Oral history traditions among First Nations people in Canada have been shown to have editing/check mechanisms built in to counteract changes over time to the histories. An archaeologist with whom I used to work was instrumental in that study. Such oral histories are now considered equivalent to written documents in Canadian law.

For the more shamanic traditions it's the spirit and inner attunement to the power of the earth/totem/mother goddess/whatever that counts, not so much reciting a spell formula to the letter. Of course that would also give sincere believers of other traditions an edge, which didn't happen, so we're back at "the SAIM had plot armour"...who would have thought...

Ok, fine, I'll bite again, Mord. I rather like the NAN fiction, you plainly do not. Here we go again!

Let's address a few points:
1) IRL census data and how it pertains to SR census data
2) 1% magical SR population data
3) time of the awakening in relation to magic
4) nuclear war, nukes, and the lone eagle incident
5) los alamos destroyed, other "natural disaster" magical events

1) From my understanding via my SR4A, the wiki, and various posts regarding stuff about other numbered worlds (ex: 4th world, etc) and horrors/immortals, you can view SR's so called 6th World either as splitting off from ours the first time the writers made a change which would be a president named Jeffrey Lynch (wiki) instead of our world's Bill Clinton or other candidates in 1992 or as never having been our world period thanks to past numbered worlds and the horrors and only having a surprising number of similarities to our own agreed upon historical figures in written documents that survived the various victors over the intervening years. The first assumption, you still get time for population figures to fictionally explode but in the second it doesn't make any sense to assume our population figures match the SR population figures at all and could well be in excess of the oft quoted figure of 1% of total US population either way. Other things to consider in that quoted percentage is it only take into account the US, when in the fiction it is US and Canada combined, and their methods of people declaring as identifying as one particular ethnic group or another - which I have seen people of many different skin tones identify with some ancestor having been from a NA tribal nation at some point, even though they may check off the box for another ethnicity in the census (or the census taker may do without even prompting). There is a margin for error in that IRL data that doesn't seem to be considered here in relation to how it might conceivably pertain to the fiction. Heck, the margin for error in the fiction is even greater when you consider the SiNless/SiNned and how they came to be in the record keeping (Wars, VITAS, The Awakening, Crashes, etc).

2) Here we straight up consider the fiction and only rely on their numbers. The 1% figure is TOTAL recorded population. It is those who have allowed themselves to be identified as magical or suspected as being magical. Try to remember magicians used to be just as despised (oddly enough, when did that go away?) as technomancers currently are. Checking that box off on the census data used to be a big no-no if you didn't want to be lynched, even before the data was lost in this or that Crash or natural/social/economic disaster if they happened to still be keeping paper around (just think how many paper/computer records were lost to water damage IRL New Orleans let alone the fictional one). There is still plenty of metahumanity who one could argue there are not accurate numbers on in their world, which are the numbers that are related to us. Our SR history is presented to us through stories passed along through the shadows and not necessarily common public knowledge, more corporate misinformation propaganda then truth meets the eyes and only those on the fringe in the shadows have any indication that the powers that be are being less than forth coming with their data. In such an enviroment you want to trust the 1% total recorded (estimated) population figure in a world with rather large recording error called SiNless? And that is even before the realization dawns that is Total population, not total local population. How those percentages play out over the entire earth's population, there very well could be entire regions with only magic capable people and not even come close to making up their entire 1% of the world's population in SR 2070, let alone back in 2000.

3) Yes, 2000. Why do I bring up that date? From the wiki:

SR "real" magic was occurring before 2011 "Year of Chaos" hit the fan. Premature awakening. Think about it, there could be SR cultures who had held on to their magic traditions through the down turn in magic and did. Wait, what is this, it is working, even if only a little bit, a small spark? Large fires have been started by sparks.

