Local Guides/Sourcebooks., Your area, your way. Options

[Megu]

Working backwards: Re: Belvidere: I actually figured that Detroit might be better now, being the home of a AAA. Considering it's already pretty much Shadowrun Chicago without the bugs (I was looking at going there for grad school for a while, and it really is as bad off as you've heard), it's hard to see how we could do anything in that direction that wouldn't be kind of redundant. I always envisioned SR Detroit as the result of renewal projects like this one: http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/29/news/econo...etroit.fortune/

Re: Red_Cap: Very nice! I'm looking it over right now! I love the voice you've got for Sand Snake, and the pro-Awakened bent for Kurdistan is intriguing. I'm a little curious about a couple things, though. The Matrix doesn't seem to come up here much. What's the situation like with regards to technomancers and AIs? Is the grid spotty or is the wireless reliable? Similarly, the Awakened scene doesn't seem to be discussed much outside of the fact that the Kurds are probably most of it.

Editing:
>3069 post-Crash merger with Global Oil
>3069

wat

Additionally, proposing following runner commentary. Alhazred and Juba are Arab expatriate NPC runners in my Twin Cities game, Swift Hinola's actually a former player character of a friend from the same game, and the rest I'm coming up with on the fly.

>Barely months later, with the Alliance shattered and the Muslim armies streaming back to the Middle East, the Kurdish forces popped up in their homeland where they declared the creation of the Kurdish Autonomous Zone.

The question isn't who called back the peshmerga; PKK head Ahmed Massoud's ties to Aden are an open secret. It's more debatable why he did it. I'm inclined to believe he was hedging his bets, setting up a friendly nation in a mostly hostile Middle East for when the Jihad was over.
- Alhazred

>But then the Kirkuk fields double -- then tripled -- production, and S-K was suddenly back in the game.

Evo's been working on making bacterial production of oil competitive for a long time, and waiting for the Middle East's wells of cheap oil to dry. They'd dearly love some hard data on how exactly Lofwyr pulled this off.
- Veiled Vandal

>The NOC runs the pumping stations north of Kirkuk, the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Pipeline that runs west to East Anatolia, and the newer Black Sea Pipeline that runs north through Kurdistan to T'blisi, in Transcausia. The only pipeline currently operational is the north-bound one, so while the NOC is officially an Iraqi company, the Kurds have de facto control over its profit margin and receive plenty of bribes and kick-backs as a result. The NOC's CEO is Umar ibn Ehmed, a local Kurd. He's got lots of family in Arbil and Dahuk, though, so its not hard to figure out where his true loyalties lie.

The Syrians are clamoring to get that westward pipeline built. Expect fireworks.
- Juba

>Their presence in Kirkuk is low-key, with a few small natural gas spigots that all run into their compound in the Adallah District. Strangely, none of this appears to be exported, though its possible that AF is working on new refinement techniques. They've been trying to get permission to do some delving around the Baba Gurgur, but Mayor al Jibouri has so far blocked those efforts.

This isn't all that strange. For a small AA with a focus on technological development rather than natural resources, it might be more profitable to develop the techniques and sell them rather than try to lead a mass resource extraction effort themselves. Their knowhow might be what got the Kirkuk oilfields producing again.
- Lawrence

>The leader of the Foundation's efforts in the area is Hector Venizelos, a Greek. No one knows much about him, but there have been four assassination attempts against him in the past year alone. He's made it through without injury every time, but someone wants him gone.

Without injury, but from cam footage it looks like not without being shot. Rumor has it his luck is ...inhuman.
- Alhazred

>On the outskirts of the city near the NOC complex, the Baba Gurgur is an eternal flame that has been burning all on its own, without metahuman help, for over 4,000 years. Formed by natural gas leaking up through the surrounding sand and bedrock from oil fields below the city, the Baba Gurgur has been a place of pilgrimage for the Kurds since they settled the area and many Kurds (including Yezidis) come here to pray. It is especially popular with expectant mothers who come here to plead for healthy babies. It's also a permanent astral shallow.

There's a remarkable concentration of fire spirits in the immediate vicinity these days. They're pretty much innocuous unless you attack them or try to bind them, so no one (except for the vehemently anti-Awakened) cares much. But with the astral shallow, if you're a mundane, it's quite a sight to see.
- Alhazred

>For those who haven't grown up in the Middle East, telling the difference between an Iraqi, Iranian, or Kurd is nearly impossible. For natives, it's a matter quite literally of life and death. Speaking Arabic to an Iranian (whose native tongue is Farsi) or Kurdish to a Turkoman (who speaks Turkish or Arabic) will most likely end up with the affronted party trying to slit your throat.

