Adventure: Audit at Descoberto

7 scenes. The opening adventure has no written ending: scenes marked Open are where your table's story starts to run on its own. The build checks that every scene can be reached and that every path arrives at an open scene.

The scenes

1. 1. The Night ShiftTwo messages on the same night: the hospital is out of water and the audit arrives at eight.
2. 2. The Clean-UpFive hours to hide three years of resistance.
3. 3. The AuditorCeleste arrives at eight sharp, with four Kuro-Tech guards.
4. 4. Meter 14The auditor wants to watch the calibration of the one meter nobody may see.
5. 5. Knife DinnerA compliance dinner, with soup in a bar and a spoon that should not be there.
6. 6. The News OpenThe contract with Brasília ends in 30 days, and the station will be emptied.
7. 7. The Valve OpenThe fraud was found, or the cell decided to act first. The station is sealed.

The characters are on the night shift. Two messages arrive half an hour apart.

The first: the notice + contribute

A notice from OmniTerra arrives on the supervisor's terminal: a Routine Water Asset Audit at 08:00 (see Handout 1: Internal notice: audit). It does not say who is coming or why.

The second: the hospital + contribute

Lia gets a coded message on the truck radio from the Hospital de Base in Brasília: the hospital's water tanks hold one day of reserve (see Handout 2: Message on the truck radio).

What to do + contribute

The characters can wake the supervisor, Zuleide Batista, who will call the cell together to prepare the station. And they have to decide: do they send the extra water to the hospital today, with the audit arriving, or wait?

Zuleide gathers the cell in the canteen and hands out tasks. They have five hours to make the station look like an ordinary station.

Celeste is polite, quick and observant. She has a Compliance Memory implant: everything she sees is recorded as legal evidence (see The grounded catalogue). The four Kuro-Tech guards, led by Sergeant Takeda, stay in the yard.

The auditor's schedule + contribute

1. A tour of the facilities, with one character as guide. 2. Inventory check: pumps, tanks, meters and the employees' implants, one by one. 3. Short interviews with each section. 4. In the evening, a dinner with the supervisors (see Knife Dinner).

In her folder is OmniTerra's objective card for the quarter. An observant character (Perception DV 15) can read its title at a glance.

Sooner or later (at the latest when Suspicion reaches 3), Celeste asks to watch the calibration of Meter 14, the Old Main's meter.

How to fool her + contribute

• Swap the reading on the spot: Basic Tech DV 15, by whoever is at the panel while someone distracts the auditor.
• Distract her: Persuasion or Conversation DV 13 against her attention. On a failure, she looks at the panel at the wrong moment.
• Switch off the Compliance Memory for a few minutes: Electronics/Security Tech DV 17, with physical access to the implant. A serious crime if discovered.
• Tell her the truth: only works if the characters already know Celeste's secret (see Knife Dinner).

Celeste invites the supervisors to a compliance dinner in the station canteen, with the menu she brought (see Handout 4: Menu for the compliance dinner). It is a loyalty ritual: everyone uses their own corporate cutlery, and everyone watches everyone.

Etiquette checks + contribute

Each character at the table makes an Etiquette check (or Acting, to fake it) DV 13. A failure adds 1 to Suspicion: someone held the fork as if it were a spoon.

Celeste's secret + contribute

Celeste was born in Taguatinga, in the Brasília REGEST, and joined OmniTerra at nineteen on a Monsoon contract. Her family still lives there. In her jacket's inside pocket she carries a small aluminium spoon that was her grandmother's.

A character can notice it (Perception DV 17) or draw the revelation out (Persuasion or Interrogation DV 17, with a good approach). If the secret comes out, Celeste becomes a possible ally, frightened and expensive.

Nobody asks anything. In thirty days, Brasília loses the 6% of its water it gets by contract and the 9% the cell sent off the books. The employees go to Alcântara, or, those with something to hide, into quarantine.

Open + contribute

The written adventure stops here. The cell has thirty days and many options, and none of them is clean. See Where the story can go.

This scene happens if Suspicion reaches 6, if the Meter 14 fraud is discovered, or if the cell decides to open the Old Main all the way at once, with the auditor still inside.

The station holds 41 resistance members, four armed Kuro-Tech guards, an auditor with a recording that could condemn everyone, and a valve that could send Brasília, for a few hours, all the water in the Descoberto.

Open + contribute

What happens next belongs to the table. Kuro-Tech sends reinforcements within four hours; OmniTerra treats the station as a "compromised asset". See Where the story can go.

Celeste Prado-Vasconcelos + contribute

Senior Compliance auditor at OmniTerra, 34. Polite, quick, tired. Born in Taguatinga, she joined the company as a Monsoon contractor and rose by being the best at doing what she was told. She carries her grandmother's spoon in her jacket pocket and a recording of everything she sees inside her head.

What she wants: to close the audit without trouble and not think about her family in Taguatinga.

Dona Zuleide Batista + contribute

Supervisor of the Descoberto-7 Station and leader of the Ladle Cell, 58. A hydraulic engineer, grandmother of five who live in Ceilândia. She replaced all 41 employees one by one, over three years, without anyone noticing. She does not believe in great victories; she believes in litres.

Sergeant Edson Takeda + contribute

Commander of the Kuro-Tech contract unit. He and Rui worked together as Great Rift contract security in 2111, on the inland side of Djibouti. Takeda has never talked about it with anyone. His profile is in The Valve.

The adventure has no ending. These are paths the cell can try, each with its price.

• Leak the recording. If Celeste becomes an ally, her Compliance Memory has everything: the Planalto II Expansion plan, the orders, the numbers. A REGEST newspaper would publish it. OmniTerra would know exactly where it came from.
• Sabotage the Planalto Core. Without water for cooling, the data centre stops. So does the space fleet's telemetry, and OmniTerra responds the way it responded to Halcyon.
• Bargain with another ESTEMP. Thalassa sells desalinated water and would love a contract in Brasília. Is swapping one corporation for another a victory?
• Kidnap the auditor. She is worth a lot to OmniTerra, and she knows a lot.
• Empty the station. Take all 41 to Brasília before the relocation, chips, arms and all, and become a nomad cell.
• Open the valve. Send all the water at once, for a few hours. It fills the hospitals' tanks and gives away the whole cell.

Loose threads + contribute

• What Takeda will do with what he knows about Rui.
• Who inside the AntiFaCa will want to use the station for something bigger, and bloodier.
• What Lia will find out about the hospital when the water stops.