Holographic murderers?

[Calcoran]

I was just having a look at the Q&M board ... and the self powered hologram gave me some ideas that might be worth fleshing up ... a bit like the whodunit with Ezri, only different .
Let us look at the recipe from the Q&M board. Imagine a small power cell ... or even better, some sort of small thermo-chemical solid fuel (in short: it burns, providing energy, and leaving only traces of its combustion behind it). Go to the holodeck, create a hologram that is able to tap into the power cell / harness the power of the solid fuel pill. Give it a bit of processing power (link the replicator matrix (which is certainly able to replicate component parts) to the hologram generator to get it done faster) and holographic emitters. Program it so that it emits a replica of itself, and gradually shut down the holodeck. You've got a self generated holo-emitter fueled either by a power cell or some small but powerful chemical reaction. When its own power runs out, the hologram disappears and the power cell / reaction products fall to the ground.
Now that you have this, you can give it the shape you want, the appendixes you want, and order it around like your usual ... say ... invoked demon / elemental / whatever. The orders it obeys and shape it can take would have to be quite simple, after all it has only very limited computing power. Nothing comparable to an EMH, but maybe enough for a fine murder weapon. Difficult to trace back the hologram creator when all you've got left is a bit of chemical powder or a molten power cell. Moreover, your holographic killer can have (roughly) the shape you want it to have. One day it can be quite horrific, next time have claws, then tentacles, then be almost invisible. Victims will have died of fear, or strangulation, etc...
Question is: who would be mad enough to use such a murder weapon? What for? And what will the players do to counter him?

Ideas?
Comments?

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Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

[StyroFoam Man]

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poster

[Calcoran]

Sorry Styro, you have to do it yourself (well ... you do have access to a power cell and a holodeck, don't you? ).
So ... you would use such a weapon. Care if I ask what for?

[Captain Blake]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Calcoran:
Question is: who would be mad enough to use such a murder weapon? What for? And what will the players do to counter him?
</font>

Well, if it had been back in DS9, I'd say it'd be an interesting way for a Cardassian Agent to Kill Bajorans. Make the Holographic representation look like Demons of Vengeance (I assume that the Bajorans have those, most religions do in some form) and send them to kill "troublesome" Bajorans in such a way that it looks like the Prophets are seeking vengeance.

The same sort of thing could be used by a renegade Winn to cow his/her enemies. "Those that oppose me are hated by the Prophets and punished by Them."

Both of these ideas 'port well over to any religious culture, with similar ideas.

There's always the Espionage groups, Section 31, Tal Shiar, Obsidian Order, etc. Assassins have been looking for non-tracable means to kill people for a long time, and this one would be better than a lot of them. As for why Section 31 would send a holographic representation of Dr Bashir to kill someone, I'll leave that to your imagination.

The holo-killer could be nothing more than a dodge, something to take the heat off of another arrangement. You could use the "Journey to Babel" TOS episode as a guide, but have a holographic killer that looks like an ambassador.

I'll be happy to help with the forensics, once I have a better idea where you are going to go with this.

Alex

[KentLaptop]

You'd be better off using the remote probe thats been modified to emmit a full fledged hologram, sprinkle in a bit of tricorder tech and put in a self destruct device. With the tricorder tech you could then have it give off any life form signiture needed for the job and with the self destruct well there no evidence. The other item you could use would be Guard Drone also found in the Price of Freedom book. With some modifications there you'd get the same effects but also have a phaser and a personal force field. Also you'd want a small cammera installed so you can see their faces when their phasers have no effect do to the shield.

[StyroFoam Man]

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[Calcoran]

Somehow, I imagine that a killer than is 99.9% holographic would leave a much smaller signature than many of the means you suggest. I mean, even the probe, it certainly leaves a whole lot of things behind it that the PCs could use to track it down.

[Calcoran]

Besides, the idea has a subtle something that probes do not have (like ... already been used in a DS9 episode?).

[KentLaptop]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Calcoran:
I mean, even the probe, it certainly leaves a whole lot of things behind it that the PCs could use to track it down.</font>

But how much evidence is left behind by a phaser set on overload which would be the same sort of self destruct device used.
Also with the probe you could put a nasty little trick in that it can mimic forms so lets say probe is in on form gets spotted zooms into the mist of the PC's and changes its for to one of them.

[Polanski]

COMPUTER !
END PROGRAM

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Commander A.Polanski

[Robert Lai]

Hmm. If you consider something like CSI and the extent to which they can analyze physical evidence, even the trace remnants of a power cell would be a lead.

Investigator 1: "Sarium krellide power cell, but it has a 0.05% phase differential with those commonly found on the planet."
Investigator 2: "So it came out of nowhere? I don't think so. Check all the ships in orbit. One of them will have that same 0.05% phase differential ..."

