So what's the absolutely worst way to meet an untimely demise in Shadowrun?

Hyz, I think you should only be limited to one entry .

...

I think Hyz should produce a tome of unholy power named something like:
"Hyz's Big Black Book of Doom"

It' be an SR supplement that would allow a GM to actually describe those "Fates worse than death."

Just be glad we don't have simsense.

Cyberzombie.

The fact that your spirit is trying with all it's might to flee your (astrally) rotting corpse, but is imprisoned by magic has always chilled me.

Ultimately, if you fail to kill yourself, you are nothing but a mass of tumors from all the cancers.

How about the Sadist Bloodmage Healer? He cuts you once, then uses blood magic to help him heal the previous cut.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

He gets to cut on you for a long, long, time.

Being forced to eat yourself alive by an AI that's taken over your skillwires, is high on my list.

The Surge seemed to have some pretty fraggin' nasty ways to kill you. Nathan Saunders, for instance, has to stay wet constantly or his skin dries out, cracks open, and starts to openly bleed all over his body.

Nasty.

Just don't forget to eat your friends before that.

What about dermal sheathing? Orthoskin? Full-body replacement? Quickened shapechange (normal human)? Genetreatment? Replacement body?

Why not go family style with a lazy susan and you know, pass the best bits around.

If I had to choose between autocannibalism or eating my friends, I'd like to think I'd eat myself. But if I didn't have a choice in the matter, eating myself would be pretty bad.

In a similar vein, being dissected alive to "keep your parts fresh" would be pretty bad too.

I have to nominate Dr. Halberstam's vivisections of TMs as being the nastiest way to go on so many levels.

I don't think dermal sheathing would prevent the skin from drying and cracking, although it would help with infections entering through the cracks. Orthoskin would probably be rejected due to the nature of the effect (a lot of Surge effects have the ability to regrow themselves). I'd also say genetreatment wouldn't work--I'm not up on all the 4th ed stuff, but it's theorized pretty heavily in "Year of the Comet" in 3rd that Surge is caused by fractions of meta-genes being expressed due to the world-wide rise of mana in 2061, and metagene's are said to be pretty hard to mess with scientifically.

Quickened Shapechange should help out with it, but that's not an idefinite thing, is it?

As for full replacement body...yeah, I think that'd do it.

Just replace the skin with cyber then, and done.

True, but I imagine it took some time to figure out what was up when it first hit him, and there'd be a period of time in there when his dying through massive bleeding skin cracks was entirely possible.

And that'd be a bad way to go is my major point.

One of the PCs in our group got absorbed by a protean. Nasty way to go.

I'd also imagine that the Horror's know some pretty nasty ways to kill people, although I have no idea what they might be.

Spit roasted by a group of Wendigo...slowly

Being tortured to death by a toxic shaman or alternatively being the sacrifice in a blood magic ritual would be what I call a "hyzmarcaean experience".

I second the terming of "Hyzmarcaean Experience". An HE will be used to identify situations in Shadowrun that would make chthulu make composure checks.

Hey now, let's not discount good ol' fashioned bio/chemical warfare and Awakened diseases!

How 'bout that Croisade? Gotta love any disease in which the effects are listed as "Agony" and "Self-Devouring." It's enough to make a guy want some nanites. O-Cells I mean; you don't want Surtr... Surtr would be bad.

Why choose? Get mind raped into joining a Wendigo Cult and do both!

First you can eat your friends. Then you can eat yourself nearly to death. Then while you are holding on to the thin line between existence and shadow your mentor can devour your spirit piece by piece while you beg him piteously to continue masticating your flesh before you until you die. And in about six to twelve hours you will die.

-Frank

Worst way to die...I'd have to say not answering my old PC Dicerman's questions would be up there. That elf just had a thing for torture.

But no, the single worst way to die will probably take some time to put together, but my PCs did run into the following bad situation once.

Let's say you're a nobody. You live in a remote village that scrapes by farming and selling the occasional dragonscale or whatever. Then one day an old spirit shows up and starts tearing shit up. You're forced to watch as it moves down the line of your friends, family and tribe and rapes them to death. And as each of them dies loving every minute of it, you're frozen motionless, unable to even try to save the people you love because that would mean you might miss your turn.
It's the psychological revulsion, self-hate, impotence, and total domination that raises the awful scale for me.

