Matrix Anomalies, More AI related questions/speculation. Options

[-X-]

Wondering what other oddities you all might predict for the Matrix 2.0. Focusing on intelligent phenomenon. I'll name rather than describe the ones I have so far (as potentially still around) to avoid spoiling.

Pre-crash entities that might still be around.
Deus
Morgana
Mirage
Alice
Original Crash Virus (Assuming it isn't Alice)
Deep Resonance
Dissonance

During crash entities
Capn Chaos (Probably not though)
Pax?
Plenty of other Matrix ghosts
Jormungander
JackBNimble

Obviously not all of those are likely to be canon AI's (or whatever) in future Shadowrun products, I'm just trying to come up with a full stable that I can pick and choose from for my purposes. So what am I missing?

[Dranem]

You forgot that Morgan became Mageara when Renraku striped away to codes to create the knowbot that became Deus... ;)

Far as I can tell - though pretty old now - Fast Jack is still around.
Matrix celebrities I miss: Remi :)

Last I heard there may still be 2-3 hackers left from Echo Mirage.

[Ancient History]

Dinnae ferget Mitch.

[Witness]

If Captain Chaos, Deus, Mirage, Alice et al do survive, then so might Eliohann/Cerberus. Now that's what I call a ghost in the machine.

[-X-]

[hyzmarca]

Fast Jack may have been leonized. Sprites are pretty-darn anomolous, especially the ones that appear to be Free from the system failure fluff. Dr. Halberstam seems to have his hands full with new things to research at the moment.

[Witness]

Well it looked in System Failure (p95) like there was a possibility that Eliohann/Cerberus could have gone the same way as CC- i.e. could now be an E-telligence.

Best bet for info on Mitch (and all sorts of other goodness) would be AH's Echoes of the Crash page, EDIT: or if you have the Denver boxed set, p84 in the main book- but it's just shadowtalk rumors, nothing very concrete. What you get on AH's page is about all there is to know.

Megaera might have survived the Crash through her nodes?..

[Witness]

There is also, of course, what I regard to be the anomaly of all anomalies. The Big Weird One That Was Never Explained. One word: Saeletra. (DenverBS p73)

[hyzmarca]

Obviously it was an ancient magical being. There are countless canidates. The IEs were active around that time, as was Thias. It might be a free spirit. Some of them were active at power sites and mana spikes for centuries before the Awakening and could have learned to use computers.

My pet theory of today is that it was either Lochost or Dis. Both of their fingerprints can be found of things that lead up to the Awakening and of all the Passions they would be the most powerful leading up to that date.

As the Passion of change the Awakening is right up Locost's alley. Likewise, the Shiawase decision serves him as the Passion fo Freedom. (Paradoxiclly, it also serves Dis, the Passion of slavery).

[The ubbergeek]

Excuse te question, but what was those 'Passions' that I keep hearing about now and then? Idols of Elves?

[-X-]

I didn't even realize AH was still around. That is extremely helpful. I'd forgotten about Halb and Roxy. Wonder if Rox got Jormanganded or Nimbled.

Mitch looks like paranoia and rumor and not much else. Or at most a ghost in the machine like Alice is supposed to be.

Looks like I have more than enough heavy hitters now I just have to narrow them down some.

(Passions were the not quite gods that folks in the Earthdawn era worshipped..., sort of. Their origins were extremely unclear, or I really missed out on some key Earthdawn books.)

[hyzmarca]

Passions were the closest thing that there were to Gods in the Fourth World. They were worshipped by every Namegiver race except Dragonkind and were exceptionally powerful. Like Mentor Spirits take followers they took Questors but the powers granted to Questors are generally far greater than those granted by Mentors, Totems, and Idols and the requirements are generally more strict.

While Idols are abstract things which are open to interpertation the Passions are very concrete. While Idols may not exist outside of the inds of their followers, the Passions certainly do exist objectivly. While idols can, at best, give a dream to a Shamen so that he'll right some wrong for them Passions could materialize right in from you of and bitchslap you into next century with their near limitless power.

The Passions have faded from the memory of the world, however, and the only reason that they are still worship activly in the Tirs is that Immortal Elves still follow them and keep their memory alive.

The only confirmed Passion in the Sixth World of Vestrial, the Passion of Manipulation and Deceipt. Harlequin was once his Questor and he is seen talking with Harly in one book.

[Witness]

Although, as I've pointed out in the past...

[ Spoiler ]

Deus and Dis,
Mirage and Mynbruje... some eerie parallels there. ;)

[-X-]

[Witness]

[ Spoiler ]

I can certainly see Gossamer being Mirage re-born. But it does seem a little unlikely to me that Diamond Lattice would be Deus re-born, since the two seem to be on friendly (or civil, at least) terms.

[Aaron]

[ Spoiler ]

Gossamer and Deus may have (appeared to have) been on good terms, but who knows the psychology, or even the motivation, of an AI? And knowing one, what guarantee is there that it would apply to another?

By the bye, why are we whispering?

