Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: DeathStrobe on <05-01-15/0018:52>
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So I'm reading Lockdown.
She says she's scatter brained because she's tired...
I'm pretty confident she's a headcase now.
I actually wouldn't have given this a second thought, but she mentioned it twice. Very good foreshadowing there, who ever wrote the medical miracle section.
I came to this conclusion after Stolen Souls. Figured tasering yourself doesn't sound like it'd actually work, and on top of that, she seems awfully aggressive in trying to find a cure for CFD. I guess the question now is, how long can she hold out before her AI personality takes over. And who's the AI? Or maybe AIs? I mean, she has probably been exposed to a lot of them...
Well, back to Lockdown. This book isn't going to read itself.
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Well, back to Lockdown. This book isn't going to read itself.
It can if you buy it as an audio book :)
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Possible. However, I'll put it at, say, 30-70 odds. There are legit reasons for being scared shitless at the thought of CFD, and wanting to find a cure. If Butch has spent the majority of the last couple years researching and field testing, with little sleep, then sleep deprivation alone would easily account for being a bit 'scattered'.
Also, victims of CFD tend to show more signs than just being 'scattered'. If she is infected, it is still very early stages.
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I bet the writer put the seed of doubt there on purpose, to make us paranoid, even if it turns out she's not infected. Those devious writers :p
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More good questions: if she is infected, is the AI aware of what is going on? And is it malicious?
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I bet the writer put the seed of doubt there on purpose, to make us paranoid, even if it turns out she's not infected. Those devious writers :p
I hadn't thought about that but it's a very interesting idea.
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Well, CFD is pretty clearly inspired by some of the classic horror movies of days gone by. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Stepford Wives, The Thing, The Faculty... There are countless tales of people being replaced by something... Other to draw on. And in all these tales, a common element is that it is hard to tell who is still the person they claim to be, especially when the chips are down and everything is on the line. Pressure and adrenaline push our 'fight or flight' reflexes into high gear, but deaden the whole 'logical thinking' and 'normal behavior' things. So someone displaying abnormal behavior or a short temper may just be feeling the pressure, or that could be the first sign that they've changed. Which only increases the pressure on everyone else, and so on.
Until we see Butch making serious out of character moves (such as when Riser abandoned his old MO to go for big explosions, or when Fastjack started posting Horizon spam) then we ought to watch carefully, but assume she's unaffected. Much the same as with any doctor who has been treating patients with an infectious disease, but hasn't shown symptoms of contracting the disease yet.
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I'm hoping to instill paranoia in the next campaign to the point admitting to sleeplessness and headaches is a death wish.
Oh heck, new scam Take out a high value target you've been paid to remove, but told to do so that it doesn't look like a hit of any kind.
Secretly drug them with stuff that causes temporary memory loss, black outs, fierce headaches..then arrange to leak the information to a ambitious lieutenant or rival. Seed journals or entries with odd diatribes and recordings that seem to be another personality. Basically convince others around them that target is now a headcase, and let them take them out for you.
Or you can just be a scumbag and get them infected.
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Or you can just be a scumbag and get them infected.
That gives me an idea: let one (or more?) of the PCs get infected. The kicker being, the personality is not only non-malicious, it's actually an e-ghost of an old friend/ex-lover/etc. that died that got killed while in the Matrix. The e-ghost wants to help find the cure, which in terms of game mechanics allows a player to play as two different characters (their default character, and a hacker), switching between them for when the run starts focusing more on the Matrix. Role playing aside, this could help with the difficulties in that our table frequently experiences when someone has to plug in.
As for Butch, I'm with Marzhin. Might be a scare, might be foreshadowing.
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It is a good way to kill a runner's career. Plant the seed of doubt that they might be a headcase. The paranoia of the shadows will do the rest.
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There might be a story with Butch in it in Chrome Flesh.
...
Justs ayin'.
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If you look at the way Butch has changed from, say, 3rd Edition to 5th Edition, then something has to be responsible for the change in personality. 3rd Edition Butch was quite shameless about dealing with Tamanous and wasn't trusted by the majority of the others on Shadowland. Nowadays she is almost the most trusted member of Jackpoint.The change could be CFD, or just inconsistent writing.
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Or because she's had years to change her perspective and act on it. CFD is a new thing, and she's been trusted since 4th Ed.
I personally think Butch's 'issues' stem from Essence loss. From Stolen Souls:
> You kept a vamp penned up for two weeks. Are you crazy?
Did you feed it?
> Slamm-0!
> Yes.
> Butch
Butch made multiple mentions of the sacrifices she made, and that could have been one of them, if she couldn't bring herself to feeding others' souls to Subject Alpha.
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In the name of science and the impression I got from Stolen Souls she isn't above feeding others to her subjects.