Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: belaran on <02-26-18/0731:49>
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Hi,
Reading Dark Terrors, it seems to me that Arthur Vogel has been killed, during the Detroit "terror attacks", which seems to an inside organised by the bugs infesting Ares. It also seems like Damien is playing their game. And there is no word on Cross and his Seraphim, which were supposed to oppose the bugs.
So am I write to assume that, after Vogel's death, the bugs are more/less in control of Ares, and are just being fight off by semi-renegade Firewatch's teams ? Or does anybody read the published content differently ?
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I missed the part saying Vogel was killed. My reading of Sticks' audio recordings and what other people had said lead me to believe that Insect Spirits are rapidly gaining power, but aren't in control of Ares yet, and this may be connected to Damien Knight's loss of total leadership to Vogel. Without knowing if Vogel was killed, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Damien Knight is still actually against the bug spirits, and is aware they are actually trying to take his company from him. Possibly because they know that Ares has beaten them once before, and want to make sure that strength is theirs, though this kind of logic could probably only come from the shamans, not the bug spirits themselves.
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I missed the part saying Vogel was killed. My reading of Sticks' audio recordings and what other people had said lead me to believe that Insect Spirits are rapidly gaining power, but aren't in control of Ares yet, and this may be connected to Damien Knight's loss of total leadership to Vogel. Without knowing if Vogel was killed, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Damien Knight is still actually against the bug spirits, and is aware they are actually trying to take his company from him. Possibly because they know that Ares has beaten them once before, and want to make sure that strength is theirs, though this kind of logic could probably only come from the shamans, not the bug spirits themselves.
I don't agree with your last sentence. Insects know how to work together to take on a threat to a hive and they can rank the threats to the hive (as far as I understand). The very nature of bug spirits make them very well suited for infiltration and conquering. Finally, high powered bug spirits are exceptionally intelligent, and even medium force spirits are as intelligent as an average person.
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Just to be clear, this is the statement making me feel Arthur Vogel is no longer with us:
"Among those currently reported as missing are several members of the Ares board of directors, most prominently Arthur Vogel, who is one of the corporation’s current major stockholders and had arrived in Detroit only three hours ago after a long and extensive tour of the corporation’s holdings worldwide."
The fact that Vogel called an emergency meeting to discuss the "leadership of the corporation", then gets killed (by the bugs) , leading Damien Knight to assume full control, is what led me to think he is either allied or instrumented by the bug. But I'm a bit baffled by the lack of information on Leonard Aurelius (re)actions. (maybe it's covered in Street Lethal, which was supposed to be released before Dark Terrors).
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What're the chances Arthur Vogel comes back, now a fleshform bug spirit? You can never assume "missing" means something so clean as " only dead" in Shadowrun, after all.
I don't agree with your last sentence. Insects know how to work together to take on a threat to a hive and they can rank the threats to the hive (as far as I understand). The very nature of bug spirits make them very well suited for infiltration and conquering. Finally, high powered bug spirits are exceptionally intelligent, and even medium force spirits are as intelligent as an average person.
That's true. In that case I really do wonder if that's what's happening.
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there were a couple weird hints about this dropped. I think Fastjack made a post about it. I thought it was simple a joke. But the question does seem to keep re-occurring.
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A Dark Terrors related question... What year is it in-game now? I thought it followed "current IRL year + 60" but Dark Terrors has a line "The UCAS government filed lawsuits in the Corporate Court against NeoNET, Evo, and Aztechnology in late 2078. The verdicts in the cases against NeoNET were handed down throughout the second half of 2079; I’ll cover those in more detail later." implying it's at least 2080 now? Apparently Wikipedia of all places does confirm it's 2080 now in Shadowrun. Jeeze. That means either my characters aged quite a bit or their backstories need to be altered to have major events (like Crash 2.0) happen even earlier in their lifetimes.
Man, I did not follow the metaplots... I was so busy dealing with the rules I basically missed the entire story of what happened about CFD. Probably because I never read Market Panic... I don't even know what a "monad" is, or what "monad-derived tech" might mean in future books.
Anyways, I can't see the insect cult passing up a chance to infest such a major player like Vogel. If no body was found...
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I thought it was 2079. The last few books' Jackpoint login page at the beginning showed that year.
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For the record, Dark Terror time index is
Current Time: 17 Dec 2079,
It's not 60 years in the future, but 62. I think SR1 was released in 1988 and the game was set in 2050 (so 62). Upcoming Street Lethal may have a date set in 2079 as it was supposed to be released before Dark Terror.
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My first thought when I read this was that Sticks had decided to just fuck it all and go had after Otto. I figured he was behind the explosions in an attempt to get at him.
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Hum, that is an interesting theory... Mine was more that Vogel got eliminated by Otto, and that Damien Knight is too happy about it to look at the gift's horse mouth...
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Damien's way to paranoid to take something at face value. You don't play chess with Big-D without getting really aware of how the big dragons play the game.
