im more tempted to say its a take on some illness thats grown into legend over generations.

if it came with the europeans, and selectively targeted natives, its comparable to how infected blankets spread disease among the natives in usa.

a simple cold can be a epidemic if the immune system have never encountered it before...

bah, i should have read the whole post linked to. the disease angle had been touch upon...

also, it awoke something i read about the image of beauty in those areas. being fat was seen as a thing of beauty iirc. and as the fat would have insulating properties, it kinda makes sense. it would also be a sign of wealth i guess.

makes one wonder how practical things turn into social/cultural/religious elements.

*laughs* Snow, I think it will be part of the fun. It's fun to be all sneaky and go ninja their HD's, but how much MORE fun is it if we plan it where they can read it? It's so much sporting that way (at least until we get down to details...)

Btw, I vote that we donate money to the martini fund. (All donaters must swear upon pain of badness that if they should mysteriously recieve a digital copy of the file, they keep it to themselves?)

For my martini's I need Russian vodka, Italian vermouth and French Lillet and lemon peels.Even in large qualities this is cheaper than my 2nd type- the 'ball and chain' martini with blue berry vodka, orange liquour, lime juice and blue berry to garnish. But these are sneakier so they may work faster on Synner.

The wasting illness sounds like TB more than naything AND like a vampire legend like you get in parts of southern New England. Anyone know what the local vampire legends in that are were like? Anything pre-columbian?

P. 70 Paradis Lost, just below the pic of the ork with a surf board

That certainly sounds like it might be linked to the Shark goddess. Hawaiian myths are difficult to study due to two waves of competeing peoples who wanted to wipe out each other's culture AND the white man's attempt to wipe it all out. Shark myths seem to be like the wild hunt in northern Europe. Some say it's a defender, some say it's horrible, ALL say you're better to avoid the whole fragging thing.

I'd guess the jungle would preclude it, but any ideas if the NAN cultures of SA have a wild hunt tradition?

Huh. It would be interesting to know if any Native American cultural groups have something similar to the Wild Hunt. Native spirits tend to be... not so nice often.

Last time I was in Hawaii, I asked a couple local kids who I met why Hawaii doesn't really have ghost tours, like alot of the mainland does. They kinda looked at me, looked at each other, and then back at me. After about 30 seconds I said "It's the Native American principle, isn't it?" They asked what that was, and I said "The nice spirits scare the hell out of you, and the mean spirits... well there aren't ghost stories, if no one is left to tell them." They agreed throughly.

(Remember folks, black sand is made from lava, so don't make the mistake of taking that from the islands either.)

i guess it explains a bit, you got to be a certain kind of mad to be a shaman and actually try to talk to those spirits...

A ninja I may be, but mess with the devs on my favorite game? That's biting the hand that feeds and this ninja dog knows his place.

There are some ghost stories in Hawaii that I have heard but they generally are on the lines of 'do not go near them.' Like a parade of dead people, if they see you, you will join them.

Exactly.

My dad lived and worked on a reservation for awhile, back in the days before the casino craze. He lived out on the beach, in a fort made out of driftwood. Some of the stuff he learned and heard about... not the friendly end of the spirit spectrum.

TKD, I was talking about Daddy's little ninja. But thanks for the heads up. It's always good to know we're going to have to plan on AH and Syn having their own ninjas...

If you've seen the Ghost Cartels PDF, you've seen parts of SoLA. For instance, the Guerreros sidebar on pages 130 and 131 is snipped right from the Aztlan chapter of SoLA.

Isnt it obvious from the sampling here that this is a book that people want? Stop making excuses and release it. I'd rather pay for it then wait for some phantom free ebook. I know you'll come up with some excuse on how it is not as easy as it sounds. Bull. Make it happen.

Tee hee!

Some people do not appreciate, that a game based on secrets and hidden corp files, has its own mythology of secret files.

sure, its nice to pretend that there are secrets out here, but "we" want to be in the know, damn it!

The ED Dragons book was released.

Yeah, but they're still shying away from admitting there is no other way to release SoLA. BTW, wasn't the German translation of Shadows of North America published that way, too?

Indeed it was.

Soo, what's the location of the run? I have some contacts in Portugal and what's the cut?

-Chrysalis

This may be considered blasphemous, but I'm not convinced that Catalyst should continue with SoLA. After all, it is an old sourcebook with outdated information about how a section of the world was seven years ago in gametime. Honestly, I would prefer they use their energy on things in the here and now.

BURN THE HERETIC! BURN HIM!!!!

Also, I really feel that outdated information is better than none at all. I mean, there's so many places where dated info is all we have, after all.