4) And here we go. Sparks be flying only they aren't starting any fires when just yesterday they did:

Something interesting to note about that Lone Eagle Incident, whose report are we reading? Do we have any characters that reported on site just who pushed the button? I propose (probably again) that the SAIM could have been setup as the fall guys, that they did not in fact launch that nuke and the victors got to write the history of what happened in that site when the Delta team attacked. So, would others against NAN have me believe that the SAIM sophisticated enough to bypass the safeguards and launch a ICBM but not believable that they could wage an effective magical guerrilla war on their own territory against superior numbers and tech or what? And talk about defending ones self from the aggressor:
Huh, I wonder why they might have gotten defensive/aggressive when the little they had left of their traditional territories was being taken. And there is another total area number, those may have been an entire US reserves/treaty/traditional land being taken there. And I don't suppose whitey tree huggers or park/native neighbours would have been all that thrilled either. Well, would you look at that:

Guess who went for the ethnic cleansing move first. Yeah, since you can sympathize with US and Canada believably pulling out the kill entire regions and neighbouring regions with the fallout from biological/chemical/nuclear options but you are going to begrudge what was going to become the NAN looking to do something similar with what was available to them with their magical traditions?

5) Fire be ragin' and VITAS be culling. So, for 2+ years you have NAN being thrown into new camps, just like their ancestors were, magic mojo happening already in small doses and then one of them has enough of this genocidal BS and has the magical means to do so on Dec 24, 2011 SR and for the next 7 years till 2018 with the Treaty of Denver, it is on with a cold, then hot war. So, US and Canada have military forces, boots to put on the ground. Were any of them NAN? Those guys used to be welcome in the forces. Might that have given them some insider knowledge and skills they could have passed on once they were liberated from the camps? Heck, there were things they used to teach their fellow grunts when they were walking point. Oh look, here come our former buds to kill us and take everything we ever called home after we broke free from the camps, again...
Some select quotes from the past thread and SR4A says:

Sorry superior numbers, you seem to have met your match when your tech isn't up to the task of facing off against the magical mojo and your training hasn't prepared you for this foe. You've lost the new high ground: Astral (and the metaplanes)

Hmm, too bad there isn't a spoiler tag that I have noticed here to get the size down into manage-able bite sized chunks or I suspect this is just going to be ignored a TL;DR.

Oh well, my point being, the source material is purposefully blank and it is up to us to fill in those blanks as we see fit. When I fill in the blanks, I see the NAN as plausible within the framework of the SR world and its magic. In its past, this was a huge shift but its future is still to be written, so if you figure that cyber, bio and bunch of other techs has caught up to or surpassed magic initiation sufficiently, have US and Canada invade and finish their genocidal Acts from before they amalgamated into what is now the UCAS and use a nuke like however it was done in bug city if that is what you are after. But that assumes NAN are not advancing in bio, cyber and other techs these many decades along with their population numbers of various tribes plainly more well off than they were before when their lands and rights were being given away to corps not of their choosing. And that the Corporate Council would even allow it to happen in 2072+.

Posts with a table of contents are always fun to read.

Indeed...

This is one of those "don't go there" topics, trust me.

So, why did you? I do concur that we can all benefit from leaving this one alone.

Mostly because I find the idea long term retention of high precision information relying solely on the failings of human memory to be comical at the best of times, if you really wanted to know.

And yet there are those people that know the entire Koran, word for word, and have every single word correct. Forget what they're called. But the point is, they can't read, so they learned it from someone else who repeated it to them over and over again, and that person likely couldn't read either and so on, and they still have it correct.

Just because you can't remember what you had for lunch last week....

If I'm understanding your key points Canadian Wolverine, I'm going to try and go through them, but as your post is a small novel, please excuse any ommisions I might have made.

First the lone eagle incident either demonstrates a) a conspiracy to paint the first nations as terrorists, or b) that IF they have a small team capable of a single attack on a single base, then they MUST have a large enough force to hold off an army of millions.

The first idea holds little merit, as the group did infact attack and seize a missile base. While I can not definitively say who's finger pushed the button, it seems unlikely that whoever was potentially responsible for wanting said supposed conspiracy would have the power to simply remove 2 (I think it was 2 anyway) ICBM's headed to Russia which it was undoubtedly tracking from the fabric of space and time.

The next point about the US army having no defense against magic is problematic for so many reasons I can only try to come up with a reasonable list. While I will fully agree that each branch can be fairly monolithic as a whole, and rather resistant to the idea of change, each individual unit will most likely attempt to adapt to the crap happening as best they can. Now for my list.
1) a substantial portion of the US military intel network is located in space. This means no magical force on earth can pose a threat to it

2) Many of these satelites are rather complicated objects, and as such would have a very high OR, likely in the 6-9 range, this means there are virtually no reliable magical ways to hide from them, except using the spirit power of concealment. This means risking rampaging spirits, and potential brain hemorrhaging levels of drain because you have to continuously summon, and possibly bind spirits to keep the trick up.

