stevebugge,

You ever actually try to find 'real' entrances to the Ork Underground?

It always hit me as kind of silly that nothing goes on in Kansas in SR. It's a border state in the 2070s, and it has an extremely colorful (although ancient by SR standards) history.

I miss the Brat & Brau. The back room would have been great for meets with the fixer.

Ok that brings up unwanted images of the Village people, handcuffs and boots... *shudder*

...so, you from Madtown?

Haven't been back there in a while. Miss those summer & early fall days sitting outside Memorial Union on the lakefront drinking beer. Lat time I was there I was totally impressed by the explosion ofcraft Brewing. When I was in school there were maybe 6 beer taps (Schlitz, Pabst, Miller, one german import, Buttwiper & Strohs), Now it's like walking into a McMenamin's in Portland. A veritable wall of taps, most of them local brewers from Dane County & the surrounding area.

@TheOneRonin: I will, lived in NO for a while back in the mid 70s. One of my current characters, Hurricane Hannah, is a Cajun.

Real Cajun? As in, laissez le bon temps rouler, crawfish boiling, shirmp-boat driving, bayou-teche swimming, zydeco listening, squeeze-box playing cajun?

I grew up dead in the middle of Acadiana (where all the REAL Cajuns come from), so I'm pretty well versed in Cajun lore. I speak some cajun french (as well as some Parisian french) as well. And normally, I don't have much of an accent. However, when I get really pissed off, or really drunk, I sound like this guy.

Yeah, nothig ever really goes into the events of the CAS secession either. I figure that period was marked in Kansas as Bleeding Kansas 2: Electric Boogaloo. And honestly, in 2070 that's just 36 years ago. Everyone in positions of authority in that region vividly remembers the sanguinary secession bloodbath that marked Kansas staying in the UCAS while the Confedacy got everything in Missouri between Highway 44 and the Mississippi.

-Frank

...all that and throws one hell of a punch (8DV) too (calls it her "Jambalaya Jab")

When I was down there, I had a good friend who was a Cajun. Yeah we did the ol' crawfish boils, a little foot stomp'n to Zydeco, & got pretty drunk. Didn't drive a shrimp boat though as he was a Pre-Med at Loyola.

You gotta PM me with a few good phrases for Hannah to use, been a while.

Also wouldn't mind seeing your work-ups on NO. I've been pretty preoccupied with Beograd, Zagreb, Hilo, Milwaukee, Madison, Tsiolkovskiy Station, and High Star Station.

Hmm... how much in the way of Mafia, Yak, and Triad? I'd bet it'd be rather light on all of them. Maybe non-existant in Yaks and Triad, but maybe some Mafia somewhere?

Basically, where are the hubs of the underworld in Kansas? XD

But the succession thing.. whoa. That would probably put Wichita as some sort of crazy area for UCAS opposition somewhere?

That's exactly the kinda stuff I'm talkin' about!

As for where the criminal element would reside, that's not a problem either, really Kansas City, MO and St. Louis ensures that there's a Mafia presence at least neighboring Kansas at all times. The KC metropolitan area (remember, Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas are seperated only by a river) combines for 2 million people today, which makes it only 300 thousand less people than say, the Denver metro area, and it's position as the center of a border state between two countries could make things very, very interesting. And like Frank said, If you don't think that there isn't sharply divided opinion on each side of that CAS-UCAS border, you're kidding yourself. I'm just dying to know more about how everyone decided to cut Missouri in half.

Basically, Kansas is a really mellow place, if you don't count tornadoes or it's long and violent history as prime border war real estate.

Really? Eeeenteresting.

Kansas (both KS and MO) have less than a 2% Asian makeup today. It'll be higher in 2070, but hardly enough to make the Triads or Yaks more than a minor nuisance.

Organized crime in Kansas has historically been done by white people and black people - unsurprising considering who lives there (almost half of the people in Kansas City are White, almost a third are Black - and that's including the fact that Kansas has more stringent social requirements for counting as White or Black than does California). Major historical organized crime rings in Kansas have been American Sicilian Mafia, Irish Mafia (see "Kansas City Family"), Iranian Embezzlement Schemes (see "Indian Springs Bank"), Good Old Boy Smuggling (see "Kansas City Masacre"), Child Pornographers (though that was due to a since closed loophole in the Kansas rules of digital enforcement), militant Hate Groups (see "Westborough Baptist Church"), and CIA payoffs to dictators (see "Kansas Liberia Connection" and "Saudi Kansas Payoffs").

So the organized crime you'll see in Kansas really doesn't look a lot like what you see in coastal areas. It's not based on smuggling things through the waterfront, there isn't any fucking waterfront (well, there's the river, but you know what I mean). What you see is influence peddling, and severe white collar crime. And you see really chicken-shit third rate criminal groups who do their smuggling out the back of a Chevy Malibu. You see seriously rich dudes with blood on their hands walk off a plane in Charles B. Wheeler Airport, and you see dudes running child prostitution rings out of their shed.

