I have some questions about some oddities in the Shadowrun map of North America, that shadow wiki was not able to help me with. I’m hoping that the collective memories and wisdom of the forums here might either pull up some known information, or be able to provide some fun speculation.
Background: My game has been heading cross-country from Seattle in recent sessions, having finally made it through some NAN states to arrive in Winnipeg (in mid-winter….so they really don’t want to linger). . They are heading to Boston, but they are trying to avoid the most ‘natural’ routes to avoid the people who may or may not still be hunting them. So last night I pulled out my old SR2 book and spread out the decent map of North America therein. Looking at possible routes and hazards, we noted a couple of oddities. I followed up with some other on-line maps, and they seem to show up consistently.
Oddities, of course, are often great jumping off points for stories.
One: The UCAS/MAC border takes a dip south, to put Thunder Bay in Algonquian-Manitou Council (AMC). Thunder Bay is, in the here-and-now, a fairly major Canadian port on Lake Superior, which ships a lot of the grain from the prairies. I suppose that the obvious reason for it ending up in AMC hands is that they really wanted a port that was not iced up for as much of the year as Churchill is, and bargained hard for it (maybe they gave up some extra prairie land in return).
But I wonder if there are any other reasons/stories/rumours about it?
Also, because there is a fairly major highway running along the north shore of Lake Superior, that means all traffic taking that route has to go in then back out of AMC territory at Thunder Bay. To me this just screams opportunities for smuggling, scams, and the likes. Any existing material or ideas on how to create an episode or two around this would be welcome (although the group may take a south shore route just to avoid the border crossing, given two fake identities and someone who is lying low for safety reasons)
Two: Go look at the UCAS/Quebec border. For the most part it just follows the current borders between the province of Quebec and the provinces and states that touch it pre-SR era. Now follow it as it swings up to the north and west. It starts much like the border we see in RW maps between Quebec and Ontario. Towards the northernmost extension of the UCAS, however, the UCAS border pulls slightly away from the Quebec border, leaving a very slender finger of the AMC extending down between the two for maybe a couple of hundred kilometres.
I’ve not carefully enough compared the SR maps to RW ones to figure out exactly where that may be. Possibly around Lake Timiskaming (or Témiscamingue if you prefer), but I’m not quite sure.
Anyone have any idea what the reason for this is? In the RW this is not exactly highly populated territory, although if my reading of the map is off, it could possibly include the copper mining area around Rouen-Noranda (or Rouyn-Noranda if you prefer)? But it would be a lot more story-interesting if it was because of a dragon lair, free spirit claimed territory, ritual site of great potency, or the like.
Again, anyone know anything about this odds spit of AMC territory? Failing knowledge, have any fun speculations?