Quick question: Is gitmo going to be the new Godwin?

Considering the topic of this thread, Godwin doesn't apply.

But generally: yes.

You want a tank? You want an F-16?

All you need is the cash and a form from the ATF. Oh, sure. They're supposed to be "deweaponized." That is if you park your tank on the front lawn. If it's going overseas, then what difference does it make? The U.S. didn't become the largest arms supplier in the world by being picky.




Goddammit. Read Aztlan. It's ALL there. Everything that you need to know that clearly you do not. Everything that backs up what I've said since I actually have read the book. I am not going to do Nigel Findley's job and rewrite the book for you. But since the info is out there, it would be in your best interest if you want to continue discussing this to read the book and not come in ignorant asking questions that were answered 13 years ago.

Frankly, I'm not going to link to you anything. I've seen your posts in this and other threads. There's no point in bothering, and no assurance that you will read it or even acknowledge it afterwords. All I've gathered is that you can't be bothered to look anything up and just assume everything you type is gospel without a shred of proof. Whereas I try not to say things that are easily disproved in two minutes of Google. So, short answer: Google it yourself. I'm not your personal reference librarian.


Oh, it's even better to that. To incorporate into the larger post, anywhere from 1/3 to 40% of personnel employed by the CIA are private contractors--such as the "advisors" in South America, but also as analysts, translators, and yeah... as DO personnel "advising" standard collection, counterintelligence and paramilitary operations.


hermit nailed it head-on.

Aztlan is not Mexico. Quite a few things changed in SR. Enough that they wrote a whole book about it.

They weren't back when SR1 was written. In the 1980 census Hispanics were 6.4% of the US population. An influx of immigrants was not on the radar of the general public back in the late 80s.

What are you talking about?

There had just been another amnesty granted before SR was released because of the influx of immigrants since the last one.

{Hopefully this qualifies as SR history rather than political discussion. If I'm wrong I'll delete the post.}

The '86 Amnesty was tied to disincentives applied to employers. If you bought the logic that the fines and penalties on the employers would result in a universal meme of "no work for illegals", then you wouldn't anticipate an increase in immigration.

History may have shown otherwise but in '87-88 when the bulk of the SR text was written, it was justifiable for the writers to think it might work. And in the SR-verse, it may have, and would have been a sufficiently small blip that it wouldn't be worth noting in the sparse timeline.

Soemthing that has been bothing me is that I don't think Aztlan would work from its conception, specifically outlawing catholicism. Mexico happens to be one of the cradles of the catholic movement in Middle and South America. The idea that Mexico is first subordinated by a power groping minority is not impossible but highly improbable and then having an anti-catholic platform to woo the youth with - right, my suspension of disbelief just walked out of the room.

Going through massive institutional change... Setting the clock back 200 years... and then developing an invading army...


As some one pointed out a tank full of salt with every swalloing of Shadowrun history.

or just dial ones mind to cool rather then realistic

The USG is actually very picky. If you want non-picky the mid 90s had a lot of hungry Russian officers who had huge piles of ammo and weapons and wanted dollars and could arrange for people to not inspect your trucks at the border.

Actually, the ATF doesn't issue a permit to people to buy things like combat aircraft. I forget who does, but it's more than a simple permit as they are considered war munitions. (on the United States Munitions List) Plus the people who make combat equipment for the USG have contract restrictions on who they can sell to.

When they demilitarize an aircraft they cut the aircraft in half and then weld it back together, in addition to removing the engines, flight computers, ejection seats, navigation systems, etc. This severely reduce the strength of the fuselage and the ability to do clever things with it. Things sometimes slip out without having that done, but it's how they should be done and are required by law to be done.

Similar bad things are done to HUMVEEs, etc, though there are more common exceptions there then there with AFVs.

Yes, I know what goes OVERSEAS is not covered by laws, but you said it yourself... if it's here in this country it's deweaponized.



I'll find the book and read it.



OK, you point out what I did in a previous thread... It was a question about a rule in a game... I pointed out where I got my information, and then when the discussion turned into an argument, I asked one of the WRITERS of the game to make a decision. I took it too far and I admitted it in that thread, but I thought I had a fair argument.

