In all seriousness, that's not a bad thought. People keep getting reassigned to some outpost in the boondocks and are never heard of again? They obviously were responsible for the Excalibur thing. Intra-corporate struggle? Fallout from the Excalibur disaster. The thing you hear about Joe from Sales (or maybe it was in accounting, the grapevine is not sure)? You know that Excalibur has placed significant challenges upon us, and outside agents want to use this opportunity to sow fear and uncertainty among us, the Ares family. Stand strong, loyal citizens, as the proud phalanx of Ares did!

[Yes, I'm fully aware that there was no phalanx of Ares, but I guess Ares gives their namesake a better reputation than actual historical cults ]

It's... progressing. Slowly. Quite playable now, but I don't know where they're at on storyline other than being a bit annoyed that the base game's not done and they're already talking paid content pack.

Keep the feedback rolling. Always good to see. (Even when painful.)

I could point out some bugs if you like

You're not disqualified from it y'know. Dig in!

You asked for it

Courting Disaster:
- That AG Chemie got dropped to A-level, even temporary, is bad for several reasons. besides invalidating some German sources, it leaves the question (as the whole AGC stuff happened in German canon before 2074), why AGC was still allowed to be part of the NEEC as a non-extraterritorial corp (the the list in Spy Games, p.93), or what happened to it's seat in the meantime.

Horizon:
- I haven't read all of it, but what I've read was generally ok. I just wondered about the absent of Wind River Corporation (acquired in January 2068, Sixth World Almanac). This is odd, because in the Sioux Nation PDF it is said that "[it's] only a matter of time until they go toe-to-toe with Horizon and Aztechnology on the world food market.", which again is bad, because of... things.

MCT:
- Sikorsky-Bell and Saab are both described as AA's. Unfortunately someone wrote in the CAS chapter in Dirty Tricks, that the CAS don't have any AA's beside Lone Star. As this statement ignores DocWagon, you may say it was bugged in the first place, so you may ignore it. Nonetheless Shadows of Europe clearly states (p. 145), that Saab is not a AA. Thou it would qualify as one, the CC refuses to give it to Saab, because the Scandinavian Union has signed just a modified version of the BRA and want to push them to sign the full treaty.
- Also it is said, that "Sikorsky-Bellalong with their Sikorsky Aircraft and Grumman Aerospace Corporation subsidiaries, [will pull] up to the top of the aircraft production field.". First Grumman is part of Lockheed (Rigger 3, p. 20), and S-B is just a major player in the helicopter market (p.21). As an aerospace company in general they are just #4, after Federated Boeing, Lockheed, Novatech (for whatever reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) and when I get the introduction on page 20 right Saeder-Krupp and Ares are even before F-B (understandable, just count the aerospace companies in S-K's chapter).
- While not fully a bug, MCT bought "Yakashima Africa". Thou removed from the infobox at the beginning, it is still in the text. From my understanding of economics you can not just buy a whole division (which is not the same as a subsidiary, which are some sort of independent entities). And even if it was "exchanged" is it was in the text, it was a bad trade, as Yakashima gave up his whole division, plus two subsidiaries for CodeBlue Biotech, which is described in Corp Guide (p.117) as a "tiny European biotech company". I think someone got fooled. This is particularly bad, because of ... things.

Renraku:
- A nice bug is, that, while Renraku became a world leading food corporation 'over night' and surpassed Aztech in some areas, it is written, that Renraku bought Nestlé, which - again as written in the text - was a part of Aztech in the first place. Nestlé is actually a Z-IC subsidiary since Shadows of Europe (p.29) out-of-game, and in-game since the late '50s or early '60s (Corp Guide, p. 225). This is bad, because of... possible things.
- It is writen, that Renraku is a shareholder of Hyundai. The author just thought about the automobile company, but this Hyundai Motor Company, is a subsidiary of the Hyundai Motor Group, which again is part of the Hyundai Group umbrella. This, again, is bad, because of... things.

It's not uncommon for a corporation to spun off its divisions as subsidiaries. Though they may be wholly-owned subsidiaries headquartered at exactly the same address, inside the same building and using the same cafeteria, whose existence only matter to lawyers, accountants and tax services agents.

