Let me find what I wrote. Quite frankly, that section wasn't SoLA's finest (far worse things happened during the project, for sure, but let's not go there today), and there are better alt-scenarios just screaming to be written.

Bolivia, on the other hand, was quite entertaining to write.

Say, is there a free file-hosting service I can use?




Without even asking the original authors, but that's hardly surprising at this point.

JWK: Use Box.net to put the files on. That's what I'm using. And let me know if you want me to make them into a read-only, printable PDF.

On a side note and hopefully not too late: The interrogative pronouns "where" and "who" have quite similar German equivalents, "wer" und "wo". There's just a twist, each has vice-versa's meaning.

Saying something like that above with German pronounciation would inquire about who the vodka is...

Furthermore, the stuff with the V instead of the W is used in Germany for russian/ukrainian and the such . .

It's never too late for necromancy.

Uuuh, right, i did not notice that O.o
Also, didn't we discuss this in another threat recently?

Heh. I've been away from the boards for quite a while and I wonder what's happening about SoLA. I come on the boards to find some of it waiting. Thanks a lot guys

We are not waiting anymore. SoLA won't be coming out and possibly any material that it would have will now show up (hopefully) in Almanac's to the 6th World.

The Almanac will not have all of the material from SoLA, simply because the word count devoted to the topic isn't as much. It will, however, cover some of the places that appear in SoLA.

I've got a couple of drafts to add to the ones Demonseed and Ancient have posted. If my plans for them don't pan out, I'll get them up some time in the not-too-distant future as well.

Yeah, I imagined this would be so.
Now, talking as a true native, the Amazonian Kingdom doesn't make much sense taking Brazil as a whole. If you take the map shown here, the Amazonian Forest is practically everything to the left of a imaginary line connecting Belém to Rio Velho. The area around Cuiabá is Pantanal and you could even patch it together with the Amazonian Forest. My main concern is the brazilian shore. It is hugely populated, not only the Rio de Janeiro - São Paulo area. Then again, if all the people was relocated to Rio de Janeiro - São Paulo, it would explain why the Megalopole is SO DENSELY crowded.

Also, considering that Hualpa took over Brazil, this could be a great moment for the Paraguayan government try to negotiate with the new founded Amazonia a corridor to the Atlantice Ocean, since, you know, Brazil and Argentina took it from them on the 19th century and we killed 99% of their masculine population at the time...

Ecuador and Peru fighting with each other would be another thing.
Anyway, I'm going to lunch now, if someone wants to discuss this I would be glad.

I personally say the foundation of Amazonia was an elaborate coup d'etat against a wildly unpopular government, involving lots of dissidents amongst the "normal" urban population backed by Awakened rebel leaders. They took over the government and renamed the country from "Brazil" to "Amazonia" to show what they were all about. It sounds way more plausible than "three dragons and a bunch of shapeshifters walk into a bar and declare independence" .

The same thing goes for the breakup of the USA, really, but replace the dragons with "a bunch of native americans".

Well, even so, it implies that the urban population was completely or almost completely relocated to Rio-Paulo. Considering that about 80% of Brazil's population live at the shore, taking all of them or almost all of them to Rio-Paulo is A LOT of people in such a small territory, I think the best way would be to consider some other major cities like Salvador, Recife, Florianópolis, etc in extraterritory, just like Seattle is to the UCAS. This of course considering that Rio-Paulo is the a different country, instead of a "ghetto".

JongWK, did you ever upload your files?

I prefer it all as one single country, it makes more sense to me. I like the idea of a big ass cyberpunk city, too, so I don't object to Metrópole too much. Admittedly, it makes more sense if you ignore Shadowrun's canon population figures (which are smaller than the ones from the present day), but it doesn't mean you have to make the rest of the coast deserted.

Métropole (I hope I got the accents right) is the biggest sprawl in the 6th world by far. With all the dire implications. Oh, and the wilderness part of Amazonia is separated by a Korea-style DMZ from the City. Think of it as the bigger, smellier brother of the Gaza Strip, where Vampires and other creatures have every right to prey on metahumans. (Meta)humans are the lowest of the low in Amazonia's eco-friendly, sustainable, energy-efficient and carbon monoxide neutral society.

Sources are Aztlan SB, Blood Sport (novel), Wake of the Comet, and an article in WunderWelten fanzine from way back.

Fixed 'Metrópole' for you.

@Bira, well, sure, overpopulated sprawls are part of the setting, true. I've seen a lot of people complaining on how the NAN doesn't make sense in the first place, while I do believe that an Awakened coup d'état in Brazil would actually work (specially if being backed out by a GD), my complaint is that some people would resort to terro-, erm, liberation fighters to prevent such a massive relocation and as far as I know (and I could as well be wrong), I've never seen any rebel group fighting to restore Brazil.

I don't think there has been any forced relocation. Metrópole had 40 years between the Amazonian coup and the present to grow to its current size, and I imagine a lot of people who lived away from large urban centers figured that's where most of the money is, and moved in on their own through those decades. As for the coup that created Amazonia itself, I imagine it would have had about as much popular support as the regime change from our real-life military dictatorship into a proper democracy had - you don't see many people who want that back, either. Just imagine what the previous government must have looked like .

