Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: Ryushiroi on <12-07-11/1621:32>
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Not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, so here goes...
I have been puttering around in the background/back history of Shadowrun. Being a relatively new player, and having an over-active imagination, I have begun to consider creating a character who used to be a member of the Network, the nodes created by Deus.
Problem is, I've come up against two concerns. One is could any members of said group have survived Crash 2.0? Second, if they did, would there be any residual issues. Perhaps most key, are there any "required" cyber/bioware implants that I might need to account for?
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>Over the last few months I’ve been pulling a steady income pulling kidnap jobs for a Johnson. The guy had a list of names—everyday wageslaves—of people he wanted me to snatch off the streets and deliver. Don’t ask questions, right? So, I get near the end of the list and I start to recognize some of the names, and then I start to ask questions. It turns out that all of them were involved in Arcology Shutdown. They were all trapped inside when the doors closed. I decided right then that it was time to stop asking questions.
> Hard Exit
They would probably have some form of Invoked Memory Stimulator, a Datajack, an ASIST Converter, and possibly Cerebral Booster. Given their incredible utility to otaku (which the Network nodes in fact were), their "unique" headware setup might also include a Math SPU and Encephalon. They may not still have all of that hardware, or it might have been upgraded or simply removed, but even if so it would leave an Essence hole. I mention that because ...
If they survived Crash 2.0, the nodes are probably going to be technomancers of the "evolved otaku" variety, and their Resonance needs to be reduced by the amount of lost Essence ::) . They also all possess above average attributes, especially Mental attributes.
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I was under the impression that many members of the Network didn't know they were members. Why would they need a specific cyberware setup in order to house a piece of Deus unwittingly?
I'll fully admit that I haven't read every piece of source material on Deus and I might just be missing facts.
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It was the cyberware that allowed them to house part of Deus unwittingly. Just because you have chrome, doesn't mean you know you have it, or how you got it.
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The cyberware setup is from The Network chapter of Threats 2. It's heavily modified, so it takes a lot of success for an expert to even notice what it is. In SR4 it would be a Cybertech 8+ threshold. But while Deus was stored in their brains (as otaku), there was other cyber that they needed to be otaku (the datajack and ASIST converter), as well as the actual ware to control them (the IMS, BTL stimulators, carcerands; all the stuff that it used to control the Banded). Plus, like I said, in SR3 there was not an otaku alive that didn't have a Math SPU and Encephalon.
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But while Deus was stored in their brains (as otaku)
Actually, System Failure says they have a Data Lock for that. Which makes sense, because neither Otaku nor TMs can store data in their brains (although Deus might have been able to solve that problem)
The other significant piece of cyber mentioned is "a cutting-edge simsense transceiver that the rest of the world has not yet seen". Significant because captured samples of this tech are heavily implied to have been the basis for the new wireless matrix tech.
What is more difficult to answer is the fate of the Network members after the crash. According to System Failure, all Deus-aligned nodes of the Network fell comatose once the recompilation was complete. What happened to them has AFAIK never been established, but being comatose is probably not the best state during a global infrastructure collapse...
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Well ...
From just above the HE quote:
Though former Director Huang has been arrested (and possibly is deceased), his team of scientists—commonly held to be responsible for the Arcology Shutdown—is rumored to be working on more emergent tech- nologies similar to what was witnessed at the Renraku Arcology in Seattle. This time it is believed they are working on tech that can capture, transfer, and store biological memories.
> Downloading into human brains is how Deus escaped in the first place. It was only a matter of time before Renraku seized upon how the AI did it and patented the process.
> FastJack
Take that as you will.
Also, I seriously doubt all of those people Hard Exit was kidnapping were non-Deus nodes.
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Uh huh, so the in-character text in book that is not exactly known for its canon consistency disagrees with the game info in another book -- your point was?
And Exit's story could basically mean anything. Several 10k people were trapped in the arcology and it's fair to assume the majority was subjected to all kinds of experiments. A few hundred of those were made into network nodes, but Exit's mysterious Johnson could as well have been after something totally different...that's the beauty of such references ;)
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I wanted to point out that the wireless matrix wasn't a new thing when it got adopted. Iris Firmware (a Renraku subsidiary) designed the Athabaskan Council's grid using satellite and microwave systems rather than land lines. This was way back in the 2050's. I find it difficult to believe that Deus was unaware of that. Renraku is also VERY well known for its nanotech abilities, this goes way back to the first DNI between a human and a cybernetic hand. I'm sure Deus was well aware of that. Renraku programming is very modular. Which means distributive programming. I'm sure Deus was well aware of that. SK had an kill switch for their matrix which protected them from the crash. The inherent fragile nature of the Athabaskan grid would have protected them similarly.
