I'm listening to NPR's All Things Considered and they did an article on Jimbo. Apparently the FBI(?) received another lead on where Jimbo might be buried. Now don't ask me why, but I started thinking of how to include Jimmy in a Shadowrun scenario.

Maybe Jimbo comes back (as a spirit, or whatever) and amasses some wealth in order to avenge his death, sorta like a curse on the descendant of those who murdered him? Or what if the FBI is still trying to find his body, and for some reason they hire the runners to follow a lead... OMG This is great! What if while they're investigating the lead they actually find his body, and it turns out some tiny backwoods town had preserved and enshrined the body. Apparently the town was plagued with sickness until his body arrived or was found. Wouldn't that be fun?

I don't know... Just figured I'd throw it out there or something...

Edit: Almost forgot the green... I'm pretty lame, huh?

Man, you almost forgot to make your post eye-gouging.

As for Hoffa, one word: shedim. It's the answer to everything, and you know your PCs are itching to fend off zombie Teamsters.

~J

Some friends and I were watching this report at breakfast, and decided that what had really happened is that he his attourney (a man also featured in the report) had begun a game of hide and seek, all those years ago.

Picture: The FBI is digging their new hole. CLANG! They hit metal, clear the dirt away, and find the door to an underground vault. They open it up, and out runs Hoffa going "OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE"!!

Another possible twist is to skip old Jimbo and just use his life. The Riggers and technicians who control and oversee the truck fleets in the UCAS are organizing, and trying to get the Riggers who pilot suborbitals and semiballistics (as well as more traditional aeroplanes) into the mix. This is of grave concern to the UCAS, the corps, and just about everyone else—time for some shadow wetwork.

~J

Hmm. That's something I've never paid attention to in SR. Are unions ever mentioned?

New Seattle mentions that the Mafia controls "[…]the trucking companies and unions the factories depend on" in Auburn. The Underworld sourcebook has a similar passing reference talking about kidnapping (shadowtalk mentions that it can be used to "[pressure] a union boss they need to subvert").

They clearly exist, but their role doesn't seem well-defined. I'll dig through NAGRL in the morning.

Edit: regarding the green, it isn't that bad, but I do find it difficult to read—not that much contrast against the grey. I'll have to check it on another monitor.

Edit2: shedim are basically spirits that inhabit dead bodies and turn them into zombie-like things. Of course, Master Shedim are a whole different kettle of fish… (they are to regular shedim what Deus is to spellcheck.)

~J

Sony Vaio flatscreen with anti-glare here. The green isn't that bad, but it is harder to read than the default.

@K: No need to put yourself out dude. Thanks though. It's been a while since I read SoU, which is funny, because two out of the last three campaigns I've been involved in had heavy "organizational" influences. The GM running the first one winged it, and I winged it based on light RL knowledge and a few blurbs from random books.

Shedim don't just inhabit dead bodies. They inhabit empty bodies. They first appeared in YOTC and they are the reason why cremation has become very popular and sane magicians leave their bodies inside force 16 wards when they project. There is nothing quite as fun as retunring to your meat and finding that a squater has taken it to Hoboken, New Jersey.

For the most part, they are Night of the Living dead zombies without the infection power. They travel in hordes. They eat people alive. And they really are reanimated dead corpses.

Master Shedim are different. Master Shedim are Zombie/Wendigo/Free Bug Spirits on crack. They have the regeneration power and can make their bodies appear to be perfectly normal. They have access to all of their hosts' memories and skills. They pick hosts who are in positions of power and exploit that power for their own unknowable goals. And they use their compulsion power to make you cook parts of yourself and feed yourself to them while you're still alive. Being alive while they eat you is necessary for the Essence Drain power to work.

Swiped!

Re grey and green: I generally get online from one of three different computers. From two of them I can read it fine, although it is harder than normal. The third one has an older monitor and I have to highlight your test (turning it to white on blue) in order to read it.

We have always assumed a large union presence in SR. There are hordes of people without power - the SINless, the goblinized, all sorts of marginalized people. They will band together, get treated slightly better, and allow someone with less than perfect ethics to become rich and powerfull.
Good for runs with the mob or yaks or rings or whatever.
You want info from the dockworker? Well, he's a longshoreman, and since the mafia is 'protecting' their interests, the fact that you roughed up some working class schlub just cost you more than you bargained for..

Hmm. That opens up a whole new category of shadowruns against unions, nascent or established...

Actually, Hoffa is now one of the SINless and is clearly living in the Shadows. He must have had one good decker to purge all traces of his current whereabouts.

Different Jim, but in my first SR3 group, I went through a run where an music loving eccentric CEO of a large multinational corp hired us for a globe trotting run to prevent a mega corp music label from trying to summon and bind the ghost/spirit of Jim Morrison and forcing him to play music again and promote the sales of his old music albums.