Hi.

Somewhere in the angry, angry thread on the recently released clusterfuck sourcebook War, someone suggested we just write our own book about war, much improved. I say: let's.

Project Outline
This project is to cover War in Shadowrun, as well as the War between Amazonia and Aztlan.

For the first, it will offer a rundown on how military in SR works, what the status of corporate and governmental military forces is, how they operate, and detail a couple of military units from around the world, both corporate and governmental (and probably some religious or independent). Also, it should detail a couple of mercenary firms and give an insight on what life as part of a giant army for hire is like, and tactics for shadowrun troops - use of drones, magic, and matrix warfare ought to be detailed here (including an insight on the current powers in those fields). Maybe also a primer on how to fight in different theaters, what to take to Russia and what to take to Amazonia, or something. This should comprise roughly a third of the book.

The second part is to contain Info on the war, it's beginning and proceeding, complete with maps, diagrams, descriptions of participating units and armies on individual, unit and global level, warzones and maybe fiction outlining how the waqr feels for someone on every side of the conflict. This should be a bit shorter than the general part, but still offer enough information to make sense of this war.

Maybe a third part, detailing other war zones, also is a good idea. Random ideas would be: Israel/Arabia, Russia/Yakut (both have been laid out as wars waiting to happen before), Southeast Asia (Nagas, French, locals ...), Desert Wars and RadWars, and ... well, suggestions of course are welcome.

And finally, gear. Here I would like to revise the stuff from War and add other stuff that feels missing, like actual Aztechnology-produced small arms (they're supposed to be the world's second-largest producer of small arms, but there are no actual Aztech named guns anywhere, what the fuck).

Those are, of course, only suggestions, and neither do I claim to be the king of this project. I'm open to any suggestions and help.

Any takers?

I'm tired of not finding this so I'm editing this post and putting this in it.


For War and Profit: The Search for El Dorado

0) Shadowland login screen. This is one of the touches that will make this document feel like an SR4 publication.

1) Introduction The Real Story Of The War (written up as a a classic in-game Shadowland writeup, maybe with some references to War!, but nothing contradicting it)
- An introduction to the war as we see it, and a short out-of-world writeup what this adds to War!, why it makes sense to own both War! And this and what our mission writing this is.

[meat 2 to 4: an overview of the entire Am/Az conflict as an Argus document that got leaked onto the shadow boards. They got hired to give a comprehensive overview of the war (probably by UCAS or CAS) - that'll let us give an objective view on everything without having to rely on making 'runners to tell the stories]

2) God’s Eye Perspective: An overview of the conflict
2.1 Aztlan: The only thing better than power is more power
2.2 Amazonia: Over our cold, dead bodies
2.3 UCAS/Ares: The enemy of my enemy still is my enemy (but seeing them kill each other is priceless)
2.4 Saeder-Krupp: War is business. More war is more business.
- Horizon: Food for the World, and pleased love us!
- Colombian freedom fighters: Viva Colombia!

3) The Front Lines! (What happened in the war, and who did what where. All the stuff we miss. This is where a timeline goes!)
3.1) Timeline of the war
3.2) Maracaibo (urban warfare in all it’s gory glory)
3.3) Caracas (If this isn’t the biggest mess in South America, it’ll do till the real biggest mess arrives)
3.4) Bogota (venture point, occupied city, dense atmosphere, but no massive battles)

4) Military Organizations involved
4.1) AZT - War on 5,000 Nuyen a soldier or less
4.2) AMZ - Magical guerillas
4.3) UCAS/CAS - High Tech, Low Numbers
4.4) Ares/S&K - Who do you think /makes/ the High tech toys
4.5) Mercs - A range of Merc units. From those barely better than a shadowrun team, to highly trained, highly equiped special forces mercs.

