I can see all kinds of beefs people could have with that trilogy. It's too cheesy and high-powered, it marginalizes shadowrunners, it has Ryan Mercury, etc. I could also see it as marginalizing Harlequin's Back, which is supposed to be one of the most emotional and heart-wrenching campaigns ever.

What would be your alternate history of Dunkelzahn's death and the extraplanar menace of the Horrors?

Geez, where to start?

Off the top of my head I'd have it that Dunkelzahn died to open the Watergate Rift. Why? Because this would be the only way that Ghost Walker would be able to return to our world. And Ghost Walker would be the real force necessary to fight back against the horrors.

In this situation Dunkelzahn knew that he was expendable, and so he gave up his life so that Ghost Walker could return and lead the fight against the horrors. I would probably have something in there that Ghost Walker got stranded far off in the metaplanes while fighting the horrors during the last invasion and this was the only way to bring him back.

Oh, and Ryan Mercury would have been in the limo with Dunky at the time of the blast and killed instantly.

Why would Ghostwalker be so vital compared to Dunkelzahn? The Dragons of Earthdawn book said that Dunkelzahn was the better spellcaster, while Ghostwalker was the better conjuror. They're pretty much even, but if Ghostwalker had some amazingly awesome abilities, then your idea is the greatest.

But you know what, that might have really been what the freelancers had in mind. After all, why else would Ghostwalker reassemble the Spirit of Denver, if not to fight something big and tough like the Horrors?

Hmmm, well maybe Dunky knew that most of his knowledge could be passed along in the memory crystal and be learnt by the other dragons, but the knowledge Ghost Walker had, of both conjuring and of the horrors could not be learned with out his return.

And since knowledge is power it was vital that Ghost Walker be brought back to our plane of existance.

But the Jewel of Memory is firmly within the grip of Lofwyr. He ain't sharing, and I doubt Dunkelzahn expected him to. if he wanted any single person to have it, it would be Ghostwalker, but he doesn't have it, nor will he in the forseeable future.

How do you know Dunkmeister didn't want Loffie to have the Jewel? Maybe he figured it would eventually force the dragons (and maybe others) to work together more this time around.

I thought it would make them attack Lofwyr. Ghostwalker would be more likely to go along with Dunkie's wishes if he were given the Jewel, anyway.

What if Dunkelzahn noticed the imminent arrival of the shedim and tried to close the gate, only to notice even a GD is not strong enough for that feat?



I myself can take him wandering the planes fighting the horrors, it´s just the possession of a cyberzombie that was a bit much.

Has anyone official ever came out to say who the runners gave the Jewel to?

My players gave half of it to Hestaby and half to Lowfyr.

The Jewel of Memory's a focus? I thought it just had Dunklezahn's memories and knowledge.

Spend the yen to buy a clue! Clue == 1

The number of people on this thread who have read and comprehended Survival of the Fittest is...low.

So why would Dunklezahn want Lofwyr to have it?

That adventure was great. My group borke the jewwl, which led to an awesome metaplanar quest about a year down the line. I think the best parts were seeing how smooth Hestaby was with the little trick with Morningstar, and getting one over on Lung and Ryumyo. Best of all was that it wasn't Hestaby at all, it was Dunkie behind it all, years before it actually took place, mostly because the thigns she went after were things that he set up. Like the Jewel of Memory and the Jade dragon.

There's a number of reasons for Lofyr to have it. One , I think, to learn more from the past, and see that there is more in the world than just his own self interest. Dunkie was pretty nasty back in the 4th world. Then he bacame Lore Master after Vasdenjas died. Then comes the 6th age, and suddenly he's nicer. So there has to be some sort of tie-in. Also, using the jewel is going to take time. I think it's also part of a plan basically to distract Lowfyr a bit, scale back his operations. he is known for micromanaging everything his corp does. Maybe Dunk just wanted to give others some time to work.


As far as the DHT goes, one of the problems I see with it, is that it's a lot like the old 80's action flicks. Anyone remember Commando? The main hero is really good all the way up to the end. He's fallable, but he kicks just about everyone's tail, until he gets to the Big Bad Boss at the end and just gets the crap kicked out of him, but still manages to win somehow. And then there's "billy".

(1) He thought Lofwyr would win it by traditional means, as the most powerful and most cunning (after D died) dragon. Why not give it to him anyway, so that he might respect the will and not try to take the whole hoard? In fact, it gave Lofwyr an incentive to encourage other dragons to respect the will as a means of giving away D's stuff.

(2) If he'd given it to anyone else, Lofwyr would have called for a Rite of Succession or possibly just stolen it. He probably would have succeeded at either. Why not just give it to him, with a line about not being a prick that might just have some minor impact on his behavior?

(3) He knew someone was going to call a Rite of Succession eventually, as Ghostwalker did when he returned. D thought giving it to Lofwyr and priming Hestaby with instructions on how to manage the other dragons and win the Rite and then give it back to Lofwyr was the best way to influence Loffy and make him a kinder, gentler dragon. See the very end of SoF. Hestaby didn't win because she's actually that clever, she won because D's gift to her in his will was a data file that anticipated the whole situation and told her how to win and how to then gracefully bow out in favor of Lofwyr. And it worked, in asmuch as one can make Lofwyr stop to consider the fact he may not be the closest thing to god.

As far as the official cause of D's death, I can handle the self sacrifice to stop the Horrors stuff, mostly because it at least got rid of the Horrors as a SR world existential threat.

What cheesed me off as a plot point (Ryan Mercury is many things, but not a plot point) was the timing. How convenient that the Azzies should make some big discovery the same day of the inauguration. How bizarre that Dunky felt the need to then off himself almost immediately. Did he hate his limo driver that much?