3) While the army has no 'organized' magical defenses for itself, even 1% of the armies population will have awakened on their own. These will include adepts, and you can bet, that if they are in the army, a substantial number of them will have the mindset such that their abilities will manifest more towards the "making stuff blowup" end of the spectrum, as opposed to the "speed knitting carebears" end.

4) Also the army contains many individuals who have diverse religious backgrounds and beliefs, and some of them will no doubt have some from of mysticism among them, and awaken as mages/shamans. They will be able to, even if only instinctively at first begin to provide counter spelling, and spirit summoning abilities on their own.

5)Civilians of all stripes will have started to awaken, and those capable of astral and metaplainier travel will have started to have done so themselves. Even without the armies support or in many cases knowledge or consent can, and depending on their personalities would either use astral warfare against NAN themselves, or hang out on the astral near bases to help provide defense against attacks made there. Lets face it, 1% of NAN's population is way smaller then 1% of the general US population, and given they've all been threatened with genocide, they have a fairly good reason to wish to put NAN down, and given that no laws presently exist to regulate them, and no organizations exist to track them down, vigilantism will be at an all time high.

So yes NAN will posses the capacity to send a spirit to a military base to attack people, but 1% of the base will have awakened and may be able to provide some defense. 1% of the family members of everyone living on the base will have awakened too, and 1% of the entire population NAN just threatened to drown in their own blood will have awakened as well. And if any of them have influence over spirits that 1 NAN spirit will likely be greeted with with enough hostile spirits they that will have a hard time existing long enough to even materialize.

The NAN themselves while not facing highly organized attacks from the astral will have to put up with a never ending torrent of amateur spirits sent from the newly awakened population trying to protect themselves. You can bet at least some of them won't be too selective about their targets, as they could be sent by individuals of a nearly toxic mindset. Lets face it, since awakened can recognize eachother with assencing, its possible they could from small groups 2-12, and spend all weekend long summoning squads of force 1-6 spirits, and sending them to search for, and attack groups of NAN, and depending on their magic scores, they could literally keep this up virtually nonstop, resting only to deal with drain.

So while I fully agree the U.S. military would not have had formal magical defense procedures in place by then, they would not be defenseless against magic, and the NAN would IMHO likely have been buried under a tied of spirits sent by the very people they so graciously offered to bury under a volcano.

Why do you assume that 1% can do anything more than shoot a few sparkles out of their fingers scaring the hell out of themselves and everyone around them? Maybe at MOST few Watchers or Force 1-2 spirits. And many of those vanishing quick because they likely have only a couple of services.

Remember, these are folks that are throwing at MOST 4-5 dice for any Magic test. They'll be lucky to not kill themselves on the Drain, assuming the people around them haven't lynched them for being damn dirty NAN spies.

Actually, no, scratch that, virtually none of that 1% will be casting or summoning a damn thing. They will NOT have any sorcery or summoning skills and you can't default on Magic skills. The amount of folks that manage to learn even a single rank in a Magic skill in the timeframe involved can probably be counted on your fingers.

Meanwhile the opposition has been summoning high force great form spirits and hurricanes and exploding volcanoes.


-k

I'd really like a see a research study on that, and find out how accurate they are.

It's less about lunch, and more about HOW the brain actually forms memories, what sorts of things is remembers, and how easy it is to trick.

For exactly the same reasons that assumptions are made about NAN's ability to use magic.


Now you're assuming they all have a fractional magic score, and single digit drain stats.


Odd, I feel EXACTLY the same way about NAN. But if they magically pull the needed skill out of some dark 'plot hole', I naturally assume the rest of the population has the same 'plot hole' open up in their souls when they awaken too.


Using the same fractional magic scores, and single digit drain attributes the rest of the population has, as well as skills that seems to materialize out of the ether?

I'm sorry, but either this stuff takes exacting and meticulous knowledge, skill, and preparation, which need years of training, or you can actually do it by feel. Since NAN didn't have the time, population, or resources for the former, I assume the latter is true. IF the latter is true, then NAN aren't the only people who can 'feel'.

