Title

The Nostromo

As you open the double doors, you realize that this isn't your run-of-the-mill hangouts. Just inside the doors, on the right hand side, is a cork board plastered with phone numbers, net addresses, slang-encoded notes, little snippets of job offers and job requests. Smack dab in the middle of the cork board is an old-fashioned telephone terminal. Directly under that is a spilling over pile of old newspapers and screamsheets in a multitude of languages.

As you walk in, you realize that several booths have been torn out and replaced with workbenches. Scattered on their well-worn surfaces are open toolboxes, motorcycle engine blocks, bundles of fiber-optic cable, odd bits of junk. And then it occurs to you the kind of clientele that come here: hackers and techies.

Directly in front of you is the bar proper. Also well-worn. Above the bar, facing you, is one of those back-lit neon dry-erase boards. On it are scrawled separate lines, each containing what you can only assume is a name, some action performed, and a date. Probably some inter-patron skills contest.

Behind the bar is a large bald man. He puts down the glass he's probably been polishing for the past century, gives you a big toothy grin of bad dental work, and extends his good arm, the other being a primitive Russian-made prosthetic. "Hello. Welcome to the Nostromo. I'm Mother."

Mother

"We have three rules here at the Nostromo:

No open weapons.
You see these workbenches? You can use, fix, or take anything on them. Just be sure to add to the collection later.
I'm Mother. You take care of me, and I'll take care of you."

This last rule makes you think that a poor tip will make him repeat it to you.

After drinking, tipping, and chatting with him for a while, he tells you that he used to own this bar originally. It was called, coincidentally, "Mother's". Then, Holywood Cafe' Entertainment, the same theme-restaurant company who set up the Sulaco decided to buy it from him. The price was right. They remodeled it (not that you can tell), renamed it, and, because they thought his name added to the ambiance, let Mother remain a permanent fixture of the bar as the bartender.

Mother's not known for any special drink concoctions, but he is the creator of the "Fil Special".

The Fil Special

Fil, one of the regulars, has an insatiable addiction to caffeine. One day, Fil decided to take Mother to task on the promise of "taking care of" each other and asked Mother for the strongest cup of caffeine laden stuff in the bar. Mother, not missing a step, grabbed a big mug, waltzed up to the SoyCaf machine, opened the stopcock of the cleaning drain on the tube running from the bottle of SoyCaf concentrate, poured the thick black goo into the mug, stood a spoon up in it, and served it up to Fil with a smile.

Fil gulped and scraped the mug clean, and the rest is history.

Characters with a caffeine addiction who gulp down a Fil Special will have their craving fulfilled for 6 hours. Any character without a caffeine addiction will be able to fight fatigue or miss a night's sleep (they pretty much can't avoid it). Also, they will most likely be hyper. After the Fil Special wears off (approx. 6 hours), the character's intelligence and reflex scores will be effectively halved for 6 hours.