Given their origins, the Walking People offer sanctuary and help to the Emergent, once originating with technomancers and now including e-fauna, AIs, and sprites. The group keeps people safe and unseen from oppressive forces such as puppet nations, megacorporate flunkies, and the ever-diligent eyes of GOD. The latter has become a more pressing issue with the wider organization, especially as the continued pursuits of the CCMA place more and more systems and hosts within the purview of the Foundation structure. The general belief within the Walking People remains that the centrally controlled Matrix is too much power in one place and is in the hands of the wrong people.
Their numbers have seen a notable growth in recent years, but they remain incapable of opposing most political or corporate holdings aside from Matrix raids, occasional doxing attacks against smaller targets, and other forms of corporate vandalism. Most of their members are still found within the AGS, with more than a hundred of them finding and remaining in refuge in the Berlin sprawl. In lieu of increasing the pace of their attacks, however, many of their members have taken to traveling farther abroad, with some hiding in the sprawls of Tenochtitlán, Metrópole, Mumbai, and Hong Kong. Their Emergent membership had at one point dwindled to just thirty percent (fewer than twenty-five individuals) but has now swelled back to almost fifty percent (nearly one hundred beings), growing faster than the membership as a whole.
One method of group income that some of the members, especially those in the Berlin area, have taken to and excel at is the creation of smaller Foundation-based hosts. Most of these hosts are for smaller groups, including small businesses owned and operated by neighborhood momand-pop shops, or local neighborhood communes coordinating their efforts and performing fundraising. In areas where the consideration for Foundation-based hosts is not preferable, the group retains skills related to Framework-based hosts and will utilize newer and older resources equally in order to complete a task. In Berlin, they are one of the go-to resources for working outside of the Foundation-based structures, finding their knowledge in growing demand as the noose of the megacorporations continues to tighten.
While there is no real leadership within, one of the prominent figures of the organization is an old troll decker named Sim-Eon. He has been spearheading the Walking People’s constant quest for data on everything Matrix, especially within the many Euro-nations and sprawls. His actions make him one of the best sources of Matrix expertise on the continent. An old-style neo-anarchist, Sim-Eon has pushed the group toward the same kind of outlook. Some would refer to Sim-Eon as a veteran or legacy decker, as he used to hang on the Shadowland BBSs back in the time of Captain Chaos, and this certainly shows in his touch.
> Born in Seattle, Sim-Eon is in his early fifties and was one of the Chaos groupies back in the day. He left the shadows during the year of the comet, Halley’s that is, to join Horizon. Some feel he was a bit naïve, but he truly believed in the “do no harm” motto of the corp. Disillusioned by the technomancer massacre in Las Vegas, he came back to the shadows early 2075. He moved to Berlin soon after while hunting for information on CFD. To this day, thanks to him, the Walking People have one of the best knowledge bases on the epidemic and the monads.
> Butch
> The private host managed by the group has been mirrored into the wired, or Framework, Matrix of Berlin (yes, people in Berlin still leverage the remnants of the old, cable-based Matrix). This makes the task of destroying it more difficult, as one would need to find and crash all backups that mirrored locations in order to stop it from operating. Late in 2081, a series of murder victims were believed to be members of the Walking People. As of the time of this upload, there are no solid leads, and many members of the group have gone even more underground than they previously were.
> Ricki
