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The doors in Big D's will

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The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #15 on: <09-08-15/0238:21> »
Au contraire.  Aztechnology, because of its base, makes it easier to nail to the wall -- you have a specified target.  It's a lot more difficult if the greater majority of your activities is primarily economic warfare; when you can engage your opponent so blatantly in all-out 'screw you and the caballo you rode in on', throwing tanks, fighter jets, carrier groups, and Thor shots into all-out physical war on their primary holdings, with black/shadow operatives taking care of taking their 'excessive options' off the board, the comparatively-more-delicate economic conflict is less difficult.

Much of Aztlan, given the chance, would be willing to be not-part-of-Aztechnology; ask all the Catholics who are persecuted, and those who kowtow to the Corporate State Religion in order to 'get along' and move up the ladder.  Would it require an Omega Order?  Well, sure, but it'd require that of any corporation which didn't either a) self-implode (Fuchi) or b) lose its main driving force in the middle of a major cataclysmic computer crash (CATCo, despite how much I despise them).  So if / when you can cut Aztechnology away from Aztlan, you'll start to have an easier time of it.  But only start to, because it's still a AAA-rated corporation, and it's still going to be a tough fight, just like every other megacorporation.

Aztechnology going down, though, sure would make the streets a hell of a lot darker and meaner.
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ScytheKnight

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« Reply #16 on: <09-08-15/0422:35> »
If we're talking about who's going to fall from Lockdown... well NeoNET are the obvious choice since Boston IS their hometown and location of their global headquarters, of all the AAAs they would be the easiest to go down from the Lockdown. What would that mean? Well, NeoNET hold a lot of the keys to the wireless Matrix, as well as being up to their eyeballs in the CFD mess... there's a LOT of dreck that could fly around hitting everyone if they go down.
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CitizenJoe

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« Reply #17 on: <09-08-15/0705:05> »
Aztechnology survived an Omega Order. I think they are the only ones to do that.  Aztechnology defeated two dragons.  Aztechnology is providing like half the food in the world.  They put out the most optical chips.  You could irrefutably prove that Aztechnology is the Devil and the vast majority of the world would pause for a moment to stare at their soyburger and then go right back to watching their trideo. Aztechnology going down makes no sense. If they did go down halve the world population would go down with them.  It's like saying the inverse Rapture happened (or actual Rapture if you follow the White Hat Aztlan theory).

CitizenJoe

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« Reply #18 on: <09-08-15/0755:14> »
You know, I was just thinking about how other megas went down.  Particularly Fuchi...  Fuchi was a mega by way of owning JRJ International.  Novatech picked that up to stay Mega.  Then NeoNET picked it up.  It never really went down, just changed form.  Yamatetsu became EVO, BMW became Saeder Krupp.  Even Aztechnology used to be ORO.  Anyway, that just got me thinking that taking down Aztechnology doesn't need to mean removing it from the playing field, it could simply mean changing it as a plot device...

I just mentioned the White Hat Aztlan Theory.  Basically, it goes like this.  There is something WORSE out there and Aztechnology is preparing us for it, like inoculating for the flu.  Aztlan is the bad guy the same way that Thera was the bad guy in Earthdawn.  They fricken' saved everyone's lives with the Rites of Protection and somehow they are the bad guys.  Aztechnology being 'evil' stems largely from Dunkelzahn and Harlequin saying so.  But if you presuppose that a dragon named Black Fang and an immortal elf have their own agenda, you can see how their opinions might be a bit biased. 

That brings me to how to take down Aztechnology... They don't go down, they have their hand forced and reveal that they were the good guys all along.  As much as Dunkelzahn claimed that he was protecting us from The Enemy and Blood Magic, he kept it secret from the general populace... and used blood magic himself.  So, Aztechnology reveals that whole old secret plot about the Horrors and then roll out their line of defensive technology that they have been developing to fight these evil spirits for decades. 

Wakshaani

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« Reply #19 on: <09-08-15/0805:36> »
Aztechnology survived an Omega Order. I think they are the only ones to do that.  Aztechnology defeated two dragons.  Aztechnology is providing like half the food in the world.  They put out the most optical chips.  You could irrefutably prove that Aztechnology is the Devil and the vast majority of the world would pause for a moment to stare at their soyburger and then go right back to watching their trideo. Aztechnology going down makes no sense. If they did go down halve the world population would go down with them.  It's like saying the inverse Rapture happened (or actual Rapture if you follow the White Hat Aztlan theory).