If you stare to long into SoLA, SoLA will stare into you.

Have you read any of the 'Shadows of...' books? I mean I agree with your sentiment, and if it were any other line of sourcebooks I just wouldn't care, but, well, I they're honestly the best value for money you will ever get out of a sourcebook for any RPG. I only play Shadowrun 4, and I still don't regret walking down to my local gaming store and plonking down £70 for all three of them (Asia, Europe, and North America). I actually reference the Shadows books more than Runner Havens or Corp Enclaves, even though I run all my games in 2071-72. The material is so rich, the country descriptions so well written out, and there are more great plot hooks than you can shake a stick at. The section on Britain, despite being only about 5 pages, was worth the price of Shadows of Europe on it's own. If you're running a Hong Kong game then you'd be an idiot not to go grab the pdf of Shadows of Asia, just for the write up on China, as well as some really cool material on Korea. The write up India is very cool, and definitely makes me want to run a game there. The weakest of the pack is Shadows of North America, because the continent has been so heavily detailed already, but even that is a better buy than trying to dig up all the old NAN books.

Just the fact that there should be a fourth 'Shadows of...' book makes me feel incomplete. It's like there's a hole inside me that only Catalyst can fill
(OK... maybe slightly tongue in cheek. Slightly.)

Would that be an average or challenging sanity roll?


YEAH. Me too.

Original Universal Brotherhood file: 4 SAN

"Lost" works of Nigel Findley: 13 SAN

Shadows of Latin America: Priceless

There are some things sanity can't buy. For everything else, there's NecronomiCard.

while we seem to be at it again.
was there ever a book that dealt with africa? O.o

It's not the Mysteries Within, so Challenging.

In short, Yes. It's full of Awesome as Aaron would put it. There are rules for porting all of Earthdawn into SR; rules for destroying all connections to ED; Dragons, IEs and Horrors; a street-level campaign which removes all the meta-arcs controlled by anything which has seen a Magic rating higher than 4; and finally, there are chocolate golems.


(If you couldn't guess, I'm just screwing with you.)

As DSE and AH have both alluded to, there are aspects of SoLA in multiple products that have been written since then.

Cyberpirates has some Africa info, Feral Cities from what I've seen has some info on lands around Lagos.
IIRC Some mention in Target Wastelands & Target Awakened Lands, not much in the last two but some entries on Deserts and I believe Egypt.

Bah, Africa? Who cares, it's just where (meta)humanity was born, and lets face it aside the Rain Queen, Azania, the Zulu Nation, minerary resources, pletora of wars, smuggling galore, piracy, wildlife, talislegging, poaching, strange magical fenomena (I'm guessing alot here but just think with all the blood spelt in its ground, and what might be dumped there how the astral conditions of certain places can be), the Egipt, the northern shores and the corporate gladiatorial show of the Desert Wars, not to mention the potential for slavery, metahuman exploitation/experimentation and other very disturbing and dystopian thing.... Well what do Africa has to offer and why should we want a "Shadow of ...." for it? It makes no sense, something new? What we realy need is the same old thing version N.next.

(Yes it was sarcasm)

thankies ^^

You forgot the mass-driver space elevator in the Kilimanjaro.

And, though pretty cramped, the Lagos Chapter of Feral Cities offers a fair ammount of intel about Africa.

How much for the Real Ancient Files?

I saw it along with Caine and Bull at last years GenCon on Peter's laptop. Although technically we only got to see the actual file and not the contents, so it could just be where he keeps his porn stash hidden from his better half and this is all one big wind up.



And the mysterious tribal goings on in the Congo, darkest heart of Africa.



Depends on how many web comics you decided to post thoughout them.

Apparently, that died with Findley.

Sorry they have been around for free for too long, they are ancient history nowdays.

Looks like it is Freelancer Porn either way.

a file on cybered porn too, gee first they allow real curse words and now this.

so yet another mystery file somewhere? who has the file on cyber penguins? Big Bad Beeste?

It was Findley's idea, so I guess his widow and his old Mac would be the place to look for any notes of this.

Flak and I aren't freelancers though....

wouldn't that be nice?
maybe something sorta like a memorial printing for him?

Nice and horribly legally convoluted, I'm afraid. But nice, yes.

I could be wrong but I think that porn was into the equation from day one (that simsense thing), cybered porn is just porn for cyber-fetishists.


Cybered Penguins?
Sammy Linux or bio-drones?

They live in that Antarctic city. Cybered penguins with the Fear power. Albino penguins who look disturbingly human in some unintelligble way.

Maybe that´s why you only got teased with a look at the file?