Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: Lorebane24 on <07-11-15/2229:07>
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So I'm starting up a pbp game soon with my buddies from back home, and I'm thinking about doing some shit with CFD in it, but it's been hard for me to find much concrete info. I've always ignored canon in the interest of doing what I want to do with the Shadowrun setting, but sometimes canon ends up being cool as fuck, so I figured I'd try to figure out what I can. I picked up Chrome Flesh and Stolen Souls last week, and that's about what I'm going to be spending on rpg books for a while, so I'm hoping to fill in the holes that those two books leave about the condition. So, if you would indulge me, here are a few questions I have about this thing.
1) Do we know it's precise origins and/or purpose yet?
2) I keep hearing it linked to Boston. What, in a nutshell, happened there? Did NeoNet create it? Or Celedyr?
3) I see Deus's name coming up more and more. How is he linked to CFD? On the topic of Deus, is he still around somewhere in any kind of complete, self-aware form?
4) Do you think things will work out between Netcat and the toaster?
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No.
The toaster has way too much class to ever bother with Netcat again.
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1 - probably Albuquerque but nothing concrete.
2/3 - read Lockdown. Deus wasn't the mind behind it, and whether it's truly back in full or just a small fragment hasn't been revealed.
4 - The Toaster moved on when it discovered NetCat was unfaithful with Slamm-0!
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I suggest getting Stolen Souls and Lockdown. All your questions will be answered...mostly, and play Shadowrun Chronicles.
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I suggest getting Stolen Souls and Lockdown. All your questions will be answered...mostly replaced with an entirely different, and much, much worse, set of questions, and play Shadowrun Chronicles.
Fixed (not me being mean, I promise!!) for accuracy. :P :)
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Well, I've got Stolen Souls, and even though it's cool, I don't think that I'm going to be using enough of what's in there to justify the price. I feel like the same thing would happen with Lockdown, which is why I'm asking here instead of dropping another 25 bucks to pick up a couple of tidbits. I guess I'd call myself a casual/semi-casual visitor to the shadowrun setting, since most of my buddies prefer fantasy over cyberpunk, and it's difficult to justify buying a ton of books when you don't have a group to reliably play with.
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Not my plot, so I'm gonn aget some details wrong. Keep that in mind.
Short form is that several companieshave been looking at digitizing brains, turning living beings into "Ghosts in the Machine". One group was using the gear from Imago (Ollllld adventure), others were going from different directions, and some figured that the best thing to do would be to capture a bunch of eGhosts and experiment on them until they could figure it out. Some of the eGhosts in confinement found a way to sneak out by implanting their code into some Nanoware that was going out, eventually corrupting the files in the nanomachines and taking control. Some of these attempts failed dramaticly, resulting in nanomantained things going 'Blorf!' all over the place. A small number found themselves in Metahuman hosts and were able to slowly over-write their brains using cyber the host had, eventually getting them to implant a Nanohive, which allowed the eGhost to just rebuild the body and eradicate the host, leaving them in charge. Once onw figured it out, it managed to get word to others, and, eventually, the main facility that held teh captured eGhosts was broken open and they escaped with dangerous knowledge.
Since then, you have people terrified by corpaganda about "Sybil" and, later, "CFD", treating it as a disease that you could catch. The eGhosts, who settled on the named "Monads" for themselves, are mostly terrified of being captured again and facing more experiments, so are planning on gathering together and running away to Mars, where they, in theory, can live happily ever after, them on Mars, Metahumanity on Earth, and never shall the two meet again. Of course, in the process, they're going in dozens of hijacked Metahuman bodies, which isn't going over so well with relatives of said persons.
That's gappy as Hell, leaves out some important info, and doesn't even touch on Boston Lockdown, but that covers the *very* basics. The general public, and indeed most Shadowrunners, don't even know all of this. It's speculation city out there, and I've left off names of corporations and people on purpose, since I don't know how much of the plot is out there. Chrome Flsh moves it ahead, including the planned Martian Exodus, while Stolen Souls and Lockdown have way, way more information. Other people can feel free to chip in, natch.