Not an actual Omega Order. More of ... hrm. A Theta Order? It's as close as anyone's gotten thusfar. Of course, you could *see* an Omega Order in the future...

The Azzies beat *one* dragon, Sirrurg, and might have had help with that ... note that when he went for his Limit Break in the big fight, his magic backfired and turned inwards instead of killing everyone in a 10 Kilometer radius. Not that any Azzie will ever *admit* that it was anything but their cutting-edge MilTech, of course. :) In the process, their food production was *devastated*, losing their primary food production zone (NatVat), and suffering a blight across their own crops that turned them into a desperate food *importer*.

They're not happy campers just now, but are putting on a nice show to keep people distracted from that.

Speaking of distraction! Everyone in Boston is looking to pin the whole mess on a mega other than itself. Does it really matter who *was* guilty if someone pops up with proof of who *is* guilty?

*peers at Lockdown*

Boy, some of teh bribes being waved at player characters were awfully large. Wonder how many Shadowrunners would do something immoral in order to get a bigger paycheck?

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #20 on: <09-08-15/0908:27> »
I believe an actual Omega order was issued on another minor (A, maaaaaybe AA) corporation.  The 'Theta Order' is the Ensenada strike, and it was more along the lines of the corporate court giving Aztechnology a 'warning shot across the bow': "Play nice or we'll wax you like a brand new Lamborghini."  As Danchekker showed, however, taking out a major megacorporation (he was after Novatech, but any of the other Big 10 are applicable) was less a matter of doing it completely on your own than it is prying apart your economic structure - and once blood is in the water, the rest of the sharks come a-feeding.

This means that in at least 80% of the cases, the corporations and facilities that make up Aztechnology simply won't have AZT on the door or in the ledger books any more - they'll have S-K, or ARES, or EVO, or MCT, or Yakashima, or any of a couple hundred different corporations that would quite willingly take a bite out of the AZT, or snap up any scraps floating in the water.

For the sake of clarity, however, in regards to the other examples offered:

Fuchi / Novatech / NeoNET: JRJ International was never 'picked up' - it was a quiet internal transfer by the primary (and, technically, constant) owner, Richard Villiers, from Fuchi Americas to Novatech.  That transfer, when Villiers made Novatech public, allowed Villiers to a) swipe a corporate court member from Fuchi (as one is permanently assigned to JRJ-or-its-parent-corporation) and therefore b) become a AAA megacorp by default.  When Novatech pulled the IPO and wound up merging with Erika and Transys Neuronet, the new corporation (NeoNET, literally 'New Novatech-Erika-Transys') became the parent - though you can bet your toes that Villiers remains the overwhelming shareholder of JRJ International.

BMW --> Saeder-Krupp, ORO --> Aztechnology, Yamatetsu --> EVO: naming conventions, though only the first two are permanent, non-disenfranchiseable members.  Keruba got bought out by Renraku (I may be wrong on this, since for this moment I'm relying on the Wiki, which clearly hasn't been thoroughly updated in years), which means Renraku is theoretically in the same position as NeoNET - Keruba being theoretically vulnerable to being bought out from underneath them, though I somehow also remember this as being incorrect; Keruba --> Renraku was, I thought, just a name change, but like I said, I could be wrong.

As for White-Hat Aztechnology, well, here's the thing: if given the devil as proven (AZT being 'shown as being the devil'), if you figure that people are going to shrug their shoulders at that, they're going to do the same thing on AZT's big reveal to prove they aren't bad guys - which is to say, 'yeah, right, whatever'.  And in truth, it's exactly that which would backfire on them - because they're making weapons against bad things that they claim are going to come across in two hundred or five hundred or a thousand years, at the earliest.  People will say, 'Oh, yeah, right, pull the other one.  Here, have a bullet to the head.'  Basically, you can't have it both ways.

And since there's no evidence, either with the IC fluff, the OOC fluff, or the crunch, that Aztechnology is doing what the 'White Hat Aztechnology' theory suggests, and in fact every single piece of evidence is a full and direct indicator of the opposite - that the PTB at the AZT are in fact trying to suck up to the super-nasty-bads in order to be 'off the menu' - it really kinda looks like the WHAZT theory has nothin' but hot air and sweet rainbow-farting unicorn wishes behind it.  :/  Sorry.  Remember - 'out-of-game-world' means there isn't an 'unreliable narrator' issue; facts is facts.
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CitizenJoe

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« Reply #21 on: <09-08-15/0929:24> »
I think it comes down to whether or not you think Samuel Colt is a hero.