5) Modern Warfare 2073 (meat: a document compiled by the CAS armed forces for CAS Marine officer trainees at [whereever their Marines academy is].)
5.1) Different Strategies for different people (an introductionary essay on different types of armies in the 6th world and what that means)
5.1.1 The 6 Million Nuyen Soldier (High Tech, Low Numbers: Examples UCAS, CAS, Ares, SK, MCT; essay by one of these or maybe an analyst of another corp)
5.1.2 Do you want to live forever? (Quantity over quality. Examples: AZT, Russia; an essay by a former Russian or Aztlaner soldier)
5.1.3 The new ways of War (magic-heavy armies. examples: AMZ, TT, Yakut. An essay on fighting those from the perspective of a CalFree soldier?)
5.1.4 Down and dirty (Asymmetrical Warfare. Examples: African Armies, Terrorists and Insurgents. An essay by a veteran of the Polish freedom fighters)
5.1.5: Oh My God Is That A Dragon? An essay on what combat does look like when your air force faces Wyverns and Dragons. Probably an in-game
5.2 The Matrix on the Battlefield
5.2.1: The combat hacker. What does Hacking for the military look like and how does it differ from hacking for corps?
5.2.2 Digital Frontlines: What is fought in the Matrix in War and why. Securing commsats, encryption/decryption, infiltration/guarding of tacnets, recon, disinformation. How do Hackers work in the Combat Zone The HQ Hacker, the OpCom haker, the descendants of the comms guy, Rigger platoons and Cyberwar Brigades
5.2.3 The Resonant Side Of War: Combat Technomancers, AI and Sprites versus Tactical Hackers and Agents. Also an essay on The Military fighting AI and Sprites, possibly written up as a report from UN forces fighting to take back Geneva.
5.3 Magic on the battlefield (an Intro by a hardened Merc about Magic on the Battlefield and how it changed everything, a brief outline of magic in wars from the Ghost dance War to the Euro Wars to the Az/Yuc-War.)
5.3.1 to 5.3.3 Three essays on magic on the battlefield, each in-character: one by a member of the Tir Tairngire armed forces (magical combined troops), one by a Yakut shapeshifter (magical guerilla) and one by an UCAS combat mage (Magic in a technicised army). Each with it’s own flavor and varied use of magic)

6) Faces of War: Sample Units (meat: a collection of documents accumulated by the Ares' Inteligence Services, formerly part of the Seraphin network, who want to study how these militaries work to know more about their competitors, and as a for-sale guide for 'military counselors'.)
Aztlan Brigada de Fusileros Paracaidistas (Aztlan’s parachutist regiment)
La Legion Étrangère, 1er Régiment étranger de cavalerie, 1er REC (mobile light armored cavalry)
The King’s Own Royal Gurkha Rifles (formerly Royal Gurkha Rifles, British Gurkha regiment)
Henan People’s Liberation Army 19th Infantry Division (organised much like a Chinese PLA regiment from the Korean war)
MET 2000 Einsatzgruppe 3 (A heavily cybered combined arms troop)
The units should feature fully statted example NPCs as well as unit organization and rank charts.

7) Gear and coolshit (meat: an exposé by the Lagos Arms Fair, written for prospective customers; downloaded is the English version, but there could be others in all kinds of languages mentioned somehow)
- Revisions of the gear in War!.

8) Game Info Errata’d rules from War! That are not totally batshit.

9) Shadowland Open Forum. An open forum where we can have our talkers go nuts. good, old-fashioned shadowtalk, rumors, discussions drifung. We can dump anything that does not fit anywhere else here.


Issue 1: Az/Am The Search for Eldorado / Rumble in the Jungle ?
Issue 2: Land War in Asia (SE Asia, China)
Issue 3: Desert Wars, Rad Wars, Gamer, Survivor! The WWE (World Warfare Entertainment) Monday night RAW!
Issue 4: In the Navy, You can Sail the 7 Seas! Naval Warfare and Piracy. WaterWorld! PPG/Japan trade war
Issue 5: You say Jihad, I say Crusade (Frank's scenario, could also involve Israel and Venice),
Issue 6: Russia/Yakut/Baikal

Though I think depending on interest 3 and 4 can be switched. Depending on writer interest, cool ideas.. etc.

Or RadWars. Yes, that needs to go in too. Edited the Outline.

In a first hotfix, a kind soul on the official German boards provided these. Just found them by accident in the one thread there I still follow (those boards are hardly better than the CGL boards).

basic map (small)
basic map (large)
terrain map
sattelite image map

Many thanks, Loki!

While not native of the rain forest, I'm a native of the country (and travelled to Manaus and Belém once and spent one week each). I would glady help with any cultural question about Brazil Amazonia.

Hint: i'm pretty sure Mikhail Kalashnikov has not produced all the AK-97 and AK-98 in use.

