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ChronicMORRIS RYAN MALONE
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Faction: Lungers / Maelstrom
Appearance:
- Standing at nearly 6’8”, Morris is a wide, well-built man with a strong hint of a gut to accompany his musculature. Bald, his face is almost traditionally Maelstrom, with optics and sensors replacing his eyes, while scarification cuts into sparse, light facial hair. Morris’s arms resemble hydraulic and construction equipment, armored with pieces of armored cars painted black, though his hands seem to be a pair of ripped MoorE Technologies models. His upper torso is a dull metal sheen, titanium and armor components in an almost industrial sense. Morris wears heavy set clothing to cover these things, jeans and loose shirts with thick black leather jackets in the Maelstrom style.
- Raven Microcyber Mk.3 Cyberdeck
- Heavily modified Kiroshi "Clairvoyant" Optics
- Heavy modified Gorilla Arms / Titanium Bones
- Second Heart / Blood Pump / Independent Oxygen Supply
- Subdermal Armor / Armor Plating (Upper Body)
- Techtronika VST-37 Pozhar
- Techtronika RT-46 Burya
- Thorton Mackinaw Larimore / Zetatech Atlus
- Born in Heywood, Morris Ryan Malone would have a fairly normal childhood as far as childhoods could go. A netrunner-lite from a young age, he'd be among those proteges hacking various terminals here and there to make a quick eddy, all while dropping from the school system once they started with a local cyberware program to shove proprietary tech into their skulls. His parents wouldn't be much help after that though, with a dad in construction getting hooked on glitter by accident from one of his painkiller hookups and a mom trying to hold things together once everything started to fall apart. From a pretty young age, Morris found himself relying more on the Net for help.
One of his endeavors would change his life forever though, a little party up in Watson. He went, in part because Valentinos had started recruiting kids his age and Morris had already gotten a glimpse of their handiwork, in part because the organizers said they might have some work here and there. A little cryptographic puzzle, that's all it was, and some good little boosters to kick the party into high gear. It turns out that the puzzle was a daemon and the game was trapping it without actually ‘touching’ the thing, generally a bad idea since it fried the first person who accidentally delved too close. Morris would nearly get fried too, though a bit of luck and a split-second decision to pounce as it was breaking the ICE of another partygoer meant he survived. It turned out the organizers were Maelstromers and to one degree or another, they were impressed by the kid’s talent, said he had a real chance to shine here or there. The Net was a place they wanted to roam free, do what they wanted, cybernetics a tool to get there, an expression of themselves.
Morris, stupid and young as he was, jumped in. He started living up there with a group of them, getting his first cybernetics under a haze of boosters and painkillers duking it out, and soon coming under the tutelage of a codefreak there. Deep dives into the Net here and there happened, in some ways changing him, some ways keeping him the same. By the time Morris had turned twenty-four, he’d gained an understanding of the Net in the same way as you’d gain an understanding of your city block, gained an unusual competence with daemons, gained an unusual competence with logistics. Numbers just made sense to the guy, and he used it to the gang’s full advantage. Organizing interceptions of Militech gear and Kiroshi optics, Morris would rise in the ranks of the local groups. He’d err away from the drugs production, sure, found it to be too hot for his tastes with all the addicts and the cops, the solos especially, instead sticking to the clean crimes. Hacking corporations across their spheres of cash for a quick eddy, scrapping cars for whatever parts he could, selling off cybernetics they’d stolen away from the big names in their industries, that became his mode of operation.
When Brick and Royce both got killed in the middle of a Militech raid, Patricia stepped up to the plate as the overall leader of Maelstrom. Their operations grew in scale, whole harvesting operations at parties like they were Scavs, stringing-up NCPD who’d gotten too close like they were totems in Watson, grew in scale, grew in attention. He didn’t like that, mainly also because she was even less predictable than Royce had been, mainly because corpos had started sniffing around where they did business. When things went south in Totentanz and she got killed by a solo, a whole lot of the Maelstrom folks had been blown away and Morris seized on that opportunity. Some of them rallied around Clint, one of the more Brick-like gangers, some of them around Erika, but Morris led out his own band of Maelstromers, the folks he’d worked close with before on the Militech and Kiroshi operations, the folks he knew, the folks he trusted. Altogether, it wasn’t a great time for the gang, chaotic as it was.