Anyway, you can buy whatever is for sale. If Yakashima is willing to sell its Yakashima Africa division, it can create such spin-off subsidiary and transfer all related assets just for the purpose of selling them. It's also pretty common to create a shell company to package assets sale (and avod taxes). If they wanted to, they could have created a spin-off subsidiary to sell all their assets whose current number of employees has a 7 in it and sold it to MCT.
But that also means that if Yakashima is not willing to sell, whether its an internal division, a 100%-owned subsidiary or even a 50,00001%-owned subsidiary, there is no way to buy it (except very specific cases where the management has been careless with debt collateral, stock options or simular instruments).

One of the ongoing problems between teh German team and the US team. A lot of us have *no* *clue* what's going on over there. I've written off ever doing anything S-K related, for instance, as I don't want to step on toes over there. The downgrade probably happened after Spy Games and is part of the current Audit... my guess is that someone on teh Court had a bone to pick with AG, used this to whap them on the nose and cause soem damage, and that the second A will be restored on appeal ... just a way for the big dogs to keep everyone else in line.



That was a huge absence, IMHO. Food is kind of important after all, and Wind River singlehandedly made Horizon the largest agricultural supplier in North America. It's kind of a big deal.



Dirty Tricks was my fault. I fully own that one. (Weirdly, the Atlantis Foundation is also listed as a double-A in other places, and is also based out of Atlanta. It shouldn't be so highly-rated, but, neither here nor there.) ... chalk it up to the chapter narrator having a brainfart.



Renraku's always been a player in the ag game... surprised me when I was doing the reserach too. Back in Corporate Shadowfiles, it was S-K and Yamatetsu (tied at first), MCT, Renraku, and Shiawase (tied at second), and Aztechnology in third (!), above only Ares and Fuchi. in Corporate Download, it was Aztechnology and Shiawase tied at first, then Renraku and Yamatetsu tied at second, with Wuxing and MCT tied at third. Their agricultural strength had just never been well-detailed.
Nestle I'd found as having fallen apart back in 2008 (!) in Corporate Download, but I missed the Shadows of Europe part entirely. We'll have to tie up the Z-IC bit for certain. Drop me a line later for some brainstorming.

And I'll have to dig into the Hyundai Group. I tripped ove rthat with Shonen Jump in Japan, then caught myself and followe dthe trail all the way up to where it belonged, but I missed that for Hyundai. Dangit! Need more webcrawling...

Now this is interesting, because the German authors have the very same complaints.


The perception among many German fans is that the US authors have a bone to pick with the German team and are retaliating in this way. However, it was stated (in Lockdown, I think) that, in-game, the AGC got the downgrade as part of the Audit and to set an example to all the other uppity 2A corps.


However, Hyundai is a chaebol, a form of company roughly comparable to a Japanese keiretsu - a conglomerate of nominally separate companies under a common umbrella name (Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Mitsui, Daewoo, Sumitomo) with interlocking stock ownership and controlled by members of an extended family or clan. Chaebol (or keiretsu) stock is rarely traded on stock markets, but due to their nominally independent nature, the separate divisions of a chaebol or keiretsu could evade US occupation dictates that forbade companies of a certain size or above (conversely, Shadowrun's Japanese megacorps are organized as Zeibatsu, which are actually illegal under the current (in-game, abandoned by the Yamato accords) Japanese constitution). If keiretsu were counted as singular entity, and not each member company separately, Sumitomo would be larger than Wal-Mart in every respect save employee numbers. IRL.

The nature of a keiretsu - a conglomerate of independent companies - however does mean that soem fo theae companies, should thier stock be for sale for any reason, may be bought up by another company while keeping their keiretsu name. This is mostly done to forment alliances between different conglomerates - for instance, the Mitsui bank, despite the name, belongs to Sumitomo - or due to the sellout of part of the conglomerate to an outsider party (I believe this happened to parts of Mitsubishi).

In Shadowrun, this means Hyundai Motors may belong to Renraku, while Hyundai-IBM, the core company, belongs to Eastern Tiger, as canon (more specifically, Corporate Shadowfiles) states.

We really need to make a US-to-Germany channel for discussion. In one of those Things, we'd have to hold it in English, since I don't think anyone on teh US side knows a lick of German. Yes, I know exactly what commentary is now in peoples' heads. Don't get me started on US linguistic programs and expectations. We'll be here for a *while*.

Yes, that seems really, urgently necessary. Most German authors know English at least well enough to communicate, I think.

