| A Guide to Denver travel for the Identity Challenged Crossing The Line |
| Underground, overground, in the air and on the streets. There's more than one way to cross a border, and in a place like Denver, its essential for every shadowrunner who wants to be worth more than some ratty streetpunk to a suit to know how to cross the borders with a full kit, or get across without leaving their name and number with the border guards. Now the thing about Denver being divided up is, it was never built to be as such. This means its got a couple of hundred years of growth before becoming a border town. Because of this, the border patrollers of the various sectors have a hell of a time trying to keep the place secure from small groups of border jumpers. Pueblo, Ute and to a lesser extent, CAS territories have marked advantages in border patrol, due to the areas around their borders being less built up. But for Aztlan, UCAS, and Sioux, its virtually impossible for them to have an airtight border. Below are some of the common ways that readers have sent in about, and that SOF has compiled in its trips to Treaty City |
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| The Old-Fashioned Way The old fashioned way involves (usually) someone on the other side of the border with a vehicle of some sort. This works well for large borders of chain link fence (or similarly weak boundaries), as the large expanse of land makes electronic sensors and patrols less likely and effective. Over, under or through the fence all work, as long as you don't mind getting dirty and maybe tearing up your threads a little. Beware, though, the Pueblo fence is wired and electrified. Do a little research on your fence, some portions are better looked after than others, some nations put more money into theirs than others. The UCAS fence is really just a mere token, holes in it can last for up to a week, and patrols are much less frequent in comparison to other Nations. Since you cant get into UCAS from the Denver sector (you still have to traverse Sioux land to get to UCAS proper), they don't really mind too much about border jumpers, at least, not enough to spend a ton of cash policing it. This goes to a lesser extent for CAS as well, but for some reason they take border protection more seriously. Pueblo, CAS and UTE all employ infrared scanners (thermo-imaging) with image-recognition software systems. These cameras are monitored by a stationhouse, usually a stationhouse covers 10 miles or so but it changes from area to area, and nation to nation. These are in turn hooked up to a central matrix system, usually. The infrared systems set off an alert when they spot something, and the guys in the stationhouse check it out manually on the screens before radioing it in to a nearby border patrol unit. This system isn't very effective in areas that have a built up population, but its great for light forested areas and farmland. |
| Hired Help One of the bigger 'smalltime' rackets going on in Denver is that of smuggling. Its mostly privateers and small groups of people rather than any large, single entity controlling the smuggling, but these guys typically share the same routes and many groups share 'alliances' and 'agreements'. Of course, many don't, but you cant screw with other groups too much without border patrols clamping down indiscriminately on smuggling. With this in mind, the most common, and cheap way is to hook up with one of the Overlanders, the term used to describe the people who smuggle goods and people across borders in normal vehicles. Some have trucks and semi's kitted out, other have vehicles with compartments big enough for one person. Many have deals with various border officers, and its not too hard to get into contact with them. Depending on what business is like at the time, payments for getting across Sioux, Ute, UCAS and CAS borders are typically around 500-1000 yen, with two or three times that amount to get into Pueblo or Aztlan now that they've locked their borders down. Success isn't always guaranteed though, and bring a wad of cash just in case you need to grease the palms of border officials some more. Best for one or two people, really, anymore and the price goes up as the number (or size) of the vehicles have to be increased. The other big one is airborne. This is expensive, though, as the stick jockeys (or t-bird pilots) tend to be taking some hotter gear, and pound for pound, people are heavy and 70 kilos is a lot of chips, drugs or guns. There's no other way than airborne to get a larger team in with full kits, though, and often they'll drop you off 'at the door'. The chances of success are near 100% for airborne, and you wont have to bring along cash to bribe the officials. Radar can be a problem, and even though car travel is apparently more dangerous than flying (stats wise), when something goes wrong in a plane, its usually very wrong. |