Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: ChewyGranola on <06-08-14/1503:26>
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So, this executive order makes no sense. Neither does the "gleeful" ratification of Congress with the Resolution Act of 2016. I mean, here in the real world, the United States suffered a pretty nasty terrorist attack. People who resemble the attackers in things like religion and skin color live right here, in the US. No political group called for their extermination, no one wanted to put all of a particular group in internment camps, etc, at least no one credible or serious or powerful in any way. There were isolated attacks against sadly innocent people, but the US government did not suddenly become a genocidal hate machine.
Now I am well aware of the travesty that was Japanese Internment.That was a terrible act, but for all the misery inflicted on Japanese-Americans, the government never even discussed the wholsale extermination the way the US government of the Shadowrun universe just did for reasons, at least not that I'm aware of.
What I'm getting at is this: what the heck is up with this part of the plot? Has it been revealed anywhere that President Jarman was some kind of evil spirit, or an immortal with an agenda, or something that makes sense in game? Because otherwise, I just can't make sense of this part of the history. I mean, I can handle the NAN, because I figure that in the alternate reality of SR there were lots more Native Americans. I can handle the CAS seceding for making the map look cool reasons, I can handle a state being "kicked out" of the Union, but the wanton extermination of Native Americans by a United States with similar experiences to the United States of the real world I don't really understand.
Sorry for the text wall. And I'm not trying to bring up real world politics or history, but I thought that if I just asked "what's up with Native extermination" people would bring up Internment and 9/11 related violence so I wanted to get that over with.
Thanks.
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It's due to the fact the SR timeline is different from our own. While it wouldn't make sense in the real world, in their world there was apparently a lot less acceptance of Native Americans. So, given there was still a lot more bigotry than exists in real life, they naturally took the dumbest decision possible for solving a problem.
Keep in mind that bit of timeline was originally decided during the Cold War, back when America was backing dictators and terrorist organizations left and right, crushing small democracies because they didn't agree with the U.S., and the current acceptance of Native Americans was not as wide-spread. So the idea that the U.S. would do some very horrific things to a group of people it didn't like internally was actually realistic, given it was currently doing exactly that at the time (including funneling drugs into low-class communities, illegal drug tests on minorities, and a few other atrocities). So, basically, the entire premise of the Great Ghost Dance was based on the very real viewpoint that America was an asshole victim.
Then the Soviet Union fell apart and within only a couple years all of that no longer was as relevant.
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I totally get what you are saying. However, in spite of the Cold War circumstances of the setting, in spite of the dictators and terrorist organizations the US backed, none of that equates to genocide. It's a long step from realpolitik to genocide. Hell, even at the highest point of, say, the Civil Rights Movement, which did get voilent on many occasions (mostly from the police and racist groups but obviously black people had to defend themselves too), no one seriously said "fuck it, genocide is the solution". I was really really hoping there was a cool in-game explaination. Otherwise, next time I introduce newbies to Shadowrun, I'm going to have to alter that a bit, like internment but no extermination.
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A major part of why genocide was not considered a solution to the Civil Rights movement is because of World War 2; when you get to before that, the U.S. had no problem considering genocide (Hitler was very popular in the U.S. prior to WW2) and had already attempted multiple genocides by that point (most directed at Native Americans).
In addition, even after WW2, the U.S. aided a number of genocides, and it's well known that certain segments of the government actually did consider genocide as a response to the Civil Rights movement. The only thing that held them back was the kinder elements that came into power and were horrified at the Holocaust. But even then, it did not stop the experiments on low-class populations, some of which were definitely war crimes.
So, really, people had no problem believing the U.S. would commit genocide yet again because it had already done so multiple times and was guilty of aiding other genocides. Of course, the Soviets were not exactly any better.
It's not really until the 1990s that you see the U.S. government as a whole start to really get the idea that genocide is a bad thing and start to back away from helping people who commit it.
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Theres a bunch of really stupid unbelievable stuff in SR's backstory e.g The US abandoning California to be invaded by japan because it wanted to save on its aid budget, The UK just sort of giving up on northern Ireland ect.
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Well, to be honest, the California bit is California's fault. California was, in effect, trying to emotionally blackmail the U.S. into giving it more and more attention and threatening secession if it didn't get what it wanted. The U.S. simply called its bluff and told it that it's no longer part of the Union; they never said California couldn't rejoin.
Instead of rejoining the Union when they got invaded, California called on Japan for help. That's what started the Japanese invasion.
The bit about Ireland? I can say that the UK, by the looks of things, was facing a number of ongoing disasters at the time and simply didn't have the resources to fight a magical nation that wanted to take a piece of land by force. Realistically, the UK only maintains its territory as it stands because so much of it is uninhabitable. That's also why they have the severe overcrowding problem on housing; they've had to move as much of Scotland into what was England as they could just to save lives. Grant total, about half of that island is inhospitable to human life right now.
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You have to imagine that the extreme right had taken over the US government at the time. They were willing to let corporations run wild doing whatever corporations want, because what's good for the corporations is good for the economy, which in turn is good for America.
Here are these tree hugging eco terrorists which are a real threat to corporations and the economy and every white skinned/red blooded American who just a few years earlier told them all they had to leave America or else. And then on top of that they turn out to be bullet proof and causing all manner of natural disasters using magic. I mean, what are you going to do?
If all the AmerIndians wanted you dead because you didn't want to move, what would you do? You can't give them back their land and you don't want to die. So why not kill them all? They're going to keep fighting until they're all dead. So if your only solution to stop the fighting is to kill them all. You might as well kill them all.
Anyway, of course next year volcanos started to explode and the President realized that they wouldn't be able to kill them all and that it appeared like the opposite might be true in that the Indians might be able to kill all the white people. So naturally the Treaty of Denver happened and everyone lived happily ever after.
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Understand that neither Executive Order 17-321 - or the Resolution Act of 2016 - stand alone. To understand them, you really, really, really need to look at the whole picture. This isn't a matter of 'the extreme right' or 'a single terrorist act'. This is nuclear fraggin' war that SAIM attempted; that got them especially isolated. Then they broke out. Then the NAN ordered all the non-Indians (except for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) to get the hell off their land (i.e. the entire North American continent) under threat of dire magical retribution. And then, just to prove they could, they made Redondo Peak light off and killed Los Alamos and everyone in it. Call it 12,000 innocent people.
No fraggin' offense, but the NAN goddamn shot first.
Now, that isn't to say that genocide is the answer; EO 17-321 and the Resolution Act are travesties. And they, and everything on the USA side that led up to it, were very heavily influenced by the corporations that were pulling the purse strings. But they are neither totally one-sided nor massacres of undefended peoples - when you get down to it, the NAN kicked some very serious ass.
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And then, just to prove they could, they made Redondo Peak light off and killed Los Alamos and everyone in it. Call it 12,000 innocent people.
20,000.
Hence the name Alamos 20,000.
(And fuck Daniel Howling Coyote for blowing up a mountain sacred to many of the Pueblos which surround Los Alamos and Redondo Peak. No wonder the PCC and Ute Nation had several "border skirmishes" before PCC took over Ute and bent them over a barrel.)
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I hope this won't be seen as too personal -- it's not really all aimed at you in particular, it's a long-standing frustration of mine, and I might just yell it all at my students the first day of class, instead of going over the syllabus -- but this really kind of...rubbed me the wrong way. I know your question is well-intended, and I'm glad you're interested in the setting, interested in explaining the setting to your friends, and wanting the setting to make sense to your friends when you explain it. I get that! It's awesome. And I'll totally agree that parts of the setting are really weird and/or stupid, and always have been, and there's nothing wrong with loving it, warts and all, like so many of us do.
[rant]
...but the wanton extermination of Native Americans by a United States with similar experiences to the United States of the real world I don't really understand.
What do you think happened to them here in the real world? If that doesn't count as "wanton extermination of Native Americans" what the hell does?
I find it kind of troubling -- completely away from the game for a moment, just as a human being, a citizen of the planet, and perhaps most of all as a historian and professor -- that someone is so desperate to find a supernatural explanation for this (admittedly execrable) order, asking if there's been some metaplot development that shows an insect spirit or some other nefarious supernatural threat was involved. It feels very old World of Darkness to me, that way, where everyone expects magic to be behind every important historical figure, explaining away every unlikely occurrence, or excusing humanity from every terrible ill we've inflicted upon one another.
People do evil shit just fine all by themselves.
