CAS setting info? Options

[Patrick Goodman]

There should have been more things happening in Texas in SR. But I sometimes get the impression the Texan crowd don't want things to happen in Texas. They just want Texas to win.

To a certain extent, that's true. I've met a lot of Texan fans that feel that way. They just want a retcon.

I'm not one of those.

I remember back in the day at FASA sending Mike Mulvihill a document called "Line in the Sand," which outlined what would have been about a two-year arc of stuff happening in Texas, resulting in some lost territory being restored and the Sons of the Alamo being more than a footnote. He seemed interested in talking about how to start implementing some of it...and then Mort shuttered FASA.

Rob wasn't too interested in it, as I recall, but I did send a copy to him for consideration.,,and the FanPro troubles soon began.

I've been hesitant about sending it to Jason. The sad thing is, most of it could still work in the current storyline....

[snowRaven]

With all the Aztechnology stuff going on, I'd say at least talk to him about it.

[Critias]

On the other hand, having the Texan win in a single sentence only because victory rightfully belong to their people would be the surest way to remove any reason for the area to be given attention in any future sourcebooks. RPG is about telling stories as they happen, not after the facts.

Well, yeah. Which is why what I said is what we call "a joke." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

There should have been more things happening in Texas in SR. But I sometimes get the impression the Texan crowd don't want things to happen in Texas. They just want Texas to win.

I know the reason I, personally, haven't really pushed at Jason or anyone to let me write more about the CAS/Azzie border war is because...well...it's a full-on border war. It's bigger stuff than I like in my own personal Shadowrun games, it's more militant than I think your average campaign is built to handle, and it's the sort of thing I think I would have trouble selling to the average GM. I know we've got War! and a handful of gear books that are all full of attack helicopters and tanks and stuff like that...but to me, that's outside the scope of what's likely to come up in your average game. I want the things I write to be things people not only enjoy reading, but can actually use in their campaign.

If I let the military historian in me out and write a detailed piece about how this armored unit and that armored unit and this air assault badass commando team and that artillery company all get together and stomp hell out of the Azzies, who respond with this infantry brigade and this armored squad and this horde of Blood spirits...well, that's all well and good, but the trick of it is (a) somehow wedging a group of PCs into the middle of all that without them dying outright, and (b) somehow making it feel like the insertion of that group of PCs is what really matters, not the twenty hojillion dudes with supported by tanks and Thor shots and attack helicopters and stuff. And, what's more, it requires © doing so based on the assumption that the PCs aren't from there in the first place, because the overwhelming majority of campaigns aren't set in this area, so I couldn't even write it with a "local knowledge/guerrilla warfare" slant.

So, yeah. I'd dig it if stuff happened in Texas. There is stuff happening in Texas, in fact, that I know about. But it's the sort of thing that would be tough to write and make useful for your average Shadowrun game, which means some folks would love to see it, most folks would regard it as wasted page count and money, and it's a hard sell to The Powers That Be, who would obviously prefer we work on things that would appeal to a broader audience.

[thenightaflame]

Random additional question now that it seems the Texans are done playing (hey, did you know that there is no such thing as a law that states your state flag is to be flown at the same level as the US flag, and if we cut Alaska in half, Texas would be the third largest state (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Sorry, Texans are fun to pick at.)

Anyway, what's the best source to find out what happened to X or Y company. I realize that there's no way that every company's future has been mapped out in the 6th World, but specifically, I'm looking for Shell Oil and Chevron. Also, is there any supplement that deals in any way with mining (specifically equipment)?

Thanks.

[Nath]

Anyway, what's the best source to find out what happened to X or Y company. I realize that there's no way that every company's future has been mapped out in the 6th World, but specifically, I'm looking for Shell Oil and Chevron.

For 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions, you may take a look at my old Corporate Index. According to Shadows of Europe, Shell was involved in the formation of Royal Dutch Joint Enterprises (now Regulus Joint Industries) but it's not clear what Shell assets has become. California Free State had half a page on Chevron.

[thenightaflame]

Awesome. That'll be amazingly helpful, and the UPS guy just left from delivering the Almanac and Shadows over North America, so it's time to start reading. Wish I had unlimited funds so I could just buy all of the books at once (well, just make that all books)...

[Nath]

I've met a lot of Texan fans that feel that way. They just want a retcon.

An election CAS 2076 platform ? "No to Florida Recount, Yes to Texas Retcon !"