It wasn't a dictatorship, we had rotating presidents and we had an opposition party after all
Also, people may believe in anything with the right actions/words. The '64 coup was embraced by the population at large for fear of baby-eaters communists it wasn't until later that MOST people who weren't communists/socialists in the first place, started complaining about the government.
If, let's say, Hualpa simply took over power with others Awakened, promised food and health care to all with the single condition that most people would be relocated to other areas so they could use Magic™ to grow back native fauna and flora to prior or close-to-prior colonization times, then yeah, I can see a huge support. Of course, crime would flourish inside hugely dense sprawls.

And we had no torture chambers, the mainstream media and the economic elite did not support the dictatorship and we should be thankfull to the military because they saved us from a socialist dictatorship



I started to imagine a very anti-democratic, unpopular and corrupt government beeing overthrown by a coalition of awakened forces, traditional peoples (native brazilians, quilombolas and others) and the MST!

About Metrópole, well, I think that, to get an sprawl from Rio to São Paulo, this monster would grow also to the north of Rio de Janeiro state (lots of oil there!) and west of São Paulo state (at least to the region around Campinas). That would be like 800km wide!

And it would be bordering Mantiqueira Mountains. That place is kind of awakened today, imagine in the 6th world! BTW, things that would become awakened in the 6th world are very common here. I mean, just in the block where I live there are two talismongers (you brazilians know what I'm talking about, those small shops where you can buy candles, umbanda and candomblé artifacts, images of saints, etc).

EDIT: because my written English é uma merda...

Bolivia is almost ready for posting, and there's more coming after that. I'd like to find a basic legal statement that makes it clear that my material is not intended for any commercial purposes. Do you happen to have one?

Creative Commons has a nice wizard.

creative commons?

edit: Rotbart draw first!

No sir, you must be wrong, there were no torture chambers and we should be thankful for the military to save us from baby-eaters communists.



Because no group is more democratic than the MST, right? (To summarize the wikipedia link, the MST is a pro-peasant movement who wishes to create a communist goverment similar to Cuba and old URSS in Brazil)


Yep, but as you pointed out, a lot of this land is really hard to live (with mountains and stuff), which leaves the living area quite reduced

I disagree in some aspects. MST is more about land reform and is based in constitutional rights about land use, they don't have a revolutionary agenda to take the power or something, but yeah, you can find (lots of) old-school communist aspects in their speech and actions (that is obvious, which capitalist organization would fight for peasants anyway? ). But this kind of discussion is complex, really controvertial and would go way off-topic...

Anyway, I'm glad to find other brazillian dumpshockers! That must be rare since all we got in portuguese are four 2nd edition books and three novels...

Yay!


First off, thanks for the accent fix. I knew one had to be somewhere, just not where.

Also, as for the NAN, didn't they institute a one-drop rule or grandfather's rule? If so, a good portion of the US population would apply. Also, I seem to remember they had an aggressive immigration policy for one-droppers from the UCAS/CAS/CAL as well as received all identified tribals from there save for some tribe on the East Coast who only is there because Dunkelzahn loved them for some reason.


For they are crunchy and taste good with a variety of spicy sauces. Whoever was not relocated was *eaten* by a horde of stampeding critters, I imagine. Pockets of Resistance fighters might prevail, of course, a bit like the Anglo reservations in the UCAS.


This assumes no Great Dragon would take offense in that. Hualpa is not the only dragon around in Amazonia. The Green Menace does not have that name for fun.


Are these the guys who supported your current president when he was first elected?

Cool! If that is the case with Amazonia then I could apply for not been eaten by the critters! You see, in Brasil the ethnic groups are, in general, all mixed together. My family, for exemple, is a mix of portuguese, spanish, african, italian, dutch and native brazillians and that is quite common.



Well, not exactly. President Lula is from the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores - Workers' Party), a party born inside the labor unions movement at the last years of the dictatorship. The origins of MST is in the rural workers' movements from the same period. So both share similar origins and the same left-wing position in the political spectrum and one supported the other most of the time. The thing is that, at 2002 ellections, the PT moved to a more left-center or center position so it would "look good" for the middle and upper classes. That is what made Lula be ellected - before that he was allways stuck at around 30% of the votes. So, to win the elections it was all about public relations and marketing to make people believe that Lula was no "red menace". But the MST is famous for its direct action tactics - they occupy land to call atention for the agrarian reform issue - and it is not good for the image PT wanted for 2002. So, at that time, the MST was not "officialy" supporting PT and PT was not "officialy" supporting MST, but I believe many people from MST voted for Lula.

I know, the explanation is quite messy... I can try to explain better if you'd like, just send me a pm.

As I said elsewhere, I tend to make things less, well, race-based in my games. I say that, while the revolt that formed the NAN was indeed led by Native Americans, it wasn't entirely made up of them. I mean, they fought to depose a government that was okay with putting people into concentration camps. I'm pretty sure that would piss off a large portion of Americans, native or not. The "Native American" nations, therefore, have a much more diverse population than their name would suggest. Native Americans formed the core leadership of the movement, and so their cultural trappings were adopted as a form of self identification. By 2070, that cultured has seeped through most of their societies.