It's really not that bad if you're obviously foreign. They'll just assume you're a stupid infidel who doesn't know any better. Which isn't always such a bad thing, if you can play it up a little bit, but I wouldn't recommend it if you don't have basic social skills. If you look like you could be Middle Eastern, though, the above is much more true. And if you look Jewish, well, I hope you're bringing some serious dakka, or you could be in real trouble real quick, regardless of how polite and fluent you are. Still, a little nanopaste will clear up both of those latter ailments.
- Hyasynth

Hyasynth isn't kidding about the social skills, though. I'm ethnically Somali and look it, but since I grew up in the UCAS, I've gotten myself into seriuos trouble here a few times by misunderstanding a social situation. If I wasn't a good shot, I'd have been dead a long time ago.
- Swift Hinola

So modest. By "good shot" Miss Hinola means "fastest sixgun in the Middle East".
- Juba

Flatterer.
- Swift Hinola

[Demonseed Elite]

Alrighty then. I've finally put the finishing touches on my Kirkuk, Iraq file. It comes out as an 8-page word document, and can be found here:

Red_Cap, you should toss this up on box.net. Much friendlier for downloading stuff like this than rapidshare is.

[Belvidere]

As for Detroit. The way I've been thinking about it is sort of a renewal project... but one that just covers up the dirty grit that is The D. Instead of trying to clean out the issues like drugs, murder, ect, they just kind of blocked it all off beneath them. Imagine Taris from Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic on a smaller scale obviously. So highwats and roads for SINners are elevated along with even entire communities, No proper building has entrances on the ground. And whatever is left on the ground is all gangland and turf wars. There are probably areas that are a mix of elevated and ground level and whatnot. Inspiration from my current GM who's running his game in Detroit, very similar, almost identically to this, and probably Final Fantasy 7 and Taris from KotOR as I said before.

[Megu]

As for Detroit. The way I've been thinking about it is sort of a renewal project... but one that just covers up the dirty grit that is The D. Instead of trying to clean out the issues like drugs, murder, ect, they just kind of blocked it all off beneath them. Imagine Taris from Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic on a smaller scale obviously. So highwats and roads for SINners are elevated along with even entire communities, No proper building has entrances on the ground. And whatever is left on the ground is all gangland and turf wars. There are probably areas that are a mix of elevated and ground level and whatnot. Inspiration from my current GM who's running his game in Detroit, very similar, almost identically to this, and probably Final Fantasy 7 and Taris from KotOR as I said before.

I could see that being pretty cool.

Tell me Devil's Night is still an active tradition.

[Belvidere]

I could see that being pretty cool.

Tell me Devil's Night is still an active tradition.

Oh, it would have to be. Ahaha. Gangers come up from below and terrorize the upper Detroit dwellers? That sounds liek a great night!

[JollySkull]

Wait can I use this as a place to rewrite the pull crap the did to my home where I lived for all my life, Los Angeles.

I hate how they effed up my town with it all being flooded. Really the average height for the majority of sunken part of LA is 100ft above sea level. So it seems to me they are all like we do not want to talk about LA the most diverse metroplex today, but simplify it. It does not make sense.

I mean they make it seem like LA is all about the entrainment industry when we are not like that at all. We have great diversity in our industries. We have a large amount of Aerospace companies, Transportation, Computer engineering, medical, etc. There was plenty of stuff to have corporate espionage and gangs are there but are in their own zones and often are not as troublesome as people think.


BUT NO!! Everyone has this strange idea that LA will have an earthquake and it will sink. Or that we are all about the entrainment industry and all super linked in to it together. We are supposedly superficial Los Angeles is not like this at all.

GRRR, now that is out of the way I am okay with there being suddenly huge magical caverns under LA it can be kind of cool if it turns out is a giant Caern or a group of great dragons sleeping cocoon. The I enjoy having a sort of megacorp that is trying to control your minds through media and doing what the aAzies are doing to make them look good despite the dark and ugly secrets that lie beneath.

So thanks for all that read this I know i probably have a huge amount of grammatical errors so forgive those.

But I like some stuff but alot of it i would rework and change.

Thanks
The Jolly skull

[Red_Cap]

Megu, your stuff's in. Good catch on the "post-Crash" comment; I must have been half-asleep when I wrote that part, so its been fixed. If anyone else has some commentary they'd like to throw in, by all means, please do.

By popular demand, I'll developing three more sections -- one on the "special populations," ie Awakened and Emergent folks and associated things -- another on all of the basic services (Matrix, water & power, etc), and the last on runner-centric hotspots like the inevitable bars, dives, etc that our alter egos so frequently haunt. Any suggestions?

[Red_Cap]

-- Snip --

Jolly, rather than try rewriting CGL's vision of LA, work within it. I refuse to believe that every runner in SoCal has lost their common sense and broadcasts their runs live on the trid for the whole world to watch. Give us the low-down on the areas that Corporate Enclaves neglects, the places were the cyberpunk part of the universe shines through ("dims the light" might be a better term) the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. Tell us about El Infierno, some haunted back-sections of the Deep Lacuna, or the gang-wars that are threatening to spill out onto Rodeo Drive. I've been writing this message for maybe 90 seconds, and there's three good ideas that would help flesh out LA from ludicrously open to downright dangerous.