I could soundly trounce the character limit of any given post, and a second, and a third, just rambling off a nigh-random, stream of consciousness, list of terrible things mankind has done to itself, with no more textual support required than a casual glance at the handful of books I see from this spot in front of my computer. I'm not even in my Big Kid Library, I've only got about half a shelf out here that's full of actual academic texts instead of fiction of one stripe or another, but hell if that'd stop me, because all the historical texts are for is jogging my memory and reminding me of one atrocity or conquest or another. It's, I mean, it's all of history, if you look at it from just that terrible angle. It's what we do. It's what groups of humans do to one another, every chance they get, and it's what some groups of humans are doing to other groups of humans right this very second. It's not remarkable, what's remarkable is the absence of such behavior.
Evil, even -- or perhaps especially? -- evil of a political, racial, cultural, and religious bent, requires absolutely no genuinely supernatural excuse to exist. The long-standing differences, political, racial, cultural, and religious, between most of America and the tremendously marginalized Native American population are a yawning chasm that makes the Grand Canyon look like a crack in the sidewalk. The only implausible thing about EO 17-321, to me, is that it took as long as it did to get written. When one considers the tremendous history of violence, counter-violence, raid, skirmish, retaliation, escalation, and extirpation that makes up almost the entire written history of American Indians, it's not at all a stretch to me that one more President in a long line of Presidents, egged on by just a few little tweaks here and there in the alt-history that makes up The Sixth World, would give the order that was given.
Let's just...be careful what we Other too desperately. Let's be careful what we don't give mundane humanity the "credit" for. Humanity is capable of tremendous acts of absolutely shitty and vile behavior towards one another, even (or rather especially) on the grand, national, scale. We haven't needed real-life Insect Spirits or genuinely sorcerous cabals or immortal handlers to make us do any of the terrible shit we've actually done to one another in real life, through the millenia...why would we need that in a fictional setting that's already meant to represent as at our greediest and most banal?
It doesn't take a magical threat to make someone in a position of power do something stupid and evil to a group of people with a different skin tone, speaking a different language, worshiping different gods, and living on land the powerful don't want them living on; it almost takes magic to keep them from doing so.
[/professorial rant]
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The other thing to note is that while Shadowrun's history "officially" splits with our own in 1989... The fact is that it's an alternate timeline that stretches back decades, if not centuries with little, subtle differences that had to be in place for the major changes to come about.
Unfortunately, except to a handful of history buffs, detailing all of that would be boring and pointless (not to mention a LOT of effort for very little reward). So we only worry about the major changes that happened, the ones that directly brought about the World as we Know It in 2050+.
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Critias- Thanks for the response. I totally understand what you're saying. However, the events I'm talking about seem more akin to the Final Solution than the past American policy towards Native Americans. I'm a historian too, and while my area of expertise is the Civil War and Reconstruction, I like American West history too. And I'm not meaning this in a snarky way at all, I'm just trying to explain my confusion with the Executive Order. I didn't take what you wrote as personal in any way. The internment of Native Americans in the SR universe I can totally get. Hell, the US had official policy to "whiten" Native Americans for a long time. But when it comes to out-and-out genocide, the physical wiping out of a group of people...well, I think that ship has sailed in the United States, at least in the 20th century. Once the Holocaust is history, I have a hard time believing that any Western nation would go for out-and-out genocide, regardless of the circumstances. Now, obviously, we have seen "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia, but the industrialized murder the SR history imples makes me question things.
It is funny that you thought that felt oWoD; I'm a long time player of those games. The only reason I was looking for a different explaination is that I find the SR historical event to be super implausable. Obviously humans are capable of a lot of evil, as we see throughout history. I'm no pollyanna, I normally figure that Evil and Stupid are driving many of the important events in history. However, I think even Evil and Stupid act within the mores of their times. Genocide, in the United States and in the West in general, seems to have gone out of fashion since the Holocaust. I think if the original authors had left it at, say, interning all Native Americans and "educating" them to not be culturally Native, then I could have accepted that with no problem, from an alt-historical POV.
Hopefully I'm making sense. Your post's points are very well taken, and I don't have a problem with regular people doing bad things to each other. It's just that within my understanding of history and the American mindset (whatever that means) since World War 2, straight up physical genocide seems to be off the table. I think Americans would be more likely to put people they don't like somewhere (like Reservations!) and forget about them than murder them man, woman and child.
Wyrm- Yeah, looking at it from a big picture perspective helps. And yeah, SR history is full of stupid. Your post was helpful in getting me to accept this facet of SR American history. Thanks!
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It also helps to remember that this was the US declaring war on a segment of their own people. The Constitution technically doesn't have a method for doing that, so ... and it wasn't like the Civil War, where you had a discrete line drawn.
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Well the Civil War was kind of declaring war on a rebellious segment of the population too. Keep in mind, the South (or the North for that matter) was hardly unified on the questions of slavery and secession. Just look at the Baltimore riots in the north or the fates of Unionists in East Tennessee or Texas in the south. So the Civil War was not fully a country vs country conflict. In fact, I think of the Ghost Dance War as having to include disaffected "Anglos" on the Native side too, turning the whole thing into a second Civil War. That would help explain the populations of the NANs too, which is good for my headcanon.
Now, this is all my interpretation and stuff, so grain of salt and all that...
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Chewy, if you want something even more full of stupid, visit the American Revolution. The entire premise for the Revolution and what the colonists were doing, in light of everything leading up to it, was stupid at its finest on the part of the colonists.
It gets worse when you get into other historical events:
Another item full of stupid? The U.S. and British Empire almost ended up at war with each other over a pig. They had to get the German Empire to mediate the dispute.
The British Empire did eventually go to war with a group over a chair (the British technically lost this one).
Half of the wars the Italians were involved in. I think they even had a war over a bucket.
The Trojan War. Seriously, this is a war started by a guy just because his wife ran off. Genociding the Trojans was a wee bit of an overreaction.
Seriously, if you're going to dismiss SR history just because it's stupid, you also have to dismiss a lot of real-life history for the same reason. Because, ultimately, you're facing a case where people in real life go to war over farm animals and furniture. And where a genocide was committed just because of a jealous husband's reaction to his wife running away with her love. The U.S. in SR history at least had better justification for its last attempt.
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I'm not dismissing it because it's stupid. I just don't find that part...I dunno, believable. I'm well aware of the stupid of history. I'm not dismissing SR history at all. It's alt history and I generally have no real problems with it. When I run a game I may do something like dial up the Articles of Confederation feel of the CAS or mess around with the exact meaning of extraterritoriality and corporate citizenship, but I don't dispute the alt history. The genocide is just a personal sticking point.
I will have to disagree with you on the American Revolution point, however. The colonists had some very valid reasons to be unhappy with British rule, [contemt cut because this is not a history forum!]
And the Trojan War is so mythologized as to be nearly impossible to talk about unless one is a serious Ancient historian, which I sure as heck am not.
The big difference between the Ghost Dance War and the others mentioned is that they didn't involve genocide or even large scale conflicts. In light of the destruction of Los Alamos, the attempted start of a nuclear war and an alt history that has to incluse both additional Native American populations and additional animosity towards Native Americans, the genocide is staring to make more sense to me.
So in conclusion, yes history is stupid, but not generally Stupid, you know?
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A large part of what the British did was in response to earlier colonist stupidity; basically, the whole issue was that the colonists started a war and the British spent a lot of money ending it. All the British government was doing was asking the colonists to pay for the very conflict they caused in the first place. The monopoly issue was actually a case of the British themselves undercutting the prices of smuggling operations after dropping all attempts to tax the colonists for the war in response to colonist dissatisfaction with the taxes.
Oh, and the land issue? The restriction wasn't a restriction on where they could settle within British territory; the restriction was on them settling in French territory. The settler issue was because the colonists were illegally seizing another nation's land. That's what started the war that the colonists were asked to pay for. Note that Americans would later pull this yet again in stealing Hawaii from its people and stealing what is now Texas and a few other states from Mexico. And there's still some people who are unhappy that the American attempt to annex Canada failed.
To put it in perspective, this would be like Arizona starting a war with Mexico... and then blowing up an Army base because the U.S. government took them to task for it before backing down and offering to help Arizona with some of its crime problems.
Needless to say, when the colonists tried to surrender before hostilities started, the British were not willing to accept anything less than unconditional just due to the fact the colonists had been massive dicks up to this point.
