Behind the Crown [OoC], Out-of-Character information for Behind the Crown Options

[Koekepan]

BioZu (pronounced bee-oh-tsoo) Inc. is the employer of the characters as of day 0 in Behind the Crown.

The pronunciation is because it was founded by a couple of german scientists (something about a biologische zukunft) called Klaus von Unten and Maria Knochenkauer. This pair of geniuses was deeply engaged in biological creation of precursors for industrial chemistry and manufacturing. They received funding from a few private sources, then went more public and got buy-in from a few investment arms of various majors who like to have their fingers in lucrative pies.

The office where Day 0 starts is on a woodsy hilltop, about two miles from the border with the Salish-Shidhe lands near the southern fringes of the Seattle enclave, not far from a place called Tumwater. It's an R&D facility which is well out of the way for two clear reasons: one is risk in dealing with experimental biologicals, and the other is general secrecy around corporate R&D. There is road access, so that industrial tankers and trucks with supplies can come, but the office itself as a good 100 yards from the next nearest building, which is an electric charging station for electric vehicles, and the very last extended fringes of the street grid system.

The office itself is basically a three storey set of offices the size of a fancy mansion (but more blocky) tacked onto a warehouse, which has been converted to an R&D space.

Security is mostly of the cameras/locks/shoeleather variety, but the guards do carry weaponry, and there is a security rigger, to meet the needs of regulations around experimental biologicals.

For those of you who track earlier threads, consider the installation to have light-blue security as per http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t&p=1317859

Rumours

Of course, as with every company with a german connection, it's all a Saeder-Krupp front! Or maybe Lofwyr is behind it all and they don't even know it. Or something. Watercooler speculation on this has reached the point of a corporate in-joke; that they're secretly incubating eggs for Lofwyr.

Another favourite set of rumours is all about where the backing and money come from. It was a cabal of dragons that backed the original founders! Or maybe they're over here as an Aztechnology move, because they could never survive in Germany!

Klaus and Maria are secretly wild, passionate S&M lovers. (The fact that Klaus looks as if a strong breeze would blow him away and Maria seems mostly obsessed with rose gardening, when she's not making mushrooms do unnatural things in the service of heavy industry, does nothing to dispel these inevitable rumours.)

BioZu is really a front for something dark, hideous and unspeakable! Do you know where the feedstock for the growth medium comes from? Do you know what it's made of? I bet you it's made of metahumans! Go on, prove me wrong!

BioZu is bankrupt, dying, on the ropes financially. It's all a lie, a money laundering front.


Yup, rumours aplenty, most of which have no bearing on the day-to-day life of growing vats of weird mutant sludge.

[Koekepan]

Limits to infinity. This is why Biozu has a business model.

The UCAS has done a great job of moving away from petrochemical power sources for years. This happened for a bunch of reasons, mostly coincidental but some deliberate. VITAS was a big reason; a sudden crash in population and economic activity will do that. Losing so much land, especially the oil-rich land, to the NAN and CAS, didn't help. Interrupted international supply chains didn't help either.

Unfortunately, folks do a lot with petrochemicals that has nothing to do with burning it in heat engines. Lubricants, polymer precursors, all sorts of things come from the ground courtesy of the mineral extraction industries. And in the days of artificial joints and complex electronics, these are more important, rather than less. So what to do, when you can't call up your old suppliers, given that half of them are dead courtesy of plagues and war, and the other half have been shut down courtesy of environmental freaks running governments of their own? You adapt your resources, and start pulling things from the air with the help of biological sources.

Then of course the real trick is, how do you extract your lubricant from your mycelium? Sometimes, the right answer is to get other biologicals to do the hard work of refinement for you. And then yet others to coalesce it all into useful flakes. And so on and so forth, until your multistage process end product is fed through a filter the size of a Bulldog, and you package the result for bulk sale. Profit!

If you're buying the Green Terror brand of bullets from Executive Solutions Logistics, then the lubricant coating that helps stop your barrel from overheating when you're fighting off a wave of ghouls was made from mushroom stems. Thanks, Biozu!

[Koekepan]

While tigers prowl the forest floor, monkeys dance in the branches.

