MediaBlitz!

Eternal Winter Campaign Notes

This section of the web site is for GAMEMASTERS ONLY. This part of the site has short descriptions of each of the runs planned and ran in my campaign. If I find out that any of the gamers in my group has read any of this, your characters will start to have abnormally short life spans.

If you are a player, will always be a player and never a GM - don't read this section. Your GM may have visited this site and taken an idea for your campaign. And there's nothing like spending an hour infiltrating a site and then realizing that you've read this all before.

Disclaimer: Beware SPOILERS for various Shadowrun modules and sourcebooks.

This section reveals the background of the three seasons of the game, the various players, and the major plots running through the campaign. If you are one of my players and you're reading this, you're dead.

The game is set around Dallas, Fort Worth, and the surrounding areas in 2056. The characters are based out of the FW/D Sprawl, but the campaign will take them to Louisiana, Oklahoma, Aztlan, Austin, San Antonio, the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, an alternate Earth, and the year 2116.

During the game, the runners may accidental let the Horrors into the world, open up a portal to allow a massive Bug invasion many times worse than Chicago, and nuke Dallas and Fort Worth.

Then again, they have a chance to stop all the above.

Let's hope they don't screw up.

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. in 2056

The main opposition is John Bly, the villain from Fox's television western-with-an-attitude show, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Bly is *gasp* an immortal elf, aspiring for immortality from the Fourth World. Using time travel magic, Bly traveled to the future, 2116, with threemagical talismans - the Orbs. He tried to use these objects to open a rift so the Horrors would return to the World but was defeated somehow. Escaping through time, he took the three Orbs with him, but one of the Orbs was damaged, scattering the three Orbs and Bly across the 19th Century.

From his records from 2116, Bly knew that all three Orbs would be discovered in the late 1880's [the last time all three would be together]. Unfortunately, the damaged Orb went critical and exploded (prompting a mana spike), leaving two orbs. During his fight with Brisco County, Jr., Bly was hurled through to the future of 2050, close to the time when the remaining two Orbs were rediscovered. One sits in the Atlantean Foundation's Baton Rouge enclave (minus two rods), the other is about to be discovered in Aztlan. Bly has already acquired one of the rods, and the other one is in a museum in southern Aztlan.

Once Bly has both Orbs, he's planning on using them to travel to the future year of 2116, where he was defeated, to use the Orbs to finish his work and gate in the Horrors. If Bly isn't stopped, the Horrors will be able to come through in 2116 instead of in 5175, when they're supposed to.

But the runners can have some help on this - for in 1889, Professor Wickwire placed Brisco County, Jr. in an experimental cryogenic chamber that froze Brisco for the future, when Brisco knew that Bly would come back. The sleep chamber was buried with the second orb, the one in Aztlan. Unfortunately, when Brisco thaws, he'll find that he's suffering from the same thing that affected Mel Gibson's character in Forever Young. If Brisco can't use the two Orbs to take him back to 1889, he'll die within days.

Everybody complains about the weather...

Well, if you've been checking out the MediaBlitz!s on this very same web site, you would have noticed that in the weather sections very odd things have been going on. First off, there's been an awful lot of Hurricanes and Tropical Storms in the Atlantic in 2056 - and despite heading into the summer, the temperature hasn't gone up that much. In fact, as we get into June, it's been falling!

In 1987, the Soviet Union launched a satellite called Sprite. Its fuction was to disrupt the 1992 US Presidential Election by affecting the number of voters heading to the polls. But due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sprite was never given a GO message. For dozens of years, Sprite had been floating in orbit, another piece of space junk. That is, until January, 2056, when a meteorite impacted on the side of the satellite, activating it.

Sprite is a fully-functional weather control satellite.

Sprite focuses the Sun's rays on the Eastern Atlantic to drive more moisture into the air, generating more storms to head across the trade winds and end up as hurricanes and what-not. And because of Sprite, the Earth is cooling - but the satellite only has enough juice to do this for less than a year. Sprite conks out in November, 2056, dead forever.

The result of this is that Texas will be under a blanket of snow from mid-August to early January. This snowfall takes place in the second season (called "Snowfall" for some odd reason) and is the backdrop for that season.

Sprite, the Soviet Weather Control Satellite, comes straight from the pages of First Comics' comic book American Flagg!, developed and written by Howard Chaykin.

