Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: Mirikon on <12-21-11/0848:30>
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So in the introductory story in Conspiracy theories, Fastjack is talking to someone he calls Sam, and though it is unclear whether the meet is in the meat or the virtual, the person he's meeting is described as a blond woman. She obviously has connections to a lot of information, but is clearly not aligned with Horizon. The only Jackpointer i know named Sam would be Sunshine, but this certainly doesn't sound like him.
So who is it? Personally, with the writeup of Colonel Samantha Roth in SOTA, that's leading me to believe that she is the one Fastjack is talking to. Which leads to the question, "What's her angle?"
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Two products I haven't bought yet.
*shakes fist*
Curse you, desire for print-product instead of PDF!
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I do not have, nor read Conspiracy Theories, but it could be Samantha Villers, FJ was involved in a run with getting Caroline Tara Villiers to Samantha Villers in the book Night's Pawn.
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Sam is not a JackPointer, and the meeting was in the flesh.
That's all I'm going to say.
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okay then. Are we Going to get to know then? In a future product? Or is that NDA territory.
P.S. If it is. Cata has my NDA in their office, on file..........Just sayin....... ;)
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*Shrugs*
Who knows?
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My nuyen's on Villers...either that or Verner learned a gender-change spell and is back in the game.
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My nuyen's on Villers...either that or Verner learned a gender-change spell and is back in the game.
Heh. I just got my hands on kindle copies of some of the old books. Young Twist has some solid brass ones. Pisses off three dragons (at once), including mouthing off at Lofwyr to his face, and lives.
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Older Twist hasn't let up.
I wonder if he's around Post Crash 2.0. Not like he did much decking... More of an Ops Organizer and Burned Out Shaman.
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Older Twist hasn't let up.
I wonder if he's around Post Crash 2.0. Not like he did much decking... More of an Ops Organizer and Burned Out Shaman.
I don't think we've heard anything about him at or after the "Year of thr Comet", much like other people, he could've been "renewed" by the rise in magic. So who knows.
I really doubt any of the current crew will be using him tho. It seems the genearl undercurrent is to not like content from the other editions.
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I dunno if it is a case of them not liking things from older editions, but perhaps wanting to focus on moving plots forward.
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I really doubt any of the current crew will be using him tho. It seems the genearl undercurrent is to not like content from the other editions.
That's certainly not the case with me. I love older material. hell, I managed to sneak a Captain Chaos post into Artifacts Undbound, and Maria Mercurial into Mission SRM 04-00: back in Business.
The key is to find places where it makes sense to use these older characters. It's been 20+ years for most of them as well, so many of them aren't in their prime anymore, if they're still alive at all. And in the meantime, we have to keep moving the plots and teh stories forward, and develop the current stuff as well as new stuff. So it's a fine line to walk.
Bull
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Which is one reason I'd love to see a Street Legends style supplement (possibly a pdf only version?) covering the runners and major players of yesteryear. People like Dodger, Twist, Captain Chaos, Roxy, Hatchetman, Deus, Pax, and so on. Perhaps Fastjack, Bull, and some of the runners who've been around a while decide to share their tales. Can anyone here say the wouldn't want to see what Puck would write about Deus and Pax?
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Dodger's an Elf, 20+ years, he's still in his prime. :P
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Dodger, yes. but Sally, Ghost, and Sam? Not so much. And Kham is ancient, if he's still alive. (I think we'll learn his current whereabouts in an upcoming product I'm working on though).
And trust me, I want to do a Street Legends: Classic (As well as a Street Legends: Book of the Dead). But that's dependent on sales. the print version of SL didn't sell fantastic, but I think the price point on it was the culprit. It's full color and hardback, which is nice and the reason it was expensive, but...
Hopefully the eBook supplement coming out does well enough to warrant more.
