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Kesendeja
It's come up in a game I'm running and I need to know where the Great Ghost Dance was performed. Specifically I need the country its in after the formation of the NAN.

A character has shown an interest in examining the astral nature of the site.

Anything you can tell me about this location is appreciated.
hermit
The Location is described both in Secrets of Power 3: Find your own Truth and Harlequin's Back, but it's kind of inconclusive as to precisely where except "southern Midwest, someplace like Monument Valley maybe", if I remember correctly.
Kesendeja
That actually helps, Thanks.

Asking for creative help now. How would you all run it?

What would you recommend for what they find at the actual site?
Would it be guarded, or have become a place of pilgrimage for native mages. What's the background count like in the 2060's.
hermit
To mundane eyes, the site is unremarkable, a rocky plateau between higher rocky formations, with some dry shrubs and weeds and a whole lot of dust. It looks like just another bit of no-man's badlands. Maybe it gives off a bad air for mundanes, a kind of "got a bad feeling about this place" vibe.

Astrally, it is a warp. It is a hellgate-in-waiting. It is a scabbed wound in reality that refuses to heal properly. Magicans should feel this, even if not astrally projecting or using astral sense. It is a site where great power was wrought and where a sense of foreboding and bad things to happen taints the air. As harlequin says, "I can almost taste the ritual". Every Awakened feels somewhat sick and elated at the same tme, in the presence of something powerful and dreadful at the same time.

No critters for miles around this place, even mundane animals avoid it. There are, upon close examinations, a bit off-site, there are mostly-overgrown remains of people. lots of people. bones half-buried in durt, obviously cracked and gnawed open by coyotes and whatnot, together with scrsaps of 2010s clothes and some old indian-esque jewelry. those were the remains of the dancers who sacrificed themselves, who were laid out and left for the animals to reclaim (traditional Lakota air burial, mostly because the remaining dancers wanted to move fast).

It would be guarded by NAN Truth Talkers (elite shamans) and various NAN states' special forces (Salish Rangers, Sioux Wildcats) on loan, especially against nosy Anglos intruding onto this sacred site (they couldn't stop Harles because who could, and Sam in SoP had Daniel Coleman with him to wave him through, and who are they to question their prophet; I assume your group wpould not have this).

I'd give it a background count of at least 8, maybe aspect it towards the Shamanic tradition. It might also be guarded by mighty spirits who only let proper Shamans of proper Native ancestry pass and will warn off/kill any who do not fit that pattern.
Nstol_wisper
It's a powerful place in the game and they never or almost never mention in source material where exactly it happened. Yet I was sure I read somewhere the exact Nation it was in.
Well, you got me curious. If I run across any info I'll share it here.
binarywraith
QUOTE (hermit @ Oct 30 2019, 05:46 PM) *
To mundane eyes, the site is unremarkable, a rocky plateau between higher rocky formations, with some dry shrubs and weeds and a whole lot of dust. It looks like just another bit of no-man's badlands. Maybe it gives off a bad air for mundanes, a kind of "got a bad feeling about this place" vibe.

Astrally, it is a warp. It is a hellgate-in-waiting. It is a scabbed wound in reality that refuses to heal properly. Magicans should feel this, even if not astrally projecting or using astral sense. It is a site where great power was wrought and where a sense of foreboding and bad things to happen taints the air. As harlequin says, "I can almost taste the ritual". Every Awakened feels somewhat sick and elated at the same tme, in the presence of something powerful and dreadful at the same time.

No critters for miles around this place, even mundane animals avoid it. There are, upon close examinations, a bit off-site, there are mostly-overgrown remains of people. lots of people. bones half-buried in durt, obviously cracked and gnawed open by coyotes and whatnot, together with scrsaps of 2010s clothes and some old indian-esque jewelry. those were the remains of the dancers who sacrificed themselves, who were laid out and left for the animals to reclaim (traditional Lakota air burial, mostly because the remaining dancers wanted to move fast).

It would be guarded by NAN Truth Talkers (elite shamans) and various NAN states' special forces (Salish Rangers, Sioux Wildcats) on loan, especially against nosy Anglos intruding onto this sacred site (they couldn't stop Harles because who could, and Sam in SoP had Daniel Coleman with him to wave him through, and who are they to question their prophet; I assume your group wpould not have this).

