Major Players

This file is a place for me to keep track of all the major players in the Shadowrun world— mostly gamemastering notes.

Corporate

Lofwyr and Saeder-Krupp

Lofwyr gets his own entry in the Threats book, and Saeder-Krupp, of course, has its appearance in Corporate Shadowfiles. Naturally, he gets his own page here as well, since my master plan for Lofwyr needs its own page for proper exposition.

Lofwyr has a number of human manifestations— possibly including Hans Brackhaus, given the fellow’s magical impenetrability in Dead Air and Lofwyr’s habit of micromanagement. The one that the PC’s have seen is the one that turned up in Worlds Without End: human, male, with long iron-grey hair, and almond-shaped eyes of a peculiar golden color. Patty’s flashing of her business card in the metaplanes led to the run against Silk Flame, the decker with the copyright infringement problem.

Damien Knight and Ares Macrotechnology

Damien Knight definitely has something against the Bugs, and got along with Dunkelzahn well enough that he was able to get the dragon’s assistance in taking over Ares.

Knight, I suspect, knows about the Horrors, and found out about them from Dunkelzahn. He has a very practical view toward such matters: if he can make Ares Macrotechnology into a potent force for defeating major magical threats, he’ll be one step ahead of the competition. To this end, he’s been supporting a lot of research into weapons that will defeat magical threats: to him, the Bugs are just a convenient source of R&D testing. (Having the Bugs and the Horrors shows that there’s an interesting metaplanar ecology out there...) When the Horrors strike, Knight intends to step in as a fair-haired hero to save the Earth’s collective rear end.

Aztechnology

Aztechnology is definitely up to no good. Juan Atzcopotzalco may be a shambling zombie, but there are some very nasty players involved there, including Darke. (I should come up with something to account for what happens in Harlequin’s Back vs. Threats and Beyond the Pale.)

Renraku

Inazo Aneki must’ve done something that would make Dunkelzahn trust him with the only way to get into Tibet. In addition, Renraku has some interesting computer systems and AI technology.

Governmental

UCAS

The UCAS is still a world power. Despite the fact that other nations get lots of press, the UCAS is a major economic force, and the utter confusion of a democratic government— notice how all the countries in the news at most pay lip service to democracy?— doesn’t stop it from continuing with its black budgets and behind-the-scenes operations like it did back when it was the big kid on the block in TwenCen.

Governmental operations are not going to trickle down to the level of the player characters very often, because governments are much less likely to go outside their own black ops teams (which they can recruit from military service) than the megacorps. If you can control your own justice system, it’s much easier to make your assets deniable.

Tir Tairngire

Guideline: all immortal Elves are nuts. Maybe it was the trauma of seeing civilization fall and spending at least a thousand years running around in neolithic cultures. They might have killed off all the other immortals who were more reasonable. Perhaps even Elven minds might not be configured to handle millennia of experience. For whatever reason, every one of them is a few french fries short of a happy meal. Note that while they’re all insane, they are insane in a very functional way...

Eh'he'ran, also known as Ehran the Scribe, who I’m keeping with the white-haired, clean-shaven look despite all the beards in the Tir Tairngire sourcebook. Stick with a tenor voice, cultured accent (precise pronunciation, but keep it American). His Free Spirit servant Ariel, who goes by Ariel Nasir, is described in Harlequin (import that). He is certainly a fifteenth circle Lightbearer, though he may not take his duties seriously any more. He’s probably at least a fifteenth circle Adept in a fighting Discipline (given his duels with Harlequin) and some wizardly ones. Ehran is obsessed with Elven superiority, and is striving for the elves to rule the world; he is one of the major architects behind the Great Ward, which will keep the Horrors out of Tir Tairngire and put Tir Tairngire in the position of Thera when it becomes safe to go out again. The only beings he truly respects are Elves and Great Dragons, though he can put on a good enough show of politeness that no one will be able to tell. (It’s not like they can penetrate his masking...) He is not inhumane; he simply considers Elves the natural rulers of the rest of metahumanity, and can see no reason why a properly (Elven) run society would not prosper to a degree that all other sentients would find their rulership benevolent. (He has lots of rhetoric for this: Elves with their long lives are naturally suited to long-term planning, vegetarians have calmer tempers and smaller requirements than meat-eaters...) He would love to be a persuasive writer, but he lacks the proper creative spark to truly stir metahuman souls, and instead relies on rhetorical tricks that have been polished over millennia, leading to various schlocky books that can easily capture the hearts of those who don’t like to think deeply. His beliefs are strong enough that those interacting with him can easily pick up the spirit. While Ehran can act as a muse, he does not consider that to be an appropriate post for one such as himself.

