About all this on Metrople, I don't think I have the talent or patients to try writing a sourcebook. All the stuff I wrote about Metrople was stuff I was thinking of to answer backgammon. I had no intention of it being for a real book. But thanks Synner for the info, I may even think about learning to write.

Synner's right: the LASB is not an officialy sanctioned effort, we do it knowing that FanPro might perfectly reject the entire proposal. Everybody should know that before thinking in joining (better to avoid nasty shocks down the road).

No, that I probably won't get paid.

IGNORE THE IDIOT BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

But the curtain is on fire!

That's probably for the best.

BTW, I thought the world biggest Megasprawl is the Rhein Ruhr Megaplex with 25.000.000+ inhabitants...

Let's get back to productive imagination, shall we?

Frag, you have some cool Ideas, I must say... I like the Houseboat/Waterworld community thing. With all the refugees from the rest of Amazonia, I am sure that is a real possibility. Then you would have real threats like Dragon and other Awakened creature raids, along with those pesky Cyberpirates.

As far as the Airport Idea, I am unsure. I think that the Amazonian Gov is pretty xenephobic, so I would imagine they would try to restrict air travel as much as possible. If there were air travel, it would have to be away from restricted airspace, which means (I imagine), only from the direction of the Ocean. Backgammon had mentioned an Idea about doming the city, like London was, so that would complicate air traffic patterns, and I think, would rule out Semi-ballistics, yeah? Anyway, Air travel would be at a premium, which gives us Shadow-Riggers an interesting Legal employment opportunity...

I love Kelp! Kidding. Yeah, that is feasable, heck, people eat it now. I dont think aquatic soy is too far fetched though. I dont know too much about marine horticulture, but Why not? We have Lasers, Dragons, and Bioware, come on...

Any-hoo, got to go, please keep venting Ideas everyone. Obviously we wont get any credit, but who cares! Do gamers get credit for anything? Think of how honoured we would all be if the LASB has some of the Ideas WE have presented, in its canon? That sounds pretty cool to me...

Is there anything, mentioned anywhere, about the Falkland Islands? I am just curious if there is anything said about them in Sourcebook canon, I've never seen anything...

Nope, so far they've been unmentioned. I can't really see the British giving them up because a) they've already faught a war over them and so far the Islanders still want to remain with the UK, and b) it'd make a nice piece of sovereign real-estate to keep an eye on South America from. I suggested a quick mention of it still being British in the UK chapter of SoE, but since I wasn't involved in the final writing we'll have to wait and see.

Whoa, six million trolls in the place. That rivals even Hawai'i or the Troll Kingdom of the Black Forrest. That's an awful lot of troll.

Note I went with global averages not Seattle.

200 million... yikes!

But in my numbers I tried to reflect the fact that many would chose to emigrate to surrounding countries or Portugal rather than live in the new conditions (I think SOTA mentions one of the cities in Portugal receiving many brazilian refugees, or something like that)

But yeah, 200 million is still reasonnable.
You can see why I find this place interesting...!

Synner, are you including SURGE changelings in the "Other" category, or in their metatypes?

Guys (and girls, by the way), as I´m joining this thread as a natural-born brazilian, I´d like to point out some things about Brazil that I saw from previous posts...

1. Yes, economy here is more of a metaphysical problem than anything else. Our current economist made it into a form of art, that any a few initiates can understand, much less act. Although, as we have a higher inflation rate and (comparatively) low risk rate, there are lots of foreign investors putting their money in, because unlike anywhere in the world, it comes back in less the half the predicted time. It weird but true. If you understand the local economy laws, you can aplly for magical theory as well - it should be as easy as learning your A-B-C´s. So, I guess that, unless POWERFUL and DRASTIC changes are made, economy will be as chaotic and unpredictable as usual. But the rest of your arguments is valid: services, tourism and domestic needs are the most powerful force around here. Small and informal economy (like micro-entrepreuners) pay more than 80% of the salaries in the country, leaving to the big companies and State (that employs a GREAT part of the economically active population) the rest. Biotechnology, Mystical Goods and military technology are also strong (well, at least right now even if the mystical jewlery STILL doesn´t work).