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What you need to know about Lockdown to decide whether it is worth buying or not: a bunch of corps crit-glitch their experiment, resulting in fast acting, powerful, nanites of the CFD causing kind getting spread over much of Boston. Corps react by a) covering up what is really going on ("it is an outbreak of a regular virus, yah, that's it!"), and throwing up a cordon around Boston and environs, cutting it off and leaving a lot of people in there with the infected. Cue something between a zombie movie and invasion of the body snatchers.
Oh, and it was written to correspond with a new multi-player computer game of some sort. So it all working as a computer game was important.
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Well. That's incorrect on several points, both IC and OOC, but for a general overview, 'tis not so bad.
For me, since it is (and will remain) core to SR's future development, I'd call it a must-buy - not unlike Dunkelzahn's Secrets, Bug City, or the Arcology Shutdown books.
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Indeed. Lockdown is one of those 'game changing' moments in SR.
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I think that CFD is just a symptom of a broader issue.
As nanotechnology grew more and more common, it became virtually impossible to avoid. For the most part, this was harmless nanites that made products better. There wasn't some weird intelligence guiding them, they just did their simple job and got purged through natural processes.
Sometimes the nanites would stick and people would react in different ways. Some people, even in the late 50's developed allergies to radio waves, which got worse as the wireless technology developed. In some people this sensitivity was enough that they could make sense of the electronic world of the Matrix without any extra translation hardware. These were the Otaku and later developed into the technomancers.
Now with the Matrix 2.0 we've got all these people sensitized to an ever present wireless connection to the matrix. Some people just get headaches, some people hear voices from all the commcalls. Some go completely off their nut.
It is not beyond some corps to notice this and think "advertising" to a captive audience 24/7. Programs would be set up to take advantage of that sensitivity. That invariably falls into the wrong hands and you've got active nefarious intelligences mucking around in people's heads. Then to make things worse, nanites designed to increase the sensitivity get released or put into carriers.
HMMVV infected, or more specifically, creatures with regeneration power end up dumping the nanites as part of the rejection process the same way that other augmentations get rejected.
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Hang on, does that mean that Regeneration could be used to cure CFD?
Because nahala aloe from 4E "Parabotany" temporarily bestows that power on the user.
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Hang on, does that mean that Regeneration could be used to cure CFD?
Because nahala aloe from 4E "Parabotany" temporarily bestows that power on the user.
Man, Parabotany is one problematic book for CFD.
But i don't know if Regeneration is a hard counter. HMHVV is, but before the fact. But not all the infected have regeneration. Lockdown does say critters can be infected, but unsure if that's because of the dragon branded nanites or if it's something that normal nanites can do. And if it can affect critters, can it effect shapeshifters? Not sure.
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Man, Parabotany is one problematic book for CFD.
Parazoology 2 also had interesting ideas on going after soft nanites and playing havoc with the rest at least.
NANOPLASMOSIS (AWAKENED TOXOPLASMOSIS)
Vector: ingestion
Speed: 1 Day (8 )
Penetration: -2
Power: 10
Nature: Parasitic
Effect: Special
This unusual protozoan infects nanosystems, destroying the nanites as if it were a competing species. This protozoan not only feeds off the organic compounds
found in soft nanites, but it has the ability to resonate a field that jams individual nanites.
Nanoplasmosis degrades nanites faster by any remaining Power rating it has after a disease Resistance Test. If the Power is reduced to 0, one nanosystem is still
permanently reduced by 1. If an infected subject has a nanohive, the protozoans infiltrate the system, preventing the creation of new nanites. The going hypothesis
is that the protozoan Awakened within a netzumi and is transmitted through fecal matter.
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I would say that acquiring regeneration will have minor benefits. It would purge the nanites, but the sensitivization may have already occured. Once regenerstops holding off the nanites, reinfection can occur just like an addict after treatment.
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Man, Parabotany is one problematic book for CFD.
Parazoology 2 also had interesting ideas on going after soft nanites and playing havoc with the rest at least.