And don't sweat it. It's just unrealistic to expect anyone to learn German for what's a side job at best, I'm seeing myself just how hard that seems to be working with refugees and American friends who consider emigrating next year way more seriously than I would have expected.

Divisions, subsidiaries, sells:
Well, yes, I know that, but besides that all, I don't see any involving party is whiling to sell, either their share or whole parts of their company to either MCT or Renraku, either because of enmity (the Japanese and Koreans aren't the closest friends on this planet), or for pure economic reason, especially when you just get a tiny European company in exchange.


Could you give me the page number for that? I always searched for the exact reference of Hyundai-IBM... but as I already hinted when I refereed to things, I meant the AA-chapter by me and Michel Witch, which included Yakashima and ETC (where I mentioned Hyundai Group as the second biggest Korean corporation (AA). Hyundai Group, because I couldn't find anything on Hyundai-IBM besides the name, and I guess that this is either just a joint venture or a subsidiary).


There should be a forum post by Michel about that. I'm in completely favor of that, but there have some other things to be done. May find me on Facebook, where we could discuss this.

There should cycle at least two, maybe even three or four corporate index Excel fills around. Some can be found, when you use google, two or three should be somewhere around all the freelancers, already. James Meiers started one, based on the oldest version. Then there seems to be a "2065" version (which also includes the bugs and errors of the original and Meier's version) and I also send around my version (most up-to-date one, with errors corrected and German sources included).

Personally, I wouldn't use Corporate Shadowfiles as source material, unless it's the only one, as it's very old, and mostly out-of-date. Also several things got retconed.

As for Z-IC, it is an old corp, (ingame), thou introduced in the London sourcebook, it was first greatly used in the 3rd edition, while Nestlé was included in a German sourcebook about Switzerland, but was named Nestor (and Nestlé was a subsidiary). With Shadows of Europe the retconed it to be Nestlé again.

For the Renraku situation, I would either use Mondolez or Coca Cola instead.

I'll check, but it'll require using print books, therefore may take some time. My gut says corporate Download and corporate Shadowfiles, but I'll also check Shadows of Asia.

Edit: Nothing on Hyundai-IBM in SoA.


Would you terribly mind giving it to me? For my lists.

The Corporate index just lists Native American Nations 1 as a source for Hyundai-IBM, without a page number. IBM again is mentioned in Neo-Anarchist Guide to North America, while Hyundai Motors emerged first in Rigger 3. In SoA the just talk about Hyundai, so besides guessing the authors just wrinting about the motor company, I interpreted it in that way, that the Shadowtalkers actually talk about the Hyundai Group.


Sorry, but no. Beside it contain some internal stuff it is also still work in progress. But as I said, you can try your luck with Google, but that versions are not error free.

NAN one, huh. Hyundai as a motor company goes back as far as Shadowplay (the novel), which lists the Hyundai docks where the company keeps many, many import cars for sale in the Northwest.

Nothing I found in Corp shadowfiles, but damn it, why isn't there a searchable PDf of that book. :/

Those were the good old days when authors were creating megacorporations by taking the name of an American company and the name of an Asian company and putting them together.

Such entry in the Corporate Index that lacks page number either come from the word document Rob Boyle distributed to freelancers that I used as a starting point for the index, or from books I only had a French version available at the time (with different page numbers that wouldn't be relevant to other people). Considering I never managed to keep the things wholly up to date, I also never took the time to make a second pass to complete the missing data.

I made the mistake not to put a version number in it. However, I only put new a version online when at least one book would have been added in full (which allow to use the booklist for versioning).
The "2065 version" was supposed to some sort of an ultimate version once it became obvious I would never find the time to catch up on 4th edition sourcebooks. It stopped with System Failure and third edition in 2065. I don't see how it could include bugs and errors "of the Meier's version" since it would predate his making of one (which I never saw personally). Unless he was the secret source from which Rob Boyle held the original file.

I'd be interested to know about bugs and errors. Note the index lists what is actually written in the book, even if it makes little sense, unless there was an obvious contradiction to address. HQ mentions was sometimes based on Real Life corporation. All of this, of course, cannot account for books who were published after the index was made.

I meant it that way, that Meier stated his version (AFAIK) on the original one and so took over the bugs, besides there was a newer version (which again had the same bugs).


