Difference between revisions of "The World"

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http://theshadowrun.proboards.com/thread/346
==The Seattle Sprawl==
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1_1ES7tdzvO65eeErMFvEu_uedVM&hl=en_US
===The Redmond Barrens===
The district of Redmond was once among the most prosperous places in the Seattle region. During the late twentieth century, it developed from a suburban community into a major center for the computer industry. Huge office complexes and skyscrapers sprang up as more and more companies moved in. Then came the Crash of 2029, the viral attack that crippled the world telecommunications network and wiped out computer systems everywhere. Redmond's primary industry died overnight. Eighty percent of the businesses in the district collapsed, along with the local government, which was unable to cope with the disaster. A small percentage of the residents fled to Bellevue, which was also suffering from the effects of the Crash. The rest turned to lawlessness and riots.
Drawn by the abandoned homes and apartment buildings, refugees from other districts and Seattle's homeless began moving into the area. This caused further violence, prompting more "respectable people" to flee Redmond, resulting in more empty buildings, which in turn attracted additional squatters. Within a few years, this vicious cycle transformed Redmond into a ghost town inhabited by criminals, transients, refugees, and those who were unable or unwilling to get out.
Roughly half a million people live in Redmond, though it's tough to come up with an accurate number because most of the population is SINless and it's impossible conduct an official census. Permanent residents come from diverse backgrounds, but the percentage of metahumans is generally fairly low—a reminder of the prejudicial suburban attitude and the widely held belief that metahumans couldn't hack it (pun intended) in the ratified world of computer programming.
In Redmond today, a scrap of food or a cheap trinket can be a reason to die. Bands of squatters and gangs attack the weekly convoys of armed trucks that deliver food to the district's few grocery stores. Abject poverty gives rise to a host of social ills that repeatedly drag down every resident ambitious enough to attempt to rise above his or her station—or even to behave as a relatively decent metahuman being. Aside from a few remarkable cases, Redmond is a seething mass of violence waiting to explode.
Rather than attempting to find a way to improve the communities in the Barrens, the few companies that bother to have facilities to protect their investments. Many of them hire the toughest, most socially alienated squatters and gangers they can find as security guards. "Accidental" shootings in and around local corporate facilities are just another fact of life in Redmond.
The syndicates are big in Redmond, of course, and the Mafia and the yakuza run the local black market. Because even legal goods are difficult to get in Redmond, the biggest market is for daily necessities like food and medical supplies, followed closely by "entertainment" such as pirated trid, sim-chips, BTLs, booze, porn, and similar moneymakers. There's a brisk business in illegal weapons, though the syndicates are careful which factions they choose to arm. They keep most arms sales small unless the mobs are preparing their own gangers and soldiers for war.
Redmond is the perfect breeding ground for new syndicate muscle, mainly because the only way most youngsters can make it off the streets is by joining one of the mobs. Yakuza and Mafia recruiters keep their eyes open for promising young talent, especially from the local gangs, and the Seoula Rings also use Redmond as a recruiting center. At least five Rings tunnel recruits out of Redmond and into their ranks elsewhere in the metroplex. The Seven Triangles Ring is currently leading the pack–probably because their recruitment tactics seem specifically designed to scare the drek out of the candidates.
Redmond attracted a larger suburban population because it is mostly flat, with a few hills in the southern end and the Snoqualmie River winding through almost a third of the distrct. Now the river is filthy, choked with toxic sludge, and other refuse (including the more-than-occasional corpse). Massive packs of devil rats live all along the shoreline, some of the horribly mutated by whatever drek is in the water.
Apart from the kilometers of abandoned buildings, the cracked and deteriorating streets, and the vast slums and squatter "cities," Redmond's only distinctive features are the "toxic castles," as locals call the various factories and manufacturing plants. Plenty of them look a lot like techno-Gothic structures of rusting metal and soot-covered brick, surrounded by moats of their own poisonous filth and high walls topped with razorwire. Armed guards regularly patrol the walls to keep the facilities safe from armies of squatters and roving gangs, and most plants ship materials in and out via helicopter or tilt-rotor to avoid bringing trucks through Redmond's dangerous streets.
