Tavern Thursday: Neon Complex - Part One (Patreon)

Each Thursday I do a quick sketch of a new fantasy tavern as a paying-members-exclusive post. Each post includes an illustration and just enough tavern details for a GM to drop it in their game wherever they need a place for adventures to gather and quest to start.

This Thursday, based on a member request, rather than feudal fantasy we're doing a cyber-fantasy tavern. It's future cyberpunk, but also a world with technomancers, mystics, street samurai, deckers, and both semi-real planes accessed through a info-matrix and spirit realms that require spells or talismans to reach. Presenting the Neon Complex's base set up takes so much space that this is a rar 2-part Thursday Tavern, with Part 2 coming next week.

Want to see more stuff like this? Would you rather see a Sorcerous Speakeasy of the Runic 20s? A Diesel Pulp Dive Bar? A Preternatural-Post-Apocalyptic Trading Post? Really Wild West Saloon? Member requests often guide content, so if you want Thursdays' "fantasy tavern" to wander more in genre coverage, let me know!

NEON COMPLEX 

The Neon Complex is more than a place to get a job and take a meeting with a middleman or arranger. It is a hub of independence and freedom that exists on five distinct levels -- the public meatspace "Neon Club N," the private meatspace speakeasy and hideout "N," the info-matrix virtual location "The Neon Diner," the virtuality node "Crimson Emission," and the spirit plane of "Noble Gasses." The five levels are collectively called the Neon Complex and have the same owner (see below) and are run as interconnected businesses, but it's common for someone to be aware of one or two of the levels without knowing about all five. People who do know about all five are called a "Pentalpha" if they are in good standing with the Neon Complex, and a Fivefold Thorn is they aren't.

Where different aspects of the Neon Complex have different information in the sections above, they will have sub-entries, always beginning with the public meatspace Neon Club N.

Appearance

("Neon Club N" Art by astragal)

Neon Club N: The public face of the Neon Complex is a a series of interconnected businesses in a cheap-looking strip mall at the bottom of a failed and most-empty skyscraper on the edge of the entertainment, business, and warehousing districts of the city. It advertises a club, cyber cafe, hotel, bar, and food cafe as if they were separate businesses, but all are clearly connected once you enter. The exterior is cheap, garrish, dark ven during the day (as surrounding buildings block any direct sunlight), foggy (due to the cooling units in nearby buildings for both computing centers and power generators forming frozen water vapor, which drifts down 24/7), and wet (both due to the fog, and because employees spray the exterior and nearby street clear of grease, food scraps, blood, and other bodily fluids at least once a day).

("Neon Club N" Art by kinwun)

These storefronts have a unified aesthetic (at least in the front rooms and lobbies) of neon and cheap fixtures bolted over worn industrial infrastructure. They share unified public restrooms, deliver docks, and employee-only back rooms.

N: If you know the right employee-only door to knock on, and know the right password, you can access "N," the unlicensed, underground part of the Neon Complex where illegal goods (including most drinks and recreational drugs) can be bought and sold, personal stalls with or without computer terminals with powerful location concealment and antitracking hardware can be rented by the hour no-questions-asked, and fake IDs, serial-number-free weapons, and an entire library of banned books (both hardcopy and digital) can be perused or bought.

Most of the business at N occurs in The Hub, a grungy circular bar where everything sold or arranged by the House is handled by terminals linked to automated pneumatic tube delivery systems. Chairs tend to be rusty and industrial, and N can range from being a swarming dance floor and endless party to almost entirely empty, depending on complex social factors no one really understands.

