I was writing in the blood mage thread and had a disturbing thought about the NAN who did the Great Ghost Dance. They willingly gave up their lives for the greater good. They sacrificed themselves willingly to help their nation.
Go back to the middle of the last century and that is what the kamikaze tried to do.

For the greater good of the Empire they willingly committed their lives to the destruction of the enemies. More than a miliatry act of desperation, or a way to reach paradise after death, in Shinto, they became divine the momment they set their feet on the path. It was a spiritual act. They were "spirits of the air" =Kami of the Kaze= Kamikaze before they died.

Now we see these men as brave but foolish whose sacrifice failed to halt the American advance and may have added weight to the scales in favor of using nuclear weapons.

But having explained this view of the Japanese, how are the GG Dancers viewed in 2070? I am sure they are heros to the NAN but how do the UCAS, CFS and CAS see them? Any idea how the Japanocorps view them? Surely the ideal of a suicide for the cause would appeal to some of the more hard charging types.

Just one thing: I missed the part about the Great Ghost Dance involving suicides. Where did you get that at? Is my memory so poor? =)

Just re-read the SR3 and SR4 accounts of the Great Ghost Dance and nothing about suicides. Perhaps something the old NAN books? Not all ritual magic requires sacrifice. Where did you get this at? =)

read secrets of power trilogy, dozends if not hundreds of dancers died dancing.
well, they were not really KILLED per se . . they just did not stop untill drain/exhaustion killed them off

Many thanks. =)

Good lord. Just doing a little reading on the topic. According to wikipedia:

See more here.

I'm not sure it is public knowledge what the GGD was, that it involved blood magic nor death of the dancers. So I think everyone would think they were heroes and/or freak magicians. The view would be coloured by the fact they BLEW UP MOUNTAINS more then they may or may not have died doing so.

The possibility of another GGD probably has all of the non-NAN powers in North America (Aztlan included) shitting in their pants and is probably one of the few reasons there haven't been any major expansions into NAN territory by hostile forces.

yeah in secrets of power by charrette they have a spot where twist has the ghost dance

if i remember correctly, they had awakend and non awakend people in it. There was one eagle shaman that came up to sam and beseached him to save....them? the world? i can't remember which, then he goes into the bond fire thingy and up goes his spirit lending his spirit power to attack the invading force.

when I really want to know is what happend to the black guy mage for sato? when sato became sato spider he was like "run little man I'll kill all of you in time" but sato spider died so i wonder where he ended up.

I remember specifically that the GGD was explicitly stated to be a blood magic ritual in either the SR3 history overview or SR4's. As such, the nonawakened who died as part of the ritual wouldve contributed immensely to it.

Blood Magic involves sacrifice, not just "Blood" itself. The spirit/essence/drain of a person also can be included.

The GGD is, technically, Blood Magic, but it's of the rare, and barely known/remembered "Good" type, as the sacrifice is willing and a part of the ceremony. You have to be for the ceremony to work.

But it summoned up a whole lot of power, and that always has a price. Both GGDs had a very, very high price indeed.

Right the WILLING sacrifice give a lot of mojo. IF the kamikaze had worked they would have been seen as heros instead of a useless loss.

I guess if it was a secret that the dancers were sacrified, they might only be names of honor on a memorial along with the guys who died in firefights.

Power requires sacrifice. *returns to chanting*

More Blood for the Bloo..oops wrong game

close enough, for me, WH40K is the in between of shadowrun and BAttletech *g*

In my mind, the GGD wasn't blood magic, and IEs and Horrors had nothing to do with it, other than being immensely affected by it (the Awakening must have been like Pride Weekend for spike babies). Sometimes, magic is just magic, and I think the GGD is the archetypical instance of that. There didn't need to be anything weird about it. That's what made it special. It blew everyone's minds by just being magic.

Unfortunately, I know canon disagrees with me on this point. That's fine; I've never really let canon be that much of a constraint if I didn't like it (and I DO like it, 80% of the time--I like it a lot). But for purposes of this discussion, I'd say opinion of those that died in the GGD would be different, depending on which view you take. By canon, since I guess some IE/Horror or something was there, the GGD must have been at least semi-secretive. In which case, there's no public opinion about them. In my games, I've always imagined the GGD as being pretty well-documented, if not fully staged as a publicity event. I won't say "stunt" because it was every bit as powerful as SAIM claimed. But if I were running a movement like that, I'd show off the GGD as much as possible. SAIM was working with rather limited numbers, compared to their opponent. It was in their best interest to end the conflict with as little bloodshed as possible. You can make all the same arguments that the US did in defense of its decision to nuke Japanese civilians. I won't defend those arguments, but I do feel absolutely confident saying that the US government was more likely to give up after a flashy presentation of the GGD than if the GGD had been done in secret ("hey, all these tornadoes sure are weird--bah, it's just coincidence, let's keep fighting"). In which case, I'd imagine those that died during it are regarded in the NAN as heroes. Everyone else in North America, however, probably disagrees. At best, they were naive enough to be manipulated into suicide for political gain by cynical leaders. At worst, they are terrorists worse than the 9/11 hijackers. And the Japanese perspective on them is probably very confused--there is a key difference between the GGDers and the Kamikaze pilots--the GGDers WON.