When I combine all that together, I see Deus holed up in the Athabaskan grid with modular nanite nodes (people) wandering about until enough get together, and then Deus manifests in some manner. Since higher level processing requires more power than a human body is going to provide to a nanite colony, it requires an external source, like maybe a constant background wifi signal. The nanite nodes would likewise need to be updated and replaced as they die out, so maybe if you convince the whole world to carry around transponders, maybe even implanting them... Where did Transys come from again, with all its technology?
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Thanks for all the replies. Now my head hurts... :-[
This might also be the time to mention that the character is supposed to be for the Missions campaign. We are just starting to be inserted into Denver...
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Good to know. Did I mention that Iris Firmware is HQ'd in Denver?
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Oh, I already know that if my GM gets sufficiently annoyed, he might send Renraku goons after me... Something about being proprietary equipment...
Oh, and a technomancer...
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Fine. Let me put it this way:
The use of datalocks would be incomprehensibly stupid. If Deus used datalocks, then it would have never escaped because the Army and Renraku would have carved every single one of them out of the skulls of the survivors and stuffed them in a box somewhere because they are datalocks.
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Oh dear...
System Failure, page 15f:
Like many of Deus’ creations, the technology of the Network is ahead of its time. Each Node in the Network is implanted with a suite of advanced headware disguised as everyday business ‘ware, so that most cursory security or medical scans detect nothing out of the ordinary for a productive member of twenty-first century society.
Each Node’s headware suite includes a large amount of headware memory, compressed with state-of-the-art software and bound with a data lock and Rating 8 encryption so that even the Node itself cannot access it. It is here that the compiling code fragments for Deus (and Megaera) are sealed.
There is also a sizable secondary memory storage unit used in conjunction with the Node’s cranial cyberdeck and datajack/knowsoft link. Each Node also comes equipped with an internal radio transceiver, subdermal speakers, a transducer and a cutting-edge simsense transceiver that the rest of the world has not yet seen. This internal simsense transceiver allows the Nodes to transmit and receive short-range Full-X ASIST transmissions over an encrypted radio wave carrier signal. Combined with a system of headware sensory links, this allows Nodes to share sensory information, sometimes even memories and experiences, over a distance of about 20 meters from one another or through the Matrix.
The only piece of bodyware that the Nodes possess is a set of Rating 6 skillwires, which, combined with the knowsoft link, allows the Nodes to download skillsofts and utilize them
if necessary.
I might also point out that your arguments would be equally valid against any other piece of cyber Deus installed. Are you claiming Network members didn't have any cyber?
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I'm claiming that there might be a way of doing it without cyber. I'm also claiming that the entirety of the matrix wasn't wiped out. I'm also claiming that Deus had access to research that could have predicted wireless matrix and his access to a safe zone.
Whether or not you should be concerned with these claims depends on how much you respect Deus as an adversary. I mean how smart could he be? ;)
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Well, since not everything had unlimited storage memory in SR3 there wouldn't necessarily be a reason to suspect a bunch of cyber that didn't have it. That said, Renraku could have and probably did carve that shit out of their citizens anyway.
But any storage memory, and especially storage systems specifically designed for the wearer to not access? That stuff is getting ripped out in a second because cyber is cyber (Deus made them more productive. Yay), but data is special. But it is simply a matter of short-sighted, blatantly stupid tactics for Deus to be put into a thousand datalocks. And frankly I don't care what the book says (I say this having nothing to do with CGL. If Jason tells me that I have to obey SF, then that's that)., because it is from every conceivable perspective outright stupidity. It also diminishes a great deal of the mystery behind what Deus did and was able to do.
But this is just one more reason why I think System Failure is hugely, fatally flawed.
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Except wasn't that ware designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to detect with scanners? Are you going to have a mage assense every one of the 100K or so people coming out of the arcology before they have a chance to escape? And since Renraku was not allowed to keep a large force amongst the UCAS army (due to people fearing another San Francisco), they would have had trouble corralling all those people long enough to get any ware out of them.
Sure, if it was a group of ten or fifty or even a hundred, that might be an option. But where are you going to keep 100K people isolated in the middle of downtown Seattle? Especially since ten years later they still haven't cleared out all of Deus's 'toys' in the SCIRE.