Now you want us to take anything you say about real life without checking. Also it helps to know WHERE you got the information. You want to throw out facts (about real life)... back them up. My post (in which you responded) has links to the Ford Memo. The purpose of those links were so that someone can't scream in my face: "You're all frakked up! That didn't happen!" It also showed that companies (Ford at least) want to EXPAND the bottom line. It's their God, and they worship it to the exclusion to everything else. They were willing to have people DIE rather than fix an $11 fuel tank issue. Do you really believe that ANYBODY would want them to have a military? This is about any company in real life... Shadowrun is frakked up, but we all know that.



Like we have in Shadowrun, they're are "deniable assets".

If it goes overseas it's covered by the The International Traffic in Arms Regulations if it's on the United States Munitions List (22 CFR 120-130).

But you know and everyone else knows that those laws can be handwaved away. When it's "over there" people will look the other way. When it's over here... well people get a little hot over that.

Good.

You know what. Until then shut your mouth.

You don't know what you're talking about. The issues you have raised have been around for twenty years, and were answered 13 years ago.

Stop wasting peoples' time and read the book. Then you can contribute with the rest of the adults.

Actually, I am an adult. I also don't have to take your shit. YOU act like an adult and if you don't like the fact that I want to argue about something... well you can go piss up a rope for all I care.

I didn't think this was a discussion limited to the Aztlan sourcebook, but a discussion if the SR timeline's invasion of Texas was feasible from our own point of view, with RL examples and experiences thrown in.

Simply saying "That was covered in the Aztlan Sourcebook" doesn't really help with the suspension of disbelief. Having a whole country change the state religion practically overnight does break that sense for many.

There's a lot of stuff that irks logic in the SR books (like the NAN population explosion), and it would be useful to know how others handle those, apart from blindly copying everything written under the SR logo. There are various ways to explain things, and some may work for others.

The Church had a very radical phase in the 2020s (where they ordered metahumans burned and whatnot), which usually i used as an excuse for it alienating believers.

Also, you can change what publically is expressed as belief, and within a generation create more or less your own religion. So long as alternatives are suppressed, this will indeed work. A RL example would be the Soviet Block, especially East Germany, which has effectively been dechristianised in the last 40 years.

And as for the NAN population explosion ... the NAN books, as well as SoNA, stated the NAN followed a one drop rule policy. If a drop of Indian blood is enough to make you an Indian, a whole lot of people would find themselves Natives, even though they don't look or feel it.

I find that easier to swallow than, say, the German setting (Saxonian royalist smurf mercenaries galore!)

Moderator voice:
This is a reminder of the Terms of service:

This thread contains a number of postings which are in violation of that rule. If this continues, the thread will be closed.

And a wannabe-Tir-state! And a troll kingdom! And Throal!

Oh yeah, not to forget Berlin.

What they did to Switzerland was similarly ugly. Artificial island in the middle of Lake Zuerich, some arcology in Basel, half the country separated, and the alps turned into a no-tech zone... yeah, right.

PLEASE don't remind me of Berlin.

Throal, however, or rather that funky little Caér under the Rhine valley, actually is a nice story hook. Certain players are gonna hate what they're going to find there ...


Oh, the Separation makes some sense. Switzerland isn't quite the unified country. However, Genom's arcology built on a box structure over Basel's inner city that has no supporting pylons and contains a medieval-ish outcast enclave ripe with ghoul gangs, Banshees and a grade 10 hermetic Überage who started out with essence and magic 8 ... that's a tad cheesy.

Overall, the Swiss setting makes a lot more sense than much of the German setting. Then again, that's not much of an Achivement, since the Califorinan setting makes more sense, too. Including SR4's changes.

As a swiss, I have to vehemently disagree. The swiss setting doesn't make any sense (apart from the ultra-security - we're the country where a mossad squad was caught for not turning their car engine off while waiting).
At its heart, Switzerland is one of the most conservative countries, and the idea that any change has to be done by consensus is a core principle of our nation. I don't see us separating over anything, not with a plethora of other options available, and a tradion of balancing out differing opinions.

I'd like to play devil's advocate to this one.
- In Nazi Germany, a significant percentage of the children in the population were convinced to make the state their primary allegiance; To the point where they were turning in their own parents, some of whom were executed.
- With the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, Islamic Canon Law was deposed, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with the new Turkish alphabet derived from the Latin alphabet, the dress law (the wearing of a fez, a traditional Muslim hat) was outlawed, laws regarding family names were enacted, etc.

