Raleigh-Shiawase Omni-Consumer Complex

Written by: Coupe

We've all gotten lost in a shopping mall at some point in our lives, no need to deny it chummer. But while there's getting lost, there's also getting lost, where you've not so much lost your sense of direction as you've lost your hope of getting back home before sundown. The Omni-Consumer Complex is very much in the latter category, so much so that some people have taken to just outright living down there. Bet you're not feeling so bad about losing your mom in the stuffer shack as a kid, eh?
The OCC could be considered the beating heart of Morrisville and Cary's combined commercial zone, a monolith of a building that's risen highs into the sky and delved deep under the earth, that connects all the major shopping-centers in the area together via store-filled tunnels and bridges (and even a monorail-system!) along with a few residential-complexes to house all the many, many staff manning the stores. And now the Shiawase megacorp was able to buy it all up and begin refurbishing the whole thing into something even more consistent and profitable.
For us in the business of shadowrunning, it's not the gorillian stores up top that's got this place its own article, it's what's underneath. Long story short: Yes, the layers of underground tunnels go down a lot further than the ones you take to get from boutique to salon, and yes, some of them have been abandoned long enough that little communities from other abandoned parts of Raleigh's underground have settled down in them unimpeded. Shiawase and the city council are looking to stomp these out, but it's like trying to kill roaches in a cheap motel; y'kill one and another just comes right up.

More likely though, you kill one and the other ten trap you and feed you to devil rats.

— Anonymous poster

Some of these tunnel-communities just wanna live and cook drugs in peace, others want to sell you goods that you can't get in the stores up top, and a few of 'em even have a few extralegal jobs if you're looking for some extra cash. Just remember to download a map or five before you take a look for yourself, okay?

Purpose / Function

The OCC's stated reason for existing is to act as a sort of 'Nexus' for the Morrisville & Cary commercial districts, unclogging the roads and sidewalks a little by giving pedestrians and vehicles alike a variety of store-filled walkways, elevated roads, parking-lots, tunnels and tramways to get in and around the district. Right now, Shiawase are also using it to obtain boku metrics on consumer psychology and shopping patterns, through passive observation of the shopping public through electronic surveilence and computing networks.

Architecture

The OCC has probably suffered more than any other part of Raleigh, when it comes to the changing tastes and fads over the decades: The outside of the main building's art-nouveau, the interior parking-lots are baroque, the upper store levels are neo-futurism, some of the transport-hubs are Googie but others are brutalist, and there's exactly one bridge that's Egyptian Revivalism. Add to that the fact that every store's also pushing their own aesthetic, and you've got a pretty good simulation of a fever-dream in Raleigh's commercial district.

Fun fact: A surprising amount of ferrous metals were used in the main building's construction, owing to a sweetheart-deal made with one of Ares' heavy-industry subsidiaries. You used to see windowcleaners and maintenence guys on mobile platforms attached to the outer struts with electromagnetic clamps, 'till that one power-surge led to one of 'em creaming a schoolbus. These days, kids and gangers just like to throw magnets with flags and RFIDs on the struts.

— Anonymous poster

History

Truth be told, there's no concrete begining to the OCC in whole: The first building on site was a city-owned multi-story parking lot, and the connecting routes just sort of got pieced together over time by corps and city-planners who all came to the same conclusion of where a good stop-off point for shoppers and transportation should be. More lots were built underground to handle higher traffic, and tram-stops were put in for shopping-centers that weren't close enough for a footbridge. A few ambitious designers even got clearance to build underground roads connecting outer-district routes through to major shopping centers, so restocked merchandise wasn't caught up in traffic.

Ever seen two truckers pull guns on eachother over who has right of way? Raleigh has.