I'd give it a background count of at least 8, maybe aspect it towards the Shamanic tradition. It might also be guarded by mighty spirits who only let proper Shamans of proper Native ancestry pass and will warn off/kill any who do not fit that pattern.


That's a very good description. The background count should be pretty phenomenal, it is the site of arguably the largest blood magic ritual performed in the Sixth World.
Tecumseh
It depends on your definition of what constitutes the Great Ghost Dance vs. regular magic. Harlequin's Back also differentiates between "the Great Ghost Dance and other, smaller ghost dances," so again it depends on how literal you want to be about the capital-letter version vs. the lower-case versions. I haven't read Secrets of Power 3, so I can't comment on hermit's description.

On December 24, at the same time that the great dragon Ryumyo appeared at Mt. Fuji, Daniel Howling Coyote led his followers out of the Abilene, Texas Re-Education Center. The narrative is clear that the escape was fueled by magic, but whether this was regular spellcasting or the result of ritual spellcasting (i.e. a big or little ghost dance) is an open question. Abilene is located in the CAS.

When ritual magic was used to make Redondo Peak in New Mexico erupt, "Howling Coyote appeared in a vidcast from a nearby Zuņi reservation." Redondo Peak is north of Albuquerque and northwest of Santa Fe. Both of these locations are squarely within the Pueblo Corporate Council. In real life, the Zuņi reservation sits on the border between Arizona and New Mexico, west of Albuquerque, which would also put it in the PCC. (Howling Coyote and his followers then used ritual magic to destroy the Sixth Air Cavalry Battalion from Fort Hood with sudden, violent tornadoes.)

The books are fairly clear that the "Indian War" was a guerrilla war, which strongly suggests hit-and-run tactics. As such, I suspect that Daniel Howling Coyote and his followers moved around frequently, conducting the Great Ghost Dance wherever they could. It's never said where they were when the conducted the ritual that triggered the eruptions of Mts. Rainier, Adams, St. Helens, and Hood, but if they were reasonably nearby (like they were when Redondo Peak erupted) then that would put them either in the Salish-Shidhe Council or Tir Tairngire.

The plot of Harlequin's Back takes the runners to the location of the Great Ghost Dance. The setting is described as desert that is "bare, almost featureless." It's barren and flat with little life growing. This probably matches the description of the Zuņi reservation (in the PCC) fairly closely, but for argument's sake I'll point out that Howling Coyote was born on the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation in western Nevada. (His parents were Utes.) This is juuuust inside the PCC border, and right at the crux where California Free State, Tir Tairngire, and PCC all meet. This was originally part of the Ute Nation before the PCC absorbed them in 2067. Historically, the real Ghost Dance was performed by the Northern Paiute people, whose territory covers western Nevada, including the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. So, if you want to lean on the historical connection between the Ghost Dance and the Great Ghost Dance, there's a strong connection there.

So, if you want the country where the Great Ghost Dance was conducted, the PCC is the most prominent candidate. But if you want the precise location, that's never been specified and is open to GM interpretation based on what fits the story best.
Sengir
QUOTE (Kesendeja @ Oct 30 2019, 10:12 PM) *
What would you recommend for what they find at the actual site?
Would it be guarded, or have become a place of pilgrimage for native mages. What's the background count like in the 2060's.

I would suggest declaring the lack of information to be intentional: The NAN does not want people to have a look at the site, let alone mess around there, because they absolutely do not want any information about the rituals to become public. They sure as hell do not want to give anybody the slightest bit of information of how to replicate the GGD, and probably fear that any information about the blood magic performed there would cause uncomfortable questions. So the site is kept a state secret, maybe there even is a fake site somewhere else as a distraction.

The security as suggested by hermit would be there, but covert and/or explained by something completely unrelated, like a military compound nearby.
Iduno
An ecological disaster/toxic waste dump from back when the US was in charge of the area. Give people a reason not to want to go there, and remind the citizens that the new boss is better than the old boss and definitely not the same.

I also like the idea of a fake site as a distraction.
JanessaVR
For this scenario, I highly recommend SR5 Forbidden Arcana, pp. 169-175. There's an excellent and reasonably detailed account of exactly what your players will encounter poking around such a site.

