Being the entrepreneur that I am I was considering starting a Slave trade business.Here are the key components that I think would be needed.I would primarily be the coordinator/founder.I would probably need a few investors to get it off the ground,however it is possible that this may not even be workable.Feel free to post your thoughts.I just have a lot of free time and was bored.

I am posting this in order to gain some feedback as to whether or not it would be a lucrative business,and the probability of success.I am also curious as to what the charge would be for various aspects of the business.This idea is in it's very beginnings so feel free to add any suggestions of your own.I watched Law and Order last night,and started thinking if slave trade would be possible in the year 2060.

First.A location to acquire the actual slave labor?This is one of the first of many difficult decisions to make.I need an area where you could empty small villages of children and young adults without much resistance.I am open to suggestions on this.

Second.A team with priority of nuyen over morals to secure the groups of slaves.I figured a 6 man team give or take.This is subject to change,depending on the size of slaves taken.Mostly high firepower with a couple doses of combat mage.Cost?

3rd.A vessel to transport both the team and the slaves.This could well be the most costly of the items needed.Due to cost,the thoughts of trying to hijack a sub or large watercraft have crossed my mind.I would like to stay away from aircraft, but I haven't ruled it out.

4th.A pilot of the sub/watercraft or plane.Cost?

5th.A location to keep the slave labor till transfer to owners.A large warehouse complete with suitable quarters.Nothing elaborate here.Would have to find a location where the leaser stayed out of your business. This could be possibly provided by an investor although not necessarily.

6th.A method to find investors?I mean really,you know there out there.It's all about coming into contact with them.

7th.A way to get the word out you are in the business of selling human labor?There would be a high demand for omeone you could have work 16 hours a day for the expense of food and a small room to live in.It's a goldmine.The advertising is a slight problem,however.I mean after all it is illegal.

8th.How much should the asking price be?If you had 20 slaves and sold them for 50,000 a piece that would 1,000,000..Even if your overhead was 750,000 a trip that's 250,000Not bad for sitting in Seatlle.

Anyway,like I said I was bored.

I would think Amazonia would be prime location for pickup. Human life if barely worth the air it breathes there, according to the government as described in the books. Shoot, they'd likely pay you to take them away.

So do you think it is a feasible plan?

It'd make for a twisted SR game, that's for sure.

I'm moving this to the Shadowrun forum where it belongs.

Isn't there something about it in Cyberpirates? The African ones tend to even stoop to that in order to eat. Plus there is what to do with the people who have been extracted.

Don

The one thing that might be lucrative (these boards are really gonna get me in trouble if Homeland Security is watching) is remembering the sweat shops of today are that much more, er, sweatier (I have to imagine) in 2050's/2060's....no corporate accountability (I mean, heck, it is almost as bad today in some cases...we all know some of the horror stories that we hear coming from, say, Nike in Southeast Asia). Factory workers working for pittance sunup to sundown so the 1st world can get their Stuffer Stuffs really cheap like

I was watching that movie, Tears of the Sun, a couple weeks back and, after reading your question, I was thinking about how easy it would be to turn that crew of SEALS into mercenaries who raid a village and round the folks up (possibly with corporate blessing to raze a traditional village to make way for industrial processing). You could have the team force the villagers to a pre-arranged drop point and sell them off at, as distasteful as this is, an underground slave market for workers in factories, drug processing, the sex trade etc. I have to assume that these types of activities have only intensified with the nation-state falling by the wayside in recent decades in SR.

Another show that showed this type of trade, albeit a screwed up operation that brought the cops in, was HBO's second season of The Wire. Basically, Russian mobsters were paying off dock workers to 'lose' cargo ships here and there (which held all sorts of contraband, including humans). Something went wrong, deaths were involved, but for an interesting look at this trade if you have HBO, you may want to check it out...2nd season reruns just started on Sunday nights.