[Voran]

I still use the older SR version Paradise Lost for Hawaii. Still great read. Though the fashion is so definitely 90s (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Radical-B]

Found this while searching for a local group, it's really detailed all the down to historical landmarks and mafia families.

http://tampa-bay-shadows.googlegroups.com/...qocOGWUY90Yyf_g

[Megu]

Found this while searching for a local group, it's really detailed all the down to historical landmarks and mafia families.

http://tampa-bay-shadows.googlegroups.com/...qocOGWUY90Yyf_g

Does look interesting, but is there more to this or just the intro?

[Radical-B]

Does look interesting, but is there more to this or just the intro?

That's all I could find.

[Megu]

Blade' homebrew Zouerate, Mauritania. In French, unfortunately, but with a little Google Translate and guesswork it's quite readable.

[hermit]

Actually I am working on a translation, whcih I will use to experiment a bit with pdf creators.

[suoq]

I'm aware of three very different sets of notes on Omaha as a setting.

My setting has Offutt AFB duties expanded because of CAS and NAN as well as a history of awakened research. (Lots of intelligence gathering, research, and deep bunkers filled with smart people.) There are some interesting retired military residing in Omaha, keeping to themselves. Western Nebraska has a lot of border smuggling as well as a large resistance group of people driven out of the Nan who want to return to their homes (they have the same view of Denver and Colorado that people who view themselves as Palestinians view Jerusalem and Israel). The border, as a result, is pretty messy, keeping Offutt busy. Lincoln is pretty much a refugee dump, filled with the people who quit fighting after the NAN won and the people who send others off to fight while hiding in a safe place. Boys Town has broken away from the Church and become a home for Metahumans not accepted by their families. Boys Town looks more like a concentration camp than anything else, partially as a result of years of people wanting to keep them in and partially as a result of years of defending themselves against the outside world. A metahuman growing up in Boys Town will have a very different view of the world. The rural areas still rural, although any abandoned Atlas sites are well defended (by whom and for what reason are questions best not asked).

LurkerOutThere has a completely different, but still very good setting. I'm not sure what he's made public.

David 'Lightfinger' West has an Omaha setting at http://members.cox.net/~lightfinger/sr/place.htm

[Synner667]

Good to see this resurrected.

[HugeC]

I wrote this up for my players in a game that went 2 sessions before we starting doing something else. There's not terrible much here, but perhaps it will be of use to someone. I didn't have access to any official cannon except an SR timeline when I wrote it, so if I have crossed something official folks have written, that's why.

Detroit in the 2070's

[ Spoiler ]

You wanna hear about Detroit, chummer? I can tell you, allright. I've been kicked around the D for near a century, but they never rattled my brains. I remember coming up here like it was yesterday, back in the nineteen seventies! Things sure have changed since then- whole world's gone crazy. But I guess if you young folk have got sense enough to listen to your elders and get some history, then maybe there's hope yet for this old town. Just keep those drinks comin', wouldn't want my throat to get dry while I spin my yarn.

The New Millenium
So the first thing to know is that Detroit used to be famous for the automobile. 'Round the turn of the 20th century they started buildin' 'em here, and back when I was a kid, seemed like Motown was what Detroit was always gonna be. But things went haywire just after the start of the 21st century, and the Big Three (I'm talkin' car companies now, not megacorps) found themselves going bankrupt. Back then I didn't pay much attention, but I remember something about banks not making loans, which stopped folks buying cars, which pretty much gummed up Motown's entire economy. See, the car companies being in trouble meant everyone was in trouble, 'cause just about everybody back then got their income from the car companies in one way or another. The guys on the line got laid off first, and then the engineers, and next the parts manufacturers couldn't sell their wares, and the roach-coach driver didn't have workers to sell sandwiches to, and even the joygirls couldn't make time no more. It was all pretty bleak for a while, but then Ares showed up and started buying corporations by the block, starting with GM (that's General Motors, biggest of the Big Three, in case ya don't know). Ares Financial started making low-interest loans to car buyers, and it didn't take ol' Lucius Aurelius long to turn GM right around and make it profitable again. Within a couple years, the economy started to recover, and Detroit seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief in 2010. 'Course if we had known then what was coming, we woulda started crying instead.

