"Evil Tree"

I was talking about finding the trees in their territories. It makes sense that they kill them on sight.

It does.
In their territory, it's not clear that they did find any. And it's also not clear why the UN would be like, "Bad Amazonia, killing man eating trees! bad!"

The whole setup is just weird.

The whole UN issue with Amazonia was because they were found sabotaging an Aztechnlogy facility working on the healing properties of the Sangre del Drago tree.

Of course, Amazonia didn't know that, since the bad intel they received said the facility was developing super-hiper-mega-kamehameha mosquitos that could kill just by biting you.

And if you think a mosquito like that isn't scary, well, have you gone to Amazonia? There are like 1 million mosquitos per person over there.

No no mosquitoes are scary bad.
Super Mosquitoes are extra bad.

I live in Eastern US. it's a freaking giant Swamp. We get mosquitoes the size of house cats.

I just don't see why Aztlan.. would go..
You know what we need to protect ourselves from Amazonia while we deal with the yucatan! Magical Killer Trees.


It's just kinda wth

Yeah, but they're all on the same date


Latter, the Awakened Drago. The Diablo isn't just Awakened, it's actually SURGEd.


Right, that's the one that's new. No such name is given in YotC (it's just referenced as an Awakened Drago).


I think my chief issue with it, just from what I've heard, is the implication that Aztlan has the ability not merely to force-grow 40-meter trees but to deliberately induce SURGE, and in specific manners as well.


Is there any particular reason the Sangre del Diablo would have true-breeding SURGE despite the fact that SURGE in general appears to not breed true (as noted in YotC, p30, if that were the case we should be seeing vastly expanded numbers of SURGElings from interbreeding)?

~J

Yeah, because that's the date the new boards went live. We copied them over, and the numbers are the order that they were "registered" in, which I believe follows the same order they were previously registered.

However, I don't really know the board software that well, so I could be wrong about the whole thing. I just know most of the original DR crew and the "Prime Runners" we created accounts for were all the first ones in line, so... I think they're following that order.



SURGE was weird when it came to paranormal critters.

In metahumans (and in some instances of critters), it just resulted in seemingly random mutations. These were a one time thing, and while it's likely they pass on their genetic traits (or others, who knows?) when they have children,with the mana level dropped back down, it's hard to say.

It should be noted that SURGE can still happen, just like Goblinization. It's just incredibly rare.

With certain critters though, SRUGE manifested an entirely new species. Changlings with cat feature,s or lizard features, or a marsupial pouch aren't a new species, they're simply a mutation of whatever they were. With the critters in YotC though, the Sangre Del Diablo, the Glomoss, the Horned Bear, Demon Rat, etc... These are actually new critters. There's very little difference between Awakened and SURGE< honestly... SURGE mostly just points to how it happened initially,

The new species that emerged can breed true. In most cases, they're still rare. The only one on that list that is even a little bit common is the Glomoss.

(My original proposal was a bit longer and more in depth, which talked about the genetics of it a bit, and covered the idea of New Species vs Mutation as they relate to paranormal critters, but Lady Jestyr, Eleanor Holmes, ended up also doing a section discussing genetics of SURGE. Lady J has a degree in science that touches on genetics some (if not completely), so she ended up handling all of that, while I just got to make some fun new critters. It's a shame, I really liked my Emerald Sheep. Completely normal, mundane sheep with naturally brilliant green wool. )

And Bobby: In this instance, you are flat out wrong. As I said before, my mandate from Mike M. was "Evil, Sentient, Carnivorous Trees". The final version didn't end up completely sentient, but... The idea behind them is that they're twisted and borderline Toxic, if not outright toxic.

Bull

Also...



They're actually pretty vague and unclear about what will happen with breeding. Lots of "It's unclear if" and "we don't know yet".

The stuff in my above was, at least, some of the intentions behind what I wrote, and so far as I know, how we're still treating most of it.

Bull

oi Bull, shot you a pm

They still spit sap at you as of War!.

Well, yeah. I can't take the credit (or the blame) for that

I'm not saying that the stuff Mike wrote in War was good or bad. It's different than I would have handled it, and I'd have written the SdD's up a bit differently (Obviously, since I did).

I'm just giving out the rationales for why certain things were done certain ways once upon a time.

Bull

That's okay. Being forgettable is an advantage to a Shadowrunner.






-k

Horned Bears are an identified new species, but neither the IC nor OOC descriptions call them SURGEd. Likewise Glomoss. Actually, only the Demon Rat and the Sangre del Diablo are described as SURGEd (there's a mention about a falsified theory about the Shambler being SURGEd). This wasn't intentional?

~J

Are you sure? We could still try.

Nope. I never really thought about it, honestly. Like I said, I was working under the assumption that SURGE was responsible for both one-time mutations and awakened "new" species, and the critters I worked up were ass supposed to be new (or possibly previously undiscovered/undocumented) species. (It should be noted that the Horned Bear, Night Manta, and Shambler were all Earthdawn critters updated for Shadowrun, which was something we wanted to do as well as create some new critters. Originally it was going to be like 12 or 20, but it got pared down to a half dozen before I started writing).

Unfortunately, due to a hard dying on me and my backup disk not working, I lost all my original notes and files back in 2002. And my YotC writing was actually done in 2000, before FASA closed down (The book was about 90% done when FanPro picked it up and finished it). So, it's been a long time since I did this stuff.

Bull

If you like, sure. I'm cool with that. But only if I get the paycheck that goes with it

They should have just seeded the area with a few thousand drop bears and called it a day. No one debates the legitimacy or efficacy of drop bears.

Don't worry, I'll write a check full zeros in it (and only zeros).



I'm pretty sure that dropbears have been added to the Geneve Conventions articles relating to biological weapons. And if they weren't, WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING?

Bummer I was going to ask if you could put up some of the stuff that got cut as it sounds very interesting; oh well.

No. They want to shoot their sap at you, but can't since they lack a Natural Weapon (Sap) or Elemental Attack (Sap - treat as Acid).

EDIT: It's like having the Pistols skill but no hands to hold the gun with.

When I first read that they attack with sap, I thought it was referring to sap like the blunt weapon (Melee weapons: Sap) and the trees attacked by hitting things with their branches.