alt.War: Turning Anger into productiveness
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It's professional. A published piece must stand on it'S own. So yes, Bobby is far mroe professional than anyone at CGL right now, and possibly most people in gaming and many other authors (Karen Traviss, this might mean you).
Creative Fanboy Rage: Channeling your anger by writing the book the author should have written.
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Ancient History
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That's like what I said, only better in every way. Thank you.FrankTrollman wrote: (extremely coherent explanation)
Any attempt at creating a spell that interacts directly with the electronic data rather than sensory inputs will automatically fail, because there is no distinct "data" aura for a spell to interact with.
It still doesn't prevent hardware-level hacking though; you'd just be confined to going in with the equivalent of a 5volt battery and a multimeter.
It also totally allows tech to trigger off magic: shine a laser at a tree and put a sensor opposite. Voilà, an invisibility-triggered switch. That's trite, but you could make non-trite things as well.
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Yeah, I saw his original piece. The original was written clearly without acknowledging that materialization spirits had 3 dimensional movement standard. People had to argue with him that in fact, Earth Elementals could fly, because he believed that they could not. It was... puzzling.sabs wrote:Aaron's Free Spirit rules got changed on him from when he turned them in, to when they got printed. The cost for the race changed.
Magic and tech certainly interact weirdly, but there are substantial uses for that limited interaction. Let's say, for example, that you have an area spell that violently expels everything from its volume. Cast it at a low force and it can clean machinery - since the more processed machine is less natural than the contamination, you can simply pick a force in between and leave your machine alone and pure. What you've essentially done is created a processed item cleaning/purification spell, but you've done it by having the spell affect everything but the machinery you're interested in.fectin wrote:It also totally allows tech to trigger off magic: shine a laser at a tree and put a sensor opposite. Voilà, an invisibility-triggered switch. That's trite, but you could make non-trite things as well.
One of the things I've always liked abut Shadowrun magic is that the effects of it are physically real in the world and respond to scientific analysis in a weird, but nevertheless real way. It means that people can do creative stuff involving magical effects and physical objects and you can predict what will happen in a real way.
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Nobody is a born professional but many never grow to be one. As for irrational rage, I think I'm kind of a case study that it's not Irish-specific.Well, to be perfectly fair there have been times where I've defended crap that I wrote, even when I knew it to be crap and wrong. When I get my Irish up I'm an irrational bastard and should no be allowed near the internet.
Creative Fanboy Rage: Channeling your anger by writing the book the author should have written.
I have a question, because I skipped all of SR3.
Who wrote it? FASA? or FANPRO? Or someone else?
I've been rereading my sr1/2 stuff and I have to say. It's still pretty awesome. FASA knew how to build a fun game. Sure there's some rules that make you scratch your head, and some design decisions that are weird. And the Matrix rules are painful looking back on them from 20 years in the future. But reading both my Earthdawn and Shadowrun stuff. FASA made a fun, quality game. Kinda sad to see how far from it's roots it's come.
Who wrote it? FASA? or FANPRO? Or someone else?
I've been rereading my sr1/2 stuff and I have to say. It's still pretty awesome. FASA knew how to build a fun game. Sure there's some rules that make you scratch your head, and some design decisions that are weird. And the Matrix rules are painful looking back on them from 20 years in the future. But reading both my Earthdawn and Shadowrun stuff. FASA made a fun, quality game. Kinda sad to see how far from it's roots it's come.
The Matrix rules actually are starting to look awesome again because this segregated web of webs is where we're going to go IRL.
FanPro and FASA were both involved in SR3's long run. But yes, it's sad to see how far the line has degenerated (except the Berlin book, which probably really needs translation).
Or maybe they should just give the license to Pegasus. Seems like they know how to make quality games too.
FanPro and FASA were both involved in SR3's long run. But yes, it's sad to see how far the line has degenerated (except the Berlin book, which probably really needs translation).
Or maybe they should just give the license to Pegasus. Seems like they know how to make quality games too.
Creative Fanboy Rage: Channeling your anger by writing the book the author should have written.
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Religion: A Source of Tension
“Their hats are slightly different than ours. Kill them!”
Posted by: RageX
In any area with deep divides between different people, you can expect religious differences to play a role. Sectarian violence is so common that you almost don't even need the noun. When was the last time someone told you about sectarian cookies or sectarian hair cuts? And so it should come as no surprise to learn that amongst the things being fought over in Southeast Asia today are religious differences. If you want to understand the battle lines, you have to understand the religious conflicts.
Buddhism
“Those who will not achieve enlightenment in this life should be hastened to the next.”
Now, there are many different religions practiced in the world in general and Southeast Asia specifically, but the big fish in the pond here is Buddhism as long as we stick to the peninsula (there are a lot of monotheists in the island countries, but they aren't much involved in the war). If you're from the West, you may think of Buddhists as some sort of neo-hippie movement where everyone tries to get along or something – take a few swigs of the harshest booze you can find until you forget that misconception, chummer. Buddhists in Southeast Asia will stab you right in the face. There are multiple different sects of Buddhism, and they fight each other. If you're familiar with how the Catholics treat other Christian sects in Ragusa or Luanda, then just imagine that where the religious leaders wear orange robes.
So Buddhism differs from the monotheist faiths in that there really isn't a creator god at all. The big cheese is literally this guy who lived in the sixth century BCE. And he's not a metaphor or a legend, he's a historically real prince who went out and killed people with a mace at the age of 14 and has a birthday, and became a monk at the age of 35. He was brought up in Hinduism and can be seen as a Hindu reformer. In fact, Hindus incorporate him into their religion too – but more on that later. The emphasis is on personal enlightenment. There is a big divide between conservative Buddhism, which holds that only select people can become enlightened in their lifetimes and other people can only hope for a better start in their next life, and liberal Buddhism, which holds that anyone can become enlightened and escape the cycle of rebirth at any time. There's really a lot of stuff involving various behavioral codes of conduct and other slag that are common between the different factions, but what's really important are the differences.
Theravada Buddhism
The Theravada school is the first and last word in Siam and Myanmar, where nearly nine in ten people practice it. And it's a majority religion in Laos, and a plurality religion in the Republic of Cambodia. The most important fact about Theravada Buddhism is that they believe that the Buddha was a human mage who successfully used his own magical abilities and righteous philosophy to stop himself from reincarnating. That has huge impacts on how Theravadans view things. For one thing, it makes magocratic ideas extremely palatable. For another, since literally the most enlightened being in the whole history of the whole universe is an awakened human, it becomes relatively easy for Theravada Buddhists to assert the mastery of metahumans over magical beings.
Mahayana Buddhism
Mahayana Buddhism is what almost everyone follows in Vietnam, and the one in five people in Malaysia who are Buddhists are probably Mahayana Buddhists. If you go to former Chinese countries like Yunnan or Hainan, Mahayana Buddhism is the most prevalent religion there too. Its primary point of difference with Theravada Buddhism is what they say happens when you achieve enlightenment. Rather than simply getting out of the wheel of reincarnation, you become a Buddha, which in turn is a kind of god. So on the one hand there are totally Buddhas (plural) out there for you to talk to, and on the other hand the original Buddha was a supernatural creature – not a human. This in turn means that if you go to Vietnam, mages are not afforded the deference that they are in Siam or Cambodia. It also means that if you go to Manchuria, that some spirits are considered to be Buddhas, and afforded appropriate reverence.
Pure Land Buddhism
Originally a sect of Mahayana Buddhism, the Pure Land sects believe that actual enlightenment and escape from the cycle of rebirth happens in a metaplane that is called The Pure Land. People who are “worthy” get born in their next life in this metaplane, where they will be instructed in final enlightenment by a Buddha and become immortal spirits. Functionally, Pure Land sects are very similar to a salvationist religion like Christianity or Islam. You go through your life, and if you're “worthy” you'll be reborn in a perfect world and never die after you are dead. Since enlightenment during this life is impossible, Pure Land sects no longer maintain monks or temples. They proselytize heavily, and form small cults. Each cult has their own interpretation of the Pure Land Sutras and what metaplane the “Pure Land” actually is, and what makes someone “worthy” of achieving it. A sizable amount of Pure Land cults turn into terrorist cells when they decide for one reason or another that blowing something or someone up will make them worthier than they are now.
“I worship the spirits that live in my river. I have no idea whether the spirits in your river are worthy of worship. Maybe you should ask them.”
