So having read the conspiracy book section on the dragon issues and put it together with other shadowrun material I have to wonder where this is going. Ghostwalker has bugged off back to the astral, Hetsaby is putting herself forward as the defender of metahumanity, Sirrug is toasting humans, and Lofwyr is gathering other traditionalist dragons in response to Hetsaby. You then have the apparent whole sale murder of anyone dealing in dragon telesma with the corresponding disappearance of said items and the apparent confirmation of a dragon egg hatchery on Madagascar. These occurrences and actions raise the following questions for me,

Is ghostwalker going to return?
Has Ghostwalker lost his city for good?
Is Ghostwalker leaving a form of retcon put in because some people had an issue with Denver being taken over by a Great Dragon?
What is Hetsaby's real game as no one in shadowrun who has been portrayed as being altruistic in the past has ever turned out to truly be.
What does Sirrug have against the leaders (of which some are dragons) of Atzlan/Aztechnology?
What is Lofwyr going to do in response to Hetsaby's attacks as doing nothing makes him look weak.
Just how many drakes are running around killing dealers in draconic telesma?
Why a hatchery when the dragon of sixth world explained that clutches were raised by individual dragon parents?

Ghostwalker slipping out of Denver to Do Something ™ isn't a retcon. That would just be silly. When he'll be back is anyone's guess... his last big trip was for ten thousand years. This one could too... or it could end tomorrow. How confident would you feel, if you loved in Denver, about getting up to some shenanigans with taht sword of Damocles over your head?

As for Lofwyr, well, we'll see, won't we? Can't let those kinds of challenges go unmet in Dragon culture, but, he has a mega to worry about, so how much can he focus? Also, don't judge him in human lifespan activity ... he could let it lay there for a century before slapping back. Dragons take a Looooooong view.

Beyond that? Too early to say.

I'm not doing much of anything with this particular plot, though I am chiming in with ideas that might affect it. Don't take any of what I'm about to say as gospel, since I don't know anything for sure. This is my personal speculation.


It's possible he has already, just not in a particularly spectacular fashion; Spy Games hinted that he was there, just not himself (while released later, Artifacts Unbound actually takes place before Spy Games, if memory serves correctly). Or that could be a ruse. Be that as it may, his major domo seems

I'd say that question is a tad premature...but I don't know for sure. Not my baileywick.

Nope.

It might not be altruism, but enlightened self-interest. Dunkie was pretty altruistic, but he had a mean streak; Hestaby taking up his mantle does mean she's gone all squishy. I'm inclined to say that while she's changed some positions, she's still not someone to trifle with, and to think she's gone altruistic is, like an earlier question, just a tad premature.

Sirrurg's crazy, IMO, and a terrorist by just about anyone's definition. Who says any of his reasoning is at all rational? That said, he could just be wanting people to remember where they are on the overall world stage, and he might just be wanting to return to days of yore where dragons ruled over a less-enlightened people.

My guess is that he's just crazy, though. *shrug*

I'd say things are going to get ugly, sooner rather than later.

Enough, I'd say.

Very good question. I can think of a couple reasons, but nothing really worth mentioning at the moment since they're not even to the point of being half-baked.

I hope the answer to this one is anything but this: "Sirrug is just crazy!" Anything else I can live with but this would make me pretty unhappy. Hell I'd be happier with no explanation.

Sirrug has plans, and concepts, but shares them rarely even with other dragons. We know he has a supremecist streak and just plain ol' doesn't LIKE the lesser races. He might have a "Let the strongest survive" streak, or he might be Horror-tainted, or he might just really, rrally, REALLY want to take a nap but can't with all these living THINGS making NOISE all the time. If he can find a nice warm place where nothing is alive within ten klicks, he can finally get some shut-eye.

There's *always* a reason.

Which is how I see it generally speaking.

Some of the comments attributed to Sirrug seem to indicate that the leaders of Atzlan/Aztechnology have done or are doing something he finds worthy of destruction. However as the Big D referred to Sirrug as "the destroyer" the triggering action could be rather insignificant. On the other hand it could have something to do with the fact that Atzlan is using massive amounts of blood magic and Sirrug is attempting to halt it before something bad occurs.

"ALL YOU METAHUMANS! GIT OFF MAH LAWN!!!"

I'm pretty sure there's more to it than that. It's probably just as well I'm not writing this one.

I'm curious as to why he moved. You wouldn't think he'd really care about political push-back in Amazonia...

"I NEVER METAHUMAN THAT DIDN'T GO WELL WITH BARBEQUE SAUCE"

Heh... Well Said...

Sirrurg... IMO terrifying (much so), but not terrorist. He will consider fear a natural metahuman reaction. He is a dragon warrior specialising in direct action after all.

Aztlan executed a dragon. Previously Sirrurg hunted those who killed dragons during the down-cycle, now a metahuman group steps up and "celebrates" a dragon killing. Instant shift of target.

Probably. Like others have said, he probably already has.