("N" Art by IG Digital Arts)

The Neon Diner: The semi-secret info-matric site linked to the Neon Complex, The Neon Diner takes the virtual reality appearance of a 50's diner, it's always-wet parking lot, and four exterior lights, while all the rest of the info-matrix appears as a dark forest and a single road. The Neon Diner has a computer-rendered aesthetic that makes everything seem obviously fake. The Neon Diner is not listed in any official info-matrix directory, but its location can be found on numerous message boards and decker guides. Most people assume it's someone connected to Neon Club N, but can't prove it. It takes the right password to be able to access communication with anyone at Neon Club N or N, but with those passwords you can make reservations or order goods to be picked up at N, or even communicate with patrons at N or Crimson Emissions... if you now their Neon Complex handle.

The Neon Diner can also act as an Augmented Reality overlay in both Neon Club N and N, if you know what 'special of the day' to order from a booth at The Neon Diner. This allows a decker to walk around the meatspace locations, while also seeing whatever part of the Neon Diner they wish as a virtual overlay.

("Neon Diner" Art by Nikolay E)

Crimson Emission: A virtuality, the Crimson Emission is a semi-real digital space that requires technomancy to access. Most deck-mages that are aware of the Crimson Emission access it by traveling to the Neon Diner, then moving to the diner's virtual restroom, then to a specific stall (which always seems empty), where a patron can log out or, if they know the virtuality spell and Crimson Emission cyber address, can take themselves into the digital demiplane. A few Pentalphas have deck-totems that allow them to teleport to the Crimson Emission from any info-matrix connection. While a decker traveling to a virtual space such as Neon Diner remain physically in the meatspace world, one using magic to travel to the Crimson Emission is physical in that digital world, though from there they can only travel to the location where they jacked in, or another virtuality if they have access to one.

The Crimson Emission appears to be a high-tech observation room, with windows out into a endless mass of swirling pink gas, a central greenhouse with various plants, and a single power generator. While it's rare for more than 3-4 deck mages to be in the Crimson Emission at a time, no matter how many arrive, it always seems sparsely populated.

As a private virtuality, the only things that can be done from the Crimson Emission are to access the Neon Diner (and, therefore, services offered at Neon Club N and N, if you know the right passwords), and the spiritual realm of Noble Gasses, which can form as an image in one of the windows, but only if you know the handle of someone in Noble Gasses and they are in that realm and agree to speak with you. However, this is a rare interface that allows a spiritual mystic in a spirit realm and a technomancer mage in a virtuality to communicate while neither is present in meatspace.

(Crimson Emission Art by Valeriy)

Noble Gasses: Noble Gasses is not a place, even insomuch as the spirit realm can be considered to have locations. It is, instead, a state of being linked to the concepts of Neon Club N, and N. It is extremely difficult to explain to those unable to project their spirit to or physically move within a spirit realm. It can only be accessed from within the spirit realm, and doing so requires a specific awareness of its existence and an ability to focus on its core essence (which generally requires a specific Noble Gasses mantra or a talisman attuned to the correct state, though powerful enough spirit walkers can reach it with just an awareness of its existence). One-short drinkable talismans exist, which normally take the form of a cup of coffee, or an alcoholic energy drink. Those within Noble Gasses can communicate with others within Noble Gasses (which always includes at least one employee of N, who always has a handle separate from any of their online or meatspace handles), and with those in the Crimson Emission (if their handle there is known).

Trying to describe its appearance to those who have never been to a spiritual realm is nearly impossible, but veteran spirit walkers who try say it is just past where hunting spirits and crafting spirits merge, as a land of brightly glowing vapors mixing and merging to both celebrate their own strengths and make new, sometimes explosive things.Or they just say "It's a place with tons of bright swirling colors and the feint sense of hot coffee, cold pie, and talk of revolurion."

("Noble Gasses" Art by vukkostic)

Origin: The Neon Complex began as the hideout and base of operation for the Radon Raiders, a combination urban recovery team, mercenary company, small batch brewing company, and punk band. They began by buying failing businesses to act as meeting places, fronts to launder ill-gotten gains, and warehouses. As the Raiders became increasingly powerful and wealthy, they bought more locations, mostly in the building where Neon Complex is now, and tied it to their own magical conveniences (including the things that became of Crimson Emissions and Noble Gasses). Eventually they tied control of all their concerns to a network of legal titles and front businesses, some secure computer servers, and agreements with local street power brokers, to ensure that no matter how someone tried to wrest the Neon Complex from them, they could retain control of it.