Animism is not a religion. It is actually a whole lot of different religions that share a core belief that the spirits of various domains and/or objects are religiously important. The Ancient Wisdom Channel loves to talk about how Animism is the fastest growing religion and has been since the Awakening, this is only sort of true. The reality is that there are really a lot of religions (plural), that have Animist beliefs. And yes, since the existence of spirits is pretty much common knowledge, many of those religions are growing. Shinto and Voodoo, for example, are Animist Faiths, and in the last fifty years or so they have become huge internationally. But there are still a lot of religions that center around Animism that don't export themselves very well and are very limited in geographical extent. The Montagnard Confederation essentially has an Animist state religion, where people worship the Plig. But the Plig don't really leave the forested highlands of Southeast Asia, so you won't find a lot of people making shrines to the Plig if you go to Africa or even Myanmar. Animists often get lumped together in no small part because historically they have a much easier time getting along than other religions do – the existence of spirits over there that are worthy of worship doesn't really preclude the existence of spirits over here that are worthy of the same. Yes, Animists still go to war with each other, but the basic propositions of their religions does not cause the kind of discord that “There is One God and his name is Steve” does among the Bobbists.
Syncretism with Animism is virtually universal in the modern era, even amongst people who nominally describe themselves as monotheist or atheist. Spirits exist, OK? They are right over there. If you deny them, they will give you a wedgie and throw you in a dumpster. So while entirely Animist religions have been on the rise for the last sixty years, every other religion has had to make peace with Animist beliefs and practices in one way or another.
The Plig
The Plig of the Montagnard Confederation appear as tremendous beasts of the jungle, but while they are not immediately recognized as spirits the way most such creatures are, they are spirits. They speak directly to their followers and command them to conquer more territory and plant more forest. The Plig themselves seem to care little for the welfare or lack thereof of the humans who inhabit their lands, but if those humans live like beasts and take care of the forest, the Plig reward them. The Montagnards are actually several tribes who have rather different interpretations of how the spirit world interacts with the mundane world – but since the orders are given by a giant boar or tiger rather than members of any of the tribes, the distinctions are really pretty academic. There are no sutras or bibles, the entire religion is simply whatever the Plig tell their followers and whatever those followers tell other followers.
The Phi
In Laos, the spirits of the forest are called the Phi, and they are further divided into good Phi and bad Phi (the bad Phi are Phi Phetu). Since half the Phi are supposed to be liars, the Laotians don't trust anything that a spirit says. Trust is placed in Shamans (or Buddhist Monks) to identify whether the Phi are telling the truth or not. The final say is thus with human authority rather than the spirits of the forest. Laotians have correctly noted that spirits like to drink chicken blood and liquor, and regularly give offerings of both of Phi of all types. Even those Phi who have been identified as Phi Phetu are given offerings, mostly in the hopes that they will be appeased and leave. Interestingly, everything I just said applies in Shan State as well – they even call the spirits Phi.
Karen
The Kareni state religion is called “Karen” and it is an Animist faith as well. The Karen believe that everything has a spirit, and that those spirits are made out of fractional spirits that are tied together into a bigger spirit. A human, for example, has 33 spirits which Voltron together into a whole human aura. The Karen regard tying spirits together and making bigger spirits to be a normal thing and they have some seriously big composite spirits stitched up defending the enclave. Quite a number of people would like to know how they managed that.
After the battle of Chicago, the Universal Brotherhood was no longer able to pretend that they were anything other than a possession cult that implanted insect spirits into their faithful followers. In the ensuing purges, they were mostly destroyed. But there are still Brotherhood cults active, and what they do is formally within the definition of Animism. There are spirits, those spirits are religiously important. The remaining Brotherhood cults are quite open about their affiliations – how could they not be? Those who follow them are called “maggots” and are few in number. But they do deliver exactly what they promise these days: follow them faithfully and they will implant an insect spirit into your body. Ew.
“There is one God. It is my God. If you deny Him, I will destroy you.”
As long as we're talking about Continental Southeast Asia, none of the monotheist religions are particularly large (with the exception of Islam in Malaysia and Pattani). And more importantly they are not considered to be particularly different by the people in the area. There's a book, there's only one god, there's some important prophet or something... you've already run through the entire knowledge of people who who grew up in a society where Christianity and Islam were both extreme minority faiths.
Both Christianity and Islam formally believe that absolutely everyone who doesn't accept their particular holy book is doomed to an eternity of torture after their death and that everyone who accepts their particular prophet is going to be rewarded forever in eternal paradise after death. This extreme position pushes their followers to proselytize heavily and perform extreme acts. The Free Burma Rangers regularly perform “rice conversions” (withholding food until someone agrees to convert to their religion), and the NIJ actively campaigns for Malaysia to set fire to all non-believers in Kuala Lumpur.
Christianity
Christianity is an extreme minority religion pretty much everywhere in Southeast Asia, and has relatively little cultural impact. What they do have is incredibly massive funding compared to their numbers. Christianity was originally brought to Southeast Asia by European colonists in the last three hundred years, and to this day Christian groups get funding and weaponry from missionary organizations around the world – mostly from the Confederate American States, Hungaria, and Luanda. Remember: the Christian groups consider themselves to be completely surrounded by godless pagans, and they respond accordingly. They have little actual power outside Myanmar.
Islam
If you're thinking about some battle between Sunni and Shia or a never ending river of invasion against Europe, you can forget it. Islam in Southeast Asia isn't the Caliphate and the New Islamic Jihad is actually a pretty minor political force even in Malaysia. Everyone is formally Sunni, but most of the schools in Southeast Asia are so moderate that they are declared apostate by Sufi groups. Nevertheless, more militant Islam is a social problem, especially around Pattani. The Malaccan pirates regard all pagans as valid targets and wage pretty much continuous war on everyone who doesn't follow their book. Those people on captured ships have their pants pulled down, those who are not circumcised are corrected with whatever blade is handy. However, one should be careful to overgeneralize – because Malaysia has 18 million Muslims in it and isn't like that at all – they even let us host this fine message board there. In Malaysia, concessions to Islamic Banking and such are there, but almost entirely window dressing on a modernist and secular society.
Hinduism
“I like your gods. We'll take em.”
Hinduism is the oldest formal metahuman religion, dating back thousands of years. Buddha lived two thousand six hundred years ago, and he started as a Hindu. There are ancient Hindu cities that are under water because several thousand years ago the ocean levels were lower than they are now. And over that entire period, Hinduism has been adding gods and rituals and stuff. These days they claim to have ten million gods, and that's probably true. The core idea is that people reincarnate and come back as different levels within society and have different life paths and stuff, but that gods and magic beings also incarnate, and so you can have two copies of the same god with slightly different traits. Hinduism has the basic running idea that if any two people have different religious ideas that both are true, and that really all religions are just parts of Hinduism and also social constructs are actually castes within Hinduism. They don't convert, they absorb. Hinduism recognizes Buddha as a god (even though Theravada Buddhists don't). In Southeast Asia, Hinduism is mostly practiced in Nag Kampuchea and by immigrants from the subcontinent of India.
Naga
The Naga have a Hindu system that is extremely conservative. There is a very strong caste system which puts almost all Naga castes above almost all castes open to humans. The Naga regard themselves as the mystical snakes described in ancient Hindu Vedas and Sutras. The claim is that Vasuki, former Nagaraja of Nag Kampuchea is literally the compatriot of Vishnu, and that the Naga are semi-divine and from the underground and underwater world of Patala. Your position in life is determined by your birth, with castes for individual careers in addition to social statuses.
“Their hats are slightly different than ours. Kill them!”
Posted by: RageX
In any area with deep divides between different people, you can expect religious differences to play a role. Sectarian violence is so common that you almost don't even need the noun. When was the last time someone told you about sectarian cookies or sectarian hair cuts? And so it should come as no surprise to learn that amongst the things being fought over in Southeast Asia today are religious differences. If you want to understand the battle lines, you have to understand the religious conflicts.
Buddhism
“Those who will not achieve enlightenment in this life should be hastened to the next.”
Now, there are many different religions practiced in the world in general and Southeast Asia specifically, but the big fish in the pond here is Buddhism as long as we stick to the peninsula (there are a lot of monotheists in the island countries, but they aren't much involved in the war). If you're from the West, you may think of Buddhists as some sort of neo-hippie movement where everyone tries to get along or something – take a few swigs of the harshest booze you can find until you forget that misconception, chummer. Buddhists in Southeast Asia will stab you right in the face. There are multiple different sects of Buddhism, and they fight each other. If you're familiar with how the Catholics treat other Christian sects in Ragusa or Luanda, then just imagine that where the religious leaders wear orange robes.
