A citation isn't an explanation, its just a link to a source of the information: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/citation so don't worry about spending the time.

Look, I asked for the cite because it isn't a subject I would say I was proficient at and desired some reading material. From just reading something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder I see adoption of gunpowder as something not happening till like 4 centuries after its discovery (9th to the 13th according to the wiki), so I was really hoping that you could help me understand it better with a better link, because right now my own reading strikes me as your assertion doesn't hold water and I don't mind being wrong about that if I can be shown a source on the history for a bit of reading. Color me confused.

Er, thanks for the info but where does this info come from? I'm just a newb, haven't read all the wonderful SR fiction you have, please help?

This is the thing I don't get. Things must be very different where you are because it really doesn't strike me that the population would be hostile, the government sure was but then they had been fucking up for years by that point with all the various disasters between 2009 - 2014 SR ( http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowrun_timeline) and even before that regarding corps. And how can you agree that they have a few magic shamans but ignore that to be a effective shaman we are talking about a significant amount of charisma and willpower then throw in a bunch of social related spells and you should have a recipe for a bunch of people who had a chance to hear a shaman on a soap box or whatever at the very least becoming neutral towards them. Unless of course mundanes are well known for their magical resistance and I am just unaware of their good rolls with a little help from their edge if it was somehow going to affect them negatively. No, I see years of resentment over centralized governments in the east not giving a shit about the west and then watching them go nazi really push the populace towards seeing the NAN as freedom fighters, for their freedom too. And we aren't even talking about "poor white people", the melting pot has pretty much taken care of that silly notion decades ago - we're talking about brown people in their regions who refuse to lie down and die versus a centralized gov who doesn't care, heck seems to encourage, that corps are pillaging their homes. I'm not really sensing where the UCAS is winning the public relations propaganda side of things to have everybody up in arms at the NAN.

Hell, UCAS is lucky it was able to keep Seatle, IMHO. This fictional universe makes the IRL Battle Of Seattle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTO_Ministeri...rotest_activity ) look like a cake walk.

CanadianWolverine aye, perhaps I was alittle harsher then I should have been but I get REALLY tired of people asking for "cites", especially when something as trashy and unrealible as wiki is mentioned, call it a character flaw of mine.

Perhaps a better way to restate my gunpowder point would be to say that once it was shown to be an effective and realible weapon it was very quickly adapted, just as I believe "magic" would be.

You don't have to look very deep at the fiction for the 1% number, just crack open any of the various sourcebooks dealing with magic and they seem to always place the number of Awakened at 1% of the population (I think one of the older ones said 5% but could be misremembering.). However, an interesting tidbit is that the 1% is stated to include everyone who is Awakened so the actual number of Mages/Adepts have actually decreased over time as more "minor talents" have been introduced into the ruleset.


Look, I'm not sure what your situation is or what people's attitudes are in your part of the world, but historically the population at large doesn't tend to react well to a tiny minority of people marching in and telling them that they have to give up their land and agree to be treated as second class citizens if they couldn't prove a claim to a tribe in order to right some injustice that happened long before they were even born, and even in the "nicest" possible version of the NAN as protrayed in this thread that is exactly what happened. Don't you remember the fluff talking about streams of displaced refugees fleeing into the UCAS from the NAN Terrorities? Or the fluff talking about the indians rounding up anglos and forcing them into rezes at gunpoint? Not to mention the fact that the American regions that the NAN won happen to be some of the stauntest "pro-American" parts of the country? And no, I don't mean "pro-government" by that statement.

As for the bit about social Shamans, sure, I'm sure that some people would convert to "the cause", however, magical mindfucks are not and have never been effective long term solutions, especialy when you are ordering people to give up their rights and land, not to mention that the new masters have already shown that they are willing to deploy WMDs. And the NAN has never been about being "a melting pot", if that were the case then there wouldn't be much if any difference between the UCAS and the NAN.

Ascalaphus you can believe that until your blue in the face however it's directly contradicted by street magic third edition. The two primary traditions Hermetic and Shamanic magic get more press because they are the simplist and widest nets possible. Shamanism as practiced by the seminole indians is going to be extremely different from Shamism practiced by the Omaha or the Blackfoot. Yet their both shamans yet they can both fit under a similar system. The gaps are even wider if you compare Sioux shamans to the "shaman" or "witch doctor" of the rain forest. Yet the game groups them up the same, your attempting to provide a universe justification that A) Contradicted B) A mechanical issue.

What exactly? I as making three different points;
* Persecuted people sink more karma into combat magic
* Before magic returns, the to-be first hermetic mages weren't doing it for power, just enlightenment -> they're not very far in the race to develop combat magic
* Sci-fi fluff doesn't translate into a Tradition immediately; any new magical style will take years of practice to learn it's version of Arcana, Spellcasting and develop spells in it. It takes more than belief in the Force to use it. And before magic returns, you can't really practice any of it.


