Miranda Investigation

Year: 307 CE - tba

A small fishing boat named 'Miranda' was found drifting along Polsk's shore without an owner on board nor any registration within any nearby harbours, thus it was towed into harbour and boarded by port authoritiees to figure out where the crew had gone and if there were any documents explaining where the boat came from.

Initial course of Events The boat is about 10 meters in length making it one of the smaller fishing vessels. It was probably crewed by at least 4 people. Going on board the officers find that it is quite run down meaning it most certainly was drifting on the sea for a few weeks. An almost unbearable smell of moldy fish, rotten wood and old fuel lies in the air. The planks bend slightly under each step and make creaking noises as the team moves towards the wheelhouse. Through the partially open door they can already see chaos. Going inside confirms there definitely was some kind of struggle in here. The steering wheel is battered and the navigational equipment is extremely damaged as if something big had been tossed into it. Investigating the equipment reveals that the GPS tracker issued to such vessels was likely removed a long time ago. 2 officers go outside again to look for further clues taking the damaged navigational computer with them. The other three step down into the kitchen and living spaces. The picture here is no different, plates broken on the ground and the table is cracked in the middle. A few splatters of blood are on the ground. Inspecting the sleeping cabin with its 4 bunks they discover some ordinary clothes, and other small items that likely belonged to the crew, however, no kind of pictures are found. The door to the captain's cabin is jammed. Outside the 2 officers discover the probable cause of death for at least one of the crew members. A piece of railing on the backboard side of the vessel is missing, along with its supports and part of the deck. Police Officers and detective board the boat and begin take fingerprint samples. They force the door to the captains cabin and take the DNA from the blood spatter and check it against their records. All 4 crew are reported missing and probably dead. As they break the door down a gust of decay comes from the cabin. There on the bed lies a corpse. It's a man probably in his thirties with a brown beard. The cause of death is quite clear as the knife in his chest is hard to miss. Drowned red from blood the clothing still gives away that this was most likely the captain. Other than the bed there is also a desk with a drawer and a yellow jacket hanging on a fishing hook style clothing rig. A plaque on the desk reads “Captain's patent: Tyson Graham”. Besides it lies an open book from which pages have been torn out. checking it reveals that it is the log book of the “Miranda”. The DNA test results point toward two people, one called “Mathew Flynn” and the other “Loran Hebert”, the second was reported missing 2 weeks ago in a small village on the west coast of “Isernotaria”. Checking with the local authorities there confirms that a vessel named “Miranda” was registered there. However there are no further records found other than its registration. From the crew cabin an officer discovers something hidden in one of the mattresses. It's a small brown book sealed with a lock. From the deck another officer shouts, “Found another one of the fellows!”. Lying under many of the fish crates in the bow of the ship is another corpse. He seems younger than the captain wearing the same type of yellow jacket over rugged and warm clothes. A facial scan reveals that this must be “Loran Hebert”. The corpse has 2 bloodied stab wounds in the belly. An additional officer is dispatched to the case.