2 hours after the phone call, after Dunk has flown to Aztlan and retrieved Mercury, and is sitting in his house w/ Ryan and Nadja:

"Nadja, Ryan, this item that Aztechnology has uncovered is a locus stone that can reaise the level of mana to a degree that wil let an army of cruel spirits through the metaplanes. You and I are gonig to go to France to meet and Immortal Elf named Cambieul, where I will sacrifice my life to power this artifact I so wittily dubbed the Dragon Heart. Then the two of you and Cambieul will go throug hthe metaplanes and destroy the bridge that would let them through. Then you can get your team together and go kill the people that are doing this."

"I'm going to let the people of the UCAS know that I am going, and name my VP as my successor, and then dissapear from society. Eventually it will come out, through some "clues" left behind by me, that I was killed by a bloog mage gestalt within Aztechnology. That hsould give oyu some help in getting rid of them. Ok, well then, let's get going."

aka: they didn't do it 'cause the book would be really short. Like in the movies. They didn't do it because "script said."

It was directed at pretty much everyone. Your part was due to this:

Fair enough.

In my game world, Dunk didn't sacrifice himself at all. Someone assassinated him, but that someone is still a mystery, which is a concern even among the great dragons (who tend to suspect each other simply because they can't imagine anyone else could manage it).

I just never felt that the self-sacrifice angle was handled well. It didn't seem to fit with Dunk that he'd choose that time and that method to enact his suicide and it also killed the dramatic mystery of the entire event.

My big problem with the way they approached the topic was how narrow it ended up being. The story they were telling is something that literally every major power in Shadowrun would have known about and had a major stake in-yet the number of people involved was relatively small. It would have been a perfect opportunity to show the breadth of the Shadowrun universe-say by having the main character be a face/fixer type, trying to carry out Dunk's last instructions when the most powerful people in the world have very different ideas about what should be done, and how it should be done. Then you could have minor characters have small rolls to round out the story (e.g. How Argent provides background muscle in the Findly books)-mercs, covert ops specialists, deckers, street sammys, etc....

Any, that's my two

AFE

What would the different powers want with the Horrors? I can imagine Ares trying to study them.

The same interest that everyone has in an extra-dimensional invasion that threatens to wipe out human life-only they have the power to do something about it (and potentially gain some profit in the process).

AFE

Dunkelzahn stuff = good.

Ryan Mercury stuff = much less good.

It seemed like the Big D assassination was a vehicle to showcase red-hair. It became a story about a few characters of rather questionable literary worth instead of the earth-shaking event it could have been. Had I the writing skill to dare try to make a living at it, I'd have looked at a dozen or more shadowrunners of all kinds and how they were drawn into the repercussions. Each learns some aspect of the nature of the gestalt and the horrors, but maybe none get the whole picture. Some punk in the wrong place/wrong time meets and helps out Harlequin, but doesn't recognize who he is or the relevance of what he does. Everything Assets, Inc. does would be split up among these dozens of runners. Some of the super-twinks could still appear, but as mysterious, almost perephrial characters.

And a lot more about how "slammed dunk" affected everyday people. Moms keeping their kids home from school, churches being packed.

Stuff like that.

Ah. Perhaps you should be more clear in the future and refrain from making disparaging remarks against red-heads, who are not likely to take it well at all.

Naw, it's genetic. That's like telling a blonde to smarten up by passing her a Little Miss Goth™ kit.

That wouldn't make her smarter. But it could draw my interest.

Mmmm... firey temper...

I remember reading this one piece of fan fiction called "Heart of the Dragon" in which it turned out that Ryanthusar was a previously unknown great dragon, and the Watergate Rift was caused by a circle of Wendigo blood mages...

so anyone have any thoughts on Dunkie's pet name for Nadjia Daviar? Nadjaru-what-ever-the-hell-he-called-her? I'd always assumed that she was another drake because ofthe way he picked her up, the way she "bonded" with Mercury, and the similar weirdo 'pet' name.

Well, I actually kind of liked it, but YMMV. I was simply answering the nature fo the thread.

BTW, in that fanfic, the Dragon's Heart was more of a McGuffin to find out more about the inner workings of the Draco Foundation. (E.G. before becoming the Big D's third translator, Ms. Daviar was in MET2000. And like Jane "Frosty" Foster, she was a byblow of an Immortal Elf)

I have not read the fan fic, however, I would not agree that it would necessarily be worse (as an indicator of how low my view of the way the DHT was plotted). If they had done it right, finding out that RM was just a place holder concisousness put into a great dragon's body while his spirit was away on the plains (as was Ghostwalker's) and that he was going to get the boot would not have been a problem for me at all. And since the Secrets of Power trilogy, I have had a warm spot in my heart for Windigo Blood mages of the Azzi persuasion.

But that is just my two
AFE

Back to the original question, I would have preffered if Dunk had simply been killed by horror agents and left a number of contingencies in place, not because he knew he was going to die, but because he knew he might die.

Then Ghostwalker returns because he felt the death of his brother and wanted to kick some ass. Whereupon he starts thrashing around breaking shit because he's been gone for thousands of years and honestly has no idea what's going on.

Having Dunk be so smart that he anticipated and planned his own death actually just makes him an asshole because that means that running for president was just him jerking people around and he never intended to actually run the country.

If you make things too epic, they don't mean anything, and that's the basic problem with the entire DHT. The stakes are so high and the people are so crazy awesome that it doesn't actually end up being awesome so much as inane.

-Frank

I disagree about the pres bit. He may ahve anticipated teh need for it, but the impression I got was that it wasn'ta certainty, mroe of an extreme contingency. Really they should have just sent the fucking army down to take control of the site, but what the hell.