Also, the mythology of the Trojan War had historical effects; so, dismissing it as being too mythological is actually ignoring much of its real-world impact. Mainly, in that the Trojans had a massive impact on history through their successor people: the Romans. So, this is one of those cases where mythology cannot be separated from history because mythology had a rather impressive impact on history. Plus, archaeologists are pretty convinced they found Troy.
I know you find that part unbelievable. But compare it to some real-life wars; some of them are just as unbelievable in why they started, and yet... they happened. I could point out another war where it's majorly unbelievable in how it turned out, and which famously did involve genocide, but that is typically considered bad form to directly bring up... and yet, when you get into the history of that particular war, you can see how stupidity from its predecessor caused the stupidity within it. The SR world is similar; the Executive Order is a result from ongoing stupidity and part of the final culmination of a number of idiotic decisions.
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I always wondered if maybe the Executive Action was an attempt by certain parties within the government to head off the coming Ghost Dance and buy time for the US military to knock down the emerging NAN.
Societies like The Black Lodge were well embedded in the various tiers of society, including the rich and powerful of D.C. Granted the majority of these were still just wearing robes and playing at being Powers, however some of these individuals had to be Awakening as well and who knows what ancient knowledge/persons were available, they did adapt to the return of magic fairly quickly.
Recognizing that the NAN had a strong tradition and lore of their own, they would have been viewed as competition and that if organized could bring out the big mojo.
The Lodge might not have known exactly that the Ghost Dance could be done, or maybe they did, but they certainly would have realized the potential of even just coordinating ritual groups to operate in concert. They would have been well placed to plant the idea and encourage the necessary support to get something like this pushed through.
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Chewy, I hate to break it to you, but people, by and large, are stupid. And history is made and written by people. Therefore, history is chock full of stupid. Even scarier, a lot of highly concentrated stupid gets put into government, especially when people are angry and afraid. You only need to go back to 9/11/01 to see the truth of this. How many otherwise calm and rational people, after watching the Twin Towers fall, got the fool notion in their head that it'd be a great idea to turn the entire Muslim world into a glow-in-the-dark parking lot? (That means nuking the everloving drek out of them, in case you didn't catch that.) Hell, I was one of them! I can tell you straight up that if I'd had the launch codes on that day, I'd be guilty of more than a few war crimes by now. Your arguments are nice and rational, but they ignore the fact that people who are angry and scared aren't rational. Going back even further, you only need to look at Germany in the wake of the Great Depression. Germany had gotten the hammer dropped on it after WWI, and there were people starving and angry, but not knowing what to do. You take a guy with charisma, who can give people a clear target, and say, "This is your enemy! HE is the one who made you suffer!" and you'll find that they can get people to do terrible things of their own free will, charging blindly into the abyss.
People are terrible, stupid, wretched creatures, and sometimes all it takes is one bastard with an axe to grind or a personal insane grudge against a group, and all hell breaks loose.
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Chewy, I hate to break it to you, but people, by and large, are stupid. And history is made and written by people. Therefore, history is chock full of stupid. Even scarier, a lot of highly concentrated stupid gets put into government, especially when people are angry and afraid. You only need to go back to 9/11/01 to see the truth of this. How many otherwise calm and rational people, after watching the Twin Towers fall, got the fool notion in their head that it'd be a great idea to turn the entire Muslim world into a glow-in-the-dark parking lot? (That means nuking the everloving drek out of them, in case you didn't catch that.) Hell, I was one of them! I can tell you straight up that if I'd had the launch codes on that day, I'd be guilty of more than a few war crimes by now. Your arguments are nice and rational, but they ignore the fact that people who are angry and scared aren't rational. Going back even further, you only need to look at Germany in the wake of the Great Depression. Germany had gotten the hammer dropped on it after WWI, and there were people starving and angry, but not knowing what to do. You take a guy with charisma, who can give people a clear target, and say, "This is your enemy! HE is the one who made you suffer!" and you'll find that they can get people to do terrible things of their own free will, charging blindly into the abyss.
People are terrible, stupid, wretched creatures, and sometimes all it takes is one bastard with an axe to grind or a personal insane grudge against a group, and all hell breaks loose.
Ok, people, please stop writing as if I have said "Hey, why genocide, the world is full of sweetness and lollipops and happy people". I have a history degree, I am well versed in the American Civil War, Raconstruction and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, times that were very very full of evil and pain. My reasons for having a hard time with the genocide order are not rooted in some strange belief that good always wins or that humanity can't do bad things. My reasons are rooted in my understanding of the American attitude and politics since the end of the Second World War. I don't think that the United States, or any Western nation for that matter, would turn to a genocide that the official history seems to imply would have to be an industralized, Final Solution type murderfest. I can believe that the United States, when confronted with part of the population that has turned to terrorism, would do some incredibly stupid things. I don't think genocide would be one of the options, so I was hoping for some clairfication in the matter, not endless posts about man's inhumanity to man. My questions about the genocide order are rooted in my opinion based on real world history that the Shadowrun universe shares.
As far as the whole American Revolution thing goes, from everything I have read the conflict was not entirely the fault of the British or American colonists, it was a thing that happened because of politics and the circumstances of the time. Both sides had valid reasons for fighting. The colonists were not unbelievable dicks, and neither were the British. They were two groups of people (more really, when you count fence sitters and Loyalists) that had opposing views of their recent history and rights and responsibilities as far as imperial government went.
Troy has been found, but that doesn't mean the Trojan War went down as in myth. As I said, I don't know much about the time period, so I can't say much with certainty except that I was always rooting for the Trojans.
Anyways, this has gone fairly off topic quickly. I'm not trying to sound like a jerk here, but I sort of feel like I'm being talked down to (posted down to?), and I don't really like that.
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Chewy, you have a charismatic militant racist government that is blaming a minority group for problems related to the economy and slandering them as terrorists, all the while having public support, before ordering them rounded up into camps with the full intent of eventually exterminating them. Doesn't that sound familiar? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust)
And I'm not talking down to you so much as confounded as to how a history major would miss a parallel that is blindingly obvious. The entire history is about the U.S. not getting over its genocidal tendencies and finally sliding down the slippery-slope into full monsterdom. The difference is, this time the minorities had enough firepower to stop it by themselves.
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Dude, the Holocaust happening is why I have problems with it, as I have clearly stated. The attitude towards industralized genocide has changed since then, particularly in Western countries. I think the Holocaust, combined with a national sense that the Japanese Internment was a terrible thing, is why we didn't see mass internment or anything post- 9/11, in spite of nutjobs calling for it. I don't think an industralized genocide carried out by the US or any of the western allies is a realistic thing for an alt timeline without a major PoD either before or during WW2.
I'm not missing the parallels at all. It's obvious that the original writers wanted to inject a little Nazi into the US pre-breakup. I don't think the US has to slide into monsterdom to break up or make bad choices. For all the bad of the US, we have never had an industralized genocide like the Final Solution.
My main point is this: in the West, post-WW2, I feel that industralized genocide is so unlikely for the next, say, 100 years that it is nigh impossible. That's why I have had trouble with EO 17-321. I have stated that a number of times, very clearly.
There are plenty of other things going on in SR history, including the internment of Native Americans, the Ghost Dance War, the Seretech and Shiawase Decisions, the rise of Japan, Eurowars, return of magic, VITAS, Goblinization, etc that would cause the US to collapse. Genocide is not a necessary ingredient to accomplish what the original writers wanted.
Look, I got the answer to my question, SR canon-wise. That's all I was looking for. I'm not stupid and I am well aware of not only the nastiness of the United States but of humanity in general.
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I do not necessarily think it was entirely nastiness but fear on many levels.
In regards to 9/11 also remember, many muslims came out against the attack, saying how it was not their way or the wrong sort of target.
Now if an overwhelming majority of muslims within America on that same day had suddenly lashed out at the rest of America, who can say how that might have turned out?
Internment camps would have been the least of it and for those who resisted, I doubt they would have enjoyed the benefits of the Geneva convention.
Plus consider how Magic changed the equation. The US government was having its hat handed to them at almost every turn when they went up against magical forces and all they knew was that the Native Americans seemed to be able to control it. They had no way to detect it in advance or even tell who among the Indians could do it.
After 9/11 people were scared, but most saw it more as a lucky, if well organized, hit. The enemy basically threw a big rock at us.
We tightened security on the planes so they ideally shouldn't be able to do that again.
When the shoe bomber was caught, we all learned to have our shoes checked and liquids limited on a flight.
