This page is best viewed by Netscape v3.0 or greater.
|
Well, if your one of those bone heads of the 90's who believed that
he could just freeze his body in some little ice box for over
60 years and then thaw out to get the cure to your life threatening
disease, I got news for you chummer! That disease ain't the only
life threatening thing around nowadays. Everything and everyone is
life threatening.
So, let me give you a quick little history lesson in the world of
the shadows. Since you've been chilling out, things have changed,
mostly for the worse. Where to start, hmm... well I guess the best
place is the corps, well the megacorps. There are not many small
businesses left that survived the attack of the corporate gouging.
The bigger companies merged with even bigger companies, called
megacorps, whose competition usually can not keep up with their prices
until the megacorps run the small businesses out of existence. And
if that didn't work, the megacorps often hired shadowrunners, uhm
negotiators with guns, to cause problems for the smaller businesses.
Don't get me wrong here, not all megacorps worked together to strangle
the mom and pop organizations, in fact that couldn't be further from
the truth. The megacorps often hired shadowrunners to do runs, er
planned missions, against other megacorps. These runs consisted of,
but not limited to, things like espionage, assassination, negotiation,
protection and a whole lot more big words I can't even pronounce. In
the late ninties, or maybe it was the early twenty first century,
that the megacorps went to the governments and asked for the ability
to have private protection, that basically means legalizing private
corporate armies and to take care of any sort of armed intruders
however they want. And guess what, the bozo's in the government agreed
to it. That goes to show you whose kids I am putting through college
with my tax dollars, if I paid taxes that is.
And if you think the corps stopped there, your wrong. Next they got
the government to allow the Resource Rush, a land grab of natural
resources from Native American reservations. And what mentally
handicapped government would let this happen you ask? Well, ours.
This basically led the Sovereign American Indian Movement (SAIM) to
capture a missile silo at the U.S. Air Force's Shiloh Launch Facility
in northwest Montana. They threatened to start'a blast'n them there
missiles unless they got their land back. Over a week went by while
the U.S. pretended to negotiate with the Native Americans, then sent
in the Delta Team anti-terrorist squad who "negotiated" a settlement.
There were rumors that the SAIM managed to launch a missile at Russia,
but there was no boom, so you tell me if they did or not? Of course
after that little incident, there were alot of trouble for the Native
Americans with those anti-Indian riots and all. And history repeated
itself again when Canada started those internment camps again, but
don't you start running my Japanese friend. The camps were for Native
Americans, so your off the hook this time.
Actually Japan had it good, they managed to take over Korea with force,
Korea tried fighting back with nukes which didn't detonate, probably
because they had that "made in Korea" sticker on them, and frankly
street kids in sweat shops don't really know how to assemble thermal
nuclear devices all that well. Then Japan declared itself the Japanese
Imperial State. They sent up alot of solar powered satellites that
had the ability to project energy to any part of the world, thats what
lead to the economic take over of the Third World.
Which brings us to roughly 2010, when the first VITAS Virally
Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome appeared, nick named the New Black
Death. People panicked and after about a quarter of the earths
population died from this disease, they torched whole sections of
cities as a precaution. The next year, strange things happened when parents
started to have mutant offspring. Scientists dubbed this new generation
the Unexplained Genetic Expression or UGE. Little did they know that
those babies were elves, dwarves and the like, metahumans, actually
metababies. This was the first stage of magic being let back into our
world. The next magical encounter was when a bunch of Japanese people
on a train passing Mt. Fugi saw the first great dragon, Ryumyo. Then
a fellow by the name of Daniel Howling Coyote created the Native
American Nations (NAN) and lead his people out of the camps. Of course
it wasn't the summer camp type that you could just walk out of, the
armed guards fired but Daniel Howling Coyote was protected from the
bullets by a strange glow. Magic started to reclaim the earth as
forests grew over night in deserts, new rock formations excreted from
the earth, and manastorms swept the sky. Then the great dragon, yes
Mr. Dunkelzahn himself gave a 12 hour and sixteen minute interview with
a Holly Brighton, which explained what was happening. The rise of
magic came to be called the Awakening.
