Data Haven Apeiron

Data Haven Apeiron is an exclusive intelligence facility hidden deep in the world of the shadows. It is hidden behind a complicated webwork of other legal, quasi-legal, and completely illegal ventures, operating its masks for a profit. If it were a legal entity, it would be comparable to a class A megacorp.

The primary business of Apeiron is intelligence. They have a number of retired operatives from services all around the world, and the best intelligence services are trying to quash the rumor that if you go out looking for employment with them, you might wind up getting recruited after a thorough mind probe. (The problem is, the rumor is true, and the governments hate that.) The information they have is available for a price to anyone.

Naturally, this sort of information is a threat to governments who want the data kept under wraps. This is why Apeiron operates behind so many layers of deception. Among its cloaks are:

• The Back Room Network, a major pirate trideo network that maintains its own staff of roving reporters. These reporters also gather information for the data haven itself, as field agents.
• First Digital Bank, a legitimate Switzerland-based bank with a Matrix office that handles funds, is fully insured, and is useful for creating secure identities.
• Rasta Credhaven, a face bank in the shadows of the Carib League, used for money laundering and fencing.
• Virtual Meetings, a classy Matrix VR service for letting people meet in simulated environments, which has an adult section that (if you know the right codes) runs at California Hots levels.
• The Silicon Hinde, a Matrix node set up to look like a pirate vessel and containing all manner of pirated software and trideo.
• All the News, Goddamnit!, a data haven that archives every newswire, magazine, screamsheet, or other available data source it can get its hands on, legitimate or pirate. Popular among newshounds and deckers because they don’t permit anyone to keep track of what your queries are. They have a fairly simple billing formula that analyzes their expenses and infrastructure costs and doles out the amount of billing based on the proportional CPU time people use and the amount of infrastructure required for the data they searched. (Plenty of newswires refuse to have contracts with a place that gives time to pirate feeds, so they run a number of apparently legitimate businesses that actually subscribe to the appropriate newswires and leak the info to AtNG.) They will happily run all their news sources past a profiler for you.

Central Headquarters

The central headquarters of Data Haven Apeiron is on a converted supertanker (of a size on the order of that of the Exxon Valdez, which was about a thousand feet long, 180 feet wide, and 90 feet deep; 20 knots seems a reasonable speed) that was obtained for cheap before being decommissioned. (The largest one to date, the “Happy Giant”, was 1504’ long and 226’ across the beam.) The paper trail shows it to be an expensive retirement and artists’ colony, named the Basking Leviathan, cruising lazily around the Pacific Ocean on a fusion-powered vessel. They’re usually “full up on reserved spots” when people investigate, though they take care to have an appropriate set of legitimate-seeming transactions cloaking the vessel. The forest of antennas and satellite dishes on the roof allows old, rich people (often retired shadowrunners) to control their investments in style.

The next layer of deception for the tanker is that they’re a shadowrunner’s dream vacation for laying low: hermetic libraries, enchanting labs, places to set up medicine lodges, facilities for vehicle modification, a microtronics facility, gyms for training and physical therapy, a mainframe with a programming facility, and even a fairly good cyberclinic, though you have to bring your own ’ware if it’s anything not easily available. They have a complicated set of bureaucracy prepared to handle any difficulties they have with investigators, and never get involved in anything strongly illegal: everything has fake permits that could believably have fooled the people there, and the red tape is set up to be a nightmare.

One layer further in is the Back Room Network’s main production studios. Here is their newsroom, broadcasting the events that the corporate-controlled mass media doesn’t want you to hear, and the various bluescreen studios for their virtual sets for irreverant satires and overly honest documentaries.

At the core is the actual intelligence staff, spending a lot of time hiding in plain sight and soaking up tropical sunshine while reviewing current events on their headware. Agents get their cyberware implanted here.

The tanker has a lot of lawns and ivy/lichen to provide astral security, and a few mages and shamans on board. (There are usually a couple of big Sea spirits lurking around doing Guard duty, occasionally providing Movement, and warding off storms.) The defenses are through drones and pop-up turrets; the ship mostly uses missiles. The walls have a lot of retrofitted windows, and there are plenty of new staircases and elevators, though there are many sections that are almost completely disjoint unless you have the exact right codes to open up fail-secure maglocks and thick security doors.

Handling: 5
Speed: 25 (10)
Acceleration: 1
Hull: 9
Bulwark: 0
Signature: 1/1
Autonav: 4
Sensor: 6
Sonar: 4
Fuel: Fusion
Economy: ∞
Features: crane for container cargo handling, VTOL landing spots
Crew: 15 engineers, 8 riggers
Subsidiary craft: Ares Dragon cargo copter, 2 Hughes Sea Stallions with pop-up nose turrets, 1 Hughes Airstar (Executive Layout) with pop-up nose turret, Condor drones, Wandjina RPVs. All can be rolled into hangar space.

Atlantis Base

Apeiron’s “Atlantis Base” is in the Carib League. It is actually a minor money-laundering site that exists as a small corporation doing matrix-based backup, encryption, and data stamp verification services, giving it an excuse to be pumping all sorts of private data around. The base actually makes a fair profit. However, most of its “engineers” are actually analysts doing an entirely different sort of work while deckers from other locations do any actual work that needs to be performed.

Apeiron Services

Apeiron’s services include:

Dossiers on people, countries, organizations, and corporations, with the various sources of information qualifies by reliability. These list information on significant individuals that are involved with the focus of the dossier, reports on holdings and chains of ownership. (In the Apeiron mainframes is a very expensive network of information tracing through the variety of shell corporations and holding companies, showing who owns what. It’s not complete, but it’s good enough to be quite valuable.) If they don’t have a dossier on someone, it is possible to commission an investigation (which could in turn end up hiring shadowrunners).

Maps of various places, with listings of known information about security. These maps can be obtained formatted for orientation systems and autopilots, and are kept very up-to-date to reflect construction, rush hour patterns, and places you can go that aren’t normally considered valid routes, such as hotel lobbies that are big enough to pass a vehicle.