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SL James
Yeah, like that means anything.

QUOTE (Demonseed Elite)
Hell, the guy who lived next door to me my freshman year is about 1/64th Mohawk and was from Long Island but now claims membership in the Mohawk Nation. You can be sure there'd be many more like him when the Ghost Dance starts whipping up.

Meanwhile, I wonder how many people would have helped hide their Indian friends, neighbors, in-laws, and just random passers-by here, and then feel so betrayed by the murder of 20,000 people in Los Alamos County, followed by witnessing the callow and treacherous decision on the part of the federal government to bend over and take it in the ass from these same terrorists.

I wonder how many people would be so pissed by the betrayal, and by the murder of the people they know, in all likelihood of relatives, and ironically of the many people who work at LANL because they oppose the national security industry but have delusions that they can change things from the inside. I wonder how many of them would join Alamos 20,000.

Sure, we'll stay. We're part of the NAN because Aztlan is a member. Sure. We also outnumber you four to one. We run shit. You just pretend you do. But in 2016, you killed 20,000 of our friends; our relatives; our fellow citizens. One of these days, we will make you pay, and it will make Onate and the counter-attack following the Pueblo Revolt look like a slap on the wrist.

I wonder how many people would be just like me.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Demonseed Elite)
QUOTE (FrankTrollman @ Dec 31 2006, 06:23 PM)
Because as soon as people can talk to the Great Buffalo Spirit there are 200 million "Native Americans" the next day, that's why. I am White. I'm a Jew. Most of my forebears are from around Poland. There are reasons that my family lives in North America now instead of Europe, and those reasons are pretty old now.

But I could claim tribal membership. It wouldn't be recognized by the BIA, and I don't really care enough to do it, but I could. There are a lot of people in my situation in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. People who could decide to be tribal but don't because the tribes don't really offer anything. They lost. And despite the advances made by AIM, they are still losing today.

Exactly.

I spent two years in college living in my university's Native American Residential Program House and one thing I certainly learned was that some tribal nations are extremely easy to claim membership in.

Hell, the guy who lived next door to me my freshman year is about 1/64th Mohawk and was from Long Island but now claims membership in the Mohawk Nation. You can be sure there'd be many more like him when the Ghost Dance starts whipping up.

Does he have papers? I do. smile.gif

But I'm about as Indian as George Armstrong Custer. Not, that is, that I identify with the Babykiller. But I'm about as much an Indian as he is.

When the Awakening hit, I'd be scared crapless, but I don't think I'd be searching for my lost ancestry. In fact, if SR events go as they are supposed to, I think I'd bury that history, lest someone find me and decide to lynch me.

No, I'd be looking into the secular magic, probably wind up dissapointed and UnAwakened, and go back to life as normal.




However, it does occur to me...

If we re-wrote Shadowrun, from the ground up, to take into account our past, our present, and our possible future events, which does not include the Native American population multiplying over a hundredfold overnight, and all of them suddenly both able to contribute Mana to a Ritual on frankly ghastly scale, and willing and able to fight...

Wonder what it would be like?
SL James
QUOTE (Glyph @ Dec 31 2006, 05:40 PM)
I mean, you have things like the U.S. turning into the equivalent of nazi Germany and rounding up American Indians to put them into death camps.

You also have to remember that in the original backstory, the Lone Eagle was launched at the Soviet Union, against which the U.S. was still engaged in a much-thawed, but still ongoing Cold War. A group of Indian terrorists almost started World War 3.

And, yeah, I think the original devs were right on. If such a thing happened IRL, as impossible as it is, or if a nuclear weapon were detonated in the United States... civil rights in this country are toast, especially for the minority group painted as the responsible party. It's not like the US government would need Indians to fight a war against a foreign Indian foe - they are the enemy.

QUOTE
My problem is with how readily most other religions seem to accept SR magic and incorporate it into their beliefs, even though SR magic is completely different than what most "magic"-practicing religions would consider it to be.

Yeah, and I have a pretty good reason why - a reason which, if history is any indication, would cause me to be banned again if I actually typed it.
Glyph
Well, I semi-agree with that, since they did a lot of nasty stuff to muslims in the wake of 9/11 - but on the other hand, there is also a backlash against a lot of that. And that's something you don't usually see in alt. histories, since the people are generally portrayed as gullible sheep. Which a lot of them can be, but I don't see stuff like that happening in America without a lot of angry voices raised in dissent.

I also have problems with these escaped American Indians suddenly turning into super guerrilla fighters able to outfight the U.S. army. Yeah, maybe the Apache warriors in the time of Geronimo were pretty badass, but I don't see most modern American Indians as being any more proficient with a bow and arrow than me (skill of zero, in other words). I can see magic storms messing up air support, or whatever, but I don't see U.S. special forces and the like being massacred by guys with bows and arrows.