Being slurped up through a straw by Ghostwalker after he cast Turn to Goo on you!

...that gets two

...letseee... surging into a lesbian ninja elf catgirl who ends up a minion playtoy of either Lofwyr _{(the GM)} or Hestaby _{(the GM)}.

Not that it's ever happened to my knowledge, but:

Remember "Fields of Fire"?
Falling damage = distance fallen in meters (D)

Ha! Forgot you were sleeping on the sofa, huh?

I hear that's how Chuck Norris died back in the 50s.

1) Awakened Syphilis. Happened under an old GM of mine to another player. Wasn't pretty.

2) In jail when the mob pays off your cellmate, who's known affectionately as Bubba the Love Troll. Did this one to a player's PC when said player got bored one night during game and decided to go on a skilling spree at a local country club for no reason whatsoever, then attacked Lonestar when they showed up.

Bull

Getting sent to Cleveland.

Damn, Bull beat me to it, dying while being serviced by Bubba (the LOVE troll) was going to be my suggestion.

Seriously though, if I had to choose a way not to check out it'd be death via BTL Grade torture, imagine having every last pain repector in your body turned to 120% 24/7 until the very last star in the universe burns out.

And the best thing of all is with the proper chip, while your victim is screaming on the iside, he can be fully aware of his body docily carrying out your every command, slavishly loyal to his new electronic master.

Now that I think of it... what would it be like, waking up to find out, you're the other girl in a room with some corporate sicko and an already personafix'd Molly Millions...

Oh like causing your bones to shatter, slicing open your astral signature (pattern in ED), or causing your skin/flesh to rip off and slide over your body in nice juicy junks potentially leaving you with an eyeball for a belly button, and your nose on the back of your head? Yeah they weren't real big on flat out killing you, big fans of torturing you to death though. Or causing you to torture other people to death so they could feed off that persons pain and your mental/emotional pain for having done it. Though if you are into dieing, just ask the next great dragon you meet about verjigorm.

...yeah that should have been my choice as well, However, still have a bad taste in the brain pan from Survival of the Fittest, Year of the Comet & Wake of the Comet that made several characters of mine feel a panther cannon round to the head would have been preferable.

dangit mr. ravor you stole my kill!

all the simsense movie death scenes looped to continual playback, and editted to BTL, the RAS overide duped to respond to your commands. so they see themselves die over...and over...and over...in every way that was described previously, in addition to more torturous designs...and while its happening you've hacked them to go around and kill everyone they ever cared about, after you've had your fun they will not have enough strength left to finish the job so you let them sit....alone....in a room with a single red pin light...

Who said all of them died .....

I like to think of some of Halberstam's research laying down the groundwork for full body cyborg technology. So I think the brains of his test subjects are somewhere in a decommissioned research facility, growing insane while they slowly degenerate until too many of their neurons are damaged for them to sustain self-awareness...

By the way... where is the infamous Mr. hyzmarca? Did we draw the summoning circle wrong?

well, my response to this question is always "sodomized in half by a horse", but that's not very 6th world-ish.

most of the weaponized nanotechs sound pretty horrible, and radiation posioning is always a terrible way to go. but i still think getting thrown out an airlock of a space station would be about the worst.

Lame.

I'm fond of the stuff the Master Shedim made the narrator do in Threats 2. Nothing like sticking your hand in a boiling pot to pick out a paw to chew on.

Just remove the technology aspect, and that is how a horror would kill you. Now imagine them doing that to entire cities of people over the course of thousands of years with no way to leave. Ah, I do so love earthdawn.

The absolutely worst way to die in Shadowrun is so simple that many people overlook it. At home, in your on bed, surrounded by the people you love, of old age.

Being tortured to death isn't a bad way to die because death is the good part of being tortured to death. Once the pain because great enough it is what you look forward to and hope for. You embrace oblivion like a long-lost lover.
But when life is good, when you have everything that you could possibly want, when you wish that you could live this life forever but feel it slowly slipping from your grasp, when there are no less than four different ways for you to extend your life but you don't have access to any of them, the feeling of total impotence is overwhelming as you rage futilely against the dying of the light.



There is a video on the internet of a man named Mr. Hands getting killed that way. It doesn't seem to be nearly as unpleasant as one would imagine.

oooh. that's good.

they've lived a full life and are want of nothing. they may not welcome death but they are not afraid of it and do not fear it.