For crying out loud, Mordinvan. People here is saying exactly what you don't want to accept, that for some reason, that CW explained earlier, the NAN were ahead of everyone else on the magical curve, while everyone else was summoning Watcher and force spirits of rating 1-2, the NAN were invoking High Force Spirits. If you can't accept this premise, well, than it really becomes difficult to argue about it, right?

Yes, you're completely right, they've been practicing magic for the last 120 years, and have perfected all kinds of techniques, how silly of me not to realize that. And here all this time I thought the fact that they've all had magic scores of 0 until the awakening that might have posed a bit of a problem in actually learning how to cast, or summon spirits, because neither spells nor spirits could have existed until the awakening.

You've really opened my eyes, and given great hope for all those hard working olympic hopefuls who are training to be gymnasts despite the fact they're all congenital quadriplegics, that they really do have a chance to shine, and win gold immediately after getting up off the operating table.

And it's that assumption -- on your part -- that leads to arguments like this. You're wrong. Sorry. There's nothing in the fluff to counter the notion that, clearly stated since some of the earliest Shadowrun fluff and reinforced since then in novels and sourcebooks, the NAN were just "ahead of the curve."

Now you are just being a jerk.
But ok, i'll amuse you one more time. Let's say that everyone was congenital quadriplegic trying to get a gold medal in gymnasts. When the Awakening happened, they all learned how to walk and move their arms, but they had to work their atrofied muscles to a prime level. The difference was that the NAN had super-uber coaches and medical facilities to regain muscle fast, while everyone else was still trying to move their toes.
If you are not willing to suspend your disbelief just a little more given that you already suspended it enough to accept dragons, elves, trolls, etc. then there isn't much more to say.

Except the fluff pretty much tells us that the NAN, for whatever reason, was NOT in the same boat, that they somehow had advanced casting and summoning abilities.



No, I'd actually forgotten at first that you can't default Magic Skills.

I was thinking Magic Scores of 5-6 with no Skill ratings, so they'd have to default.

And most folks DO have single digit drain stats, even in 2070. Remember that shadowrunners tend to be well above the average.



The disconnect here is that you are refusing to acknowledge when the books say that the NAN did, in fact,have a leg up on everyone else.



-k

I grabbed the sentences with the 1% in them from your post. From their context, I really get the impression you didn't read that particular section of my post. Understandable, I did write up a "small novel" as you put it, I spent a bit of time going over my books, the wiki, and previous threads on the subject (thus all the hidden text which counters a lot of the points you make before they are repeated). I tried to put it all together on various points I kept seeing being repeated, a compendium if you will of points that keep being brought up that are well, just wrong. Here I will attempt to focus on the 1% point where it most commonly goes wrong:



There, even bolded a short little sentence to sum up my thoughts on the matter nicely. Your 1% of NAN population or US population? Doesn't exist in the fiction. What exists is ... well, I went over that already. That one assumption on your part throws a huge wrench in your argument before it even gets going. Please review the above quote to see why.

So if any one asks, "Hey, are you saying NAN are all magic shamans and braves?" I say, perhaps not all, but certainly more than their fair share when compared to other regions in the world and with bunch of verifiable (in the fiction) magical active skills of significant Runner worthy ratings, especially their Prime Runner NPC Howling Coyote and his otherworldly help leading up to the events in the fiction. The power of the f... plot is strong with these ones

So, perhaps a few David Blanes or Chris Angels of the US go "Sweet, I have real mojo!" who have sought out ancient rites to improve their theatrics but given the social climate of the day as described, if they aren't hiding in the shadows they are dying in the light of the oh so friendly chaotic times of pre and post Awakening. Being openly magic in the 2000-2018 US and Canadian militaries with the Commander and Prime/Defence Minister covering up the botched missions while selling out to the growing power of the Corps? LOL! At best, I'll concede that there may be the few exceptional Prime Runner NPCs who discover some of their Adept powers but beyond that, I don't see it putting a dent in what would become the NAN. Think of it like this, how well do armies do when their support lines are cut? What do you suppose the support lines were like for someone magical who wasn't on the insider track with the NAN in SR 2000-2018 (and even beyond for decades to come)?