Redmond is ''not'' the place to go if you're looking for nightlife other than sleazy bars and strip-joints where most of the customers'll knife you for a drink or five nuyen. You're not likely to find much biz in such places, though they sometimes provide an out-of-the-way spot for a meeting, if you can keep the locals at bay with suitable levels of intimidation.
====Touristville====
The only marginally safe area of Redmond is the section that borders Bellevue, near the offices of the so-called Redmond District Government. Known as "Touristville," the area caters to tourists and slummers from Bellevue who come to experience the "thrill" of the Barrens and hang out in sleazy clubs. Lone Star actually patrols here. but smart visitors bring along their own protection by packing heat or (If they can afford It) traveling with a bodyguard.
=====Crusher 495=====
''124th Avenue and 143rd Street''
This bar and restaurant on the western edge of Touristville is owned and operated by a group of orks who opened the establishment after the Night of Rage. The place is popular with people from Bellevue and Downtown looking for a real "Barrens" experience, and the owners and staff work hard to make their establishment a sort of community center where the locals can gather. Racists have attacked the place more times than anyone can count, but Crusher 495 offers such a rare and successful opportunity for all the races to gather under one roof in harmony that the Humanis-types only create bad press for themselves by targeting it.
''495 is a good place to be among friends in Redmond, especially if you're metahuman. The guide makes the place sound as corny as a 1960s musical, but it just happens to be —people can get together here without the pressures that normally make us fuck with each other. Johnsons, on the other hand, like it as a "neutral ground" between Bellevue and the true depths of the Barrens, where no suit is going to go.'' - Tuskadero
''Janus Koskey, the manager of the 495, hears everything going on in Redmond worth knowing. He'll pass on information from time to time for a reasonable fee. He's also been known to arrange introductions between Johnsons and shadow-talent, provided neither side is Humanis or looking to cause trouble for the locals.'' - Solo Mio
=====The Skeleton=====
''Redmond Fall City Road and 196th Avenue NE''
The Skeleton is Redmond's hottest nightclub, located on the southern edge of Touristville. Redmond's best musicians trek out to the Skeleton most every night in hopes of being discovered by one of the talent scouts or media-corp people who frequent the club. It also attracts Bellevue's young and well-off, who enjoy the thrill of "slumming" in Redmond.
''The Skeleton's management likes to keep the place looking good, which tends to mean orks and trolls aren't welcome. An average-size bribe usually convinces the bouncer that you'd add "color" the place.'' - Goblin Boy
''Great place to snatch some corporate kid and put pressure on mommy or daddy. Security is tight for that very reason, and a lot of goldenkids have their own bodyguards, but it still beats the odds of successfully breaking into a high-security condoplex.'' - Archangel
''The passion of some of those musical acts regularly attracts free spirits to the place. Must be something about the surrounding despair and that desperate urgency to escape you can hear in the songs--draws 'em like a magnet. You can spot them leaning on a pillar, looking a bit too cool, gazing unblinking up at the stage while a mosh pit is consuming itself right in front of them.'' - Darth Vaper
=====The Brain Eaters=====
The Brain Eaters are a mixed-race gang operating in the Touristville area. The Star lets them get away with it because they're fairly tame as thrill gangers go. The Brain Eaters are techies, interested in scavenging the remains of Redmond's technological infrastructure. Their colors are black over white and each gang member wears a distinctive red fez.
The Brain Eaters are heavily into smuggling and are the sole group of shadow-deckers operating out of the Redmond Barrens. Their headquarters has Matrix jack-points, computer hardware, and pirated software. Recent indications suggest the Brain Eaters are helping the yakuza expand their syndicate's operations in Redmond, in exchange for wiz new warez that "fell off the back of a truck."