Bull
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Personally, I'd call it "Get offa my lawn!" and make it about the Old Guard and the up-n-comers. We get Hatchetman and Sally Tsung, but we'd also get the guys running with /Dev/Grrl or Picador's protege (Like she took up for Matador). That'd give us coverage of the old stuff and coverage of new people as well.
As for old stuff in general, I know I'd love to roll around in it all day long, but, you have to remember your market; Shadowrun isn't composed only of 22 year vets who want to know what Concrete Dreams are currently playing and whatever happened to Mr Clean. You also have fifteen year vets who never really knew the old guys (Really? DNA-DOA was first ed! Who played that? Second ed forever baby, woo!) and six year vets (Pfft. With *that* art? Third edition was amazing!) and rookies who got the Shadowrun core book for Christmas today.
Focusing only on the old guard is, well, mastrubatory. It isn't fair to the fanbase at large and, as Shadowrun involves ongoing stories and an ever-evolving world, you have to keep moving or you'll die. Now, this doesn't mean you can't look back for stuff that you can pull forward; much as fashion and music is built on the shoulders of those who came before, so to do stories... if you can make a story better by tapping Big D's Will, or if you want to have the runners in an adventure run into Euphoria's sister, well, that's a neat thing.
The trick is to find the right balance that can make everyone happy. There's no perfect formula (5% old school, 85% current plots, 10% seeds for the future? No, let's see...) and goodness knows that each writer, and reader, wants different things. The goal is to make quality STUFF, and let it find, or create, an audience. I can promsie that, whenever I write something, if a nod to my generation makes sense, I'll happily throw it in there, but if it doesn't, then I won't.
Of course, I'm also reminded of Stan Lee's Golden Rule: Every issue is someone's first issue. It's good to have a small summary or "What has come before" section to help keep people up to speed or to ease people into things.
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I'm rambling. Sorry. Up too late wrapping stuff, then woke up early to UNWRAP stuff, then took a nap, and now I'm back awake. Oh Xmas, you play such havok with my internal clock.
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Kham we heard about last in 2070, in Runner's Havens, where he's in the Old Ork's home.
His family runs the Bot'Kham, a group of Shadowrunners/Smugglers that occasionally are muscle for hire outside of their regular routine. The character I refer to in my stories, Murphy, is a distant relative (Second Cousin or something. Hard to tell with all the family that Orks have), and my usual narrative character, Jon "Money" Johnson, hires them a lot. They have a better code of honor than most, and he's got family vouching for him as well as his rep.
That said, I'm hoping that Kham's able to go out some way other than just dying in his sleep... He's a tough old ork and deserves better than that.
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Are you kidding me? Best way to die. Seriously, going out in a hail of gunfire is still not a good way to die. Never has been.
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Are you kidding me? Best way to die. Seriously, going out in a hail of gunfire is still not a good way to die. Never has been.
Unless gunfire is a euphemism for post-coitus bliss.
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Well, I get almost all my stuff as PDFs now. Having one or two computers at the table is a lot easier to deal with than dealing with a pile of books. For my D&D games, I would use to bring a couple suitcases of books to the game. That's not something I want to fool with now, so I just bring my laptop loaded up with the PDFs, and enjoy. Plus, that also means I can read the sourcebooks at work. 3rd shift at a gas station means you have a LOT of time to read.
So yes, the moment any Street Legend supplements are available, I'll be downloading them.
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I guess that I'm the opposite. I tend to use just one book for Shadowrun (At the table, at any rate), or four for D&D. The rest are needed rarely, so are kept nearby, but on a shelf and not in the way. Laptops are so much bulkier than books, IMHO, that trying to passone around would drive me mental.
I realize, here, that I'm and old fogie, so, you know. Kids, lawn, etc etc etc.
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Are you kidding me? Best way to die. Seriously, going out in a hail of gunfire is still not a good way to die. Never has been.
Beats living for months hooked up to machines that breathe for you, make your heart work, all those wonderful things, only to end up dying anyhow.