Ares. Mitsuhama. Renraku. We all know these names, and they prowl the world like mighty tigers, menacing each other with snarl and roar while disputing over the wealth of the world with swipe of claw. But what of the monkeys that dance in the branches above?

There are many small firms, ranging from the janitorial service on the corner, to multinational concerns elbowing their way up the corporate ladder to AAA stardom. However, one particular form has started to make waves in the financial press.

Invetsu.

The word Invetsu is a CalFree neologism, born from a combination of californian entrepreneurial structures, by analogy with some much older japanese structures. It works like this:

An investment firm (or syndicate, or partnership; the details hardly matter) pursues early stage investments in a number of promising startups. Of these, maybe twenty percent will survive the first five years, and maybe five percent will be the stars that return enough to satisfy the original investors. But what if something could nudge those numbers up, to twenty-five percent, and eight percent? Carefully-planned integration, both vertical and horizontal, to raise turnover and reduce collective risk? Then, as they grow and expand and go public, careful management of shareholdings and cross-investment, to increase structural resilience and hedge against risk?

Old rules would have limited or banned a lot of this sort of thing, of course, but in a wounded CalFree, led by a nation that grew on the backs of the Zaibatsu, and recovered on the backs of the Keiretsu, the Invetsu was an easy sell. After all, why should investors not guide their investment targets to success? Why should they not integrate, in the name of efficiency? Why should a population, shaken by one calamity after another, not enjoy the fruits of prosperity and stability?

Why indeed?

[Koekepan]

Mandrake Elkhunter

Mandrake is an elf, a member of the Salish-Shidhe community from the region south of the Seattle enclave. He is fairly old (whatever that means in elven terms) because he was one of the first generation born as elves, back in 2011. That means he's nearly fifty now, but the way that elves age, he could easily pass for twenty-five. He was an early naysayer as far as Tir Tairngire was concerned, but not important enough (at the time) for anybody to care about. Instead he just stayed where he'd grown up, and integrated into the new authorities. However, he was smart enough to work with local farmers, and the council, arguing that they'd make more money and build more alliances feeding the people of Seattle. Gradually he built from this quite an impressive little grocery business. Not bad for a pinkskin from the hills.

Amanda Chung

Amanda was, at the time that she was born, a third generation chinese-american US citizen. That seems like an awfully long time ago, but she's an important presence in Tacoma (always the little brother to Seattle, and now the junior partner in the enclave) where her father's painstakingly built logistics company passed to her when her brother (the intended heir) fell to VITAS in '22. This means that Chung Brothers Trucking is in her hands, but in the mean time she's also carefully built her surplus funds into a minor property empire in the enclave.

Ola Torssen

Ola is a giant. Literally; a nordic troll variant. There was enough of the old scandinavian blood in his family, from the early settlers in the Seattle area, that it came through and made him what he is. He stands about twelve feet tall, but looks pretty good in a sharp tailored suit. He can afford suits because he got a degree in early education, and then built his own school, specialising in metahuman upbringing. His huge size, combined with polished manners, persuaded quite a few corporate parents of metahuman children to entrust their little tearaways to him, for a fee that would only have been obscene if they weren't desperate. Of such things are exclusive, high dollar private schooling enterprises built.

Genady Voltsev

Genady was, early in his life, a Vory soldier. As the wheel turns, he took the fall in court on behalf of his group, and went inside for a few years on a shipment of drugs that had nothing to do with him. A grateful organisation, when he was out, set him up with a handsome lump sum, fully expecting that he would drink himself into a vodka grave within six months like so many of his comrades. Instead, he broke type and, based on years of choosing to do nothing but study economics and finance in prison, started to live on nutrisoy in a halfway house while sinking every nuyen into the stock and commodity markets. Three clever investments later, he upgraded his way of life to a bed in a basement, and krill sprinkles on his nutrisoy. Two years after getting out, he moved to a tiny apartment, and started eating mycoprotein and using a cruddy old pocket secretary for investment research. Three years after, a somewhat larger apartment in the same building, and an old cyberterminal. Within five years, he'd bought his own houseboat on Lake Washington. That was ten years ago.

