This is what I'm wondering:
Does Mortimer's cabal actually care about the “voice of the people”, or are they one of those groups who only think that they do, like so many socialist revolutions in the past century?
What is their end goal?
That was an open-ended question, by the way: not a request for spoilers.
UPDATE 2018-10-09
So, Mortimer got to talking a bit more about two of his — of course, that's Mortimer's Darknet gender — group's agenda in the recent session. This board doesn't have spoilers, so I will only refer to them as ‘the one which concerns meatspace solely’ and ‘the one which concerns both meatspace and the Zone in tandem’. Ech, that's unwieldy. How about ‘Poverty’ and ‘Connectivity’? Well, so much for spoilers.
If you are reading this but haven't caught up on the latest session, then boo on you.
Anyway, so obviously the two can work hand–in–hand. There is no reason why you can't want to better both the meatspace and the Zone aspects of peoples lives.
However, the suspicious, dissecting–of–plots fanboy in me sees the possibility for an ulterior motive there: Is it possible that his cabal are working to give the less well–to–do people better connectivity to the Zone while simultaneously making it so that the middle–class spend less time there to escape from the dreariness of the meatspace LA?
What else could result from that huge demographic shift?
On that note, I do think Mortimer was on the up–and–up with the player's characters. They could have ulterior motives, but based on what The Mook has given here, I think what he told them — about cleaning up the Zone, the meatspace world, and providing better access for those of the disenfranchised who want it — was all accurate. That is mostly a hunch, but there you go.
Of course, I also think that Mortimer thus far has only represented the friendlier face of his cabal. His job has been that of appealing to and encouraging their hired help.
One other thing: If those virtual wolves were indeed sent from Kristos for Mortimer, and if that was because Kristos didn't like how chatty Mortimer got with the team, then … I think Mortimer accurately expressed at least some of his group's agenda when he explained them.
I'm really wondering, now, what Mortimer intends to do with the Darknet areas of the Zone when they've cleaned away the “seedier places”… Hex, Aegis, Jam, and Dr Discord, watch your backs…
Poor Sara Leevee. Serra Livi? I feel bad for her. Anyway.
I don't think the team needed be concerned that Mortimer is tasking them with this latest job because he wanted to lose them. They don't know enough about Mortimer to finger his group, but they know enough to finger his group's cause — if, of course, he was being straightforward with them.
Think about it: the team has asked questions, but they haven't shown any unwillingness to work for the cause he professed.
Are they expendable? They do take a large paycheck for each job. Mortimer's group probably has its inner circle keeping very tight; they don't want to risk themselves: those folks are the planners and schemers. They hire Zone roughs to do little jobs: jobs that don't require any ideological compatibility. Our team fills the huge gap between: external enough to be risked, valuable enough to be conserved, and reliable enough to perform all but the most sensitive of missions.
But, hey, those are merely my thoughts.