But hell, the whole resource rush thing that started it is contrived, too. That's why I use the bare bones of canon, but don't take it that seriously.
mfb
psh, what are you talking about? all modern indians practice with the bow and arrow every day, are able to commune with the earth and other supernatural beings, and speak in a halting patois of grunts, gestures, and half-learned english.
Charon
Just as there were a handful of amerindian shaman seeing great buffalo in the sky in 2011, there ought to have been christian faith healers who out of the blue start to really cure the ills and summon angels. And now where do you flock to? Your own tradition that suddenly works miracle as promised in the holy book or to some mumbo jumbo about buffalo in the sky?

By everything the designers have told us about magic, the various religious groups in the world should have produced magicians working their art through their own spiritual frame of reference just as fast as the amerindians produced shaman once magic returned.

Except of course for some reason they didn't and every faith in North America except for the spiritual representatives of a virtually dead tradition stayed silent during the SR early time line.

Win or lose, various christian denominations wouldn't have remained silent while what amounts to a heathen religion takes over the continent. Not when many christian would feel christian magician summoning angels and performing biblical miracles is proof that God is on their side. And to this day the conflict against NAN would have very heavy shades of holy war. Considering that, it's almost unconceivable that there hasn't been another bout of war in the past 50 years.

Imagine Islam had tossed christians out of half the continent. I'm sure you can't imagine the whole deal going down as quietly and the peace holding out as long as it did in SR, would you?

Now, Amerind did what they did and short of re-writing the timeline it can't be undone. Beside, we can fill what seems illogical by figuring there was a lot of behind the scene immortal powerbreakers involved (and there was). But that doesn't excuse the meekness displayed by religious factions to this challenge.

I mean, if you can rile up so much support to block gay marriage, surely you can muster some outrage against heathen amerindian usurping your land with heretic magic. And then translate that religious outrage into political actions.
Wakshaani
The big stick is teh Immortal Elves. They taught the natives lots of Frogtooen Magic Lore, such as teh Ghost Dance. Yeah, lots of faith healers sprung up in US territory, some nerdy kid found out that, hey, he really *could* shoot a magic missile at the darkness, but, nobody really *knew* anything.

Teh Immortals, meanwhile, had been prepped the natives for years with magical styles, showing them how to control the magic once it was present (Or possibly even casting some VERY small spells beforehand, to show what was to come) ...

Think of it this way.

You have two tribes of cavemen, one ten times teh size of the other. Both have a bunch of machineguns dropped into their midst, but, teh smaller group also has a couple of soldiers who can explain how the guns work, teach them how to aim, and had been prepped them for a year before the guns actually showed up.

Now, the day the guns showed up, the smaller tribe attacks teh larger.

Not exactly a fair fight, is it?

Same thing with magic and teh NAN.
Thane36425
I don't really see the problem with the split of the US into the UCAS and CAS. The country is already sort of dividing along those lines now in terms of Blue and Red states. I'm a little rusty on the Shadowrun backstory but it was that divide and certain policies somewhat like the argument prior to the Civil War, minus the slavery issue, that wedged the two sections from each other. So, it could be possible that a series of events like VITAS and the Ghost Dance could have been enough to force a split.

However, I'm not entirely sure that would happen, though. There is simply too much to lose in economic and military terms. Still, there was a lot to lose last time, but hot heads dominated politics of the day and for some 30 years major issues were left unresolved until it turned into war. In Shadowrun, there were issues left unresolved too and others that were decided for the benefit of the Corps and the politicians, just like prior to the real world Civil War (replace Corps with individual industrialists).

Thane36425
QUOTE (Wakshaani)
Think of it this way.

You have two tribes of cavemen, one ten times teh size of the other. Both have a bunch of machineguns dropped into their midst, but, teh smaller group also has a couple of soldiers who can explain how the guns work, teach them how to aim, and had been prepped them for a year before the guns actually showed up.

Now, the day the guns showed up, the smaller tribe attacks teh larger.

Not exactly a fair fight, is it?

Same thing with magic and teh NAN.

This can happen even if both sides had weapons all along. All it would take would be for the smaller side to get a bur up its backside and go on the attack while the large side wasn't interested in a fight.

Look at the US in Somalia. The US had the advantage in firepower, equipment and training. However, one botched raid and 19 dead and many more wounded and we pulled out. Sure we killed large numbers of them, but they still drove us out.

If a bunch of people in our own backyard starting working real magic, and powerful magic to boot, even stopped nukes from working, I think it would be a fair bet that we'd be spooked.

Pulling out as stated in the SR canon might not have been really practical though. Moving tens of millions of people would not be easy and maybe impossible, not to mention what would happen on the world stage if the highly productive Mid Western Farmland was suddenly put out of production. I think what would have been more likely to happen would be cedeing control of those territories to the NAN with populations staying in place. All those people would mean more production and a bigger tax base for the NAN, even if all non-natives were made second class citizens with limited rights.