Is there even such a book?


Hermetic magic is the most likely tradition for any western army to have access to. I don't think Black Magic or Chaos Magic has more than a handful of adherents, and I definitely don't think they'll be taken seriously by the military. Either way, Hermetic magic is still treated as being the most common magical style in the west.

I'm talking about what kind of wizards these would be.
* They wouldn't start with any combat spells
* The people who actually had any magical skills such as Spellcasting were people with a gentle harmless hobby

It takes more than being in the 1% to be a good wizard; learning Arcana, Spellcasting etc. Without a teacher and tried and tested method of magic, you won't be doing anything big soon.

Ascalaphus, OK lets assume that the "Magic Brave" theory was alive and kicking during Howling Coyote's time. 1 out every 100 people is going to stretch that poor slot 5 billion ways to Sunday. This "Magic Brave" is going to be a Healer, Scout, and Heavy Weapon. He's then going to be summoning Spirits, and let's face it, that is going to be pretty draining to the "Magic Brave" in question.

Also being a "Magic Brave" does not make you invincible... actually when the US soldiers finally understand that the wack job waving his hand and shooting lightning or their buddies just drop dead, he's going to become a bullet/grenade/rocket magnet.

Next, these Magic Braves are NOT growing in number during this time. Every "Brave" is out in the field working and not at home training a new "Brave".

Finally... didn't a good many of the participants of the Great Ghost Dance DIE afterwards?

I personally like Force 3 spirits. Worst case 6 drain, and still stun for an average (M3) shaman. They get an optional power, and with the things they already have just for being a spirit, they can terrorize just fine.



You don't have to wave hands, and a manaball is close to invisible. You can just take some binoculars and hide in a bush overlooking a military base or patrol route.

When soldiers start getting killed by things they can't see, can't defend against, they'll certainly panic. Militaries place a lot of emphasis on developing tactics to handle situations; they don't like the unknowable.



True, there won't be many of them. Some will get trained in the field, however, not unlike PCs earning karma for runs.
But it only takes a dozen terrorists to make the US crap their pants, and that's even without magic...




I think the fundamental issue is this: SR1-4 are all full of weird, silly things. However, if you like those things, it's almost always possible to come up with an explanation why it could, would happen.

As a history student, I don't even find much of SR to be that implausible; other periods in history are just as weird to us in the present. The social developments are all possible - not the only way things could go, but they could happen.

You have to accept basic assumptions such as magic, of course. I find the technological side stranger; the emphasis on VR is odd. So is the relative unimportance of biometrics, data mining and essentially the corporate surveillance state. Allowing so many SINless is odd for an oppressive regime; you'd want to keep track of everyone.
However, a 1984 total-surveillance setting would probably not be any fun (no way you're getting away with shadowrunning), so they "ignored" it. By SR4, sticking your head in the sand is just too unbelievable, though.

Yeah, but magic isn't a rifle. You can't just pick it up and use it after watching it done a few times. Magic is a jet fighter or a Galleon. Its use must be demonstrated and taught. You yourself have asserted that some metaplanar entity must have given DHC the knowledge needed to accomplish the GGD.




I originally envisioned the handover as a "scorched earth" situation with shades of guerrilla resistance, but then I remembered that the NAN was formed by, basically, holocaust survivors with the ability to end all human life in a supervolcanic ash cloud. No one but a complete psychopath would think that their flag or house was more important than not triggering the end of the world. Because there's no hope of victory here. Best case scenario is a suicide course.

Er, why do the NAN magicians have to make moves that make them bullet/grenade/rocket magnets? Just giving a bunch of NAN soldiers who are already intimate with the local areas knooks and crannies the low down on how many UCAS they are facing and their last known positions and trajectory from Astral could be enough to have those NAN soldiers do some serious damage in an ambush or fade away into the landscape ... the NAN shaman doesn't even have to leave home to do it, he could relay the info from manifestation, right? Healer can be done away from the front lines as well. Heavy weapon can be done by proxy with a binded spirit while monitoring its progress from astral after resting off the effects of all that headache at home with the help of another NAN shaman even, right?

So I agree, the loss of a NAN shaman would be painful for their forces, so why wouldn't they act accordingly? Why even give the UCAS the advantage of shooting at anything?

This last point of magic I am not totally clear on but can a shaman/mage cast a supportive spell on his ally headed to the front lines and sustain it from out of sight? Invisible or magic armored NAN soldiers anyone?

But hey, UCAS picked up a few mages somehow too because somehow these damn braves are freaking guerrillas in the mist makes them realize magic is effective instead of thinking their soldiers have a nut loose (maybe they do after a well placed spell) and aren't following orders because of ghost stories, I wonder how the newbie UCAS mage would fare against the guerilla warfare NAN shaman(s) in astral combat? Do initiated shamans do well against non-initiated mages?