Yikes...forgive the length..i kinda rambled

Extracted? Thats a nice way of putting it.
In all seriousness though I dont think that a pilot will be an issue. You can always just chip it. As for where to keep the poor bastards? I would wait to "extract" them until I had filled most of my orders. That way you only have to store a few, and you could always just keep them in a box or something. Just open it up, toss them a few scraps, and let them out to use the facilities (or not, depends on how twisted you want this game to be). Actually I'll bet you could manage a thriving business just by sticking to the barrens. Then all you need is a van.

Also, get a few sets of trodes and some sort of simsense feed, keep 'em in line easily enough.
Eventually though, you'd have to start dealing with the background count where you stash them. That could act like a beacon for folks looking for their relatives/friends/loved ones.

Good point. I never thought of that. You could always rig up a mobile slave base in a big van though. You can fit a few boxes in a good size van. Just make sure the tabs are current.

Learn from the Japanacorps. Just-in-time shipments, don't keep too much merchandise hanging around in storage. It's expensive, inconvenient, and dangerous.

Heavy weapons probably aren't necessary except for backup. Nonlethal weapons should be the order of the day; more money that way. Take a cue from riot cops.

~J

And remember, organ legging is a viable alternative if a "corp" is escaping/being rescued/too rowdy

What kind of money can you get organlegging? They might be worth more in pieces.

~J

What's the price of Type O clone parts now? divide inhalf for "used" and there's ya have a nice guideline.

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| Please do not feed the Ghouls! |
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Ahh.I never really thought about the possibility of selling them as live organ donors as well.That opens up so many more doorways.

Initially the plan was to get large groups of slaves to cut down on travel expenses,however if you were to go to the Barrens,as previously suggested that would kill that problem along with having a large extraction team,and needing a large area to keep a surplus of bodies until delivery.

This keeps becoming more profitable by the minute.The problem still lies in the advertising.It is one of my main concerns that I still haven't thought of an idea for.I suppose word of mouth would suffice,but I was looking for something that would reach a little farther.

Take an animal shelter mind set.

"Welcome to Lockdown, if you are not purchased in one week, portions of you surely will be. It is therefore in the best interest of your continued survival in a single organism tha tyou remain docile, calm, respectful of the guards and above all, do your best to be purchased whole, not as spare parts."

"If any of you deemed particularly valuable are damaged, you will be repaired using parts from the others. I advise not starting fights for your own safety.

~J

Wow, sick minds really do think alike.

I gotta think that these types of communities have a pretty fast word of mouth type of advertising. So, I know it sounds mundane..but think about it:

"Hey, so and so gave me some solid 'cattle' last week, check him out..."

I know it sounds tacky...but with the way of the world today, and extrapolated into SR, folk probably want AS LITTLE as possible written down. And if word gets out your product is bad, you are done...check out a book called Dark Alliance by Gary Webb about how word of mouth (and some nice CIA turning the other way) fueled the crack explosion in LA in the 80's.

You could also build a front corp like "lumber shipping" and catalog by type:

white slaves=pine
sex slaves=oak
factory workers=cedar
etc etc

You will have customers in no time with word of mouth and the ability to have transactions through e-transactions (laundered probably). Speaking of, reaching out to certain types in the mob and organized crime and/or gang, pay your operating fee and kickback fee and I am sure that they will open avenues for you. That "honor among thieves" is bunk...any organized crime family will have ways of getting you ANYTHING you want. Drugs, sex, slavers. Like I said, that show, The Wire, really blew me away with how the Russians used the corruption of the unions to do half the work for them.

Matrix technology could also be used...disappearing SANS and what not, but up front investments to have customers (obligatory freaks and deviants comment here) "sample" the merchandise....and surcharge for that. I know it sounds distaseful, but you gotta think this stuff happens with webcams these days, we just dont hear about it.

I also think that running out of the Barrens is probably good..but any desolate area, rural or otherwise, is gonna work.

