SR Seattle Redmond

Redmond

At A Glance

Redmond Barrens Map Online

LTG Codes:	11206
Size:	436 square kilometers
Population:	498,000 (Human 81%, Elf 6%, Dwarf 1%, Ork 10%, Troll 1%, Other 1%)
Population Density:	1142 per square kilometer
Per Capita Income:	¥6600
Corporate Affiliated Population:	22%
Hospitals and Clinics:	6
Voting Precincts:	10
Education:	Less than Twelve Years: 78%; High School Equivalency: 18%; College Equivalency: 3%; <1%
District Mayor:	Sonya Scholl (Socialist)
Major Corp Facilities:	None
Criminal Syndicates:	Finnegan Family (Mafia), Shigeda-gumi (Yakuza), Kumon'go Ring (Seoulpa Rings), Yellow Lotus (Triads)
Major Gangs:	Brain Eaters, Crimson Crush, First Nations, Red Hot Nukes, Rusted Stillettos, Spiders, Wraith Masque
Minor Gangs:	too many to mention
Security Ratings:	E (most); C (Touristville); Z (Crash Zone, Rat's Nest, Glow City)

The Redmond district of Seattle, UCAS is more commonly known as The Redmond Barrens, well known for its run-down ghettos of the SINless and squatters, intermittent and incessant gang violence and it's scenes of vast urban decay. At the end of the 20th century Redmond was a center of computer industries in the North American northwest. The Shiawase nuclear powerplant Trojan-Satop had a particular meltdown, creating the notorious "Glow City". Most humans and metahumans left Redmond after that disaster. Then the Crash of 2029 struck and destroyed the Computer industry. Since then the district hasn't recovered in any way.

Before the Crash, Redmond attracted a large suburban population because it is mostly flat, with a few hills in the southern end, and the Snoqualmie River winding through almost a third of the district. Small farms prospered at its edges, and there was even a small vineyard and winery culture in Kingsgate and Hollywood. Though the old corporation Microsoft maintained a large campus - its central campus, in fact - the district was never really overly urbanized, so most of the district was made up of one to four story buildings instead of skyscrapers, with a few modest apartment complexes among the private homes.

Today, the Snoqualmie River is choked with toxic sludge, with massive packs of devil rats living up and down it. Asphalt and concrete have begun to crack and pit, showing their age without anyone to upkeep them, and plantlife grows wild and tangled in some places, or blasted and poisoned in others. The Barrens are made up of kilometers of abandoned buildings, as well as clusters of squatter cities - tents and other makeshift shelters scattered in and among the few buildings still capable of providing shelter for the homeless and destitute, who call gather together into populations of as many as several thousand in hopes of surviving the depredations of predators both metahuman and otherwise.

There are also the occasional "toxic castles," as old factories and industrial sites are called. Such places are always occupied by those with the strength to seize and hold them, so this frequently means gangs, but a few well-organized squatter communes have set up shelter in them. One and all, they are defended by armed guards. There are even a few factories that are still in actual operation. They, too, are defended by high walls, razorwire, armed guards and drones, and their employees have to be ferried in via aircraft (usually VTOL and helicopters), though lowest-level employees are often assigned dorm space on-site, and only taken back to their homes for multiple-day "weekends."

• Welcome to the Redmond Barrens

Neighborhoods

Avondale (E)

• Quiet neighborhood with a large tight-knit Caribbean population, mostly human.
• Gangs: Heathens

Bargain Basement (E)

• Former upscale bedroom community with apartments and condoplexes now filled with the poor
• Run by slumlords backed by criminal syndicates (Mafia and Yakuza primarily).
• Little street bazaars spring up in parking lots, narrow alleys, and other spaces, where locals can offer up what they've managed to make, scavenge, or scrounge for sale.
• Aces: Bar A rough dive bar, also known as the "Scumpit". A frequent hangout of the Crimson Crush gang.
• The Joke: Nightclub & Brothel Lobby of an apartment building turned into a bawdy cabaret and brothel.
• Squatters' Mall: Black Market Former shopping mall taken over by squatters and used as a sort of all-products bazaar.
• Gangs: Crimson Crush

Brain Heaven (E)

• Devastated area sparsely populated by squatter and street survivors. Very rough.
• Close enough to see the glow from Glow City.
• The Body Mall: Street Doc Former hospital broken up into a "mall" of medical practices offering street doc services.
• Monohan Vehicles: Factory A vehicle manufacturer that makes military and police vehicles for Ares Arms.
• Gangs: Rusted Stilettos