So Buddhism differs from the monotheist faiths in that there really isn't a creator god at all. The big cheese is literally this guy who lived in the sixth century BCE. And he's not a metaphor or a legend, he's a historically real prince who went out and killed people with a mace at the age of 14 and has a birthday, and became a monk at the age of 35. He was brought up in Hinduism and can be seen as a Hindu reformer. In fact, Hindus incorporate him into their religion too – but more on that later. The emphasis is on personal enlightenment. There is a big divide between conservative Buddhism, which holds that only select people can become enlightened in their lifetimes and other people can only hope for a better start in their next life, and liberal Buddhism, which holds that anyone can become enlightened and escape the cycle of rebirth at any time. There's really a lot of stuff involving various behavioral codes of conduct and other slag that are common between the different factions, but what's really important are the differences.
Theravada Buddhism
The Theravada school is the first and last word in Siam and Myanmar, where nearly nine in ten people practice it. And it's a majority religion in Laos, and a plurality religion in the Republic of Cambodia. The most important fact about Theravada Buddhism is that they believe that the Buddha was a human mage who successfully used his own magical abilities and righteous philosophy to stop himself from reincarnating. That has huge impacts on how Theravadans view things. For one thing, it makes magocratic ideas extremely palatable. For another, since literally the most enlightened being in the whole history of the whole universe is an awakened human, it becomes relatively easy for Theravada Buddhists to assert the mastery of metahumans over magical beings.
Mahayana Buddhism
Mahayana Buddhism is what almost everyone follows in Vietnam, and the one in five people in Malaysia who are Buddhists are probably Mahayana Buddhists. If you go to former Chinese countries like Yunnan or Hainan, Mahayana Buddhism is the most prevalent religion there too. Its primary point of difference with Theravada Buddhism is what they say happens when you achieve enlightenment. Rather than simply getting out of the wheel of reincarnation, you become a Buddha, which in turn is a kind of god. So on the one hand there are totally Buddhas (plural) out there for you to talk to, and on the other hand the original Buddha was a supernatural creature – not a human. This in turn means that if you go to Vietnam, mages are not afforded the deference that they are in Siam or Cambodia. It also means that if you go to Manchuria, that some spirits are considered to be Buddhas, and afforded appropriate reverence.
Pure Land Buddhism
Originally a sect of Mahayana Buddhism, the Pure Land sects believe that actual enlightenment and escape from the cycle of rebirth happens in a metaplane that is called The Pure Land. People who are “worthy” get born in their next life in this metaplane, where they will be instructed in final enlightenment by a Buddha and become immortal spirits. Functionally, Pure Land sects are very similar to a salvationist religion like Christianity or Islam. You go through your life, and if you're “worthy” you'll be reborn in a perfect world and never die after you are dead. Since enlightenment during this life is impossible, Pure Land sects no longer maintain monks or temples. They proselytize heavily, and form small cults. Each cult has their own interpretation of the Pure Land Sutras and what metaplane the “Pure Land” actually is, and what makes someone “worthy” of achieving it. A sizable amount of Pure Land cults turn into terrorist cells when they decide for one reason or another that blowing something or someone up will make them worthier than they are now.
- It's also important to note that almost anything can be blamed on Pure Land cultists, because there is no central organization and no official interpretation of any of their doctrines.
- HugMonster
“I worship the spirits that live in my river. I have no idea whether the spirits in your river are worthy of worship. Maybe you should ask them.”
Animism is not a religion. It is actually a whole lot of different religions that share a core belief that the spirits of various domains and/or objects are religiously important. The Ancient Wisdom Channel loves to talk about how Animism is the fastest growing religion and has been since the Awakening, this is only sort of true. The reality is that there are really a lot of religions (plural), that have Animist beliefs. And yes, since the existence of spirits is pretty much common knowledge, many of those religions are growing. Shinto and Voodoo, for example, are Animist Faiths, and in the last fifty years or so they have become huge internationally. But there are still a lot of religions that center around Animism that don't export themselves very well and are very limited in geographical extent. The Montagnard Confederation essentially has an Animist state religion, where people worship the Plig. But the Plig don't really leave the forested highlands of Southeast Asia, so you won't find a lot of people making shrines to the Plig if you go to Africa or even Myanmar. Animists often get lumped together in no small part because historically they have a much easier time getting along than other religions do – the existence of spirits over there that are worthy of worship doesn't really preclude the existence of spirits over here that are worthy of the same. Yes, Animists still go to war with each other, but the basic propositions of their religions does not cause the kind of discord that “There is One God and his name is Steve” does among the Bobbists.
Syncretism with Animism is virtually universal in the modern era, even amongst people who nominally describe themselves as monotheist or atheist. Spirits exist, OK? They are right over there. If you deny them, they will give you a wedgie and throw you in a dumpster. So while entirely Animist religions have been on the rise for the last sixty years, every other religion has had to make peace with Animist beliefs and practices in one way or another.
The Plig
The Plig of the Montagnard Confederation appear as tremendous beasts of the jungle, but while they are not immediately recognized as spirits the way most such creatures are, they are spirits. They speak directly to their followers and command them to conquer more territory and plant more forest. The Plig themselves seem to care little for the welfare or lack thereof of the humans who inhabit their lands, but if those humans live like beasts and take care of the forest, the Plig reward them. The Montagnards are actually several tribes who have rather different interpretations of how the spirit world interacts with the mundane world – but since the orders are given by a giant boar or tiger rather than members of any of the tribes, the distinctions are really pretty academic. There are no sutras or bibles, the entire religion is simply whatever the Plig tell their followers and whatever those followers tell other followers.
The Phi
In Laos, the spirits of the forest are called the Phi, and they are further divided into good Phi and bad Phi (the bad Phi are Phi Phetu). Since half the Phi are supposed to be liars, the Laotians don't trust anything that a spirit says. Trust is placed in Shamans (or Buddhist Monks) to identify whether the Phi are telling the truth or not. The final say is thus with human authority rather than the spirits of the forest. Laotians have correctly noted that spirits like to drink chicken blood and liquor, and regularly give offerings of both of Phi of all types. Even those Phi who have been identified as Phi Phetu are given offerings, mostly in the hopes that they will be appeased and leave. Interestingly, everything I just said applies in Shan State as well – they even call the spirits Phi.
Karen
The Kareni state religion is called “Karen” and it is an Animist faith as well. The Karen believe that everything has a spirit, and that those spirits are made out of fractional spirits that are tied together into a bigger spirit. A human, for example, has 33 spirits which Voltron together into a whole human aura. The Karen regard tying spirits together and making bigger spirits to be a normal thing and they have some seriously big composite spirits stitched up defending the enclave. Quite a number of people would like to know how they managed that.
- It's pretty much the same as Invoking.
- Chun the Unavoidable
After the battle of Chicago, the Universal Brotherhood was no longer able to pretend that they were anything other than a possession cult that implanted insect spirits into their faithful followers. In the ensuing purges, they were mostly destroyed. But there are still Brotherhood cults active, and what they do is formally within the definition of Animism. There are spirits, those spirits are religiously important. The remaining Brotherhood cults are quite open about their affiliations – how could they not be? Those who follow them are called “maggots” and are few in number. But they do deliver exactly what they promise these days: follow them faithfully and they will implant an insect spirit into your body. Ew.
- Transforming human beings into true form insect spirits is an unconscionable waste. The Universal Brotherhood are disgusting.
- Kerrigan
“There is one God. It is my God. If you deny Him, I will destroy you.”
As long as we're talking about Continental Southeast Asia, none of the monotheist religions are particularly large (with the exception of Islam in Malaysia and Pattani). And more importantly they are not considered to be particularly different by the people in the area. There's a book, there's only one god, there's some important prophet or something... you've already run through the entire knowledge of people who who grew up in a society where Christianity and Islam were both extreme minority faiths.
Both Christianity and Islam formally believe that absolutely everyone who doesn't accept their particular holy book is doomed to an eternity of torture after their death and that everyone who accepts their particular prophet is going to be rewarded forever in eternal paradise after death. This extreme position pushes their followers to proselytize heavily and perform extreme acts. The Free Burma Rangers regularly perform “rice conversions” (withholding food until someone agrees to convert to their religion), and the NIJ actively campaigns for Malaysia to set fire to all non-believers in Kuala Lumpur.
Christianity
Christianity is an extreme minority religion pretty much everywhere in Southeast Asia, and has relatively little cultural impact. What they do have is incredibly massive funding compared to their numbers. Christianity was originally brought to Southeast Asia by European colonists in the last three hundred years, and to this day Christian groups get funding and weaponry from missionary organizations around the world – mostly from the Confederate American States, Hungaria, and Luanda. Remember: the Christian groups consider themselves to be completely surrounded by godless pagans, and they respond accordingly. They have little actual power outside Myanmar.
