Billionaire Casino Free Chips & Diamonds

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE: 1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997


1-5-1998	1-12-1998	1-19-1998	1-27-1998
2-2-1998	2-9-1998	2-16-1998	2-23-1998
3-2-1998	3-9-1998	3-16-1998	3-23-1998

The issue opens with the death of American MMA fighter Douglas Dedge who died from brain injuries suffered in a fight in Ukraine. It's a long story but TL;DR as you can imagine, this isn't good news for the fledgling sport, which is already struggling to stay alive in the face of government scrutiny over the perceived dangers. Political opponents of MMA have been waiting for something like this to happen and they wasted no time in jumping on it. Even though it wasn't a UFC event, that hasn't stopped UFC from taking the brunt of the bad publicity. Dedge was punched into tapping out and immediately stood up after the fight ended, but then collapsed again. He went into a coma and never woke up, dying 2 days later. Former UFC co-owner Art Davie (who now co-owns K-1 America after UFC fired him) sent a letter to UFC and, conveniently enough, also sent the letter to Arizona senator John McCain and several cable and PPV companies, saying that MMA wasn't a sport and that UFC should be banned and even plugging his own new kickboxing promotion. So obviously, his motives for sending this letter are questionable to say the least (here's the video of the fight. Fair warning: you'll basically be watching a guy die).

WATCH: Douglas Dedge MMA fight

Scott Hall has checked himself into rehab again, almost exactly a year to the date that he did it last time. Hall is expected to be gone for at least 30 days. Last year, WCW caught a lot of flack for continuing to promote Hall when they knew he wasn't going to be appearing at shows. This time, they didn't mention his name once on Nitro and are no longer advertising him for house shows. This comes just a few weeks after the death of Louie Spicolli, who was a close friend of Hall's. Dave also mentions that 2 years ago, around this same time, Hall was suspended by WWF for testing positive for marijuana on the same day he gave notice that he was going to WCW.
The Academy Awards, usually one of the top 2 or 3 rated TV shows of the year, aired head-to-head against both Raw and Nitro this week and yet both shows still managed to do strong ratings, which is phenomenal considering most shows get eaten alive by the Oscars. Basically every week or two, both Nitro and Raw seem to be setting ratings records and not even the Oscars seem to be able to slow them down. Interestingly enough, Raw actually won a quarter-hour segment in the ratings for the first time in over a year, but WCW still owned the night. But WWF is undeniably beginning to close the gap. In related news, a recent Raw aired on Tuesday because it was preempted by another show. That Tuesday episode of Raw, without facing Nitro competition, did a pretty monster rating also and has USA considering possibly moving Raw to Tuesdays, but it's still premature to speculate on whether it will actually happen. Besides, Dave says that if Raw moves to Tuesdays, WCW would likely just move Nitro to Tuesday also. One final note: these big time Raw ratings were for taped shows, which once again proves that taped vs. live has no bearing at all on ratings. (not sure if you've heard, but turns out wrestling was pretty damn popular in the late 90s).
Les Thatcher will be promoting a Brian Pillman benefit show next month and he's managed to do the impossible: bring WWF, WCW, and ECW together under one roof. WWF has agreed to send Steve Austin and Sunny to co-host the show (but not wrestle). WCW will provide the main event, Chris Benoit vs. Chris Jericho. And ECW is sending Al Snow vs. Chris Candido. The rest of the show will be various indie wrestlers. All the money will go to Pillman's family.
Eric Bischoff appeared on TSN's Off The Record show, mostly to respond to Vince McMahon's comments on the show the week before. While Vince came off charming, confident, slightly out-of-touch, and somewhat dishonest, Bischoff came off as far more open and honest, but also defensive and somewhat arrogant. Dave says that a lot of the wrestlers who have worked for both Bischoff and McMahon say that Bischoff doesn't seem to care about the wrestlers, while Vince at least acts like he cares even though most feel like it's just a facade and that Vince doesn't care about them either. Bischoff is far more blunt with his opinions and is less liked by his employees than McMahon. But those same people also say they trust Bischoff to be honest with them far more than they do McMahon. During their interviews, both men refused to admit to their obvious mistakes (McMahon when talking about the Melanie Pillman interview, Bischoff when he refused to admit in hindsight that firing Steve Austin was a mistake).
Other notes from the interview: Bischoff claimed that much of McMahon's success was because of the talent, not because of McMahon's alleged promotional genius. Bischoff pointed out how both Hogan and Randy Savage already had the gimmicks that made them famous before coming to WWF and in Hogan's case, he was already a huge international star from his years in AWA and NJPW. Or in the cases of gimmicks that really hit, it was usually the talent that came up with it (Bischoff noted Scott Hall's Razor Ramon gimmick, which was Hall's idea and was basically just his old WCW Diamond Studd gimmick with a Scarface twist. Bischoff claimed Vince originally wanted Hall to do a G.I. Joe-style gimmick). As for Vince's claim that WWF was winning everything other than the ratings war, Bischoff disputed that too, saying WCW is leading in PPV buys (true) and that WCW is outdrawing WWF in house shows so far in 1998 (also true, although it's very close). As for TV ratings, Bischoff said Tuesday afternoons, when the ratings come in, used to be exciting but now they're so used to beating WWF that it's not even a big deal anymore (he's gonna be choking on those words in a few months).
And still more notes from the interview, because paragraph breaks are helpful: Bischoff points out that Austin's gimmick was his own creation and that Vince's idea (The Ringmaster) flopped, but admits WWF deserves credit for pushing Austin to the moon when he got over. As for firing Austin, Bischoff said Austin was injured a lot and they felt like Austin wasn't being honest with WCW about his injuries, which is why they fired him. Said Austin in WWF is "a big fish in a small pond" and he wouldn't be a top star in WCW. Talks about meeting Vince in 1990 for an announcer tryout and admits he wasn't a good announcer back then. Bischoff also admitted that he came up with the NWO concept after seeing the NJPW vs. UWFI feud in Japan in 1995. Says Lex Luger was originally supposed to be the 3rd man and then Sting but he figured both were too predictable, so they made the decision to go with Hogan 4 days before the show (Dave calls bullshit on that one, since he knew 10 days before the show that it would be Hogan). Said WCW plans to do a Hogan vs. Hart angle sooner or later and that it won't be a U.S. vs. Canada angle like WWF did. Regarding rumors that Bret was going to show up on Nitro with the WWF title the night after Survivor Series, Bischoff said "absolutely not" and explained how the circumstances were different from the Madusa WWF women's title incident. Given Hart's contract situation and WCW's ongoing lawsuits with WWF, he said there was no chance whatsoever that Hart would have shown up on Nitro that night. When questioned about all of WCW's top stars being over 40, Bischoff name dropped guys like Mysterio, Guerrero, Benoit and Jericho but the host pointed out that they're all mid-card guys and not presented as main eventers but Bischoff sorta dodged the question. And finally, he said McMahon tries to portray the wrestling war as himself vs. big bad billionaire Ted Turner, but Bischoff says Turner's involvement in WCW is minimal and that he actually only talks to Turner maybe twice a year. Eric Bischoff says he is the one kicking Vince's ass, not Ted Turner. (Weirdly enough, I can't find video of Bischoff's interview, but here's a more in-depth recap with a lot of exact quotes):

READ: Eric Bischoff on TSN's "Off The Record" in-depth recap

Promo Azteca has taped a few demo shows with higher production values in an attempt to sell them to a network to air in the U.S. WCW is reportedly interested in airing it as their own Lucha show and is willing to pay for the extra production costs. On the flip side, WWF is interested in doing their own Mexican show called WWF Latino and have been negotiating with Televisa in Mexico about airing a show, but it's all in the discussion phases for now.
Giant Baba has finalized the deal with WWF for Vader to appear at AJPW's upcoming Tokyo Dome show. There have been discussions for a relationship beyond that but the problem is basically....Baba is cheap. He's still stuck in the old mindset of paying a headliner around $10,000 per week. But when you're trying to sell out the Tokyo Dome and you need to bring in special attractions and gate money is potentially in the millions, it takes more than 10K to get a top WWF star. Baba won't put any serious money on the table for big time foreign names, so WWF ain't biting.
A 19-year-old named Takeshi Morishima debuted for AJPW this week. Word is they're really high on him and he has great potential since he's a tall guy with a lot of skill and a judo background (he's mostly known for being one of the top names for NOAH and also a former ROH world champion. He retired in 2015 due to health issues but still helps run NOAH behind the scenes).
NJPW rookie Shinya Makabe (better known these days as Togi Makabe) suffered a broken leg in a match last week and will be out for awhile.
Randy Hales' new promotion Memphis Power Pro Wrestling debuted sooner than anticipated, holding their first show at Lady Luck Casino in Tunica, MS. It was basically the same group of people who have been working Jerry Lawler's casino shows for months, including Lawler himself, Sid Vicious, Bill Dundee, Tracy Smothers, etc. Despite basically being the exact same promotion as USWA, on paper, the company is 100% owned by Randy Hales, since he has no part in the ongoing legal mess from USWA. Speaking of...
The legal situation over the demise of USWA got messier this week. Mark Selker filed a 200-page lawsuit against Lawler and Larry Burton, alleging conspiracy to defraud. Vince McMahon and several others are also named in the suit as co-conspirators, but not as defendants. The suit claims McMahon lied to Selker about the potential value of USWA in regard to advertising revenue that the promotion could bring in.
A&E will be airing a 2 hour special called The Unreal Story of Pro Wrestling featuring interviews from many of the biggest names in the business (this is actually a pretty good documentary. I could only find it broken down into 7 videos. Here's Part 1 and it should automatically play the next part).

WATCH: The Unreal Story of Pro Wrestling (Pt. 1)

Many in WCW are expecting that Syxx will be brought back. Hogan and Kevin Nash have been talking about doing a storyline to use the real-life heat between them, including the firing of Syxx, to work an angle where Nash would headline against Hogan, which pacifies Nash somewhat since he's been vocally unhappy about being held below Hogan's level.
There's also rumors of Ultimate Warrior heading to WCW and it was even referenced by Mark Madden on the WCW Hotline. Dave says that 95% of the time, when you hear rumors about Warrior returning, they're false but in this case, there might be some truth to it. There's been talk of him working a couple of WCW PPVs in late 1998. Dave doesn't know if it's going to pan out but he says it'll surely bump ratings up in the short-term. Of course, Warrior has a known track record so he probably won't last in WCW long term, which is okay because aside from a short-term curiosity boost in ratings or buyrate for his first match, Warrior isn't good for much in the long run anyway.
ECW has sold out 15 consecutive shows in a row. Meanwhile, WCW had sold out 20 in a row, but that streak came to an end last week in Cincinnati.
Notes from the latest Nitro: Lodi suffered a legit broken ankle when catching Psicosis outside the ring during a spot. DDP vs. Sting was possibly Sting's best match in years. Chris Jericho was fantastic and hilarious yet again and has just been killing it the last few weeks. The Giant has been legitimately gaining a bunch of weight and when the announcers said he's 493, it's not an exaggeration.