I live in Arizona and every so often, we hear about neighborhood homes housing 50-100 undocumented immigrants from Mexico getting busted and most neighbors were clueless (due to racism, ignorance, or that lovely disease known as suburbia).

I have officially spent too much time thinking about the slave trade for the past ten minutes

Interesting topic though...I enjoy games that show the full spectrum of humanity in SR, and unfortunately, this is one of them.

Coke en stock.

A point to the first person to identify the reference without searching for the phrase.

~J

I played a run last week where one of our characters ran into (or rather, was run into by) a van full of people with a netgun trying to take his tender Ork muscles captive. Turned out that they weren't slavers, but that's what we were thinking the whole time, and we were freaked the heck out. Now you've come and made me relive that horror, so the next 20 times I play shadowrun I'll be wondering how sick the GM is. More power to you. As a side note, if they HAD been slavers, the trick would have been on them--our Ork is weak. We keep him around because he knows how to sew us up.

On another side note, now that you people are talking about cocaine (or rather, one of you is, and a couple others are making obscure references that are totally over my head), a funny book to check out is a book called "Red Cocaine." Turns out all our drugs came from China, Russia, and Cuba. Here I thought Colombia and the CIA had a little bit to do with it...

Nath wins a point, CircuitBoyBlue makes the obvious but incorrect connection.

~J

Hey CircuitBoyBlue...happy to add to the paranoia, if I was able to ....

This is a bit of an aside...but I remember reading somewhere that drugs that WE are familiar with (coke, crack, meth, heroin) are still a thriving business in the shadows b/c not everyone can afford the BTL's etc. That seems logical given the rampant class issues in SR.

Now, knowing that there is plenty of documented evidence of CIA involvement in the 80's to help fund the Cold War (never heard of Red Cocaine, might check that out...try a book called Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography...great read..traces the history of coke and the power players involved...from CIA to Coca Cola to the whole side deal with Iran Contra, to the discovery etc etc), how likely do you think megacorps might be willing to use some of that illicit trade? We know they use Srunners obviously, but how about dipping into the drug trade? Too dangerous?

My players are in 2053 now, but this thread got me thinking about how the corps might use drug trade to help fund the corp war that comes up where Fuchi goes kaput.

Or even Aztlan, considering the heart of the coca trade is perdy darn close there to help fund the fight against the rebels.

Or am I just a twisted cynic?

Or, for yet more shades of grey playing, the rebels use it to fund their war with Aztlan.

Bingo! Love those shades of grey. Actually, that is exactly what happened in Nicaragua in the '80's. The Sandanistas (the evil commie galactic overlords according to the US) were using cocaine money to fight the Contras, and so were the Contras (the "moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers" according to same source) to fight the Sandanistas. So, basically, two opposite sides of the coin were making the drug lords a heckuva lot of money. Folks like Pablo Escobar laughed all the way to the bank. Great point, Nikoli!

In terms of SR, that is where it could get interesting, actually, IMHO. Aztlaner rebels, being funded by the CAS CIA, with drug money to help destabilize Aztlan with a group of characters running the drugs, money, guns, whatever. Helping set up distribution networks and the like in the CAS and in rebel strongholds. Getting ahold of fixers to set up the drug ops...coordinating smuggling routes...all sorts of shadow operations.

I am gonna shut up now...I have totally hijacked this thread...but I hope it stayed true to the heart of the original post...sorry

Just to clear it up for anyone still confused, as I said, "coke" up there did not refer to cocaine. It was, rather, a code word for slaves.

~J

So, in essence, what you are saying is, this sort of operation should be reserved more for organ legging than slave-trade?

yes, slavery doesn't make much economic sense anymore (well, except in some places and small fringe economies). Things change for a variety of reasons and people tend to compliment themselves by assuming that the world is becoming increasingly moral and people are changing for those reasons alone. There's similar thoughts relating to feminism and independence of former colonies.

Organ-legging is an entirely new animal.