We didn't think it could really happen to all of us.
But now with the Awakening any Native American could be a literal mini-nuke with no real way to tell which Native American was or was not a threat and with the NAN's declaration that all non-Indians should leave the Americas or face dire magical retribution, the government lost it's little corrupted mind and decided to follow the age old adage 'Kill them all, let God sort them out'.
The old fear of killing what you do not understand played a big part here.
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Your post, like the earlier one from Wyrm, makes the most sense out of anything I have read here.
I wasn't sure that in canon ALL Native Americans joined the Ghost Dance Rebellion. Looks like a majority did. Good to know, thanks Sendaz!
I still think that it is almost impossible for the US to embrace genocide under any circumstances, but I suppose if anything would do it, magical terrorism would.
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Dude, the Holocaust happening is why I have problems with it, as I have clearly stated. The attitude towards industralized genocide has changed since then, particularly in Western countries. I think the Holocaust, combined with a national sense that the Japanese Internment was a terrible thing, is why we didn't see mass internment or anything post- 9/11, in spite of nutjobs calling for it. I don't think an industralized genocide carried out by the US or any of the western allies is a realistic thing for an alt timeline without a major PoD either before or during WW2.
I'm not missing the parallels at all. It's obvious that the original writers wanted to inject a little Nazi into the US pre-breakup. I don't think the US has to slide into monsterdom to break up or make bad choices. For all the bad of the US, we have never had an industralized genocide like the Final Solution.
My main point is this: in the West, post-WW2, I feel that industralized genocide is so unlikely for the next, say, 100 years that it is nigh impossible. That's why I have had trouble with EO 17-321. I have stated that a number of times, very clearly.
There are plenty of other things going on in SR history, including the internment of Native Americans, the Ghost Dance War, the Seretech and Shiawase Decisions, the rise of Japan, Eurowars, return of magic, VITAS, Goblinization, etc that would cause the US to collapse. Genocide is not a necessary ingredient to accomplish what the original writers wanted.
Look, I got the answer to my question, SR canon-wise. That's all I was looking for. I'm not stupid and I am well aware of not only the nastiness of the United States but of humanity in general.
Here's the problem: You're talking about the real world in that. SR had them still using internment camps, and it wasn't limited to just the Americans. The Japanese also continued to do it. As did a lot of others. And they continued to do it after the Great Ghost Dance was over, specifically with metahumans. The SR world didn't learn the lesson from internment camps and genocide that the real world did.
That's the disconnect you're having. You're applying real-world lessons to a world that didn't learn those lessons.
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Your post, like the earlier one from Wyrm, makes the most sense out of anything I have read here.
I wasn't sure that in canon ALL Native Americans joined the Ghost Dance Rebellion. Looks like a majority did. Good to know, thanks Sendaz!
I still think that it is almost impossible for the US to embrace genocide under any circumstances, but I suppose if anything would do it, magical terrorism would.
The trick is, also, to remember that it's not our US. It's not our Native Americans. Not only is stuff like the Ghost Dance (and VITAS, for that matter, which certainly added to the tension of the era) unprecedented, but it wasn't happening to us, it was happening to a mildly alt-history setting which had who knows what kind of different backstory in a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand little ways that would have changed American attitudes towards genocide, towards Native Americans, or towards both; but that aren't quite important enough to 2075 storytelling that we've ever bothered to write them all down.
In the end, there's a pile of handwavium that needs to be applied to the setting (hell, they did the same with retcons pretty early in the game)...this is just another instance of it.
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Yeah, handwavium. I hate handwavium. You guys are right, that's the problem. The official PoD must be either pretty far back or right during/after WW2 to change attitudes like that. Handwavium...damn it. I suppose its the same handwavium that makes corporations value employees enough to bother making them citizens or having enough Native Americans to even attempt to have big countries again...fair enough, handwavium it is.
Isin't that kind of a supernatural reason for the EO then? ;D
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Heh. You think megacorps make wageslaves citizens because it CARES about them? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
...Whew. I needed that. Seriously, megacorps make the wageslaves citizens because it is a means of control. They gain more control of their citizens, and their carrot v. stick equations take less carrot to get productivity when faced with the "Do you want to be a SINless in the Barrens?" argument. And they make the controls subtle, so wageslaves brainwash themselves into doing as the corp wants them to.
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The other thing to note is to look how large the NAN nations were when formed, how many citizens they had. Even if EVERY single person of Native AMerican descent, including people who could claim 1/64th Amerind blood, moved there... It still wouldn't come close to giving you enough numbers to match what SR had. Which means in this alt-history, there are a LOT more Native Americans kicking around, and probably much more heavily oppressed. I imagine the Civil Rights movements of the SR world in the 60's were a little different because of this.
<shrug>
And Handwavium. WHich I'm fine with and am a frequent user of, because I'm more concerned with getting to the good stuff that impacts our players. :)
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Heh. You think megacorps make wageslaves citizens because it CARES about them? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
...Whew. I needed that. Seriously, megacorps make the wageslaves citizens because it is a means of control. They gain more control of their citizens, and their carrot v. stick equations take less carrot to get productivity when faced with the "Do you want to be a SINless in the Barrens?" argument. And they make the controls subtle, so wageslaves brainwash themselves into doing as the corp wants them to.
Well considering corporations today seem to value their employees less than a mega, yeah. Corporations don't need to brainwash people to make money, and they don't need the extra costs of housing and security to interfere with their bottom line, and honestly even the whole concept of extraterritorality is unnecessary to the corporation's bottom line, after all with decisions like Citizens United corporations can just buy the government anyways...wait, I get it. That was a test. More handwavium. My bad! ;)
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The other thing to note is to look how large the NAN nations were when formed, how many citizens they had. Even if EVERY single person of Native AMerican descent, including people who could claim 1/64th Amerind blood, moved there... It still wouldn't come close to giving you enough numbers to match what SR had. Which means in this alt-history, there are a LOT more Native Americans kicking around, and probably much more heavily oppressed. I imagine the Civil Rights movements of the SR world in the 60's were a little different because of this.
<shrug>
And Handwavium. WHich I'm fine with and am a frequent user of, because I'm more concerned with getting to the good stuff that impacts our players. :)
Yeah I agree. I would imagine worse Indian Wars, too. That could easily mean worse conditions for Native Americans. Which changes the whole make up of the US, changes the Civil War, changes Manifest Destiny, everything.
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Well considering corporations today seem to value their employees less than a mega, yeah.
I've been staying out of this discussion, as I think it's been pretty well covered by other, more knowledgeable people than me. But this tangent is just funny. The megacorps have made their employees into citizens of the corp, they cannot leave the corp without some sort of reason, they often stay on corporate enclaves when possible, they use corporate-issued scrip that can only buy the items that the megacorp sells. Add to that the fact that the kids of the corp are often automatically citizens of the corp, going to corp-sponsored schools, teaching corporate propaganda. And somehow the corporations of today care less about their employees? That, good sir, is a viewpoint that only a corporate wageslave would have in Shadowrun.
Corporations don't need to brainwash people to make money, and they don't need the extra costs of housing and security to interfere with their bottom line, and honestly even the whole concept of extraterritorality is unnecessary to the corporation's bottom line, after all with decisions like Citizens United corporations can just buy the government anyways...wait, I get it. That was a test. More handwavium. My bad! ;)
If you read the SR history, you'll see why Shiawase wanted extraterritoriality. It was tired of the US government's oversight of their nuclear plants. That's where it started, and it snowballed from there. That initial reason is more than enough to justify a push for extraterritoriality among the corps. The fact that seventy years later the corporations have become the new governments was not something intended from the beginning, it just sort of became that way. When the governments could no longer provide for their citizens, the corporations stepped in with open arms. It may have been malicious, it may have been benign. More likely, it was a little of both.
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The only thing I wil say is this: corporate extraterritorality is unnecessary IRL. Shiawase could just have easily bought themselves some congresspeople and change some regulations instead of becoming their own country. The thing about megas treating their employees was mostly sarcasm, but I apparently forgot to use the sarcasm font. Of course wageslaves have it tough.
Listen, I love Shadowrun. For all its flaws and messy history, for the things that don't make sense its a great setting. I have recently gotten back into the game after a 15 year absence. I have found that 32 year old, history degree having me is far more critical of the setting's flaws than 17 year old me. That's where this comes from.
Apparently, challenging the setting is heavily frowned upon. I won't make that mistake again. Thanks for the reminder that the SR world's divergent history goes way farther back than I realized.
