Just a few quick thoughts about DoT6W...

I don't think Aden deserved as many pages as he got. I found his section to be largely useless. I was most happy with Rhonabwy/Sea Dragon and Celedyr sections. Everything else was pretty much as I figured.

As for the lesser dragons section, I think Alamais should have gotten more space, as well as Eliohann, considering he was being positioned as a up and comer. Perianwyr's section was funny. What happend to Kyle Morgan? Am I forgetting something from another sourcebook?

No, this is the first appearence of the death of Kyle Morgan.

I think Aden's section could have been better, at least hinting at things.

The Aden material also gains special interest if you add to your reading list sections of the Lofwyr chapter from "DotSW", the Ibn Eisn/IUM section of "YotC" , the Constantinople writeup in "SOTA63" and for some less obvious tie-ins in the Deserts chapter in "Target:Wastelands" and the short Odessa writeup in "SSG".

i'm really confused. what would have made aden's section more "useful"? or, what makes it less useful than other writeups?

Well, you didn't see much of the dragon in anything. Lots about the Middle East and the Kurds getting their own country (I thought that was a neat idea) and the New Islamic Jihad, but not so much on Aden him/herself.

I liked that chapter too. But, when compared to say, RHonabwy and the Sea Dragon's chapter...Aden doesn't get out much.

I think that was the point. Apart from Sirrug, Aden was meant to be the most reclusive of the known Greats, his actions are felt rather than seen and in that respect I think the chapter is particularly well written. Where even Lofwyr's actions are visible through the means he uses, Aden's give the impression of almost invisible ripples that actually affect the lives of thousands if not millions of people. This lends his 'visible' actions (like levelling Tehran) all the more weight and make him more frightening than he might otherwise be.

And people wonder why he's my favorite.

I thought Arleesh was the Most Reclusive Great Dragon?

I figure that at any given time there's a bigger chance of meeting Arleesh while she goes about her crusade than Aden who sits at home and meddles in the world in the most discreet fashion.

Also keep in mind the rather virulent prejudice against the Awakened in the Middle East.

I had a question about the rules concerning Drakes. They say you can play one with ST permission and tell you how to get the priorities set up for such a character but the information seems a little sparse. For example they simply say that the stats are slightly higher than the norm for its metahuman form and that the stats are the same for both the metahuman form and the drake. The fact that the character would be going from (as an example) six feet in hight to nine feet (roughly) would seem to imply some change in stats. Also what is "slightly" in reference to stats? Are there any further rules on this or is it just up to house rules?

There are rules and stats in the GM section, I'll give 'em another go-over when I get home and can look at my book again.

<flip, flip> The stats for converting Namegiver-to-Drake form are in Threats 2. Ye can easily do the same thing with the DotSW stats by pretending that the stats for the bred drake are for "average" humans: i.e. all attributes are 3.

Y'know, I think a Giant-turned-drake could just about arm-wrestle an adult dragon...

Ok, that makes sense. Assume normal human stat of three and that gives you all the bonuses to attributes. Thanks for the suggestion.

Just started reading Dragons and was thinking about a few things.

I know it wasn't one of the greats or anything but it deserves some mention, Hasselich.

He was shot down by Ghost in one of the secrets of power trilogy books. Never said if he died or anything. That was one of the coolest scenes ever. Ghost was a smokin sammy!

Also wasn't there another dragon mentioned in the books? I think it was a partner of Verner's love interest (not Sally Tsung).

hasselich--that wasn't the one that got wasted in Into the Shadows, was it?

Haesslich was the dragon killed in the first Secrets of Power novel. He worked for an AA oil company and got himself killed by shadowrunners (of all things) from Twist's crew more than 10 years ago. Why bother with him when DotSW was meant to cover the current status quo amongst the Scaly Ones?

Re: Kyle Morgan, the adventure Mercurial (from about 1990) is set up to finish with Morgan dead one way or the other, barring some player weirdness.

Au contraire. Morgan was made to survive Mercurial, only to show up again in A Killing Glare.

Killing Glare is where Morgan has been told kill two Urban Brawl stars (ex-Shadowrunners who are hinted at having run through DNA/DOA). Runners get to find and stop him.

This is his and Peri's last appearence before it's announced in Dragons that Morgan died and Peri bought his club.

Actually, Peri is mentioned in Dunkie's Will, after A Killing Glare, as is mentioend in Dot6W. Kyle, hoever, is not.

