ZERO PARADES wiki

Check Out the Aerial Creep

Check Out the Aerial Creep is the “weird guy on the pylon” task. Carmuna Pessoa — the bootleg garment vendor in the Bootleg Bazaar — has decided that the strange man parked on top of an aero-tram pylon south of the Bazaar is up to no good. She wants you to find out what he’s doing up there.

He’s not a creep. He’s The Phantom Line Engineer. Whatever he’s actually doing on the pylon is part of the city’s communications infrastructure, and the task quietly opens up that whole thread.

Acquisition[]

Carmuna Pessoa will ask to investigate a strange man loitering atop an aero-tram pylon in the Old Docks.

Objective[]

The garment vendor Carmuna is convinced a strange man up on the pylon south of the Bazaar is creeping. Look into the matter for her.

Subtasks[]

  • Speak with the Aerial Creep.

  • Let Carmuna know that the Creep checks out.

How to play it

The task is short. Two beats:

  1. Climb up. The aero-trams in Portofiro run on cables suspended from pylons that tower over the city. The “creep” is on top of one of them, near the Old Docks.
  2. Talk to him. He’s the Phantom Line Engineer. Carmuna’s worry resolves quickly. Bring the answer back to her at her stall in the Bazaar.

Skills that help:

  • Coordination for the climb up the pylon, depending on how the game gates the approach.
  • Personalism and Cold Read for actually reading the Engineer’s pitch once you’re up there.
  • Technoflex for understanding what he’s actually doing with the aero-tram line if you want the full picture.

Why it’s worth doing

Two reasons it pays off:

  • Carmuna trust. Carmuna is one of the Bazaar’s most opinionated vendors and the person who held PSEUDOPOD’s last working sock-importer transaction. Building rapport with her opens up Assign the Unassigned Assignment leads on PSEUDOPOD’s last day.
  • The Phantom Line itself. “Phantom Line” implies a private or undocumented telecommunications run. Renotel has a monopoly on Portofiran telecoms (their dolphin-shaped payphones are everywhere). A Phantom Line is something running outside that monopoly. That’s the kind of detail that has a way of being relevant to the Miracle Line, the EMTERR rumours in Loose Ends, and possibly the Opera’s own communications.

What’s confirmed vs. unknown

Confirmed: Carmuna initiates the task, the “creep” is up on an aero-tram pylon south of the Bazaar, the man is the Phantom Line Engineer, the task resolves with Hershel telling Carmuna he checks out.

Unknown to the player at start: what the Phantom Line actually is, who runs it, whether it intersects with the Renotel monopoly or any of the city’s other comms infrastructure, and whether the Engineer turns into a useful contact for any of the bigger plot threads.