Well, there are several posters who are involved with the military in some capacity, so they'd be good for getting reliable consideration of such diverse topics as:

• Logistics In A Mana-Saturated Battlefield
• Tactical Implications of Metaplanar Transit
• Astral Overwatch
• The Role Of The Variable Payload Semiautonomous Microgrenade Launch Harness
• Wooden Staircases - Bane Of Powered Armour
• Grenade Drone Swarms
• Everything Is Hackable - Why We Use Laser Comm Drones And Drag Wires
• Cyborgs, Possession and Mutant Bears
• The Last Argument Of Kings Is The First Of The Victor
• Nanofabrication - New and Terrifying

All of which should be addressed, to different degrees.

An entire section should probably lightly cover warfare in its forms, detached from any specific scenario, because it's useful knowledge that players will be interested in. Commentary can cover how magic and tech can radically alter what the "unimaginative three-star" is saying in ways he hasn't already considered and add to the "Shadowrunners are just better" vibe.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I'm probably overcomplicating things and doubling the pagecount.

So, hermit, your suggested structure is:

War In Our Time (Introduction)
Those Who Fight And How They Do It
AzAm '73
War Zones
Guns, Spells and High Explosives.

I'd split the first in two for the sake of clarity and have Maps - a section entirely full of maps, detailed borders for all the War Zones, Sites of Interest and random buildings. Though Maps would be one of the harder parts to do.

Oh, and here are some random weapon/gear section suggestions:

Monofilament Harpoon Grenade - a cluster of microharpoon launchers which spool monofilament wire behind them, creating an impassible and invisible spiderweb in closed spaces and draping over any poor soul to be caught in the radius. Destroying the grenade is the first step to bypassing the obstacle, heat works as well. Why is this possible when monowire costs so much? Either because of Nanofabrication or because it uses Microwire.

Grenade Drones - cheap nonwireless hover/crawl drones that swarm through an area taking everything apart. Given the size of them and a healthy military budget, you could have racks of them as standard issue.

Military Armour Gear: a half dozen weapons and launchers intended for the sortof-powered military armour.

Which War Zones should be covered? hermit opted for Paris, and Abschalten and his buddy would provide their Caracas-write-up from their forum game, right? Any others?

Check this out: (and yes, written by Frank Trollman)
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...19&start=19

Firstly, welcome aboard to everyone who came while I was asleep. This might actually fly! All help is greatly appreciated.

Brazilian Shinobi, your help would be greatly appreciated. Especially about Amazonian cities and culture - something that's completly alien to me.

Okay, slight confusion: Paris is not a war zone, I just fanslated the SR France writeup of it. My bad. Paris could be a part of alt.Spygames though (zero hope left for these books). That, or Paris and Caracas are compiled seperatly (if worked out well enough). With some advertising on RPG sites and forums, we might even get enough attention that people will download our stuff.

My basic idea for the writeup of the war covered (the main focus should be on two settings, tops, with some five more covered in an 'other wars' section) would be to borrow structure and some events from the much, much more dynamic CP2020 Firestorm campaign - which had a decent coverage of it's conflicts, gave timeline and maps, and yet offered a lot of free space.

I'd like to keep as close to canon as possible, save for War, which I'd totally ignore.

Suggested settings:

-> Amazonia/Aztlan (North of Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia). Despite the horrible things that War! did to this war, it has huge potential in my opinion, in an Avatar Navii vs. Colonial Marines style. Just no Gaea to come to the Amazonians' rescue.
-> Israel vs. Arabia (Middle East). Unsure here, but we'd sure not be short on writers knowing the location and culture (and what a war there is like). The setup would be the Caliph dying, some nutcase ursuping and lashing out on Israel, pitting a highly reinforced, technicised and modern force against masses of suicide attackers and guys with AKs. A third faction coming from Israel's drone control master program becoming an AI and manipulating both parties for it's own ends optional.
-> Russia vs. Yakutia vs. the Baikal rebels (Central siberia, Baikal region, and beyond). Russia has been a setting set to explode since ... well, at least since Shadows of Asia, but I'd go farther back to Target: Wastelands. There also are some decent, if slightly gay, novels in German about the russian military that basically say it has not changed at all. Plus, I recently watched Admiral, and a friend's been reading Gaunt's Ghosts back to back and talking to me about it rather much (female friend, you see), so I'm a bit in the mood for a russian army writeup.
-> Southeast Asia (Nagaland vs. anyone vs. anyone else). A nice setting in theory, but nothing I really know much about. Possibly doubling the Amazonian experience though, but I always wanted to do somewthing with Nagaland.
-> A trade war between Japan and the Japanacorps and Wuxing, Evo and the PCC. This would cover the entire Pacific (and be a little too shamelessly inspired by Firestorm maybe, but what the hell, it's a fun and different setting and actually needs these shipfighting rules. Applies only if we intend to actually keep them).

