Im working on a backstory for one of my backup characters, and i want him to have used to work with winternight. I kinda still want him to have his old cell as a group contact seeing as he didnt turn them in when he got caught and what not. But from everything i have seen im not even sure if winternight is an active group or not.

Given what they're responsible for, it seems likely that they would've all been hunted down and shot - either by angry world governments, or Shadowrunners hired by FastJack. Hell, given the number of 'Runners who were personally affected by the Crash, it wouldn't have been hard to put together twenty teams of volunteers looking for some payback.

It's an appropriate "Dark Secret". Every Mega and government took enormous damage and would be have been looking for them, and not to pat them on the head.

Not just Megas and governments, too. Pedophiles and rapists would quite literally be more welcome in the Shadows than someone who used to run with Winternight. After all, not everybody in the Shadows was raped as a kid or has a friend who was, but finding a 'runner who didn't take some kind of personal hurt during the Crash that's bad enough that they'd be quite happy to shoot you dead.

I'd say that would be a 25 or even 30-point Dark Secret flaw. If that gets out... You're done for. Hung Out to Dry, and everybody in the world is gunning for you. Your only hope might be to make some kind of faustian bargain.

Well, yeah. But I'd feel a more likely to die in the next month if I was on the hit list of the KGB FSB and Mossad than if I was on the hate list of Anonymous.

This comes up so many times. I'm still wondering, where to find that negative quality.

The Shadow community isn't Anonymous. They don't gather wearing Guy Fawkes masks to protest shit, they just sneak in and plant a bomb.

They're probably also likely better-positioned to move if an ex-Winternight operator got outed, too. The FSB and Mossad would likely contract the killing out if they wanted in on that action.

Anyone outed as Winternight is basically gonna be dead inside of a week.

Seriously. They're that hated, and by pretty damn powerful people.





-k

It's not (just) the powerful ones you need to worry about*.


It's the fact that literally everybody is going to be gunning for you. Everybody who misses Captain Chaos? Yeah, if they hear you're in their neighborhood, they're coming for you.

Everybody who lost a friend, or nearly got killed by Jormungandr themselves, they're coming for you. You're their opportunity for payback. You might as well go turn yourself into tamanous as volunteer meat, because the treatment you'll get from them is likely to be gentler than whatever the Shadows will mete out. You try to check into a coffin motel? Too bad the motel's owner was a good chummer with someone who got his brains fragged by that Worm - and whoops! Looks like your pod cycled on the automatic cleaning systems while you were still inside. Have fun drowning.

Try to go buy something? Even the Vory won't sell to you. Don't even try visiting the Crime Mall, because everybody there is packing. You'll last all of four minutes before someone shouts "Hey, that's the guy! The guy from Winternight!" Suddenly, everybody pulls a gun and starts shooting at you; either for payback, or because they don't want to get any of your taint on them by looking like they're in the slightest bit not opposed to your continued existence. If you manage to get onto a smuggler's ship under a fake name and get caught out during the voyage, your ass is going to walk the plank, and they're going to film it and broadband it all over the Matrix.


And no Dragons are going to deal with you, either. Remember, they lost at least one of their own - Eliohan - directly to Jormangandr (though I imagine he put up a hell of a fight,) and probably more in the chaos. There's no faustian bargain you can make with them strong enough to save your skin, because all of them would quite frankly rather have you as an appetizer than a slave.

About your only bet for allies and safe harbor is going be Threat magicians, radical neo-luddites, Shadow Spirits, and worse. If you were smart, you'd go find an Astral Rift and permanently relocate to a Metaplane. And even then, you're not really safe. There's still plenty of Initiated Magicians who hate your guts enough to go on a Metaplanar Quest to get their vengeance.

And of course, let's not forget the governments of the world. Barring relocating to a Metaplane, your best bet might be to find the government with the best record of upholding its own laws vis-a-vis due process, and which doesn't have the death penalty, and surrendering to them. But I wouldn't bet the bank on it - there's gonna be enough angry Shadowrunners out there that are willing to do a run on a government supermax to shoot you.



*Though it bears remembering that they dropped an orbital missile on Art Dankwalther for less.

Make a backup, backup character.

I make it a point of policy to have at least 5 backup characters ready to go at any time

Let me open my chummer directory....... I have 29 backups . Too much time, too few games and too wussy a gm.

About "Dark Secret"...


That was it's name in SR3, IIRC. In SR4A, the closest approximation is the flaw Big Regret. It's a bit tamer, but if you want true grit, I'd allow the PC to take Borrowed Time with it.

I can't believe it's actually not in SR4... For a player who was damn determined to have a character who used to be part of Winternight, I'd port it over.

Seriously, that's like asking to be a character who used to be a member of Al Qaeda, only everybody in the world hates you.


"Borrowed Time" might be appropriate as well, indeed.

Wow i knew they were hated because of the crash but not that badly. Im gonna have to come up with a new backstory now cause i like this character too much to kill this way lol

Nah, roll with it. With the Crash 2.0, with all the other records that blew up, why wouldn't his ties to Winternight be gone as well? Or so he thinks.

Honestly I can see the remaining Winternight people as being more probable problems than some random shadowrunner who would have to know that some connection may exist, and find it, possibly requiring a technomancer going on their astral quests, deep resonance or whatever it's called.

I don't see a problem with it. I've got a player who always insists on playing a Technomancer who used to be White Banded. It came up once in a while but was more interesting to have it in play than not have it in play. If I killed Deus's former minion right away then it just discourages people from playing that type of character. If I leave her in then we get interesting story lines to play with.

It's better than bland technomancer #6. "This one's different because it has Elven Wines 4 whereas the other one had Urban Brawl 4." Fuck off.

Shadows of Europe does mention that Winternight is thick as thieves with the Aesir Society and Viking gangs in the Scandinavian Union. I could see a cell of WN crazies hiding with the various scandi fractions - a bit hard to dig them out of large, magically active go-gangs spanning the Danish archipelago, no?

From Vice we know that one of the leaders survived and managed to escape, and in Artifacts Unbound there's a scenario involving actual Winternight members, so they are definately still active - though I'd guess on a much smaller scale, and probably mostly under the guise of other groups (there's some stuff in Feral Cities suggesting Winternight involvement as well.

I've always liked Winternight - maybe because I'm Swedish, I don't know - and using them for the Crash 2.0 was a brilliant idea IMO.

But yeah - starting with 'Big Regret' is a minimum, possibly 'Hung out to Dry' and 'Wanted' as well...

Plus 'Enemy', I'd say.

Ditch you identity, scrounge up a good watertight one, get into one of the space colonies - as far out in the kuiperbelt as possible or perhaps a Pluto based research colony.

...then nuke the earth from there instead!

Hey, good idea - time to start Winternight 2.

1. Get to the Kuiperbelt
2. ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL
3. Fling rocks on earth until satisfied