Oh and your vaunted space tech/ air superiority? While it is an interesting point to bring up, even mundanes have figured ways around that before. That same stuff that people can go under cover/ground to not have peeping over their horizon? The same stuff that can be given trouble in some spectrums with barrels of fire (remember reading about the fake tanks when NATO was taking on Yugoslavia) and with blankets/ghillie suits/tent canvas made of the correct material and regular visual spectrum camouflage and disguises? Only a Spirit power defeating that particular high ground, come on. How about the real high ground at that point in the SR time line?
Can the tech see into the Astral in SR 2000-2018? No, magi-tech still has trouble with that in SR 2072+ let alone in those chaotic times when things were just getting started.

Just because someone's a jerk doesn't mean they're wrong.


Suspend my disbelief that someone would wallow in blood magic tainted rituals, blowing up a city and several volcanoes all over north america, and that the great dragon who offered a million bounty wouldn't go looking for them?
Or that any of the wilderness spirits who actually liked the volcanoes before they exploded destroying hundreds of square miles of wilderness, and killing millions of animals of various sorts wouldn't go looking for them?
Or any of the other immortal elves who should have been able to see the truly evil mojo going on wouldn't go looking for them?
Or that even the atrophied magical muscles of every other terrified and screaming person who literally outnumber them 100 - 1 would be totally and completely impotent?
My disbelief is getting stretched a little thin at this moment.

I'm not debating that the books say they did. The books could also say the moon is a giant marshmallow, and you can get pregnant from drinking too much Dr. Pepper. That however does not mean they have a good reason for doing so. How is it that when actively and willingly engaging in a war of genocide they don't somehow all become toxic? How is it when using that much blood magic, which the great dragons know can cause problems with the horrors that they didn't step in and eat all the shamans? How is it the other immortal elves didn't do the same? How is it howling coyote manged to learn to be able to summon a force 'plot' spirit in the middle of a concentration camp, and when placed under similar stress of desperation and death, all the angloes got to do was die in droves?

I only see power of plot holding any of this together, and as a generally rule "because I said so" is a really pathetic reason for things this completely unreasonable to occur.

So you to have some reason to justify very nearly every NAN having awoken? Or is this just wishful thinking on your part?

SR1 "history" was essentially 3 guys with a pile of stereotypes and a hammer. It's really poorly thought out in just about every aspect. For example, the whole corporate extraterritoriality bit was written so that it revolved about the idea that corporations can't have armed guards without extraterritoriality. I guess, being game designers, they didn't actually go into banks or deal with Brinks trucks. ...

Mordinvan,

Would it help your suspension of disbelief if the SR History was explained like this?

Bob, a great form free spirit, returned to earth when the mana levels got high enough. Bob took a look around, found those that were the descendants of his old allies, the natives of North America, who were being persecuted by another race. Bob was not happy about this and decided to do something about it. He found the most powerful shaman that he could, Howling Coyote, and taught him and others that were in the camp, all the while using his powers to conceal them from others while the teaching was on-going. Hence, the natives were given advanced magic, taught how to use it by a being that had been using magic for a very long time.

The ritual that was used was and is a variant of blood magic that does not call the horrors, as it is self-sacrifice, not sacrificing others. If I recollect correctly, the ritual allowed mundanes to participate, give up part (or all in some cases) of their life force. Each mundane didn't contribute as much as an awakened person, but there was a whole lot more of them. This was in one of the first SR novels, can't recall which book it was in, but it seems to me that it was the one about a dog shaman and getting rid of a few nukes, where they used a similar ritual as the GGD to neutralize the nukes, but it cost the dog shaman his magic.

If Bob also paid a visit to the Pentagon, to their deepset and safest command bunker, materialized and asked them if they really wanted an all out war? Don't you think that that would have made them stop and think, especially after it appeared that bullets could not hurt it, but it could definitely hurt them? There is a good possibility that an encounter like that would not be made public, for several reasons, including moral, fear for their lives, wanting time to find defences against this kind of "attack" before confronting those that have it the ability to do them.

I don't recall anywhere where there was a mention that the natives were pursuing a genocidal program against the rest of North America. They wanted their freedom from an oppressive government and had the power to force the issue.

This sounds like that Star Trek movie (IV?) in which an overwhelmingly powerful, alien entity comes to Earth looking for its buddies the whales. Did we ever find out that alien's name? Bob, by any chance?

Earth was a lost Colony of the Whale Species. Their colony ship crashlanded into the Oceon, accidentally wiping out Dinosaurs and creating an Ice Age. Sadly their terraforming equipment was destroyed and their massive frames could not be supported on dry land. They were forced to genetically modify themselves to live in the Oceans, which resulted in their loss of hands. Over the years their machinery all stopped working and they became incapable of defending themselves against these individually weak monkeys who had come to over populate the planet.