2. While hate crimes (directed against homossexuals and the poor) aren´t unusual, they are not the norm. But there is a lot of violence in the big cities, and I doubt that even Hualpa herself can change that with ease, even after 50 years! ALthough we are a VERY mixed race (indians - native brazilians -, blacks and europeans (portuguese, spanish and dutch)) , something that made for us to be easier to accept the different, the unusual. Also, there is a strong sense of spirituality, and we´re not talking about two or three main religions. Although most of us are Christians, there are THOUSANDS os christian sects, of mixed african-christian religions (whose antropolical term scapes me now - oh, wait - it´s sincretism), buddhists, "followers of the light", jews... It´s a crazy mix, but works (for most of us). Indian and african "prmitive" sympathetic magic made the basis for almost all our superstitions, and I guess we´ll need a whole new chapter on magic when Shadow of South America comes out.

3. Cidade de Deus (while it´s a GREAT movie) doesn´t show the complexity and efficiency of organized crime. The Comand Vermelho (Red Commando) is one of the typical crime syndicates that basically rule Rio d Janeiro. The guys are organized, better equiped than the army, and know their tactics. Also, they count with the locals help, because they DO assist them, unlike the government. Anyone who lives in the favelas (only one "L") may not like where they live, but where else would they go? Yes, there are small fish in there, but they are not the top bosses, the proverbial sharks in the pound. These guys can go to jail at no problem - they run their business from there, by messengers or cell phone, easily. As for "rebels", we don´t see people like these since the military dictatorship of the sixties and seventies. Maybe. The local Yakuza and Triad are doing well, thank you, in the big cities (mostly São Paulo).

4. The is a very small number of drugs made locally. Mostly, marijuana. Anything else is bought from Colombia and the likes, where the drug cartels RUN the country.

5. Decker paradise? Maybe. The government only and solely fiscalizes big companies for copyright infringement. Almost all domestic users, small-time companies and - yes, even the State uses pirate software. We had big hackers here, who attacked banks and corps, but in the end where caught. Most of them don ´t go to jail, because they are in their early teens. Guess it´s just like America, hum? The only place where there isn´t pirate software ads it´s in the TV.

6. Drugs, hookers, (hidden) gambling, everything is OK. We once had legal gambling, but that was before the war. And there´s a strong lobby for some years to bring it back. Even the bicheiros (the leaders of a quasi-legal gambling syndicate, called "jogo do bicho" (the animal game)) are putting money and influence into it. Put the average joe morals are against, so it´s like legalizing pot: profitable but a problem.

7. Can´t say anything about the average metahuman population. When I ran a SR game in Amazonia (and having NO info about, making everything from scratch), I came to similar numbers, but the Ork and Duende (translates as Goblin, but no the official one, a local metahuman we created) population were bigger. As I said we are a VERY mixed race. What could it account to new metahumans race and matahuman variants? Indeed, there could be SEVERAL metahuman variants derived from our indian and african heritage. Who knows?

8. Dragon dictatorship? I´ve seen that movie, and unfortunately, that works.

Hey, guys, I don´t know about you, but I like the way it´s going.

And by the way, it´s Metrópole.

Amazonia is militantly environmnetalist, and with such a humungous sprawl already, I imagine there would be some very draconian (pun intended) pollution and population control laws. Mandatory sterilizations, one child per family limit, a garbage tax, and no fossil fuel cars for private use.

A lot of people get a lot of wrong ideas on mining/refining from looking either at China/Pennsilvania or 1930s-1970s films.

I am actually sitting in the Ruhrgebiet, the rusting industrial heart of germany and it is - green. I am looking straight at a hill (around 50-100m tall) made from the residues of coal mining. It has been covered by (from practicall experience with a similar hill) 30-100cm of good solid earth & humus and planted over. Today it is a "Landschafts-Schutzgebiet" (Protected Natural area - lot's of wild animals including deer)

Same with open-pit mining. Sure, while it is open, it looks ugly. But once the pit moves, it get's re-naturated and often ends up another Biotope. And ore-mining can be done with classical mines (and has been done / is being done in Europe, i.e Rammelsberg/Harz until the 1970s)

As for power producing or refining, it is a question of the investment in clean air technologies. With multi-tier filters you get better than 99 percent of the pollutants (and a lot of plaster)


So I actually can see Amazonia having a classical mining/refining industrie and most of the refining being done around the Metropole. After all a city that size already needs massive waste treatment systems and power facillities and you can actually use some of the waste for power production or via recycling. And if you concentrate the polluting stuff and build the pipes huge enough you get a "clean sky over Amazonia" and additional pollution over Aztlan.