Also, for the record, poking around the Bridges is a Very Bad Idea ™. They're not going to like what's on the other end...
SpellBinder
QUOTE (binarywraith @ Oct 30 2019, 06:49 PM) *
That's a very good description. The background count should be pretty phenomenal, it is the site of arguably the largest blood magic ritual performed in the Sixth World.

And the cries of that ritual still echo across the globe today...

Mentioned in the Blood Magic section in Forbidden Arcana.
Nstol_wisper
I have no 5th Edition Supplements handy and I thought I was going have to go looking for some......

I forgot about the Forbidden Arcana info. Nice call. cool.gif
Moirdryd
The NAN books, and Target: Awakened Lands and Target: Wastelands should provide extra useful information
hermit
Also Shadows of North America, and maybe the Sixth World Almanach. I think there was a short covering the actual Ghost Dance in SR4A's Core Book, but I may be wrong there.
Kesendeja
I want to thank you all for the help, its been a godsend for the game. Finding the site itself is almost a campaign, and bad thingsTM will happen if they do find it. Really looking forward to running this series of adventures.

Just want to mention I asked the question other places, and this is the only one who answered in a serious tone. Thank you.
hermit
Glad to help. smile.gif

Also, the link in your signature 404s. frown.gif
JanessaVR
QUOTE (Kesendeja @ Nov 8 2019, 08:08 PM) *
I want to thank you all for the help, its been a godsend for the game. Finding the site itself is almost a campaign, and bad thingsTM will happen if they do find it. Really looking forward to running this series of adventures.

Just want to mention I asked the question other places, and this is the only one who answered in a serious tone. Thank you.

Yeah, there's the "official" Shadowrun forums, and there's us.

Who had your back? smile.gif
Moirdryd
Dumpshock for life! smile.gif
Nstol_wisper
Be it forum or face to face, there is not much meaningful info out there. dead.gif dead.gif
But when questions are answered, good.
I'm building a Native American backstory. No spirits yet, just mentor ones. I encourage more than one for characters.
hermit
Why not take ALL the mentor spirits?
Nstol_wisper
Not all, But several mentor spirits, some summoner skill with lots of posession can be considered the psyschologically damaging equivalent of say... Severe essence loss through augmentations and having to replace bricked implants often.
If played that way and not careful. vegm.gif
Sendaz
QUOTE (Nstol_wisper @ Nov 12 2019, 08:02 AM) *
Not all, But several mentor spirits, some summoner skill with lots of posession can be considered the psyschologically damaging equivalent of say... Severe essence loss through augmentations and having to replace bricked implants often.
If played that way and not careful. vegm.gif


I think you are confusing what a mentor spirit is in this case.

Typically in SR, you only have One Mentor spirit at a time as they help as act a conduit for your own personal magic to operate, so is sort of a mindset in a way.
Hence why you can not normally have more than one Mentor spirit, because it is that mindset that makes your magic work. Change your mindset and you would traditionally lose the first Mentor spirit for straying from the path and may potentially come under the wings of another Mentor spirit.


When you mention lots of possession, that is still calling down regular spirits, not Mentor-type, who just possess your form or whoever you are possessing and do not manifest outside of said possession.

We have done something like this in the past, with a possession tradition where we had several regular spirits we would call upon to possess the character depending on the task at hand required.
Sengir
QUOTE (Iduno @ Nov 4 2019, 05:32 PM) *
An ecological disaster/toxic waste dump from back when the US was in charge of the area. Give people a reason not to want to go there, and remind the citizens that the new boss is better than the old boss and definitely not the same.

Just don't make that excuse too realistic and real dump toxic waste there, a Toxic domain combined with the biggest mana spike in history sounds rather...suboptimal biggrin.gif
Nstol_wisper
It makes you wonder how many of these disasters in the Shadowrun world reported as "accidents" or acts of nature....... I guess the ghost dance is neither since it was planned.......
are not actually purposeful acts meant to aspect a region against....Another Ghost Dance effect? Scorched Earth policy to disenfranchise the people? read.gif
Nstol_wisper
This recent discussion about the Great Ghost Dance has brought up question......
If the ghost dance events never occured, would the UCAS have eventually allowed the NAN to secede and form their own Nations in some form?
Did the events like the Canada annexation, the formation of the CAS,... make a NAN likely given enough time?
Sendaz
QUOTE (Nstol_wisper @ Nov 20 2019, 05:27 PM) *
This recent discussion about the Great Ghost Dance has brought up question......
If the ghost dance events never occured, would the UCAS have eventually allowed the NAN to secede and form their own Nations in some form?
Did the events like the Canada annexation, the formation of the CAS,... make a NAN likely given enough time?

