Unkillable Ghostwalker? Options

[Bull]

It's been brought up a couple times, so I felt it was worth commenting on real quick. Agree or disagree, I don't care much. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

1) Ghostwalker is arguably the most powerful Great Dragon in Shadowrun. Obviously, there's no stats, but I believe he was/is inteneded to be at least on part with Lofwyr, if not more so, physically. Considering his mastery of spirits, it's not that much of a stretch to say he also probably the powerful in terms of Magic.

2) GW is a master of Spirits. We saw this when he took on Denver. He didn't do it alone, he had spirits. A LOT of spirits. a lot of BIG spirits.

3) Go read Invoking Great Forms, SPirit Pacts, that sort of thing. Ghost walker can do all of that, at high numbers.

If Ghost Walker rolled into Denver without at least 30+ points of hardened armor, I'll eat my copy of YotC. At the very least, I'd bet GW can pull off a trick similar to a Possession Tradition mage. And even with a Baseline Great Dragon (Magic 12), Summoning up a Force 12 spirit (Far less than they can do on thier own), that's and extra 24 points of hardened armor right there.

Plus, I think people over-estimate how much military hardware that was available. I always got the impression that each sector only had a token militray presence, per terms of the treaty (at least in terms of heavy hardware), and everything was over long before anyone really had a chance to respond with external military support.

Bull

[Ancient History]

I think if any of the respective militaries involved had felt like rolling into a city full of civilians and unleashing hell, then Ghostwalker would (eventually) be a smear.

[Patrick Goodman]

Operative term is "eventually." And the civilian casualties would make Nagasaki and Hiroshima look tame, in my opinion.

[Mantis]

That was my impression too. There was mention of light panzers (Lobos I guess) taking off, Aguilar choppers in the air and missiles being fired at him as well. But all the really big stuff would have been outside of Denver proper. This whole thing was why Aztlan lost the Yucatan, because they had to pull military forces away from that conflict to deal with this one.
Doesn't the news bit also talk about Ghost Walker tearing a large blood spirit in half? Yea I figure he must be pretty damn tough. My impression was that his absence was why some of the other greats were getting away with the things they were. Or not.

[Bull]

I think if any of the respective militaries involved had felt like rolling into a city full of civilians and unleashing hell, then Ghostwalker would (eventually) be a smear.

Agreed. I'm not saying he would be completely unkillable (Though, by the rules, once you hit about 30 or so Hardened Armor, not much is going to touch you outside of something REALLY big, like Main Battleship weaponry, Thor Shots, or Nukes). Just that in less than 24 hours, with civilian casualties to deal with, it's completely feasible to me that GW rolled in, annihilated some of the primary light military defenses, sicked a few dozen spirits to Confuse, Fear, Accident, etc the rest, and made everyone pause long enough to go "umm, ok, maybe we should talk". Then he cut a couple backroom deal with a couple of the primary countries, and that was that.

As Patrick said, anything else was basically going to be the death of just about everyone in Denver, one way or another, and be an epic PR disaster.

If Ghostwaker had been just chilling out in the middle of the desert or something, with no people around, and the Azzies, or the UCAS or whoever had a fill military regiment ready to go? Sure, GW would eventually lose if he decided to stick it out an fight. But it would be really, really, REALLY damn costly for the military forces involved. And GW's not gonna just sit there while people poke at him from long range. If nothing else, Force 24 Improved Invisibilty SPell to get the hell out of dodge (Or even more effective and possible, he has a free spirit pact and can use the Astral Gateway Power).

Bull

[Demonseed Elite]

This whole thing was why Aztlan lost the Yucatan, because they had to pull military forces away from that conflict to deal with this one.

I really wonder if the Sixth World Almanac will address this. If SoLA had come out, it would have been clear that Aztlan did not lose the Yucatan. But it didn't come out, so the last canon material on the subject makes it look like Aztlan was on the ropes there. With the recent freelancer fallout and with pieces of 6WA being rewritten, I'm not sure how that subject will be addressed.

