Replace "liberated half of Kuwait" with "conquered half of Iraq and have spent the last 15 bloody years trying to pacify it, and failing miserably," and you may have a better picture. Really, though, there's not very much in the sourcebooks about this little scuffle. The Calfree sourcebook labels it as a Tir specops team, and DotSW called it an invasion push, but that's really about it. It's not even mentioned in the Tir Tairngire sourcebook; from that book you'd think that Tir hadn't tried anything in Calfree since the late '30s. There's really no reason to think that Hestaby necessarily killed anyone when she turned back the Tirs in '53.

...not that I'm really defending canon here. Most of the stuff that's happenned in California I have similar objections to; the whole area could honestly do with a big rewrite to take into consideration the fact that the entire state does not consist of people with their heads buried up their asses. But it's not changing, and I have no expectation that it will change in the futire, so I'm just going to play up the People's University, which I like, and ignore most of the rest, which is pretty much a waste of paper.

The Tir did take ground during the war. For all we know, the Princes may have put forward to the public the claim that their forces had stopped because they had totally achieved their objective.

don't know much about Tir ( apart from it being elvan? and hard?) but would love to be pointed in the right direction of where to look! amazing how much you learn on this site!

torz x

I'm behind the times on CalFree - what's the state of the Resistance down there these days?

Thanks for that Fortune that is plenty to keep me going!

torz x

ooops sorry hahnsoo!!! looking at the wrong name whilst typing responce and trying to make a phone call!

*grovel, grovel!!*
torz x

Critas, the US is a bad example for the average level of nationalism, especially in a country with strong ethnic and racial tensions (such as Tir). I personally think of the Tirs more like of some sort of warped version of an Arab state, with the entire country being led by a minority, be those Sunni Arabs (Saddam Iraq), the Alawite tribe (Syria) or Tutsi (Rwanda, and we all know how that went down, don't we?).

If a significant portion of the populace - as in, non-Elves - are alienated by the government, downtrodden and the target of massive prejudice and inequality, it would porpably *help* Hestaby that she wiped out, as you referred to it, the 101st airborne.

If that 101st airborne was made up mainly of elves (elite units in dictatorships tend to be made up of people who aren't of the disadvantaged, if only to keep the chance of the presidental guard mutineering as low as possible), the downtrodden non-elves wouldn't give a fuck - or even rejoice that she opened those pointy-eared oh-so-superior bastards a remarkably large can of asskick. Noone of those downtrodden would give much about dead elves, because they never had an elf friend, let alone family, and always were on the receiving end of elf racism.

On Hestaby:

Hestaby repelled a small Tir strike force aiming for a quick and decisive capture of the Shasta Dam. It is very likely, especially in Tir Tairngire, that the common people do not even know the event ever happened. It is possible that Hestaby was involved in the "militia response" that forced the Tir forces back in the 30s, but it wasn't a visible presence, and so it doesn't mark her reputation in the Tir at all.

Also remember: Tir Tairngire is not a democracy. The Council of Princes is not elected by the people. In countless authoritarian governments around the world, there is this phenomenon where the populace "loves" the unelected official; at least until it seems like he can be realistically overthrown. Iraqis claimed to have loved Saddam Hussein when he was in power, but these days, most of them speak more freely. The Tir has a lot of social pressure on its populace; even those people who don't actually like Hestaby aren't going to go around saying they dislike a Prince. They are going to say they love her! So is Hestaby really immensely popular, or is she pulling a Saddam Hussein ("Hey look, I got 99.9% of the popular vote!")?

On Saito:

Really, moreso than Hestaby, Saito is the 800 lb. gorilla that needs to be dealt with if anything changes in California. He's got a big spot of turf right in the middle (well, not exactly the middle) of the nation, and with San Diego belonging to Aztlan and Los Angeles now in Pueblo hands, he's got a majority of the population in his control of San Francisco.

Could Saito thrive, longterm? Maybe. With continued megacorporate backing and continued support from the anti-metahuman local militias, it's possible. But I suspect that his megacorporate backing is going to wane as the Japanacorps realize that the new Japanese Emperor isn't going away very quickly and is in fact gaining more power. And I also suspect that the local militia elements, flush with their recent successes, might start to build their own power players, and start suddenly remembering that Saito isn't Californian, he's Japanese.

The bigger problem, from a storyline perspective, seems to be that it's really hard to do much with the rest of California while Saito's sitting there. Like EB (I think it was EB) said, there's been very little mention of the central government or even the Central Valley. If the Central Valley gets too powerful, they should be able to put up a serious fight against Saito; if they are too weak, they become ignored. Yet at the same time, even if they are too weak, Saito's had trouble expanding. So it's a bind.