Sean Laverty is the organizational and financial mastermind behind Tir Tairngire, even as Ehran the Scribe is the demagogue. Laverty is primarily responsible for the failure of archaeologists to publicise any discoveries they made of the previous era of magic. He is a relatively benevolent individual, and one of the richest of the immortal elves, as well as one of the most stable. His control over archaeological discoveries came from the fact that he was a regular backer on expeditions to areas he knew well; the archaeologists who found things that were too sensitive were paid very good money to give up all the extraordinary evidence, and many expeditions into sensitive areas were redirected toward major finds that wouldn't turn up anything special. (Even the limited magicks available to him in the down cycle made it possible to verify a person’s veracity.) Lacking any decent proof, no reputable archaeologists attempted to show off the more unusual artifacts they turned up. Laverty has a very secure warehouse in Paris, packed to the gills with unusual skeletons and broken relics. His own delight is in planning: setting up systems that can function well without his intervention, hiding secrets where no one else can find them, and thwarting an opponent’s moves at every turn by anticipating every one of them are all pleasures for him. He can be lured out by getting close to the innermost defenses of one of his most complex webs, as he relishes the sight of someone being thwarted by the very impressive final stages of his plans. He is not a good loser, though...

Aithne Oakforest is a former Blood Elf; he went mad fairly early as immortal elves go, when his thorns went away and the already-crazed state required to survive the thorns proved useless. He has spent centuries as a drunken warrior, doing his best to forget his own glories; he began pulling himself together sometime around the Renaissance. His furious temper can still get the better of him, as in the case of his wife putting in rosebushes at their home.

Urdli is an aboriginal immortal who has become obsessed with extinguishing magical threats over the long millennia.

Tír na nÓg

Lady Brane Deigh is a new immortal Elf, made so by the rites of the Elven Queen (see Denizens of Earthdawn). Remember the tricks for an Irish accent (make R’s back in the throat, and make the release on T’s very distinct). She is the Queen of the Seelie Court, the new Elven Queen, from the ancient model of a center of Elven culture that ruled by example rather than power.

Liam O’Connor is another interesting figure that we don’t have much data on; the Tir Tairngire sourcebook has many more leads than Tír na nÓg. I have him getting fed up with the whole thing and walking the Path of Lords into complete obscurity. He is a spike baby, over three hundred years old, and is not interested in immortality.

Alachia is still around— apparently since the Second Age, the Age of Dragons, according to Anjo Verde on the ShadowRN list, who has read the translations of Scars and Little Treasures. She is the mentor for Brane Deigh, and the secret Prince of the Tir Tairngire council, Sosan Naerain.

Organized Crime

The Mafia

The Yakuza

Ryumyo

Ryumyo considers human governments an impediment, and has chosen the Yakuza as his tool for exercising his theories of economic management. He is battling with Lung for economic control of the Pacific Rim.

The Triads

Lung

Lung is battling Ryumyo for economic control of the Pacific Rim to further his own goals of...

The Seoulpa Rings

The Organizatsiya

The Russian mob, described as the Vory v Zakone in the Underworld sourcebook, should be played up in anticipation of the Yamatetsu move to Vladivostok, and the chance for the largely non-Asian PC’s to have a chance to interact with non-Asian criminals

Independent

Independent figures out there making a difference.

