Gang Focus: The New World Soldiers believe that “the world is meant to be seen from all perspectives,” which they take to mean chemically induced altered states of consciousness. They regard it as their mission to introduce these “new perspectives” to every-one, by any method that happens to be handy—from pushing for drug legalization to spiking the community water supply with hal-lucinogens.
Leader: Sugar Daddy, a skinny human geek of indeterminate age.
He wears layer upon layer of oversized clothes (tattered but clean), a striped stocking cap whose puffy tip brushes the ground, and bomber goggles. Most of his garments have deep pockets that he fills with pills of every description. He spends a lot of time on street corners, handing out pills to passers-by and inviting them to “experience the Universe.” Often he leaves a trail of pills behind him as he walks, because they drop through holes in his pockets and hems.
Sugar Daddy buys his vast collection of pharmaceuticals with the proceeds of his trust fund, which his wealthy family set up for him partly to make sure he would always be taken care of and part-ly to keep him away from their doorstep. He is the oldest son of Henk Grundland, the Grundland Peanut Butter Cookie magnate; his family regards him as an embarrassment best left unmentioned.
Lieutenants: None.
Gang Rating: Equal
Head Count: Approximately 60 members.
Initiation Rituals: The specifics of the initiation rituals vary from recruit to recruit, but all of them share a common thread. The prospective gang member must get high and then build some-thing fantastically complex while the other gang members shout out impractical suggestions, wrong advice, or just random non-sense. In most cases, the recruit builds something with snap-together plastic blocks or a similar building set. A rigger recruit might have to disassemble and then reassemble an engine to cer-tain performance specs, or a decker might have to build a custom deck from assorted parts.
Uniforms: Though the New World Soldiers don’t have a formal uniform, they tend to dress like their leader in layers of scruffy clothes, bomber goggles and strange hats.
Symbol: The gang’s symbol is a giant, bright-colored capsule crowned with a floppy, red-and-white-striped top hat, against a psychedelic spiral background. All members wear this symbol somewhere on their outermost layer of clothing or tattooed on a visible body part, like a cheek or the back of a hand.
Territory: The Soldiers operate throughout Los Angeles and con-sider the entire city their territory. (Actually, they concon-sider the world their territory, but for now they’re focusing on L.A.) Their headquarters is an abandoned drugstore, which they’ve cleaned up and painted in Day-Glo colors.
Operations: When they’re not dipping into Sugar Daddy’s trust fund, the Soldiers get most of their money from drug-running.
They pick up a lot of courier/middleman jobs for various syndi-cates in spite of their burned out appearance because they rarely let their own desire to “experience the Universe” get in the way of serious drug biz. After all, getting the chemicals to the general public is infinitely more important than getting high themselves.
Finally, Sugar Daddy is always looking for one more high, one more altered reality, to find the truth of it all. If he hears of a new mind-altering drug, he will personally go wherever necessary in search of it. Sugar Daddy frequently tests new drugs before the corporate research departments concocting them even know they have anything. How he gets his hands on such “classified trade secrets” is a mystery; many people speculate that his patrons share more than the “secrets of the Universe” with him.
Among other things, the New World Soldiers are one of the main suppliers of magical plants from the Mojave Desert. How they get hold of them, no one knows—but no one much cares, either. Their knack for getting magical plants and Anasazi “spiritu-al helper” mixtures out of the Mojave makes them a major link in various magical smuggling operations run out of Los Angeles to Denver, Seattle and Tir Tairngire.
They also have connections among the rich and bored of Westside, Studio City and UCLA; they provide the upper-crusters with the chemical edge that brings “happiness” to those whose only worth comes from having more nuyen than they can spend.
Through these connections, Sugar Daddy has set up the occasion-al shop in Poccasion-alm Springs and Las Vegas. He has occasion-also been seen in Denver, Seattle, New York and the Caribbean League help-ing some of his better customers “see the Universe’s beauty.”