I think I'd personally like to see the rest of California get behind another "warlord" or even a couple. Perhaps influential leaders rising up in the Central Valley or the Big Sur in response to Saito's actions (and even those of the PCC). That would really solidify California as a North American version of the Balkans. Then, further down the line, I think it'd be interesting if someone tried to do some nation-building in California; similar to what went on in Afghanistan, with a combination of trying to establish an elected government and simultaneously dealing with regional warlords. You'd get strange instances where a warlord would be given a cabinet position (Saito as defense minister?) and they still try to flex their muscles (such as one warlord saying he refuses to disarm his followers in his home region). For an even crazier mess, make this new Californian government a parliamentary system, where every half-witted, crazy Californian political activist group/tribe/cult can run for seats.

Personally, I'd also like to see California get back Los Angeles in this whole process, but I'm not sure exactly how that would be accomplished. Maybe Pueblo has more problems controlling the Mojave than they can deal with, or maybe they have bigger problems with Aztlan aggression from the south, and can't afford to concentrate so much of their military so far west.

Or as someone on the boards suggested maybe Los Angeles wasn't the main target at all but a secondary objective.

As DE said, there is no real reason for the general Tir public to even know anything about the latter offensive against the Dam. It was not really part and parcel of any war, and the Princes would probably rather hush it up than appear to have egg on their faces.

Is there a quote to back up his assertion that it was just a small raid? I remember no such thing from CFS, though it has been some time since I read it.

~J

I still don't buy it, but I'll grant that it's a possibility.

Edit: and Critias comes through with the book support. Thanks

~J

Heheh. Don't thank me. I felt like a one legged man in an asskicking contest all morning at work, 'cause I didn't have a book to back me up an' everyone was all "small specops raid" and "no one heard about it" and stuff. I didn't post it to back you up, I did to back up the two pages of my own posts.

Well it's definatly not cannon, but my group went to freeCal before SoNA came out, and I as a gm ruled that the city of LA had been the site of a massive infection of the zombies. By the time my players get there everyone worth evacuating has been evacuated, and the still living natives had gotten massivly suspect of anyone who dosen't like sunlight (Big problem for Night One party member). It was really fun, but that was before SoNA correctted me.

Huh, well that sure shut *me* up. Was that all from Shadows of North America? I guess I'd better get that book before I start shooting my mouth off, huh?

But the central government barely controlled the Central Valley (Of all the places in the state, that's the last place I'd allow the government to operate if I was in agribusiness), and nothing short of a miracle is going to unify California.

I generally agree with Eyeless Blond. The Cal Free book is mostly worthless. It completely ignored the power that California really has. I have pretty much tossed a majority of the cannon out the window when running and have made up my own history. I run the Cal Free government as a large argicorp in its own right. Since agriculture is one of its most important exports and a huge bargaining chip with dealing with foreign powers, they would have moved to protect its assets immediatly. I know by cannon they couldn't but I have worked things out a bit differently in my version of the Shadowrun Universe.

I am going to start a new campaign that is cannon based and involves the PC's supporting a charismatic underdog candidate in the next Cal Free election, so they will be dealing with getting the various factions of the Northern Cresent, Big Sur and the Bay Area as well as the California Rangers and other former UCAS military personal together to support a new regime in Cal Free. It sould be a lot of fun and a lot of work.

Slip

In the Shadowrun world, California doesn't have the power you think it does, and in real life it'd be quite easy for it to lose it as well.

~J

Except that neither of those things effected the agricultural output of California, even the Cal Free book calls it the bread basket of the world.

I am just saying it wouldn't be easy. It would be hard. Now if you want that to happen in your version of SL that is cool. I just don't like it in mine.


Slip

You have a point, so another tactic: most of the agricultural wealth goes to the agribusinesses, not to California. The value is still there, but the government has lost it.

~J

In Cannon you are correct that is what happened, I choose to play it as Cal Free snatched up the land and business after succeeding and before the Agricorps could move in on all of it. Again, just the way I have run it and certainly not cannon.

Slip

Strange, since Aztechnology is called the world's largest producer of foodstuffs. And then again in Threats 2 or SoNA they talk about the agricorps and devastation caused by pollution level use of pesticides. I'll see if I can find a quote.

Crimson,

And I am comming from a NorCal perspective, which tends to care about only what is North of LA, so I see no problem with what the SR universe did in SoCal. Different perspective, different likes I guess.

Typical attitudes though. NorCal tends to dislike SoCal and SoCal just forgets NorCal is even there most of the time.

Slip