Islam
If you're thinking about some battle between Sunni and Shia or a never ending river of invasion against Europe, you can forget it. Islam in Southeast Asia isn't the Caliphate and the New Islamic Jihad is actually a pretty minor political force even in Malaysia. Everyone is formally Sunni, but most of the schools in Southeast Asia are so moderate that they are declared apostate by Sufi groups. Nevertheless, more militant Islam is a social problem, especially around Pattani. The Malaccan pirates regard all pagans as valid targets and wage pretty much continuous war on everyone who doesn't follow their book. Those people on captured ships have their pants pulled down, those who are not circumcised are corrected with whatever blade is handy. However, one should be careful to overgeneralize – because Malaysia has 18 million Muslims in it and isn't like that at all – they even let us host this fine message board there. In Malaysia, concessions to Islamic Banking and such are there, but almost entirely window dressing on a modernist and secular society.
Hinduism
“I like your gods. We'll take em.”
Hinduism is the oldest formal metahuman religion, dating back thousands of years. Buddha lived two thousand six hundred years ago, and he started as a Hindu. There are ancient Hindu cities that are under water because several thousand years ago the ocean levels were lower than they are now. And over that entire period, Hinduism has been adding gods and rituals and stuff. These days they claim to have ten million gods, and that's probably true. The core idea is that people reincarnate and come back as different levels within society and have different life paths and stuff, but that gods and magic beings also incarnate, and so you can have two copies of the same god with slightly different traits. Hinduism has the basic running idea that if any two people have different religious ideas that both are true, and that really all religions are just parts of Hinduism and also social constructs are actually castes within Hinduism. They don't convert, they absorb. Hinduism recognizes Buddha as a god (even though Theravada Buddhists don't). In Southeast Asia, Hinduism is mostly practiced in Nag Kampuchea and by immigrants from the subcontinent of India.
Naga
The Naga have a Hindu system that is extremely conservative. There is a very strong caste system which puts almost all Naga castes above almost all castes open to humans. The Naga regard themselves as the mystical snakes described in ancient Hindu Vedas and Sutras. The claim is that Vasuki, former Nagaraja of Nag Kampuchea is literally the compatriot of Vishnu, and that the Naga are semi-divine and from the underground and underwater world of Patala. Your position in life is determined by your birth, with castes for individual careers in addition to social statuses.
- Interestingly, in a lot of the original Vedas, the Nagas are the villains.
- Heartfinder
Last edited by Username17 on Fri Jan 07, 2011 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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PoliteNewb
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That is some nice work (the religion fluff), and has given me some ideas to adapt to a D&D setting. So thanks.
Mainly wanted to note that there appears to be some stuff missing from the Karen Animism section...it just sorta trails off.
Mainly wanted to note that there appears to be some stuff missing from the Karen Animism section...it just sorta trails off.
I am judging the philosophies and decisions you have presented in this thread. The ones I have seen look bad, and also appear to be the fruit of a poisonous tree that has produced only madness and will continue to produce only madness.
--AngelFromAnotherPin
believe in one hand and shit in the other and see which ones fills up quicker. it will be the one you are full of, shit.
--Shadzar
--AngelFromAnotherPin
believe in one hand and shit in the other and see which ones fills up quicker. it will be the one you are full of, shit.
--Shadzar
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Username17
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- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
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Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
So here's the first draft of Myanmar:
Trollish Myanmar: Nasty, Brutish, and Tall
“Law is what you make it.”
Posted by: Heartfinder
Myanmar Timeline
You've probably seen the news trids about the ever growing humanitarian crisis in Myamar. Or Burma, or whatever your local news affiliate chooses to call the region. Oh, it's very dramatic, with metahuman heads stuck to poles lining the entrance to the Warlord's palace, and it makes some amazing footage. But if you aren't from the region, or maybe Aztlan, you've probably gotten the wrong impression. Those heads on sticks aren't an atrocity, they are culturally appropriate. Many Burmese people believe that the Atman is in the neck or head, and that proper funerary practice is to cut the head from the body in order to release it. Around here, the Christian and Muslim practice of burying the dead whole is considered barbaric and disgusting, while chopping heads off and sticking them in trees or on bamboo poles is considerate. So really the foreign news media has the situation all kinds of wrong – the atrocity isn't the fact that all those heads were stuck on poles filling up the entirety of the courtyard of the Lion Throne – the atrocity is that there are all those dead people in the first place. The grim images they show the outside world of skulls with a kanenayar perched upon them are actually normal everyday things, and the horrible statistics of the number of people who have died or disappeared that they speed through at the end is the actual tragedy.
Now that that's out of the way, if your impression from the news feeds was that Trollish Myanmar is a hellish nightmare world where people are murdered on a daily basis and life has progressed beyond meaning or morality – then yeah, that's kind of true. I just think it's important to get across straight off that the cultural expectations of what is horrible aren't the same here as they are elsewhere. If you see some old man decapitate a corpse and walk off with the head, he's probably being nice.
Myanmar has been in a state of civil unrest since the 2065 national elections coincided with Crash 2.0, and massive fraud came to light. Corruption and dissatisfaction had been growing and feeding each other for years, and when the electronics came apart during the election, so did everything else. The three top parties (the Buddhist Development Union, the National Prosperity Party and the Communist Party of Burma) all contested that they should be in the runoffs for the presidency, and demanded open accounting of the election results. MandalayIcon, the corporation that had made the electronic voting machines in the first place (and coincidentally was owned by NPP presidential hopeful Suthi Pam Maung) declined to turn over what fragmented records they had. And then segments of the army loyal to the NPP threw a coup that failed to take over the country, and it's been all downhill from there.
There was a brief period of relative stability under the trollish warlord Thakin Belu, who put together the “Golden Gauntlet Alliance” that took over most of the country. That only lasted for two years though, because Belu bit off more than he could chew in Shan and Siam (it turns out that when a country has only 80,000 soldiers, but over 70 million people, they can draft more soldiers. I mean who knew?), and that alliance fell apart. And when an alliance falls apart, it usually involves someone's head on a stick – in this case Thakin Belu's. And once that happened, every collection of warlords who could figure out how to get the hell out of Myanmar did so – which is why Karen and Chin are their own countries. Warlords in Kachin are even now trying to cut ties (as soon as they can stop fighting amongst each other as to whether to make a Buddhist or Christian theocracy), United Bengal has been making moves towards annexing Rakhine and it is entirely likely that no two provinces of historical Myanmar will be in federation with one another within a few years.
But that doesn't mean that the warlords of Myanmar aren't dangerous to other countries. Far from it. The violence in Myanmar is spilling out all over the place. Drugs, BTL chips, and refugees swarm across the borders into Assam, Yunnan, United Bengal, and Siam. The only thing that keeps the economy of Myanmar from completely zeroing out is a constant influx of money from crime. Myanmar is formally in its eighth year of crisis, but to be brutally honest having contested elections spark protests, civil war, and a complete collapse of civil society just isn't the new here.
The way things work right now, the rules are made by whoever is strong enough to enforce them, and they extend as far as those people can reach. That means if you're a Belu (that's Burmese for “Ork or Troll”), your voice means more because you have longer and stronger arms. It's that simple. And it's why we call it “Trollish Myanmar”. Or even just “Belustan”.
Tamanous
“How much for the little girl?”
You've heard of them a thousand times. People whisper their names into the dark and they know fear. They're the men in gray chemsuits, the body snatchers, the organ leggers. The one, the only, Tamanous. And yes, I do some business with them, and their credit is excellent. But while they have a truly excellent fear campaign going, almost everything you have heard about them is a lie. Some of them are spread by Tamanous workers themselves, others are just the overactive imaginations of people who don't understand the business they are in. So no, they aren't stealing metahuman fat to sell to cosmetic companies or harvesting hobo organs to implant into rich Cantonese Sararimen. That stuff makes great campfire story material, but it's not actually profitable. And Tamanous are not just in the business of being scary, they are also in the business of making Nuyen.
Which is not to say that they don't run a thriving trade in metahuman corpses – because they totally do that. It's just that most of the stuff you hear about is just not practical. What would you do with the liver of a random street person? It's not gene-matched to anyone in particular, so there really aren't any interested buyers to implant it into. The days of having people choke down immunosuppressors for the rest of their lives were over in the forties. Type O organs grow in vats and are better than implanting vagabond specials. The last people to have their kidneys stolen for transplant work were some Bihari guys in 2052, and that's just because Jharkhand is and always has been a shit hole. A shit hole where it apparently takes them several years to figure out that vat-tissue has a lower rejection rate than something you pried out of some random Yadav.