There are more examples of radical change on a country in a single generation. I think we need to look harder at history to realize how quickly society can and does change.

Love you to do so.



Hmm... The totalitarian nature of the Nazi party was one of its principal tenets. The Nazis contended that all the great achievements in the past of the German nation and its people were associated with the ideals of National Socialism, even before the ideology officially existed. Propaganda accredited the consolidation of Nazi ideals and successes of the regime to the regime's Führer ("Leader"), Adolf Hitler, who was portrayed as the genius behind the Nazi party's success and Germany's saviour.

To secure their ability to create a totalitarian state, the Nazi party's paramilitary force, the Sturmabteilung (SA) or "Storm Unit" used acts of violence against leftists, democrats, Jews, and other opposition or minority groups. The SA's violence created a climate of fear in cities, with people anxious over punishment, or even death, if they displayed opposition to the Nazis. The SA also helped attract large numbers of alienated and unemployed youth to the party.

Vctims of Nazi persecution in addition to those Jewish and Roma between 1939-1945 included communists, various political opponents, social outcasts, homosexuals, religious dissidents such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, the Confessing Church and Freemasons.

The Church in Nazi Germany was subjected to as much pressure as any other organisation in Germany. Any perceived threat to Hitler could not be tolerated - and the churches of Germany potentially presented the Nazis with numerous threats.

In 1933, the Catholic Church had viewed the Nazis as a barrier to the spread of communism from Russia. In this year, Hitler and the Catholic Church signed an agreement that he would not interfere with the Catholic Church while the Church would not comment on politics. However, this only lasted until 1937, when Hitler started a concerted attack on the Catholic Church arresting priests etc. In 1937, the pope, Pius XI, issued his "Mit brennender Sorge" statement ("With burning anxiety") over what was going on in Germany. However, there was never a total clampdown on the Catholic Church in Germany. It was a world-wide movement with much international support.

Pope Pius XI condemned the Nuremberg Laws in July, 1938, and was preparing an encyclical against anti-Semitism, but died in 1939 before it could be completed. His successor, Pius XII decided not to speak out against the atrocities being carried out in Germany.

The Protestant Church was really a collection of a number of churches - hence they were easier to deal with. The Protestants themselves were split. The "German Christians" were lead by Ludwig Muller who believed that any member of the church who had Jewish ancestry should be sacked from the church. Muller supported Hitler and in 1933 he was given the title of "Reich Bishop".

In 1936, the Reich Church was created. This did not have the Christian cross as its symbol but the swastika. The Bible was replaced by "Mein Kampf" which was placed on the altar. By it was a sword. Only invited Nazis were allowed to give sermons in a Reich Church.

In 1941 August von Galen, the Archbishop of Munster, spoke out in a sermon against the Nazi practice of euthanasia (the killing of those considered by the Nazis as genetically unsuitable). Adolf Hitler wanted Galen arrested but Joseph Goebbels warned against this as Galen was a popular religious leader. It is claimed that Galen's sermon inspired the formation of the anti-Nazi White Rose group.

After the war there was a general re-essurgance in christianity and a unification of protestant churches as well. During this period of time we could argue that religion was not attacked openly but was suppressed and subordinated by the Third Reich's power apparatus for maintaining the personality cult around Adolf Hitler.



The precursors for the secular reforms can be found in the measures and proposals of the Ottoman Empire (Tanzimat, first constitutional and second constitutional era). The Ottomans' failure to embrace the Arab populace was one source of political tension. It was said the reforms, "alienated a segment of its society," and as "the state's hostility to religion became clear,… Islam thus became a political tool in the hands of Arab populace." (see Countercoup (1909)) This factored in the Arab Revolt. Atatürk's reforms thus aimed to escape from the old mistake. Rather than having an Islam emerging solely from opposition to the Kemalist state, have a Kemalist socialization imbibed by a more pluralistic Islam. The changes toward secularism did not happen overnight in the framework of the new republic. It had a narrative originating from the Ottoman Empire's political experience, a narrative which continues during the 21st century, with a Turkish Islam rooted in Sufism, particularly Naqshbandi Sufi orders, and punctuated by frontier conditions of Turkey. Whether the results were "pluralistic" and "liberal" by chance or by plan is debated.