Of the original Big Three, only Ford made it out the other end of the credit crisis intact, as you may know since they are still around to this day. Chrysler and Nissan merged, and managed to struggle on, though they lost a lot of market share. Things seemed to be getting back to normal. Then in 2011, folks started having pointy-eared babies, which caused a bit of an uproar. Prophets predicted doom (when don't they?), but let's face it: elf and dwarf babies are cute, and nothing much to get upset about. VITAS, on the other hand, was scary as hell. All that pollution that had been pumping out of the factories and power plants over the century or so since the industrial revolution? Well, those who got hit by the virus became deadly allergic to it, and you could catch the virus from people who were infected. VITAS spread like a cheap slitch, and with it came riots, looting, and then martial law. By the time it had passed, a full quarter of the world's population was dead, and upwards of half the people died in some of the slums around here, where medical care was scarce and folks were packed in like sardines. Then came goblinization in 2021, and then another strain of VITAS, and more riots and martial law. Basically, the whole world went to hell for about 20 years, but in the background that whole time, Ares was quietly expanding.

Ares Macrotown
After the whole debacle with the credit crisis, the state and local government folks got the idea that having so much of the economy in one sector might not be such a good idea. Turns out Ares would help the guvvies with that. After Ares bought GM, its world headquarters was moved to the Renaissance Center right there downtown. Then they bought General Dynamics, and Bank of America, and even NASA, the old U.S. government space agency, and who knows how many little companies besides. Ares operations in Michigan were expanded, and an economic boom started in Detroit that brought a lot of folks back from the 'burbs to work in the city proper. Old slums that had been mucking up the city's image for decades were torn down, with shiny new neighborhoods built in their place for Ares employees to live in. When the orks and trolls all got herded up in Veteran's Park in Hamtramck, Lucius Aurelius paid for better shelters and food for those poor folks out of his own pocket. Then he bought the Tigers (who had been on a losing streak), tore down their shoddy old park and built the Macrodome in the space of a few months, and the next season, they pulled off a World Series win. The big computer crash of '29 caused more economic problems, but not for Ares; they just snapped up more businesses weakened by the sudden economic collapse and somehow made them more profitable. By 2030, seemed Ares and Lucuis Aurelius were everywhere you looked. Folks around here were positively in love with that man, and his budding megacorp. That good will was passed down to his son Leonard, who took over the business then. But Leonard's time at the helm of Ares was all too short.

Knight Rises
Damien Knight, that old corporate shark we love to hate, managed to sneak a majority share of Ares out from under the noses of the Aurelius family by using some kind of coordinated computer stock manipulation, dubbed the Nanosecond Buyout. Next thing you know, he's the CEO and Chairman of the Board. Unlike the Aureliuses, Knight wasn't much into philanthropy; profits and power seemed to be his motives. Over the next few years he started buying off members of the city council. Then he took advantage of a corruption scandal in the Detroit Police Department to have our boys in blue replaced by Knight Errant Security, an arrangement that remains to this day. Now most folks didn't mind all these things since the economy kept getting better and better with Knight around. Over time though, he started cutting back wages for the lower-end workers, and some neighborhoods began the slow descent into slumhood. K-E started getting lazy, and eventually places like Hamtramck and Inkster became the drekholes they are today.

My personal favorite stunt of Knight's was the Peoplemover II project, a mass transit initiative that would set up subway tunnels connecting the entire metro area. It was proposed in 2037 by one of Knight's flunkies on the Detroit city council, and ended up being funded by the state and pretty much all the municipalities in the sprawl. Guess who got the contract? Yep, Ares. They began digging tunnels starting in the old salt mines beneath the city, but by 2042, the project had to be scrapped when most of the tunnels were 'accidentally' flooded. The project's funding floundered, and eventually it was scrapped altogether, but not before Knight had swindled billions in taxpayer nuyen out of the various governments involved.

Windsor
Now something else happened in 2030 that's important, and that's the formation of the United Canadian and American states. Funny thing is, Canada always seemed just like another state in the old U.S. to me even before they were officially merged. Anyway, once the Act of Union was signed, Windsor was no longer in a foreign country, and travel and trade began to flourish across the two bridges since you didn't need a passport to cross anymore. Oh, I forgot to mention the East Span! It was the second bridge to Canada constructed in Detroit, built by none other than Ares Construction back in the teens. So, due to the way the local laws got grandfathered in (no comments about my age, thanks), prostitution was legal in Windsor, which sparked the development of a huge red-light district there. Now, just because it ain't legal doesn't stop the joytoys from prancing up and down 8-Mile, but for law-abiding salarymen, Windsor became a very popular hangout. The Detroit casinos opened satellite branches there, and Windsor grew much richer as a result of all the new "vice tourism".