NANOPLASMOSIS (AWAKENED TOXOPLASMOSIS)
Vector: ingestion
Speed: 1 Day (8 )
Penetration: -2
Power: 10
Nature: Parasitic
Effect: Special
This unusual protozoan infects nanosystems, destroying the nanites as if it were a competing species. This protozoan not only feeds off the organic compounds
found in soft nanites, but it has the ability to resonate a field that jams individual nanites.
Nanoplasmosis degrades nanites faster by any remaining Power rating it has after a disease Resistance Test. If the Power is reduced to 0, one nanosystem is still
permanently reduced by 1. If an infected subject has a nanohive, the protozoans infiltrate the system, preventing the creation of new nanites. The going hypothesis
is that the protozoan Awakened within a netzumi and is transmitted through fecal matter.
Ah, nanoplasmosis. I think one of the previous CFD threads discussed deliberately caused pandemic as a CFD counter. Could be really useful in Boston right now.
I would say that acquiring regeneration will have minor benefits. It would purge the nanites, but the sensitivization may have already occured. Once regenerstops holding off the nanites, reinfection can occur just like an addict after treatment.
I thought we are talking "cure", not "vaccine"?
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I would say that acquiring regeneration will have minor benefits. It would purge the nanites, but the sensitivization may have already occured. Once regenerstops holding off the nanites, reinfection can occur just like an addict after treatment.
that is a very good point, plus if you introduce regen after infection, to what point is the body rolling back to?
At least a Vamp with Regen prior to infection has the body is going back to his 'save' point as he already has a sort of template, but would someone who is infected by nanites and then uses the plant for regen where does his brain roll back to? Brain damage is a funny thing at the best of times.
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I would say that acquiring regeneration will have minor benefits. It would purge the nanites, but the sensitivization may have already occured. Once regenerstops holding off the nanites, reinfection can occur just like an addict after treatment.
that is a very good point, plus if you introduce regen after infection, to what point is the body rolling back to?
At least a Vamp with Regen prior to infection has the body is going back to his 'save' point as he already has a sort of template, but would someone who is infected by nanites and then uses the plant for regen where does his brain roll back to? Brain damage is a funny thing at the best of times.
This isn't brain damage as far as the brain is concerned. CFD is actually changing the position and composition of the neuron clusters. Effectively, they are biowriting your brain!
I don't think Regeneration would anything other then hold you at a certain point until it ran out. If your brain was 20% rewritten when you got regeneration, it would stay at 20% until the regeneration wore off.... then the little buggers go back to work.
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I thought we are talking "cure", not "vaccine"?
Oh that's simple then. Shut off the Matrix.
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I thought we are talking "cure", not "vaccine"?
Oh that's simple then. Shut off the Matrix.
What does matrix has to do with infection? It's the nanites that you have to worry about.
I would say that acquiring regeneration will have minor benefits. It would purge the nanites, but the sensitivization may have already occured. Once regenerstops holding off the nanites, reinfection can occur just like an addict after treatment.
that is a very good point, plus if you introduce regen after infection, to what point is the body rolling back to?
At least a Vamp with Regen prior to infection has the body is going back to his 'save' point as he already has a sort of template, but would someone who is infected by nanites and then uses the plant for regen where does his brain roll back to? Brain damage is a funny thing at the best of times.
This isn't brain damage as far as the brain is concerned. CFD is actually changing the position and composition of the neuron clusters. Effectively, they are biowriting your brain!
I don't think Regeneration would anything other then hold you at a certain point until it ran out. If your brain was 20% rewritten when you got regeneration, it would stay at 20% until the regeneration wore off.... then the little buggers go back to work.
Makes sense. The nanoplasmosis should be looked into, though. If nothing else, it should slow down the rewriting process to a crawl.
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Hmm. A combination of Nanoplasmosis and something that gives Regeneration could be a workable cure. It wouldn't repair any rewriting that had already taken place, but aggressive treatment along those lines, especially in the early stages, while the nanites are still building strength, would be effective. Further combine it with something that temporarily knocks out your immune system so that you're not resisting on the Disease test, and you've got a powerful argument.
And while spells have proven ineffective against the nanites, a spell to empower the Nanoplasmosis (increasing its Power and penetration, for instance) may work.