Some little tweaks here and there, correcting page numbers or corporate status (like the one of Saab, mentioned above), added some missing corporations, removed some that weren't coronations (like "Schreiber, Kimoto, Pünder & Partner Rechtsanwalts- und Steuerberater-GmbH", were you made a subsidiary out of every name ), removed some doubles, corrected some sources, page numbers, etc.

I am actually appalled that you (the greater 'you' as in 'the writing team') don't already have this in a day and age where it takes ten seconds to email someone, and real-time video/voice/text chat is ubiquitous.

They do upstairs, so that the leads can stay in contact and handle big stuff. The Freelancers are just typewriters for hire. That kind of thing is technically above our pay grade. Having access to financials ia *useful* for Engineering, so that you can know what level of pricing your design can handle, but as long as the guys upstairs give you a target, you don't really need to know. Same thing here: We don't *have* to know this, but it'd be handy.

But Engineering in one site needs to be able to communicate with Engineering from the other site.

Germans are in the same boat as the Japanese: We are fully aware that our language is useless on an international level, hence speaking at least some English is practically mandatory

I still wouldn't suggest real-time communications, though. Finding a common time slot across 9 hours of time difference just doesn't work well, trust me.

Language should not be a barrier, as all authors should be able to write and talk at a decent level of english. The problem is to find a suitable platform. And to accomplish that, someone has to do things. But that's to much for a a public discussion.

Indeed. About to go to teh day job, but I'll follow up thsi conversation via channels soon.

See, I just went home. So when you're on a conference in Vegas, the people in Berlin who filed the ticket will have long gone home by the time their issue gets handed through to level 3...

If our supplier project lead, in Bucharest, can conference us (eastern north america) and their head office (California) and manufacturing monitoring office (Taiwan), I'm sure you could all figure it out

But realistically, email, or better yet a mailing list or private forum, would probably be easier the vast majority of the time. But once in a while a few minutes of conversation can avoid days of writing!

I skyped with Michael Witch (Albuquerque?), Scott Schletz and Jason Hardy and i live in Hamburg, Germany. But as oyu said there are plenty of possibilities to communicate.

I suppose at the very least it's the kind of thing the guys responsible for the editing passes before publication should probably twig to, rather than waiting for the fanbase to point it out every time.

I raise to California, Central Europe. and Japan, that's an extra hour spread

It's all a question of the right tool for the right task, sometimes scheduling a call with Toyko is less burdensome than another 200 mails.


To get this a least partially back on topic, how is Ares' bug problem?

Dunno, when we left of, hermit wanted to skip Ares and go on to Aztech.

Anyway, I would appreciate any review or correction of my Saeder-Krupp chapter.

In fact, hermit lied and read through Ares anyway. This running review is brought to you by Havana Club International, S.A.

The Ares chapter gets better, but not much.

I'll start with something nice. On page 48, we get a box of corp-specific lingo. While it is supposed to be military slang but doesn't nearly contain enough acronyms (and bad language hidden behind them) like actual military slang, feeling kinda bowdlerized, I have wanted to see something like this for quite some time now - to breathe some life into the sociolect idea Shadowrun never went anywhere with. I'd really have liked to see this for all megas.

Also, if the authors really want to merge Ares and Horizon, well, why not. It's about time someone consolidated the American corps a bit and got SR a little less American-focused. Maybe give a second chinese company a shot, one that owns a bit of the Coastal Provinces perhaps? There are More people living inside than are outside this circle in Shadowrun, too. How about current 3A megacorps? (hint: 4/10)

Now, for the bad stuff. Apparently, it's actually bugs are behind the Excalibur debacle (what) because one in 10 Ares employees is a bug (what?!), and this made the public go wild about their GMCs and iComs and American Airlines flight tickets (WHAT?! Because one in 10 of their customers also are bugs?!). Really, the author's dedication to sticking with a bad idea is almost commendable. I hear Cunard is looking for Violinists. That may be his kind of job! Whether it's Ares or the general public is "depending on which crackpot conspiracy theorist" we believe (because that's where the real real news are - with truthers conspiracy theorists. I'll refrain from further exploration of this).