Likening the NAN to holocaust survivors is frankly insulting to those who did survive the holocaust as the Saim were essentially Nazi's with feathers given magic by a creature bent on ending the world so they could better hasten their return.

I stand by my statement that magic for all it's use as a crutch by the systemn doesn't change some very basic things about the human condition. One needs only to look at south african apartheid or Afghanistan (pick a conflict any conflict) or any of a hundred other situations throughout history where people with no other choice have fought because basically because the only alternative their enemy gave them was displacement and death. In other words no one gives a damn that the SAIM might end the world, they've basically been trying to do nothing but that since lone eagle. Why you would think people like that would stop where they have is silly.

In short it's game theory, when faced with two staggeringly bad outcomes people will almost always chose the one that has the greatest chance of perserving their way of life.

"The whole world is coming,
A nation is coming, a nation is coming,
The eagle has brought the message to the tribe.
The Father says so, the Father says so.
Over the whole earth they are coming,
The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming,
The crow has brought the message to the tribe,
The Father says so, the Father says so." -The Buffalo are coming- a Ghost dance song


In the mid 1800's all it took to force the hand of the U.S. Gov was any chance or hope of a Native "revitalization". The response, which is very similar to the response in the fictional shadowrun universe. leads up the the massacre at Wounded Knee. The US gov., and I would assume ,the UCAS have no reason to change a policy that has been in effect practically since the countries inception.

Guided by the totems, Native magic practitioners would, IMHO,have more than a leg up on their more western counterparts. Also, many Wiccan and Pagan traditions would support the native effort, just as in RL Most Pagans relate to and assist native concerns today...

That said, as a 1/32 Seneca, I like the NAN stuff even if it is a little hooky sometimes...and I would look forward to be dancing at the GGD.

Walk in Beauty.
Kanis

edited for punktuation

Hmm, just a few quick points before I head into town to flirt with a pretty young lady...


Saint Sithney, true, magic does have to be trained, but that holds true for both sides and NAN Shaman Rituals are no more valid than any other kind of ritual and everyone's magic started working at the same time. And yeah, it is canon that the Great Ghost Dance was given to the NAN by a Horror.

As for the bit about the NAN being "Holocaust Survivors" I think LurkerOutThere summed it up best, if we are going to compare the NAN Wars to anything in WWII than the Indians are the Japanese invading China at best, the comparison to Nazis with feathers isn't a bad fit either.


CanadianWolverine because you can't have it both ways, if you are going to try to claim that the NAN had a leg up in the realm of magic because of their "ancient rites" than they have to play by the rules of said rites and that means they stand out. Besides, even with the magical advancements since the NAN Wars 2070s style magic is still fragging hard to hide from mundanes so I guess its really a moot point.

Also I don't think anyone has said that the NAN's use of magic is the reason America would have magical support of their own, it's because everyone's magic started working at the same time, "ancient rites" are bullshit and don't matter in the grand scheme of things, or do you honestly think that Earthdawn's magic worked anything like NAN's Shamanism does? Hell, even if we gowith the idea that the Shamans just sustained supporting spells and used astral recon to relay information then we still don't have a war winner, "Magical Armor" and even Invisible Troops although effective really isn't as impressive as industital military might that anyone can use, not just 1% at best.

Called "Magic in the Shadows" I do believe and it was in 3rd Edition

Keep the Faith

Having it both ways? I must be missing some vital piece of information, something I would hope would have been in my 4/4A book, but if you have something else from... hmm, lets see what this index says... Street Magic that I am not even aware of. So if you say you can't perform this or that rite from inside a lodge hidden away somewhere, I'm just going to have to take that at face value. My impression is that Magic can in fact be a war winner or dragons and Aztlan wouldn't be the powerhouses they are made out to be but if I am wrong, no worries, its just fiction afterall.

I just take what I read in the 4/4A, read the stuff on magic and then let my imagination run with it. All I have is opinion and I think I am pretty clear on which side of this I fall on seeing as the whole NAN fluff was actually one of the main draws for me to the fiction. I don't mind admitting to be wrong but I am not exactly clear on how we can't both have the nazi AmerInds and the ones who saw a path to a leg up for their communities out from under nazi UCAS as well. Nobody really seems to come out smelling like roses in the fiction, IMHO.

Er, to say the least, whenever someone mentions Earthdawn in a post here, I just tend to go I bought a copy of Shadowrun 4/4A because of cool cyberpunkish novels I read once with that label on it, I had no interest (and still don't) in whatever Earthdawn is, so if there is anything I tend to ignore as being canon it is whatever that stuff is ... like, what the hell is Horror and why should I care? *shrug*

When your only hope is die fighting or die without a fight, well, you might as well die taking the most enemies you can, right? It was basicly the same thing about the Cold War, except that the USA called the NAN's bluff and paid dearly...

Nope. It was FASA doing some mighty fine hand waving to have the NAN winning.

