Sixth World Storytime
Sit back kids, and get comfortable. I’m going to tell you about Dozer.
Shadowrun, as most of you are aware, is a cyberpunk hypercapitalist dystopia which we’re slouching to even today, with a bevy of guns, cars, sweet-ass cybernetic implants, corporations larger than any country today with yearly profits in the trillions, and absolutely everything being for sale. Food is mostly soy and corn reconstituted into a myriad of things and treated with a flavor faucet. Surveillance is omnipresent but the analysis systems are so bad that those without ID numbers just kind of slide through the spaces between. Those without System Identification Numbers - without SIN - do not exist. This is good, and bad.
Shadowrun also has magic. And fantasy races. Specifically it has Orks. This is important, because Dozer is an Ork in a Human’s world.
(Below the cut we get a little nasty. Disclaimer for the admins when they eventually fall upon this depravity - this is a fictional event in a fictional world based upon a tabletop roleplaying game. Back the fuck off.)
In the Underground of Seattle rests a community of Trolls, Orks, and Dwarves no that’s all. Until recently in 6W canon, the Underground was not recognized as an official District of the Seattle Metroplex - and the Orks liked that just fine. The Trolls didn’t care much, since they tended to hang with the Orks or their own kind, shared Hurlg (a hyper-IPA with plenty of nutmeg and a caustic that could burn an Elf’s stomach to pieces) and plenty of meatlike substances at bars and restaurants that catered to them. In short, the Ork Underground was its own little city, with businesses, religion, medicine, and police.
Dozer, an Ork, was a member of the Underground’s police force - the Skraacha. An Or’zet term meaning ‘Scorcher’, the Skraacha handled neighborhood watch, ne’er-do-well training into ‘functional’ members of society. They kept the peace, supported metahuman rights rallies, beat the fuck out of the local neo-Nazi human supremacists in town (Humanis) and in their off time ran protection rackets and smuggled wepaons. They loved young, angry Orks with a bone to pick and a chip on their shoulder. Dozer fit in perfectly.
An aside, this is 5th Edition Shadowrun. Dozer was built as a cybered ‘street samurai’ specializing in close-encounters of the murderous kind. His muscles were cybernetic, he had a blade the length of his forearm concealed in his forearm, and he’d somehow begged, borrowed, and stole enough nuyen to install a bespoke Synaptic Booster, which - coupled with an Adrenaline Surge to make sure he always went first - ensured anyone who crossed his fist had a very bad day.
By the time he retired (a wonderful story in itself, but not the focus of today), Dozer had about 350 karma, 4 Street Cred (after faking his death, a story I’ll tell later), 4 Notoriety, and managed to stay out of the Public Eye until the very end when he stole a nuclear submarine. Again, a story I’ll tell later.
Dozer had quit the Skraacha after a terrible fight between a lieutenant of the group (Eybyu) and another pipe-thumping patrolman which left both patrolman and lieutenant dead, and Dozer in critical condition with massive damage to his face. Upon recovery, he promptly quit the force and went into business for himself - running a food truck he’d bought with the “insurance money” that he called C2T Solutions.
(Because you can solve any problem with a Cyberspur 2 the Throat.)
You see, Dozer had also installed a Suprathyroid Gland, which is pretty much what it says on the tin - it’s a carefully engineered runaway growth problem which confers increased strength, speed, and toughness. It also makes one the terror of buffets everywhere, and after Dozer had been thrown out of the fourth one he decided he was going to start cooking. And if he was going to cook, then by Dunkelzahn he was going to make enough for everyone.
Plus nobody looked at the cook unless he had a ponytail and a storied Naval career, so he could use it for information gathering. Only...things didn’t go that way.
Dozer’s first use of the food truck was when he and a team of pipehitters was hired to cross off a list of names - with bonuses for those made to look like accidents. There were six names on the list:
* A Federated-Boeing executive
* A Stuffer Shack employee
* An IT goon in a corporate enclave
* A retiree on the state dole
* A city employee with the Parks Department
* A ten-year-old trustafarian in a ritzy enclave
Dozer drew the short straw (or stole them while the rest of the crew argued) and took the city employee, the Stuffer Shack employee, and in a move that disgusted the rest of the team, the ten-year old. How can an Ork just cruelly kill a ten-year old kid?
With cupcakes, Dozer reasoned. Kids love cupcakes.
In a stunningly macabre display of chemistry and culinary science, Dozer whipped up a pair of dark chocolate cupcakes one would expect to find at a boutique patisserie, both frosted with chocolate buttercream icing. Special icing.