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In the games here (ie; NOT CANON), Vogel was extracted from the scene after some extremely fast calls originating from loyalists to Vogel in Ares Space. His exact location in our games is not known, and nothing official has been handed out declaring otherwise. It was tense, freakish and cool. But our group has members going all the way back to the first modules and content in 1st Ed, so for us the “new rising” of the Bugs is both nostalgic and nerve-wracking.
Someone taking care of that Scarab-Following bastitch Otto would be a good story event.
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Anyone know a date for the bombing at Ares Detroit headquarters? That is other than just "before" the Dark Terrors Jackpoint file posting date of Dec 17, 2079.
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Not sure about Vogel, but there's definitely something weird going on with Knight and the bugs. The update on Firewatch in Street Lethal says that the organization has splintered with one side (backed by the corp and Knight) and the other side headed up by none other than Anne Ravenheart. Apparently Anne and Co. took issue with the little interbreeding project Ares had going on. Knight took that as a sign of disloyalty and sent hit squads after the Ravenheart faction, who've since gone underground. Looks like both sides are squaring off for a 'war', with Chicago seeming like a hot spot.
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A Dark Terrors related question... What year is it in-game now? I thought it followed "current IRL year + 60" but Dark Terrors has a line "The UCAS government filed lawsuits in the Corporate Court against NeoNET, Evo, and Aztechnology in late 2078. The verdicts in the cases against NeoNET were handed down throughout the second half of 2079; I’ll cover those in more detail later." implying it's at least 2080 now? Apparently Wikipedia of all places does confirm it's 2080 now in Shadowrun. Jeeze. That means either my characters aged quite a bit or their backstories need to be altered to have major events (like Crash 2.0) happen even earlier in their lifetimes.
I think it's IRL+62. That would be consistent with the 2050 setting in SR1,with the game released in 1988 (and boy, do I wish I still had my hardcover RB!).
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It has varied over time but now is 62. You can tell when a book was significantly delayed when it's near 63 instead.
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Honestly, I didn't suspect at all that Damien is being controlled by the bugs. The impression I got, from one of the books mentioning Vogel having some "mysterious benefactor" in some places, that Damien is trying to wrest control of his company away from the bugs who are manipulating Vogel, and Vogel's death/disappearance was a shadowrun backed by Damien to take Vogel out.
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The surface evidence doesn't support that. Knight seems to be backing the bugs in the civil war going on in Ares at the moment. Could be part of a longer game though.
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I doesn't seem like Knight to come down on his own people like that. It seems increasingly likely that the bugs have gotten to him.
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I doesn't seem like Knight to come down on his own people like that. It seems increasingly likely that the bugs have gotten to him.
Well thats...terrifying...
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I haven't read it yet, myself but...
I doesn't seem like Knight to come down on his own people like that. It seems increasingly likely that the bugs have gotten to him.
Well thats...terrifying...
And that... an understatement... :o
Crunch~
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And that... an understatement... :o
Crunch~
Yeah, I'm good at that. Something to keep in mind if you ever run for me. There'll be 'light' resistance. ;)
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I doesn't seem like Knight to come down on his own people like that. It seems increasingly likely that the bugs have gotten to him.
Well thats...terrifying...
That's right up there with "Y'know, things have been awfully quiet at Renraku lately..."
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Actually I heard they were vetting Arcologies for the next takeover. Pretty sure they'd narrowed it down to Tokyo or San Fran... ;)
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Now that would be a nice backdrop for the Missions seasons in Neo-Tokyo. The rise of Renraku (and a huge arcology being built by them once again...)
Crunch~
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On topic:
There's only 3 real options in regard to Vogel: he's dead, a fleshform, or being brainwashed to be a better merge.
Damien Knight, there is no way he would not know Otto Stevens is Otto Hendricks.
Why else would Hendricks target Vogel supporters?
A possibility is that Knight plans on framing the whole mess on Vogel, if word gets out about Hendricks.
"I did not know that most, if not all, of Vogel's supporters were fleshforms.
And how would I know Vogel hired Hendricks?"
It's pretty hard for a corpse to defend themselves.
On Renraku:
Jumping into the limelight is not their style.
Not with all the effort they put in to make themselves as discreet as they have.
They might buyout as arcology, but even then, they would (try to) keep it quiet.
Too many people remember the SCIRE.
Noone wants to imagine another incident like that in their backyard.
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re Renraku and arcologies:
I suspect that the golden age of the arcology is well past by 2080. They kind of made sense when it seemed like society was degenerating into chaos and nobody knew how much worse it might get. Built what is functionally a fortress where you can keep your employees and their work areas and all of your other assets. But they have to be godawfully expensive to build and maintain, so the payoff from togetherness, security, and advertising/status has to be pretty big for them to make much sense.
Not that things aren’t still bad in 2080, what with CFD, the impact of losing Boston, the unwinding of nanotech based production chains (and all the economic cost and disruption that no doubt caused). But somehow I don’t feel that either the person on the street nor the corporate executive is quite as uncertain about the future as they might have been back in the thirties or forties.
Not saying that there won't be anymore, but the situation would have to be particularly favorable, I think.