The USA didn't call the bluff, otherwise they would have killed every single Native Indian because of the the "nuke" they set off.

Nukes don't work too well against insurgents and guerrilla warfare. Only when you've truly already lost could such a tactic be used, and the NAN decided not to push it that far. Those tactics don't even work in Iraq today and in that case we're dealing with foreign soil rather than native (where there is a LOT more repercussions for even small bombs going off).

Honestly just a couple Shamans with mind control spells against the right military targets would be enough to have our military devestate itself without the need for big showy GGD fireworks. I've always interpreted that the GGD was a show force and that the war which went on for years wasn't won because of an every day GGD. It was won by Fighters like Thunder Tyee using Shamans to conceal them and hit just the right military targets. "The Way to win a war is to destroy your enemies ability to wage war"

The "nuke" was not set off by the US, but by the NAN and the GGD. It was the volcanoes that erupted and killed a whole lot of people.

Also Mind Control spells do not make you kill your friends and buddies. Also, when the Americans learned about magic, then all the rules would have gone out the window. Here is a weapon that is VERY powerful, and the indians had no problems killing innocent people just to get their nation... nope, FASA did a whole lot of hand waving to have the NAN win.

Finally, when the GGD ended most of the Shaman died due to drain.

The SAIM did not plan to exterminate all "Anglos" (meaning basically all non-natives". The UCAS did plan to exterminate all natives on the other hand, and were only stopped by the GGD...

@Ravor:

...and still the SAIM was apparently better at it, given that they could make volcanoes errupt (remember that they nuked Los Alamos that way long before the GGD), control the weather and everything. Whether you like it or not, the official background is that the SAIM's shamans kicked ass right from the start, while the rest of the world was struggling to catch up.

I finally decided to poke my head into this thread, but rather than clawing my way through 450+ posts, I decided on the old tactic of reading back from the last post for a page or two. Forgive me, or at least whack me gently upside the head with a two-by-four, if I repeat something already said in the first 17 pages.

The original writers of SR focused their telling of history on North America for their own reasons. We should understand though, that Shamanism is not limited to North America. The term itself comes from an anthropologist, Mercea Eliade, who studied people in Siberia early last century. It is a worldwide phenomenon, with in some cases a very well codified system of practice in spellcasting, astral projection and summoning. Both the mechanisms, and the belief in them, would provide peoples who practice Shamanism a huge advantage in understanding the new world that would come about as mana became manifest.


I'd be curious to know how you think the Spanish conquistadors managed to control a hostile population that outnumbered them 10,000+ to 1. Certainly there was an initial period during which subjugated pupulations saw the Spanish as allies in shucking the yolk of empire, but that illusion disappeared quickly. Yet the Spanish and similarly numerically disadvantaged Europeans managed to hold on to entire continents.


VR is beginning to penetrate our society today.

It is impossible to watch everybody all the time. It is too expensive to police, collect and control everybody. If you want an example of where it would be really good to be able to do so, yet cannot be done, look at Iraq or Afghanistan today.


This is the way almost all nations have been formed, throughout history.

CanadianWolverine actually I'd disagree with you about both the dragons and Big A being powerhouses because of their mojo, with the unfortunent exception of Ghostwalker stomping all over Denver dragons who forget that they aren't Godzilla tend to get spanked pretty hard in the Sixth World, a dragon's source of power is its vast alien intellect. Big A is a fragging megacorp and thus is a nation onto itself, their magic although powerful is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Hell if I remember correctly they are still embroiled in an unwinnable war against some band of rebels or another... however my knowledge of the South American fluff is rather weak at best.

And actually I'm not saying that the NAN couldn't have used Ritual Magic to sling mojo from afar, but I do think you should make sure that you understand the limitations of trying to use ritual magic, I happen to be in the minority of Dumpshockers who view Ritual Magic as even being a viable skill that all mages should have at least a basic understanding of. Although I forget who has it as his sig, it's true that Magic seems alot more powerful than it actually is unless you take the time to really understand the ruleset.

As for there being the "Nazi NAN" and the "Good NAN", I suppose that although it would have been possible for the devs to have gone that route had they so choosen the problem is that the "good NAN" who wanted to be a melting pot and who didn't treat the current majority of inhabitants as second class citizens really wouldn't have changed much if at all culturaly, legality, or even politicaly, there simply aren't enough indians to enact said changes in a free and equal society and if the existance of magic and Mother Gia wasn't enough to win people over in the rest of the world than it wouldn't have been enough in the "Good NAN" either.

And like it or not, Earthdawn has been hammered into Shadowrun so throughly that if someone wants to even pretend to try to understand the story behind the story we need to delve at least alittle into the Fourth World, personally I agree with you on this point, I actually wish that we didn't have to discuss the fact that soul sucking enities who were banished from their home of Earth in the theorical "Zeroth World" gave the Great Ghost Dance Ritual to the NAN in order to create a bridge that would allow them to cross over eariler than they otherwise could, but that is the hand that we were dealt and have to play. Ignore it if you wish but that doesn't change the basic facts on the ground.