Doubtful, very doubtful. Unless another dragon moves in who can go claw-to-claw with Ghostwalker, I really rather doubt his city's lost, or that he'll lose it for good unless he outright dies.

Popularity, is my guess. Hestaby wants to get the adoration that Dunkelzahn got, and then use it for some draconic means.

Blood Magic, most likely. It's worse than Toxic Shamans and hastens the return of the Horrors (IIRC, at least). That anyone's letting blood magic continue is enough to piss anyone who's lived through the Fourth World off.

Something that reminds all sentients - metahumans and dragons alike - that he should be FEARED, not played with. Prediction: When Lofwyr smacks back, it's gonna be big, it's gonna be public, and it's gonna scare the ka-britches off everyone who hears about it.

More than anyone wants.

Again, not a clue. It might be, though, that creating a hatchery, while endagering eggs more by putting them all in the same place, actually provides more security for them due to being able to focus all defenses around a single place.


*groan* Puns. Puns everywhere.

The same as everyone else in the know, just combined with the ability to do something about it


What I'm more wondering about is what the rest of the world is going to do about it. Hello everyone, somebody is just touring the world blowing up the belongings of a megacorp...combined with the "Atzlan complained to the UN because their war effort was hampered" bit from CT that makes me suspect some of the new freelancers are still suffering from Wrong Universe Syndrome and have not quite understood that the very core idea of Shadowrun is...*drum roll* shadowruns as replacement for of state-sized entities going toe-to-toe with each other

James Meiers seems to be a very very very huge fan of the whole spy issue; wonder how much he has contributed to the part of the metaplot.

See I forgot about the fact that Sirrug was hunting those that hunted dragons during the down cycle. Makes his targeting of Atzlan understandable, not right but not the actions of someone who is just joker crazy either. It also puts a different slant to Hetsaby’s actions from the point of the other dragons. She is defending those the dragon killers are hiding amongst. This seems very familiar…

How does a dragon get a Glasgow Grin anyhow?

I'm going with the 'he hates metahumanity because they keep poking in stuff which brings the Horrors here faster' and 'he's wiping out Atzlan because they're messing around with blood magic and might have Horror tainted among them.' He's probably arrogant enough that he's not going to explain his actions - explaining gives the enemy the chance to try to talk their way out of it. Better to just wipe them off the map.

"Hm, this interesting thing called a movie suggested that the only way to be sure is to nuke them for orbit. Amazing, we weren't even awake to educate them on the proper way to do things."

I have no idea who wrote what since credits do not list what parts the named individuals contributed. All I know is that some parts of Conspiracy Theories are written for an universe where direct and open warfare seems to be an accepted procedure, not for a universe where powerful entities rely on small strikes carried out by deniable assets.

The 6th world is changing. There will always be a place for shadowrunners, but things are getting bigger and more dangerous. I kind of like it, personally. YMMV

Well, consider how far we've come IRL... And there's more things to happen in Shadowrun than IRL!

A tad more complicated in that part of the world. According to Earthdawn core book and Dragons sourcebook, feathered serpents of what we call now the Americas have used powerful blood magic to regenerate the jungle. Some dragons went as far as teaching metahumans blood magic. The debate turned into a war, each side accusing the other of being manipulated by the Horrors.

I think Dunkelzahn and Ghostwalker may have moved from Barsaive to the Rocky Moutains in the late Fourth Age to deal with that situation (maybe also did Dunkelzahn "unified" the title of Barsaive and Americas Loremasters back then). The feathered serpents teachings would be the origin of the Mesoamerican practices of sacrifice (and possibly also of the Northwestern tribes potlatch and the self-sacrifying exhausting circle dances). The conflict between Amazonia and Aztlan is just a continuation of that war.

Damn, and I thought the never-ending wars in the Middle East had been around forever...

Sure, it's called retirement home. If you can just pillage your competition in broad daylight you can also send your own black ops teams without having to care should the job get traced back, why hire shadowy figures from the street?

Because in open and public conflict, there are rules and limitations that others will accept. Go past those limits too often or too far and more and more people will turn on you. Shadow ops fills that gap.

Just to be clear what we are talking about

A mere week after the assassination of the head of the Shasta Shamans, six of Saeder-Krupp’s largest assets in the Middle East were targeted and were destroyed. Explosions occurred in factories and offices belonging to Saeder-Krupp subsidiaries, including Heavy Metal, Fatima Petrochemicals, Iraq Oil, Maser Industrial Electronics, and Krupp Munitions. In the final attack against Saeder-Krupp in these series of assaults, Hestaby herself made an appearance in Dubai, in a gesture that was obviously meant to make a statement of her own, perhaps to Lofwyr directly to let him know in no uncertain terms that she is quite capable of fighting her own battles, and perhaps as a reminder to us all that she is still a very dangerous force to be reckoned with. Hestaby was seen and recorded flying over Dubai, attacking the S-K Middle East division headquarters. The attack lasted close to an hour. In that time, the forty-seven-story arcology was reduced to a pile of twisted and melted durasteel, shattered armored glass, and a fifteen-meter deep crater. To emphasize the metahumanism that lies at the core of Hestaby’s philosophy, in each of the attacks on Saeder-Krupp, advanced warning was given to allow the facilities to be evacuated.