''The Eaters aren't just computer geeks. Plenty of them will bash your head in with a baseball boat if you insult their stupid hats, or if you look like you have something valuable they might want. They make some cred by selling any cyber on their victims before unloading the body parts on the organ market.'' - Wraith II
====The Plastic Jungles====
At the turn of the century, a wealthy agriculturist built twenty of the world's largest greenhouses in north-western Redmond, not far from Echo Lake. The giant tent-like buildings, several kilometers in diameter, stand on land that was considered too polluted to grow crops. The agriculturist proved the skeptics wrong—almost. The land yielded amazing harvests of food, but most of it was too contaminated for consumption.
The huge greenhouses were used to grow tropical flowers and other decorative plants until the Crash of '29, when the backer lost his fortune and the entire project was abandoned. Primarily because no one else had ventured into the area, the lion's share of Redmond's metahuman population moved into the agri-domes to live among the wild offshoots of the original plants.
The squatters living in the Plastic Jungles are understandably paranoid about outsiders, especially humans. They're organized into urban tribes and scratch out what existence they can from the poisoned soil. Tribal shamans are working to cleanse the soil of contaminants so that the squatters can grow some of their own food. Those who succeed, of course, immediately become targeted by gangs and scavengers looking to steal the food supplies.
''Ironically, the metahuman tribes of the Plastic Jungles are a shining example of racial cooperation. Elves works alongside orks, dwarfs, and trolls to protect and sustain the tribes, and most of the metahumans in the community have put aside their differences in order to survive. "Normas" are not well-liked or trusted, but the tribes don't kill visitors out of hand.'' - Smiley
''The Plastic Jungles are truly a sight to see. Dirty grayish canopies of bioplastic high over a near-tropical world that is warm and free of rain. The grounds of the old greenhouses are covered with a riot of tropical and semi-tropical vegetation, creeping vines, and exotic flowers in every color of the rainbow, filling the air with a heady scent. The metahumans built tents and shelters out of discarded bioplastic sheeting, wood, thatching, and whatever other materials they could gather. If it wasn't for the contaminated soil and the near-total lack of modern conveniences, the place would almost be pleasant.'' - Greely
''Oddly enough, there's some awakened critters that seem to have adapted to the contamination. You'll hear flocks of birds and see all manner of fauna thriving. Now you know and I know that evolution can't happen that quickly--so what the fuck is going on in there?'' - Birdwatcher
====="Mama" Palazzo=====
Nearly without exception, this bucolic dwarf can be found in the territory she's staked out in the Plastic Jungles for her garden. Tended by her and a small number of volunteers, Mama has managed to cultivate a number of beneficial plants that she uses to brew up herbal remedies. Despite the Jungle's lack of any formal system of management, Mama feels a responsibility to the Jungle community, and she has a degree of influence over it with some members out of respect for what she does.
''The jungle lacks "any formal system of management" because it's an anarcho-communist syndicate. It doesn't need anyone in charge, as much as that may surprise whatever corp drone wrote the report this text was pulled from.'' - Rude Rocker
''Palazzo is just a relatively well-known gorilla in what's literally a lawless jungle. The metahumans in there aren't any more civilized than the plants or the awakened creatures, and any of them are just as likely to kill and eat you. Going in there with the hope of finding anything more than roving packs of animals, or what might as well be animals, is expecting too much.'' - The Keynesian Kid
====Hollywood====
=====Hollywood Simsense Entertainments=====
''NE 145th Street & 168th Avenue''
This factory in Redmond churns out cheap simsense gear and even cheaper sim-chips. The place has its own studios, which produce mostly soft porn and horror-schlock, using "actors" with all the emotional impact of wet carp. The company is in the pocket of the Seattle Mafia and cranks out low-grade BTL chips for sale to chippies all over the metroplex. In its back rooms, Hollywood films hardcore sim-porn and even worse drek, like snuff-films using "actors" recruited from the streets of the Barrens. A lot of wannabe actors and actresses end up working in one of HSE's productions after becoming addicted to BTLs, so they'll do whatever the director says for another hit.