— Anonymous poster

It took Raleigh a while to catch onto their parking-lot becoming a nexus of shopper traffick, but they didn't hold back in capitalising when they did: Another shopping-center was built on top of the lot, even more stores and drive-thru restaurants were constructed on the sides of the road, and there were plans to make a VTOL landing-pad on the roof to ferry even more people from the Raleigh–Durham International Airport and corporate residential-blocks. That's where it got called the 'Omni-Consumer Complex' for the first time, and is as close to an official birth as you can get.
Unfortunately, all of those renovations and plans completely lost steam in the early 60s, when the abandonment of the Forestville projects and Crash 2.0 kneecapped Raleigh's economy. Budget-cuts got serious, and one of the first victims were the OCC's upcoming projects. The complex started to stagnate in a serious way, not helped by the growing problem of SINless moving into the tunnels that were abandoned or forgot about as their previous owners either went bankrupt or got bought up by larger corps that didn't really care.

Some of the businesses in Raleigh have even became friendly with the folks living underneath. As it turns out, having several SINless metahumans and the occasional drug-lab below your store is much better than the critters that move in when they leave.

— Ursa-Minor

Finally, in '76, Shiawase managed to outbid Saeder-Krupp on determining and purchasing 88% of the OCC and begin renovating on their own dime, all to have control of the Morrisville-Cary Commercial district's heart and begin rattling SK's hold on Raleigh's economy. After finishing the abandoned VTOL-accomodation projects, the corp's been scooping up abandoned and struggling storefronts and replacing them with their own, while begining the arduous task of trying to clear out the SINless from tunnels they want reconnected to other Shiawase-owned businesses in Raleigh.

Founding Date

2059

Alternative Names

The OCC

Parent Location

Raleigh, North Carolina

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YOU HAVE THREE NEW MESSAGES IN: JOB-LISTINGS

OPEN MESSAGES?

Chopping Spree

Sender: Barkeep
Subject Keywords: RSOCC, Shiawase
Recipients: Shadowrunners = ListingEnabled
Job Type: Vandalism

Shiawase might own the bulk of the OCC, but about a third of the stores in the complex are still independant businesses or owned by other corporations, and the terms of their property leasings mean that Shiawase will have to play the slow and steady games if they want to replace them with their own brands. The aim of this run is to break into several of these stores, wreck up the place as much as you can get away with and get out of dodge without so much as breaking one panel of Shiawase-owned glass. The catch is that the Mr. Johnson giving you this job isn't working for Shiawase: She's here on behalf of the owners of those very stores, who want you to frame up Shiawase as violently pushing local businesses out of the OCC so they have better leverage to keep independant businesses alive in the complex. Make it nasty, chummer.

Parade Medley

Sender: Barkeep
Subject Keywords: RSOCC, Shiawase, Raleigh
Recipients: Shadowrunners = ListingEnabled
Job Type: Security, Counter-Intrusion

Every year since their acquisition of the Omni-Consumer Complex, the Shiawase megacorporation have held an annual parade around and through the building celebrating the 'great frienship' between Raleigh and the corp. Free snacks, loud music, giant floats (both physical and projected) and of course, discounts in all the Shiawase stores. The parade's organiser, represented by Mr. Johnson, has it on good authority that a local business has paid beaucoup bucks and hired local 'freelance contractors' to sabotage the float, but without hard evidence of this transaction or the plan of attack, the organiser is not very optimistic in his security force's chances to stop whatever his foes have planned. His solution? Fight shadowrunners with shadowrunners: Mr. Johnson wants you to ensure the parade's unimpeded progress through the OCC at all costs, and is offering unregistered discount-cards along with the usual pay, should you succeed.

Trickle-Down Economics

Sender: Agitator
Subject Keywords: RSOCC, Shiawase
Recipients: Shadowrunners = ListingEnabled
Job Type: Investigation

Deep inside one of the abandoned tunnel-networks beneath the Morrisville-Cary Commercial districts, a number of SINless transients have fallen ill to a new and strange waterborn pathogen, one that eats away at the victim's nervous-system and persists even through the most thorough of cleaning and sterilisation. Attempts at investigating upstream have sourced the leak to an unmarked facility located underneath a Shiawase-owned electronics shop, but as soon as one hole was patched, another was discovered nearby not long after. The affected SINless are unable to investigate further and have little legal recourse owing to the fact that they're illegally drinking runoff water, but a good samaritan acting as our Mr Johnson wants to see the matter investigated and dealt with regardless. The pay isn't likely to be great, but one of the locals are promising that 'mother gaia herself' will compensate you for your troubles.