[Koekepan]

Noam "QED" Winkelman

QED is a fixer to the rich and famous. He is a nonobservant jew, but not shy about his heritage. He specialises in making quiet solutions available to sensitive problems, often family problems. He doesn't deal with drugs, but he has employed people to drag more than one chiphead into rehab. He's a genial fellow, full of half-corny, half-subversive sayings.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate, and I'm a sieve."
"I accept payment on delivery. I trust you - and after the solution, you have reason to trust me."
"There are no problems. There are only opportunities - to hire very creative people."
"Conscience? I had mine surgically removed and replaced with work ethic."
"The need was to remove obstacles to a contract. The obstacles are removed - Q.E.D."

Brent "Heavyfunk" Stokes

Heavyfunk is a bit of an odd duck. He thought, at age 24, that as a regular, mundane human being, that he would have a fairly satisfying life as a heavy equipment sales engineer with a B.A. in English and Anthropology. He had a cush job for someone with his age and experience level, pushing semi-automated tunneling systems for Red Borer Drilling, a small company in the bigger Renraku family, and he liked the benefits, which included the chance to travel to remote areas where tunnels were being planned. Then he awoke to magic. The company tried to keep him on board, but they couldn't make it work, because he had become a shaman of Whale. Killer Whale, to be specific. However, he had lost none of his basic sales savvy, so he went to work with talismongers until he struck out on his own. He works out of a yacht (sail or sculling oar only, no propeller at all) that he uses to run up and down Puget Sound, and all over the world when the fancy takes him. He also produces music of a kind that has become pretty popular with junior wizards and wannabes.

Mama "Pillows" Comfort

Yup, she's a madam. She came by her nickname honestly, and her name is probably fake, but given she has a strict no-real-names policy at her place (for obvious reasons) it hardly matters. Pillows provides expert personal healing opportunities to the overworked and overstressed and overpaid. Her talented team of ladies, gentlemen, ambiguities and machinery will see to a truly wide range of unusual requirements. Her place isn't just all deviance and debauchery; she also has a large private club as part of it, where the most eyebrow-raising offering is expensive champagne. Why? Isn't it obvious? Plausible deniability for all comers. Her biggest ancillary expense is discreetly efficient security. But even the people kicked out of her place don't get identified.

[Koekepan]

Fircandle Realty

Fircandle is a property management and brokerage firm, specialising in property all over North America, west of the Rockies, that governments will let them. This makes them sound like a really big fish in the realty pond, but they're actually not. So much in the NAN lands is locked down to what tribal elders will permit, that the vast majority of what they do lies in CalFree and Seattle, although they have a few lucrative contracts managing lands to tribal standards, here and there. Their headquarters are in Sacramento, but they have a major office in Seattle proper. A lot of their revenue comes from condominium brokerage fees in Seattle, but their people travel all over the place.

ZenTem

ZenTem is a company devoted to building climate control. Everything from air conditioning to air filtration to heating to humidity management to pathogen removal. Building a hospital? They can help you. Building a house? No problem. Building a skyscraper? They have what you need. They can do everything from unit installation to custom sheetmetal work. It's not a surprise that they're a major employer of dwarves, but they'll hire anyone with the right paperwork.

Volcanic Metalwork

Volcanic are a tooling and machining concern, with half a dozen machineshops scattered around the Puget Sound region. They can do everything from custom-crafting you a ball bearing (although why would you need it?) to blueprinting a go ganger's engine.

[Koekepan]

MaChef

MaChef used to be called Machine Chef. About twenty years ago they were basically semi-automated short order nutrisoy dispensers, and you could find their franchise holders on the fringes of wherever there were poor labourers building the shining future. In the intervening years they've climbed the quality ladder a bit, including quite a bit of real food (if you have the nuyen or scrip, and you're not too picky) but they still sell their 3NY RiseBukit (reconstituted bulk starch "rice", stir-fried in algae-derived cooking oil, with nutrisoy flavour "meat", served with a cup of seaweed "tea") and it will keep you vertical for a day. Slot a stick, punch a button, eat. But for 43NY you can get a real egg, bacon, cheddar and mushroom omelette with real coffee... if you don't have better options in reach.