[thenightaflame]

Since this is probably going to be somewhat of a long-term project for me, I decided to set up a blog where I'll stick stuff I make up for this: here's my first entry:

http://southernshadows.wordpress.com I haven't set up any of the design side yet, so the look will most likely change, but not terribly much because well, I suck at that sort of thing. If anyone else wants to join in with adding material (trying to keep it at a more locoal level to avoid canon conflicts and flesh out areas that aren't really covered in current materials), I can make that happen.

Criticisms and comments welcomed, and to keep you from having to go to an outside link, I'll spoilerize the text:

[ Spoiler ]

I’ve hemmed and hawed for a bit over just how I should start this trip into the Land of Cotton, but it all boils down to how I’m not much of a writer. Reckon that’ll be clear enough before too long in any event.

Dirty Bird and Smokey Joe did an ok job of giving some of the high points of the region, but I’m going to clue you in to some of the specifics. Tidbits of info that might help you survive just a little bit longer.

As an example, ever wonder why Tuscaloosa and Birmingham are still separate cities even though B’ham should have swallowed T-town up years ago? Might have a lot to do with coal mines.

The area between the two cities was lousy with coal and, unfortunately, methane. At about the turn of the century there were a couple of occasions where these things blew up, caught on fire, and/or otherwise made a lot of people’s lives miserable while ending a few dozen lives. Corps have really come a long way, ain’t they?

Then late in 2017, after the Ghost Dance cowed the US, the drek really hit the fan. By this time, there were a few hundred kilometers of tunnels dug out in the area from Brookwood (just east of T-Town) to Summiton (a bit west of Birmingham). Most of these varied between 2 and 4 kilometers underground with as many as two dozen levels in the larger parts of the Blue Creek coal seam.

Here it might do well to point out that to keep these things from blowing up too terribly often, you’ve got to continuously pump out the methane and cover everything with rockdust to keep the coal dust from building up from dangerous levels. These mines had mostly been abandoned for around five years as South American coal was massively cheaper to import, so it goes without saying that neither was rockdust freshly applied nor was methane pumped out for quite some time.

Construction had just completed on a massive smelter that was going to use nearby Holt Lake for cooling. This was generally considered a good thing as jobs are typically always welcome. Enter a couple of ecoterrorists who styled themselves as Choctaw. They called themselves Hush and Tali. Not only was this plant and the resulting thermal pollution something they patently did not like, but they also figured they could do “their part” in fighting the white man as well. Why let the fact that they had almost as much Choctaw blood running in their veins as I’ve got martian blood get in the way of some good righteous smiting?

No one is exactly sure what happened, but it happened in a big way. The popular theory is that one or both of the two were awakened and that they used spirits to stir up all of that coal dust and methane that had been undisturbed for so long, then all that was needed was the smallest of sparks…

The explosion was tremendous, registering on seismographs as a 3.2 as far away as the University of Tennessee up in Knoxville, Tennessee, some 480 kilomters away. Many of the mine shafts and tunnels collapsed, creating chasms in the ground above them. Some places the elevation changed by over 80 meters in a matter of moments. The smelting plant was entirely destroyed, as was much of Brookwood, and well, pretty much everything that was along around a 100 kilometer long corridor some 60 kilometers wide. The accumulated methane shot out like jets from the various access shafts that dotted the area for almost three weeks. The land became little more than jagged cliffs, blind drop offs, and other terrain that defy anyone to attempt to cross, much less build on. This part of the state is now known as Coal Canyon

Surprisingly, even to this day, we’re still probably not done seeing cave-ins and sink-holes. Coal can smolder, and for a very long time. No one really knows exactly where the fire is, but the people who know about such things claim it’s most likely still going on. Old geological surveys put the Blue Creek Coal seam at somewhere around 800km long. God help us if it drops one of those biological research facilities in downtown Birmingham. Those idiots always have some world-ending plague sitting around.

And like any other drek-hole imaginable, it’s never so bad that you won’t find someone who’ll live in it. Some metahumans took refuge in the accessible parts of the mines when the discrimination got to them badly enough. From the stories, there are some families that have lived down there for going on three generations, even opening up some of the previously collapsed areas. Mainly it’s orcs and trolls, but you get a sprinkling of dwarf and the tougher (or more desperate) humans and elves. The resulting groups tend to be very clannish and protective of their boarders with the largest enclave being a group of trolls that call themselves the “Jimmy Number Fives” or Fivers, for short after the name of the mine entrance they inhabited, Jim Walter No. 5.

