Charm City [IC] Options

[sunnyside]

(OOC: This is meant to provide some prompts as a soft start while people sort out characters, and figure out why and how to get them to Baltimore. Once everyone is place you can get down to business.)

Everyone occasionally has a need for a change of scenery in the buisness. Your contact understood. They even found and vetted a lead for you, a fixer going by Brewster out of Baltimore. The word they were passing was the port city had a shadowrunner shortage. At least a shortage of those with some actual talent. Lots of nuyen potential and a milk run to get you comfortable with the place. Your contact had heard that sort of talk before. But, after hearing about you, Brewster was willing to cover the cost of the relocating, would provide a townhouse for the team he was putting together, get them a local fake SINs, and front them 500 nuyen.

Your contact hadn't heard that sort of talk. Maybe Baltimore really is the place to be? At the last it facilitates your needed "change of scenery."

Your info said to contact Brewster once you settled in. He's network seems to prefer ships to get into town, which allows bringing your own vessels or vehicles and gear.

His preferred port is off the old Canton Waterfront Park. Like a lot of parks it's still there, some of the plants are even surviving in the artificial lighting of the uptown building above it. The various docks have been extended. You could almost freerun across the inner harbor. If you have a ship Brewster can make arrangments to park it here for now. He's got connections with the local mafia to keep an eye on it, but don't leave anything too valuable out. As you arrive you see nice boats pulling up to the uptown buildings. Arms swing out and lower ropes, like the rigs for lifeboats on cruise ships. The boats are then hauled up the sides of the building, and then swung in and rested on a frame, turning them from boat into a fancy deck. Cars, trucks and motorcycles disembark the ship and roll down the docks into the city.

The safehouse is a townhome at 711 E Chase street:
https://goo.gl/maps/JzVGVgvhJDdNDQ639

The area is heavily built up. With many rowhomes having been demolished here, proper skyscrapers were put up by the megas in this area early on as shipping brought dollars and then nuyen to Baltimore.

As you approach you see a large uptown structure built over the area, going from Homewood to Brentwood (over Greenmount) and from Chase to Eager streets. Your comlink indicates it's called "Savannah Estates" and run by a subsidy of Evo. It's hard to see through the glass on the sides, except when someone is standing too close, which happens to be the case in many of the floor to ceiling windows. They stare out at the traffic and people below, but you'd been informed by your contact not to worry about them being nosy. They aren't really seeing you. They're all seeing a collective overlay that turns everyone below into some animal or other, out interacting or lazing in a pristine nature scene. Sometimes they appear as predators fighting over territory. Majestic.

The downtown area still has the Bmore chicken and grill, the liquor store, courtside bail bonds, Hi Mart and so on. But the bulk of the area is a huge parking lot, ground level, three stories up and then five down. Apparently, it was envisioned this would serve as parking for the nearby skyscrapers and uptown, but...it was not popular among the uptown set. When they do want to use their own car, which isn't all that often with their own retail and corporate offices up there, they now typically drop down from one of the car elevators.

Your contact informs you the area is the territory of the "HomeBoyz" go gang. Taking their name from the local dealer, which has over time gotten into "pimping rides." The HomeBoyz aren't known as being the toughest gang. They put too much nuyen into their rides versus weapons, they definitely prefer form over combat capability, and they don't especially want to get them messed up in a fight if they don't have to, especially against lame cheap pedestrians or bikers. But they don't have a lot of enemies at the moment.

Brewster has paid them for "protection" of 711, and some parking spots and drive in storage units. Cargo companies actually use the high ceilings on the first floor to park vans and semi's. But much of the rest of the garage, especially the basement with longer open stretches, has HomeBoyz tearing around at any hour.

The leader is Icey R. They're an Ork with a reputation for being unflappable, serious, and violent. But the HomeBoyz are more mixed race than many of the Ork gangs in the area. The gang member you have a comcode for, if you need to interact with them, is Rat Fink. A troll that plays into the nickname. Brewster passed along through your contact that they're friendly, especially if they haven't had too little or too much novacoke.

Based on the granite countertops and pastel blue furniture your safehouse must have been fancy once. Still not so bad. At least the first and basement level windows and doors are already barred as is the back door into the main garage. The maglocks are supposed to be higher security, and let users spy out the front and back doors. The first floor has a living room, dining room, and kitchen. The second and third floors have three bedrooms each. Two narrow ones, with a window to the outside, and a larger master bedroom that would have once presumably looked out into rear garden, but now they are bricked over as they'd look into the garage. The basement has two more narrow bedrooms looking outside, a utility area, and an unfinished basement space about the size of a master bedroom. Each bedroom has a minifridge currently full of flavored soy packets, microwave, bed, chair, and desk.

The sounds of an unlicensed bar pretending to just be a daily house party leak in from the townhouse sharing the west wall, as one band after another starts trying to bang out tunes. The townhouse sharing the east wall seems to be a BTL flophouse. Usually pretty quiet aside from the occasional freak out. The tenants/patrons spill out onto the sidewalk if not the road, looking like zombies or corpses depending on if they're moving. Or perhaps they look like a herd of peaceful Zebras if you're looking down from high enough.