Devil's Triangle

## Brookside-Arrowhead-Southview Housing Complex

* **Location:** 2610 15th St S, Fargo, Region 3, RRDMZ 58103
* **Population:** 96 habitation units, usually houses between 150-250 inhabitants
* **Administration:** The B-A-S is technically property of Goldmark-Craig-Schlossman (and as such, an extraterritorial possession of the Group), although actual maintenance and supervision is sporadic at best.
* **Security:** B-A-S Resident Responsibility Group "Devil's Own"
* **Gang:** [see above]
* **Background Count:** 0.5

From the outside, the BAS (as it usually appears on official documents to avoid using the full name) doesn't look much different than the rest of the tightly-packed labyrinth of rental properties that dominates University Drive south of Hwy 52, a little more run-down than most, but nothing to indicate why the locals down here call this place the 'Devil's Triangle'.

Built almost a century ago as three different apartment buildings (the aforementioned Brookside, Arrowhead and Southview apartment complexes), it was expanded and merged into one during the housing crunch that immediately followed the Awakening. As the waves of refugees out of the newly formed Očéti Šakówiŋ and Niswi-mishkodewinan multiplied Fargo's population, it was a struggle enough to find places to put all of them, much less the facilities to police and provide services for them. The conditions in these newly-expanded complexes were basic and often unreliable when present, comparable to the oil boom in what was previously western North Dakota just pre-Awakening. It was during this time that the predecessors to GCS (Goldmark, Prairie, RKAK, Craig etc) began using 'Resident Responsibility Groups', armed residents who quickly became little more than landlord-endorsed gangs. Bigger complexes like the newly dubbed BAS (then nicknamed 'The Boss') got a bit of a reputation for violence, drugs, prostitution and other vices of the poor. But no more so then several of the other merged complexes. Sure there were rumors of hauntings and strange events, but in the chaotic years after the Awakening, there were always rumors like that.

The BAS didn't really gain its current reputation until the Crash of '29, when everything between 52 and 32nd Ave S went several months without wireless, electricity or any official utilities. The local Ten Miles and anyone who could pirate water or electricity rose to the top of the pecking order, creating an urban no man's land until order could be restored during summer of that year. It was during this time that the BAS gained its common nickname 'the Devil's Triangle'. It was noted in security reports as being one of the hotspots of crime in the area. Off-the-record, it remained a center of crime because security forces quickly learned that once a perp had fled into the triangle it was nearly impossible to drag them out. Largely this was due to the overcrowding, the unwillingness of the inhabitants (at its height in the 2030's estimated to be nearly 500 or twice the complex's capacity!) to cooperate, the ad hoc, labyrinthine nature of the interior layout, lack of reliable (legal) matrix connection and other factors that made finding anyone in the Triangle difficult. Over the years, this reputation grew into an urban legend and and old Security force veterans would tell rookies that the building itself didn't want them to catch their perps and spoke of a sinister power waiting inside and the officers who entered never to leave again. The reputation of the Devil's Triangle only grew as the locals got ahold of it and its reputation as a place where security would not go spread, attracting the sorts of criminals that would value that, which only made it more sinister in turn, a bit of a vicious cycle.

While the overcrowding of the post-Awakening has never gone away, decades of urban development in Region 3 has alleviated it some and the need for hive-like tenements like the BAS has lessened. These days the sinister reputation of the "Devil's Triangle" keeps away most would-be apartment-seekers and has served to self-select for only the desperate and lawless, making it a center for drugs, violence, prostitution and the like. It also serves as an informal center of the local black market and the parking lot between the three wings has served as a home for the Night Bazaar more than once. But the legacy of the Devil's Triangle is in its reputation as an urban legend. The stories have only grown in the telling to the point where neighbors view the building itself as an entity, something to be avoided or fought or appeased, a hungry thing that squats in the center of the neighborhood, occasionally claiming a victim who enters and never leaves. Locals drive and walk past, they avert their eyes and its common wisdom in South University to never mention 'That Place' directly. The mystique alone is capable of keeping Security out most of the time and the dread it inspires (however earned or not), along with the traumatic things that have happened within it, has actually tainted the mana around it, giving it something almost approaching a background count.

**Return to: GCS**