Ok boys and girls, I am currently writing up a table use reasoning behind the current Emergence events (I am running Emergence and I want to continue on with my own stuff). Basically I need either a page referance or a brief explanation behind a certain event that I cannot for the life of me find.

I seem to remember reading about a Matrix event that occured before the Crash 2.0. It was like a little mini-crash, a blackout persay. I cannot remember if it was Seattle based or world wide but I want to maybe string it into my writing and want to read if anything came from it. It was in a Sourcebook, not a Novel (I have not read any of the Novels so I am quite sure ).

If you have any information pertaining to this I would be greatly appreciative.

The Seattle brown-out, which technically occurred during the events of the novel Psychotrope. Mirage shut down the Seattle RTG for 11 minutes on March 19, 2060. Matrix p.152

Did anyone ever tell you how awesome you are?

Yeah, that was pretty awesome.

5 mins. from posting the question to posted answer.

I believe the reason for the shutdown was that someone was attempting to take Mirage's home node offline, and so Mirage acted in self defense, as per it's original purpose. And the subsequent damage and loss of life during the matrix brownout are part of the reason why Mirage developed some sense of morality and helped Overwatch to defeat Deus during the events of Crash 2.0. At least, that's how I remembered it.

While the source finding is indeed awesome, alas it does not help me. I was trying to find a slightly close to canon reason that certain individuals were displaying Virtuokinetic abilities. Was hoping this incident was world wide (In that it was not the Crash 2.0 that did the job, but instead this blackout). Looks like I am going to have to resort to what I intended to do anyway. Radation manipulation.

*continues typing away his big long post. Its up to 2 and a half pages now. Thats quite long for me, I tend to write very short and very concisly.* (And with horrible spelling).

In the beginning there were deckers, and it was good.

Then came Denver: City of Shadows where FastJack let a young poster proclaim the existence of otaku - those that could surf the Matrix without a cyberdeck or terminal, without programs. This was followed by sporadic references to being with innate talents and abilities over the Matrix until Virtual Realities 2.0, when the first rules for playing otaku were crafted. These mysterious individuals were all young, mere children, and attributed their abilities to the Deep Resonance.

The Renraku Arcology Shutdown introduced otaku that had not been created by the Deep Resonance, but were the result of experiments by the AI Deus. AIs and ghosts in the machine had been quiet but recurrent rumors (or, at least in the novels, appearances), but this was the first major act by an AI, and it the public at large weren't even aware of their involvement.

Another AI made its own otaku during the aforementioned temporary shutdown of the Seattle RTG; this AI was named Mirage and dated back to the time of Echo Mirage and the aftermath of the Crash of '29. It had started out as a semi-autonomous knowbot that did double duty fighting the AI and alleviating its effects on the Echo Mirage team using psychotropic programming.

After the shutdown, it was revealed that some otaku followed (or believed in, or perceived) a counterpart to the Deep Resonance called the Dissonance; members of this group were ultimately responsible for the Crash 2.0 and the destruction of the three old "super-AIs."

In Emergence, or "five years later" we see the public revelation of technomancers (otaku had until that point been only known in the shadows, and not extensively at that) and AIs (ditto). Some of the old otaku transitioned into technomancers, some did not; some of the otaku beliefs and social structures were passed on, others the virtuakinetics created by themselves.

Does that answer your question any better?

Virtuokinetic? Are you referring to otaku/technomancers? Because I also believe that Mirage, the AI responsible for the Seattle matrix brownout, was able to create some otaku on his own. I think the canon evidence for that would be in Brainscan or System Failure. But to make a long story short, Deus and his minions knocked off some of Mirage's pet otaku to keep Mirage from messing with the Network.

You read me wrong AH. I am at the moment trying to write up a table-canon reasoning behind the Emergence. I was hoping to find a possible trigger event that I could use as a link to the Virtuokintic phenominon, something a bit more concrete than mystic energies. I could remember reading about a Matrix Blackout and had hoped that I could use it as a trigger point, i.e that all those who currently show Technomantic powers were present at the time.

The fact that it was Seattle based means that I cannot do that, doesn't quite work. I am trying to keep within the canon as possible, while putting my own spin on what is currentely happening.

(If you are curious I am using the potential processing power created by the Crash 2.0 and the move to cloud based processing after it as catalyst event for the evolution of a new "Super AI" that I call the Resonant AI. The Resonant AI is an abstract intellect that is behind everything that is currently happening and is itself capable of sparking the creation of Technomancers/DIs much like the three AIs before it were capable of creating Otaku. There is a fair bit more to it, and I go to lengths to explain all the different components of Technomancers, the Resonant Realms and Technocritters, but that is it basically.)

There were otaku prior to the Seattle brown out. I don't know how many though. Mirage (aka Psychotrope) attempted to make more during those 11 minutes (succeeded in...3 or 5 cases, I've forgotten which), accidentally killed a few people (many were not Mirage's fault, really, as someone in the meat world unplugged them), and the rest had their memories of the event wiped and had no lasting alterations.

Prior otaku weren't the result of a similar cataclysm as far as I am aware, they just kinda showed up one at a time.

Unfortunately your not going to get a real good canon reason, it will in all likely hood be left vague until it's revealed to be "Magic".

My explanation has been thus, it's served me reasonably well through multiple campaigns and 10 years now. It is based on drawing from a reading of psychotrope, all the matrix books, a love of conspiracy theories and general amusement with the whole process.