You really need to go over your SR history more for some of this.


The GGD happened in 2016, when the US and Canada were still separate countries and they both lost big chunks to the NAN.

Follow that up with The Computer Crash of 2030 and this is where you see the US and Canada merging to form the UCAS.

If Daniel Howling Coyote and his crew had not kicked off the GGD, we probably would never have had the NAN to start with and the US and Canada would most likely still be separate countries. And given enough time they would have integrated magic into their systems and would not have been so vulnerable to regular magical uprising.
This is turn would have made it unlikely for the CAS to split off from an unbroken US just as Japan probably wouldn't have invaded a rebel California.

Without the kind of Mojo that the GGD brought, the NAN would never have been allowed to form in the first place, which in turned led eventually to the breakup of the US and reforming of several borders.
pbangarth
QUOTE (Sendaz @ Nov 21 2019, 04:16 AM) *
Without the kind of Mojo that the GGD brought, the NAN would never have been allowed to form in the first place, which in turned led eventually to the breakup of the US and reforming of several borders.


This returns me to a question I have had all along. Once the NAN formed, even after various plagues and pogroms, etc., there would have been a mass migration of millions of people, some to NAN, most out to the old nations. I don't see that reflected in the story line, though I may have missed something.

For example, I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (which even now has a higher population that Seattle does in SRx). There would be over 5 million people (again, even after population reductions) who would not be seen appropriate / want to live in the NAN, and would go, at least at first, to the nearest part of Canada to still exist: Ontario. The USA would experience a similar, larger scale migration. These migrations would have boosted populations in the receiving regions dramatically.

Is this reflected in the official history anywhere?
Nstol_wisper
The NAN has been largely Anti-Anglo and forced most non Native Americans to leave. I have not seen much written on migration the other way though I may have read somewhere that the initial migration was around 60% of Native Americans to the NAN.
I guess it was assumed that most would eventually choose to leave once the NAN was established.
Mantis
Several of the NAN nations allowed reservations for what they called "pink skins", basically anyone who wasn't native enough but wanted to live the lifestyle. This was covered in the first edition rule books.
The other thing to keep in mind is cities were harder hit by the various VITAS plagues than smaller communities and rural areas.
Also, devs aren't super great with realistic numbers for populations. Pretty sure a bunch of the numbers were just pulled out of someone's ass. The NAN population is a well known example of this.
Nstol_wisper
The population numbers to me don't make sense until you consider how many Native Americans might have been living in the the US and Canada, and how many people must have immigrated from Aztlan as they were once part of the NAN.
They do not discuss any significant numbers comming from Aztlan but I like to think they were greater than known.
Tecumseh
I think these are oversimplifications. It's hard to make blanket statements about the NAN because the component nations are so varied. The Sioux Nation is militaristic and jingoistic while the Pueblo Corporate Council is corporate and pragmatic. The Sioux Nation is anti-Anglo because it's the saber-rattling is good politics and gets the voters to the polls and keeps the military well-funded, even though this is met by a collective yawn from the UCAS. Shadows in Focus: Sioux Nation has this. (The exceptions are the UCAS border states, like Nebraska and the Dakotas, which received a lot of displaced refugees who want to reclaim their homes and who are clutching their chests about the Red Menace on the border.) Conversely, the PCC annexed Los Angeles and the significant population of non-natives there, effectively becoming more diverse in the process. The early editions also talk about the relatively loose definition of "native" that was employed, and how the NAN - in a nod to reality - decided to accept anyone with a trace of Native heritage as a citizen. This helps address some of the population disparities.

The migrations following the Treaty of Denver are alluded to in several places. For example, the Puyallup Barrens weren't the Barrens until 1) Mount Rainier blew up and covered Puyallup with lava and lahars, and 2) refugees from the Treaty of Denver streamed into Seattle and needed a place to live, leading to a rapid (and shoddy) building spree that created one of the Z-zones that we know and love. (Refugees from the Night of Rage also contributed to the massive population influx.) Seattle 2072 covers this.

