What Justifies an Omega Order?, Looking for secrets that could bring down a AAA... Options

[Rad]

Pretty much what it says on the tin. I'm looking for ideas for a deep, dark secret so terrible that it could destroy a AAA megacorp if it ever got out. This is largely inspired by the quest in Dragonfall, where you're hired to blow up an Azzie research facility that's working on developing a form of ritual blood magic than can kill people through their relatives.

What I have in mind is for it to be some kind of secret Aztechnology project which either poses a massive threat to the rest of the Corporate Court, or is just so unbelievably heinous that even corps that mess around with bug spirits and blood magic will go "Damn omae, that drek's just wrong."

If you have an idea for another corp or some other type of secret I'm open to hearing about it, the main thing is that it must be something that has a significant chance to outright destroy a AAA if the secret is exposed. Ideally the megacorp-killing nature of the secret should be obvious to any shadowrunners who stumble across it. Not an easy thing, I know--given some of the scandals the corps have weathered--but I'm interested to see people's ideas of just where the line is in terms of corporate shenanigans.

[binarywraith]

Honestly, I can't think of a single thing they'd actually give an Omega Order for these days, after the shit Aztechnology's been allowed to get away with without even so much as sanctions.

[Rad]

Yeah, that's kind of why I was asking. I tried to think of something bad enough to be "holy shit, we could bring down a mega with this" level material, and came up empty.

Bear in mind, it doesn't have to be omega-order fodder. Maybe the information poses some other type of risk to the corporation other than getting their peers to stomp all over them with Thor shots.

[Sendaz]

What I have in mind is for it to be some kind of secret Aztechnology project which either poses a massive threat to the rest of the Corporate Court, or is just so unbelievably heinous that even corps that mess around with bug spirits and blood magic will go "Damn omae, that drek's just wrong."

In the Azzie pyramid, that's called the Quarterly review. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

No seriously.

If your department does not submit at least one world collapsing/war crime equivalent plan you get to play guinea pig for another department's plan.

If you have an idea for another corp or some other type of secret I'm open to hearing about it, the main thing is that it must be something that has a significant chance to outright destroy a AAA if the secret is exposed. Ideally the megacorp-killing nature of the secret should be obvious to any shadowrunners who stumble across it. Not an easy thing, I know--given some of the scandals the corps have weathered--but I'm interested to see people's ideas of just where the line is in terms of corporate shenanigans.

Have at look at Sacrifical Limb where the runners find out more about Ares and their bug research. But even if released, they would probably still weather it fairly much.

To get a full on Omega order it would have to be something that affected the Corps/ Corporate Court directly, undermining them or cutting into their profits significantly.

If Halberstam turned back up at a corp with daisy chained TM brains in jars to create an overwhelming force to subvert the Matrix might get someone's interest and the CC might shut it down so no one party had it.

[EKBT81]

IMO:

Out-of setting answer: Whatever the author considers fitting. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

In-Setting answer: Stuff that threatens to deeply upset the corporate world order.

What cases have been actually mentioned in fluff yet? IIRC the one against Art Dankwalther. Was Operation Reciprocity actually a full Omega Order? I'm not sure there.

[Curator]

anything to do with using live human subjects, mass killings/genocide of poor/condemned/particular/sick people to try to save face/gain property/cover something up, (meta)human genetic experiments, the gross stuff

[Rad]

Yeah, Reciprocity was kind of what set the bar so high. Sources vary on whether that was a full on omega order or not, but either way the corp weathered it relatively well, so this needs to be something worse than privatizing a nation's worth of corporate assets.

One direction I was thinking of was that (IIRC) Aztechnology is one of the main food suppliers for the 6th world--so something that involved introducing some kind of additive (retrovirus/nanites/awakened drugs/ect) that gave them some kind of hold over everyone that consumed their products could be a big thing. Since virtually everyone eats Azzie-made food products, that would mean messing with a lot of the other mega's wageslaves/consumers, which is sure to not go over well.

The trick is to figure out what the additive does that makes it such a threat. Mind control? Drug Addiction? Opening people to possession by blood spirits?

[edit]

anything to do with using live human subjects, mass killings/genocide of poor/condemned/particular/sick people to try to save face/gain property/cover something up, (meta)human genetic experiments, the gross stuff

Yeah, but that's "tuesday" for most megacorps.

[/edit]

[Cynewulf]

Constructing a giant laser under the surface of the moon, aimed at Earth or the Zurich Orbital, and calling it the 'Death Star'.
The part the Corporate Court gets annoyed at is the blatent trademark infringement.

[Stahlseele]

stuff like the ability to listen in to and to change the datastream in fibre optic cables.
because with that you have basically achieved world domination capabilities.

