The Hostage

Steps

1. Something’s wrong

At the 2nd third of the game, when the player tries Jelena’s knowledges she left back in The Predecessor, Maho will come by character’s desk (not right after the submission, one ingame hour or two after), and will suggest that both of them go to the bar after work to get some beers.

At the bar, she will look less happy, and will say the following:

• Something is wrong with the file the player submitted (she’ll give the file’s name)
• While the numbers are correct, those aren’t the “correct” numbers
• She feels like the player did something wrong (she will hesitate saying this word), but it’s weird, because they never did something like this before
• After a while she’ll leave with a happy “see ya tomorrow”, and the player is free to leave the bar

The discussion will look more like a vent after a full day’s work, but a threat behind those word should be felt by the player.

2. Tightening the security

From then on, the player will have to juggle with 2 different difficulties:

• The sabotaged values need to look “real” in order for Maho to validate them. She will flag if you pick knives as weapons for mercenaries before they go and try to intercept some convoy, but selecting the wrong chemical product as excitors will be something she won’t be able to catch.
• In the mean time, always relying on the same data source (like Tobias), or having Maho always flag the same type of “errors” from the player will trigger the pattern detector software which will eventually trigger the “Caught Path”. Making too much mistakes seen by Maho will also make this end trigger.

3. Skeletons in the closet

Mechanically, this needs to happen a few days, or even a couple weeks, after steps 1 and 2.

A directory will eventually appear in Pythia’s internal network, well hidden in subdirectories having randomly hashed names (typically cache names for example).

This document will contain infos about Maho’s father, without explicitely naming him. It will however detail what his father did, and how his daughter replaced him (again, we have no way to tie Maho and this document at this point).

The character will however make a note saying that this event is oddly familiar, and he’d like to check the “deep” forum when he’ll have some times.

From the next evening, the player will be able to find various documents and blog posts. The player needs to find the following blog posts / news snippets:

• “Pythia Solutions employee looses 40 millions credits in investments”
• “L&S furious after Pythia declines 40 million credits debt buyout”
• “Daughter of a troublesome Pythia employee joins the company”

Note: the documents will appear at the rate of 1 per evening, and the player will need to be patient in order to find it. Once the document has been found / read, it won’t appear anymore in order for the others have more probabilities to show up.

4. Status quo

Once all document gathered, the character will send a message to Maho, saying they will need to see her at the bar the next day after work. Maho will say “Okay 😁”, and the day itself at work won’t have any specificity.

The evening, however, the character will be about to meet with Maho at the bar, and she will completely drop the mask for the 1st time when seeing the documents (3 + 1 found in the internal network earlier).

She will then explain everything:

• How her father tried to bet on something stupid with the company’s money and it didn’t work
• How he was forced to work beyond his physical capabilities for years before his body finally shut down
• How she didn’t have any other choice than to replace him in order to keep reimbursing the debt
• How she did notice that even though she couldn’t catch everything, the character’s actions are clear: they want to sabotage the company. Also, she regularly sees the “obvious” mismatches, but raising any alarm for this will make Jameson ask uncomfortable questions about why she is focusing the player / character. She will say that both the character and Tobias (if he helps) are good at what they are doing
• How, if they succeed, L&S will end up being able to have their hands on the remaining debt and they won’t be as friendly as Pythia Solutions, all while saying that Pythia wasn’t being nice to begin with
• And finally: how she cannot let anyone else other than you know what’s happening with her. She needs to keep her cover, otherwise questions will be asked around and Pythia will be forced to reveal what’s going on, and this cannot end well

The character, even though mutic, will make her understand that they aren’t interested into revealing her secrets, although they don’t want to stop the sabotages. She won’t like that but can’t exactly do anything about this. So she will suggest a deal: she keeps the character’s plan of sabotaging Pythia Solutions secret, and in return, the player does no blow up her cover. The player doesn’t exactly have any other choice than accepting.

5. Escape plan

From then on, the game will continue “normally” up until the player reaches the 3rd third, and unlocks the file creation ability.

A note will then appear in the character’s phone, saying something along the lines of “I might have an idea for Maho’s situation”. Nothing more, the player needs to figure out.

Since the file creation ability allows the player to create a file almost out of thin air (but it requires more time), they can create one that will essentially be Maho and her father’s escape plan.

If the players takes too much time to figure out what to do (but they still need to read the character’s note about helping Maho), Tobias will end up giving hints one evening at the bar, during The Bombing living thread. Since Pythia Solution is not doing good right now, a mission about driving 2 persons far away from here won’t be seen as weird, or at least, checking on why was that necessary will only happen when the accountant will need some answers about this, in a few months.

So, the player needs to create a file containing the following tasks:

• Sampling task: select car (pick the most reliable one)
• Sampling task: select Maho’s address as the starting point. This data will be found in the document found in the internal network
• Maze task: select destination and how to get there the simplest way
• Temperature task: pick enough fuel in order to get to the destination
• Sampling task: select a driver will lots of experience among those selected
• Pick a date (day after the current one)

Note : this task can be sabotaged, and a steam success named “Footgun” will be unlocked.

6. Sayonara

Submitting the file will immediatly “summon” Maho to the character’s desk, where she will fix them for a long while without saying anything. Obviously, internally, she is still processing, hoping and being scared of any form of betrayal from the character.

After a while, she will ask:

• “Is this what I think it is?”
• “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
• “Are you serious?”

Of course, our character won’t say anything. She will then cry, then smile, then cry again, then say “thank you”, then leave. This will trigger the end of the day, no matter what time it was before she came at the character’s desk. The next morning, she will be gone.

Reward

Maho, AKA the Pythia’s most brillant QA being gone so suddenly, Pythia’s health will be hit and loose a big chunk. But at this point, the player should also have finished The Bombing as well, so they are nearing the end of the game anyway. So there’s a big chance of triggering The Empathic path from there.