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His family runs the Bot'Kham, a group of Shadowrunners/Smugglers that occasionally are muscle for hire outside of their regular routine. The character I refer to in my stories, Murphy, is a distant relative (Second Cousin or something. Hard to tell with all the family that Orks have), and my usual narrative character, Jon "Money" Johnson, hires them a lot. They have a better code of honor than most, and he's got family vouching for him as well as his rep.
Fanfic or official stuff?
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A new book with a great cover on a brick and mortar store shelf will attract more new players than all the pdf's ever produced.
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A new book with a great cover on a brick and mortar store shelf will attract more new players than all the pdf's ever produced.
I disagree. This may have been the case even as little as five years ago, but with the proliferation of laptops, tablets, and the like into every facet of life, producing more pdfs will expose your product to people who live their lives with a computer constantly at hand. In addition, it exposes your product to people who might not live near a brick and mortar store. I live in a college town, and there is one gaming store in town. Their selection of shadowrun books is, frankly, limited, and mostly consists of used copies of older material. Barnes and Noble has some of the core books, but not much else.
Honestly? The best thing that Catalyst could do is to continue working on the little pdf files like the components of Runner's Black Book and the Missions series of modules. Modules are one of the best things to have in order to help advance a game, since it encourages more people to take up the GM's chair. A supplement providing guidelines to designing your own run would be awesome, too.
What you need more than a flashy new book in a brick and mortar store is a good ad campaign, both at cons, and also focusing on some of the places where gamers congregate, namely college campuses and gaming-centric websites. There are entire websites dedicated to play by post or play by chat games out there. Get some people to get out there and run games on these sites. People see a game, see the world, and then they'll be more likely to get into the game. Speaking from personal experience, I got into Shadowrun not because of books with flashy covers, but because the DM of my Hero System group decided to switch gears for a bit and introduced me to it. And so I started looking for Shadowrun books.
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His family runs the Bot'Kham, a group of Shadowrunners/Smugglers that occasionally are muscle for hire outside of their regular routine. The character I refer to in my stories, Murphy, is a distant relative (Second Cousin or something. Hard to tell with all the family that Orks have), and my usual narrative character, Jon "Money" Johnson, hires them a lot. They have a better code of honor than most, and he's got family vouching for him as well as his rep.
Fanfic or official stuff?
The fact that my character hires them and "Murphy" being a relative is FanFic. The rest is heavily suggested by Shadowtalk in Runner's Havens (Page 99).These guys operate on a strict code based on professional and familial loyalty—they’ll never betray their family or their employer.
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So how do people know to look for PDFs for a game they have never heard of?
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Reread that last paragraph of my last post.
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I dunno if it is a case of them not liking things from older editions, but perhaps wanting to focus on moving plots forward.
Pretty much, for me.
I hate nostalgia. I think it's stupid.
I think the idea of a professional criminal having a twenty-year career that doesn't involve long stretches in prison is hard to swallow. I figure most would either die, go to prison forever, or retire as soon as they could buy an island like The Chromed Accountant (Who got into running because he didn't see the value in being an IRS company man, so he went into the private sector to make his "Fuck You" money).
I've had this conversation with the others, and I don't get it. Hatchetman's last canon appearance was in 2056/1995. Most people playing this game didn't even know him to remember him, so why should we spend precious word count on him? I'd rather not jerk off to the past, or to the same fifty plot characters, when there are 7 billion people on and above Earth. I have a compiled list of all the characters I've used, including those I've created and killed. The 100+ new characters exist to fill a niche I saw as lacking: recurring mid-level plot characters who can be used virtually anywhere. Some have reappeared. Most have not, and probably will not. They're there for players to use as they see fit because I want people to have a million little plot hooks that they can use to jump start their own PCs and adventures—which is how I've used most of the books and plots with one (significant) exception.
I don't know how I feel about SOTA73 coming out a month after CT because I knew someone was going to ask/assume the two Sams might be the same person. My plan when writing CT was that most people who care about this stuff would assume it was Villiers—someone who already has a past with FastJack—and not someone else or perhaps a new character.
