Dear Dumpshock,

A while back, I tried to figure out what I'd implant in a mundane (probably an ork, but who knows?) to make a Warhammer 40K Space Marine. I got as far as Muscle Replacement 4 and Dermal Plating, but then I realized that A. I'm not aware of a level of human-armor interface in Shadowrun equivalent to that in 40K (I'm not even sure Space Marines can take their armor off), B. I'm not aware of any gene/bioware that would cause the sheer level of growth exhibited by Space Marines, and C. there are other things that aren't represented by the Shadowrun rules. Now, I realize that 40K is set in the year 40K and Shadowrun is just in the 2070s, but I feel like the difference is nothing unattainable by 6th world science, particularly if practiced in the complete absence of ethics. And this leads me to my point.

I want to assemble a group of the leading weapon, armor, cyber and bioware (etc, etc.) scientists (and a bunch of orks; it's good when your test subjects gestate as quickly as possible), and take them to a secluded base where they can work uninterrupted by things like laws. Where would the best place be? The places I've considered are A. taking over Evo's Mars base, B. traveling deep, deep into the ocean and excavating a base from the floor, or C. simply building (or hijacking) an orbital base of my own. It has to be secluded, because after I develop the technology I'm after I'll be using it to create my own personal legion of troops with which to, you know, try to take over the world.

I'm thinking the advantages of the Mars base are that someone else already did all the hard work to set it up, but Evo won't be too happy when they realize communications have gone dark, and having no atmosphere makes Thor shots even more effective. The advantage of a cave under the sea is that it's on Earth, so attaining resources wouldn't be hard, but at the same time being detected is the most serious risk. Finally, a base in space (or on the moon?) would be secluded and wouldn't generate much heat, but shipping resources up would be a hell of a chore.

So, in short, how do I secretly assemble an army capable of making a respectable attempt at taking over the world?

The question isn't so much the army, that was done using Better Than Life chips and brainwashing people.

The question is why the frag would you want a world in the condition it's currently in?

Why is that every time anybody wants to set up an army they come up with the most extravagant secret base possible. CAN you build a secret underwater base in the SR universe? Yes. Would it be cost effective? Doubtful.

If we posit that you have a completely insane set of resources, you will still need to decide whether or not your army and base will be self sufficient. If you are making your own food, you will need to divert money, space, and man-power. On top of this you need to consider all the skilled labor you'd need for any possible mishap that could occur. In an underwater lab of doom, it seems to me that you'd need many clever physicists hanging about just making sure your base wouldn't collapse. But, if you decide to not be self sufficient, then you'll be discovered soon enough anyways...

Why not do what Sealand did and just get your own aircraft carrier out in international waters? That seems a much better starter base. Think small for now, it sounds like it will be at least twenty years before you'll have an army that could compare with even the most minimally funded band of mercs. You don't want to piss any off until you absolutely HAVE to. The phrase "mua ha ha" should not be in your vocabulary for some time. Leave that one for your children.

Several of the novels have Space Marines out of armour, but several people appear to be permanently suited up because of injuries, old age, etc.

Space Marines are people whose bodies are taken, shaped and forced to be the way they are [some of the novels involve people being "recruited"], using techniques developed and honed over thousands of years...
...Not something you can put together in a chop shop, no matter how Delta it's supposed to be.

Why do you want to take over the world ?? What does that mean to you ??
What happens if you succeed ?? What happens next ??

Why not do like Winternight did and take over an old secret Cold War sub base. There's plenty of old abandoned cold-war era military installations way up north in Canada and Russia that were used for early warning missile detection. You could go in, do a little construction, and have some hackers make sure the facility is conveniently erased from any government lists. If you really think that you could swing an underwater, mars base, or space base, I want to know where the funding would come from for that. Because I really don't think any of the AAA corps are going to launch you and your army into space to take over Evo's mars base.

How about this for a secret base...
...Deep beneath the Cheshire countryside a salt mine is used for storage.

Indeed, I'd look at a retired aircraft carrier, or perhaps a boomer, if you need more secrecy. Those bad boys will be selling pretty cheap (relatively speaking), far cheaper than a Mars base. I don't know that a boomer would have all the space you'd want for what you're doing, but a carrier definitely should, plus its nuclear power plants guarantee availability of power. The real question is, which ports would you use for getting 'volunteers', restocking, vacationing, etc.

Here's an idea for an army on the cheap...

Mass-Produce Streetline Specials and hand them out to the SINless, and have a nice revolution against the SINners.

How is Antarctica looking these days? How much ice is covering the north pole?

Because you can?

