THE MYSTERY OF BERT RUDALL
The mystery of Bert Rudall's disappearance was and remains the primary motivation for all that happens in Rain City. While characters certainly lead regular personal lives (falling in love, getting married, raising babies, committing crimes, committing suicide, etc), Bert Rudall's disappearance is THE top agenda item for any detectives working for Joe Terror, as Terror was hired by Gil Bates to find Rudall, and the case has been vexing his agency for nearly a year now. Bates also happens to be Terror's wealthiest client, so finding Rudall is his detectives' top assignment. Likewise, all spies are trying desperately to find Bert, as his death has been ordered by Number Two, Rain City's ranking Vulgarian Secret Service operative. Eliminating Rudall and Terror is their top priority (with the exception of a couple of agents who have other assignments.) Reporters are looking for Rudall partly because he is one of their own, and it is rumored that his disappearance is linked to the exposes he wrote about Alan Paulson and Netscoop. Furthermore, by finding him, any reporter is assured of a Freddy, and maybe even a Pulitzer, for breaking such a huge story. Finally, lawyers want his testimony, as he holds the information which would make possible any number of civil lawsuits against either Netscoop or Megahard. And even prosecutors want his help in bringing criminal charges against Paulson, not to mention wanting to convict Natalie Tonebasher for espionage activities. In short, Bert Rudall is the Golden Goose, and he who can find him, or pin the tail on his killer if he is dead, lives happily ever after.
Except......
That is almost all hogwash.
The REAL reason that everybody (the non-player characters, that is: Bates, Paulson, Number Two, Crassman,etc.) is after Rudall is for the Bloodhound NT diskette. If Bert is the Maltese Falcon for the player characters, then the diskette is the Black Bird for the NPCs. To understand why, you need to know the history of Floral Storm, and Alan Paulson's involvement therein.
Originally a trade war between France and Vulgaria, Floral Storm quickly escalated into a military affair. The result has been an embargo of all Vulgarian products in the U.S. This was a disaster for Alan Paulson, whose sexual addictions include Vulgarian floral underwear, and a special foot powder which contains powdered emu horn. (Horned emus are indigenous only to Vulgaria.) Furthermore, foot powder is a necessity of life in Rain City, due to the constant wet weather, and it is rumored that Paulson wanted to corner the market.
(What follows is a mixture of known fact and speculation from the finest minds in Rain City.) Paulson concocted a scheme to bring a quick end to Floral Storm and resume shipments of Vulgarian goods. Megahard Inc. was the world's largest supplier of military and spy computer software, and had previously sold products to Vulgaria. Paulson entered into a partnership with Megahard CEO Gil Bates whereby Netscoop would develop a new software package, Bloodhound NT, and Megahard would market it to the Vulgarian navy. But Bloodhound NT was intentionally designed with several hidden bugs, and after the successful sale of the product, Vulgaria found that nearly half their fleet had been disabled. Paulson was in heaven. Not only would Floral Storm quickly be over, but he had made a mint from Megahard for the faulty product, and the resulting lawsuits and negative publicity might well put his nearest competitor out of business. (Some say this was his primary motivation, and downplay the foot powder/undies angle, but all investigators agree that the errors in Bloodhound NT were deliberate, though only one person has any proof of it.)
But Paulson didn't get away with it cleanly. A mysterious female double agent known as The Weasel managed to obtain a copy of the original prototype Bloodhound NT diskette, which contains the bugs implanted by Netscoop's development team. She was videotaped passing the diskette to an unknown man who many believe to be Bert Rudall, and it was immediately after this that Rudall disappeared. And so, while the public at large believe that it was likely Rudall's public mudslinging at Paulson which prompted his disappearance, a few people cling to the belief that Rudall disappeared with the diskette in order to protect it until he could come up with enough supporting evidence to break the story in S.P.I.T.E.
That the diskette exists is fact; it has since been recovered by Bacardi Jim, and remains hidden in a secret location until he, like Rudall, gathers enough supporting evidence to turn it all over to Baby C. BJ's finding of the diskette was partially the doing of reporter Gypsy, who, while going through old publicity photos of Natalie Tonebasher to accompany a S.P.I.T.E. article, recognized one of Natalie's dresses as being identical to one worn by Bert Rudall in one of the photos in Joe Terror's case file. She mentioned the coincidence to her friend Bacardi Jim, who flew to Vulgaria to search Tonebasher's summer house. He found the diskette sewn into the dress, which was hanging in her closet. Unknowingly, the Vulgarians had been in possession of the diskette for months, and never even knew it!
While the diskette is incriminating, it is not the ironclad proof that BJ needs to put Paulson behind bars. It still allows Paulson "plausible deniability," the story that while the bugs may have been deliberate, he knew nothing about them. Therefore, he has not come forward with it's contents yet. On the other hand, the diskette IS the key to any criminal case against Paulson, which led him to hire two thugs to kidnap Beachgal, in an attempt to extort the diskette from the couple. The kidnapping was foiled when Beachgal led the kidnappers to an abandoned silver mine near a relative's home in Montana, where she was rescued by her childhood friend, Little Bear, a Blackfoot Indian.
Paulson isn't the only one who wants the diskette. The Vulgarians are after it, hoping that it can help them to locate and repair the bugs in their naval fleet. In an attempt to get their hands on it, and believing that Beachgal had the diskette in her possession, they actually sabotaged an airliner, causing it to crash and killing 139 innocent people. They sent their most ruthless killer, James Haeford, to do the job, then to infiltrate the National Traffic Safety Board crash site team, hoping to extract the diskette from the dead A.D.A.'s luggage. This plot failed as well, due to the fact that the diskette had already been secreted in it's current hiding place by then. When it was discovered that Beachgal had miraculously survived the crash, Haeford packed up and went in search of her in the wilds of Glacier View National Wilderness in northern Washington. There, he crossed paths with Bacardi Jim and Little Bear, who were on their own rescue mission, Little Bear and Misty having discovered a faint trail of Beachgal's blood leading away from the crash site. Despite mutual mistrust, the two parties joined forces to search for Beachgal, BJ being unaware of Haeford's true identity and motives. They found Beachgal nearly three weeks after her crash. (The couple refuse to discuss how she was able to survive for that long in her wounded state, but rumors persist that she was nursed back to health by a family of Sasquatches.) Upon finding her, Haeford drugged Little Bear, and threatened to kill Beachgal unless she revealed the location of the diskette. A bloody mountaintop battle ensued between BJ and Haeford, during which Haeford revealed that it had been he who had killed BJ's ex-wife, Okgal. BJ was forced to kill James Haeford, but not before receiving a knife wound which has left him with a long permanent scar down his right jawline.
Finally, Gil Bates is desperate to get the diskette himself. It was THIS that prompted him to hire Joe Terror to locate Bert Rudall, not altruistic concern over the reporter's well-being. With the diskette in hand, he can prove that Megahard is not responsible for Bloodhound's flaws, and can protect himself from billions of dollars in lawsuits. This provides another reason for Bacardi Jim not to come forward with the diskette. Were he to do so, Bates would call off the search, and BJ is himself quite eager to talk to Rudall, even if Joe Terror's agency finds him first.
And so, fellow citizens, the search goes on. For employees of Joe Terror, S.P.I.T.E., GH&B, and the VSS, the search is for Bert Rudall. For employees of Desert Moon Investigations, the search is for more nails for Alan Paulson's coffin. (BJ took his wife's kidnapping very personally.) Good luck and happy searching.
(Note: Although many of these events involve player characters, they are all "sanctioned" storylines, and are considered by the game designers to be part of the "real" history of Rain City, integrated into their overall plotline.)