Still, I don't think NAN would have lasted too long. The US would have eventually struck back and retaken some or all of the land. Perhaps that is why the designers split the US so that it would not be able to muster than kind of power and why Aztlan is down there waiting to take advantage us just such a distraction.
FrankTrollman
QUOTE
You have two tribes of cavemen, one ten times teh size of the other. Both have a bunch of machineguns dropped into their midst, but, teh smaller group also has a couple of soldiers who can explain how the guns work, teach them how to aim, and had been prepped them for a year before the guns actually showed up.

Now, the day the guns showed up, the smaller tribe attacks teh larger.

Not exactly a fair fight, is it?


Oh but in this case it goes even farther. The only reason that there are more people in the larger group than the smaller is because the larger group historically had access to better stone to make neolithic weaponry out of. Cavemen can actually simply decide to switch from one group to the other at any time for any eason or no reason at all.

Once it became clear that the Native Americans knew how to use their new weapons, making the switch was easy and natural for a lot of people. Suddenly the "Europeans" don't even out number the Indians any more.

---

Of course, it's in many ways based on a big lie. Game mechanically, being a Native American culturally speaking doesn't give you any magical talent or training inherently in the Shadowrun rules. But the thing is that by the time it becomes generally accepted that your capacity for magic is just as great being a Southern Baptist as a Ojibwe people have already gone two generations believing otherwise. In short, Daniel Howling Coyote sold the world sone snake oil that made people turn to peyoteism long enough that Christianity became a minority religion.

And once that happened, it's pretty much going to stay that way, because there's no logical reason for anyone to ever switch to Christianity. Like the other monotheist religions, it doesn't make any sense except to people brought up being told that its inherent contradictions are somehow natural and normal. Once it becomes a minority religion, people don't grow up being able to make any sense of it.

-Frank
knasser

I agree with everything FrankTrollman has posted on this (except the bit about my mom turning native american). But as an added bit of justification for people suddenly deciding that they're native american, bear in mind that if Danial Howling Coyote had a head start on magic use, then he would also be in a much better position to train new magicians. Yes - people can discover their gift and learn it all themself, or via a mentor spirit, but it's so much easier to have someone there to teach you new spells and show you how to safely summon spirits. Especially if this is new, you're alone, and you're frightened.

Personally, I see the NAN having a lot of non-native americans who "converted". Depending on how people saw it, they might not even have to give up their own religion to do so.
Charon
QUOTE (FrankTrollman @ Jan 1 2007, 02:08 PM)
Oh but in this case it goes even farther. The only reason that there are more people in the larger group  than the smaller is because the larger group historically had access to better stone to make neolithic weaponry out of. Cavemen can actually simply decide to switch from one group to the other at any time for any eason or no reason at all.

Well, that contradicts millenia of mankind making arbitrary distinctions between groups based on race and culture and enforcing them violently, clinging to it doggedly.

We don't switch well from one group to the other at all. Groups do NOT let go of their culture easily and they do NOT accept other members in easily. Or else our history would have been much more peaceful.

Even most animals don't accept flip flopping that easily in their herd, packs etc.

And I don't see Americans as the most likely group to have a big portion of its members letting go of its (various) cultures and eagerly embrace another one in the span of 5 years or so. And then the remainging americans living reasonably peacefully next to the usurpers for the next 60 years.

Especially not when the dominating religion is one that embrace the concept of judgement day, end of times and being tested by God and when the dominant political culture has always had trouble letting go of any conflict even when its security wasn't compromised. It's hard to imagine americans letting go of a fight just because things look bad after 5 years. Especially since the Ghost dance exhausted the NAN by killing hundreds of its most powerful shaman, which would have quickly been obvious.

However the war ended, it would still be going on and indeed there should have been plenty of border wars in the past 50 years, with a strong religious undertone in many instances. This situation with the NAN shoudl have produced a situation that make the Israel-Palestinian conflicts seems like an harmless neighbor dispute.
Glyph
Well, for one thing, according to canon, people didn't start switching over to the American Indian side until after the war, when the NAN was desperate to fill their mostly-empty territories and accepted anyone with any American Indian blood at all, in addition to the pinkskins, and later on the metahumans. Before the end of the war, all people really knew was that the government was hunting down some terrorists, and not being that effective about it.

Considering how successful Christianity has been in spreading through other lands, where it started out as a minority religion, I don't see it suddenly going to the wayside. Maybe in largely secular Europe, but not in the extremely religious U.S. People don't switch religions at the drop of a hat.

