[Ixal]

Wow, that's some amazing summaries. But yeah, much of it sounds post-2075 to me, though there's also some stuff that's probably still relevant to the 2070-2075 era. In particular the famine caused by Sirrurg.

I honestly had no idea about Ares. I'm vaguely familiar with Knight and Vogel, but there's a lot more going on. With that kind of internal rivalry, it sounds like they might end up going the way of Fuchi. What are the best books with more info about this?

How exactly did MCT surpass S-K as the largest megacorp? Just the Matrix stuff? Because I thought that was mostly NeoNET territory. I'm obviously not surprised that NeoNET has been overtaken, but if I'm not mistaken, the CFD shit didn't hit the fan until after 2075, so in the 70-75 period, NeoNET would still be king, right? (Didn't NeoNET cut up some technomancers, by the way? Or was that Horizon?)

What is "the Monad situation"? I don't think I've heard of that before.

I'm also interested in Aztechnology's shift away from blood magic. I know them primarily as deeply evil blood magic users with possible horror ties that has a positive public face because they provide all the food and other stuff most people actually need.

Cutting up Technos is mostly MCT territory, but many corps did that. You might be remembering the Las Vegas Massacre Horizon did when there was a large group of Technos was protesting against Horizon because they didn't came through with the promises they made and the Consensus somehow thought it is a good idea to start shooting.

MCT overtook SK mostly because the latter was distracted with the Dragon Civil war, sunk a lot of cash into fighting it and also suffered a lot from the anti dragon sentiment Aztechnology created.

[Dasher]

Teh famine's a big one, yeah. Food prices go crazy, real food vanishes from many tables at middle lifestyle or lower, soy gets big again, and there are several crackdowns in cities as the agricorps start going after urban farms … they don't want the competition and this give them an excuse. Quite a few people start raising small herb gardens in windowsills or raising chickes on rooftop coops, only to have police bust in and have a corporate lawyer impound the stuff. It's a VERY rough couple of years for Aztechnology until Sirrurg goes down. (If you want to see the whole thing start, take a look at Dirty Tricks for the lowdown.)

I am definitely getting Dirty Tricks, also because it seems to be related to the Backhaven plot that SRM4 is partially about.

I'm surprised that police would crack down on urban farms in the middle of a famine, though. That can't be good for your popularity.

I am a fairly avid reader of the sourcebooks, not the fiction, but I do not recall anything about famines.  Citation needed?

Yes, while some of the food corps might want to crack down on urban farming and it may have been criminalized, most corporate police are not going to enforce those laws unless it directly benefits them.  Sure, they raid a gang holdout, they will tack on illegal chicken raising or if they need an excuse to search a place "suspected urban farm".  But the negative publicity combined with the fact that oppressed (or even just regular folk) will fight to keep their food would make it a . . . non-cost effective exercise for Lone Star/KE/other police forces to follow.  And non-corpo Police would probably say "Screw off, I'm not enforcing that" to the corpos.

[Reaver]

Teh famine's a big one, yeah. Food prices go crazy, real food vanishes from many tables at middle lifestyle or lower, soy gets big again, and there are several crackdowns in cities as the agricorps start going after urban farms … they don't want the competition and this give them an excuse. Quite a few people start raising small herb gardens in windowsills or raising chickes on rooftop coops, only to have police bust in and have a corporate lawyer impound the stuff. It's a VERY rough couple of years for Aztechnology until Sirrurg goes down. (If you want to see the whole thing start, take a look at Dirty Tricks for the lowdown.)

I am definitely getting Dirty Tricks, also because it seems to be related to the Backhaven plot that SRM4 is partially about.

I'm surprised that police would crack down on urban farms in the middle of a famine, though. That can't be good for your popularity.

I am a fairly avid reader of the sourcebooks, not the fiction, but I do not recall anything about famines.  Citation needed?

Yes, while some of the food corps might want to crack down on urban farming and it may have been criminalized, most corporate police are not going to enforce those laws unless it directly benefits them.  Sure, they raid a gang holdout, they will tack on illegal chicken raising or if they need an excuse to search a place "suspected urban farm".  But the negative publicity combined with the fact that oppressed (or even just regular folk) will fight to keep their food would make it a . . . non-cost effective exercise for Lone Star/KE/other police forces to follow.  And non-corpo Police would probably say "Screw off, I'm not enforcing that" to the corpos.

The famine that is being talked about only happened in Aztlan, and was directly tied to their war with Amazonia. This is all covered in thr WAR! sourcebook. And some of it requires reading between the lines..... (the AZT soycafe manager and the exchange he has with Corporate HQ is a prime example).

And yea, the AZT police really did crack down on home gardens: Simply because it was fucking with Aztech's bottom line. And THIS is because there is nit distinction between Aztechnology and Aztlan government....


Think China, and you have Aztech/Aztlan  but reversed. (China's government must own 50% of any business set up in China. In Aztlan, Aztechnology owns all the businesses, as well as the government. This was one of the reasons for the first Corporate war, and formation of the Corporate Court. Details of this can be found in the Atlan sourcebook, and several other 2e books.

[Wakshaani]

Teh famine's a big one, yeah. Food prices go crazy, real food vanishes from many tables at middle lifestyle or lower, soy gets big again, and there are several crackdowns in cities as the agricorps start going after urban farms … they don't want the competition and this give them an excuse. Quite a few people start raising small herb gardens in windowsills or raising chickes on rooftop coops, only to have police bust in and have a corporate lawyer impound the stuff. It's a VERY rough couple of years for Aztechnology until Sirrurg goes down. (If you want to see the whole thing start, take a look at Dirty Tricks for the lowdown.)

I am definitely getting Dirty Tricks, also because it seems to be related to the Backhaven plot that SRM4 is partially about.

I'm surprised that police would crack down on urban farms in the middle of a famine, though. That can't be good for your popularity.

I am a fairly avid reader of the sourcebooks, not the fiction, but I do not recall anything about famines.  Citation needed?

Yes, while some of the food corps might want to crack down on urban farming and it may have been criminalized, most corporate police are not going to enforce those laws unless it directly benefits them.  Sure, they raid a gang holdout, they will tack on illegal chicken raising or if they need an excuse to search a place "suspected urban farm".  But the negative publicity combined with the fact that oppressed (or even just regular folk) will fight to keep their food would make it a . . . non-cost effective exercise for Lone Star/KE/other police forces to follow.  And non-corpo Police would probably say "Screw off, I'm not enforcing that" to the corpos.

It kicks off in Dirty Tricks, when Sirrurg flattens Borriqua (Puerto Rico) during a massive hurricane that parked itself over the island for a full 24 hours, with Sirrurg unleashing his dragon and spirit allies against the general populace while he, himself, completely eradicates NatVat.

A few days after that, the Atlacoya blight strikes Aztlan, ripping across the land at staggering speed, wiping out the year's corn crop and further rotting stored corn across the land, resulting in a huge famine striking the nation. They wound up having to import food from other countries and corps, which really grated teeth when they had to buy food from Horizon, who they'd been butting heads with in the Az-Am war, and resulted in a world-wide boost in food prices as some people went into panic buying mode... the profits from that helped several corps invest not long after.

It follows in the next three or four sourcebooks from there for that year, but by the next year, the nation's recovering from it. NatVat remains a non-entity, and with it gone Aztechnology's food production is badly hurt, but they're working on new alternatives since then.