Rating 2 for purposes of EW.

~J

Most of the people who get put in those situations are grunts, and aren't the best customers in a longshot because they cause Docwagon to actually use its assets. The best customers, the ones with the platinum or super platinum accounts are corp higher ups who have their own security, don't do anything "stupid", and have Docwagon "just in case".

EDIT- Who would Docwagon most likely send a team after first if said team was equal distance or close to equal distance, a LS cop with a basic contract in some urban hellhole or a corp exec. with a super platinum I don't know got too drunk passed out and hit his head on something. They will always go with the exec. first, there's a reason the high level contracts have bio-moniters and the low level don't.

EDIT2- If I've seemed argumentive these last few days sorry, but some of the recent topics are near and dear to me. I want to see peoples' opinions and try to explain mine, which I admit I have a hard time doing in type.

Well, I think they'd go after both, since LS likely has a contract with DocWagon, and if they keep letting LS officers twist in the wind, then the aren't worth the money they're being paid, and there's always Crash Cart.

LS guys aren't really prime organlegging targets anyway, at least not for the kind of professional kidnap/torture type guys you're talking about, who capture live people then vivisect them, ala Touristas.

I mean, if you want to play SR like a bad Eli Roth movie, that's you're right. Personally, that's not the tone I'm looking for, and realistically, I don't see that kind of operation surviving long; it's so lurid that the media would be all over it, any "hooding" Shadowrunners (and it seems like a fairly good portion of the high level runners in the sourcebooks do some hooding from time to time) would get dragged in after you kidnap and de-bone their niece or something, and lastly...this seems like exactly what Tamanous would want to avoid: living people with relatives who might come looking for them.

Yes, they could clean astral signatures and disinfect their working areas, but proper and thorough cleaning is expensive, and when you're marketing to the poor, you need to keep costs down.

More likely organlegging targets? KIA gangers. There's nearly an endless supply of these morons, they basically create the supply themselves, and are probably too drugged up to even bother pulling their dead buddies back to safety. You could just roll around with a van picking up bodies as the opportunity arises, and probably meet the quotas you'd need. Why bother kidnapping and torturing that nice mother of 8 children when she ducks out for some groceries when it's just as easy to drag in that guy bleeding out around the corner from her squat?

Lone drunks, drifters, etc. would probably round out the rest of their harvest. People aren't stupid. If organlegging runners and/or Tamanous ran around live-capturing random people from residential areas, people would adapt. Travelling in packs, pitching in for security patrols, etc.

Not saying they wouldn't go for both just they'd get the exec. first. You are correct in saying most of the "donars" would be street people, my point was Docwagon is not a sure thing as far as safety from organlegging or any other sixth world mischief is concerned. It really depends on where people live. Is Tamanous going to snatch someone off a AAA or even a A/B street? Hell no. Probably not even a C area, D or lower though I can see it, sometimes, it's all about risk vs. reward.

I can see that people who die in a shadowclinic getting either sold to organleggers or even recycled by the streetdoc. Maybe not all of them if they have friends waiting in the lobby, but a few bits and pieces. Even if they make it how are they to know they are leaving with everything they came in with?

Shadowrunners are rare for a few reasons.

1. many are already employed as mercs.

2. shadowrunners are commiting illegal acts instead of enforcing the law.

3. a great deal of the skills required for shadowrun are only possessed by
a few individuals. (matrix and magic mainly)

The numbers are not indicative of danger level at all, especially when you start getting into special anti-drug, organized crime units, swat, htr, etc.

First to start out Jon C you're making an awful lot of assumptions. I'm going to leave it at that except to say this: All gangers aren't stupid, and all LS cops aren't total morons either. We can argue these points about a fictional world all day long but I'll just say it's all in how you play it.

On to my point. Even though this post has answered most of my questions in a roundabout way I still say that there would be a market for second-hand organs. I'm not so sure it would be ghoul food since most ghouls are feral, which people seem to forget, and the ones who aren't don't form a large market base. You're not going to make a lot of money on the two ghouls in Seattle who are intelligent enough to have a means of income and have an organlegger contact.