Add to that the media presence focused on the SCIRE by the fact that there is a task force of the UCAS army out in the streets of Seattle, and there is no way to cover up moving all those people to undisclosed locations. Or were they going to lobotomize people in the lobby before sending them out to meet their families?
Again, on a small scale, you're right. But this is much, much larger than small scale, so you're not going to be able to keep track of everyone before they scatter, especially when most of your attention is on defeating the remaining enemies inside the building.
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You're off by a factor of ten. The numbers of survivors are inconsistent, but the highest number was less than 10,000 (SSG), but there was also one description that was around 2,500.
Ultimately, it comes down to two very different ideas about what the Network was supposed to be, and both were written into the game. I am biased towards the material written by Hyatt, Schoner, and Levine, whose material in Threats 2 seems more "pure" to the idea than what he may or may not have written in System Failure.
Anyway, I gave my list, and I have zero interest in continuing this discussion.
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IMO, the number of living survivors should have been much higher -- at least 40k, up to 70k or so. 30,000 dead is a lot. Not impossible, no, not by a long shot, but it's a ton.
For you wondering, here are some numbers:
- Locked Inside: Over 100,000, presume 110,000
- Time of 'Occupation: 509 Days (12/19/2059 to 5/11/2061)
- 70,000 survivors: 40,000 dead, 78-79 killed per day.
- 40,000 survivors: 70,000 dead, 137-138 killed per day.
- 10,000 survivors: 100,000 dead, 196-197 killed per day.
Man. That's a lot of dead people.
However, my disagreement here is twofold, with the conclusion:
- Deus needs to completely conceal the fact that he's discovered (ruthlessly, make no mistake) how to discretely and distinctly separate his parts and download himself into metahumans. He needs:
- People to hide his Network amongst, essentially overwhelming the 'rescue' areas so that most if not all his Network nodes make it through. He needs a lot of patsies to hide a thousand; 2500 isn't going to cut it. Even 10,000 won't be enough. 20-25,000 might be enough ... maybe.
- A way to download his data so that a scan for cyberware (yes, deltaware is harder to detect, but it is by-god not impossible) is going to be a quick scan, a shrug at the minimal 'ware in them, and a shove-past. If this is successful, the first part is less important, but important nonetheless.
- A way to protect his precious nodes, to maximize their survivability in the nasty, nasty Real World. Which means protective cyber, bio, or nanoware.
Loading up on the headware the way System Failure has it is a guarantee of detection. "Hey, this guy has huge amounts of headware. You think we should set him aside?"
Ya think ?!? - Deus had two tests running:
- Getting the human brain to be able to accept massive amounts of information, and then be able to access nearby computer processing to utilize that information at computer-level speeds. This is what's going on when Puck and the Scarecrow are testing out their subjects, including the evil little girl, in Renraku Arcology: Shutdown.
- Discovering the very best ways to keep the metahuman body alive. All of his test subjects, if they survived their tests (such as, for example, getting used as target practice by the Blues, again in RA:S), were very specifically tested for neural function.
- Therefore, Deus's intention was clearly to download himself into unused portions of metahuman brains, implant those suckers up enough to make them virtually immune to getting dead, and then let Aneki do the rest.
I got this into a Shadowland post during our Otaku wars; unfortunately, certain writers whacked out large portions. Wish I'd saved it all; it was a piece of art.
In any case, I agree with James; the stuff written by Hyatt, Schoner, and Levine has clear priority. Whomever wrote the cyberware profile for the Network Nodes in System Failure was an unfortunate example of not understanding the intention behind what was previously written. I wonder, in some cases, whether or not people talk to past writers, or read the work that they're basing their OWN work on ...
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Your averages are good, Wyrm, but remember: probably 75% of all the fatalities occurred in the first few weeks during the takeover. Which makes the 10,000 survivors number even messier.
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That I have strong disagreements with, Jack. Twenty people -- ordinary people, not a mob, cold, torn away from their familiar haunts and/or separated from their loved ones -- are sitting there. One guy gets bold, runs and kicks over a drone, scrambles for the elevator, gets in. "C'mon, we can do this!!" The drone gets to its feet, is joined by two more, they go into the elevator and literally slice the guy apart with chain saws.
Now. You're one of those 19 'other' people. Are you gonna rebel??
Control through threat of violence by the one against the many depends on the individual being kept an individual, not being allowed to group up. You get this in a lot of Westerns, but going the other way around.
[LEAD Member of MOB]: "Bring him out, Sherriff, we're gonna lynch him!!"
[SHERRIFF]: "Well, I can't take you all on ..."