Because icing doesn’t burn off the alcohol content of spiced rum - and Chloral Hydrate (Shadowrun’s version of Rophynol) has double potency when mixed with said rum.
Add in a gaily-wrapped box from an actual boutique patisserie with an Augmented Reality tag noting they were offering gift boxes as a ‘thank you’ to the community they served, and Dozer had created the perfect lure to ensnare anyone with a sweet tooth.
Ten-year old Trudy stepped out of the schoolyard gate, savoring the fine Bellevue weather as she walked along the road towards home. She didn’t *need* to walk, but it had been a nice day at school and Trudy felt even better about the day as she could remember the highest points of it while getting that last bit of exercise before the afternoon homework session began.
The sun was shining, the roads were quiet save the occasional yellow bus or GridGuided car taking her classmates to *their* homes. Allison had suggested Trudy come over to her house for a group study session, but the last time that had happened Allison’s homework looked suspiciously similar (okay, they were exactly the same) as hers.
“Afternoon, Ms. Appleton!”
The voice caused Trudy to turn and wave with a bright smile, her DocWagon bracelet jangling against her pale wrist. Two Knight Errant patrol officers leaned against their car, waving back before scanning the area for potential suspects to question and search.
“Good afternoon Officer Cortez!” she yelled. “Hi Sergeant Weber!”
The two officers were well known in the neighborhood, and Trudy’s parents had noted with pride the discount they had received on their insurance premiums by agreeing to the surcharge for having physical patrols in the area during and after school hours. Really, they had said, it was leaving nuyen on the table if they hadn’t, and having security services available during their 12-hour workdays meant they could put in the extra hours at the office but still sleep easy at night.
As she walked past manicured lawns, a smelly groundskeeper trimming hedges, and Augmented Reality picket fence property indicators to her own modest home, Trudy’s day got even better as she spied a specialty cardboard container from her favorite bakery on the doorstep. She’d never thought that Le Petite Sweet would send a delivery, but someone must have really been thinking of her today to send over such a treat! Trudy picked up the box before sending the unlock code to the house’s front door via her bedazzled trode patch on her temple - right where her Datajack would be, she thought.
The cool air of the perfectly-adjusted central heating and cooling system brushed against her face as Trudy stepped inside, her commlink downloading personal messages from the corporate grid once her PAN interfaced with the wider house network. There were two more messages from Allison, one of which was a repeated offer for Trudy to come visit today and do homework, and a second one that her Nixdorf Sekretar agent indicated was a phishing attempt via a picture of a cat playing a piano. Trudy thought the picture was funny, but not funny enough to allow Allison access to copy her homework directly. Besides, there were much more important things to consider.
Trudy set the box on the dining room table and opened her prize, finding a pair of chocolate cupcakes with a dark chocolate icing. They smelled freshly baked and sweet - not as sweet as she liked, and without the chocolate sprinkles she always wanted when she would get her weekly treat at Le Petite. In fact, they didn’t even look quite like the bakery’s signature cupcake - but her stomach growled in anticipation anyway, so she took a bite while going through her homework questions for the day. The rich flavor of the chocolate was slightly offset by the spiciness in the icing. Trudy was confused for a moment, then took another bite.
There was rum in the icing. Trudy knew because she had stolen a drink from her father’s liquor cabinet, and the dark liquid in the bottle tasted just like this. The icing, however, was much better than that terrible alcohol.
In no time at all, the first cupcake was gone, and Trudy yawned while sending a message to the fridge unit to pour her a glass of milk. She felt oh-so tired all of a sudden. Maybe the nice groundskeeper opening the back door could help her get her milk.
Shaking his head, Dozer gently took poor Trudy upstairs to the bathtub, ran the water, and laid her inside. He took the box and the detritus from the cupcake, and let himself out the door he entered.
The payment hit his account fifteen minutes later, as medical services screamed towards the house where a drowning had occurred.
There are, of course, several other stories I have involving Dozer and his food truck, Dozer and his old patrolman buddy Stamp, Dozer being thrown off a ten-story building and hitting the pool with nothing more than a bruise, Dozer inventing the term ‘dumptrucking’ as it refers to lateral strategy, and finally Dozer stealing a nuclear submarine and becoming a pirate king with a mage and a decker he’d run with on that last score.
But for today, we’ll leave it with poor Trudy. Maybe tomorrow I’ll talk about how Dozer changed the outcome of a re-enactment of the historic Battle of Helm’s Deep.