Meanwhile, in Southfield...
Now something I haven't mentioned so far is that Ares wasn't the only megacorp building a power base in the area during the early 21st century. A consortium of Japanacorps that called itself the Japan Business Society of Southeast Michigan was buying up land in one of the nearby 'burbs. The corps that made up the JBSSM (megas like Fuchi, Mitsuhama, Renraku and Shiawase, as well as several smaller J-corps) eventually decided that paying taxes to the local government was a pain, so they just took the whole city over. It took some years to set it up, but they got their guys onto the city council, managed to buy the Civic Center from the town under false pretenses of charity, and finally in 2027, they had enough clout to just dissolve the city and turn it into the Southfield Extraterritorial Enclave, or SEE. All the private citizens living in the former city of Southfield that weren't in the direct employ of a JBSSM member corp were kicked out of their homes and given a token stipend for their troubles. Some folks tried to fight it with lawsuits, but even with thousands of plaintiffs, there wasn't much they could do against the combined legal might of the JBSSM. In addition to home thievery, they kicked out ALL metahumans, employee or no, along with anyone immediately related to a metahuman. Many of those folks ended up at refugee shelters in Hamtramck or on Belle Isle, and the J-corps earned a hefty helping of meta hatred for what they did.

Anyway, after they created the SEE, the four megas in the JBSSM started work on Renraku Arcology 2: Electric Boogaloo, better known to us locals as the SEE-Hive. Unlike in Seattle, this time it was a shared venture, with Fuchi, MCT, Shiawase and Renraku each owning a quarter of the arcology. They bulldozed a full square mile worth of residential zone (remember all those people they kicked out?) and began construction in 2043, and by 2052, it was done. It made the headlines worldwide, and slowed commuter traffic on the Lodge and Reuther freeways due to gawking at the monstrous thing. Anyway, much like its Seattle predecessor, the lower levels of the SEE-Hive (or Southfield Arcology by its official name) are a giant mall. As soon as it opened, there was a very popular boycott movement started by Mothers of Metahumans due to the poor treatment the JBSSM had given metas in years past. In order to avoid plunging profit margins, the JBSSM had to eat their hat, and in 2054 they rescinded the ban against metahumans entering the SEE. MoM in turn lifted the boycott, and the SEE-Hive mall started see quite a bit of business.

The Underworld
I guess that brings me to the seedy side of life in the D. We have all the usual organized crime syndicates at work in the area, including the yakuza (based in and around the SEE), the tongs, and the mob. They all do the usual things that crime syndicates do (drugs, prostitution, gun running, theft, racketeering, and so on), but with a bit of a twist. During the first big computer crash, some bright thug got the idea to start offering the mob's services as a kind of banking network. They would hand out markers (they called the chips 'zitti') in exchange for nuyen or other favors, and you could use the markers as cash at mafia-run establishments all throughout the city, for anything from groceries and medicinal drugs to weapons and black market cyberware. It wasn't too hard for them to do, since they already had guys who were pretty good at keeping the books straight. Though at that time it was only on a small scale, and only for as long as the Matrix was down (preventing easy electronic transactions with real cred), it turned them a tidy profit, and they kept it going even after things got back to normal. More recently, during Crash 2.0, the practice really took off all over the sprawl, and the mob became an almost legitimate organization, depended on by just about everyone in the lower class neighborhoods to do business in an efficient manner. That earned the mob a lot of cred with the common folk, and Knight Errant has an especially hard time pinning anything on mob bosses these days thanks to that. Seeing the success that it brought, the other syndicates have picked up a similar practice, making markers pretty handy things to have, even if they can only be used "in-network."

One more thing I should mention, while on the topic of organized crime, is Aztechnology. Little Aztlan is down by the Ambassador Bridge, and a gang called Los Jaguares has claimed it as their turf. Some say the gang's just a front for AZT, but whether or not that's true, those guys are some mean hombres. The thugs in charge of the mob and the yaks seem like civilized gentlemen compared to those cutthroats. Word has it they are into organ legging, human trafficking, and the most addictive drugs and BTLs you can find in the sprawl. If I were you, chummer, I'd steer clear of those guys, or at least stay off their bad side.

Awakened Detroit
The Awakened World is alive and humming in the D. We got ghouls slogging around in the sewers, vampires lurking in the shadows, mages and shamans practicing their craft all over the city, and even a few dragons that you can catch a glimpse of now and then. I think it was some time around 2050 when folks on the Belle Isle Ferry took the first pictures of a leviathan known as the Lake Erie Monster. Since then I hear TerraFirst has claimed that same dragon as an ally in the fight against pollution. We also had a dragon alight on the tippy-top of the Ren Cen back in '57. Folks took to calling that one Redwing, and it became something of a mascot for the hockey team, even though nobody has seen it since.

[Megu]

I haven't gone over the whole thing, but thank you Huge, I have been wanting to run a Detroit game for a while now.