*****


Not of this World so tell me, why are you only willing to look at the effects of insurgents and guerrilla warfare when it's in the NAN's favor? Why don't we talk about the effects of insurgents and guerrilla warfare when the NAN tries to control the terrority they somehow managed to win? Nevermind the fact that unlike the example of Iraq the NAN fighters are going to have a hell of a time hiding amongst the general population.


*****


KCKitsune I might actually have to disagree with you on this point, the dirty little secret of The Great Ghost Dance is that was basically nothing more than a massive Blood Magic ritual, so I'd imagine that although some of the Shamans died from the drain most of the cost was bared by the lives of the mundane dancers, a cost that according to the "Shadowtalk" of someone who claims to be there was high enough that the indians were physically unable to continue the ritual any longer than they did.


*****


Sengir sure, I fully agree that the devs decided in some drug induced haze to allow the NAN to win via "power of plot". I'm not saying the the NAN doesn't existance in the offical history, what I'm discussing is whether or not the offical history is even remotely possible given the way we are told that things actually work in the Sixth World.

pbangarth just off the top of my head I'd say that the introduction of disease and superior technology were huge factors in the ability of Europe to control the New World, factors which the NAN didn't hold.


Also although that portion of history hasn't really held a great interest for me, I seem to recall reading about how the Europeans played various tribes and regions against each other as well, another factor which I'd agrue the NAN didn't have going for them either.

I noticed this when I was reading through this link - http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowrun_timeline%29



So, would that count as the introduction of disease?

And as far as tech goes, we are talking about today's generation currently implemented tech vs weapons & magic NAN supporters can get in their communities right? Getting hands on stuff better than hunting gear in Canada you would need to rip off a military or rcmp armory but its a little easier to get your hands on things like assault rifles in the US states, right? Is it hard to equip militias in the states?

So, tech being roughly even except I would suggest the UCAS would have tech superiority in air/ground vehicles and satellites, so would magic and guerrilla warfare strategy be sufficient to counter and over come? Is this the sticking point? Or is it also that there are those convinced a brown person can't hide within the local population or geography/topography?

Because the U.S. wasn't running a guerrilla war and the U.S. military is not setup to run guerrilla wars. We have a lot of ability to counter them, but those abilities assume tactics and abilities which magic blows away.

and you're dead wrong about Natives having a hard time hiding in the general populace. Brown skin isn't exactly a rarity any more, and thanks to intermarriage many natives can pass as Anglo to the untrained eye. But how would you tell a Native American person by looking at them in a crowd?

P.S. - this is going from discussing the "possibility of fiction" into a potentially very racist tangent and I don't want to go there.

Me too, but my problem with the storyline is the size of the NAN and rather than its existence itself. Why did they have to make it that HUGE and not just one successor state (yeah, I like BT ) among many

The magic is something I still can live with, if the storyline says that the NAN got a running start into the sixth world, why not. I can even see the SAIM winning a war against the US/UCAS, just imagine how the Japanese must have felt when their cities got nuked...and that was something science could explain quite well.

Penny Arcade explains it.

Rule 12

BlueMax

I'm not sure I understand the disbelief here. The U.S. was weakened by disease, disaster, and corporate hegemony. They fell to an enemy armed with what was, at that time, a weapon that they could not counter. If you believe that can't happen, you're the same kind of person scoffing at the plot of The Dark Knight, and frankly, I think you have a bit too much faith in the stability of society. Civilization is fragile; a single hurricane managed to reduce New Orleans to lawless anarchy; and that was just one storm, in just one city. A Jewish man running over a black child in NYC set part of Brooklyn into chaos; a police brutality trial set a good part of Los Angeles on fire for DAYS.

The Ghost Dance caused disasters all over the U.S., simultaneously, during what was, in essence, a civil war. The only thing that surprises me is that Texas didn't make like California and go independent.

As for the population numbers, I think you're ignoring that SR departed from our timeline somewhere around the 90's, as the Japanese bubble economy never burst. Also, for some reason, there was a lot more interest in Native American rights than there was in our timeline; it seems likely that they folded in some like-minded activists, probably married them into the tribes, and grew from there. For the more racist NANs, it's not that hard to believe they could have survived. The whole world in SR was depopulated by disease, and they managed; most industrial tasks are automated, and if you live in the midwest with nothing better to do you're going to repopulate fairly quickly.

The conquest of the Americas can't be boiled down to a few factors without a lot of glossing over of details and complexities, however there were a few very important factors. Disease was the number one ally for the Europeans. Without it, I would argue they would have failed to conquer the entire new world, and possibly would have been driven and held back from some of the larger political entities entirely. Disease, however, took a long time to have a large effect. Several plagues occurred, but over decades.