Note Investigation They pick the lock and open the book. On the first page there's a single sentence in polish and two others in different languages. After getting a translator they discover that the three sentences say all the same thing. Page 1: “Should you find this, don’t talk to anyone about it, for they could be amongst them, no matter what position they might hold.”. The following pages are all written in the second language and it will take some time for them to be translated. One of the detectives contracts food poisoning at home, the new case appointed officer, “Lucas Ash” takes over his work for now. The presumably last crew member is identified as "Justin Barrett" since he was reported missing just a few days after "Loran Hebert" in the same village. Translation Page 2: I think I did it, I did the impossible. I managed to escape their watch, their influence. But I can never hold myself safe now, as I would certainly be killed should they find me. For the Order doesn’t like to be discovered. My name is Mathew Flynn. I am, I mean I was a security agent for the CSIS. Don’t try to inquire about me, I made sure to erase every possible data on my background. This includes my real name, for how else should I have escaped? My old personality doesn’t matter now. Just what I've discovered is important. In this book I hope to comprise my findings and preserve them for a time when the order is weak. For only then will it have an impact and a chance of revealing them. It all started with the Acolyte Incident. More specifically it had something to do with the messages that were sent before the craft arrived. Investigations at that time pointed towards no point of origin, that it just seemingly appeared. But how could that work? I myself couldn't believe what the investigations were claiming. So I started my own search, completely from scratch. I went over it multiple times but I couldn’t find it, until I looked at it from a different angle. The message had nothing that could point towards its origin but it did have something which it was directed at. Of course its primary goal was probably to inform us about the coming intrusion but what about its secondary? The translator appointed to the case is injured in a car accident and has to be hospitalized. A new one is arranged to continue the translations. The following day as the new translator skims over the book before starting his work, they discover that from the third fourth page on, the briefly translated text seems to make no sense at all. The assumption is that up from there the pages are written in a sort of cipher. Decryption experts are therefor appointed to help on the following translations. DCAE took over the investigation from the Polskan Police and seized all related assets (corpses, documents, and the Miranda), and began decrypting all documents it could using artificial intelligences. The food poisoning of one of the chief investigators and now the car crash makes the DCAE extremely suspicious that someone or something is trying to prevent Polsk from figuring this out. Polsk authorities are now looking for spies or any anomalies with DCAE experts to see if there's something going on that's causing these events to chief investigators. Translation Page 3: Have I gone mad? I hope not. Have they found me? It was today that I spotted something while out on the ocean, just for a brief second I thought there was something metallic floating in the water. But I mean, how would they know. Did I forget something? I should probably not write these things in plain text as to make it harder for them to detect it. But then again, would it matter what my mind can produce as encryption in comparison to what they are capable of? I have to try and then just hope that this book falls into the right hands. Maybe if? Ok, whoever is reading this I hope you have not contacted anyone else about it. I am begging you. I mean if this is publicized on any kind of network I guess I have failed. But even if it has come to their attention, it might still take some time till they can do something about it. This is the only hope I have for this. Ok, in order to read the following pages you will need to travel to ██████████. Look for ██████████. Dig there and you will find a chest with everything you will need for decrypting. The small selected team secretly travels to the location before the new entry is even uploaded in the DCAE database and they find a box hidden there containing a small cipher book and instructions with which to get the corresponding cipher and code for each page. Translation Page 4: Ok, back to the more important information. When the message was finally decrypted into something that made sense, no further attention was paid to it. Sure it was analyzed in certain ways, especially after the craft appeared but no one ever questioned the present decryption. During my research however, I stumbled onto a little idea that was recorded in one of the meetings of the decryption team. What if the message could be decoded into more than one meaning? I followed everything I could find on that idea and ultimately ended up having a personal algorithm brute force its way till I found something else that made sense. And after a few weeks It did. The following message read: “Instruction: Do not engage. Reason: Core has taken over responsibility. Mission active. Information: Message safe for public.” This could only mean one thing, there had to be something amongst us which was under the control of the Acolytians. Something or someone who knew about how to get this other message. I tracked down every recorded institution who was logged to have received the message. I then spent many, many days with intense research into the people who worked in some of the more… odd… places. One of those was the University of Niederbach. Sure it was a quite large institution, but why would they care? I found out that one of the teachers there had worked in helping with the decryption and that his ideas were extremely helpful in the further efforts… almost as if he had already known. So I called up one of my friends who was currently working as an agent in Germania and sent him to inquire more about this teacher. Looking back with my knowledge now, the discoveries the agent made were probably more due to luck than skill. He was good, but they were near perfect. In that night a break-in into the facility in which the documents are stored is reported. When the security team arrives at the vaults the find that nothing has been stolen. On the next day as the team continues its work they find that many pages of the book are cleanly cut out. Only about 2 pages with content are left. They also discover a sort of letter tugged beetween the pages of the book written in the same cipher pattern as the book. It reads: This death is not our cause, we do not kill unless there is no other way. The remaining pages are all you will need for finding the culprit. Do not worry about the rest. We are those that keep away what you can't handle. We are those who work to keep you safe from certain extinction. - The Order of Contactors A forensic analysis finds that the letter is completely sterile. However, using remaining notes that the decryption member of the team made as a habit, they are able to construct a few samples of the missing fifth page. These are: "But how are you to trust your eyes when they work to blind you." "The order of the metal mind are [missing information] ." "[missing information] since the begginning of [missing information]." "They know technology to an unreal level, using it to [missing information] ."

Hitman Investigation While investigating the two incidents which took the two officers out of work for a while again, DCAE discovers that the food poisoning is likely to go back to a manufacturing error resulting in a faulty expiration date. Several other items of the same product with this flaw are also discovered and called back. The car crash is traced back to a bad mixture of oil which clogged the motor. The team almost wants to close the investigations with those results, however, one of the chemical experts suggests another possibility based on a small technical report found in the investigations. Based on this the same selected group inquire further and re-examine the old parts. They indeed find faint traces of another chemical which lead them to believe it was more likely sabotage. However, this other report is kept silent and instead the first cause is released to put, whoever wanted it to look normal, at ease. Due to this turn of events the first case is secretly reopened by the same group and after lengthy analysis it is found that the product the victim ingested was possibly swapped out in their house for the one with the faulty expiration date. Another strange thing discovered in the process is that, even though the officers were harmed, a lot of thought went into the attacks to make them non-lethal, especially in the case of the car accident. DCAE thus brought the Polsk National Intelligence Agency into the mix to assist with the investigation. The investigation ultimately tracks both cases towards a hitman for hire. And a quite good one at that. After confronting him he admits to the attacks but he does not know who issued them to him, though that's mostly something normal in his line of work. In that matter the investigations lead to a dead end. The DCAE team thanked him and he summarily executed him on the spot. They track his bank transfers to see who paid him with the initial expectation that it'd be a money laundering scheme to raid and detain. They track the transfer back to a sort of “ghost account” which is completely empty. The money used was deposited into the account at a bank in a remote region. The security camera footage from that day is corrupted and the description of the bank teller leads to a person who died over 10 years ago meaning the person had to have worn a disguise.

"Order of the Contractors" Investigation Continuing off of the 'Note Investigation', the DCAE/NIS decided to look into this "Order of Contractors" group they had received a note from. The investigation on the “Order of Contactors” goes by very slowly. The only clue currently comes from a simple internet search of the term resulting in a website whose content is… questionable at best. The website in question is truthspeaker.org which is a place where people post their experiences, sightings and whatever other nonsense you can think of. The most active account in regards to the “Order of Contactors” is, after a huge amount of special permit grants traced back to a person named “Willie Hammet”. He currently lives in Ostmark and claims to be an ex-member.