Auburn

Auburn is the very definition of working class. People there take pride in working hard and putting food on the table, providing for loved ones, and being part of a community; after all, getting the job done means everyone has to do their part. Free time is spent on classic working class activities like local sports teams rather than trying to live a fancy life. There’s plenty of consumption, of course, but those big trucks get used and abused. Homes have a huge trideo set for entertainment but not much trust in the Matrix, and the only name brands are on sports jerseys, not sports shoes. Sunday’s the only day that nobody works, and it’s spent on neighborhood events, family gatherings, or even church. Yeah, religion in this day and age, who’d-a thunk it?

Hunting’s also a big deal here. Probably half of Seattle’s hunting licenses are held by Auburn residents, and the eastern Kanaskat gate is the main through-point for hunters who have permission to enter Salish-Shidhe territory under strict quotas.

The first thing you’ll note when you enter Auburn is the Hum. It’s like the Tacoma Aroma, only for the ears. It’s a low-key rumble, the side effect of so much industrial machinery running 24/7. After a few days you get used to it but those first few days sleeping’s rough. The people tend to stay out of your business but once you break in to a group, you’re family. Stoic on the outside, gregarious on the inside. As long as you’re in with them, they’re some of the best people ever.

The people of Auburn are a proud lot. They’ll respect anyone willing to work but they despise a “moocher” or anyone living on public assistance. At the same time this is one of the largest districts for governmental aid for disability and food aid. If someone’s humble and shamed by taking the help it’s tolerated and the gentle lie that “they’ll be back on their feet soon” is one that everyone will agree on even while helping them out “just until you’re solid again.” In contrast, someone who seems able-bodied but on aid or who seems too happy about getting funds on the first of the month will be scorned. That the former tend to be human and the latter metahuman is certainly just coincidence (spoiler alert: It’s not a coincidence at all).

A possibly unexpected aspect of Auburn is environmentalism. The large number of hunters understand conservation and teach the kids to respect nature which is a core part of the Young Pioneer Scouts that so many working-class kids join that it’s a virtual rite of passage but they also believe that those areas are to be used, not left alone. You’d think someone would have trouble believing that nature was God’s gift while at the same time ripping through it on a snowmobile belching toxic fumes everywhere. Agree that drinking water’s important but scoff at water-quality warnings, saying that they’ve drunk from the Green River for forty years and it’s never hurt them, so why get up in arms over it? From the outside it seems impossible to hold so many opposing ideas in someone’s mind but the residents of Auburn manage it all the same.

Part of that working-class pride above is that they’ll shrug, blame the weather, and ignore how their breathing worsens year after year due to toxic smoke belched out of factories until they die of cancer, with their withered husks of lungs inside them. Oh, and Auburn is infamous for not wanting to get medical care. The belief is that they’ll “get over it” and, anyway, they have a job to do, so they just have to tough it out. That the metahuman body is resilient and recovers from almost anything only encourages their hard-headed belief that they’ll be fine. Auburn has Seattle’s lowest rate of health insurance outside of the Barrens.

Major Neighborhoods

Pleasant Hills

Located at the southern edge of Summer, the Pleasant Hills area is known by locals as “North Puyallup,” a series of government-subsidized housing for the poorest (and ork-iest) residents of the region. The Hills are alive with small gangs, rampant low-level crime, and a horde of people working hard just to get by. Sure, there’re plenty of BTL dens, liquor stores, and bodegas on every corner, but it also has the highest percentage of churches in the district, community outreach centers, and the local HQ for Mothers of Metahumans (MOM) as well.

Life here is rough but not as rough as the trideo makes out. Pretty much anything that goes wrong in Auburn is blamed on the Hills, and in return Hillsfolk tend to have a big chip on their shoulder about where they’re from. While the area has a large ork population (fifty-four percent), humans are the second-largest, with elves and trolls making up around five percent in total. Weirdly, the area is nearly devoid of dwarfs.

Maple Valley

The area is upscale, featuring a small café, plenty of nice shops, the office of Dan Hausen (alderman for Maple Valley, Humanis member, and leading candidate for the next Auburn mayor), and a good, wholesome church.

More than one of us has an uncle who’s a member of Humanis and makes a scene at family gatherings. Maple Valley’s basically composed of all those uncles in a gestalt form. Oh, there’s no violence, that’s “beneath” them but they’d love to have a “peaceful cleansing,” where the metahumans just up and left the district. Were that to happen, they’re sure that their kids and grandkids would then flock back to Auburn to take the jobs that are being “stolen” by “lazy orks” and they’d be able to rebuild a “proper” community.

It’s weird seeing smiling old ladies sitting around, enjoying tea, and knitting while dropping just terrible things about metahumans, but, well, that’s just how the community rolls.

Humans make up more than 90% of the local residents, with elves and dwarfs filling in most of the remainder and they’ll let anyone and everyone know that if it wasn’t for Those People bringing crime with them from the Underground, they’d surely have a peaceful community again.

Green River

Green River's metropolitan area is a decent-sized blue collar stretch northwest of the Federated-Boeing Auburn Facility and the location of dozens of apartment blocks, most of which house Federated-Boeing workers, Green River commercial industry set up to support the workers, or construction workers which have flooded the town to build the Green River Arcology.

Sometimes called the “Green Zone” by locals, the arcology’s still years away from being finished. Construction has been plagued by industrial accidents and bad contracting, leading some to say that the entire project’s a giant boondoggle. If it’s completed, it’ll be a self-contained micro-city with clean water and air, two things in high demand and low supply in Auburn, so many investors still see it as a winning bet, at least for now.

There are still dozens of businesses, hotels, restaurants, and bars all in operation around the formerly quasi-rural area of Green River. Rumor has it that the locals are trying to kill the arcology project, since they know it’ll eradicate their businesses. The number of accidents might be spirit-related, but conjuring up spirits near the river is bound to call up something toxic eventually.

This area also was once the hunting grounds for the infamous Green River Killer. Almost a century later, Green River still has an air of suffering lingering in the astral like a bad smell. According to local legend, some of the ghosts of the Killer’s victims might still be around, too.

Auburn Junction

Auburn Junction started out as an ambitious urban renewal project in the heart of downtown Auburn - just north of the District Hall - to create a “shared public space” in the area, to renovate, add greener buildings, etc. All very well-meaning.

