Shadowrun General > Fan fiction

Myths & Mysteries

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Dangermaus:
Good stuff Sendaz! Keep it coming please.

Sendaz:
Not so much a theft, but a train was 'stolen' in a fashion back in 2031.
It was the EuroWars and Russia was kicking arse across Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. This would change in the following years as the EDF and Met2000 organised and the infamous Nightwraith incident occurred, but for now the Ruskies were on top.

A Russian support train loaded with fresh troops, vehicles, parts and other gear was steaming through Slovakia on its way to Bratislava from which it would resupply their forces in Hungary and Austria

It would never arrive at its destination.

Satellite images taken at the time showed the train entering the Harmanec Tunnel, which is about 4,698 m long. The train cars themselves tallied up to right around 3,000m so it was expected there would be a window of time when the train was not visible from above.

However, when the train failed to turn up, alerts were sent out and it's path backtracked as no transponder signals from the various car were detected. Upon discovering the train had never exited the Harmanec, troops were diverted there as fears that maybe a tunnel collapse/sabotage had occurred.

What they found was much more disturbing.

While the tunnel itself was intact, just over a 1,000m into the tunnel a 100m section of the rails was missing, with only freshly churned soil filling the gap. Theories of a pit trap were at first dismissed as even a moderate sized hole could not have accomadated the entire train and would have left stalled cars on their own tracks, albeit in disarray.
The walls of the tunnel were searched for possible hidden side passages that a stolen train could have been diverted along, but to no avail.

In the meantime digging commenced in the churned earth area to look for clues while magical support was called in to try assensing the situation. When the Soviet волшебник (mage)turned up and viewed the site, they went pale. The soil did indeed show recent magical activity and a strong one at that. Earth elementals were summoned to help speed up the digging, following the churched earth and magical traces down.

They found the end car about 500m down.

Someone or something had basically made a hole just over 3km deep and let the train drop down it, it's own inertia pulling in the rest of the cars behind it. And then filled it in with everyone onboard still inside, not that many would have survived the drop in the first place.

No one ever claimed responsibility and the Russians had already decided to focus mostly on the German end of the push going forward anyway, so this was quietly filed away and forgotten while diverting many of the troops in the region to other fronts, leaving only token forces to hold the already claimed areas.

A mystery remaining to this day.

Sendaz:
THE PHONEBOOK
In the Before times, we are talking Early 'Bull' Era, possibly even Pre-'Bull' Era- details are hazy on this point, ancient chummers had to ring each other up with primitive comms systems, some even non-portable and mounted on the wall of your pad.
So they had these things called phonebooks.  Real actual pages made from dead trees bound together and loaded with all the various commcodes for people and businesses in the area. And that was really the only way to find and contact people back then.
Anyway, tech moved on, comms became portable and one could just search the Matrix for commcodes, so these phonebooks sort of fell by the wayside.
Except for one.  Rumours persist there is a Phonebook that still holds ALL the commcodes, past and present, both public and private.
Yes, even Nadja Daviar's personal hotline, you pervy stalker.  Now, focus....
The technomancers claim it is some kind of Deep Resonance artefact given form, Mages argue about whether it  even exists and if so whether it is connected to the Metaplane holding the Akashic Library.
While probably just another urban legend, enough folks of interest seem keen to lay their mitts on it that there may be some truth to the story.....

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