Okay. I was reading through Seattle 2072, and the Arcology was re-classified from a "place of interest" to a "neighborhood". Hell, it's big enough, I won't argue. In Runner Havens, it's listed as "Seattle Center, Downtown". In "New Seattle", it's listed as "1 Renraku Avenue", which I assume is made up (I haven't tried Google Maps). I can't find my copies of Shutdown or the old Seattle sourcebook to check those right now, but my question is... Where, exactly, is it? I mean, most of the stuff, you can actually see it marked on the maps; or you can even go to Google Maps, look up the address, and say "There! It's in that spot!" But I haven't been able to find a map which specifically pointed out where the Arcology sits.

The best suggestion I've heard is that every map of the Downtown area in Seattle has a little square, on the waterfront, marked "Downtown". One of my friends said that entire square is the Arcology.

Can anyone point me to a reference I'm missing, or whatever?

times like these i can actually enjoy that i ended up trading my tir book for the seattle sourcebook...

from what i can tell, comparing google maps of seattle with the fold out downtown map of the book, the archology straddles yester way from the harbor to 4th avenue street, at least as far south as s king street, and about similarly north (cutting of 5th avenue and reaching almost highway 5, or whatever its called)...

basically its a single big rectangle on the downtown map...

Someone ask Catalyst if I can scan the map from my First Ed book.

But I feel like I am having my leg pulled. They made a map of Seattle and didn't put the ARC? You have got to be Drekking me.


BlueMax

the downtown square on the seattle maps of later books seems to basically be the folded downtown map in the seattle sourcebook.

btw, i did some quick math based on the scale of the google map i was looking at, and the thing is 400 by 600 meter, or about 240000 square meter!

while the aztechology area seems close, the actual pyramid they have there is maybe 1/4 of the total area...

the archology is truly massive...

It really is. I started a project in my foolish youth to CAD up floorplans of the arcology, which involved a bunch of calculation of various aspects of the Arc.

Let me tell you, the Arc is monstrous. I seem to remember it also being fairly steep, all things considered.

Edit: Hobgoblin: RA:S p72 gives dimensions of 780m by 650m base, 969m tall.

~J

could very well be, as i based my measurements on the scale given on the map, and eyeballing the streets bordering the building (if it can be called that).

could be its reaching further towards the harbor then i got the impression of from the map.

If the RA/ACHE is marked on the Seattle 2072 map of downtown, I missed it.

*shrugs*

This is the thing - I know, with absolutely certainty, I've seen a map including it before. However, I currently have access to none of my pre-3rd-ed books and only a handful of my 3rd-ed ones, so I can't check them all...

First Ed back cover has it. I would show you but I ph34r the lawyers.


BlueMax

back of seattle sourcebook most likely.

the folded map there of downtown is very easy to miss.

yup. And even the UCAS military hasn't entirely cleared the place yet. they're still sorting out a lot of the damage caused by the whole Deus incident.

hmm, now that i think about it, deus could probably hide away whole labs and server rooms simply by having some worker drones pack the place in walls and remodeling the nearby hallways.

any building plans that renraku had before the shutdown is probably wildly inaccurate outside of the basic locations of support structures...

heh, i recall reading ones that a university having a audit of their server hardware had to follow a ethernet cable and knock down a lite wall to locate one of their old reliable ones that had been sitting in some corner for years without failure. Now consider a similar situation, only you have no clue where something is hooked up, and going in to the network to see if you can dig out some hardware address is likely to get your hardware or brain fried from whatever deus left behind.

renraku and/or ucas personel probably just cleaned out whatever systems used to run the seattle utilites and other services and just shored of the rest for later study, if ever.

the place is like some old dwarven mountain fortress, long abandoned, where people have started to stay in the "courtyard", with scary stuff hiding in the deep shafts...

a man and AI made moria, perhaps?

not to mention that those Otaku all got out of the arc without getting caught. that implies that there's at least ONE hidden entrance to the Arc somewhere out there that nobody's found yet. Pax and her crew could even be occasionally hiding out somewhere in there and nobody would ever know it.

So was there a resolution to the whole arcology mess and if so what was it? I mean aside from Deus escaping for the life of me I can't remember anything about the area being declared fit or unfit to live in.

basically, the UCAS military spent two years reclaiming key areas of the arc from Deus's brainwashed troops. There was the usual flurry of lawsuits and finger pointing but the Seattle gov ended up with the building on their plate. So they turned it into low rent housing. Ok, section 8 slums.

But aside from building a section of slums and reclaiming the mall, about 90% of the arcology is still unreclaimed. The UCAS military controls the reactor complex in the basement, and they are still sifting through portions of the executive suites...but that's it. about 90% of that building remains unexplored and sealed off.

