In DoSW, it's presented to basically come down to two choices, either Lowfyr or Hestaby gets the gem. Of course, things don't always go that way, which makes htings interesting. In my game, for example , the Jewel was shattered. No one got it. But I've always wondered about what else might have happened. I remember the book saying that Lowfyr wouldn''t bat an eye at giving the runners 1 billion nuyen. I actually offered this in my game, as the PC that had the gem had actually had a few run ins with Scale before. Anyone ever taken that money and ran? Or done something completely off the wall? Given the gem to Lung? Just curios to see some of the "what if's..."

I think you mean SotF - Survival of the Fittest...

I was planing on demanding a 1% stake in SK but the game folded.

My GM would have had him pay that as well, of cause the character would never run again.

Edward

hehe, yeah, sorry. Call it an A.M. stupid moment. I was looking over a thread in the DoSW section while I was thinking about it.

So, what Synner, no answer from your campaign?

Never got to play it myself, nice read though. I like to think my character would have been involved in splitting the gem among the dragons in council. Mostly cause I feel it'd be better pissing off all the dragons a little bit, but also giving them some benefits to balance it out, rather than REALLY pissing off 1 dragon, like say, Lofwyr, to gain approval of Hestaby. Or vice versa.

The only one who deserves the gem is Vast Green.

~J

Is this gem the same as the Jewel of Memory that Big D bequeathed in his will? The same gem I've heard is supposed to be pretty but ultimately useless at the moment because the memories inside it are somehow locked away in the Astral?

Yes on the first half. As to the second, regardless of the status of the memories (I don't remember anything about them being locked away, but that's neither here nor there), the Jewel of Memory is as useless as any other object that immediately grants one premier status amongst Great Dragons.

~J

Well, that's your classic no-win situation.

If you give it to Loffy, you're basically making a devil's bargain. 1 Billion for you, and you just gave the German Dragon what he needs to start taking over the world.

On the other hand, if you give it to Hestaby, you've as good as made your lunch date with Lofwyr.

In conclusion, there are only two good options, depending on the resources you can call in.

1: Fly away with the gem to Zurich Orbital, where the dragons can't get it in person, and they can't touch it with their minions. (You hope!)

2: Lock it and yourself in a small room with about 1000 Kg of C-XII and push the little red button. Preferably this room should be deep, deep underground and lined with reinforced concrete, so as to maximize the chunky salsification effect. Hopefully this blast will be enough to render the gem useless to any dragon who gets his talons on it.

more spoilers


Big spoiler


so therefore

that would be the difference between
"may not lie"
and
"must answer honestly"

then again the dragin can use dragonspeech so that only you ant it can hear the answer

"I'm not going to tell you" is an answer, and a dead honest one at that.

~J

you forget the bait you hold in your grubby little hands

-blink- What is this book, and where the hell can I get my grubby little paws on it?

Survival of the Fittest, and at your local Shadowrun reseller.

Kremlin: not buying it. You've got the bait, but that doesn't mean they're going to give you everything to get it.

~J

I thought the karma rewards were rather light tho, considering the series of adventures you go through in the series before you get to the gem/council part.

All in all, I still think it was a nice read.

While the dragons were unable to directly take revenge on you, they could use their minions. So while Lofie couldn't just up and eat you, he could set it up so some shadow team geeks ya. Or plans within plans to get someone to thor shot ya.

It would be a good adventure to end your SR3 campaign. Since you either end up with loads of money/influence or a lot of pissed off dragons

Hence why I mentioned the C-XII.


In the end, you're going to piss off one of those wyrms, and gentlewyrm's agreement or no, the ones you piss off WILL come back to haunt you.

Since you're a dead metahuman anyway, and in light of the fact that giving it to Hestaby is the same as giving it to Lofwyr, only without 1,000,000,000 or some percentage of Saeder-Krupp Heavy Industries in your pocket, and in light of the fact that Lofwyr is the Bad News Dragon...

Yeah. Flipping the bird in a major way to all the major wyrm players and cheating their hit squads? Sounds like the best you could hope for.

If I recall, the only thing the dragons weren't going to allow, was the playuer chars to waltz out with the gem. I believe the book mentioned something along the lines of them agreeing to null the rules there, wipe out the impertinent runners, and call a re-do.

However, you did have the option of destroying the gem right then and there, and they would have let you. Destroy it yeah, walk away with it, no.

How about this?

"I don't want anything to do with this affair. So I'm just going to set it down. Play poker to decide who gets it or something, I just want to go home!"

Or do they demand that the player decide who gets it?

I'd allow the players to say, "Play poker for it," and having Heastby reply, "You deal."

So that's when those background skills of "poker lpayer" come in handy, eh?

But really, can they just say they want to wash their hands of the affair and go home?

Poker? If you're going to make them compete for it then you have to make them really work for it - something like a game of charades or equally embarrassing equivalent. Nothing says entertainment like Lofwyr getting 'Waiting for Godot' or Ryumyo having to attempt Concrete Dreams 'Sons of Thunder'.

Think so, not sure, Edward has my SotF at the moment

but Shadow Dragon, you may want to consider that due to dragon honor and not wanting to get mobbed by all the other GDs they are not likely to retaliate.

Also consider this, Lofwyr always wants good assets. Any shadowrunner who has a loyalty quotient so high that he will not betray his johnson, even for what Lofwyr offers, is a MAJOR asset if Lofwyr can get the runer on a long term contract.

I find it hard to believe that Gold Master would be so stupid as to turn down that kind of an asset for petty vengeance

Do the dragons require a single choice?

Because given the choice between washing my hands of it, and demanding that it's ownership cycle between the GDs, current and future, for equal portions of time per year, sounds better to me.

That was another potential. Tricky that, given some shadowrunners inclination to go guns blazing. It's a matter of degrees, if you wanted to staight off give it to hestaby, you'd have to do it in a way that you muted Lofwyr's sense of annoyance. The way the situation plays out, with Hestaby giving it to Lof anyway, might cut back on some of that, but for that situations the playerchars would have it in their best interests to try and pad it as much as possible

Never got to run it myself.
But put the question to my players.
Their response: Saeder Krupp! All of it!

I demanded a lot, and then Lofwyr siad "Wait, isn't that it there?" And I said "Uh.. yes..." and then he killed me and took it.