=====The Red Hot Nukes=====
The Red Hot Nukes are a dwarf go-gang operating out of Hollywood along Route 202. They consider themselves more of a neighborhood association than a gang. Their leader, Grinder, is an African-American dwarf who organized the gang after her retried from a short shadowrunning career. The gang's colors are gray and red, along with an ever-present baseball cap. Their symbol is a mushroom cloud, which commemorates both their name and their skill with explosives. If it goes boom, the Nukes know how to build it, use it, and disarm it. In fact, the gang's initiation ritual involves disarming a bomb built by Grinder. No one gets a second chance.
''The Nukes specialize in rockets involving demolitions: protection, insurance scams, terrorism, even wetwork if the price is right. They love any opportunity to blow something up.'' - Bung
''I used to run with Grinder when he worked the shadows. Back then, he was so rock-steady he could disarm a corporate security system in nothing flat. I went drinking with him once after he founded the gang, and he said something about starting the Nukes because of something he found out on a run. He wouldn't say anything more about it, just shivered and shook his head like someone coming out of a bad dream. Whatever he found out, it scared him bad. I didn't think anything could scare Grinder.'' - Tangent
''"Neighborhood association" is right, because they want to keep things quiet in service of the neighborhood business: producing and distributing illegal sim-chips and BTLs. They run the product out of Redmond on their hot rods, and the Mafia makes them their exclusive distributor in the Redmond Barrens. Their involvement in the production side of the business is even more direct, with gang members regularly appearing in the gruesome live-fire horror scenarios recorded by the Hollywood capture studios.'' - Wraith II
====Glow City====
In 2013, the Trojan-Satsop nuclear power plant in southeast Redmond suffered a partial meltdown, contaminating Beaver Lake and the surrounding land for kilometers around. In 2028, Shiawase Atomics built a new plant next to the rusting hulk of its predecessor. That plant's been providing power to the metroplex ever since. After the Crash of '29, squatters and refugees began building hovels on the contaminated land, despite attempts by the metroplex government to remove them. Unwilling to continue to waste money protecting a segment of the population that didn't even pay taxes, the government eventually gave up and the squatters remained. Since then, the transient population has more than tripled, despite the high death rate from cancer and radiation sickness, to say nothing of the infant mortality rate and some hideous radiation-induced mutations.
''Glow City is a fragging community of mutants. Some are so twisted by the radiation they seem like a hideous new metahuman race. Some magicians among the squatters have tried to treat the illness and mutations, but the few shamans living there have trouble coaxing any power from the pulluted and irradiated land, and it seems unlikely any mages live there (most Glow City residents can't even read).'' - Yahoo
''This place is a terrible blight. The Great Mother cries out in pain, and the sound of her weeping often drowns out our songs. THe only power to be found here is pollution and slow death.'' - She Who Knows the Night
''Not all shamans have trouble with Glow City. I've heard of a shaman living practically on top of the remains of the failed nuclear plant who goes by the name of Burning Bones. They say he's so irradiated that his skeleton glows in the dark through his flesh, but he's not dead of cancer or radiation poisoning because he's in tough the "spirits of the invisible fire" that aid and protect him and his followers. He can raise spirits in Glow City, something no other shaman can do.'' - Winger
=====The Body Mall=====
''Issaquah-Beaver Lake Road and East Beaver Lake Drive''
Not far from Glow City is an abandoned hospital, taken over by a group of street docs and dormer staff members who offer legal and not-so-legal medical services to anyone who can afford them. The hospital's four floors are set up like a sort of "shopping mall" of illegal chop-shops, body clinics, and similar operations, all offering the best services at the lowest prices.