WATCH: Lodi vs. Psicosis (injury at 3:36)

Kevin Wacholz, formerly Nailz in the WWF, is expected to join WCW and be part of the NWO and get a big push (nah never happened). Dave recaps the incident from 1991 where Nailz attacked Vince McMahon and choked him over his Summerslam payoff and then filed a police report claiming McMahon sexually assaulted him. Nailz then testified against McMahon in the steroid trial and was so obviously full of shit that it actually helped McMahon rather than hurt him. Dave seems befuddled that anyone would hire this guy and says, "Next thing you know, somebody can O.J. his girlfriend and get a job in this profession. Hell, they can do that and afterwards be considered for the Hall of Fame in this profession." Chris Benoit respectfully disagrees.
Latest update on the Jim Carrey "Man on the Moon" movie about the life of Andy Kaufman: Jimmy Hart will play himself but it's believed they may not actually call the wrestler in the movie Jerry Lawler because it's being produced by a Time Warner company. So they will tell the story of the wrestling angle, but it's believed it'll just be a fictional wrestler. WCW is actually pushing for Disco Inferno to get the part (Lawler later confirmed this in his autobiography but thankfully it didn't happen that way. Can you imagine?)
Notes from the latest Raw: indie wrestler Christopher Daniels, who wrestles as Fallen Angel, worked a dark match before the show. Rocky Maivia is great. Vince Russo appeared on TV as part of an angle with Sable and Luna Vachon.
John Tenta and Steven Regal are reportedly close to signing deals with WWF.
Shawn Michaels will work Wrestlemania but it's expected that he won't be wrestling again for a long time afterward (boy, I'll say).
Someone who attended the Eddie Gilbert memorial show put on by Dennis Coraluzzo writes in and talks about the show, specifically about Coraluzzo and Gilbert's mom cutting promos burying Paul Heyman and claiming he stole ECW from Gilbert. Dave responds and says he doesn't really think a memorial show is the classiest place to be burying people. He also says the story between Gilbert and Heyman over ECW is a lot more complicated than Heyman allegedly backstabbing Gilbert and stealing it and for Coraluzzo to simplify it to that extent is pure fiction.

FRIDAY: Wrestlemania 14 fallout, X-Pac debuts in WWF, news on Antonio Inoki's upcoming retirement, and more...

