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[OOC] VU93 Street Legends: The Wyrm Ouroboros (Shadowtalk Addition)

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The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« on: <01-19-12/0831:53> »
Please use VU 93 Jackpoint Addition rules.



The Wyrm Ouroboros
Age:
64 (b. 02/14/2009)
Height: 195 cm (6' 5")
Weight: 78.64 kg (173 lbs)
Hair: Dark Brown, Silvering
Eyes: Grey
Gender: Male
Metatype: Caucasian Elf
Awakened: No


> I'm not going to say how I got this, because revealing sources -- or access -- is a quick ticket to Bad Karma.  The one thing I will say is that its source is such that I have no doubts as to the provenance of the information.  Read into that what you will.
> (Insert A Likely Hacker)

Great Lady:

   You desired to know as complete of information upon those in your service as it was possible to acquire without violating the inner sanctum of their thoughts.  You have received the fruits of our labor upon the rest of <<corrupted>> and the Follo<<corrupted>>, as well as the more mundane <<corrupted>>hers.  Much of the information from the <<corrupted>>ath came voluntarily, and of course much from we of <<corrupted>>ch.

> What the hell is this?!?  What's with all the corrupted data??
> Yellow Rose of Texas

> Sorry, Rose.  Even with decrypting it on location, an embedded worm started eating away at it as soon as I pulled it off the system; I disinfected it as a matter of course, but as you can see there were certain key words and phrases it got to almost immediately.
> (Main Hacker)

   In regards to the Wyrm Ouroboros, all of us were extremely reluctant to delve into his privacy.  He is a father-figure to those of us who survived the Purge; even though he was not with us physically after our first formative year, he remained with us in the Matrix, no matter that he could not touch the Resonance.  In addition, though he is not given to flights of fancy, exaggeration, or lying, when one of us could get him to talk about his past, he was very adept at altering dates, names, locations -- all of the sort of information you would expect an experienced shadowrunner to change in order to protect himself, his cohorts, and his clients.
   That said, after considerable discussion and with much difficulty, we have assembled this profile for your elucidation.  Percentage indicators represent our confidence in the accuracy of the information.

   According to records acquired from the Endl<<corrupted>>ive, Kendrick Morkain (Mohr-kahy-EEN) was born in St. Francis Hospital on the south side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA on February 14th, 2009.  Although he was by far not the first so-called 'spike baby', he was a seven-day wonder for the local newspapers, after which he passes into private information sources only.  His childhood inoculations and vaccines proceeded on-schedule, as did his entry into the world of education.  His instructors found him to be bright but socially inept; only one teacher indicated her opinion that the former was the cause of the latter.  His intelligence kept him ahead and apart from his age-peers; Ken skipped third grade and started taking high school courses while still in middle school.  (99.912% confidence.)
   His social development continued to lag, finding expression only in music (piano and cello) and stage acting (two high school plays).  In the latter Ken found something of a social circle, but reports continued to indicate him as being an 'outsider', even among those bottom-rung crowds.  Students on social networking sites spoke of Ken as thinking too much, being 'brainy' and 'a nerd' -- compare this latter to 'geek', which was apparently an acceptable social category of intellectual aptitude.

> I don't get it.  What's the diff?
> (Young Person)

> It's the difference between a trog and a troll.
> (Older Person)

   His grades and advanced work allowed him to begin taking university-level courses at Marquette University in June of 2025 (his 16th year) even before his last year of high school; psychology and computer programming predominated in his college course work.  Though Ken 'walked' with his graduating high school classmates in June of 2026, he had not taken secondary-level classes since the previous December; he also took no time off for the summer, continuing to pursue education as social outlet.  (The Marquette University counsellor noted his concern about this development but, as Ken was well under the legal drinking age in the state, admitted that socialization with his peers was very difficult.)  (98.514% confidence.)
   Certain facts grow somewhat muddled at this point, near to the Crash of '29 as it is.  It is of record that Kendrick was involved with the Midwestern Neural Artificial Intelligence Foundation (NAIF) (a cloud-networked group of programmers at various midwestern universities and centered at Purdue University) which was in competition with similar AI development teams on both the East Coast (centered at MIT) and the West Coast (centered at CalTech).  Ken's team added a unique twist to the NAIF group's programming which was missing in the other two -- psychosocial development.  None of us in O<<corrupted>>, not even Prophit or Microbyte, have quite managed to determine what the programming was; we are not certain if it properly transcended into the <<corrupted>>, if it was corrupted by the original Crash Virus and thus overwritten, or was simply incorrect programming.
   What else is certain is that Ken, along with fellow students Jethro Welle (computer networking and security) and Mitch Davis (computer security and economics), spent much of September and October of 2028 programming a complex-for-the-day computer worm, christened 'the Worm Ouroboros'.  It was a tracker-worm, designed to be planted in a small trading company's computers, then to move itself up the economic 'food chain' before replicating and infiltrating the computers of any company trading more than $50 million daily -- in essence, only the largest trading companies.  Once there ...