Actually, someone just pulled what appears a test run for such an operation in Russia. And why "can't pull it alone" signifies "great dragons", the author never explains. This is an arbitrary example of a massive problem that permeates the entire article: causality between random things is just claimed, and then sentences that read like proof or facts in support are added that are just more random claims, really. The moon is made of cheese because bananas, and Damien Knight is in league with great dragons (plural!) because nobody could have done the Nanosecond buyout alone. Nevermind that he probably could, with the aid of a more advanced version of Corkow (maybe with a more evil name, like CzernoBog?), but hey, not everyone can follow IT security insiders when there're so many crackpot truthers conspiracy theorists to choose your truth from.

But it seems to me the author has no idea how the method of proof by facts works, or just can't be bothered. And the in-world voice - Cosmo is supposed to be a "cynical corp raider/disillusioned anarchist who works as a Johnson and a fixer" - goes on a tangent about HMHVV, Bugs or CFD with literally everybody. The entire article reads like one of those bizarre, self-published books about UFO bioroid sex bot Men in Black written by someone whose mental issues are so painfully obvious it hurts to read.

That is not how you should write a text that contains worthwhile information, even in and about a fictional world.

Ah crap, bottle's empty. Next review tomorrow soon whenever.

The hermit returns, wooohoo! And only slightly drunk! This running review is brought to you by Havana Club International, S.A.

Now, for Aztechnology. It seems Cosmo has been cured of his (her?) momentary madness during the Ares chapter and is more or less back to cynical corporate raider Johnson.

There are some issues here, initially. Issues that probably are not only the author's fault. The chief issue is: What became of Médicarro? ChromeFlesh was all about how Aztech launched a DocWagon-like service called QuetzalCare. Now, Aztlan has had a joint-venture DocWagon-like service (with DocWagon) ever since the Aztlan book. Has this cooperation been severed and MédiCarro's assets been consolidated into QuetzalCare? That was my assumption. Then why is Médicarro listed as one of Aztechnology's chief divisions? Why does MédiCarro get a long-ish writeup in Aztech North America? I assume the author drew mostly on the Corp Dossier book and little to no coordination happened between them and the ChromeFlesh author responsible for the relevant bits of ChromeFlesh, but ... well, could an author say something about this? Is QuetzalCare MédiCarro's street-level new name, or is it a different services provider under the same corporate umbrella?

The first paragraphs are nicely written. Also, nice pokes towards Silicon Valley culture. Some typos (Dasault [sic]) but not many. And Cosmo doesn't remind me of self-published rants of people who need professional help.

The chapter offers a lot of value to flesh out a campaign, from the Shack's P2.1 account and the things it tweets (shouldn't that be 'beep'?), like the 2 am Burrito Koan, they offer examples of how Aztechnology PR works as opposed to Horizons, and they make the notion that Aztechnology, the designated evil corporation, is actually pretty popular. And why do they love the big A? A combination of a good media strategy and diversifying their spider's web of subsidiaries' media strategies, rather than banking on their central brand, solid PR damage control, and making good quality products. Hey, that explanation works!

The history part seems accurate for the most part (I really should reread the Aztechnology book), the focus on VITAS is nice, since VITAS is a pitoval, cataclysmic event in the Shadowrun timeline that usually is just totally neglected, and gives a good, concise, rundown of how David, Medellin and Massaya, three Mesoamerican drug gangs, became a Megacorp. The events of stormfront are surprisingly well handled, all things considered, and the Fanboy Much? Corps is not mentioned even once (+1).

The people section is where the first major mistake is to be found, though: So Dzitbalchén is the dragon owning Motecuhzoma, head of Aztech magic R&D? Really? After having been executed for murder by Aztlan/Aztech and dissected, the recording of which was a hit simsense in 2073? really? Again, a fluff bible seems desperately in order. Still, it updates well on other board members (J.J. Harvn jr!), and offers Aztech's very own version of Hans Brackhaus, which is actually really nice and again a detail helpful for GMs to flesh out their games. However, on the topic of J.J. Harvin, will we ever learn what became of Gunderson's deep-sea arcology, the one with the highly addictive and toxic undersea tobacco?

The chapter rounds out with information on what running for and Aztech is like. Ares did that too, but it's done better here, I feel, instead of "they really like the military, like, a lot, so you gotta balance between pleasing Sgt. Johnson and how you like to do jobs", you get how Aztech jobs tend to naturally be dirtier than other corps' jobs, and how running against the big A is like a box of chocolates.

All in all, nice chapter with a few flaws, the biggest being part of a larger problem the author is probably not him/herself to blame.

