Little late but have been going back over Stormfront and i have to ask what was the deal with Aztechnology being in three of the plot wrap ups and coming out ahead in each one? Im all for suspension of disbelief in favor of a good story but Aztechnology beating Sirrug, winning the war with Amazonia, and forcing their way back into Denver seems more like some one disagreeing with past plot developments and deciding to undo them as much as possible rather than moving ahead with a reasonable story development. The wrap ups even go so far as to say Aztechnology is in a better place than where they were before the war started. How is that possible? The way it stands now either Aztechnology takes over the world and becomes the Empire in name as well as in fact or they get set upon by every one and eliminated from the world as a threat no one can ignore any longer.

Like I said late to the party by about a year but was wondering if anyone else had that response when this first came out?

I like to pretend that War! was non-canon.

-- Geopolitically they are in a good spot. Not sure they really are ahead in every respect. They lost a lot of land in the north (that they traded away) for (as far as I can tell) useless land in the south, had a huge casualty count over the course the war, still need to deal with insurgents in and near Bogota (which was tied up pretty perfunctorily but that plot was getting dragged on WAY past its expiration date of interest anyways). They didn't actually kill Sirrurg. And why they want back in Denver is a mystery as there's nothing of value to be had there. If anything, them getting dragged back into Denver is a loss

They can't take over the world: the FMC won't let them.

Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that we're now 5 editions in and its pretty much the same megacorps.

I'm not. If the fundamental pillars of the world economy are in flux or otherwise destabilized then the entire game changes.
I get that some change is good, but at that point we're talking something that changes the entire premise of the game.

That said, a spinoff game such as Shadowrun 2110, where the world has collapsed into a post-apocalyptic nightmare where the remnants of the megacorps have their own little empires carved out in the bug-infested wasteland and occasionally hire 'Shadowrunners' to recover old tech or destabilize rival corps prior to a land-grab might be interesting. Non-canon of course.

I was personally surprised that Aztechnology survived the fallout from the Dragonheart trilogy.

I mean, here you have this corporation that actively tried to bring the Horrors across early. And almost succeeded. As in, actually created a bridge between the two metaplanes, and it was only dumb luck that the "runners" got the Heart there in time.

And yet, does Aztechnology suffer any sort of repercussions for this? (to be honest, I'm not sure, but I don't recall any).

Even if you argue that Oscuro/Darke could possibly be a rogue element inside of Aztechnology and world destruction isn't the end goal of the entire board of directors, that's still a pretty big cancer to have in your Corporation.

And even if you say Darke is gone at the end, that's alot of blood mages that are running around in Aztechnology. You see atleast two blood spirits that aren't connected to Oscuro, you see them using blood to conduct a banishment, and have formed a "Gestalt" Blood Mage that allows who knows how many mages to band together.

On top of that, they might have a Locus.

Is it just Apathy that stops the others from doing something? Inability to get more than 1 Dragon or IE to work with another? Can't tell the Corporate Court why you're hitting them that hard? (Ares: "So tell me about these Horrors? Which Metaplane did you say?")

It always seemed odd to me.

So... Make Believe in your Make Believe... Entertaining.

The Megacorps have shifted a bit over the 20+ years of Shadowrun. We have seen some come, and we have seen some go. But they ARE the big economic fortresses in the World.

*Shrug*
Hey, other people pretend that the Dragonheart Saga was non-canon.

Yeah, that is true. I am not one of them, but that is true.

Pretend?

I pretend Ryan Mercury gets loaded into a cannon sometimes, does that count?