Carnation (E)

• Neighborhood on the border of Redmond and the Salish
• Large metahuman (particularly orc and troll) population.
• Carnation-Seattle Ranch: Industrial Ranch Industrial ranch that spans Seattle and Salish territories alike.
• Life-Eez Appliances: Factory A manufactory making cooking and cleaning appliances that employs local metahumans in practically sweat-shop conditions.
• Gangs: Raging Apes (mostly ork and troll)

The Crash Zone (Z)

Area devastated by a jet crash fire. Ruled by various tribal-style "kings" who lay claim to fiefs and battle one another for turf, goods and followers, made up of men who escaped from the local prison.

Glow City (Z)

Site of a major nuclear meltdown, now filled with madmen and mutants.

Hollywood (E)

• Somewhat prosperous area with a prison, hospital and low-budget simsense studio.
• Hollywood Correctional Facility: Prison A high-security prison.
• Hollywood Hospital: Hospital A hospital struggling over the district's poverty and needs.
• Hollywood Simsense Entertainment: Studio & Factory Combination simsense gear and chip manufactory, recording studios and retail center for all manner of simsense (particularly pornographic simsense).
• Gangs: Red Hot Nukes

Kingsgate (E)

• Small, close-knit community
• High proportion of metahumans.
• Crusher 495: Nightclub Ork-owned and operated rock club of 30+ years, with rough slampit and hard music.
• Gangs: Kalifangs (primarily female gang)

Downfall advertisement

Plastic Jungles (E)

• Former greenhouse set up run wild, with squatter population that cultivate the plants that grow here.
• Gangs: Earthbrothers

Purity (E)

• Community of mostly humans, with a high Chinese population.
• Gangs: Wraith Masque (Chinese, associated with tongs); Ubermensch (anti-metahuman skinheads)

The Rat's Nest (Z)

Massive trash dump and squatter haven.

Touristville (C)

Relatively civilized and safe nightclub and bar neighborhood favored by the affluent of neighboring districts as a place to go "slumming." Extensive art-based, avant garde, countercultural community.

• Banshee: Bar No-frills karaoke bar.
• Dr. Bob's Quickstitch Clinic: Street Doc Street clinic.
• The Edge: Restaurant Swank grill with a downtown vibe open to everyone, located on the edge of Bellevue.
• The Jackal's Lantern: Bar Rough nomadic bar favored by the (non-Redmond) Halloweeners gang.
• Phoenix House: Restaurants Successful Japanese restaurant.
• Redmond General Hospital: Hospital A government- and corp-funded medical facility that is the most modern medical facility in the district.
• The Skeleton: Nightclub World famous rock-club featuring bands every night; well-known as a favorite place for even successful bands to play a set occasionally, often anonymously.

The Strip: One notable part of Touristville's nightlife is the Strip, a long row of clubs, bars, and other entertainment venues, well patrolled by Knight Errant, and an easy place for partiers to walk from place to place - or simply wander around its (relatively safe) streets, frightening one another with their own daring at "roaming Barrens streets at night." Some of the notable establishments here include:

• Green Fairy Tower: Various An old highrise apartment complex turned into a variety of weird shops run by Barreners, including the absinthe bar that gives the place its name.
  • Green Fairy: an absinthe bar
  • The Lovely Humidor: a smoke shop
  • O'Dowell's Pub: an Irish-style pub on the ground floor that sees plenty of bar fights
  • Brainscream: a favorite hang-out of the Brain Eaters that specializes in smart drinks
  • Aurora Theater: a “personalized theater experience” that all the locals know deals mainly in BTLs
  • Lucient's Panoply: a talismonger shop
  • Pen & Ink: a tattooing, branding and piercing shop
  • Aspirations: an art gallery that specializes in local talent.
• Meltdown: Nightclub rubber-walled club home of hardcore, thrash and metal in Redmond, featuring live thrashcore bands on weekends.
• Redmond Center Hotel & Dining Room: Hotel & Restaurant Plush hotel and upper-class restaurant favored by monied out-of-districters partying in Touristville.
• Redmond Center Mall: Mall Two story mall and ten-story luxury hotel that caters to out-of-district customers.
• Sweet Georgia's: Strip Club & Brothel Strip club and brothel.

