May we chant his chants and sing his songs as our power grows.

Long live the SAIM!

Edit: Ugh, title gore: Should read 10:32 AM PST. Any mod want to help me out?

And thanks to Daniel Howling Coyote, global mana levels rise faster than normal for the next sixty years at least.

And probably would be 10:32 A.M. PDT, since Standard time doesn't start for at a month and a half yet (based on when the material was first written).

Yes, thanks to all that indiscriminate blood magic, the Horrors nearly managed to invade the Sixth World millennia ahead of schedule. Nice Job Breaking It, "Heroes."

And here too: On reddit my corresponding Sixth World News entry from a very unlucky pundit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments...ligions_on_the/

I think it might have become murkier recently but originally the world mana level didn't rise faster (at least not because of the Ghost Dance). The Ghost Dance manaspike was a local phenomenon.

... all except, where's my jetpack? I thought where we're going, we don't need roads‽

Not all explosions take place in a matter of seconds. Some take so much longer and/or are so much more widespread that our own perceptions cannot register them until well after the fact. From Forbidden Arcana, page 123:

"The world was not meant to Awaken quite so suddenly. As was observed earlier, blood magic has a particular utility in that it can generate mana spikes in locations. The Great Ghost Dance represents the same principle on a world-shifting level. Such trauma was akin to a shot of stims into a sleeping person. They awaken, disoriented, conscious but raw and confused. So it is with this Awakening. It may be some time, if ever, before the world has its chance to regain its clarity and perspective. Already much of what was seems irretrievably lost."
> Wordsmyth

"You’ve got to wonder if the manasphere has somehow been permanently colored by that. Like, if the whole Awakened world, being jump-started by blood magic, somehow aspected the world to be more conducive to blood magic. Or even just gave us all an unconscious inclination toward violence and pain."
> Ethernaut

"Wait, you’re suggesting that if the Great Ghost Dance hadn’t happened, not only would magic and other Awakened stuff have taken longer to show up, but we’d all be less violent, and the world would be a nicer place? C’mon."
> Jimmy No

"All places, all things in this world, bear the echo of that which touches them. The Dance was a scream to the heavens. Its echo rings still."
> Man-of-Many-Names

Forbidden Arcana is exactly were I suspected murkiness. Though I would say, the only person suggesting cycle acceleration is Jimmy No in asking for clarification. And of course the way he phrases it doesn't make sense. 2017 was six years into the Sixth World. There are instances of people using magic before the Great Ghost Dance. It didn't cause Daniel Howling Coyote to be able to use magic from "day one".

It's also interesting that Wordsmyth uses the analogy of "shot of stims into a sleeping person" because it reminds me of Ehran's text in Year of the Comet (p.26). Back then Ehran compared the Awakening to the literal awakening of a person. Events like the Goblinization or SURGE ("Awakened stuff" I guess) are like rousing or yawning, just a natural part of the process of awakening, according to what he wrote. Of course it is possible that this is a case of public versus private opinion, but I think there is very little suggestion of the Awakening being irregular before Forbidden Arcana. And let's not forget, this is probably the first Awakening Wordsmyth witnessed.

I always saw the GGD manaspike as both a local and global phenomenon as the mana spike is still mostly concentrated locally, but that it also diffused itself into the manasphere for a global effect. We've got plenty of canon examples where big players are shocked at how quickly the lesser races are figuring out and performing higher magics. But, in Harlequin's back he still had to travel to the site for the magic he wanted to pull off.

Little of column a little of column b.

Spikes tend to be highest at their center, or deepest, depending on your point of view. Bet Elijah was surprised at how deep that fovae went. Certainly freaked Ehran & Harliquen out when they found out.

Are there really a lot of examples? I remember two instances: the Ghost Dancers and Aztlan/Aztechnology.

In case of the former they likely got help. (Thais being a candidate.) Of course that was immediately the question for the immortals: 'who taught them' instead of 'how did they figure it out'? And the latter was supported by Oscuro and potentially a corrupted dragon. I don't know that there is an actual example of magical practices showing up early because of a higher mana level. I would also say, Harlequin's Back and later the Dragon Heart trilogy is explicit in that without the local effect of the Ghost Dance mana spike you would have a normal mana level.

Anyway, there was always a tension with the idea of a mana peak 2600 years in future once Earthdawn was introduced as a reference for how magic at that peak level would look like. So if you have insect spirits in Shadowrun and you know they are not supposed to show up for a thousand years inevitably it will feel like cycle acceleration though as far as I can tell a normal cycle was claimed.