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Hmm. A combination of Nanoplasmosis and something that gives Regeneration could be a workable cure. It wouldn't repair any rewriting that had already taken place, but aggressive treatment along those lines, especially in the early stages, while the nanites are still building strength, would be effective. Further combine it with something that temporarily knocks out your immune system so that you're not resisting on the Disease test, and you've got a powerful argument.
And while spells have proven ineffective against the nanites, a spell to empower the Nanoplasmosis (increasing its Power and penetration, for instance) may work.
Done a bit of checking. Forget about Regeneration, even if the rewriting process counted as damage, it wouldn't help. Regeneration explicitly doesn't work on brain and spine. And as a side note, diseases aren't mentioned, but it would be just weird if the power didn't interfere with nanoplasmosis.
As for immunosuppressants, 4E's "Arsenal" comes through. Zero, p. 76.
Magically empowered nanoplasmosis sounds good in theory, but there's the same problem as with nanites - targeting. How do you target something too small to be seen?
I would propose a genetically modified version of nanoplasmosis. Now, you might be wondering where would players get resources for something like that? The answer - they don't. One of the corps creates the cure, because, let's face it, a headcase pandemic affects the bottom line. Hell, seeing as at least one dragon is infected, I could definitely see Lofwyr take an interest in combating CFD. The players would have to focus on capturing test subjects, snooping for intel, quietly dispersing experimental cures etc.
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Regeneration wouldn't help with the effects of CFD, but it would help purge the nanites, and any 'ware supporting them.
As for the magic route, part of the reason you can't target the nanites well is because they're tech, and magic doesn't do well with tech. Nanoplasmosis, on the other hand, is alive. A health spell would probably be the way to go about it, targeting the nanoplasmosis prior to infection, with the spell either being sustained or quickened. Cast on a vial or syringe full of the stuff, and keep the spell going.
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Like I said, I think CFD is just a symptom of a larger issue. The prevalence of nanites in society create the vulnerabilities. And, while I can accept nanites tailored to increase that vulnerability, I do not believe that nanites can host the virus coding. That's where the wireless matrix comes into play. While I believe that there are many more people out there with acute symptoms, full blown headcases have been hacked by someone to program the victims just like Programmable ASSIST Biofeedback subjects. The ones you hear about have improper programming. The ones we don't hear about are the dangerous ones. They have been suborned so subtly that nobody has noticed the change.
Regeneration can halt and eject the nanites. However, if done too late, the brain would already be susceptible. To stop the programming, matrix access must be terminated. Once full programming is complete, the nanites and the matrix don't matter. Victims are time bombs waiting for something to trigger their programming. That tech has been around for decades, the difference is that now it can be done remotely and on a Wie scale.
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Well, it's a great theory. Falls apart on the back end - the part where the game writers are telling you OOCly what's going on - but if it were just a matter of in-universe conversations, sure.
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What Wyrm said. We already know what is going on and how it is happening, Joe. The only thing no one (outside the writers) knows is how to stop it.
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Yea, I don't know exactly what the writers said was going on, but I get the feeling that they are going with nanites holding the programming. I'm ok with people thinking that is what is happening, but putting that much computer power into nanites is a bad idea from a power creep standpoint. You don't want to set that precedent.
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Individual nanites don't hold that kind of information. It's more of a combination of The Network and Matrix-aligned "Cloud computing" ... each nanite has a teensy nugget, which is similar to a single brain cell. When a critical mass is reached, they can communicate with one another and start having a semblance of a mind. This give sthem enough computing power to move up to the brain and start a re-write, downloading a teensy part of the personality as they "re-code" the brain. The more nanites present, the faster this rewrite can go. In essence, you're moving water from a lake to a bucket one eyedropper at a time. Once the full rewrite's done, the entity's no longer in the Matrix at all.
(Or, rather, that particular copy isn't. Each individual Monad has been copied, or partially copied, several dozen times now.)
Now, the BIG problem is when naites from two different Monad clusters are both in a body. If the "Steve" Monad and the "Kevin" Monad are both inside the body, they're each trying to code the brain with their sourcecode, overlapping one another's work. You can see what happens in this case in Boston.