The changes included abolition of the office of caliphate held by the Ottomans since 1517, achieved on March 3, 1924, which followed the abolition of the religious education system and the introduction of a national education system on March 3, 1924. Closure of the Islamic courts and the abolition of Islamic canon law gave way to transfer to a secular law structure by adoption from the Swiss Civil Code and other laws.

Atatürk's reforms were not anti-Islamic. Reforms included the establishment of Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), with the duty of "to execute the works concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of Islam, enlighten the public about their religion, and administer the sacred worshipping places." Reforms visualized a state which stood at equal distance ("active neutrality" rather than "passive neutrality") from every religion, neither promoting nor condemning any set of religious beliefs. Directorate for Religious Affairs become responsible for selection of appropriate policies through careful analysis and evaluation.

During single party period of time, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the early years of the Turkish Republic set in motion numerous changes to the political landscape of Turkey, the revolution of which lasted until the multiparty era of the 1950s. The graduates of the Tanzimat-era modern schools, who formed the nation's elites including Atatürk and the members of Republican People's Party, applied their western-inspired modernization to all areas of government. Central to these reforms were the belief that Turkish society would have to Westernize itself both politically and culturally in order to modernize.

Both examples, Germany and Turkey, were during a time when nationhood of both countries were relatively young. That of shifting from a monarchic insitution base to that of a democratic one took a long period of time. It was not until the 1950's to the 1960s that we can talk about multirepresentational parties in place, and secular education having replaced religious education. The understanding and concept of the division of church and state only enters the cultural pathos during this period of time, as those intially who have gone through secular education have become adults. In some countries such as Frace, Italy, and Spain the division of Church and State has not fully seperated where each live next to each other in comfortable or uncomfortable companionship.

Now if we were to talk about comparisons Italy and Spain might be more interesting or then the current changes undergoing in Venezuela and its political neighbours. But what does that have to do with the price of land in Texas we won't know .


Notes to others: WHILE AN INTERESTING SUBJECT ON ITS OWN, WE WILL MOST LIKELY CONTINUE THIS CONVERSATION IN PRIVATE IF WARRANTED. DO NOT TAKE THIS AS AN EXCUSE TO START ARGUING POLITICS AND/OR RELIGION. Thank you.

Given the 'totalitarian nature' of the Aztlan and Aztechnology, I think your additional detail on the Nazi regime actually reinforces to me the ability of the government to enforce the level of oppression and change in the country.

Granted, my example of Turkey only supports rapid changes, but even that is interesting to refute the disbelief of changes in the Shadowrun world, IMO.

Please note I am less defending the authors and writers (of which I am not one) and more espousing that actions, reactions, events and the geo-political climates can and do move and change in ways that seem to require a suspension of belief in the real-world... except that they do happen.

Godwin strikes again ...


To be fair: in Weimar, everyone had their militias (and who hadn't hired Freikorps mercenaries). And the largest, first and maybe most militant was, until the late Weimar years, not the SA, but Rotfront. Weimar was a royal mess the Nazis, through sheer luck, managed to profit from.

Also, as mentioned above, Aztlan IS a totalitarian state, and those have proved to be able to fundamentally change countries in a generation (Nazi Germany is not the only example - take communist China or the USSR, East Germany, or
as an example how even a democratic society can change, Japan).


Actually, as Aztlan had absorbed Colombia, all those little Central American states and parts of Venezuela, it IS relevant, since those nations have likely introduced a number of new elements into Mexico, then the new nation of Aztlan. For instance, a new elite of Columbian drug cartel businessmen and military types who seemingly are fairly effective and might well have reorganised the Mexican army into something that can deliver enough power to really hurt the Texas national guard. Likely using ties the cartels had with the former communist block and fascist Argentina to arm their new force with whatever they could get, paying in drug money and money from counterfeit consumer goods (as any rising industrial power has).

It is possible, given enough money, will to spend it on an army, and available manpower, to generate a huge army more or less from scratch. The Union did that in the American civil war, Hitler did that, and I see no reason why a reformed, expanded Mexico with a new leadership should be incapable of doing so, especuially since they could build on FARC and/or Para veterans as a core for this army.