RentaRig

Just what it sounds like, really; walk up, and rent heavy equipment or industrial vehicles. All fitted with rigger interfaces, all ready to go. Need a backhoe? Need a grader? Need a commercial van? They have what you want, chummer.

Svenson Auctions

These fellows have a big yard and warehouse in the old Federal Way area, between Seattle and Tacoma, a bit south of SeaTac. Estate auctions and business closures are their main thing. Don't try robbing their warehouse unless you really know what you're doing; it's secured in accordance with UCAS law, and they have a lot of lawyers that know them well. Not worth it for some crummy old credenza or something.

Highrise Farming

Oh, boy. It's a joke, but it's not a joke. They have an eight level aeroponic-aquaponic setup, over three hardened basement levels in what used to be a parking garage in downtown Tacoma. Years ago they sold that wacky tobaccy, Mary Jane herself, but they've branched out a lot. The top has wind generators as well as a bunch of solar panels, and internally all the light is that weird artificial light tuned to get the very most of the very best light to plants that you can. Even so, they get in what sunlight they can, when they can, and grow everything that they can. They get about four seasons' worth of growth, staggered across the year, and manage to crank out enough real food to keep local fancypants restaurants supplied. They have fish, they have crabs, they have mushrooms, they have berries, it's just crazy what they do. And it mostly pays better than that sweet leaf ganja used to, times being what they are.

[Koekepan]

Green Marine Shipping

A boring name for a weird combination of retro and futuristic technology. They run freight vessels, that are basically sailing ships. Rigger-driven sailing ships. That's right; you have one rigger in a life support tank running a whole ship. They aren't particularly large, but they don't need to be. Even just a couple of dozen TEU will pay for a voyage's expenses, and they have quite a few vessels.

Virtual Garage Investech

VGI is an investment syndicate based around the old mythology of inventors in garages. It's not all that different from the old days, but the structure's a little different. They've specialised in matrix developments, and are building a nice little invetsu based around ASIST technologies for business and entertainment. The synergies between their various arms tend to make for good adoption rates in the public, and this means financial success.

Cody "Goodies" Banks

Goodies is a movie producer. Or rather, he was. Way back when, his daddy sold the family farm when the rumblings of the NAN were still rumbling, and turned it into a big pot of cash. Little Cody got the chance, with some of that money, to go to school in California, for the movie industry. Time passed, things happened, and Cody got into financing adult entertainment - which turned massively positive when simsense took hold. That was the beauty; simsense recordings were too big to conveniently copy to the customer, so publishing turned into a real thing again. These days, he's a major financier of the kind of unspeakable, hideous, sinful filth that makes evangelists wrap it in a plain brown paper wrapper before taking it home. And if you're experiencing what it's like to be an ork getting it on with an elf for half an hour? Goodies might just be thanking you for your purchase.

[Koekepan]

Expeditious ExImport

A fancy name for a fancy gang. They're smugglers. No bones about it; their chosen way of life is transport past the eyes of authority. They started as a go-gang about fifteen years ago, but they got in the losing end of a gang war, and the (less hot-headed) survivors reshaped their purpose towards money instead of notoriety, and what with all the madness of the era, they graduated to smuggling with elan. Their conceit is that they're a serious business, and they treat it that way - but the fact is that no government recognises them except as being nuisances.

Barbara's Boys

Barbara's Boys are a pretty nasty crew. They will run whatever makes money. Kamikaze. Cram. BTLs. Protection rackets. Gambling. They have substantial control of seven blocks of downtown Tacoma near the docks, and don't tend to have a problem with body disposal for some reason. This is just as well, because the word is that there are bodies that need disappearances from time to time, resulting from their activities.

Fong Lai

Mister Fong is a well-known fixer, and generally understood to be in touch with a wide range of talented criminals, but if anyone out there could prove it, they're very quiet about it. Mostly, he's known to be a lawyer in good standing with the Seattle bar. And yet ...

[Koekepan]

Charles Maximilian

Charles is a business executive. No doubt about it - and a decent one at that. He used to be an executive director in Renraku Seattle, but quit that job some years back to go into entrepreneurialism. It was an amicable parting. It must have been, because he's still walking and talking, wheeling and dealing without a red team stalking him from the shadows. Instead, he's helped turn a few scrappy little startups into respectable small businesses, and by all accounts he's popular with the folks that make things happen.