There's also setting off multiple volcanoes in populated areas, and the stream of refugees created by a comparatively small group claiming about half of the land of two large industrialized nations. I like real, actual Native Americans, but the ones in Shadowrun are every bit as monstrous as the megacorps. It was grating to me how early Shadowrun portrayed them as the "good guys".

Well, Canada mostly lost a bunch of empty countryside

I know, nothing involving demographics and the NAN makes sense if you think about it too hard...

Well, if you look at a map of US population density, the NAN also got the least densely populated area. After all California, the greater Seattle area, Denver and Salt Lake City are all excluded. In addition they created Anglo reservations.

True, but it's even more extreme on the Canadian side...even if the Algonkian-Manitou Council had not thrown out a single person, they'd be far short of the 5 million supposedly living there.

Remember, the SR timeline's world is supposed to be more densely populated than the real world at that time, too.

And a lot more spread out after the two VITAS plagues wiped out some 35% of the global population.

That's mutually exclusive, isn't it? But why would the Shadowrun world of 2017 that has experienced a catastrophic population collapse through the VITAS pandemic be more densely populated? And that was only one out of several cataclysmic events.

You have to remember that they came out of concentration camps and the volcanoes were set off to stop a US military operation aimed at exterminating all Native American tribes. The eruption occurred two minutes after the operation had started. Throughout 2017 the NAN forces had tried to prevent but ultimately only delayed preparations for the campaign.

Relocation to cities for better prospects, for one (it's happened in history, so why not again?). It has also been stated in numerous books that there are a lot of ghost towns across N.America. It's also possible that VITAS simply wiped out a lot of little out of the way settlements (like those that barely rate 300 people, where you can watch your dog run away from home for 3 days, etc.) if the quality of medical care wasn't high enough or close enough to begin (like having to go 100km just to have your teeth looked at).

And then there's the NAN takeover. How many Anglos would have moved into the Seattle Metroplex (or Denver, L.A., N.Y.C., etc.) over relocation to a reservation? Now the Seattle Metropolitan area may have about 3.8 million people compared to the roughly 3 million in Seattle 2072, but there's a drop in land area from just over 15,000 square kilometers down to 4,000. That roughly triples the population density.

Well, looking at the world it's the same area less people live there, so population density has dropped. Let's say the USA has lost 10% of its population to VITAS, unless it has afterwards taken in a number greater than that in refugees the country is less densely populated.

If we are talking about the density in urban areas I just don't think that the world of Shadowrun by 2017 has diverged from our world so much, that it overcompensates for the population loss. Rural flight is an ongoing phenomenon for the last 200 years. The Sixth World probably no longer has climate change as a driver but it has awakened nature encroaching on settled land. The trend of urbanisation is the same, only they have lost a quarter of the world population.

Anyway it could well be that VITAS "bottomed out" some of the smaller communities in the US. That just means the countryside they will soon cede to the NAN is even emptier.

Reading the last few postings, I have a sudden idea about adventures in midwestern ghost towns. Scavenging gangs roaming through empty streets, Mad Max like plains races and so on.

You are a romantic.

Don't say it out loud, man! It's supposed to be a secret.
It may also have to do with the fact that I'm re-reading the Dark Tower cycle right now

Even if they just suffer the average casualty rate, small towns would be hit harder...the less people there are, the more people will not see a perspective there, rinse, repeat. Refugees also tend to move to the larger cities (and I'm not seeing the US/UCAS government being able of running a resettlement programme).


@Banockburn: IIRC YotC had a story set in an abandoned town in the boondocks...

That may very well be.
I just had the realization that so far I've mostly used extremes: total urban setting, or remote / exotic locales, often in total wilderness.

I think this idea needs to simmer a bit.

Back to the Ghost Dance now!

OK, let's talk a bit about the technicalities: What was the Ghost Dance actually? We know that the SAIM did a lot of things, from controlling the weather to volcano erruptions. So was the Ghost Dance actually a series of rituals, one dance for tornados here and then with a bit more booty shaking for precision lightning strikes there? Or did the dance just accumulate power which SAIM shamans could tap into if they needed extra firepower? And how did the SAIM/NAN have the power to blow up volcanoes and control the weather well before the GGD started?


Redondo Peak in New Mexico erupted and buried Los Alamos. Almost immediately afterward, Howling Coyote appeared in a vidcast from a nearby Zuñi reservation and claimed credit for “invoking our Mother Earth to punish the children who forsook Her.”
Within an hour of the broadcast, the Sixth Air Cavalry Battalion took off from Fort Hood, Texas, only to be destroyed by sudden, violent tornadoes. This incident marked the official beginning of the NAN guerrilla war.

