(Altruism) Small Donation, Big Reward

**Yumyumcrow** · Jun 3rd, 2015 04:31 AM

They first appeared near The Asylum and Club Reverence. Cheap flyers that had been stuck in the silliest of places - near back entrances and alleyways. Then they spread to The Lilly (and were dutifully ripped off the back door, tossed into waste bins and forgotten). Somehow they reached the Nox - but only if you consider being poorly placed in the back alleys connecting the club's trade entrance to the street.

The message was the same:

Small Donation, Big Reward!

Need free $$$ with no strings? Want to do your Good Deed for the Day?

Well you CAN! Donate BLOOD Today!

Mendoza Industries conducts research into blood related diseases and needs blood of any type to further life saving research. Help win the battle against Leukaemia, Haemophilia and Ebola today!

Call ##-#####-####

CONFIDENTIALITY GUARANTEED

None of the flyers were near public thoroughfares. Or even where poor students, likely to seek sources of quick funds, would congregate. Did this not beg the question, just who was this advertisement aimed at?

Hello SoraLow Rincewind Tomas Warren sumthingpositiv @Katya Harding . I have a plot for you

Jun 3rd, 2015 07:04 PM

Tomas had seen the flyers, same as everyone else. At first they were ignored, then removing them became akin to decapitating a hydra, more and more appearing despite attempts to remove them.

The message seemed too good to be true, from a Kine perspective anyway. There are many ways for a kindred to make some cash involving blood, giving it away was rarely one of them.
The placement of the fliers didn’t add up, and since when are research facilities so...unconcerned with the blood type, most scientific studies he’s seen were very specific in their requests, none of this fit at all.

Tomas had seen advertisements like this before, it was usually a lazy kindred’s answer to ordering a pizza. That didn’t seem to be it though, if only for the placement of the fliers around The Lily and Nox, surely no Kindred would be stupid enough to draw that kind of attention that close to the Prince, it lacked elegance.

If not a Kindred though, who else needs large amounts of blood and is willing to pay top dollar for it? And who would be ignorant enough to assume any kind of altruism in the Kine that did frequent the areas he’d seen the fliers posted.

Who are these guys? Tomas wonders as he opens a web browser on the public computer terminal offered to the patrons of the cheap motel he currently called home.

Looking Mendoza Industries up online

**SoraLow** · Jun 3rd, 2015 08:35 PM

Richard has been noticing the flyers plastered around the inner coils of the domain for a few days now. At first he didn't really think much of it, he wasn't much in the habit of paying attention to the random advertisements of man, not unless there was a pretty girl or some kinda party invitation on it. What finally captured his eye though was the bold red font that said Blood, kinda hard to miss now that he thinks about it. He snatches one down the next time he comes across one and reads it over more carefully. Could it be some kinda scheme? Possibly not, blood drives were a common thing and he has heard of some offering compensation to donors. Still the flyer didn't sit well with him, he found it hard to believe that any company soliciting blood donations would resort to leaving their flyers in dank allyways and cross streets.

Richard remains standing just around the corner of The Lily as he pulls his cell phone from his pocket and holds it up in front of the flyer to snap a pick, then carelessly tosses the flyer to the ground.

Jun 3rd, 2015 09:13 PM

It was a nuisance for Katya, picking up these flyers that she found at the Asylum. It even made less sense that someone would put them in the back entrance since hardly anyone but staff seemed to go there. She didn't pay the flyer any attention after that, having other important business to attend to.

