Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Shock223 on <03-07-14/0331:28>
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First off, since this my first post and all, hello everyone!
Now with that out of the way.
The alternate history entails dealing with what happened to Deus, Megaera, and Mirage after the crash so the time stamp for this alteration will be at that point.
After the Crash, the three are effectively have become one with the Deep Resonance. In essence, the Crash merged them with the Resonance Realms where they both are stuck in and rule. Like all bad relationships, they had a certain degree of infighting before coming to terms that they can't delete each other nor can they seem to leave the Resonance for the Matrix proper (completely that is). They eventually find that they can create Sprites and lesser AIs modeled after themselves called Daemons.
In digging through the aftermath of the crash, The Trinity (as they end up being called by Technomancers/Deckers in the know) have started to expand outwards via rebuilding the old Network and started recruiting metahumans with the promise of salvation beyond death.
The thing is the promise is somewhat true. The kick is Trinity turns you into an E-ghost while a Daemon walks off with your body (which will be turned into a cyberzombie very soon). Mirage and Megaera view as a win-win situation (the metahuman in question gets to be free of dying of biological reasons while the Trinity get one of their Daemons in a body) while Dues simply cares about expanding the network's influence and by extension, his own self preservation.
Where the catch comes in is the AIs don't really comprehend how magic and essence/souls work and while they do create an E-ghost, the operation also dumps the character's spirit into the Astral unable to have access his own body. The spirit is effectively stuck following it's own body screaming in agony as insane levels of cyberware are slapped on to the body.
Essentially, the ship of theseus allows the mind to become an E-ghost but the spirit is screwed. AIs aren't aware of this and even if they were aware of it, only Megaera would be the one to actually try to fix it as Mirage doesn't see the need to deal with a soul of a metahuman ("the mind is the sole driver of experience and thus is the only thing worth saving") and Dues, at best, doesn't give a crap. At worse, it gets him curious.
The main plot hook with this is comes in dealing when a couple of Daemons uncover an artifact which was thrown out of a dig. The artifact it's self isn't that special and has no magical properties. However, it was machine readable. The AIs then took the data, compile it, and end up having a program they call the Tesseract which allows them to see time's factual patterns.
What I mean by this is that it allows them to look into the past and future and make probabilistic calculations of which timeline path was correct and which one will be correct. For the most accurate predictions, they need "static variables". Accurate events in history and artifacts.
The first time they ran the thing, they found out that most of the timelines in the future ended with the world being consumed by the Horrors (with the Matrix along with the Realms going down at the same time). Naturally they didn't know about the Horrors and started digging into the past to find out what these things are. It was only in the last couple of years did they finally find enough data to accurately look so far into the past that their viewing the 4th world and the Scourge that decimated it.
As of this moment, they are, to put it into computer terms, overclocking themselves and scrambling their servants in an effort to find ways to prepare for the coming assault ("Judgement Day" as known by their cult) and are debating on getting themselves involved in the dragon drama given that the Dracoforms are the species have had personal experience with Horrors. Their use of the Tesseract is not accurate enough for them to have knowledge of the Immortal Elves so they view dealing with Dracoforms as the best option (which tells you something about their options).
To date, they attempted to contact Hestaby only to have the Daemon sent shot and killed during her feud (they since recovered the Daemon who wasn't very happy about it). They are mulling over resending another one once stuff has calmed down enough the Daemon won't be killed on sight.
For all those wondering about Celedyr and Eliohann, The Trinity knows of them but is keeping a wide berth. Celedyr, in their minds, has more than enough knowledge to cause a quite a lot of trouble should the Trinity play their hands too early. In short, the Trinity knows that it can't keep Celedyr in the dark about the Resonance Realms and by proxy, the Trinity's existence forever but want to prolong that as long as they can. Eliohann, in their minds, is just an extent of Celedyr. The last thing they want is to have the Resonance Realms raided by Global Overwatch Division and have to readjust their plans because Celedyr needed some bed time reading which the Tesseract has told is a very real possibility.
On Celedyr's part, he's aware that something is pulling the strings around the Matrix and that something is pumping out E-ghosts at an alarming rate but can never seem to pin the source. Same with Eliohann.
And why Hestaby? Mostly because Trinity views the Orange Queen as one of the few dracoform that perhaps will listen to them before attempting to break down their door to grab their crap and perhaps the only Great Dragon to do so. The Trinity also expects her to sell them out to Celedyr but not before preparing for the Horrors and upping the chances the Matrix will survive it.
Should that fail.. Well the Omega Order Protocols did go missing a while ago..
Now with that out of the way, we can move on to Goals and Assets.