[MEMBERS of MOB]: (Various) 'Yeah!!' "That's right!!" "You can't stop us!!"
[SHERRIFF]: "... but the first three men that step up to get him are gonna get bullets in the belly. Now that's a death sentence. You gonna be the first to die, Wally? Pity leavin' Emma all alone on account of this rustler. How 'bout you, Clarence, with your three kids and another on the way? Or you, Buck? Don't you got that money comin' in from Texas soon?"
The one, whether Good Guy Sherriff or Bad Guy Deus, makes sure the many understand the close, personal destruction that's going to happen to them if Problems Happen. Keeps them from getting up the courage to accept themselves as a possible loss in order to get the job done. With the effectiveness of a few 'examples' of utter ruthlessness among large groups of people, you certainly wouldn't need to make many in order to ensure that the rest were going to not want to be the next one.
Consider the Holocaust. A comparative few terrorized, controlled, and dominated tens of thousands daily, and literally millions of them during the course of the war, 'just' by utterly ruthless application of violence and pain -- combined with the hope of 'one more day of life'. People can be cowed, and cows can be herded. Counting from Kristallnacht to V-E Day (2,371 days), during which 11 million were killed, you get an average of 4,640 per day. Considering the Arcology, I'd say no more than 10,000 were slain for purposes of control in the first 60 days. Yeah, that's a lot, but over 400 floors, that's only 167 per day -- one person per 50 people every 2 weeks. Not bad for reminding people that if they live five more minutes it's because they aren't causing trouble.
This doesn't count experiments, of course, but hey, you can't have everything; where would you put it?
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Odd thing just popped into my head, so I thought I'd put it out there as well. I'm working with the Holocaust again, so our numbers are 11 million, 2371 days. We're considering ONLY those people, and how fast they get completely wiped out.
In an extended social circle -- people you know relatively well and people THEY know; about a thousand people total -- a person is taken from the group roughly every 2 days -- 2 days, 9 hours.
In a large social circle -- you, work, friends outside work, the people you know well enough to talk to at church; about 250 people -- a person is taken every 9.5 days.
In a moderate social circle -- you and your friends, people at work, people you know well at church; about a hundred people -- one person about every 24 days. 23 days, 17 hours.
In a small social circle -- you, your friends, the people at work; about fifty people -- one every 42 days, 10 hours.
In your 'immediate' circle -- 15 people -- they take one person every 158 days, 1 hour, 36 minutes.
So you hear about something every few days; you miss someone you know every 10 days. You lose someone you interact with every three weeks, and someone you talk extensively to every 5 weeks. Every five months, you lose someone you care about.
Kind of odd when you think about it that way ... but again, this is about averages.
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Oh, I agree totally about those making a break for it. But we're talking about Deus and how it slaughtered people that it deemed "incompatible" with its plans. That's where I figure the 75% were killed.
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People who fought would have been incompatable. People who didn't -- which would likely have been most of them -- would have been experimented on...
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Even the people who fought could have been an experiment of a different sort... ;)
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Going back and reading the Shutdown book, I'd have to say that I agree with the others who say the number of survivors was probably in the 40-70K is a good mark. For one thing, the Shutdown book implies that a good number of the residents were still trapped on the residential floors, except for those who became Banded, or were taken to the Slave Pens for experimentation. If we assume that most of the deaths were in the beginning, as Deus took control and locked things down, then we can say that a large portion of the population survived, since most of the population was apparently still alive when Peregrine slipped out to spread the word.
Also, as horrible as the situation was, if 100K people had been killed in the standoff, you had better believe that it would have been mentioned SOMEWHERE.
As for the ware, if we assume that maybe 10% of the survivors were members of the Network (no idea what the actual percentage is), then if there are 70K survivors coming out of the building, you have 7K people you're looking for. Except you don't know you're looking for them. Remember, cyberware is fairly common in the sixth world, and it wasn't until later that they realized that Deus had fled the system. That means there was plenty of time for the members of the network to escape and disappear into the sprawl.
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... but we do have a solid idea of the number of people in the Network -- a thousand, give or take a few dozen. And they would not have been looking for 'nodes of the Network', they would have been searching for 'aberrations' -- such as Whites. Doing brain scans (no pun intended) for aberrant neural constructs would not have been easy, which means that locating the Whites could have been very difficult. However, locating the Blues (who were typically cyber-monsters) or Greens (who had moderately stiff cyber-mods too) would have been MUCH easier. Implanting the amount of 'ware laid out in System Failure would have resulted in detainment.