There are also references to the number of ghost towns across the West, small communities emptied out because their populations were displaced, because drones can automate agriculture, and because small landowners can't compete with corporate latifundia. There are also references to weather patterns changing significantly due to the Great Ghost Dance, making weather more extreme and a home on the range less palatable. Paranormal critters also contribute to this. A juggernaut sniffing around your property can really put you off homesteading.

As far as Nstol_wisper's question about migration the other direction (Native Americans moving to the NAN), this isn't explicitly detailed but there are allusions to it here and there. For example, Shadows of North American provides a partial breakdown of tribal affiliation for each country. For example, the Chocktaw ended up in the Sioux Nation, despite the fact that their ancestral lands are in the southeastern US (or CAS, in Shadowrun-speak: Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana). Same for the Chickasaw. Part of this is due to the existing (real life) reservations not necessarily matching ancestral lands; another part of this is the concentration camps authorized by the Re-Education and Relocation Act (USA) and Nepean Act (Canada) in 2009/2010 in the Shadowrun timeline. Since a significant portion of the native population was already displaced, it was that much easier to resettle/migrate to the new Native American Nations.
Nath
Without or without magic, the Ghost Dance War is a decolonization war, and demography matters a lot in the political outcome such war.

The problem with a "what if..." scenario is that Shadowrun canon setting is not just "What if a native insurgency had magic?" It's "What if a native insurgency had magic and some unspecified number of millions of people in the US had a different ethnicity?"

Shadowrun has completely inconsistent demographics. The NAN numbers are one of the most obvious examples, but whenever the early authors touched something related to demography, they missed the mark. Seattle population is way too low to qualify as somehow densely populated. The life expectancy for elves and dwarves are based on a sample of zero. Tir Tairngire history makes no sense with regards to the elven poppulation age pyramid. Ork population is nowhere near the level their stated fertility rate should imply. And NAN numbers were so crazy they had to be retconned.

In the NAN Sourcebook, the Pueblo, Salish-Shidhe, Sioux and Ute put together have a population of 65 millions, with less than one million of so-called pinkskin (more than half of them in the Salish-Shidhe Coundil) and an unspecified number of Mormon in the Ute nation.

As a comparison, the actual number of native americans in 2010 is about 3 millions, or 5.2 millions if you include those who consider having mixed ancestry. To make those numbers fit together, you must assume a 1000% growth in four decades. To put it another way, you must have a fertility rate above 7 children per woman accross the southern NAN (if you're asking, no, according to the NAN SB, orks only makes up for 13% of the population in the southern NAN). This is not totaly unrealistic: it is the current fertility rate in Niger (which happens to be the highest in the world as of now). But it also means that something like half or two-third of the population are children (which would have interesting strategic implication for the Sioux Nation, as the number of person fit for military service would steadily rise with every year).

Of course, if you look at the detailed tribal breakdown, this average fertility rate no longer works. In the most extreme example I have number for, to get the Salish tribe from 2000 people to 2.5 millions in two decades, the fertility rate would be well over 40 children per woman (and possibly double that if they insist on only marrying within the tribe).

Shadows of North America slashed the population number by a factor two or three. The Pueblo, Salish-Shidhe, Sioux and Ute have a population of 30 millions, with 21 millions having an actual tribal affiliation. Actually, the Pueblo population barely changed, while the overall Sioux population was divided by 5, and its tribal population was divided by 8.

While NAN SB vol. 1 just forgot to mention the Mormon population in its tribal breakdown, SoNA fails to account for them, either not counting them in the population figure, or forgeting to mention that desite being welcomed in the NAN and staying a major community, their number dropped from several millions to about 300,000. Also, the Ute population at 3.3 millions would mean either Las Vegas is now a desert or the rest of the country is (as the current pop. of Las Vegas metro area is 2.2 millions). After the Pueblo, the Ute and Los Angeles merged, such issues became less obvious with a global population figure.

Some people came up with the idea that SR alternate history could have been different as far as the 18th and 19th century, resulting in a much higher native population to start with. Interestingly enough, that means the native population reaction to the Resources rush would have had a different weight, as well as the internment policy.