In theory, almost anything could be hidden there.

I have a character called Sonya who lives in the other 90% of the ARC. She is a guardian in some ways, being one of the banded.

If you'relooking at RL Seattle, the archology is where they currenlt have frontier square. lots of clubs and bars and winos and where you can get the otur for the RL underground, just a little north of the two athletic fields.

Pioneer Square.

Someone plotted it on a google map, but I can't vouch for the veracity (for example, they have the Pacific Science Center located at Harvard and Mercer, despite the fact that it's located in the Seattle Center, and clearly marked as such by google). What I want to know is what happened to the stadiums? (or the Kingdome, if that was never demolished in SR continuity).

Seattle Downtown Map

Mind, Pioneer Square is not. It's a triangle.

Also, it's a shame that the http://www.seattlemystery.com/Mystery Bookshop was moved/demolished/bought/absorbed in the construction. It's a great little store.

looks about right to me, compared to the seattle sourcebook map.

seems i had underestimated the distance out into the bay earlier...

Our current SR 4 game seems to be heading towards the place. I can't wait to try to crack it open.

If you head to my SR site (see sig) and click on the 'Game Resources' link there is a 'Downtown Seattle' map complete with the Arcology and other places of interest.

sorry to say dave, but the location of the archology seems to be a bit to far south...

its upper right corner should be right next to highway 5, and cut of 5th avenue...

Godamn you are right! In all the years I've been using the map I never noticed...

Comparing it to the original Seattle Sourcebook I can see the northern edge should extend up to the Glass Onion.

This is an interesting topic. It seems to me, based on the resources referenced, that there is no definitive answer. I like the map that Dave put up, because the location made more sense to me geographically. Easy access to I-5, Airport Way would go right to the Arc's front door. Of course, it means no Safeco Field, Seahawks Stadium, rerouting Hwy 99... .and who knows where the present day rail tracks would go. But if the Arc was further north, quite a few of Seattle's historic buildings would be gone (btw, Seattle's tallest skyscraper, Columbia Center... its SW corner would be just be on top of the Arc's NE foundation). I also didn't like that the Arc would be right on top on Pioneer Square and 1st. Ave. I guess I have a soft spot for those blocks. However, it seems that address references point to the Arc being that far north into downtown proper, so maybe we can assume that Seattle's skyline and streets are radically different than it is in 2009.

The present day Seattle underground tour begins at the old Doc Maynard's Saloon on 1st and Yesler. That happens to be smack dab in the middle of the Arc, according to the published Arc address. Does that mean the Ork Underground should go underneath the ARC? Doesn't make much sense to me because the ARC has a ton of sub-floors, IIRC.

It does. one of the ingress points in Brainscan and Shutdown was an ork underground entrance into one of the subfloors.

I would assume initial construction collapsed portions of the old underground as they excavated and then they were built back later after construction was complete.

Years ago I played around with modeling the Arch in Google earth. I'll dig up the pics and post them. The thing is fukn Huge. Almost unbelieveably so.

the pics are google earth screen shots. the size of the building is exactly accurate so far as the location, foot print, and elevations. However. I didnt' find enough time to figure out how to build a polygon in google earth so it turned out a step pyramid because I could only figure out how to build a seris of oblong blocks. IIRC when I posted these years ago there was another guy who had made a better picture with a smooth sided pyramid. Cant find that thread now.

Note: the 3D moddles of the other buildings are from google earth and that the Kingdome and the baseball park are still there. Also currently seattle has a height restriction on buildings of something like 70 stories because the runways of the SEATAC airport are directly south. Apparently they're routing air traffic around this monstrocity.

Here are some links:
http://i565.photobucket.com/albums/ss100/O...RenrakuArc1.jpg
http://s565.photobucket.com/albums/ss100/OneTrikPony/

Theo rigial Seattle map, going back to 1st Ed also misplaced Pike's Place Market the tag is on the wrong place.
The psorts stadiums are a serious problem because when SR first came out there was the kingdome, making that great pic on the cover of NAN1. Since then of course it started to fall down, then it was knocked down and two stadiums were put up further south towards the docklands and towards Tacoma.

Anyone know if Charrette has ever made a comment on any of the hcnages in the SR world?

That is a big twinkie. Given that the current tallest building in Seattle is 295 meters. I'd expect the arc to cast a hefty shadow over the whole downtown area during winter.

The Burj Dubai in UAE will supposedly be 818 meters when finished soon. The Arc trumps that as well.

http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?cityID=27
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?25002165

the shadow of the Arch is, in fact, a cannon issue. It's writen as having 'light tunnels' that carry sunlight through the building for both interior lighting and to progect natural sunlight on those parts of seattle that will never see another natural sunset. Lost a character trying to ecape out of one once.