Gangs: Brain Eaters (hacker gang); occasional carousing visits by Leather Devils (Bellevue gang)

Sophocles (E)

• Relatively peaceful former bedroom community.
• Mostly made up of small squatter clans.
• The Madwoman: Bar Stripped down bar favored by locals; used by local neo-tribals to hold raves, attracting more clientele including street shamans.
• Gangs: Minor only

The Verge (E)

• Ash-covered area on the Redmond-Salish border.
• Filled with squatters who live in near-desolate conditions.
• Site of a gang war between the Crimson Crush and First Nations.
• Novelty Hill Sleep & Eat: Flophouse Refurbished warehouse turned into coffin hotel and dispenser restaurant.
• Silverbear's Den: Street Doc An old truck stop that has been converted into a local clinic and surgery by Dr. Crispin Silverbear and his assistants. Under the patronage and protection of the First Nations gang.
• Gangs: Crimson Crush; First Nations (Amerind smuggler gang)

Woodinville (E)

• Upcoming community, with a high Japanese population.
• Downfall: Bar Quiet, relatively peaceful bar popular with magicians.
• Yoshiro's: Restaurant Cheap and rundown Japanese restaurant.
• Gangs: Minor only

Corps

Monohan Vehicles, an Ares contractor

• Monahan Vehicles (Local): Locally owned Monahan Vehicles provides nearly a quarter of the legitimate (that is, SIN-based) employment in Redmond, between their factory in Brain Heaven and their company headquarters in Touristville. Twenty years ago, Monahan was in sharp decline, producing its own line of vehicles for sale to a retail market uninterested in anything without a big-name label. Fortunately, when Dominic Monahan took over his father's business fifteen years ago, he quickly negotiated a contract with Ares Arms as the local manufacturer of Ares' military and police vehicles. Since then, Monahan fortunes have taken off, making the corp one of the few successful Redmond enterprises and ensuring the Monahan's family as the local moneyed elite in the district.

Criminal Syndicates

The syndicates have a strange peace in Redmond - by and large, there is little enough worth fighting over, so they share physical territory in ways unheard of elsewhere in Seattle. Because even legal goods are hard to get in Redmond beyond Touristville, every market is black market, though no one can really pay black market prices among the locals. The Barrens are an excellent place for the mobs to store and arrange for the auctioning of black market goods for customers outside the district, however, and that's often reason enough for them to secure operations here. Additionally, Redmond is a breeding ground for new syndicate muscle - the most promising of their gangs (and those who manage to avoid the gangs) frequently find their way into the mobs, one of the few avenues of escape for Barrens folk.

• Finnegan Family (Mafia): An Irish family in the Seattle mafia who specialize in both magical and technological strength. Strong in prostitution, drugs and gambling concerns.
• Shigeda-gumi (Yakuza): The Shigeda are the second-largest gumi in Seattle, notorious for being far more eclectic and less traditional. Involved in gambling, BTL, prostitution and smuggling.
• Kumon'go Ring (Seoulpa Rings): Recently merged with the Dog-men, a Salish gang, and involved in smuggling, human trafficking, organlegging and cyberware salvage and resell.
• Yellow Lotus (Triads): Old-school, magically powerful Triad involved in selling BTL, smuggling of illegal immigrants, running sweat shops (that said immigrants end up working in) and the sales of the goods thereof.

Gangs

Generally speaking, there are some 300+ gangs at any one time in Redmond. Naturally, most of these gangs are no more than a dozen or so individuals, seeking to lay claim to a few blocks of territory that generally includes their homes and/or where they seek to make livings with extortion, prostitution, and various gambling and drug sales.

Only a few gangs get to the size to make them a notable threat in Redmond, and it inevitably takes brutality, cunning, and a willingness to think beyond meanest survival.

