What is the leading theory on the fate of Sen. Oscuro (Mr Darke)?

I know his Big Bad Plan failed and that he fell into the Abyss when the bridge collapsed, but did anyone see him die? Could he crawl back out of the hole?

I also heard a theory that he was the "burn victim" on Zurich-Orbital who fled Aztechnology and is afraid of mages. Could this be possible/probable?

Your input, as always, is eagerly anticipated.

AFAIK, it's still open i canon. But he's lurking about in my games. Being ousted from power by the second biggest AAA requires keeping your head down , but since the bloodmages are out of power in Azzie-tech, I don't see him hiding form them as much as trying to pull them away. but that's just my take.

They could potentially blame him for losing their status—after all, he was the one who let victory at the bridge slip through his fingers.

~J

Or they could just do what we do- blame Ryan Mercury for everything.

But that's a good point, I never really thought of the blood mages thinking of it that way. I always saw them as blindly loyay. On the other hand, they could all just be a bunh of schemers trying to climb over each other, so they'd be more than happy to see him dead (and sacrificed, and bonded as a blood ally spirit!)

There is no nastier enmity than that between the zealot and the person they formerly owed their zeal to.

~J

Postscript: well, that's twenty years I've been spelling (and pronouncing) it "emnity" proved wrong.

haha, fist, i think i might like playing in your games.

merci (ever notice no one ever says thank you in english if it's all they have to say?)

thanks.

.............what?

my point exactly

(shut up Doc )

You know when you think you remember something from a book but then you arent sure of the book or in fact if it was all in your own mind.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that on the streets of Mexico City (Okies so I cant spell Technochitilan) in one of the worst shanty towns a figure is working to help the people. He is scared and often bleeding, but he was doing good work.

I always thought that was a fallen and risen again Oscuro. Then like I said I might have imagined the whole section of text.

i though Oscuro shipped himself up to Z-O to retire. (and hide from the azzies)

don't suppose one of you could pull up a page reference form that?

Earthwalker: I think that's more likely to be the bloodspirit chica that Oscuro sacrificed/used than the 'man' himself. Guy was evil to the bone, if such a thing can be said in shadowrun. I don't really see a guy that sacrificed young children to effectively ring about the end of metahumanity for his own gain trying to make amends with his fellow man just because he lost. Not trying to slam ya', just think it's someone else. Aztlan source book perhaps? One of the few I don't have, so I couldn't tell you for sure one way or the other. Ask AH I guess.

Remmeber, no one stays dead in Shadowrun except Dunkelzhan and Uncle Ben.

NOOOOOOO !!!! Uncle Ben!!!!!


Ok, think I finally found a good enough reason to pay an elite runner team to attempt a wetwork job on Z-O. Any takers?

Can we get a "HELL NO!"?

~J

hehe.... reminds me of a job offer we had once in a game...

We had just finished a rather spectauclar run for who turned out to be Alamaise against one of the IE's (nothign confrontational, basically snatching a link/pattern item all 'Harlequin' style). We later got approached by a Mr. Brauckhaus, asking us if we were interested in whacking Alamaise. ......

We said no as politely as we could and slowly got up and walked away.

So later on , Alamaise found out, and asked us if we wanted a counter job, to whak Jean-Claud Priault.....

We said no as politely as we could and slowly got up and walked away.

We spent the next three months in hiding.

Bear in mind we are not a team with such delusions of grandeur. We hope the GM was just trying to rattle us. But she keeps saying she's got something else going with that......

Just kill me now please.

If it is Darke in Z-O a confrontation confrontation could go two ways.

1. Background count of 9-10, no matter how powerful he is his magic is useless. He is an easy target if you can get to him.

2. He's probably a fragging Horror Construct. Horrors and their corrupted agents probably like manawarps. Instead of the +9 or +10 TN to his spells he gets a -9 or -10 TN. Housekeeping will have to scrub for hours to get the runner chunks off of the walls.

Before I make a decision I'll have to search every thread concerning Horrors and manawarps and see if fistandantilus3.0 has any opinions on the subject.

Well, in Harlequin's Back, Darke is listed as human, through and through, and IIRC, a 12th grade Initiate. Meaning he could still cast spell, although the drain would be a biotch. But hey, that's what blood magic is for now isn't it!

Human and Horror Construct aren't mutually exclusive. Horror's can't create, they can only corrupt. Their "Constructs" are simply beings they corrupted to be more like them.

But if he does have to use blood magic the cleaning crew will be very angry. I could imagine him taking out the entire team save one member only to be assasinated by a disgrunteled janitor who is tired of cleaning up blood and metahuman giblets.

The whole place is microgravity, right?

He'd just have to wait until it starts clogging up the air vent filters, then replace them.

I'm pretty big into ED, so I realize the difference. All I really have to go on in SR is Hq's B., but in that one ,there are some actual horror constructs, and Darke has no particularily special powers or stats. So you asked my opinion on it, I say he's human.

Besides, in ED - Scourge Unending, it has rules for creating Horror Constructs, and it says that all adepts that are changeed into constructs lose all talents. That would include spellcasting. Making it hard for Darke to cast spells. That's assuming of course that both systems follow the same general guide lines, especiallu since S.U. was published well after the DHT.