Setting up shop in an abandoned warehouse in Watson along the north end of Offshore St, Morris soon went to work making his connections throughout the city’s Net. Soon enough, he had Militech shipments redirected to his people, as well as some others from Techtronika and Rostović, for dispersal throughout Night City. The basement sections grew to be his own little fortress, air filter systems replaced by gas pumps for carbon monoxide, doors and entrances replaced by airlocks and armored sections, and the monoxide spread out into many other little outlets to occasionally kill the unaware bum. For his own people, Morris became a slight antithesis to their usual vices, a constant moderator for keeping the violence for the times it was really needed and not being seen otherwise.
The attack on Arasaka would prove to be a massive benefit to Morris and his group, informally called the Lungers for their proclivity to gassing opponents before they even knew they were under attack. Seizing control of two Trauma Team Atlus AVs which had been pinned down in the crossfire, as well as ransacking numerous Arasaka warehouses when their security systems went haywire, the Maelstromers found themselves suddenly in control of unusually powerful systems. Morris was quick to secure his own position in this, performing full system wipes on all the captured equipment while also occupying the vacated Totentanz club. In the weeks after, as Arasaka pulled out what it could, he’d engage in an aggressive war against them, trying to claw out anything he could. Cyberattacks and daemons flew left and right with little regard for anyone caught in the middle.
Since then, he’s kept control of swathes of Watson for his own purpose, engaging in some dealings with Militech to keep them off his turf, keep him off theirs, though every now and again another shipment bearing the Militech logo finds its way into his warehouse.
LUNGERS
Leader(s): Morris
Allegiance: Maelstrom
Strongholds:
- Abandoned Warehouse, Northside, Offshore St, Watson
The Lungers’ center of operations, this abandoned warehouse is where various shipments ‘lost’ at the docks become mysteriously ‘found’ with all their serial numbers burned off at a good, honest price. A number of monitoring systems disconnected from the Net and hard-wired are present, with no actual systems within the warehouse having a Net connection. Lighting is also kept to a minimum, primarily due to the Lungers’ optics removing the need for such. The basement level is cut-off even further, with airlocks at entrances and exits to help keep in the carbon monoxide atmosphere. The best sign of life in the whole facility is the constant Ritual FM radio station playing on full blast.
Totentanz, Northside, Pershing St, Watson
Formerly run by Patricia, the Totentanz club continues to blast its signature blend of absolute noise and screamed lyrics at a breakneck pace. The Lungers rarely utilize the locale, instead using it as a meeting place where they can choose the stakes, they can choose the circumstances, and ultimately choose the direction. Despite a fairly hands-off attitude, whenever Lungers aren’t on the job, they can be found at Totentanz relaxing in that usual Maelstrom way.
Notable Members:
- Nathaniel
One of Morris’s top lieutenants and his trusted man in acting through the numerous interceptions at the docks, it’d be hard to not consider Nathaniel to be somewhat of a ragged man. He’s mostly borg by this point, stuffed to the gills with ripped Arasaka and Militech technology, has to eat his meals through a tube, and generally is less than happy with any engagement that doesn’t let him eviscerate at least one person. It’s gotten to the point that Morris has been forced to send Nathaniel on jaunts into Japantown to teach the Tyger Claws what fear is, though it doesn’t just help remind his lieutenant what joy is.
Dietlinde
Owner of Totentanz and formerly just the bartender, Dietlinde operates her establishment with the exact same amount of pomp and ceremony she served drinks with: Absolutely none. She’s by the books, a cold woman by the very definition of such, though has proven to be infinitely reliable to Morris. Under Dietlinde, the club has become a rocking house for the various idiots of Watson with the number of kidnappings and executions performed there taking a steep dive. These days, it’s just the ones who piss off Maelstrom who disappear at Totentanz.
Main Income Source: Black Market Sales (Weapons, Cybernetics), XBD Recordings, Financial Crime (Cash skimming)
Short History:
- One of the split-off groups when Patricia flat-lined at Totentanz by an unknown solo, the Lungers have flourished with black market activity left and right. Selling off Militech, Kang Tao, Techtronika, and Rostović shipments to the bidders on the market after the boxes disappear at the docks, it has been through careful organization, planning, and solid execution that they have made so much cash. Despite this and their other activities drawing a fine line from the other Maelstrom gangs who manufacture Glitter and Black Lace, who rip out cyberware from victims to sell on the market or implant into their own members, and the Lungers who sell guns and cyberware out the box, sell XBD recordings, and skim cash from corps, the gang isn’t kinder by any means. Lungers often leave their victims hanging from several buildings along the street while those who betray the gang for others are sent to their loved ones one organ at a time, all while recording the process to sell on the streets in XBDs. The message they send is pretty clear: Cross the Lungers and you die when we say you die.