But one thing is clear: Aztlan did not shift significant military forces to Denver. If they had, the outcome would have been much, much messier than it was. The public relations problem is part of the reason they didn't; Aztlan may have been able to cover-up the war in the Yucatan, which most of the Sixth World doesn't care much about, but they would have had a harder time covering up a shock-and-awe campaign on Denver. And then there's the whole issue of an Aztlan army crossing the border (which they have to do to get to Denver) kicking off a major international war.

What bugs me about Ghostwalker is not that he wasn't shot out of the sky when he first appeared. He caught everyone flat-footed and he's no doubt very powerful. It's how very little anyone has done since his coup. Here's a city that was apparently so important that it had to be divided up among numerous national governments and they all handed the keys to a dragon who appeared out of nowhere. What kind of sweet deal did he cut with these governments, exactly?

My second beef with Ghostwalker is less about Ghostwalker and more about the whole plot line. I don't have an issue with a dragon declaring a major city as his fiefdom, it's a pretty cool idea. I just don't think Denver was the best city for it and in the process Shadowrun lost a really interesting sprawl that had a lot of potential on its own.

[Whipstitch]

That's more or less how I feel about it. As Bull mentioned earlier, I figure that the trick to killing a GD would be targeting them in the first place. Great Dragons almost certainly have access to some seriously jacked up illusions that would make a high grade cat shaman green with envy. For all we know many of those spirit sightings were actually the result of mind manipulations and phantasms. That's not to say he doesn't have real power, of course, but you have to consider the possibility that a GD and his high powered spirit servitors may very well be capable of making their force look quite a bit scarier than it actually is-- the fog of war is bad enough without Great Forms and Spirits of Man running around whipping up mental manipulations and phantasms in addition to the purely physical havoc they're quite capable of creating. Such things aren't foolproof, of course, but suddenly turning a big portion of your enemy's army into a batch of unreliable witnesses would definitely sow a lot of confusion.

So I guess I can sorta buy into the idea that a particularly powerful Great could an unprepared opponent over a barrel and cut a good deal in the short term, particularly when you consider all the other crap that was going on in the background of this particular incident. It's just after the nations in question have a chance to regroup that I think it gets a bit sketchy. The gubmint deciding to honor a bad deal just isn't something that happens very often in my vision of the Sixth World.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Agreed. I'm not saying he would be completely unkillable (Though, by the rules, once you hit about 30 or so Hardened Armor, not much is going to touch you outside of something REALLY big, like Main Battleship weaponry, Thor Shots, or Nukes). Just that in less than 24 hours, with civilian casualties to deal with, it's completely feasible to me that GW rolled in, annihilated some of the primary light military defenses, sicked a few dozen spirits to Confuse, Fear, Accident, etc the rest, and made everyone pause long enough to go "umm, ok, maybe we should talk". Then he cut a couple backroom deal with a couple of the primary countries, and that was that.

As Patrick said, anything else was basically going to be the death of just about everyone in Denver, one way or another, and be an epic PR disaster.

If Ghostwaker had been just chilling out in the middle of the desert or something, with no people around, and the Azzies, or the UCAS or whoever had a fill military regiment ready to go? Sure, GW would eventually lose if he decided to stick it out an fight. But it would be really, really, REALLY damn costly for the military forces involved. And GW's not gonna just sit there while people poke at him from long range. If nothing else, Force 24 Improved Invisibilty SPell to get the hell out of dodge (Or even more effective and possible, he has a free spirit pact and can use the Astral Gateway Power).

Bull

Correct me if I am wrong though, bit didn't a Canon Great Dragon take an Orbital Laser and Survive? I mean Really, isn't that just a little excessive there... Something that would wipe out a city is only a nuissance to a dragon? Really? Come on now, all that does is establish that the Greats are not something that can be removed from the game... they reek of Plot Device, which is okay with me, but that being said, it should be admitted that that is what they are there for instead of denying it and saying that they are just fairly powerful characters... they aren't, they are Plot Devices...