Sendaz

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« Reply #22 on: <09-08-15/0944:43> »
Ironically, the Azzies DO have in their possession Rainbow Farting Unicorns.

Unfortunately, they have already weaponized them. ;D

So... yeah

Do you believe in a greater WIRELESS, an Invisible(WiFi) All Seeing(detecting those connected- at least if within 100'), All Knowing(all online data) Presence that we can draw upon for Wisdom(downloads & updates), Strength (wifi boni) and Comfort (porn) or do you turn your back on it  (Go Offline)?

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #23 on: <09-09-15/0208:53> »
I think it comes down to whether or not you think Samuel Colt is a hero.
... and once again, we have to wonder what life is like out in the soy-bean field past the bleachers, because you sure as hell ain't on the baseball field like the rest of us.  If you want to get taken seriously, Joe, you really need to not throw off some sort of non sequitur that you think is somehow apropos without, y'know, pretending (or being) pretentious and not drawing the parallels.  Get with the rest of us.

And Sendaz ...

... I will track you down, and I will hurt you.  Badly.  :P
Pananagutan & End/Line

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CitizenJoe

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« Reply #24 on: <09-09-15/0528:35> »
Samuel Colt made the handgun available to the masses, essentially letting them control their own destiny rather than forcing them to rely on someone else to protect them.  Samuel Colt is either a hero like Prometheus for giving fire to Man, or a villain, like Prometheus for giving Fire to Man.

Dunkelzahn was keeping the Horrors hidden away because he didn't think we could handle it.  I'm suggesting that Aztechnology is actively working on means to fight the Horrors rather than hiding from them. Aztechnology is the new Colt. 
« Last Edit: <09-09-15/0531:04> by CitizenJoe »

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #25 on: <09-09-15/0535:49> »
Well, your conspiracy theory would certainly be helped if you were able to provide proof - whether fiction, in-game in-character suspicion, in-game fluff text suggestion, or out-of-game straight-out facts, all of which would have to be canonical (i.e. actually parts of SR books) - that Aztechnology was doing that, as compared to the myriad sources that state that Aztechnology is, in fact, attempting to collude with the Horrors, bring them across early, etc.
Pananagutan & End/Line

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Moonshine Fox

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« Reply #26 on: <09-09-15/0747:06> »
Samuel Colt made the handgun available to the masses, essentially letting them control their own destiny rather than forcing them to rely on someone else to protect them.  Samuel Colt is either a hero like Prometheus for giving fire to Man, or a villain, like Prometheus for giving Fire to Man.

Dunkelzahn was keeping the Horrors hidden away because he didn't think we could handle it.  I'm suggesting that Aztechnology is actively working on means to fight the Horrors rather than hiding from them. Aztechnology is the new Colt.

Uhm, Dunkelzahn did a LOT more then simply hide the horrors because he (rightly) figured we couldn't handle them or would try to ally with them. He sacrificed his own life and then bound his spirit with a massively powerful artifact and a cyberzombie shell in order to patrol the boarders of astral space, smoothing out mana spikes that would let the horrors come over sooner. The main spike of the Great Ghost Dance almost was a bridge in direct help of an AZT blood mage cabal. Big D's spirit (renamed Lethe at that point since what he did cost him most of his memory) took direct hand in throwing the horrors back and shattering the bridge.


The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #27 on: <09-09-15/0847:59> »
And to be entirely correct, Dunkelzahn wanted to talk about what was coming.  Harlequin talked him out of it.
Pananagutan & End/Line

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CitizenJoe

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« Reply #28 on: <09-09-15/1040:43> »
This brings us to the Dunkelzahn is a Jerk Hypothesis.  This is along the lines of Superdickery... don't go there if you have work to do.  Dunkelzahn's Will has dozens of things that prove he was a dick.  I can point out the Dickery from his first encounter in the Sixth World.  Where was he found? Where was his lair?  Whose lair was in proximity to where Dunkelzahn was first found? Dunk was caught red handed looting another dragon's lair and then spun it as a media event.

Red_Cap

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« Reply #29 on: <09-09-15/1047:42> »
Jerks don't commit suicide to save the world from an impending apocalypse.
Looking for a PBP or Roll20 game, SR 4 or 5.  I'm not picky.


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