Organization:Red-Lite

Red-Lite is an adult-oriented vending machine operator which sells breath mints, cologne, Superhuman Ability Modules (often with risque names and powers), various things you would be too embarrassed to show to a cashier, and (inexplicably) "Flux Soda" energy soft drinks.

Their machines tend to come in pairs, one to sell most of the above goods and one to sell enough different SAMs to satisfy every possible kink. Because of their placement away from being seen by anyone not looking for a machine, Red-Lite machines are often the target of vandalism, and are thus designed to use the cheapest possible components and be easy to replace.

Red-Loot and Hex
Red-Lite is infamous for its venture into the gambling business. Gambling parlors, disguised as adult-only arcades, would have pachinko-themed pinball games and arcade video games with a heavy theme of R-rated content. The player would insert a 100 COIN piece into the machine in order to be allowed to play.

These arcade machines dispensed Hex, hexagonal coins known for their use in the black market, equal to the player's score in the game. Since Hex are not illegal in and of themselves, they were considered a "useless" side-effect of adult arcades. People could just take them home, but the expectation was that they would spend the Hex on black market goods.

This is where Red-Loot came in. Originally called Green-Lite machines, they were vending machines that only accepted Hex as collateral. Green-Lites would dispense random products with random value, usually far less than the market value of the Hex deposited. Since black market Hex prices fluctuate wildly and Hex is not legally-backed tender, Green-Lite offered a way to use Hex at a consistent price.

This stopped when Green-Lite machines were seized by the police, since gambling in any form is illegal in the New Real. Red-Lite claimed that they "didn't take any responsibility for Green-Lite machines" and that "Green-Lite is an intolerable breach of Red-Lite patents and trademarks", despite clear evidence that manufacturers produced both Red-Lite and Green-Lite machines, sometimes in the same factory.

Soon after Red-Lite paid out a hefty fine for facilitating gambling, rumors becgan to spread about a replacement machine, "Red-Loots". These machines were supposedly painted a different-but-similar shade of red than normal Red-Lite machines, and had no markings to distinguish the manufacturer. The machines turned out to be real, but no longer distributed random items in return for Hex. Instead, a digital menu would let the user select an item in the machine being traded for a specific amount of Hex, and then insert the required payment.

To this day, no one is sure if Red-Loot machines are the result of Red-Lite getting smarter about what they put their names on, or if someone else is behind these automated prize counters.

Investigations of Red-Lite's finances point to the former, but breakdowns of Red-Loot machines themselves reveal generic parts that are a bit more expensive and a bit more sturdy than genuine Red-Lite vending units. Furthermore, Red-Loot machines use a completely different interior than any existing Red-Lite model, bearing no resemblance to Green-Lite units and not sharing a single component with modern Red-Lite machines.

While Red-Loot is all but officially a product of the Red-Lite corporation, the exact origins of Red-Loot and of individual Red-Loot units are a mystery. No factory on Gaia's surface has ever produced a single component used in a Red-Lite machine, and the software is written in an unknown programming language, suggesting that an entire underground supply chain (in both the literal and figurative sense of the word "underground") exists under the control of organized crime syndicates.