Same thing with Amazonia and its paracritters. I can see something on the level of a Great Ghost Dance defeating a national army. A "paracritter invasion", not so much. The "Big Magic Ritual" here was more focused on boosting ecosystems than into winning a war. To me it's more plausible that the dragons had won the hearts and minds of a sizeable portion of the population before the so-called invasion began, and did just enough to keep everyone happy afterwards that they managed to stabilize their new regime. As we say here, it all ended in pizza . Rather than "forced relocation", I can see a series of "incentives" for people to move out of the areas being swallowed by the magically enhanced ecosystem through the decades.

Heh, no problem. If there was one thing it touched me as "weird" when I was learning english is the lack of accents.



Uhm, well, I didn't know that. This way a lot of non-Native supporters could go into the fold as well, specially, the more instructed personel necessary to run a country.



LOL! Yeah, I could go with that, "they" say we taste like pork, right?



Officialy? No, but they do receive a lot of formal and informal support when they ask for it but it is like your sig says. Communism is like herpes (and devil rats).

OK, here's Bolivia in 2064.

Feel free to use it for non-commercial purposes. Enjoy!

Thanks, JongWK!

am I the only one who wants to gather up the pdfs and make them into one big one with all the little side bars and the like in?

Thank you, JongWK!

@Dragongirl: In case you want to (and none of the respective authors object), would you share?

Also, I think these files deserve to be hosted on Dumpshock. Again, barring the disagreement of the respective authors.


True, must be weird for you. For me, the most baffling thing was how little writing has to do with speech.

I *think* it was in Findley's books, but I could be mistaken. Anyway, it would only make sense. They would need them direly.


Yah. Don't tell me. Ours are involved in the government again and looking to take over the social democrats.

And yes, pork would be a decent approximation, I think. Sweeter though.

do it!

Thanks JongWK!


@Dragon Girl Yes please!

What of Amazonia and Argentina and Peru? While we're at it? Do the respective writers still hang here and are willing to publish their stuff for free on the internet?

The freelancers who worked on it would love to do that. But we're still trying to get in touch with some of the authors. If we're ever able to contact everyone and get them to approve releasing the drafts, I could certainly put them together into a single PDF. Not with the level of quality that Adam does it, but it'd be something.

Nobody could do it in the level of Quality that Adam does i guess . .

Argentina: Synner.
Amazonia: Synner & other authors.
Peru: I'm still in contact with the two Peruvian authors. More on this soon.

I still have to upload Crime, Panama and Caracas.

Thanks a bunch! I love to finally see this!

Thanks a lot – keep 'em coming.

To clarify what Demonseed posted: Since Catalyst has pulled the plug on the possibility of an official release, we are trying to (re)contact all the authors involved in the SoLA project to get their approval to release their material for non-commercial purposes. We already have a number of sections/chapters greenlit (incl. Paraguay, Argentina, Amazonia, the Corporate and Crime overviews, Panama, and Caracas) besides the ones posted. We could just release the drafts on Dumpshock and be done with it, but I was kind of hoping to get this laid out proper and presented as a full-blown unoffficial sourcebook.

PS: I have a couple of volunteers lined up to handle the layout, but they're not going to have time available to do this in the next month or so. So anyone interested in helping with this side of things, please drop me a line (my address is in my profile).

That would be really great. Of course, that doesn't mean raw chapters as a preview aren't appreciated – just in case.

As for Bolivia:

I like.

Have I mentioned how much I hate Internet Explorer?

Panama will be available for download as soon as I return home in a few hours.

Panama Pan-Corporate Zone available for download now. If you haven't done so yet, you can also download Bolivia. Feel free to use them for non-commercial purposes.

Enjoy!


1st EDIT: Caracas also available now. Feel free to use for non-commercial purposes.

2nd EDIT: Peru in 2064, written by José "Pepe" Barbe (Philomitus) and Hugo Medina (Heianpe). Feel free to use for non-commercial purposes.

Also: Argentina by Peter Taylor (Synner), Aztlan and Caribbean League by Jason Levine (Demonseed Elite), and French Guiana by Bobby Derie (Ancient History).

3rd EDIT: Crime in Latin America available for download now. Feel free to use for non-commercial purposes.

awesome, JWK!

Thanks alot. Really appreciate it. I don't remember if I thanked the other authors yet too, so if I haven't thanks all.

I've just uploaded my Caracas draft. Feel free to use it for non-commercial purposes.

Let me know if you guys want any art pieces for it.

Unfortunately its been a good ten years since I last fooled around with, or got any training in making PDFs. I'd be willing to learn and give a hand, but I also don't believe I have the software. (Still if no one else had been on this, I would have given it a go, I'm certain someone else can do this part much better than I could.)

Where is the hint in Bolivia about the bugs? I'm reading and reading and can't find the foreshadowing the OOC section refers to.