Tavern Thursday: Neon Complex - Part Three (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.

The last Tavern Thursday, based on a member request, was a cyber-fantasy tavern rather than feudal fantasy. 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 took so much space that it became a rare multi-part Thursday Tavern, with Part 1  two weeks, ago, Part 2 Monday (to make up for missing last Thursday), and Part 3 wrapping it up today.

Part 1 has the general description of the Neon Complex, and the entries for it's appearance, origin, and owner.

Lodging/Stabling 

Neon Club N: There is a hotel section in the mixed storefronts of Neon Club N. Its public lobby is fully automated, with a kiosk that allows reservations to be made, payments made, and codes received for opening a sleeping capsule or one of the hotel's basic rooms. Of course, all of that can also be done through online connections on the info-matrix. Deluxe rooms are also available, but not advertised. If someone knows to type in the right password when making a reservation, instead of getting an access code to a capsule or basic room you get a passcode to enter on a hatch in the lobby, which allows you access to the hotel's manned front desk. From there you can arrange for one of the deluxe rooms, as long as the desk clerk doesn't think you are a troublemaker.

The sleeping capsules sleep 2, have a window in the capsule hatch that can be tinted to completely black, and can serve as a viewscreen for free info-matrix sites or as a jumbo-screen for the guest's own computer or playback device. The window can also become a one-way viewscreen, allowing the occupant to look out the window without allowing anyone to look in. While most people using sleeping capsules will take advantage of the complimentary bathroom and secure shower stalls at the end of each capsule hallway, there are personal plumbing hookups (similar to those used in 0-g spacecraft) that allow an occupant to relieve themselves without getting out, and the auto-clean cycle uses life-form safe cleanser sprays, so you can even get yourself cleaned and blown dry while inside the capsule, though it's a bit like sitting in a low-heat dishwasher.

(Neon N Sleeping Capsule, art by chayakorn)

Basic rooms aren't a ton better, and are essentially a sleeping capsule at one end of a 10 foot x 10 foot room with a shower, sink, commode, a shelf that can serve as a desk, and even bigger video display, and two chairs that can fold out of the wall.

Deluxe room are actually quite upscale, which is one reason they aren't advertised. Mostly only employees of the Neon N Complex and their trusted friends, family, and regulars know about the rooms, and there aren't as many of them (though most staff don't know the exact number). They are 400 square feet, have a kitchenette, actual windows to the outside of the building (though also able to tint and act as a viewscreen), conversation pit, a small desk, chairs, and actual bed, individual climate control, and so on.

(deluxe room, by IG Digital Arts)

Anyone paying for at least a capsule can also pay for a assigned spot in the entirely enclosed parking garage below the Neon Club complex.

The Neon Diner: It is possible to take a nap while logged in to the Neon Diner. If you do this with the virtual "Early Morning Special" on you table, you give the diner's system access to your meatspace hearing and kinetic sense (and a webcam, if you have one and wish to), and it will wake you if it detects a threat with those senses.

N: The underground part of the Neon Club has places you can sleep, but not real "hotel rooms," or even sleeping capsules. nearly anyone that is given access to N is allowed to find a corner to sleep in, though there is no guarantee of safety or security for those who do (though anyone caught violating the safety and security of anyone in N is banished at best, and eliminated with prejudice at worst). There are also 'bays,' unused spaces with workbenches and a random assortment of tolls and data monitors, which are named rather than numbered. There is no convention to bay names, which seem randomly drawn from a dictionary (there are, for example the Armitage Bay, Carrot Bay, Daybreak Bay, Freight Car Bay, Furnace Bay, Pliocene Bay, Velocity Bay, Vermillion Bay, and so on). An attendee of N can ask a bartender or virtual info-matrix attendant for access to a bay (even a specific bay, if they have one they like), and be allowed to use it for nearly anything (sleeping, a party, motorcycle maintenance, target practice, planning a rescue mission, brewing moonshine, and so on), though access is only granted to attendees believed to be unlikely to cause trouble.

Clientele

For all the levels of Neon Complex N, there are essentially three types of clientele -- walk-ins, regulars, and trustees.

