[X] My Assistant

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Here is some nightmare fuel for you folks...

Awesome Link CanRay. Thanks

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

They sacrifice single digit numbers of people out of their nine digit number population. So no, the chances for her are astonishingly low.

That is, of course, what they want you to think. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

They sacrifice single digit numbers of people out of their nine digit number population. So no, the chances for her are astonishingly low.

They do. However, that single digit? Is not the rightmost digit. It's not the second, third, or fourth rightmost digit, either.

[Wakshaani]

I choose to believe you are being sincere in which case I say, Thank you I try so very hard.


I like the megacorps being evil not as James Bond movie villains bent on holding the world hostage but in more human ways. They are about amassing wealth and power at the expense of *almost* everyone and everything. You can turn them into silver age comic book villains and have a grand old Pink Mohawk time tearing them down but it requires suspension of disbelief beyond the amount required to play a game where you're a grizzly bear sized cyborg with horns getting into shoot outs with fireball throwing wizards. So yes on any given occasion one or more of them might be playing around with satanic black magic but to single out a handful of them as good and a handful as evil in the longterm ruins the fun. It shouldn't be that easy to figure out who the enemies are. So Aztechnology sliding down a few notches on Forbes Top 500 Evil Forces and Horizon / Ares taking major strides towards the top of the rankings makes the setting more interesting. Old school runners screaming and yelling about how Aztechnology and Renraku are the worst of the worst and the new generation shrugging it off as so-last-decade. Ares gets away with being considered one of the "good guys" but they make most of their money from guns. Without sparking a debate it's pretty easy to call that blood money. Horizon makes most of their money by manipulating the populace through media control. Aztechnology makes most of their money from food and consumer goods. Ares sat out a failed (... or successful) coup attempt while trying to sell themselves as All American, Aztechnology showed metahumanity that even Great Dragons bleed. The Azzies didn't do it to save the world, they did it to win a war they might have started and Ares didn't sit on their asses because they hate America they did it because they didn't want to lose out on military contracts with the victor.

Longwinded. I like the shades of grey. If all my players assume every run for EVO is to deliver candy to poor starving children and every run for the Azzies is to open a gate to hell it takes a lot of the dystopia out.

Very much sincere! I always love having new eyes on things, and this crosses over into my wheelhouse a bit. Dr. Doom is a great villain, for instance, but if you use him in the same way over and over, he gets stale. You have to give him occasional time off to recover. You have to give his other aspects, like his nobility, a chance to shine through to show he's not one dimensional. Sometimes he does magic suff just to mess with you. He's rich in all the right ways which turns him into a *great* bad guy.

It's easy to fall into a rut with the megas as well. If Aztechnology is always the big bag mojo boogeyman of uber-evil, then it gets all to easy to just drop them in when you need a magic badguy, so much so in fact that people will read ahead and go, "Oh, bad magic? Well, it's gonna be the Azzies." *flip pages* "Oh look! I was right. Surprise surprise."

So, yeah, you have to go with the classics because, well, they're classics, and you have to mix it up a bit as well. The Azzies beat Sirrurg the Destroyer. By themselves. They put him *down* and on Trideo so everybody saw it. They're being hailed by people all over the world for being butt-kicking do-gooders. Who saw *that* coming? I know I didn't. That's an *awesome* story and I can't wait to see where all it leads.

[ShadowDragon8685]

AZT's always had good PR.

Just because the Evil Empire triumphs over the Rampaging Monster doesn't mean they aren't still the Evil Empire.

[Wakshaani]

AZT's always had good PR.

Just because the Evil Empire triumphs over the Rampaging Monster doesn't mean they aren't still the Evil Empire.

Quite true! But it's a different story, for certain. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

As for Blood Magic, remember that not all Azzie mages are Blood Mages. That's a tiny slice of the overall magical population. With the usual magical numbers, there are only about 1300 Initiated Magicians in Aztlan, and of those, maybe a hundred are Blood Magicians. They're *powerful*, but not *common*. They use dto have influence far in excess of their numbers, but the loss or Darke and the Blood Gestalt knocked their influence down by a bunch.

[Nath]

Your milleage may vary, as there have been a lot of confusion between the Aztec tradition and Blood Magic.

