Welcome to the Redmond Barrens
Outside Touristville (which isn't considered part of the Barrens), most of Redmond is Rating E. In New Seattle, this is what it says about Rating E zones: "Lone Star does not assign patrols to such areas or make any effort to prevent crimes from happening." Rat's Nest and Glow City are even worse, being Z-Zones. Lone Star definitely does not go into there, and the whole city has agreed that containing them is more productive than enforcing law there. If a Lone Star officer does go into a Z-Zone, they get hazard pay (three times normal pay rate) plus a week off after returning. That should give you an idea just how bad those areas are.
During the day, the Barrens are a sad, desolute place. A fog of despair and human misery seems to hang over the entire district. The streets are torn and cratered, the buildings are barely standing, the housing has no running water or heat. There are a few places worse than the Barrens (Calcutta, Beirut), but not many, and there is no evidence from within the Barrens that one is living in a first-world nation's boundaries. The Crash Zone is a scar on the very face of the land, cutting just as deep and wide as the scar on the souls of the SINless who live there.
The Barrens at night is worse. Gunfire punctuates the setting sun, as another child dies for his shoes or her Nuke-It burger. Families huddle in their homes, praying that tonight is not the night that local gang decides to squat in this building, raping mothers and daughters and looting what scant possessions a family owns, all with a sick glee. Mothers also pray for their sons and daughters who have not come home, who have been lost to the streets, swallowed by the violent gang culture that has risen up to replace the lack of a social community.
Some cops do visit the Barrens at night. They pretend to be enforcing law, but if you look closely, you can see that the pestilence in their eyes is not about serving and protecting. They come here to live out dark fantasies, to take advantage of people that the world does not register as existing. No one will care about some extortion. No one will investigate a missing child. There is a sickness in the Barrens. So much violence and despair detaches a person, desensitises them. They feel disconnected, adrift. And then, in this state, the sickness of the Barrens creeps into them, whispers dark things to them, and makes them do bad things.
I think if the characters are tough, chromed, spell-slinging shadowrunners, the masses of the Barrens most likely will leave them alone for fear of being turned to goo. The go-gangs and thrillers are a different matter. Not to mention organised crime. But the general huge human devil rat population should shy away from runners whose bodies scream death. Wearing an assault rifle over your shoulder would be a good idea in such places. Concealment works against you when others are sizing up their ability to attack you and choosing the weakest targets.
Redmond is busy, maniacally alive. You can get anything on the street for enough money. The streets buzz with people. Someone may try to kill you because you, or your haircut, or a joke you told, or the way you walked, offended them. It's crowded and busy and medical help (at least crude first aid) is never far away - there's an entire mall full of street docs, for Ghost's sake. Losing a fight and getting slashed a few times is painful and humiliating but you can stagger to the quack and get stapled up. Okay, it'll cost, but not much, there are plenty of sawbones willing to do basic trauma work. So, losing a fight is no big deal.
The buildings - no glass in the windows, most places. Where there is still glass, it's in places that can afford steel mesh over the windows. And that draws much attention. Habitation is marked by plastic sheeting over window frames to keep the wind and rain out. The glass went years ago. Everything flammable has been stripped out. Fires for cooking, for light, for warmth, need fuel and fuel is rare.
Every one of the few stores has heavy concrete obstacles that could have come from Omaha Beach out front, to prevent ram-raiding. Windows are covered by mesh during the day, by steel shutters during the night. Graffiti covers everything. Gang tags, crossed out and overwritten, show decades of street warfare's shifting boundaries.
Garbage drifts in corners and alleys. Nobody ever collects it; organic stuff rots or is eaten by vermin, inorganic stuff gets scattered or scavenged or just piles up. No power. No water. No sanitation. Stairwells reek of excrement. Rain collectors of assorted levels of effectiveness are everywhere rainwater might be foul but it's the best drinking water available.
Many residences are shantytown shacks improvised out of plastic sheeting and other odds and ends. 'Work' is twelve-hour shifts six days a week in a sweatshop, for a pathetic wage but enough nutrisoy (the foul stuff farmers feed to livestock) to feed yourself and a few dependents. If you're young and pretty you can whore for up-towners and earn real money like that of course, your pimp takes most of it. If you're brave and stupid you can run with a gang. If you're brave and smart you might get somewhere with a local crime syndicate.
Every morning, at locations all the locals seem to know, groups of people cluster, waiting for the trucks to come to pick a few lucky ones for 'real work' The unlucky ones left behind? Well, there's the guy who has Mellow Blue BTLs for sale to ease the misery of rejection and he'll give you credit. For the first few, anyway.
A few uptown do-gooders circulate, handing out soup and sandwiches and bibles and religious texts. Some gladly pretend to be converted to whatever faith will feed them. Some proudly refuse. Once in a while a do-gooder turns up dead in a sad scatter of discarded tracts, but not too often: that attracts unwanted attention.
Most young Barrens residents are barely literate and have trouble spelling their own names. Some have parents who teach them better. Most do not. Schools? What schools?
Opinions vary as to when the best time to move is. If you're afraid of people, move by night. If you fear the ghouls and devil rats and other wildlife that emerges by night to scavenge the day's leavings, move by day.
Most Barrens residents don't have guns, but do have knives or other ways to make life painful for anyone attacking them. Lay unwanted hands on someone and you'll likely lose corpuscles. Whether anyone nearby weighs in to help depends where you are: in crowded Redmond, you could probably commit rape and murder in a doorway and none of the passers-by would intervene.
(Adapted from this Reddit post)
