Not quite anti-gravity, but pretty close
This article is dated 1999, so that was 6 years ago.

Yeah, but with one space probe ... even given the fact the researcher knows something about Halley we don't, one probe is almost certain to fail. Which only shows that Winternight is big and scary by terror organisation standards, but not the ultimate boogeyman everyone makes it out to be.

Sorry, this isn't Antigrav, this is Maglev - what makes monorails and the shanghai airport express float. No real anti-gravity. It is actually about as related to antigravity as a rocket booster is (hey, that can take things up into the sky and defy gravity too).

Dude, you're trying to use real world logic. According to the book, if the probe had reached the comet, it would have worked. Whether they needed a weapon more powerful than we have on Earth is irrelevant because it would have worked using what ever plot hole it wanted.

What about the antigravity that's ripping the Universe apart?

I don't doupt they could do it, if that egghead said so. But still, space probes are extremely vulnerable and prone to failure. To ensure success, WN should have nuke-mined ALL probes. That they didn't (or couldn't) proves they're not the ultimate boogeyman. That was my point.

I assume that there would be ways to work around that. And I would assume that, if anyone, these secret service people know. Hell, a rogue member of one of their deep ops teams might be the person who told Winternight how to do this.

I dunno, what good would an enchanted nuke do, besides warp astral space a bit more?

Also, I might read threats sometime in the future ... what else is in there? I might also lend it to a fellow gamer whose character is fond of conspiracy theories (has the knowledge skill on 5). In case it isn't too out of there, that is.

And be assured, Al Qaida WOULD enchant their bombs if it WORKED.

The god-mod chips are good stuff. There's probably a way around it, and if anyone knows, those groups might, but I wouldn't assume anything. We're talking about really high-level BTL action.

I guess we'll know when one goes off. Canon-wise it hasn't happened. Though there are hints to some deep relationship that come up in the Secrets of Power trilogy. Ancient History's page has more.

Winternight is the coolest of the threats, IMHO, but there's some other good stuff. Top of my head, there's some new and exciting bugs; some dragon stuff; the Black Lodge; the Blood Mage Gestalt; etc etc.

I don't know what we're arguing here. Yes, yes, Al-Qaida is evil. No arguement from me there. Their stated goal, as much as I know, is to remove Western influence and presence from Muslim countries, and/or destroy said countries as economic, military, and political powers.

Winternight's stated goal is to bring about the apocalypse by destroying all life on earth, precipitating Ragnarok and elevating themselves to the status of godhood, through ritual magic drawing upon the energy released by billions of deaths. Just so you know. They're both terrorist organizations, but it seems to me they set their sights a little bit differently.

As far as the shadowrun universe knows, enchanting bombs doesn't work. Winternight hasn't detonated one so we don't know if it works for them. What we DO know is that they are actively pursuing high-end research into it...

You overlook their goal to unite the world under one Taleban-esque regime, to eradicate any infidels (by forcibly converting them or by, well, the Nazi way), and their whole spiritual shahid/demigod/fucking to eternity angle. But yes, they don't explicitly say they want to waste the world.

My point is that Winternight and Al Qaida re about the same size and have about the same place in the pecking order of large international organisations. Personally, from what I read into the names, consider Deus and his minions, Aztech (and their secret goal of establishing a bridge for the horrors - thought he Azzies may not even be aware of this, I dunno, never bothered to read the Mercury triology for more than a few pages), the Bugs and possibly even Lofwyr a greater threat to then world as a whole than them.

Because, stating a goal and being close to achieving it are two different things. Granted, I have no idea whether the authors and devs decided to inflate WN in size and scope, but from what I read, they seem a lot like Al Qaida in scope, ressources, and impact. The whole "kill every living thing and use their life energy to elevate to godhood thing seems a bit loony to me.

Yeah, well. Maybe that is Al-Qaida's goal. To my knowledge it's not - I seem to recall the bin Laden tape prior to the election said a lot of "stop messing with us, and we'll stop messing with you" stuff - but hell if I know.

I never really expected FanPro and Friends would have Winternight succeed at any point, mostly because I believed the "no, there won't be a fourth edition! stop asking!" part of the FAQ, but you never know. I know the azzies got de-fanged a couple of years back; I don't consider Deus a threat, personally; and I don't consider Lofwyr much of a threat. The Bugs; well, maybe them.

The main difference I see between Al-Qaida and WN, outside of their goals, is the level of infiltration of major first-world they're presented as having. I don't buy the "OMG there are sleeper cells of Al-Qaida EVERYWHERE just waiting to kill us all!!!11" stuff. The shadowtalk in Threats though clearly describes a global organization, with serious magical and technological support (the only organization known to have units of multiple toxic shamans working together, which was unheard of circa Threats), underground caches of not maybe one or two suitcase bombs but a number of strategic thermonuclear weapons, advanced bio- and chemical weapons facilities, access to then-unknown psychotropic conditioning techniques, etc etc. And their goals might be pretty loony, but we've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that blood magic is the real deal, in the shadowrun world - look at the Azzies, at the Ghost Dance, and the hints of it just about everywhere else.

But maybe our differences come down to opinions of exactly what Al-Qaida is and is capable of - and that's not a discussion for this board.

Ooh, good point - hadn't thought of that. Wonder if Winternight is familiar with the Little Ghost Dance and Spider's nuke plots from Secrets of Power and if they're merely trying to avoid that particular outcome?

Consistency isn't his pair of shoes, anyway. He has said repeatedly that all nonbelievers must be brought down, and all that crazy stuff was found in theri propaganda materials ... but yeh, I don't know him personally either, so I can only offer speculation based on material gathered here and there.