Birdy

Muito Obrigado Perssek for taking a look at this thread and posting your thoughts!

I think I'll rehash some more thoughts later when I'm not at work, but it's very interesting to note Yakuza and Triads have power.

And could you explain jogo do bicho? I've come across it in my brazilian portuguese lessons, but aside from being a form of gambling, I don't know what it is. How does it work?

My 2 cents...

I think the Megas wouldn't have any official presence in the city. Remember that Amazonia is one of the few nations that gave the finger to the rulings of the Corporate Court. Officially, the Megas all boycott the place. And the Amazonian government likes it that way.

Now, even with the plagues, Metropol is probably still pretty big. That means a big marklet and a big labor pool. And if the economy has tanked, a big, poor, cheap, and unhappy labor pool. I'd expect the corps to have fingers in the city, with two restrictions:

1) They'd avoid notice from the other Megas. No corp wants to be brought up before it's competitors in the Corp Court with _proof_ of dealing behind the Court's back. So expect deniability at multiple levels.

2) They'd avoid notice from the awakened government. The critters that run Amazonia know that the Megas would love to install a more corp-freindly power structure. So any Mega influence in the country is a potential agitator to destabilise the country.

Why the corps would get in at all:
1) Big, cheap labor force
2) Big market. Poor, but with lots of numbers.
3) Access to natural resources, both mundane and awakened.
4) Poor, numerous, downtrodden population. Just asking for a corp-sponsored revolt.

I don't see why there would no official presence. It's not because the Extraterritoriality is not recognised that it's forbidden to set up shop there. The Corp Court (unless you have a canon source to back that up) is not about to forbid corps from doing business just cause they don't have all the power they'd like. And, they really can't avoid notice if they plan on running any sort of profitable business. Though with such strict regulations, you can indeed be sure they'd play in the governement's back with deniable projects and assets.

I think that the odds of my buying the S:LA just went from unlikely to midrange likely.

Just to clarify again, none of this is going to be in Target: South America. This is 100% unofficial.

(Anyone just jumping in, you might want to read the whole thing so we don't repeat what's been said)

Another idea I've had is the Awakened governement trying to make the people of Metropole belive that they care about them. I see like huge publicity pannels with slogans such as "Amazonia: Let's work together!" with a background of humans posing and lovingly holding awakened critters with a Dragon hugging them all with his wings. You know, a really fake artsy picture shot like in Calvin Klein or other perfume adds. The Awakened trying to close the divide between the people feeling their governement doesn't give a rat's ass about them (it doesn't). They'd be everywhere. And whenever you'd have to deal with Awakened entities (not frequent at all, thankfully), they would treat you like a silly misbehaving child, talking slowly and condescendantly to you.

So visually, you have this real dirty, grey and black city where the rulers have no empathy or sympathy to it's downrodden citizens clashing with this brightly coloured image the governement is trying to make them believe that "we are all one big happy familly" and "Hualpa Cares!".

Well, one can always portray Amazonia and the other "back to nature" movements along the "green" USA in Pournelles "Fallen Angels"

Birdy

Well, about the "jogo do bicho":

It started in 1892, with the Baron of Drummond, the owner and administrator of Rio de Janeiro´s Zoo, who created a game to raise funds and increase the number of visitants. Each ticket sold to the zoo came with the drawing of one of the 25 selected animals (ostrich, eagle, donkey, butterfly, dog, ram, kidd, camel, snake, rabbit, horse, elephant, cock, cat, alligator, lion, monkey, pig, peacock, turkey, bull, tiger, bear, deer and cow). At the end of the day, the selected animal for the day was revealed, and guaranteed a prize in money.

It was a real golden mine for some time, but before the end of the year, the police closed down the game, because (at the time) gambling was illegal.

Nowadays, the prize runs from US$5.00 to US$1,500.00 (I guess), but it varies from State to State and can get as high as US$3,000. Weekly.

People usually choose a number in scales of tenths, hundreds or thousands (each one paying a bigger prize) variations from the original animal number, betting some money in it. The money is then multiplied by the probability of coming out, and if you win (betting big and high), you can get A LOT of money.

