The Rampart
Written by: Coupe
When the average sprawl-dweller is told to think of the kind of person who lives in the Barrens, you can bet your next drink it's not gonna be a very charitable one, and it's kind of hard to blame them, between the propaganda pumped out by corps who want their workers to stay where they are and the unfortunate fact that most 'visitors' from the abandoned wastes have a tendancy to do so with only theft and/or murder in mind, and The Concrete Forest is no exception. But every now and then, you get a settlement in the Barrens that isn't looking to quench their frustrations in the blood of salarymen, people who just want to get by another day without hurting anyone if they can avoid it. The Rampart is one of those places. The Rampart is a fortified encamptment built in one of the Conrete Forest's many gutted skyscrapers, where the law and society of Raleigh's long faded out but the free-fire zone of the Barrens is still a few blocks down. Headed and looked over by disenfranchised ex-employees of the infamous Forester Group that founded and abandoned the proto-sprawl that the Concrete Forest was meant to be, the Rampart is something of a haven for the homeless, SINless and any other kind of outcast from sprawl-society that isn't necesarilly homicidally insane. The place isn't exactly 'friendly' with Raleigh, and well-to-do salarymen who drive too close to their sphere of influence get jacked and mugged out of principal and fermented grudges, but they're generally content with minding their own business, and if you don't look like you're 'city people' they're happy to trade and do business with you for the things they can't procure themselves.Word to the wise: Insulin's always in short supply at the Rampart. Drop a box or two of the stuff at their front door, you'll make some friends for life.Our Barkeep insisted on bringing this settlement in particular to attention because they've recently began reaching out to mercenaries and Shadowrunners for, supposedly, 'expert consultancy and assistance'. Between Raleigh city-council putting more pressure on the settlement to 're-assimilate' with society at large and The Horse Dancers making an aggressive expansion, they're looking for ways to keep hold of their (mostly) self-sufficient lifestyle without going into all-out war. Expect plenty of contract to find themselves your way, chummer!
Assuming I take up their work, what do a bunch of barrens scroungers have to offer me in return?
They don't have much in the way of goods if you don't care for organic foods and Devil Rat-leather, but they do have quite a few valuable services, especially if you have business of your own in the barrens. Their Falconers know the Forest well enough that if you need something or need to get somewhere in it, they can take you there quicker and safer than anyone else.
Hell, I'd say just being in the Rampart's handy. If you're willing to pay a moddest fee, they've got dozens of hidden boltholes in the upper floors of their building where you can lay low for a while, knowing that if anyone wants to flatline you, they'll have to go through a few hundred very grouchy locals first.
Demographics
The Rampart is a metahuman-heavy area by the CAS' standards, with only one in three inhabitants being a baseline human. Orks make the majority of the metahuman population, followed closely by Trolls, then smaller fringe demographics of Dwarves and Elves. The number of SINners can be counted on one hand, since the settlement as a whole aren't interested in citizenship but know the practicality of having a few people on hand to make legit purchases when needed. Of course, exact numbers on any of this are hard to get, what with the people living there being tight-lipped around outsiders.
Government
Jury's still out on what the 'official' style of rulership is, but the Ramparters describe themselves as 'Democratic Syndicalists', with the unofficial leading forces preferring to see themselves as advisors and representatives rather than bosses.
Defences
Just about everyone in the Rampart has the commonsense to pack some kind of weaponry, even if it's an old break-action shotgun or a knife on the end of a pole, while the settlement itself has been fortified a substantial amount to deter raiding. All of the perimeter walls and outer buildings have been reinforced with scrap-metal and sandbags, you've got spotlights up on top along with empty tripods to mount automatic guns when the city's not looking, and at least two 'battle-busses'; abandoned public-transportation that's been armored up and fitted with as many guns and firing-ports as the chassis can handle.
Their upper-floors are also prime sniping-spots, but aside from a few designated nests tend to lack for cover.
Industry & Trade
Most of the people working in the rampart are focussed on keeping food and water stocked up, with the majority pulling some weight in farming and maintaining agricultural tools. The rest tend to busy themselves with scavenging and subsistence-hunting through the Concrete Forest, pulling apart anything with useful gear or edible-meat and carrying it home before they attract the wrong kind of attention.
Infrastructure
Null Kit had more fun than he'd admit looking at how the Rampart keep self-sufficient. The sparse power they manage to illegally leech from Raleigh's main grid is supplemented by a mishmash of every renewable source you can think of, water is collected through similarly eclectic means and recycled with frightening efficiency, and one of the floors has been completely gutted and made into the least OSHA-compliant vertical farm I've ever seen.
Assets
Despite making their own resources efficiently enough to always have a surplus, The Rampart generally do their best to only keep that surplus as low as they feel comfortably risking, trading away excess food and water as soon as they get it under the reasoning that having too large a stockpile makes them a target to the other, less reasonable inhabitants of the Concrete Forest, as well as drawing more ire from the corps for having the audacity to be well-fed without paying them for it.
