Just wondering: can infiltration be done through sewers?

I've seen plenty of runs where the players decided to infiltrate a site through the sewers and it got me thinking whether it can be done.

Are there enough room in real-life sewers for people to move around down there? Can you actually make it inside buildings through the sewers? or just past outer perimeters?

How dangerous an enviroment are the sewers? (gasses, bacteria, rats?)

Does anybody in here have real-life experience with working in the sewers? what's it like? what do you have to take into account when you're moving around down there?


Adhoc

Seattle in a good city for sewer travelling, since there are many old buildings underneath the new ones. I think there was an earthquake or somehting, and they just built on top of the old crap.

A number of folks have a sort of romanticised, Hugo's Paris, sense of what travelling the sewers is like (myself among them).

In many locations, particularly in compounds (as opposed to urban blocks which have many privately held buildings on them), steam tunnels are large enough for sub-terranian movement between buildings. Such tunnels frequently access a number of buildings, either as deliberate basement portals (hatches) or as decayed masonry where pipes intersect walls. Just be wary of very hot pipes, poor ventilation, and no lighting (service folk tend to bring their own-- you should, too). Also, most will be too small for a troll, or even a burly ork to wriggle through.

In the same vein, many large cities (e.g., New York and Chicago) have vast tracts of unused subway tunneling that lies fallow from previous generations of trains/tracks, or for administrative reasons. Frequently, access to these tunnels is barred only by simple locks and fences (makes tagging rather too easy....sigh). Such tunnels can give you access to buildings with subway stops in their basements and to incomplete or under-construction subway entrances.

Such are my notes from the Underground.

A friend of mine put in 6 years working Sewers and Drains for the city I live in. I'll ask him about this when I see him next week.

To say nothing of the crap that finds its way into the sewers -- hypodermic needles, anyone?

Used condoms? Baby diapers?

That's graphic - but the bacteria (As mentioned earlier) has an attitude.

-Siege

I guess those are good reasons for security personnel not to go there.

My friend told me a story once about being called to a sewer main break downtown. He showed up and saw a big disgusting shit-filled hole in the middle of the road that the fire department refused to go into to help shut off the pipe. He said "What's the matter guys, you don't want to break bread with us? Look, there's a loaf comin' down right now!"

Storm drain tunnels (which are different than the sewer system which is often in piping too small to do much else but crawl through, and then only if it aint full of you know what) are networked throughout cities along with steam tunnels and can be huge. I used to go "draining" a lotta places in the US, and they can go down pretty deep under cities and open up into huge underground vaults with waterfalls etc. Theyre usually clean enough to run around in without getting sick. I dont know about getting you into buildings, but they can get you into some pretty interesting areas that are otherwise secured.

I don't think the sewers will get you into buildings, until you talk of things like the SCIRE which require massive capacities, resulting in tunnels big enough to allow a human to move within.

What sewers can do is get you past perimeter security of places like airports or military bases, unless those are built to be completely self-sufficient. But there may still be security-systems in the sewers, depending on the level of paranoia among the security designers.

Btw:
V:tM Clanbook Nosferatu has some comments on sewers and how to use them to hide und move around unseen. I just don't have it around here ATM to look up the details.

I believe some of the older sourcebooks mentioned what was in the sewers. At the least, you got to contend with Devil Rats, maybe a Protean or two, or even jauckafer, and ghede flies (insects like sewers). This just sounds scary only on the paranormal angle. There's probably a lot more, simply physical things to make it memorable for the sewer diving runner.

Don

Yes, some sewers have access to buildings. People are going to install about the smallest pipe/tunnel they must to handle the flow. The flow is going to depend in great part on the number of bathrooms. If it is a manufacturing facility, chances it will be big in case the tenant needs the flow for the manufacturing process. If it is a warehouse with employee johns and emergency showers, it doesn't require the flow so probably will have minimum size pipe.

Considering the airport and military base, it is probably cheaper to put in a septic field. They have the space, and it is usually a long way to connect to the sewer system.

And those are just educated guesses, based on some first hand knowledge.

DNA/DOA had a detailed sewer crawl.

Some of those sewers are abandoned, some for water pipes and electrical trucking.

well , to me (and i always ran my fames this way) human sized swers and tunnels only run under (main) streets , buildings just have some 10 to 30 cm diameter pipes to allow the shit to join the "mainstream" , sometimes the larger sewer tunnels passes under the building but there's never-ever direct access from sewers (why should it ?)
Thats's just MY advice...