What I have never seen addressed is the fact that, depending on the point at which SR timeline differ, between 5 and 20 millions of latinos in the US (a very rough estimate) can be considered as being of native descent. So when Daniel Coleman is calling for every person of European, African or Asian descent to leave North America, the new nations he plans to establish could actually be dominated by Mexicans, possibly bringing in the question of an annexation as Mexico is taken over by the Azatlan party on a pro-native agenda. On the other hand, you could also argue SR alternate history somehow has a lower latinos immigration.

In the end, factoring the Great Ghost Dance in or out the equation may matter just as much as whether the STC to represents only three or four millions US natives, or is an alliance that gather ten millions US natives that exist in this alternate timeline with as much latinos, and Mormons, and hundreds of thousands or even millions more of white people living in the Rocky Mountains opposing the federal governement, because they were fed up of having their father shot at checkpoint by national guards who though he was waving his hands like a shaman ready to cast a spell at them and their daughter killed in drone strikes because "reliable intel" coming from corporate contractors designated the house next to a birthday party as a major shamanic lodge.

I'd say the description of the war so far barely scrapped the surface of it. Five years of hard counter-insurgency operations on US soil led by federal forces would likely put some dents on the campaign trail in the 2016 election (plus incumbent president Garrety being assassinated three weeks before election day on top of that...). It has been stated that STC forces were controlling pretty large areas at least in Washington state, so I wonder how the election were actually held. What if William Jarman, freshly sworn in as president after Garrety death and running in the coming election, decreed the election couldn't be held safely in one or several states who happens to be the ones where pro-STC governors or state legislature majorities have become a credible possibility?
Moirdryd
It's also highly probable that humanity has it's own varieties of metahumanity within their racial category just like Elves, Orks, Dwarves and Trolls do and this began expressing since 2012 and that in the Americas that variety expression is... Native Americans. It's also worth noting that the Elves that would form the Tir and several ork and Troll (and dwarf) communities would also form parts of the NAN.
Nstol_wisper
So in that way, which would the nonvariant humans be?
Nath
QUOTE (Moirdryd @ Nov 22 2019, 02:04 AM) *
It's also highly probable that humanity has it's own varieties of metahumanity within their racial category just like Elves, Orks, Dwarves and Trolls do and this began expressing since 2012 and that in the Americas that variety expression is... Native Americans.
Err, I'm not sure to understand you here. Are you saying that children born in the Americas from parents of European, African or Asian parents are going to magically turn into Amerindians? That's not how it works. The metatypes have so-called "metavariants" in different regions of the globe, but those are related to some level of local ancestry.

Also, elves and dwarves metatypes start expressing at birth in 2011, while orks and trolls metatype start expressing in 2023.

QUOTE (Moirdryd @ Nov 22 2019, 02:04 AM) *
IIt's also worth noting that the Elves that would form the Tir and several ork and Troll (and dwarf) communities would also form parts of the NAN.
According to the Shadows of North America, there are 35 millions elves in the former states of USA and Canada, for a total population of 354 millions (9.3%). "Only" four millions, or less than one in seven elves, live in Tir Tairngire.

Taking human population as a reference (basically assuming that no human had to leave the place they were living in because of their metatype, only because of their ethnicity), the "natural elven population" in the Salish Shide and Tir Tairngire should be 837 000. The surplus of 4.1 millions is mostly in Tir Tairngire, meaning the Ceneste tribe has a negligible weight. The Algonkian, which also opened to elven immigration, have a surplus of 1.13 million. The UCAS also depart from the theoritical value, with a surplus of 1.47 million elves. On the other side of the spectrum, 6.2 millions elves are "missing" in the CAS, 590 000 in California and 324 000 in the Sioux.

The deviation suggests elve immigration upsets the balance between the anglo (...and french) nations and the NAN by 5.3 millions, to be compared to the 310.4 millions total population of the anglo nations and 44 millions in the NAN.