Personally, I hate how people keep comparing the 9/11 Hijackers to Kamikaze.

The Kamikaze would detest being compared to the 9/11 'jackers. They were WARRIORS who fought other warriors and soldiers. Those ships they flew into could fire back. Even the freighters were filled with what the Japanese saw as "Warriors" or "Soldiers". They were doing it to defend Japan from imminent invasion.

They were Samurai.

The 9/11 'Jackers hit a sitting duck. The Towers were filled with Civilians. Could not fight back in any way. And had no military value.

They were cowards.

or as the saying goes, one persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter...

or in shadowrun terms. sure that guy killed some people, but those people where using his locals from the barrens as slave labor or guinea pigs...

but yes, the kamikaze where soldiers going after military targets. but one could say that the cold war opened up the door to viewing anyone as a military target, thanks to their plans of nuking urban areas.

anyways, we are a long way from the age where large armies lined up on each side of a field and ran at each other with axes and spears...

well, aside from finfancial value due to the stock market being located there if i remember correctly . . and the effect of more or less the whole of air-traffic probably being canceled because of that, effectively tying the us of a down literally . . and of course the moral damage and shock value and publicity . . there IS no such thing as bad publicity, there's only publicity . .

Hmm, actually, it makes sense: the blood magic of the GGD drew the Horrors...

I agree about the relative success of an action influencing how it is perceived. The same is true of which side you look at it from. Consider the Light Brigade. Heroes who died obeying orders or idiots who charged canons on horseback?

Idiots who charged cannons on horseback. Anyone with common sense would have subjected both Lucan and Cardigan to accidental on-purpose friendly fire.

To back up the topic slightly: the GGD would HAVE to be greatly publicized. If not to the general populace, to the governments affected. A demonstration of a new weapon is almost useless unless your enemy knows you are the one wielding it. Sure, the UCAS might eventually figure out that the fissures opening under their armies might be some sort of concerted attack, but in the meantime, your best mages are dying from ritual spellcasting drain. You're going to lose the war (or sink the continent) before anyone realizes you're the ones destroying the world.

"Mr. President!" "What? We're in a Top Secret Meeting..." "Priority message from the Native Commanders... It says... Look... Outside... Your... Window." "What?" *Turns around, sees a tornado* "Oh... Drek."

But to defend the kamikaze pilots, they were uniformed military personel in military aircraft , who gave their enemies a hcnace tofight back the 9/11 terrorists offered no identification we not in a declared war, were not representing nay recognized govenrment (the Taliban denied a link beyond them being 'guests") and targeted civilians on purpose to spread fear, not to target forces that might be able to respond. Their goal was not the destruction of materials but fear, like terror bombing.

BACK ON TOPIC

I think the fact the GGd was a suicide ritual is probably a pretty big secret. otherwise, keep the war going. it's a non-renewable resource if the US military had kept up the pressure.In a war of attrition, the USA would have won just because the NAN would have been losing men just to 'fire' their weapon. You don't even have to blast the ritual site, they get off their 'shot' but how many men do they lose doing it? too many.

unless they kill more of the enemy...

"

First off you don't know if it is going to work.

Once it does work, you don't want them to know where the Ghost Dance is being performed (can you say satellite surveillance followed up with as many airburst Nukes as needed).

Third you have to reach critical mass your demonstrations so that there is no way they are going to disbelieve (or cover it up) you when you announce to the world that Air force base X will be hit by three tornadoes in 30 minutes.

Fourth you certainly don't want them to figure out how many losses you take every time you perform the ritual.

Fifth the GGD was used to disrupt the anti insurgency operations against the Native Americans. The Shock and Awe effects were a bonus.


Oh, and according to the Secrets of Power, the GGD dancers don't have to be magically active. They just have to be willing.