The blood mages were supposed to be an elite among Aztlan and Aztechnology mages, with only the best, brightest and most ruthless taught its secrets. By 2061 in Corporate Download, only a few blood mages remained within Aztechnology, hiding they knew any blood magic, as board members were willing to remove any influence from the blood mages faction within the company. The more important part here was that, at this point, blood mages were on the run and were no longer wielding much clout inside the corp. Or at least it was what written back then. It has ben mostly ignored thereafter by a lot of gamemasters, and it's often more like every Aztlan or Aztechnology awakened know blood magic, and Corporate Guide retconned things to keep them in charge.

I like to think of Aztechnology upper management as the Death Star board meeting in Star Wars : the real businessmen like Tsurunaga Shinoyama or JJ Harving Junior may be mocking the "old religion" in front of whoever is leading the blood mages, and get a sudden nose bleed for it, Darth Vader-style, but those who call the shot, Domingo Chavez or Ding Ramos, play Moff Tarkin role and make sure no one important gets killed and the corporation keeps running.

[Wakshaani]

Yeah, Darke was the 'Vader' on the board. WIthout him, and the loss of the Gestalt, the Blood guys were reduced to a small cult with no board members going to bat for them. Pretty much, the votes went, "All in favor of adding more money to EVilPlan: Destroy All Consumers? No? All in favor of moving money from the non-profitable arm to more consumer products? Well, a unanimous vote. Next order of business..."

They're still around, but the concept of Blood Mages Running Aztechnologgy got it's back broken and has never recovered.

[shonen_mask]

Your milleage may vary, as there have been a lot of confusion between the Aztec tradition and Blood Magic.

The blood mages were supposed to be an elite among Aztlan and Aztechnology mages, with only the best, brightest and most ruthless taught its secrets. By 2061 in Corporate Download, only a few blood mages remained within Aztechnology, hiding they knew any blood magic, as board members were willing to remove any influence from the blood mages faction within the company. The more important part here was that, at this point, blood mages were on the run and were no longer wielding much clout inside the corp. Or at least it was what written back then. It has ben mostly ignored thereafter by a lot of gamemasters, and it's often more like every Aztlan or Aztechnology awakened know blood magic, and Corporate Guide retconned things to keep them in charge.

I like to think of Aztechnology upper management as the Death Star board meeting in Star Wars : the real businessmen like Tsurunaga Shinoyama or JJ Harving Junior may be mocking the "old religion" in front of whoever is leading the blood mages, and get a sudden nose bleed for it, Darth Vader-style, but those who call the shot, Domingo Chavez or Ding Ramos, play Moff Tarkin role and make sure no one important gets killed and the corporation keeps running.

The whole corp structure is corrupted just the same way. There are plenty of unsavory pratcices hidden in the inner working of the corps and the Matrix in general....
A lot of breakthroughs at a terrible cost....

[Sendaz]

Though to be fair, who hasn't sacrificed a chicken over the keyboard to try and reboot a locked up Azzie terminal when that report has to be filed tonight or it's your head on the chopping block, literally.

>_>

<_<

^_^;

Nevermind.....


The smart blood mages as a next step would be to try and introduce more innocuous uses of the blood magic, and keeping it to self-sacrificing only - ie damaging yourself to boost a spell effect or such.

If someone runs off and misuses it by bleeding the neighbour, well you did provide a warning saying it was for Use on Self only.....

[shonen_mask]

Though to be fair, who hasn't sacrificed a chicken over the keyboard to try and reboot a locked up Azzie terminal when that report has to be filed tonight or it's your head on the chopping block, literally.

>_>

<_<

^_^;

Nevermind.....


The smart blood mages as a next step would be to try and introduce more innocuous uses of the blood magic, and keeping it to self-sacrificing only - ie damaging yourself to boost a spell effect or such.

If someone runs off and misuses it by bleeding the neighbour, well you did provide a warning saying it was for Use on Self only.....

*laughs*

I remember 'bood magic' referenced in SR 2nd. And the South American Territory being described as having a minor influence in the world....

[FuelDrop]

Though to be fair, who hasn't sacrificed a chicken over the keyboard to try and reboot a locked up Azzie terminal when that report has to be filed tonight or it's your head on the chopping block, literally.