NYT article/The Weekly Episode on Epstein Hotlist

Just finished watching The Weekly (it’s kind of a Vice rip-off by the NYT) on Hulu where they went into detail about their story published this week about a « hacker » named Patrick Kessler who claimed to have tens of thousands of hours of Epstein’s private videos.
Turns out, Patrick did not released the videos and there is a lot of questions with his credibility, nonetheless, he clearly exposed two lawyers (Bois and Pottinger) for attempting to profit by offering to reach large settlements in which they would take 40%.
The article is here: Jeffrey Epstein, Blackmail, and a Lucrative Hotlist
Even though it sounds like this guy Kessler is full of shit, I REALLY wish that he wasn’t and at some point these troves of photos and videos get released and a bunch of rich and powerful people get what they deserve for abusing these women.
For those who need access to NYT- it is a long article, but here’s the full text:
By Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Emily Steel, Jacob Bernstein and David Enrich Nov. 30, 2019 Soon after the sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein died in August, a mysterious man met with two prominent lawyers.
Towering, barrel-chested and wild-bearded, he was a prodigious drinker and often wore flip-flops. He went by a pseudonym, Patrick Kessler — a necessity, he said, given the shadowy, dangerous world that he inhabited.
He told the lawyers he had something incendiary: a vast archive of Mr. Epstein’s data, stored on encrypted servers overseas. He said he had years of the financier’s communications and financial records — as well as thousands of hours of footage from hidden cameras in the bedrooms of Mr. Epstein’s properties. The videos, Kessler said, captured some of the world’s richest, most powerful men in compromising sexual situations — even in the act of rape.
Kessler said he wanted to expose these men. If he was telling the truth, his trove could answer one of the Epstein saga’s most baffling questions: How did a college dropout and high school math teacher amass a purported nine-figure fortune? One persistent but unproven theory was that he ran a sprawling blackmail operation. That would explain why moguls, scientists, political leaders and a royal stayed loyal to him, in some cases even after he first went to jail.
Kessler’s tale was enough to hook the two lawyers, the famed litigator David Boies and his friend John Stanley Pottinger. If Kessler was authentic, his videos would arm them with immense leverage over some very important people.
Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger discussed a plan. They could use the supposed footage in litigation or to try to reach deals with men who appeared in it, with money flowing into a charitable foundation. In encrypted chats with Kessler, Mr. Pottinger referred to a roster of potential targets as the “hot list.” He described hypothetical plans in which the lawyers would pocket up to 40 percent of the settlements and could extract money from wealthy men by flipping from representing victims to representing their alleged abusers.
The possibilities were tantalizing — and extended beyond vindicating victims. Mr. Pottinger saw a chance to supercharge his law practice. For Mr. Boies, there was a shot at redemption, after years of criticism for his work on behalf of Theranos and Harvey Weinstein.
In the end, there would be no damning videos, no funds pouring into a new foundation. Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger would go from toasting Kessler as their “whistle-blower” and “informant” to torching him as a “fraudster” and a “spy.”
Kessler was a liar, and he wouldn’t expose any sexual abuse. But he would reveal something else: The extraordinary, at times deceitful measures elite lawyers deployed in an effort to get evidence that could be used to win lucrative settlements — and keep misconduct hidden, allowing perpetrators to abuse again.
Mr. Boies has publicly decried such secret deals as “rich man’s justice,” a way that powerful men buy their way out of legal and reputational jeopardy. This is how it works.
7 men and a headless parrot
The man who called himself Kessler first contacted a Florida lawyer, Bradley J. Edwards, who was in the news for representing women with claims against Mr. Epstein. It was late August, about two weeks after the financier killed himself in a jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Mr. Edwards, who did not respond to interview requests, had a law firm called Edwards Pottinger, and he soon referred Kessler to his New York partner. Silver-haired and 79, Mr. Pottinger had been a senior civil-rights official in the Nixon and Ford administrations, but he also dabbled in investment banking and wrote best-selling medical thrillers. He was perhaps best known for having dated Gloria Steinem and Kathie Lee Gifford.
Mr. Pottinger recalled that Mr. Edwards warned him about Kessler, saying that he was “endearing,” “spooky” and “loves to drink like a fish.”
After an initial discussion with Kessler in Washington, Mr. Pottinger briefed Mr. Boies — whose firm was also active in representing accusers in the Epstein case — about the sensational claims. He then invited Kessler to his Manhattan apartment. Kessler admired a wall-mounted frame containing a headless stuffed parrot; on TV, the Philadelphia Eagles were mounting a comeback against the Washington Redskins. Mr. Pottinger poured Kessler a glass of WhistlePig whiskey, and the informant began to talk.
In his conversations with Mr. Pottinger and, later, Mr. Boies, Kessler said his videos featured numerous powerful men who were already linked to Mr. Epstein: Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister; Alan Dershowitz, a constitutional lawyer; Prince Andrew; three billionaires; and a prominent chief executive.
All seven men, or their representatives, told The New York Times they never engaged in sexual activity on Mr. Epstein’s properties. The Times has no reason to believe Kessler’s supposed video footage is real.
In his apartment, Mr. Pottinger presented Kessler with a signed copy of “The Boss,” his 2005 novel. “One minute you’re bending the rules,” blares the cover of the paperback version. “The next minute you’re breaking the law.” On the title page, Mr. Pottinger wrote: “Here’s to the great work you are to do. Happy to be part of it.”
Mr. Pottinger also gave Kessler a draft contract to bring him on as a client, allowing him to use a fake name. “For reasons revealed to you, I prefer to proceed with this engagement under the name Patrick Kessler,” the agreement said.
Despite the enormities of the Epstein scandal, few of his accusers have gotten a sense of justice or resolution. Mr. Pottinger thought Kessler’s files could change everything. This strange man was theatrical and liked his alcohol, but if there was even a chance his claims were true, they were worth pursuing.
“Our clients are said to be liars and prostitutes,” Mr. Pottinger later said in an interview with The Times, “and we now have someone who says, ‘I can give you secret photographic proof of abuse that will completely change the entire fabric of your practice and get justice for these girls.’ And you think that we wouldn’t try to get that?”
A victim becomes a hacker
Mr. Pottinger and Mr. Boies have known each other for years, a friendship forged on bike trips in France and Italy. In legal circles, Mr. Boies was royalty: He was the one who fought for presidential candidate Al Gore before the Supreme Court, took on Microsoft in a landmark antitrust case, and helped obtain the right for gays and lesbians to get married in California.
But then Mr. Boies got involved with the blood-testing start-up Theranos. As the company was being revealed as a fraud, he tried to bully whistle-blowers into not speaking to a Wall Street Journal reporter, and he was criticized for possible conflicts of interest when he joined the company’s board in 2015.
Two years later, Mr. Boies helped his longtime client Harvey Weinstein hire private investigators who intimidated sources and trailed reporters for The Times and The New Yorker — even though Mr. Boies’s firm had worked for The Times on other matters. (The Times fired his firm.)
By 2019, Mr. Boies, 78, was representing a number of Mr. Epstein’s alleged victims. They got his services pro bono, and he got the chance to burnish his legacy. When Mr. Pottinger contacted him about Kessler, he was intrigued.
On Sept. 9, Mr. Boies greeted Kessler at the offices of his law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, in a gleaming new skyscraper at Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s West Side. Kessler unfurled a fantastic story, one he would embroider and alter in later weeks, that began with him growing up somewhere within a three-hour radius of Washington. Kessler said he had been molested as a boy by a Bible school teacher and sought solace on the internet, where he fell in with a group of victims turned hackers, who used their skills to combat pedophilia.
Kessler claimed that a technology executive had introduced him to Mr. Epstein, who in 2012 hired Kessler to set up encrypted servers to preserve his extensive digital archives. With Mr. Epstein dead, Kessler boasted to the lawyers, he had unfettered access to the material. He said the volume of videos was overwhelming: more than a decade of round-the-clock footage from dozens of cameras.
Kessler displayed some pixelated video stills on his phone. In one, a bearded man with his mouth open appears to be having sex with a naked woman. Kessler said the man was Mr. Barak. In another, a man with black-framed glasses is seen shirtless with a woman on his lap, her breasts exposed. Kessler said it was Mr. Dershowitz. He also said that some of the supposed videos appeared to have been edited and cataloged for the purpose of blackmail.
“This was explosive information if true, for lots and lots of people,” Mr. Boies said in an interview.
Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger had decades of legal experience and considered themselves experts at assessing witnesses’ credibility. While they couldn’t be sure, they thought Kessler was probably legit.
A chance to sway the Israeli election
Within hours of the Hudson Yards meeting, Mr. Pottinger sent Kessler a series of texts over the encrypted messaging app Signal.
According to excerpts viewed by The Times, Mr. Pottinger and Kessler discussed a plan to disseminate some of the informant’s materials — starting with the supposed footage of Mr. Barak. The Israeli election was barely a week away, and Mr. Barak was challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The purported images of Mr. Barak might be able to sway the election — and fetch a high price. (“Total lie with no basis in reality,” Mr. Barak said when asked about the existence of such videos.)
“Can you review your visual evidence to be sure some or all is indisputably him? If so, we can make it work,” Mr. Pottinger wrote.
Kessler said he would do so. Mr. Pottinger sent a yellow smiley-face emoji with its tongue sticking out.
“Can you share your contact that would be purchasing,” Kessler asked.
“Sheldon Adelson,” Mr. Pottinger answered.
Mr. Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate in Las Vegas, had founded one of Israel’s largest newspapers, and it was an enthusiastic booster of Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Pottinger wrote that he and Mr. Boies hoped to fly to Nevada to meet with Mr. Adelson to discuss the images.
“Do you believe that adelson has the pull to insure this will hurt his bid for election?” Kessler asked the next morning.
Mr. Pottinger reassured him. “There is no question that Adelson has the capacity to air the truth about EB if he wants to,” he said, using Mr. Barak’s initials. He said he planned to discuss the matter with Mr. Boies that evening.
Mr. Boies confirmed that they discussed sharing the photo with Mr. Adelson but said the plan was never executed. Boaz Bismuth, the editor in chief of the newspaper, Israel Hayom, said its journalists were approached by an Israeli source who pitched them supposed images of Mr. Barak, but that “we were not interested.”
‘These are wealthy wrongdoers’
The men whom Kessler claimed to have on tape were together worth many billions. Some of their public relations teams had spent months trying to tamp down media coverage of their connections to Mr. Epstein. Imagine how much they might pay to make incriminating videos vanish.
You might think that lawyers representing abuse victims would want to publicly expose such information to bolster their clients’ claims. But that is not how the legal industry always works. Often, keeping things quiet is good business.
One of the revelations of the #MeToo era has been that victims’ lawyers often brokered secret deals in which alleged abusers paid to keep their accusers quiet and the allegations out of the public sphere. Lawyers can pocket at least a third of such settlements, profiting off a system that masks misconduct and allows men to abuse again.
Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger said in interviews that they were looking into creating a charity to help victims of sexual abuse. It would be bankrolled by private legal settlements with the men on the videos.
Mr. Boies acknowledged that Kessler might get paid. “If we were able to use this to help our victims recover money, we would treat him generously,” he said in September. He said that his firm would not get a cut of any settlements.
Such agreements would have made it less likely that videos involving the men became public. “Generally what settlements are about is getting peace,” Mr. Boies said.
Mr. Pottinger told Kessler that the charity he was setting up would be called the Astria Foundation — a name he later said his girlfriend came up with, in a nod to Astraea, the Greek goddess of innocence and justice. “We need to get it funded by abusers,” Mr. Pottinger texted, noting in another message that “these are wealthy wrongdoers.”
Mr. Pottinger asked Kessler to start compiling incriminating materials on a specific group of men.
“I’m way ahead of you,” Kessler responded. He said he had asked his team of fellow hackers to search the files for the three billionaires, the C.E.O. and Prince Andrew.
“Yes, that’s exactly how to do this,” Mr. Pottinger said. “Videos for sure, but email traffic, too.”
“I call it our hot list,” he added.
Image The Grand Sichuan restaurant in Manhattan. The Grand Sichuan restaurant in Manhattan.Credit...Stephanie Diani for The New York Times A quiet table at the back of Grand Sichuan
In mid-September, Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger invited reporters from The Times to the Boies Schiller offices to meet Kessler. The threat of a major news organization writing about the videos — and confirming the existence of an extensive surveillance apparatus — could greatly enhance the lawyers’ leverage over the wealthy men.
