TECHNOLOGIES
POSTED BY: DARRYL DEVLIN
The best word to describe my life inside MCT is “used.” As for the rest of my troll kin and our ork brothers, it’s not much different. I’m big, I’m strong, I know how to show respect and control my temper. I didn’t get immediately shoved into janitorial work to be pushed down and constantly threatened with being replaced by a drone. In-stead, they gave me a uniform, then taught me to take a hit. After that, they taught me to give as good as I got. My weapons training stayed basic because I was never expected to pull my gun. I was there to be intimidating and if necessary, to bring down rowdy metas. Yup, just metas. I was told to never lay my hands on a human citizen of MCT. Didn’t matter if I knew the SIN they cast was fake as a troll CEO, I wasn’t allowed to engage.
That was left to the human officers.
That was when I was first hired. The guidelines didn’t change all at once, but they still changed, par-tially because they just didn’t make sense. When you have a strong security guard excelling at all aspects of their job, why limit what they can do? Humans com-mit crime and do shadowruns—why put high-quality people on the sidelines when that happens? So the scope of our duties broadened, and we were trusted more. Sometimes one of us was promoted to
man-agement—generally in security, seldom in any other division, but it was still progress.
But it’s tough to get away from the fact that trogs are seen a certain way. All across the com-pany, we’re optimized for our size and resilience.
We’re pushed to develop the big muscles, and de-pending on how well we test in other areas, we get placed in jobs to best make use of our strength combined with our other talents. If we don’t devel-op, or we score particularly low across the board, we can expect to find ourselves doing the lowli-est of low jobs, often in extremely unsafe envi-ronments. Or more often, we are simply expelled from the corporation and into the local national population or transferred to a subsidiary and sold to other corporations as part of that corp’s assets.
For trolls with the Talent or high scores in tech-nical areas, MCT finds a special place in their se-curity division for them. They struggle to be treat-ed the same as their fellow mages and hackers, and they often find positions on heavy-combat or high-threat teams thanks to their strength and ability to shrug off small-arms fire. These same teams often find orks in their ranks. When they can, MCT forms complete squads of orks and trolls. Unlike the old days, these squads now usu-ally have a trog commander.
But the drive for money is strong in MCT, even more so than the rest of the Sixth World. If an ork or troll can make a division more money by ascend-ing to a particular position, then corporate policy is that an ork or troll should definitely ascend to that position. There may be exasperated looks and remarks muttered under various people’s breath, but more and more, those attitudes will not stand in the way of our advancement.
There are plenty of remnants of less tolerant days. Back when I first started, the corp wouldn’t do a thing to cater to our size, and they’re not re-building every facility or buying a whole new fleet of vehicles just because attitudes have shifted.
Lots of times we have to cram ourselves into vehi-cles not built for us, or squeeze our hands around weapons that feel like toys. If you want to fit in, if you want to advance, you don’t complain. You find a way to make it work. Adjusting your own property is fine, but it has to be returned to its hu-man-appropriate sizing when you cease residence or return it to the corporation. This often means a serious debt when moving, transferring, or being fired, often transferred over to your new employer if you get shuffled off with a subsidiary.
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I actually watched a troll get left behind by a sec team. Theycame on site with two vehicles, a modded Citymaster and an armored-up spirit. The Citymaster got rocket-hollowed and when they had to bail the troll didn’t fit. They booked it and the troll got stranded.
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BalladeerWhat you can generally expect from MCT is that they will try to put their best face forward.
Yeah, it can be awkward sometimes, as they sometimes will go out of their way to tell you how much they like some famous trog or another, or how they once voted for a trog for public office, but you can always grit your teeth and tell yourself that hey, they’re trying. And if they fake it long enough, perhaps someday they’ll make it.
RENRAKU
POSTED BY: BIGREDONE
I have had the honor and privilege of serving the citizens of Renraku for more than twenty years.
I worked as a warehouse packager as a child, proved trustworthy through several morality tests, and was allowed to train for a spot at Najimi Security through my high school years. Najimi of-fered me the opportunity to overcome my limita-tions as an ork, show the strength of my honor, and join the ranks of its elite samurai. It has not been easy as one of the lesser breed among my betters, but with my strength and perseverance I have done well.
And no, I am not a fool.
I fully understand the difficulties that my kind have here at Renraku. It is a place of great ex-pectations, culture, and history. A history that we have not yet earned a place in, other than as the monsters of legend. Our ancestors wronged the ancestors of the people of Renraku, and we must work to atone for that. I have risen to a place that few can achieve. The ranks of Najimi’s corporate samurai are limited, and few orks can aspire to this position. But in truth, very few among our kind would be able to. The strength of discipline I learned in my youth came mostly because I
was not raised among my own kind. I was raised among humans. While I felt shame when they looked upon me, I earned their respect. Not with fist and foot, but with honor and restraint of my violent soul. That is the path denied those of my kind who are raised in ignorance and anger.