[Sengir]

The Corporate Court has a secret list of technologies which were lost during the first Crash and shall never be recovered, on the threat of an Omega Order:
- Remotely manipulating optical communication (possibly made moot in the course of Shadowplay)
- Core war programs (i.e, another crash worm)
- Destroying comm sats.

Being exposed is widely infiltrated by the Bugs would certainly also qualify -- what happened to the UB amounts to an Omega Order.

[Cain]

What cases have been actually mentioned in fluff yet? IIRC the one against Art Dankwalther. Was Operation Reciprocity actually a full Omega Order? I'm not sure there.

A full Omega Order is all-out corporate war; IIRC Dankwalther was "just" justified use of tactical orbital weaponry.

Really, what justifies an Omega Order is politics. If you convince the Corporate Court that it's in their best interests, they'll order one. Exactly what you justify it doesn't exactly matter, it's politics and favors that will win the day.

[Nath]

Originally (in Corporate Shadowfiles), what makes an Omega Order is the way the penalty must be carried out rather than the act that prompted it.

The Corporate Court issues mandate to corporations to punish the offender with a fixed amount of damages. When a small corporation breaks the rules, any of the AAA corporation should be able to gather singlehandly enough assets to tear them down. Moving into the AA megacorporate league, it might takes two or more of the AAA to coordinate their efforts. And if the offender happens to be one of the AAA, then all of the other AAA corporations would be called. More especially, it requires those corporations to divest assets out of the range of their strict business interests for the common good. So they would try to minimize the risks and loss associated.
The Omega Order is a mandate twice open: the amount of damages that can be dealt is unlimited, and the corporations that may take part is also unrestricted. The point is not only to gather enough forces to take down the targeted corporation. It also avoids having only the handful of mandated corporations looting all key assets.

The Corporate Court can issue a "regular" mandate to all seven, eight, nine or ten AAA prime megacorporations to drive a corporation value to zero. They may even possibly issue a mandate to ten, twenty or thirty additional AA megacorporations to contribute. But the actual Omega Order is when every and any AA and AAA megacorporation is allowed to.
Actually, a large regular mandate could even be stronger than an Omega Order since it would nominally requires those corporations to contribute to the effort, while the OO is open.

However, that was how it was defined originally. Story-wise, a wide-reaching mandate or an Omega Order would have the same result, and the latter has a cooler name (and just has a name, to start). Since Shadowrun is, as a roleplaying game, story-driven, people expect Omega Order for the sake of dramatic showing.

Undramatically, in my opinion, the worst thing a corporation could do would be deprive any of its shareholders of their rights. Really. The whole system relies on the idea that shareholders retain their rights to vote and sell-out. Otherwise the whole system collapses. Megacorporations may have shareholders, but also are themselves the shareholders of their subsidiaries. They rely on those rules to have their own managers obeying, instead of seceding with their entire division to join the competition. Sure, you can go the illegal route and threaten shareholders to sell-out, or outright kill them. But the very fact Damien Knight or whoever heads the Shiawase family still have to deal with their rivals on the board, while number of plots still revolve about buy-out, suggest some red line stands.

[Jaid]

basically, to get an individual representative to vote in favour of an omega order, the cost of issuing the omega order must be less than the cost of not issuing it (not reminding people that the corporate court can just bomb you all to death does hold monetary value as does the cost of actually carrying out the punishment).

to get enough for a majority, then, you need to persuade a majority of representatives that the threat to their corporation's bottom line is greater than the cost of launching the omega order. anything less than that, it just isn't going to happen no matter how awful the things you're doing are. (alternately, you can also provide them with reason to believe that issuing the omega order is going to be compensated by you in excess of the cost of issuing the omega order - basically, it just has to make them more money to issue it than to not issue it)

Art Dankwalther didn't get a thor shot dropped on him because what he was doing was bad. he got a thor shot dropped on him because he was going to cost too many people too much money.

[Shortstraw]

Honestly, I can't think of a single thing they'd actually give an Omega Order for these days, after the shit Aztechnology's been allowed to get away with without even so much as sanctions.

Not leaving out the yearly offering of cookies and milk to the great northern spirit of man and his horde of task spirits?

[Shemhazai]

Ghouls as a population reduction measure.

[kzt]

An omega order is the Corporate Court going to war with a major corporation. They will NOT go quietly. Zurich Orbital will be be the first thing that turns into a cloud of metallic confetti.

[Sengir]

An omega order is the Corporate Court going to war with a major corporation. They will NOT go quietly. Zurich Orbital will be be the first thing that turns into a cloud of metallic confetti.

If the Z-O went down so easily, somebody would already have done it...