But let's go through some more of the crazier myths for a bit. Does Tamanous have fetus farms to make babies to feed to ghouls or sacrifice to power magical rituals? No. Ghouls eat old dead human flesh and have no use for young babies. And there are plenty of unwanted orphans in Bucharest even today, so if you wanted to sacrifice a bunch of babies to dark gods or whatever, it would be cheaper to just steal them after they were already made. Even if there is some sort of profitable angle in there somewhere, Tamanous isn't doing it. Some female research prisoners are forcibly impregnated to test the effects of drugs and medical procedures on pregnant women and fetuses, but those fetuses are ultimately dissected to look at possible teratogenic effects. Does Tamanous keep meticulous records of the tissue profile of large numbers of people so that they can rip out their organs at a later date if a client happens to have a tissue match? No. There is no tissue match good enough to match the rejection threshold of a clonal organ – not even an Owen Type clonal organ. Sometimes specific people are kidnapped to fit required demographic profiles for a study, but that's almost always poor people who have rare diseases. Again, no one wants your squishy bits. Does Tamanous kidnap people and invest them with insect spirits? No, the more progressive hives of Australia and Chicago have turned to domestic livestock for true forms and can get volunteers to aspire to being good merges. And of course, the more bestial and aggressive hives don't have any money.
Commerce exists because there is a demand for a product and a supply for that product. And the trade in metahuman bodies is no different. To see what Tamanous is up to, all you really have to do is follow the money. There are after all, relatively few interested parties looking to buy metahumans and so you can trace things back to the supply. The biggest buyer by volume are ghouls. They need to eat metahuman meat and they genuinely don't care where it comes from. It's not a real big cash maker, because at the end of the line ghouls are usually paying about 10¥ per kilo, retail. So butchering up a human is about 420¥ (average human is 70 kilos, and they dress down to about sixty percent of live weight). But that's shared across the whole supply chain, from the razorguy who was paid 70-140¥ to bring in the corpse to the warehouse guys and the smugglers all the way to the butcher who has the actual secret menu he shows his homophagic clientèle. But while that part of the business turns a profit, it does not make a particularly large one. Tamanous mostly continues those operations because it makes them friends with some incredibly scary people and because it scares people. A lot. And Tamanous mostly defends itself with uncertainty and fear. Some guns too, of course. But mostly just by scaring people.
Secondly, some cadavers have useful bits in them that a good ripper doc can repurpose for another patient. Everyone thinks “kidneys” but that really hasn't been true for a long time. Yes, the corneas of the eye are immunologically privileged and people who for whatever reason don't want cybereyes could graft on some cadaver eyes and do OK – but that is gross, and clonal cornea tissue is cheap. No one cares. The real money is in Type O bioware, because after flushing it out with Type O blood for a few weeks you can get something that is ready for transplantation. You better believe that corpses are scanned carefully for that stuff, because that is a 5000¥ payday. Don't get excited if you find some cultured bioware, because that can't be transplanted and you might as well just sell it to ghouls as mixed organs.
Here's how that works: Let's say you're some company like De Beers-Universal Omnitech, and you have a new drug that has passed animal trials and looks amazing. What do you do next? Well, next up, you need to do human trials, so you get some volunteers and pay them money and do it all nice and above board and you carefully monitor all of your results and submit them to the Corporate Court and demonstrate that your product is safe and effective. And you tell everyone in the whole world that this is what you are doing. But the Corporate Court's mandatory trial periods are really short, and the required sample sizes aren't very big. And in any case, if you're DBUO, you actually had several tests going and only submitted the one that looked most promising. But you still want to know what the actual side effects and effectiveness ratings are, and that requires more research. It requires bigger, longer studies with people who take weird amounts and are subjected to intrusive tests on a regular basis. So what you do, is you hire an agency that will keep people in prisons and give them medications against their will. And that agency is Tamanous.
And here's the other part: Let's say that you're Novatech, and you have a competing medication to DBUO's offering. You want to know how effective and safe DBUO's drug really is, so that you can manage an effective marketing campaign. And if it turns out that there are actually some problems with it – see if you can't put some pressure to get it recalled or discounted. So your choices are basically to send shadowrunners into De Beers-Universal Omnitech labs and try to find out what they know, or hire an agency to do the testing themselves. And yeah, that agency is still Tamanous. In fact, Tamanous may just reuse their study findings for DBUO and sell them to Novatech. It's not like Novatech personnel are going to be touring their facility.
And lastly, Tamanous just plain operates a couple of shadowclinics. They have some of the most skilled and least ethical medical professionals on the planet and substantial cloning facilities. People will pay for that. And yeah, they may tell you that the organ they are implanting into you was stolen from a Korean highschool student, but unless you're getting a piece of generic bioware, that is almost certainly not true. It's just a story they tell the patient to make them think they have done something terrible and are dealing with terrible people that they dare not double cross.
So that's what Tamanous does, now let's talk about how Tamanous is structured. The basic format is similar to the Pueblo Corporate Council: decisions are made by “chiefs”, with specialist consultants called “cacique” whether they have any magical ability or not. Members of any operation get “shares” of the specific activities and “shares” of the organization as a whole. These shares pay dividends, which are your wages. If you stop working for them, your shares are canceled. If you do good work or stay with the organization for a while, your shares can “mature” into “voting shares” (which allow you to have your voice heard in steering policy), or “permanent shares” that are kind of like a pension – as they keep paying dividends whether you are currently doing any work for them or not. Shares are given out either “lodge” or “non-lodge” and those pretty much correspond to whether the position is a “need to know” position or not. People working in peripheral capacities such as snatching, butchery, or sanitation get the “non-lodge” shares, which are primarily distinct in that while they can mature into permanent shares, they never mature into voting shares.
It is important to remember that when you factor in the difference in profits from the medical research angle and the body butchering enterprise, that the entire body snatching arm of the organization actually loses money. The people buying up corpses and selling the meat and salvageable parts literally make more money from their shares in the organization than they take in. That entire arm of the organization seems to exist to scare the fuck out of people. And it works. Tamanous has become a story that Yakuza killers tell each other in the dark. It is the ultimate bogey man, and the arm that provides that visceral terror even in law enforcement agencies and criminal armies is something that very nearly pays for itself. Plus, the medical research end produces a lot of bodies, and the network really can dispose of corpses more cheaply than other syndicates can – many of them even pay Tamanous to get rid of bodies for them. As an added bonus, Tamanous can call on footsoldiers and assassins who are the kinds of people that actually hunt and eat metahumans from their regular clientèle, which means that those gangs that have tried to put the squeeze on Tamanous really have met with grisly and unfortunate ends.
Today, Tamanous operates with impunity, albeit also in secrecy, in most of the world. They operate openly in Pathein, where they run a research hospital and prison. The fiction is maintained that they steal R&D data from medical companies and use it to run their own research. But the reality is that they are paid primarily by the companies whose works are being tested. Most of the inmates in the prison are random (presumably) innocent people that Tamanous goons have rounded up off the street or shanghaied out of a bar, but for a shockingly modest fee, they will imprison people sent to them by individuals or even municipalities. Other medical prison complexes are harder to find, but there is one in the Congo, another in Romania, and a fourth one somewhere in the Los Angeles basin.
Know Your Warlords
“Who's the most incredible, extraordinary fellow?”
Myanmar is not really a country so much as a region. And while 150 years ago, it was the richest area in South Asia, today it is poorer than any region that hasn't had nuclear bombs dropped on it (Khalistan, we're looking at you). But that doesn't mean it will always be like that. Indeed, just 50 years ago the place really seemed to be getting its act together and unifying and having elections and growing the economy and stuff. So there's a lot at stake, and while many of the warlords want to tear everything down to ashes so that they can be undisputed rulers of their particular pile of soot – others want to recreate Myanmar as a country and a nation. If you are interested in which way the winds are blowing, you probably want to keep tabs on the most important warlords.
Thakin Saw Bo
Thakin Saw Bo is a massive troll who sits on the Lion Throne in Naypyidaw and holds the Golden Gauntlet. He's kind of the head of state of Trollish Myanmar, and is listed as such in those publications as bother reporting that Myanmar has one. He has so far been unsuccessful in his attempts to get the warlords to unite again under the Golden Gauntlet or the Lion Throne. But he has sent his ork and troll thugs to butcher hundreds, maybe thousands.
