Greets,

According to what I have read Renraku Arcology in 2070 has been re-opened as low income housing for the morally destitute. After receiving a bit of dosh, my character, Sonya former guard at Renraku Arcology has decided to relocate back into the pyramid. She is also Deus' agent in the Network.

Now she wants to explore the floors that were sealed after the Deus debacle. What could be found there?

I was thinking she could re-open the labyrinth and maybe even find the minotaur again. Since some of the machines are built on knowbot technology they could also conceivably have survived. Hiding away in the arcology infrastructure killing when someone gets too close, stealing power when no-one is looking.

Another idea is that her former partner was turned into a cyberzombie, could he have survived in stasis?

It's the Arc... Just about anything is possible.

For what it's worth, I ran an adventure for my group that involved the ACHE ... lemme see if I can find the session notes one of my players took ...

Here they are, in order for the entire adventure:

• http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/se...ark/070109.html
• http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/se...ark/070116.html
• http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/se...ark/070123.html
• http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/se...ark/070130.html
• http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/se...ark/070206.html
• http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/se...ark/070213.html
• http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/se...ark/070220.html
• http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/se...ark/070227.html

Favorite excerpt: "Giant huge pyramidal arcologies never turn out horribly ... "

Hi Aaron,

That was a fun read.

Thanks,

-Chrysalis

Personally, I plan to use the inhabited floors of the ACHE as a setting for an imported CthulhuTech adventure - with it's presumed background count of at least 3, it's just perfect to hide a little horrible somwthing or a strange magical artifact.

Some floors are still sealed, but presumably more for corp research (or rather, government - after all, the ACHE is a government faciklity now, since Raku dosn't foot the bill of cleaning up their mess). I could imagine a factory floor still operational, part of the labyrinth as a government training faciklity for one or another obscure purpose, and some zombie rooms also, both for clandestine/black research or interrogation of political prisoners and as an internemnt facility for magical inmates of the highest threat level.

Rogue drones, maybe even AI'd by favour of a shard of Deus fleeing there after the second crash, would also be an interesting idea. Maybe a nanite cloud that can take on human form as an AI (there was this sludge drone that didn't make it in the oficial book, but circulated ion the internet in the same file the centipede drone was in), and some subordinate standard spiders, arachnoids and maybe a gorgon as subscribed drones run by robot pilots slaved to the AI's primary node, the Nano-Terminator thing. They could even live in the arcology, undetected ... for the time being, that is.

As for Chrys' character: her former colleague might well be a test subject in said Area 51-ish government facility. He could also be a wreck of a person granted living (vegetationg) space in one of the hospital floors, with all the valuable bits and pieces of deus cyber removed and barely cared for, depending on what the character is to perceive the arcology like.

She could also, of course, hear about the Flow Paragon and want to get back int ouch with her master, looking for a way to do that in the ACHE Matrix (that room in Dunkie's testament comes to mind). Said partner then might be an arc survivor like her, who was rescued before fully programmed, and awakened as a 'mancer with fitting paragon in 71 (and propably a serious, serious matrix addict by now).

@Aaron: Like your idea of the ACHE's inside. Mind if I borrow that? Also, fun little adventure and amusing read, too.

After a while I think it would be interesting on running a few adventures based on the ACHE. I could see my character doing it between runs (and most likely running into a lot of other urban explorers/shadowrunners).

However, I kind of like keeping the labyrinth as dangerous as it was.

I used the ACHE's inhabited section as a sort of halfway house/prison for the SINless. The players breached it using smugglers and than broke into the upper floor persuing the back story of the group's technomancer who had lost a good chunk of memeories beign tested on in the Renraku arcology when it went apeshit. It was one of my group's favorite runs.

Actually that reminds me of a run I Gm'ed a few years ago. The 'runners came up with the location of an abandoned military base in Nevada. Apparently during the Ghost Dance War the mountain that the facility was built into erupted as part of a chain across the Western US. The 'runners decided to run a clandestine salvage op on the area. Like usual a certain player of mine managed to accidentally blow it up. But on the plus side they got some good swag.

Knock yourself out.


I'll pass the compliment along to the woman who wrote the session notes. =i)

The darkened bathroom dripped with crying wallpaper. Charlie splashed his way through the stagnant pools. His hand was slick with blood and he was having trouble paying attention. His biomonitor had been warning him for the past hour now that he should be seeking medical attention.

There was a metal skittering sound coming from the corridor. Charlie breathed in, his heart beating faster as his adrenaline started pumping again. It would soon be on him. The lights flickered for a moment, before coming on. The copper taps and dirty porcelain sinks came into stark contrast. The sound kept getting louder. He pulled his hand up, the gun in his hand a mess of his own blood. He could feel the blood drip into the water, he could smell it.

He could see the tentacles weave around the doorway, and then the central mass appeared next. The gun fired twice the shells ejecting on the floor and his shots ringing out and striking centre mass. The thing slithered closer it's metallic irises glowing blue and Charlie fired off another two shots. One of the irises stopped glowing and it was now in the room with him. It disarmed charlie as if he was a child and it dragged its appendages from the water and pinned him there. There with dripping implements it did not stop until Charlie had been completely shredded.

