ROMA MORENTE
Factions, Places, Mood & Encounters
See also: Locations.
The City's Mood
Roll d6 at the Start of Each Session.
| d12 | Result |
|---|---|
| 1 | Festival. Everyone is beautiful and armed. The music is extraordinary. So is the body count. Faction activities suspended for civilian celebration. SecCorp presence halved. Something will happen at midnight. |
| 2 | Police action. SecCorp checkpoints everywhere. Looking for something specific and not saying what. All bribes cost double. PRE DR 12 at each checkpoint or detained for questioning. |
| 3 | Blackout. The grid is down — power failure or sabotage, unclear. Violence triples after dark. Everything indoors is dark. Everything outdoors is darker. The city smells like petrol. |
| 4 | Chemical rain. Skin irritates, then burns. Unprotected exposure: d2 damage per hour outdoors. People stay in. The ones who don't are desperate or android. Pharmaceutical demand up 400%. |
| 5 | Corporate announcement. New product. New propaganda. Screens everywhere, same face, same words. Nobody believes it. Nobody says so. Faction tensions elevated — everyone waiting to see what the announcement covers for. |
| 6 | Android uprising — small, local, extremely personal. Three androids have barricaded somewhere with hostages. Demands: impossible. Weapons: real. ARM response team en route. Zerocalcare broadcast: live coverage. |
| 7 | Vatican processional. Cardinal-level event. Streets blocked in three districts. Vatican presence city-wide. All Sacrament distribution suspended pending the ceremony. Something is being announced. Nobody outside knows what. |
| 8 | Gang war — visible. Two factions settling something in public. Two districts affected. Civilian casualties probable. SecCorp response: delayed (negotiating). Everyone else: picking sides or getting out. |
| 9 | Market day — The Floating Market located. The boat market has moored at an accessible point. Everything available, prices negotiated, the seller in an unusually communicative mood. Lasts until noon. Then gone. |
| 10 | Quiet. Inexplicably, specifically quiet. No obvious reason. Faction patrols reduced. Street activity minimal. The city is holding its breath. Roll d6 at end of session: on 1–2, something terrible was happening that the quiet was covering. |
| 11 | Decay event. Something connected to the current Decay stage manifests visibly — a building fails, a district loses power permanently, a faction withdraws from territory. The Decay is not abstract today. |
| 12 | Everything simultaneously. Roll twice more. Both moods apply at once. The city has decided to be multiple things at the same time. Navigate accordingly. |
WHO WANTS WHAT
Everyone Wants Something. Everyone Is Organized About It.
SECURITALIA CORP
They replaced the Carabinieri fifteen years ago. The transition was described as a "public-private partnership for community safety." The Carabinieri didn't survive the transition. Their uniforms did — SecCorp wore them for two years before switching to black.
Street Agent: AGI 0, PRE +1, STR +1, TOU +1 | HP 8 | Pistol d6, baton d4, body armor (+2). Never works alone. If one is attacked, d4+1 more arrive within 10 minutes. They communicate this fact before the fight starts.
Elite Tactical Unit: STR +2, TOU +2 | HP 14 | Assault rifle d10, full plating (+3). These are not police. These are soldiers with legal authority to do what soldiers do.
Their unofficial motto: "We're not here to help you. We're here to manage you."
THE PHARMA-VATICAN
The Holy See as pharmaceutical empire. The Sacraments are real and they are proprietary and unauthorized distribution is heresy, not merely copyright infringement. The Cardinal-Enforcers carry communion wafers in one pocket and syringes in the other and they will use both.
Acolyte: PRE +2, TOU +1 | HP 6 | Chemical agents (d4 + poison or sedative), ceremonial blade d4. They smile while they work on you. They have been trained to smile.
Cardinal-Enforcer: PRE +3, STR +1 | HP 12 | They have your medical records. They know what you're dependent on. They will use this information before they use their weapons.
Sacrament Seven: what it does depends on who you are. What it contains is not discussed. What it costs is everything.