Lets face it the GGD and the resulting NAN are the single most silly propositions of the entire setting. I love the setting, but from the get go this required the most suspension of disbelief. Shamans work, but none of the European Traditions do. That is what is sold as the reason the GGD worked. Based on later writings of how magic works in Shadowrun, we know that is not the case. So whether it was a suicide pact or not does not really matter because the event and its resulting consequences are something that just need to be quietly accepted, however poorly it was thought out. The balkanization of the US could have been more realistically modeled by pursuing regional cultural differences than by suggesting that a very small percentage of the population with mystic mojo kicks everybody's asses. Personally it sits better with me that a certain Ehran was a behind the scenes player who actually screwed the Indians, and a ton of people died without knowing why. It suits the setting better than a willing sacrifice, and alleviates the ridiculous factor; at least for me it does YSRMWV.

The Shamans worked because they kept up with the old Traditions, and continued to practice them.

Suddenly, one day, they worked again.

"Hey! Cool! The Spirits speak with us once more! Hey, Wolf, go bite that White Man's ass!"

How many ancient European Traditions are practiced today, continually, and in great percentages of population?

*THAT* is why the GGD was so powerful. It was the FIRST major use of Magic ever. Noone had a defence for it at all. They couldn't even figure out how it was done in the first place.

Kind of like the US being the only one with Nukes for awhile.

Then, you know, everyone and their DOG tried to make sure that they could get magic afterwards, and that's why the other traditions came about.

Dog helped. He got petted and a treat. Dog was happy.

Yes, of course, the lack of effective magical troops in the US military during the early days of the Awakening was highly unrealistic because the today in real life US military spends tends of billions of dollars researching the practical battlefield applications of magic.

So what seems to be the party line is that the Amerindians Rituals were the real deal, and everyone but them was full of shit. I realized the second I wrote that it would turn up what turned up. So Kabbalists are doing something different after the GGD. Shinto is full of shit. Wiccans are nuts. Druidic societies have no inkling of what works. Zoroastrians are smoking crack and etc., but the Amerindians of all tribal cultures had it spot on. I am not suggesting the US had the juju, but that plenty of people loyal to the US would have, and though they would have been a smaller percentage of the population than say Shamans were to the population of Amerindians they would have ultimately equaled or outnumbered them. After the first mystical shit hit the fan do you think for an instant that the GOV would just roll over. I would say they would have appealed to all "good americans" who might have a clue as to what was going on to step forward. As a device for balkanizing the US fine I submit to it, but I am certainly going to look for the Shadow play for it to make any sense. When you have a 8000 year old manipulative bastard pulling the strings it makes more sense to me that the cards would fall the way they did, especially when your opponent potentially has a couple of the same kind of manipulative bastards urging them to cut their losses.

the great ghost dance also had the knowledge of some millenia-old individuals supporting it. certainly other cultures would have had magic, but not necessarily magic on the scale of the great ghost dance. they most likely wouldn't have knowledge of any kind of blood magic, and odds are good that ritual magic was not as advanced back then in general, let alone a ritual on the scale of the great ghost dance.

even in current SR, there isn't really magic on that scale generally speaking... not very many people causing volcanoes to erupt for example, ritually or otherwise.

The GGD was Horror magic, pure and simple. It was taught (and probably created) by the half-Horror half IE son of one of the most sadistic and knowledgeable Horrors of the Fourth World and one of the most skilled and experienced Nethermancers of the Fourth World. It was designed to allow magical effects would should only be possible near the peak of the mana cycle to be performed shortly after the Awakening and is more powerful than any spell available to rules-legal Earthdawn characters (though similar in effect to Call Forth the Maelstrom the GGD was both more powerful than and quicker acting than its Elementalist conterpart). As such, it was really impossible for any magical group to counter it.

But it was more than that. The logistics of fielding a magical fighting force shortly after the Awakening, particularly when the most powerful magicians would be older religious leaders who are both unlikely to volunteer and unlikely to be fit for duty if they did.

The Shaman/Hermetic divide didn't help either, since the vast majority of Native magicians could learn from their totems while most Western Magicians required years of academic study. It was possible for some of the few Wiccan soldiers in the US military to Awaken with Idols, but would be rare enough to have no real effect on the tide of battle.

I never knew a certain 1/2 IE 1/2 Horror was involved (I assume this is in a novel). That goes a long way to making it more credible.

I still disagree about the rest of it, the numbers just don't work. When you give examples such as only really old westerners have magic might, and meanwhile every little kid can learn from his totem, but lets ignore every western, or eastern animist, tribal, spirit based tradition, which are still extant today, of course the answer is going to be what you want it to be. What makes American Indians so special in comparison to every other culture in the US in the context of magical traditions?

FASA was an american company...