Oh, I know... for the LOLs

I've always thought that this would be the way an intelligent terrorist would try to do real harm to a nation. To hell with nukes, and airplanes, they are too hard to get and use. Just dump thousands of cheap firearms among the inner city disenfranchised, and watch them do his work for him. In North America he wouldn't even need to import the firearms, just the money to buy them at the corner store.

And then point to the social decay and say, "See, their own decadence destroys them!"

I think the SINless would be just as likely to shoot each other as they would be to shoot some SINners. Sure, they'll probably rob some stuffer shacks or whatever, but Lone Star and Knight Errant cops would be able to handle any untrained SINless dude with a hold-out pistol easily. If your objective was just to cause some general anarchy, I think it'd be mildly successful. But if you wanted to do damage to actual strategic targets, I think it'd fail miserably.

So putting alittle extra something in common household drones update and having them do all the work for you isn't good? Bust a moves and cleaning drones could probably do some damage. The problem is the scale of the uprising.

The real problem of a SINless uprising is that you will never be able to control them. This thread is about taking over the world, not toppling the old regime! If you gave the SINless guns, the enterprising ones would shoot you and take the rest of the guns, I know I would.

Handling one SINless with a Hold-Out, no problem.

Handling mobs of them, as in, more bodies than you have ammo, then you start getting into issues.

I point to the British when they fought the Zulus. (Of course, there were other extrenuating circumstances as well, one being that they really needed to have figured out supplying troops with ammo faster!).

As for controlling them, well, that's what Charisma is for. Just got to do it before you poke up on people's radars about being a threat. Anyhow, how threatening can the SINless be?

"They have HOW many people at the gates?"

Here's one: Start with North America - do the following in a major election year
Dump Massed Streetline Specials amongst the SINless, as said earlier. Anarchy makes the rest of the job easier.

Hire many teams of shadowrunners to assassinate varied individuals, not because there's really a reason for any of them, just to cause more chaos. For added power, pretend to be from varied corporations and countries while you do this, so you can try and start a corp war. Or just a war.

Have the Mafia, Yakuza, Vory, and whomever else you like to start distributing K-10 to the inner-city SINless. That anarchy problem just got a LOT bigger. Or just dump a ton of it into the water supply.

Assassinate the president of UCAS, the president of CAS, and the members of the Sovereign Tribal Council. Tough move to make, but I think you probably have the resources to get some brainwashed suicide assassins by now - a single, armed killer with nothing but merder on his mind, and a total willingness to die is the most difficult thing in the world to defend against.

Crash the Matrix. Again. I'm not much of a computer scientist, but the logic behind it seems to make this step pretty easy to accomplish.

Have your political party (What? You don't have one?! GET ONE!) start claiming that it will bring back stability and peace and so on. In ALL the nations whose leaders you just killed. Talk a lot about a secret planfor peace and such. If that fuck Nixon pulled it off...

Kill your political opponents, using the brainwashed suicide killer trick. Have a failed attempt on your own party's members (possibly including yourself), showing your personal guards (see black/brown shirts) for details) to be much more competent at security than other forces.

Get elected. Seeing as the people of the Sixth World are about as smart as hamsters (they're downgraded from the modern 'sheeple' model), this should also be easy.

Using rhetoric of stability and protection, slowly recombine the former American nations. If any resist, upgrade the destruction, with some assassinations of political opponents. Oh, come on, you already know how to do that. Overall, this step is likely the longest and hardest.

Now, you have a nation that actually has a significant amount of power and authority. Assuming you managed to avoid the Corporate Court stopping you somewhere along the line (pay them off, or offer them great economic benefits - a free trade agreement and open borders within your nation should help), you are now capable of continuing. Next stop, the WORLD!!!

Hmmmmmmmm, well planned out.

The only hard part would be getting enough beer to prevent the Canadians/Displaced Irish from taking over while you're trying all this.

That's the beauty of it. You don't have to handle them. They'll handle themselves. A sudden influx of guns isn't going to be the catalyst for a social change. It's just going to fuel the continued downward spiral of the society the SINless have built. Rather than assault each other with knives, they'll use their free guns. If they were going to storm the walls of Bellevue, they'd already be doing it.

Yup!

I sort of assumed you had massive resources. Beer for the Irish, Vodka for the Russians, Sake and Anime for the Japanese, etc. The people who aren't busy voting for you or causing the trouble for you will be out of the picture!

Yes, I will concede your point about the strategic targets, but if one's purpose is to terrify a population and get them to draw within themselves, and away from his pile of sand, mobs of gun-toting riff-raff back home work way better than bombed buildings.