Charon already addressed my other problem with people suddenly deciding to become American Indians. I also agree with him that by all rights, there should have been far, far more anger and resentment on both sides, instead of a relatively enduring peace. Thane36425 did note the UCAS/CAS split and the threat of Aztlan, but all that does is make it barely semi-plausible. I still think there should be a lot of bad blood between the UCAS/CAS and the NAN, especially when you consider how those millions of refugees, and their descendants, would feel about a bunch of back-to-nature freaks frolicking around in a woodsy paradise gained by murdering thousands of innocent people, and throwing all of them out of their homes.
Draug
Bringing this back to the Middle East, does anyone think something similar to the American Indian Shamanism vs Christianity can have happened between Islam and Zoroastrianism? Such an instance could explain a lot of infighting in the region. Unless, of course, it succeeded in uniting the Islamists against them. Then again, perhaps Israel and its backers decided to back the Zoroastrians, creating a second front for Islam to fight in the mountains.

I also find the idea of Iran suffering from terrorist bombings by religous fanatics amusing. (Not implying that all Zoroastrians are fanatics.)
Demonseed Elite
Street Magic does say that Zoroastrianism has seen an upswing since the Awakening, partially as a backlash against the Islamic fundamentalists.
Draug
Cool.

So, the anti-fanatics go and become fanatics of a different religion in order to beat the fanatics. nyahnyah.gif

EDIT: More questions!

- Has a Kurdistan established? If so, where are its boundaries?
- How about Palestine and the Palestinians?
- Has the Shi'ite souteastern part of Iraq have joined with Iran?
- What happened to tiny but oil-rich Kuwait?
- How did Ibn Isa's near unification of the Middle East affect Muslims elsewhere?
- What parts of the Muslim/Middle Eastern world have converted to Zoroastrianism?
Synner
Pretty much all of those are answered to some extent or another in Shadows of Asia.
ChicagosFinest
My question is about Dubai. It seems the perfect Runner Haven and front door to the middle east. When I went through the Cannon I count find anything about it. Does anyone know?
Draug
QUOTE (Synner)
Pretty much all of those are answered to some extent or another in Shadows of Asia.

OK, cool. I'm going to have to get a copy of that book. In (legal) PDF.

I assume that's possible?
SL James
Yeah. There are 3 or 4 places to buy them online, and the hardcopy quality (i.e., pictures) is the same as the PDF (whereas the hardcopy of Runner Havens is markedly better).

QUOTE (ChicagosFinest @ Jan 2 2007, 08:53 AM)
My question is about Dubai.  It seems the perfect Runner Haven and front door to the middle east.  When I went through the Cannon I count find anything about it. Does anyone know?

There's a paragraph in Shadows of Asia on Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

QUOTE (SOA @ 101)
Abu Dhabi and Dubai
These ultramodern glass and steel metroplexes are the twin hearts of Arabian finance. A less restrictive atmosphere rules, and most residents live and work in conditions closer to the Western world.


And so on...
FlakJacket
QUOTE (Jarl)
- Has a Kurdistan established? If so, where are its boundaries?

Yup, Kurdistan became independent in 2043. Looks as though they got a large part of south-east Turkey, a small bit of western Iran and a sliver of northern Iraq. They didn't get Kirkuk though so their capital is in Arbil which appears to be just north of the border.

QUOTE
- How about Palestine and the Palestinians?

Well the Israeli's took back the Sinai peninsula so Gaza kind of followed and expanded down to the new border. Jerusalem got grabbed by the United Nations so that's taken off the agenda. Generally they're playing nice together as SoA was talking about a Palestinian state coming about fairly soon.

QUOTE
- Has the Shi'ite souteastern part of Iraq have joined with Iran?

Nope, the border is still the same as today according to the map in SoA.

QUOTE
- What happened to tiny but oil-rich Kuwait?

Got subsumed into the Arabian Caliphrate when Saudia Arabia, Oman, Yemen, the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait all joined together as one nation. They also later absorbed Jordan as well. James already mentioned they're one of the most liberal area of the place.

QUOTE
- How did Ibn Isa's near unification of the Middle East affect Muslims elsewhere?

It's probably in SoA but I can't be bothered looking it up after everything else. smile.gif

QUOTE
- What parts of the Muslim/Middle Eastern world have converted to Zoroastrianism?

Well several big members of the New Islamic Jihad are on record as saying that it's a Bad Thing™ so that's not exactly bound to encourage inter-faith dialogue. Seem to be mostly located in India, Azerbaijan area and a small minority of ten thousand of them in Iran.
Draug
Cool. Thanks for that info.
FlakJacket
As people have said before, if you want to know what what the 'canon' situation for the Middle East circa the 2060's then getting Shadows of Asia is your best bet. Personally though whilst there a number of things that they did with the region that I liked, there were several bits that just seemed more than a little silly or illogical to me.

If you're thinking of buying a .pdf then I can definitely recommend BattleCorps BattleShop. Never had any problems with them in the past and they don't use Digital Rights Management tools like watermarks or restricting your use of it which is a big plus.
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