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History of the Sixth World

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FastJack

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« on: <12-28-11/1100:37> »
After reading a couple other threads, I realized that many of the posters and players on the forums here don't have the encyclopaedic knowledge of the sixth world that Bull, Wakshaani, Wyrm, myself and other old-timers have. So, here's this thread.

The rules:

1) This is NOT a discussion thread. Opinions, suggestions, etc. will not be kept and, most likely deleted from the thread.
2) If you have a bit of history that you want to share, put it here. Just post what you know and any sources, if you have them.
3) If you have a question about anything, post it here. When responding to the question, make sure you quote the original post in your post so it will be easier to find.
4) Don't get carried away. If something is not canon, or you don't have the sources where you think you saw it, make a not of it in your post. Either we can track down the source or declare it apocryphal.
5) If anything is from a source that is recent (within six months of when you're posting), PLEASE use spoiler tags!!

Enjoy!


FastJack

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« Reply #1 on: <12-28-11/1101:17> »
Here's the first bit, copied from Wakshaani's response on the survivors of the Echo Mirage team. I know that this is fact, and in one of the books. As soon as I can track down exactly where, I'll post it.

Alice Haeffner was killed in action against the Crash Virus, but either became the first E-Ghost or the Virus absorbed her personality and made itself into a copy of her ... the jury was never able to say for certain on this one. Regardless, the Matrix entity Alice of Wonderland vanished in Crash 2.0, seemingly destroyed, along with Wonderland.

"Buddy" made it out of the Crash Virus alive, but with a wide array of psycotropic issues. He never recovered, and finally died in 2050. Until his death, he was active as a decker in the shadows. (Possibly an old writer's PC? Dunno.)

Major David Gavilan was the officer in charge of the project. He became Damien Knight.

Ken Roper and Michael Eld left the military and got themselves a start-up company (Matrix Systems)and  producing the world's first commercial deck. Villers bought into the company (But they would only allow him to have 49% of it), then the two both died in "accidents" and all their research was destroy in a mysterious fire. Villers showed up a week later with copies of their work, prototypes of their Cyberdecks, and had assumed full control of the company after their deaths. He leveraged this into one-third ownership of Fuchi.

Keith "The Suit" Hannigan worked for Fuchi, but was snatched by Mitsuhama Computer Technologies in 2046 and hasn't been seen since. (hmmm...)

Erica "Static" Rutledge became a Shadowrunner.

These are, to my knowledge, the only ones who made it out of there. Lucien Cross is connected to Knight's Nanosecond Buyout, wich had to have had some kind of cyberdeck tech behind it, but I don't *think* he was ever outed as a member of Echo Mirage. More likely he was a tech head that Gavilan recruited, brought to a secret underground bunker, and went, "See this? This s the best computer in the entire world. It can do thing sthat you can only dream of. It's yours, if you do me a favor first..."


UPDATE
Keith "The Suit" Hannigan and Erica "Static" Rutledge both had their profiles posted in Virtual Realities, the 1st Edition SR sourcebook for all things decking (FASA 07107, published 1991).

Ken Roper and Michael Eld are mentioned in Matrix, the 3rd Edition Shadowrun (FASA 7909, published 2000) book on decking.

Damien and Alice are "suggested" to be Gavilan and Alice Haeffner in Corporate Download (FASA 7125, published 1999). The Nanosecond Buyout is also discussed here, as well as in Portfolio of a Dragon.

As for Buddy, I'm still searching.

Update 2: CanRay informs me that Buddy's story is in the novel 2XS.

Wakshaani

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« Reply #2 on: <12-28-11/1603:27> »
If anyone has requests...

Mirikon

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« Reply #3 on: <12-28-11/1612:59> »
If anyone has requests...
Bios for Captain Chaos, Dodger, Fastjack, and Hatchetman.
Greataxe - Apply directly to source of problem, repeat as needed.

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Bull

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« Reply #4 on: <12-28-11/1705:55> »
Short Versions:

Captain Chaos - Neo-Anarchist, moderator for Shadowland during mid-1st edition, I think.  (the original moderator just posted as Sys0p, IIRC).  Not much is actually known about Cap outside fo his duties with Shadowland.  He was given an encrypted program call "JackBNimble" in Dunklezahn's will.  He died during Crash 2.0, but the JackBNimble program activated and may have "Saved" a backup copy of Cap.  this is just a rumor at this time.

Fastjack - One of the oldest and most skilled deckers, Jack was born in 1999, and during the Awakening received a message on his old Mac Firestorm computer from someone named Saelatra that said "Good morning world. Welcome back. Play nice." What or who Saelatra is has never been revealed.  Jack got used as a rules example a bunch in the 1st edition core rulebook.  He invented the Attack Program "Jackhammer".  He's rarely seen in the flesh, and his matrix icon is a human male figure that's constantly "blurred" so that none of it's features are recognizable.  After the Crash 2.0 and the death of Captain Chaos and Shadowland, he gathered a group of interesting runners (and a few non-runners) and started up Jackpoint.  he may have a daughter named Perri, who runs the shadows as Skald.