The Communist Party of Burma
The CPB is the oldest political party in Myanmar. They predate any of the military dictatorships, they even predate the Japanese occupation. They've been fighting a red flag insurgency for 134 years. Sometimes they have been one of the stronger factions, sometimes they've been one of the weaker factions. Their ideology has wandered from Stalinism to Maoism to Juche to various homegrown communist pastiches. But they've always been around. And they've always been fighting against those they regard (today) as imperialists or fascists. Today they are promoting a vision of bringing “Maoist Freedom / Aztec Wealth” to the country. That seems to mean that they intend to conduct a Maoist insurgency across Myanmar and then establish a state/corporation unity like in Aztlan.
Honestly, these guys seem to have the best chance of uniting the country, their leadership is a seven person council of mixed racial and ethnic makeup, and their current grab bag of communist slogans and economic theories from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries is quite popular. More than that, they have a real possibility of reuniting the states that used to be part of Myanmar when it was a federated whole – which in turn is drawing warlords from Shan to attack communist strongholds inside Myanmar. Currently the head of the committee is Thakin Lwin, but the “party” is resiliant enough that her death wouldn't really do anything.
The blue helmets in Myanmar have a pretty open mandate. Originally sent in to protect the children, the scope of the operation grew substantially once boots were on the ground. They can, and do, take whatever actions they deem necessary to “restore normality to the state of Myanmar and promote the public welfare.” And if that means taking hostages, attacking rival warlords, selling opium, or putting people to work in camps operated by MCT, then so be it. The UN mission to Myanmar lost its funding (but not its mandate) years ago and has been “self financing” for 3 years. This is largely done by selling the resources or labor that they capture from warlords to smugglers or corporations. Amazingly, they remain fairly popular doing this sort of thing – because UNICEF soldiers allow people they put to work to keep half of their earned wages.
U Law
U Law is a Chinese Myanmaran adept of considerable personal strength. He claims to be playing some elaborate game of Assassin, where he receives a specific target in a vision and then gains strength when he kills that person. He has created a gang from the remains of the 28 Cranes Triad that ruthlessly murder people and refuse to negotiate with anyone. They have grown strong in a short period of time, but U Law's complete inflexibility makes him a lot of enemies.
Suthi Pam Myat
Younger brother of deceased politician, corporate magnate, and opium warlord Suthi Pam Maung, Myat is now the overseer of MandalayIcon and its criminal empires. MandalayIcon doesn't even really bother to make telecommunication equipment, having not actually retooled after Crash 2.0. But they do make red orchid and BTL Chips, and have more foreign currency than most of the other warlord groups. The once-glittering corporate offices they had have been left to mildew in the humid monsoons for years, and most of their money goes to purchasing Japanese weaponry. Myat still dresses the part of a corporate mogul though, which is a weird juxtaposition when he is standing with his black clad guerrillas in the ruins of his brother's financial empire.
Yangon
“Why would you sell that? No seriously, who would even buy that?”
Yangon is a blight upon the Earth. Long enjoying the status as “the only city in Myanmar that foreigners could name” (even though many of them call it “Rangoon”), Yangon has been the go-to place for foreigners for centuries. Of course, it has also long been true that people wouldn't go to Myanmar at all if they weren't looking for drugs, weapons, slaves, sex, or something else that was unobtainable or frowned upon in their nations of origin. So Yangon has become something of a bazaar of the profane, and it is a blight upon the Earth.
Yangon is where most foreign currency comes into the country – and that includes Nuyen, because Myanmar's corporate presence isn't enough to justify a Corporate Court mint. So it's far too valuable to every faction to allow it to fall into “enemy hands”. As such, Yangon hasn't been under the control of anyone since the contested 2065 election. And yeah, that means that no one has worked on the roads or the power grid since 2065. Yangon stinks, and there are barricades everywhere, and some of them are on fire. Any particular neighborhood is likely “run” by a minor gang or militant religious group. But don't expect any of them to invest in infrastructure, because they don't.
Nevertheless, people go here because of the bazaars and auction houses. No one is going to go to Alezu to buy sketchy Myanmaran wares, because no one has heard of Alezu, they have only heard of Yangon. So when someone in Alezu has something they wish to sell to foreigners and cannot manage to smuggle it to Assam, they take it to Yangon and try to find a buyer. This reality perpetuates itself, as now when you want to purchase one of Myanmar's products, you couldn't get it in Azelu even if you knew where that was, because the people wanting to sell to you are in Yangon. Further, because people who come to Yangon for commerce are incredibly sketchy people who are there to buy and sell incredibly dubious services and products, the marketplace fills up with questionable materials, and people come from all over the world to buy and sell in stuff you can't find anywhere else.
Major auction houses and gangs will have their own generators and water purifiers. So while pretty much everything looks like an endless shanty on the outside, some buildings are actually pretty posh on the inside. Some of the auction houses specialize in specific kinds of contraband (such as slaves, or stolen artwork), but others have lots that are more eclectic. Several auction houses have explicit deals with pirate or triad bands. The time between when something is stolen by Malaccan pirates and the point a barker starts calling bids for it in Yangon is usually only a couple of days. Residents of Yangon will often say “You could buy a nuclear bomb here” and that is technically true, although the number of nuclear devices that have actually gone on sale here is pretty small.
A very important part of the economy in Yangon is the hospitality industry. In Yangon that is brothels, opium dens, and casinos. The Star of the Sea Casino is actually a ship from the Canton Confederation that is permanently docked and used as, well, a casino. Enough stuff goes on there that's illegal in Hong Kong that it is not expected to ever return to its port of origin. The brothels try to maintain the party atmosphere they had in the early sixties, but while they can (and do) still offer young children for the sex tourists, years of neglect of the city's infrastructure has been hard on them. Most of the neon signs are dull and gray, with the place having a rather depressing atmosphere even if underaged rentboys is your thing. Years of declining profits have left the Yakuza in Yangon in a hard place – they've now lost enough face that they have been uninvited back to the empire.
A major exception to the race to the bottom is Yangon Airport itself. It has always had its own water and power, and is run entirely by MCT, which keeps it in good working order. The brothels in the airport don't have anyone under 14. But they are clean, well lit, and air conditioned. That means that a lot of sex tourists never bother to leave the grounds of the airport.
Trollish Myanmar: Nasty, Brutish, and Tall
“Law is what you make it.”
Posted by: Heartfinder
Myanmar Timeline
1942: Japanese forces take Burma from the United Kingdom with the aid of the Burmese independence movement. Imperial Japan reneges on their pledge to make Burma an independent country and begins an occupation of their own.
1945: Burma reconquered by the United Kingdom with the aid of the Burmese independence movement.
1947: First free and open elections held, delivering a resounding victory for the independence leader Aung San, who is then assassinated by paramilitaries armed by the British army. Burma declares full independence six months later, but the government lacks unity or leadership.
1949: With the Burmese government torn apart with internal strife, sections of the Nationalist Chinese Army invade Northern Burma and set themselves up as warlords. They vow to use their position to reconquer China from Mao, but end up forming criminal gangs instead.
1959: The feudal lords of Shan are bought off with lifetime pensions in exchange for their historical powers.
1962: An army coup brutally takes control of the country and institutes an isolationist one-party state. The army's economic reforms are nominally socialist, but based on strange superstitions, and the results are an unprecedented disaster, even when compared to other dictatorships.
1974: Mass strikes begin in protest over severe economic mismanagement and shortages of rice. These would become a yearly affair and were handled brutally by the military government. The army issues a new constitution, cementing its role in the one-party state.
1978: The Burmese military begins a campaign against the separatist Muslim people of Arakan. A quarter million refugees flee to Bangladesh.
1987: All bank notes that were not considered to be in “lucky” denominations are demonetized and banned. Superstitious insanity had gone too far, and Burma's economy completely collapses amid a currency and confidence crisis.
1988: Mass protests paralyze the country. The army declares the protesters to be communist dissidents and kills thousands in brutal crackdowns.
1989: Military government creates new constitution, allows multiparty elections. Name of nation changed to Myanmar.
1990: Daughter of Aung San wins landslide victory in elections, military junta refuses to allow transition of power.
1995: Government forces capture rebel strongholds in Karen and Shan.
2007: Fuel crisis grips the country, Buddhist monks lead anti-government protests, which are put down bloodily.
2008: Devastated by the arrival of Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar's military junta rams through a new constitution.
2010: The military government holds elections, but refuses to allow major opponents to contest them. The resulting victory for the military government's puppet party are roundly condemned internationally.
2013: Myanmar and Thailand begin military skirmishes on both sides of the border. Shan separatists fight alongside Thai troops.
2020: Myanmar is invaded by Thailand, hoping to annex Shan. Myanmar is victorious, but the slow response of the federal government promotes anger at the military junta.