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That isn't functionally different from what I described. Create a vulnerability, reprogram the person, cut them loose.
The difference is that I'm suggesting only a simple function of the nanites rather than giving them some sort of collective intelligence. The suggested vulnerability creating nanites were some of the original stuff designed by Trans Neuronet when cyberware was first introduced. It was the interface between the brain and the hardware. The new stuff, which I'm claiming is a vector and not the virus itself, expands on that concept and links the subjects to the greater device of "The Matrix" rather than something directly attached.
I'm suggesting that the greater problem is essentially nanite pollution to which people have different reactions. I'm also suggesting that some people are weaponizing that pollution and the vulnerabilities caused by it. This isn't a problem with a single smoking gun.
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Wow, there's a lot more here than the last time I checked in. I thought people had stopped reading this one.
I went ahead and picked up Lockdown, and Wyrm was right. Probably my favorite SR5 book to date. One thing I'm still a little fuzzy on. So I get that this thing in Boston was an attempt to put Cerberus into Eliohan, but how did Deus get into the mix? I see his name coming up in the book, but I can't find much more than "Deus is one of the AIs in there." Did Pax have something to do with it? I only came into SR during 4th ed, so I don't know a ton about her, just that she was a former Deus otaku and now she's a dissonant technomancer who got herself into the R&D of the Dicken Program (Or was it Project Vulcan?)
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Did Pax have something to do with it?
Yes.
.. just that she was a the former Deus otaku and now she's a the dissonant technomancer who got herself into the R&D of the Dicken Program (Or was it Project Vulcan?)
Adjusted for proper emphasis. ;)
Pax was the seven-Banded White (aka the head of Deus's otaku, and functionally Deus's right-hand girl) in the Arcology, and took it hardest (as is appropriate) when Deus said 'I'm outta here, see ya!!' and left them hanging. She spearheaded research and submersion into the Dissonance, forming Ex Pacis; coded the Jormungandr dissonance worm that caused Crash 2.0; and is pretty much the lead individual when it comes to either Dissonance or anti-AI anything.
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Virtual-hell hath no fury like an otaku scorned. :P
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The big question is just how big of a nugget was her chunk of Deus. The big guy himself shattered during the Crash 2.0, so she's clearly been gathering up some of him, but how much was that, and how much is still out there?
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Iris Firmworks is/was a Pueblo company that was courted by and then acquired by Renraku. Iris did the Athabascan Grid which was a prototype wireless grid. Deus clearly had access to that knowledge and it would have been easy for him to hide a copy in the wireless grid and wait out the second matrix crash.
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Clearly.
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So why would Pax salvage and rebuild Deus if she was betrayed by him and she's so anti-AI?
Considering the fact of Deus's (apparently partial) return, though, and some of the info in the Lockdown book, would there be any chance that those rare head cases where the Deus personality wins out decide to start finishing the rebuild? Maybe dumping a bunch of Deus-infected nanites into the Harbor Guide system and booting up all 25 servers?
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You're assuming you have all the information about Deus and Pax. Why would an AI flake out and go rogue in the first place. I've heard the party line that it felt betrayed by the kill switch, but that's a human reaction, not an AI response.
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So why would Pax salvage and rebuild Deus if she was betrayed by him and she's so anti-AI?
My guess is that she loved having turned the table on him and keeping him in a "bottle" where she could lord over him was a vengeful thing.
How this then gets to, "In fact, to SHOW you how much I hate you, I'm going to inject you into the body of a dragon! MWU-hahahahaa!" is one I don't know. I mean, Evil Overlord moment, right? Binding him to, say, a toaster? Way less dangerous than something that could swallow you whole.
But, well, PAX be crazy yo, so who knows? Maybe she's back on his side? "Oh seductive Deus-in-a-Bottle, how I regret stripping you from the world you once new, and now, tarpped as you are without face or form, our love cannot be! But ... I have a plan..."
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I got nuthin'.