Yes, which produced the butchery of the ACW and resulted in a series of near disasters in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, with a fairly huge butchers bill in France. Narco guerrillas have somewhat limited expertise in running corps level combined arms operations. Much less than the Germans or the ACW senior leadership did. Or Iraq.

SCNR.

Which is why they'd be smart to hire in outside contractors I'd think. When you consider that the global drugs trade is worth an estimated 400 billion dollars a year even though the South American groups only make up a part of that just look at the sums the Cali and Medellín Cartels were raking in at their heights. They already hire whole armies of outside experts nowadays such as accountants, money launderers, former special forces soldiers, ex-intelligence agents to run counterintelligence programs, tech specialists - apparently back in the mid-90s during a raid the Colombians found a cartel data centre manned by up to six IT staff running a $1.5m mainframe computer.

Sorry for the derail but I just have to comment: I wish, most Germans would even care to possess such detailed knowledge of our past. And you know about what happens to those who refuse to learn from history...

Well, speaking for myself ... I feel that Nazis over and over again for four yeears (9th to 13th grade) were quite enough. Anyway, the history repeating itself just now is not about Nazis, it's about communists. Though the Nazis oiginally were a leftist party too, admittedly (that the 'socialist' part in national socialism).

isnt there a saying about stalin being so leftwing that he became rightwing?

i fear that fascism, nazism and communism all have now become so much branded, that trying to float either as a political direction will be political suicide.

(funny thing is that all argued that the group/nation/race was more important then the individual, but for different reasons iirc)

but authoritarian hawkism seems to be very much in vogue these days (thanks to al-qaida and the perceived need to do something about those terrorists), so some variant of either will pop up again, if under other names.

thing is that to distilled a political direction will not hold anything good in the long run, sooner or later one will bump into ones own ghosts in a corner...

I see the NSDAP as in it's roots socialist in name only, as well as Stalin being a right wing dictator who hijacked the bolshevist agenda to establish the imperialist superpower we all know as the USSR. That doesn't make real commies seem any less lunatic in my eyes though (WARNING: personal views, discussing such things can only lead to catastrophe).

Personally, I felt bombarded with Third Reich History in school too, but since I've got my Abi, I meet so many people who don't know anything about it because they just coasted through history class without paying attention, their classes got cut down due to personnel shortages or their teacher skipped the topic (apparently, some STILL do!). I find knowledge about the beginnings of the Nazi movement and the circumstances under which they rose to power much more important than the exact course of WWII, after all it's "principiis obsta!"

Well, overall I wanted to highlight that I rarely find such detailed knowledge of the interior workings of this part of German history on an internet forum and that I did. If there is interest in a more extensive discussion we should indeed move that into private or a thread on the offtopic forum.

Yes, let's keep this private. Not that this thread is closed or all the Americans are bored to death.

Hat jeder von euch einen Account im SR-Nexus, Technoschamanen-Forum oder dem Eisparadies? Dann koennen wir es ja da fortsetzen.

sadly my german is basically non-existent but the topic could be interesting...

It's soon-ish coming to an Offplay section near you.

OK, then I'll quickly summarize Chrys' post to start off a thread in the general discussion forum.

Edit: Here you go.

Edit2: Seems like such a discussion is against the Terms of Service and the thread therefore has been locked. Any idea where we could move this?

While the topic is interesting, it is not appropriate for Dumpshock so it has been closed. Please keep the conversation relevant to Shadowrun the game or Shadowrun the universe.



One or more posts make generalizations about people by their country of origin. That is considered a violation of the Terms of Service everyone agreed to. Any further actions will be addressed with administrative warnings to the offending party(s).

