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[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

I'm writing a Cyberpunk tabletop scenario & was hoping to get some ideas here.

I have a plot outline. PC's are Nomads camped in the Night City suburbs where their pack is on contract. They are sent to Texas, Amarillo to be exact, to collect a pack-mate who is being released from prison.

This person has a sister, who has been exiled from the group they originally travelled with for crimes she most definitely did commit.

The sister has arranged to kidnap her brother on his first stop in the way back to Night City.

The question is, what is her motivation to do this? I have some ideas but I'm not sure they're plausible.

[Nissui]

Just a couple feelers:

• Is there a score to settle with the group that the brother and sister originally ran with?
• Is there a reason that the sister would want to keep the brother away from Night City?
• Would the sister turn on her blood to absolve a grievous debt?
• Does the sister know something about the party that they don't know?

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Just a couple feelers:

• Is there a score to settle with the group that the brother and sister originally ran with?
• Is there a reason that the sister would want to keep the brother away from Night City?
• Would the sister turn on her blood to absolve a grievous debt?
• Does the sister know something about the party that they don't know?

Well, the sequence of events I have in mind runs like this.

Party travels to Amarillo, encountering minor problems and collects the brother.

Brother asks to go to a Nomad friendly place to celebrate his release (can't think why the PC's would balk this).

Sister has her minions hit the place when he's isolated from the group, with a mercenary power armour trooper as backup.

She then has an argument with the, dismounted, trooper that ends with the trooper being shot dead.

PC's have to track her down. One possible assist is from the trooper's annoyed fixer.

Adventure ends with an attempt to rescue the brother from her hideout.

Original motivation I had devised was a screwed up attempt to manipulate the brother into joining her, crossed with resentment at him deserting her when he left his birth pack to work in the PC's pack.

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[Graelyn]

Ever been to Amarillo?

Lived there a number of years, if you have questions about the place.

Also: here's some good background for your session  

[Nissui]

So... she wants her brother's help for something she can't do alone, or even with a cadre of hirelings/mercs, since she'd rather use them just to get him back. There's something he specifically offers. She wants to cash in on the moral obligation she feels he owes, and was willing to orchestrate the abduction immediately after his release, which suggests it's pretty important to her. Perhaps her original crime left an unresolved matter?

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

So... she wants her brother's help for something she can't do alone, or even with a cadre of hirelings/mercs, since she'd rather use them just to get him back. There's something he specifically offers. She wants to cash in on the moral obligation she feels he owes, and was willing to orchestrate the abduction immediately after his release, which suggests it's pretty important to her. Perhaps her original crime left an unresolved matter?

Well. I'm currently going with the notion that she was bait for a scheme to snag unwary marks from the places her pack passed through, passing them off to co-conspirators outside the pack (Raffen Shiv bandits) to be sold as slaves/experimental subjects.

You get exiled from a Nomad pack for really bad offenses that put the whole group at risk. And it's done by stripping the offender and driving them out of camp. I was toying with the idea that she wants her brother to watch her back. She's assassinated her way to leading the gang she's in charge of at the moment and is well aware that someone might try the same gambit with her.

And, Graelyn, I've never been to the US. I picked out the locations from looking over the sourcebooks (Home of The Brave & Neo Tribes) and noting the area marked as the usual Nomad rest/wintering area (mainly Arizona & New Mexico). I figured the brother had been picked up as the player's pack was travelling through Texas on its way there.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

So. I pulled up Google Maps did a bit of searching and Street View checking and came up with the following.

The brother is due for release from the Nathaniel J. Neal Unit in Amarillo (picked at random from prisons in area).

To get there I'm estimating a two day journey (Google says about 18 hours but this is a more screwed up US & they will be travelling off the interstate where possible). I picked a place at Random in Barstow to be a Nomad friendly business they can pick up supplies from, Lube Express.

Along the way they get hassled by local cops near Parker AZ, moved on by hostile locals near the Iron Horse Grill in Salome and spend the night at the Lewis Canyon Group Campground.

The brother asks to go to the Friona Inn motel and is abducted from there. I was thinking of repurposing one of the neighbouring lots as a large bar and expanding the motel a little.

The sister's hideout is currently plotted to an Arizona ghost town called Nothing. I figured that to be sufficiently out of the way, but still accessible to heavy vehicles.

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[Graelyn]

Well, some notes.

Amarillo sits on an open flat featureless grassy plain for a hundred miles east and west, but gets all mountainy desert north and south. This means it's a permawind corridor. A good 10-20mph wind that just never lets up ever. Dust is a problem, along with fast moving and rapidly changing weather patterns.

The people in 'the panhandle' area actually fit the stereotype of Texans much more than almost any other place in Texas (which is actually a quite cosmopolitan and diverse state). Not a lot of black people in Amarillo, but lots of Mexicans, fluent in English and not. The rest are portly and uneducated white folks. Amarillo dominated the global teen pregnancy birthrate for 2 decades (number 1, yeehaw!) Lots of meth, of course, as is par for that course. The dominance of the church in local politics ensures the city has no nightlife to speak of besides bars, and thus the kids have nothing better to do than drink, fuck, and get into large-scale brawls.

City cops exist, but the city is dominated by the competing county sherriff's departments, with Potter County holding the northside, where the majority of the city (and most of it's wealth) lies, while bitter, vengeful, and broke Randall County sits in the dying south-side of the city. Interstate Highway 40, besides being the  artery of all trade and traffic, also marks the border between these areas, and while local laws are identical, enforcement tactics change dramatically between them.

While there is technically a downtown, with a grand total of 5 'tall' buildings, the entire city looks and feels like an aging suburb. No one builds up, they build out, on big property lots with sizable yards. Building over 1 story high are uncommon.

Everyone is armed. While Texas allows open unconcealed carry of firearms, the percentage of people walking down the street with an openly holstered piece is higher in the panhandle. Thusly, crime in open daylight is rare, but when night falls, the streets become eerily empty, and this changes.

That's probably a lot more than you needed. Have fun!

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Thanks Graelyn. That's all useful stuff.

Oh, the PC's are:

Michael "Toolman" Tooley. A vehicle/weapons tech who tends to play up the whimsical Irish stereotype

Jake "J" Williams. A solo with a bias toward security work.

Crystal "Mistigris" Matapang. Netrunner (& in my variant of Cyberpunk that also means Rigger, usually with drones) of Filipino extraction.

Enrique "Ratso" Rizzo. Fixer who is usually a general negotiator & supply procurer.

Locke (no other name as yet). Electronic tech with a sideline in second storey work to get in position for sniping with a 15mm rifle.

They are with a travelling show that is part of the Blood Nation. The esthetic used for performing is Old West/Mississippi Riverboat and the Pack is called Fever Dream. Currently camped in a Night City suburb on contract to a consortium of local corporates to entertain the wage slaves.

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[Graelyn]

So, did you burn the fucker down or what?