Walden Kunai

Yeah, yeah, his parents liked Walt Whitman, whaddya gonna do? Walden is an ork from Hawaii, who left there when the environment got a little too racially challenging for his liking. Right now he mostly earns his keep as a security consultant. Yeah, it sounds like security guard, but it's really not. He works for a few security firms on a contract basis, but he's certified expert in about fifteen different vendors' blends of security hardware, ranging from pinhole cameras to dye squirters and he knows protocol from military black site through to revolver-in-the-cash-drawer corner store stuff.

Major Ronald Haversham IV

The major works for the UCAS marine corps, as part of the national guard. He's a reservist, and maintains a day job as a dentist in West Seattle. He's cleancut, squared away, patriotic and about as soft and snuggly as a brick. His role tends to fluctuate with whatever the metroplex's latest demand for support might be, but in general when you see him, it means the civilian world has created yet another drekheap that they need him to fix.

Commissioner Lightbringer Starlight

The commissioner ticks a lot of boxes. She's female, well-cybered because of a run-in with some 'weeners that left her nearly dead, more or less the colour of a chocolate malt, from humble origins, and ork. She was a police union representative for six years, a beat cop for eight, a detective for seven, and she's now the commissioner of public security services in Seattle. Mostly this means that she's the contract rep for metroplex policing, but there's a teeny-tiny rump of a police office that still notionally maintains an identity, and she's also in charge of that. Kind of like playing with toy cops instead of toy soldiers.

Chin-ho "Jeremy" Huang

Jeremy is a pioneer of urban renewal, and a pillar of the community. Yes, yes, when you've all stopped clutching your sides and laughing, that's what the tridshows call him. In reality, he's the proprietor of three different chains of businesses, which makes him a pretty wealthy man. The first is GridWorks, a bunch of mechanic shops. Rumour has it they're chopshops at night, but nobody with any smarts repeats that too loudly. The second is Camelia's - basically a combination morgue/organ/bioware/cyber shop. The third is HuangBilt, a chain of contractors doing everything from houses to hotels. All his locations are in or around the barrens, but somehow survive. The received wisdom is that he's as crooked as a dog's hind leg. But he's rich.

[Koekepan]

Petsonal Petsonalities, LLC

Petsonal is where you go to get that pet barghest you've always wanted. And to equip it. And to train it. Wait, maybe a barghest isn't your thing? How about a nice clutch of cockatrices? Maybe you're more of a salamander kind of a gal? Petsonal is here for you. By appointment only. You really don't want to show up to their location in Ballard without calling first. It would be a bad idea.

Cookie Manander

Cookie used to be a bored housewife, until her husband and kids got turned into compost by a toxic shaman. That was kind of a life-changing event for her, and she's now a nonprofit executive, with a clear focus on environmental concerns. She also has a few new kids, but no husband.

Carvel Brasken

Carvel is a dwarf who is very happy working for Cross in Seattle. He's something of a bellwether for the metahumans-in-business movement, such as it is, and a regular in various clubs. Highly visible, that's him. Toastmasters, Rotary, all sorts of groups. Definitely in the top 1% of dwarves showing up on trid.

Kelly Grahame

Kelly is a serious bureaucrat. All 8 feet, 8 inches of her. She works in the Metroplex sanitation and sewage department as a senior office head - basically, she runs a lot of the place. It's a logical choice. Sewage is one of the best-paying jobs a lot of trogs can get.

Mario Avellini

Mario is a notable member of a prominent italian fraternal organisation .... ah, fraggit. He's a mobster. A capo. He's recently come to power in Seattle. How? ... who wants to know?

[Koekepan]

Depending on new recruitment outcomes, I'll look at a soft start on the 12th of June, 2020.

Depending on how that goes, a serious kickoff on the 19th of June, 2020.

Posting rules: absent prior warning, I expect to see responses in 48 hours - after that, I assume you're doing nothing, drinking heavily, staring at the incredible plastic ass of the person walking the other way, or whatever - anything but taking command of the IC situation. After a week of no response, your character is liable to be written out in bloody (but amusing) ways.