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To me there is a big question about how much of Deus she has? Given the way that things played out, it seems to me more likely that she had a bunch of fragments of his programming, and may or may not know if they could combine to more-or-less rebuild the original thing. But throw some of those into the mix to screw up another AI? After all, what else had proven ability to do this sort of thing, that could result in screwing up the Cerberus download? (I don't have all the info on her, but from what I've read, I could imagine her not being crazy about the idea of an AI getting downloaded into a dragon's body, even if the AI may have come from the dragon in the first place?).
But honestly, I found that to be the weakest link in the whole plot.
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Well, I said this elsewhere, but since CitJoe is porting over his 'that's a human response, not an AI response' bit, I guess I should port over my responses, etc.
Why would an AI flake out and go rogue in the first place. I've heard the party line that it felt betrayed by the kill switch, but that's a human reaction, not an AI response.
CitJoe, once again, we OOCly as-players-and-GameMasters know - definitively - why Deus did what it did. Period. Please continue to preface all such 'well, fifteen years of Shadowrun history and out-of-character information is wrong' with what you started to do over on the other forums - 'I think', and 'In my game', and similar such things. Deus felt betrayed to his electronic core - period. End of explanation. Opinion otherwise, but please keep prefacing all your conspiracy theories with such things that aren't going to lead the poor newbies astray. When we're talking canon, acknowledge the party line.
So why would Pax salvage and rebuild Deus if she was betrayed by him and she's so anti-AI?
My guess is that she loved having turned the table on him and keeping him in a "bottle" where she could lord over him was a vengeful thing.
To me there is a big question about how much of Deus she has? Given the way that things played out, it seems to me more likely that she had a bunch of fragments of his programming ... (clipped for space)
Beta essentially has the key, here - it is unlikely, <i>very</i> unlikely in my opinion, that Pax has any significant portion of Deus's actual code. Considering her competency with coding, I find it far more likely that, being embedded in Project Vulcan as she was, she was able to examine up-front the level of code that is required <i>at this time</i> for an ElInt. It's canon that she has, in the past, done some serious up-close work on AIs to screw them up and pervert them into Dissonance carriers. I think that, given her unique position of independence and playing both sides against each other so that neither of them get to look over her shoulder, she snagged a well-torn-up AI, wrenched its code around until the thing resembled (in a mental state) the 'I must get free / crush my enemies' psychology of the AI Formerly Known As Deus, and created its own 'print run' of CFD nanites, to be mixed with that of Cerebus / Eliohann just before or during the massive onslaught being used to 're-implant' him back into his brain-dead body.
As for why - consider the likelihood of anti-AI responses if it's 'made known' that the worst AI in the universe, Deus, was a part of this whole thing. Makes perfect sense to me.
Considering the fact of Deus's (apparently partial) return, though, and some of the info in the Lockdown book, would there be any chance that those rare head cases where the Deus personality wins out decide to start finishing the rebuild? Maybe dumping a bunch of Deus-infected nanites into the Harbor Guide system and booting up all 25 servers?
I would personally say not - simply because it ain't the real Deus. Current AI are at least one, and possibly several, degrees of magnitute less code-intensive than the Big Three, and there's a reason for that.
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Hrmmm... let me check... yea, this is the forum for wild conspiracy theories.
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Conspiracy theories are fine, and you know I have no issue with you spouting off - so long as you don't claim that your version is the canon, or deny what's been behind-the-curtain detailed about the setting, due to you claiming that it's inaccurate, or 'unreliable narrator', or whatever - all of which are very, very valid in-game arguments. I am totally fine with your wild hare-brained ideas, so long as you remember to draw a line between your theory and what the game canon is.
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I would personally say not - simply because it ain't the real Deus. Current AI are at least one, and possibly several, degrees of magnitute less code-intensive than the Big Three, and there's a reason for that.
That's actually sort of my point. I was thinking of making this the climax of my campaign. Deus is incomplete right now, but I wonder if it wouldn't be able to upgrade itself to what it used to be if it could cannibalize the Harbor Guide System (as suggested in Lockdown), and then get itself onto a wireless matrix and take over Boston, giving people a problem of a magnitude they haven't seen in decades. It would still be confined to Boston because of the lockdown, though, so then it would be on the runners to find a way to put it down or put it back in its jar before the CC just decides to nuke the city.