2021: Mass protests bring down the military government at a cost of thousands of lives. Fair and open elections held.
2022: Kayah, Chin, and Shan achieve independence after referendums.
2024: Former junta warlords withdraw to Shan, where they continue to grow opium and conduct border raids into Myanmar.
2029: In the chaos after the Crash, Thailand and Myanmar begin a proxy war across Shan's opium fields. Neither country achieves victory.
2030: Myanmar drafts new constitution, with elections held every five years, capital moved to Yangon to move it farther from Shan raids.
2033: Thailand invades and defeats Myanmar, annexes the Tanintharyi region.
2035: New elections usher in a military regime, pledges to reconquer lost territories of Myanmar.
2039: Kayah reannxed by military invasion.
2040: Invasion of Shan unsuccessful, but no actual peace declared, even to this day. Two countries are still technically at war.
2041: Chin reannexed by military invasion.
2065: General election results lost amid second Crash. MandalayIcon corporation throws a coup, multisided civil war begins.
2067: Thakin Belu unites many regional warlords under “The Golden Gauntlet”, region now referenced as “Trollish Myanmar”.
2068: Three years of civil war have created a humanitarian crisis, United Nations mission approved, still ongoing.
2069: Trollish Myanmar invades Siam. After a horribly bloody stalemate, Golden Gauntlet Alliance collapses, resulting in a de facto victory for Siam and Shan.
2070: Karen secedes from Myanmar.
2071: Chin secedes from Myanmar.
1945: Burma reconquered by the United Kingdom with the aid of the Burmese independence movement.
1947: First free and open elections held, delivering a resounding victory for the independence leader Aung San, who is then assassinated by paramilitaries armed by the British army. Burma declares full independence six months later, but the government lacks unity or leadership.
1949: With the Burmese government torn apart with internal strife, sections of the Nationalist Chinese Army invade Northern Burma and set themselves up as warlords. They vow to use their position to reconquer China from Mao, but end up forming criminal gangs instead.
1959: The feudal lords of Shan are bought off with lifetime pensions in exchange for their historical powers.
1962: An army coup brutally takes control of the country and institutes an isolationist one-party state. The army's economic reforms are nominally socialist, but based on strange superstitions, and the results are an unprecedented disaster, even when compared to other dictatorships.
1974: Mass strikes begin in protest over severe economic mismanagement and shortages of rice. These would become a yearly affair and were handled brutally by the military government. The army issues a new constitution, cementing its role in the one-party state.
1978: The Burmese military begins a campaign against the separatist Muslim people of Arakan. A quarter million refugees flee to Bangladesh.
1987: All bank notes that were not considered to be in “lucky” denominations are demonetized and banned. Superstitious insanity had gone too far, and Burma's economy completely collapses amid a currency and confidence crisis.
1988: Mass protests paralyze the country. The army declares the protesters to be communist dissidents and kills thousands in brutal crackdowns.
1989: Military government creates new constitution, allows multiparty elections. Name of nation changed to Myanmar.
1990: Daughter of Aung San wins landslide victory in elections, military junta refuses to allow transition of power.
1995: Government forces capture rebel strongholds in Karen and Shan.
2007: Fuel crisis grips the country, Buddhist monks lead anti-government protests, which are put down bloodily.
2008: Devastated by the arrival of Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar's military junta rams through a new constitution.
2010: The military government holds elections, but refuses to allow major opponents to contest them. The resulting victory for the military government's puppet party are roundly condemned internationally.
2013: Myanmar and Thailand begin military skirmishes on both sides of the border. Shan separatists fight alongside Thai troops.
2020: Myanmar is invaded by Thailand, hoping to annex Shan. Myanmar is victorious, but the slow response of the federal government promotes anger at the military junta.
2021: Mass protests bring down the military government at a cost of thousands of lives. Fair and open elections held.
2022: Kayah, Chin, and Shan achieve independence after referendums.
2024: Former junta warlords withdraw to Shan, where they continue to grow opium and conduct border raids into Myanmar.
2029: In the chaos after the Crash, Thailand and Myanmar begin a proxy war across Shan's opium fields. Neither country achieves victory.
2030: Myanmar drafts new constitution, with elections held every five years, capital moved to Yangon to move it farther from Shan raids.
2033: Thailand invades and defeats Myanmar, annexes the Tanintharyi region.
2035: New elections usher in a military regime, pledges to reconquer lost territories of Myanmar.
2039: Kayah reannxed by military invasion.
2040: Invasion of Shan unsuccessful, but no actual peace declared, even to this day. Two countries are still technically at war.
2041: Chin reannexed by military invasion.
2065: General election results lost amid second Crash. MandalayIcon corporation throws a coup, multisided civil war begins.
2067: Thakin Belu unites many regional warlords under “The Golden Gauntlet”, region now referenced as “Trollish Myanmar”.
2068: Three years of civil war have created a humanitarian crisis, United Nations mission approved, still ongoing.
2069: Trollish Myanmar invades Siam. After a horribly bloody stalemate, Golden Gauntlet Alliance collapses, resulting in a de facto victory for Siam and Shan.
2070: Karen secedes from Myanmar.
2071: Chin secedes from Myanmar.
Now that that's out of the way, if your impression from the news feeds was that Trollish Myanmar is a hellish nightmare world where people are murdered on a daily basis and life has progressed beyond meaning or morality – then yeah, that's kind of true. I just think it's important to get across straight off that the cultural expectations of what is horrible aren't the same here as they are elsewhere. If you see some old man decapitate a corpse and walk off with the head, he's probably being nice.
Myanmar has been in a state of civil unrest since the 2065 national elections coincided with Crash 2.0, and massive fraud came to light. Corruption and dissatisfaction had been growing and feeding each other for years, and when the electronics came apart during the election, so did everything else. The three top parties (the Buddhist Development Union, the National Prosperity Party and the Communist Party of Burma) all contested that they should be in the runoffs for the presidency, and demanded open accounting of the election results. MandalayIcon, the corporation that had made the electronic voting machines in the first place (and coincidentally was owned by NPP presidential hopeful Suthi Pam Maung) declined to turn over what fragmented records they had. And then segments of the army loyal to the NPP threw a coup that failed to take over the country, and it's been all downhill from there.
There was a brief period of relative stability under the trollish warlord Thakin Belu, who put together the “Golden Gauntlet Alliance” that took over most of the country. That only lasted for two years though, because Belu bit off more than he could chew in Shan and Siam (it turns out that when a country has only 80,000 soldiers, but over 70 million people, they can draft more soldiers. I mean who knew?), and that alliance fell apart. And when an alliance falls apart, it usually involves someone's head on a stick – in this case Thakin Belu's. And once that happened, every collection of warlords who could figure out how to get the hell out of Myanmar did so – which is why Karen and Chin are their own countries. Warlords in Kachin are even now trying to cut ties (as soon as they can stop fighting amongst each other as to whether to make a Buddhist or Christian theocracy), United Bengal has been making moves towards annexing Rakhine and it is entirely likely that no two provinces of historical Myanmar will be in federation with one another within a few years.
But that doesn't mean that the warlords of Myanmar aren't dangerous to other countries. Far from it. The violence in Myanmar is spilling out all over the place. Drugs, BTL chips, and refugees swarm across the borders into Assam, Yunnan, United Bengal, and Siam. The only thing that keeps the economy of Myanmar from completely zeroing out is a constant influx of money from crime. Myanmar is formally in its eighth year of crisis, but to be brutally honest having contested elections spark protests, civil war, and a complete collapse of civil society just isn't the new here.
The way things work right now, the rules are made by whoever is strong enough to enforce them, and they extend as far as those people can reach. That means if you're a Belu (that's Burmese for “Ork or Troll”), your voice means more because you have longer and stronger arms. It's that simple. And it's why we call it “Trollish Myanmar”. Or even just “Belustan”.
Tamanous
“How much for the little girl?”
You've heard of them a thousand times. People whisper their names into the dark and they know fear. They're the men in gray chemsuits, the body snatchers, the organ leggers. The one, the only, Tamanous. And yes, I do some business with them, and their credit is excellent. But while they have a truly excellent fear campaign going, almost everything you have heard about them is a lie. Some of them are spread by Tamanous workers themselves, others are just the overactive imaginations of people who don't understand the business they are in. So no, they aren't stealing metahuman fat to sell to cosmetic companies or harvesting hobo organs to implant into rich Cantonese Sararimen. That stuff makes great campfire story material, but it's not actually profitable. And Tamanous are not just in the business of being scary, they are also in the business of making Nuyen.
