long-time lurker, first time poster, etc.

preparing to GM a 2E SR campaign (for various and sundry reasons, not making the transition to latter editions or adopting some of the cannon that has come post-2E, such as Dunkelzhan dying or the Corporate Court existing, but want to at least use cannon as my point of departure), campaign will be set in late 2056, so taking a look at what the cannon says about the election of 2056 (e.g. the wikia page, plus bought a copy of "Dunkelzhan for President" (Dfp) which gets into the 2057 election) and judging how to incorporate it into my campaign... my understanding is:

1) in 2048, the Democrats ran Alan Adams, with a Technocratic running mate, Thomas Steele and that ticket won

2) President Adams died, right after being re-elected in 2052, reportedly of a heart-attack (though this being Shadowrun, magic or nanotech could have simulated the effects of a heart attack? there's shadowtalk to this effect in DfP), vice president Thomas Steele becomes President, Secretary of State James Booth (also a Technocrat) becomes the new veep

3) in June of 2056, the UCAS Congress formally recognizes the great dragon Dunkelzahn as a legal citizen, boosting the Technocrats to the top of the polls (e.g. pandering to the Awakened vote, and people who thought adding a great dragon to the tax base would be great for UCAS)

4) November 2056, Thomas Steele and James Booth apparently win "the most boring election of the 21st century"

5) it is exposed that the matrix-based election was rigged, Republican Speaker of the House Betty Jo Prichards becomes the interim President (and first female president of UCAS)

6) a special election is held in 2057, with the lineup being:
Dunkelzahn and Kyle Haeffner, Independent: "A New Golden Age"
Arthur Vogel and Gary Gray for the Democratic Party: "Save the Earth" (and judging from DfP, Vogel has an eco-terrorist past?)
Dr Rozilyn Hernandez and Ramsay McMulkin for the New Century Party: "Our Magical Futures" (a splinter from the Technocratic Party)
James Booth and Brandon Ekimasu for the Technocratic Party: "The Status Quo" (impeached vice president trying to make a comeback)
General Franklin Yeats and Anne Penchyk for the Republican Party: "Rebuild America" (hawkish survivor of Bug City who seems like he'd start a war with NAN)
Kenneth Brackhaven and William Ager for the Archconservative Party: "A holy War for the Soul of the Nation" (thinly disguised front for Humanis)

what I have not found in all my digging is:

A) was Alan Adams actually assassinated? I'm assuming they deliberately left it as vague? thought naming the new vice president who benefited from Adam's death with the same surname as Lincoln's assassin certainly seems like a deliberately heavy-handed hint...

B) who rigged the 2056 election? presumably the technocratic incumbents or someone associated with them (e.g. megacorp backers), but why? if they were at the top of the polls? or were they rigged too? the only in-cannon reason I could see for them having a tough re-election is the events of Bug City / erection of the Chicago Containment Zone

C) were the Republicans in control of the House prior to the 2056 elections (e.g. at the time my campaign is set, is Betty Jo Prichards already the Speaker?), I'm assuming so, but don't see it explicitly stated, and it's possible the Technocrats won a rigged presidential election at the same time the Republicans took control of the House

D) were Vogel/Gray and Yeats/Penchyk the Democratic and Republican tickets in 2056? or did they run new slates in 2057? I'm assuming the former (not least because it let's me potential adapt material on the 2057 election from DfP into my current campaign)

E) was Brackhaven running as a "fourth party" candidate in 2056 as well, or was his 2057 bid an opportunistic jumping in after the scandal and the annulment of the 2056 election?


in terms of my upcoming campaign, due to events in my previous campaigns, I'm comfortable saying Steele's plans to give Dunkelzhan citizenship were derailed and DOA with Congress (like two or three big earth-shaking PC-involved non-canonical events, at least one of which would have resulted in Congressional hearings)... and that Steele-Booth are not doing as well in the polls... so if they were wanting to rig the elections, there would be a much more obvious disconnect between the polling and the reported election results...

I dd read this with attention and found it very interesting, but I'm not there yet in my readings so I can't actually help.

Looks like Nath is still active here, that sounds like things he'd know.

I'll PM Nath with the URL to this thread, thanks.