Dodger -- Dodger is a bit more complicated, since Dodger featured heavily in a bunch of early SR novels and later ina  couple plotlines.  Dodger is an elven decker who took his name from the Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist (and often speaks witha  bit of archaic old English).  He was part of a runner team with an ork named Kham, a mage named Sally Tsung, a street samurai named Ghost Who Walks Inside, and later a decker/shaman named Sam Verner (Who Dodger names Twist).  Dodger discovered an AI hidden in Renraku's Seattle mainframe named Morgan and fell in love with it.  Renraku captured Morgan, but Dodger rescued her, but she was damaged by Renraku dissecting her code to figure out how she worked.  Dodger and Morgan (Now calling herself Magaera) ended up fighting against Renraku and later Deus.  I'm not certain of Dodger's 4th edition status off hand, as I don't think he's been mentioned.

hatchetman - Hatchetman was a street samurai and regular Shadowland poster.  He is featured in the In Game fiction for the 2nd edition SR book Cybertechnology where he gets implants and becomes one of th first Cyberzombies.  It is generally assumed that he is long since dead, as Cyberzombies don't have a long life expectancy in the first place and the 1st generation 'zombies were even worse (6 months to a year at best).

Bull

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« Reply #5 on: <12-28-11/1718:00> »
Cap's first appearance was, I believe, in NAN vol. 1. He acts like a sysop in NAN, and he definitely serves as the "host" of Neo-Anarchist's Guide to Real Life (products 7202 and 7208 respectively) though it's not explicitly stated that he's a sysop. He's identified as one in Denver.
« Last Edit: <12-28-11/1724:54> by James Meiers »

Bull

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« Reply #6 on: <12-28-11/1730:38> »
Thanks James.  I wasn't certain exactly when he started posting regularly, just that he wasn't in the first few books.

Longshot23

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« Reply #7 on: <01-01-12/0254:32> »
Cap may have been - there was someone called 'Control' in the earliest books.

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #8 on: <01-05-12/2213:07> »
"Buddy" made it out of the Crash Virus alive, but with a wide array of psycotropic issues. He never recovered, and finally died in 2050. Until his death, he was active as a decker in the shadows. (Possibly an old writer's PC? Dunno.)

Keith "The Suit" Hannigan worked for Fuchi, but was snatched by Mitsuhama Computer Technologies in 2046 and hasn't been seen since. (hmmm...)

Erica "Static" Rutledge became a Shadowrunner.
Keith "The Suit" Hannigan and Erica "Static" Rutledge both had their profiles posted in Virtual Realities, the 1st Edition SR sourcebook for all things decking (FASA 07107, published 1991).

Update 2: CanRay informs me that Buddy's story is in the novel 2XS.

Couple of things.

First, Buddy is not a 'him', but a 'her'.  She was a neurology student and researcher at the University of Washington, wound up with bipolar disorder, and was killed by Black IC in '2XS', which (though I originally thought was concurrent to the UB adventure 'Missing Blood') is actually in 2052, and plays with CrashCart -- which Yamatetsu buys up after the 2XS debacle.  She is whom I was thinking about before -- and we never get her actual name, so far as I could discover.

Second, I'd forgotten that both Hannigan and Rutledge have their profiles in the original Virtual Realities -- or, more accurately, in the short story about Rennie and Dr. Halberstam that is the second half of it.  Both the Suit and Static were part of the Echo Mirage tech team.

Which means that we have only one example (Buddy) as to what the Crash virus did to people who weren't left as total vegetables -- and, actually, the one person whom we know for certain was an EM decker.

In my personal opinion, that makes for one commander (Gavilan/Knight), four techs (Hannigan, Rutledge, Roper, and Eld), and one decker (Buddy) who made it out alive of whom we know the names, and one (Alice) who died.  I'm not entirely certain whether or not Kyle Haeffner was on the Echo Mirage team in some way; I vaguely remember him being so, but I can't nail down why I think so yet.
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CanRay

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« Reply #9 on: <01-06-12/0111:45> »
I don't have time, and am a bit too beat up mentally, to go through 2XS right now (I have two copies for some reason), but IIRC, it was 2051 or 2052 when the book happened.
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Bull

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« Reply #10 on: <01-06-12/0157:11> »
I really need to get ahold of the novels again *sigh*  Never had a complete collection, but what i did have got ruined in a flood about 6 years ago.

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #11 on: <01-06-12/0200:28> »
I don't have time, and am a bit too beat up mentally, to go through 2XS right now (I have two copies for some reason), but IIRC, it was 2051 or 2052 when the book happened.

2052, as I said.
Pananagutan & End/Line

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New Wyrm!! Now with Twice the Bastard!!

Laés is ... I forget. -PiXeL01
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CanRay

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« Reply #12 on: <01-06-12/1051:59> »
I don't have time, and am a bit too beat up mentally, to go through 2XS right now (I have two copies for some reason), but IIRC, it was 2051 or 2052 when the book happened.
2052, as I said.
And that's why I shouldn't post at 1 AM.
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BlackMyron

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« Reply #13 on: <04-27-12/2110:59> »
 The adventure "Missing Blood" from the UB boxed set is indeed set at the same time as 2XS (not surprising, considering the late, lamented Nigel Findley wrote the main UB sourcebook, although not the adventure) - Dirk Montgomery is friends with private eye Patrick Bambra, and cues within the novel and adventure suggest that Dirk visits him while in hiding not too long before the PCs encounter him.

On a related note to the original question in the thread, "Night's Pawn" indicated that some people pegged FastJack as one of the Echo Mirage team, but an authority on the subject said that the rumors were false, as all the 'fates' of the former members were all accounted for and he wasn't one of them.

 As far as Cross, the connection with Knight/Gavilan is that he worked for Acquisition Technologies alongside him.

Wakshaani

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« Reply #14 on: <06-22-12/2025:08> »
*bump* Just leaving lunch and heading back to work, but, I have some free time this weekend if anyone else has some history that they want plopped onto a table. I was thinking about a general "The Horrors and Shadowrun" thing, from the Great Ghost Dance to Dunk's death, Oscuro, and today, but I didn't know if anyone really worries about that sort of thing anymore.