[Lindt]

It survived the Crash Virus and a dedicated hacking force whos entire job was to drop it out of orbit. Its a tough old bird of a space station.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Killing a space station, if you have the resources and are willing to burn the bridges to do so, is quite easy. Launch a large number of missiles that will explode and scatter shrapnel in an intercept trajectory. DONE. Or the whole "Ford Americar moving at ten times escape velocity" trick. Also, lasers work quite well, even better in the vacuum of space than not, and there's no defending against them the way they might theoretically defend against a few projectiles with their own defense sats.

Killing it with HACKING is not quite so easy, but killing it PHYSICALLY? Quite frankly, I'm astonished that Z-O didn't go down the moment they declared an Omega on Fuchi.

[Jaid]

destroying the ZO station wouldn't really help you any in defending against an omega order. basically, for all intents and purposes, when the corporate court declares an omega order on you, it's because the big 10 declared war on you. the court itself is merely the ambassadors... it would be like the entire UN declaring war on you. you might blow up the UN building, but each member nation still exists, and you just made them all mad. that is perhaps *slightly* better than having them all mad and still with their intact communication lines, but you're still pretty much screwed beyond belief.

[FuelDrop]

Back in 4th I designed a surface-to-orbit AV missile that could be fired from any launcher and would home in on its target nearly perfectly. cost less than 10 grand per shot. [/tangent]

What would justify an Omega Order? Realistically, something that will cost all of the big 10 enough money that ANYTHING else is preferable. Think a Godzilla breed-and-release program, a doomsday organization with an actual shot at success, Hydra's plan in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, that sort of thing. For the Corporate Court, issuing an Omega Order is a risk that the world's governments (who still have real military forces) decide that the corps have finally crossed the line and get their asses into gear. It's not exactly a big risk, but it is a risk that the CC has no desire to take without a good reason.

[kzt]

destroying the ZO station wouldn't really help you any in defending against an omega order. basically, for all intents and purposes, when the corporate court declares an omega order on you, it's because the big 10 declared war on you. the court itself is merely the ambassadors... it would be like the entire UN declaring war on you. you might blow up the UN building, but each member nation still exists, and you just made them all mad. that is perhaps *slightly* better than having them all mad and still with their intact communication lines, but you're still pretty much screwed beyond belief.

The CC is supposed to be a lot more then a few people meeting. ZO is stated to be actually critical to normal economic operations of the corps, particularly financial transfers between corps and preventing large-scale financial fraud. It goes first because it's just so darn easy and the chaos it creates opens other opportunities.

It's unlikely that you can defeat all the other corps, but you need to defeat them, you just need to convince them that you can really, really hurt them and they should really reconsider. For example, say after being hit with an omega order and (and post swatting ZO) Aztechnology 'reluctantly' uses a ritual magic attack to kill all C level and board of Horizon when they won't agree to "just get along together".

[Jaid]

and then you're also slitting your own throat, and demonstrating that you're too dangerous to allow to live. congratulations. you've just made yourself a target that they can't afford to not completely obliterate.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Jaid: They've already issued an order to exterminate you.

At this point, you have nothing whatsoever to lose by deciding to take them down with you. Swatting Z-O out of the sky and instituting the insane havok that will cause is just the beginning. Strategic and tactical strikes launched on vulnerable vital infrastructure (and when you're going all-in, the definition of what is and is not "vulnerable" skews quite a lot,) scorched-earth tactics, scorched-matrix tatics with the release of the worst cyberworms and viruses your cyberwarfare labs have created, full-scale biowar and astral warfare...

Really, the CC issuing an Omega Order is likely to kick off World War III. The national governments (and please do not make the mistake of thinking they are powerless, inconsequential, or (all) subordinate to a AAA Mega,) will get involved in very short order, because their own interests will inevitably be threatened because that vital corporate infrastructure you're targeting is also vital national infrastruture to them, too. You can't kill AZT without also killing Aztlan, and Aztlan won't take that lying down. Likewise, you can't kill Ares without killing the UCAS and quite probably large swathes of the CAS and NANs as well, and the UCAS (et al) won't take that, either. Declaring war on Horizon is tantamount to declaring war on CalFree, etcetera. And that's before the Great Dragons and Immortal Elves get involved to protect their interests.

[Rad]

Sounds good to me, part of the reason I was interested in this was that I wanted to create a scenario in which runners come across this information and have to weigh "Dude, we can take down a corp!" with "Dude, that would wreck everything forever, and just having this is likely to get us killed."

It's an excellent high-stakes "what do?" kind of situation. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

The hard part is coming up with a "corp killing secret" that's believable in-universe and immediately obvious as such.