Keep the Faith

[Glyph]

The great dragons have always annoyed the hell out of me. They never seem to be anything but overpowered author Sues. A great dragon should be something that can challenge a team of prime runners, not some overblown plot device in NPC form that can shrug off orbital bombardment, ravage modern cities, etc. The IEs are just as bad, although fortunately those have been played down in SR4.

[Bull]

So I guess I can sorta buy into the idea that a particularly powerful Great could an unprepared opponent over a barrel and cut a good deal in the short term, particularly when you consider all the other crap that was going on in the background of this particular incident. It's just after the nations in question have a chance to regroup that I think it gets a bit sketchy. The gubmint deciding to honor a bad deal just isn't something that happens very often in my vision of the Sixth World.

The trick here is that two of the nations, IIRC, decided to back GW completely. ANd we're never told why. The UCAS and one of the Amerind nations, IIRC (The PCC?) threw their weight in behind GW. I'm guessing the rest of the countries just decided that it wasn't worth fighting over.

In my mind (And this is in no way canon), GW traded magic "secrets", and/or piles of gold. Maybe he continues to offer a yearly "tribute".

And more importantly, he's more or less become a figurehead in Denver anyways. He may consider it his domain, but he's left the city to run unmolested since then. So at the end of the day, none of the other countries lost anything, really. Nobody else is gonna fuck with Denver while the big white wyrm is watching over it, and they still run their day to day operations as usual. THe question isn't so much "Why have they left the Dragon in place" as it is "Why would they bother gambling to change a system that's working in their favor"?

Personally, I think it was a bit of a lost opportunity. There's a lot of potential in a city run by a dragon. But the changeover from FASA to FanPro really derailed the plotlines, and I think any planned followup was more or less dropped. There had been talk about Denver getting more of a focus post YotC at one point.

Bull

[Bull]

Correct me if I am wrong though, bit didn't a Canon Great Dragon take an Orbital Laser and Survive? I mean Really, isn't that just a little excessive there... Something that would wipe out a city is only a nuissance to a dragon? Really? Come on now, all that does is establish that the Greats are not something that can be removed from the game... they reek of Plot Device, which is okay with me, but that being said, it should be admitted that that is what they are there for instead of denying it and saying that they are just fairly powerful characters... they aren't, they are Plot Devices...

Keep the Faith

No, they totally are Plot Devices. And I don;t think anyone's ever claimed otherwise. That's why they have no stats, in general (and I've always said trying to give "baseline GD stats" was always a mistake).

I'm not sure about the Oribital Laser, I don't remember that one all that well, but Orbital Lasers aren't something that's ever been statted up or really described in any detail either. I don't remember any killer, city destroying lasers mentioned in SR anywhere though. The closest they've come is the Thor Shot, and even then I think the best those have pulled off is ships or small buildings.

Bull

[TomDowd]

One of the elements we played with in the original Shadowrun story was that when the Great Dragons woke up they discovered a world - the 6th World -  that was radically different than any world they had experienced before. The combination of a low (but growing) mana level and technology meant that the Great Dragons were not the 'gods' they had been in their day. They were, in fact, disquietingly (to them) vulnerable. We hinted about pre-Awakening 'dragon hunts' connected to nuclear testing, which probably found a few of them. When they awoke even the dumbest among them realized that rolling out and just trying to take over was not a good idea, given the amount of firepower that could be directed at them. So, the majority of them dug in and created socio-political fiefdoms to not only establish power bases, but to protect themselves as well. They were still vulnerable, however. One example is the finale of my book Night's Pawn when the Great Dragon Alamais finds himself in the cross-hairs of a full-out combat mission backed by the 2051 equivalent of  AC-130 gunships packing battlefield lasers.

Something that we also thought about, but I don't think it ever saw print anywhere, was that any government or large military-industrial corp, would immediately be working up action plans for taking out Great Dragons. Given that a Great Dragon would be hard-pressed to affect anything in orbit, I can see a good deal of effort being put into developing orbit-to-ground weaponry to use against the Dragons... and that could have other purposes as well. The Dragons would be aware of such things, and would work to strike their own alliances to gain knowledge about how to protect themselves from these threats. (For example, it could be argued that one of the reasons that some of the Dragons spent as much time with a human appearance as they did was so that they would be harder to track via technological means. The theory being that a dragon-human in the boardroom is harder to hit from orbit than one that has to lounge under a tent in the parking lot.)