The bets are usually based on dreams with animals or things that relates with animals in dreams. There´s a common joke about this:

"Man finds his friend betting, and goes to see if he has a good hunch.

- So, you´re feeling lucky today?
- Yeah, I had this weirdest dream ever, and it really looked like a sure bet.
- You´re betting on what?
- Cow.
- Your dreamed with a cow?!
- No. My mother-in-law."

Jogo do bicho results appear everywhere in media (except TV), and you can see their quiosques everywhere, specially side by side with official lottery agencies. The "bicheiros" (Jogo do Bicho administrators) have a BIG reputation with their communities, specially in Rio de Janeiro, because they pratically sponsor Carnaval, being the main money line behind the Escolas de Samba that shows up in Sambadrome for the Carnaval competition every year. They pay for everything, not only for the escolas, but for the community: medicines, doctors, buildings, schools, lawyers, the works. They are - to most low-class and poor people - a kind of very whealty Robin Hood, taking from everybody and giving some to the poor.

They work in a kind of syndicate (having a common logotype, colors and all) and have also legitimate bussiness aside Jogo do Bicho.

Most of people think they have connections with organized crime, but very few (and I mean two or three) have been arrested because of this until today.

It should surely exist in SR Amazonia, being a very strong part of brazilian culture.

Thoughts about prejudice and meta-human hate in Amazonia:

Guess that most of the population would have no problems with the usual meta-humans. Probably because the place is so awakened, it would be hard not to have a troll, ork or even a dwarf in your family somewhere. And the certainty that would be more, because that guy (or gal) isn´t going to get a chastity vote just because he´s the only metahuman in the familly.

There´s a lot of prejudice taken for skin color here, but it isn´t prone to full racial atacks and hate crimes. It is more on the scene of blatant discrimination (I.E. you don´t get the job because you have the wrong color or was born on the wrong side of the tracks). And we are used to accept everything fate throws in our face. If it´s lemons, make a lemonade. If it´s metahumans, see if their hands are clean before they sit for the dinner.

Sometimes it´s that simple, sometimes it´s not. It´s easier to accept the differences in the northeast part of the country (coincidentally, where I live), because most of the people here have family history up to the discovery of Brazil, being the region that housed the first settlements, and giving them a huge racial intermixing. Also, the place is arid, almost to the point of being desertic. It meant that you had to deal with your neighbohours to survive, not matter how much you disliked them. It created an ability to endure - although maybe not to understand - the other, sometimes with a wicked sense of humor.

The usual brazilian is fatalist, conformist, good-humored and VERY, VERY into the survival thing. We usually don´t think that it´s important to have success as opposed to being able to survive alone, without anyone´s help. It´s sometimes a egoistical culture, but it varies a lot.

So, if Hualpa comes with the "we care" campaign, you can be 100% sure that it will work. 3V ads with lovely metahumans and humans living harmoniously are a sure bet, because people here believe, with unbreakable faith, whatever the media tells them. It could easily be a media-regulated government, where the interface between the state head and the people would be the media ads, news and prints.

Easily, I´ll tell you.

is very exaggerated to say that the criminal factions here have better equipment than the army Perssek
i perssonaly have never seen nothing bigger than assault rifles and grenades in the favelas
and when the riot car comes(called Caveirão-Big Skull- for them) they all run like rabits


PS: my english is terrible. so sorry if my post sounds like an ogre's speech

This might be an interesting little subplot to run in the city if there was a resistance:

If there was a resistance in the city, the primary backers would be Aztlan and Aztechnology. But another major supporter might be the Catholic Church or the German Catholic Church since many of the people in the city would be Catholic.

It would be wonderful intrigue. You would have the liberal wing of the Catholic Church (such as the Order of St. Sylvester) working against the Aztlan government, where they would naturally work with agents of the Amazonia government.

And you would have the archconservative wing of the Church (the New Jesuits & the Westphalians) fighting against the "dragon dictorship" in Amazonia. Naturally they would come into contact with Azatlan agents and would probably form alliances of convenience.

The success of the two rebel movements would be part of the great political game happening in the Vatican leaving open many possibilities for shadowruns as each side to tries to get a leg up.