Street Gangs

Red Hot Nukes symbol

• Crimson Crush: Major (Bargain Basement, the Verge) • Primarily orkish group focused on neighborhood protection, often clashing with racist organizations and gangs. Extortion and BTL dealing.
• Earthbrothers: Minor (Plastic Jungles) • A primarily Orkish gang, who feel that the megacorps are intentionally spreading toxins through the Ork Underground in an attempt to kill off and/or sterilize it’s inhabitants. They’ve got some odd ecological notions as well. They get along tolerably well with the Wraith Masquers, mostly because their various priorities don’t particularly overlap… They dress in brown and grey with jade-green leaf insignia. They make most of their money working with smugglers.
• Kalifangs: Minor (Kingsgate) • A primarily female gang that places a high value on stealth and ambush tactics. They tend to prefer poisons, garrotes, and easily-concealable knives over noisier weapons. Several of them also use bows, possibly because their leader favors them. They wear red bandannas and snarling tiger badges as their gang colors, tend to be down on men, and are rumored to feed failed “applicants” to the ghouls.
• Raging Apes: Minor (Carnation) • An ork gang that frequently clashes with Carnation corporate forces.
• Red Hot Nukes: Major (Hollywood) • "Neighborhood watch" style dwarven gang who specialize in hand-to-hand combat and explosive ordinance. Deal in explosives and insurance scams, as well as sabotage.
• Rusted Stilettos: Major (Glow City, Brain Heaven) • Ork and troll gang based out of irradiated Glow City. Most of them are also mutated in one way or another, and focus on smuggling, drugs and muscle work.
• Wraith Masque: Major (Purity) • This medium-sized Redmond gang has proved surprisingly prosperous and durable, thanks in part to their quiet alliance with the mystic students of Master Sung. They’re primarily human, mostly due to their current leader’s personal prejudices against metahumans. Their colors are black and green, with a classic “diamond” mask or makeup. Most of them throw in urban camouflage armor jackets, for practicalities sake. They do a lot of small-time dealing, some petty theft, the occasional carjacking, and run a string of street prostitutes – the only position in which Elves are welcome. Most of their drugs/BTL chips/weapons come from the Komun’Go Ring, for which they generally act as street distributors.

Go-Gangs

• Chaos Lords: Minor • A tightly-organized gang which gets it’s money from running minor chop-shop, fencing, and smuggling operations. Their emblem is a multicolored array of eight arrows pointing outwards from a circle of red and yellow spirals. They apparently gained their name from the utter unpredictibility of what they may have for sale in any given week. If you need a decent car or vehicle in Redmond you’re probably going to be dealing with the chaos lords sooner or later, if only for parts. They often work with other minor gangs, usually when they need some extra lookouts or want to steal several vehicles at once.
• Charioteers: Minor • This go-gang is quite psychopathic; the members carry hooked chains to catch and drag their victims. They’re surprisingly well-equipped and skilled for a thrill gang, don’t appear very often, and do very well for a group so widely hated… There have been a few fairly high-profile victims and no known successful reprisals to date, leading many to feel that the gang has hidden backers – or might contain some high-level corp brats and their bodyguards.

Specialist Gangs

First Nations gang symbol

• 162s: Minor (entire district) • A gang of ghouls that can be found throughout much of Redmond, navigating its sewers and tunnels.
• Brain Eaters: Major (Touristville) • Red fez-wearing hacker gang. Electronic crime, smuggling, tech-scavenging and black marketeering.
• First Nations: Major (The Verge) • Mainly involved in other areas of Seattle, but currently clashing with the Crimson Crush over access to the Verge, to aid their smuggling efforts.
• Heathens: Minor (Avondale) • A cross between a gang and a cult, and one of the few street-level groups with serious magical support. Their leader’s a Voodoo Adept who at least pretends to believe that his Loa is a god – and who has convinced quite a few of his ganger followers to become Serviteurs. He occasionally summons a high- powered Loa to possess one and sends him/her out on a special mission. They run protection rackets and deal in drugs, BTL’s, and magical “bodyguard” work.
• Mockers: Minor (entire district) • Less a “gang” then a professional club, the Mockers are a sizable group of young pickpockets, thieves, con artists, and burglars. They make it a point to do something nasty to anyone who injures one of their members – but usually don’t interact with other gangs much; their speciality is stealth and they don’t bother with “turf” beyond a few safehouses. Mockers use a variety of identifying symbols, and change them regularly.
• Spiders: Major (entire district) • Gang that hates insect spirits, taking great pride in their destruction of such. Finance their bug-hunting by working as couriers, fences and other types of criminal middlemen. Also known to engage in occasional organlegging.
• Ubermensch: Minor (Purity) • A group of violent skinheads, with a penchant for cyberware, and a disdain for metahumans, magic, and almost everyone else. They have ties with the Humanis Policlub and steal obvious cyberware (Limbs and such) whenever possible. Most of them have minor cyberware, although rarely any of the truly expensive items. They don’t get along with anybody, although human groups are less of a target for them then metahuman ones are.

Seattle in the Shadows