The computer gods take KFC as a sacrifice in a pinch. You know, next time you're having difficulty and find yourself without a chicken to sacrifice...

Pro tip.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

The computer gods take KFC as a sacrifice in a pinch. You know, next time you're having difficulty and find yourself without a chicken to sacrifice...

Pro tip.

"There you go, One Whole Chicken." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)
"Jobu Thanks You"

[Mongoose]

Weren't they actively trying to hasten the arrival of the Horrors at one point, too?

Probably not as corporate policy, even a secret one. Was pretty much just the effort of one specific individual or small group within the company who were able to gain a lot of resources because of the companies acceptance of blood magic, toxic shamans, etc. Basically, they paid the devil to do some dirty work, and didn't ask any questions about what he did with the money.

EDIT - ah, I see Darke has been pretty well discussed already. Carry on then.

[shonen_mask]

Probably not as corporate policy, even a secret one. Was pretty much just the effort of one specific individual or small group within the company who were able to gain a lot of resources because of the companies acceptance of blood magic, toxic shamans, etc. Basically, they paid the devil to do some dirty work, and didn't ask any questions about what he did with the money.

EDIT - ah, I see Darke has been pretty well discussed already. Carry on then.

Horizon was a Leader on that project at one time, the whole Horror thing.....
They even sold broadcast rights I believe.....

[Opti]

Canon-wise, those were the Masaya cartel from Nicaragua, the David cartel from Panama and the Cali cartel from Colombia (Aztlan SB, page 51). In Shadowrun history, the Norte del Valle cartel never ascended to prominence in Colombia, and those three cartels somehow reigned over Mexico underworld, either preventing the rise of Mexican cartels or taking control of them. By 2070, the David cartel remains as the major criminal organization in Aztlan.

ORO was the name of the corporation the leader of the Cali, David and Masaya cartels put on a corporation they bought in Mexico to launder money in 2007, which was renamed Aztechnology in 2022. It stood for Ortega, Ramos and Oriz: Juan Ortega, head of the Cali cartel, Julio Ramos, head of the David cartel, and Diego Ortiz, head of the Masaya cartel.

I submit respectfully to correction!

[CanRay]

He's got a datajack and a cyberarm. While CyberTrejo is scary, it could be worse.

He could be MysticAdeptTrejo.

Street Samurai Trejo scares me just as much. Don't forget that a lot of Bioware and Cybernetics don't show!

[Chinane]

So other than some possible links to blood magic (is this detailed in any of the sourcebooks? i.e. how much power the blood mages have?), what makes Aztechnology so much worse than the corps? I've been working my back through the metaplot and some people have alluded to Amazonia being the "good guys" in the war that just wrapped up but I just haven't gotten that impression. I'm not calling Aztlan white knights or anything I just haven't been able to find something that makes them evil. Well, beyond the whole oppressive corporation exploiting it's citizens while sacrificing humanity for power. I mean Sirrurg deserved a whooping something fierce and Amazonia didn't seem too offended about him fighting on their side.

IMO it's totally legit for a shadowrunner without META-knowledge (i.e. player reading background stuff) to root for Aztechnology in their war vs. the evil eco terrorists from Amazonia.

For most 6th world citizens Aztec is probably just that nice megacorp providing everyone with cheap food and necessities. That blood magic stuff is just vile propaganda made up by their competitors (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

[Nath]

No "metaplot knowledge" should be required to know about blood magic after August 2057, as Dunkelzahn outed Aztechnoloy use of blood magic in his will. I guess it's somewhat equivalent to Eisenhower "military-industrial complex" for the Canadian-American people.

To further encourage an end to the use of blood magic by Aztechnology and other parties, I offer a bounty of 1 million nuyen on any blood mages captured alive and delivered to the Dunkelzahn Institute of Magical Research for the purposes of studying the effects of blood magic use on metahumanity. I further authorize the Draco Foundation to provide suitable rewards for the receipt of verifiable accounts of blood magic use, the rewards to reflect the usefulness of the information provided.

It is metaplot however to know that the use of blood magic can have apocalyptic consequences that people inside Aztechnology specifically seek/seeked.