Secondly just because the world has clone replacements doesn't mean you will get them. Let's just say that SR world has a catch-all Bacta Tank that they can put you in while you are wanting for that cloned organ. Hospital lifestyle costs 2k Nuyen a day. That's a big chunk of change to wait on a cloned organ, nevermind if you need something right now.

The fact is that people whether corps, street, whoever will need second hand organs even if the market is small. That's means people are going to be there to provide that service. Hell if you work with organleggers you may only be one of four Shadowrunners that does, and you may not make that much money but last time I checked Shadowrunning doesn't pay that well either. Even 1k is one month of low lifestyle.

Okay, now that the off topic Lonestar talk is done. I think live snatching only comes up in a business sense when someone needs a specific organ undamaged. It would be kinda counterproductive to shot someone whose liver or kindey you need in the gut with EXEX ammo. You'd knock them out, does em with narcoject, or get them with a stun spell. Hell, if you only need something like a kidney or even an eye you don't even have to kill them. Just dump them somewhere.

I recall reading (and might be wrong) that the average Lone Star officer signs a contract of employment that allows the Star to install cyberware if needed. So the basic DocWagon contract is just to bring back a live body (all that training and experience is expensive) that they can slap metal limbs on and send back out to work.

Organlegging's a very dangerous task. You can't just drive down the street in a bulldog stepvan, tasering people and pitching them in the back. Not that anyone's suggesting that, of course.

Organlegging is the next step above mugging, and I'd wager it's the mugger who taps someone a bit too hard on the back of the head who gets into the biz the fastest. The critical problem with it is the severity of the crime. People dislike muggers, but really hate murders. And then you have someone who not only murdered, but treated the person like they were a car, a collection of valuable parts to be broken up and redistributed.

This means that while there are probably (at any given time) a few dozen groups of organleggers, they're being arrested (or killed by other organleggers) and new groups fill the void. If someone gets sick and Doctor A discovers that their 'new' kidney wasn't new or even theirs, then that's a red flag. Doctor B who implanted the kidney swears he bought it legit from Supplier C, who is probably legit (on the surface) but says that he bought that kidney from Organlegger D, and here's the info (picture, name, maybe even back account number used for payment) and BAM, one less organlegger. Maybe even Supplier C goes down, and possibly Doctor B loses his license (and moves to a new area and starts all over). So there's a lot of risk involved. I would imagine it's a lot more profitable to sell simchips, legal or otherwise. Plus you don't have to worry about the freezer in your truck breaking down and your cargo going all ripe on you.

Yes, Lonestar can implant stuff into their "cops", they don't even have to be injured, or even aware they are being implanted. An employee can go in for a routine checkup and come out with cyberware of somekind.

There's one organlegging ring to rule them all, Tamanous. They might not do all the business, but they are damn near close. These are as mentioned before bad, bad people who, do things that will make the most jaded corp exec go "Damn, wish I thought of that."

Does anyone actually know what the Azzies do with all those sacrifical vitcims? That's something to think about during your characters next Stuffer Shack run.

I just found this, courtesy of This Is True's Current Issue

Here's the piece that I'm referring to:
SPARE PARTS: Michelle Eather, 37, of Woodbridge, Tas., Australia,
discovered she was a perfect match for a U.S. man who needs a kidney
transplant, so she agreed to donate her left kidney to the man, whom
she has never met. But when news of her donation broke, she started
getting calls from people wanting her other kidney -- or other organs.
"There have probably been more than 2,000 inquiries," Eather said.
"Some people email me twice a day." (Hobart Mercury) ...Do something
nice and everybody wants a piece of you.

The columnist's comment at the end is amusing... and having been around here too much, I can see it being an inspiration for some runs.

but the point is, look at the reaction that she got! Even with cloned organs in 2070, there's still a market of desperate people that would take any means they can. In modern times, it means bothering a potential doneree; in the Sixth World, it means hiring people to find doners, willing or not.

(as an aside, I would recommend signing up for that newsletter)