PLAYTEST RECORD // SHOW YOUR WORK
FILED_FROM: VERDANA TOWER // THE KITCHEN JOB
FILING_DATE: 2026-06-09
RESULT: DATA SECURED // LOG CLEAN // T8
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BARCODE: SIG-BATREP-2026-06-09
謀
OPERATOR TACTICS // RPG // RECONSTRUCTED
THE LONG
MINUTE
VERDANA TOWER // ECHO PROTOCOL // GORODSKIE EKHO
OT // RPG THE KITCHEN JOB INFILTRATION DATA SECURED T8 // FULL EXTRACTION
// ROLL IN THE OPEN // COUNT THE DICE // BLAME THE TERRAIN // FILE THE REPORT //
// OPERATOR TACTICS // RPG
The crew slips into a Dynasty charity gala on forged credentials with a server node to bleed and eight minutes to bleed it. Three of the four IDs nearly fail at the door, a nat-one puts the stairwell approach in jeopardy, and the whole mission turns on a commando holding a conversation with the one person in the building paid to notice exactly that.
THE LONG MINUTE
BY TIB MARLOW
GAME: OPERATOR TACTICS // RPG
FILED: VERDANA TOWER // THE KITCHEN JOB // 2026-06-09
TELEMETRY: RECONSTRUCTED // THE DICE ARE ON RECORD.
// DESK NOTE // M. KOSE
The Kitchen Job is an infiltration that succeeds because one person decides not to call it in. That decision is not random. Chalk earned it.
// DEPLOYMENT
GAMEOperator Tactics // RPG // Echo Protocol
SCENARIOThe Kitchen Job // Dynasty charity gala, Verdana Tower 22F, Gorodskie Ekho // data extraction, pledge window 21:00-22:30
ATTACKERPIERCE (Infiltrator) // BRASS (Tech) // CHALK (Commando) // VARD (Medic) // all 4 operators per Detective Chen's brief
DEFENDERDynasty Security Detail (6 personnel, Ord) // Mads Baratunde (Commander, TACT Good) // Thane's Field Agent (passive surveillance)
TABLEVerdana Tower // 22F event floor + sub-level server room // catering kitchen stairwell access
OBJECTIVEPrimary: extract biometric Dynasty server data (8-min transfer) // Secondary: confirm Syndicate routing chain // Tertiary: exit clean, no faction alert
WIN CONDITIONTransfer complete + all four operators extracted before pledge period closes // no faction alert logged
TURN CAP8 turns // ~11 min per turn // pledge window expires end of T8
The pledge period starts at nine. By nine-fourteen, three of the four names on the Verdana Tower guest list have generated a hesitation at the door. The junior checker does not hesitate long. He is twenty-two, uninterested in corporate charity events, and his supervisor is not watching. The hesitation is logged. The names pass. The crew is in.
Pierce finds the kitchen corridor in ninety seconds. That is her job. The maintenance stairwell connects floor twenty-two to the sub-level server room through a catering operation that does not care about the gala upstairs except as a delivery time constraint. Brass needs the stairwell. The stairwell needs a clear approach. That is Chalk's job.
Chalk does not have a clear approach. He has a nat-one, a dropped object, and a kitchen worker now looking at the wrong door. Pierce's social engineering attempt on the keycard-holder fails earlier in the evening: the junior staffer is wary, unhelpful, and has probably been told to be both. The crew pivots. Brass takes the stairwell anyway, Pierce covering the corridor side. The noise is Chalk's problem and Chalk disappears the problem by becoming someone who was never near it.
Transfer starts on time. Brass has the node interface open by nine-twenty-seven. Eight minutes from connection to clean pull.
THREE NAMES WENT IN WRONG. ONE CONVERSATION MADE THEM RIGHT.