I would say both. You have the ghost dance as a form of ritual magic. The Great Ghost Dance was one, likely long-lasting, instance of the ritual in 2017, which produced the eruption cluster. Redondo Peak was probably a smaller ghost dance.

Shadows of North America, p. 86:

The Great Ghost Dance was performed by ghost dancers accross the country. Though there was a center, the site of the Great Ghost Dance somewhere in the desert, visited in Harlequin's Back. And the dancers were not just shamans I think:

Native American Nations Vol. I, p. 74:

Target: UCAS, p. 37:

It was probably an ongoing process gathering strength with ghost dancers dropping in and out over the course of a few months. The Great Ghost Dance also allowed for the control over the weather, that the NAN had in 2017:

Harlequin's Back, p. 9:

Well, it's in the name, really, IMO.

They used sacrificial blood magic to literally invoke the fury of the earth and sky. Or rather, bargain with powerful, likely free (fire or earth) spirits living in the volcanoes, and storm spirits controlling the weather. I always interpreted this as the main way the magical power was used, but of course, it's also possible that some was diverted for other magical purposes.

My problem is that IMO "control all weather over North America" sounds far too broad to be covered by a single ritual. Hence I was tossing around possible alternatives which still fit (most of) the established canon:
1.) The GGD actually was a number of rituals. One for the Redondo Peak eruption, another one for the tornadoes that took out the Air Cav after DHC's broadcast, one for flooding some supply base in the middle of nowhere...
2.) The GGD was a single ritual, but that ritual only served as a power source which shamans then tapped into for blowing up mountains or blowing away helicopters

And in either case, I agree it seems unlikely that the dancers would have all been shamans. Being drained/sacrificed in a ritual does not require magical skill.

I don't think it's a matter of or. I think it is either. A single ritual with a bunch of "lower-tier" rituals, all feeding the same purpose. See the description of the Ghost Dance in that third Sam Verner book, where people all over the world take part in it in some way, but there's also a central ritual coordinating it all.



No, that's not required. But from descriptions in fluff as well as actual rules, magical blood is a LOT more potent.

I think that belief (even if unawakened) played just as much a part in the Ritual...

I don't think using a believer ever granted a bonus to blood magic...on the other hand, a nonbeliever who is kicking and biting at his captors might make the ritual a bit more difficult

So...I give you some passages to consider from Harlequins Back (pardon the text insert, the OCR is not great, and I'm not retyping it all at 1am):

HB:10 The chasm represents the gulf In the metaplanes between our world and the world of the creatures. The outcropping Is the spike of magic created by the Great Ghost Dance, and Ihe bridge Is Ihe journey that the creatures are undertakIng to reach Ihe Slxlh World.


HB:19 Magic leaves an imprint wherever you work It: he says. Usually Ifs fairly Insignificant and produces no lasting change. But when you work magic on the scale of what was performed its a different tale entirely. Lifes energies empower magic. and when life Is expended In that effort. the result Can be Staggering. And It leaves a permanent Impression on the area.

HB 21: The Dance was effectively ·blood magic·-people died willingly to fuel the magic. and the echoes from that sacrifice can still be felt.

Just my 2¥

What are your two nuyen, though? Not sure what you're getting at with the quotes.

Well, the war is officially over: https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments..._denver_signed/

Would consider the events of the mission pack "Ripping Reality" would be a major factor. I mean, seriously, Ghostwalker tells the other nations to get the frag out of the Zone, that it's His territory and not theirs.

Of course, there's still an alternative outcome...

I think it's fair to assume that a lot of migration/displacement occurred without regard to the US/Canadian border. The (IMO) more better statistic would therefore be 28,8 million displaced people in total, out of a total population of 282 million. Which sounds like a lot, but ~10% displaced population actually isn't that much when you compare it to Europe after WWII.

But one question, what do you mean by "Aztlan became part of the NAN according to some sources"? Are there sources which contradict that, or is it just that there are few sources for Aztlan's NAN membership?

Originally Mexico was on the other side in the negotiations. That's in Second Edition and the NAN books for example. After that NAN membership for Aztlan was introduced and now that I had another look the fact is repeated in many sources. So I can actually only point to the Sixth World Almanac as a newer source, that does not mention it (though they still have Aztlan signing the Treaty).