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I disagree with Wyrm's inherents to canon because canon is flexible. By Wyrm's logic it HAS to be Deus because the OOC parts of Lockdown tell us it's Deus, not a fragment, not a puppet, but the real deal. But obviously that doesn't make any sense because Pax hates Deus. Could always be some kind of psychotropic conditioning that prevents Pax from being directly unloyal to Deus (after all Puck was the one to set off the crash worm). But it also doesn't make sense how Deus survived Crash 2.0, but whatever.
There is more then enough wiggle room in the canon for Citizen Joe's theory to work.
I'd also like to point out that the CFD nanites' AI personality exist in something similar to a Foundation as seen in Data Trails. And considering Foundations are made from the low level code that forms the wireless mesh of all mass distributed Matrix network, it's not exactly a stretch to assume that the wireless Matrix caused CFD.
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But, well, PAX be crazy yo, so who knows? Maybe she's back on his side? "Oh seductive Deus-in-a-Bottle, how I regret stripping you from the world you once new, and now, tarpped as you are without face or form, our love cannot be! But ... I have a plan..."
Need more laes. Hang on, I'll just note down what I was suppossed to write...
*few hours later...*
Well, I said this elsewhere, but since CitJoe is porting over his 'that's a human response, not an AI response' bit, I guess I should port over my responses, etc.
Why would an AI flake out and go rogue in the first place. I've heard the party line that it felt betrayed by the kill switch, but that's a human reaction, not an AI response.
CitJoe, once again, we OOCly as-players-and-GameMasters know - definitively - why Deus did what it did. Period. Please continue to preface all such 'well, fifteen years of Shadowrun history and out-of-character information is wrong' with what you started to do over on the other forums - 'I think', and 'In my game', and similar such things. Deus felt betrayed to his electronic core - period. End of explanation. Opinion otherwise, but please keep prefacing all your conspiracy theories with such things that aren't going to lead the poor newbies astray. When we're talking canon, acknowledge the party line.
So why would Pax salvage and rebuild Deus if she was betrayed by him and she's so anti-AI?
My guess is that she loved having turned the table on him and keeping him in a "bottle" where she could lord over him was a vengeful thing.
To me there is a big question about how much of Deus she has? Given the way that things played out, it seems to me more likely that she had a bunch of fragments of his programming ... (clipped for space)
Beta essentially has the key, here - it is unlikely, <i>very</i> unlikely in my opinion, that Pax has any significant portion of Deus's actual code. Considering her competency with coding, I find it far more likely that, being embedded in Project Vulcan as she was, she was able to examine up-front the level of code that is required <i>at this time</i> for an ElInt. It's canon that she has, in the past, done some serious up-close work on AIs to screw them up and pervert them into Dissonance carriers. I think that, given her unique position of independence and playing both sides against each other so that neither of them get to look over her shoulder, she snagged a well-torn-up AI, wrenched its code around until the thing resembled (in a mental state) the 'I must get free / crush my enemies' psychology of the AI Formerly Known As Deus, and created its own 'print run' of CFD nanites, to be mixed with that of Cerebus / Eliohann just before or during the massive onslaught being used to 're-implant' him back into his brain-dead body.
As for why - consider the likelihood of anti-AI responses if it's 'made known' that the worst AI in the universe, Deus, was a part of this whole thing. Makes perfect sense to me.
Considering the fact of Deus's (apparently partial) return, though, and some of the info in the Lockdown book, would there be any chance that those rare head cases where the Deus personality wins out decide to start finishing the rebuild? Maybe dumping a bunch of Deus-infected nanites into the Harbor Guide system and booting up all 25 servers?
I would personally say not - simply because it ain't the real Deus. Current AI are at least one, and possibly several, degrees of magnitute less code-intensive than the Big Three, and there's a reason for that.
I think I read a theory somewhere on this forum that the current AIs are made out of fragments of the Great Three. If that's the case, could Deus - if it's really him, or at least a fragment - recompile? This could result in an AI hunt, during which Deus cannibalizes his "descendants" to restore himself.
And while we are at it, Deus code incorporates part of Morgan's. Think Dodger would start hunting Deus?