Before the session, Mr. Pottinger encouraged Kessler to focus on certain men, like Mr. Barak, while avoiding others. Referring to the reporters, he added, “Let them drink from a fountain instead of a water hose. They and the readers will follow that better.”
The meeting took place on a cloudy Saturday morning. After agreeing to leave their phones and laptops outside, the reporters entered a 20th-floor conference room. Kessler was huge: more than 6 feet tall, pushing 300 pounds, balding, his temples speckled with gray. He told his story and presented images that he said were of Mr. Epstein, Mr. Barak and Mr. Dershowitz having sex with women.
Barely an hour after the session ended, the Times reporters received an email from Kessler: “Are you free?” He said he wanted to meet — alone. “Tell no one else.” That afternoon, they met at Grand Sichuan, an iconic Chinese restaurant in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The lunch rush was over, and the trio sat at a quiet table in the back. A small group of women huddled nearby, speaking Mandarin and snipping the ends off string beans.
Kessler complained that Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger were more interested in making money than in exposing wrongdoers. He pulled out his phone, warned the reporters not to touch it, and showed more of what he had. There was a color photo of a bare-chested, gray-haired man with a slight smile. Kessler said it was a billionaire. He also showed blurry, black-and-white images of a dark-haired man receiving oral sex. He said it was a prominent C.E.O.
Soup dumplings and Gui Zhou chicken arrived, and Kessler kept talking. He said he had found financial ledgers on Mr. Epstein’s servers that showed he had vast amounts of Bitcoin and cash in the Middle East and Bangkok, and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold, silver and diamonds. He presented no proof. But it is common for whistle-blowers to be erratic and slow to produce their evidence, and The Times thought it was worth investigating Kessler’s claims.
The conversation continued in a conference room at a Washington hotel five days later, after a text exchange in which Kessler noted his enthusiasm for Japanese whiskey. Both parties brought bottles to the hotel, and Kessler spent nearly eight hours downing glass after glass. He veered from telling tales about the dark web to professing love for “Little House on the Prairie.” He asserted that he had evidence Mr. Epstein had derived his wealth through illicit means. At one point, he showed what he said were classified C.I.A. documents.
Kessler said he had no idea who the women in the videos were or how the lawyers might go about identifying them to act on their behalf. From his perspective, he said, it seemed like Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger were plotting to use his footage to demand huge sums from billionaires. He said it looked like blackmail — and that he could prove it.
‘We keep it. We keep everything’
Was Kessler’s story plausible? Did America’s best-connected sexual predator accumulate incriminating videos of powerful men?
Two women who spent time in Mr. Epstein’s homes said the answer was yes. In an unpublished memoir, Virginia Giuffre, who accused Mr. Epstein of making her a “sex slave,” wrote that she discovered a room in his New York mansion where monitors displayed real-time surveillance footage. And Maria Farmer, an artist who accused Mr. Epstein of sexually assaulting her when she worked for him in the 1990s, said that Mr. Epstein once walked her through the mansion, pointing out pin-sized cameras that he said were in every room.
“I said, ‘Are you recording all this?’” Ms. Farmer said in an interview. “He said, ‘Yes. We keep it. We keep everything.’”
During a 2005 search of Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach, Fla., estate, the police found two cameras hidden in clocks — one in the garage and the other next to his desk, according to police reports. But no other cameras were found.
Kessler claimed to have been an early investor in a North Carolina coffee company, whose sticker was affixed to his laptop. But its founder said no one matching Kessler’s description had ever been affiliated with the company. Kessler insisted that he invested in 2009, but the company wasn’t founded until 2011.
The contents of Kessler’s supposed C.I.A. documents turned out to be easily findable using Google. At one point, Kessler said that one of his associates had been missing and was found dead; later, Kessler said the man was alive and in the southern United States. He said that his mother had died when he was young — and that he had recently given her a hug. A photo he sent from what he said was a Washington-area hospital featured a distinctive blanket, but when The Times called local hospitals, they didn’t recognize the pattern.
After months of effort, The Times could not learn Kessler’s identity or confirm any element of his back story.
“I am very often being purposefully inconsistent,” Kessler said, when pressed.
A Weinstein cameo
On the last Friday in September, Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger sat on a blue leather couch in the corner of a members-only dining room at the Harvard Club in Midtown Manhattan. Antlered animal heads and oil paintings hung from the dark wooden walls.
The lawyers were there to make a deal with The Times. Tired of waiting for Kessler’s motherlode, Mr. Pottinger said they planned to send a team overseas to download the material from his servers. He said he had alerted the F.B.I. and a prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.
Mr. Boies told an editor for The Times that they would be willing to share everything, on one condition: They would have discretion over which men could be written about, and when. He explained that if compromising videos about particular men became public, that could torpedo litigation or attempts to negotiate settlements. The Times editor didn’t commit.
Mr. Boies and Mr. Pottinger later said those plans had hinged on verifying the videos’ authenticity and on having clients with legitimate legal claims against the men. Otherwise, legal experts said, it might have crossed the line into extortion.
The meeting was briefly interrupted when Bob Weinstein, the brother of Harvey Weinstein, bounded up to the table and plopped onto the couch next to Mr. Boies. The two men spent several minutes talking, laughing and slapping each other on the back.
While Mr. Boies and Mr. Weinstein chatted, Mr. Pottinger furtively displayed the black-and-white shot of a man in glasses having sex. Both lawyers said it looked like Mr. Dershowitz.
‘You don’t keep your glasses on when you’re doing that’
One day in late September, Mr. Dershowitz’s secretary relayed a message: Someone named Patrick Kessler wanted to speak to him about Mr. Boies.
“The problem is that they don’t want to move forward with any of these people legally,” Kessler said. “They’re just interested in trying to settle and take a cut.”
“Who are these people that you have on videotape?” Mr. Dershowitz asked.
“There’s a lot of people,” Kessler said, naming a few powerful men. He added, “There’s a long list of people that they want me to have that I don’t have.”
“Who?” Mr. Dershowitz asked. “Did they ask about me?”
“Of course they asked about you. You know that, sir.”
“And you don’t have anything on me, right?”
“I do not, no,” Kessler said.
“Because I never, I never had sex with anybody,” Mr. Dershowitz said. Later in the call, he added, “I am completely clean. I was at Jeffrey’s house. I stayed there. But I didn’t have any sex with anybody.”
What was the purpose of Kessler’s phone call? Why did he tell Mr. Dershowitz that he wasn’t on the supposed surveillance tapes, contradicting what he had said and showed to Mr. Boies, Mr. Pottinger and The Times? Did the call sound a little rehearsed?
Mr. Dershowitz said that he didn’t know why Kessler contacted him, and that the phone call was the only time the two men ever spoke. When The Times showed him one of Kessler’s photos, in which a bespectacled man resembling Mr. Dershowitz appears to be having sex, Mr. Dershowitz laughed and said the man wasn’t him. His wife, Carolyn Cohen, peeked at the photo, too.
“You don’t keep your glasses on when you’re doing that,” she said.
Data set (supposedly) to self-destruct
In early October, Kessler said he was ready to produce the Epstein files. He told The Times that he had created duplicate versions of Mr. Epstein’s servers. He laid out detailed logistical plans for them to be shipped by boat to the United States and for one of his associates — a very short Icelandic man named Steven — to deliver them to The Times headquarters at 11 a.m. on Oct. 3.
Kessler warned that he was erecting a maze of security systems. First, a Times employee would need to use a special thumb drive to access a proprietary communications system. Then Kessler’s colleague would transmit a code to decrypt the files. If his instructions weren’t followed precisely, Kessler said, the information would self-destruct.
Specialists at The Times set up a number of “air-gapped” laptops — disconnected from the internet — in a windowless, padlocked meeting room. Reporters cleared their schedules to sift through thousands of hours of surveillance footage.
On the morning of the scheduled delivery, Kessler sent a series of frantic texts. Disaster had struck. A fire was burning. The duplicate servers were destroyed. One of his team members was missing. He was fleeing to Kyiv.
Two hours later, Kessler was in touch with Mr. Pottinger and didn’t mention any emergency. Kessler said he hoped that the footage would help pry $1 billion in settlements out of their targets, and asked him to detail how the lawyers could extract the money. “Could you put together a hypothetical situation,” Kessler wrote, not something “set in stone but close to what your thinking.”
In one, which he called a “standard model” for legal settlements, Mr. Pottinger said the money would be split among his clients, the Astria Foundation, Kessler and the lawyers, who would get up to 40 percent.
In the second hypothetical, Mr. Pottinger wrote, the lawyers would approach the videotaped men. The men would then hire the lawyers, ensuring that they would not get sued, and “make a contribution to a nonprofit as part of the retainer.”
“No client is actually involved in this structure,” Mr. Pottinger said, noting that the arrangement would have to be “consistent with and subject to rules of ethics.”
“Thank you very much,” Kessler responded.
Mr. Pottinger later said that the scenario would have involved him representing a victim, settling a case and then representing the victim’s alleged abuser. He said it was within legal boundaries. (He also said he had meant to type “No client lawsuit is actually involved.”)
Such legal arrangements are not unheard-of. Lawyers representing a former Fox News producer who had accused Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment reached a settlement in which her lawyers agreed to work for Mr. O’Reilly after the dispute. But legal experts generally consider such setups to be unethical because they can create conflicts between the interests of the lawyers and their original clients.
‘I just pulled it out of my behind’
The lawyers held out hope of getting Kessler’s materials. But weeks passed, and nothing arrived. At one point, Mr. Pottinger volunteered to meet Kessler anywhere — including Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
“I still believe he is what he purported to be,” Mr. Boies wrote in an email on Nov. 7. “I have to evaluate people for my day job, and he seemed too genuine to be a fake, and I very much want him to be real.” He added, “I am not unconscious of the danger of wanting to believe something too much.”
Ten days later, Mr. Boies arrived at The Times for an on-camera interview. It was a bright, chilly Sunday, and Mr. Boies had just flown in from Ecuador, where he said he was doing work for the finance ministry. Reporters wanted to ask him plainly if his and Mr. Pottinger’s conduct with Kessler crossed ethical lines.
Would they have brokered secret settlements that buried evidence of wrongdoing? Did the notion of extracting huge sums from men in exchange for keeping sex tapes hidden meet the definition of extortion?
Mr. Boies said the answer to both questions was no. He said he and Mr. Pottinger operated well within the law. They only intended to pursue legal action on behalf of their clients — in other words, that they were a long way from extortion. In any case, he said, he and Mr. Pottinger had never authenticated any of the imagery or identified any of the supposed victims, much less contacted any of the men on the “hot list.”
Then The Times showed Mr. Boies some of the text exchanges between Mr. Pottinger and Kessler. Mr. Boies showed a flash of anger and said it was the first time he was seeing them.
By the end of the nearly four-hour interview, Mr. Boies had concluded that Kessler was probably a con man: “I think that he was a fraudster who was just trying to set things up.” And he argued that Kessler had baited Mr. Pottinger into writing things that looked more nefarious than they really were. He acknowledged that Mr. Pottinger had used “loose language” in some of his messages that risked creating the impression that the lawyers were plotting to monetize evidence of abuse.
Several days later, Mr. Boies returned for another interview and was more critical of Mr. Pottinger, especially the hypothetical plans that he had described to Kessler. “Having looked at all that stuff in context, I would not have said that,” he said. How did Mr. Boies feel about Mr. Pottinger invoking his name in messages to Kessler? “I don’t like it,” he said.
But Mr. Boies stopped short of blaming Mr. Pottinger for the whole mess. “I’m being cautious not to throw him under the bus more than I believe is accurate,” he said. His longtime P.R. adviser, Dawn Schneider, who had been pushing for a more forceful denunciation, dropped her pen, threw up her arms and buried her head in her hands.
In a separate interview, The Times asked Mr. Pottinger about his correspondence with Kessler. The lawyer said that his messages shouldn’t be taken at face value because, in reality, he had been deceiving Kessler all along — “misleading him deliberately in order to get the servers.”
The draft retention agreement that Mr. Pottinger had given to Kessler in September was unsigned and never meant to be honored, Mr. Pottinger said. And he never intended to sell photos of Mr. Barak to Mr. Adelson. “I just pulled it out of my behind,” he said, describing it as an act to impress Kessler.
As for the two hypotheticals about how to get money out of the men on the list, Mr. Pottinger said, he never planned to do what he carefully articulated. “I didn’t owe Patrick honesty about this,” he said.
Mr. Pottinger said that he had only one regret — that “we did not get the information that this liar said he had.”
He added, “I’m building legal cases here. I’m trying not to engage too much in shenanigans. I wish I didn’t, but this guy was very unusual.”