Quote
(recording, K. Morkain)
   ... it was supposed to just bloody monitor and report back -- biggest earners, that sort of thing.  I don't remember, Mitch took care of the details on that part.  What it did was start increasing the stock buys and sells.  Shares traded increased by something like a tenth of a percent.  Not much just looking at it, but those companies trade a hundred thousand here, a hundred thousand there -- nice big and most importantly round numbers, so seeing a 'buy' sent for a hundred kay return with a hundred kay and ten ... well, some of the big houses halted their electronic trading for a couple of days in mid-December.
   (Sound of a sigh)
   Let me tell you, getting a badge at your door on New Year's Eve kinda puts the kibosh on the night's festivities, you know?

   The three were traced by FBI and SEC computer experts and arrested late on New Year's Eve, 2028.  All three were out on bail when the Crash Virus of 2029 began taking down systems left and right.  With the FBI database savaged by the virus, the charges against Morkain, Welle, and Davis were not so much dropped as erased.  Like tens of thousands of other programmers across the world, Ken studied the Crash Virus.  The difference between his research and most other hackers of his day was that while they sought ways to contain, control, and cease its actions, Ken studied its proclivities, its preferences, what it attacked and why -- or, to anthropomorphosize it, what it liked.  This, along with his previous programming work on the NAIF team, brought him to the attention of the Echo Mirage team in early July.  (78.028% confidence.)
   On 21 July 2029, Morkain was brought into Echo Mirage.  Not as a member of the actual Echo virus-hunting squad, but as a 'bridge' programmer for the psychological monitoring program, code-name 'Mirage'.  He and several others had the knowledge base necessary to take what the psychologists studying the training Echo hackers recommended and translate it into programmer-speech that the Mirage team could use to code the monitoring program.  While others built the 'weapons' used by Echo Mirage to hunt down and terminate the Crash Virus, Ken helped to build the 'armor' put in place to help them stay relatively sane.
   After arguing long and passionately about the need to understand the issues the Echo Mirage hackers faced from their point of view, Morkain himself underwent implant surgery in April of 2030, and began undergoing the physical and psychological training necessary to neurally access the Internet via the desktop cyberterminals.  Although he never personally engaged the Virus, he sent himself through a number of different members' sense logs.  Socialite believes this to be where his slight bipolar tendencies come from.  (92.625% confidence.)
   On 3 November 2031, the last pockets of the Crash Virus were wiped out.  Long since forewarned via SigInt that elements within the Pentagon wish to eliminate the Echo Mirage team, (only seven of its original thirty-two hackers having survived the Crash Virus), four immediately disappeared.  The other three took themselves off over the next month and a half, before the debate about their future could be finalized.  By this time, of the more than 150 command and support staff of computer programmers, psychologists, and techs, less than 40 remained on-site on the last day, the remainder having returned to private practice, been reassigned to other parts of the Air Force, or simply disappeared into what we now would call 'the shadows'.
   Ken, having spend most of the last nineteen months shifting between working with the top computer programmers the US and Cananda had to offer on one hand and the intense virtual world that even the isolated local network was on the other, kept his peace and waited for the decision to be made.  The UCAS had only been established in April, and a lot of different individuals were trying to put their stamp on events.  Taking his first steps into true decking, Ken -- The Wyrm Ouroboros for the first time -- planted worms within several UCAS governmental systems to keep watch and report, refined versions of the original 'Worm Ouroboros'.
   While the worms were sufficient to give him enough advance warning to trigger their info-wipe programming, sixteen of his fellow loyal citizens were killed before he could get word to them that the decision had finally been made.  Specific data throughout the UCAS government systems on Ken was erased, scrambled, or overwritten with segments taken from other individuals with data similar to his.  Thus, on 27 May 2033, Captain Kendrick Morkain, PhD, disappeared.  (86.486% confidence.)

