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- PC mages start/help business (3D print shop, DIY freeze-dry, modelling agency for niche porn, automobile/mobile phone/implant repair shop, tattoo parlour, etc. Something appropriate for your high-tech/high-rise - low life/low-rent Eastern European post-communist setting). Soon, quasi-official paramilitary group indirectly enjoying the support of the government via a high-prestige government-funded non-for-profit organization show up, effectively demanding protection money in the form of some obscure tax. The tax is legit, turns out every single business is already paying, no two ways about it.
- McGuffin: a list of high-ranking officials that a large construction firm has bribed. The government wants it, and might be willing to let the company operate in Budapest in exchange for the list and a hefty fine. Some radical mage group/non-mage group aided by mages wants to expose the list; they fear the government is going to make the list disappear once they get a hold of it.
- PCs witness a clandestine meeting between high-ranking mage (NPC from PCs' own org) and a Szövetkezet manager (on moving trams, hopping from one line to the next, mingling with crowds; accidentally spotted, quite difficult to follow, but actually conspicuous once PCs know what to look for). When PCs reveal their findings (to either party, or the media), one or both parties try bribing them, NPC claims acting "for the greater good".
- False-flag operation: politician taken hostage, or mayor/priest/celebrity assassinated, or high-rise/public transport river boat station/tram/concourse in mall is blown up. PCs are either the perpetrators, acting on a request of higher-ups in their orgs, or involved as witnesses/investigators. The interesting bit is that clues are planted or asked to be planted that incriminate a specific other organization. Reprisals. Escalation.
- Smuggling people.
- PCs are political prisoners under house arrest, and they're the ones being smuggled out of their homes, quite unexpectedly and unbidden, by some shadowy org they have never heard of before. What's the agenda?
- There are strict border controls and immigration policies in place (basically there is a maximum number of immigrants the city will take in a year). PCs are involved in smuggling people into Budapest for profit.
- PC smuggling ring is run on bribery.
- PC smuggling ring is run in the Umbra - how do you cheat Paradox/Szövetkezet hackers on your trail?
- Smuggling ring routinely involves shootouts with police, and explosions.
- PCs must whisk some out-of-town magical messenger across the city-wide blockade set up by protesters (The introduction of a new tax has been tabled in parliament, one that hits cyclists/smokers/drug-users/construction workers/health service staff/families of five or less people/etc. hard, and spontaneous resistance has sprung up. Budapest in deadlock for days now - no-one is allowed to cross the bridges and checkpoints except for ambulances and fire brigades.)
- People are being made magically sick (via public transport system/fireworks/as part of a sham or real population census). The illness is a form of colour blindness where people have a hard time differentiating between various bank notes. This is doubly interesting for mages, given how frequent this particular affliction pops up as a Paradox flaw - now regular non-magical folks are getting it too. Heavily marketed new and expensive medication promises to cure the special form of colour blindness.
- Appeasing the Budapest spirits. A series of accidents and sabotage at major construction site in city. Some fin de siècle celebrity's (surely a poet or an impresario) spirit or a building spirit (some crumbling or well-maintained art nouveau mass) is annoyed with the reconstruction. What do you do?
- PCs find out that a certain group (redheads, AAA game developers, 8-bit ambient music fans, people with calligraphic prints or enamel pitchers/vinyl records/knives bought at the Ecseri flea market) are being registered by the authorities. (Perhaps one of the PCs is also among those targeted.) Investigation reveals that the people in question share some mystical bond, and that plans are in place to lock these people up in underground internment camps.
- A massive rooftop garden in the town centre is a major backdrop for scenes in the story: this is where an NPC always meets the PCs, or where some ransom is to be handed over, or shootout pursuit is staged, or one of the PCs lives in the building.
- A major NPC is moonlighting as a volunteer at an NGO helping the homeless.
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