And somehow cause all of canada to turn itself over the first nations despite not having done the whole land theft for oil companies in the first place, or being involved in any way in the lone eagle incident, or really having any reason for the concentration camps, or being significantly affected by the volcanoes....

It is Canada, they are like the backyard of America...
*ducks and runs for cover*

To my knowledge, it was never mentioned in either way, if Canada and Mexico followed in the US footsteps with regards to Natives. I don't think it really mattered either way. Howling Coyote's address was to all of North America, claiming it all back from the non-natives. At that point, I don't think they cared about if it was the US, Mexico or Canada.

The guerrilla war lasted years, from the start in 2014 (I think) and ending in 2017. They blew up a volcano in 2014 (which no one really believed was caused by Howling Coyote, despite his claims of doing so) and used weather to affect things for the next few years and only exploded 3 other volcanos when the US started a genocidal program to eliminate all native tribes.

Canada and Mexico didn't really need to have any mountains blow up for them to realize that Howling Coyote and the natives could really do it, so they sat down with the US and the natives and crafted the Treaty of Denver.

So, does that mean that you accept the rest of what I wrote?

Looks around for someone to start a ghost dance to explode Brazilian_Shinobi's head!!

Morindvan, just trying to see where you're coming from, and thus have just a few questions.

1) If the Native population were higher, or say the fiction flat out said that the Latinos joined them or a large group of sympathizer Anglos enough to build up more than "1% of the US population" would that be more plausible?

2) Or say, magic wasn't involved, that they'd managed to hijack or procure a lot of regular weaponry.

Would you be ok with it? I'm just trying to figure out what specifically makes you hate this idea so frothingly.

Oy vey, I suspect you are being purposefully obtuse or experience cognitive breakdown, I pretty much spelled it out in the post you quoted but here, I'll narrow it down yet again to the part you are specifically addressing, in which I already addressed your point before you made it and then will attempt to further clarify.



This isn't just wishful thinking here, lets run some math on the fictional numbers:
Total Population of The World: (lets make that fictional number) ~6 Billion / 6 000 000 000
1% of the Total Population of the World is the estimated number of people with a Magic rating: 60 000 000 / 60 Million
Total Population of the US according to here: (rounded down and made fictional) ~300 Million / 300 000 000

Now on a lark, lets say the US region got all the world's magicians, that would mean 20% of their population would be magical and yet, there would still be 1% of the world's population being magical.

Now, for the sake of these silly numbers, lets run with there only being 1% of the US identifying as NAN that would be:
~3 Million
Then you take the 1% / 60 Million of the world being magical, that would mean if all the NAN were magical, they would only make up 5% of the world's population that has a magic rating. That still leave 95% / 57 Million to be found in other regions of the world.

So, read my words again - no, I don't think every last single NAN citizen turned magical based on what was described in the fluff but if a significant portion of their total population turned out to be magical, it would not surprise me in the least. Even if there was a relatively even dispersion of magically rated characters in the SR world across all possible regions, smaller total populations have better chances of having higher percentages of their populations being magical, its just a ratio thing. For the sake of the proposition, let's call a fair share 1% of a local region's total population being magically active and anything above that would be more than its fair share.

Then, when I read the fluff combined with that knowledge of 1% of total recorded population from incomplete records due to records/data loss/social upheaval/disasters/VITAS, people who have a magic rating having basic need of survival met by not being recorded as such, and a sub culture that held on to or were taught by a mentor spirit/immortal/horror SR functional magically active skills and knowledge (and initiations), I see it as supporting that yes, NAN more than likely had more than its fair share of magically active population.

I don't know how else I could more clearly express this as being plausible within the framework laid out by the fiction.

No, not in the slightest. Sacrifice meta magic allows a spellcaster to use themselves, and if they are so inclined never harm another living thing. But big D will still pay a million bucks for you. Also not sure the dragons would approve of a single entity 'bob' messing with the balance of power like that, and I know the I.E.'s who've been active during this period of time, and have any holdings in north america would certainly intervene.

As far as I can tell, the whole Immortal Elf bs didn't exist in the minds of the SR1 developers/writers. At least, there was no indication in the discussion of the Tir that the 15 were all 15,000 years old (or whatever).