[Radical-B]

I'm kind of lucky I stumbled upon this from google groups. Before the new 6th World Almanac I didn't even think Tampa would even be big enough to be recognized. Though neither really have as much freedom for missions as Seattle fluff, I'm still happy that I'm able to use my own county maps for runs.

http://www.mediafire.com/?y4tw7211d04pz1d

[Wordman]

The official SR sourcebooks are lacking in the areas that they cover [some surprisingly so], or provide only sketchy info...
...But many of you have filled in those gaps, making the world a richer, more interesting, more exciting place to explore and enjoy SR in.

Once upon a time, this was the point of of many of the location write ups in the Neoanarchists Guide to Everything Else. The locations chapter of the Collected NAGEE contains a number of "local guides", including my guide to my own home town, Pueblo, Colorado.

[Wakshaani]

I live outside Philly and grew up outside NYC and went to school in Brooklyn. If you want send the file to me to look through. Philly actually could be really cool. Include Camden NJ and you've got barrens. Go north of the city only a few miles and it gets very green very quick and for spirits there are all sorts of historical sites.

I've been trying to tie my horrible notes into an actual background guide for Philadelphia, the city that I choose to use as a basis for my game (When there is one, sigh) ... be thrilled to have someone that actually knows the place look it over.

Aside from that, native Tennessean here, so, I can hammer out all *kinds* of stuff for the CAS. Texas has Aztlan, Atlanta has the federal government, but TN is where all the good stuff happens. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Megu]

Once upon a time, this was the point of of many of the location write ups in the Neoanarchists Guide to Everything Else. The locations chapter of the Collected NAGEE contains a number of "local guides", including my guide to my own home town, Pueblo, Colorado.

I was going to say, the Pueblo and North Bay ones both jump out at me as really good. And Chambana's pretty cool but I kind of wonder what kind of effect the implosion of Chicago would have on it? It seems like post 1e that could be something to capitalize on.

[CanRay]

I've been thinking about doing one for my hometown for quite some time, but then I realize that I want to think about that place as little as possible.

...

Which, in another way, makes it the perfect place to have Shadowrun, doesn't it?

[Daddy's Litt...]

Neat! I had a website I was going to build called "Target: Hometown" to host this exact sort of writeup. I wasn't sure it would generate any interest. Guess I was wrong. I'll have to see if I can find my writeup of Hanover, PA.

Hanover might draw lots of shamans and spooky types drawn to near by Gettysburg. Snow fox and I have been talking about writing up Philly for a while now.

[wilver]

Shadows of Las Vegas

I wrote up the following as some background material for my players on Vegas in the Sixth World. Droplets of information about Vegas are scattered throughout some books, but I wanted to have a single document that had all of the key information up front. Additions/criticisms/comments appreciated.

Caveat: I am not a local, but am moderately familar with the area beyond the strip.

Text below...

[ Spoiler ]

Shadows of Las Vegas

by Lotus

Get it? Get it?

Anyone who’s been to Vegas knows that it’s so bright, everywhere, that there are no shadows. The same goes for our Shadows -- for a city more or less openly run by the Mob (or rather, three Mobs, more on that later), there’s no reasons for criminals to hide. That tells you most of what you need to know about Vegas. The following saying tells you the rest:

“To call Las Vegas ‘Sin City’ is an insult. Not to the City, but to Sin.”

Yes, yes, there’s gambling. There’s gambling everywhere -- the kind you find in the bright lights of the Core is just the meatspace version of the countless Matrix sites. But in Vegas you can gamble on *anything*. Your smoky OTB down the street is nothing compared to the intestine-inverting stench of the underground troll on dwarf death-matches that happen at derelict warehouses in North Las Vegas. Yes, yes, there’s prostitution, which is the fancy Anglo word for “whores”. It’s been legal here so long it’s blase -- but remember that Vegas gets regular visitors from all around the world, and everybody has a different itch that can be scratched for a price. Like blondes? Come on, too easy. Blonde teenage ork teens? A dozen geriatric troll men? A cockatrice? Anything for a price.

Which is the real reason people like you and me come to Vegas -- anything can be bought and sold for a price. The desert around Vegas is a prime stopover on smuggling routes between Las Angeles (and the rest of the California Free State) up through Ute to Denver, and from there to the rest of North America. Chips, drugs, guns, slaves, telesma -- you can always find something if you know the right people. Right now the commodity of choice? Water. The Ute’s a desert, folks.

A lot of people (who skipped history in high school) think Vegas is like Seattle or Denver -- an independent or UCAS enclave that was carved out after the Great Ghost Dance. It’s actually full on Ute territory, it’s just that the Indians knew that Vegas was never going to change and didn’t even try to eject the Anglos and take over. So, the Ute security force keeps a wide perimeter around the city, and basically allows it to keep rotting from within. Poisoned land, some of their shamans say -- best to let the infection run its course, then come back later and rebuild on the scab.