The Google maps placement posted earlier in this thread is pretty close.

Based on the detailed downtown maps in Shadowrun (1st Ed.) and the Seattle Sourcebook I created the image linked below which shows the Arcology, its docks, and the two new streets along its other three edges.

• Renraku Arcology (location and size) (updated image)

Once the Sixth World Wiki starts accepting uploads again, I will post it there. — Right now I am getting "Internal error: The upload directory (public) is not writable by the webserver." when I try.

Yeah, still working on the rest of the maps. I've got a few of them posted in the "Community Projects" forum.

And yes, I noticed that the Pacific Science Center is in a different place. Apparently the devs have moved it as well as other real world buildings. Some relocations make sense but some others I think were simply errors. Whatever the case, I am placing these map markers where the devs say they exist in Shadowrun 2072.

i could have sworn it reaches as far south as s king st, not just s jackson st.

but then i only have seattle sourcebook, not SR1.

SR1 shows it reaches about half way past S Jackson St but short of King St.

I was inspired to set up a photobucket account to show my player aid/homage to the SR1 map.
http://s838.photobucket.com/albums/zz305/s...MistyRotate.jpg

I'm with Erik. It seems to make more sense to build the arcology further south over what is currently parking lots, docks, and stadium rather than demolish existing skyscrapers and historical buildings. Besides, the Japanese are experts at land reclamation, what with 20% of current day Tokyo Bay having been made into real estate. I would expect Renraku to avoid much of the fuss by just building half the arcology over the Sound.

My selfish reason is that I just inserted Pioneer Square into my game and I'd rather move the whole arcology, which they haven't visited yet, than tell them that Pioneer Square doesn't exist anymore.

Remember, there's been a Great Ghost Dance and assorted other upheaval since today; I wouldn't be sure at all that the skyscrapers and historical buildings are still existing.

~J

You are correct about the southern edge, an oversight on my part as I attempted to get the northern edge correct. A corrected image is linked in my following post.

That's why everybody needs an editor

Yeah, this one's a bit tough. You could say that Renraku was ordered to move the historic building instead of knocking them down. Notice that part of the Arc sits in Elliot Bay; with all of the money that Renraku had to through at the project moving the building may have been an acceptable loss at the time.

You could also relocate the Arc to directly west of the Kingdome. It'd be right next to where it is now. Sure, a lot more of it would be out in the bay but an 1/8th or so of it already is, why not a full half of it?

Corrected maps for Renraku Arcology:

• Original FASA map – from Seattle Sourcebook and Shadowrun (1st Ed. HC)
• Corrected overlay map – fitting the original over a Google maps background.
  The faceted gray shape west of the Arcology shows the FASA defined docks.
  The gray stripes along the other three edges are roads that do not exist IRL.

P.S. the overlay map really does show that realistically the Arcology should have been located further south. However, I always assumed it was deliberate allegory on the part of Shadowrun's creators that Renraku bulit on top of the building they did.

Edit: Also compare the satellite view to the map view in Google. It seems the large cargo shipping container yard is relatively new landfill, and was still mostly water when Shadowrun and the Seattle Sourcebook were released.

That's pretty good placement MJ. You even have enough space for the Haunted Mug to still exist. I tried keeping the keeping the north east corner below Cherry Street on my map (as it is in the 1st edition map) but I'm not pleased with where it lands the northwest corner. I think I'll just move the northwest corner and say ta hell with it.

Edit: And damn! Nice work on the piers! Just noticed those. No way am I going to try to mirror that in Google; thing's laggy enough as is.

Nice work! I would say that is pretty definitive. I'm still amazed at the published height of the darn thing.

I was kind of shocked when I first realized how tall the building is officially. It is almost always drawn as a copy of the Tyrell Corp. building from Bladerunner, which has always looked to me to be shorter than its base length. AFAIK, in my games it is half the height with half the floors. So, 780 × 650 meter base and 490 m tall with 160 floors—that still makes it the largest building on the planet, but it also fits the visualizations, and dividing the floor given in a book by two is easy on the fly for converting in play.

Actually, if you're on the ground, it might look that way due to the foreshortening.

That might be true, to an observer on the ground, close to the building. But the art I recall shows the building from the air and from a distance, and it always looked wider than it is tall.

Another way to visualize the Arcology is a rectangular based pyramid that would be 970 m tall, but cut off halfway up. This makes the roof area is 1/4 the ground area. You only loose 1/8 of the volume compared to a full pyramid with the same base. The result would look like the Tyrell building, and hence like the art in Shadowrun. Now if the art had been based on the Transamerica Pyramid then the height would make more intuitive sense.

It's ~1015 meters along the diagonal, so it is wider than it is tall.

~J