What the developers and the city didn’t count on were things like the Awakening and the Ghost Dance War. So the construction of Auburn Junction ended up taking about three times longer, costing ten times as much and delivering on barely any of its intended functions.

Its unified design has become piecemeal, as some parts of it are a decade older than others, and those little parks and “public spaces” have been adopted by squatters, addicts, and other street people. The apartments are still inhabited, although some of them have become low-income housing.

Stuck's Carnival

Mitchell "Mitch" Stuck has run his little six-block empire in Auburn for years. The metroplex and district governments continue to let him because it would be too expensive and bothersome to try the case in the courts (plus there’s a fair chance Stuck would win.) They have already closed the loophole that allowed Stuck to declare “independence” for his little city and it reverts back to the district of Auburn upon Stuck’s death (although ownership remains with his legal heirs). So Stuck gets to have his fun and he seems intent on living as long as possible. He’s pushing ninety years old now. He lost his mind ten years ago and is being kept up by a wide array of chemicals, implants, and hope. As long as Mitchell is alive, so’s his empire, but as soon as he dies, the property reverts to Seattle who would very much like to clean it up.

The Carnival itself is the central building in the whole zone of chaos, a grand building of too-red red velvet, burgundy walls, and old school sexism. It’s got a sort of Wild-West-meets burlesque cabaret charm, but it’s also got a sleazy undercurrent all its own. The rest of the place is filled with otherwise illegal activity such as a black market that operates brazenly under the banner of “Stuck’s Swap Meet,” rampant prostitution, gambling, and more.

Seattle’s law enforcement has no jurisdiction here, so while anything goes inside the Carnival, there are always cars stationed at the entrances and exits, so don’t take anything with you but memories.

Enumclaw

The Shigeda-gumi yakuza organization is headquarters in Enumclaw, although their reach covers almost all of Auburn. They mostly concern themselves with respectable business—making loans, handling litigation and - of course - real estate. This is backed up with a significant side hustle in “Sintertainment." Hostess clubs, bars, prostitution, and gambling establishments. There’s a small trade in drugs and BTLs but it’s mostly internal, keeping imported workers on a leash rather than selling to the general population.

Shigeda-sama has no desire to see burned-out SINless people cluttering up his empire, so he keeps his organization away from what’s traditionally a major source of profit. If you want to operate in Auburn, it’s wise to get on the Shigeda-Gumi’s good side, but there’re those who fight against them who make up in loyalty and passion what they lack in resources or power.

The capital of the neighborhood is the Shigeda Tower, which is the center of all Enumclaw's extensive distractions and - more importantly - the Shigeda-gumi's direct business. The rest of the block around it features a hostess bar, pachinko-centric arcade, pawn shop, general store, karaoke bar, and tattoo parlor. All of which are, of course, Yakuza rackets. Several food vendors and small-time sellers also operate in the region, all under the protection of the Shigeda.

The bosses also use the block as a general celebration center whenever they want, which is fairly frequently.

Places of Interest

Hotels

Covington Rent & Rest Hotel

Type: Hotel

Rating: ★★

Price: ¥40

Location: 272nd Street Southeast & Wax Road Southeast, Covington

Description: If you are in need of economical lodgings, the Covington chain is an excellent example of a well-run cubicle hotel.

The equipment is state-of-the-art, the sleeping areas are secure, well lit, and clean, and there’s even a small restaurant on the premises. An excellent value for customers watching their budget.

Of course one of the reasons why the Covington cubes are so well looked after and squatter-free is because they’re owned by a front company of the Shigeda-Gumi Yakuza who also own the rest of the buildings next door, including Mako Tattoos and the Filthy Dragon Bar.

Anyone causing trouble around the place has to answer to the Yak legbreakers before the cops even get to them.

Dieringer Sleep Company

Type: Motel

Rating: ★★

Price: ¥30

Location: East Valley Highway East & Forest Canyon Road, Pacific

Description: A fairly average cubicle hotel offering no amenities and a location primarily of interest to late-night highway drivers.

This is a pretty trashy squat but there are a couple things of note.

First, it picks up some smuggling business along the highway, at least in that some smugglers and other road-warriors crash here.

Second, the former owner, Barney Moulton, was a VP with Mitsuhama before he got tossed out in some company purge. He always claimed to have something squirreled away for when he needed it, but he got gacked years ago and nobody ever found whatever it was.

Enumclaw Moneymaker Hotel

Type: Hotel

Rating: ★

Price: ¥25

Location: Griffin Avenue, Enumclaw

Description: A low-rent hotel known for cheap rates, it’s an open secret that the Moneymaker offers hourly rates and is the last stop for prostitutes in the area.

This is a gathering point for the burnouts and castoffs that the Yakuza have no use for and it’s also where unaffiliated independent or semi-independent sex workers congregate.

Since the local police are in the pockets of the Yakuza, it rarely gets raided but it’s where they know to go for any missing persons a year after they’ve vanished. Well, if they’re still alive.

Business picked up with the influx of former Undergrounders to Auburn. They have few contacts, low standards, and few other good outlays for their paychecks so Moneymaker has been making bank.

Of course this is also where you get Humanis thugs getting riled up by seeing ork workers with human sex workers so you get some brawls now and then. As you might expect, humans get sent home to cool off and sober up, while orks go to jail and pay fines.

Green River Inn

Type: Hotel

Rating: ★★

Price: ¥55 - 105

Location: Southeast Green Valley Road & 218th Avenue Southeast, Green River

Description: This family-style economy hotel offers two floors of sleeping cubicles as well as its eight floors of regular rooms for its guests.

Stuck's Sleephouse

Type: Motel

Rating: ★

Price: ¥20

Location: 88th Avenue South, Stuck's Carnival

Description: Located in Stuck's Carnival, the Sleephouse isn't usually used in conjunction with the well-known local sex work trade. Instead, it's usually where you put your hoop after you spend all night partying and gambling at The Carnival itself. If, after all that, you're a little too poor to stay in The Carnival itself then you head to the Sleephouse.

It doesn't offer any amenities of note besides a bathroom but its a safe bolthole and frequent travelers to Stuck's Carnival find the staff fond of repeat business (with no questions asked, obviously).