untraceable

Just another tinfoil conspiracy theory. Nothing to see here citizen, move along.

Source
Dear Mr. Putin, Let’s Play Chess
JANUARY 17, 2017 ~ PATRIBOTICS
PART ONE: PAWN TAKES QUEEN
I have an overarching theory of Russia’s attack on America and the West. Here it is.
There have not been a series of attacks on America and Europe by Vladimir Putin. There has been one single operation; it is the same operation.
By 2008, possibly even earlier, according to John Schindler, a National Security expert formerly at the NSA, Russia had placed moles in the highest levels of US counter-intelligence. I take this as my starting-point, because all the subsequent facts bear it out.
Mr. Putin always wanted to use the strength of the West as a lever to attack it, because Russia is weak and poor. So he did, and he used a very old-fashioned and effective method. Spies inside the IC. He also believes in propaganda and mind-games. He uses them on the West, he uses them on Russians, in Russia.
Hillary Clinton correctly noted that Putin rigged his own election in 2011. This, apparently, is when he started to hate her.
By the 2012 election, Russia’s desire to interfere with American democracy was already there, but it as yet didn’t have the tools to succeed in that aim. I deliberately omit some of the timeline here in order to get to the bigger points in the story, but I will return to it later.
Russian moles placed inside the NSA recruited Edward Snowden. A letter between the FSB in Cuba and SENAIN in Quito held in a file marked ‘Assange’ in London, dated 4th April 2013, the day before Snowden sent his only email on legalities, April 5th 2013, and before Snowden took his uppermost level documents during the rest of the month of April, proves conclusively that Mr. Snowden is a Russian agent who acted on instructions from Moscow. After Snowden fled to Hong Kong, he escaped from there by an Ecuadorean travel document arranged by Julian Assange, and tried to get to Cuba.
Snowden is a low-level IT idiot. He had help taking what he took from the NSA. I recommend the NSA review their case files and pick up the Russian moles within their agency. Snowden used stolen credentials, but it is almost certain that he received a piece of removable media like a memory card from his Russian handlers. He took military secrets. And by “he” I mean the FSB.
In 2013, after the Russians received all of the Snowden files, and China some of them, most press coverage concentrated on the traps that terrorists and Russian spies were able to avoid. They missed that Russian hackers would now proceed to use the NSA’s tech offensively.
In 2013, the Russians briefed their army of hackers.
In 2012/13, a young Russian hacker called Yvegeny Nikulin, then 26, was using Snowden’s NSA techniques – stolen credentials – to hack LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring.
Formspring, which shut down late 2013, was the app that Anthony Wiener used for his sexting.
According to John Schindler, “a hacker”(Nikulin) was picked up in Prague, October 5th, on suspicion of interfering with the DNC and the Democrats in America’s election. He had been sought on an FBI red warrant.
He is being extradited to the United States (if Jeff Sessions, a Russia partisan who recruited the spy Carter Page into Team Trump, does not try to stop it) over strong protests from Russia. The DoJ announcement on his indictment mentioned not only Formspring, but ‘a count of conspiracy’ and ‘sending a code to a computer’.
It was three years later. Nikulin was now 29.
On Oct 26, Rudy Giuliani joked on television about a big surprise coming in the election that would turn things around for Trump.
On Oct 28, Director James Comey of the FBI announced that more as yet unexamined emails had been found on an old laptop of Mr. Wiener’s.
Mr. Putin, it is my surmise that some of the Russian moles inside US counter-intelligence work within the FBI’s criminal division, and particularly, within the New York field office.
It is my surmise that your hacker, Nikulin, sent a command buried in a virus earlier transmitted by Formspring to ‘wake up’ that old computer and either find, or place, emails from Huma Abedin on to it, and that you then contacted your moles inside the NYPD/ FBI NY and told them to “suddenly find” emails that, the expectation was, could not possibly be combed through in time before the election.
Your agents within the FBI Field Office then did a number of additional things.
Firstly, they illegally spoke to any friendly press and the Trump campaign about putative ongoing criminal investigations into the Clinton Foundation and the matter of her email server.
They told Fox News’s Brett Baier that Hillary Clinton “Would soon be indicted” and this was reported on TV, and then retracted after the damage was done.
They told your agents of influence, Rudy Giuliani and X Kallstrom, that ‘a group of active FBI agents’ had demanded Comey release his letter. Both of them stated as much, Mr. Giuliani specifying ‘active’ FBI agents.
They used your agent General Flynn – I scorn to use ‘of influence’ in this case, Flynn knew what he was doing – to say on live television that active FBI agents were talking to him about an going ‘criminal investigation’
And they told the New York Times that the FBI ’Saw No Clear Ties to Russia’ in the matter of the Russian bank servers. And the New York Times printed it, even though they, the Times, knew it was false.
Before the election, only I reported, correctly, that the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence division in Connecticut had obtained a FISA warrant for ‘any US persons’ relating to the two banks involved in the Trump Tower server; Alfa Bank and SVB Bank.
So your moles in the NSA recruited Ed Snowden in 2012/2013.
You got to work using NSA hacking techniques. Stealing legit credentials features often. You hacked Wiener in 2013 via Formspring. You waited.
You used your moles in the FBI Field Office and, in 2016 at the right moment, you woke up Wiener’s laptop via the ’Snowden Virus’, found or planted old emails on it, and suddenly had the FBI Field Office “find it” and then lean, hard, on Comey to produce the letter he did.
Your RIS moles in the FBI then engaged in some agitprop with Giuliani, Flynn, an innocent Fox News, a not-innocent New York Times who deliberately used its prior authority to rubbish Franklin Foer and David Corn’s Alfa Bank server reporting, to make absolutely certain that “Trump-Russia” was suppressed and Clinton was defeated.
Your agents in the FBI Field Office in New York did, however, make one incredibly stupid mistake. A coder named Dustin Giebel caught it and he flagged it up to me.
The trouble with hiring young and foolish men to flood twitter and Facebook, to act as your hackers and so forth, is that they are young and foolish. Trolls gonna troll.
In this case, the Twitter account @FBIRecordsVault ceased being dormant for the first time in two years. It went on a little tweet storm. The last tweets were attacks on Hillary Clinton with a chaser of an attack on Eric Holder, the former AG. The first tweet, however, was a tweet praising Fred C. Trump. (Donald Trump has often said that his father is his only hero). It used language about Mr. Trump senior that was not only unlike any FBI descriptors ever used before, but had been lifted from Donald Trump’s commercial, company website.
When I saw that, I was overwhelmed with joy. It was not the severity of the offense, it was its traceability. Somebody sat at a keyboard and typed those tweets. Identifiable people. An FBI statement wrongly said that these were automated responses to three FOIA requests. Not true. Some identifiable person ordered and gave that statement. When I filed a private FOIA lawsuit with Mark S Zaid and Bradley Moss, we wrote the questions in ways that would be difficult to avoid answering. Who wrote those tweets? How many agents knew of them? What records exist of FBI agents or staff visiting the Trump commercial website to lift the descriptor of Fred Trump? What internal investigations exist into FBI agents leaking criminal investigations to Flynn and Giuliani? Do they feature any of the same agents who composed, knew of or authorized the FBI Records Vault tweets?
Days after our FOIA requests landed, Mr. Giuliani abruptly withdrew from his application to be Secretary of State. A week after our lawsuit was announced over non-response, the Department of Justice announced an investigation into more or less every matter named in our lawsuit, including the FBI Records Vault’s beautifully traceable tweets.
Even little pawns, like Twitter accounts, can become Queens, if you let them reach the 8th square, Mr. Putin.
So there you have it. Part One:
Russia has moles inside the IC, several of whom are not yet caught.
The NSA moles recruit Snowden.
Assange Ecuador and Russia give Snowden orders, and removable media to scrape intel and military secrets.
Ecuador exfiltrates Snowden to Moscow.
2012-2013, Russian hackers are given all of the NSA techniques. Nikulin hacks Formspring and Wiener. He plants a virus in his laptop. He waits and wakes it up in October.
Russia’s FBI Field Office moles “suddenly find” the emails, perhaps even placed on that computer, at a crucial juncture.
Russia’s FBI Field Office moles pressure Comey into releasing his letter, and thereby spin the election to Trump.
How am doing so far, Mr. Putin? You know, for a woman. And an amateur.
PART TWO – FBI: WHITE KNIGHT VS BLACK KNIGHT
Or, James Comey’s Counterintelligence FBI vs Rudy Giuliani’s NY Criminal FBI
There are three parts to this theory, like a good play, and narratively, the next section ought to be about your spy ring in the University of Cambridge, your hacking of Facebook and Twitter and your propaganda wars across Europe, but as I have learned from you one must play to the audience, and I think American readers are mostly terrified that Director Comey will throw America under the bus and cover up your coup.
I don’t agree. Here is my take.
Before the BBC and the Guardian confirmed my HeatStreet exclusive on the FISA warrant issued in October, I was a lone voice in the wilderness on its existence.(And may history record that our conservative-leaning website had that scoop). When the writer Jason Leopold of Vice asked if Trump had been under investigation in September he got a GLOMAR response: ‘We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any such records’.
GLOMAR responses are named for a submarine and can only be given if a matter of national security is at stake. Mr. Leopold announced he would sue, for why should a concluded investigation be a matter of national security? I told him, with little credibility then and tons now, that the GLOMAR response made sense because there is an ongoing investigation into Mr. Trump and his associates on a matter of national security.
Democrats, including Democrats in Obama’s government who ought to know better, have asked if James Comey had ‘a double standard’ over the investigations into Clinton and Trump. Yes; he did, and he does. He may talk about a criminal investigation. He may not talk about a current, ongoing investigation into espionage, bribery, money laundering and so forth that affects US national security.
Over the summer and early autumn Democrats wrongly stated that the FBI / Comey had said they were not looking into Roger Stone and had declined to investigate Roger Stone, who announced his links to Wikileaks. This came from a Senate hearing and Mr. Comey’s testimony to Democrat Rep. Nadler. Rep. Nadler asked if Stone’s boasts constituted special circumstances, Comey said “I don’t think so.” It must have been frustrating for Comey. He was GLOMAR-ing Congress right to their face and they did not understand what was going on.
Subsequently, the heads of NSA, CIA and FBI “Glomar”ed, in no particular order, two Congressional open Russian hack hearings, one closed briefing to the House of Representatives, and in the case of the CIA’s Director Brennan, Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.
Furthermore, although Comey is a natural Republican he appeared to have played it straight. In the summer he cleared Clinton of a criminal standard of negligence. In the fall, he had been sandbagged by Russian moles inside the FBI Field Office in New York. But I do not believe Mr. Comey surrendered wrongly to ‘pressure’. He knew the moles had effective kompromat – the emails your hacker Nikulin planted or woke – and that were he not to revise his testimony in the light of new evidence, his far more important natsec investigation into the traitor, Donald Trump, would be discredited. He then worked around the clock to clear Mrs. Clinton.
All evidence shows that James Comey is pursuing your assault on America, Mr. Putin, with the fearless I expect from a counter-intelligence patriot. In June, he named Donald Trump to a FISA court as an agent of Russian influence. In July, he did the same. Both times, the court turned him down. In April, Mr. Comey received audio of Russian money financing Trump – that’s the same time that Paul Manafort joined the campaign to run it. He formed a joint CIA/FBI /Treasury task force to look at the money.
Over the summer, US counter-intelligence met with Chris Steele because they had already got their own independent information that he was correct. On October 5th, your hacker Nikulin was picked up on an FBI ‘Red Warrant’ in Prague which means Director Comey had put a top priority on getting him some time before. Armed with whatever Nikulin spilled – and, Mr. Putin, he fainted when they caught him – Director Comey went back again, to a new FISA judge, on October 15, and he got his warrant.
Every indication is that Director Comey is not only independent but plays better chess than both you or I, Mr. Putin. (Can I call you VVP? I feel like I know you). For in September, the FBI did not join the ODNI statement about Russia’s intent being to aid Trump. Why not? Because while the NSA and CIA had heard the tapes of Americans in Trump’s camp working with your officials, taking your bribes, disseminating your information, Director Comey had not yet received his warrant. In order not to give Trump’s defense and the defense of his camps anything to go on, the FBI was Caesar’s wife. It did not act on surveillance of US persons abroad offered by the UK, Estonia, BIS, and Lithuania until it got the warrant. Director Comey does not want any ‘fruit of the poisoned tree’ defenses (no pun intended, Mr. Putin, and may I remind you sir that it is bad form to kill one’s opponents in chess. It’s cheating).
The FBI ‘changed’ its stance on the final Russian hacking report because they had, by then, listened to the tapes. Legally. Under a warrant.
The FBI has, fortunately, always employed the principle of compartmentalization. The FBI Counter-Intelligence division in New York kept their dealings secret from the criminal field office in New York.
But, some readers will say, Russian moles in the NSA – OK, it’s a worthy target. Why would the Russians have sleeper moles in a mere FBI criminal field office, even if it is New York?
And the answer to that is simple; a corrupt FBI NY Field Office guards the interest of Russian mobsters, allows them to launder their money through Trump’s “failing” casinos and building projects, makes sure that Trump being paid double for a Florida house doesn’t get investigated, allows paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to keep a mansion in New York City, ensures that Trump’s criminal taxes don’t get investigated, and sits hard enough on the NYPD that Trump can commit crime after crime in plain sight, socializing with the FBI’s most wanted mobsters, and never get charged with a damn thing. It ensures that Manafort and Stone can live in Trump tower, that Cohen’s trips on Russian-Registered private jets get washed. It allows the “FBI” to be next to the media, including the New York Times and Fox news, and act as un-named law enforcement sources. The FBI Field Office in New York wasn’t just infiltrated by your agents to scupper Hillary Clinton, Mr. Putin. It was there to guard the money of your billionaires and to cover the tracks of your handlers in the Russian embassy and consulates. That’s why the dead security guard at the Russian consulate never got investigated. You have a lot of people in New York, and they are very affable, pleasant folks, too. I’ve met a couple.
But let’s get back to the game. Your trouble is that Mr. Comey is not for sale. You have nothing on him. Let’s remember your hacker Nikulin, whom Comey was chasing since who knows when. A few days ago Comey picked up another of your hackers in Spain as he was about to board a plane to France with his wife. You yourself, through your propaganda sites, connected this to the DNC hack. You had the identical reaction that you did to Nikulin being picked up. You threw a rather beta male hissy fit. Stanislav Lisov had coded a bank virus. But there’s rather more to it than that. Lisov fits the hacker narrative in the Steele dossier. He needed paying. He has Gazprom connections, and he has a scary interest in satellites, which you, Mr. Putin, would like to weaponize against the United States.
But you know, the FBI caught him, none the less. Comey caught him. They know about the US company he formed, how it transferred to Oregon from Florida, and how money was funneled through a failed ‘secretive startup’.
The white knight is outplaying the black knight and all his moves indicate that.
PART THREE: ENDGAME – THE ‘IAGO GAMBIT’
Is it really worth chronicling the rest of the match? You, Mr. Putin, have relied on big data and on propaganda, including an army of trolls. It is plain to UK intelligence that you have a Russian spy ring at Cambridge University; that you may have combed through and stolen, illegally in the EU, the Facebook data of hundreds of millions of Americans; that you use propagandists SCR and combined GSR and SCR to form Cambridge Analytica; and that you used Twitter’s database to create a bot army.
It’s plain from both money and propaganda that Steve Bannon is your tool, your agent of influence; that you work through Nigel Farage and so on; that RT and Sputnik are not merely spy centers, but money-laundering tools; and that you have used ‘Big data’ of Cambridge Analytica (personality types plus propaganda from SCR) to poison the minds of Americans and indeed voters across the West. You have your hackers sitting on 4 Chan, where the ‘prank’ on the Brexit petition involved Russian server addresses.
But you are a careless player, Mr. Putin. Scrubbing archive.is of tweets wherein @GenFlynn pushes your hideous propaganda is pretty dumb. Scrubbing Michael Cohen’s phone data is also dumb, when we have him and his daughter waltzing around Europe and the Caribbean in Russian-owned private jets. You live by the troll, sir, then you die by the troll. Your propaganda and how you pay for it is all traceable. America has its hackers, too.
The DoJ inquiry has fired the first shots. It’s named Erik Prince. It knows you have the Mercers, it knows about Bannon, it knows about your moles in the NYPD. You see sir it all goes back to Nikulin. The NYPD ‘found’ that laptop on October 3rd. And on October 5th, Nikulin comes to Prague for payment.
But Mr. Putin, James Comey’s friends were waiting there to turn your black pawn into our white queen. And whenever Flynn tweeted Russian agitprop, the FBI and the NSA had a URL.
You sir, are like a chess player in possession of all his many, many pieces, but boxed in, in the back row, and despite having them all arrayed on the board – Jeff Sessions as Attorney General even though he recruited the spy Carter Page into your team – despite all of that, none of it will matter. White has you trapped. You and your ally Iran. Checkmate came from the Persian phrase, “Shah Mat”.
The King is dead. And I didn’t even have to bother with Sessions, Page, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, and all the SIGINT that we have on them, the deals they made with Wikileaks to receive intel that you hacked and phished and planted with your viruses.
Impeachment of Mr. Trump is on the way.
What you should ask yourself is if it is in Russia’s and your own best interest for you to keep deceiving an angry America? For when the trials do start, the back-covering, the rage, the scrambling, the desperate need to seem harder on your oligarch friends than the next politician – this could harm not only you and your allies but the next generation of Russian kleptocrats too.
It would surely be better to give it up now, release some of that kompromat now, push Trump out, and face the anger of a relieved United States after Trump resigns.
But perhaps you cannot.
Perhaps Mr. Putin, you have played yourself right into a corner. After all, those who know what komprat you hold on them also know that you hold it. And they can collaborate with the FBI.
Chess is a good game, sir.
But the reason Russians are so poor is that you can’t stop playing it.