The Church Of Gaia

The Church of Gaia is, well, the Universal Brotherhood. Sure, the UB was a plot by the Bugs to take over the world, but how many people know that? They know that there are Bug Spirits cordoned off in Chicago, and maybe the various UB chapters disappeared after that, and some might know that the UCAS government came down on the UB for some reason, but hey! Bugs are everywhere.

The Chicago Hive was called the biggest in North America - couldn't there be hives in other cities? Couldn't these hives be larger now since the Chicago one was busted wide open?

The ChurchHouse that the runners will be involved with is a Fly/Wasp nest.

Mister Zero

My version of Mister Darke, Mister Zero sprung from the pages of H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Thing on the Doorstep". Zero is a Horror that either came through in a mana spike (caused by the destruction of the Orb in 1888?) or stayed after the Fourth World ended. Either way, Zero's been around for a long time.

Mister Zero exists from body to body, switching places with a new host and killing the old body with the old host's mind/soul trapped inside. Zero can jump from a body to any other body with great difficulty, however, it is easier for Zero to jump back into a body Zero has possessed before. The more times Zero has possessed a host body, the longer Zero can stay in the new body. Eventually, Zero will be able to stay in the new body and not return.

Mister Zero has organized a secret group, an evil sect that performs ritual sacrifice to weaken the barrier between this realm and the realm of the Horrors. This Cabal of Zero (cooler name coming soon) is headed by Mister Zero.

Mister Zero is aided by an Ally Blood Spirit (that can operate outside of Aztlan just fine, thank you) called Valdemos.

When the runners encouter Mister Zero, its main body is a twelve year old girl called Suzanna. Zero is preparing Suzanna's father for the new host and uses the father to commit the sacrifices. The first Zero adventure, the father will probably be killed, Zero escaping back into Suzanna. Between the first and second Zero adventure, Suzanna will have been adopted by Janette and between the second and third adventure, one of the PCs buddies will fall in love and marry Janette - he's been chosen by Zero to be the new host body.

War

The third season revolves around the war between the CAS and Aztlan. On January 6, 2057, during yet another scramble of Azzie fighters ducking into the DMZ (most likely chasing after a group of shadowrunners), the Texas CASMil planes responded into the DMZ, and one of the Azzie planes strayed into the Texas side of the DMZ - one of the gung-ho Texas pilots shoots down the Aztlan fighter jet without orders.

This is the latest thing in the long list of tension builders along the front. The Azzies respond, the CAS responds, and viola! War.

Eventually, the CAS pushes Aztlan back past San Antonio before the war ends.

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me."

Ares owns the cops (Knight Errant). Ares is based in Detroit. Ares is seen as a benevolent corporation. Ares is also involved in cybermancy.

Omni Consumer Products owns the cops (Detroit Metro). OCP is based in Detroit. OCP is seen as a benevolent corporation. OCP built Robocop.

I can't ignore this.

At the end of the first season, Robocop is introduced by Ares. Actually, it's RoboKnight. Actually, it's Dancing Flame's brother, missing these last three years, secretly a corporate spy for Ares who was killed (brain dead) a few months back. A viable candidate for Ares Macrotechnology's RoboKnight program, he was put into service as the prototype (along with the new Smartlink 3). By the end of the year and the end of the second season, RoboKnight will be sent to Dallas, where the first mass-production of RoboKnights will be done. Dallas/Fort Worth's law enforcement contract will be up for grabs at the middle of season two when the DFWPD strikes and gets fired. Knight Errant wins the contract.

The elves must die.

The Black Lodge summons the horror Shinde Imas, elf-slayer. Shinde Imas proceeds to raise an army of goblins from the earth and marches them against Tir Tairngire. Ute joins forces with it, in order to occupy the land formerly known as Oregon to gain a seaport. This will happen after the CAS/Aztlan war begins. The Shinde Imas will fall, and it's goblins will dissolve. Sioux and UCAS retaliate against Ute's brash actions. Tir Tairngire falls to the Portland/Salem/Eugene valley by the time this is over, Sioux manages to take most of the northern half of Ute. Ute relocates to the southern area, Sioux Peacekeepers are stationed throughout eastern Oregon, on paper, it's the Tir's land, in practice...

One of the PCs is a member of the Black Lodge, and has been destined to do something to do something vile, according to seers he's been to. This is it.