Posting format:

"""Speech"""

<<<Matrix>>>

___Whisper___

+++Thought+++

:::Astral:::

Yup, it doesn't use colours. That makes it easy for those in text-based browsers.

Anything else that I need to clear up?

[pbangarth]

Sounds good!

After a week of no response, your character is liable to be written out in bloody (but amusing) ways.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Check out the "Post or Die" and "Post or Die ... More" threads. Same de - termination.

[ntwi]

Sounds good to me. I'll make sure I give you advance warning of the times I may be unable to post.

[pbangarth]

Papeete Pete - Papeete Pete's Tahitian Treats

Possibly the damn largest troll you will ever see, Pete is a product of the unique genetic bottleneck that led to Polynesians being so big, no matter what metahuman form. He runs a clam and fish shop down by the docks and brooks no trouble in his establishment. No arguments from the locals, who know. Some scuttlebutt suggests South Pacific valuables like pearls and coral (what remains of it) runs through the shop. No proof in official circles.

[Koekepan]

Devlin Mulloy

Devlin is a craftsman at the fine art of distillation. Not just any craftsman either; he's near the top of the field. If you want something that's 175 proof and tastes of flowers, he's the guy. If you're hoping for 40 proof and redolent of blackcurrant, rose and elderflower, he can make it happen. His products have graced the tables of pretty much every bigshot (or bigshot wannabe) in town, and far afield. His distillery is a carefully guarded, scrupulously monitored place in the Eastlake part of Seattle, and rumour has it that he's a man of over ten meganuyen.

Margaret Greenbaum

Margaret is a trid news personality. No, she doesn't just read the news; she comments on it actively, interviews people and generally makes it entertaining. She's also quite adept at riding the line between being a thorn in the side of the authorities, and a friendly voice. She also has a style that makes it just sexy enough to get listeners a bit more engaged than they might otherwise be. Old tricks, but reliable.

Ryu Takeda

It's quite the cliche, isn't it? Japanese sushi chef in Seattle. Even so, it works really well because he's not just any sushi chef. He's the one that will cater when visitors from Imperial Japan must be impressed. Yeah, he has a chain of four (very expensive) restaurants, but they're practically just the farm team for the top assistants who will have the privilege of assisting him in preparing the finest and most delicate work for the most rarified visitors.

PoliDemos Policlub

If you know some Greek, you might surmise that this policlub had an interest in city politics, from a democratic point of view. Or, perhaps, a fresh take on representative or direct democracy. You wouldn't be exactly wrong. But you'd be far from right. They're what happens when a lot of little folks from the suburbs get elbowed aside, and again, and again ... and have had just about enough. So, yeah, they're a policlub. Kind of the same way a homeowners' association is a neighbourhood club.

[Koekepan]

Elizabeth Stinovski

Elizabeth is wealth. Quite wealthy. She was the only daughter of a couple of pre-Matrix stock option multi-millionaires, and in the mean time has made a few stockbrokers and investment advisors quite rich. She survived various crashes and so on by cunning use of commodities and real estate, turning her investments over to move to the next one like a snake sliding through the financial jungle. She has self-consciously modeled herself after Queen Elizabeth the First of England, declaring that she'd never marry, because she expects that to do so would diminish her personal standing. Wealth breeds insanity, so they say.

Gannon Forkbeard, Thane of Lower Redmond

Gannon is a dwarf, and a bad-tempered traditionalist. He is the leader of a team of dwarves who have declared themselves to be separatists. They've built themselves a warren underneath Redmond, and seem to survive it fairly well. Nobody but dwarves can fit in those tunnels, so they're very defensible. The team is organised into a clan of sorts, and they have magical support in the form of a dwarf claimed to be a mole shaman. Nobody has told them they're wrong, and nobody seems to be in a position to unearth them, and nobody cares much about Redmond, so they get to run their own affairs. Shamans or no, they have a lot of old drones that they've rebuilt, re-equipped, and reloaded. Be polite to them.

