Malen

Malen runs the party shop in the Bootleg Bazaar and is the closest thing the Bazaar has to a missing-persons case. Her father Eno disappeared. So did his friend Gilmar. The local police call it a runaway. Malen calls it a pattern.

If you stop at her stall to buy a wig and you let the conversation go anywhere off the price tag, you’ll end up in one of the game’s quieter side investigations.

What she’s selling

She runs the Party Shop, which is exactly what it sounds like — costumes, dress-up, the impulse-buy end of the Bazaar economy.

(All prices in sol, Portofiro’s collapsing currency.)

For a CASCADE build heavy on Doppelgang or Shadowplay, Malen’s stock is the cheapest “change-your-face” inventory in the game. Wig plus glasses for 16 sol is not a bad spend.

What’s actually going on with her

Behind the till, Malen is distressed. Her father Eno disappeared recently. His friend Gilmar disappeared one week before that.

Both men were:

• fans of Subcomandante Bagman, the in-fiction TV personality you can watch from Foto 24;
• obsessed with a rash of other disappearances in Quisach, all rumoured to be connected to a specific payphone at the west entrance of the Bootleg Bazaar.

Eno reported Gilmar missing. A week later he was gone himself.

The Bazaar GM — the local carabinero on the floor — is sympathetic to Malen but doesn’t believe the disappearance angle. His read: Eno and Gilmar were in a relationship and staged the disappearance to run away together. That’s the kind of conclusion a tired cop reaches when he doesn’t want a real case on his desk.

You get to decide which read is closer to right.

Why it matters in the larger game

A few threads cross through Malen:

• The payphone at the west entrance of the Bazaar. Quisach is full of payphones. The Miracle Line, the Phantom Line, Bagman’s call-in number for The Reality Situation, the Renotel monopoly. A payphone allegedly linked to disappearances is exactly the kind of detail the game wants you to notice.
• Subcomandante Bagman. A TV personality whose fans go missing is not a normal entry on a city’s missing-persons rolls. Bagman is a recurring environmental character. Worth chasing what his audience is being pulled into.
• The Weeping Eye pattern. La Luz’s secret police are in town. People going missing for opaque reasons in ‘96 is not unconnected to the same surge of Weeping Eye activity that got Tempo del Sur killed.

How to play it

Malen’s case is conversational, not violent. Skills:

• Personalism — she’s grieving and worried. Match her.
• Cold Read — distinguish her version from the Bazaar GM’s version.
• Records — if there is a missing-persons pattern, the police records are where it would surface. The Bazaar GM is your route in.
• Sensors — for actually approaching the suspect payphone at the west entrance.

What’s confirmed vs. unknown

Confirmed: Malen runs the Party Shop with the wig / hair-set / glasses inventory, her father Eno disappeared, Gilmar disappeared a week earlier, both men were Bagman fans, both were investigating a rash of disappearances allegedly linked to a specific payphone, the Bazaar GM believes they ran off together.

Unknown to the player at launch: what’s actually happening at the payphone, whether Eno and Gilmar are alive, who is responsible, and how the pattern relates (if at all) to the Weeping Eye’s ‘96 crackdown.

Vendor Inventory[]

• Mister Artista Hair Set for ☉ 5

• Party Wig for ☉ 9

• UFO Glasses for ☉ 7