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Internalized oppression and self-loathing are real.>
SunshineThe orks—and I’ll include the trolls as well, for they are also in need of atonement—are wel-comed into the Renraku family. They are given all the tools needed to act in the proper fashion, hon-or the proper customs, and obey the appropriate laws, both criminal and social. They are confront-ed with a choice: Will they breconfront-ed anger at their indebtedness, or will they accept and overcome it. In life, we do not get to choose when a debt is owed; we wrong another, and they choose how the debt must be repaid. Life within Renraku is a chance to repay that debt. A chance to live a life of honor for ourselves, our children, and our families.
I shall have an honorable family name to pass on.
What others must understand is that our place in the corporation is not given to us as a right. It is earned. We do not have honor from our family name. We must earn every centimeter of a bow.
We start from a place of shame, but we are not forced to stay there. We keep ourselves there by fighting against the honorable among us. Yes, they shame us and in doing so, shame themselves, but they can afford the small shame. When we strike out in anger or act against them with a desire for vengeance, we have no honor to spare.
We can grow in Renraku. We can earn honor.
We can aspire to give our future generations a place without shame.
Or we can rebel. We can dishonor ourselves by acting out. We can huddle in anger and resentment at the bottom of the social caste because we are too prideful and angry to understand that this place only shuns those who shun it. We can fail to realize that we work to lift ourselves up but have nothing to fall back on, so there is not room for failure.
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Somebody drank the Kool-Aid!>
Slamm-0!>
But there is perhaps no better way to illustrate the Renrakumindset. The calm and conviction BigRedOne displays can be tremendously influential, and he also shows just what
you have to go through to succeed at Renraku. You have to accept your own inferiority to be seen as good—it’s a kind of deeply internalized guilt I hear Catholic friends talk about. But rather than waiting for an unseen redemption, your parent corp is there waiting to help you purge your guilt. In Japanese society, with all the importance placed in being part of a larger whole, the fact that orks and trolls are offered any way in is a strong draw.
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Mihoshi Oni>
That’s for the ones who stay. What BigRedOnehas no real way to understand are those who he condemns, those who, in his terms, “huddle in anger and resentment at the bottom of the social caste.” He dismisses them, puts them out of mind, because that’s part of the whole point of the social conditioning he is subjected to. Mihoshi Oni’s Catholic analogy is perhaps more accurate than she understands (which is odd for a decidedly non-Catholic nation). Trogs are born with the original sin of their metatype. They are not fully human from birth; that humanity must be earned. If they do not earn it, then what is the loss? They were never fully human to begin with, so no human has been lost in the rejection of this trog.
Imagine, then, the resentment of the trogs who have been treated this way. Who have had to audition for the chance to be real people and did not pass. When you are rejected goods from Renraku—one of the most influential forces in the nation—where do you go? What can you be?
Unsurprisingly, a lot of these people fall into the shadows, but be careful if you’re thinking about them as a great pool of potential recruits. They are often full of anger and feel as if they have nothing to lose, and that’s a dangerous combination.
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Jimmy No>
The best thing about all this Catholic imagery is thatRenraku has truly been subjected to the wrath of an angry god.
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NetcatI was asked to provide thoughts about shadowrunners in relation to Renraku, but I am hesitant to do so. My primary advice is that you simply should not do it, since you have little to gain and tremendous amounts to lose. The gains are trivial—a handful of nuyen—and the losses of honor and dignity are far more important.
When you operate without structure and without discipline, you surrender yourself to what is weak inside you. Do not give in. Build strength instead of indulging weakness.
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Good hell, he talks like a self-help book.>
Cayman>
Actually, he talks like a Renraku employee manual. Thatlast line is a direct quote.
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Mihoshi OniBut I am not totally without pity. I understand that, in the process of building our eventual selves, we must often begin from low points. People may be in the shadows as a start to something better. So conduct yourself with honor. Negotiate honestly and keep the promises you make. If any Renraku personnel make reference to that which you are not, understand that they are simply pointing you to what you could be. Accept their words and actions with dignity.
I know that orks and trolls who run against Renraku might worry that they will be special targets for Renraku security forces. That’s foolishness. Our job is to defend what we have and to secure our premises. Everything else is subordinate to that.
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Yeah, he’s probably not being purposefully disingenuous—he very possibly really doesn’t know that Renraku threat analysis procedures, more often than not, identify trolls and orks as the first targets to eliminate. Probably just a coincidence.