''You can find a lot of cheap cyber-mods here, at least 10 to 20 percent less than you'd pay in a Downtown hospital or clinic. Of course, a lot of the cyber is low-grade or second-hand (so are most of the replacement organs), so you get what you pay for.'' - Neon Chrome
''This place does a brisk business with the yakuza and Tamanous, buying and selling illegal organs and used cyberware. If you're shopping around for your medical needs, this place or Doctor Bob's Quickstitch in the Bargain Basement neighborhood are the best in the district (though that may not be saying much).'' - Doc-U-Dub
=====The Rusted Stilettos=====
The Rusted Stilettos claim the territory near Glow City in the southern portion of Redmond along Route 202. The gang is made up of mostly of trolls and orks, and their colors are black and rust red. Many gang members look sickly and pale—whether from make-up, tattooing, or simply life near Glow City, it's hard to say.
The gang recruits members from Glow City's squatter communities. Most of its money comes from protection rackets against the local residents, along with smuggling and dealing BTL and other mindbenders to the squatters. The syndicates don't take much notice of Glow City or Stilettos, leaving them to take care of their own, which seems to be just how the gangers want it.
''The stilettos are fragging mutants, literally. They operate in an irradiated zone and look like death warmed over. A lot of the trolls in the gang have excessive dermal bone deposits that make their skins pale and lumpy, but also more toughly armored than a regular troll's. They often dye what little hair they have pale green.'' - Crusher Keel
====Organized Crime====
While influential in Seattle, the Mafia struggles as power is consolidated under their new leadership, the Bigio Family, and has relatively little day-to-day control of Redmond. Similarly, the Triads, while powerful in Seattle and particularly the Puyallup Barrens, hold relatively little territory in the Redmond Barrens. The Redmond district is, instead, dominated by the yakuza, with significant opposition by the Seoulpa Rings, the Korean crime syndicate created by the pogrom of the yakuza's Korean membership.
The Nishidon-gumi syndicate of the yakuza dominates smuggling operations through Puyallup and Redmond, along with some hijacking and traditional protection rackets. The gumi also runs much of the vice industry in the Barrens, particularly the chip trade, against significant competition from the Mafia and the Triads. While the oldest yakuza clan in Seattle, the yakuza in the Sprawl currently answer to the Shotozumi-rengo, whose leader, Hanzo Shotozumi, is responsible for unifying all the yakuza throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Also part of the yakuza, the Shigeda-gumi clan runs operations in the north of the metroplex, including parts of Redmond. The gumi competes with the Ciarniello Family (Mafia) in the gambling business and has considerable influence on smuggling in northern Seattle, as well as a large slice of the vice industry.
''The Shigedas have been importing bunraku "flesh-puppet" brothels from San Fransisco, using prostitutes modified with personafix BTL chips to make them into whomever the client wants. The brothels are a huge cash cow, so you can bet the Mafia or some other rival will try to muscle in on the action." - Spook
Formed from the remaining Korean members, or their families, after the assassination of the previously-Korean leadership of the Seattle yakuza, the Seoulpa Rings are a small but dedicated opposition to the yakuza. The Komun'go Ring operates in the Redmond district, running smuggling, fencing, protection, and information rackets, frequently trying to horn in on yakuza action, and equally often butting heads with local gangs. The Ring runs a lot of protection rackets near the Salish-Shidhe border, using threats of magical and physical violence to give their "suggestions" weight.
====Minor Characters====
'''"Stinky" Joe''' is a particularly pungent metahuman, rumored to be infected with a relatively mild variant of the HMMV virus.
'''"Big Sack" Johnson''' is a member of the Crimson Blazers, an offshoot of the Crimson Crush, and a big fan of the Seattle Screamers.

Revision as of 03:05, 20 October 2016

Corporation List and Description

http://theshadowrun.proboards.com/thread/346

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