You could have slave labor but be more subtle, hire corp wage slaves, put them in a nice facility in the middle of on where. Sure mr jones, you can quite, just walk out the door.
"But we're in the middle of a desert."
"Should have thought of that before you quit boyo."


As a RL example when I left Xerox in the 90's it was because they were moving the office from Connecticut to Florida. A year befoire they had closed the office in Boston and told the staff there "you want to stay with Xerox you've got to move 200 miles ot the Stamford office. Then they were telling us "You want to stay with Xerox you've got to move to Florida" effectively tearing up all connection to your life and tying yourself to the corp. They expected 60% of the staff to go, they got 13% because we didn't want to be such slaves.

Problem with organ legging is the initial quality of your specimen. If you live in a zone where life is cheap, so are your organs. Bad food, squalid living conditions and no health care= garbage product. Plus you lose money because all the cargo must be delivered alive (harvested organs don't last long) and you have to check for disease/defects from your patients. Low end organ legging should always be done locally. Don't forget to sideline by feeding the ghouls the left overs.

Maximize your revenue streams.

The trouble with illicit businesses is that if your customers can find you, so can other people. Not only people who might want to shut you down for moral reasons, but also competing criminals (especially bad with big organizations, which tend to either squash the competition like a bug or "offer" them the opportunity to work for them - giving up the lion's share of the profit to them, of course), city or corporate officials looking for bribes, law enforcement agencies (which may not care, if you're kidnapping people from the Barrens, but they'll come down on you hard if the "wrong" person disappears, even if your group didn't do it). Plus, the "market" might already be saturated with other budding entrepreneurs with better connections and/or more economies of scale.


Be sure your GM is okay with this, because not every GM will want to run a campaign where the PCs are things like orphanage-bombing terrorists, serial rapists, pedophiles, or slavers. Some GMs like moral ambiguity but prefer for the PCs to be the "good guys"... at least relatively speaking.

The slave trade business came up as a topic in January.
How much is a metahuman worth?
What to do with a Metahuman?

I don't think there is enough money in it for Shadowrunners to make a living, as a gang can deliver a person of any sex or race for 1000 .

Sorry to double post,but I also take custom orders.

I would have to agree with some of the previous posters in saying that slavery wouldn't be an economically feasible enterprise in areas with a high cost of living (like Seattle or any other city). Of course, there are a lot of screwed up places in the shadowrun world, even in North America (Cascade Ork comes to mind).

As for BTL, I definitely think its worth a lot more than actual slaves. A kid can slot a BTL without his parents' knowledge, and he can do it as often as he wants, for one simple down payment.

Actually no, most BTL's have a limited number of runs, then they burn out, other wise there wouldn't be a constant market for the pushers.

Oh, that makes sense. I was just saying the chip's more convenient.

That's not exactly true. Once you can traffic goods, you can traffic anything from truckloads of guns to cars full of drugs to cans full of people. Certainly, there will not be a market for people in Seattle as there would be in some of the seedier South East Asian cities, but that doesn't mean that Seattle's less pleasant areas would not have any demand at all. Crime organization-run industry (eg drug refineries) to brothels to organlegging, there is a market, and there are people with the resources to tap into it. It's highly doubtful anyone makes a business solely out of running people into an area in Seattle, but that's not to say it can't happen.

yeah the problem with trying to set up an organ legging or sex slave trade is exactly what glyph said. the competition that has already entrenched itself won't have any problem adding you to their stock. with organ-legging you have to compete with Tanamous (sp?) and with the sex-slave trade you gotta compete with the Triads or the Seoulpa rings, i don't remember which. trying to cut in on either organization's trade could be excessively hazardous to your health. personally, i wouldn't try competing with them, i'd try to buddy up with them somehow and get as much that way as i can.

What do slaves run for these days?

Who's are the big players?

Where are the big slave markets?

Why do you need slaves? When you have the SINless.

Cheerful thoughts

QM