“FREE” ZONE

POSTED BY: KLUDGE

By now, everyone has heard about Denver. Oh wait, maybe not, because most of the corps are downplaying it, and the governments don’t want to announce how weak they really are. I’m sure someone around here is putting together some-thing for us with more depth, but let me give a

little surface view before I explain why this is an important place for trogs.

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Why are we taking data from a guy who may or may not

have put a price tag on a bunch of our heads?

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^Kane

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Because no one’s collected or thoroughly proved it’s legit.

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^Bull

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Then why was it up in the first place?

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^Sunshine

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^{JIC. CYA.}

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^Bull

In February, Ghostwalker gave the sector gov-ernments their walking papers. He also gave any-one not willing to swear fealty to him the same orders: Get out or else. He gave them a month to pack up and get out. In March, while many citizens had fled the free city, the UCAS and CAS govern-ments were still clinging to the crazy idea that he was kidding, or he’d come around and work with them. When the deadline hit and Ghostwalker said,

“Times up!,” the UCAS and CAS switched over to trying to act tough, while the PCC and Sioux Na-tion quietly shifted their important government operations to locations just outside the FRFZ, the advantages to owning sovereign national soil around the free city. After a dramatic demonstra-tion of why not to frag with a dragon, the UCAS and CAS were pulling out their aerial resources filled with what few troops and government assets they could manage.

Ghostwalker now claims control over all of the former Front Range Free Zone. All the sec-tors, all the citizens, all the property, all his. Of course, there are forces working against this and righteously pissed about it. The involved governments aren’t happy, the megacorpora-tions aren’t happy, and the displaced citizens aren’t happy. The first and the last are probably out of luck. Governments and individual citi-zens don’t have much that Ghostwalker cares about, but the megacorporations are going to be hard to keep out. Even before the final oust-ing, Ghostwalker was in talks with several of the megas to stick around and maintain business and infrastructure support in the city. I haven’t seen any logos or heard much more than ru-mors, but I’m sure several of the big boys are

already back and working to prove their value to the white wyrm.

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It’s nice to see someone, or something in this case, sticking

it to the corps. Gives me hope that one day we won’t feel their boot on our throats.

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^{Hard Exit}

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You won’t. Eventually we all suffocate.

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^Hannibelle

Now that you know, the next bit will make more sense. Over the past two months, orks and trolls from all over NorthAm have been working their way into Denver. Trogs are flocking to a place controlled by something as “monstrous” as them in hopes that Ghostwalker will create a more en-lightened society in his fiefdom. The overall cul-tural setup of this new nation-state isn’t fully de-veloped, or even partially. It’s still in flux, but if enough trogs arrive to shift the balance of num-bers, they can certainly shift the social order in the process. Based on the numbers I’ve seen, this is huge and could definitely shift the numbers in fa-vor of orks, who are far more supportive of trolls than anyone else.

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Really? The trogs are only headed there because they

know Ghostwalker is a big proponent of “he who is the biggest badass gets the power” and they’re looking to play off this attitude to their advantage.

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^Stone

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Ghostwalker is the biggest badass. He’s not going to

let his kingdom fall to fighting and squabbling, or risk one of those powers rising to match his. Not that an ork or a troll could ever go mano-a-mano with GW, but you get my point.

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Hard Exit

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I’m sure there is a certain elf around town who might

disagree on who is the biggest badass. Not necessarily agreeing, just saying.

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^Frosty

There are a few current issues to consider if you think this move might be for you, and I’m not entirely sure that others who have jumped on the bandwagon have considered all these potential issues. I’ll admit that it is currently a huge movement in North America. The number of smuggling runs pulling trogs out of Seattle’s slums has skyrocketed over the past month. It

took a little bit of time for word of mouth to spread, but once it did, every trog in town was hitting up the Cascade Orks and other smug-glers to get them down to Denver. While many are calling this a fad, the fact that right now it’s a one-way trip is giving it a solid foundation and preventing anyone who has already made the move from backing out. The one-way trip is defi-nitely a hiccup in anyone’s relocation plans, but it gets worse. As it stands, Ghostwalker is letting new citizens, willing to swear fealty to him, into the city with a very open-door policy. Part of this is to fill the voids left by those who fled, and the other is to fill his belly with fools. Sadly, we know how many fools exist in the shadows, and how many will try to push their luck for a chance at a buck.

Everyone who comes to Denver has to swear fealty to Ghostwalker before the dragon himself or one of his trusted advisors. All of his advisors are spellcasters with the ability to determine wheth-er someone is being honest, and those who ar-en’t being honest are getting rounded up by the ZDF. They don’t get taken right away—that would scare others—instead they are let in, put on a list, and then grabbed in the middle of the night to be penned up for later dining by Ghostwalker. For those inside, it’s not a state secret; they just keep it from newcomers. If you’re headed in under false pretenses, know that they’ll know you aren’t loy-al, and don’t be wherever you claim to be staying when they come for you. If you’re honestly ready to live in Ghostwalker’s realm and follow his laws, you’re golden and have plenty of opportunities left open by those who took off.