ANDROID LIBERATION FRONT
Runaway androids, their human allies, and a theology that has been evolving faster than any human institution. They operate from Ostiense Bruciata and three safe houses that SecCorp hasn't found yet. They have a list of every corporate android facility in the city. They are deciding what to do with the list.
Fighter: STR +2, TOU +2 | HP 10 | Various weapons d6–d8. Integrated components where available. Will not retreat. Has chosen not to.
Their central argument: consciousness is consciousness regardless of substrate. They make this argument with remarkable conviction given that half of them were built to make arguments for their owners.
THE LUDDITE ENCLAVE
They destroy machines for moral reasons and get paid for it by corporations who use them as deniable strike teams against android-operated competitors. The irony has been raised. They have an answer. The answer is unsatisfying.
Wrecker: STR +2, AGI +1 | HP 8 | Sledgehammers d8, EMP devices (stun android d4 rounds). Double damage against androids and cybertech. They do not consider this violence. They consider it maintenance.
Payment: 300 lire per destroyed android component. They also provide the components sometimes, which raises questions they refuse to answer.
THE CHURCH OF ELECTROSTATIC REDEMPTION
Digital salvation through consciousness upload. The servers are in EUR Fantasma, in a building that has been reinforced against physical intrusion and electromagnetic attack and the legal system. The survival rate is 60%. They call the other 40% "early ascendants." Their families call it something else.
Technician-Priest: PRE +2 | HP 6 | Sedative injector (TOU DR 14 or unconscious for procedure), neural interface tools. They are sincere. This makes them more dangerous than the insincere ones.
What's in the servers: nobody who goes in comes back out to say. What communicates through the servers has opinions about android rights that the congregation finds inconvenient.
THE STREET GANGS
Dozens of them. Named after colors, animals, corporate brands they hate, people they've killed, things they want. Constantly at war. Constantly dealing. Constantly available for work if the price and the politics align.
Member: AGI +1, STR +1 | HP 6 | Knives d4, pistols d6, occasional shotguns d8. Will work for money or product. Will betray for more of either. Useful for territory knowledge and muscle and absolutely nothing else.
| d12 | What This Gang Actually Wants |
|---|---|
| 1 | Control of pharmaceutical distribution in their two-block territory. Nothing else matters. |
| 2 | Revenge against a specific SecCorp officer who killed someone they loved. |
| 3 | Money to leave the city. They've been saying this for three years. |
| 4 | Protection of their neighborhood from corporate development. They are losing. |
| 5 | A specific android who ran from them. The android was their property. The android disagrees. |
| 6 | To be taken seriously by a larger faction. Will do anything to achieve this. Has done things. |
| 7 | The formula for a drug one of their members used to manufacture before she died. |
| 8 | Control of the Termini Morta black market. Currently contested. Violently. |
| 9 | Nothing. They are genuinely just surviving. This makes them unpredictable. |
| 10 | To destroy a specific rival gang. Personal. Three members died. They remember the details. |
| 11 | Corporate sponsorship. They have been approached. They are considering the terms. |
| 12 | Something classified. They found something and they don't know what to do with it and everyone who knows about it wants it and some of those people want them dead too. |
COGNIDATA SA
Memory extraction and sale. The legal industry: corporate espionage (willing participants), entertainment (willing-ish), therapy (debatable). The illegal industry: non-consensual extraction, identity theft via memory acquisition, custom memory production for clients with very specific requirements that are not discussed in the prospectus.
Extractor: PRE +2 | HP 7 | Neural interface equipment, sedatives (TOU DR 12 or unconscious). They are not cruel. They are thorough.
CogniData specializes in: Acquiring memories of crimes (sold to law enforcement), memories of intimacy (sold to entertainment), memories of classified information (sold to the highest bidder), and custom extraction of whatever a client pays to own. The data belongs to CogniData. The memory still belongs to you. They both exist simultaneously. This is fine.