Looking over DfP again, and doing some more poking around the 'net, it seems like:

a) Vogel is from a "One World Party" that took over the Democratic nomination in 2057, meaning you had someone else as the Democratic nominee in 2056 (and by implication a different GOP nominee as well, Yeats seems like way too colorful a character to fit with the whole "most boring election of the 21st century" tag they put on the 2056 elections)

b) Brackhaven jumped into the 2057 race, implying he hadn't run in 2056

c) it says both that Booth was a former johnson in the DeeCee shadows, and that he doesn't know who rigged the 2056 elections and wants to find out

d) one of the runs in DfP, you have the players in VR, planting a listening device on the bottom of veep's limo, an overly-large listening device, looking very much like a "dry run" (the title of the run) for the assassination of The Big D, which, from cannon I know wasn't really an assassination but more of a suicide / apotheosis deal... implying maybe that the whole thing, getting citizenship, a rigged election that is then exposed, running and then being "assassinated" was all part of the dragon's plan? (it seems like the Dragonheart trilogy of novels might explain this, but I can't find a detailed enough synopsis of any of them to know for sure... for all I know, running for president, and winning, when the opportunity arose was just what The Big D was doing before something more important came up... from everything I can find, being president of UCAS for a few hours wasn't integral to the Big D's plan, though the Horrors thinking he was assassinated was a feint that was maybe integral to the plan?)

e) DfP also refers to Just Compensation, a novel set in 2055 that involves UCAS-CAS intrigue and President Steele... as with Dragonheart trilogy, can't find a detailed enough synopsis online... in principle I wouldn't mind tracking down copies and reading it, but don't want to waste time or money if it's not going to give me anything useful


*IF* the Big D was behind it all, then i guess my alt.timeline is: Big D doesn't become a citizen, other powers that be in my campaign are doing stuff to handle the Horrors, with or without the Big D being involved, Steele-Booth lose 2056 election, owing to the cumulative weight of Chicago and stuff that's happened in my previous campaigns, to either the Democrats or the Republican nominee, NPCs I will have to make up who'll have to be (superficially at least) fairly anodyne

if Steele, or some part of the Technocratic Party was part of it, then my alt.timeline is the rigged election still happens, or they realize the polls make the rigging too risky and try to engineer an "October Surprise" on top of the rigging... but something that would plausible shift public back to the incumbents? which is normally the exact opposite of what people mean by an October surprise

if some other external actor (a megacorp invested in the status quo in UCAS? probably Ares?) was behind the rigging in the canonical timeline, then I think the alt.timeline is either October Surprise, or realizing the Technocrats are a sinking ship and pivoting to make some accommodation with one of the other political parties

either way I can still use the cast and some of the ideas in DfP if my campaign ever gets into political stuff (but honestly, right now, I feel like I can't possibly compete with the insanity that is the real-life 2016 POTUS election), but with the personalities involved not being presidential candidates in my alt.timeline, akin to "that State Senator from Illinois who gave a really good speech at the convention before the Senator from Illinois from his party won the Presidential election, what's he up to these days?" it'd be "that hawkish General some people were talking about being a potential GOP nominee, before boring old whatshisname got the nomination and actually won the nomination, what's he up to these days?"

Sorry for the delay. I'm currently on vacation, spending little time on an actual computer. So...

A) Alan Adams death never received more attention beyond Super Tuesday introduction. First because it was introduced to the audience way after it was supposed to take place, four years down the timeline. It wasn't even used as a campaign-trail skeleton's in Booth's closet. I'm not sure it was mentionned in Just Compensation, which makes me postulate it may actually have only been introduced in Super Tuesday as a retcon when someone pointed out 2nd edition corebook mentionned Adams as the 2052 winner.
So, the plot is entirely open to the gamemasters.

B) It is suggested in Dunkelzahn's Secrets: Portfolio of a Dragon that the reason 2056 election rigging and subsequent revelations were tailored was to remove Steele from the White House without having to defeat him in the actual election. Dunkelzahn is one suspect here (considering he received UCAS citizenship in june 56, it would have been hard, though not impossible, to jumpstart a campaign so late into the election year ; also, image-wise, it could have been
perceived negatively to defy the very person who made it possible).
Dirty Tricks has a paragraph or two on how the election rigging scandal erupted. It mentions a decker from Baltimore area hacked into an Ares subsidiary that provided voting software, and how the scandal broke out after he boasted about it on a decker board.
I'm remember reading somewhere the '56 election rigging described as a plot by the New Revolution (an organization introduced in SR much later in Threats 2 to propel general Yeats to the White House, which was foiled by Dunkelzahn candidacy and Yeats assassination. But I'm totally unable at the moment to remember where I had read that, which could be really anywhere, including a totally unofficial non-canon forum post by someone who never have been even remotely involved in the writing of a sourcebook.
As far as conspiracy theories can go, powerful people could find it handy to "rig" every election for all the major candidates at once, letting the result go according to polls, and keep the evidence if there was an imperious need to remove the incumbent in the four next years.

