The rules of family in the shadows, Professionalism Options

[hyzmarca]

Shadowrunners are people and people have needs that must be met. Among these needs are companionship and the propagation on one's genes. Thus, many shadowrunners have families, or at least try. While quite a few choose to wait until "retirement" to start their families many in the shadows understand that "retirement" from the shadows is a mythological concept that was never actually real. These people, instead, use their downtime to cultivate familial relationships.

Because of the general importance of family as well as the general vulnerability of civilian family members, there is a set of unwritten rules that is generally adhered to by shadow professionals on all sides, government, freelance, corporate, and criminal alike. Because of the global multi-cultural nature of the shadow community, it is impossible to fully codify all of the subtle nuances that exist between the different subsets to shadow warriors but this document attempts to provide a set of general guidelines for shadow warriors with families and shadow warriors who must deal with the families of others.

Rule 1: The Golden Rule.
Never, ever, mess with a fellow shadow warrior's civilian family. It doesn't matter who you are or who you work for, this is the golden rule which must never be broken. It may be tempting to use kidnap an enemy's family members as leverage or hurt them to punish the enemy, but just don't do it. It is unprofessional.

Rule 2: The Rule of Equity.
If one shadow warrior injures a family member of another shadow warrior in any way, the aggrieved warrior and his allies have the obligation to inflict an equal injury upon a member of the perpetrator's family, parent for parent, sibling for sibling, spouse for spouse, child for child.

For example: John Doe Fed-Ex's the severed head of Brad Pitt's wife to him. Brad Pitt and his partner are now obliged to decapitate John Doe's wife and fed-ex her head to him.

Rule 3: The Substitution Rule.
Not every shadow warrior has every possibly family member. If the perpetrator lacks the appropriate familial relation for an equitable retaliation, then the aggrieved shadow warrior is obliged to retaliate against the family of one of his associates, with the closest associates being preferred. This rule exists to ensure that no one willingly works with a family-killer.

Example: John Doe doesn't have a wife, but his dry cleaner does. Because Jon Doe is a loner with no associates closer than his Dry Cleaner, the Dry cleaner receives his wife's severed head in a fed-ex box along with a note clearly stating that this decapitation was retaliated for John Doe's actions.

Rule 4: The Kidnapping Rule.
The kidnapping of a civilian family member is the single most dangerous situation for a shadow warrior. So long as the loved-one is held hostage, the shadow warrior can be forced to do anything. For this reason, the kidnapping of a family member fully nullifies rule 1 in relation to the kidnapper and all of his associates.

Example: Raver and Scorcher and rival Shadowrunners working for opposing interests after the same target. Raver, being both greedy and crazy, kidnap's Scorcher's girlfriend and promises to kill her if Scorcher doesn't give up the job.

Scorcher knows that Winston is Raver's fixer and that he'd know where Raver's safe-house is. Winston is a family man with a lovely wife and a three-month-old. Scorcher, being pissed off, scared, and in desperate need of information, breaks into Winston's home, rapes his wife in front of him, and cuts off the baby's toes with a pair of pruning sheers one-by-one while threatening to do far worse.
This is fully permissible and Winston does not have the professional right to retaliate though he might choose to do so, anyway, such an action would make him lose a great deal of face and give him a bad reputation even if it doesn't invite further retaliation.

======================================================
Section 2: Keeping your Civilian Family Safe

While the Golden Rule and associated Rules of Retaliation greatly reduce the prevalence of attacks on civilian family members, family remains a very tempting target for those who lack honor and professionalism. This section is intended to provide Shadow Warriors with tips for keeping their civilian family members safe.

What happens in the shadows should stay in the shadows.
Many people talk about their work days with their families. Shadow Warriors should never do this. The more information your family has the more tempting and vulnerable they are. Shadow Warriors deal with some very powerful and dangerous entities and a single misspoken word at school, the supermarket, or anywhere else could bring the full might of some very powerful and dangerous entities crashing down on their heads. Furthermore, if your family members have information then they become intelligence assets, subject to capture and torture by these entities. Sharing information with your civilian family members puts not only them at risk, but you as well.