Currently, their leader goes by the name Saban, but if rumor is to be believed, he’s on pretty shaky ground because this isn’t quite the bad old days and not everyone likes the idea of hiding away, making random raids on shipments that travel nearby Interstate 20-59. Some want to move up in the world, no matter the cost.

Well chummer, that’s all I’ve got for you tonight. Remember, when you dance with the devil, make damn sure you’ve called the right tune.

The tl:dr, I blew up a bunch of coal mines between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, making building at surface level fairly impossible, and have some random groups living in the remains of the mines with a very little bit on one of the groups.

Edit: proofread damnit, proofread.

[snowRaven]

The tl:dr, I blew up a bunch of coal mines between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, making building at surface level fairly impossible, and have some random groups living in the remains of the mines with a very little bit on one of the groups.

I like it.

I think there's a bunch of potential in a setting like that--it's like a toxic zone, but not quite. Could possibly give rise to some methane-dependent awakened creature, a local avenger toxic shaman, a ghost or two...

Runners can be sent in to retrieve someone who's hiding in the tunnels, or to gather reagents (or samples for BAD-making) in the form of awakened methane-eating fungi, or to find some family heirloom in the wreckage of an old home.

[thenightaflame]

I like it.

I think there's a bunch of potential in a setting like that--it's like a toxic zone, but not quite. Could possibly give rise to some methane-dependent awakened creature, a local avenger toxic shaman, a ghost or two...

Runners can be sent in to retrieve someone who's hiding in the tunnels, or to gather reagents (or samples for BAD-making) in the form of awakened methane-eating fungi, or to find some family heirloom in the wreckage of an old home.

Thanks, if you don't mind I might happily run with some of that stuff.

I added some more and cleaned up that grammatical trainwreck that was in the other post. This one is written a little dryly, but what it is what it is.

[ Spoiler ]

See that mess? That's kudzu. It's been a bane of the South for quite a while now. Originally, it was brought over by railroad companies to control soil erosion because it's a fairly hardy plant that can grow on the steep slopes of the hills they made.

This was all well and good, except that in some parts, kudzu took off like wildfire. The mix of soil, sun, humidity, and rain found in parts of the Deep South provided a perfect new home to this nefarious vine. It's not uncommon for kudzu vines to grow at a rate of 26cm a day, meaning it can quickly take over an area, slowly choking out other plant life's access to sunlight and hastening the deterioration of man-made structures. The frost each winter brings kills off the vines which new growth quickly overtakes creating a mess that's nigh impossible to walk through, at times forcing any who make the attempt have to wade through up to a meter's worth of tangled vines.

To further compound the problems caused by this plant, kudzu is a royal pain to kill. The vine portion of the plant grows out of a drekkin' huge root. In areas that have been infested for some time, it is not uncommon for them to be well over a meter in length and weigh in at 75-100kg. The vines generally grow out of one area of the main root called the rootcap, and that is what must be entirely destroyed to actually kill the plant. Notice how I said entirely? If small fragments of the rootcap remain intact, it will grow back. Killing the vines can work, if you're willing to come back and do the same thing every year for the better part of a decade. Did I forget to mention that these roots are generally deep enough and can lay dormant for long enough that most herbicides are entirely useless? And that it's not uncommon for a good half dozen of these roots to be in an area around the size of what's in the picture?

Now you know why it's not shocking to see road crews with flame throwers while you're riding the roads of the CAS.

In the hills of eastern Tennessee, back just a few years before the Awakening, the locals decided to try a slightly different approach: goats and llamas. They fenced in areas taken over by kudzu, and just let'em at it. Not sure how well it worked for them, but it sure as drek ended up causing problems for people in the southwestern reaches of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

You see some kudzu, like so much other stuff, ended up gaining a touch of magic during the awakening. The awakened varieties are easy enough to tell from the regular sort through mundane senses because their leaves have an iridescent sheen, as compared to the matte light green of the regular sort. For the mundane sorts, the only other noticeable difference is that the vines will writhe as you're walking through them, making it more difficult to travel through. If it is near a point of naturally high energy, it will grow at as much as twice the rate of normal kudzu, and its vines are not killed off by frost or freezing weather.