I went through so many drafts of that story that it's ridiculous until I pared down the meeting descriptions to the bone because it got in the way of the story, and because I don't think you need to know if FastJack has undergone Leónization, and I certainly am not going to make it clear who he would trust to meet with when he decides to respond to Horizon. I'd rather you make up your own story. It's your game (and maybe your PC), after all.
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James, I'm going to be as nice as I can with this. Not everyone has been involved in Shadowrun for decades. For some of us, it isn't nostalgia. For some of us, it is actually trying to learn about all the stuff that's come before, so we can get a better view of the world. And since a lot of the old material isn't in print any more, it is difficult for some people to find out more about the old characters and plots. I'd never heard of Hatchetman until that one line in Augmentation mentioning him. I'd never heard of Alice until someone mentioned her on these forums. The first I'd heard about Eliohann was in Street Legends. I had no clue there was a module called Dark Angel until someone pointed it out to me. Until Attitude came out, I'd never heard of Dierdre.
For some of us, this is an attempt to get in on all those references and inside jokes that are peppered throughout the books. And a bit of history helps, especially if you're thinking of running a game.
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Luckily, you have Bull and me for that. We're the oldest of fogies.
(And James is a mensch. I think we compliment each other pretty well, since he's got a different take on things than I do, but we can also compare notes and chat about things. Of course, I'm in the odd position of being an old fart and a rookie, so.) :)
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Twenty-ONE years soon, and still haven't played. >:(
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I think the idea of a professional criminal having a twenty-year career that doesn't involve long stretches in prison is hard to swallow. I figure most would either die, go to prison forever, or retire as soon as they could buy an island...
Hatchetman's last canon appearance was in 2056/1995. Most people playing this game didn't even know him to remember him, so why should we spend precious word count on him? I'd rather not jerk off to the past, or to the same fifty plot characters, when there are 7 billion people on and above Earth.
I almost entirely agree with you on this. It's why I have a love/hate attitude towards JackPoint. It's great because it's an elite club that (generally) keeps on target with the subject at hand. On the other hand it limits exposure to the world of the "average" shadowrunner...or, rather, it limits exposure to the minds of the average runner as I'm specifically talking about the commentary posts rather than the article postings of the books. Introducing new blood is a way to do this and that new blood, in being "average" by definition, will have a high turn-over rate. We're coming into the 4th year since the Clockwork / Netcat feud and three years after Haze's tempo issues. At least one of those three should be dead. But there in lies the problem. The insular nature of JackPoint makes replacing a dead member seem trite if the new member is there to replace the function of the dead one. If /dev/grrl or Snopes or Plan9 or Clockwork or Kane dies then it would seem contrived to introduce a new youthful or skeptical or crazy or technophobic or morally lacking character to JackPoint as if all this time Fastjack knew of these other people and only kept them out because "that slot's filled" or worse that with the death of the old it is then implied that the new member has magically ascended into the elite club based solely on the other finding an early grave. The more open JackPoint is to the shadowrunning community as a whole (to post comments) then the larger more diverse sampling size.
As for the idea of revisiting past runners solely being a product of nostalgia...I disagree. Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, may play a part, but it is not the whole of it, nor is it particularly an important part of it. I would argue that a reason to spice current products with the occasional note, reference, or inference to older runners is to instill a sense of continuity and history; it simply adds depth to the fictional universe. However this is not an argument for spending full page write ups on x or y runner from 2053.
I don't know how I feel about SOTA73 coming out a month after CT because I knew someone was going to ask/assume the two Sams might be the same person. My plan when writing CT was that most people who care about this stuff would assume it was Villiers—someone who already has a past with FastJack—and not someone else or perhaps a new character.