Teach them to kill
The inability to defend themselves in battle is the greatest vulnerability faced by civilian family members. As a Shadow Warrior, your profession naturally attracts violence and death. There may be times when the most vulnerable members of your family must choose between killing or being killed. It is your responsibility to be sure that they are both willing and able to choose the former.
Make sure that your family members always carry firearms and know how to use them. Take them to shooting ranges and use VR simulations to drill them until they are skilled marksmen. Use realistic targets to desensitize them from killing. If possible, have them actually kill real living people to be sure that they can do so.Use simulated combat to teach them the importance of cover and live fire exercises to teach them to be cool under stress. Make sure that they know to always kill and always finish off a wounded assailant.

With children, start VR combat training immediately after birth and give them real firearms as soon as they are able to understand the concept of death and know which direction to point the gun. Make sure your children know to carry a gun everywhere and to kill anyone who tries to disarm them.


Use pass-phrases
Knowing how to kill is useless if your loved ones do not know when to kill. Teach your loved ones challenge phrases to issue and response phrases to expect back in the event that you must communicate with them through an agent. Make sure that they know that anyone who fails to give the correct response phrase should be killed without hesitation.

Maintain separate emergency escape plans and safehouses

Your civilian family members should always have escape plans and safehouses that are fully independent from your own. In the event that your emergency plans are compromised they remain safe and, in the event that their plans are compromised, you remain free to rescue them.

[toturi]

John Doe doesn't have a fixed identity. Bob who is John closest ally knows John as Tom, Dick as well as Harry. So in order to punish John, Bob gets his wife's head shipped back to him for Tom, Dick and Harry's indiscretion.

In fact, by Rule 3, if Jack is John's closest ally and John backstabs Jack, Jack has to kill off one of his family in order to warn Jack! Hence the phrase "Keep your friends close, your enemies closer still."

The only rule: There are no rules; Thou shalt win at all costs.

[hyzmarca]

If John backstabs Jack then Jack isn't his closest ally.

The thing is that shadow runners who can't protect their families are going to be laughing stocks. Unless there is some form of brutal retribution, they're never going to get another good job again and they'll being relegated to escorting little-old ladies across the street for 20 :nuyen: a pop in Redmond.

[sunnyside]

Ok. First I'm afraid I was unable to take this seriously due to the use of the term "Shadow Warriors".

Still part one sounds like something an indavidual might believe, but not the comunity.

Also in games families are commonly plot hook generators. Sad but true.

That being said keeping them hidden is probably your best bet. Even your teammates don't need to know.

[Ravor]

I don't know, I think I have to agree with toturi's one rule, because I personally don't see a Shadowrunner crippling himself by limiting the options which he can use to gain an edge against whoever his target is.

Because after all, in the end Mr Johnson is really only concerned with results, not whether or not this week's Street Scum play nice with each other's family.

And remember, all it takes for this 'Professional Code' to fall apart is to mix in human emotion, I seriously doubt that Winston in your example would really give a frag about whether he was beaking some 'Professional Code' as he let other Fixers know exactly what Scorcher did to his family as he arranged for Scorcher and his girlfriend to end up fitted for a pair of cement shoes.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Shadowrunners, Fixers, ect are a diverse crowd of human scum who get paid to shoot people in the face, not a bunch of emotionless drones mindlessly following what strikes me as some vaguely Asian Code of Honor, and that this Code would only work if the vast majority decided to follow it.

*Edit*

However, let me clarify that I do agree that more often then not, Shadowrunners will tend to leave each other's families alone because it's generally not cost effective to target a Runner's loved ones because most Runner's will take it very personally if/when their loved ones are targeted. (After all, you are dealing with people who tend to be highly skilled and dangerous loose cannons.)

But you still totally lose me when you try to expand it to a 'Shadow-wide Honor Code' and claim that Winston is supposed to 'suck it up' because Scorcher had 'honor' on his side.

[mfb]

[toturi]

[Ravor]

[mfb]

i think #3 is more complex that hyzmarca has written it. i think if Winston went after Scorcher's family, Scorcher's pals would view it as a breach of 'the rules', while Winston's pals would view Winston's actions as being valid under rule #2.

and i think that either way, Winston is screwed--not only did he lose his family, but everybody knows that he got mixed up in family crap. family crap is something you don't, as a general rule, want to get involved in, for the simple reason that it can spin so wildly out of control.