Dunkelzahn

Dunkelzahn is a large blue-and-silver Great Western Dragon who is one of the few immortals to have avoided a completely selfish outlook on life over the millennia. Dunkelzahn’s personal agenda in the big game of Great Dragons is one of the more public ones. Dunkelzahn is almost maternal in outlook, believing in nurturing the capabilities of metahumanity so they will be worthy of being equals to the Great Dragons when they achieve that level of power.

Harlequin

Caimbueul Har’lea’quinn is at the very least a fifteenth circle Adept in the Swordmaster and Wizard Discplines (check Blood Wood), and definitely a fifteenth circle Lightbearer. He is the last remaining Knight of the Crimson Spire, redubbed the Crying Spire by the few who remained when Sereatha perished, and he is eternally in mourning for his lost world. Because Sereatha is, to him, an eternally lost golden age, he cannot become attached to long-term efforts to create societies like Tir Tairngire and Tír na nÓg. He spends much less effort in the Machiavellian manipulations most immortal elves use to while away the centuries, because he considers the games pointless; when his original nature as a questing hero gets the better of him, he actually tries to make a difference for the better in the world. (He spends a lot of the rest of the time in drunken reveries.) He believes in keeping knowledge of previous ages secret because people are discovering things for themselves now, hauling themselves up by their bootstraps rather than being fed tidbits by ancient beings.

His aliases include Harlequin, Quinn Harley, ...

He may be forced into revealing a few secrets if it becomes evident that the world may need more Lightbearers.

He may have been Richard the Lion-Hearted, in which case he may have been Ehran’s lover at some point in the past.

Jane Foster is his apprentice, another new immortal elf (like Brane Deigh).

Aina

Aina is another of the independent immortal elves.

Brightlight

The otaku-friendly techno-elf claiming to be Leonardo da Vinci was not actually da Vinci. (Ehran the Scribe was telling the truth about his conversations with da Vinci as a human.)

Ambrose

Ambrose, who makes an appearance in Virtual Realities 2.0, is evidently Merlin Ambrosius, the advisor to King Arthur Pendragon.

Hestaby

Hestaby has a batch of Initiated shamans at the Shasta Lodge, as well as a cadre of otaku. She is a philosopher among her kind, seeking the secrets of the universe through internal journeys. She is particularly interested in the phenomenon of otaku, as they may represent a step toward a harmonious union of magic and technology, since they have wetware brains that can deal much more closely with digital information than usual. Her group of otaku are generally technoshamans.

Shasta Lodge

A group of shamans working for Hestaby in the former Shasta Ski Resort.

Name: Shasta Lodge
Type: Dedicated (working for Hestaby)
Members:
Limitations: Shamans only.
Strictures: Limited Membership. Oath. Material Link. Belief. Exclusive Ritual. Fraternity. Obediance (to Hestaby).
Resources/Dues: Luxury. No dues. Patron: Hestaby. Customs: Some of them travel around Northern California as healers (using homeopathic techniques as well as magic).

KSAF

“The future must be preserved.” This idea is so cool I’m reluctant to actually look for an explanation behind it. Instead, it’s just a great excuse to put the runners in harm’s way because KSAF got a tip from their mysterious benefactor.

Fabulist

A non-Great Eastern dragon known for collecting stories and occasionally telling them. Not incredibly wealthy, but according to scuttlebutt has a knack for talking to the right people.

Masaru

Like many young Greats, Masaru is an idealist with simple, immature notions: he seeks freedom for his native land of the Philippines.

Arleesh

As another young Great— born in the middle Fourth World— this Great feathered serpent has only seen the Horrors once, and that was in her youth. She is dedicated to protecting the world and its biosphere from the depredations of beings from other metaplanes. The Bugs are a mild annoyance; she knows that humans will be able to handle them. It is the greater threats that concern her, the ones that present a danger to the planet as a whole. It might be interesting if we can find some way of introducing her to Bottled Demon, given that I expect the runners to completely blow the plotline of the module there.