[nods]
For starters, with 1/3rd of the world being Christian, 1/3rd of all magicians will be Christian. Then, there are churches pretty much everywhere - each with a background count of at least 1, and places like Notre Dame, St Paul's etc probably up around 5. Or higher! Theurges can pick and choose where to create Domains. The return of magic will persuade the Pentecostals etc that this is 'the outpouring of the Holy Spirit', so they'll be welcoming any wonder working believer. With non-Christian magicians fighting the background count of the churches, their spells and spirits are going to fry when entering churches - encouraging Christians to chase them out of the churches, and making it clear to everybody whose side any spellcaster is on. The large number of domains means that most Christians will first discover their abilities in church, reinforcing the belief that these are miracles, and getting training/spell designs will be much easier than for less common traditions.
There really should be multiple theurgy traditions - any Christian theurgist who focuses on theology will have an Augustinian/Calvinist slant resulting in Drain based on Logic, mystics following in the tradition of St John of the Cross or the Quakers, Shakers etc will have Drain based on Intuition, the Pentecostals, Charismatics etc would have Drain based on Charisma. (of course, most won't touch shadowrunning, so the rules don't ned to worry about this). What would get 'interesting' would be if they found they couldn't couldn't cast spells in each others churches; initiatory groups would probably focus on getting around the problem.

The really interesting denomination in Shadowrun would be the Baptists - they've always hated racism, were in the forefront of the battle against slavery and segregation etc. They'd have been fighting bravely on behalf of metahumans. But they also have a reputation for loathing magic - so (for example) an Orc Magician could well owe his life to Baptists who risked their own lives to save him from Humanis goons - and still have to hide his magical abilities from them. Create some interesting complications.

P.S. For the people talking privately about Rome vs Hitler - be sure to check up on the Bismark's Kulturkampf - it was in the minds of everyone involved.

hmm, culturekampf, that turned up in cyberpunk v3

about christianity and magic, isnt there a special order doing that? order of st sebatian or something?

There're several. From that Televangelist guy whose wonders are actually magic performed according to a christianised hermetic tradition, to the Order of St. Sylvester, the Vatican's magical arm, to the Theurgs of Germany's renegade catholic church, to countless smaller christian-ish orders covered in German as well as international publications.

As has been described, especially in Europe, the Awakening triggered knee-jerk anti-witch/wizard reflexes wih the local churches, which kind of alienated the awakened population as a whole from the Church and Christianity as a whole. Thus, a öarge number of Awakened in Europe follow Old Paths (be that roman/greek influenced, neopaganist, druidic/celtic, gypsy magic, Theran, Sarethian, Blood Forest or shamanic). Also, you have strong islamic, jewish (like classic Hermeticism) and modern (Psionics) traditions of shadowrun magic. There is a share of christian-influenced groups, especially among Hermetics and Idolists, but generalising 1/3 of the world's awakened are Christian is naive.

Furthermore, 1/3 of today's world's population live in countries with a strong christian history, correct. That doesn't actually make them Christians by default, though. You're, for instance, about as likely to find a devout Christian in Kairo as you are in Rostock or Leipzig or Berlin. You're also MORE likely to run into devout Muslims in either of these cities. Same with many (not all) Eastern european countries. Don't try to compare European and American christians. They're worlds apart.

true that, most of norway is by history protestantic christians. but i would claim that the majority of those only practice the social rituals of baptism, wedding and so on out of tradition then out of real religious believes.

but then there is always the vocal minority that speaks up, loudly, about homosexuality, abortion and all the other stuff.

The figure of 1/3 of people being Christian is from the UN figures. Large slabs of the 'Muslim' world are predominately Christian, while Christianity is spreading rapidly in Africa, India and China.
Sure, that includes purely social Christians - so do the figures for Hindus, Muslims, Daoists etc. In all those cases though, the stress of emerging magic is going to send budding magicians running to the nearest comfortingly stable support group - humans turn to the familiar when facing too much change, and the Sixth World will have 'future shock' far beyond that described by Toffler.

As an interesting note, I sat through a class on Central Asia (specifically the former soviet republics) which covered such things as the high percentage of muslims and the vast differences between, say, Uzbeck muslims and arabic muslims. For one, your typical central asian Muslim doesn't think much about a drink of vodka now and again...

Relavence? None. I just like showing off my big brain (so big, I have to strap a backup brain to my waist... looks a bit like liver...)

And just where exactly are religions largely overwhelmed by Awakening any more stable than science or their family?


I'd like to see that link ...