The real reason is much simpler -- money. Both legal and illegal business account for a majority of the Ute’s tax base. When you next buy your ticket to Vegas (or if you’re feeling adventurous, buying a permit to drive in), zoom in on the various extra fees that get slapped on it -- one of them will be for a temporary tourist visa that lets you stay in the country. Every time you slot your credstick to get another drink, sales tax makes its way back up to Provo, and odds are every roll of the loaded dice can put the last of your nuyen into the fur-lined pockets of the Comanche Mob.

Crime

So, let’s talk about crime. There’s the Mob, the Triclops, the three “I”s -- the Italians (Verontesse family), the Irish (Wynne family) and the Indians (Comanche tribe) -- who are the biggest players: they control the Strip and every activity, legitimate or otherwise, contained within. They work hard to keep their cash cow bright, clean, and tourist friendly -- any settling of vendettas must be done *quietly* or risk bringing down the wrath of both families (an excellent source of shadow work, by the way). I know some of you runners try to avoid mob runs, to avoid the risk of getting caught under the thumb of the local capo, but in Vegas, it is impossible to avoid their influence. Any bit of shadow biz involves the Mob in some way, so you might as well calm down and accept it.

The Yakuza are a solid, yet distant, second place when it comes to organized crime in Vegas, despite their best efforts to drive a wedge between the mob families. Other than the large casinos, the yaks dabble in everything, and it’s not too hard to find a discrete agent working any given block of the Strip.

Beyond that, it’s a smorgasbord of everyone else: the Triads (Chinese), Seoulpa Rings (Korean), and every type of gang and low-life you can imagine. Which reminds me...

Corps

The smarmy side of me is complaining that, in covering criminals, I have yet to cover the megacorps in Vegas. Har har har. More true than usual in Vegas, though -- the largest corps in terms of gross earnings and personnel run the casinos: The Flamingo Casino Group (owned by the Verontesse Mafia), the Wynne Conglomerate (Wynne family) and the Wind Speaker Corporation (owned by the Comanche Mob). None of them are multi-national (and are thus unranked by the Corporate Court), but since they only operate in Ute (Vegas and Reno), they can throw down with any other megacorp in town.

The only big boys (AAA ranked) in town with an auspicious presence are Aztechnology and Renraku. The Azzies are rumored to own the Luxor pyramid casino (along with rumors of blood sacrifices on the roof) and have their Ute HQ downtown (unique among the megas, who if they are allowed to do business in Ute, have it in Provo). Renraku performs a critical function in Vegas -- they are the primary supplier of gambling machine hardware and software. Yes, the mob runs the casinos, but they have to buy their machines from Renraku.

A summary of the rest of the Mega’s presence within Vegas:

Ares: Ford, Weapons World, Knight Errant (private security)
Fuchi: Virtual Meetings Inc. (telepresence), Fuchi Simsense Studios
Mitsuhama: Sakura Studios (simsense), Black Lotus (software)
Saeder-Krupp: BMW
Shiawase: Shiawase Atomics Southwest (nuclear power)

A summary of the rest of the worst, along with their ranking and primary area of business:

Buce Talent (unranked, entertainment) – who helps book of those acts? They do.
ESP Systems (A, simsense) – based in Chicago, solid presence in Vegas
Istus International (A, real estate) – an up and comer, recently constructed HQ in Vegas
Lone Star (AA, private security) – they’re not the “cops” though, more on that later
UNLV (unranked, education) – they incorporated back in the 20s as a for-profit university

The above is by no means complete – but if you’re hired for some local shadow biz, and it isn’t through the syndicates, it’s likely through one of them. If not, it’s likely through the…

Las Vegas City Government

Spend a day in Vegas and it’s easy to forget that you’re technically a temporary visitor to the Ute Nation – remember the Ute is basically defined by their anti-Anglo sentiment – but if you look closely at the logos on the Strip Panicbuttons, you’ll see the LVCG. Depending on your viewpoint, the LVCG is either the token gesture to Ute Nation membership or just another branch of the Comanche Mob. Either way, no one gets elected to a LVCG position without approval from Provo.

The only respectable aspect (IMHO) of the LVCG is that they resisted corporate takeover of their law enforcement (Lone Star and Knight Errant stand poised to take over, should something change), so the other sign of the LVCG you’ll see is the Metropolitan Police (MetroPol for short, MP for shorter, the latter also a dig at their somewhat militant response in some cases). The MetroPol do a good job at keeping law & order on the Strip (anything else would be bad business), in exchange for that the mobs let the MPs make a token bust to show to the public that the casinos are “clean”.

Beyond the Strip

That said, MetroPol really only cares about keeping clean the pieces of Vegas that bring in money. While technically having jurisdiction over the entire city, you’ll see Halley’s Comet before you see an MP on patrol north of the city. Highway Patrol is the roughest division, as they have to form the front-line troops keeping the rabble from encroaching in the city. When they do venture off the interstate, it is only in armored vehicles and full riot gear.