As the author of the Peri piece in Dragons, here's my own thoughts about what actually happened. Keep in mind though that unless this sees print somewhere in an official publication, it's just my own personal backstory, and not what "really" happened

It's obvious from the fiction in Mercurial that neither Kyle nor Peri were all that happy with the assignment. Kyle's a smooth but ruthless bastard, so I think part of this was because of Peri. Peri's into music and art, much mroeso than his human partner. But Peri owes Kyle what amounts to a Wookie Lifedebt, so he works with him faithfully. But they also have an emotional bond, possibly put in place by Peri (It's never really stated how in depth this bond is, how it came to be, or even what it actually entails), so Peri's distaste for the mission is being reflected by Kyle.

At the end of the mission, Kyle takes a dive, possibly faking his death to the runners (Assuming you play it and killed him). He slinks back to Aztechnologyh with his first major failure, and Mecuririal's survival leads to a major public scandal to the Azzies, hurting them in their most vulnerable spot: Their bottem line. Stock prices fall a bit, Azzie's suffer some losses, and Kyle ends up on his bosses shitlist.

A couple years later, Kyle and Peri have been doing drudge work for Aztechnology. Low rent jobs because the Az doesn;t trust them. Then finally they get a break and are given a big assignment: Recover a pair of runners for Aztechnology, who are now posing as Urban Brawl players. During A KillinG Glare, the big showdown comes during a game of Urban Brawl, which is internationally televised. Kyle and Peri not only fail and are beaten, but are beaten on live TV.

At this point, Kyle has to make a decision. Live up to his failure to his coprorate masters, or go underground. The pair go on the lam, and Kyle begins working again as a freelance assassin, which is what he did prior to being hired exclusively by Aztechnology.

Kyle is successful, but always keeping his head down. Inevitably though, he's going to meet his match. The comments in Dragons are something of a joke based loosely on events from my old Shadowrun campaign, when I was playing Bull. Kyle was a major reoccuring foil for us, and at one point he used us as a distraction in an airport while he blew up a plane. There was also a running storyline about Kyle being an assassin, and that whole concept of "To become the #1 assassin, you have to kill the current #1."

So Kyle meets his end, leaving Peri free to persue his own agenda's again. After the Year of the Comet, Peri goes to Denver and swears allegiance to Ghostwalker in exchange for protection from the Azzie's, who would still like him brought down. I can see a corp that trafficks in blood magic being very vengeful. They rank #2 in that department, right under Lofwyr and Saeder Krupp.

In reality, though, I basically killed Kyle because there wasn't a whole lot to do with him. Peri was, unfortunatly, defined by two things: Being Kyles Sidekick and getting some music in Dunky's will. Not a lot to go on. But I have always had a soft spot in my heart for him due to the role he played first in Bull's old SR game, then later as a reoccuring character in one of the SR campaigns I GMed. I liked Kyle, but he was a bit limited, pigeonholed. And I couldn;t really do anything with Peri because of that.

Plus, I originally only had 1000 words to work with, and Kyle's story took way too much of that space. As it is, I managed to trim and prune trhe piece to 1500 words, and still had stuff to say.

I liked Peri because in the end, he gave me a dragon that is has some pwoer, has his own motivations, but is a dragon that players and characters can possibly relate to, and who can be used in an SR game without throwing things off too much. Lofwyr or Aden or whoever shows up,a nd things get wonky and deadly. Peri (Or Damon, as Wild also had a fun, down to earth Dragon in the book) show up, and they throw a party It's a good hook that GM's can easily use, even in a low power game, and they won;t have to scare the pants off their runners

The Weekday Eclipse, BTW, was originally a boat. Gahbardi, the author of the piece, was my friend Steve's Wayakambi Houngan of Ghede, and they ended up playing "Cyberpirates" for a while on the Eclipse. Blitzkrieg was the name of a band that two of our characters were in at one point (Blitz was a Phoenix Shaman Guitarist/Singer, and Krieg was a Henehune cyberfreak drummer with wired reflexes). Psychadelic Phlemm was the band of another rocker character of mine, Johnny Fever (, aka Johnny Dylan, Great-great grandson of Bob Dylan).

Consider this your DVD Extra Behind THe Scenes look at the Perianwyr section of Dragons

Bull

*claps*

Excellent work Bull. I have to admit, Peri did strike me as a kinda fun dragon to play around with (talking from a DM standpoint mind you), and he would prbably get along great with this one member of my SR group.