Gang Mercenary

The name Gang Mercenary in no way relates to our conventional image of the HMG laden military Merc. Gang Mercenaries are those who would have become gang leaders if they had the desire, but instead found satisfaction in simply engaging in street war activity for pay. Essentially, they are gang members from hell who work by the hour. They are highly skilled in improvisation and street smarts but seem to have little capacity for negotiation or stealth. They tend to be armed with every conceivable light weapon, body armor, and cyberware, fighting in an insanely chaotic, yet calculated, manner. Gang mercenaries also tend to be extremely smart, possessing a high rating of virtually any skill required for survival in the slums. Gang Mercenaries always require that they be paid in advance and never offer promises.

Sewer Demon

These individuals tend to be Street Samurai/Magic users who got just a little too in touch with the ugly side of their magical and mundane selves. Many are burnt out Toxic Shamans. Sewer Demons purposely confine themselves to the sewers because they realize that, above ground, their methods and mentality would eventually get themselves killed. Sewer Demons have unbelievable control over their bodies, possessing the ability, be it cybered or not, to filter gasses, move amongst sewage undetected, blend perfectly into walls, slow their heart rate to the point that it is undetectable, and lower their body temperature to normally fatal levels. The physical form of a Sewer Demon is almost skeletal, yet possessing flesh which looks as if it is flopping and dripping right off their bodies. Many have had horrid cyber modifications, often removing entire limbs for the sake of installing large blades, spikes, hooks, or any other imaginable piece of paraphernalia. Remarkably many have contact corporations, usually through corporate installed headgear, and are often called upon to intercept targets traversing the sewers. Corporations occasionally send out agents to locate “Pre Demons” and offer them modification, drugs, or whatever for their future services. Modification surgery is usually performed hastily, right in the sewer. Rarely does a Sewer Demon survive more than a year or two after he or she is initially modified.

Elder Child

Elder Children are adult individuals who have been modified through drugs and surgery to appear as children. The procedure usually involves intense chemical treatment, bone shaving, skull size reduction and other horrid procedures. These freaks are usually “manufactured” by corporate laboratories and, occasionally, underground medical facilities who then “rent them out”. The subjects are usually kidnapped pedestrians, drug users, or the occasional Shadowrunner who ended up into a bad situation. As the body is reconstructed it is usually packed with every conceivable piece of cyberware, all of which is specially designed to appear virtually undetectable. The individual is then brainwashed or kept on drugs so they’ll remain obedient and submissive. Elder Children are primarily used for high level infiltration and assassination missions during which a child can get relatively close to the target with little heed paid to their presence.

Screamers

Screamers are kidnapped individuals, normally everyday pedestrians, who have been turned into disposable agents through the installation of a piece of cyberware nicknamed a Scream Link. The cyberware is an external/internal electronic device, installed along the back bone, which contains a small receiver, tracking beacon, nerve stimulating device and an explosive charge. No real surgery is required for instillation, the device, about twenty centimeters long and eight centimeters wide, is simply “plugged into” the individual by pushing several barbed pins lining it through the flesh and into the spine. The device is preprogrammed to allow the individual to travel along a two kilometer wide path to a specific location. If the individual traverses outside this area the device will automatically explode, killing the wearer and anybody in the immediate vicinity. The device can also be detonated by remote control. Normally the wearer is promised that he or she will be released and the device removed if they carry out a specific mission, normally some kind of delivery. Half the time the “delivery” is actually a hit and the explosive is detonated by remote control when the individual reaches the destination. The name Screamer originated by the tendency for the victim to let out a horrid, high pitched scream a second before the explosion takes place.