Foes: The Soldiers’ few foes include law enforcement types (a bunch of uptight no-lifers who just don’t understand the benefits of drugging out) and anyone who tries to put a spike in their drug-running busi-ness. One of their favorite tricks is coating cop-car door handles with drug-laced DMSO to make the cops high. They also have a mild prejudice against corporate types, whom Sugar Daddy calls “stuffed-shirt stiflers of the creative mind.”
Uniqueness: The gang does anything possible to make people start tripping: handing out pill pack-ets on street corners, painting subway turnstiles with hallucinogen-laced DMSO, and so on. In one infamously successful escapade, the Soldiers managed to spike a batch of paint used on the cans of a popular brand of soda with DMSO and LSD; reports of con-sumers having wild hallucino-genic episodes came pouring in to local police stations for forty-eight hours until the soda was recalled.
On the rare occasions when they fight, the New World Soldiers prefer chemical-based weapons like Narcoject guns and gas grenades. They restrict them-selves to chemicals that alter perspectives, like knock-out gas or laughing gas, rather than substances like Fugu-5 that are intended to maim.
They tend not to kill their ene-mies, preferring to “open their minds to new p o s s i b i l i -ties.”
GANG PROFILES
New York- No Capo The Carnetti Family, The Columbo Family The Genovese Family, The Lucchese Family
The Bonanno Family
Washington FDC- Capo Don Franco Mueller The Mueller Family
The Marconi Family (Don Victor Marconi)
Chicago- Capo Don Jim O’Toole (assumed deceased) The O’Toole Family (see Milwaukee)
Milwaukee- No Capo
Don Leo McCaskill (temporarily in charge of Chicago)
Seattle- Capo Don James O’Malley (deceased)
The Finnigan Family, The Ciarniello Family The Bigio Family
Atlanta- Capo Don Gerold Gianelli The Gianelli Family
Los Angeles- No Capo The Larraga Family The Gillespie Family
Denver- No Capo The Casquilho Family (UCAS Sector)
The Chavez Family (CAS Sector)
New Orleans- Capa Miriam Kozlowski The Kozlowski Family
Dallas/Fort Worth- Capo Don Miguel Chavez The Chavez Family
San Francisco- No Capo Operating out of Berkeley/Oakland
The Worczek Family
Las Vegas- Capo Don Dominic Freda The Verontesse Family Various smaller families The Boss of All Bosses
Unclaimed
The Inner Circle
The Capos from Boston, Chicago, Washington FDC and Las Vegas The Dons from the families of New York, The Caribbean League, Los Angeles
The Commissione Heads of the 50+ Families
Boston- Capo Don Conor O’Rilley The O’Rilley Family
The Morelli Family The Muldoon Family
HONOR.
RESPECT.
FAMILY.
Without these, I’d be nothing but a dirtbag—a freaking shadowrunner. Honor and respect—these set members of the “Family” apart from the scum who want what’s rightfully ours. The smuggling operations, the protection rackets, the casinos and brothels … our ancestors spilled their blood to build these empires. And I’ll spill mine to keep the Family strong. Weakness is not an option.
It dishonors the Family. Anybody dishonors the Family, he pays with his life.
Anyone who doesn’t show us respect, or tries to take what we own, we send them a message. First we hurt them, then we hurt their business, their friends and their family.
And if that doesn’t work … we kill them.
The Underworld Sourcebookdescribes in detail the “Big Four” international criminal syndicates: the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Triads and the Seoulpa Rings. Each syndi-cate’s markets, business practices, traditions, histories and secret rituals are revealed, along with loads of infor-mation on gangs, terrorists, assassins and other groups who rule the shadows through no law but their own. The Underworld Sourcebookincludes guidelines for building campaigns around organized crime and customizing them for local settings, and alternate campaign rules that allow players to play members of organized-crime syndi-cates. It provides a wealth of adventure hooks, story starters, background information and rules for use in any Shadowrun campaign.
For use with Shadowrun and the Shadowrun Companion:
Beyond the Shadows.
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