Printable Version of Topic

Click here to view this topic in its original format

Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ RL Tamanous

Posted by: Chance359 Jun 12 2006, 10:00 PM

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FLESH_AND_BONE_II_ABRIDGED?SITE=7219&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-06-11-12-27-08

While he may not have going for the actual organs, he took just about everything else taht wasn't nailed down.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 13 2006, 02:01 AM

What's Tamanous?

Posted by: emo samurai Jun 13 2006, 02:08 AM

Tamanous is a cabal that harvests organs from the living; someone'll get mugged one night, then they'll wake up missing half of their liver, or a kidney. They rarely kill people; murders get investigated. Something that's in between murder and a crippling mugging, though, doesn't. Rumor says that their facilities are guarded by ghouls and the whole thing's run by a wendigo.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 13 2006, 02:40 AM

IMO that's a silly idea. I think that serial organ theft would get investigated a lot faster than run of the mill murders. Murders happen every day in big cities but serial organ theft is creepy and unusual and would catch peoples' attention.

Posted by: HMHVV Hunter Jun 13 2006, 02:43 AM

QUOTE (Wounded Ronin)

Not in the world of Shadowrun. As one Shadowland poster put it:

"It's about strategy...Think about it: they knock the guy out, steal his kidney but leave him alive. So the Star catches him and charges him - with what? Not murder; the victim lived. Not theft; body parts aren't covered under theft laws. All that's left is 'malicious wounding' - much less serious than murder one. And the Star doesn't even have enough officers to follow up on all the MURDERS that get reported, much less the malicious woundings."

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 13 2006, 02:51 AM

I'd say then that it depends on how apathetic the GM decides to make the Star. If the GM decides that the Star is the ultimate expression of apathy and they continue to behave algorithmically for years then that would fly.

But if the Star is in any way intelligent the people there are going to differentiate between Assault With A Deadly Weapon charges that are random and the ones that are systematic and involve organ removal. Furthermore, it's not just malicious wounding, end of the story. There's almost certainly an element of premeditation which would make charges more serious. The fact that you removed an organ from someone would probably open you up for some kind of torture charge. Something as exotic and bizarre as street organ harvesting would not be confused with random assaults if you decide that Lone Star has the slightest bit of intelligence.

The other thing is that Tanamous is an organization. Random street murders and assaults are, however, random.

This means that while Lone Star *cannot* possibly hope to stop all of the random attacks that happen on the street by virture of the fact that the attacks are *random*, there's a lot more for them to go on when they go up against an organization. There's more evidence, there's premeditation, there's methodologies, and inherently there's a certain degree of predictability. All of these things mean that an organization is a much more vulnerable target to the Star than something as ephemeral as all the random violence that goes down in a city. So, if I were the Lone Star commissioner, I might even considering focusing on organizations and spending resources efficently that way instead of pumping all my resources into the inefficient task of trying to prevent random violence from happening on the street.

The more I think about it the dumber Tanamous sounds.

Posted by: Drraagh Jun 13 2006, 03:14 AM

QUOTE (Wounded Ronin)

The way I tend to see the Star played, perhaps because most people tend to play Shadowrun like an action movie, is as follows:

The Star, KE, and so forth are arms of a corporate entity. They protect the members of the corporation and the property of the corporation, but they do not care about what goes on to people not covered and if it happens off their property. So, if I was to shoot a squatter in the middle of the street, KE and LS wouldn't care because the squatter is not a voter, not a corporate member, not able to have a sway in any form.

Also, the cops are able to be bribed fairly easily (I think even the rules in SSG are kinda low for bribes), and things like that. There are very few who actually care abotu the world.

And finally, any time that I try and play them like they care and that, players tend to get psised because the cops then go to catch their characters and can end up arresting them or whatever. They assume that when the cops catch them, the game is over but that could be the start of runs and such for them. There were movies like that, but as I'm at work, the only one I can remember is the new Mod Squad.

Posted by: Toptomcat Jun 13 2006, 03:23 AM

QUOTE

The more I think about it the dumber Tanamous sounds.

Even if Lone Star is competent and proactive, they still can't go into Z Zones with anything less than a mechanized company. There are enough people in Z-Zones alone to fit organ-harvesting demands for many years to come.
Now, if they started getting greedy and trying to harvest the healthier organs outside the Z-Zones, then there would be problems, but they'd always have that core pool of... 'product'... to draw from.

Posted by: Lazerface Jun 13 2006, 03:59 AM

The Lonies only care if the stolen organ belongs to a valued member of society. So some poor sot on the street will most likely be treated and released while his case will be lost forever in the evidence locker. I think the Tamanous also pays for delivery of dead bodies (cover of Loose Alliances).

Posted by: Ironfish Jun 13 2006, 03:12 PM

People dissapear in the city all the time. If they were rich enough and pretty enough or mabye were somehow important, they may be missed. Random Joesixpack goes missing and the Star will likely put forth no more than the token effort to find them. Tamanous employs ghouls for that reason. Snatch the meat off the street, carve em up take what you need, the ghouls munch the rest. Mo Muss no Fuss. No witnesses. No bodies. No solid evidence. Also nothing to stop an underpaid Lonestar cop from trying to get a little something extra on the side. No matter how dirty it may seem.