C) According to The Neo-Anarchist Guide to North America, ever since the Technocratic Party entered the political stage, political alliances between parties have been a requirement. That is basically to say the Republicans and the Democrats only get to rule when they receive support from the megacorporate-backed Technocrats. Since Steele and Booth won as a pure Technocrat ticket, outside of the Democrat-Technocrat alliance of 2052, they may have brokered a late deal (possibly after the election) with the Republicans. Or the Republican may have come on top simply because the Democrats and Technocrats were divided.
If US bipartisan politics is any indication for the UCAS, it can also happen that the party who won presidency does not win the House, like it did in 2012.
For the 2054-2056 term, I guess it's completely open considering how midterm elections can go.

D/E) No clear indication. Most sources hint at the '57 candidates coming out for the special election. It makes sense if you consider US political tradition rarely allowed defeated candidates to return for a second attempt - even though the election happened to be rigged, Steele nonetheless ran ahead in opinion polls for months, which may brings the other parties to try something else in '57.

Thanks for taking time out of your vacation!

A) that being the case, I'll mull it over, but at the very least I'll have the "it was a secret assassination by the Technocrats" be a conspiracy theory that still has currency among the most partisan Democrats in 2056... the best I can come up with as a counter-theory is partisan Technocrats saying either it was a natural death, stress from the campaign, or... since Alan Adams is described as being a CEO of an Illinois investment firm, Colbert Group, he was killed by his wife or someone who stood to benefit from the CG coming out of the blind trust it would legally have to placed under when he was in office... at the very least I'm thinking the widowed former First Lady (Secret Service Code Name, "Abigail", obviously), should be a power broker in the Democratic party

B) if I don't want to kill off Dunkelzahn in my campaign, is Portfolio of a Dragon worth getting? snagged a copy of Dirty Tricks today, in addition to what you describe, it seems to paint Steele as knowing in advance the election was rigged (or possibly, just masterfully framed, using his own supreme confidence that he'd win and the wording he thus uses against him?), took a fresh look at my copy of Threats 2 and the chapter on New Revolution... yep... it's shadowtalkers only, but the argument is the Technocrats didn't need to rig the election, they were so far ahead in the polls (not true in my alternate history, given the lack of The Big D getting citizenship and other shit that has gone down in early-to-mid-2056), so it could be NR which did the rigging... but that NR didn't have the mojo to assassinate a dragon... it doesn't explicitly suggest it was to benefit Yeats, in fact it says an Archoconservative Senator is at the top echelons of NR, but Yeats would seem to be the guy most in synch with NR's agenda... will have to take a closer look at the run in DfP where Yeats gets assassinated

C) that makes sense given the real-life political science (Duverger's Law, a two party system is the stable state in a system with first past the post voting)

D/E) I'd argue that isn't such an iron-clad tradition, Dole was Ford's running mate in 1976 and lost before being the GOP nominee in 1996, Mondale lost alongside Carter in 1980 before being the Democratic nominee in 1984, Nixon made a comeback to be the GOP nominee again in 1968 after losing in 1960, the Democrats ran Adlai Stevenson twice in a row, before that the GOP ran Thomas Dewey twice in a row, and further back than that, the Democrats ran William Jennings Byran three times... and in the context of a do-over election where the nominee was cheated out of a victory, it makes even less sense not to re-run the guy who has the national campaign already in place... but a new slate for the Dems, GOP and the Archoconservatives does seem to be what the canonical material suggests

My copy is lost somewhere in the basement, but IIRC the important bit was like chapter 1 of first book:

1. A shadowrunner is in Atzlan doing a job for big D. (I think this guy turns out to be the first 6th world drake) He sees and confirms that Azzies have and are using some artifact (bloodstone, maybe the dragon heart? dunno), I think he sees them using it for blood magic. He calls Dunkelzahn's personal phone line.
2. Dunk is at the post-election win party. He gets this call, it lasts 30 seconds or less. Long enough to say 'they have it' or something similar. He immediately leaves the party and goes for a ride in the limo.
3. Boom. (evidence seems to imply a magic explosion from inside the limo, not a bomb underneath)

D's apparent motivation: magic spikes (ghost dance being the biggest example) draws the far part of the astral closer. Horrors are on the far side building a bridge. Mr Darke is on this side purposely building a bridge to the horrors with blood magic. Using the dragonheart, the ex-D spirit can smooth out the spikes/bridges and slow down the Horrors.