I like it. It adds some confusion. What was the old quote for earning karma out of 1st or 2nd edition main book (I'm away from my books)? ... it's something along the lines of "award extra karma if the run is a whirling nightmare of chaos and confusion." It's probably Villers...but Col. Sam worked or works (again, away from books/home computer) for Sam Villers. Maybe Sam is playing go-between for Sam, or Sam is Sam under a faked background and a lot of media hype, and so on.
...this is an attempt to get in on all those references and inside jokes that are peppered throughout the books.
[jokingly] "You were not put upon this earth to 'get it', Mr. Burton." - David Lo Pan [/jokingly]
Shadowrun (and the role playing game industry in general) is notorious for their odd vague references and inside jokes. Dunkelzhan's Will for example. Or one game book (I think it's either Denver Boxed set or Bug City) that says, when discussing the problems of the bugs, something like "and then there was the CrashCart Debacle," leaving it at that and only if you read the Findley novel (2XS, I think, but it's been a while) would you know what they were referring to. Or NERPS! And with all the individual authors involved in creating Shadowrun...I wouldn't be surprised if there were things that they didn't get. So while on one hand I'm saying that if you think you can understand all the inside references then "get used to disappointment" (to which Inigo responds with "'kay"), on the other hand, as someone who has painstakingly collected and read every published Shadowrun book (save the last few novels, and I haven't finished CT or SOTA:2073 yet), I'm right there with you, Mirikon...I want to know it all and feel that, while the end goal is not attainable, the endeavor of it, the Great Work, is a paramount goal in and of itself.
And I agree that the desire to figure these things out is far from nostalgia.
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This is why I heartily endorse the PDF publication of past, well, everything. While I think that having the artwork and redoing the formatting would make it, well, nice, I don't think it's critical ... and it definitely would be good to have the entire history of Shadowrun searchable for the people writing for the future.
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This is why I heartily endorse the PDF publication of past, well, everything. While I think that having the artwork and redoing the formatting would make it, well, nice, I don't think it's critical ... and it definitely would be good to have the entire history of Shadowrun searchable for the people writing for the future.
The limited dialogue I've had with Jason on this (first thing I did was volunteer for OCR duty), I know he's got a lot of the books scanned, but they were scanned as images and need to be cleaned up with text added.
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This is why I heartily endorse the PDF publication of past, well, everything.
Here here!
While I think that having the artwork and redoing the formatting would make it, well, nice, I don't think it's critical ...
Naw, part of the history. That whole 1980's fashion revisited of the early 2050's lets me hate it all over again. :)
and it definitely would be good to have the entire history of Shadowrun searchable...
drooooool!
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... and it definitely would be good to have the entire history of Shadowrun searchable for the people writing for the future.
Word. Seriously, you have no idea....
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The limited dialogue I've had with Jason on this (first thing I did was volunteer for OCR duty), I know he's got a lot of the books scanned, but they were scanned as images and need to be cleaned up with text added.
PDF books like that are good for folks like myself who never got the chance to collect the older books that are very OOP.
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Twenty-ONE years soon, and still haven't played. >:(
If you can't find a local group, get in on a Play by Post game. There are several running on this site, and whenever someone advertises a Shadowrun game on rpol.net, the games fill quickly. The problem there is that there are more people who want to play than there are DMs.
The limited dialogue I've had with Jason on this (first thing I did was volunteer for OCR duty), I know he's got a lot of the books scanned, but they were scanned as images and need to be cleaned up with text added.
PDF books like that are good for folks like myself who never got the chance to collect the older books that are very OOP.
Agreed. The only place i've been able to find some of the old sourcebooks (not to mention the novels) is on torrent sites. Also, it would be nice to have a master list of all the shadowrun products past and present.
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If you're willing to spend a block of time trawling eBay and Amazon Marketplace, you can find almost anything. That's how I got my Denver and Universal Brotherhood boxed sets.
On the other hand, having everything available as a PDF would be awesome,; might be worth publishing (either as a free download or in the index page of each book as it comes back) a list of references to old material for each new book - so newbies know where to look!