The existence of dragons, spells, spirits - all are going to be a shock to science, simply because they can't be explained scientifically (not initially, anyway - however given science has a successful track record going back centuries, science will remain highly respected, especially because it *can* explain so much else).
Families? Difficult to have "daddy's eyes" when you goblinize. If there's even the slightest hint of adultery, that charge is going to be thrown around with UGE babies.
But a religion whose holy book has a prophecy about a dragon turning up when dragons *do* turn up? You can't buy that sort of publicity. And fearing dragons is a survival trait in Shadowrun.


Sure. It's somewhere around here: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/pro...dyb/dybcens.htm
There's a lovely easily read table there somewhere, but I couldn't find it when I went searching.
I normally use this site when researching for games:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

Something that has a lot of fun potential - nobody thinks of their own beliefs as halfhearted or wrong, and Shadowrun Magic is powered by personal belief: so how other people perceive their beliefs is irrelevant.
This allows for some weird spellcasters. An exaggerated C0fE parson whose Spirits of Man turn up in cricketing gear; has Britannia for spirits of water, steam locomotives for spirits of fire and so on...his magic would work as effectively as any other spellcasters.
Hmm....

I would name my own belief at most halfhearted...

Yeah, Awakenings said that ten years ago ...

As for the links: http://www.adherents.com lacks a proper source for their numbers (I have dire trouble considering anything published by a US religious fundamentalist to extremist Christian a proper source, as I would not believe figures coming from a Saudi religious university or the Muslim Brotherhood). However, please take a good look at the third largest 'religious' group on that site. Why do you assume they'll turn to religion during the awakening, when they can also consider dragons Space aliens or something?


Sure, but there're numerous other possibilities. Godzilla comes to mind, for instance - here's what I'd expect as headliens in 2011, after Japan's first sighting of Ryumyu - "MANDA COMES TO LIFE, ATTACKS BULLET TRAIN - ARMY: WE'RE DESPERATLY SHORT OF MASER TANKS".

Similarily, Dragons might be seen simply as monstrous, unidentified and possibly hostile creatures and be attacked by nations' air forces. Unless, of course, the Dragons make contact and explain themselves, which is what most of them have done (those who didn't were usually shot down).

? have another look. They're linking to govt sources from around the world, the UN and so on. (why are you referring to them as a religious site, much less an extremist site? The ads?)


Sure. Which is why Shinto - which is one of the religions of only one country - is deservedly represented.


It's physically impossible for a dragon to fly - they're too big, about as aerodynamic as a brick, and covered in armour.
Trying to explain one rationally just isn't an option.
Which dragons were shot down? I can recall dragons oh, destroying Tehran, airliners and so on, but I can't recall any that lost.

Nachtsomething. woke up in a pool of toxic waste, found her eggs corrupted by the same, flipped out and flew around blowing things up until the German air force shot her down with space lazerz.

They claim they took most of their the info on Christianity from the World Christian Encyclopedia, a substantially less-than-scientific publication.


Shinto isn't a religion in our sense. Shinto believes in living spirits in everything; it's animist and very, very vague. Godzilla can well be interpreted as a menancing kami out to avenge mankinds ecological sins, or just menancing because it has a bad day (that's how Godzilla is usually portraied in the new movies, anyway). Kami are neither omnipotent nor invulnerable. They're not gods in the sense God is. They're spirits, but they're also mortal and limited. Additionally, they're so pop culture and commonly integrated into modern life with most japanese, they'd definitly not find back to 'true' shintoism in droves - simply because there IS no 'true' Shintoism. It's very much mix and match.

Anyway, 4 Million is maybe a bit low a figure - just, many Japanese won't readily associate themselves with Shintoism as a religion in the way Westerners would with their faith of choice. Asians tend to have a very different, less dogmatic way of living out their faith (or not).


They said that about bumblebees too, once. Besides, trying the scientific approach - if our laws of aerodynamics don't explain that properly, the laws of aerodynamics are flawed) - is just as feasible as running to the next church and kneeling down, shouting "you were right all along!". Aside from that, Dragons play a very minor role in the Bible.


Firewing in Germany, Kaltenstein barely not (because Lofwyr made him stop), both covered in DotSW, that UniOil dragon in the Secrets of Power, two Plummed Serpents mentioned as downed in the Atzlan book ... no Great was ever downed (save for by another Great, or personal choice), but many lesser forms.