I saw no evidence that any of this was related to the election. If you want D alive, several choices. KILL HARLEQUIN, or some other immortal elf volunteers. Another dragon steps up. Some normal person somehow pulls this off. And I think Secrets is useful if you want ideas for lots of story hooks. Instead of in a will... say D is auctioning off the 'previously unknown DaVinci', or big D doesn't have the coins of luck, and your shadowrunners steal it from whoever.

yeah, this is more or less what I am doing, have a non-canonical IE deeply involved in my alternate timeline for why the Big D doesn't have to pull the Dragonheart maneuver, and an unrelated reason why the Big D wasn't able to secure UCAS citizenship in 2056 (tied to political problems my previous campaign inadvertently created for the Steele administration)

I kind of see him as a cross between Jon Stewart and Michael Bloomberg in our current political situation... Bloomberg is richer than anyone who have ever run for President, just like a dragon with a hoard, and twice now he's sat down, hired analysts and crunched the numbers and decided he can't win as an independent, maybe next time... so in my alt.timeline, the Big D isn't rigging 2056 to cause the 2057 election, but maybe hoping to try again in 2060... he's a dragon, it's not like four more years will kill him... and Jon Stewart, because unlike Bloomberg, the Big D has a late night tv show with a fan base who'd really want him for President...

and agreed, reading Secrets now, so many good plot hooks even if you aren't using the "the Big D is dead and his will has upended everything" premise

Honestly, this is the route I'd go. Kill Harlequin. He's emo enough that being an undead spirit guardian against the Horrors is right up his alley, and it frees you up to use Big D to push for actual changes in the UCAS. In fact, that's actually an alternate timeline I'd love to play in, one where most of the 2060's BS is tempered by having to deal with Dunkelzahn still alive and well and holding all the strings he's built up over the years.

Yah. Dunkelzahn goes public(-er) by starting and running the Draco Foundation. The first thing they do is buy the rights to Jiffy-Pop. Oh, and the Atzlan sourcebook says it was a corrupted Locus

Wow, no love for Harlequin in this thread...

Don't think I'd want to have the Draco Foundation come into existence in my Dunkelzhan Lives!!! alt.timeline, but the shadowy network described in Portfolio is definitely cool to run with

And what I have for "how the horrors are kept at bay without the Big D doing the Dragonheart thing" involved the Azzies already (quite by accident, my last campaign was 10 years ago, before you had things like wikia where you could open the fire hose and consume all this cannon... and I was running the sequel of a friend's campaign, that was a sequel of another friend's campaign, that was in some sense a sequel to that other friend's brother's campaign when they were in high school... so... lots of divergent plot points inherited from that, including cool stuff with Fuchi that I don't want to go away, plus 90+ runs that I've done in 4 separate campaigns, to say nothing of the former players in those campaigns who went ahead and ran their own campaigns as well)

was already tempted by the Aztlan sourcebook, now it's at the top of my to get list

Most Presidents found libraries when they retire. Dunkelzahn founding the Draco Foundation, taking a seat on the board, and filling it with pretty much the same people he would otherwise will it to would be an excellent legacy. Plus, it effectively excises some plot elements like everything resulting from Ghostwalker.

There are two conflicting theories about the death of Dunkelzahn.

The first one was that he took the chance, but nonetheless had contingency plan. He firmly believed his shadow networks would allow him to detect the Aztlaner attempt at locating and unearthing the Locus (a powerful artefact) well in advance so as to counter them.
But when his top agent phone him on Inauguration Day and describe, he has to resort to his ultimate contingency plan, whose planning involved the aforementioned dry-run.

Another theory is that Dunkelzahn knew well in advance a bridge for the Horrors to return would inevitably appear (and possibly that the Aztlaners wouldn't even need the Locus for that) and possibly very soon, say within the four next years. Earthdawn lore has magical patterns for everything that have a name: people, objet, and nations. A head of state could theoretically tap into a nation's magical pattern. That theory gies a reason for Dunkelzahn death to happen just a few hours after his inauguration.

In the end, it's down to performing a magical act to stop an event that almost no one could notice was taking place. It's really just some Aztlan mages unearthing an artefact in Texas (IIRC) and activating it. They could fumble the activation, or have exhausted its mojo, or get bombed in the following minutes, and none of that would happen. Or any powerful character, including Dunkelzahn, could perform a different made-up magic that do not involve a sacrifice.
The whole plot with Dunkelzahn was actually kinda terrible if you consider that it retroactively made the PC efforts in Harlequin's Back completely useless.

If you ask me, the importance of Dunkelzahn's legacy in Fuchi break-up is greatly exaggerated. He did not contribute at all to Villiers plan. The only thing he did was creating a situation that made a Nakatomi-Yamana temporary alliance likely, thus convincing Villiers it may be the time to break apart.