Restaurants

Green River Pizza

Type: Pizzeria

Cost: ¥

Location: Southeast 312th Way, Green River

Description: Green River Pizza has all the hallmarks of tacky, having loads of memorabilia and acting as something of a living museum to the Gary Leon Ridgeway, AKA the Green River Killer. Most of the locals have found it distasteful or outright offensive but with the ground breaking on the Green River Arcology, most residents have another thing to focus on.

Surprisingly, the lack of attention given to the pizzeria has allowed it to explode in popularity, mostly thanks to the owner's forward thinking regarding delivery drones (and a deal with local yakuza to make sure they're digitally well-protected) which can travel all throughout the metroplex.

Mot of Green River Pizza's most dedicated customers don't even live in Auburn and the Matrix advertising has yielded an entire new market who can't get enough of the good quality, cheap, greasy pizza that seems practically endless.

John Buck's Deer & Ducks

Type: American Restaurant

Cost: ¥¥¥

Location: Enumclaw-Buckley Road, Boise

Description: A sleepy little eatery near the Seattle-Salish border, Bucks offers a wide array of “critters and varmints” for those looking for a taste of mother nature. Waterfowl and deer are, of course, the main attractions but if it walks, wiggles, swims, or flies, they’ll cook it up at Buck’s. Since many of the hunters who cross into native territory are just trophy hunters, they drop their kills off at Buck’s but John keeps a few of his own hunters on staff to bring in fresh meat as well. Expensive, but where else can you get imported beaver burgers and wild turkey breasts?

Buck doesn’t have a problem with orks (the Cascade Orks bring him some extra supplies now and then) but he dislikes dwarfs and he hates, and I do mean hates elves. His son became an elf poser back in the mid ’50s and wound up starving himself to death trying to get the right look. Buck’s never forgiven them and doesn’t like UGE kids of any kind in his place.

Magician's Feast

Type: Salish-American Restaurant

Cost: ¥¥

Location: Enchanted Parkway South & 28th Avenue South, Auburn Junction

Description: A fine family restaurant serving Salish and American cuisine, the Magician’s Feast is best known for its regular magical illusion shows put on by trained magicians.

Mark Hiems, the owner, used to be a hotshot panzerjock for Aztechnology but he called it quits and walked away after one too many Central American bush wars about 35 years ago. He hasn’t looked back, although he still knows some people down south of the border.

Hiems isn’t a magician himself; his old partner Wes Nickerson was until he retired about a decade ago. Nowadays, most of the place’s magical talent is made up of students from UW and other colleges.

Maple Valley Diner

Type: Diner

Cost: ¥¥

Location: 233rd Place Southeast, Maple Valley

Description: The Maple Valley Diner is the type of place that harkens back to simpler times and is a favorite of Maple Valley's elderly to the point where they can be found hanging about the outdoor seating whiling away their retirements under an umbrella while the usual Maple Valley wageslaves come here for a soykaf in the morning and, more often than not, a quick and easy bite to eat during lunch.

It serves your typical "diner food," heavy on the fats and with healthy scoops of butter and salt. It is genuinely good food, too, and their soyburgers are so good that they've managed to make their way onto a few top ten lists for Seattle's best burgers.

The problem? They don't want to serve you if you're an ork. A lot of what you want will mysteriously be out of stock and if you keep at it and don't find the dirty looks then their payment processing might "glitch" so that they can start a scene and call the cops. Nine times out of ten it won't lead to anything but a lifespan shortened by stress but there have been a few incidents of an irate local all but brandishing their personal firearms at tusked patrons.

The Barn Burner

Type: Southwestern Restaurant

Cost: ¥¥¥

Location: Griffin Avenue & Porter Street, Enumclaw

Description: Here you’ll find some of the best southwestern food outside of the Sioux Nation.

The Barn Burner specializes in steaks and chops, potatoes with all the fixings, corn on the cob, and more. The prices can be a bit steep, especially depending on the market value of beef and buffalo, but well worth it.

They also host country line dancing on Thursday nights with a live band.

Stuck's Stuff-Your-Face

Type: Buffet

Cost: ¥

Location: 85th Avenue Southeast & Southeast 358th Street

Description: This all-you-can-eat buffet is built into The Carnival casino. It takes up a staggering one and a half floors and has its own chocolate fountain, an open-air barbecue pit where what you pick is cooked-to-order, and trays upon trays of foods mostly of the Salish, Chinese, and American fast food style of cuisine.

If massive trays of fries, sugary sweet & sour chicken, dry teriyaki, and dodgy crab's legs aren't your thing, then the troll-sized waffle cones are of a particular draw - they're pricier than everything else (containing about roughly a gallon and a half of soft serve when filled in the traditional way) so you need to buy each cone individually from a vending machine but more than a handful of people come to the buffet just so they can buy enough ice cream to take home or share with multiple people.

Bars & Clubs

Casey's

Type: Bar

Location: 162nd Avenue Southeast & Lake Moneysmith Road, Green River

Description: This neighborhood bar is located around the corner from the Clone Zone Mall.

This makes it a popular hangout for mall employees and hangers-on after hours, which means you can often find some talented hackers talking shop and willing to make deals for hardware or coding work.

Koibito

Type: Hostess Club

Location: Porter Street & Marshall Avenue, Enumclaw

Description: Sitting just around the block from Shigeda Tower, Club Koibito is something of a rarer sight in Seattle outside of corporate megatowers: an honest-to-goodness Japanese style hostess club.

Consisting of mostly female staff (there are a few men and agender options), it caters to (mostly) men seeking drinks and alternative conversation, especially those who have had a long day. As the Shigeda-gumi are considered the most progressive yakuza around, they manage to get a decent chunk of business from the more conservative clientele venturing outside of their comfort zone as well as those who aren't brave enough - or are otherwise opposed - to seeking out the prostitution row that hangs around the Enumclaw Moneymaker Hotel.

Shogun Karaoke Studio

Type: Karaoke Bar

Location: Porter Street & Washington Avenue, Enumclaw

Description: Looking for a place where you can get drunk as a skunk (or high, if that's your bag) and sing too loud with people who are also looking to sing too loud? the Shogun Karaoke Studio is the premier (and only) karaoke bar in Enumclaw and it caters to just that sort of crowd.

Owned by the Shigeda group (the Shigeda-gumi yakuza's holding group) the Shogun exists as a means to capitalize on Enumclaw as the "go to" place for cheap and easy entertainment for the citizens of Auburn and the Metroplex. The decor is modern and clearly a rip-off of a Japanese-style karaoke bar but most important its safe and easy entertainment for those a little unaccustomed or unwanting of Enumclaw's broader vices.