[Ravor]

Although I agree that is exactly what would happen, once you allow for that reality then the entire 'Shadow-Warrior's Code' falls apart into a far more realistic Hatfield & Macoy type senerio.

And considering that a Hatfield & Macoy scenerio would happen with or without the 'Shadow-Warrior's Code' then what exactly is the point of such a Code's existance in the first place?

* It doesn't change the fact that if John fucks with Jack's family then Jack is going to declare all-out war on John and his family.

* It doesn't change the fact that if in said war Jack fucks with Tom's family then Tom is going to go Hatfield and Macoy back on Jack.

* And it doesn't change the fact that Jack's chummers with back Jack, John's chummers will back John, and Tom's chummers will back Tom.

So at best the 'Shadow-Warrior's Code' is a failed Honor Code whose existance or lack thereof doesn't change a single thing.

*Edit* Cleaned up a redunant point.

[Glyph]

I kind of agree with Ravor - Hyzmarca kind of lost me at rule #4, where someone who has his wife and baby tortured before his eyes is supposed to let it go, because the other person had some weird unwritten code of "honor" on his side.

About the only thing I agree with is that shadowrunners would take steps to protect their families but wouldn't, as a rule, talk "business" in front of them. And harming a runner's family would result in dire retribution. Runners would probably have an unwritten agreement that each others families should be off limits, and sane self-preservation is part of that. You don't want to get someone so angry that his only concern is devoting himself, 24-7, to hunting you down and doing terrible things to you.

But when you think about it, lots of runners wouldn't even follow rules #2 and #3. Do all runners have no problems with murdering innocent women and children in cold blood? A lot of runners who would put a bullet between the Don's eyes still wouldn't kill his wife and kids.

Do all runners shrug and settle for a coldly impersonal "this for that" retribution, instead of making an extremely brutal example of the person who actually did or commissioned the hit on their families?

Nah. I like rule #1, but I think rule #2 should only state that a runner whose family gets killed will seek violent retribution on everyone involved, and "it was just business" won't cut it as an excuse. Rule #3 should state that associates are fair game, but they should be given a chance to disassociate themselves from the transgressor, unless they provided material assistance to him, whether they knew the ultimate goal of that assistance or not.

And I don't think there would be any formal rules, just general attitudes such as "Man, you don't mess with someone's family. It just isn't done."

[hyzmarca]

Consider that this was intended to be a somewhat IC document by someone who is somewhat extreme about protecting his family (I mean, requireing one's kids to carry concealed pistols to pre-school isn't exactly the policy of a completely stable person).

But, the principals are pretty basic.

Rules 3 was an extreme exaggeration, of course. The basic idea is that those who are indirect accomplices in an attack on a runner's family are just as guilty as the one who chose to do the deed. A fixer who furnishes supplies or a teammate who looks the other way is just as responsible because they could have stopped him, one way or another, and chose not to.
People who choose to run with lose cannons are responsible for the consequences when those loose cannons go off. You can't just point to your teammate, who you trust with your life, and say "he did it, not me". If someone is a loose cannon like that, then you cut all ties with him one way or another, because he will eventually bring something bad down on you if you tolerate his behavior.

Rule 4 was a matter of urgency. If people have information that is required for the safe return of a shadowrunner's loved one then those people are just as guilty if they choose to withhold that information and if people are actually assisting in the kidnapping then they are certainly guilty, as well; there would be no loss of reputation to use their families as leverage against them in return.

Winston could very easily retaliate. But, most of those shadowrunners who have families themselves would probably see that Winston was in the wrong when he refused to give up this loose cannon who kidnapped another runner's civilian loved-one. It isn't that Winston would suck it up without a doubt so much as every Shadowrunner who has family would have something similar to Winston if they were in Scorcher's position (yeah, Scorcher was extreme but he needed the info as quickly as possible and didn't have a mage handy) so Winston is going to be the one to lose rep for it either way and the quieter he keeps the incident the less rep he's going to lose.

During the cold war, NATO and Soviet spies did some really terrible crap to each other at times but there was always an unwritten rule against targeting each other's families. It isn't that that everyone would go "oh no, Stasi Agent Volkswagon killed CIA agent Smith's grandmother, that violates the unwritten rule". It is more like "Dude, I have a grandmother. Targeting grandmothers ain't cool, Volkswagon."
(I apologize in advance to any East Germans or former Stasi agents who may be offended by my naming a fictional Secret Policeman Agent Volkawagon.)