[Witness]

[-X-]

[ Spoiler ]

My take on it was that however they managed to stash themselves away during the crash (Hiding in the Network, saving themselves to an ultraviolet host then shutting it down, or just fending off the virus in one of the places that stayed online.) erased their memories or something.

Maybe part of how they survived the second crash was by taking all their memories and emotions and copying them from active programs to a more basic type of readable file? Then once the crash was over they could read how they used to feel, but it isn't the same as actually experiencing those emotions?

Possibly they were just whittled down to their core SK forms and AI quality.

It could even be that the reason they all survived was they had to work together and DiamondDeus realized that he might not like them, but he might be able to trust the other two. Similarly maybe the Matrix 2.0 is so hostile to their 1.0 forms that that is the reason they had to band together.

Maybe they were just bored and lonely and decided to have a E-threesome? Ugh. I'll stop speculating there.

I'm not at all sure how or why Morgeara would have gotten plastered with the brands though.

As to why we're whispering, I thought it was to avoid spoiling people who hadn't gone through things like System Failure yet. Or possibly hangovers?

[Geekkake]

In a game I'm currently running, the Crash really hosed the previous AIs. Something along the lines of a lobotomy and a grand mal seizure all at once. In a half-retarded effort to save themselves, the independent intelligences of the Matrix tried to seed copies of themselves hither and yon, but all of them were corrupt, and significantly less than the original. Each corrupted copy has taken on its own identity once the Matrix was restored, and are the "matrix spirits" referenced in SR4.

Another proto-AI has been intentionally designed (by what party I won't say, my players read and they've just learned enough) as an SK that moves about looking for those sorts of Matrix icons, and to consume them, adding relevant bits of code to its own. Currently, this proto-AI is located in an optical chip, inert, waiting for someone to connect it to the Matrix to start its hunt. The holder of the chip is the ignorant, Southern ork thug of the party, who stole it as free loot during a completely unrelated run. He has no idea what he has.

Its name is "Osiris".

[Ophis]

One PC in my first(still ongoing game) SR4 game is a surviving Node that houses a signifcant portion of a crippled AI from the ECS battle. His personality is an overwrite by the AI to stop the body being a complete psychotic meglomaniac (think P-fix at AI levels, with loss of previous memories.)

I laughed inside when the player gave the amnesiac character the street name Mirage.

[hyzmarca]

You know, it isn't impossible that Technomancers are actually nodes in a new Network.

[stevebugge]

[-X-]

[ Spoiler ]

The matrix has you Neo.

Really I assume Technomancer's are caused by the same thing Otaku were, just wireless and less restricted.

[Kiedo]

I know you wanted info about AI and I'll get to that but I wanted to express an idea I've been tossing around since reading the SR4 book.

Ok, we all know how similar to magic being a technomancer is, alot of the same rules or at least fairly similar anyway. And then we have the hidden areas of the matrix only accessible after submersion. Now the book says nobody knows exactly where those places are, so what if they are Astral space? What if the big D didn't kill himself to fight the horrors alone. What if he had found a way to fuse magic and technology and that's were the technomancer came from. Just look at sprites, created from the matrix itself? Or spirits who found a "bridge"? Now take that a step further and take into account AI, what if the Big D has actually found a "bridge" from astral space to matrix space and he is infact one of the various AI programs that have no tracable origins. Or maybe he hasn't surfaced yet. Or what if a powerful Horror had also found a way into matrix space and was now labeled as just another AI program.

It's a bit big, and it might have been mentioned before, and it may seem a bit far fetched but I like it...

[-X-]

Here's a thought (bear with me on this);

Alice thinks that the original crash virus was the direct cause of her current (as of 2060) state, almost like it killed her and copied her.

Big D drops CC a mysterious encrypted file called JackBNimble that he thinks might be 'a communication from another world'.

Repeatedly we get references that the original crash virus was never eradicated, just driven into hiding.

CC was never able to break into the file. Sure maybe he just never got around to it, but it seems to me just the kind of thing an uber decker would have fun tinkering with in his off hours so he probably played with it enough to know it was some serious encryption (as would D's deckers if he let them).

So it could be that JackBNimble was the crash virus. It encrypts itself (which would probably make decrypting it pretty hard) with either a trigger to get itself out, or if it was desperate enough maybe it was counting on some code-killer entering the system it might happen to be in wreaking havok. Then once released it could go about its merry way.

Well along comes Jormangand surfing dissonance waves and voila! No more concerted effort to hunt poor lil' crashy'29. Of course the Matrix is going to hell when it happens but maybe crashy'29 doesn't care about that. So it rides ahead of Jormangand killing folks and dumping them in .zip files laughing with glee.

And if Big D suspected what it was and what it liked to do, his cute little comment about a communication from another world could have been talking about the world of the Matrix (IE, an AI), which to a dragon especially might seem like a whole other world. Alternately he could have been refering to a communication from the dead (Which the ghosts in the machines sort of are in a way). (Given how the weird NASA photo's mystery turned out this seems like just the kind of wordplay and misdirection prevalent throughout the Will. Sneaky sneaky that big flying snakey.)