It’s not really as bad as you might think, it only seems that way compared to the sterile streets of the Strip only a few miles away. Some areas of interest:

Chinatown (Spring Mountain & Red Rock) – center of Triad activity (natch) in Vegas.

Koreatown (Spring Valley & Rainbow) -- center of Seoulpa Ring activity in Vegas. Also borders Chinatown, meaning that border is a Triad/Ring battleground.

Henderson – corp burb, has experienced huge expansion in the past five years. All shades of high class, so dress like you belong. Middle to high class residential.

North Las Vegas Barrens – ‘nuff said. Most of you probably live here, so I won’t say more.

Enterprise/Spring Valley/Summerlin – if not in the Barrens, that means you’re a moderately successful runner/mobster and live here. Middle to low class residential. Boring.

Paradise – Just east of The Strip and just north of the airport, this area is home to UNLV, some up and coming nightclubs, and a good chunk of the Vegas magical community. Home to the only Vegas Wiz-Kid gang.

Boulder City – a Ute city, gambling free, meaning this is the effective southern border of the Vegas sprawl. Ute military patrols out of here, so watch your step folks.

Ute Air Station (formerly UCAS Nellis Air Force Base) -- the effective northern border of the Vegas sprawl. Ute military patrols out of here too, though UAS duty isn’t the most sought after (most injun flyboys prefer the former Hill AF Base near Salt Lake), and as a result have a permanent bad attitude. And by “bad attitude”, we mean would rather geek you than talk to you, given any excuse.

Getting in and out…

…by Air:

99% of visitors to Vegas come through McCarren International Airport. Nominally owned by the Ute government, its day to day operations are governed by a consortium of local corps (the mob, the megas, etc.). Security is typical for a North American airport, which is lower than you might expect. There are a few other places to land a plane in Vegas – there is a private airport in Henderson that caters exclusively to corp traffic (really, anyone with enough money can use the facilities). There is a similarly sized airfield in North Las Vegas, though regular air traffic left it years ago as the area degraded into the hellhole it is today. However, you still find the occasional black market panzer or VSTOL sneaking in at night.

And, of course, there’s the UAS, which keeps a pretty tight radar net around the area (one thing they actually can do fairly well). You can sneak in some unscheduled chopper flights within the city without a flight plan (or a bogus one) – what is Vegas without some spontaneity? – but try to make a break to the Hoover Dam and you might end up as target practice for the UAS SAM batteries.

…by Sea:

Don’t be a drekhole. (still a desert, folks)

…by Land:

Since the rest of the Ute nation uniformly despises the people of Vegas, and Vegas is surrounded on all sides by Ute territory, road traffic is discouraged, to say the least. Few locals stop, but some drive through. You get a few more visitors that come from Cal Free through Ute, though they better be tribal or rich enough to bribe your way through. I-15 is the major thoroughfare in this regard – north to Provo, Salt Lake, and points beyond, south to Cal Free. Route 93 is the other road that cuts through the city, though not quite as active (who wants to go to Reno anyway?). The bulk of traffic heading in and out of the city are freight vehicles (and most unmanned and remotely controlled, which has led to some interesting encounters from bands of North Las Vegas ruffians); this includes the heavy rail lines running through town.

…Illegitimately:

Which is, honestly, probably what you were interested in in the first place, and, natch, is going to depend upon your resources and level of desperation.

What not to try – being a stowaway. Ute is paranoid about Anglos sneaking in and retaking over the territory, so they’ve wised up to neo-hobos breaking into open train cars or sneaking into the back of semi cabs. Companies must file manifests for every train and truck passing in and out of Vegas, listing content delivered, content picked up, delivery times, and so on. These are verified by layers of drone sensor systems, both fixed and mobile, at the city boundaries. And for every camera the Utes have on your cargo, there are two guns aimed in case something is up. If you want to smuggle something in by land, make a mob contact with the myriad of trucking companies they control.

What to try – use the airport. Seriously, the flimsiest of fake identities if usually enough to get you in and out of McCarren; Vegas makes it money through tourism, so as long as you’re not on the UCAS Ten Most Wanted List, expect an easy trip into Vegas (and if you are on the list, you’ll only get an extra pat-down). Somewhat harder to get out (people don’t spend money once they leave), but not that much harder.

Away from the strip and the highways, there is a small and tight-knit panzer community operating out of North Las Vegas, using the surrounding mountains as camouflage in and out. High risk, high reward, and high prices if you want to tag along. That is, if you can find someone willing to talk to you.

Finally, in a worst case-scenario, you can just walk in and out of Vegas – the Ute sensor net, while probably locating you, has bigger problems than a drunk Anglo wandering into the desert and dying of heat stroke. And there are enough hiding places within the mountains that you could make it to Cal Free undetected if you had enough water.