And if you are interested in more permanent acquisition of territory, one example after another in human history demonstrates that the easiest way to take down a mighty power is to show up at the gates after it has done the grunt work to itself.

Uhm, I think I've seen this before...
Oh, right, it was in some old movies, where people lived in a galaxy far far away a long time ago and there were these dudes with super powers and a big bad dude in a big black bad-ass armor with a breathing problem. Those were ok movies

Something like 30-40% of the US already is armed (including a number of people who shouldn't be), yet the rate of Americans causing serious political harm with them is pretty low. I doubt this would work in the UCAS. It MIGHT work in a nation which either operates under an oppressive regime, and the people are already looking to revolt but don't have the equipment to do so (in which case you're probably doing the world a favor), or it's a country just full of knuckleheads who don't know not to point firearms at your buddies or think a streetline special makes you someone. And frankly, I doubt the latter case would really help you overthrow those in power.

V for Vendetta's plan of handing out anonymity is better. Look at what happened when we allowed for that on the internet (4chan). Another possibility would be to release a new UGE virus and force a certain amount of the population to transform into monsters, but frankly, that race has already been run twice, and it's sort of an old dog.

Bugfox's idea could work, but if you have the power to pull that drek off, you already ARE in control of the world, so there's not much purpose in it (and trying it runs the serious risk of losing everything you do have).

Did you WATCH Star Wars? I don't recall most of this happening. Unless you saw political assassinations, armed SINless, a crashed information network and so on somewhere I don't know. Though I do appreciate the comparison to the Empire's plan - it worked pretty well (for a while... I guess they might ahve gone with some of the easier options, instead of trying to build giant battlestations...).

And to nezumi: You're probably right. But there's a difference between having enough money and power to manipulate the world, and actually TAKING OVER/RULING it. I was assuming we were going from one to the other.

I still think that the real question here is, how do I get my space marines?

Hey! No putting it back on topic after it's derailed!

Geneware. Invest in 2+ space marine orks, breed them together. It's win.

I'd build a distributed peer to peer VPN run by black hat hackers to build my own version of a blacknet (ala Halting State) and The Exchange. A bunch of hardcore black hat hackers with very diverse skillsets and interests. Start trading favors with each other. Build a botnet here. Get admin there. Have whatever targets you want.

I would also focus very heavily on media control, simsense programming and psychotropic IC technology if you really want ways to program and control the masses.

- J.

There is two attempts at a political assassination in the movies both on Padmé, the first one when her ship explodes after they land on Coruscant and the second one with the polymorpher whose name I can't recall.
But the rest of it you can see on the Expanded Universe. Palpatine does indeed control the biggest criminal groups, he controls what is said in the media, because anyone who tries to put the war on perspective suffers some kind of "accident" and he is putting two different groups to weaken each other.




Yeah, there are things you could use on Augmentation, no more than 2 generations later you could have some big bad-ass orks.

Meh, genetweaking your own monster trogs or arming the SINless is never going to win you the world, what you need is to be a Decker or TM with crazy hacking and hardware skills, then build a network of sim modules that were modified for hot sim. Once you've done that start hacking people's 'links and pipe in BTL Grade Pyche IC through your sim modules.

That's partly what I was alluding to.

- J.

Sure, but my version holds true to the idea that three people can keep a secret when two are dead.

Having to share power with other evil masterminds just gets too messy...

Every evil mastermind has henchmen....

- J.

Just go play Evil Genius. Funniest game I've ever played. Nothing like being an evil genius, creating your secret hideout, and establishing deadly traps in your base to kill unsuspecting intruders. It kind of sucks when your own henchmen get killed in the traps, but hey they knew the risks when they signed on that foreign governments would want to stop me and secret agents would be sent to stop me.

Sure, but I got the impression under your post that your fellow Deckers would have to be skilled enough to be able to help you create said network and hense would be skilled enough to figure out the master plan and either stop you or more likely, demand a piece of the pie.

As annoying as it is to have stupid henchment, smart ones are just too dangerous to keep around ... after all I don't want to wake up one day to find that I literally worship the ground that Bob walks on.

/scbw ON i always thought you build them in your barracks for 50 minerals (dont forget to build enough supply depots, or you will get stuck at a moment)

..oh and it helps a lot to continue scv production at your command center to keep economy growing, while upgrading in your engineering bay and researching stimpacks at your academy..

and get those hot medic chicks for more ...ahem.. healthier troop condition

/scbw OFF =)

Wrong marines.

Inca emperors dealt with the problem of henchmen's capability in similar ways. The bad generals were put to death for failure. The really good generals were 'retired' before their troops got too loyal to them, rather than the Inca. The mediocre ones stayed. Sounds like modern society to me.