> Captain?  That was fast.
> (Skeptic)

> Well, if this is real, it sounds like he'd finished his bachelors before the Crash.  Working in that kind of atmosphere, with that level of people, any university would fall all over themselves to grant you a doctorate, just to get their hands on the information inherent in your thesis.  You can't keep  a PhD a lieutenant.
> (Military Sort of Guy)

   The next records of the Wyrm come from the Salish Council.  Apparently, he believed that the best place for him was somewhere the UCAS government wasn't about to send anyone, and hacked himself an immigration visa for the Sinsearach elven 'pinkskin tribe'.  His atypical neural implant made him a target for certain elves of rising influence, and 'a gentleman of polite demeanor but threatening aura' was sent to discuss certain things he could do for the 'southern Salish Council elves'.  Very soon, the Wyrm was again a member of a programming team, this time as its head, using his knowledge of psychology and computers to help plan the battle for the southern Sinsearach elves' hearts and minds, and to direct its implementation.
   Throughout the next year and a half, countless pieces of propaganda were employed, voice-overs hacked, and visuals altered in order to sub rosa push the agenda of Aithne Oakforest, Sean Laverty, and Lugh Surehand.  The publications of Ehran the Scribe are similarly but subtly emphasized.  The main work, however, was the duplication of the international communications links inside downtown Portland, the spread-out lifting of two dozen 'small, inexpensive' comsats, and the acquisition of the Civil Emergency Network codes.  Between the future Princes' deep cover operatives and the Wyrm's advanced knowledge and technology, these hurdles were carefully researched and quietly overcome -- so much so that nobody outside Portland knew what was going to happen until it did.  In exchange for his work, Ken was made Kinealthas Morkain, Duke of Lyons.  (88.894% confidence.)
   Apparently even the well-educated pragmatist had a leftover streak of Tolkeinesque romance in him.
   The Ar<<corrupted>> holds a large amount of information, images and articles, of 'Kinealthas' during the following three years, as he did everything one would expect a high noble of a new nation to do -- parties, soireès, socializing, hob-nobbing with the elite.  During this time he also headed the Matrix division of the Information Directorate, a very real but obviously very secret department of the Tír Tairngire government, tasked with censoring information coming into the Tír as well as acquiring intelligence from both inside and outside its borders.  For obvious reasons, their primary loyalty was to the High Council, and when in 2037 ID agents inside the Peace Force discovered Gen. Grundman's coup plans, the Wyrm Ouroboros led the Directorate deckers in seizing control of the Peace Force communcations network.  (94.221% confidence.)  Immediately afterwards, he played aide during Ehran the Scribe's trip to portions of Europe, particularly Tír na nÒg and Snowdonia, where he gave advice on the advancing technological front.  (On a personal note, this is when he first got interested in fine liquors, particularly whiskey.)
   Upon his return in late September, the Wyrm had the opportunity to look at the Tír with eyes newly exposed to how other people lived -- and it appears that he did not like what he saw the Tír doing to its own people.  Realizing just how much control over its subjects the High Council used, and realizing just how much he despised them doing so, he began planning his own escape from the clutches of the Tír government.  His social rank gave him the privacy necessary to revamp his tapeworm design, and his highly-placed position gave him the access to liberally seed the Tír computers with them -- even to uploading them into personal, off-grid systems.
   Once again, in May of 2038 and this time with a big chunk of change, Kendrick Morkain vanished from electronic existence.  He never used the name 'Kinealthas' again.  (92.262% confidence.)
   Afterwards, it becomes difficult to track the Wyrm's whereabouts; any imagery and genetic information within whatever false IDs he utilized must have been incorrect to 'within acceptable error range' parameters; he has previously stated in interviews that he moved around a lot, changing cities and sometimes nations every three to six months.  As previously said, he is very adept at changing dates, places, and names in order to conceal exactly what happened and when.  He is, however, fairly honest about the bones of the matter, so if one has patience and considerable time, one may research the emergent information in order to discover the true events. We shall quote from his 'acknowledged' deeds, and inform you of the actual activity, arranging things in the correct timeline.

Quote
2037: Boosted and distributed a complete 'Who's Who' of the ownership of Mitsuhama Computer Technologies, including a two-layer exploration of fronts and holding companies.  Suspected of having delved much further into fronts, holding companies, etc. (Japan.)