We also wanted to be sure that the Great Dragons became a power in the post 2050 world, not the power to be reckoned with. When writing this kind of fiction rampant escalation is something that you have to fight against all the time. Its very easy to fall back on simply making new things bigger and more bad-ass than what's come before it, but that quickly spirals out of control. What works best is that when new things are introduced they throw off the balance of what is already there, but do not necessarily dominate automatically. Is it feasible that in the 15 years since the Awakening a Dragon like Ghostwalker could exhibit the kind of power that he did and be ready willing and able to take on multiple, technologically capable (and magically capable) governments simultaneously? Sure. But the author in me is forced to ponder whether or not something else is/was going on...

Given everything that has been said (and I have to confess to knowing nothing special about the Ghostwalker situation), I would think a completely logical question to ask in-character would be why wasn't more specialized firepower turned on him at the time he took over the Denver area? And why hasn't anyone done much of anything since? (And given that within a very short period of time after showing up through the astral rift he was laying magical siege to the Denver area, it certainly seems like he had a plan and immediately went to it...)

TomD

(And while I was writing this, some other posters chimed in along the same lines. I will reiterate one of my points - it wasn't an orbital laser that hit Alamais, but a battlefield-grade one firing from an aircraft, and he didn't shrug it off. And remember, something firing from orbit doesn't have to be a city burners, in fact the likelihood is that a controlled energy weapon wouldn't be.)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

No, they totally are Plot Devices. And I don;t think anyone's ever claimed otherwise. That's why they have no stats, in general (and I've always said trying to give "baseline GD stats" was always a mistake).

I'm not sure about the Oribital Laser, I don't remember that one all that well, but Orbital Lasers aren't something that's ever been statted up or really described in any detail either. I don't remember any killer, city destroying lasers mentioned in SR anywhere though. The closest they've come is the Thor Shot, and even then I think the best those have pulled off is ships or small buildings.

Bull

An actual Thor shot would devestate far more than just a building or a ship, assuming the "telephone pole" sized rods typically discussed for this project... Large Tungston Rods of that size tend to weigh in the 5000kg Range and would have a High Level Tactical/Very Low Level Strategic nuclear yield at best, and higher ratings at worst... at least in theory anyways... while much smaller weapons (Crowbar sized Rods) could be used for more surgical strikes...

The resulting extreme force can be explained by the formula Ek = m(v^2)/2, where Ek is the kinetic energy, m the mass of the object and v its velocity.

Mass is about 5000kg
Speed is proposed to be about 36000 mps (though some place it as low as 9000 mps)

Doing the math (Using the Metric Scale): 3.24^12th of Kinetic Energy... that is a LOT of kinetic energy... Not sure how that converts to equivalent Kilotons of TNT, but it can't be a small number...

Keep the Faith

[Dumori]

How ever its likely that the smaller rods of crowbar size are commonly used as the telephone sized ones are very destructive. It also gives thats there would be one hell of a rang of thor shots to cater for many diffrent situations.

[Ol' Scratch]

The big problem is that if great dragons are this powerful, why do they even play games with metahumanity? As Death said in the most recent episode of Supernatural, “This is one little planet in one tiny solar system in a galaxy that’s barely out of its diapers. I’m old, Dean. Very old. So I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you.”

[hermit]

Because in the great order of things, they shrink to almost human size.

They also have, going by the SR3 rules, little chance, even channeling a giant spirit, with an armour spell as big as they can hope to have, and hiding behind a barrier, to survive a direct hit with a ship-ship weapon, let alone a serious cruise missile, aerosol bomb, or dragon-zapper sattelite beam weapon.

[Draco18s]

dragon-zapper

I read this and imagined a (very large) bug zapper with the logo and words "Dragon Zapper!" on the side and had to laugh.