I thought the IEs were in on it? The US had to be broken before they had room to create their new feudal paradise and all?

I am sure you are not inclined to take care of any arguments but :

GGD is sacrifice magic, yes. But it is not Blood Magic, it is what is called Life Magic, a subtle difference but a very fundamental one. In Blood Magic you sacrifice life essence of other(or yourself) to sustain magical device, in Life Magic you sacrifice your own essence.

Blood Magic is view as a perversion of the morally acceptable Life Magic (and what the Big D was using when he 'sacrificied' himself is Life Magic), even if both function basically the same. It's like white and black magic, same energy, same methods, different moral ground and use. the main difference is selfless versus selfish sacrifice.

Dragons were sleeping when the half-horror was actively teaching and setting things in motion, they were surprised, just as the active IE were. They were all expecting a slow build-up of magic over a longer time-frame. They weren't thinking the level of magic the SR world will know to be avaliable before more than a millenium. The GGD changed all that.

Even if Ehrand presence is attested after the NAN foundation, if am not certain that he is a force in the NAN creation and was partner of Coyote. This is even rendered more doubtfull by the presence of Aina's son (what was his name ?) around David Coyote.

Great Ghost Dance doesnt only take USA by surprise, it took every meta-organisation by surprise too. They had to act fast about it, and the IE involvement could be seen by their infiltration of NAN in the way of the Salish-Sidhe then the Tir.

As IKerensky pointed out, there is a difference between self-sacrifice and blood magic. Even Big D practiced self-sacrifice. Even if you are reluctant to accept that, the GGD happened decades before Big D's will put a price on blood mages.

And how would the dragons know about Bob? The great dragons had only been out for 3 years at the most. I doubt that they would have been able to setup an effective spy network in that time. Even if they did have an effective spy network, if Bob was discreet and only showed Howling Coyote or a couple more the rituals and had them teach the others, there is no way that the Dragons would have learned of Bob's actions.

As for the IEs, unless Bob taught one of them, there isn't much chance that they would learn of it. There aren't many of them to begin with and they did benefit from the creation of NAN. And I wonder how much power they actually had then? This was a time when people were abandoning their children if they suffered from UGE and turned into a dwarf or elf.

Could you provide details of the IEs that you know were active and why they would intervene?

Small note but why do people use the 1% figure for the early 6th world. It is 1% in 2050+, but that does not mean it started out that high. It might be something like 1% of 1% or even less when the GGD happened.

Because it's convenient to their argument?

*shrug* If there are fewer people with a magic rating the farther you go back in the time line, that just makes the odds better that NAN has a bigger share of the available people with a magic rating (and magical types armed with the teachings).

Oddly enough, I could have sworn I have read posts by others on the forums familiar with past editions that the books used to say it was estimated 5% of the population in SR have a magic rating.

Ahh, here is the quote of where that idea got into my cranium (sorry, would have got the code linking to the post but not sure how to get that from a locked thread):


And estimated 5% of the world's population being magical would actually hamper the NAN having the early magical dominance on the world scene, so I am all for a lower percentage than 1% earlier on in the SR time line.



That sounds pretty dominant for day one at in a lower mana situation and then they have 3 years of cold war and prep time. So, it would at least be safe to guess that DHC passed on the magically active skills and knowledge to his followers mentioned in that quote to pull off what he did walking out of the camp (and that in 3 years time they would have in turn passed that stuff along). But from what we know of many of the other details now, even in just how to play a magical character, the magical resources backing DHC and his followers does give them an advantage, especially against a foe who has next to none of that.

Lets say on a lark that the US does have a few military personnel or citizens who haven't been shunned after staring at goats didn't work out and they have a magic rating and actually admit that. Now how useful is that magic rating if they have no ranks in any of the magically active skills because they didn't have a teacher of some form or another? Does the character just hope they pop up as a Adept, rather than Magician or Mystic Adept, so they can just instinctively use the full potential of their magic rating? Even if they do, who will teach them how to initiate? Those teachings had to come from somewhere and in the SR timeline, one of the chief originators was DHC and his NAN followers. So even if the US or Canada had some magic, they couldn't default and more than likely that magic rated character would need to defect to the NAN to get magically trained.

Oh wait, that would promote immigration and improve their population numbers, wouldn't it?