Read "Western" as "USA". They certainly didn't have any CANADIAN Totems there!

No Goose, Moose, Beaver...

No Backbacon or Beer...

Damnit, I want my Beer Shaman!!!

Faelen it was written in the 1980's. The idea was that indians kept using thec same rituals they had been using for centuries and suddenly BANG they work. The Freaking rain dance is not just a thing to impress tourists and give people a chance to hang out and shoot the bull. It really started freaking raining! Remember the guys in the camps were part of a political movement so they would embrace the 'old ways.'

By comparrison the USA did not have magic on file. The rifle company might have a few guys in it who were wiccans but their rituals were not a part of the unit drill. The NAN, desperate for any edge, suddenly had a weapon that no one else had because no one else was looking for it. There was probably some level of disbelief on the part of the top brass about the existance of magic until the big blow came.

A neat story might be during the war some squad of white guys saved from NAN forces/spirits because they had a member who wa wiccan or knew the kabalah and found their spells worked. If they were seen to be using magic against NAN, it might be the indians who invented the tactic of "geek the mage" before he lets our cat out of the bag.

Or became an Adept Berzerker, ala Odin's Blessings.

I know when it was written, I have owned all four editions. I understand the premise, I get the why. My point was that it was oversimplified to the point where it seriously stretches credibility. It is the single weakest link in the setting precisely because the rationalization of it requires accepting things as fact that are not plausible given the ground rules. Magic returns and only the American Indian has held onto his ancient values and rituals. If it looks, smells, feels, etc. like bullshit it probably is. This is why I need the Shadow play behind it or it just does not hold water. As has been shown Traditions work because of a metahumans complete belief, and innate talent. If I worship Odin and really believe and practice "ancient rituals" tm why won't it start working at the same time as Walks Lightly with Six Shooters raindance.

All of it smacks of a GM hand waving. I love the game, I love the setting, but I am not going to be blind to the fact that one of the fundamentals of the settings history is really kind of lame. It does not ruin the game for me, but I need more than the party line for it to work in my games.

The issue was one of recruitment. The modern all-volunteer military, lacking any comprehensive magical program, would have had to quickly develop a way to find and recruit skilled magicians. They could reinstate the draft, but that would still present the insurmountable problem of identifying the less than 1 percent of the population that had access to combat-practical magic and rushing them through basic training.

The Native Americans didn't ave this problem because they had no civilians, not of their own choice, but because the US military rounded them all up and put them in extermination camps so that their only two choices were to join the fight or die.

Other traditions worked, too, but they weren't systematically employed by the US military because the infrastructure required to identify and conscript them simply didn't exist at the time and could not have existed at the time.

Except for one thing we are talking about kicking out what...70 million non American Indians. So roughly 700,000 adepts/magic potential. None of whom are going to get involved when a populace of less than half a percent tells you to get off of your land. Not to mention how many of those 70 million own firearms. The numbers don't work, and all the attempts to explain it away with excuses of the system this, and the system that, does not make it work.

Faelan, I think it was great that they said "Only the American Indians had working magic" because shamanism gave them a head-start over hermetics, who, as has already been said, needed years of academic study. The whole Native American angle gave the game a certain charm that it's never gotten back. The part that ruins credibility came later, when there were tons of other traditions that also worked. Now that Native American tradition isn't special in SR anymore, one has to wonder how they're powerful enough to warrant owning half of North America. I prefer to keep a special spot for them in my games, but it's hard to do without cliches like meeting your Johnson in a wigwam.

As for the kamikaze pilots, I guess my view differs a little from everyone else's. It's not that I'm about to defend the 9/11 hijackers, but the kamikaze pilots weren't that much better. If their consciences were clean because they were just soldiers launching a military operation, their government wouldn't have loaded them up with more amphetamines than Rush Limbaugh at a buffet. But also, all of you keep talking about how the kamikaze pilots SAW their operation. It's not like the 9/11 hijackers saw themselves as terrorists. They saw themselves as warriors, as their cultural equivalent of samurai. They were attacking infrastructure in the manner any military does in times of war. You may say it wasn't a declared war, but it WAS declared. We just weren't listening, because the people declaring it were religious whack-jobs (and they weren't doing it in English). And a definition of "they were using terror, they must be terrorists" doesn't work, either, because ALL militaries do that, or at least should. If you can scare your enemy into surrendering before more lives get lost, that's a GOOD thing. Yes, the 9/11 hijackers were evil, but I'd say that has more to do with their end goal of a forced theocracy than with their methods. The kamikaze pilots were using terror, too, because they weren't trying to just wipe out military targets (that would be a trivial waste of pilots); they were trying to wipe out a few targets in a manner that would scare the shit out of us and make us back off rather than "mess with the crazy guy." We, too, were aiming to do far more than destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki--we were trying to scare the shit out of Japan so they'd surrender (it's debatable whether or not they surrendered BECAUSE of the nukes, but that was our thinking at the time).