Those are, off the top of my hat, some wild ideas. All open to discussion. More wild ideas heartily welcome.


That's different IMO. Aztlan is supposed to be BIG on arms export. What DO they export? Is their main product battle tanks and helicopters? Can you be 'big in the arms trade' by selling only the luxury items few potential custiomers can afford? I don't think you can compare Mikhail Kalashnikow to Aztech anyway (and remember, while produced by numerous manufacturers and Afghan village smiths, the gun always is known as Kalashnikiov, even in it's various versions and iterations).


Sounds good. AzAm '73 might become more than one writeup (depending on what out target pagecount is, though). I Like it otherwise.


Sounds good. I'd especially like an old-fashioned text where a runner who did some merc work writes about just HOW much better runners are than grunts and is commented to pieces by hardass marcs who point out his fallacies and misunderstandings. Typical old style shadowrun style, offering different view points in-game and leaving it for the reader to descide which side he believes, if any. This would definitly need someone in the know though, if you ask me.

Anyway, wild ideas here. Any comments?

Edit: Frank has some nice ideas. Could someone point megu here? He's been running in the SE Asia setting, maybe he's familiar enough for a writeup. Of course, frank's ideas have a much larger scope than mine or anyone else's so far.

Edit 2: Posted a project thread in the Gaming Den.

I think the "hot zones" should be:

Desert Wars
Rad Wars
Israel/Middle East (maybe.. what does that look like these days. I don't remember what the current state of that is, but it could be some very good story hooks.)
Lagos? It was supposed to be a Merc hot-zone/war zone. So what are they fighting over, what kind of resources are being thrown around.

Caracas definitely sounds like it could be interesting.

Where /are/ the hot spots where Mercs would get a job, instead of Shadowrunners.

Paris doesn't really seem like it make sense.. The EuroWars are done and over with.

Paris is a prime setting for alt.Spy Games though. What with the Megas versus insolent Government, elf and NEEC influence, the nobility, the church and all the other guys. It is certainly not where alt.War should go.

This seems like something I would like to get in on while it is still relatively on the ground floor. Even if I never wind up finding the time to contribute, I think it's better to sign up now and add nothing than to sign up after this is one hundred pages long and try to make a contribution. I am willing to take a stab at writing anything assigned to me, but of course the crunch is what I want to get my grubby hands on the most. Also um, English is my first language (no offense Hermit) and I've worked as a professional proofreader, so, there's that that I can help with.



I think this is a good structure. As far as the AzAm '73 section goes I think we need maps (already have a good start on those) and also a timeline, with descriptions of the major battles, when and where they occur. This is the major connective tissue we need here, as opposed to unrelated essays, a super-in-depth Bogota setting book, and Fields of Fire 4E being just sort of haphazardly glued together. I think it would be good to expand this structure into an outline (a la the TOC of any published SR book) and to look at how much is "broken" in the published WAR! sourcebook in each of these individual sections. In other words, is that our MO, fixing what is broken (removing unnecessary things, adding missing things, correcting mistakes) or is this more of a "Start From Scratch" kind of endeavor?

Ah, so you can proofread and polish. Awesome.

I'm not quite sure yet, but it looks like a mix. Expanding War's scope, if you will, into something more like it originally was supposed to be. Lots of stuff was cut entirely, stuff that the setting has sorely been missing.

Also, there should be rules fixes, and ideally a staged arttribute system of some kind to get away from MEGA DAMAGE that is even more screwed up.

Oh, and a hotspot where all these statted warships actually make sense. Ever read the Firestorm campaign of CP2020's?

No, I don't have any familiarity with cyberpunk.

Like I said I'm glad to write anything that's assigned. I've been an enormous Shadowrun fan for around fifteen years, and hopefully I've acted as a sponge to absorb all the fluff that's been printed in that time. I'm also a game designer so I'd be happy to start rooting around in the numbers/balance side of thing as well. But yeah...who is on board so far and what is being done? Let's get organized.