There's a lot more of a problem for the awakened. Firstly, the sheer mass of astrally active life in one place makes astral perception more difficult. Depending on just how infested the area is, this can range from a minor nuisance to almost being nigh on blinding. Secondly, remember that huge root? In the normal plant, it stores carbohydrates so that in lean or extreme conditions, it can survive for quite a while. The awakened variety works in a similar manner, but it also stores magical energies. It taps into not just the natural background magic of the world, but also that of any workings and magical creatures that are in its midst. So all magic that passes through or happens in one of these fields of kudzu is robbed of some of its strength. It seems as though if you can stay around 10 meters away from the plants, this has no effect except on effects that must pass through its area of effect. Another affect of note is that astral travel though an area infested by this vine is impeded, much the same way as physical travel is. Spirits are not happy at all about being forced into such an area. Finally, the arguably most dangerous characteristic of awakened kudzu is that if it absorbs too much magic too quickly, the roots will explode. Apparently, shortly before the explosion, the aura starts rapidly shifting colors.

Duke's parabiologists have taken a keen interest in the awakened kudzu's possible uses. Beyond attempting to discover the possible mechanisms for absorption of magical energies, a lot of interest is focused on how ingesting freshly cut portions of the plant can restore an adept's vitality, but this is sometimes comes at the price of losing agency. Effects are much weaker with the leaves and vines than the root itself, but there is definitely a cumulative effect with the lower potency parts. This property seems to go miles to explaining the odd behavior exhibited by certain animals that live in and off of these awakened kudzu patches, but I'll talk about them another time.

All in all, it's just another part of living in the South. Those lucky fraggers out in west Texas and Oklahoma don't have to deal too much with this stuff, but back east of the Mississippi? We're lucky to have room to walk.

tl;dr: I did a writeup not just for kudzu, but for an awakened variety of kudzu. At some point, I'm going to have to sit down and come up with the crunch for this, but the way I envision it, in muddled definitely not polished fashion:

[ Spoiler ]

Attempting to move through regular kudzu on foot will halve your movement rate and give penalties to any agility tests (at least a -1 to dice pool and most -3--depending on how thick the kudzu is for a given area). Additionally, finding anything in kudzu of either variety will be more difficult (GM's discretion penalty, based off of the size of the object, but keep in mind that even just in moderate coverage finding something like a dropped rifle will be hard if you moved away from it).

The awakened variety might be a bit on the complex side. It is more difficult to move through (I'm thinking about 1/4th movement rate and -2 to -4 dice pool penalties for agility tests). 1/2 movement rate for astral movement through infested area (10 meter radius from plant), penalty to astral perception based off of level of infestation (not entirely sure how to set this up in a decently easy way to use, along with the plant blow up portion). When entering the plant's active radius, magic users have to perform an opposed test against the (thinking number of major roots present maybe?) and they take an amount of drain=to the number of net hits of the plant. This repeats every hour in which the character remains in the effected area/exits and reenters. Any spell cast within the plant's effective area manifests as one force lower (so to get a force 3 manabolt, you've got to cast it at force 4) and all spirits that come into the area lose a point of force. Magical items such as foci function at their force-1 while in the affected area, but no permanent change is made; however spirits do permanently lose force. If the drain caused by the plants, added to the force siphoned off of spirits and spells, is greater than some number I've not thought about long enough to nail down, the root explodes, releasing the magical energies.

Eating a whole leaf can reduce drain by one point. Each point regained in such a manner compels the character to mindlessly attempt to acquire and attempt to eat the most powerful magical item that the character knows about for one minute, heedless of the current situation (which if there is no known astrally active item would mean that the character would start gorging on the leaves, adding to the amount of time they are compelled). To resist this effect, make a will test (3). Each success reduces the amount of time the effect lasts by 20 seconds. Eating any portion of the root will remove all drain suffered by the character with the side effect of making the compulsion last for five minutes. To resist, use the same method as before. All portions of the plant lose all effectiveness 1 hour after being cut.

[snowRaven]

Thanks, if you don't mind I might happily run with some of that stuff.

Feel free! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah, the crunch of that kudzu needs polishing...but I think it can turn out good.

[Bigity]

I would REALLY like to see something about occupied Texas. I mean really. A bunch of "Aztlaners" have moved all the way up to Austin? And Austin is occupied? And the rest of Texas is ignoring it? Have you met these people?

I've always felt this way, in any edition. Probably because I lived in San Angelo for over a decade and it's a border town in Shadowrun. Good place to enter Aztlan for some shadow work.

[CanRay]

I think that says more about how powerful Mexico/Aztlan has become rather than how "passive" Texans are.

[Bigity]

That never stopped us before (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)