Didn't TerraFirst! have these under employ too?

Erm ... who is backing these guys? Whcih major nation or Dragon? Amazonia? I mean, it's not like strategic nukes grow on trees, let alone all the tech needed to maintain them, the storage facilities ... and what about all the other high tech stuff? Any background on this? Because it seems a tad odd to have that popping up out of nowhere ... of course, you can always set up a raqgtag facility to breed Anthrax and Smallpox using freely available technology, but that's not something that falls under "advancedbio/chem weapons facility". As for the psychotropic technologies ... did they team up with Scientology? That would explain this angle ...

Surely, there's not a bomb-belted bearded fanatic under every stone. But why should that be true with WN?

My whole point was their ressources, scope and even goals are somewhat the same. And in the Sixth World, there're worse things out there than those loons.

Like Aztlan. They still have that Locus thingie. They lost Yucatan and denver, but they're far from being defanged. They still can pull off major stunts, maybe even break Dunkelzahn's Spirit's defenses and establish a second bridge. Also, they appear to have some Horrors around already - or at least, tainted dragons (Aztlan book).

Or like the Bugs. They're everywhere, they hide in dark spaces, they take over our bodies, and unlike Winternight, they are hard to stop because they just come ... and come ... and come ...

Or take those weird magical phenomena that came up after Halley - the Shedim and whatnot. They also pose a greater threat than WN, because they're so damn common.

And lastly, Deus survived the Shutdown, didn't it? It is out there in the Matrix. It is still around. And it's plans surely won't be pretty.

Okay, interesting idea ... that'd up their threat rating a bit.

As I understand it, toxics tended to crop up, largely unwanted, among those shamans in the TerraFirst! ranks. Avenger-types are pretty much drawn to the extremist techniques espoused by some of the more radical cells. It is also my understanding that these shamans tended to cause lots of damage to TerraFirst! when they acted on their plans, and as such there's been a strong movement to disavow and distance toxic/extremist elements from the organization. Not to say they're now toothless hippies on-par with the PETA. They still burn crop biolabs and sabotage polluting chemical facilities, but they don't spread plagues or try to wipe out all human settlement in order to prevent humankind from damaging nature. The core of TerraFirst! probably, for instance, would seal shut a pipe dumping toxins into a river, and probably bust a few heads and maglocks getting to it. The extremist/Toxics would probably release spirits and twisted paranimals, along with the toxic waste itself, to cleanse the entire facility of life and leave it an unusable dead zone. Cut off the limb to save the body, and all that.

Not as far as I know. It was toasted in the 3rd novel of the Dragonheart trilogy.

Colour me ignorant.
Yeh, I gave up after the first 20 pages of the first book. It was too much to bear.

But that still makes for quite some competition for WN for the worst threat in the world.

It is SOTA 2063, not 2064... IIRC, The thread magic is refering to the metamagic filtering.

By far? I don't know. Master Shedim might even be on the same team as Winternight. But more pressing? More common? More useable? More badass? Yes, there are thing such as thing.

Where do we have evidence of it being an AI? All I've seen is that a program intended to combat it has since awakened into an AI.

~J

Oh, it'd make sense that it's still around deep in the computer system of some of the megacorps and the UCAS.

Many governments including the USA keep samples of ebola or the spanish flu as potential bio weapon (or to develep vaccine in case someone else use these viruses as weapon). In SR, I can't believe that no one kept sample of the 29 virus for the very same reason. Actually, I think I remember reading that the first Black IC were developped using the virus code.

Storywise, bringing back the 29 virus would be an occasion to finally shed all the light on its origin, the link to Roxborough and all that. It would be a good thing IMO.

Sure, but woudl they hook it up onto the Matrix? No. I'd rather expect teh Virus to be contained in a closed system - much like germs are contained in sealed-off labs. Well, in theory; we all know what happened to the US bioweapons program's Anthrax, eh? Some Winternight operative might have infiltrated such a lab and copied the virus onto a memory stick or something.

Using such a story arc, WN could be a powerful tool.

Yeah, it'd neatly wrap up most technological arcs. Now all we need is the horrors/IE arc be finally wrapped up, and the devs can start all over again. Which, I suspect, is what 4th is really all about.

Are you saying you don't trust Alice?

If you read the artical it clearly states that this process would work on non magnetic principals. It's not maglev, which works by setting up opposed magnetic fields, this is somthing that works by manipulating the otational spin of atoms to creat a gravitic field of some sort. The spin of the atoms is effected by using a magnetic field though.

The Eggman

edit:bad quote

Sorry, then, didn't refer to the Podkletov experiment. That man, however, is a con artist. His experiments cannot be replicated, though a large number of orghaniosations, including all major players in the US aviation and air force business, have attempted to. and unless it's replicable, dependently, it's not useable as an implemented technology.

Same. It's not like it's Shadow Trek or something.

Out of parallel interest, I refer you to 3001: Final Odyssey. At that point, all the most deadly virii in the world (including the computer ones) are stored in a buried, hermetically sealed vault on the Moon.

Hey, here's one for Conspiracy Corner A long time ago I read Charles Berltiz and William Moore's book The Philadelphia Experiment. Leaving aside the controversy over that specific incident and whether or not it ever occurred, one part of the book described the report of a man who claims to have seen working a-grav experiments in a lab.

It's all out in Lone Gunman territory, of course, but what good conspiracy theory isn't?

You might call BS on it, but it's in the books. The closest I could figure out that EFC powered superconducting magnets that would turn the compressor fan and the turbine blades, similar to what's used in electric prop motors.

The concept that I took from it's meaning was that it was a "rotorless helicopter" or a spinner.