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> Southern Cal and Aztlan
Eddy_Munster
post Jun 29 2007, 09:04 PM
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So the world of Southern California has been turned upside down and inside out. A lot has happened there. Besides the 4th Ed main book, where can information be found on Aztlan and Southern Cali? From Mexico City to Santa Barbara kind of stuff. I know there was a lot of recent info about San Fran as Saito occupied it. However I am not sure about info south of this.

I do not own all the books, but quite a few from 2nd and 3rd editions, and will look for the info I can in what I have. I ask because there is likely a lot of info in books I do not have and would like to purchase. Which of those books still has relevant info about these areas?


Oh, and Hello to some, and Hello again to others as this is my first post in a long, long time. :)
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FrankTrollman
post Jun 29 2007, 09:14 PM
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The best book on Aztlan is "Aztlan" - a book crammed full of Aztech material that fairly rarely contradicts itself.

Southern California is a mess and there are no good sources for it. The material in Shadows of North America contradicts the material in California Free State. The material in Year of the Comet contradicts the material in the main book.

Basically, there is nothing to be learned there. And by "there" I mean any book you happen to pick up. Aztlan owns San Diego, but what year they took it and what country they took it from is a point of contention across sources. The PCC owns LA, but they don't actually have any of the people in the LA basin. What natural disaster befell LA is unknown, and so far ever flippant answer to that question has involved numbers so astronomically large that all life on Earth would have been destroyed (seriously).

So uh... good luck with that.

-Frank
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stevebugge
post Jun 29 2007, 09:17 PM
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Both Cal-Free and Aztlan have their own sourcebooks, dating back to 2nd-3rd edition. There is some additional info on Cal-Free in Shadows of North America, and also in Threats 2.

The great flooding and annexation of SoCal still needs a lot of explanation however.

There also have been some shake-ups in the Aztlan Goverment in 4th edition mentioned in the history section, hopefully these will get more detail in the future.

And there is the oft rumored Shadows of Latin America still floating around somewhere too.

[Edit]And once again Frank proves to be the faster typer[/edit]
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Eddy_Munster
post Jun 29 2007, 11:34 PM
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Hmm.. anyone know a good place to get a copy of the Cal Free book?

So nobody knows exactly what brought on the flooding and made the walls all come tumbling down? If not, what are some of the theories floating around if I can ask?

Also, if the PCC is sending in aid, didn't they also move in troops and other disaster relief teams?
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FrankTrollman
post Jun 30 2007, 07:46 AM
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QUOTE (Eddy)
Also, if the PCC is sending in aid, didn't they also move in troops and other disaster relief teams?


Don't you understand that you are making me remember Year of the Comet? What's wrong with you?!

Anyhow, the thing to remember is that "Los Angeles" can mean both the literal city of Los Angeles (which has like 2 million people in it) and the entire Los Angeles Metropolitan Area (which goes from OC to the Grapevine and has 18 million people in it). It's important to remember this, because the authors of YotC forgot.

In Shadowrun's history, the smaller version of LA became a free enterprise zone under the control of the Los Angeles Authority. This was a governmental group who was empowered to make a profit off of running the region without the capability to actually levy taxes. As you might imagine, corruption ran completely amok. During the Year of the Comet, there was a series of quakes and volcanic erruptions around the Pacific Rim, of which the entire greater Los Angeles area is a part.

Here's where it gets weird: The Los Angeles Authority, which we'll recall only speaks for Baja Los Angeles, asks for aid from outside and Pueblo Corporate Council troops respond by occupying Alta Los Angeles. The best analogy I can come up with is having the Pope call for French troops to assist in the defense of the Vatican and then having them occupy the entirety of Rome.

Of course, that's all in 2061, and despite the fact that Alta Los Angeles has over half again the population of the entire Pueblo Corporate Council, this annexation did not raise the population estimates of the PCC by a single person. Years later the PCC is written up as having pretty much the same population as it had in NAN Volume I - despite the fact that it should have more than doubled if it really did annex a mega city.

The flooding happened later, sometime between System Failure and the 4th edition main book. No good explanation has come for that. Heck, Horizon got into the big ten on the back of contracts to rebuild California, despite the fact that neither it nor the devastated area are actually in California. Apparently, it hasn't been part of California for almost a decade, so I'm totally unclear as to what they were building or who was paying them.

QUOTE (Eddy)
So nobody knows exactly what brought on the flooding and made the walls all come tumbling down? If not, what are some of the theories floating around if I can ask?


Take your pick:
  • Changing weather patterns increased the LA basin's average rainfall from 38 cm per year to well over 300 cm per year (this can actually happen). The resultant flooding is now institutionalized as LA's cannals are overflowing with water every day of the year.
  • As described in Street Magic, big sections of the Earth simply vanished into the Astral and mountains sank into the sea. The resultant tidal wave which would destroy Tokyo didn't happen because Green Lantern saved the day.
  • As described in the basic book, earthquakes toppled mountains into the ocean and a tidal wave sent sea water up and over the mountains and filled the Central Valley with sea water. Incidentally, all life on Earth was destroyed because that's a hole bigger than the Yucatan crater that heralded in the K-T boundary.

-Frank
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kzt
post Jun 30 2007, 09:38 AM
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But then everyone forgot about this because of the brain virus that makes it impossible for people to use effective cryptography.
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Eddy_Munster
post Jun 30 2007, 03:41 PM
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Frank: LOL and Thank you very much for all that. I grew up in Los Angelas and am fairly familiar with all the regions of it. I was taking a look at the little that I have on the entire thing.

I find it is hard for a lot of people who have never lived in a city that size to visualize that the actual City of LA is contiguously bordered by all those 'Outlying' areas. So they often think that what happens in city, is a distance from those areas. Yet you can easily drive from Camarillo (in Ventura county along LA's northern border) all the way to Long Beach/Huntington Beach and continuously be surrounded by city with no way to tell you entered another section of the city without the road signs.

In Target: Wastelands it lists LA as a complete, and utter toxic area that is so bad that Spirits of Man randomly attack people. Whether poor or extremely rich, it doesn't matter.

It mentions PCC as moving in troops, but nothing else.

Ok all, thank you very much for the help with this. I think it's time to go grab a few more sources on this, if possible.

Then I need to escape from Aztlan...
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