Ok folks, as one of the people who kickstarted Shadowrun Online (now known as Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown), I got the ebook of Lockdown and spent the last few hours reading it. So, I came up with a thread for spoilers for Lockdown, and will post here. This is massive spoilers, please do not look any further if you do NOT want to be spoiled.






In short, major shit happens that changes the Sixth World forever, we get a lot more info on headcases (mostly because we have a massive dragon assisted outbreak of those) and adventures that can literally change the Sixth World and its players.

Let's see:

The Great Dragon Eliohann, who was seemingly taken out in the Crash 2.0/Deus wars, is still comatose, but his "soul" is still in the Matrix (in Cerberus, his Matrix icon)

Celedyr arranges for a surgery to try to reunite the two, using a version of the headcrash nanovirus to attempt to "re-write" Cerberus into Eliohann's body. Something goes wrong. It always does, but this time, it's.. um.. spectacularly bad. You see, there's two "life" forms in that nanovirus: Cerberus.. and Deus. (yes, it's back)

Eliohann/Cerberus/Deus (I'm just going to call them ECD) escapes the procedur, and in a confused state, flies away, eventually crashing into Fenway Park. Literally, as in "Great Dragon takes out the Green Monster".

The big uh-oh is that along with the problems of a Great Dragon at war with itself is that during ECD's escape from the surgery, it brought an iridescent rain on Boston. A rain full of nanobots with two Intelligences fighting each other inside those nanites.

(All together now: Uh-oh!)

People who get exposed to the rain get infected by the Headcrash virus and get overwritten. Some with a majority of Deus, some with a majority of Ceberus, some with a mix of both. Quite many die of the nanites overwriting their brain (it's being called an encephalititis attack). Others go insane (the original personality is locked out of control, but can watch everything happen).

Boston gets locked down (of course, you figured that out) hard, Nothing in or out. This is a tighter lockdown then even Bug City was, with good reason. No power except for absolute essentials (like water, sometimes). Air drops of food and other supplies more like "Fly at super high altitude, drop it technically outside Boston Metroplex borders and let momentum take it in to the City proper and trigger the parachute at some point)

There are three corps that are at risk here. NeoNET (the folks behind the experiment to "cure" Eliohann), Aztechnology (Participants in the experiment), and Evo (the original progenitors of the CFD Virus). If the players can figure out who was behind of it, those three corps are in deep stinky corp-destroying drek. In fact, one of the offers that the players receive is from a AA corp that offers 2.5 Million for the team, plus 1% voting stock for each runner (so your runner team could be 5% owners in a newly made AAA corp). The AA corp wants the info so they can take it to the Corporate Court, and strip one or more of the three corps at risk here of their AAA status (with the AA corp getting their status in return). Quite a few of the offers are "buy your own island and retire" levels, but that was the one that jumped out at me first

Apparently, they have a site set up for DM's and players to report how the deal went down, and which option their players took in their campaigns, and that Catalyst are going to take the results of this and from Shadowrun Chronicles players into changing the storyline.

Eliohann isn't a great, he's just an adult dragon.

There is annoyingly a lot of questions left unanswered, so it seems we got to wait for the next meta plot book.

A few questions that are weird.

Why did Pax help Deus? She hates him.

How did Deus survive Crash 2.0 and where has he been for a decade? Probably Mars.

How did the QZ get set up so quickly? And why were the Megas so..."cooperative?"

How did Cereus get made? It doesn't make sense that when 2 AI fight each other a new AI is made. That's never happened before, and it's just kind of weird. It's also problematic in that it's possible to copy AI, which breaks one of the SR4 rules of AI, in that they can't be copied or be duplicated.

In Stolen Souls, Neurosis is implied to be a different AI then Cerberus. Probably made because Eliohann is crazy enough to form 2 different persona on the Matrix. But where they both the same AI, or were they 2 separate AI's? The book doesn't answer this. But if we never see Neurosis again, it'll imply that those two personas were from the same AI.

And lastly, where is Mirage and Morgan? If Deus survived, odds are they other two did too. And what have they been up to?

Ever read the list of SR4 Technomancer Paragons?


Because plot. Or, in more in-game terms, because C5 is getting a certain routine in fighting Deus. This is it's fourth or fifth (Arcology, Network, Crash, CFS, maybe Paragons between Crash and CFS) incarnation by now. They ought to.


Well. Seems Deus decompiled during the Crash (again), and this time had to fight Cerberus for surpremacy in it's decompiled network state. It has happened before.


Being the Paragons that weren't descended from Deus, in all likelhood. What's much more interesting: since HBS' games are canon (and so is SNES Shadowrun, thank you, Splintered State), what happened to the Aneki AI and APEX? What happened to the Elf from Imago, the first confirmed eGhost (though Jack Armitage may or may not be earlier)?


Nah. They'd only be if they'd have produced a crappy gun nerd collectors' edition battle rifle.

Further question : Just what the hell is this all supposed to do long term, other than attempting to re-create Bug City with a Luddite fear base rather than a magical threat panic?

I am starting to dislike AIs as much as Immortal Elves.

what about Cereus ? ( a Sprite-Bird whispered into my Ear that he is " the Lovechild" of Cerberus and Deus )

with a Dance in the Matrix
Medicineman

An in-game explanation of going back to SR3 prices for gear, and a cover for the disdasterous characterization of some Jackpointers under Hardy's competent editing. Lemons from lemonade, remember? I doubt there's any long-term plan. Long-term metaplot planning hasn't been with Shadowrun since the death of Findley and Sargent's disappearance.

What it does is recreate Bug City in a rules edition that has cyberdecks back, prices closer to SR3, and less capable characters in standard mode. Roll back time. Some people might like it (not me, but anyway).

Apart from anything that might have come out of the Matrix blender at the the stock exchange, A seed AI going to war with its rivals might simply have been smart enough to leave a backup somewhere. He had some experience with stowing away, after all


I'm more interested in how he got into those nanites. Did he simply stumble over the project and think "a dragon body, just what I was looking for!", did Pax decide to copy him there (for whatever reason), or any other reason given?

I thought about maybe Pax was trying to punish Deus by trapping him within a dragon. After all, then he'd be hunted for the rest of Eliohann's life, which would be a nice bit of irony. But the fluff section doesn't line up with that since Deus helped attack the facility with Eliohann's body over the Matrix.

So Pax and Deus collaborated to intentionally get him into a dragon brain? Did he intend that to be his new home, or did he just want to control a powerful meatbody (with magical ability) while going about his matrix business?

Its not explained. Deus's and Pax's motivations are completely unknown currently.

I heard they were trying to work up a viable set of rigger mechanics/vehicles rules because they want their own AI controlled vehicles to go freewheeling in.

You Jean Deus is going for another hard takeoff scenario? Because a godlike super intelligence seems like the only path to achieve that

Rule 34 "The internet is for porrn" => it´s a child of kinky love, because you know, for us it is an artificial world but or AIs it´s the reality.

And they got fucked.

SYL

If a half mad/ half god AI like Deus can churn out a decent and workable Rigger Handbook before 6th edition rolls around, I would seriously consider following him.

I doubt half god would be enough, he'll need the upgrade to full AI godhood before that happens

Don't worry, the post-Singularity Shadowrun world still won't have working rigger rules.

I think "rigger rules which are universally agreed to be good" is a good benchmark for technology so advanced we can't begin to fathom it any longer