The Carotid Souk (kuh-ro-tuhd sook)
Written by: Coupe
Lemme ask you, chummer: Have you ever left the Shiawase Omni-Consumer Complex with a burning desire for something other than megacorp NERPs? Have you ever wanted to shop at a place where every day comes with a new and exciting stock of stuff you've never seen before? Are you willing to put up with pickpockets, gangers and the occasional outbreak of drug-addicted Cockatrices to try something you'd never legally get in the CAS? Then boy oh boy, does the Carotid Souk have you covered!Twice, twice the cockatrice thing happened, and that's all anyone talks about when the Carotid's brought up these days...Located where the north of Neuse ends and the The Concrete Forest begins, the Carotid's a 24/7 bazaar that connecting the larger residential-areas and slums, that takes up whole warehouses, streets and even several floors down into the sewers and abandoned transit-stations below. Most of the stuff topside is what you'd expect to find - old clothes, bootleg trids, stolen electronics and drek from the Concrete Forest - but if you're down with braving the lower levels, you'll start finding the more 'esotetic' stuff: arms-dealers, paracritter butchers, street-docs selling 'second hand' bioware and even a bite to eat for the HMHVV infected out there. If you can think of it, it's being sold or catered to somewhere in there.
Said HMHVV positives are also the reason why nobody tries to hold up any stalls down there. It's a pretty tidy arrangement that keeps business going, ghouls fed and bodies from stinking up the joint, y'know?Mind you, all of this comes at a price: The Carotid's still a place on the edge of Neuse and the Concrete Forest, and Lone Star only visit the above-ground parts if they absolutely have to, so staying alive and in posession of your own NuYen is your own responsibility, omae.
Demographics
While the demographics of the Carotid Souk are pretty close to that of Raleigh and Neuse as a whole, it shouldn't come to much surprise that a lot of the more marginalized groups have more presence here than elsewhere: Minority metatypes/metavariants, awakened, HMHVV-positive and even technomancers and AIs can live and work safely in the Carotid.
Well, safe from outsiders. Being a technomancer isn't gonna protect you from thiefs and gangers pulling the usual drek, but most in the Carotid don't look kindly on and snitches.
Districts
The Carotid can be seperated into several distinct areas, each with its own trend in goods and services: At the far south ends of the Souk you have the Shills, where you'll find the stalls looking to hock overpriced junk towards non-locals looking to 'slum it' in Neuse, along with a few actual corp-owned businesses that feel brave enough to set up shop. Further up from that you'll find yourself in the Shades, where most of the Carotid's merchants and gangs call home and the stalls focus on selling day-to-day goods to locals.
The Shades are also the place where the most gossip goes on, and so long as you have cash to spare and don't make yourself look like a cop or corpo, you can get wind of anything that passes through Neuse.
It'll also work against you, if you're not careful. Make an ass of yourself in the Shades and word passes quickly to every other place, and before you know it you're paying 20 bucks for a soft-drink while the locals are chopshopping your ride.Down in the mazes of old metro tunnels and knocked-through basements, you've got the Sheers: This is where you'll find the more well-off businesses and the ones that operate in more legally grey-areas, like unlicensed talismongers, exotic animal purveyors and 'happy ending' masseuses, wink wink. A lot of 'mostly harmless' stuff that isn't work Lone Star's time and trouble, but it's also the part of the Carotid where you'll find hangouts and businesses for some of the more entrepreneurial-minded gangs looking to make and sell drek that they definitely don't want the police to know about.
You'd think there'd be gang-wars going on around the clock, but all of the smarter gangs know better than to start shooting in crowded tunnels and piss off a tightly-knit clique of heavily-armed locals. Not to say they don't happen on the regular, just that the fights are mostly kept behind closed doors where there's less risk of collateral damage.
Friendly advice, this is as far as you should go unless you have been invited. Best case scenario, you get ushered out by a local good samaritan. Worst case scenario, you inevitably get lost and run into something or someone that is hungry.Finally, down in the very bottom tunnels and pits beneath the rest of the Carotid, you've got the Shafts. Now this isn't where the Carotid's heart is - most of the community-leaders and first-among-equals stick to the sheers - but this is where all of its deepest darkest secrets hide out. All the wares too hot for the rest of the Souk's tastes, all the people whose nature gives pause even to the more equitable denizens of Neuse and the absolute worst (and some would say best) of what the Carotid has to offer can be found down here.
If you believe the rumors, this is where you'll find restaurants that cater exclusively to ghouls, a secret Orichalcum mine a clan of immortal Shamans, seven technomancers that stopped CFD from infecting Neuse, the knights templar, and the guys who drove out all the venomous spiders from Raleigh.
One of those is true and two of those are half-truths, I will concede.
No one ever thinks to ask if a brown recluse bite hurts a ghoul... It does. And it takes forever to heal, thank you very much. Good riddance to the lot of those ungrateful bastards. Finally free of all those "Nocte! Come catch this spider!" calls, as if I'm somehow immune... but those days are behind me now. Shame about the spiders, though...
Well that's one truth. Wonder what the half-truths are?
History
Kind of difficult to say when the Carotid definitely became a 'thing'. The place had been a commercial center for the Neuse area for decades, but back in the day it was a pretty unremarkable commercial district. It was only when the Forester Group got started on their Forestville renovations that things started to get a bit shakey: Sure, there were no shortage of bored and hungry expats building up Forestville, but Jonathan Brightday's hypetrain led to a lot of businesses picking up and moving into what they were thought was gonna be the new heart of Raleigh's sprawl, leaving the remaining businesses struggling to stay afloat. Then, naturally, Brightday and the Forester Group dissapeared, along with the money, plans and most of Neuse's economy.
With Forestville being left to become what everyone now calls the Concrete Forest, it wasn't long 'til parts of Neuse were dragged down with it: The economy tanked even further, crime went up and hundreds of stranded workers fled the Concrete Forest to try and eke out a marginally safer life than in the new barrens adding to the already strained infrastructure. Not a lot of people wanted to stay in the northern parts of Neuse once the urban decay really kicked in, but when you're broke and SINless, you're not really swimming in alternatives.
Not until the Rampart got in full-swing, but you'd be surprised at how picky they can be with migrants.So naturally, it fell to the locals to fill in the vacuum that the legit businesses left. Stalls started moving in without caring about the legal permits needed in other parts of Raleigh, abandoned buildings were sectioned into hostels and squats, and abandoned infrastructure was recycled by the locals into something they could actually use.
For instance, a Pottery Barn was upcycled into a brothel.Just like northern Neuse's decline, the district's growth into a huge, self-sustaining bazaar was a runaway one: the place was already an E-zone - meaning Lone Star wouldn't assign patrols and only go by if they absolutely had to - so the locals didn't have to worry about licenses or regulations when it came to running their businesses, which would attract others looking for the same and so on. It wasn't any surprise that this also attracted crime and gang-activity, but for many in Neuse's poorer parts this was for the most part an acceptable price to pay for some semblance of a functioning infrastructure and economy.
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