I did quick math for the other metatypes and it seems there is no similar imbalance between the anglos and NAN (though there is a strong imbalance for orks between UCAS, CAS and California, but not the way you'd expect, with 8 millions that should be in the UCAS who turn up in the CAS ans California).
Nstol_wisper
And it was mentioned that Aztlan had a problem with people leaving there any way they could and resettling north.
How many of them had come from Central and South America, another source of NAN citizens? Was it possibly an underlying reason for them to leave the NAN, to control their borders?
Iduno
QUOTE (Moirdryd @ Nov 21 2019, 08:04 PM) *
It's also highly probable that humanity has it's own varieties of metahumanity within their racial category just like Elves, Orks, Dwarves and Trolls do and this began expressing since 2012 and that in the Americas that variety expression is... Native Americans. It's also worth noting that the Elves that would form the Tir and several ork and Troll (and dwarf) communities would also form parts of the NAN.


No. Earlier editions were more explicit about the NAN being natives, people who wanted to be natives/live in harmony with nature, and political undesirables who were lumped in with them by a corrupt government and corporations. For plot reasons, Vitas didn't hit the concentration camps (and also people didn't die from being in concentration camps), and joined together. So their group had 70 years of population growth, while the rest of the world was reset back to 1980's demographics to make populations easier to calculate (whatever the demographic information we have says times 1).

It's less stupid and more lazy, which is a contrivance most people can probably admit to.
binarywraith
QUOTE (Tecumseh @ Nov 21 2019, 02:20 PM) *
I think these are oversimplifications. It's hard to make blanket statements about the NAN because the component nations are so varied. The Sioux Nation is militaristic and jingoistic while the Pueblo Corporate Council is corporate and pragmatic. The Sioux Nation is anti-Anglo because it's the saber-rattling is good politics and gets the voters to the polls and keeps the military well-funded, even though this is met by a collective yawn from the UCAS. Shadows in Focus: Sioux Nation has this. (The exceptions are the UCAS border states, like Nebraska and the Dakotas, which received a lot of displaced refugees who want to reclaim their homes and who are clutching their chests about the Red Menace on the border.) Conversely, the PCC annexed Los Angeles and the significant population of non-natives there, effectively becoming more diverse in the process. The early editions also talk about the relatively loose definition of "native" that was employed, and how the NAN - in a nod to reality - decided to accept anyone with a trace of Native heritage as a citizen. This helps address some of the population disparities.

The migrations following the Treaty of Denver are alluded to in several places. For example, the Puyallup Barrens weren't the Barrens until 1) Mount Rainier blew up and covered Puyallup with lava and lahars, and 2) refugees from the Treaty of Denver streamed into Seattle and needed a place to live, leading to a rapid (and shoddy) building spree that created one of the Z-zones that we know and love. (Refugees from the Night of Rage also contributed to the massive population influx.) Seattle 2072 covers this.



Speaking specifically to Puyllaup it's also got a lot of refugees from the purges that created Tir Tairngire, both of non-elves and of elves that were politically driven out.

Also, regarding population numbers, remember that there's a combination of vast deaths due to two VITAS plagues. The death rate was astronomical, something like 1:200 survivors among humans and elves, with orks, dwarves, and trolls being much more resistant. Sourcebook numbers estimate over 2 billion dead in the 2010 outbreak, and another 900 million in the 2020's with VITASII. The NaN, presumably due to the greater access to magical healing, was relatively unscathed.
JanessaVR
QUOTE (binarywraith @ Nov 27 2019, 09:43 PM) *
The NaN, presumably due to the greater access to magical healing, was relatively unscathed.

Even with that, I assume that the Awakening also caused millions of Native Americans to suddenly just sprout out of the ground and everyone said "Huh, ok, that happened" and then went back to business as usual. smile.gif

Sendaz
QUOTE (JanessaVR @ Nov 29 2019, 04:21 PM) *
Even with that, I assume that the Awakening also caused millions of Native Americans to suddenly just sprout out of the ground and everyone said "Huh, ok, that happened" and then went back to business as usual. smile.gif

Great Orgy Spell? wink.gif
JanessaVR
QUOTE (Sendaz @ Nov 29 2019, 03:17 PM) *
Great Orgy Spell? wink.gif

LOL! Maybe!
Iduno
QUOTE (binarywraith @ Nov 27 2019, 11:43 PM) *
Speaking specifically to Puyllaup it's also got a lot of refugees from the purges that created Tir Tairngire, both of non-elves and of elves that were politically driven out.