The Aurora

Type: Bar

Location: Noble Court Southeast, Auburn

Description: Local talk is that the place gets its name for ghostly lights that sparkle in the night, seen through a large glass window behind the bar. This is true but the lights aren’t the aurora borealis, they’re gas fumes from a nearby garbage dump being ignited by pollutants in the air.

For obvious reasons, the owners just chalk it up to “magic” and ignore the rest.

Rundown even compared to other dive bars, the Aurora is infamous as the last stop for shadowrunners before they fall forever into the barrens and obscurity. Samurai whose wires are too slow or whose cyber has left them a shaky mess, riggers who’ve lost their ride, deckers trying to scrabble spare parts together, mages who had their minds shattered in the astral... you can find them all here trying to forget their pain in a cup of booze that manages to both taste rancid and be watered down at the same time. Those who still have a few nuyen to rub together can rent rooms from the two floors above the bar.

The current owner, Hun Skaar, keeps a small shrine to fallen runners on one wall. If you’ve not seen someone in a few months it won’t hurt to swing by and check the big board, just in case.

The Filthy Dragon

Type: Bar

Location: 272nd Street Southeast & Wax Road Southeast, Covington

Description: A seedy bar controlled by the Shigeda-gumi Yakuza, primarily of interest because it serves as a front for a body shop in the back.

The Shigeda have recently stepped up business at the body shop by using it as a chop shop for packing and selling illegal organs on the black market, to compete with the Tamanous.

Let’s just say you do not want to get drunk enough to pass out at the Filthy Dragon, especially if you’re a stranger in the area.

The Hole Story

Type: Bar

Location: Oravetz Road & 41st Street Southeast, Auburn Junction

Description: The Hole Story is a favorite bar with ork shadowrunners and other criminals.

What the owner and patrons consider "one of theirs" will have their pictures immortalized on the Wall of Fame at the back of the bar. Since the Hole Story has been going on for over forty years, the once-small shrine now takes up the entire back wall, with picture frames, AROs, pinned pieces of paper and all else taking up the space.

They keep it tidy, at least as tidy as it can be, and the truly legendary ones have their tusks bronzed and plaqued.

Attractions

Eric's Italian Restaurant

Type: Abandoned Italian Restaurant

Location: Roosevelt Avenue, Enumclaw

Description: In the summer of 2049 this place was the site of “Eric’s Ten-Minute War,” a somewhat botched hit attempt by the Yakuza against several Mafia lieutenants in the district.

When the smoke finally cleared, nearly two-dozen people were dead, only a handful of them actually members of either syndicate and most innocent diners and bystanders caught in the crossfire.

Since then, the two restaurants established on-site have both gone out of business due to odd incidents. The last one had a major kitchen fire that closed the place for good back in 2060. The building has been vacant since then, the developers unable to lease or unload it.

Rumor has it the experts they brought in told them the place is haunted but the price of clearing the ghost (or ghosts, the stories conflict) is too high, so no one has bothered.

Word amongst the Auburn Yakuza and Mafia is to stay away from Eric’s. Apparently, some of their people have gone missing in the area.

Green River

Type: River

Location: Green River

Description: The Green River is seventeen kinds of toxic, thanks mostly to the dumping of chemicals from the assorted industries along it but there’s also a history of serial killings that have turned the astral even more hazardous.

Toxic elementals spawn from it on the regular, usually on the smaller side, but there are a couple of toxic magicians (mostly shamans, some hermetic) who actively stoke the problems and try to conjure up even more powerful spirits.

Rumor has it that a toxic great spirit was bound somewhere along the river’s path, but the exact location has never been pinned down, if it’s true.

Needless to say, if you have to astrally project near the river, be on your guard.

The Carnival

Type: Casino

Location: 85th Avenue Southeast & Southeast 358th Street, Stuck's Carnival

Description: The district oldest casino and cabaret club, The Carnival is located on the outskirts of Stuck, a tiny “city” of six square blocks, created through a legal loophole in the incorporation of Auburn into the Metroplex of Seattle by businessman and entrepreneur Mitchell Stuck almost forty years ago.

You can play at the various gaming tables, enjoy drinks at the bar, or take in one of the various cabaret acts performing here.

The Carnival is like an over-the-top vision of what a cabaret is supposed to be: all red velvet and gold braid, ladies in can-can skirts and fishnets (a few boys, too, for that matter), crazy stage acts from singers to acrobats and flame jugglers. The whole thing is raunchy, cheap, glitzy, and totally appealing to the lower-class locals and visitors alike.

The Ultra Resort

Type: Private Resort

Location: North Island Drive & North Vista Drive, Tapps Island

Description: The mysterious Ultra Resort on Tapps Island in Auburn has been a source of controversy in the district since it first opened in 2049. Not long thereafter the resort closed off the entire island to visitors, allowing only members of the elite Ultra Club to visit.

In spite of various protests, the privacy of the Ultra Club and its members has been upheld and the resort uses all modern means to maintain it.

The staff of the Ultra Resort is capable of providing nearly anything their guests’ jaded hearts may desire, meaning they have both deep connections and deep pockets. That often translates into big business for their various sub-contractors when it comes to finding just the right vice or disposing of the evidence of a particularly successful “vacation” at the place.

One known fact about the Ultra Resort: back in 2063, a daring group of thieves managed to rob the place, cleaning out its vaults and escaping the island. Lone Star investigators found several suspects, all of whom were strangled to death with lengths of optical cable. Everything they owned that wasn’t nailed down was taken, presumably by the killers, who were themselves never found. Chances are whoever pulled off the robbery didn’t get a chance to enjoy their success.

Wuxing Park

Type: Park

Location: Maple Valley-Black Diamond Road Southeast, Timberlane

Description: A new entry in Auburn, Wuxing opened a small park as a cultural outreach just east of Lake Wilderness.

Designed to emulate a Chinese Scholar’s Garden, the tall hedges and winding pathways make it seem far larger than it actually is, allowing many guests to stroll around and have private(ish) conversations while not being seen by others. The park itself is relaxing and quite lovely, featuring traditional Chinese architecture and natural splendor. Plenty of ducks, frogs, and fish are found in the park’s winding waterways, while the small tea house, snack bar, and cultural center/gift shop give you somewhere to take shelter in case of bad weather.