And for all the writers out there: I love the old books I still have, plus the 3rd and 4th edition stuff I have been reading lately. Looking forward to getting 5th edition real soon. Keep up the good work.
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Except, Granola, that without extraterritoriality, eventually when something hits the fan, or some drekhead 'activist' slips in and spreads your dirty laundry all over the matrix, or one of your competitors wants to take you down a peg, and buys a few congressmen of their own... well, things get much nastier. Even today, when people see pictures of nuclear waste being dumped as part of the 'fertilizer' in the yard of their kids' pre-k, they tend to get upset. Upset enough to cause problems for corporations. And that's without even considering LAWSUITS. Have you ever read international case law? Try suing a foreign country for something. It rarely goes well. But when you're suing a corporation that isn't extraterritorial, sometimes you get massive judgements against you. (McDonalds coffee is actually hot? OUTRAGE!) When you're extraterritorial, you're another country, and aside from all the fun of anything happening on your soil being judged on your terms, there's that extra lovely legal layer between you and any lawsuits outside your land. Simply put, in addition to allowing corps to do what they like, how they like on their land, it also serves to shield them from potential consequences of their action. During the last corp war, it wasn't the governments that finally made everyone play nice, it was the Corporate Court saying not to let things get too far out of hand.
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(McDonalds coffee is actually hot? OUTRAGE!)
It's so off topic, but people bringing this up in such a way is a pet peeve. There is quite a difference between "hot" and "hot enough to cause third degree burns in as little as two seconds."
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Except, Granola, that without extraterritoriality, eventually when something hits the fan, or some drekhead 'activist' slips in and spreads your dirty laundry all over the matrix, or one of your competitors wants to take you down a peg, and buys a few congressmen of their own... well, things get much nastier. Even today, when people see pictures of nuclear waste being dumped as part of the 'fertilizer' in the yard of their kids' pre-k, they tend to get upset. Upset enough to cause problems for corporations. And that's without even considering LAWSUITS. Have you ever read international case law? Try suing a foreign country for something. It rarely goes well. But when you're suing a corporation that isn't extraterritorial, sometimes you get massive judgements against you. (McDonalds coffee is actually hot? OUTRAGE!) When you're extraterritorial, you're another country, and aside from all the fun of anything happening on your soil being judged on your terms, there's that extra lovely legal layer between you and any lawsuits outside your land. Simply put, in addition to allowing corps to do what they like, how they like on their land, it also serves to shield them from potential consequences of their action. During the last corp war, it wasn't the governments that finally made everyone play nice, it was the Corporate Court saying not to let things get too far out of hand.
I get what you are saying, but I think my point still stands. Corporations have no problem making money and writing law without nationhood, so going for it seems unnecessary.
Then again, Shadowrun universe is different. And the trope is key to the cyberpunk setting. I have no problems with it.
And besides, remember what I said? I will never again criticize the SR canon, not here. Lets let this go, move on to more fun questions like what the heck is Sybil?
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It isn't a matter of questioning, it's a matter of requesting clarification - which you did, albeit in a slightly clumsy manner. (Anyone who can get Critias to rant on his Professorial topic deserves a bronze star just for that, in my book - in part because I love to read Critias ranting.) Always ask for clarification.
You should, however, understand that the 'point of divergence' really isn't 'way back' - the point of divergence is pretty much when SR was first published in 1989, because that's when they were writing the first sixty-one years worth of 'future history'. 1999 didn't see a massive strike in NYC, food riots, and an attack on a Seretech Corporation truck and facility; 2001 didn't see a nuclear plant owned by Shiawase, Inc. go online and get attacked by ecoterrorists. The three-plus-aborted terrorist attacks in the USA in 2001 didn't happen - and yet Tom Dowd et. al. conceived of a terrorist attack that would make America sit up and take notice - but they put it in 2009, and put it in the hands of a home-grown faction, i.e. the Native Americans, probably because they had a map they wanted to use (a Balkanized North America) and needed a way to get there. (Story does tend to lead results.)
The Re-Education Act ... ... called for the confinement of anyone connected in any way to SAIM. On the same day, Canada’s Parliament passed the Nepean Act, legitimizing internment camps for Native Americans. Not surprisingly, abuses of both laws were rampant. Throughout 2010, thousands of innocent Native Americans got shipped off to “re-education centers” (my personal favorite euphemism for concentration camps). Many of them never returned.
So legally, a lot of NAms shouldn't've been there; 'abuses', see. And yeah, people died. A lot of them. OTOH, a surprising number of people were saved (per se) by being in the camps, because 2010's 25% culling of the world population via VITAS gave the camps a miss - the camps were isolated.
Go back to the history introductions of 2nd or 3rd edition, and give it a closer read; pay very close attention, also, to the sequence of events. Resource Rush > Lone Eagle > Re-Education Act > Camps > Awakening & Howling Coyote > NAN Ultimatum > Redondo Peak & Los Alamos > Extermination Order > Three Years of the Great Ghost Dance's Biggest Hits > USA Finally Gets Its Hammer Together > Hood/Ranier/Adams/St. Helens Blow Their Tops > Treaty of Denver. Pay attention to the order of things - like how the Extermination Order comes after Los Alamos, how the Re-Education Act comes after the Lone Eagle incident. I'm not saying that the NAN didn't have perfectly valid reasons for protesting and acting (and I agree vociferously with Critias about 'people are evil enough, don't read conspiracy theories into everything', something Sendaz apparently ignores in his post suggesting Black Lodge etc. influence), but considering we were facing nuclear war, well ...
I've always felt that SR's future-history hung together remarkably well, presuming you dial yourself back to pre-1990 thought patterns. Yes, the Holocaust was horrifying; I know this and believe it, and you will rarely find a more emphatic opponent of genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc. than I. But y'know, here's the thing - everyone focuses on 6 million jews and ignores the other fourteen million victims of Hitler's extermination activities - Romany gypsies, homosexuals, intellectuals, POWs, political opponents, and people who just got in the way. And how many people know about, much less discuss, Stalin's purges that killed yet another 20,000,000 people in the USSR territories, from 1924 through 1953? This sort of thing can happen, even in the First World; the panic and the fear simply have to be hot enough, and nothing gets your blood boiling faster than nuclear war and a death toll roughly four times higher than the World Trade Center attacks. And yet we still focus on Hitler's hatred of Jews, despite him clearly hating a lot of other people even more, and Stalin just spreading 'the love' out across a few decades instead of a few years.
Remember to step back and look at the whole picture and how the questionable part fits into it all, is all I mean to say.
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And besides, remember what I said? I will never again criticize the SR canon, not here.
Which is, I feel, the altogether wrong message to take away from the thread. No one has leapt to the canon's defense and said everything is perfect. We're just trying to offer up explanations and reminders of how to patch it together enough that you can say "So yeah, that's what happened, moving on to stuff that actually matters in-game, we've got..."
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Wyrm- Great stuff. That's a fantastic answer and good enough for me. I'm not sure what was so clumsy about my initial question, but since I wrote it that's no surprise!
Critias- The answer of "It's a different world going far back" is good enough for any historical question that may come up. It seems as if people just take canon for what it is, maybe debate some specifics (corporate citizenship or something) and that's it. I'm ok with that. It just seems that my question elicited a general sense of "Hey, this person must be either naive/mentally deficient to ask this". It's not a big deal. I appreciate your answers to my questions. Also, I bought Neat on my Nook. It's really good!
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It just seems that my question elicited a general sense of "Hey, this person must be either naive/mentally deficient to ask this".
I don't think that's the right thing to take away from all this. The thing is that the canon of SR is different from our history. So to look at one through the lens of the other is just going to result in these kinds of questions. I don't think anyone here has implied that you are naive or mentally deficient. Maybe a little naive, but once things got clarified I'd hope that people changed that opinion. The fact that you were looking at the SR canon through the lens of reality is what caused that disconnect, no naivete on your part.
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Up until now I thought the PoD for Shadowrun was 1989. I now realize that it make much more sense for the PoD to be earlier in the 20th century or even before, with the differences really becoming noticeable in the 90s and later
I don't understand why people thought me naive. My reasoning was based on what I think is a valid interpretation. I never stated that people are inherently good or something. I suppose people do like to assume...
Anyways, my questions are answered, and future questions will be in canon context only. No problem! I appreciate the answers.