   This took place from August 2042 to April 2043, and involved the Wyrm delicately identifying the complete Sa<<corrupted>>p empire -- and those portions of the economic sphere that were owed debts by it.  While a large number of matrix intrusions were undoubtedly necessary, the information was less a matter of acquiring a file and confirming its contents than it was assembling a factual dossier from myriad sources.  This more than any other shows his talent: acquiring, analyzing, and synthesizing data into a highly-accurate image of events, ideas, and intentions.  The Wyrm lived in various places during this time, including London, Paris, Frankfurt, and Oslo.  We have identified the employer as Nathan Crane, a fixer in Southampton, England, who was killed in 2054 during an exchange.  We have, through analysis of archived data traffic, identified Crane as an agent (colloquial 'Watcher') for the Great Dragon Dunkelzahn.  We believe the Wyrm was hired periodically to update this information, but we have no proof besides the fact that up until 2056, the information was updated on a biannual basis.  (84.120% confidence.)
   In the several months immediately afterwards, it appeared that the Wyrm stayed in the British Isles.  Imagery retrieved from the En<<corrupted>>ests that the Wyrm was in Snowdonia in early July, but considering the distaste for cyberware by the elves of Tír na nÒg, and his repudiation of Tír Tairngire, it seems unlikely.  (42.952% confidence.)

Quote
2040: Uncovered and published links connecting Boston magnate Richard Villiers to 'The Terror of the Orient', Fuchi Industrial Electronics. (UCAS)

   In September of 2045, the Wyrm was hired by an individual we believe to later have been associated with the Sons of the Alamo policlub (CAS) to positively identify the Board of Directors for Aztechnology.  Like the <<corrupted>>upp research detailed above, the Wyrm acquired and analyzed information in order to pinpoint his targets; this particular research focussed on data-traffic analysis, key phrase acquisition, and human intelligence.  Three individuals within Tenochtitlan have admitted, under extraordinary measures to ensure their secrecy and privacy, that the Wyrm lived and engaged in shadow ops there, both as employee and employer, from November 2045 to July 2046.  (72.297% confidence.)
   While we believe the Wyrm to have been successful -- all indicators point to this probability (94.344% confidence.) -- we have not been able to locate any such file within t<<corrupted>>ve.  If this information was ever acquired or synthesized, it was never committed to electronic data storage.   Reconstruction of the work creates a list of 1,258 possible individuals.  Likewise, the precise identity of his employer is in doubt, as it may be one of six individuals, only two of whom remain alive.

> Where can I get that list??
> Yellow Rose of Texas

> Didn't come with the file.  Sorry.
> (Main Hacker)

« Last Edit: <01-19-12/2139:15> by The Wyrm Ouroboros »
Pananagutan & End/Line

Old As McBean, Twice As Mean
"Oh, gee - it's Go-Frag-Yourself-O'Clock."
New Wyrm!! Now with Twice the Bastard!!

Laés is ... I forget. -PiXeL01
Play the game. Don't try to win it.

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #1 on: <01-19-12/2136:30> »
Quote
2042: Assisted in an attempt to crash critical Aztlan matrix systems prior to a military offensive. (CAS)

   Around early March of 2048, the Wyrm was approached by individuals from Hannover.  His experience in coordination of a Matrix 'softening-up' was hired and put to use against the Karlsruhe city goverment.  He again acted as both employer and shadowrunner, directing emplacements of what can only be called 'active on demand' hard-line access links into the Karlsruhe city government Matrix.  These links prove incredibly useful in giving AGS military hackers nearly direct access to the core communications and organization grids inside Karlsruhe, enabling military forces to take over the city more swiftly than anticipated.  Doing this averts an intended attack upon the Black Forest Troll Kingdom.  (86.622% confidence.)
   Immediately afterwards, the Wyrm disappeared.  It is unknown if he was contacted b<<corrupted>> was, then the latter's notorious vengeful streak must have taken the day off.