Session 3: Smash and Grab [8-6-18]

Crit W. (GM): It's been a few long, boring weeks while you've waited for the heat to die down. While you've waited, Crypto's hired help have been working on your hideout, and they've successfully finished with your purchased base upgrades.
They've done this with Crypto occasionally shuffling you all into specific rooms of the base so that at no point does any of the hired help actually see you.
This, she explains, is done both for your protection and for the help's protection.
That said, you have her assurances that she's keeping a watchful eye on the entire process via her personal drones, and as far as you can tell that seems to be the case.
Crit W. (GM): Occasionally her monkey-drone brings you cold drinks from the fridge.
But soon enough...
...the base is upgraded.
It's currently about 8 in the morning.
Crypto has said she'll use your new Comms center to call you all at about 10.
In the meanwhile, you have a bit of time to yourselves.
Crit W. (GM): So what are you doing?
Marysa is reading the news on a tablet.
Madelynn: Madelynn is making breakfast.
Lemma: Nina is happily sequestered in her room, working on the same proof she'd started yesterday.
Crit W. (GM): Sea Palace Power Outage Deemed 'Mechanical Failure'. Kelp-Based Coffee: Is It Effective? Seven Tips for a Happier Commute!
Spark: Spark has jogged, showered, eaten, and washed dishes. She waits in the comms room.
Marysa: "Hmm... figures they'd blame our damage to the casino as a power failure. Wouldn't be good if folks found out what really happened, for them."
Madelynn: Transferring her food onto a plate Madelynn, sits down at the table. "Well they're not about to tell the truth."
Crit W. (GM): Many sorts of meat are not available cheaply in Palamedes due to its lack of natural farmland. Egg, however, is not one of them, and is readily available in Palamedes markets... and your refrigerator.
Madelynn: Roll 2d10+knowledge+phys
Madelynn: rolling 2d10+6
9+9+6= 24
Crit W. (GM): The eggs are delicious.
Once you two have finished eating, time passes... soon it's about 10 AM.
Thanks to the clocks on each nightstand in each of the restored bedrooms, even Lemma has no excuse for being late for the call.
Madelynn: Quickly cleaning up her dirty dishes, Madeylnn makes her way into the comm room.
Crit W. (GM): Spark is already there, sitting almost perfectly still.
Patient.
Lemma: Lemma arrives on time, if only just.
She lingers by the door, seemingly reluctant to join the table proper.
Crit W. (GM): At 10 AM sharp, the Comms screen turns on.
A cheery looking, emoticon-ish sort of face illuminates the screen, on a bubbly ocean background.
"Ahhhhh, this is so much better." Crypto says.
"Good morning everyone. I hope you haven't been too bored the last few days?"
The emoji-face on the giant screen moves around, looking at each of you in turn. "Lemma! Hey! Come join us! You don't need to be shy."
Marysa: "Being cooped us like this isn't exactly exilerating. How bout hooking us up with some booze?"
Lemma: Nina blinks several times, fidgeting against the wall and looking profoundly uncomfortable.
Madelynn: Madelynn shrugs "Could be worse. Better bored than dead."
Spark: "I would like to get started as soon as possible," says Spark, a genial smile on her face.
Lemma: "Do you need me to sit down?" she asks, her voice barely carrying across the room.
Crit W. (GM): "I... guess not?" Crypto's emoji-face takes on a nonplussed expression.
Lemma: Nina nods in acknowledgement, staying where she is.
Crit W. (GM): "RIGHT! Well then." Crypto coughs, audibly.
"We've got a lot to cover today, so let's get to it I guess."
Marysa: Maryssa cuts in. "You got our next job? We hitting your target yet, or are you going to have us making cash for now?"
Crit W. (GM): "My target?" Crypto asks. "My target is for you guys to gain power as a gang, as I've said several times."
"I do have a job for you... but it is not anything personally related to me. And we have other things to cover first, like your guest downstairs."
Marysa: "Don't think i don't recognize the name Crypto. Or the other half that goes with it. The one thats rich and famous." Marysa notes.
Spark: "Please," says Spark, that genial smile still in place. "Continue."
Madelynn: "Guest?"
Lemma: Nina tenses, oh so slightly.
Crit W. (GM): Crypto seems to ignore Marysa's question for "You remember that Smuggler Access you guys so-wisely chose to invest in?" Crypto asks rhetorically. "That got you access to the Black Market. As I'm sure you know, the black market is not a place so much as a bunch of loose affiliations-- and in Palamedes, the black market comes to you."
*for now.
Marysa: marysa leans back in the chair, crossing her arms.
Crit W. (GM): "Down in your sub-level basement-- hold on a moment, this is going to be inconvenient." The viewscreen turns off, and Crypto's monkey-drone turns on, hopping up on the table.
"Down in your sub-level basement is a room a bit like a confessional booth. The black market guy enters from one side, he shows you a Chroma Key, kind of like a passcode in the black market, and you exchange money, goods, and services without ever seeing each other's faces."
"If his chroma key is wrong, you open the door and kill him."
"If his chroma key is right and you open the door for any other reason, you lose your black market privileges."
"Make sense?" Crypto asks.
Lemma: Lemma nods.
Madelynn: Madelynn nods "Simple enough."
Crit W. (GM): "Right, well, we have one waiting for us now. I remember you in particular wanted to see if I could find someone to buy your bones, yes? Have you been saving them up like I asked, in sheets?"
Marysa: "Yeah, i got some."
Crit W. (GM): "Bring them, and let's go see what he's got. I'll get to the rest of this, and the job, after that." Crypto's drone hops off the table, then starts walking toward the stairs.
Marysa: Marysa goes to collect the goods from her room, before heading down.
Spark: Spark waits patiently.
Crit W. (GM): "Today's chroma key is Black-red-purple." Crypto says, as you all head down.
Madelynn: Madelynn follows the monkey drone down to the tunnels, .
Crit W. (GM): Once you all get down to the room, you find it to be... well, basically exactly as described. It's a small room, no chairs, no frills, looks like any other room in the sublevel.
The only difference is the partition set up in the middle, with a slider-drawer that can be used to pass objects, and a speaker with a button next to it, presumably matching a speaker on the other side.
Through a small slot in the wall, a card is slid through. Three color squares: Black, red, purple.
"Once you've inspected the card, you push it back through." Crypto's little drone has to stand on its tail to reach high enough, but she pushes it through.
A few moments later you hear a clunk, and then Crypto opens the drawer.
There's a tablet, displaying a screen oddly like a shop screen. (See Discord)
Marysa: rolling 2d10+10
8+2+10= 20
rolling 2d10+10
9+2+10= 21
rolling 2d10+10
4+2+10= 16
rolling 2d10+10
6+10+10= 26
rolling 4d10
7+5+3+2= 17
Crit W. (GM): You all decide, collectively, to have the black market aid Crypto in finding you some more opportunities for next time.
You pass the tablet back over and Crypto transfers the funds.
"Pleasure doing business." Says a digitized voice over the speaker.
"And that's that." Crypto says. "Simple, cold, efficient. That's how they operate."
"Now let's go back to the comms room!"
Once you're back in Comms, Crypto deactivates her drone and the screen turns back on.
Crit W. (GM): "To answer your earlier accusation, do you need me to tell you my past? I assumed you weren't interested, as long as I stayed honest with you and the money flowed."
"I was Crypto, of the famous duo Crypto-Graphic. Yes, the same Graphic that In-ven-ted the Selfon." Her tone is snarling.
"The asshole stole the patents through a contract loophole and left me in the dirt while he became a multi-billionaire, and so I've come to take over his stupid shiny city and rub it in his face, okay? I haven't lied about what we're doing, I haven't lied about where we're going, the only thing I never said was my personal stake."
Marysa: "Just wanted to confirm if we were attacking the place in the enar future. The rest isn't as important." Marysa notes.
near*
"Some folks like to tell the hired help one plan, when they have something else in mind completely. Just want to be on the same page."
Crit W. (GM): A little side-blurb appears on screen, and then another, and another, and another, all articles detailing the massive boom of the Selfon, and the rise of Graphics Unbelievable's stock prices.
Marysa: "Already had one boss screw me over, cus of that."
Crit W. (GM): "I'm... aware, mostly, of your pasts. I had to delve, because I needed to know who I was gathering. But I don't make a habit of lying, especially to people willing to throw a dude into an incinerator."
Lemma: Lemma nods.
Marysa: "Just as long as things are clear, going forward. That's fine with me."
Crit W. (GM): "For this to work, I need you all to trust me, and I need to trust you. Lying won't help that."
Lemma: Another nod.
Crit W. (GM): "The only things I won't tell you are the same things that nobody knows. I won't tell you my real name. I won't tell you where or who I really am.Even Graphic only ever knew me as Crypto, and we kept our project work decentralized to keep corporate assassins off our backs."
Marysa: "Understandable."
Crit W. (GM): "Bottom line though, I'm on your side, yours before anyone else's, even mine. That may sound weird, given my stake in things, but I believe that once I manage to get you all going, even if I stop being part of the picture you all will still manage what I'm trying to accomplish simply because it's the best course of action for you personally."
"But as long as nobody tracks me down and shoots me in the head, I'll be here to help you. So shall we get started?"
Crypto pulls up a picture of Palamedes.
Then, alongside it, she pulls up lists of the gangs in the city.
Spark: "That'd be appreciated," says SPark.
Crit W. (GM): "These are the strengths and the territories of every single gang in the city, not including you... yet."
"As you can see, the Golden Dice are a little pissed at you still. Even after a month, they're still looking for you. We need to put a stop to that."
Their HEAT value glows brighter.
"HEAT: 5/10"
"To that end, I have your first JOB."
The viewscreen changes again, this time to a building. Looks like it's in the- "This building, owned by a tech company owned by a shell corporation owned by The Singularity, is located in Silicon Square. The south half."
Crit W. (GM): "We don't care about the 19 upper floors, just the ground floor."
"This is one of the Singularity's tinkertech tech labs. I want you all to hit it, steal a bunch of their tech shit, and if you can, plant some fake evidence fingering the Golden Dice."
Some statistics for the job itself appear on the right side of the screen.
"Now, normally I'll be offering you guys some choices, if I can." Crypto admits. "But today we only have one job, because we need the G-D off our damn backs if we want to get anything useful done."
Spark: "That sounds just fine by me."
Marysa: "Let's get out there, and get a move on then."
Crit W. (GM): "You guys do have one choice, though!" Crypto says.
"Do you want to hit them during the day, or during the night?" She asks. "During the day, the Phalanx will be more likely to show up if you can't keep the alarm from going off, but the Singularity will be less likely to openly try to stop you, since this place is masquerading as a legit operation, and in most respects it is."
"At night, the Phalanx are less likely to bother, but the Singularity will be more free to respond."
"This job is in Singularity turf, so keep that in mind as well."
Spark: "Night," says Spark promptly. "Our chances of getting away with it are far higher, and that way we can blame the Golden Dice more easily."
"And if a couple of their thugs show up," she says, "we can deal with them."
Marysa: "Sure, let's do that. We just gotta kill 'em if more show up."
Madelynn: "Night's probably best."
Crit W. (GM): "Tonight it is." Crypto says. "Also, a warning: They have a cape on staff as a guard. I would tell you what they do, but-" Crypto pulls up a page from a database with a 404 error.
"They expunged her, digitally."
Spark: "No pictures or public knowledge?"