[Koekepan]

Explanation of 4/10 shifts:

Many companies that require a regular presence with some overlap between shifts to ensure regular handoffs, split their shifts into four, ten-hour day length shifts. Then each shift generally overlaps on Wednesday (or some other day, but Wednesday means that one leg of the shift works Sunday, the other Saturday, so everyone gets some regular weekend day off). Then, for the real 24/7 folks, the ten hour shifts are staggered across the 24 hours of a day, so that you actually have six hours during which the three shifts are handing off ...

The key message is: most of the people working in this environment are in the office, on this day.

[Koekepan]

Mary Margaret mcMahon

Mary is not a big-timer in this profession, but she's professional, reliable, and capable. She's tapped into some of the more independent groups, so while her prices aren't necessarily the best, her scope is excellent.

Henry Swift

Henry is half bookseller, half antiquarian, and all datahound. If you want to know what's hot in tattoos this month, he neither knows nor cares. If you want to know what the legendary haunts of manticores are, he not only can sell you a book on that, but he probably knows most of what's in that book off by heart - as well as two dozen others. What Fuchi's latest deck design teasers are? He couldn't really help you. Who might have been instrumental in the creation of a mainframe from the '80s? He probably even could dig up their Ph.D. thesis. He has expensive taste in coffee.

Billy Morgan

Billy is a guy who will build what you need - as long as it's machine-based, anyway. He's a bit of a prankster, in his way, but his technical work is unimpeachable. He's in high demand with Seattle region R&D shops that need his services for custom prototyping work, as well as the use of his equipment. You don't stuff a van with a full 3D fabrication and packaging setup, without it costing a lot of money - which should tell you what he bills for his time as well. But it's worth every penny. One of the results is that, not only can he repair or customise broken decks, but he can also probably tell you who's working on some new, exciting hotness.

[pbangarth]

I'm wondering what spirit domain a research facility is. My guess is a hearth spirit is more for a home/residence, and may apply only to the cafeteria and kitchen. The rest ... a city spirit?

Oh, and the Owl shaman thanks you for starting us off in the @&@^ daytime.

[Koekepan]

I'm wondering what spirit domain a research facility is. My guess is a hearth spirit is more for a home/residence, and may apply only to the cafeteria and kitchen. The rest ... a city spirit?

Oh, and the Owl shaman thanks you for starting us off in the @&@^ daytime.

Oh, I'm sure you'll be fine. You're just tired, coming on the tail end of your night shift, and in the office for the Wednesday morning birthday cake stuff before going home to roost.

Consider the workshop/R&D facility also to be a hearth domain, but a different hearth domain from the office space. The spirits drifting around the office space look more like sararimen, while the R&D space is more like technicians and labtechs in general feel.

[pbangarth]

Hey! Happy Birthday, ntwi!

[Koekepan]

You know you want his smarts when the biodrones emerge from the fermentation sumps and start consuming human flesh.

[ntwi]

Thanks. Birthdays get strange as a parent. The kids are so wrapped up in them while I picked up a new set of d6's for my latest runner. No mini's for shadowrun so I'll get a new set of dice for a character. My wife laughs at me but doesn't mind as they're cheap and don't take much space... Far less than the assorted 3d terrain I've build at various time for D&D (that's been acquired and repurposed by my little girl, but thats another story).

On a different note, I've finally gotten the rest of the details locked in, and that money disappears fast when you're trying to cover all the bases. Given your preference for the Main Book, I'm gleefully ignoring the programs from the Matrix book to save on money, the legwork heavy style of Matrix run you've posted elsewhere seems to mesh with that. I was second guessing myself on the bioware by the end, but I squeaked it in with ~500Y in my pocket and one month of lifestyle. But with two cars, a handful of drones, a decent cyberdeck with a stack of software and assorted other things with lights that blink, I have my toys, heck I even upgraded my Neo-A Trid-Pirate contact to level 2. Give me a few minutes to edit the other post.

[Koekepan]

Happy birthday, indeed!

And little girls repurposing Daddy's gaming gear is their prerogative. It's written in the stars, I think.

Yes, I tend to go well with legwork, prep and so on. Of course, if you WANT to do things the hard way, that's always an option, but ... why would you?

And I have a birthday treat for you when you get active, so you can look forward to that.