Their second most valuable asset, as you and I both have said, was to use native allies to increase their numbers. Those allies were often very motivated to use the Spanish to beat the guys over the next hill, or the imperialists who had conquered them earlier. These allies eventually caught on to their mistake.

European technology was superior, but not superior enough to overcome the numbers, except in a few instances where surprise and cunning allowed them to maximize that superiority. If you have 1000 bullets against 10,000 enemies who all believe that to die in battle is the greatest glory, you are shit out of luck. The technological advantage also was potentially fleeting. Cortez made it to Tenochtitlan, and then had to retreat to deal with Spanish troops sent to arrest him. By the time he had returned, the Aztecs had their own European style ships on the lakes around their capital. The metalwork was more difficult to copy. Pizzaro massacred thousands of Inca warriors and captured Atahualpa the emperor through a cunning trap that enclosed them all inside a plaza, unarmed, facing cannons. They never fell for that one again.

The problem for a small number of people to dominate a large number is primarily logistical. The Spanish took nearly two hundred years to conquer the last of the Maya, because those people were spread out in individual kingdoms across some very nasty terrain. Each kingdom had to be reached and conquered separately. Yet the Spanish conquered the Aztec Empire, a much larger and internally organized political entity, and took over the whole in a matter of 2 years, because the entire empire was so well organized. The Spanish cut off the head and replaced it with themselves, and the tributary system kept on feeding treasures and staple goods into the centre. Eventually, the conquered peoples drifted away, and needed to be subjugated again directly, but by that time reinforcements had arrived, diseases had spread and other subjugated peoples provided manpower.

Pizzaro had similar conditions against the Inca. The incredible supply chain the Inca had built up in their empire supplied the Spaniards and their allies for years, sometimes decades with food, clothing, weapons, shelter, etc.

Ironically, some of the toughest people to conquer were the least politically organized. Tribes in the Amazon rainforest were devilishly difficult to pin down, because they had little investment in infrastructure to try to protect, and they had poison darts, the best technology the Americas could produce against the armour of the Europeans. They didn't have to overcome the armour, but merely scratch to kill.

So how does any of this apply to NAN vs. U.S. and Canada? There are some direct correlates. The NAN insurgents faced a much larger, powerful and organized enemy. Yet they had technology (magic) the enemy did not have right away (and if it is true they were fed some mojo form the Horrors, then the enemy never had it), and were able to use the existing infrastructure to feed, house and arm themselves. Do we have to work to suspend disbelief somewhat to accept that it would have lasted? Yes, we do. So what? Dragons? Elves? Immortality?

And, let's face it, if we want a real life example of how a small but motivated group can stick it to the world's greatest military power, do we need to think too long for a current example?

Seconded.

The point I at least have been trying to make is that while civilization is fragile the events of the GDW literally depend on a unified and illogical response by the people being expelled from the territories. It literally requires them NOT TO FIGHT back as just by population numbers and level of resistance make the situation unworkable. It also requires the US not only to break up and give up half it's territory in response to a a WMD attack but not to retaliate to that WMD attack in any fashion. IT requires an increasingly tenous strain of circumstances to supprt 1) Vitas doesn't kill any Natam's 2) Natams get enough magical mojo to fight off the US 3) US doesn't respond under MAD principles 4) No resistance is made to the mass relocation 5) No further wars are fought between the UCAS and NAN when the magical forces are a little more balanced.

It's perfectly logical for civilians to flee instead of fight. It's a natural human response - we flatter ourselves into thinking that we're heroic by nature, but we're a species of cowards, for the most part. Without strong leadership, even large groups will break in the face of organized opposition. It's the primary reason that slavery has remained viable throughout human existence.

Except as you pointed out in another thread, when was the last time you saw two indians standing together. Your talking about hundreds of thousdands of people who cities and communities depopulating and leaving their land for a potential unknown exile for a vastly numerically inferior population. Their facing an unknown variable either way, when you give a person two unknowns they will always pick the one that has the potential of maintaing the status quo, that's why the NAN doesn't work.

This summer, along with a bunch of Anglos, holding out against a proposed dumpsite on top of an aquifer with the cleanest water known on Earth. It worked.

It was an ironic statement not something i was asking seriously, ah context.

SAIM was not the tribal leaders. They were the brash youths who decided that a policy of direct action was the only way to get the world to hear them. Though, I suppose William Wallace was "essentially a Nazi" because he fought back against an occupying force due to their centuries-old policies of abuse and cultural annihilation? The whole escapade was written as a parallel to the holocaust. Intentionally. That was the point - Concentration camps turned death camps. It was meant to be an American holocaust, therefore comparing them to holocaust survivors is more than just accurate, it is exactly what they were envisioned to be when the scenario was created. And please, for Godwin's sake, don't pretend to be insulted on behalf of holocaust survivors. It's not a good look.

What was the Japanese reaction to Hiroshima?

