RUG 107.9 Radio Station
Written by: Coupe
Ah, RUG 107.9 AM, for all your conspiracy theory and barrens sports needs. For those of you who don't know, the 107.9 used to be the frequency from back when ths place was a legitimate establishment, a radio talk-show called Raleigh Uptown Gossip that spent all its time talking about everything that was happening in the seedier parts of Raleigh, before it shut down due to a combination of wireless-matrix taking over and one of their hosts being found skinned in an overpass. Yeah. The building itself still broadcasts under a new host calling himself DJ Rum Twister under the name Raleigh Underground Grapevine, only this time the show uses encrypted matrix-broadcasts instead of AM radio to get its message across the area, and because it's sitting on the very edge of where Raleigh ends and the Concrete Forest begins with Meltdown and her Nuclear Warlocks calling the bottom floors of the station their new homebase, nobody's really in a position to stop the station from talking about whatever the hell it wants to, like gang-wars, developments in barrents politics and whatever illicit stuff they find corps are doing in the area.Purpose / Function
The bottom floors are almost exclusively territory for the Nuclear Warlocks, who've called this place their main base of operations and occasionally make use of some rooms as drug-farms in exchange for acting as protection/security for everyone inside. Up top, you've got Rum Twister and his motley gang of engineers and 'matrix personalities' keeping the local wireless waves active with whatever entertaining or informative drek they can think about on the spot, while also occasionally acting as an early-warning PA for go-gang clashes, turbulent weather or smokestorms from the Pit.
Alterations
Well, the tower's still there because, in Rum's own words: "It looks whizz!" Everything else has been through a dozen makeshift renovations, mostly fortifying the ground levels and turning a few rooms into improv greenhouses. The walls surrounding the building are pretty unique by Barrens standards too, being actual poured-concrete walls with a welded metal gate (they use an old truck engine to open and shut the thing, or so I heard), and neon signs plastering the whole outside.
History
So way back, the station was one of Raleigh's last dedicated non-corp radio-stations, the afformented Raleigh Ultimate Gossip. They always tried to put on airs of being an 'underground' radio station despite all the sponsors plastered on the outside and in their broadcasts, and one of their ways of reinforcing this image was by talking about gang-activity in the Raleigh area. Anytime a shootout, police-raid or execution happened, the two hosts at the time, Jerry Rockfield and Alex Norman, would be talking about it to an audience of disgusted but oddly engrossed listeners, and legally they'd get away with it due to some loopholes on broadcasting laws going through the CAS at the time.
Unfortunately, Rockfield and Norman were only protected from the legal consequences of their actions. Their luck ran out when they started covering a cartel raid on a drugs-lab in Forestville as it was happening. Norman's last coherent words on-air were talking about a supposed threatening phonecall from local police to hush up on the matter, which he laughed off with a few jokes, before things got hot: A couple of cartel hitman had broke into the station and made their way to the broadcasting room by holding staff hostage, where they shot Jerry Rockfield in the back of the head and kidnapped Norman. A few days later, his flayed body was found in a nearby overpass with a written warning about narcing on cartel business.
The Station was pretty much abandoned after that for a few years, on account of nobody wanting to move in and be the next target for whatever gang had performed the hit. It even managed to remain unclaimed and in one piece when the nearby Forestville renovations took hold, on account of it still being something of an iconic building of the area, and stayed that way when the Forestville project was abandoned and turned Forestville into the Concrete Forest.
Nobody's really sure on when it started up and running again, only that a few years later, a new voice was intruding into the public grid, broadcasting from the old RUG station courtesy of a paranoid DJ and 'truth-seeker' calling himself DJ Rum Twister. A few attempts were made by local gangs to shut him up or take over but were fended off by a maze of traps and alarms set up on the ground floor of the building. It was only when Meltdown and her crew actually tried reasoning with the guy that an agreement was made to share the place, sharing protection and occasional broadcast-time.
Alternative Names
The Warlocks' Sanctum
Type
Tower, Telecomms
Parent Location
Owner
Owning Organization
Characters in Location
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