Now there's some dystopia. The oldest elves at that point were teenagers, so it's a country founded by rich immortal elites with an army entirely composed of child soldiers.
binarywraith
QUOTE (Iduno @ Nov 30 2019, 01:55 PM) *
Now there's some dystopia. The oldest elves at that point were teenagers, so it's a country founded by rich immortal elites with an army entirely composed of child soldiers.


Yup, and the refugees were pushed out to live on a volcanic ash-flow shithole where breathing the air leads to black lung. Tarislar's gotten a little nicer over the years, but that's entirely down to the Laesa mafia making it their territory and cutting a deal with KE to clean it up.
Sengir
QUOTE (binarywraith @ Nov 28 2019, 05:43 AM) *
Also, regarding population numbers, remember that there's a combination of vast deaths due to two VITAS plagues. The death rate was astronomical, something like 1:200 survivors among humans and elves, with orks, dwarves, and trolls being much more resistant. Sourcebook numbers estimate over 2 billion dead in the 2010 outbreak, and another 900 million in the 2020's with VITASII. The NaN, presumably due to the greater access to magical healing, was relatively unscathed.

My headcanon is that the Amerinds had some sort of immunity to VITAS, for whatever reason (luck, karma, engineered bioweapon...). I mean, on a meta level VITAS is clearly intended to be an inversion of the plagues which depopulated the Americas while leaving the European colonists mostly untouched. Europeans were far less affected by these plagues because they had a degree of immunity, so analogously the Amerinds should also have had some kind of immunity.

Also, even "they randomly were more resistant to VITAS than everybody else, deal with it" still makes more sense than the idea of people being spared from a disease because they were squeezed into camps with poor sanitation and medical facilities...
Iduno
QUOTE (Sengir @ Dec 1 2019, 12:13 PM) *
My headcanon is that the Amerinds had some sort of immunity to VITAS, for whatever reason (luck, karma, engineered bioweapon...).


Canonically, it was "being in concentration camps, away from all of the sick people."
Nstol_wisper
There was some mention of people disappearing from Central and south America and reapperaing in other places, with no logical explaination of how.
I think that some went to the NAN. scatter.gif
Tecumseh
VITAS plays a couple roles.

It's another example of "this new [Sixth] world is scary and we don't understand it". Add this to the Awakening and Goblinization and you can explain all sorts of in-game revolutions in thinking and world views, and how things skewed from our timeline.

VITAS also serves as a blank slate in some regards, along with the Matrix Crash(es). If there are questions about "why isn't the global population larger [with all of the downstream sociopolitical effects]?" you can point to VITAS. If (when) there are questions about "if we already have ___ technology today, why do we only have ____ technology 60 years from now?" you point at the Matrix Crashes.

So it's an effective tool for the writers to take over the world, as it gives them license to make it their own with fewer constraints or handcuffs from our real world.
Iduno
QUOTE (Tecumseh @ Dec 3 2019, 04:19 PM) *
VITAS plays a couple roles.

It's another example of "this new [Sixth] world is scary and we don't understand it". Add this to the Awakening and Goblinization and you can explain all sorts of in-game revolutions in thinking and world views, and how things skewed from our timeline.

VITAS also serves as a blank slate in some regards, along with the Matrix Crash(es). If there are questions about "why isn't the global population larger [with all of the downstream sociopolitical effects]?" you can point to VITAS. If (when) there are questions about "if we already have ___ technology today, why do we only have ____ technology 60 years from now?" you point at the Matrix Crashes.

So it's an effective tool for the writers to take over the world, as it gives them license to make it their own with fewer constraints or handcuffs from our real world.


And probably especially useful when you didn't just have the Internet always available when you needed to look stuff up.
Sengir
QUOTE (Iduno @ Dec 2 2019, 11:03 PM) *
Canonically, it was "being in concentration camps, away from all of the sick people."

...which really is a case of "I don't even" wink.gif


QUOTE (Tecumseh @ Dec 3 2019, 10:19 PM) *
If there are questions about "why isn't the global population larger [with all of the downstream sociopolitical effects]?" you can point to VITAS.

If that was the intent they screwed up badly, because the one question global population numbers in SR raise is "why is the global population that large despite VITAS?"
Nstol_wisper
If the world population were about 9 or 10 billion before the outbreak and population growth were at a rate similar to the first half of the century......
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