As was said several pages ago, there's not really a comparison. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened when Japanese forces had already been kicked out of much of the pacific theater and forced back to the Japanese mainland. The Japanese ability to make war had been significantly curtailed and they had little to no ability to agressively strike at their enemy. Also, and this is the telling part for me, no one asked the Japanese as part of the surrender to mass relocate or anything of that nature.

Besides the point since America has WMDs of our own and numbers on our side. Besides, had Japan actually been winning the war at the time or even had the ability to retalate effectively it's very doubtful the end result would have been the same.

People, let's recap, shall we?

Taken from Shadowrun 2nd edition:

Shadowrun's World and go separate ways around the 1990's. In 1999 there's the whole Seretech vs USA trial and the Supreme Court declares that Seretech can have its own private army and congratulates them for killing people lest could lead to a greater catastrophe. In 2005, a great earthquake shatters New York, killing 200k people and leaving 200 BILLIONS dollar of damaged infra-structure, personel, etc...
After the Lone Eagle Incident, the native americans were used as scape goats for the whole thing and the corporate propaganda convinced every one that the native americans were dangerous and should be put int "re-education" camps.
VITAS happened in 2010
Also, the Apartheid lasted as far as 2014. (Just to show how different the time lines are)
It is said that the magical power of NAN is comparable to the nuclear power of the USA. Also, it is worth mentioning that if the US started nuking their own territory, they could even defeat the NAN, but wouldn't take the territory back.
The Treaty of Denver, signed in 2018 said that there would be a period of 10 years to relocate the populations.

You do realize that the ten year limit you so boldly written for me only makes the NAN less likely to survive right?

Perhaps, perhaps not. My point is, when Howling Coyote shows up in 2014, it ignites a civil war that lasts almost five years. Then, all hell breaks loose when mounts Hood, Rainier, St Helen and Adams explode. The civil population might have panicked and simply complied.
I'm not saying that everybody accepted quietly, surely there were people who "will leave their homes in a coffin", and I believe that the native americans would gladly help this happen.
Is the balcanization of Canada, MExico and US improbable? Sure! But given the rest of the scenario, it fits nicely.

QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ Nov 4 2009, 07:34 PM) *
Except as you pointed out in another thread, when was the last time you saw two indians standing together.



This is the best post I've seen in the thread. I feel like you and I are really on the same page; this captures the spirit of the way I see the NAN movement really eloquently, and rises above the citation shitstorm.

Sorry, my citation was meant to be humorous.

EPIC FAIL on my part

BlueMax

Sorry, my citation was meant to be humorous.

EPIC FAIL on my part

BlueMax

This was on another thread but I'm going to sum up one argument.

1. The whole "land grab" where national parks, government owned resources, and indian lands being handed over to the corps is a clear sign that the "politicians" are neither patriots nor honorable. These are bought men and women with essentially no loyalty or allegiance to their constituency. Money is their only friend.

2. The US economy as a whole is pretty kicked. $200 billion in damages to the east coast. Who knows how much economic damage was done in the time it took to relocate Wall Street to Boston.

3. VITAS maimed the populace and economy. The US economy is based on high efficiencies, meaning events that impact productivity for prolonged periods have multipliers that don't exist in less efficient economies where there is slack that can be taken up. See how well the US is able to supply medicines for H1N1 with months of warning. Vitas was a total shock.

4. The president is assassinated and the assassin is never caught.

5. Howling Coyote takes responsibility for the Rodondo volcano that hits Los Alamos by hijacking TV. He becomes a punch line for late night TV.

6. The tornado that trashed the Air Cavalry after the Los Alamos volcano was a very big blow. If my web-fu is right, the "Attack" 1st Battalion of Air Cav out of Fort Hood has about 3 dozen AH-64s. Assuming all were lost to the storm, it takes out 5% of the US' total Longbow forces, destroys $650-700 million worth of hardware, and kills about 70 combat pilots. That is like the entire aircraft losses in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

7. The guerilla campaign waged by Howling Coyote was part of a media blackout. The normal patriotic westerners caught in the crossfire were not only ignored, they were actively silenced by the government. Given the latent mistrust of "big city government" that lurks in the western states, this could readily cause the populace to believe the stories of a government frame-up and begin sympathizing with the proto-NAN.

8. The media blackout backfired when the masses discovered the "long defeated" indians had been waging a guerilla campaign for years. Worse than that, the indians appeared to be more effective than the military. Howling Coyote stopped being the punch line to a joke when he turns out to be so hard to kill that the government had to cover it up how badly they failed.

9. Once the lid blew off, it took literally months to get an operation off the ground to take out the NAN. Why did it take months? "Accidents" "Bad Weather", all the while the mention of "indian magic" make the rounds and stop being funny.

10. 15 minutes after the publicized launch of the operation, 3 volcanoes blow. Suddenly the jokes from a couple of years ago become a nightmare. Can the NAN cause a second New York quake? How about hitting the San Andreas or the New Madrid fault lines, either of which would decimate the nation and gut the economies.