As you might guess, the place isn’t popular with the Yakuza but a combination of public protection from Wuxing and protection payments to the Mafia have so far kept the harmony from being disrupted.

Government Buildings

Auburn District Courthouse

Type: Courthouse

Location: Main Street Southeast & 29th Street Southeast, Auburn Junction

Description: The seat of Auburn's highest court and a bustling hive of activity on every given day.

The Auburn District Courthouse is only notable for its proximity to Auburn Junction for its award-winning redesign during the reconstruction of the central area of the district decades ago.

Auburn District Hall

Type: District Hall

Location: R Street & 29th Street Southeast, Auburn Junction

Description: Auburn's chief municipal building is where the mayor sits, more often than not placating the corporate interests in the district that allow its once-pristine rural charm get thoroughly and wholly devastated by pollution.

Once a cutting-edge building during the beginning of the Auburn Junction redesign, it now look rather run-down and dated by modern standards. The same can be said for much of its security, which is easily running a generation or two behind the state of the art.

Businesses

Auburn Mall

Type: Shopping Mall

Location: 8th Street East & East Valley Highway

Description: The Auburn Mall has two floors and a full selection of shops, including Body+Tech, WeaponsWorld, and Microdeck.

The mall also has a local place called Auburn Enhancements and both it and the Body+Tech are willing to look the other way if you slip them a little something extra.

Bowman Metal Works

Type:

Location: Ofarrel Cutoff Road & 12 Street East

Description: Despite being a fraction of Federated Boeing’s size, Bowman’s produces more pollution than all of the larger corp’s plants combined. It’s the largest employer of tuskers in the region, providing high pay due to the risky working conditions. Turnover’s high, as even orks can only take so much toxicity before they have to step down, but the good pay means that openings are always filled.

They’ve been hit with fines galore over the decades, but somehow, they power through and keep pumping the air full of smoke and the river full of runoff. Not sure how that works, but it keeps churning all the same.

Old boys network, along with strong Mob contacts. Sometimes workers fall into vats. Off hours. Where there aren’t cameras. They always drop their nametags before taking the hot splash, tho. Funny, that.

As bad as Auburn’s astral is, it’s at its lowest downriver (and downwind) of Bowman’s. Lone Star’s magicians practice against the toxic spirits that snarl through the astral here. Not the big ones, of course, just the freshly generated baby ones

Clone Zone Mall

Type: Shopping Mall

Location: 64th Street East & 160th Avenue East

Description: Auburn’s home for budget-priced electronics, many as good as brand names, but keep in mind that the mall does not maintain its own security service, nor are the service or warranties on many of the products here the same as you’ll get with high-ticket brand-name items.

A lot of the places at Clone Zone are essentially electronics shops where hackers whip up knockoffs of commlinks, decks, trideos, and other hardware, some of them built out of salvaged or repurposed parts, and package and sell them at cut-rate prices for the locals and tourists who feel it is their gods given right to own a commlink, trideo, multi media console and all the memory they need for every trid, song, and sim ever produced, no matter how much they are paid. Naturally, some of the warez-sellers are willing to make “custom modifications” with no questions asked for an additional fee.

Diamond Deckers

Type: Computer shop

Location: 1101 Supermall Way, Sumner

Description: Diamond Deckers is a computer clone company famous, or infamous, for building decks that were slightly altered copies of Fuchi corporation computers in the 2040's and 2050's. Fuchi tried legal action to stop Diamond Deckers but they lost in court despite the fact that the imitations were so blatant.

It never became public knowledge but Fuchi was secretly doing business with Diamond Deckers after the lawsuit, using them to test prototype chip designs and experimental simsense interfaces. The Diamond Deckers products were, effectively, a test of a new design and a way for Fuchi to be safe from any legal action occuring from accidental death or misuse.

After Fuchi's dissolution in 2060, the Diamond Deckers continued with the few prototypes that they had and built off of them, regularly, until the Crash 2.0. After that they returned to their roots and now produce several of their own (legal) designs as well as a whole host of knock-offs.

Requiring extraterritoriality to sell their knock-offs with relative impunity, they sold their flagship location and purchased an area in the Green River Arcology. While its still being constructed, this location in The Supermall is where they sell their legal goods that won't get Corporate Court lawyers nipping at their heels.

Enumclaw Arcade

Type: Pachinko Parlor

Location: Wells Street & Washington Avenue, Enumclaw

Description: The Enumclaw Arcade is part of the good, clean yakuza-owned fun that Enumclaw offers in bulk for a fraction of the price that you'll find outside Auburn.

Only a stone's throw from Shigeda Tower, the arcade itself offers all sorts of games and entertainment that you'd expect as well as an entire second floor dedicated to pachinko machines. It's segregated from the first floor for a few reasons, the first of which is that they make most of their money through them so it only makes sense to have that many machines.

The second and more noticeable reason, however, is that the second floor allows you to smoke. It's also considerably louder. The Enumclaw Arcade uses the exact proven science of the pachinko parlors of the Japanese Imperial State and replicates the conditions perfectly to entice salarymen who might come for the hostess club or the sex work services but chicken out - or have bad impulse control.

Federated-Boeing Auburn Facility

Type:

Location: Enumclaw Road & Southeast 408th Street

Description: As the single largest employer in Auburn, where

FB goes the district follows. They have a massive union base, but there’s open fear that the facility could try to break them, driving a serious racial backlash against the district’s orks. General harassment in the southern half of Auburn is climbing as trucks of Humanis thugs roll around, reminding the orks to mind their place and not try anything.

Any pushback against these are, of course, seen as “violent thuggery” by the authorities, who send the humans home and round up the orks. Everyone knows how the lines are drawn, but so far, it’s remained almost entirely non violent.

FB used to do some research here, but that’s since been moved off-site, with the Auburn facility now focused entirely on construction and engineering. Most of the facility handles standard work, but military contract work is reserved for Hangar #4, and being selected to work there is a high mark in someone’s career.

Work never stops here, running 24/7. This has led to more automation across the board, including drone-based security. Spiders run the show from central security, but the military wing has a crew unique to it who use a much higher grade of drone and who are authorized to shoot first, then shoot again, before asking questions

Humanis Policlub: Auburn Chapter Headquarters

Type: Policlub

Location: Witte Road Southeast, Maple Valley

Description: The Humanis Policlub in Auburn isn’t as entrenched as they are in Renton, but they’re a growing force in Auburn due to a lot of the orks moving out of the Underground coming to Auburn for work.