[Angelone]

I read this and imagined a (very large) bug zapper with the logo and words "Dragon Zapper!" on the side and had to laugh.

So shiny... so shiny and blue... must have it... ZAP! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[HappyDaze]

and missiles being fired at him as well.

Well, as long as they were fired AT HIM, then he has nothing to worry about thanks to SR4's terrible scatter rules.

[Ophis]

One of the elements we played with in the original Shadowrun story was that when the Great Dragons woke up they discovered a world - the 6th World -  that was radically different than any world they had experienced before. The combination of a low (but growing) mana level and technology meant that the Great Dragons were not the 'gods' they had been in their day. They were, in fact, disquietingly (to them) vulnerable. We hinted about pre-Awakening 'dragon hunts' connected to nuclear testing, which probably found a few of them. When they awoke even the dumbest among them realized that rolling out and just trying to take over was not a good idea, given the amount of firepower that could be directed at them. So, the majority of them dug in and created socio-political fiefdoms to not only establish power bases, but to protect themselves as well. They were still vulnerable, however. One example is the finale of my book Night's Pawn when the Great Dragon Alamais finds himself in the cross-hairs of a full-out combat mission backed by the 2051 equivalent of  AC-130 gunships packing battlefield lasers.

So Alamais wasn't caught by an orbital laser then? I seem to remember that from Nights Pawn but you wrote it so you know best.

On the GW thing I always felt that th Draco Foundation (whose head was UCAS VP...) fed him the info he needed since he was Dunkelzahn's brother.

[Draco18s]

Well, as long as they were fired AT HIM, then he has nothing to worry about thanks to SR4's terrible scatter rules.

HAHAHA! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[kzt]

Doing the math (Using the Metric Scale): 3.24^12th of Kinetic Energy... that is a LOT of kinetic energy... Not sure how that converts to equivalent Kilotons of TNT, but it can't be a small number...

4.2 * 10^15J/MT. So a bit under a KT.

[TomDowd]

So Alamais wasn't caught by an orbital laser then? I seem to remember that from Nights Pawn but you wrote it so you know best.

On the GW thing I always felt that th Draco Foundation (whose head was UCAS VP...) fed him the info he needed since he was Dunkelzahn's brother.

My recollection was that the lasers were in the transports that the main characters deployed from, and targeted by a hand-held spotter unit. Could I be wrong? Hell yes - its been too long to trust my memory alone. I'll double check my copy of the book tomorrow since its currently in my school office. 

And that's a very interesting conspiracy theory. That then begs the question - Did the Draco Foundation know of his coming, in advance?

[Demonseed Elite]

The trick here is that two of the nations, IIRC, decided to back GW completely. ANd we're never told why. The UCAS and one of the Amerind nations, IIRC (The PCC?) threw their weight in behind GW. I'm guessing the rest of the countries just decided that it wasn't worth fighting over.

In my mind (And this is in no way canon), GW traded magic "secrets", and/or piles of gold. Maybe he continues to offer a yearly "tribute".

I do think I'd feel better about the whole plot if there were some hints in this direction, or some seriously curious shadowrunners digging into it. Like Tom said in his post, it's hard not to imagine there is more going on here, but there's been little material to indicate it.

[Redcrow]

For my own campaign setting I've essentially ignored everything pertaining to Ghostwalker. IMO, such a vulgar display of power is not only not very bright, but is beneath a Great Dragon. Instead I prefer to portray the Great Dragons as Machiavellian schemers who use manipulation and their incredible resources/influence to get what they want. While characters may from time to time work for a Great Dragon, they usually aren't aware of it because there would be numerous proxies between the two. Even the person who hires the runners may not know that it is on behalf of a Great Dragon that they are acting.

Conversely, most Great Dragons are so wrapped up in their own schemes and covert power struggles that the runners (thankfully) remain beneath their notice. However, should the runners errrrmmm, run afoul of a Great Dragon then I would likely pull a Kaiser Souze* on them.

OTH, my games also tend to be less run 'n gun and more run 'n hide so YMMV of course.





*The Usual Suspects