And the government puts thousands of people through scanning not totally dissimilar to this every day, in airports across the nation. SR has rules for portable cyber-scanning devices, and I don't think the people getting out of the arcology would have just scattered; remember, Military Shutdown. They run for the barricade, they get shot.
Still -- I go for at least 40k survivors, likelihood decreasing to 70k max. I think in my game I'd probably run it at about 55k or so -- 1 in 2 survive.
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There was a military shutdown in effect, yes. But do you have any idea how long it takes to process fifty thousand people? How many portable cyberware scanners did the army have in the field? How good were they? Before the shutdown, Renraku was already one of the pioneers of cyberware tech, and Deus advanced things considerably. The scanners the army had may not have been up to the task. And did that cyberware appear to be something innocuous, such as a normal datajack, or some headware memory, or a medical implant, or something similar? Remember, there are two ways to hide something. You can make it invisible, or you can make it seem like something it isn't. And if it looks like something normal, and you have thousands more people to process before, you know, it starts raining again or a crowd of people who spent the last few months as prisoners get restless about being kept outside, then you have people rushing the processing, especially if they don't have cybereyes, like the whites did.
As for shooting people who try and rush the perimeter, that may work in theory, but then you have to remember all the cameras encircling the military perimeter. And the fact that it is difficult to control thousands of people. If one freaks out, then you risk a stampede, in the middle of downtown Seattle. Especially if any of the groups that love to start chaos decide to start having fun. And it takes time to transport that many people to another site, involving a lot of vehicles. And you have the pressure to reunite families that have been separated by the shutdown.
I agree, that each of these factors in and of itself is less than conclusive. However, taken together, the deck is stacked heavily in the favor of most, if not all, of the Network escaping detection.
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you know, shooting peaple running to barricades worked in Chicago CZ, why wont it help in enclosed arcology space. And further...you remember how tight the security was back in 50ties in arcology...how difficult it was to get inside. Should those SOTA scanners and systems, once purged of Deus presence, cut off from arclogy network rewired and used to work for military? It is not a huge crowd running arcoss footbal stadium. It was level by level, corridor by corridor liberation...so not all 40K at once, IMO...
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you know, shooting peaple running to barricades worked in Chicago CZ, why wont it help in enclosed arcology space. And further...you remember how tight the security was back in 50ties in arcology...how difficult it was to get inside. Should those SOTA scanners and systems, once purged of Deus presence, cut off from arclogy network rewired and used to work for military? It is not a huge crowd running arcoss footbal stadium. It was level by level, corridor by corridor liberation...so not all 40K at once, IMO...
In Chicago, anyone running to the wall of the CZ was assumed to be an insect spirit in flesh form, not helpless victims of a mad AI with family waiting for them on the other side of the blockade, where all the news crews were waiting to see survivors brought out.
The security in the arcology was tight, but once the barriers went up, how much of that tech in the lower floors remained intact? Between the resistance, the animals from the zoo, and the drones, there was a good deal of damage. Add to that the fact that replacement parts were obviously hard to come by, and I imagine that anything SOTA that was functional in the lower levels was either destroyed or stripped.
It was a level by level assault, true. But that doesn't change the fact that you have survivors coming out, so where are you going to put them? A tent city outside the arcology? Just leave them at your back as you continue on to the next floor? Assaulting the arcology is a logistics nightmare. Dealing with the survivors only adds to the trouble. Now picture you're a grunt clearing out the building. You don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of cyberware technology, and all you have is (likely) a handheld scanner or (if you're lucky) a mage. You know that Deus's Banded all have cybereyes, so that's what you look for. If they don't have cybereyes, they aren't one of the AI's servants, right? Sure, maybe (big maybe) your scanner shows up a bit of headware, but that kind of thing is very common in the 2060, so there's no reason to think it was a big deal. Especially if that ware looks like simple headware memory.
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Thank you for reminding me; I'd forgotten how far the UCAS military had gotten.
Simply put, there isn't going to be a 'flood' out the doors; the Army already controlled anything but a near-death plunge from 10+ stories up. Which makes getting out less a 'fly be free' than it would be a 'line up to be processed.' Remember, these are people who, for the last 509 days -- not quite a year and a half -- have been living an 'obey or die' existence. And all the ones who are going to be critical for the AI are going to be plugged in, ideally in the midst of dozens of other non-critical plugged-in individuals.