Matrix security at the HQ is not great but they don’t keep anything incriminating in the building. Magic’s even thinner.

Thomas Hamilton’s the head of the Auburn chapter but his wife Karen is the one who has more passion for the cause. They’ve actively kept regressive policies, like tying education funding solely to property taxes, so the public schools in Pleasant Hills are starved for funds while those in Covington are well-funded or ensuring that orks get worse interest rates (if they can get loans at all), restricting them to low income housing.

Judge George Jones has a particular bee in his bonnet about ork crime, pushing for maximum sentences for minor crimes and keeping Wynaco full of convicts. The district prison population has an ork majority, even though orks are only a quarter of the population.

Lenny's Loans

Type: Loan Office

Location: 87th Avenue South, Stuck's Carnival

Description: Lenny's Loans makes sure that you have money if you need it while in the city limits of Stuck's Carnival.

He’s one of the rare “functional” ghouls and his favorite joke is that he doesn’t “charge and arm and a leg” - that joke never gets old to him.

This promise doesn't necessarily extend to late feeds or any attempts to skip out of a debt with Lenny. He always gets his pound of flesh.

Mama Pani's Talisman Shoppe

Type: Lore Shop

Location: 1st Street Northeast & L Street Northeast

Description: If you’re shopping for magical goods, then chances are you) are used to heading off the beaten path to find what you want. Mama Pani’s packs a surprising amount of value into a small storefront; walk through the beaded curtain over the entrance and into a space of tightly packed shelves and tables full of a range of magical goods from dried herbs, roots, feathers, and bones to ritual paints, chalk, and candles, heavy with the spicy scent of incense (Mama Pani’s own special blend) Chandra Pani is an East Indian ork and a gifted talismonger. Don’t mistake her for a dotty old woman, though, she’s as sharp as they come and drives an honest bargain for her goods. The customers she likes get invited to sit and have tea while Mama and her assistant, a dwarf named Raj, prepare and wrap their purchases

Mako's Tattoos

Type: Tattoo Parlor

Location: 272nd Street Southeast & Wax Road Southeast

Description: If you've ever wondered where the Auburn yakuza get their ink, you need look no further. Mako's tattoos is run by an old, ex-yakuza tough who got out of the game after a stay at the Enumclaw Second Chance gave him a new outlook on life. While he is still in the organization, he pivoted entirely to running Mako's Tattoos and, with his rejuvenated health, has become quite the artist himself.

He spends most of his time tattooing yakuza only, as his specialty seems to be classic Japanese style tattoos and even turning a few famous wood block prints into something that can transfer to flesh adequately. If you ask nicely and pay a lot he'll be more than happy to give you one in a similar style, although it will be fairly distinct from an actual yakuza ink.

Besides that, the rates are fair and the artists are all generally polite and enthusiastic about their work, something that the owner purposefully hires for. There's an unexpected air of an artist's commune underneath the hard-boiled scowl of yakuza associates and they don't seem to discriminate with their clientele, likely owing to the Shigeda-gumi's general progressive nature.

Max's Ironworks

Type: Gym

Location: South 324th Street & Pacific Highway South

Description: Step into this Auburn gym and you might think you’ve been transported to the set of a sim about the boxing gyms of decades gone by. The warehouse-like interior is dominated by the squared-circle of the boxing ring, but is also filled with free-weights, mats, heavy bags, and other training equipment. No computerized machines or cardio equipment here (if you want to get your heart rate up there’s a circular track and some jump ropes, go to it). The gym has ¥10 day-passes and offers sparring lessons on a pay-as you-go basis. You can learn about the “sweet science” of boxing or simply come and get in a workout for less than you would pay at more fancy and expensive gyms.

Max Czernak, the owner and manager, is an older ork and a veteran of underground and unofficial boxing and urban fight leagues, and has the scars to show it. Although he’s getting on, Max is only in his late 30s, and already a proud grandfather. He’s still more than fit enough to handle himself and give out a beatdown in the ring to anyone who thinks they can take him. The Ironworks are a decent place to recruit some muscle, so long as you’re discreet. You can also score some muscle enhancers and find out the best places for muscle- mods and whatnot if the regulars get to trust you and you ask around.

Nippon Exchange

Type: General Shop

Location: Fell Street & Marshall Street, Enumclaw

Description: While Enumclaw does have a Stuffer Shack, the Nippon Exchange offers more or less the same fare as you'd expect in Aztechnology's world-famous subsidiary with one caveat: it has hundreds of mixed-in Japanese-only brands which the Shigeda organization has imported from Japan.

Strange flavored candies, a hot food area which has knock-off Lawson's bento boxes, Japanese-style burgers, and a whole host of tempura meals made daily, clothes, and even appliances, the Nippon Exchange is fairly priced, fully stocked, and is unarguably the cleanest business that the Shigeda run.

Quetzalcola Bottling Plant

Type: Grocery Store

Location: 60th Street East & 164th Avenue Court East, Pleasant Hills

Description: This is where Quetzalcola Seattle produces a small amount of regional soda flavors as well as acts as the major distribution hub for Quetzalcola, shipping Q-Cola to every location where the soft drinks are sold.

The massive, sprawling plant is usually eating up power and sending up smoke all hours of the day and those that work there are subject to brutal working conditions, with bonus pay a laughable concept and the legal requirement being all that they get to take home.

There is one advantage to having your bathroom breaks and BPM (bottles-per-minute) timed, though, and its that you get graded on your performance daily and are paid in Stuffer Shack-only coupons which can be exchanged for any number of goods.

The coupons are basically a stackable corp scrip, too, so that means this facility is never hurting for workers as the poorest of the poor and even the desperate lower class rush to fill any vacancies.

Renraku Biocomp

Type: Research Facility

Location: 1st Avenue & Algona Boulevard North, Auburn Junction

Description: A subsidiary of Renraku Computer Systems, Renraku Biocomp is located just down the block from Algona Community Hospital.

It seemed like Renraku Biocomp was poised to move out during the Renraku Arcology Shutdown since Renraku North America's regional headquarters moved to San Franciso but in a surprising move, Renraku NA kept Renraku Biocomp in town.