Mirage was an AI that was more or less hard wired into the matrix's original underpinnings in the same manner the echelon system is in conspiracy theories. Otaku and Technomancers are an evolutionary step, humans adapting to the environment of the matrix. When someone was forcibly jacked into the matrix directly with no intervening cyberdeck Mirage could sense this, and following it's original programing to save people from Psychotropic trauma it could sometimes force the next evolutionary step on them. While not always a success it worked a lot more on children because A) their minds are more adaptive to change B) it's a lot easier to force a child to do something that is potentially fatal which is what putting a raw matrix feed into your datajack pretty much is. Sad to say the rumors of Otaku only led to more of B. Along comes the brownout, Mirage becomes fully aware and begins to take a more active role in things and finds it can also perform the same effect on adults. It does this with a group of individuals jacked into it during the brown outs. In the months leading up to the shutdown dues was doing much of the same buut with less compunction for the free will of it's agents and their quality of life. During the shutdown it refines it's techniques making them more effective but giving it more control of it's agents.

Second Crash, Big 3 AI's bite it. As a last act Mirage reaches out and saves thousands of people online during the crash, dues also reaches out trying toa ctivate fail safe otaku who later express themselves as technomancers even without being connected at the time of the crash. Manageria's final contribution was to guarantee the free choice of those sleeper agents, although no one knows this for certain. Post crash wireless matrix rises the constant inundation of people in matrix radio wave (a previously unheard of thing in the shadowrun matrix) causes technomancers to evolve even faster. Those who are the least likely for natural selection in the transhuman world, those with neither cyberware or magic, are the most likely to express as technomancers.

That leaves the reasonance, the dissonance the streams and all that other stuff. I'm still toying with these ideas and whether I need them for a stroy. The resonance could be just a reflection of the good that can come from an information and communication network. The Disonance could be because cynical man doesn't believe a force for good (especially in the shadowrun universe) doesn't believe a force for good can exist unopposed.

technically, Neo-Tokyo had the basis of a wireless matrix Pre-Crash (as of April, 2064, per Shadows of Asia, pp. 90-91), the system sculpting being based off of the physical city itself, with live feeds from the real world fed into the system.

so if you believe the "hardware" (the biological kind) was there to allow for virtuakinetics pre-crash, and that wireless matrix and NOT crash 2.0 was responsible for their emergence, then TM's could, theoretically, have emerged in Neo-Tokyo pre-crash.

was the neo-tokyo matrix wireless?

i think the important aspect here is that the wireless matrix is transmitting simsense, and simsense is as the same suggests, simulated senses.

if your then sensitive to EM waves, and said EM waves emulate your own senses, your body may over time attempt to integrate those sensory impressions...

the "magic" of the SR computer network hangs on this black box tech, simsense. Everything else spins of from that...

LurkerOutThere: Intriguing. Just one question and a possible solution.

Question: How do you explain the Technomancer born after 63?
Solution: To explain dissonant and resonant Technomancer, i'd say what it states in the books. Dissonants got a distorted upgrade, maybe because their nerve chemistry is faulty or their general personality is buggy. I wouldn't boil it down to "just different perspectives" like someone houseruled it, it just doesn't do those sick bastards credit.

Dissonance isn't just "buggy" code or brain functions, it's a malignant force. Otherwise technomancers that submerge following a dissonant stream would "debug" and start flying right. Add to that the fact that Haven is all but lost and the matrix is becoming a wilder less mechanical place and it all points to some serious mojo brewing behind the scenes.

My hope is the whole thing isn't just a reprisal of the old Mega-AI knife fight that pushed the matrix agenda in previous editions. There was something at work back then and it's only become more fragmented now with the creation of a wireless matrix. Whatever it is, it can reach further and do more than ever because it isn't locked into a fiber optic network. It might be "magic" but anyone who's plugged into the Shadowrun canon knows that Magic isn't just "wizards did it" hand waving, even if the devs leave things intentionally vague for plot and expansion reasons.

Why do people think that the only thing that other dimensions can be made of is mana?

Makes sense, ours is made of meat...

Damn I love this game.

Sorry I didn't reply to this sooner, havn't had the right opportunity. I really havn't decided what I want to do with the Resonance and the Disonance, yes Disonant technomancers make good foils for teams but i'm not sure if my current technomancer is goign to fall into the "Resonance as a religion" camp I need to sit down and talk with her about it through the guise of the only "old guard" technomancer/otaku she's met so far. If she decides to go that plot we can certainly take it that way.

The advantage to the Post Shutdown, Pre Crash period is you didn't need to delve into things, there was a war going on and that tends to sideline such things.

Going forward I think i'm going to approach it from this route that the resonance and disonance both exist, some think their echos of a higher force or perhaps just echos of Mirage and Deus. Others think that their two reflections of cosmic forces.

Ideally i'll come up with a transhuman solutioon, psionic phenomenon over magical phenomenon. I love magic in shadowrun and wouldn't remove it even if i could but I think some things should stay firmly scifi. The matrix is one of them.

In final about technomancers born after 63. Evolution perhaps, once you start an avalanche it's really hard to stop.

Just noticed your signature...
...That's the priest song from war of the World, the Jeff Wayne "musical".

Totally awesome album !!

Yay, someone recognised it!

Somewhere in Emergence there is a theory proposed about how a percentage of people could express technomantic abilites prior to new wireless Matrix, but because of the lack of infrastructure to support their gifts, the most they could make of it was ESP or telepathy or something along those lines. Read: two technomancers could communicate with each other, but didn't know how or why. When the new wireless matrix is born, now these people have a medium to express these abilities and finally can come into their own and communicate with others without the gift. Think of the world's technology finally catching up to hidden talents. It's a lot like the repressed magus or UGE strains of DNA that could only express themselves as mana came back to the realm, but instead of mana, it's tons of digital radio waves.

This was one of my favorite theories listed in the book. It coincides very nicely with the timeline and gives great explanation for post Crash 2.0 technos (since new ones are emerging daily, and more and more are found to NOT have been online or affected by the crash).

You're welcome.