Quote
2043: Spearheaded an attack on New York/New Jersey non-Mafia criminal interests. Morkai and associates are believed to have kept up to 15% of the money from 'opposition' operations, thought to total over $10,000,000. (UCAS)

   From 1 June 2039 to 26 August 2039, more than 7,000 individuals met in order to set the standards for Matrix programming -- to create and emplace the bedrock code for the seven-year-old Matrix, to determine baseline universal referents for various programs, and to exchange and develop ideas for the future development of the world computer network.  The Wyrm embedded himself among these individuals as a working cover -- three covers, in point of fact -- in order to lead a team of over twenty individuals in a combination scam and heist against the Ry<<corrupted>>ported Watada-rengo Yakuza.  While the transactions and extended confidence schemes utilized by the team are too extensive and baroque to detail, the most notable for the purposes of this file was the acceptance of Yakuza funds (a high-six-digit figure) in order to bury an inherent back-door within the baseline code for node connection sequences.  Supposedly, the Wyrm and his cohorts achieved this or something similar, but gave their purported Yakuza employer sixty thousand lines of code which supposedly enabled the back-door but which, when run on anything but unadulterated Matrix Systems Portals, was utterly useless.  (77.063% confidence.)
   Qui bono analysis indicates that the most likely individual to have employed the Wyrm and his associates would have been the Gr<<corrupted>>ut this may be overly simplistic.  The total monetary loss for the Yakuza is estimated at 150,000,000¥ or more, during these three months and over the next eighteen as their worldwide systems hemorrhaged additional funds before Yakuza deckers could find and fix the code, of which the Wyrm and his associates received over a million each -- again, stretched out over those twenty-one months.  (96.601% confidence.)
   It should be obvious that the Wyrm may have made contacts with numerous significant individuals involved in the shadow networks during the Conference.  Soci<<corrupted>>ipper agree that there may well have been a shadow version of the UMS conference occurring simultaneously.  Of interest here is that we can positively place the Wyrm at the 2065 UMS conference in the United Kingdom, along with several other faces from the first conference.

Quote
2047: Researched and distributed a document incriminating Ares Macrotechnology in illegal human testing and unregulated toxic waste disposal practices. (UCAS)

   MCT was the bad guy on this one, back in '50 or '51; timeline on that one's a little sketchy, and I'll tell you why in the next bit.
   Anyhow, the Wyrm was taking a break down in Brisbane, Aussieville, enjoying the land of sun, sand, and highly-poisonous everything, getting to know a hot magic chick slash decker, when he got hired along with her team to check out some politico's daddy's disappearance.  Long story short, they track the guy down to a supposed-to-be-abandoned town on the north-eastern coast, within spitting distance of the Great Barrier Reef.  There's a zero-zone facility there that they figure they have to break into, and one of their team goes and talks with, like, his bloody ancient great-great-great-great-great-grandfather koraji and he talks to his juju buddies and they stampede, I drek you not, six juggernauts into the place in order to totally frag over the security.
   There's video; you should watch it.  Abso-frickin'-lutely hilarious, especially the part where the big bull stomping around gets half-blasted by the exploding fuel tank and rampages through the power facility before falling off the cliff and into the ocean.
   So anyhow.  Not only is the guy not alone in being hijacked, he and something like four hundred other people are busy being used as bioreactors.  Another five or six hundred are being used in experimentation of the effects of toxic waste on meta/human bodies, and the horror farm isn't very concerned about where the runoff is going.  All the guinea pigs are pretty much still conscious, but you can bet your fluffy tail they were all pretty bonkers by that point.  (95.619% confidence.)
   They weren't able to rescue the guy, but the lady's team protected her and the Wyrm long enough for them to get the backup power going and data-rape the on-site SneakerNet, which leads into the next thing ...

Quote
2051: Planned and executed a matrix assault on the Parliament records of the government of Australia. (Australia)
2055: Involved in several border incidents from Australia to Seattle. A small child of approximately 4 years of age is involved.

