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Diffusion
Archetype: Human Negotiator
Even if dueling parties involved in a subtle or overt conflict have no
desire to cease their bickering, it is occasionally in the best interest
of a third party that this conflict be stopped. Examples include a
national government who wishes to end the corp war that is destroying
their tax base, to a neighborhood who wishes to end a gang war which is
destroying their homes. Rather than run the risk of pissing off either
party in a conflict, it is sometimes best to call in an anonymous third
party negotiator.
Diffusion is one such negotiator, working for an interested third party
but never revealing who this employer actually is. He is your classic
negotiator, making attempts to personally sit down with the leaders of
each conflicting side in an attempt to work out a solution. Unfortunately,
the technique also makes him fairly ineffective. Would you want some guy
waltzing up and asking you, pretty please, to stop the fighting but giving
you no reason as to why? I didn’t think so.
Fortunately, there are other kinds of negotiators available for hire.
Marissa Twist
Archetype: Elf Negotiator
Twist’s contact list is several kilometers long, and she has business or
personal links to just about anybody of any importance in a given city or
country. When hired to end a conflict, she searches to find which of her
contacts knows the parties in question, and then uses he near mystical
skills of manipulation (and a lot of nuyen) to get these contacts to do
her bidding. Why argue with a bunch of runners she hardly knows when she
can get the runners’ friends and contacts to do the convincing for her?
Any conflicting party who has to deal with Twist will find their actions
interrupted by calls and personal visits from contacts, friends, and
perhaps even family requesting that the conflict be ended. It is extremely
unlikely that they’ll ever see Twist herself, primarily because the Twist
everyone sees on their telecom screens doesn’t actually exist.
In reality, Twist consists of a team of about 10 negotiators, operating
out of an undisclosed location (possibly somewhere in Germany), who use a
borderline AI program to create and manage the video/audio phenomenon that
is Twist. All ten negotiators can simultaneously be jacked into the
mainframe, gathering information from datastores, contacts, and other
sources, and then feeding it into the Twist program. The program itself
decides on the best course of action and makes all the personal vid calls
and demands. Sometimes it’s not clear as to whether the negotiation team
is running Twist - or Twist is running the team.
Hardline
Archetype: Troll Negotiator
While most negotiators use finesse and subtle manipulation to end a
conflict, Hardline uses techniques designed to make it so difficult for
either party engaged in a dispute to get anything done that they decide to
hang it up and go home. Hardline and his team of ork and troll sidekicks
will begin with a firm demand that the fighting be stopped. If this
doesn’t work, he’ll proceed to damage BOTH conflicting parties’ personnel
and equipment until waging a campaign against one another becomes nearly
impossible. Sometimes he’ll even piss the combatants off so much that
they’ll actually unite with one another in an attempt to defend themselves
against Hardline and his cohorts. Either way Hardline wins, because the
initial conflict has ceased.
Hardline rarely personally engages in direct physical conflicts,
preferring to sit back in his Rolls Royce Phantom, receive intelligence
from his agents, and decide which course of action would best render the
conflict void. He is extremely intelligent, completely uncybered, and has
a set of social graces even an elven aristocrat would envy. But, unless
you happen to meet Hardline at one of the many elitist social occasions he
attends, odds are the only image of him you’ll ever see is his face
issuing a calm, but firm, threat via telecom.
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