I think having this project have separate headquarters here and on TGD might be kind of detrimental.

It's a corp war setting. I like the presentation, and it has a section about a trade war in the Pacific that could be a useful source of ideas for a war 'hotspot' that would make these warships make sense: a PCC/Japanocorp trade war.


I know. Hence I'd like to set up a permanent base, possibly it'S own forum. I'll have some time on my hands tomorrow, and see what I can sort out.

Well, if you want to set it up on neutral ground (neither Dumpshock or TGD), I have a forum that can host it. I know there's a 98% chance or more that this offer is unneeded, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to put it out there.

Also I will stop speed posting now. : )

Thanks. I might take that offer up. ^_^

Lagos is covered in Feral Cities, isn't it? Would be a waste of time and effort to re-write it, since the write-up is not that bad.
Lisbon would be nice, as a prime spot for merc companies - or did that change?

Lisbon has never been covered again. Lisbon and a civil war somewhere in the Maghreb could be nice. Put Meridional and Lusiada to some use.

What I meant is that the AK-47 may be the most widespread weapon in the world, really few people do care if it really is an IzhMash AK-47 from Russia, or a Chinese Type 56, a Zastava M64 from Yugoslavia, an ASH-82 from Albania, or any other variants (for instance, a lot of Kalashnikov used by criminal outfits in Western Europe are Albanian ASH-82 actually). Aztechnoloy may be the largest producer of "Kalashnikov" in the world, you're still going to call it an AK.

Then, IRL, the biggest companies in the defense industry are BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raython, EADS, ... I could go even further down the line, none of those companies is producing firearms, save General Dynamics M134 and new XM312 miniguns (BAE used to own Heckler & Koch, but they sold it several years before reaching to top spot). Aircrafts, missiles, radars and naval vessels sales make the top of the list. Armored ground vehicles are lagging behind. Firearms only comes at the very bottom of the list, and even there generic ammunitions manufacturers weight nearly as much as the famous brands.

In this regard, Aztechnology sells the Aguilar attack helicopter, the HS-950 Skytrain military transport aircraft, the Striker missile launcher and the Cuanmitztli MBT. Also, in the previous editions, the good old EFA air fighter involved Aztechnology subsidiary Dassault.

I guess it'd be a good idea to make sure CGL won't just send a C&D to you, since you're talking about releasing a free e-book in direct competition with War!

I'm not really into mercenary/war settings so I probably won't help you on this project, but I hope you'll be able to get it done.

A prelim announcement: I'll set up a Forum for this project somewhere. This thread, as well as the Dumpshock thread, will be maintained for ideas, but discussion will be moved there. It'S just easier to keep everything organised that way. I'll post when I have the forum ready and would be happy if anyone would have webspace for offer.

You could shoot Redjack an email and ask if he would open up a sub-board here at dumpshock. Would be very convenient.

IMHO, you should choose the locations through "what is it the mercs can do there" rather than asking "what location is cool and was briefly mentioned in a sourcebook".

IMO, mercs should make use of a mothership-like vehicle to operate from (humping it to the mission area is time-consuming and I'd hate to see something like "random travel encounter"-tables in a Shadowrun book). This means either a boat or ship, a wing aircraft or t-bird, a wheeled or tracked land vehicle. So you have:

- riverine operations: performing missions with heavily armed speedboats from a ship or seaside forward operating base either in a big river delta or mangroove jungle or in a flooded city
- airmobile operations: performing high-speed missions with infiltration by armed helicopters (maybe in tandem with real attack helicopters) or t-bird. Like "Blackhawk down" and stuff. Or HALO infiltration (with a working rules system this time, please)
- land operations: performing long-duration missions with highly mobile wheeled vehicles in rural areas, or vicious urban warfare with tanks in a war-torn city

These would be my three mayor fields of mercenary work. You can play multi-missions evenings or multi-evenings missions as you like it, and you have a theme for each location that gives a distinctive look.

You'd tailor unit descriptions according to each location, like SEALs for riverine ops, and give a good oversight on military unit organization for fireteams, squads, platoons and companies. Gear also according to locations (rebreather systems for riverine ops, assault ladders for land ops, and so on). Oh, and kitlists with more details than "flak jacket, survival kit, rifle with 4 clips of ammo"

And I wouldn't do a big Lagos write up. I would more do..