Storm Front actually gives good reasons to believe that a large part if not the entire Fourth edition only happened inside Fastjack's head, which had been daydreaming typing documents posted on Jackpoint under other names. This would explain the growing number of inconsistencies better than any other explanation. It's possible Jackpoint never existed at all and it only was Fastjack self-fulfilling fantasy of a data exchange platform that he wanted to be better than ShadowSEA. I guess it was the way his mind coped with the death of Captain Chaos.
Lately he started grasping reality again, but he's far from recovering. He acknowledged his split personality disorder, recognizing it wasn't the "real" Fastjack that was posting contents on Jackpoint, but the other personas he invented and to whom to "handed over" the node. However, at the same time he still displays strong signs of paranoia, blaming his mental disorder on some sort of nanotech conspiracy. His last paranoid episode already had him blaming Horizon for changes in the Jackpoint persona behavior, prompting him to attack Horizon systems.

Or at least, this explanation is as good as another.

Ok I am not willing to write off all or even most of 4th edition as Fastjacks delusion. That smacks too much of The "Dallas" dream explanation to get Bobby back from the grave. Dating my self a bit with that reference.

A question that came to mind from rereading Storm Front comments made several times about the possible fallout from the massive magic performed by Aztechnology, Amazonia, and Sirrug with the artifacts. What has that done and what may erupt out of Boggata in the near future to tear Aztechnology a new one? Or what has Aztechnology really been up to with the massive amounts of death, rituals, and corruption of the mana environment? After all these are the idiots who tried to summon the Horrors early for some unknown reason.

Which is horrible. If that is the way it goes, CGL can kiss my money goodbye.

The hospital was in the snowglobe!

As is just about everything else.

Stormdrake, I agree with you on the whole Azzie thing it's just too much. Just thinking about all the resources they used recently , they should be hurting not stronger.

Shadowrun has always been completely economically illiterate with no concept of what resources are actually worth. I love how we went from one extreme of stupid, Dunklezahn's will causing big corporate conflicts over chickenfeed prize money, to the other, with random adult dragons worth 50 billion nuyen. Ooooookay.

Has anyone ever calculated what the total value of all gold in the world is vs. all the shit dragons supposedly bought with their hordes that should have depressed the price 90%+?

Fuchi disappeared, some others emerged, how many bigs should rise or fall in only 20 years?

Lots to unpack here.

First, 4th edition wasn't in FastJack's head, nor was JackPoint. I'll go ahead and wave an "As official as I can make it" flag ove rthat one until Bull swings by. It's a fun theory and feel free to embrace it if you want, but that's not the deal from the writing side of things. Just, you know, gettin' that out there.

Changing megas. In the very beginning, they didn't exist. 1st ed has 'corporations' but 'MEGA-corporation' as we know it slipped in there a bit late. Lots of small changes happened as the world started to be better defined; for instance, at one point, there was a megaplex that connected Boston, NYC, and DC, then kept on rolling down the east coast until it snapped up Atlanta. Just one big-ol' city the entire way. That got quietly painted over into multiple megaplexes that are large, some of which even overlap, but there's a LOT of space between DC and Atlanta that isn't, you know, ominous rows of skyscrapers.

As for the Azzies, they're in a weird place rght now, sort of a paper tiger. They lost a *ton* of military stuff, not just in terms of material but in manpower. They took losses, but casualities are vastly higher when you count teh seriously wounded and mentally shattered... Bogata had a couple of Shadow spirits active, for instance, and the general jungle warfare stuff is pretty terrible. Add to that what Blue did to several troopers and the general stress of multiple years of war and, well, the mental health isn't so strong. Big gambles against Sirrurg and Amazonia both fell their way, at which point they threw up their hands and went "We declare peace!" ... because they probably couldn't have fought much longer without losing everything they gained. You always want to go to the negotiating table with a big win fresh in your hand, after all.

Which brings us to two different things.

The corporation of Aztechnology is doing swell. They got paid a lot of money to help with the war(s), the world is beating a path to their door for anti-dragon technology (even if it isn't exactly reliable), and while they lost a MAJOR subsidiary with NatVat's destruction, there's a chance that they can rebuild and, even if they don't, they still have a pretty good selection of back-ups to start taking over some of the load. All the new positive feedback is driving sales in their consumer goods division, and teh R&D guys have new Amazonian plants to experiment on.

