Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: DazedDante on <07-20-12/0407:59>
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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.
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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. :)
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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.
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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*
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And keep buggin Critias to hurry up with a book on the Tir. ;)
*bites tongue*
Tease.
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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.
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fourth? There were hints of other AI's but no one on the caliber of the big three.
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He probably means Toasty.
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Or Alice (http://youtu.be/aEj-mrwwaxo).
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Alice doesn't count. imo she's an E-ghost....or maybe the crash virus.
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Alice was very specifically Alice Haeffner - and therefore an e-ghost. No 'actual' AI here.
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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.
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Indeed. E-ghosts are a subset of AIs.
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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.
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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
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All three maintained UV nodes where they were gods, and were generally capable of feats no one else was. So I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that Alice wasn't equal to the other three. Deus was only free to exist in the Matrix at large for nanoseconds before the End Of The Fucking World (Crash 2.0 beginning during its emergence and the Novatech IPO). Alice was roaming the Matrix freely for a minimum of seven years.
The only thing that really makes Deus/Maegera/Mirage special is their conflict over the Network nodes.
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Indeed. Deus, Maegera, and Mirage are more widely known because they actually went and meddled with metahumanity on a significant scale. Alice, on the other hand, created Wonderland and was content to make Roxy's life a living hell for as long as possible. Hence, she wasn't well known to the outside world, and only a few steps up from an urban legend in runner circles. Just like how Morgan/Maegera was before the Shutdown, and the fight over the Network, when she 'came out' and started making major plays to counter Deus. In other words, the visibility of an AI is not the measure of the power of an AI.
As for other events creating e-ghosts, JackBNimble 'saved' and 'archived' a lot of people during the Crash, including Captain Chaos.
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Indeed. Deus, Maegera, and Mirage are more widely known because they actually went and meddled with metahumanity on a significant scale. Alice, on the other hand, created Wonderland and was content to make Roxy's life a living hell for as long as possible. Hence, she wasn't well known to the outside world, and only a few steps up from an urban legend in runner circles. Just like how Morgan/Maegera was before the Shutdown, and the fight over the Network, when she 'came out' and started making major plays to counter Deus. In other words, the visibility of an AI is not the measure of the power of an AI.
As for other events creating e-ghosts, JackBNimble 'saved' and 'archived' a lot of people during the Crash, including Captain Chaos.
Which is really, really, WAAAAY past due to be resolved btw.
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As for other events creating e-ghosts, JackBNimble 'saved' and 'archived' a lot of people during the Crash, including Captain Chaos.
Which is really, really, WAAAAY past due to be resolved btw.
A dangling plot thread, indeed.
There've been a few hints, but you really have to scour for 'em. In general, you want to loook forward with plots, not backwards, but I always try and sprinkle a bit of stuff from before in there whenever possible. About a 5% nod, really.
No clue when, or if, this one will ever get more airtime. Still, you have to think that Imago, Jack-B-Nimble, and Project Imago have some similarities...
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I just assumed that Project Imago was a continuation of Imago, but then, I never played/read the module.
As for the Captain, in one of the recent books there was one job where you had to go around and get e-ghosts to sign off on a digital document warning them about NeoNET, or some such. The leader of one of the group of e-ghosts the players find is called the Captain...
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There've been a few hints, but you really have to scour for 'em. In general, you want to loook forward with plots, not backwards, but I always try and sprinkle a bit of stuff from before in there whenever possible. About a 5% nod, really.
Of course, if a plot has not been resolved finally, then....is it really looking backwards? Or is it looking left and right?
When I GM, I think of the Shadowrun plot threads a bit like my miniature work area: I have all my paints and tools
around me, and I look through them for the right one to do what I am trying to do...I would think you writers are
the same way: SO many unresolved things....So many questions that have not been answered..It would be nice
if they were wrapped up eventually...
Personally, I am expecting those starting up in 2014, the 25th anniversary year. I hope we finally get an answer on
who that person who posted WAY back on the Awakening Day was...
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I think there was some stuff in Emergence that very slightly hinted at the 3 AI's wandering the matrix together, though that might just be how I interpreted it.
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I think there was some stuff in Emergence that very slightly hinted at the 3 AI's wandering the matrix together, though that might just be how I interpreted it.
I still say Pulsar is one of the old AIs who just 'rebranded' itself.
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Hopefully we'll get to find out if Dodger is alive or dead soonish. I've got something in the works that reveals the current status of him and his old team. ;)
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I think there was some stuff in Emergence that very slightly hinted at the 3 AI's wandering the matrix together, though that might just be how I interpreted it.
I still say Pulsar is one of the old AIs who just 'rebranded' itself.
Who's to say Pulsar isn't BOTH Mirage and Deus in some weird AI merge (akin to how Bugs merge with people).
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That would be ... unique. And really, REALLY powerful.
As for Dodger, Bull, drop Zimmerman a line on that. He's the Elf Guy, after all.
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As for Dodger, Bull, drop Zimmerman a line on that. He's the Elf Guy, after all.
It's cool, we chatted.
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As for Dodger, Bull, drop Zimmerman a line on that. He's the Elf Guy, after all.
It's cool, we chatted.
Ah! Well good then. :)
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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.
As I've said elsewhere, everything is in the Endless Archive. Include the source code of the big AIs of yesteryear... ;D
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I was wrong, the story I was refering to is in System Failure, pg. 123 "Hello World". The patient is talking about 3 idols in the matrix, the imagery seems to point towards various aspects fo the previous A.I.'s. I think all three where severly weakened from Jormungand (sp?) and the crash in general and also had some of thier code intermingled.
I personally would like to see these three eventually fully awakening, and being almost as powerful as they were before when they combine thier efforts and be on par with great dragons and IE's as far as schemeing goes.
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What indeed. : )
Dodger is more or less my favorite Shadowrun character. At least in the top 3.
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For me, definitely less. Dodger annoys the hell out of me.
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I always loved Dodger and his anachronistic speaking style. Gotta say, other than watching the interplay between the Orange Queen, Laughing Man, and others of their ilk, Dodger's Shadowland posts were always my favorite. But then, if I could be whoever I wanted in the Matrix, I'd probably take on the attitude of a swashbuckler, a la Errol Flynn. So Dodger's a decker after my own heart. Plus, the story between him and Morgan/Meagara is too sweet. He brings a bit of light into the otherwise dismal world of the shadows.