Lemma: Lemma frowns, staring at the screen.
Spark: rolling 2d10+9
6+1+9= 16
sure
+5
Marysa: "well, it's not like every job has all the details up front anyways. Risk always comes with the reward."
Madelynn: Madelynn shrugs "Let's find out what they can do."
Crit W. (GM): Once the meeting is done, Crypto calls you another automated lift-- not to the base, you're forced to hoof it for a bit in some inconspicuous smallclothes.
"I'd prefer to avoid using the sublevel to get around unless absolutely necessary." Crypto says. "We want that to be kind of our trump card."
Marysa: "Sure."
Crit W. (GM): Soon enough you're dropped off outside the building.
It's dark.
Looking at the building from the outside, it seems that aside from the lobby, the rest of the ground floor is purposefully raised off of street level, preventing both looking inside and potentially breaking windows to get entry.
"For the record guys-- none of the people working here know that they're working for a gang."
"They're all civilians, as far as at least most of them know this is just another job."
"Given the shit being worked with here, there's probably at least one, maybe two people in there that are in on it, but otherwise..."
Spark: "Their safety will be considered," says Spark.
Crit W. (GM): She trails off. "Anyway, I'll leave it to you for how to handle things. I've disabled the silent alarm system, and I have a few drones in place ready to jam wireless signals when you're ready for it."
Marysa: "We got anything to plant, to help with the ruse?"
Crit W. (GM): The lights in the place are on, and it's still evidently open.
"Look on the curb near the building." Crypto says. "I had a guy leave a box of Golden dice stuff, including their famous cufflinks."
Madelynn: Rifling through the box Madelynn grabs some cufflinks "Shall we?" She says gesturing towards the building.
Lemma: Lemma nods, doing her best to keep her breathing steady. She seems to only now be realizing what she's actually about to do.
Marysa: Marysa browses through the box as well, pocketing a few pieces.
"Let's go. Who's taking charge?"
Spark: Spark takes some cufflinks, clipping them onto her suit. "I'll take charge," she says, "unless there are objections."
Lemma: Nina shakes her head.
Madelynn: "Nah, lead on."
Marysa: "Sure. You probably know what they're like better than us."
Spark: "Alright," says Spark. "Let's go."
Crit W. (GM): Once you open the front door, the guard at the front desk looks up. The two guards by the doors give you tense looks, hands reaching.
"Hello, can I, uh, help you?" The guard asks.
There are two elevators to the left of his desk, but you're not here for the upper floors.
Spark: "Hello," says Spark, leaning onto the table, cufflinks glinting gold, clearly visible as she smiles. "We're here to investigate some issues in management. We've noticed some discrepancies."
Crit W. (GM): "Uh... sure. Can I see your ID cards?" The guard asks.
The two guards by the doors look nervously at each other.
Madelynn: rolling 2d10 + 25
3+3+25= 31
hp
Spark: "Listen," says Spark with a sigh, turning and taking in the room, "we can do this the easy way, where you wave us through. I'd really like that."
rolling 2d10+10
3+5+10= 18
+5 hp
Crit W. (GM): rolling 1d3
1= 1
Crit W. (GM): "Uh... o-okay." He presses a button on his console.
The door behind him unlocks.
Spark: "Thank you very much," says Spark. "Have a nice day."
Crit W. (GM): One of the door guards nods his head toward your group. The other guard looks at you collectively, looks back at the door guard, and shakes his head.
They continue to basically, stoically, cower by the doors.
"Hey, who are you?" The guard in the hallway attempts to stop you.
He moves his walkie-talkie up toward his mouth.
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
2+8+10= 20
Spark: "Stand down and nobody has to get hurt," says Spark.
Lemma: Before she moves into the hallway proper, Lemma takes a moment to walk over to the furthest glass door.
Crit W. (GM): The guard drops his melted walkie-talkie. He pulls his gun.
Lemma: She kneels down, inspecting it, and draws a tiny lambda in the bottom corner with a sharpie.
Crit W. (GM): Lemma becomes 1/10ths Gordon Freeman.
Lemma: Then follows the rest of them of the party, walking in just in time to see the guard drawing his gun.
Madelynn: rolling 2d10 + 25
2+10+25= 37
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
5+5+10= 20
Crit W. (GM): "Agh!" He drops his gun, glowing red.
The handle is bubbling.
He holds his hand, and starts backing away.
Spark: "Sit down," says Spark.
Marysa: rolling 2d10+10
5+2+10= 17
hp
rolling 2d10+4
1+8+4= 13
hp
rolling 2d6+13
3+6+13= 22
Crit W. (GM): WHACK goes the security guard.
he falls flat on his ass, groaning.
He ain't getting back up for a while.
Spark: Spark burns the camera out in passing.
Crit W. (GM): "You guys were supposed to tell me when you went in, dammit." Crypto complains. "I've cut off all wireless comms. I barely managed to stop a 911 call before it connected."
"It won't last forever, so you're on a timer now."
Lemma: "Sorry," Lemma murmurs, by instinct if nothing else. "Won't happen again."
Crit W. (GM): You enter a room full of cubicles.
The guards give you curious looks, but don't stop you. Evidently they think you're supposed to be here.
Several scientists are working at their cubicles, even this late into the night.
There's an exit from the room at the far side, as well as two bathrooms.
Lemma: Lemma waits anxiously for the others to move, eyes flitting between the cameras, the cubicles, and the guards
Spark: Spark checks the door
Crit W. (GM): It's not locked.
In fact it is slightly ajar.
Spark: Spark steps through
Crit W. (GM): You come to a hallway with a window on the left side, probably bulletproof. This door is very obviously tougher than the others, made out of tinkermetal, and the camera in this hallway is, unlike the others, visibly wired through the wall to the left.
It's a security checkpoint.
(Also you should probably shut THAT DOOR, THE ONE TO THE LEFT ON THE MAP SPECIFICALLY, behind you.
This will not, in fact, lock the door.
So we are clear.
Spark: Spark shuts the door behind them.
Lemma: (Is the window glass?)
Spark: "We're at a security checkpoint," says Spark to Crypto, burning the camera out with a glance.
Lemma: Lemma fidgets.
Crit W. (GM): There's a pause, then: "Did you just do something? Another 911 call was just attempted."
"Slightly different GPS location from the first, closer to you currently."
Spark: "Burning out the cameras," says Spark. "Denial of resources."
Crit W. (GM): "Well, you probably blew your shot at bluffing you way through there, uh... are there any exposed wires, or keypads, or keycard slots?"
Spark: "I doubt that would have been possible," says Spark.
Crit W. (GM): "Just answer the question"
Spark: rolling 2d10+whatever
1+8= 9Marysa: rolling 2d10+13
7+6+13= 26
Lemma: rolling 2d10+5
8+4+5= 17
Spark: +4 then
Madelynn: rolling 2d10+7
6+9+7= 22
Crit W. (GM): There is no keypad next to the door, or other obvious means of opening it. There are exposed wires... connected to the camera.
Marysa: "Wire connected to the burnt out camera."
Crit W. (GM): "If it's a monitored checkpoint... could be connected to the same computer that works the door. Your earbuds have a little pull-out clamp, hook that onto one of the wires."
"Make sure it's not the power wire. Lick it first if you have to, Marysa."
Spark: "Do it," says Spark.
Marysa: "Ugh. Fine."
Marysa follows the instructions. If anything happens she'll be expecting more cash.
Crit W. (GM): You grab one of the wires at random and lick it.
rolling 1d6
3= 3
You're fine.
You big baby.
"Jackpot." Crypto says. "Oh. My. God."
"They're still running windows XP! Oh my fucking god! How fucking lazy do you have to be to- Oh my god!"
Crit W. (GM): "I'm opening the door, just- Oh my god!"
The door slides open.
"OH. My. GOD."
rolling 2d10+2
7+9+2= 18
rolling 2d10+2
6+6+2= 14
rolling 2d10+2
9+3+2= 14
Crit W. (GM): rolling 2d6+3
3+5+3= 11
rolling 2d6+3
1+2+3= 6rolling 2d6+3
3+5+3= 11
rolling 9+6+9
9+6+9
= 24
24-2
rolling 24-2
24-2
= 22
Crit W. (GM): BANG BANG BANG.
Marysa: rolling 2d10+10
9+4+10= 23
rolling 2d10+10
1+1+10= 12
Crit W. (GM): Bullets go into Marysa's body.
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
2+7+10= 19
Flashbang them
Crit W. (GM): Bullets soon pop out of marysa's body as she starts regenerating.
Spark: "Down on the ground," Spark says. "And nobody dies."
Marysa: rolling 2d10+10
8+7+10= 25
Spark: rolling 2d10+5+5(hp)
8+10+5+5= 28
(Intimidation)
Crit W. (GM): The blinded guards get down on the ground, along with the (now scared and shivering) scientists.
Spark: "Thank you," says Spark. "Please remove your communication devices and guns and kick them toward us."
Crit W. (GM): It takes them some feeling around (they're still blind), but soon all the guards and scientists have tossed you their phones, guns, etc.
Lemma: rolling 2d10+5 HP
3+2+5= 10
Marysa: rolling 2d10+10
6+2+10= 18
Madelynn: rolling 2d10+5
10+4+5= 19
Spark: Spark takes the phones and guns, then continues.
Burns out the cameras as an afterthought.
Crit W. (GM): The room you guys are in is full of... half-assembled tinker devices.
The scientists were apparently working on them on the tables around the room.
Marysa: rolling 2d10+13
3+4+13= 20
Crit W. (GM): There are also several consoles, probably for logging work.
Lemma: rolling 2d10+20 HP (science to skim the consoles for anything important)
6+9+20= 35
Madelynn: rolling 2d10+7
8+6+7= 21
Marysa: Marysa looks at one of the scientists near a piece of tech that caught her eye. "Hey, you. Finish that up for me, would you?" Gesturing to the piece."
Marysa: -"
Crit W. (GM): Nervously, the scientist in question gets back to work.
"J-just give me a minute." He says.
Crit W. (GM): At first it seems like a bunch of parts, complete worthless trash-- but with your attention brought to it, the parts quickly come together, both mentally and before your eyes, into what looks like some kind of... cannon gun.
"H-here." He says.
Sonic Ampli-Cannon: A tinkertech "wave motion" gun that fires blasts of high-powered sonic waves. A single hit from this gun can rupture eardrums, and sustained fire can cause massive internal bleeding and brain damage. The waves fired by this gun are powerful enough to break glass, crack and shatter concrete, and even break steel. The downside is that the waves produced merely by turning the gun on, much less firing it, are so loud and so high-pitched that it is easily detected. Anything resembling stealth is impossible with this gun. 5d6+3 damage per shot, ignores conventional armor. Has enough power for 6 shots per job, then must be recharged. Deals damage in a cone.
Marysa: "Appreciated. Now help me bag up some of the rest of this junk, if you don't mind." She adds, with a grin.
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
8+6+10= 24
Crit W. (GM): The scientists grudgingly bag up the rest of their work.
Crit W. (GM): There's a man in the hallway ahead! Look, he's doing a dance!
Spark: "On the ground," says Spark.
Crit W. (GM): It's a dance where he throws away his molten gun and walkie talkie, then tries to make his pants not be on fire!
Pat pat, patpatpatpat.
Patpatpatpatpatpatpat.
patpatpatpat.
Oh, he did it.
Now he's down on the ground!
Spark: Spark attaches Crypto through the correct wire.
Crit W. (GM): The hallway is blocked by two tinkertech doors.
No exposed wires.
No keypads.
The camera here isn't connected to them, either.
Lemma: Lemma pauses.
Spark: "I require some assistance with these doors," says Spark.
Madelynn: rolling 2d10 + 25
3+9+25= 37
"Give me a sec I'm working on that." Madeylnn rreplies
Spark: "You have very odd, useful powers," says Spark.
rolling 2d10+10
5+5+10= 20
rolling 2d10+10
2+5+10= 17
Crit W. (GM): The left door pops open. The right is a little more resistant.
...There's a second door behind it.
Madelynn: Madeylnn flips some of her hair over her shoulder in an exaggerated motion and says "I know."
Crit W. (GM): "I have got to get a camera or something to follow you guys...* Crypto mutters.
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
4+8+10= 22
Crit W. (GM): "What's going on? What do you see?"
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
2+4+10= 16
Crit W. (GM): "My heuristics think there are probably doors near you, but I'm not sure how many... probably the vault to your north?"