Then the government decided enough was enough and called for Executive
Order 17-321, the extermination of all Native American tribes. Well,
this did not sit well with Daniel Howling Coyote and friends. They
started a powerful magical ritual called "The Great Ghost Dance", and
shortly after Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainer, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Adams all
exploded in a volcanic eruption that rocked the world. The government
suddenly didn't feel so cocky now and they wanted to negotiate a deal
with the Native Americans, which was called the Treaty of Denver.
In about 2018, some brainiac created simsense chips, your equivalent
of techno-cocaine. It was about at that time too when scientist
managed to combine man and machine, the first cyberlimb was created
and used effectively, god bless those guys. I think that is when
the protection agency, Lonstar, was formed. They're nothing but
a bunch of gun toting, trigger happy, god complex, power freaks. And
no, I am not being biased, they have the "shoot first and don't ask
questions later" attitude.
Then the goblinization happening on April 30, 2021. Basically one in
ten people metamorphed into metahumans, freaks back then. The government
had another hissy fit and rounded up as many as they could and sent
them to the internment camps that were once occupied by those Native
Americans. The Japanese went even so far as to round up the freaks
and put them on a secluded island. Good one guys, Gilligan would
have been proud. As if things weren't bad enough, another strain
of the VITAS plague appeared killing one tenth of the worlds population,
not caring about race or skin color.
In the late twenties, Sony, Fuchi, and RCA created the first cyberterminal,
a cybernetic link between a user and the computer. A bunch of elves
also took over the Mt. Rainer area declaring themselves a new nation,
the Sinsearach. Then came the big virus, a computer virus this time.
It trashed memory, hard drives, and caused computers to burn out,
no computer with access to the grid was safe. The economy was nearly
wiped out. The government trained a special group of cyber geeks to
take care of the virus, they actually went in the computer to fight it.
I think a couple of them died from lethal biofeedback. But, they learned
something very valuable, how to easily access protected corporate
files. This lead to deckers, them guys who hook there brains up to
the computer and find things they are not suppose to. They managed to
kill the virus, but they also learned how to make it, which is even
nastier.
In 2030, Canada and U.S. merged into one country, that way the U.S.
could now say that they did infact produce the best hockey players.
In the early 30's the Euro-Wars started, basically the Russians fighting
for land they lost because of there 1990's "made in Korea" weapons.
It was squabbling and wars for a long time for nearly every part of the
world. In 2035 them Sinsearach elves created Tir Tairngire (the Land
of Promise), soon to be a force to be wreckened with. Nations fighting
nations, humans fighting metahumans... can't we just all get along
people?
During the 40's a new player entered the game, the Universal
Brotherhood, preaching the words I just used. They managed to
scrounge up quite a bit of support too. In the late 40's and early
50's people started to use more cyberware and bioware, others using
the magic that evolved. It wasn't till 2055 that people found out
what the UB really was. A front for insect shamans, the worst ones,
who took over Bug City (Chicago). They used the UB to turn those
mindless followers into bugs. Well our FBI decided that the UB
wasn't a good thing to have around, so they started to "shut down"
all of the UB installations. To "cleanse" Chicago, which was so badly
infested, they had to use a nuke, not one of those Korean ones either!
Then politics got real interesting when our friendly great dragon,
Dunkelzahn decided to run for president. The funny thing is he won,
but he didn't get to celebrate long, he was assassinated shortly
afterwards. But he left alot of them small business alot of money,
so now all the businesses are megacorps, a bunch of new players
in the game now. That also means more business for shadowrunners.
Well other then some corp stuff that I am not interested in telling
at the moment, this should bring you up to date, in a nutshell
anyways.
|
|
|
|
|
Shadowrun is copyrighted by the FASA Corporation and is protected
by law from any and all duplication. All rights reserved. So make
up your own damn system! Shadowrun is just a roleplaying game and
is not to be taken seriously.
|
|