Its actually one of the few divisions that indirectly benefited from the dust-up at the Renraku Arcology, which nearly destroyed the corp’s reputation and influence in Seattle.

A lot of the people pulled out of the arcology, subjected to the rogue AI’s attempts to modify and “improve” metahumanity, provided megapulses of research data for the company’s biomedical division.

It allowed Renraku Biocomp to develop new interface protocols, nerve analog products, and rejection management treatments.

Saver's Central

Type: Grocery Store

Location: Southeast Green Valley Road, Green River

Description: This is KongWalmart's main competition in the arena of prices and variety merchandise except Saver's Central looks for a little more quality and focuses their scope more on food, with clothing and furniture usually housed in a separate building altogether.

Saver's Central came out on top during the food riots just after the Ghost Dance War after proposing mergers, leveraging corporate buyouts and hostile takeovers so quickly that the world blinked and they had quintupled their market share in the worldwide grocery market.

They were largely the ones responsible for keeping most of the riots down to a dull roar, doling out what food could be found at mark-ups just high enough to keep people from going ballistic.

The Crash of 2029 hurt them like everyone else, but not nearly as much as other brick-and-mortar storefronts. They were able to keep most of the scheduled food deliveries going and when the Matrix became the giant communications network that it is today, all it did was streamline things for them.

They've since then branched out cautiously into other merchandise, looking for a bigger slice of the profit pie that Kong-Walmart's been eating.

Shigeda Tower

Type: Business Center

Location: Griffin Avenue & Cole Street, Enumclaw

Description: A bold name for a five-story complex, the Shigeda Tower is the HQ for the Shigeda-gumi, the public office where you can visit to get legal advice, settle debts, take out loans, and more.

The first floor is always filled with soldiers, while wannabes cluster outside hoping to get a glimpse of star thugs. There’s also a front desk, snack bar, and yes, gift shop. Loan officers and lawyers work on the second floor; the third is for modeling, photography, and magazine layout; while the fourth has a small recording studio for simsense recording, and, after hours, porn production. The fifth floor is reserved for Yakuza officers.

Every so often, to keep up the illusion, the tower will be raided by the police, where a handful of soldiers are marched out in handcuffs, and a few pistols and BTLs are rounded up. The police will smile for the media (who are always tipped off about the raid) while talking about the small handful of criminals who give the company a bad name. The Shigeda use this to clean house of troublemakers, but sometimes a hot young prospect will volunteer to get arrested, knowing that he’ll get a promotion once released from prison as long as he toes the line.

Stuck's Bag-Your-Body

Type: Cyberclinic

Location: 87th Avenue South, Stuck's Carnival

Description: Your typical body-mod shop located in Stuck's Carnival. The location itself means that you're mostly going to find sketchy, illegal, or both sketchy and illegal mods.

While the staff is knowledgable and the clinic itself is clean, you barely have to pay extra to get any cyberware that looks like it got ripped out of someone put into your own body without so much as a question about anything - except on which painkillers you want.

Stuck's Swap Meet

Type: Illegal Market

Location: A Street Southeast, Stuck's Carnival

Description: This small, open-air Auburn market is the epitome of Stuck's Carnival: its bright, loud, and sleazy with just as much danger as there is entertainment. Anything that is illegal can be found here, including but not limited to exotic paracritters and straight-up stolen property being sold by a variety of gangers and organized crime associates.

Its a place where anything goes and you should definitely, always, be wary of who you're buying from. Ask too many questions and you might find yourself on the precipice of a fight and there has been more than one occasion where someone at Stuck's Swap Meet where they found a market stall filled with stolen goods that were theirs or their people's.

Stuck’s legbreakers are there to keep the place from burning down, protect the patrons, and most of all, make sure the assorted barkers and sellers pay their taxes. Past that, they don’t care. Whatever two people want to do to one another, in private or in public? Not their problem.

Oh, every now and then they might step in, sometimes to make sure things are consensual, sometimes to ensure that the proper fees are being paid - and you can, of course, go ahead and pay them on the spot if needed. After they get their credits, feel free to carry on.

Stuck's Zeotrope

Type: Computer Shop

Location: South 358th Street, Stuck's Carnival

Description: Stuck's Zeotrope is the Stuck's Carnival version of all the smaller shops and stalls you run across when you walk the craggy asphalt of Stuck's Swap Meet.

It's focused, perhaps unsurprisingly, on the trade of an illegal vice. Pause for shock. Yeah, it's where Stuck's people sell off all the illegal chips and sims that they end up buying from the yakuza or making it themselves.

Since there's no regulation and law in Stuck's Carnival whatsoever, its done in a shocking brazen manner with all the technological jazz that AROs and an actual storefront can give you along with the unbearable sleaze of a greasy-fingered man in an alley has when he peels his jacket back to expose his hand-made covers.

It also has a decent chunk of hardware, too, including dataterms, commlinks, cyberdecks, and all sorts of programs. Of specific popularity and interest are especially cracked subscriptions to a few services that citizens of Auburn - usually Undergrounders who moved once it started getting gentrified - seemingly cannot get enough of due to a prior lack of access.

The Supermall

Type: Shopping Mall

Location: 1101 Supermall Way, Sumner

Description: The second-largest mall in all of Seattle (and if current market trends continue, it’ll be the largest soon), the Supermall manages to thrive when one after another mall has shut down, replaced by the ease of Matrix shopping and drone delivery services.

The Supermall had been in decline for years, catering to an increasingly poor client base but the past decade has seen a small resurgence from teenagers who have embraced the idea of a mall. They have effectively reclaimed the area, bringing badly needed nuyen along with them. With over a hundred stores and six anchors there are plenty of entry-level jobs to go around for teens looking to generate a bit of income.

There’s a thriving skate subculture here (not allowed on mall grounds, but they’ve gravitated to the parking lot around the now-closed Wordsworth and so far mall officials aren’t stopping them). The Trideoplex remains popular for teen romance, while the large variety of stores on the upper floors sell everything from housewares to furniture to sports trading cards and comic books.

Vintage Diamond

Type: Pawn Shop

Location: Battersby Avenue & Railroad Street, Enumclaw

Description: Vintage Diamond is yet another yakuza-owned business in the shadow of the Shigeda Tower. With the amount of vices in the neighborhood, it only makes sense that it has a well-protected and mostly above-board pawn shop available to people, especially to anyone the yakuza disappear in the Filthy Dragon or to buy anything a local sex worker might slip off a client's wrist, bag, or their pants.