   Okay, so both of these are pretty much spot-on true.  The issues that MCT was having Down Under stemmed from sixty not-yet-bought-and-paid-for members of the then-Parliament.  First Monday in March has always been an Aussie holiday -- Labour Day -- and all the government stuff is officially closed while they have parades and picnics and scorpion-biting contests and drek like that.  So on 6 March 2051, the Wyrm, his lady-friend, her team, and some of their less-patriotic friends spent a nice chunk of the parade time cracking Parliament's security, getting the Wyrm inside, and hooking him into the server-room mainframe.
   You'll have to talk to <<corrupted>>o find out what exactly the Wyrm did, 'cause I can't figure out quite how he did it. What it resulted in was those sixty Members getting a really wicked file composing the Worst of MCT On Your North Coast dropped into their pocsecs -- this was before you could transmit most data wirelessly -- and then, if the message was ignored for an hour, the file dumping itself to everyone in that Parliamentarian's office's mailing list.  Hell if I know how he got the feedback to work, but more than 6,000 people got that file that day, and the Canberra news broke into the Labour Day Cup cricket match between West Australia and Brisbane Independent with all sorts of screaming and hollering and such like that.
   MCT had to do a lot of work trying to quiet that down, but they never were able to make more than blinking idiots believe that the footage was faked.  Oh, they still claim it was, but it pretty obviously wasn't.  The Wyrm, his lady friend, &c. cost MCT a number of government contracts and several tens of millions in clean-up and reparations.  (98.937% confidence.)

   The 2055 stuff has to do with Wyrm and his family.  Yeah, family -- he keeps it quiet, but the Wyrm has >>CORRUPTED<<
>>CORRUPTED<<
>>CORRUPTED<<
>>CORRUPTED<<
>>CORRUPTED<<
>>CORRUPTED<<
>>CORRUPTED<<
>>FLOATING POINT ERROR<<
>>DATA UNRETRIEVABLE<<
>>Continue?  Y/N

>
WTF?!?
> Jean Gene Genie

> Wyrm, you aren't hacking my node, are you?
> Bull

> I'd apologize, Bull, but we both know I hate insincerity.  We also both know that I allow very few people to have information on my family.  We all have enemies.
> The Wyrm Ouroboros

> That's fair.
> Bull

> So what's the scoop?  Wife, kid(s) ... what?
> (Curious Someone)

> From what I can remember of ancient rumor, the 'hot magic chick / decker' is the wife.  The small child was a daughter.
> (Older Decker)

> I heard three kids, and that the wife is working in the light these days, with the kids all nice and citizen-like.
> (Social Runner/Fixer)

> I heard he's a Mormon polygamist and has, like, four families.
> (Anybody's Guess)

Quote
2056: Involved in setting up a 'halfway house' for street kids in New Orleans. Later thought to be original home base of a so-called 'otaku' gang. (CAS)
2061: Participated in an intrusion into the 'closed' Renraku Arcology. (Seattle Metroplex)

   Your Ladyship knows the truth of these, for we have kept you abreast of these situations as they were taking place.  We understand that you were not behind our assembly, but your patronage has certainly influenced us.  For this we thank you, and pledge our continued service to your goals.

> Okay, so that's just bullshit.  Do I have to call WTF again??
> Jean Gene Genie

> The truth is complex.  Did the Wyrm set up an otaku tribe in New Orleans in 2056?  Yes.  Do they want to reveal who they were and are?  Clearly not; otaku then, clearly technomancers now.  Am I going to do it to them?  Oh, hell no.
> (Old Decker)


> Is that all of it?  What about the Khazakstan thing?  What about everything for the past decade?
> (Curious Someone)

> Here we get into more modern information; clearly the file above is meant to be more of a background document.  From what I understand, the Wyrm was working for someone, probably the Russians, maybe Yamatetsu, late in '61, probing at what computer systems exist inside Yakut.  After six weeks of study, the Wyrm told his Johnson that he couldn't do a bloody thing for them and quit.
> (Social Runner/Fixer)

> After that, he got involved in the whole shadow war between Ex Pacis, Overwatch, and the Network.  I heard he was at the Nexus at the time of Crash 2.0, but I can't confirm that he was working for them.  He was definitely spending a lot of time in the Data Havens -- doing research on something, but I'll be damned if I know what.
> (Old Decker)

> I heard from a friend of a friend -- F2F, note -- that during the Crash all he did was float there and watch Jormungand.  Like he was studying it.
> (Young Decker)

> Where was this?
> (Curious Someone)

> Beppu, he said.
> (Young Decker)

> Strange.  I asked around, got the same story, but my contact said Manchester.
> (Old Decker)

> Really??  I was told the Helix.
> (Social Runner/Fixer)

> ... mine said the Morgue.  I guess it's time -- WTF??
> Jean Gene Genie



> Getting past all that, what's he been up to since Crash 2.0?
> Jean Gene Genie

> Besides the Silicon Glen conference, apparently not a hell of a lot of actual running stuff.  I've heard that he spent a lot of time in South America, but I've also heard that he camped out in DFW during the same time-period, so it's a bit muddled.  His iconography remains the same, though -- a basalt-and-ebony serpentlike wingless dragon, elements of Eastern and Western combined.  He still uses his constellation of agents a lot, all of them sculpted to look like various Great and lesser dragons.
> (Matrix Addict)