Posted by: Lagomorph Jun 13 2006, 08:06 PM

I think Tanamous as an org is plausible, but that the benevolence of letting people live is hard to believe. When death is so cheap, why spend so much to try and keep them living? Besides, you get more parts out if you kill them or they're already dead, not just a part here or there.

Posted by: HMHVV Hunter Jun 13 2006, 08:13 PM

QUOTE (Lagomorph)

It's not benevolence, it's a matter of strategy, like I pointed out above. And another point raised in that same book was that having survivors spread horror stories about them gives them a very scary reputation.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jun 13 2006, 08:15 PM

So here we are having a civil discussion about a secret organization that kidnaps people, steals their organs, feeds their scraps to their ghoul guards, and the only point worthy of contention is why they wouldn't kill everyone.
I love Dumpshock.

Seriously, it does seem odd that they let people go. It seems someone would either be SINless, and they could just off them without questions, or it's an upstanding citizen and they shouldn't be attracting attention to themselves by nabbing them. What's our source that they don't usually kill people?

Posted by: HMHVV Hunter Jun 13 2006, 08:26 PM

QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)

I don't know how usual it is for them to not kill, but The Underworld Sourcebook had the story of a survivor, so they do so at least SOME of the time. How common it is, I dunno, though that same write-up did emphasize your point as well - that plenty of homeless SINless folk just disappear, never to be missed or seen again, to fuel this organlegging machine of theirs'.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Jun 13 2006, 08:32 PM

Okay, well, I guess I can go with the idea that most people just disappear, and some people occasionally escape either by being released (perhaps to spread spooky rumors) or the occasional freak-accident escape. It was the idea that, by policy, they only harvest an organ or two and then let you go to blab your story to anyone who'll listen and drum up public awareness when they could just make you disappear and keep ALL your organs that seemed implausible

Posted by: Kanada Ten Jun 13 2006, 11:49 PM

I can check the Underworld SB, but I don't think Tamanous normally lets people go. They discuss the harvesting factory in that book, and none of those people were slotted for release, not to mention that Tamanous shows off their Amerindian roots by using every bit their prey: the leftovers are ghoul chow.

Posted by: Chance359 Jun 13 2006, 11:53 PM

I prefer to run them as mentioned in Loose Alliances, hack hospital records to find who to keep an eye on then pick them up when you need them. More effecient.

Posted by: Kanada Ten Jun 13 2006, 11:59 PM

QUOTE (Chance359)

I prefer to run them as mentioned in Loose Alliances, hack hospital records to find who to keep an eye on then pick them up when you need them. More effecient.

That's how I treat the Yakuza organlegging. And they usually make you feel obligated. "In exchange for your wife's liver, we will pay off this debt. Otherwise... we'll take your heart out."

Posted by: Chance359 Jun 14 2006, 12:42 AM

And somehow, that sounds even better. Think I'll have to modify a mafia leg breaker I'm been toying with. Thanks.

Posted by: SirKodiak Jun 15 2006, 10:43 PM

QUOTE (HMHVV Hunter)

QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jun 12 2006, 10:40 PM)

I understand the point you're making regarding strategy, but the most similar crime we have today, kidnapping with the intent of sexual assault, often ends in the death of the victim. That it doesn't always end that way has more to do with the psychology of the criminals, who aren't professionals and are often irrational, than with good strategy. While the police might be more motivated to track down a disappearance with suspicion of murder, they have significantly less to work with than when they have a living suspect who can provide information and physical evidence. Denying the police that information is more valuable than reducing the severity of the charge. This is particularly going to be the case for an organlegging ring where the police will be able to build up a collection of information as they tie together the data from different victims.

The best reason I can see letting people go still alive is the PR value of it. Your customers might be more comfortable using stolen organs if they believe that the victims are still alive and receiving proper medical treatment. Which I think is something to remember, stolen organs aren't all going to get used by cold-blooded killers who don't value human life; most will just be scared and desperate, and believing that the unwilling donor will be okay could be important to them. This belief could be particularly important in helping them deal with whatever guilt they might have once they know they'll live, when they can start thinking about what they did. That's a time that is particularly risky for the organleggers, as you can't have the organ recipient turning himself in in guilt, spilling everything he knows.

Posted by: James McMurray Jun 16 2006, 12:06 AM

I don't think kidnapping with intent to rape is anywhere near kidnapping with intent to steal organs. It certainly isn't the closest we have nowadays. Kidnapping with intent to murder or torture is a lot closer.

Posted by: SirKodiak Jun 17 2006, 06:54 PM

QUOTE (James McMurray)

I meant similar in terms of the strategic situation created for the criminal. Torture is hard to define and is rarely an end to itself; when it is an end to itself, it creates the same strategic situation as rape, so my argument still holds. Kidnapping with the intent of murdering someone doesn't provide a useful comparison in this case because the point of the discussion was whether or not organleggers would kill their victims or release them. Someone who kidnaps another for the sole point of killing them is, obviously, going to kill them instead of releasing them.

So, to clarify, I was not attempting to make a point regarding the severity or nature of stealing organs, rape, or murder. I merely wanted to provide another example where, from a strictly strategic point of view, elevating a crime to murder, even with the increased punishment and attention from police, can be the intelligent, reasoned act.

And I should possibly clarify that I'm not attempting to justify stealing organs, murder, or rape. I tend to have a horror aspect to games I run, and I often find that a coldly logical villain, doing abhorrent things for rational, but utterly immoral, reasons, can be more horrifying than a pack of madmen.