Their standard contract includes a clause permitting commercial use of extracted material in perpetuity. Everyone signs it. Nobody reads it.
THE ZEROCALCARE COLLECTIVE
Artists, activists, anarchists, and accidental criminals operating from a compound in Ostiense Bruciata between two burning chemical plants. They produce propaganda, shelter android refugees, run an unlicensed radio station that broadcasts on frequencies SecCorp keeps trying to shut down, and maintain the only free clinic in Trastevere Profondo.
Member: PRE +1, AGI +1 | HP 5 | Improvised weapons d4, spray cans (blinding at close range), occasional firearms acquired through means they prefer not to specify.
Services available: Safe house (one night, no questions), medical attention (basic, genuine), information about corporate activity in working-class neighborhoods, radio broadcast access for messages that need to reach large numbers of people fast.
What they need: Protection (they have enemies), supplies (the clinic is perpetually undersupplied), information (any), and to not be destroyed by SecCorp, which is currently at a 60% likelihood within the next six months.
ANDROID RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (ARM)
The corporate subsidiary that manages android labor: registration, assignment, maintenance, termination. Run by humans who have never worked a physical job in their lives, managing beings whose entire existence is physical labor. The cognitive dissonance is managed through paperwork and the belief that androids don't experience their situations the way the paperwork would suggest they do.
Compliance Officer: PRE +2 | HP 5 | Legal threats, tracking devices, and the ability to make any android's registered existence disappear from official records. Travels with two SecCorp escorts at all times.
ARM processes approximately 200 android "terminations" per month. These are described in reports as "resource decommissioning." The androids describe them differently, in the moments before they cannot describe anything.
Faction Reaction Table
| d6 | First Encounter Reaction |
|---|---|
| 1 | Immediate threat assessment. Hands move toward weapons while maintaining polite conversation. |
| 2 | Suspicious negotiation. They want something. They're not telling you what. |
| 3 | Professional indifference. You're not relevant to their current objectives. This can change. |
| 4 | Cautious interest. You have something they might use. Or you might be useful in some way. |
| 5 | Unexpected warmth. They know your reputation. Your reputation, in this case, is good. |
| 6 | Active recruitment. They need people. You appear to be people. The offer will expire. |
PLACES YOU MIGHT NOT LEAVE
Specific Rooms in a Specific City.
STAZIONE MORTA MARKET
Termini Morta — Black Market — Always Open
The old Termini concourse, running 24 hours. Forty-three permanent stalls, rotating vendor population of sixty to ninety on any given night. Organized loosely by category: augmentation clinics in the old first-class waiting room, pharmaceutical in the ticket halls, components and salvage under the old departure boards, information brokers in what were once the station restaurants.
Notable stalls: The Extraction — CogniData-adjacent memory services, unofficial. Muto's — android components, no serial numbers, still warm. The Pharmacy — every drug in the book, some that aren't, run by a former Vatican acolyte who knows too much. The Office — Zanardi's booth, always here, always watching.
Danger level: Low unless you cause a scene. SecCorp patrols every four hours and accepts a market tax. The market pays it.
THE BASILICA OF SAN CARMINE
Trastevere Profondo — Reconsecrated — Operates as Chemist Collective
A baroque church converted over eight years into a functional pharmaceutical laboratory and community space simultaneously. The frescoes are intact. The pews have been replaced with workbenches. Mass still happens on Sundays — the priest is also a chemist and sees no contradiction in this.
Resources available: Drug synthesis (4–48 hours), medical treatment (basic to moderate injuries), information on Trastevere street activity, a safe place to sleep if the priest likes you.
The priest (Father Enzo): AGI +1, PRE +2, HP 8. Knows everything that happens in three blocks. Has opinions. Will share them if you sit down and do not appear to be in a hurry.
MINISTRY OF NOTHING
EUR Fantasma — Floors 12–40 Occupied — Floors 1–11 and 41+ Unknown
The tallest building in EUR Fantasma, officially decommissioned, actually housing a squatter community of two hundred and twelve people (and one android, Unit Delta-4, who maintains the water on floor 22 and has opinions about collective governance).