> 'Constellation'?  Come on, how many can the guy have?
> (Young Decker)

> Ninety-six, at last count.  I still have a few to sculpt, mostly because I don't have sufficient imagery from which to work.
> The Wyrm Ouroboros

> Ninety-six?!?  What the hell do you need that many agents for?!?
> (Young Decker)

> Various things.  I honestly only use the Great Dragons regularly, but having them helps me keep up with the whole 'Who's Who' in the draconic world.
> The Wyrm Ouroboros

> the wyrm emerged as a technomancer, one of them that hears both the resonance and the dissonance it was all that time studying Jormungand
> (English, MF, Do You Speak It?!?)

> Not likely, considering how much the agents still go swanning around.  If you had sprites, would you be using agents?  That'd be like using drones when you could conjure spirits.
> (Skeptic)

> Even if that's true, sprites sure as hell do like him.  There's always two or three somewhere in the vicinity where-ever he's connected -- beautiful things, too, what you'd imagine data to look like if the God in charge of Beauty created them.  Shining crystal, or rippling grace, or ... just indescribable.
> Vishnu



> I've been listening to him a lot on VU93, and he seems to know a lot about, well, a lot.  What's up with that?
> (Young Decker)

> The Wyrm's one of the flat-out smartest people you'll ever meet.  Ambitious, no, not really -- he just wants to know stuff.  He's an incredible researcher, arguably the best there is (no offense to FastJack, but they've each got their focus), and when he wants to know something, he'll find it out unless it is literally impossible for non-Awakened people to know.  He's particularly good at deduction from missing information -- figuring out the shape of what should be there, but isn't, and you can see that in the S-K and Aztechnology stuff above.
   What he is at heart, though, is a teacher.  Ask him a question you need to not only know the answer to, but know why that's the answer, and give him some time to work.  Once he has the information you're looking for, he'll sit down with you and not only tell you the answer, but explain why that's the answer -- background on the situation, and background on the background, and history explaining the background's background, and the psychology of people coming from that culture.  It can get kind of surprising, the things that can come up in conversations with him.
   He's a pretty good teacher when it comes to hacking, too.
> (Old Guy)

> What's he like on a run?  Anyone got any stories?
> (Curious)

> I have one.  Back in April of '72, the Wyrm acted as a Johnson for a rescue run on a remote Aztech subsidiary research lab -- you know the sort of place, ownership buried under sixty zillion layers -- sitting just inside PCC from Tir Tairngire, right around the Black Rock Desert area.  Overall, the run was nasty -- didn't stop at that facility, let's just say -- but the man was incredibly professional.  We met him in Houston, and he made sure we could all bury our accent, but he had the initial run all planned out in incredible detail.
   First the travel plans, just to get there.  Houston to West Palm Beach, change IDs to bloody Mormons if you can believe it, with datasofts (knowsofts if we could handle them) to help us with both identity and the whole LDS thing.  We fly to Salt Lake City, drive south to Provo, change IDs again to Los Angelinos heading home, and head through the Deseret checkpoints.  We get out into the middle of nowhere and meet up with someone-or-another, seemed like those Mojave gypsies, who trade us the stuff we're riding in for tough off-road vehicles packed full with survival gear, food, and the stuff the Wyrm had arranged for us to ship from Houston -- all our specialized gear, that sort of thing.
   We head off into the damn mountains, driving along as a group of friends off on a vacation of desert hiking, camping, that sort of thing.  Some of our lightly-nasty stuff gets covered as 'protection from dangerous animals', which the PCC is okay with; all the rest of it is buried in the spare tire and like that.  We got stopped three times, and every time our covers hold, the Ranger-sorts check over our weapons and licenses, nod, wish us luck and tell us to stay safe, and off we go again.
   Now, I'm not some weakling girl; I rodeo competitively, and don't let nobody tell you that isn't a workout.  But we get as close as we're gonna be able, and then we go goddamn mountain climbing all over God's red-and-brown rocks up there, setting shit up so we can spy on this place.  The Wyrm almost always was singing under his breath, and even when our ork adept was totally blown at the end of the day, the Wyrm looks like he's just been out for a brisk half-hour walk.
   The bastard runs fifteen miles, minimum, every damn morning.  He does supermarathons for kicks and grins, and vacations doing just the kind of rock scrambling we'd been doing for three damn days.
   Anyhow.  We got into the place, found where they'd been holding the girl, but she'd been moved the day before we got there.  We found out where, got back out without setting off any alarms, and boogied off to hit the next place.  She'd been moved again, but due to him researching the place all the way to Phoenix, we at least were inside before we discovered where she'd been moved to again.  That time we set off an alert, and had to shoot our way out -- then run the border into Aztlan and pull out the big guns in order to wreck the place they were keeping her in Tuscon.
   He isn't wired up like a Christmas tree, and so far as I could tell, he used a top-end commlink (custom made) for his Matrix stuff, so he isn't some combat monster.  In fact, the first few moments of cyber-combat in the place in Phoenix, he kinda seemed to freeze up, but when he got going, well, you wouldn't think they were even in the same virtual room; he just kind of ... pulled the plug on them.  Weird, really.
   Otherwise, yeah.  Easy-going, good listener, researches the hell out of whatever he thinks you might need to know.  Cute, too, in a tall lean forty-something silvered-temple geeky kind of way.
> Yellow Rose of Texas
« Last Edit: <01-19-12/2145:04> by The Wyrm Ouroboros »
Pananagutan & End/Line