Walk-Ins are people who are just using some part of the Neon Complex for its stated purposes, no more, and no less. Most often these are struggling lower-class citizens, slumming upcity partygentsia, shady off-grid freelancers, underworld elements, and the occasional lost tourist or business traveler. The Neon Food Cafe, Neon Computer Cafe, sleep capsules, and Neon Club are the elements most likely to be used by walk-ins, with the virtual Neon Diner a distant second. N, Noble Gasses, and Crimson Emission are practically never found by Walk-Ins

Regulars are people who either have used the surface-level services so often they have learned about deeper levels and convinced a trustee or employee to let them in, or people invited by a trustee to a deeper level for some specific purpose. Regulars often (but not always) know about N, Noble Gasses, or Crimson Emissions, but rarely know about all of them. Most regulars stick to surface levels, and perhaps the Neon Diner, and maybe N. Only those with the necessary magical skill know about Crimson Emissions or Noble Gases, and it's very rare for a regular to know about both. Regulars are a big part of the public culture of the Neon Complex, and often think they know what's 'really' going on, but most are only seeing a slice of the entire ecology of the fivefold complex. A regular might well spend most of their time in the Neon Club, but occasionally visit N for a specific task, or get commed by someone in Crimson Emission to do a quick paying job. Regulars are often people already part of some counterculture group, including punk music folk, moonshiners, car- computer- and repair-hackers, vloggers speaking truth to power, radical community builders (who buck restrictive laws on giving food to the homeless, teach people who to bypass corporate limitations on the use of 'leased' equipment and programs, offer medical aid and advice without the required government licenses and corporate leases, and help people in exploitive employment or non-disclosure contracts get out of them or at least escape their company town live-traps), and low-level criminals in 'victimless' or 'inevitable' lines of crime (gambling, knock-offs, bootlegs, sex work, selling seeds without corporate-imposed genetic locks on their ability to reproduce, and so on).

Trustees are people the Neon Complex's owner, "Lefty" Tuathal, has decided to give knowledge of and (as much as they are able) access to the entire complex. Trustees are as varied as walk-ins and regulars, but generally more experienced and focused. Many trustees either are groups of independent freelancers or mercenaries (similar to Lefty's old team), or true anti-corporate/anti-government/anti-authority rebels and criminals Lfty thinks are both providing a needed service and who themselves need his help, but who lefty thinks are smart enough not to bring heat down on the Neon Complex itself.

In addition to being given preferential treatment and access, trustees are given codes they can p-ass out to other people they think need access to some part of the Neon Complex. These could be people with a similar social or business mission to the trustee, a friend or business associate the trust wants to reward, or something as simple as a homeless runaway who needs a break and a safe place to crash.

Rumors 

Neon Club: Rumors of the 'Neon Underground' are common, but rarely accurately name or describe N. The most common (and most outrageous) is that there is an area that somehow combines battles of the bands, street-fights, and rollerball that's sometimes called Rock-Roll-And-Rumble. Lefty has no intention of ever doing anything of the kind, but sometimes encourages this rumor as a red herring.

N: Many regulars with access to N claim there is an 'even more underground' level to the Neon Complex they call 'O,' or 'Ops,' which they think is the super-secret illegal strike team that somehow mixes independent rock music, armed antiauthority rebellion, and a growing 'secret city' where people can live in true freedom. No such level exists, and the Neon Complex lacks the resources ot create it... but Lefty likes the idea, and is always looking for some group of trustees who might help make 'Ops City' a reality.

Neon Diner: There are many rumors about the Neon Diner on decker and digital cowboy message boards, some of which are right about everything but the correct access codes to get in. A few even note it is somehow connected to the Neon Club, and that people who fight against government and corporate overreach gather at Club Neon, and may be able to get similarly-minded folks codes to the Neon Diner.

Adventure Seed

Lefty, as a robo-taxi, spotted a homeless boy, Kevin Klearton, on a cold night and offered to take the boy someplace warm (claiming to be an "automatic pay-it-forward program with 116 credits left to assist you").

What Lefty did not know is that the boy is the son of Doctor Issavof Klearton, a genetic engineer working for the ReHelix Retro division of the Periplaneta Corporation. Dr Klearton is an abusive father, and also plans to escape the Periplaneta Corporation, and thus has hid dozens of proprietary DNA codes in Kevin, who appears to always hav a cold (as that's how the implanted genes are manifesting).

And what Dr. Klearton doesn't know is the the Periplaneta Corporation is secretly a cult of Roach Spirit worshipers, who want to spread poverty and poor living conditions as far as they can, and one of the DNA sequences hidden in Kevin makes humans severely allergic to most forms of soap and sanitiser, and they will kill to get it back.

All of which has led to Lefty begin hunted by killer combat robots that have cut him off from the Neon Complex, and with cybernetic roaches spying on him from every pile of trash, he's been unable to hide either. This leaves Lefty desperate to get someone, anyone, to help him make it to a Bay in N and hide, and if the PCs show any competence when they see Lefty (with Kevin inside) attacked by drones, lefty will offer them open access to all of the Neon Complex, if they can help him get home without being seen.

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