Clearing the arcology was indeed still a floor-by-floor cleanup, and dealing with things undoubtedly did get easier -- the level of coordination simply went down. And yes, people got sent out, penetrating 'exit security' with in some cases what must have been relative ease; the head of the Greens was outside the Arcology, for heaven's sake. But I would put forth that since a) Deus wouldn't have had such hands-on control of his people, and b) getting the Network out into the rest of the world was the very core and reason for the entire Arcology takeover. Screw the Greens, the Blues, the Whites -- all of them were tools, told a mixture of truth and lies in whatever proportion was required to get their whole-hearted, willing cooperation.
Everything -- everything -- was about the Network.
Making certain they a) get out safely, then b) remain safe while c) recompiling him outside the Arcology was his ultimate priority. And after that, well -- they too were disposable.
I suppose what I consider, as a GM and as a hopeful freelancer, is what's more frightening -- that the AI just did really good cyberware and implanted that in people? Or that the AI reprogrammed people's brains??
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Frankly? I'd be much, much happier if the AI just made advanced cyber that was too good for the current detection systems. Because if the AI could reprogram someone's brain, that means someone else would be able to copy its work. And do you really want that kind of tech out in the world?
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... seriously? Psychotropic IC and PAB units ring a bell?
They can already reprogram people's brains. It's just a question of the level of finesse.
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PAB units are big massive things, and take weeks of programming to work, IIRC. Psychotropic IC is the nastiest thing out there, but if you aren't hacking, then it isn't as big a concern for you. Neither of which are anywhere near the level of complication you'd need to turn someone's unused brainspace into memory for an AI, and attach it to the Matrix to recompile, especially if those people didn't already have datajacks.
So yes, I am much more comfortable with having the AI who had access to both beyond SOTA cyberware schematics and prototypes (this being Renraku, afterall, one of the world leaders in cyberware) and SOTA cyberware scanners being just a step or two ahead of the curve on the stealth vs. detection race. That kind of thing has been going on for ages. You can see the modern equivalent just by looking at radar and sonar systems, and the stealth technology used to defeat them. SOTA is always moving forward. Ten years old is nine years out of date, in some cases.
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PAB units are big massive things, and take weeks of programming to work, IIRC.
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Like...let`s say...Renraku arcology infrastructure for the big nasty thing
509 days for a few weeks...
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You really need to start reading all the way through what someone posts before typing responses. Psychotropic IC and PAB units simply affect personality and memories. We already know for certain Deus used such things, to condition the Banded. But reprogramming a person's memories is a couple hundred orders of magnitude from turning someone's head into a biological node that can store programming and interact with the matrix to recompile an AI. That's a feat beyond even technomancers. Cyberware, on the other hand, is easily capable of that, and all it takes is making it a step or two ahead of the army's cyberware scanners to have it be undetectable. Especially since that technology is only a step or two ahead of where the market (to say nothing of SOTA) was already at, with headware memory and other such things.
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And yet you're comfortable with Deus having, with only a fraction of his concentration, pressed waaaay way past the monofilament envelope's edge in everything from nanotechnology to smart form vehicular bodywork? A mad scientist working on ideas a thousand times faster than humans, not needing to worry about 'funding' or test subjects, and with experience in turning 'ordinary human' brains, albeit ones still young and flexible, into what were for all intents and purposes otaku -- turning them into living computer interfaces??
Deus was the world's largest FAB. With the experience he had in creating his Whites, there's no reason that, with those 509 days working at an intense pace even for him, he could not have refined the technique. Something, I'll note, he would have taken with him. He isn't the sort to leave detailed notes laying around; so far as I can tell, almost all the information Renraku and all the other corps have gotten from the Arcology is via reverse-engineering, with some help thrown in from Greens who just had to write stuff down.
Deus for Reprogramming, all the way.
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With the exception of Deus's otaku, those were all advancements on things that were already around. Drones had been around for a while. Deus did have Renraku's research to draw on, and IIRC they were already SOTA on the drone and cyberware fronts. Deus's drones were new designs, but they weren't that far past the bleeding edge. Even reverse-engineering the otaku isn't that crazy. They still needed datajacks to plug in, so it was a bit of neurochemistry that got fiddled with. Difficult, bleeding edge, but not impossible. People today have been playing with neurochemistry for decades, afterall. And when you have a template to go off of, that makes things easier. Nowhere near the level of difficulty you see in pioneering a completely new field, which is what you'd have to do to actually partition off those unused sections of a person's brain to keep them from using the information, and then turning it into memory space that you can not only download an AI's code into, but then upload it again later on.
Could it have been done? Sure, its possible. But Occam's Razor suggests cyberware.