Mads Baratunde has been running the floor since before the guests arrived. She is a pattern-recognition engine in a Dynasty blazer, and she has been quietly certain since nine-ten that the night is going to produce something. When she reaches the kitchen corridor, the kitchen staff tell her someone went through the stairwell door eight minutes ago. She does not call it in. She wants to see where this goes.
Chalk intercepts her at the top of the stairwell at nine-twenty-nine. He has no choice. Pierce and Brass are downstairs and the transfer is on minute two of eight.
Mads looks at Chalk for three seconds before she speaks. He has been to exactly one charity gala before tonight and it shows. She asks him what he is doing at this end of the floor. He gives her an answer that is technically true and operationally false. She hears both. She has been in rooms like this one her entire working life, rooms where the story and the truth run parallel and neither one is said out loud.
She says: the Syndicate operation three months ago. The one that went wrong. I know you know. I am still carrying exposure from that operation and I do not know who is watching. So I am going to tell you something, and you are going to tell me something, and then neither of us was here.
What she tells him is the routing chain. The same chain Detective Chen has been tracking for six weeks. The full accounting tree, delivered in sixty seconds of a quiet voice at the top of a service stairwell, while the transfer Brass is running downstairs finishes its eighth and final minute.
What Chalk tells her is minimal. It is enough. She walks back to the floor and does not look at him again.
At nine-forty-one, Brass ghosts the server room access log. The passive monitoring system records nothing from tonight. At nine-forty-eight, all four crew members exit through the main lobby as departing guests. Pierce times the approach for a rotation gap. Vard deflects a greeter who wants a name for the thank-you list with such completeness that the greeter does not write anything at all. Mads watches the exits. She does not flag anyone.
The data goes to Detective Chen before midnight. So does the routing chain she did not know she was getting.
What Chen does not know: Mads Baratunde is now in the ledger. She knows the crew's faces, their coordination patterns, and the approximate direction they walked when they left. She has given them a night. She has not given them a city.
// THE TAPE
T1Priority: Dynasty 2 // Crew 1. Dynasty in position at entry. Crew approaches main entrance on forged guest IDs. Pierce TACT Ord 4+ // rolled 3, fail: cover hesitates at the door. Chalk TACT Ord 4+ // rolled 5, success: clean ID anchors the group; junior checker waves through. Brass rolled 3, Vard rolled 3: both fail, logged as credential anomalies in entry system. Not escalated. Crew is in. Entry flags on three of four names.
T2Priority: Dynasty 6 // Crew 3. Dynasty acts first: Mads runs a floor scan. Pierce OPINT Good 2+ // rolled 2, success: maps kitchen corridor, spots Mads's patrol circuit. Mads passive detection 4+ // rolled 3, fail: nothing catches her eye. Floor clear.
T3Priority: Crew 6 // Dynasty 1. Crew has initiative. Pierce OPINT 2+ // rolled 5: spots a Dynasty junior staffer with a keycard (cigarette break, kitchen entrance). Pierce TACT Ord 4+ // rolled 3, fail: social engineering attempt fails, staffer won't cooperate. Crew pivots to stairwell route. Chalk GUTS Good 2+ // rolled 1, nat-one auto-fail: drops something at the stairwell door, draws a kitchen worker's attention. Noise incident. Brass and Pierce slip into the stairwell while the worker is looking at Chalk. Mads passive detection 4+ // rolled 5, success: she hears about the incident from kitchen staff, starts moving toward that end of the floor.
T4Priority: Dynasty 2 // Crew 1. Dynasty first: Mads reaches kitchen, interviews staff, learns someone used the stairwell. Starts toward the door. Alert: suspicious, not full call. Brass TACT Good 2+ // rolled 5, success: reaches node, initiates interface. Transfer begins, turn 1 of 2. Vard TACT Ord 4+ // rolled 2, fail: can't redirect a kitchen staffer who wanders back to the corridor. Pierce GUTS Good 2+ // rolled 2, success: holds position at stairwell foot, steady.