The nation of Aztlan is hurting badly. The military's broken and needs years to rebuild, they gained some land south of the border but lost a big swath to the north (Admitedly, it's mostly desert, but still), and the food situation is famine-critical. With Sirrurg out of the picture, it's expected that the food situation will improve over the next year or three back to normal, but they're suffering hugely right now. Getting a chunk of Denver back is more an issue of pride than anything else, but it hints at much better Aztlan-PCC relations in the future.

As for the gold standard, Lofwyr cares about it, but dragon hordes popped the bubble pretty huge. It's going to be something like 50 Nuyen an ounce, thanks to new sources from asteroid mining being slowly added to the world stock. The initial freefall after dragon hordes were introduced must have been fun to watch. (The current $1600/oz level is an abberation to say the least, but that discussion leads to real world stuff, so step lightly kids.)

Oh! And in terms of megas, Fuchi, the largest of 'em all, died. In and of itself, that's a *massive* change since they were the Matrix overlords, but since then we saw the rise and fall of Cross, the transformation of Yamatetsu to Evo, the arrival of Horizon and Wuxing, and 'soon' (As all those who read the computer game stuff know) another Mega will crash. Beyond that, Ares might break apart, Horizon's on shakey legs, MCT and Shiawase are gambling on a big North American push, and Lofwyr's been in a funk since Alamais was brought down and his corp's just not as cutting edge like it was while he sulks in his tent like Achilles. MightNeoNET (The former Novatech and once a third of Fuchi) take the top spot back from ol' Golden Snout? Are any AA-corps on the cusp of tearing a Triple-A down to make room for themselves? Will the Yamato Damashi movement result in another Japanacorp in the Big Ten, moving influence from west to east once again? There's a lot of churning going on in those board rooms!

Keep watching the skies, yo.

Wakshaani,
Thanks for the flag. I don't think any one was taking the "it's all a dream" idea seriously but you never know. I can see how Atzlan is pretty hosed which was why I was also asking about possible fall out from the major' almost "Ghost Dance" level magic that was carried out on several occasions with sacrifices and just the general death toll. Can we expect hordes of shadow spirits emerging around Bogatta or something equally horrible?

It looks as the only thing corps know how to do well is cause some disaster, then build some type of technological tomb to keep it just live enough to get a profit out of it.....

Aztechnology is only showing symptoms of the same behiavor. Maybe another AI will emerge as a result of the magic flux....

Kind of glad the Azzies didn't get to get their hands on Sirrug when he was down.

Can you just imagine the blood spirit they could have yanked out of that??

See its that kinda thing (which they would so do) that has me wondering what is going to crawl out of Bogata and head north like Godzilla for Tokyo.

I have a hard time seeing those two F15 shadow spirits in Bogata being killed by anything but a great dragon at this point.

Direct hit with a howitzer anti-tank round. 52P damage, -10 AP. Be immune to that, M*****F******!

Back in 13 days.

Hit 'em again. IIRC don't they lose one force every time we pop them? In that case, just keep pummeling them until they learn their lesson. If not, introduce them to the technological wonder that is FAB III.

By SR4 rules they keep coming back until you banish/disrupt them at the same time as destroying a copy of their spirit formula and winning a Willpower + Banishing vs. Force + Edge test.

Good luck.

Or an appropriately difficult astral quest followed by a fight against them at the end of the quest after you've been weakened.

Good luck.

not to mention you have to actually hit said spirits, which means they first have to materialize in a location that you have your artillery aimed at, and then prevent them from becoming aware at any point that said artillery fire is on it's way (otherwise they just pop back into the astral and enjoy the fact that they just made you shoot a howitzer at an orphanage or something like that).

According to Storm Front, page 111, Maelstrom and Oblivion moved to Denver (how they could represent a big enough threat for Ghostwalker and Harlequin to end their fight, when Harlequin and almost all the great dragons stated so far had a Force 20 spirits at hand, except for Lofwyr, and Ghostwalker is supposed to a greatest summoner than any of them, and Zebulon itself used to be Force 18, is beyond me).