And really the poor janitor would most likely being the source of the blood magic spell, not the angry guy cleaning up the mess. If it is Darke, I'm sure htat he's paying Z-O enough for a few janitors to be expendable. The question is, would htey let him stay after wards? I could see the Azzies sending up a team of runners just to have them get killed, and have the other residents pissed enough to kick him out, back down the gravity well to where they could get at him. They are 'expendable assets' after all.

Still wanna do that run? Pays good! Honest! We'll pay you half now......

Well, we can always use my "raise so many alarms they think they already have an internal breach" plan to get onto the station. After that?

Well, directly confronting a grade 12 Iniatiate, whatever the hell that is, sounds dangerous, is suicide. So you don't confront him.

You get your decker to the mainframe and explosively decompress his butt.

Have you ever seen the security sheef for Z-O Shadowdragon!? If you can find the SAN first ,in some AAA corps system, where it teleoprts to on an irregular basis, the first trigger step is at 3, it sends a probe. It's like a Red-18. So even if your Det. Factor is 12+, within a few moves, the system will start seeing you. Then there's the SK's ... and the three fates.... yikes

Better off going in without the matrix there unless you've got a cadre of top notch deckers. And they'd better be REAL DAMN GOOD, becuase otherwise:
1) the system will jsut shutdwon and you'll be out
2) Z-O only takes links from a specific SAN at a time. That link is from a AAA's system. So when you start setting off bells, either you've got a to already have a SAT link to their system on the ground, which will be some nasty lag, or they will trace you.

If you can do it though, then hell yeah, I'll hire you for the run, 'cause that's one damn good decker. Best way into Z-O is to have someone on the inside, which is ..... problamatic at best. I think we had a whole other thread on it a while back.

then you have no incentive for the run except for us killing you if you don't pay 'us' back.

But sure, as long as you give us some collateral.... say.... all you're living family and a few close friends should do nicely. Who will of course be kept at a four star hotel until the deal is finished , and returned with only a few ritua....err... hairs.. missing.... The rest of the hairs will of course be unharmed. promise. Really.

On second thought, how do you feel collateral damage and how do you feel about paying our expenses? Spacecraft are quite expensive and we may not be able to obtain one with our resources. If you agree to pay our itemized expenses and don't mind a little collateral damage, we can get the job done.

a little collateral is always to be expected, as long a 'little' doesn't include a certain orbitalplatform/habitat/bank. Bottom line and all that. Other wise.. Ommelettes and eggs

the term 'surgical strike' would be more appropriate than say..... 'space debris'

Hey mfb, you still wanna play my game?

Seriosuly, I'm gonna offer this run to my players next time they get together , to their group that's been around forever, just to see if they can find a way.I'll let you know how(/if) it goes.

Just make sure to give Darke the Filtering Metamagic.

Surely the I.E's and Dragons will all have quite an interest in seeing things turning out bad for Darke. If he is on the Z.O I can see Lofwyr having enough clout to have him ejected out of the airlock...

I'd say that the IE's and Dragons wouldn't bother. He is effectively nullified where he is, and Lofwyr can still keep an eye on him in case he decides to leave.
The cost involved in revenge is so much higher than any gain they would get that it is all but pointless.

jsut a little thread ressurection here. Looked up Darke's stats in HqB. Grade 4 initiate. Wuss. His incarnations in the adventure are much stronger than his normal stats show him as. So yeah.... he should be stronger. I don't see Harlequin getting captured by a grade 4 initiate,constructs or no constructs .

bump

Does Darke being dead or not really make a difference? Remember in Threats it said even if he's killed there will always be someone to take his place.

hey, isnt the dunkelzan institute still offering that 1mil reward for bloodmages as well, and whats more, i'm in on this run, i've done orbital work with my adept before and trust me micro-gravity and zero-gravity combat are nasty fraggers when you know what your doing....see newest post on "Stupid Deaths" thread for demonstration of why

true velocity, but there is such a thing as the principle of the matter. the fragger deserves to be explosively decompressed

On the Darke as a Horror Construct note, the ED1 Horrors book doesn't say anything about constrcts losing talents. so it could go either way. However, the book explicitly states that Horrors can alter attributes or give powers and special abilities to their constructs for every success they get on a "series of spellcasting tests." There are no explicit limits on the number or type of powers and there are no limits on the number of spellcasting tests that the Horror may make.

Even if the construct looses the Spellcasting talent in ED or the Sorcery skill in SR, the Horror can give it the spellcasting/sorcery power. More importantly, it can potentially give the construct the spellcasting power equivilant to a high-circle ED magician.


How many purely mundane characters out there would be willing to sell their souls to instantly gain all the powers and knowledge of a high-grade initiate?

I'll point out that in the third book in the Dragon Heart trilogy, it is strongly implied that Darke died, either when he finished the bridge and got trampled be the wave of Horrors, or by a magical blast that seemed to rival a small nuke when Lethe used the Dragonheart to blow up the Locus.

I think Mr Dark being Grade 6 is important because it isn't relatively high; that makes him more dependant on Potency, and therefore on the agendas and entities he serves. So he has to do the crazy evil stuff to maintain his power


Also, I always wondered how Mr. Darke came upon his extraplanar associates...

Wouldn't the Major Players of the Sixth World prefer it if Darke survived?
Ther reasonds being that they know his capabilities and identity thereby making it easier to keep an eye on him as opposed to his potential unknown successor?