[DazedDante]

So crash 2.0 happened and IIRC Deus and Mirage were scattered across the fragmenting matrix.

Bu what about Dodger and Maegera? Is he dead? Ghost in the machine? Any information would be very useful for the campaign I'm writing.

[Critias]

There's nothing canon since Crash 2.0.  I'm hoping to change that someday, personally -- but in the meantime, it means you're free to do whatever you want in your home campaign, and you won't be "house ruling" or anything. 

[Mirikon]

If Dodger survived the business in the ECSE host at the start of the Crash (Maegera was there, so you know Dodger was), then he's probably still up to his old tricks. Check for whatever Professor Laverty is doing these days. And keep buggin Critias to hurry up with a book on the Tir.

As for Maegera, Mirage, and Deus, that's trickier. The honest answer is that no one knows, or if they do, they aren't telling. They could have died in the Crash, or they could have escaped to some isolated system. It is possible that they merged and then were 'reformatted' into something else. Really, anything is possible at this point, until such time as the Powers That Be decide to pick up the question and run with it. All three of the uber-AIs would have their reasons for going into hiding after the Crash, but it is possible that they could have re-emerged under a new name.

No, this doesn't answer your question, but AFAIK, that's as good as anything out there.

[Critias]

System Failure has the most recent pre-Crash (unsurprisingly) comments on him, complete with a little mini-adventure, or string-of-scenes, or whatever you want to call it, that potentially had players helping him out with a Renraku problem.  Nothing concrete one way or the other, since then.

And keep buggin Critias to hurry up with a book on the Tir.

*bites tongue*

[RelentlessImp]

And keep buggin Critias to hurry up with a book on the Tir.

*bites tongue*

Tease.

[Wakshaani]

Meg was at the bit three-way dance in Boston and, as far as we know from published works, no AI survived Crash 2.0.

Dodger survived, but we don't know what he's been doing since then, aside from that little blurb in System Failure.

Now, there's a lot of speculation as to what happened. Some think that they were fragmented and scattered around, thus creating the seeds for the new, much weaker, AIs.Some think that the AIs might have ascended, becoming a new level of digital life, with the one that goes around the most is that Deus became the World Tree that Technomancers follow. Still others think that some of the AIs survived, but reformated themselves to blend into the new Matrix. Every other day, "Blank is really Deus!" gets floated in the conspiracy threads on the ShadowSea and, less often, JackPoint. You don't hear such things about Meg or Mirage.

No one ever really mentions the Fourth AI of olden days.

Lots of mystery on this front.

Personally, until something solid is said, there are two 'endings' for Dodger that work. One, Meg's gone, and he'll always remember her fondly, but is moving on in life. This is the sad ending that is more Shadowrun. The other version is that a tiny shard of her original form remains in his Cyberdeck, all of her power long gone as she's essentially just a sentient Agent program now, and that they sit and talk quietly on a regular basis. This is the Disney ending.

I know which one *I* prefer, but, your mileage my vary.

[lurkeroutthere]

fourth? There were hints of other AI's but no one on the caliber of the big three.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

He probably means Toasty.

[CanRay]

Or Alice.

[lurkeroutthere]

Alice doesn't count. imo she's an E-ghost....or maybe the crash virus.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Alice was very specifically Alice Haeffner - and therefore an e-ghost.  No 'actual' AI here.

[Wakshaani]

Alice is the one, yes. Her actual origin isn't known. She *might* be an E-Ghost, she might have been the Crash Virus, she might have been any number of things.

All we know for certain is that she was an intelligence who lived fully in teh Matrix and, as such, was an Artificial Intelligence, even if not the kind that you'd normally associate with the term.

Tis a bit of verbal jousting, true, but she's arguably the fourth AI. Or first. Or second, depending on when Mirage is born.

[Mirikon]

Indeed. E-ghosts are a subset of AIs.

[Wakshaani]

Indeed. E-ghosts are a subset of AIs.

At this point, and as far as we know, yes. If you poke around, you can find some examples of consciousness being uploaded (Imago the biggie, but Roxborough also has the tech) ... the problem is that the soul doesn't jump along for the ride. That soul part is what eventually flatlines Cyberzombies.

As far as we know, that soul has never made the jump. Alice might, MIGHT, be the one case where this is so. She alsomight be a disguise wornby a sentient virus. Heck, she might be Cereberus ... he was born in her old city.

I had to do some reading on her recently. Her spat (cough) with Roxy is a looooong one.

[lurkeroutthere]

Even if you count her as an AI or E-ghost or what have you, she's just not on the same scale as Deus, Mirage, and Morigan