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I'd be billing Lawyer hours to compile a master index.
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This is the sort of thing we need interns for. :)
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I'd be billing Lawyer hours to compile a master index.
Wait, I should be charging for my "hobby"??
No wonder I'm broke-ass poor.
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Completely off on a tangent here, but, does anyone else play Legend of the Five Rings? If so, then you're familiar with the Friday Fictions, where the writers behind the game churn out a new fiction (Nothing terribly long, but something.) every week to post on the website. I'd love to see if we could match 'em on that. We have the Shadowrun 4 site, it's designed for blogging, seems like something that could be done. This could be fiction, or it could be just chatting. A week where Bull talks about the game, a week where Patrick Goodman talks about the secrets behind an older product of his, a week where I drool fanboyishly over Nigel Findley, a week where we see what Sally Tsung is up to these days, etc.
Back on topic, I'm reading Conspiracy Theories now, but I'm not terribly far (Just about to start the stolen CC protocols), but the 'Sam' from the original post here? She doesn't come off as Villers. She comes off as kind of an AI to me. She's ... drifty. Her mind is on another level, doing math and looking at social connections, and Fastjack has to bring her back on task. She reads to me, and keep in mind this is a single reading, to be just a tad ... off ... from what I'd expect a human, let alone a powerhouse human like Villers, to be like.
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Why not focus on keeping the Upcoming Releases page up to date first? Dawn of the Artifacts 4 is still at the top of the list there.
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Twenty-ONE years soon, and still haven't played. >:(
If you can't find a local group, get in on a Play by Post game. There are several running on this site, and whenever someone advertises a Shadowrun game on rpol.net, the games fill quickly. The problem there is that there are more people who want to play than there are DMs.
Can't do PbP for some reason, never could. :(
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Can't do PbP for some reason, never could. :(
I'm finally getting used to it for a Star Trek game I'm involved in, but it's just not the same as sitting around a table tossing dice around.
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PbP is definitely different from sitting around the table. You lose some of the spontaneity you get in a game over chat or at the table, but if you have a good group, you can get some excellent writing and roleplaying as people have time to think out their response.
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Completely off on a tangent here, but, does anyone else play Legend of the Five Rings? If so, then you're familiar with the Friday Fictions, where the writers behind the game churn out a new fiction (Nothing terribly long, but something.) every week to post on the website. I'd love to see if we could match 'em on that. We have the Shadowrun 4 site, it's designed for blogging, seems like something that could be done. This could be fiction, or it could be just chatting. A week where Bull talks about the game, a week where Patrick Goodman talks about the secrets behind an older product of his, a week where I drool fanboyishly over Nigel Findley, a week where we see what Sally Tsung is up to these days, etc.
Back on topic, I'm reading Conspiracy Theories now, but I'm not terribly far (Just about to start the stolen CC protocols), but the 'Sam' from the original post here? She doesn't come off as Villers. She comes off as kind of an AI to me. She's ... drifty. Her mind is on another level, doing math and looking at social connections, and Fastjack has to bring her back on task. She reads to me, and keep in mind this is a single reading, to be just a tad ... off ... from what I'd expect a human, let alone a powerhouse human like Villers, to be like.
Now that would be cool if there were weekly SR fictions like there are for L5R. *stares off into space thinking of the fictions that could come about*
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The enhanced fiction line started off as something kind of like that, in concept -- short fiction, simple stats at the end (of a new gang, a new gun, a character from the story, whatever). How it mutated into 99 Bottles is still beyond me, even though the end product was pretty awesome it wasn't quite what had been the pitch for the line (for the last 5+ years, as I recall it).
I don't think the plan was ever to try and churn out one a week, because there's other stuff to work on and other checks for CGL to cut...but the plan was for them to be pretty quick, yeah.
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Sam is not a JackPointer, and the meeting was in the flesh.
For ol' Jack, that's a rarity.
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That was the point.
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I think that's, what, the first time we've ever heard of him going to someone in person???