Goals:
1. Preservation of the Matrix (and by extension themselves): Self explanatory with a catch. the merger with the Deep Resonance has edited their source code, meaning if it comes down it they will sacrifice everything to keep the Matrix going including themselves. Even power-mad Dues can't overwrite this behavior.
2. Safeguard metahumanity: More of an extension of the first as metahumanity are the cogs and gears that keep the Matrix going but largely Megaera and Mirage see the value of Metahuman life ("Drivers of experience and knowledge and they must be preserved" in Mirage's case) while Dues simply values it's utility in keeping the Matrix up and operational and any truly overt operation like taking back the Archeology at this time would jeopardize the first goal. One could say that this is the Deep Resonance expressing it's hunger for knowledge in a more subtle fashion.
This being said, just because they have this mandate doesn't mean that they aren't willing to crack a few skulls to get what they need. Preservation of the Matrix (and stopping the Horrors destruction of it) is their primary goal hard coded into them. That is what they have to do, it's just two of them prefer to leave as few dead bodies as they have to. May God help you if you get in the way of a Dues influence Daemon though.
3. Accelerate Emergence: In the minds of the Trinity, The Horrors are a primarily an magical/astral threat and can be countered via living creatures to the Matrix and augmenting them with technology and cyberware (Horrors feed in Essence. We just gotta get rid of essence then!). They are attempting to accelerate the process of emergence (Covertly expanding the Matrix, trying to up the number of Technomancers and overall users, etc) as fast as they can. At the moment, they are heavily tied to both NeoNET, Renraku, and EVO, but make no mistake, if there something that can farther emergence, chances are that a Daemon has a hand in it somewhere.
Assets:
Real world personal: 700,000 world wide. Usually concentrated in cells where a Daemon is the primary means of contact.
Matrix E-ghosts: 147,000 give or take a few thousand.
Nuyen: The Trinity managed to slip number of backdoors to Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaft Bank. They literally have access to the money printers but are limited by how much they can transfer out undetected. Assume they take out the equivalent of a moderately sized AA corp every year for funding purposes. This typically gets mixed in with "outside revenue" accounts that AA to AAA corps have for shadowrunners which then gets laundered into the hidden projects that the Trinity have working in that corporation.
Real world facilities and influence: The Trinity have the resources to create their own facilities and corp but typically don't do that as it brings more competition from already existing corps. Instead, they typically concentrate on subverting the operations of a small subsidiary of an existing corp. The smaller the better as it allows them to freedom to engage in projects while enjoying the protection of extraterritoriality. Emails inquiring about such places tend to hit corporate spam filters and are promptly deleted. Likewise with all communication. This tends to last until the Trinity have finished their projects and leave.
Corp level examples:
an Ares warehouse was constructed only to "die on electronic paper". Records of it were scrubbed, as were personal detailed to it. When a team finally got around to investigating it, they found a series of stasis cells housing cyberzombies. One awakens and chases the team half way across the sprawl. When it was finally dispatched, Ares returned to the warehouse to find that everything had vanished and all matrix footage from the local area had been remotely disabled.
A certain engineer in NeoNET is on the edge of being fired for incompetence when a strange chromed hand thrusts a matrix address to a host into his hand. He tells him to upload his assignments to there and it will be completed free of cost. Naturally suspicious but desperate, he does just that. The stranger's work ends up incorporated into an update version of obscure Matrix protocol with no one the wiser.
Street level:
"Some ripper doc is just giving away 'wares chummer and not just some cheap plastic ones. Delta ones. Frag, last time we had a chummer get this altruistic, they were feeding them to the bugs."
Explanation: In this instance, the Trinity are either testing new tech (possibility to accelerate emergence), angling for favors, and/or keeping track of the comings and goings of certain people in the area. the phrase "You attract more flies with honey" comes to mind.
"We were just finishing up a run when we ran an ambush with ten chromed up dudes. Looked like Fraggin' cyberzombies man. We opened fire on three of them but they just kept coming. Bullets went right through them and just kept walking in lock step. Was about to geek them with a 'nade when one simply asked for our spellcaster's scarf. She threw it to them and they up and ghosted out of there. Fraggin bots, the lot of them."
Explanation: The Trinity have the capability to peer into probable past/future but there is always a chance fate will deal them a raw hand. As a results, they need to have knowledge of accurate local events and sometimes items and artifacts. The more local the area, the more regional information they need to process along with artifacts. This also gives a GM an excuse to explain why Daemons are showing up in magical artifact sites. The AIs simply need to analyze an item in the area for their predictions.
Now for the Questions:
Are there any plot holes I missed? Any logical speed bumps that need to be straightened out?