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I’ve gotten a few messages from folks in Denver, and

they’re saying the Resistance is alive and well, so you’ll have places to hide out once you’re inside. The ZDF is expanding its numbers and its efforts, but it’s nowhere near enough to cover all of the FRFZ. There are plenty of folks who’ll help you hide, and plenty of places to hide with all the government facilities and private citizens who thought it was better to start again elsewhere than to live under a dragon’s reign.

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^Kia

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I want to point out that all of those citizens who owned

property and chose to flee sold their properties to Ghostwalker for a fair price. He didn’t just kick them out and claim the land. He spent a lot of capital to give them a fair value.

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^{Mr. Bonds}

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The number of property brokers who thought they would make mad nuyen by getting people to sell to them cheap before Ghostwalker started buying their property learned a harsh lesson about cheating people who a dragon is planning to treat fairly. He ended up getting a lot of free property from those guys after he ate them.

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^Ma’Fan

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How does he get away with eating all these people? It’s

murder!

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^{Hard Rock}

With the opposition arrayed against him and the inherent instability of new regimes, there is a big question on everyone’s mind as to how long this place will last in its current incarnation. Drag-ons are powerful beings, but megacorporatiDrag-ons aren’t exactly chopped liver. If they lose money or, god forbid, power from this move, they are going to come after the dragon, and ghost help him if they work together. I’m sure Lofwyr and Saeder-Krupp will be on the nay side of a vote to take Ghostwalker down in a permanent fash-ion, but Aztechnology has already proven they’ll drop a dragon, and others are not pleased at the mess caused by Celedyr in Boston. It’s a good bet that if the Corporate Court gets dragged into an issue here, it won’t play out well for Ghostwalker.

Though I’m sure that is on his radar—dragons, after all, excel at planning.

For the orks and trolls who are working hard to set up a place where they are the majority and they can set positive policies, their efforts may be futile. If the dragon loses power, the power-hun-gry are going to come in like vultures and tear the carcass of the city to pieces. The orks and trolls who move here may become the inheritors of a kingdom of ash or get shoved right back down when other metas flood back in.

On the positive side here in Denver, the trogs that have already come to town are finding one group to be very welcoming: the Zone Defense Force. The ZDF is bulking up its numbers, and in the process, many of those bulked-up numbers are bulked-up metas. Orks are getting positions in the ZDF at an astounding rate. One could look at it as a strategic move to build up the force or as sim-ply a utilization of the available workforce. Either way, it’s a place to work if you’re an ork headed into Denver for a new life.

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There are two groups not happy about all the orks joining

the ZDF. First, is all the rest of the ZDF, who feel that it’s becoming the Ork Defense Force and feel pushed aside because they aren’t as big and tough. A lot of ZDF regular Joes are tapping into aspects of their contracts that offer cyber and bio upgrades paid for with years of contracted service (with a reduction in pay, of course). Others are intentionally sending the ork grunts into dangerous situations without proper support. Some come out, but even orks aren’t supernaturally tough.

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^{Rigger X}

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I’ve seen some funny images from the ZDF, like orks in

their new body armor. They don’t have enough ork-sized gear and haven’t had the time, resources, or manpower to modify the gear, so they wear them as is. It leaves some odd gaps, but the humor comes from either the “ork in a crop top” look, or the “fat man in a little suit” style.

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^Stone

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I’m sure they don’t respond well to the laughter. I know I

don’t.

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^Bull

Some would have expected trolls to be part of that bulk up, but Ghostwalker seems to have differ-ent plans for them. The vast majority of trolls who stuck around or have arrived since Ghostwalker took over have all been offered work with what most thought was a pet project of the dragon. The trolls, well-known for being a literate race, are be-ing brought on by Ghostwalker to act as wander-ing sages. Instead of bashwander-ing heads, they’re fillwander-ing heads with the value of words and strength that can be found in genuine literacy. It’s like a renais-sance of reading led by the most unlikely of sourc-es. It hasn’t yet but will certainly go a long way in changing the local view of trolls as big and dumb.

I’m not sure if this is part of Ghostwalker’s plan, but it is definitely working in favor of those who’ve been spreading the word to head to Denver.

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Who’s doing that, by the way?

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^Slamm-0!

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Funny thing is—I don’t know. Not really funny. Kind of

disturbing actually. I usually have a good connection with ork movements. This one’s not coming through the normal channels.