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2XLOther than that, the same criteria that apply to employees of Renraku apply to those on the outside. Simply put, that means you will be treated as you demonstrate you deserve.
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Which is a concept that always sounds better to thosedeciding who deserves what.
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Jimmy NoSHIAWASE
POSTED BY: HIDEKO MACHIKI
I don’t like to speak for my people as a whole, but I will. I think everyone should get a chance to speak for themselves, because we all come from different places with different experiences.
I know why I got picked. I’ve been around. I’ve been to a lot of places within Shiawase, so I’ve seen how the company treats orks and trolls in spots all over the world. As much as I’d love to say some places are better than others, it’s just
not the case. Shiawase is pretty universal in their treatment of orks and trolls.
It’s not deplorable, but it isn’t good by a long shot. As a whole, they are slightly more polite than Renraku, not trying quite as hard as Mitsuhama.
They treat their orks and trolls with a sort of uni-versal pity. It’s not negative, it’s not often overt, it just is. They aren’t condescending to them for the most part, but they also don’t give them much slack when it comes to being respectful. Disrespect will get a troll or ork quickly demoted to the lowest position in their current assignment. If there is no lower, they are docked pay, privileges, and often even access to basic necessities. There is definitely a price to pay for disrespect, but for the most part, the orks and trolls of Shiawase are tame.
Shiawase citizens interacting with orks and trolls from outside the corp are often shocked at how brazen and outspoken they can be. They also often mistake their place as a megacorporate citizen to mean they have authority over people outside their corporate territory, and they often suffer grave con-sequences for this action. But so too do the trolls and orks who cause them harm. Shiawase has no tolerance for violence against their employees by anyone, and old habits make them lean on orks and trolls harder than others. If their own corporate security doesn’t handle the problem, they are not above contracting out their discipline to shadow-runners in order to keep their citizens safe. The cost is often placed onto the debt of the injured citizen, creating even greater animosity against metahu-mans. But the scales must be balanced somehow, and bringing shame to Shiawase by shaming an outsider deserves punishment.
As you can guess, there is not a lot of room for advancement up the corporate ranks. Minor man-agement positions are about the best any ork or troll can ever hope for within Shiawase, and they had better not make any mistakes once they get there. The powers above and around them are like-ly at the full length of their tolerance in having to deal with an ork or troll with any power. And those below them are looking for every opportunity pos-sible to knock them down. The best and smartest orks and trolls work hard to get their offices and production lines filled with other orks and trolls.
As that sometimes creates a “sell-out” mentality, moving up in Shiawase is kind of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.
The one thing I can give Shiawase some cred-it for in the understanding department is their
Shiawase Social Circles. These small-group clubs are intended to allow citizens of Shiawase to get together and talk about life in the company, as well as their personal lives, with others of sim-ilar social standing. It’s supposed to prevent cross-status griping and give citizens an outlet.
For a lot of orks and trolls, it gives them a chance to actually talk and socialize with others of their kind in a place where they aren’t forced to hold a certain face, or remain silent because of their so-cietal status. The structure of this group means that suggestions for ways to improve corporate practices are regularly passed on to manage-ment. They might not have a strong track record of doing anything with most of these recom-mendations, but some movement on even one or two recommendations is better than things were in the old days. Or at Renraku.
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It’s nice that this gentleman sees this as a good thing,just like a good corporate drone, but these meetings are all monitored by the MFID, Shiawase’s intel operation.
Suggestions may go to management, but hints of insubordination and discontent get there faster.
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Thorn>
Hideko doesn’t have a lot of information about trogrunners dealing with Shiawase, so let me fill you in.
Shiawase is more conscious than their peers about keeping their shadowy activity quite dark. With their direct connections to the Imperial family, they want to avoid clear engagement in criminal activity. This goes beyond the basics of having a Department of Unspecified Services and using the name Mr. Tanaka when hiring runners.
Within Japan, they outsource their runs, using a rotating series of fixers. They’re so dedicated to not having any fixers being clearly identified as in their pocket that they will sometimes arrange runs against their own holdings just to throw people off their scent.
The end result is that when you’re hired by Shiawase, little of their corporate culture will trickle down to the fixer and Mr. Tanaka, because that’s how the corp wants it. So you might get an out-and-out racist, or you might get someone who takes you for who you are rather than make snap judgments based on your metatype. All this is to say: Don’t count on predictability.
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Mihoshi OniEVO
POSTED BY: DEVOTED
Let’s just cross over to Evo, as they were once
Let’s just cross over to Evo, as they were once