[X] My Assistant

[Weaver95]

why do i get the mental image of freelancers reading this thread and making notes for future books?

Just make sure to give me partial credit!

[Weaver95]

well the geneva grid is basically a "haunted" system...

sounds like the perfect place for a insane TM to park her mind...

Hmm. ok, well let's engage in wild speculation. For the moment, assume the following:

1. Pax survived.
2. Pax has become a dissonant technomancer following Nemesis.
3. Pax has altered her appearance or otherwise found some way to disguise herself. to be revealed is to be killed.

A quick reference check to the rules in Unwired (pg 177) tells us this:

[paraphrased] '...Nemesis is the remorseless personified embodiement of an avenging angel and paragon that punishes those deemed unworthy.'

hmm. so Pax likes to punish the unworthy. I wonder what she would consider 'unworthy'? she also tends to think big. So it would be well within her character to lay the groundwork for her next big thing. Maybe she's building a group of Technomancers and training them to 'weed out the weak'? I'm just guessing here.

[LurkerOutThere]

I'm making the technomancer/otaku link a pretty central theme of my current campaign ark.

Basically of the Otaku we had basically three groups.

Those created by Deus: Highly vulnerable to fading, some were loosing their powers just by leaving the arcology.
Those created by Mirage: Seemingly invulnerable to fading, could be any age.
Those created by the reasonance itself or a slumbering mirage: Varying degrees of vulnerable to fading.

Now as i said my current campaign deals heavily with this plotline so i've opted to come up with some theories.

Otaku/Technomancers are both an evolutionary step of bringing metahumanity closer with machine. Otaku were somewhat rarer because not many people had their brains mainlined into the matrix as traditionally that was considered suicide. Mirage and Dues (and presumably other alpha level AI's) could speed this process. Mirage because it was originally designed as a psychotropic healing program was just better at it.

Now with WIFI being so common and magic continuing to be a threat to those without it people will continue to evolve to counter that threat. The resonant and disonant philosophies are the usual human dilusions of order and chaos but with Emergant powers already being so based on willpower belief can be an incredibly strong force.

That's the theory in a nutshell and most assuredly heavily homebrewed.

[Weaver95]

I did some more reading on Puck. turns out he was up to his elbows in some freaky shit. I'm amazed nobody on Jackpoint hunted him down and killed him for his past actions.

hrm. well, that aside - if Puck survived the whole thing, then maybe scarecrow or Pax did as well.

[LurkerOutThere]

I did some more reading on Puck. turns out he was up to his elbows in some freaky shit. I'm amazed nobody on Jackpoint hunted him down and killed him for his past actions.

hrm. well, that aside - if Puck survived the whole thing, then maybe scarecrow or Pax did as well.

Well lets keep in mind these are shadowrunners people who commit crimes for money for a living. Altruistic hunting just because isn't usually in the bill. Plus from past fluff Fastjack would respond really really negatively to anyone using Jackpoint as a facilitator for hunting down another Jackpointer and he is not the sort of person you want to annoy.

[Weaver95]

Well lets keep in mind these are shadowrunners people who commit crimes for money for a living. Altruistic hunting just because isn't usually in the bill. Plus from past fluff Fastjack would respond really really negatively to anyone using Jackpoint as a facilitator for hunting down another Jackpointer and he is not the sort of person you want to annoy.

Good point. But that said - Puck was integral to making Crash 2.0 happen. He sort of redeemed himself by planting the doom worm code egg right in the middle of Deus's source code, but even so - he was directly responsible for helping to kill a couple million people. Shadowrunners have standards, mass murder tends to keep your rep score on the low side.

The only thing I can think of about Pax is that, if she is still alive, that she'd be looking to avenge herself against someone. Maybe hunting down and killing all the baby AIs that have sprung up in the matrix since the Crash. Or maybe against the last few remaining Winternight cells that could still be out there. SOME of the winternight people did manage to survive after all. Not everyone was on their little island when they popped their mini-nuke on themselves.

now there would be an interesting campaign....you find yourself working with Pax to eradicate the last dregs of winternight.

[hobgoblin]

i find myself wondering if SR have gone analog.

[Sengir]

Also, did anyone else notice that one of the Paragons in Unwired is called Pax-Nemesis?

Given the description in Unwired, it sounds more like Nemesis' followers intentionally call her(?) by her Roman name to evoke the association with Pax, who probably is a hero for all Dissonants. That, and I simply hate the idea of another central character becoming a virtual ghost, god or whatever (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Weaver95]

Given the description in Unwired, it sounds more like Nemesis' followers intentionally call her(?) by her Roman name to evoke the association with Pax, who probably is a hero for all Dissonants. That, and I simply hate the idea of another central character becoming a virtual ghost, god or whatever (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

If Pax survived (and I believe she did) then she's most likely a crazed Technomancer dedicated to the dissonant concept of vengence.