11. Go back to #1. The politicians are self-interested weasels. They are afraid of their bribes, er, investments being trashed. And there's the risk that the NAN will turn their dark magics on them. (Was Garrity's assassin helped by the indians? Oh noes! Magic assassin!) Yeah, these guys are made of the stern stuff required to fight volcano-wielding natives. Not.

12. A competent mexico in the form of Aztlan supports the NAN, posing a credible military threat to the south, not to mention a probable supplier of weapons, ammo, and other combat gear to the NAN.

13. Even if the politicians wanted to be "Indian Givers" after signing the treaty, the world gets hit by Goblinization. Derail any military plans with martial law, major race riots, panics, etc.

14. After Goblinization the world gets slapped around by VITAS again. Yeah, military operations really work when 10% of the army dies and the other 90% is busy with humanitarian aid efforts within our own borders.


So yeah, I personally think the NAN is plausible, even if not exactly probable.

Note that I also left out any "immortal elves" from the mix. By canon, they should be there working behind the scenes to get Tir Taringire from the NAN.

@kigmatzomat, you forget that the US might go "Oh No! Howling Coyote can kill a whole lot more people! Let's give in!"

... or they might go "OK, Howling Coyote might kill a whole lot of people, and if we give in he most likely take everything! Kill them all and let God sort 'em out. Nuclear Weapons are hereby authorized." Yes the US might kill a whole lot of innocent people, but compared to what might happened... a whole lot more agreeable.

Now before you poo-poo my nukes idea, the Indians will have gathering points. If you have collateral damage... explain it away as such: "We had intel that the terrorist who just killed 18,000 people were located in this area and they were just about to launch another attack. We responded in due haste to eliminate these terrorist."




Apples and oranges pbangarth. If the government wanted to have those people off that site, they would be off that site. It would have politically messy, but it would have been done.

The problem is nuking your own country. If you have any hope of taking the territory back, you WON'T nuke it, otherwise you will have to wait for years before you can live there again. Without mentioning fallout, poisoned water supplies, two-headed babies (although after goblinization, a to-headed baby will be considered "commonplace")

Interesting stuff, even if things have got a little heated.

Personally, I don't thinks it's a good discussion if people don't get passionate about their view.

Anyways...
...I was wondering that if magic was just starting to manifest what else has happened ??

Was there outbreaks oof hauntings ??
Spontaneous strange occurences ??
Spells working with devastating results ??

Was there a tipping point - one week spells fail, another week they work ??

What was the rest of the worlds reaction to the US treatment of American Indians ??

Europe had shit of its own to deal with. A lot of riots and nuclear reactors melting down.
Russia quite possibly wouldn't say anything, since they pretty much had this same kind of problem with the various separatist movements.
Japan was busy making money using their new orbital solar panels. It is possible that some ultra-nationalists would hope for the USA being beat down as revanchism for Iroshima and Nagasaki.

If you don't want it to work, you can argue against anything. But this? This isn't really an argument in favor of the NAN being unrealistic. Clearly Native Americans exist in some numbers; we just don't see them much. I imagine the shock of seeing a bunch of them wielding magic, weapon foci, and automatic weapons is going to cow any crowd. I'm sorry, but while individuals may be motivated to heroic deeds, crowds are opportunistic cowards. Without someone leading them, they'll break easily. A charismatic leader like Howling Coyote could easily cow a group like that.

And if you don't believe in the cowardice of groups, try googling Kitty Genovese, or a similar, more recent case at Richmond High School.

But the context of the question was not about whether the Indians standing together would be opposed. It was a question about whether there would be cooperation among them enough to make a stand. It asked when was the last time anyone saw such a thing. I saw such a thing this summer.

[aside]
And what made it a particularly important spectacle, to many of us, was that it was aboriginal people standing together with non-aboriginal people for a common purpose. The First Nations people made the first statement by occupying the proposed dump site, blocking further construction, and then neighbouring farmers and townspeople came out to stand with them and to bring food, shelters and other supplies. In other places and other times in Canada, as I suspect just so in the U.S., such cooperation would have been unimaginable. I can think of a few just off the top of my head. There have also been times when violence erupted.

An old Armed Forces base, built during the Second World War on aboriginal land, was promised to be evacuated and returned after the war. Didn't happen. In the 90's the original native band re-occupied the base. There was confrontation, the provincial premier wanted the police and military to "Get those fucking Indians out of there." One was shot dead by police. Despite that, they kept the land and still live there. The premier is long gone, as well as his government.

Yes, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples have been removed forcibly from such blockades in the past. Probably it will happen again. But in this one place, a proposed dumpsite over a pristine water source, the people faced down the government over a bad decision, without violence. Looked good to me.
[/aside]

In terms of other aspects of the NAN actions, other posts earlier have addressed them well. I don't need to reiterate.