Says who? The only people who aren't afraid of death are those who believe that it will be better than life. This is limited to religious fanatics and people who have had their souls crushed by horrific torture. It is, after all, the Undiscovered Country from whose bourn no traveller returns.

there can be only one answer to the question.

That Answer Is:


Slowly.

those people are afraid of premature sudden death. because they have "so much to live for."
those that have everyone they care about taken care of after they die are more accepting and don't fight it because they are simply ready to go, ESPECIALLY when they've had everything they could ever want.
you have a very limited definition and there is just so much more out there.
each torture is different for each person. you can't break some people with sensations, the "tougher" someone is the more they can be broken with the physicality of torture. but some people all you have to do is put them in a closet. or put them underwater. the scope of the person is what makes things truly unbearable.

OK, I now have to ask. Are you a goon? ARE YOU FROM PLANET FYAD?!

Two points:

1. Hyz you're right, the worst death for a runner who's fought the law, the megas, the GD's, and the IE's, would be to die of something boring and stupid like liver cancer. That's like Hatchetman going down under the fury of a cyborg drink machine.

Or critically glitching eating and chocking to death. Yes Sally, the chinese brocolli does 12P damage....

2. I know you can SURGE into a cat girl but... do you really surge into a LESBIAN cat girl/Ninja? I wasn't aware ninja was a genetic trait.

Meh, I still always have to default to nature...

When a bug spirit lays an egg in you. The first week or so is just anticipation. You have the upset stomach, chills, you sometimes get (what you hope are) ghost sensations in your belly. Then the eggs hatch and the larvae spread to different tasty parts of your body. I can only imagine the reaction when you see a giant, curled up snake under the skin of your leg, but you dare not hit it because then it'll wake up and start physically chewing a hole through your leg to hide. The feeling of something literally crawling up your throat to feed on the inside of your face. The two weeks or so of watching these tiny wriggling creatures grow and grow. The realization that you're both famished and not hungry at all, that your bowels themselves have been consumed. And your body continues to fight to stay alive, to stay conscious, until the final moment when your little offspring decide it's time to greet the world and physically distend your skin until it snaps and they crawl free, or the tiny, jagged legs as they crawl through convenient orifices. Finally, in your dying moments, you take in the little litter of hungry larvae as they curl up on your cooling corpse, enjoying its last few hours of heat.

That, and I think the idea of flies laying eggs in your eyeballs is pretty nasty too.

Personally i'm more upset about flies laying eggs in my brain. But at least you wouldn't really be able to feel that.

Unless they burrowed through the scalp and skull first.

" Welcome to "Street Smarts" the show that gets you the dirt on those lovable runners who make our ratings so pretty. we want to thank all 3.5 million of our viewers for voting us the "peoples choice"for the 3rd year running"
" Tonite we are proud to be presenting an award to a runner who prefers to be known as "Sickle". One tough Hombre, but it seems he has met his match. lets watch the clip and I think you'll understand.

(cut to scene of typical barrens stuffer shack. )

A small gray haired woman is standing at the counter. Across from her is an bored adolescent cashier. The old lady can be heard talking to the clerk.

Old lady:" I wouldn't be out at this late but my kitties have to have their dinner" "

Suddenly, a muscle bound,packed full of chrome, street sammy pushes a head of the Old lady.

Announcer dubs in" there's Sickle now, quite imposing don't you think?"

The samurai tosses a 6 pack of brew and a frozen pizza on the counter

Sickle: "move it,ya old bag"

Old lady:" Young man, someone should teach you some manners"

At this point, the old lady winds back with her bag of cat food and begins pummeling the sammy who miraculously goes down. She continues to hammer him until the manager comes out of the back room and pulls her off of Sickle.

The manager leans over the downed samurai and checks for a pulse.

Manager:"Some one call Docwagon™ !!I think he's dead!!!"

Announcer: " and thats why we are giving our deceased friend Sickle,the "worst way to die " award. see you next week and remember, I'm Jay Nelson and "Keep those Cameras rolling"

While the psychological and physical pain has been examined in detail, it remains in the characters present. A pain that some runners would feel is the destruction of their hard earned name, or perhaps a death that leads to their impressive name becoming the joke of all who knew him, and those who respected him. I can imagine some characters choosing the fates listed above, rather than losing their good name.