In the middle of what was once Renraku Arcology lies the Labyrinth. Whatever its purpose has been lost to Deus, but the inhabitants still play their deadly game. Two such creatures still exist. The minotaur and the medusa. It is said that in the middle of the Labyrinth lies a great treasure. Many have been sent to find it and none have returned.

In my personal opinion, nothing that Deus built to torture people (SPECIFICALLY the labyrinth & minotaur) remains in 2070. The idea that the army would just leave a ginormous semi-autonomous killing machine collection around doing nothing strikes me as ludicrous, given that:
1) if it got loose, they'd all look like big fat toolboxes;
2) it might be worth selling to someone;
3) they might be able to use it themselves.

It just strikes me as a monumentally poor tactical decision to 'clean out' a hive like that and then deliberately ignore huge chunks of it. You'd want to go floor by floor, room by room, burning anything that you couldn't guarantee was harmless.

Yeah, I have to agree with that. after all the trouble they went through they'd have cleaned it out top to bottom with out leaving anything around to clean out again.

That having been said, who knows what was hidden away. That should be more the idea of the sealed areas. There are not 'monsters' there but possibly the areas to structurally damaged to be safe and right now and someday they'll have the money to fix them up. but someone who was one of Deus pawns should be able to know what's going on, bits of code hidden in maintence systems? maybe nano-bots? think of the Borg in 'Trek. it looks ugly but harmless, until someone in the know can lure in a few people and...

There were several banks and a whole mall full of jewellery shops before Deus shut it down. It is possible that while the vaults have been emptied someone might have stashed some of the valuables in a disused ventilation duct.

It's a shame that the ACHE has to be both absolutely chock full of people and then abandon certain areas. It seems... inconsistent.

-Chrysalis

Ever wander where you weren't supposed to? like in a train station or hotel or mall? it's amazing how quickly you can go from 'crowded' to 'creepy'. I was shopping at the King of Prussia Mall a few weeks ago. lots of people, lots of crowds and at the back of a store selling off it's Halloween stuff, there was a weird area, clearly backing onto the 'guts' of the mall with other people there. The halloween place was going under, the staff would probably not have noticed if you walkedo ff with stuff, or cared, but this was just different, old toys and tech stuff that I think if i brought it up to the counter they'd be more likely to ask 'what is this from" than just ring it up. It was a very odd sense of being very alone in a building I new was stuffed with people.

and that's without homocidal robots and sociopathic computers.

The King of Prussia mall? You sure have weird names for your malls.

But yes. Stray off the public areas (something I really like to do) and you will find that besides them, there hardly is anybody.

It is the mall in the town of King of Prussia. In size second only to Mall of America in North America.

Other than, of course, the Edmonton Mall.

My take on ACHE:

It's not as nice as you've been told. Yes, Deus is gone. Gone for good, except for a few loose drones and ultraviolet systems here and there. You don't find those unless you go looking for them. The only lingering effect that fiasco had on the place is phychological. Well, and magical, as the whole place does have a background count of 3.

The government had to find a use for it, of course, since they were stuck with it. Turning it into public housing seemed like such a great idea at the time. Put the low-income people there, put them to work. Perfect for all those sinless bastards who somehow got themselves a SIN during the amnesty programs back in '65. But the thing is, everyone knew what had happened here. Noone lives here by choice. You sign up for HUD, you risk getting assigned to the Arcology. A lot of people would rather be homeless.The ACHE has therefore never been filled to capacity. Once it word got out, people simply stopped applying for HUD. Which also suits the government fine. Saves them money either way. The ACHE is concentrated on a few of the lower floors. More areas above that have been converted into houseing, but there aren't enough residents to fill them. The Arc is mostly empty.

When I say noone wants to be there, that includes the guards. The military has to keep the peace throughout much of the Arc, because of the (imagined) threat of Deus resurging or the very real danger of the nukes in the basement. But Duty in the Arc is despised by the soldiers that draw it. Many of them take it out on the citizens there, others are so easily bribeable even those forced to live there can afford it.

When I say noone wants to be there, I lie. Any empty building, no matter it's reputation, will attract squatters. The army closed the origional Orc Underround entrance, but it wasn't long till they opened a new one. Or 3. With the changes Deus had made to the layout and the security, noone had the whole place mapped anymore. It was rediculously easy to make new ways in that bypassed the security the Army had set up. So long as you didn't head to the basement. The upper floors are now home to thousands of squatters who claim areas of the building for themselves and tap into the utility lines that run through the building. The Guards are aware they are there, but feel no need to tell their superiors outside the ACHE about the extent of the squatter problem. That might lead to having to clear the upper levels of the Arc again, something noone really wants to do. If a few crazies want to risk their sanity up there, not my problem. For their part, the squatters do their best to aviod the survielled areas and not to siphon off too much. As long as they at least try to hide, the guards look the other way.