And she has a LOT of people to avenge herself against...

[Weaver95]

On a related note, something else just occured to me - nobody ever really got around to repairing/purging the SCIRE matrix. when the UCAS military took back the archology they cleared the bad guys out (mostly) and then [government stuff happened] and it became the ACHE. But as I understand it, they got the local matrix hosts back online and essentially left everything else the same as it was when Deus ran the show.

so...what if the ACHE is the largest dissonance well the world has ever seen and it's sitting right smack in the middle of Seattle?

[Demonseed Elite]

In System Failure, Pax was deathly afraid of Fading, which was beginning to happen to her. Remember her speech to Puck when she convinced him to join her cause; she wanted to remake the Matrix. Given that Pax isn't the most altruistic and idealistic of people, you can bet that she wanted to remake the Matrix in an effort to stop her Fading or perhaps become something new entirely. And well, the Matrix was remade.

Just something else to consider: when Deus compiled himself, System Failure mentions that the Nodes in the Network went comatose. But no Shadowrun material since then says what become of those Nodes. And while Deus is gone, it doesn't mean the code that was in the Nodes' heads went with it...

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[hobgoblin]

there is a whole lot of data missing between system failure and SR4.

and most of it will probably never get covered...

[Weaver95]

there is a whole lot of data missing between system failure and SR4.

and most of it will probably never get covered...

Oddly enough, i'm ok with that. I like to engage in random pointless speculation from time to time.

[the_real_elwood]

Hmm. ok, well let's engage in wild speculation. For the moment, assume the following:

1. Pax survived.
2. Pax has become a dissonant technomancer following Nemesis.
3. Pax has altered her appearance or otherwise found some way to disguise herself. to be revealed is to be killed.

A quick reference check to the rules in Unwired (pg 177) tells us this:

[paraphrased] '...Nemesis is the remorseless personified embodiement of an avenging angel and paragon that punishes those deemed unworthy.'

hmm. so Pax likes to punish the unworthy. I wonder what she would consider 'unworthy'? she also tends to think big. So it would be well within her character to lay the groundwork for her next big thing. Maybe she's building a group of Technomancers and training them to 'weed out the weak'? I'm just guessing here.

The "unworthy" to Pax have always been people who are anti-technology, and ESPECIALLY people who are hypocritical about it. Like an Atlanta politician who was anti-technology but had a bad BTL habit. Bit the dust when Pax's gang (all pre-Arcology stuff) swapped his BTL chip with one that killed him. Assuming she survived and she's operating again, she's definitely working on building a gang of dissonant technomancers to wage the same old war she's always been waging.

[Weaver95]

The "unworthy" to Pax have always been people who are anti-technology, and ESPECIALLY people who are hypocritical about it. Like an Atlanta politician who was anti-technology but had a bad BTL habit. Bit the dust when Pax's gang (all pre-Arcology stuff) swapped his BTL chip with one that killed him. Assuming she survived and she's operating again, she's definitely working on building a gang of dissonant technomancers to wage the same old war she's always been waging.

hmm...I wonder if I could use that somehow...

[the_real_elwood]

It's certainly not a stretch. I'd think you'd want some fairly powerful characters if they were going to get involved with Pax, but investigating a series of incidents in which Pax is involved could make for an interesting game. And remember, Pax certainly isn't as powerful as she was before. There's no Network and no more Winternight for her to call in favors from, and anyone else she had contacts with is likely to not even acknowledge her anymore in the wake of Crash 2.0.

[Weaver95]

It's certainly not a stretch. I'd think you'd want some fairly powerful characters if they were going to get involved with Pax, but investigating a series of incidents in which Pax is involved could make for an interesting game. And remember, Pax certainly isn't as powerful as she was before. There's no Network and no more Winternight for her to call in favors from, and anyone else she had contacts with is likely to not even acknowledge her anymore in the wake of Crash 2.0.

well...keep in mind also that Pax has to keep herself hidden as much as possible. not only does she have far less in the way of resources now, but she's also got a lot of very powerful people after her who would just love to see her die in some horribly slow and degrading manner.

hmm.

ok, so how about this then - Pax would be the ultimate focus of the story arc. shadowrunners get pulled into the story slowly, and as they get closer to the truth they realize that what they're up against is a powerful dissonant technomancer.

As for a base of operations, i'm thinking the ACHE would do quite nicely. Think about it - she knows all the ways in and out of the place. It's freaking HUGE, plenty of room to hide. And she's got a nearby pool of desperate recruits to convert to her cause - the ACHE residents themselves. they're practically inmates. I suspect that her message of vengence would go over very well indeed with those people. And as an added bonus, the SCIRE matrix is still a ginormous Dissonance well.