History
The closest the Rampart had to an 'official' founder was a Dwarf by the name of Volkmar Weissmuller-Gärtner, one of the construction foremen brought in overseas from Germany by the Forrester Group to oversee construction of Forestville's renovation. Guy was pretty well regarded by his co-workers for actually giving a damn about his subordinates, not enough to risk his neck when his bosses find out, but conscious enough about the needs of his workers to stand out from his less empathetic peers. One of the ways he took care of his own was by working closely with local businesses, hotels and the such in particular, to make sure that when the work was done everybody would have a comfy place to sleep instead of simply setting up camp inside the skeletal core of the buildings they worked in.
When the Forester Group dissapeared, along with their money and any continued plans, Volkmar was at a loss. Like many of his co-workers, Volkmar had effectively packed the rest of his life away to move to the CAS and work on the Forestville project, being promised a new home and substantial payout when the project was finished. But with the project essentially decapitated, he was for all intents and purposes stranded in a foreign country with only a few suitcases of posessions to his name and no real way to get back home, and many of his workers were in the same issue.
As the remnants of their carefully rationed stipends dwindled and the living conditions of Volkmar and his men deteriorated from cheap hotels to joining many of the other former workers of Forestville in camping out in the unfinished construction projects, the dwarf grew pretty bitter at his circumstances. His homeland was making only the most token attempts at retrieving the citizens left overseas, and Raleigh couldn't care less about the situation, other than doing their best to pretend it never existed in the first place. But lo and behold, as Forestville began falling apart around him, a ray of hope shined on Volkmar!
Though Volkmar was a very private and reclusive individual in his homeland, a friend of his by the name of Tilo Metzger managed to get through to Volkmar. He updated Volkmar on the goings-on happening in Germany, and how the turmoil was adding further difficulties on their retrieval of the Forestville workers that was totally gonna happen any day, and then he told Volkmar he's been skrimping and saving cash to get the poor Dwarf a plane-ticket home, if he could just hold on for a while longer. Volkmar was giddy, but apprehensive: He'd finally be returning home, back to a life of warm beds and hot showers, but his co-workers, still huddled in improvised encampments in Forestville's slowly delapidating architecture, would be left behind. Despite his ever-growing homesickness, Volkmar declined the ticket, his men needed him now more than ever.
With the thought of returning home no longer on his mind, Volkmar focussed on the present: Germany was long-gone, any workers who had a chance of leaving in the first place did so long ago, and Raleigh had no intention of opening their doors to a flood of transient workers, so he had to make do with what he had in Forestville. Makeshift tents and encampments, intended only to remain up for as long as the inhabitants hoped it would take before they could leave, were taken down down and brought to one of the empty megaskyscrapers Volkmar thought would be best suited for his newest project. His workers were once again busy at work building, but instead of constructing for prospective businesses, they were turning the concrete skeleton of a failed promise into something that could support long-term habitation.
The beginings of what would become the Rampart was humble, its workers barely experienced in what it means to live in a Barrens zone and ripe to be picked off by the less savoury groups that were taking hold and festering within the abandoned zones, now called the Concrete Forest by the adjacent Raleighites. But the first outsiders to come to the Rampart were not there to wage war, much to Volkmar's belief: Some were also remnants of other construction-groups that were similarly left behind, while others were SINless and homeless folk from Raleigh itself, whose numbers swelled like nothing else in the aftermath of the Crash 2.0. They heard and saw that a place of relative safety and stability was coming to life in the Concrete Forest, and wanted a part of it. Volkmar accepted, not just out of the good of his weary heart but because even with his loyal workers and strong leadership, he simply didn't have the knowledge or experience needed to truly survive in the Barrens.
Since then, the meager and mostly hidden squat in the shady centers of the skyscraper interior expanded outwards upwards until all of the first few above and below-ground floors were brought inside their makeshift walls and barricades. What started as a bleak and simple means of surviving grew into a small but functional society of people who quickly began losing interest in reintergrating with society, instead finding themselves more and more invested in developing their new homestead. Conflicts occured, both from barrens gangers and Raleigh authorities looking to clear out a 'squatters' nest', but with every attempt to tear down the Rampart, its inhabitants grew more and more dedicated to seeing it survive.
In 2074, Volkmar finally passed away, succumbing to a systemic infection brought on by the deteriorating condition of his cyberware, bereft of proper maintenence. But even after he died he was practically venerated by the inhabitants of the Rampart as a gruff but kind old dwarf who always tried to do right by his workers. None of the members of his old construction-crew took his place as leader of the settlement, leaving the position empty as a sign of respect, and instead agreed to do their best in carrying out what they thought Volkmar would want for the community.
Volkmar's funeral was a pretty big affair for what a bunch of barrens wasters could scrounge up, all things considerin'. They drove his body all the way up to the old abandoned archology, and gave him a viking funeral in the neverending fire burning inside there. Killed about fourty gangers on the way there and back, too.Since then, the Rampart's population has slowly been ticking up as the settlement became a civilization in its own right, with regular migrations of new blood coming in every time the Rampart succesfully fends off an attack and proves its sustainability.
Type
Slum
Population
Aprox 430 known inhabitants
Inhabitant Demonym
Ramparters
Location under
Characters in Location
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