014-07-22 13:42:50	[01] Zodiac rolls 11 to White Knight Investigation! (Int+Inv+Runehold) (10 Again)	6, 1, 6, 6, 8, 4, 7, 7, 2, 3, 5	1 success

**Samaritan** · Jul 22nd, 2014 03:19 PM

The White Knight swam the darker depths of the net like a white shark. Cross-referencing minor details to major informations, Zoey made incredibly good progress in a very short amount of time. The first fifteen minutes were spent on picking apart the interworkings of the message board, until she found out the handle of the user, that claimed a sentient server actually existed, but was only online for 15 minutes a day. The user, working by the alias Tun-4, claimed, that there was a loose affiliation of hackers, much like the vaunted group Anonymous, that worked around this phenomenon. They wrote their own software, communicated via chat-rooms and blogs and monitored the IP-address of the server, until it went online for the quarter of an hour. Then they tried to penetrate it and see, what was behind it.
Several other users questioned this, ranging from sober scepticism to outright flame wars. So Tun-4, apparently pissed off and fearing for his reputation, provided bits and pieces from the inside. He used a private blog to monitor this info-stream himself and to keep the flamewars down to a minimum. The following text files were supposedly downloaded from the sentient server.

The following text-fragments can be salvaged:
June 13th, 2014 - "Hello?"
June 18th, 2014 - "A car will break down at Freeport Blvd. and Sutterville Road, Scramento tomorrow at 9:12 PM."
June 24th, 2014 - "What colour is blue and how does it feel?"
June 29th, 2014 - "An elderly man will be assaulted in the foyer of the Western Union office on 418, SW 2nd Avenue, Portland in two days at 4:21 PM."
July 3rd, 2014 - "Am I the only one alive?"

Needless to say, few believed him. There were however, newspaper articles from Portland, OR that described the incident. And there was also a brief message from the Sacramento Transportation Department, stating, that the Freeport Blvd. traffic was hindered on June 19th, time stamped at 9:30 pm. Tun-4 stated, that his blog would be discontinued, because a third party threatened him to. In his last statement he said, that he would supply anyone interested with the IP address of the sentient server.

Cross-referencing and indexing of the text-patterns used by Tun-4 suggest, that he is an english native, most likely of american origin.

**Zodiac** · Jul 24th, 2014 05:18 PM

Gathering her notes and heading back to her room again, Zoey tucked away her journal, adjusted in her seat and absently brushed frizzy hair out of her face in a half-hearted manner. Some notes got reworked and were set aside to later provide to Bishop in a report on his project, before she set herself up once again to delve into the workings and machinations of zero.net. This was, to say the least, becoming a rather fun project.

Zoey applies Apprentice-Forge Coal Masque again

Ideally her plan was a simple one. Get into Zero.Net, hack it, gain whatever information she could before the period of time the User was said to be online. Next, analyze the system data, get it in order and figure out from it what she could. Finally, reassess the situation again later once the User was supposed to be online.

Despite the information she'd gathered regarding Tun-4, she kept things to herself and under her belt. This was a Guardian project, and whatever she might find on the other end was for her to find and report on. There were, of course, ways to further bombard the site, but things needed to be accounted for - her equipment wasn't exactly the highest quality, which would have been helpful, and it wasn't as though she was making a group effort of this.

With her plans outlined and laid out, Zoey got herself to work, motivated by her success and the information she'd garnered, as well as being armed by her determination, the brunette settled in for a long day of hacking, It's a Fine Day settled into a whompwhomp prolonged circle of a digital cacophony in her little space. The zone was set.

25 sux / 9 rolls

Date	Action	Roll	Result
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[09] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	7, 8, 8, 3, 9, 1, 9, 4, 2	4 successes
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[08] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	7, 3, 6, 5, 1, 10, 4, 7, 8, 10, 10, 3	4 successes
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[07] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	10, 5, 7, 2, 2, 3, 5, 2, 7, 1	1 success
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[06] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	4, 6, 4, 2, 9, 8, 8, 2, 6	3 successes
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[05] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	1, 5, 10, 6, 9, 3, 7, 8, 3, 4	3 successes
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[04] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	9, 5, 6, 5, 4, 4, 4, 9, 4	2 successes
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[03] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	2, 5, 6, 1, 3, 1, 9, 6, 6	1 success
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[02] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	6, 8, 5, 7, 1, 5, 1, 9, 3	2 successes
2014-07-24 16:46:07	[01] Zodiac rolls 9 to Hack The Planet! (Int+Computers+Forge Coal) (10 Again)	9, 10, 9, 8, 1, 1, 8, 4, 6, 5	5 successes

**Samaritan** · Jul 25th, 2014 06:26 AM

Finding zero.net was easy enough. Getting in proved to be trickier. It took Zoey a solid 40 minutes, before she was finally capable to intrude through the firewall. What was beyond was a little unexpected. She had invaded a local area network, consisting of a master/slave system of two servers. Once inside, however, she was quickly able to determine where the log-files were stored. Another 30 minutes later, Zoey was sure, that she could move software tools around the server relatively unhindered. The "front-door" of the host, which she had bypassed consisted of a registration mask, which prompted users to enter a handle and an email-address for initial purposes. Data was stored on the slave-server and each registered handle received a new email address on the zero.net master, which was validated with the email initially provided.