The ACHE residents and the squatters upstairs have a lot of contact, surprisingly. If a squatter gets some flats on, he'll look like any newcomer to the ACHE himself, so they can freely mingle. SINs are only checked when you enter or leave ACHE through official entrances and at the supply depots. Sure, they can spot check you, but guards only do that when fishing for bribes. Hell, the ones at the entrances and stores take bribes too. Squatters bring in the good black market stuff. The citizens can give access to utilities and supplies from the depots. The best nightlife places are all squatter-run in the floors just above the ACHE proper, if you are in the know. Even a few of the soldiers have been known to kick back there after duty. And the kids from both groups join many of the same gangs.

That said, there are some distinct cultural differences between the two groups. Given that they are there against their will and subject to constant surveilence, and given that their part of the Arc has been santitized, ACHE residents are a pretty paraniod lot. Most of the squatters, having chosen to live among the ruins of the upper floors, are a more adventerous lot. The residents are also fairly passive, whether thats a common personality trait for people who choose to sign away their freedom for 3 square a day and a bed, or if the government is drugging the food is an open question. The folks upstairs are a pretty inventive lot, born scroungers and kitbashers. A resident will be wearing the flats the government provides, a squatter who isn't is disguise tends to look like a junkyard mechanic.

One thing everyone agrees on is that Technomancers are not welcome in the Arc. When a few residents of the ACHE turned out to be technomancers, They were lynched in a massive riot. The army dispersed the crowd, but only after the accused technomancers were killed. At first the squatters chose to accept their technomancers, as well as those from the ACHE that escaped lynching. However, the more time those technomancers spent on the ARC's systems, the more, well, twisted they became. Over the months, each one woudl wind up doing something unforgivable that would bet them banished or killed. Experience has made them more wary of technomancers now. That said, a tribe of dissonant technomancers has taken up residence in the uppermost floors of the arc. Most Arc-runners just leave them the heck alone.

Arc-running is basically spelunking within the arcology, a dangerous hobby for ACHE kids and basically a lifestyle for the squatters. Arc-runners are the only people with reliable maps of the place, having crawled through a significant chunk of it. They go through finding useful salvage, new places to tap into utilities, and the fun and interesting sights. Arc-runner gangs claim territory and leave their tags all over, and settle disputes with races through the superstructure.

Speaking of settling disputes: Guns are rarely used in the Arcology. They're forbidden in the ACHE, about the only thing that the guards won't overlook. The squatters frown apon them as well: the sound of gunshots can attract the guards in the lower levels or drones in the upper levels, and in the areas they typically reside a missed shot will either peirce a utility line, or ricochet unpredictably. Taser weapons, to, are frowned apon as the electric damage can fuck with all the wireing and other crap in the building, and you never know when you might accidentally electrify something you are standing on anyway. In most of the areas you would expect danger in, it's fairly close quarters. Therefore, melee weapons are the norm.

The Arc's astral space deserves it's own special mention. The background count in the ACHE is 2. It's been sanitized, both by the elimination of Deus, the architectural retrofitting, and cleansing metamagic. However, it's level of dehumanization and the generally held fear of the place keeps the mana levels from normalizing further. In the upper reaches, the background count is generally 3, though it can go as high as 5 in some of the old zombie rooms and surgical centers. The labyrinth still exists on the astral plane. The terror of the place left a very strong astral imprint. It's ever changing, adapting itself to the personal fears of those who enter it. Local legend holds that it is an alchera, and sometimes will manifest in the arcology, trapping unwary arc-runners. It also holds that at the center is a gateway to the metaplane of fear. The Arc's astral space has also become home to many dark spirits who like the atmosphere. These spirits are a major problem in the less-explored places. Oftentimes they take the form of the inventions of the insane AI, which adds to the confusion.

Given the background count, the Arc is a fairly inhospitible place for mages. That doesn't imply there aren't any in the Arc. The Astral space preservation society has an office in the ACHE, and frequently perform cleansing metamagic and Ward the place against the spirits it attracts. They work in cooperation with a few street shamans among the squatters. The sad story is that the background count isn't from a lack of mana, but a flavoring of it, and there are those twisted individuals who's style of magic is compatible with that flavor. Toxic mages of many varieties find the Arc to be a power site, including a number of "mad scientist" types.

Overall, the Arcology is a little bit of the barrens in downtown seattle. Runners who pull of a job may find it the perfect place to hide, if they know the right ways in, and many things of value, from black market goods to Remnant Deus-Tech can be found there.

Not according to King of Prussia, but I think they count the outlets and other shops that cluster around it.

Very nice writeup. I believe if I ever run a game in that part of the world again I would use something very close. Kinda got away from using Seattle as a main location while I was living there.

The Edmonton Mall is the biggest mall in North America. The Mall of America is the biggest mall in North America if you count the parking lot.

If you live in America I think the obvious answer is yes, parking lots do count.

I like PlatonicPimp's interpretation of the ACHE a lot. Good stuff.

Agreed, that's some solid cyberpunk shit man.

I know this is a month later and all, but god damn Pimp, that is an awesome writeup of the ACHE. Totally makes me want to write stuff in there.