[hobgoblin]

Oddly enough, i'm ok with that. I like to engage in random pointless speculation from time to time.

i know that feel, its nice to have some bits to get the feel for the setting, but i dont feel like having the complete wardrobe and diet of every AAA CEO listed in some book. I am under the impression that white wolf may have somewhat killed their world of darkness settings by going to such detail in the past...

[hobgoblin]

The "unworthy" to Pax have always been people who are anti-technology, and ESPECIALLY people who are hypocritical about it. Like an Atlanta politician who was anti-technology but had a bad BTL habit. Bit the dust when Pax's gang (all pre-Arcology stuff) swapped his BTL chip with one that killed him. Assuming she survived and she's operating again, she's definitely working on building a gang of dissonant technomancers to wage the same old war she's always been waging.

was there not a decker called anubis that used to pull something similar, like breaking into peoples places to put a black BTL with a ankh into their deck when he could not kill them by black hammering them online?

oh, and i do wonder, could pax be played out as some kind of machiavellian plotter?

maybe having multiple plans going at ones to reach some kind of goal? chess player of the matrix...

[Weaver95]

i know that feel, its nice to have some bits to get the feel for the setting, but i dont feel like having the complete wardrobe and diet of every AAA CEO listed in some book. I am under the impression that white wolf may have somewhat killed their world of darkness settings by going to such detail in the past...

well, if you can pardon the slight digression I think the main problem with the World of Darkness was that for years they promised their players that the Apocalypse was coming and everything would come crashing down. You can only promise that for so long before people start getting edgy....

Plus the writing had gone downhill. Like in a major way downhill. To my thinking, it completely stopped being any sort of good after the Players Guide to the Technocracy came out (an absolutely astounding book btw). Everything after that point was crap for all the product lines.

[Sengir]

If Pax survived (and I believe she did) then she's most likely a crazed Technomancer dedicated to the dissonant concept of vengence.

And she has a LOT of people to avenge herself against...

D'accord, just wanted to say that she probably did not become that Paragon or something similar, that would just be too much WTF.

As for remaking the Matrix, her whole plan was to use the crash worm to transform the Matrix into a new, dissonant, version, instead of simply destroying it as she promised Winternight. While the grand plan failed, I imagine all the havoc it caused did not excatly decrease the ammount of dissonance in the world...

[GreyBrother]

Somehow somewhere i got the impression that Jormungand succeeded and that the wireless Matrix IS dissonant in it's core.
But i frakkin can't remember how i explained that to myself. Just that my Technomancer (ex-Otaku) would tear his brains out, just to be sure. Better dead than a servant of the Distorted Song.

Anyway... i'm actually asking myself what's up with "The World Tree". Why exactly the same iconography as used by Deus? It would surely scare every hacker and technomancer, who heard about Deus favourite icon, out.

[Malachi]

As for a base of operations, i'm thinking the ACHE would do quite nicely. Think about it - she knows all the ways in and out of the place. It's freaking HUGE, plenty of room to hide. And she's got a nearby pool of desperate recruits to convert to her cause - the ACHE residents themselves. they're practically inmates. I suspect that her message of vengence would go over very well indeed with those people. And as an added bonus, the SCIRE matrix is still a ginormous Dissonance well.

Except that Pax hates Deus. After the Arcology breakout in Brainscan Pax went really off the deep end and started up her Dissonant Ex Pacis group. After the Arcology she was not in league with Deus or The Network anymore. I don't think she would want to go back there. Plus, it would be too obvious.

[Dahrken]

Anyway... i'm actually asking myself what's up with "The World Tree". Why exactly the same iconography as used by Deus? It would surely scare every hacker and technomancer, who heard about Deus favourite icon, out.

I think the concept of the World Tree as a metaphor fot the whole interconnected netword predates Deus, and that he chose this particular iconography because it's symbolism fit well with what he aspired to transform into.

[the_real_elwood]

Except that Pax hates Deus. After the Arcology breakout in Brainscan Pax went really off the deep end and started up her Dissonant Ex Pacis group. After the Arcology she was not in league with Deus or The Network anymore. I don't think she would want to go back there. Plus, it would be too obvious.

Yeah, after she found out what Deus was planning on doing with the Arcology, she felt betrayed and came up with a plan to get herself out of there after it all went down. And while she wasn't in league with the Network, she did have some contacts there (Puck) that she was able to use. But I definitely don't think she'd be operating out of the Arcology anymore anyways. Even though it may be fairly easy to hide among the ACHE population now, you know that matrix system is locked down tighter than just about anything else. Plus, it's still not easy to move around and carry out operations with all the security monitoring the ACHE.