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He was used in the flesh for examples in the SR1 and SR2 sourcebooks. He also appeared somewhere else (I can't recall offhand where) in-person, but it's a very rare thing. His profile in Target: Matrix describes him as always doing business over the Matrix.
The original idea was ... :D
But, no, it's very very rare that he would do that.
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When FastJack comes out of the basement, drek is going DOWN!
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Given that, this Sam is highly trusted.
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This is a lot of extrapolation and I may sound like lLan 9, but hear me out.
1. One could guess that FJ could have been part of Echo Mirage, he is old enough, and the other surviving members of Echo Mirage tend to still be heavy weights in the 6th world.
2. I do not think it is ever mentioned who supplied Echo Mirage with the first generation of cyber decks, but my guess is it was Fuchi by way of Viller Electronics (Richard Viller's company before he merged with Fuchi.) My, guess is because Fuchi was the first corp to come out with a consumer cyberdeck.
3. IF it was Fuchi/Viller Electronics, the corp probably had team of techs assisting Echo Mirage with designing and fixing the equipment.
4. Said team of tech probably had a supervisor to make sure they bring enough of the tech back to the parent crop,and that supervisor could be Samantha Viller (yes I know this is a big stretch.
5. Do not forget that word on the street says that Ms. Villers could be thinking about breaking away from Neonet and is going to start her own corp.
6. Do to possible previous connections with FJ, Samantha Viller may want to hire FJ and bring him into the light for a new crop (yes I know this is an even bigger stretch.)
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Jack isn't part of Echo Mirage. Unless he was lying in his history lesson for the reality impaired:
Most of the surviving members of Echo Mirage disappeared afterward into the private sector, taking their knowledge and experience
with them. Only a few known team members ever resurfaced; nobody knows where the rest are today. I know that some think I might have been a part of all that—I only wish I had been, because they were among the finest people I have ever known.
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Jack isn't part of Echo Mirage. Unless he was lying in his history lesson for the reality impaired:
Most of the surviving members of Echo Mirage disappeared afterward into the private sector, taking their knowledge and experience
with them. Only a few known team members ever resurfaced; nobody knows where the rest are today. I know that some think I might have been a part of all that—I only wish I had been, because they were among the finest people I have ever known.
Actually, the above implies that Fastjack knew them personally. Not a member of Echo Mirage, but someone who did infact known them. Support personal? He would have been younger, less experienced. Someone who witnessed events and the people involved without being directly part of the team.
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I personally think Jack found them after they left the project. I'd look to some of the big names of the shadow matrix from editions past. Wouldn't Captain Chaos have been about old enough to have been part of Echo Mirage?
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There are seven known members of Echo Mirage that survived. Damien Knight's one, the two who invented the cyberdeck, and ...
I'd have to check my notes.
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I think that the deceased President Kyle Haeffner and or his wife were members.
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Known Members:
- Alice Haeffner, deceased wife of former president Kyle Haeffner, who is also now dead...
- David Gavilan aka Damien Knight
- 'Buddy' dead aka 2050
- Ken Roper &
- Michel Eld, who created the first portable cyberdecks, made a deal with Richard Villiers and then died...
- Erica Rutledge aka shadowrunner Static... status?
And two others...
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2. I do not think it is ever mentioned who supplied Echo Mirage with the first generation of cyber decks, but my guess is it was Fuchi by way of Viller Electronics (Richard Viller's company before he merged with Fuchi.) My, guess is because Fuchi was the first corp to come out with a consumer cyberdeck.
Actually how Villiers got into Fuchi is very well documented. After the crash a couple of former Echo Mirage set up a small company making decks for the private market (before then it had been a military project that had been rammed into usage long before its prime, costing lives in the process). Both ended up dead under strange circumstances, after Villiers had picked up a share. Supposedly the blueprints and such had been destroyed during a fire, but Villiers was able to present a full set to the Fuchi board at the price of a 1/3 cut of the company and a executive position.
