Chrome Prophecy is a LARP system which has the core rule book released under the Creative Commons licence. And is great fun. For more info visit Chrome.
How did it come to this?
It can't be long before Earth-Fed come to get me. The whole block is getting tipoffs, one by one. As one guy falls he must blab, and so a few more people fall. I won't blab. I'm not a snitch. I may make recreational pharmaceuticals, but I'm no snitch.
Yeah, we all thought this area was perfect. Me and my gang were certain that EarthFed wouldn't notice dealers on their doorstep. And we got the block for a song. Some big shot took the warehouse that was here and converted it into luxury flats. The joke was on him though. Nobody but us wants luxury flats in a rough area. Especially not next to a big EarthFed station, with sirens going all hours of the night. I once considered writing an email of complaint to them, but considered myself lucky that none of the vans were coming here.
So me and my gang, we bought a level of the flat block. In my room we had the pharma-lab. I'm an expert on recreational pharma. Seriously. Anything that's on the street I could knock up in no time. Even if something new comes in, I could run it through the gas chromatograph and the rest of my gear and replicate it soon enough. The rest of my gang were mostly dealers. Of the elite type. Not the type who hang around on street corners, waiting to be picked up by EarthFed, unlike losers I've dealt with in the past. Pro-tip, never let a trivial dealer know where your base is. And work in cash. They will get picked up by EarthFed, and they will snitch on you. Make sure they don't have enough info to get you. Anyway, the dealers in my gang were elite. The customers came to them. The customers advertised their services to other customers, and we had enough to vet who got through. The common junkie is too much of a risk. Yes, he'll do anything for a fix, but that makes him really unreliable. He doesn't have an income stream to pay for your top-notch pharma so he will resort to stealing. I like to distance myself from petty crime. And anyway, what's so wrong with making people feel good? That's all I do, make people feel good. Or sleepy, or alert, or in some perverse cases they want to feel a lot of pain. Okay, maybe those people aren't buying for themselves, but I can make it and sell it.
As for the rest of my gang, we had an ambitious researcher in the field of recreational decking. Instead of dealing damage to a decker's deck and head, he was researching getting the deck to stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain. He reckoned that he could get a better high with no comedown or side effects doing this. We had to let him go in the end. He just sat around in full lotus position, grinning a Cheshire cat smile and declaring that he had cracked it. First rule of recreational pharma; don't sample the merchandise. I've been curious as to the effects of my products, but I've never sampled. My dealers know better than that too. Poor guy. He probably starved to death with a smile on his face.
Of course, we sometimes had problems with other gangs. This is where the heavies come in. Hardy gentechs and outsiders with the best combat pharma made addictive. Got to keep them loyal, you know. They all carried the best gun they cared to carry, with the best ammunition, and the best titan armour they cared to wear, and our contacts allowed. Unsurprisingly, dealers make poor fences when they're not dealing in pharma.
Of course, the good times couldn't last forever. This is the underhive after all. The flat to the side got busted. We knew something was going on up there, but we never asked, and they never told. Saw the 'Feds going past with a lot of shiny gear though. Looks like another gang had the same idea as us: do it right under the EF's nose and you'll be invisible. They weren't invisible. They must have fingered the flat to the left. Everyone knew they were selling firearms without licences. They were sloppy. I know, we were repeat customers of theirs. Every new heavy needed a good gun. Or a good mele weapon. Me, I appreciate claws. Nice and inconspicuous for "Don't shoot me, I'm unarmed", nice and dangerous in a worst case scenario. Not that I've ever had to draw my claws. That's what the heavies are for. Even when I was a rookie, brewing out of small hotels I had heavies. Some people know violence, and some know how to boss those who know violence.
It can't be long before EarthFed raid my floor. I will dissapear off the system, become a non-person. I'm giving you my story because I want there to be some record of my life. Something more than "this chip number was born on date, was found guilty of making illegal drugs on date, was imprisoned on date, died on date." All I wanted to do was make people happy and make a bit of money off it. Is it so much to ask? Is making people happy so antisocial that it needs to be a crime? I forget. Happy people aren't big consumers of everything the corps have to offer. Well, except for the shadier regions of organotech.
We could move, but they'd get us eventually. Our chips are registered to this address. We could go down a few hundred floors, where there's plenty of cash because everyone's too shady to use their chips. Or in some cases, don't have chips. But death will get us there just as easily as in a showdown with EF. Yes, I have my heavies, but not enough. Not enough for the horror of the floors that low. I know those floors. I grew up there. I am not returning.
So. Here we are, waiting for the inevitable knock on the door and the shout of "EarthFed". We won't go without a fight. Sure, then they'll add "resisting arrest" to our record, but at least they'll kill us here with a bullet between the eyes rather then going to a prison compound. I've heard things about the prisons. They are definately not pleasant places. I'm not going there. Not if I can help it. The heavies are well armed and we're all well armoured. We've even got a few small explosives. We should give at least as good as we take. I'd hire more heavies, but I can't bring in more people just to watch them die.
There. That's my story. Middle-time pharma-maker who is the head of his gang is going to die in a shootout with the EarthFed. No, I'm not going to go into my childhood, or mushy stories about my first girlfriend, or even how my parents died. You don't care about that sort of thing, and I don't care to tell it. I've left a small mark on history. This will go to the newsies who will, or will not, decide to publish. It's the last wish of a condemmed man, of course you want to publish this. Then it'll get caught by the archieval bots that trawl the nets. And my story, short as it is, will live.
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Roughly based on real events, or at least rumours of real events. There is a factory building in Bradford which was converted into expensive flats, and is opposite a police station. It's a rough area, however. So the common local story was that the only people actually acquiring these flats were drug dealers, as the police wouldn't believe they were dealing right in front of them. And they were the only people who wanted/had to be to be in that area and had the money for the flats.
ReplyDeleteI think there was a vague idea about regeneration of the North when these factory conversions were happening. Lots of talk about public sector jobs being moved from the south (London mostly) further North. Two political reasons for this. One is that it wins them votes in the North. Another is that many London jobs have to pay better just to get the minimum standard of living. There's even higher student loans available to anyone studying in London!
Anyway, these plans fell through, and, legend has it, these flats got bought cheaper than expected by drug dealers. Though I don't think they all died in shootouts with the police. That part is pure Chrome.