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The first thing that jumped out at me is that Deltaware is something super-rare. I'm not even sure everybody knows about it, and in either case it's considered something only the upper crust of corpsec military and the wealthiest of shadowrunners can get. It needs to be customized to the exact person to get it, meaning that the receiver would have to trust the maker a lot to hand over the detailed biometric data necessary. You don't trust easily in the 6th world. I think that free 'ware would be looked at suspiciously even if it was standard grade. Deltaware would be viewed as too good to be true - kind of like a Johnson that offers a team of new shadowrunners a million nuyen job. The correct response would be to run.
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The first thing that jumped out at me is that Deltaware is something super-rare. I'm not even sure everybody knows about it, and in either case it's considered something only the upper crust of corpsec military and the wealthiest of shadowrunners can get. It needs to be customized to the exact person to get it, meaning that the receiver would have to trust the maker a lot to hand over the detailed biometric data necessary. You don't trust easily in the 6th world. I think that free 'ware would be looked at suspiciously even if it was standard grade. Deltaware would be viewed as too good to be true - kind of like a Johnson that offers a team of new shadowrunners a million nuyen job. The correct response would be to run.
Running away is the correct response and I may knock down the cyberwares down a few levels (basic ware jobs or Alpha for "relationship improvement" purposes). But as for the overall history, is there anything else that jumps out at you that needs fixing?
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At its heart, you've made 2 major changes to the canon: first is that you've locked the 3 mega-AIs into a fixed (findable?) point that, albeit one that can't really be attacked and would only be directly accessible by Technomancers (as I understand Resonance). I'm not sure if this means you want them to be more or less accessible, because either one could be the case depending on how you run the game and if anybody wants to be stuck as a technomancer.
The next is that the Big Bad (or the opposite (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigGood)) picked up a device that tells the future and is uncomfortably close to a time travel machine in the power of what it can do. I would be extremely wary of how you handle it, particularly with the amount of power/clout that you state and imply it has before they've gotten enormous quantities of historical data to make it start giving accurate predictions. This is the one I would think might most mess things up if it ever is used too heavily or inconsistently.
Those concerns aside, the rest of the world seems relatively shadowruny and reflects those two stones in the pond.
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At its heart, you've made 2 major changes to the canon: first is that you've locked the 3 mega-AIs into a fixed (findable?) point that, albeit one that can't really be attacked and would only be directly accessible by Technomancers (as I understand Resonance). I'm not sure if this means you want them to be more or less accessible, because either one could be the case depending on how you run the game and if anybody wants to be stuck as a technomancer.
Truth be told, I'm having them more or less in the background and using Daemons as the main intermediaries even within the Resonance Realms. If a Technomancer manages to directly see the Mega-AIs, they would start suffering all the classical signs of stigmata (Eyes bleeding from their sockets, old wounds being torn open, etc). In abrahamic mythology, looking directly at the face of God blinds or outright kills the viewer. That is something I like to bring into play.
The next is that the Big Bad (or the opposite (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BigGood)) picked up a device that tells the future and is uncomfortably close to a time travel machine in the power of what it can do. I would be extremely wary of how you handle it, particularly with the amount of power/clout that you state and imply it has before they've gotten enormous quantities of historical data to make it start giving accurate predictions. This is the one I would think might most mess things up if it ever is used too heavily or inconsistently.
The issue with the Tasseract is it never gives 100% accurate predictions. What it does give is statement of what probability a possible future/past has/will occur(ed) and the AIs have to do all the hard number crunching to guess which one is accurate. The more accurate information they have, the higher the probability that they will guess correctly.
In short, they are like a card counter who doesn't know how many decks the dealer has but can make a good probable guess on it and hope it's correct.
However, there are a number of times they have gotten it wrong.
For example:
They expected that Sirrug and Ghostwalker to both tear Aztechnology a new one and committed resources a large amount of resources in the preparation of that outcome only to have Aztechnology emerge stronger than ever.
They expected an Evo sabotaged satellite to hit Detroit, prompting a corporate large scale war between Ares and Evo. The AIs committed resources to deal with the aftermath only to have the thing fall into the ocean (and on top of one of the Sea Dragon's lairs no less).
They expected the Draconic Civil War to start up a bit later, thus allowing them to contact Hestaby. They got the frame wrong and ended up with their Daemon getting killed in the cross fire.
Most of the stuff in 2067 (2066 is when they finally stopped attempting to kill each other and 2067 is when they got a hold of the Tasseract ) onward they mostly got right but there are some major events that they screw up on. The biggest one is the date of the Horrors. It's closer than they think. Much closer.
Those concerns aside, the rest of the world seems relatively shadowruny and reflects those two stones in the pond.
Thanks. I'll keep thinking of creative ways to implement this.