Well, it reads like it was writen by a German (or Russian, or someone from the Nordic countries). Given that's what Heisenberg is, I found it rather fitting. English is a malleable language that way; you can just import your favourite sentence structure and it will still work (try that in German).


Oh, I totally agree with you. It's even not entirely impossible that French and German become much more important (and english spoken much less) in real-life Europe after the disintegration of Britain is complete, given that I don't see little England retaining their standing as the world's 5th largest economy (which, by the way, would put it well behind France and California, though Shadowrun California probably has half the GDP of today's California, if that.).

English is easy to learn on a pinyin level, but good English is extremely hard to get right. Not even most native speakers are up to its many false friends (hoard/horde being a particular favourite of SR authors) and its unpredictable pronounciation. German, on the other hand, starts off hard, but becomes easier to handle once you get past all the pitfalls, like grammar, cases, plurals and long-winded sentences with split verbs at the beginning and the very end.

FYI: The author of Horizon also wrote the Ares chapter.

Huh. I always try not to think about who wrote a text, but take it at face value. That's a disturbing gap in quality there ... was Ares really originally planned to be Plan 9's voice?

I know the answer, but no comment.

Well. If that IS the case, tell the author my apologies, and he did a good job.

I feel like we will never get to see to consecutive descriptions of Saeder-Krupp Prime that agree with each other.

When it was introduced in Corporate Shadowfiles, it was just a holding company inside S-K that duplicated everything, with its own subsidiaries and its own regional divisions and subdivisions. While a lot of people think "prime" meaning must be similar to latin Primus [first] (as in "Prime numbers"), I guess it actually referred to the prime symbol used to denote a derived function in mathematics or a duplicate groups of atoms inside a molecule in chemistry. It worth noting that S-K Prime was not supposed to have any function the parent company did not have, which would have included intelligence, and that the book also explains

In Corporate Download, that odd setup was given a purpose as a troubleshooting division to which subsidiaries who failed to meet their objectives were to report. It was also described as the only division within the corporation whom Lofwyr was not constantly restructuring.

Corporate Guide did state that a S-K regional division "coordinates intelligence, counterintelligence, and military operations within its region, often in tandem with a local Saeder-Krupp Prime office." The use of the word "often" would imply ot always and thus that regional division also have their own assets to perform those functions.
Then it described S-K Prime as "Funded by a very generous black budget", it "works like a global military intelligence agency" and whose "purview also includes internal security." While it "takes command of troublesome subsidiaries when necessary", I guess the rest of the description may have suggested to some that "when necessary" meant something quite different from a failure to meet quarterly revenue forecasts as it was in Corporate Download. Market Panic completely dropped that part. In the meantime, Spy Games may also have brought confusion by listing SK-K Prime as an intelligence agency.

For clarity, I suppose you referred here to Corporate Guide (who was translated in German under the title Konzerndossier).

Ah. Yes, right. My bad. I only own German books and mis-retranslated.

Well, my main source was Corp Guide and the S-K description in the German-only "Rhine-Ruhr-Megaplex" sourcebook, where S-K Prime is mainly described as intelligence service. This was further amplified by the description of the Innenrevision (Internal Affairs Office) first in the German addon to Stolen Souls (which was then partly translated for one of the adventures in Bloody Business), which said that Prime was S-K's black CIA, while the Innenrevision was its black FBI.

I try to ignore Corporate Shadowfiles, except it's unavoidable.

Probably because he's unaware that it exists. We know from Street Legends that Lofwyr has no knowledge skill about SK (while he has about all the other AAA), which also explains the constant restructuring.

isn't the US errata guy a freelancer volunteering their unpaid time?

seems a bit rude to dump that on them.

plus, i think we're still waiting on the management to actually incorporate errata into their books after someone points out where it's needed. so even if it gets done, it might not get into the books, based on past records.

edit:



wouldn't it be funny if all the restructuring was actually the result of lofwyr getting people's jobs wrong and everyone being too afraid to tell him he just called the security chief the VP of finance?

You know, I could almost see this being a thing with dragons (at a less exaggerated level). Sure, they have amazing memories and all, but humans are so numerous, die off so often, and often are of so little consequence that I could imagine them occasionally losing track of exactly who is who or who does what.

Master, the VP you are chewing on is supposed to be in a meeting right now.

*gulp* VP?? Again!?