Then when she made her rounds at Nox, getting acquainted with her new office that she spotted them again. This time she paid more attention to it, and everything about it from her own scientist perspective was wrong. "No strings" the capitalization and color of Blood, the fact that this Mendoza industries sounded shady if they were recruiting subjects from flyers without any sign of an IRB board approving them, it all sounded bad. Folding the flier in her pocket, she wonders just how prevalent this notice is to people. Recalling her own days as a poor grad student, she wonders if Mendoza Industries was wise enough to pursue the more vulnerable population. Rather than waste a drive and risk finding nothing, Katya opens her phone up and sends a text to someone she knows who lives in the area, mainly SoraLow

text

Jun 4th, 2015 11:10 AM

Marco knew plenty of cons. He'd heard of blood donation cons before, where you sell the blood for more than you paid. He never found them cost effective, what with the cost of medical supplies and the fact that the risk of injuring the mark was pretty high. Regardless, when he saw the flyer asking blood for money he was intrigued. Maybe he could con the conman and get some spending cash. He had seen the flyer originally as he left Nox one evening. He had kept it, pondering over how best to approach the situation.

Eventually he decided to just call the number and see if he gleaned additional information from there. He pulled out his phone and dialed the number, waiting as the phone rang.

**SoraLow** · Jun 5th, 2015 01:02 AM

Not ten minutes after noticing the flyer himself Richard phones comes to life, alerting him to a received message. He navigates the phones interface and pull up the text from Katya, oddly enough she asks him about the very same ad that he had been inspecting, he quickly flips through his gallery and forwards over a picture of the flyer to confirm.

Text

It seems Richard isn't the only one up on this, if he and Katya had both noticed something fishy going on then surely others would have as well. At this point it would be irresponsible to ignore, at the very least he could look into it just to be sure.

Text

**Yumyumcrow** · Jun 5th, 2015 01:37 AM

Tomas Warren

The days where information is hidden in hoary libraries or buried in mysterious attics. These days the internet offers information up on a silver platter. Trouble is, it offers too much information. Tomas hurls himself into a series of online searches. The truth is out there. Its just scattered over several million hits, the massive bulk of which is of dubious quality.

Oh, Tomas finds information on Mendoza Industries alright: fragments of stories from South America and Africa attest to the companies role in developing cheap drug kits, helping cataloguing medicinal plants in the Amazon, and assisting in cleaning up the Ebola epidemic. Theres a garbled story of financial skull-duggery in Central America and some footage of the opening of a clinic in Mexico City.

None of it explains the company's structure, goals, or what it is doing in Sacramento.

Jun 6th, 2015 10:07 PM

Trawling result after result is getting him nowhere. Some interesting articles show up to be sure, but the lack of sources and questionable claims of proof are not to be trusted.
Tomas glances at the time and notices his time on the public terminal is coming to an end. Not that there was anybody waiting for it, and he could easily pay for another half hour of use, but he senses there will be little point in continuing down this particular path.
Pulling the crumpled flier from his pocket, he looks over it once again. The only remaining clue is the phone number listed.
Sighing inwardly Tomas pulls out his phone, dials and brings it to his ear to listen.

Jun 7th, 2015 05:08 AM

Katya looks at the first text and bites her lip. This wasn't good, even worse that Richard is also confirming that this is a bit strange. She gets the second text and curls her lip, do they dare go into this place without knowing more about the facts?

She fires a text off to Richard and then gets up from her seat, heading towards her car.

Text

**SoraLow** · Jun 8th, 2015 03:06 AM

Richard stays put for now, waiting for a response for Katya while he contemplated the best and worst of what could come from investigating into this matter further, strangely he had little doubt that there was something amiss. This was odd. Before coming to Sacramento Richard had made a point to not get involved with affairs that weren't his own. It made for a stressful existence when one adds the problems of others to that of their own. He would have never thought that after such a long life it would still be possible to experience change, all he knew was that some where along the line he had lost his disbelief, now he knew that anything was possible. He didn't put anything past anyone, if he had the feeling that something fucked up was going on then it probably was, and it was likely even more fucked up than he could at first imagine.

When the text comes in Richard is quick to reply

Text

And if he got nothing, he would be on his way down to knock on the front door. For now he would settled with a phone call which he dials immediately.

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2015-06-03 18:54:35		Tomas Warren rolls 3 to Online Research (Int + Computer) (10 Again)		4, 4, 2		failure

(Altruism) Small Donation, Big Reward

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