Ok, I admit I been out of the shadowrun loop for awile, work and college can do that. I have not been here in a LONG time or checked any news about Shadowrun. So imagine my surprise when I come to check the news cause im bored and SR4 has been announced. Cool, great, cant wait ... then I read that some System Failure has caused the old matrix to crash. When did this happen!? Is it in a book somewhere? Or does anyone have any information about this to catch me up to speed? Any direction would be appreciated.

Street Doc
Old Runner now returning to the streets.

Whew .. Thats a load off my shoulders. I thought I really missed something here!

At the moment the clues point to it being Winternight, with possibly Deus contributing as well, being responsible for it from the different references scattered about the sourcebooks.

who/what is this "Winternight" of which you speak?

You would be best purchasing a copy of Threats, but to put it simplely they are Doomsday "Cult" (I use that term loosely, and when yuo read it you'll see why) that is loosely based on Norse mythology, especially Ragnarok.

They show up in Wake of the Comet and Cyberpirates at the very least, as well. I'm almost positive I've seen them somewhere else, in earlier material...