However, a hologram would make a great alibi or false lead. It could even be adapted for a con man, who needs a 'damsel in distress' to work his line. A hologram would be ideal, because she can be any race, any coloration, and won't ever insist on a larger share of the take ...

Bob

[Calcoran]

Polanski: Who said the murderer had to put a safety interlock in his self generated hologram?

Robert: About the remnants of the cell being a lead, it all depends on the GM . Moreover, in case of a solid fuel, chemical remnants might be a bit more difficult to trace (fuel can be replicated, then traces of the operation hacked out ... mind you can't power cells be replicated?).
Problem with the alibi is that it'd need quite a lot of computing power to look realistic (cf. Quark's comment to Odo in "Who mourns for Morn" about the difficulty to obtain a realistic hologram, and the price of the speaking ones). Probably too much computing power.

[Calcoran]

(continued)
Someone asked me to elaborate a bit, so here would be the setting:

The players are liaison officers on Empok Nor after the Dominion War. Empok Nor has been moved near Cardassia Prime, and is used to coordinate technical and humanitary aid from the Federation. The station is still Bajoran property, but under Starfleet juridiction, and is approved by the Cardassian council.
Now the council has just decided to ask a more powerful presence from the Federation in cardassian space (after problems with the 1st and 5th orders, and a few Romulan sabotages). So Starfleet is about to deploy a humanitary fleet around. The Romulans will seize the opportunity to ask for their share of Cardassian space, officially considering the move as a takeover from the Federation. I haven't decided yet what the Klingons are up to.

So ... as you can see, I have plenty of potential murderers on the station:
Empok Nor and Cardassia Prime will stay on the Federation side of Cardassian space, so Romulan spies might be sent to destabilize it.
Bajorans could see this as a good opportunity to take revenge, after all the dish is supposed to be served cold.
There are certainly a lot of Cardassians from the old school who really dislike what's currently happening to Cardassia, and might want to explain it to starfleet personnel in a somewhat unsubtle way. They could also target Cardassian political opponents (progressists for instance).
Section 31 could certainly gain some advantage somehow with it too ... like moving the cardassian opinion against the Romulans ...

Who would be more inclined to use the holographic murderer, I wonder. And against whom?
I really like the idea of the hologram looking like an avatar/demon of vengeance, but somehow I only see it work with very religious peoples like the Bajorans. Cardassians are not extremely religious (pity).

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Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

[Calcoran]

Wooops, that late already?

All right ... I've been pondering with the holographic murderer scenario a bit.
I'll agree that a completely self generated hologram is a bit far fetched. Thus, I'll settle on the probe. However, the real murderer now has a size problem, so he'll only embed a relatively powerful emitter (say ... 2-4 cubic meters centered on the emitter), and no data nor computing power. Those will be generated by the station's holodeck's own computers and routed to the probe by a narrow band subspace link or something. This ought to be the lead for the PCs.
For instance, I plan to start the prelude in the holosuite. Suddenly the power seems to dwindle, and the holoprogram fails. Bartender comes in, mumbling about those bad quality holodeck's he bought. Discussion ensues as to whether the PCs get their latinum back, then they go away. I let them forget about the whole story, then a first body is discovered ... and so on.
Anyhow, the PCs will probably scan the crime place as fully as they can. What treknobabble traces would a probe leave behind, and what should the murderer do to hide them? (I'm showing my relative Trek illiteracy there)

Thanks for helping a puzzled Narrator .

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Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

[Diamond]

Right: when scanning a crime scene, you are mainly scanning for two things. One - Phsyical traces like microscopic skin flakes and other biological dust left behind by the people present. The classic example of such a substance are fingerprints. The Starfleet Intelligence sourcebook has stats for suits that isolate the body from the environment specifically to avoid leaving such substances behind to be scanned for later. Also, chemically esoteric liquids or high-energy chemicals like explosives can leave a chemical trace that might be detected.

Two - energy traces. Any time energy interacts with matter, it might leave a traceable signature. The higher the energies involved, the more obvious it would be. Thus, a phaser "stun" blast might leave microscopic scoring in the wall even if there wasn't a visible blast mark. If something was vaporized by a phaser, microscopic dust would be left behind 9even though most, but not all, of the vaporized matter "leaves the continum", whatever that means). A powerful deflector shield might leave magnetic molecules polarized (all lined up in the same direction). The levels of power in a hologram are going to be difficult to detect. Possibly a faint ionization in the air, but you could easily rule that they just don't have the tools to detect it (although if they THOUGHT to check specifically for holograms, they should have a good chance of finding an indication. It just probably is not part of their normal suite of investegation sensors.

The investegators should be able to detect that no-one left biological traces behind except the victim. Depending on the manner of death, this might lead the investegators into a red herring, thinking people in SI-style isolation suits or perhaps a robot did the job.