Hey, that was only one Mojito, and that mainly because this Moroccan spearmint is so damn good!

Jebus Fraggin' Crabst.

Did they even do the math on how may fragging bug spirits that is? All this with nary a one being caught out, with Bug City a thing that happened and was highly publicized?

This approaches 'Sailing Out Of Bogota' on the 'Did they even say this out loud to see if it sounded plausible' scale.

Yes, though the chapter is such an incoherent rant, it's hard to take it serious (and I suppose Cosmo's a headcase).

From the Evo chapter:
Cue Alanis Morissette ... Seriously, lay off Plan 9 for once and look at the Ares chapter! As a quick fix, you could just re-attribute the chapter to Plan 9 as an in-game author, actually. That'd explain a LOT.

In better news, the following chapters are much more fun to read and offer a lot more useful material.

Thanks for your reviews, very informative and well written.

On the plus side, rumour has it 6th edition will have Bug as a Player Option when you get an Ares Corp SIN.

Screw bugs !
Those monsters from Harlequin's back are the rage now among th cool kids or so I heard !

So the Ares bug thing is public knowledge now?

Depending on which crackpot you ask?

Crackpot rumors about bug invasion hurting Ares sounds believable, but how does the Excalibur project factor in, then?

By the power of "rampant acceptance of coincidentally connected evidence".

if you go with a bit of Plan 9 thinking, you could see it as the bugs trying to integrate into their various departments with only a partial understanding of what they are doing.

Kind of like the 1989 movie 'The Experts' where the Russians have created a town simulating America so as to better train their spies, but in their case they realize they are a bit out of touch basically living like the 50's and bring in Travolta & Arye Gross characters as 'experts' to bring them up to date.

In our situation, the bugs are operating on half gained knowledge from their merging while not necessarily getting the full life experience to integrate it all.
So they are making a lot of rookie level mistakes and probably are just as confused by the results as we are.

Hmmm..... a run where the bugs hire the Runners to kidnap them some experts of their own to show them what they need to be doing....

Isn't it more or less common knowledge that Dunkelzahn bankrolled the Nanosecond Buyout after dropping this unsubtle hint in his will?

But drunken reviews, referring to yourself in the third person? Market Panic gets to you, man.

Sure, that's mythos knowledge (he only ever was one great dragon, not more, which is why I signified the plural). I doubt it's common enough knowledge, especially when the CFD AI who used Cosmo's body to write it doesn't seem to know it was Dunkelzahn. But it was only an arbitrary example of the kind of broken reasoning the author used all the time, anyway.


More like the Ares chapter. The rest (I'm through Evo and into Horizon now) seems actually pretty good. It's quite the roller coaster ride.


The greatest problem I have with the Ares storyline is the reaction from customers. Bonkers business decisions, like a super expensive advertisement campaign for a product that is illegal virtually everywhere aside, and that product being utter crap aside, why would that make someone spontaneously torch their car, stomp their commlink and quit their bank account? It's Ares Arms gone mad, maybe, but why distrust an entire incredibly wide spread company, over a product most of their customers couldn't care less about? Or did you burn your lawn mower over the G36 debacle (let's leave the viability of the G36 aside)?

Yeah, the consumer reaction was pretty weird.


*pushes the remains of his still smouldering lawn mower under the car*
Ummm.. maybe?

It was also discussed openly in Corporate Download. But maybe the info was eaten by Jormungand.

Or Dev//grrl's teacher confiscated that comment.

Or the writer, as distressingly usual, just doensn't know the fluff.

I've been thinking about the Ares chapter, and I might have misjudged the author. All this rests on one premise: The chapter was intended as Plan 9's POV.

If that was the intent, well executed - the chapter captures the rambling, incoherent, at the same time paranoid (don't trust the news!) and obedient (ufologists say it was aliens, what else could it be?!) madness of conspiracy nuts far better than the actual Plan 9 narrative in the Evo chapter. And, in that case, sorry for the overly harsh review. Maybe take it as that your writeup is a bit too good and works too well.

Of course, then that would beg the questuion why this obviously Plan 9 POV writeup wasn't assigned to Plan 9, but to Cosmo, and why there never was a "the real deal on Ares" add-on because one cannot trust "Plan 9's (...) rampant acceptance of coincidentally connected evidence"- and why this was done to the surprisingly sane Evo chapter. Miscommunication?