The explanation given was that Ghostwalker could have kicked the Azzie's butt's right out of Denver but if he did that he would have let the shadow spirits free to disrupt and twist the free spirits of Dwnver. If he had attacked the Shadow spirits the Azzie's could have then "possibly" slipt in a strike against him or his allies in Denver that would have been very destructive. I don't buy it as Ghostwalker when he originally showed up handed all five sectors their collective hats against military and magical assets at least the equal of what the Azzie's showed up with at the end of Stormfront. Probablly a lot less as the Azzie's just came out of multi year war that really put them through the grinder.

Anyway that was the explanation given. The best explanation of the explanation I have heard is that this was an attempt to undo cannon history that they did not agree with. Hope I am wrong but that is the"best" explanation so far.

There is a huge Difference between Surprise achieved (Ghostwalker when he took Denver the first time) and a protracted fight with the Military Might of a AAA Corporation that is ready, willing and able to prosecute a war with a Dragon.

Yes, but why go back? What's so special about Denver that you'd provoke not only Ghostwalker but the other treaty nations? Who haven't just come out of a long tough war.

Pride? Hubris? Embarrassment for having been kicked out? Revenge? Probably other reasons out there.

Yeah, Ghostwalker clearly had a huge advantage of surprise in his 2061 attack. It takes quite a while to mobilize and coordinate the armored and air forces that would have been able to do anything.

I'm less convinced the Azzies have really good reasons to spend a whole lot of resources on a return to Denver. I guess some of it is to avoid a precedent, and theoretically being in Denver makes them part of the North American political scene in a bigger way. Valuable, but is it valuable enough? It doesn't rank in the top 20 most ridiculous geopolitical things in SR, at least.

Obviously Ghostwalker didn't have wireless enabled.

keeping the azzies out would actually be a big enough wireless bonus that i might consider turning on wireless for once

edit: and would also go a long ways towards explaining why all the other megacorps are willing to put all of their incredibly valuable stuff on the matrix, given there really aren't a lot of other plausible reasons

Where else would they put it is a better question.....

The matrix looks as if its powered by the sheer uncountable user base. and they never bothered to seperate the technology into a developmemt base and user base too...
so...

Just touching the matrix is dangerous but its impossible to live without.

"I drive a car powered by my own sense of self satisfaction."
Sorry. XD

Not impossible, just difficult.

If it were powered by my ego it'd be the most powerful vehicle in the world

I could do it.

From what I remember of your game rules you could win against every statted GD and IE at once.

If you stat it, the players will kill it.

Edit:
Apparently, sometimes you don't even need to do that...

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/That_Guy_Destroys_All_Psions

MRSI and AV howitzer rounds should do the job.

And really, it should be that way. At the end of the day, a Great Dragon is made of meat, not adamantine with neutronium armor.

Sure, they have a hell of a lot of magic, and if they're smart, a lot of technology, in their corner, but at the end of it all, they're still made of meat, and if they have stats, some player will find a creative way to kill them, assuming they're stupid enough to engage at all.

And really, why would you? Are you really so confident that you're willing to go claw-to-cannon with these nigh-suicidal lunatics? Even if you think you know what they're up to, they may surprise you, and if they surprise you in a manner to which you are unprepared, they might actually be dangerous. If they're really good and/or lucky, they could hit you with something you never thought to prepare yourself for, like sixteen rating 10 cutter/sutr nanite colonies. Or that round that hits you and doesn't do anything may actually be a tracking beacon guiding the THOR shot/cruise missile.

Even if your name begins with "The Great Dragon ...", do the smart thing: don't be anywhere near the fighting yourself. Just because you're ten tons and scaly doesn't make you immune to assassination. If you think it does, perhaps you should consult with The Great Dragon Dunkelzahn about the topic of draconic immunity to assassination.

Sorry, you can't talk to him because he's tied up with the suicide hotline. But what would he know about assassination, anyway?