So long as family remains off limits, everyone can rest easy. As soon as people start targeting family members, it does descend into a horrible mess very quickly.

In the case of Shadowrunners, it is a bit different. Shadowrunners almost never compete directly. When Shadowrunners fight someone, it is almost always security guards, gangers, military personnel, and insane magicians. It is a rare event that opposing Shadowrunners actually have cause to fire upon each other. It is almost never personal, it is usually about money, and it is almost impossible to known that the opposition has hired an unstable Shadowrunner to go against you until it is too late. This makes the targeting of families even more frightening. Every Shadowrunner with a family looks at a runner who attacks the families of rival runners and knows that their families could be next, that this guy is a loose cannon who deserves whatever comes to him and that his teammates deserve whatever comes to them.

As for the tit-of-tat retribution. Many runners wouldn't go for it. Many would. Either way, they wouldn't get a bad reputation because of it, though they might get a bad reputation if they were unable to exact any sort of revenge. The point of such actions is to make the perpetrator hurt as much as you are hurting, if at all possible..

[mfb]

it forces certain responses. if someone screws with your family, responding in kind is the only option that allows you to retain any semblance of reputation. forcing responses in kind makes sure everyone knows the score. it makes sure that punkass, no-nothing newbies are less likely to flip out and go after your family, because they've all heard the stories about what happens. it makes sure that crime syndicates color inside the lines and don't go around whacking family members, because they know that doing so will precipitate a major war.

without such a general sort of code, there are no clear responses. Jack might geek John's kid, and John might wipe out Jack's entire extended family--which sets off a huge response in turn, and so on. or Jack might just sit at home and cry for a while, then get back to work. clearly-defined consequences, especially ones that generally follow human response norms, help make such dealings less unpredictable, and therefore less dangerous to anyone peripherally involved.

[Kagetenshi]

If you target the Runner, target the family. You must leave no one behind to become Batman.

~J

[thorr]

the way i see it, its probably just like in movies about the mob or the yakuza. the sopranos and good fellas come to mind off the top of my head. i also see it being different depending on the society they come from. japanese would have different rules than americans, etc. besides they're more like guidelines. :smokin: :smokin:

[Backgammon]

[hyzmarca]

The problem with that logic is that, taken to the logical conclusion, you end up killing the entire world. The family and friends that you kill will have family and friends of their own who, in turn, have family and friends of their own, continuing until you find that everyone on the face of the planet is connected to everyone else by a complex web of relationships. In eliminating anyone who want want revenge in the future, you simply create more people who'll want revenge.

When it comes to limiting conflicts, a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction is supperior to wholescale genocide, especially considering that any runner worth killing will have the resources to take out your entire family from beyond the grave using freelance operatives and a dead-mans switch buried in a hidden Matrix node.

Besides, Batman never did get revenge against the guy who killed his parents. Every other criminal in Gotham got his ass kicked, but the actual shooter was taken out before batman even came into the picture.

Edit: And, for that matter, The Punisher is a thousand times more baddass than Batman. Who cares about angering Mr. "I dress up like a bat and never kill anyone because a criminal murdered my parents" when the whoesale slaughter of entire families can easily create Mr. "I dress up like me and kill every criminal who crosses my path because criminals murdered my wife and children."

[Ravor]

[Kagetenshi]

[hyzmarca]

The point as I have said, is that those who tolerate such acts are just as guilty as those who commit them. Every runner who has that kind of person on his team should just get rid of him, one way or another, or else face any wrath that he may bring down upon them. If you work with such a fellow, if you benefit from the fruits of his repugnant acts, then you are equally as guilty. If the perpetrator is immune to retribution then there is really no one left to go after but his accomplices.

And that's the point of rules 3 and 4. Such actions can never be tolerated. Those who tolerate them are just as guilty as the one who does the deed, even if they weren't directly involved and an example must be made one way or the other.

[hyzmarca]

[Ravor]

[Kagetenshi]

[Darkest Angel]

This thread reminds me of M:I3 and Philip Seymore Hoffman's line:

[Ravor]