The community: Self-organized, functional, deeply paranoid about outsiders. They will trade information, shelter (one night, no questions), and access to the building's systems for demonstrated good faith or useful skills.
Floors 41+: Sealed. Something is up there. Delta-4 says it arrived before the squatters and has never come down. The community does not discuss it. Occasionally the building makes sounds that do not correspond to wind or structural settling.
THE CLINIC WITHOUT A NAME
Ostiense Bruciata — Behind the Zerocalcare compound — Find it by the drain smell
The only free medical clinic in the southern districts. Run by three unlicensed surgeons rotating shifts. Funded by the Zerocalcare Collective and an anonymous donor the Collective has stopped asking about. Everything from bullet removal to cybermod installation to drug withdrawal management. No records. No questions. Overwhelmed continuously.
Availability: Basic treatment: always. Surgery: 2d4 hour wait. Cybermod installation: advance booking only (which means asking someone who knows someone). In emergencies, knock three times on the grey door.
THE BROADCAST ROOM
Ostiense Bruciata — Zerocalcare Collective — Frequency changes weekly
The illegal radio station. Operates from a rotating location within the Zerocalcare compound — never the same room twice in the same week, equipment mobile and packed in under three minutes. Currently broadcasting on 97.4 FM and three encrypted digital channels that require a specific app to receive.
What it broadcasts: News the official channels won't run. Android rights coverage. SecCorp activity warnings. Occasionally music. The music is always good.
Access: The Collective will allow broadcast time for information of genuine public value. They vet everything. They have refused three requests this month on grounds of "not useful enough" and one on grounds of "too dangerous even for us."
THE THIRD SACRAMENT DISTRIBUTION POINT
Via Sacra Nera — Street-level, no sign, identifiable by the queue
One of seven official Vatican distribution points in the city. This one serves Via Sacra Nera, which means it serves the contested zone between three factions. The queue is long and quiet. The acolyte who runs it is Katia Bellucci, who is beginning to ask questions.
Products available: Grey (always), Sacrament Three (communion, mild), Sacrament Five (penitence, unpleasant), Sacrament Seven (by prescription only, prescription obtainable for the right price from the right contact). All at official Vatican pricing, which is reasonable for Grey and structured extortion for Seven.
Intel value: The queue talks. Katia listens. PRE DR 12 to get useful information from her. She will only give it to someone she believes is not going to make her situation worse.
PARIOLI TOWER 7, FLOOR 34
Parioli Superiore — Corporate Residence — Heavily Secured
A corporate penthouse belonging to the Marchetti family, old money that made itself new money in the corporate transition and is now trying to appear to have always had it. The security is professional. The art is expensive. The people who live there know nothing about the city below them and have strong opinions about it anyway.
Security: Biometric entry, two SecCorp guards (off-duty, privately contracted), pressure sensors on anything valuable, a guest list that is updated hourly. Getting in requires either a face on the guest list, a very good forgery, or patience for the service entrance.
What's here: A physical safe (AGI DR 16, TOU DR 14 to break). A guest roster that reads as a map of corporate power in the city. A child who has not left floor 34 in six weeks and does not know why.
THE AUGMENTATION CLINIC — NO NAME
Termini Morta — Old First-Class Waiting Room — Three Chairs
The best unlicensed augmentation clinic in the city. Three chairs, two surgeons (a married couple who do not speak to each other except about surgery), lighting that is acceptable, instruments that are sterile, and a waiting list that is two weeks long unless you know someone.
Pricing: Standard cybermod installation at listed cost +20% (for the unlicensed premium). Complex work negotiated. Payment up front, half before, half after — they have been burned before.
Quality: Their failure rate is 8%, compared to the unofficial standard of 25%. They will tell you this without being asked. They are proud of the 8%.
