I don't have my copy of the dragon heart saga handy so I can't look this up myself. Thanks in advance.

Was he human? And does anyone know if stats were ever done for him?
Likewise can anyone name the members of Assets Inc?

Ryan Mercury turned out to be a drake.

There also was a dwarf merc named Grinder on Assets Inc.

He needs no stats, he is immortal, invincible and can kill with mere thoughts....bah, ich hate him.

I know that part, was he a human drake or an elven drake?

Human.

thanks

Check this for more informations. If you need help for translation, let me know (hope i don´t get banned for posting this link )

http://www.shadowhelix.de/Ryan_Mercury

Got Google translate for help, and I don't see why you should. But thanks it helped a lot.

Magic is my job...so it was a pleasure. It is just embarassing that Ryan belongs to my field....*sob*

If you don't mind me asking, why? It's been a LONG time since I read the books.

You really read the books? So you sould know why. But to make a long story short: human raised and protected by a great dragon, with access to unlimited founds, prime runners in his team, magical capabilities bejond everything known, struggling into world-changing events, helping protecting the planet from demons of earthdawn-times AND additionally changing into a drake....how does this sound to you? I call it BOOOOOORING....^^ Everybody i know hates Ryan for being Mr. Sunshine.....SR-version of Superman in his early days. So i am not proud to belong to his division.

Years and years ago, I'd forgotten most of them.

You lucky-one you. I think the shock burned the memory out of your brain...always fascinating what kinds of self-protection systems our body has, isn´t it?

Somehow, I'm thinking of the Team Fortress 2 Medic saying this

But yeah, Ryan Mercury is pretty much a Mary Sue.

I am still trying to make my GM let me have a run where i meet him. Oh boy, after that, i will be know as the "dark-mage that kicked Ryans ass"....wonderful.^^

I'm trying the same with Burnout. I'll let you know when I succeed.

WHich one was Burnout? I have only read the books until nr. 20 or so, some german novels and stopped after the gay russian ork came up....that was too much for me.

Burnout is the Cyberzombie possessed by Dunkelzahn's spirit. Yeah I know...

Aaaah...i remember. Wasn´t his name Lethe afterwards?

Yeah, that's the one.

Yeah, then hit him with a stick and greeting from me. ^^

A Mary Sue he may be, but I actually liked him. He was a fun character. So he was involved in World-Changing events, So what. Some one has to be.

Just finished reading the books again not too long ago.

I read the dragonheart saga and really enjoyed it. I dont recall Ryan Mercury being god-like at all. He couldnt even go toe-to-toe with an average cyberzombie until he had a rare power focus type artifact thing.

I think hes basically just a Human Drake Mystic Adept who thinks he is a normal human adept throughout most of the books. Obviously after all the runs hes been on he is a runner with tons of karma and tons of money, but displays no powers beyond what any player could attain given the same assets.

Also, there was a character hired by Assets Inc... Talon. He was a combat mage. He had a book or two of his own, besides joining in at the end of the Dragonheart Saga. Used a weapon foci dagger and believed that the best way to win in Mage vs Mage combat was to put up an astral barrier, counter spell, then go beat the spit out of the other mage with fist and knife.

He had an ally spirit, and there was a book about him where he was near Ground Zero when Ares dropped a nuke on the bug hive in Chicago. Great book...

Too bad the character turns out gay

You two are sooooo no SR. ^^

Yes, gay characters....somehow they make SR feel strange. ^^ But i liked Nuke City, i think it was Talon in it. And "couldn´t even go toe-to-toe with an average cyberzombie".....muahahahah....at what table do YOU usually play? Now i know why you think is not overpowered. ^^

I didn't have any issue with Talon being gay. What issues I had were with all the peripheral stuff that went on because he was gay. Like his mentor/lover who took him in as a boy-toy/apprentice (when the dude was middle-aged, and Talon was a young teen). Or the fact he let his Ally Spirit go and then it just took on a new form of a very pretty man for him and stuck around because it loved him so much. Or the female member of Talon's crew who went to a Street Doc to look into getting a sex change, because she knew Talon was gay and she wanted Talon to love her back.

Gay character? Couldn't care less. Gay character who grew up in a NAMBLA relationship, who boinks his ally spirit, and who has a "prime runner" quality professional criminal that's in such a weird co-dependent relationship she's wanting to change her whole life so that he'll return her affection? Moving away from the stuff I think Shadowrun books needs to dwell on, and into weird transhumanist porn/soap opera level stuff, in my opinion.

Hey Mary Sue's every where make into print. Not the first, won't be the last either.

Must seek out the book to witness the badness first hand.

This is too true...

The thing that kills me is that Kenson's novels (the ones featuring Talon, at least) aren't even terribly written. There's a few other characters in 'em that are pretty cool, he shows a solid grasp of the game world (of course), the cover artwork for one of 'em was positively awesome, the general shadowrunning that's going on is normally pretty well thought-out instead of always using brute force, etc, etc...but some of the plot decisions he made were just really, really, weird, particularly where the sexuality was concerned (and especially because all three of those things I mentioned came up in one book!).

Heh...
Sounds somewhat interesting at least... The book is named? I am assuming "Nuke City" from what Machiavelli posted, but this may not be accurate.

That particular one is The Burning Time (which also has the really dynamic cover I enjoy). I'd look into the other Talon books first, though, just to set the stage (and because, on a personal level, I enjoyed them more).