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^Bull

The troll sages and ork ZDF enhancements aren’t growing unopposed in the city. As one

would expect, the anarchist element that rallied behind Harlequin against Ghostwalker didn’t leave. The wild elf hasn’t been seen much since Ghostwalker took over but the diamond-eyed forces loyal to him have been sewing the seeds of chaos all over town. They’ve been particularly keen on hitting the new orks in the ZDF and the trolls that are just trying to spread wisdom in the zone. Their efforts aren’t always very precise, and plenty of other orks and trolls get caught in the crossfire. Be wary.

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Why’s our favorite chortling chucklehead not pushing

harder while Ghostwalker is trying to stem the chaos?

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^Slamm-0!

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Because he already got quite a victory out of this, and he’s

silently gloating.

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^Frosty

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Any chance Ghostwalker is intentionally trying to build his

force of orks and trolls in order to combat the collection of elves and humans that Harlequin seems to attract?

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^Sounder

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While this isn’t some fantasy trid with an ancient

animosity between elves and orks, the races have never really gotten along because of their innately opposite variations from the norm. Elves are pretty and agile; orks are ugly and tough. It’s possible the two masterminds are playing on that internal animosity and turning it external.

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^Snopes

MUMBAI

Mumbai provides some interesting opportunities to explore Sixth World ethics. Yeah, some of your eyes will glaze over at that word, but look, that’s what a lot of this whole post deals with, so suck it up and let’s talk about how you should behave around people.

There are some definite pluses to being a trog in the Indian Union, especially the Hindu-domi-nated areas. Hindus have long been accustomed to ideas about the connections between all souls and how the souls of beings you care about may appear in unusual shapes, so when gobliniza-tion occurs, they generally just saw it as another set of vessels that can hold souls and they went on with their lives. This is not to say it is some racism-free paradise—such a place does not

ex-ist—but racism is often isolated, rather than the everyday occurrence it is in other parts of the world.

And yet. Mumbai is dominated by two business sectors: entertainment and organized crime. Both of those sectors offer plenty of job opportunities for trogs—and both of them are all too willing to throw trogs into stereotypical roles.

Now, I know well enough that some of you react to this with a great big “So?” The job pays money. The money spends. So what if both mob bosses and studio producers, when they’re hir-ing, can’t envision anything for orks or trolls to do besides hit something? So what if a) They want every ork or troll to talk “street,” and b) Their ver-sion of “street” sounds nothing like what you have heard on actual streets? They’re not discriminating against orks or trolls for these roles—in fact, they’re deliberately seeking them out for the jobs! Is it re-ally worth worrying about?

As I said, this is about ethics. How harmful are stereotypes, and how much damage do you do proliferating them?

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I’ll tell you this—if those were the most worrisome

questions on my mind each night when I went to bed, I’d sleep a whole lot easier than I do.

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^{Hard Exit}

On the whole, you can live a good life in Mum-bai. Yeah, the gangland fights can get a little bruising, but who signs up with the mob without expecting a little danger? Sometimes the rain is acidic, sometimes the air is toxic, but that hits ev-eryone, not just trogs, so at least you’re on equal footing. So maybe you take the money and don’t worry about the rest.

But when you travel the world and see people telling every troll they see to punch through a wall like the bodyguard in that one Water Margin epi-sode, be sure to tell yourself that your actions af-fect only yourself.

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What a bunch of moralizing bullshit. What kind of a world

do you think you live in? One where individuals can shape or reverse huge social trends? One where we have the luxury to think about whether we reinforce stereotypes, rather than worrying how to avoid starving/freezing/

baking to death? That’s not the world we have. We’ve gotta survive, and if you somehow find a job that doesn’t entirely suck, latch on to it and count your blessings.

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^Haze

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Self-fulfilling prophecies will be our doom.

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^Arete

Again, while Mumbai might be relatively low on the prejudice scale, it’s not some sort of paradise.

It’s got crime, it’s got poverty, it’s got all the things you expect a major sprawl to have. Doing what we do, we’re often going to find ourselves among the poor and downtrodden, and a large number of them are in the slum of Dharavi. It has living conditions similar to barrens areas, but a density of buildings more in line with something like Kow-loon’s Walled City or the favelas of Metropole.

One distinguishing facet of this area is that it is very entrepreneurial. Recycling has long been a part of people’s lives here, in small operations with little knowledge or interest in health standards, and all manner of spam originates from people typing and calling away as they line long, narrow tables. You can find some people cobbling togeth-er makeshift tech htogeth-ere, as well as people willing to put their bodies on the line to make some cash. In short, it’s a good place to hide out and recruit help.

And like most of the rest of the city, you won’t feel out of place here if you’re a trog.

In document Shadowrun 5E the Complete Trog (Page 54-58)