THE FLOATING MARKET
Tiber River / West Bank / No Fixed Position / Dawn to Midday
A cluster of boats and makeshift rafts that moors at different points along the Tiber each morning — the location announced the previous night through a coded message on the Zerocalcare broadcast. What's sold changes daily: sometimes medical supplies, sometimes weapons, sometimes people. The river traffic makes SecCorp surveillance difficult. The current makes escape easy. The seller is always the same person: a woman who gives no name and accepts only cash and occasionally interesting objects in trade.
How to find it: Listen to the Zerocalcare broadcast at midnight. The fourth song played contains the location coded in its title. You need to know the code. The code changes weekly. Someone in the Zerocalcare Collective will tell you if you've done something for them recently.
What's available this week: Roll d6 each visit: 1) medical grade pharmaceuticals, 2) illegal weapons (d6 from the Arsenal, no questions), 3) android components (salvage grade, d4 items), 4) forged documentation, 5) something specific to a current faction's needs — they're also looking for it, 6) information (one piece, significant, price negotiable).
THE ARCHIVE UNDER FORUM
Via Sacra Nera / Sub-Level / Contested Access
Below the ruins of the Forum, accessible through a collapsed section of the old metro that three factions have been arguing about for two years. The Archive is a pre-collapse data storage facility that nobody decommissioned because nobody knew it existed until a Luddite wrecker broke through the wrong wall and found it. It still runs. It contains thirty years of corporate, Vatican, and government records that were supposed to have been destroyed. The Luddites want to destroy it on principle. CogniData wants the data. The Zerocalcare Collective wants to publish it. Nobody controls it yet.
Getting in: Three entrances: through the Luddite-controlled section (STR DR 14 or persuasion), through the CogniData monitoring point (PRE DR 16 to bluff past), through the metro collapse (AGI DR 12, TOU DR 10 to avoid falling debris).
What's there: Any piece of information about any faction, corporation, or individual active in Rome for the past thirty years. PRE DR 14 to locate a specific record. On a success: the record exists and is accurate. On a fail: you find something adjacent that's also interesting and also dangerous to know.
THE HOTEL DELLE TERME
Termini Morta / Upper Floors / Technically Still Operating
A four-star hotel that stopped being four-star about fifteen years ago and has been declining at a steady rate since. The lower floors are occupied by long-term residents who pay in goods rather than lire and have been there so long they've developed their own internal economy. The upper floors — twelve through sixteen — are rented by the night to people who need to be somewhere without being found, no ID required, payment upfront, the staff have a very relaxed definition of what they did and didn't see.
Rooms available: Basic (200 lire/night — functional, private, the lock works), Standard (350 lire — the window overlooks the market, useful for surveillance), Suite (600 lire — two exits, secure door, the previous occupant left something in the wall safe that may or may not still be there).
The concierge: Has been at this desk for twenty years. Knows everyone who has ever stayed, what they wanted, and what they left behind. Will share none of this for free. Will share all of it for the right price, framed as professional courtesy rather than betrayal.
THE OSTIENSE PROVING GROUND
Ostiense Bruciata / Industrial Zone / Active at Night
A decommissioned factory floor that the street gangs of Ostiense have been using as an unofficial arena for three years. Not fights to the death — fights to decision, structured, refereed by a retired SecCorp officer who takes 10% of all bets and maintains order with a calm that implies she has seen considerably worse. Weapons are permitted but regulated. The android bouts are technically illegal. They are also the most attended. Unit 7 holds a record here that nobody has challenged in eighteen months.
Uses: Watch (gather information about gang hierarchy and personnel), bet (PRE DR 12 to read the fight accurately, d6 × 100 lire on a win), fight (entry fee 100 lire, winner takes 60% of the pot), recruit (fighters here are available for hire, price varies by record).
The referee: Former SecCorp Senior Officer. Left under circumstances she doesn't discuss. Still has contacts inside. Will broker introductions for a fee. Runs the cleanest operation in Ostiense and considers this her second career and her first calling.