This was a step that prepared them to become a major force in the city, and possibly worldwide. As a result, a group of megacorporations formed a taskforce to kill all the Radon Raiders, so they'd stop being a thorn in the side of the status quo. And, mostly, the killings succeeds, and the Raiders ceased to exist. Officially of course the corporations claim to have no knowledge of what happened, and point to the fact the Neon Club N still operates as proof that reports of some hostile takeover with extreme prejudice are severely overblown. Privately, each megacorporation assumes one of the others has taken over the Neon Complex, and don't consider it important enough to fight over.

Conventional wisdom on the street and in the digital realms thinks Neon Club N (and however much of the complex the speaker is aware of) is either a tiny fiefdom of a semi-rogue corporate middle-manager (likely as a way to hire talent off-the-books and maintain plausible deniability for ops run through it), or an organized crime front, or both. And, honestly, as long as the p[rices are reasonable, the services reliable, and the current management doesn't burn any of its clients, most patrons don't care.

Owner: The entire Neon Complex is operated through a management program called "Neon Hack." Even the managers of various parts of the business get their marching orders and salary through Neon hack, and most of them assume either conventional wisdom is right and it's a all corporate or organized crime, or that one of the managers is actually the owner and uses Neon Hack as a way to keep their control and ownership secret, even from the other managers.

But none of that is true.

A single member of the Radon Raiders survived the mass assassination of his teammates, and now runs the entire Neon Complex using Neon hack to keep his hands clean and face hidden. Although, he has neither a face, nor hands, anymore.

Sinister "Lefty" Tuathal was a cross-trained cybermage and spirit walker who was the most junior and minor member of the Radon Raiders. Shortly before the group were otherwise all killed off, Lefty tried to infuse a piece of minor cyberware with spiritual energy to serve as an internal digital spirit fetish. The resultant failure fried Lefty's body, and to save his life his brain had to be removed, making him a total body cyborg. However, the Raiders did not have a full cyberbody available when they performed the emergency technomagical transplant, and instead used what they did have that was big enough, had enough connectivity and power generation to handle all the life support to keep Lefty's brain alive and safe.

Which was a robotaxi.

Lefty has no idea exactly how the Raiders managed to place his brain in the place of the robotaxi's control computer, or rig it to be fully capable to cyber-access and even made his failed digital spiritual fetish work. And he had no chance to ask them, because within hours of his coming awake within the taxi and using it's onboard dispatch program "Hack" to communicate, they were all dead,

Lefty used the fail-safes the Radon Raiders had put in place to take control of the Neon Complex, and added the 'Neon" name to the ".hack' messages sent from his robotaxi program, and became the unseen 'Neon.Hack" that controls the Neon Complex, variously acting as if he was a conglomerate of hackers, or one of the managers, or a crime boss, or a minor middle manager, or even a sapient AI, so no one would ever wonder if the neighborhood taxi was actually a powerful business owner and social manipulator.

The managers know a single robotaxi is one of the Neon Complex's assets, and generally use it to pick up patrons or deliveries, and send the rare drunk VIPs home. Designed for a dangerous neighborhood, Lefty's chassis is an old armored model, and he finds being able to sit on the street and quietly observe through hacked cameras or spirit messagers extremely useful. He originally built up the Neon Complex with the plan of putting together a team to transplant his brain into a more humanlike body, but while he could now likely do that, he no longer has any interest. What lefty DOES have interest in is encouraging, aiding, and even protecting tams of vagabands and revolutionaries like his own Radon Raiders were, and preparing for the day when true revolution comes.

 ("Lefty" Art by IG Digital Arts)

PART TWO DROPS NEXT WEEK!

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