[Horsemen]

CFD is an agent of change.  I happen to like Deus angle though it is localized for the moment to Boston.  We have no idea about Sybil and her own agenda with the other variant of CFD.  The focus on tech and the matrix is a great switch-up from magic which seemed to be the primary focus of 4th edition and it felt like the tech angle was being left in the dust.

Project Monad is another angle of change to add to the ever evolving universe that is Shadowrun.

[Sengir]

But Pax isn't sane. She's a cruel, psychotic, vindictive woman, who would gladly burn the world so she can bask in a UV node. And her hatred of AIs in general is only spillover from her hatred of Deus. Simply beating him once, with Jormungand, isn't enough.

That is assuming her aims are still the same as before the Crash. She has already gone from worshiping Deus to plotting his destruction once, and as you pointed out not necessarily bound to needing a logical cause for her actions...

[Mirikon]

But Pax isn't sane. She's a cruel, psychotic, vindictive woman, who would gladly burn the world so she can bask in a UV node. And her hatred of AIs in general is only spillover from her hatred of Deus. Simply beating him once, with Jormungand, isn't enough.

That is assuming her aims are still the same as before the Crash. She has already gone from worshiping Deus to plotting his destruction once, and as you pointed out not necessarily bound to needing a logical cause for her actions...

True. But look at everything Pax has done over the years. She never does things by halves. So why start with a cheap copy of her most hated enemy when she can set the real thing up as a sacrificial pawn instead?

[Lorebane24]

Hasn't Pax been busy setting up Dissonance pools and using Ex Pacis for some nefarious purpose? Who knows what Dissonance is capable of, after all; Deus touched by Dissonance is a frightening possibility if you ask me.

What I am wondering after reading the short story in Lockdown where we actually see the flash point play out is if she actually intended for things to play out this way.  It was Cerberus who (desperately) told the researcher to do something or other to increase his control.  I got the impression that without the hapless scientist's timely intervention Deus would have overwhelmed Cerberus and totally overwritten Eliohan's brain, so I've been running my lockdown campaign with the assumption that this had been Pax's original plan - Deus's personality contained in a single body, even if it is a dragon, would be theoretically easier to predict, counter, or control.  Obviously a returning Deus would draw a lot of fire from, like, everyone.  Maybe that was her plan - use a powerful but manageable re-creation of Deus to distract everyone from her cooking up dissonance wells all over the city.  Plus, she get the satisfaction of seeing Deus killed a second time.

In my campaign, Pax is kind of running scared.  She's not sure exactly what she's wrought here, or if she is going to be able to manage it.  I don't think this is what the devs intended, based on their comments here, but my own interpretation is that she did salvage portions of code from the genuine Deus, so that it IS Deus in that sense, but she was able to do a pretty basic patch up on it, and it's a shadow of what it once was.  I'm stating it up to be a standard, albeit powerful standard AI with attributes and everything that make it, in theory, possible to defeat through conventional matrix combat - at least once it finds a way to get itself out of people's brains and into devices.  Once that happens, though, it's going to have its eye on those old ECSE servers as a means of upgrading itself, as suggested in the Lockdown book's discussion of the Harbor Guide system

[Nightmare]

I might be wrong, but I think Pax is using Deus to get to her final endgame.  From what I've read, Pax is trying to spread Dissonance across the whole Matrix but she needs more Dissonance technos in order to do that.  Deus happens to be one of the most powerful AIs around and something everyone fears.  IF you wanted someone to not pay attention to you while you were gathering dissonance technos and spreading Dissonance pools around the world, who would you us as distraction? Deus is perfectly made for distraction...

[Mirikon]

That's part of it. But don't discount setting someone up to be the fall guy just because you hate them so much you want to watch them die over and over again. And if you can do that, AND fulfill your long-term ambitions without having hordes of white-hats storming you from all corners of the Matrix? There's literally no down side here.

Of course, if I was a psycho looking to spread Dissonance across the Matrix, then there's one way that might work, but you'd need a lot of time cut off from GOD's avenging types to pull it off. As I recall, you can worm your way into the Foundation of one Host from another, if you know the pathways. Now what happens when you unleash a Dissonance beastie into the Foundation of a Host where they are cut off from the Matrix at large? What if that beastie finds a way to get into the 'substrata' below the Foundation, and taint the others, like dropping one of those horribly radioactive elements the body mistakes for calcium into an aquifer feeding an entire region? Turning Boston into the virtual equivalent of the SOX...

[Shaidar]

Finding the creator of Technomancers/Otaku, who coincidentally happens to to be involved with the start of CFD? I know sometimes things happen because the plot requires it, but that'd require quite a bit of Deus ex machina...

Deus Ex Machina

Deus ex machina (Latin: [ˈdeʊs ɛks ˈmaː.kʰɪ.naː] [...] [2] The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the inspired and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Depending on how it is done, it can be intended to allow a story to continue when the writer has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or as a comedic device.

This looks to be the intended use as opposed to referencing Deus the AI.

[Wakshaani]

Finding the creator of Technomancers/Otaku, who coincidentally happens to to be involved with the start of CFD? I know sometimes things happen because the plot requires it, but that'd require quite a bit of Deus ex machina...

Be careful what you wish for 'cause you just might get it.