Lemma: "Three," says Lemma.
"One is open."
Crit W. (GM): "Three?" Crypto says. "Huh. Heuristics was thinking more like... four minimum."
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
10+8+10= 28
rolling 2d10+10
6+1+10= 17
rolling 2d10+10
3+4+10= 17
Madelynn: rolling 2d10 + 25
3+4+25= 32
hp
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
9+9+10= 28
Crit W. (GM): While there is another door past the second one, this one's not tinkertech.
Marysa takes the loot and catches up with the team
Crit W. (GM): The moment Spark enters the room, she's slammed to the floor.
Lemma: Lemma's breath catches.
Crit W. (GM): Gravity pushes down on her, pinning her- and pinning Marysa, who so kindly stepped in as well.
You're both held to the ground by your own weight, unable to move.
Spark: "Hello," says Spark, pushing out the words. "Surrender and you won't be harmed. We'll let you leave with your life."
Lemma: Lemma tenses.
(To GM) rolling 2d10+10+10 (Amp) + 5 (HP) normalize gravity
7+1+10+10= 28
Crit W. (GM): "Big words for someone who's gonna be wheezing in a few seconds." The pushing intensifies. Air starts being forced out of your lungs.
All of a sudden, gravity normalizes.
"Wh-"
The pushing starts again, and then stops again.
And then starts, and then stops.
Soon it levels off into normal gravity, even as the woman in the vault makes a very intense face, holding her arms out at you.
Marysa: rolling 2d10+3
4+3+3= 10
Spark: rolling 2d10+5
8+9+5= 22
rolling 2d10+10
1+6+10= 17
(Ranged attack, then power)
Madelynn: rolling 2d10 + 25
10+4+25= 39
Spark: "Surrender," Spark, "and I won't permanently damage you."
Crit W. (GM): "Tch." Seemingly lacking for better options, she puts her hands up.
"Are there any cameras you haven't fried yet in that room? If so, don't fry them yet, grab one off the wall and hook me in." Crypto says.
"I gather you just found our mystery cape? I wanna see them dammit."
"This has been driving me nuts for DAYS!"
Marysa does the wire thing again.
Crit W. (GM): "Oooh. Hello... Inertia." Crypto says.
Madelynn: rolling 2d10+7
2+4+7= 13
Marysa: rolling 2d10+13
8+3+13= 24
Crit W. (GM): "I'm guessing Lemma did something? She's a gravity cape, so it would make sense."
Lemma: "Yes."
Her voice is slightly strained.
Marysa takes a moment to load another piece of bone into the mass launcher for safety.
Crit W. (GM): "For the record, she's on the list." Crypto says. "Uh, not like, a hit list or anything. I mean a list of potential hires. She's an independent cape."
"Up to you if you want to bother, given the... circumstances."
Marysa: 'What do ya say, hmm? Care to work for a new boss?"
Crit W. (GM): Again, everything in here is valuable. Not a lot of this would be valuable to you, but there's enough tinkershit here for a pretty good payout... even split 6 ways instead of 5.
"What do you mean?" Inertia asks, slowly lowering her arms.
Mag Bracer: When worn on the wrist, this device can be activated via a surreptitious finger-gesture sensor between the pinky and ring finger. When activated, the bracer will emit a strong magnetic 'pulse', forcefully yanking metal objects in front of the user toward the user. The intended use is forcibly disarming foes by magnetizing their guns or melee weapons, then placing them in the user's hands. Once per encounter. Being made out of tinkermetal, the bracer itself will keep you from being stabbed by any swords or knives you magnetize. Magnetize axes, however, at your own risk.
Marysa: "Simple. We're just getting started. you're freelance right? besides, better than finding out what happens after we walk out of here with all this stuff."
Spark: Spark stands. "We have several heavy hitters on our team," she says, "and we could always use another. We are making quick hits against multiple bases in order to establish ground."
Madelynn: "Couldn't hurt to have allies, I guess. You're welcome to join far as I'm concerned."
Crit W. (GM): "..Well, shit, why not. Better than, uh... whatever 'not permanently damaged' would be." Inertia gives Spark a nervous look.
Marysa: "Oh, but you understand your share for this job would probably be less. You'll still get something for helping us get this all out, though."
"understandable, right?
"
Crit W. (GM): "Yeah. You're already doing me a favor by... not that." She waves a hand at Spark.
"Oh, I can help you out though. You're uh... judging by how you manhandled that camera, you probably want the footage of you here gone, yeah?"
Marysa: "Well, now i'm glad i missed my shot!" She adds with a grin.
Crit W. (GM): "I know where the camera footage is."
"And uh, as a gesture of goodwill..." She waves her hand at the door behind her.
Lemma: Still in the hallway, Lemma looks slightly more anxious than she's already been, but makes no further comment.
Crit W. (GM): It gives a loud CRUNCH, and then the tinkermetal collapses into a neat disc shape on the ground.
Marysa: "Probably a good idea. Also if you know about any more loot, that'd be useful too." Marysa adds.
Crit W. (GM): "In here. for starters." She thumbs behind her. "All this tinker shit's too much for me, I don't know what's valuable or not. I do know there's a secondary vault with the hidden security room."
Madelynn: "Don't forget we should plant some 'evidence' before we leave."
Marysa: "Who needs to know what's what? Just take it all, and we can move it i'm sure. Tinker shit always has a buyer."
Madelynn: Madeylnn drops her cufflinks on the ground.
Crit W. (GM): Snapshot Drone: A small drone that resembles a webcam with a helicopter propeller, the Snapshot Drone can either be controlled manually via controller or set to follow a specific target, repeatedly harrassing and taking pictures of them with the flash set to ultrahigh. Originally used by paparazzi, these drones are great for distracting foes on the battlefield due to their automatic nature and erratic movements as they attempt to get multiple camera angles. Has enough charge for three targets per job, or for a few straight minutes of non-combat use. The controller has a video screen, so it can be used for recon.
Marysa rigs some of the fabric to make it look like it was torn off accidentally.
Crit W. (GM): Rigged.
That aside, you guys basically take everything in the room that's not pinned down.
Maybe you should get Calypso to buy a tinker sack?
Inertia leads you off down the other hallway.
You come out to a shooting range, the range itself visible past a glass window.
It seems a scientist is working with a laser gun?
Crit W. (GM): Seems fairly standard, as far as tinkertech goes... and judging by how little damage it does to his targets, the impression is about right.
Lemma: As the other three move on, Lemma follows at a distance.
Marysa: "Hey, can i see that for a sec?" Marysa asks, menacingly.
Crit W. (GM): Inertia gives you a quizzical look as you move on the scientist.
"Uh-" He looks between you and Inertia.
She shrugs.
Reluctantly he hands it over.
Marysa: rolling 2d10+3
6+7+3= 16
Spark: Spark waits impatiently. "We should head out," she says.
Crit W. (GM): the lasers it fires are fairly pathetic, but they do deal damage at least.
Inertia stops at a seemingly blank spot on the wall.
Marysa: "Alright alright, lets finish up then."
Crit W. (GM): She pulls her fist down, and the wall crumples.
She swings it inward on a hidden hinge.
"Shit, shit, shit. They'll kill you for this! You know that? They'll kill every last one of you!" The guard inside is panicking.
He, at least, seems to understand the gravity of what exactly has happened.
Inertia calmly walks past him and crushes the next door.
Marysa: rolling 2d10+4
1+3+4= 8Crit W. GM: You whack him with the gun."Ow!" He yells. "You hit me!"Marysa: "Geez, this gun can't even knock someone out right."Madelynn: rolling 2d10 + 25
2+4+25= 31
Spark: "On the ground or she'll do it again, this time harder."
Lemma: Lemma walks forward towards the vault.
What's inside?
Marysa: "I'm definitely selling this gun the first chance I get. I'm dissapointed. i want my money back."
Crit W. (GM): Suddenly the guy is on the ground.
Silly doodles have been made all over his face.
There are angry eyebrows, and a drawn-on moustache.
Madelynn: Madelynn snickers from where she stands
Crit W. (GM): His eyelids have fake open eyes drawn on them.
There are little devil horns sketched on his forehead.
Someone has also drawn a fake line of "drool" going from the corner of his lip, and a little butt on his chin like a cleft chin.
Spark: "Let's move on," says Spark. "Take what we can get, and let's go."
Crit W. (GM): The vault is full of tinkertech.
Crit W. (GM): "The computer here has all the footage." Inertia says.
Marysa hooks Crypto into the system.
Crit W. (GM): "It controls the cameras for the whole facil-"
"This thing controls the cameras for the whole place! Wow!" Crypto says.
"Oooh, there's so much dirt on here..."
Marysa: rolling 2d10+13
6+2+13= 21
Madelynn: rolling 2d10+7
10+8+7= 25
hp
Crit W. (GM): Gremlin: This small, ball-shaped tinker device is first activated by button press, then thrown or launched at a target. The Gremlin coats itself in a fast-acting adhesive in mid-flight; once stuck to a target it emits an electromagnetic field that disrupts most electronic devices, including most electronic tinkertech devices, that the target is carrying. Large devices may be immune, as will properly EM-shielded ones. The field lasts for 2 rounds, the adhesive lasts for 3. The gremlin produces its own adhesive and is self-charging, but can only be used once per job.
Spark: rolling 2d10+4+5
7+3+4+5= 19
Lemma: rolling 2d10+10 (hp)
9+3+10= 22
Crit W. (GM): "Alright, done! Footage gone, and I left them a nice little... surprise."
"All golden dice flavored, don't worry."
"Just make sure to take the jack."
Marysa: "Alright, let's grab all the rest of the goods, and get the heck out."
Marysa takes the jack.
Lemma: Meanwhile, Lemma briefly returns to the firing range.
She draws another little lambda, and waits patiently for the others.
Crit W. (GM): "You guys done?" Inertia asks.
Marysa: Marysa goes back to the scientist. "Is this thing just a prototype or something? shots aside it can't even knock a guy out. The heck, man?"
Madelynn: "Yeah let's get out of here."
Crit W. (GM): "It's meant to be an amplifier..." he pouts.
Spark: "I'm finished," says Spark. "Let's head out before there are any other incidents."
Lemma: "Yes," Lemma pipes up.
"Here."
Marysa: "Amplifier?"
Crit W. (GM): "Yeah, it-- here, let me see that." He takes the gun back- and then briefly fiddles with it, taking parts off. "See this part here?" He takes off a part that was part of the barrel. "This acts as a focusing and amplification lens for lasers. I'm not sure why this isn't working, maybe the beam itself isn't strong enough?"
Lemma: Lemma stares at him with interest.
(To GM) rolling 2d10+20 science (hp) Do I have any ideas
10+2+20= 32
Lemma: Lemma glances away, and presses her palm against the range's pane of bulletproof glass. It ripples slightly, like she's just touched a bowl of water.
"Go in."
"Please."
Spark: Spark steps up. "Any laser will do?" she asks.
Crit W. (GM): "Uh... theoretically..?" The scientist says.
Spark: "Hand it to me, please," she says.
Crit W. (GM): He hands it over.
Spark: rolling 2d10+10
2+1+10= 13
Crit W. (GM): Even with what initially appears to be a mediocre laser...
The beam that comes out the other end of the lens is nearly blinding, and it sears straight through the target dummy and scorches the wall behind it.
Laserlight Lens: This lens is made out of an as-yet-unnamed tinkermaterial that both condenses and refracts light, amping up the power of a single, pre-focused lightsource by several times. For odd reasons, it is incompatible with tinker weaponry and traditional sources of light... but adds an effective +5 damage to laser powers.
Spark: "Very useful," says Spark. "Thank you."
Crit W. (GM): "Uh... you're welcome?" He seems baffled.
Lemma: Lemma fidgets by the pane, swaying a little from foot to foot.
Marysa grabs the rest of the gun. "Thanks for the help!" and flees out the window portal?
Crit W. (GM): Inertia steps through.
Madelynn: Madelynn follows after the others.
Spark: Spark steps through
Crit W. (GM): The scientist sighs dejectedly.
Lemma: Lemma follows last.

10am Thu 14 Jun 2012 - /r/politics

11am Thu 14 Jun 2012 - /r/politics

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