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Up until now I thought the PoD for Shadowrun was 1989. I now realize that it make much more sense for the PoD to be earlier in the 20th century or even before, with the differences really becoming noticeable in the 90s and later
I don't understand why people thought me naive. My reasoning was based on what I think is a valid interpretation. I never stated that people are inherently good or something. I suppose people do like to assume...
Anyways, my questions are answered, and future questions will be in canon context only. No problem! I appreciate the answers.
In my case, it was not so much thinking you are naive as not certain why you were not understanding the answers I had given as being towards their history being much more divergent than our's on lessons learned. Admittedly, that's an expression problem on my end; I stopped replying at one point because I was getting frustrated and just sat back and watched. For that, you have my apology.
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The earliest in-story departure that I could point to was actually in 1986, and that's in the original Shadowrun book, so yeah ... It's just a different world. Plus, with ED being in SR's past, there's all sorts of clandestine changes that could have and did happen that we just don't know about (mini-Awakenings during the middle ages per Loose Alliances, etc.).
As for this, I think SR's people and politicos were just more ruthless and willing to take action than we are, and that's fine. It's a fictional world, but I could easily see it happening IRL. This is a world that saw a lot of chaos and violence as opposed to our relatively peaceful and safe 1990s and 2000s. The Seretech Decision arose because there were massive food riots in New York City in 1999, and it's suggested that there was an escalation in domestic terrorism in the 1990s. TerraFirst! fired a man-portable SAM at the fucking space shuttle as it landed at this time. Something had to give, and a group of assholes nearly starting World War 3 seems like a good enough reason to pin them as the scapegoats and raw dog them but good out of fear, anger, and good old-fashioned spite.
I really can't stand calls to retcon the Shadowrun history. First, because no one has proposed anything even remotely as good or better (which is the absolute minimum requirement), but also the whole history of SR seems to annoy or frustrate people exactly because it's predicated on many really hard or even inhuman decisions and actions that we could not fathom occurring IRL. Considering how much of the collected cyberpunk dystopia came to pass in Shadowrun's lifetime, those are the situations that still make it fundamentally different and harder than real life. Otherwise we're playing with RL + magic, which isn't that helpful when the distinctive setting is a character of/in the game itself.
As the character of the game has lost a lot of the Neo-A romance for cold-blooded player pragmatism, it's worth noting that at this point it seems like the game has to work at making the darker elements and villainy exceed the horrific nature of reality in the 21st century. There's an old Family Guy joke from the first season about how NYC Mayor Giuliani secretly had all the homeless killed. That seemed hyperbolic, but then his successor literally buses homeless people to Florida, and that is public knowledge. If secret NYPD death squads were to be revealed tomorrow, would it really surprise anyone? There is an NYPD Intelligence Division that has been established to be and has been described as a "mini-CIA" that has conducted illegal espionage operations in foreign countries. It's not that far a step to believe that if they'd spy in secret to stop another attack on NYC that they'd be willing to whack some people.
I figure that Shadowrun has to be at least a little darker than RL, and one of the few things that still keeps it that way when trying to play catch-up to reality is that when the U.S. was faced with domestic terrorism and insurrection on a level that put the Civil War to shame as an existential threat to the Union, it reacted in a way that seems perfectly and terrifyingly plausible.
I always wondered if maybe the Executive Action was an attempt by certain parties within the government to head off the coming Ghost Dance and buy time for the US military to knock down the emerging NAN.
Maybe. Especially since Tír Tairngire wouldn't exist without the NAN forming. It's a lot easier to oust the fledgling SSC Rangers than the entire U.S. military.
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I always wondered if maybe the Executive Action was an attempt by certain parties within the government to head off the coming Ghost Dance and buy time for the US military to knock down the emerging NAN.
Well, this is what I mean by re-reading the timeline and paying close attention to the sequence of events. The Executive Order - and the assassination that preceded it - only occurred after the first Great Ghost Dance strike. A year after, in fact.
Take a look at the Sixth World Almanac, starting on p. 24, with an excerpt from the address by Daniel Coleman, nee Howling Coyote. He gives that on 10 June 2014; the Great Ghost Dance blows the top off Redondo Peak on 12 July 2014. During 2015, Thunder Tyee runs amok up around the Seattle area (eventually leading to that trideo show we all know and love, "Tyee!!"), until you reach 2016 on p. 27: 'Excerpts from remarks of President William Jarman following the issuance of Executive Order 17-231'. And in order to get there, President Garrety had to be assassinated on 15 October. The elections happened on 8 November, and Jarman (the winner) was inaugurated on 9 November instead of after the customary three month wait. (Which makes sense, really. It USED to be something like five or six months.) The Executive Order was actually his first official act, on 11 November 2016 - a year and a half after Daniel Howling Coyote's ultimatum, and after almost a year and a half of the GGD being put to use.
So yeah, keep one eye on the timeline when you're hunting for cause and effect ...
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I always wondered if maybe the Executive Action was an attempt by certain parties within the government to head off the coming Ghost Dance and buy time for the US military to knock down the emerging NAN.
Well, this is what I mean by re-reading the timeline and paying close attention to the sequence of events. The Executive Order - and the assassination that preceded it - only occurred after the first Great Ghost Dance strike. A year after, in fact.
Take a look at the Sixth World Almanac, starting on p. 24, with an excerpt from the address by Daniel Coleman, nee Howling Coyote. He gives that on 10 June 2014; the Great Ghost Dance blows the top off Redondo Peak on 12 July 2014. During 2015, Thunder Tyee runs amok up around the Seattle area (eventually leading to that trideo show we all know and love, "Tyee!!"), until you reach 2016 on p. 27: 'Excerpts from remarks of President William Jarman following the issuance of Executive Order 17-231'. And in order to get there, President Garrety had to be assassinated on 15 October. The elections happened on 8 November, and Jarman (the winner) was inaugurated on 9 November instead of after the customary three month wait. (Which makes sense, really. It USED to be something like five or six months.) The Executive Order was actually his first official act, on 11 November 2016 - a year and a half after Daniel Howling Coyote's ultimatum, and after almost a year and a half of the GGD being put to use.
So yeah, keep one eye on the timeline when you're hunting for cause and effect ...
Even when Daniel Howling Coyote initially claimed responsibility for the Los Alamos strike, it was shown in later documentation that the Government still really didn't believe he was really responsible for it. Instead they saw it as a chance to grab the renegade and they sent out the Sixth Air Cav which got promptly knocked out of the skies. So even with the opening shot of a frigging volcano going off many simply didn't realize what was going on.
The government was just barely coming to terms with the fact that they were seriously behind in a magic arms race. The government in general had little to no idea who could or could not do magic or how rituals worked, but there may have been some bodies in the ranks who may have had an inkling of the rising power they were facing so again these persons may well have advised that they needed to cull the tribe's numbers to break the possible ritual's backs. But Washington being Washington, it took time and an assassination to really open the door to the final solution route.
If you really wanted to go down the conspiracy route, was Garrety offed to make way for a president more amiable to signing off a death sentence for the rising NAN? But that's a whole other ball o wax.
When I mentioned the coming Ghost Dance I was referring to the Great Ghost Dance(should have had the word Great in at the start to differentiate, my apologies for the confusion) which was started in 2017 with the big show off on Aug 17, 2017 (SR1 pg 15), the one that popped the tops of Mount Hood, Mount Ranier, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Adams all in one go. This took place a full nine months after the Exec Order was issued as this took time to organize and build this kind of power. So we were not ignoring the timeline, though I should have define the initial terms better.
If the gathering military forces had not been slowed down by the constant harassment of freaky weather and uncanny disturbances of their bases and supply routes along with the President's constant insisting that they not send out the forces piecemeal, the military might well have been able to cull enough of the native forces to have slowed that down or even stopped it from reaching epic proportions. It was still a lot of old world thinking on the government's part and that shot them in the figurative foot, not too unlike our own American history when British troops still marched in ranks toward American opposition while being chewed up by the colonial snipers and such. It was a failure to adapt /evolve sufficiently to the situation, but one can also forgive them a bit for this as it was a whole new world they were facing.
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... I see what you're trying to think, but I'm just astounded that you're trying to think it. I don't disagree that the Air Cav was after Coleman, or that the USG didn't have the ability to grasp the radical (and I do mean radical change in the world). I just can't conceive of the idea that you might be thinking that the Great Ghost Dance wasn't functional at the time. Redondo Peak was GGD action, with enough left over to command tornados to swat down the Air Cav. The 'freaky weather' and 'uncanny disturbances' and all the other Major Stuff that was happening was the Great Ghost Dance at work.