Mrs can't-we-just-get-along committed nothing else than an act of terrorism, personally and in broad daylight. Giving an advance warning does nothing to change that, most terror groups have the courtesy of phoning in before the bomb goes off.

Of course, that's also not all THAT far from Aden's playground. Aden's a traditionalist, so likely on Lofwyr's side overall, but, not neccessarily so. He might be pulling a Schwartzkoff and stay neutral.

When ol' Golden Snout decides to bring it back, it's gon' get oogly.

Sirrurg is hunting those who kill his species. He just doesn't care about colateral damage.
Heck, he went low-profile for almost 20 years after the EuroAir Flight attack and reappeared later in Amazonia.
Everyone thought the Magician who protected the plane was a hero trying to save everyone on the plane. Considering that for at least a few seconds/minutes this Magician was capable of holding off a Great Dragon tells a lot about his power and second, the Magician was just trying to survive the attack, it just happened that everyone on the plane would share his destiny if he failed.

It also makes you wonder who it was... And what he did to incur the Wrath Of Sirrurg!

...

Sounds like a good Simsense, actually...

wouldn't Alamay side with the Orange Queen then against SK?

I imagine in the politics of Dragons there is no cut and dried sides.

Just one dragon killed by conventional firepower someplace other then Germany, that's all i'm asking. But of course we can't do that their power level is over 9000.

All I can think of after reading (this thread up to here) is Dragon's Ring.

"Fionn—the black dragon—calmly tells anyone who will listen that he’s going to destroy the [the world]. Of course he’s a joker, a troublemaker and a dragon of no fixed abode. No one ever believes him. He’s dead serious."

Always in motion, negotiations are...Really? I'm showing 1006. ... Oh, sorry, I had it upside down.

No one sees them self as the villain, but great dragons have the power and arrogance to really do some damage when they think they are right. What bothers me is if this is some sort of long con by the scaly bastards to make themselves look more fractured as a group than they are.

I think people tend to forget that Great Dragons (Hell, even dragons with a small "dee") are sentient WMDs that fly on their own and there's not many countermeasures for.

And find you tasty with ketchup. Or bier.

*Lifts bottle for the holidays*

And dipped in chocolate.

As has been discussed (to death) before.

*Is too distracted beating the dead horse to notice Grinder said something*

If she's doing it personally, in broad daylight, and with full warning, how is this an act of terrorism and not an act of war?


Really?

Remember the ToS, mkay?

An employee and close collaborator of Ms. Doe, was assassinated. The killer has yet to face justice, but Ms. Doe grew her own conviction that M. Roe was responsible. She was angered. She tried to do justice herself, by destroying a building that belonged to M. Doe company. She did this alone and never tried to hide it.

Is this an act of war? Is this is an act of terrorism? I ask you, members of the jury, to forget for a second my client is a thousands years-old thirty meters-long flying scaly beast that can twist Fate, as is her victim. To forget my client is a member of Tir Tairngire government. To forget that the building she destroyed was the regional headquarters of the largest megacorporations in the world. You realize she just was an angry person that cared for her employee and made a mistake. This is simply property damage, and nothing else. My client wasn't targeting Saeder-Krupp as a corporation, she wasn't targeting the Arabian caliphate, nor was she trying to intimidate either of them. She made sure the building was completely empty, so that nobody would be hurt. Had Ms. Hestaby and M. Lofwyr been farmers from Potter Valley, California, and the building destroyed a fifty feet-long warehouse, I wouldn't have to ask you to do so.

If that's pointed at me, you'll have to point closer: I'm no good at this sort of thing. ;)

*Is too distracted beating the dead horse to notice the ToS*

Hey, Grinder, you say something?

I have this shirt somewhere...

Front: "Necroequisadism: A typical internet discussion, typified by..."
Back: "...a screaming mob, pounding on a greasy spot on the pavement, wherein used to lie the body of a dead horse."

Want.

OK, instead of wading into the discussion of what is terrorism let me rephrase it a bit: Most state-like entities would condemn such a lone-wulf action against a respected member of the international/-corporate community as an act of terrorism. Not necessarily out of moral conviction, but also because they do not want to tick off big L (most nations), or do not want to legitimize attacks against corp assets (the collective CC).

If I'm reading your post correctly, Sengir, you're saying that other entities-Corporations and Nation States alike,-fearing the cost of an all out war would try to marginalize Hestaby's attack, classifying it as Terrorism, and not a legitimate act of war?

Although that seems to leave out the most important arbitrator of whether this is an act of war, requiring a full scale response, or an act of terrorism...which requires at least some sort of response? (I was trying to think of how different the responses would be...but I couldn't come up with much in the way of meaningful differences. Heh.) Any ways, that individual would be Lofwyr right?