African HotSpots for Mercenaries.
Supposedly Lagos is a big Mercenary hub, and yet we're never told /why/

Isn't lagos simply the biggest black market for milspec on the planet?
That would be reason enough for that.

I would like to help with this project. I've got some ideas for gear.

Lagos could just be where most Merc companies do their shopping, and keep their nominal Headquarters.

If you want to hire a Merc company, you go to Lagos? I could live with that.

The thing I'm trying to wrap my brain around is that.. currently Mercenary groups get their employment primarily from SE Asia, and Africa.

In 2073, that doesn't make any sense.
Africa is mostly back to it's pre-colonization era, except with way less people. Vitas I and II effectively killed around 90% of the African Subcontinent population. There's been /some/ re population but not much. Most of the Continent is a Highly Magical Nature realm of scary Paracritters. Now, I can see Corps hiring Mercs to go "In Country" and clear out an area of Paracritters/what small pockets of metahumanity remain. But it's not much of a Campaign hook. Maybe a couple of adventure hooks, but that's about it.

Asia, of course is just rife with fun and excitement, but most of that was covered in Shadows of Asia.

China would make for an interesting place. Warlords, Corporate interests, mercenary groups in the middle, working their trade. But that's almost a whole sourcebook on it's own.

Are Amazonia and Aztlan really hiring Mercs to fight the war along side them? If so, what does that look like.

The way I see Lagos...

It's one of those places you can get anything. The corporations use it to field their military surplus without getting sanctioned by the Corporate Court. They can also offload designs that may have fundamental flaws, as they found in Desert Wars testing - but discount-minded mercenary buyers can juryrig it enough to make a fix and get one up on their competitors. All one needs is money.

The Dark Continent may be pre-colonial once more, but it does have two things that have people going batshit insane over it: Rich natural resources, and a plethora of self-styled warlords trying to control them, people be damned.

I'll see what I can do about seeing the current writeup on Lagos and going from there. Don't have Feral Cities, but I get the feeling that a lax national government plus proximity to, say, Desert Wars gives the area a large supply of milspec weaponry and the freedom(and necessity) to use it without having to worry about LEOs coming down on your keister.

**
I think what I would really like to do is revisit the Azzie/Zonie theatre and work in everything. War! suggests there was fighting in Maracaibo between the two - and that makes sense, Venezuela still has petroleum - and the Free City of Caracas was the original border state that kept everyone in check. Its a city that nobody but the people who live there wants.

Caracas can be the Northern Gateway. It's a major shipping hub, all the corporations have offices there because they can make their fleet's ports of origin there for cheap. The harbor security has major holes, so smugglers park in there all the time to offload black market arms. It's about 650 miles as the T-bird flies to Bogota, which can make it a substantial pirate supply point. Once we're done with it, we can ensure it has deeper shadows than most.

It may not be on the same scale as Bogota with open war being fought in/around the city, but I can certainly see a shadow war being fought there with many of the same major players as Bogota - Amazonia, AZT, the Cartels, and the Megacorps. AZT has a substantial military presence based out of Maracaibo, but not on the scale of Bogota's deployment. Companies with a bone to pick with AZT funnel in arms and supplies through La Guaira that is linked by high speed rail to the rest of the Caracas sprawl.

I have an idea in mind for a proto-beast master(from Earthdawn) Adept/Tradition that's being developed/rediscovered in Amazonia.

Not sure if I want to write it up as a primarily adept Tradition, (which doesn't do much) or maybe as a PACKS like common adept build for Amazonia. Or an example character. I'll have to think about it.

They use Paracritters as shocktroops for combat. That means they have trainers, and people who can control a Paracritter in the middle of blood lust, and who can help counter the Aztlan blood mages attempts to use possession spirits.


I just looked at Google Maps, and I realize I have no concept of what the Aztlan/Amazonia border even looks like.

Bogota is in Columbia, Caracas is in Venezuela. There's a giant mountainous area separating those places from Brazil. I would truly hate to be Aztlan trying to fight a land war against paracritters in the mountains.

Parts of War! describe the Amazonians as already using paracritters in the area. Both sides do utilize mercs, but the rules of engagement vary wildly between the two. If you take an Amazonian contract, expect them to deny you use of explosives, chem weapons, and anything else that might damage the ecology of the rainforest.

I'm looking at the maps as well, and I might be able to see the demarcation lines. We'll see.