But again, you're not following the timeline. The Quad Peak Eruption action wasn't something that was just done on a whim, or something they needed to build up to. Coordination, simultaneous smaller Dances, whatever - yes, those are good explanations, but firing off all four volcanos was not something that the NAN needed to work up to. That they could have done this at any time is strongly suggested by the timeline, by the continued use of the Great Ghost Dance for 'freaky weather' etc., by the third book in the first trilogy of SR fiction, when it's utilized again. The Quad Peak Eruption was orchestrated because the NAN war parties were outnumbered and outgunned by a finally-assembled force that would have been capable of wiping them out in detail, instead of the steady hunt-and-peck conflicts that were keeping them unbalanced.
Howling Coyote popped the lid off that, and the Dance kept the pressure up when black ops teams and strike forces went after him. The Quad Peak Eruption was a psy-ops action, and it was a very effective one. But it wasn't the first use of the Great Ghost Dance.
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Okay, but following the timeline why wait 9 months from the signing of the Exec Order before bringing out the Quad Peak Eruption (QuPeE)?
You mention it was a psy-op action, but how much more impressive would it have been to have pulled off the QuPeE on the day they initially signed the Executive Action or when the Resolution of 2016 was passed by the 'gleeful' Congress?
Picture the president announcing the implementation of Executive Order 17-321 only to have Daniel break in on the newsfeed with the single word 'No.' with video feeds of the four volcanos going off in concert in the background. Or even a few days after if they didn't know it was coming.
Why wait until the military finally has its forces together? They were taking a hell of a chance by not going for the Main Event sooner.
Time was on the Government's side. The FBI and CIA were already integrating magical assets into their ranks. How long before the military would follow suit?
Hell, a magical club had opened in Minnesota the previous year and Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, has established the first hermetic studies curriculum. The military is not afraid to bring in civilian specialists when they need them and if seriously outgunned in the mana corner I suspect there was a upsurge in black op magic projects trying to get something that could work for them, though I bet a lot were simple boondoggles, what with the government being what it is. ;)
What if along the way someone in the military/government had pulled their collective thumbs out and successfully integrated more magical forces or spirits forbid another third party player joined the field and assisted with knowledge in the same way Thais helped provide information on the Great Ghost Dance to the Native Americans.
Imagine the military mounting a counter ritual,( can't call it a Dance because.. well, you know us white folk can't dance :P ) effectively neutralizing the wacky weather and volcano threat (not sure if possible, but am sure there could have been some wrangling for those). Even if they could not take control of those magical forces for themselves, just denying them to the NAN would have meant US troops could and would have moved in on those outgunned and outnumbered forces you mentioned.
I am not saying there was no serious ritual GGD mojo being slung up until QuPeE, but I do wonder why they waited until they did for the big event that really convinced everyone about magic and could the US have done something up til then to have broken/stopped it? And that is why I was wondering about the whole Exec Order thing, was it being used with the intent of trying to decimate enough of the Native population so that they could not make further effective use of the GGD since we now know it took a hefty toll on lives to fuel it.
Edit: Of course the irony is if the president had not issued the ExO, they could have probably dragged their feet in lengthy negotiations/talks/arguing over finer points of law and debate with the tribes buying them time to be playing magical R&D of their own.
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Why wait? Do you know how much time it takes to gather hundreds of willing sacrifices, get them to a power site without being discovered, and prepare and set off a massive magical ritual? Doing major ritual magic isn't like throwing a manabolt! Especially when you're talking about a time when most people don't even know how the stuff works!
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Why wait? Do you know how much time it takes to gather hundreds of willing sacrifices, get them to a power site without being discovered, and prepare and set off a massive magical ritual? Doing major ritual magic isn't like throwing a manabolt! Especially when you're talking about a time when most people don't even know how the stuff works!
Yes, but Wyrm does point out the following...
The Quad Peak Eruption action wasn't something that was just done on a whim, or something they needed to build up to. Coordination, simultaneous smaller Dances, whatever - yes, those are good explanations, but firing off all four volcanos was not something that the NAN needed to work up to. That they could have done this at any time is strongly suggested by the timeline, by the continued use of the Great Ghost Dance for 'freaky weather' etc., by the third book in the first trilogy of SR fiction, when it's utilized again. The Quad Peak Eruption was orchestrated because the NAN war parties were outnumbered and outgunned by a finally-assembled force that would have been capable of wiping them out in detail, instead of the steady hunt-and-peck conflicts that were keeping them unbalanced.
Going with what Wyrm has pointed out in that they probably had sufficient numbers and coordination all ready to go why did they still hold off and not play the QuPeE sooner then?
Freaky weather wasn't convincing people, they thought it more a fluke or the natives just following the weather, not unlike how we still argue about global warming and such.
The military probably understood and they were probably desperate to find something to counter it but simply lacked the means.
If the Natives had laid out the big cards sooner, they might well have saved more lives along the way, including the Kiowa tribe the Cheyenne nationalists tricked the Army into bombing.
Edit:They knew they were outnumbered and outgunned (on a physical weapon level, mojo aside) from the start so waiting for the army to get all gathered up when they could have convinced people sooner that they were not to be trifled with seems odd.
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Why didn't they haul out the big guns? Why should they? Yes, there were people they needed to put into place, and undoubtedly people the NAN shamans needed to train. But for the NAN, well, you don't whip out your biggest gun in response to a threat by the other guy; you pull it just when the other guy thinks he's got the upper hand.
As for the US military putting together their own ritual to disrupt the GGD - this isn't 'hey, we've developed a new weapon' sort of stuff. This is 'there's an entirely new branch of physical law that we've never heard of'. I've never heard of either of your examples, but though yeah, they do sound likely, without major 'ancient' support (such as, I dunno, a Great Dragon founding your hermetic studies university program) it's still a matter of 'one-on-one' work only five or six years after the fact. Sure, I have no doubt that as soon as this stuff went off, every military and law enforcement and spy group in the world had their spotters out for someone who could do that sort of work. And I'm sure they found some people who were willing, whether among their own forces (gotta be some, right?) or someone willing to sign up.
But what you're proposing for the UCAS - major military magical capability and action - is like going from Wright Brothers to an F/A-18 Super Hornet operating off a carrier deck in under a decade. People without tutoring - namely the NAN (who had Aina's kid) and the Aztlaners (who had that corrupted dragon) are at that point still only beginning to learn how to reliably work in concert without blowing themselves up, and that's for the best of them. You're demanding ground-breaking doctoral-level competency from people who've barely gotten through a four-year program, not to mention requiring them to figuratively run out in front of a rampaging tank and try to take it down with a judo throw. It just ain't gonna happen.
As for why the NAN held off, it's because there was a whole shadow war going on. They may not have needed the time to collect and build up a big strike - they could have done that at any time - but it's also a matter of a) getting enough time away from the hunter/killer black ops groups from SEAL Team Six (etc.) and the Rangers and the FBI, etc. etc., b) throwing the hammer they have at a group that maybe is threatening their own people already, and/or c) needing the right time to do it. I mean, you'll notice that the Quad Peak Eruption didn't stop them hunting for him right away; it took those nine months (and three of those in negotiations, presumably with a cease-fire in place) to grind to a halt, still with frequent GGD-driven weather strikes etc. against (generally) military targets.
The NAN took their first psy-ops shot with Redondo Peak - the magical equivalent of a pretty serious FAE. That went off pretty well (so to speak), but it had one or two pretty nasty side-effects - such as the Executive Order, which basically said 'fine, screw you too - we'll shoot every Native American we can find.' And the smaller (per se) GGDances they were using worked just fine screwing with the military operations, they didn't need to go totally bonkers, but they couldn't blow every caravan off the face of the earth. It did, after all, take three years plus for the military to manage to get the pieces into place - this in a world where planning and assembling this should take at most three months, and moving a military group across the country need only take three days at the most.
You can say that the guerilla war was their second psy-ops action, because the US Armed Forces still didn't have a clear threat to deal with. Look at what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, then put it in the US West - all of the US West - and add in the fact that there are significant portions of two entire states who have shown themselves to be willing and able to conceal the NAN fighters in their basements and guest rooms, an entire group of people who have a pretty damn good memory about their own persecutions by 'regular' Americans, and who see Native Americans as long-lost brothers. (Literally. For which actions the NAN decides not to kick the LDS Church out - I got the timeline wrong originally.)