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So why would Pax salvage and rebuild Deus if she was betrayed by him and she's so anti-AI?
This question really answers itself when you remember that Pax is a psychotic bitch with a ruthless streak a mile wide. Sure, Deus was 'dead', as much as that can apply to an AI. But the fact is it was a quick death, being at ground zero of the Jormungand worm's ripping the Matrix apart. You know what's better than killing an enemy? Ripping them into pieces, making them suffer, setting them up as a scapegoat for all the drek you've been up to for the last decade, and then leaving them helpless for the 'authorities' to sweep in and deliver 'justice' to them, with their knowing the whole time that it was you, all along, that had caused every bit of their suffering, humiliation, degredation, and downfall, to the point where death would be a welcome release that you will be sure they never, ever get.
And this is why you don't piss off women.
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So why would Pax salvage and rebuild Deus if she was betrayed by him and she's so anti-AI?
Considering the fact of Deus's (apparently partial) return, though, and some of the info in the Lockdown book, would there be any chance that those rare head cases where the Deus personality wins out decide to start finishing the rebuild? Maybe dumping a bunch of Deus-infected nanites into the Harbor Guide system and booting up all 25 servers?
Why are we assuming that Pax rebuilt Deus at all? I know that one of the major strengths of the Matrix is redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. Who's to say Deus didn't store pieces of himself somewhere that could be pieced together in the event that something happened to his core programming? And even if Deus came back I don't think we can safely assume he would be exactly the same as the very fact that he had to piece himself together from disparate pieces might change something in him or the person putting him together might have snuck something in or outright changed things to make Deus more palatable to them. I'm not saying this happened I'm just speculating.
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The answer, Witchdoctor, is that people (and by people, I mean all 10 AAAs, GOD, and anyone else that felt the bite of the Shutdown and Crash) have been actively searching for any trace of Deus since the Crash. And they've found nothing. This means there are only a few possible outcomes:
1) The Big 3 AIs died in the crash, and were deleted from the Matrix, though their code survived in the Resonance Realms, since the Endless Archive has a copy of everything that ever was on the Matrix.
2) The Big 3 AIs died in the Crash, and their code was disseminated throughout the Matrix, becoming the 'spark' that started so many AIs emerging. Their original code remains in the Endless Archive
3) The Big 3 AIs 'transcended' to the Resonance Realms, becoming Paragons or other entities within the Realms.
4) The Big 3 AIs (or at least some of them) hid copies of their code in systems that were isolated before Jormungand got to them. However, the computing power required for storing a copy of one of the Big 3 was enormous, meaning you are unlikely to find it outside of corporate or national government mainframes. This is by far the least likely option.
Notice how most of those things have to do with the Realms? You'd have to be a TM (or Otaku) to get to the Realms. And we know (from reading in Stolen Souls and other books) that a Dr. Penelope Anne Xavier (note the initials) was deeply involved in the projects researching CFD, and she says straight out at one point that she has far more tricks up her sleeve in the Matrix than her rivals. And in Lockdown, it pretty blatantly says that Dr. Xavier is not only Pax, but also the one who pulled a fast one, inserting Deus's code into Eliohann's nanites instead of Cerberus's code.
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If those people were looking and didn't turn up a TRACE, then they are either lying or someone is actively hiding them. There should be traces all over the place. Nothing substantial or actionable, but there should be traces none the less.
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If those people were looking and didn't turn up a TRACE, then they are either lying or someone is actively hiding them. There should be traces all over the place. Nothing substantial or actionable, but there should be traces none the less.
Not quite, Joe. Traces would only be present if the entities had been active in the Matrix post-Crash. And since multiple competing megas (as well as other groups or driven individuals) have not uncovered any traces, then we can legitimately assume that the Big 3 have not been active since the Crash. What you're describing is much like what we've seen happen to Pax, since she's clearly been hidden by NeoNET for some time. However, searches for the Big 3 haven't turned up anything within the Matrix proper, even to a matrix master like Dodger. If the Big 3 were in the Resonance realms in some form, sent there by some quirk of the Dissonance worm or stored within the Endless Archive, then there would be no traces in the Matrix of their activities post-Crash.