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I personally think Jack found them after they left the project. I'd look to some of the big names of the shadow matrix from editions past. Wouldn't Captain Chaos have been about old enough to have been part of Echo Mirage?
Ol' Cap was a journalist with a ethics streak and a interest in tech.
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I personally think Jack found them after they left the project. I'd look to some of the big names of the shadow matrix from editions past. Wouldn't Captain Chaos have been about old enough to have been part of Echo Mirage?
Ol' Cap was a journalist with a ethics streak and a interest in tech.
See, this is why a supplement on some of the big names of yesteryear would be good, for those of us who only started on shadowrun after 4th ed came out.
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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..."
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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..."
Lucien Cross and David Gavilan worked together at the investigative research division of Acquisition Technologies. Gavilan worked at AT before joining Echo Mirage in 2029 according to The Dragonheart Trilogy, and after leaving Echo Mirage according to Corporate Guide (other books, Blood in the Boardroom and Corporate Download can be read both way). Lucien Cross may be slightly older than Gavilan: in Corporate Download, he was already 70 when Damien Knight only was in his late 60ies. According to Blood in the Boardroom Game Information (thus, supposedly objective), Gavilan and Cross "had a great deal of respect for each other's programming abilities". I guess Lucien Cross, being a Quebecer, wasn't on the government list when they recruited "the best and brightest" for Echo Mirage Team Two, for clearance issue.
It has never been stated if the Nanosecond Buyout specifically relied to Echo Mirage technology. At least, there was still enough work to do for Gavilan to consider he needed Cross' skills. Also, they operated from the Swedish "data heaven", they needed to get the gear there first, while the Eurowar was still raging just 500 clicks south.
One day, I'll finish writing that fanfic on the Nanosecond Buyout...
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I do wonder if the buyout used some kind of early days smart frame/agent code so that it could work from multiple angles at the same time. Funny thing is that first gen IC used code and concepts from the Crash virus, and now agents are used as IC. Hell, SR4 agents seems like Knowbots that finally has the hardware catching up with the ideas (never mind that them knowbots seemed to be the perfect AI seed).
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The Nanosecond Buyout used what was described as "an expertly programmed bank of computers" (BITB, 54) or "a networked set of expertly tasked computers" (CD, 34).
So ... Kinda, sorta ... Yes.
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Like so many of the SR sparks, we may never know the details. And that is perhaps as it should be.
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What is described is basically the same thing that the big investment houses do now with automated robobrokers trading stocks at light speed (to the point of physically putting their computers as close as possible to the NYSE computers because light travels at 0.3 meters per nanosecond).
Anyway, you can pretty well guess what I think about going back to it. I'd rather leave it up to the players.
In fact that's my whole philosophy: Be useful. Be awesome. I'm building the frame to a house, so I don't see the value in digging up the yard to bury some (fake?) artifacts in the event someone wants to dig up the backyard to see if it's an Indian burial ground. Let them and their GM decide whether they just find buried cables, human remains, alien fossils, or the Hollow Earth.
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Two products I haven't bought yet.
*shakes fist*
Curse you, desire for print-product instead of PDF!
Just do what I do and buy both. :)
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Remember also that seven of the hackers of Echo Mirage survived; all of the techies did, too. And not all of the programmers would necessarily have been hackers; the first team showed the issues with that. In addition, remember the necessity for programming the psychological 'medical assist' program -- which eventually transformed into the AI Mirage. More people, from programmers to psychologists...
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... and thus was was born the UCAS Department of Information, the Matrix Marshals, modern NSA, and for absolute certainty, the IRS Enforcement Division.
I can see a roomful of people sitting at their computers when someone comes in and says, "Okay. Let's try a login to SprintNet. And, remember, goggles on for safety."
Because the computers might explode, see.
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De Goggles, dey do not'ing!!!
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De Goggles, dey do not'ing!!!
You need de mirrorshades.