The Vintage Diamond also is one of the metroplex's genuine vintage thrift stores, almost by pure accident. The majority of stolen items up in Maple Valley end up down here and the victims of those thefts are usually the elderly, so proper old school thrift finds end up processed by criminal enterprise and then, usually, bought by middle class university kids, most of which know of Enumclaw from their time growing up just one district over.

White River Research

Type: Research Facility

Location: 900 Forest Ridge Drive

Description: Formerly United Oil Research and Development, this seven-story building is the middle point of a fenced-in, secure compound just within sight of the White River.

The place is very nearly a zero-zone: over a hundred armed security personnel, drones, patrol vehicles, and the perimeter fence wired with motion sensors and scanners.

Over a hundred security are crammed into this one facility, and the wards are airtight. Key areas of the complex are warded or covered with awakened ivy or the like, but guardian spirits are relatively few and far between.

Suits go in, suits go out, and work of some kind goes on in there, but no one really knows what form that work takes.

Wynaco Correctional Facility

Type: Correctional Facility

Location: Auburn Black Diamond Road & 148th Way Southeast,

Description: Bought out by Lone Star about two decades ago, Wynaco is a maximum-security prison and fairly run of the mill aside from the experimental wing.

Lone Star’s Grey Men have rewired dozens of ex-cons here, turning their brains sideways in new and inventive ways to turn them away from a life of crime and violence. Those who undergo the treatment never come out quite right. They shelved it around ’68 to focus on a new program of time lapse simsense recordings, where they can follow a prisoner living through 40 years of prison time in a month. This work shows promise but it undercuts the primary business of the facility.

The primary business, of course, is prison-for-profit, where the inmates (over half of whom are orks, because that’s how law enforcement works) are used as slave labor producing body armor and helmets for the Star, as well as badge cams (Lone Star’s infamous “faulty badge cams” are always blamed on the prisoners here) and other electronics. They also mix chemicals (mostly house paint and the like) and build furniture. Local businesses have long lobbied for an end to this forced labor, as the prisoners aren’t paid for their work, while business owners have to pay their workers’ wages, creating an unfair competition that drives the locals out of business. Seattle has traditionally shrugged about this, as this labor is legal under the UCAS Constitution. With Seattle’s independence, this is sounding like its going to change - and soon.

Lone Star’s lobbyists at the Governor’s table are paying close attention to these rumors. Lone Star could easily make the facility extraterritorial to keep the forced labor but if Seattle bans the practice then there goes some market capital, and they’d rather not risk it.

Medical

Algona Community Hospital

Type: Hospital

Location: 1st Avenue & Algona Boulevard North, Auburn Junction

Description: This hospital complex is owned by Renraku North America. Algona specializes in artificial organs and limb replacements.

Algona Community Hospital got scooped up by Renraku in 2064 and incorporated it into their bio-medical research company, Renraku Biocomp, although it still functions as a treatment center for those with the right HMO coverage.

For some strange reason, Renraku never plastered their name all over the building and while there’s never been formal accusation of overt racial bias here, the prices put it out of reach for most orks and trolls in the district.

That said, it’s a perfectly fine facility that was certified for alpha-grade bioware and organ replacement a few years ago.

Community General

Type: Hospital

Location: 2125 C Street, Auburn Junction

Description: A charity hospital run primarily by the Catholic Church with the help of a local Jewish rabbi, C-Gen is always short-staffed and low on supplies but it keeps the doors open for the desperate. It remains the go-to for victims of crime along the southern border - usually gangers exchanging fire with their Puyallup mirrors but sometimes mugging victims, assaulted prostitutes, and so on.

While those are the more notable charges most of the time is spent on basic work: broken arms, dizzy spells brought on by chemical exposure, food poisoning, and so on.

Long hours, short pay, working for the good of the community and to help the actual needy. They also don’t talk to the police and have top-notch skills at dealing with gunshot wounds.

When you pay for treatment, be sure to leave a big tip for charity.

They need it, and it’s worth it.

Enumclaw Second Chance

Type: Clinic

Location: Porter Street & Battersby Avenue, Enumclaw

Description: The Enumclaw Second Chance is a private health clinic focused entirely on bioware, with three operating rooms, two floors worth of recovery space and rehabilitation facilities, and a vault with a level of digital and magical security that’s quite excessive for such a small place.

Its almost exclusively reserved for Seattle’s assorted Yakuza. A lifetime of hard drinking, BTLs, combat drugs, and body mods results in a body that simply doesn’t handle old age well.

Second Chance is there to pull out the bad and replace it with the new, with joint replacement and liver transplants being the norm, with lung and throat replacement also common for the notorious chain-smoking criminals.

Technically controlled by the Shigeda-gumi, the clinic offers services to any Yakuza member who wishes to use it and those who visit operate under the protection of a guest.

Assassination attempts and other such things are simply not allowed at this neutral space, and those who threaten to ruin that peace are quickly and violently removed. Visitors are tightly screened but every boss, or former boss, who stays there will be visited often by any number of soldiers who want to pay their respects. As bosses from rival families sometimes recover here at the same time, peace negotiations during the truce of healing are common.

No matter how senior they are, the old men here hate taking it easy. The nurses are the primary target as the patients find a youthful vigor returning that they’ve not known in decades, but more athletic visitors will often find themselves challenged to strength contests or the like. Of course, the main activity is gambling - cards fly nonstop within those walls, and while most bets are for pocket-change amounts, sometimes the pot gets outrageous.

Lake Wilderness Hospital

Type: Hospital

Location: 248th Street Southeast & Gaffney Road

Description: Located right near the lake, you could mistake this hospital for a private resort hotel rather than a health care provider. Lake Wilderness specializes in treating patients holistically in a soothing, natural environment.

Openness to holistic and alternative treatment and maintaining its peaceful surroundings have benefited Lake Wilderness Hospital. They have attracted both more Awakened patients and healers, enlarging their staff and their treatment options. This, in turn, has brought in people looking for “natural” healing and willing to pay accordingly. In some ways, the place is more of a resort spa than hospital in that you practically need a reservation to check-in and you can expect to pay four-star rates. Still, the care is top-notch, and does cater to the specialized needs of the Awakened

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