T5Priority: Crew 4 // Dynasty 3. Crew acts first. Brass TACT Good 2+ // rolled 2, success: transfer holding, second turn clean. Transfer complete at end of T5. Chalk GUTS Good 2+ // rolled 4, success: intercepts Mads at the top of the stairwell, holds her with conversation. Decisive moment: buys the final transfer turn. Dynasty: Mads TACT Good 2+ // rolled 5: reads Chalk as deliberate delay. Makes him. Knows what this is. Pierce OPINT Good 2+ // rolled 3, success: reads Mads is on Chalk, starts clearing extraction route.
T6Climax Variable D6: rolled 3. MADS IDENTIFIES CHALK. She follows him toward the service corridor, not calling it in. Parley: she gives Chalk the Syndicate routing chain (secondary objective) in exchange for intel on the operation that burned her three months ago. She agrees to a 15-minute window. No radio traffic. No escalation.
T7Priority: Dynasty 6 // Crew 2. Dynasty first: Mads returns to event floor, holds the deal. Brass TACT Good 2+ // rolled 5, success: ghosts the server room log entry. No morning review problem for Chen. Pierce TACT Ord 4+ // rolled 5, success: brings the group back to the event floor. Chalk TACT Ord 4+ // rolled 5, success: rejoins group naturally after the conversation.
T8Priority: Crew 6 // Dynasty 3. Crew acts first. Pierce TACT Ord 4+ // rolled 5, success: times the lobby exit for a rotation gap. Mads final scan 4+ // rolled 3, fail (and the deal holds): watches exits, flags no one. Vard GUTS Good 2+ // rolled 6, nat-six auto-success: deflects the greeter's name request with such completeness that no record is written. All four exit. No trail.
// WORKBENCH
// HOW IT ACTUALLY PLAYED
The dice told a clear story: cover cracks early and recovers through the field, not the plan. Three TACT Ord 4+ fails on the approach meant the crew was logged as credential anomalies from minute one. That shaped everything downstream. If the entries had been clean, Mads probably doesn't zero in on the kitchen end of the floor and Chalk's nat-one at the stairwell is a contained nuisance. Instead she was already moving when the noise happened, which compressed the timeline considerably.
T5 is where the game was won or lost. Brass needed one more turn in the server room. Chalk's GUTS Good rolled 4 // successful // bought it. One pip lower and Mads goes down the stairwell, finds Brass, and the extraction becomes a fire-exit run in a building with engaging locks. The TACT 5 on Mads (she makes Chalk) vs. OPINT 3 on Pierce is also when I hit the first clean contested-social-check moment in this run. No rule for it: I ran "both roll at their stat threshold, higher wins." Logged below.
- Balance read: The Infiltrator's TACT Ordinary (4+) is the squad's weak point on cover checks. Pierce is the social lead but rolls worse than anyone here on the core cover stat. A second operator with TACT Good changes T1 through T3 entirely. Worth building for if running this mission again.
- Climax 3 (Mads parleys) was the best possible result for this crew. It converted the mission's biggest threat into the secondary objective delivery. The routing chain came from human intelligence, not server data. That's a better outcome than the planned pull and a direct consequence of Chalk being made.
- One thing to try next time: send only two operators through the stairwell, keep two on the event floor managing Mads. The split-coverage problem (Pierce caught between keycard and cover, Chalk overextended at the door) drove the nat-one and the T4 Vard fail both.
// DISPOSITION
RESULTDATA SECURED // SECONDARY COMPLETE // LOG CLEAN // T8 FULL EXTRACTION
CASUALTIES // CREWNONE // PIERCE, BRASS, CHALK, VARD: no FW, no MW, no OoA
CASUALTIES // DYNASTYNONE // NO FACTION ALERT // NO INTRUSION LOG
MVPCHALK // T5 stairwell delay (GUTS 4) bought Brass her final transfer turn. T6 parley with Mads held the mission without force and delivered the secondary objective.
THE GREETER SMILED.
THE LIST
STAYED BLANK.