Old As McBean, Twice As Mean
"Oh, gee - it's Go-Frag-Yourself-O'Clock."
New Wyrm!! Now with Twice the Bastard!!

Laés is ... I forget. -PiXeL01
Play the game. Don't try to win it.

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #2 on: <01-20-12/0210:49> »
Oh, come on.  You gotta have something to post ...
Pananagutan & End/Line

Old As McBean, Twice As Mean
"Oh, gee - it's Go-Frag-Yourself-O'Clock."
New Wyrm!! Now with Twice the Bastard!!

Laés is ... I forget. -PiXeL01
Play the game. Don't try to win it.

FastJack

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Kylen

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« Reply #4 on: <01-20-12/2246:40> »
I'd have something, but it'd be the usual "There's no slotting way this guy had done all this." type post.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - Tolkien

"F*** subtle." - Dresden

Wolfboy

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« Reply #5 on: <01-22-12/1741:17> »
First page after "Military Sort of Guy"'s answer of "Skeptic"

>>>>>[Also, when your dealing with a combat inviroment, promotions also come fast as the people above you die. Nothing happened more or faster in the orriginal crash virus suppression than people dying.]<<<<<  --Wolfgar

Second page after "Old Guy"

It also come from being around forever. I'm actually surprised, I've actually been on some of those runs, and worked against a few as well. This guy is an utter proffessional, my hat off to you Wyrm.
]<<<<<  --Wolfgar
May god grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the firepower to make the difference.

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Silence

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« Reply #6 on: <08-22-13/0020:04> »
Second page, after Yellow Rose:

>>>>>[If this stuff is true, then why hasn't Uath been raving about this guy?  There some bad blood there, or is he just good at getting blamed for things others did?]<<<<<
     --Siouxsie(23:20:01/08-21-75)
« Last Edit: <08-22-13/0043:37> by Silence »
"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend" - every instructor out there

"Maybe in your case, but he's a great buddy I'm leaving behind." - Siouxsie

The Wyrm Ouroboros

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« Reply #7 on: <08-22-13/2326:09> »
Immediately After The Above

>>>>>[ ... who? ]<<<<<
          -- The Wyrm Ouroboros (**:**:**/**-**-****)
Pananagutan & End/Line

Old As McBean, Twice As Mean
"Oh, gee - it's Go-Frag-Yourself-O'Clock."
New Wyrm!! Now with Twice the Bastard!!

Laés is ... I forget. -PiXeL01
Play the game. Don't try to win it.

Silence

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« Reply #8 on: <08-23-13/0309:08> »
Immediately after the above:


>>>>>[Uath MacImmoman?  Psycho druid, likes making examples of why not to be more of a psycho than him.  I think I heard the Padre call him Po' Boy.<<<<<
     --Siouxsie(02:09:04/08-23-75)
"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend" - every instructor out there

"Maybe in your case, but he's a great buddy I'm leaving behind." - Siouxsie