Faelan: Only think that people new the was that apparently there is working magic and it just made multiple vocanos erupt and Indians are telling you to get the hell out of their land or something worse happens. Back then nearly nobody knew anything about magic or it's limits, so really what would you do escpecially when your own goverment is giving up the fight.

And as has been said before, only reason indians were able to pull of something like GGD was that they had an half Horror half IE intructing them on horror bloodmagic that used the willing sacrifice of the dancers to power its effect.

and then there is all the other stuff happening. goblinization, crash 1.0, vitas, weather freaking out and all kinds of crazy animals showing up. nothing like sending out a recon squad and have them run into a nature spirit, wendigo or something else they have never been told about in basic training.

humans basically stopped being top of the foodchain outside of the city for a moment, after being so for some 1000+ years...

Oh, and let's not forget Dragons!

Having Great Dragons like Aden go, "OK, you want a war, YOU GOT A WAR!!!" tends to show the (Meta)Human Race just how far DOWN on the foodchain they are.

I go off about this a lot, but I HATE the idea that the GGD was something handed down by other powers. Because it's such a central part of the setting. Just about everything else, I think you can just ignore the influence of IEs and Horrors, and the setting still works ok. But if you can't come up with an explanation for the GGD that doesn't involve IEs and friends, then you can't really have the setting without them, either. And I like my setting sans IEs. "Harlequin" was a fun adventure module, but I prefer to think of Harls as a deranged free spirit or something, who only thinks the fate of the cosmos hinges on his actions. If I wanted my setting to include immortal beings that secretly control the world behind the scenes because they're more important than us lowly humans, I'd go play Vampire (actually, I wouldn't; I've tried, and nobody will play with me because either they're drama queens that can't maintain a stable enough social dynamic to support an RPG group, or because, having had experience with Vampire players in the past, they assume I'm a drama queen that can't maintain a stable social dynamic...)

now i understand how things like history and religion can be as convoluted as it often is...

or in the words of adam savage: "i reject your reality and substitute my own"...

Might be somewhere else (like the magic supplements) but it's not in the main book.

Of course you can ignore the IE/Horror angle. It just means you are faced with the question, "why did those traditions and that totem work immediatelly, and on such a scale, while others still seemed to be forming?" rather than "why did that old half-breed pick those guys rather than any other population on the planet that claims to be oppressed?"

As for the powerful creatures behind the scenes running the world, one of the things about SR (even with IEs included) is that the strongest IEs can (roughly) injure certain great dragons in a stand-up mojo-battle. So yes, there may be some manipulating from the shadows through history, but the big guys are back and not staying very hidden.

Determination, and a willingness to commit more than any other group. Sure, some wiccans and others who happened to live in america might have been awakened, but with this level of mojo coming down while they're still in the process of understanding their powers most probably lied low rather than volunteering for the US military. After the camps, more than a few probably thought America had it coming. All they would have really had were faith healer traditions, who even more might have thought of these events as "Gods' wrath"

The Amerindians realized what they had a little faster than anyone else, and applied it as a weapon while everyone else was still in the process of admitting it existed. The Great Ghost Dance was based on an actual ritual carried out across the entire western side of the continent a century ago, and was probably fairly smiler to it. These people already had the right mindset for using magic and mass ritual as a weapon. all they needed was the mojo and the right situation.

Sure, the Shinto were figuring things out at the same time, but their mindset really isn't based on violence. Do you think they would have fought for America?

No matter how you shape it, justify it, explain it, the numbers are just so far askew that they don't work. I mean I see it as a symptom of the hobby. How do I create a setting where Cyberpunk, Fantasy, and the Wild West meet? Shadowrun Version 1.0 thats how. It was not seriously thought out at first, accept it, I do and everyone I have played with has mentioned it as being the single most ridiculous premise of the setting. The numbers don't work because they are so skewed (not slightly, not majorly, but to the point of absurdity) against it happening. No matter what is thrown out there as a justification it is just so far out there that anyone analyzing the situation without a personal happy, happy, joy, joy over it will say WTF mate! Someone sprouting pointy ears, or gaining a couple hundred pounds and a set of horns is more probable than 70 million people allowing themselves to be disenfranchised. Humans are stubborn, to the point of death more often than not.

Could you tell were you got that 70 million peopple left their homes.