Yeah, I know they're using paracritters.. I just thought they'd almost have to have adepts who can control said paracritters. Hence the idea for a beastmaster type.

I would agree, which is why I like your idea.

There's enough mesoamerican history in the jungle to make it workable.

Can you imagine though moving through tight ravines and thick jungle, and getting attacked by intelligently coordinated parajaguars of some kind, or the equivalent of barguests. The Aztlan side of the conflict must be full of really paranoid bastards who lay down suppression fire first, and ask questions never.

Yeah, that area makes the Amazonian highlands. While not as muddy and watery, it is still as dampy as the lowlands and no diminishing in the insect population.
But yeah, imagine what it must be for the Aztlan/Aztechnology soldiers. They better shoot anything they find in the woods because it might be an amazonian soldier. If you see a harpy high in the air (the largest bird of prey of the Latin American) do you know for sure it is not a shapeshifter Harpy spying on you? And even if it isn't a shapeshifter, what if an Amazonian shaman didn't cast a spell on it and is watching through its eyes.

Yeah, we better start thinking about RoE for each side.

And we need a better reason for the war than.. They planted man eating trees in Bogota

I mean.. really


For Aztlan to throw down so hard in the South.. so far away from it's traditional base of power. There has to be a reason.

I mean, if the war was happening in Nicaragua.. I could understand. Panama, again, although why would Amazonia be going into panama. But so far into South America? That seems like an odd place for Aztlan to be driving down in such large numbers.

I'm looking at the map of South America, and I don't get why Bogota is the front line.

I could see Caracas being in the thick of it. But for Bogota to be in the thick of it, they have to be doing major fighting in the mountains. The Amazon Basin is completely surrounded by somewhat serious mountains.
The mountains around Bogota go up to 5000 Meters. That's ugly terrain to be fighting a war.

To be honest, I'm seeing the demarcation line following the mountain range Bogota is in, with Aztlan on the west and Amazonia on the east. It would then curve around Lake Maracaibo and south of Caracas, leaving Caracas as a Free City.

As for the start of the war, it was the threat of more killer trees. From what I recall, Amazonia sent a black ops team into a facility that was researching weaponized SDDiablo, only to get caught, destroy the facility, and find out that they were researching SDDrago instead. It was a classic trap to get justification to go to war.

The real reason the Azzies wanted war is because they want to expand, pure and simple. Their casus belli was simply escalating hostilities between them and Amazonia.

So you think the combat zone is the Cordirellas, following that up to the Lago de Maracaibo, and around to Bariquisimeto? With the only flat area for them to fight over being between Bariqusimeto and Caracas basically?


Amazonia controlling the Amazon basin part of Columbia and Venezuela?

I think that was the case before the tanks rolled in, though I'm also wondering if the Azzies getting control of the mountain range would give them elevation for artillery. Amazonian combat doctrine favors strike and fade and guerilla tactics, while AZT has a covnentional combined-arms approach with plenty of firebases and airstrips being cut into the basin.

I think the Corderellas were the border between the two, sort of a DMZ that the wall that was supposed to go up in Bogota was a part of. I figure that AZT has a bunch of these patrol bases they're sending reinforced patrols out of (because seriously, who sends goddamn tanks into the jungle) using T-birds and helos, and a lot of the fighting is going on in the basin and around the borders of Bogota and Caracas itself.

Judging from the extraneous war text in the book, AZT made a major push through Bogota during Ghost Cartels/War. i'll check my 6WA and see if I can get an idea of where the borders of Amazonia are; maybe get a map drawn from there.

The thing is, I'm looking at Bogota.. there's nowhere to venture forward from.

You've got approximately 45 kilometers of 4km high mountain ranges of doom. With only a few passes through to the basin. Then you get to Swamp land, and then you get jungle.

If you go farther north/east it gets a little better nears Caracas.

I'll be honest, I don't see Bogota being the center of jack.. in a war. if I was Aztlan and I had control of Bogota. I'd basically put fire bases at the mountain passes and just try and make sure the Amazonians can't venture through the 2.5km high passes to get to me. There's no way you're pushing a conventional army through that area into the southern part of Columbia.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...river_basin.png
This is a map of the Amazon River Basin.. So what I would imagine belongs to Amazonia at the begining.

Yeah, I've got a map I'm looking at as well on this end.

Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way, then. I'm looking at this in the constraints of established canon. I'm also using geography as my natural border when we should perhaps use the Pan-American Highway as marked on maps/atlases as our national border / DMZ (especially as it encompasses more mountains up by Caracas, including Merida, Trujillo, and Guanare).

I need to get a hold of my books, sit down with 6WA, and just start mapping. I don't want to have to Ghost Dance/Ragnarok Bogota out of that mountain range and into the basin where it'd be halfway worth hitting.

Especially if the people-eating Epileptic Trees are damn near ringing the city now.

Well part of the project is to ignore War completely

So we can ignore the freaking people-eating trees... the people eating jungle trees that are growing at 3600 meters altitude.

I'm looking at it from a different perspective. From the map itself.

If Aztlan wants to control more territory. That territory isn't worth controlling, unless you're harvesting magical components and or trees, or both out of it. And with Amazonia being what it is.... it's a magically regrowing Tropical Jungle that has 3 feathered great dragons backing it.

Now a possible scenario is this:
Aztlan is using Bogota as a base of operations. They pushed forward through the mountains. They have forward Fire bases along the rim of the Amazon Basin from which they are running serious Logging/Hunting business. They're doing this because they need to log the area to be able to move their tanks forward.
They're using Transport planes flying out of Bogota and air dropping tanks. (Possibly some Tanks are going through the passes.. but wow that looks ugly)

Meanwhile, there's a serious second front over by Bariquisimeto to the coast Near Caracas? Drawing Amazonian troops to that part, and weakening them for the Bogota incursion on the back end?

It's buyable I guess, but then Bogota isn't being fought over. If it IS being fought over, then the Amazonians took their jungle paracritters through 50km of mountains to attack Bogota, and are doing so even in the Winter. Keeping supplies coming from the Amazon basin. That only works of course, if the Amazonians managed to push Aztlan completely out of the Basin earlier in the War.

Maracaibo is going to be a major hotspot. Amazonia wants to free it from the grip of ecological repression, and the Azzies need the fuel. As an extension, Caracas is the port. If you want supplies, weapons, what-the-hell-ever, it's going through Caracas.

AZT trying to take Amazonian soil is just...insane, there's no other word for it. There's no reason. Let them each bitch and moan, fine, but you're talking about a second Yucatan and we saw how well that went. The only reason Bogota would be any kind of target is to keep Amazonia busy while they're doing something else. Use it as a shell game, draw Amazonia's cells to the southern front, then roll through Caracas from Maracaibo and finish taking the port and the Free City itself.

I completely agree with you. The problem is that drawing Amazonian troops to Bogota is hard. It's 50+ km of Andes mountains, ranging from 1 mile to 2 miles in altitude.

For their to be fighting in Bogota, the Amazonians had to want to stop them in a way where they couldn't restart what they were doing. And really, if the Aztlan gave up control of the passes, it just wouldn't take that many troops to keep the Aztlan out of the basin. Bogota being a wartorn Beirut makes absolutely no sense.

The place I expect to be like Beirut or Stalingrad are Barquisimeto and Valencia.

Where one of the smaller Venezuelan oilfields is.

You should call it the Netbook of War. Classic.

Is there a wiki or Google Doc or something?

Maybe that's why the man-eating Epileptic Trees came in. Maybe the Amazonians need to contain Bogota now?



I expect few to none of the cities to actually be Beirut, or even Saigon. Maracaibo, maybe. Valencia and Barquisimeto, sure.

That only works if the man-eating trees can traverse 60 km of arrid mountains to begin populating the Basin
Otherwise, the Amazonians really don't give a fig leaf about them? But I mean.. maybe. Can't we pretend the trees don't exist?



Wait what? THat didn't make sense to me Doc

Give me a second, had to get a second cup of coffee...Ahhh.

Beiruit - Open warfare between multiple factions.
Saigon - Sorta like Baghdad today, or Kabul.

The cities I listed I see like the above. More Saigon than Kabul.

OKAY no more Epileptic Trees, even if I'm putting a small grove in a park in Caracas because of some crazy ecoshamans.


The only other thing I could figure is that they want Bogota for the emerald mines in the area, and the basin for all the telesma for their sweatshop enchanters. If the forest is magically regrowing at the rate that the setting suggests, then they could probably do with about half the basin and have all the telesma they'd ever need.

Of course, they would have to take the whole basin in order to defend it.

Ok, so what would be possible reasons that make Atzlan go to war with Amazonia?