What organized crime has going for it is that it isn't coastal. People don't know what to look for. You can have a meth lab running constantly and people will pretty much leave you alone. Kansas has a huge meth sub culture and almost no public awareness of meth. It's also a hub for computer crime because of the low levels of awareness and oversight. Expect Kansas in 2070 to be a huge depot of BTL. People will have shelves full of dream chips in plain sight and won't get hastled by the popos.

----

So let's get extrapolating:

In 2070 you have a major criminal gang that is straight up a front for an African Warlord. I'm not kidding, and this wouldn't even be the first time this happened. They bring women and children in from Somalia, using naturalized citizens and fake documentation to get them across the border as "family". Then they keep them in locked buildings and sell the use of their bodies to people who don't care if their partners speak English.

In 2070 you have a group of Voudounistas displaced from the CAS after the "Shedim Scare" was used to crack down even harder on Houngans in New Orleans. These Francophone or just plain weird guys have a tough time being accepted by Kansas society and don't get hired for honorable work much. Militant followers of the Loa do the standard immigrant crime stuff backed up with the power of strange magic and possession. Really it works very much like a Triad Tong except that it has family and friends in Havana instead of Hong Kong.

In 2070 you have a major group of secessionists. They believe that Kansas should have joined the Confederacy, and they don't think that the Confederacy is doing its part to stop blacks and orks. They perform good old fashion protection rackets and small time smuggling - mostly of weapons and street-grade drugs. Their connections end at the Aztlan border so they are forced to rely on drugs that can be made in Kansas and Missouri - Meth, Marijuana, and other things that start with M.

In 2070 you have a group of Matrix criminals who stay in Kansas because of the low enforcement levels and lower land values. Do they have ties to Dissonance Talkers? Maybe, maybe not. But they do make a lot of BTLs, probably some really nasty ones.

In 2070 you have the North American base of an Arabian Assassin Cult. And yes, I'm serious - wouldn't be the first time. They stay in Kansas due to its central location and perform murder for hire throughout North America.

But no Yaks. Some Yak come in and try to do his business in Kansas and a good ol boy would throw a barrel full of gasoline through his windshield.

-Frank

I'm thinking the bus tunnel under Westlake Mall that then goes under 3rd Avenue would be a good place to start looking

Yep. The trouble with running a campaign based in a 2070 Madison is that while it would probably be part of a metroplex/sprawl with Milwaukee by then, there would be no underground anything; no subways, no trog underground, nada. The area is wetland; Madison is built on a swamp.

On the other hand, the area is already pretty heavy into biotech and technology, so it could be played the same way as Gibson's Chiba, only with some feasibility (I've been to Chiba, it's all fish and industry). And I don't see why some part of (if not most of) the population of Chicago wouldn't flee there. It's not like they don't already; Madison was a popular place for gangsters to get away from it all in the 1920's and 30's. Actually, it still is.

Don't forget about all the tunnels connecting every building on campus, which means all of downtown. And this is one of the places leading internet infrastructure development, notice all the wireless and IPv6. So there's reason for a lot of computer and bio tech to be located in MadTown.

Frank, I like your style of Shadowrun.

Not all of downtown, just the campus west of Park Street or so. The water table is at about the same level as the lake, as one out-of-town contractor discovered while trying to build a condo with underground parking back in 2000. Personally, I haven't found an accessible tunnel that got me further east than Bascom Hill.

True dat.

...Bascom Hill, now that does take me back, I once played the carillon in the tower, quite a trip. Also played on the Eastman Hall organ and at the chapel on the corner of State and Lake by Memorial Library (is it still there?).

...kind of of sad, it's such beautiful country over there.

For metal mining I'd have to set things further north & central where the old Iron deposits once were. Although...there could have been rumours of Natural Orichalcium deposits similar to those in Wales. Hmmm...lend a real good meaning to the nickname "God's Country." Now if Ares messed up old Granddad's Bluff, they will have some serious questions to answer. And if they closed down the Leinenkugle's Brewery, up in Menominee, there will be hell to pay.

<edit - change of weapony>
...[Elsie's Wrath repositioning...Link to Big Cheese Array confirmed...Firing mode: Wide Spread, Firing sequence status: Armed. Hey, Ares! Bovines away! ]
<edit: after all, we are talking about Wisconsin here>

Back to all seriousness...

...Not sure how I will present the material since I do not have a personal website to make a link to. It would be way too long to post here even using [ spoiler ] tags (kind of like Knasser's Carnival). When I'm finished with the Milwaukee segment I could request RL email addresses from anyone interested and send it as an attachment. Right now things are on a bit of a hold as I am thick into running my Rhapsody in Shadow campaign (set in Europe).