I don't have a problem at all with Talon being gay. Shadowrunner are just people at the end of the day. On a side note I'm pretty sure that Stephen Kenson is gay most of his book are dedicated to a person named Christopher.

I do have a problem that the Kellan Colt trilogy was campy as hell and all together forgettable. So much of Kensons past work was so good. So the new stuff was was a bit of a let down.

Kenson is gay and married, yes, but that doesn't really render the notion of sexual relationships with minors and the co-dependent stuff any less squicky for many readers. Beyond that, it's frankly just harder to write openly gay characters without catching flak given that most genre writing doesn't really benefit much from a focus on sexuality, a problematic issue given that you can just let a character exist and people will assume they are straight whereas with gay characters you need to take matters into your own hands to a degree. It's a catch 22 in which people will complain about characters just being gay to be different but will also complain about not wanting to read about gay romance if you actually do anything with their homosexual status.

To be fair, people complain just as much about brown nipples. Less kissing, more shooting.

Isn't every main character in every novel a little bit Mary Sue of the author?

In my opinion, yes, they are.

Start reading the Game of Thrones series

George RR Martin doesn't really seem to have any issues with killing off characters.

Pretty sure that Nabokov dodged the Mary Sue bullet with Lolita.

Well, considering the characters number proliferation, the serie needs perodic pruning to keep it in check.... To his credit, he's not shy a bout doing it, even with important characters. And more often than not flips the bird to heroic death. Lannister senior's death being a good example of that (crosbow bolt to the guts while sitting on the privy...)

...but...but...if they did that, the legend of Nadja Daviar's nipples would never have been born in the Dragonheart Saga



Having Talon turn out to be gay was weird, but to me, it was quite refreshing to see a writer explore this aspect.

I also love the idea of giving his ally spirit the form of a bike. That's so cool.

Last I knew Mr. Kenson had an account here, although I suspect he hasn't posted in a long while. Like the poster Whipstitch pointed out he is gay, and his spouse is apparently an ordained minister in the Universal Brotherhood. Huh. Who knew?

I guess I never walked into any of the Shadowrun novels and expected that much. I have always seen them as pulp fiction. A lot like Doc Savage books. Or Remo Williams. Or Mack Bolan. Fun enough, but not super serious or earth shattering.

I'd agree with everything Critias said.

Talon being gay is not an issue, the issue is all the ridiculous crap that goes on around the fact that he's gay. I don't think most SR readers would bat an eye if the chick was hitting on him, and he's like, sorry, I'm gay. But then she goes on about being turned into a man? Ugh, it's just bad. And the whole NAMBLA thing going on with his teacher..just creepy.

I never liked the idea his ally spirit turned into a functional motorcycle either.

In fact, about the only fiction ally spirit I liked was the one from Burning Bright.

Burning Bright is one of the few SR pulp's I like period.

Yea, IMO it stands along as a good novel even without being tied to SR. I think alot of the books try too much to make it SR, that a good story gets left out. But I'm no writer and I imagine writing a novel is pretty damn hard.

To me, the SR universe is a whole entity, and encompasses everything in ours, and more. I'm quite happy to see writers go off the "bullets and spirits" rail and talk about other aspects of life. In the milieu of Shadowrun, it seems quite natural to explore the issue of radical modification of one's body/self to achieve a desire.

That that desire happens to be to find love, not profit and power, only makes the story more interesting. And yeah, it may not be for everyone, but so what? That's what exploration of another world is about.

I won't disagree with that. I don't think that means the quality of writing is always so great-but I also realize that's a personal preference issue.

In fact I'd like to see more writing like Shadowbeat, and with the passion and originality of books like the Lone Star source book. Part of what keeps me playing SR, even though I pretty intensely dislike the direction the game has currently taken is the hope that someday it'll get back on track. That and a lot of great history!

I liked Mel Odom's Preying for Keeps. To me, that group was an example of Prime Runners, or at least experienced professional runners act & behave. Also made for good story of how runners can be good guys, not murderous thugs, & morals.

Ya know, I'm pretty good at ignoring certain amounts of overdone crap in a novel. He was abused by his teacher? It happens. His ally spirit fell for him? Gee, maybe he made the spirit companion he intended to have forever compatible with him and he treated him well. A woman decides she wants to be a guy and make Tommy Talon lover the new him? Hey, maybe it was the trigger event for full recognition of an identity issue. Heck, Plan9 tried it just for kicks!

At least it's better than entire chapters of "And we ran. We ran and ran and ran. Then we ran some more. And we saw a rock. A rock we had seen before. We recognized it because it was near a tree we rememberd. All while we ran." like that Tolkien hack did! That was just bloody awful!

I think my biggest issue is that when I read a shadowrun novel I do not want to hear about the characters intimate encounters. I dont even want them alluded to. Its strange because this doesnt bother me in most Fanstasy novels I read...

I think it stems from a deep desire to keep sexual RP away from my gaming table, and when I read SR novels I connect with them on a Gamer level. Every character in the book is a character someone at my table is playing... rather than other Fantasy novels where Characters are just characters to me.

But seriously, playing SR as a teenager I never saw a female character played well (even those played by actual girls). Everyone has this femme fatale notion that all female runners are psychopaths. I guess only a psychopathic woman would want to run in the shadows!?

That AND I am a little prejudice against Gays.

Some folks want that in a novel, makes the characters more real, rather than just have it being about the 'Run. Not everything is Biz, after all.

Personal taste issues.