Then, when the USA hammer has been finally assembled, the NAN whips out what's the magical equivalent of four multi-megaton-scale nukes and trips the switch - and whether or not he sent an electronic or paper missive, it definitely sends a message of 'look, assholes, we got our kind of nukes too. Do you really wanna come play??' And eventually the threat of that sort of beatdown happening to any city in America (*cough* DC *cough*) is the sort of thing that finally puts the diplomats in Denver, hammering out a peace agreement.
Howling Coyote kept his eye on the strategic plan, and his boiled down to 'smack them hard, keep them reeling, and when they're getting tired but think that you're getting tired and think they've got a chance, hammer them even harder than the first time.' And it worked - in part probably because the military was tired and frustrated with getting into skirmishes in the hills and mountains where they couldn't respond effectively, when they had no ready support, when they could only infrequently manage to locate their enemy; also probably in part because the citizenry was getting tired and afraid of all of it. A year and a half was tough, but the US citizens had still shown the aggression to elect a hawk for President; they would have lynched him if he'd backed down immediately. Another year and a half, and no sign of victory in sight, and then all of a sudden wham - not just one, but four volcanos. Who knows what's next at that point, you know??
A brilliant campaign, brilliantly executed.
EDIT: A couple of things. One, they already knew where the powersite(s) was/were, and it's implied that the Dances happened all at the same site. Second, it's similarly implied that the drain was spread amongst all the dancers, and was not automatically - or even frequently - lethal. (Blood magic may get an additional kick from the actual death, but death isn't necessary if you have a big enough pool to draw from.) Third, pretty much every Native American would have been highly well motivated to volunteer - it's either death in prison, death resisting 'arrest', death on the battlefield, or death dancing. If you can't fight back on the battlefield but you still want to help, and it isn't necessarily going to be lethal (just 'dancing until you collapse from exhaustion'), then ... why not volunteer??
And Mirikon, remember that the Dance was in steady, regular use throughout those three years. The 'weird weather' that frequently disrupted military movements, wrecked bases, or whatnot was Great Ghost Dance action...
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I will be the first to admit that psy-ops are not my forte and your explanation for the wearing down of government forces and pulling the ace out only at the end just when the gov thinks it is getting it all together for their turn at bat does seems like a very effective tactic and makes sense in the overall scheme.
Thank you. :)
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There is some evidence that the USA did have some magical resources of their own.
The only US mage I know of is Ursula Mahr. Who is mentioned in the Denver boxset. In 2017 he learned Zebulon's true name and attempted to bind her, to use her against the AmerIndians. Robert Greene however, attempted to do the same exact thing at the same exact time, and they ended up fracturing Zebulon and were promptly killed by her two parts.
So the idea that the Executive Order was called to attempt to stop the Great Ghost Dance is theoretically possible. But who really knows how much knowledge the USA had about magic at the time. Maybe Mahr was their only awaken agent.
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Up until now I thought the PoD for Shadowrun was 1989. I now realize that it make much more sense for the PoD to be earlier in the 20th century or even before, with the differences really becoming noticeable in the 90s and later
I don't understand why people thought me naive. My reasoning was based on what I think is a valid interpretation. I never stated that people are inherently good or something. I suppose people do like to assume...
Anyways, my questions are answered, and future questions will be in canon context only. No problem! I appreciate the answers.
In my case, it was not so much thinking you are naive as not certain why you were not understanding the answers I had given as being towards their history being much more divergent than our's on lessons learned. Admittedly, that's an expression problem on my end; I stopped replying at one point because I was getting frustrated and just sat back and watched. For that, you have my apology.
Thanks! And for my part, I didn't understand why you didn't understand what I was saying. Stupid limitations of text. Anyways, no beef here. I appreciate the apology, but was never mad at anyone. Virtual hug!!
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The earliest in-story departure that I could point to was actually in 1986, and that's in the original Shadowrun book, so yeah ... It's just a different world.
Pretty specific, but the Rigger Black Book has the EuroFighter Aircraft (EFA) built by BAC, Dassault and MBB and entering service in 2020. This suggests the Eurofighter project didn't went the way it did in real life. First, BAC, the British Aircraft Corporation, had actually been merged with Hawker Siddeley and Scottish Aviation to create British Aerospace under the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act of 1977. Then, Dassault left the project in 1981 to build the Rafale alone. But there's still room in the timeline for BAE to change its name back to BAC, and Dassault to join a new Eurofighter project due to enter service in 2020.
Also, for some reason, Shadowrun has an Aztechnology Group subsidiary called Hawker-Siddley, with only one -e-. So possibly in Shadowrun history, the Deasy Motor Car Manufaturing Company changed its name to Siddley-Deasy Motor Car Company in 1912 (which in turn would imply the managing director's name was different as well, going back to its ancestors...).
Take a look at the Sixth World Almanac, starting on p. 24, with an excerpt from the address by Daniel Coleman, nee Howling Coyote. He gives that on 10 June 2014; the Great Ghost Dance blows the top off Redondo Peak on 12 July 2014. During 2015, Thunder Tyee runs amok up around the Seattle area (eventually leading to that trideo show we all know and love, "Tyee!!"), until you reach 2016 on p. 27: 'Excerpts from remarks of President William Jarman following the issuance of Executive Order 17-231'. And in order to get there, President Garrety had to be assassinated on 15 October. The elections happened on 8 November, and Jarman (the winner) was inaugurated on 9 November instead of after the customary three month wait. (Which makes sense, really. It USED to be something like five or six months.) The Executive Order was actually his first official act, on 11 November 2016 - a year and a half after Daniel Howling Coyote's ultimatum, and after almost a year and a half of the GGD being put to use.
The Sixth World Almanac got some things wrong, and this is one of them. According to Shadowrun 1st edition, page 15, William Jarman did issue Executive Order "immediately upon taking office," and the Congress ratified once month later. But The Neo-anarchist Guide to North America states William Jarman was Jesse Garrety vice-president for four years, ran and won the 2016 election ("campaigning stridently against his predecessor's "inhumane" actions in dealing with the Sovereign American Indian Movement"). Then, on December 12 Garretty was assassinated. Jarman was inaugurated in 2016 because he was vice-president at the time, not because he was president-elect. However, the one month before Congress ratification put it in the hand of the 115th Congress. 6WA has Garretty assassination occurring on October 15 for some reason (possibly based on another contradicting source, but I don't know where to find it), completely ignores the fact that Jarman was vice-president, and should have been immediately inaugurated and started a term, acting in full capacity, no matter what the election results were, instead resorting to advancing the inauguration of the president-elect for him to be able to issue an executive order before the end of 2016. But it would also implies the 114th Congress ratified it before the end of the year, a few days before the 115th Congress' session.
EDIT : corrected a mistake regarding Congress ratification.
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... this is what I get for not going back to the original source, y'know? :P Thanks, Nath.
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So the earlier canon source is assumed to be the "correct" one?
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So the earlier canon source is assumed to be the "correct" one?
See my post on the nature of canon (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=16912.msg299515#msg299515).
Chances is we won't get anything like official answer until a new sourcebook that cover the topic comes out, if it ever happens. That day it'll depend on who get to write the part. There are freelancers who consider first edition are the holy books of Shadowrun, and whatever came out for third and much of fourth edition (until they started writing for it, that is) was heresy. But it can be also someone involved in the writing of Sixth World Almanac who will refuse to acknowledge he could have been wrong. Wait and see.
If it was up to me, I would discard 6WA, which contains mistakes on a number of other topics. But it could be considered an equally valid opinion that the most recent book should take precedence, as chances are a greater number of gamemasters and authors may be currently using it as a reference (although the Neo-anarchist Guide to North America is still available as a PDF).
For the sake of this discussion, since we were debating on whether background introduced by the very first edition of Shadowrun made sense, I'd say it would more logical to consider the original writing.
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Rereading some books, I noticed that both Shadowrun first edition corebook and The Native American Nations names the "Resolution Act of 2016". Which implies it was the 114th Congress that voted it in 2016.
If Garrety was assassinated on December 12, and Jarman inaugurated then because he was vice-president, then the Congress would have to ratify Executive Order 17-321 no more than three weeks after it was promulgated, rather than one month.
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BTW, and this is glossing over A LOT, but the legality of declaring total war on Native American tribes is also distinct from actions against certain ethnic or religious groups because it's the equivalent of declaring war on any other sovereign states.