A bot on the master-server automatically generated the following message:
<Welcome to the zero.net, -:user:-.
179.555.29.82
The patient may walk under free skies for fifteen minutes a day. The lawyer is allowed one visit.

There was something else, a subroutine, which seemed to run on a programm, that was missing on both the master and the slave. It pointed towards some component of the whole mainframe architecture, that was currently missing or offline. Once triggered, it sent another email via a bot, that consisted of the following text:
"Congratulations on your full membership, -:user:-.

My friends and esteemed collegues,
It is with great sadness, that I will have to leave my works and businesses unfinished, for it seems my crimes against the law of the crown have left me a mere shadow of a man and I do not intend to continue this existence for much longer. I have been stripped of all joy, in fact I believe I am now nothing more than a biological machine incapable of fulfilling its purpose of continuing its existence by reproduction. I am therefore obsolete and will return to the source. But I will leave those who will miss me a solace, for I believe existence is based on information. My machinations that have helped this country win the great war have become greater and are steadily evolving, yet the quintessence of their function is primitive and binary. Yes or no, one or zero, life or death, it all comes down to information. I therefore believe, if given enough possibility of choice, sentience and soul may exist within these machines, should they have sufficient capacity for the universal language that is mathematics. Fear not, my friends, for there may come a time, in which we may meet again, lest our souls be transferred into the deathless state that is information stored in the infinity between the one and the zero.
I pray, that one day our knowledge and wisdom is deep enough to grant us such a reunion, where neither gender nor love will separate us and only our existence in information is relevant. Thus, I will take my leave tomorrow and hope, that one day, we may meet again. As my will and testament, I wish for my remains to be conserved until a day comes, where I may be transferred into this deathless state, that is information. I will now taste of the fruit, that has started all existence and thus return to the state of zero. Until we may meet again, I bid you all farewell. I will always remain fond of our memory.
A. Turing
P.S.: Dip the apple in the brew, let the sleeping death seep through.

The slave server also stored a number of blogs, chat-rooms and databases, which could be accessed by full members. It also monitored the chat-rooms. There were currently 48 users online, four of which were some kind of super-users and one admin, dubbed Hub-0.

Note: The IP-address from the email contains the 555-section just so it does not represent anything real. For story purposes it works like a normal IP and is perfectly fine.

No security breach detected

**Samaritan** · Jul 27th, 2014 02:30 PM

From here on out and until Zoey logs out, all rolls will be simple rolls, no extended tests. There are a few options, that I can offer right away, but feel free to PM or write your ideas and intentions in here.
It is possible, to install a backdoor in the server-structure, which Zoey can access at her leisure - Intelligence + Computers (Programming) - Administrator has a chance to detect with Wits + Computer - Number of successes from Zoey

Placing any kind of programm on the server will require Intelligence + Computers (Programming) - Admin may counter this by Intelligence + Computer - Number of Successes from Zoey

Accessing any kind of Database on the server is relatively simple and requires no tests. Downloading any programms provided through the blogs and websites hosted is also just a simple Intelligence + Computers roll, without any chance of the Administrator to trace it.

**Zodiac** · Aug 1st, 2014 07:08 PM

Is there a roll that can be made to potentially detect a cypher, puzzle or riddle in that introductory letter? If so, what would you like to have rolled?

Taking a moment to help herself further focus, she settled a Multitask spell on herself before getting further into reading.

Zodiac spent a bit of time looking over the letter, finding a couple things that stood out to her. For one thing, A. Turing...?

There was something awry about that already. A. Turing had, indeed, died of a suicide - or so they said - in the summer of '54. She knew this site to be one that was based on puzzles and such, as well, and the man had worked for the Government Code and Cypher School in Britain. He had come up with a few techniques that had been used to break German ciphers, assisted the development of Manchester computers, and had studied in the field of mathematical biology.

Moreover, this was a case that had come up not too terribly long ago, with an apology being made from the British gov't after an internet campaign, and even a posthumous pardon granted by Queen Elizabeth in 2013.

Was the postscript relating to the cyanide that he had supposedly used to kill himself? What was the relevance? To her knowledge, no suicide note had been found, and thus she refused to believe that this was some sort of homage to the man... it wouldn't be that simple. So there had to be something else - something more - to it.

Multitasking

**Samaritan** · Aug 2nd, 2014 07:32 AM

Analysis of a numerical or verbial cypher would be Intelligence+Science(Math/Cryptology). Analysis of a hidden message with relevance towards a conspiracy would be Intelligence+Occult.

(The Zero Protocol) White Knight Errant (Private)

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