Which is not to say that they don't run a thriving trade in metahuman corpses – because they totally do that. It's just that most of the stuff you hear about is just not practical. What would you do with the liver of a random street person? It's not gene-matched to anyone in particular, so there really aren't any interested buyers to implant it into. The days of having people choke down immunosuppressors for the rest of their lives were over in the forties. Type O organs grow in vats and are better than implanting vagabond specials. The last people to have their kidneys stolen for transplant work were some Bihari guys in 2052, and that's just because Jharkhand is and always has been a shit hole. A shit hole where it apparently takes them several years to figure out that vat-tissue has a lower rejection rate than something you pried out of some random Yadav.
But let's go through some more of the crazier myths for a bit. Does Tamanous have fetus farms to make babies to feed to ghouls or sacrifice to power magical rituals? No. Ghouls eat old dead human flesh and have no use for young babies. And there are plenty of unwanted orphans in Bucharest even today, so if you wanted to sacrifice a bunch of babies to dark gods or whatever, it would be cheaper to just steal them after they were already made. Even if there is some sort of profitable angle in there somewhere, Tamanous isn't doing it. Some female research prisoners are forcibly impregnated to test the effects of drugs and medical procedures on pregnant women and fetuses, but those fetuses are ultimately dissected to look at possible teratogenic effects. Does Tamanous keep meticulous records of the tissue profile of large numbers of people so that they can rip out their organs at a later date if a client happens to have a tissue match? No. There is no tissue match good enough to match the rejection threshold of a clonal organ – not even an Owen Type clonal organ. Sometimes specific people are kidnapped to fit required demographic profiles for a study, but that's almost always poor people who have rare diseases. Again, no one wants your squishy bits. Does Tamanous kidnap people and invest them with insect spirits? No, the more progressive hives of Australia and Chicago have turned to domestic livestock for true forms and can get volunteers to aspire to being good merges. And of course, the more bestial and aggressive hives don't have any money.
Commerce exists because there is a demand for a product and a supply for that product. And the trade in metahuman bodies is no different. To see what Tamanous is up to, all you really have to do is follow the money. There are after all, relatively few interested parties looking to buy metahumans and so you can trace things back to the supply. The biggest buyer by volume are ghouls. They need to eat metahuman meat and they genuinely don't care where it comes from. It's not a real big cash maker, because at the end of the line ghouls are usually paying about 10¥ per kilo, retail. So butchering up a human is about 420¥ (average human is 70 kilos, and they dress down to about sixty percent of live weight). But that's shared across the whole supply chain, from the razorguy who was paid 70-140¥ to bring in the corpse to the warehouse guys and the smugglers all the way to the butcher who has the actual secret menu he shows his homophagic clientèle. But while that part of the business turns a profit, it does not make a particularly large one. Tamanous mostly continues those operations because it makes them friends with some incredibly scary people and because it scares people. A lot. And Tamanous mostly defends itself with uncertainty and fear. Some guns too, of course. But mostly just by scaring people.
Secondly, some cadavers have useful bits in them that a good ripper doc can repurpose for another patient. Everyone thinks “kidneys” but that really hasn't been true for a long time. Yes, the corneas of the eye are immunologically privileged and people who for whatever reason don't want cybereyes could graft on some cadaver eyes and do OK – but that is gross, and clonal cornea tissue is cheap. No one cares. The real money is in Type O bioware, because after flushing it out with Type O blood for a few weeks you can get something that is ready for transplantation. You better believe that corpses are scanned carefully for that stuff, because that is a 5000¥ payday. Don't get excited if you find some cultured bioware, because that can't be transplanted and you might as well just sell it to ghouls as mixed organs.
- Some of the Children of the Dragon actually get cadaver corneas instead of vat jobs. Why is that?
- Groatster
- Because Children of Dragon are completely nuts. They are refusing all implants created by science, even clonal material what does not harm auras at all.
- Solution
Here's how that works: Let's say you're some company like De Beers-Universal Omnitech, and you have a new drug that has passed animal trials and looks amazing. What do you do next? Well, next up, you need to do human trials, so you get some volunteers and pay them money and do it all nice and above board and you carefully monitor all of your results and submit them to the Corporate Court and demonstrate that your product is safe and effective. And you tell everyone in the whole world that this is what you are doing. But the Corporate Court's mandatory trial periods are really short, and the required sample sizes aren't very big. And in any case, if you're DBUO, you actually had several tests going and only submitted the one that looked most promising. But you still want to know what the actual side effects and effectiveness ratings are, and that requires more research. It requires bigger, longer studies with people who take weird amounts and are subjected to intrusive tests on a regular basis. So what you do, is you hire an agency that will keep people in prisons and give them medications against their will. And that agency is Tamanous.
And here's the other part: Let's say that you're Novatech, and you have a competing medication to DBUO's offering. You want to know how effective and safe DBUO's drug really is, so that you can manage an effective marketing campaign. And if it turns out that there are actually some problems with it – see if you can't put some pressure to get it recalled or discounted. So your choices are basically to send shadowrunners into De Beers-Universal Omnitech labs and try to find out what they know, or hire an agency to do the testing themselves. And yeah, that agency is still Tamanous. In fact, Tamanous may just reuse their study findings for DBUO and sell them to Novatech. It's not like Novatech personnel are going to be touring their facility.
And lastly, Tamanous just plain operates a couple of shadowclinics. They have some of the most skilled and least ethical medical professionals on the planet and substantial cloning facilities. People will pay for that. And yeah, they may tell you that the organ they are implanting into you was stolen from a Korean highschool student, but unless you're getting a piece of generic bioware, that is almost certainly not true. It's just a story they tell the patient to make them think they have done something terrible and are dealing with terrible people that they dare not double cross.
So that's what Tamanous does, now let's talk about how Tamanous is structured. The basic format is similar to the Pueblo Corporate Council: decisions are made by “chiefs”, with specialist consultants called “cacique” whether they have any magical ability or not. Members of any operation get “shares” of the specific activities and “shares” of the organization as a whole. These shares pay dividends, which are your wages. If you stop working for them, your shares are canceled. If you do good work or stay with the organization for a while, your shares can “mature” into “voting shares” (which allow you to have your voice heard in steering policy), or “permanent shares” that are kind of like a pension – as they keep paying dividends whether you are currently doing any work for them or not. Shares are given out either “lodge” or “non-lodge” and those pretty much correspond to whether the position is a “need to know” position or not. People working in peripheral capacities such as snatching, butchery, or sanitation get the “non-lodge” shares, which are primarily distinct in that while they can mature into permanent shares, they never mature into voting shares.
- ”Pretty Similar” my entire ass! That's exactly how a PCC semi-autonomous enterprise is structured!
- Green Ring
It is important to remember that when you factor in the difference in profits from the medical research angle and the body butchering enterprise, that the entire body snatching arm of the organization actually loses money. The people buying up corpses and selling the meat and salvageable parts literally make more money from their shares in the organization than they take in. That entire arm of the organization seems to exist to scare the fuck out of people. And it works. Tamanous has become a story that Yakuza killers tell each other in the dark. It is the ultimate bogey man, and the arm that provides that visceral terror even in law enforcement agencies and criminal armies is something that very nearly pays for itself. Plus, the medical research end produces a lot of bodies, and the network really can dispose of corpses more cheaply than other syndicates can – many of them even pay Tamanous to get rid of bodies for them. As an added bonus, Tamanous can call on footsoldiers and assassins who are the kinds of people that actually hunt and eat metahumans from their regular clientèle, which means that those gangs that have tried to put the squeeze on Tamanous really have met with grisly and unfortunate ends.
Today, Tamanous operates with impunity, albeit also in secrecy, in most of the world. They operate openly in Pathein, where they run a research hospital and prison. The fiction is maintained that they steal R&D data from medical companies and use it to run their own research. But the reality is that they are paid primarily by the companies whose works are being tested. Most of the inmates in the prison are random (presumably) innocent people that Tamanous goons have rounded up off the street or shanghaied out of a bar, but for a shockingly modest fee, they will imprison people sent to them by individuals or even municipalities. Other medical prison complexes are harder to find, but there is one in the Congo, another in Romania, and a fourth one somewhere in the Los Angeles basin.
Know Your Warlords
“Who's the most incredible, extraordinary fellow?”
Myanmar is not really a country so much as a region. And while 150 years ago, it was the richest area in South Asia, today it is poorer than any region that hasn't had nuclear bombs dropped on it (Khalistan, we're looking at you). But that doesn't mean it will always be like that. Indeed, just 50 years ago the place really seemed to be getting its act together and unifying and having elections and growing the economy and stuff. So there's a lot at stake, and while many of the warlords want to tear everything down to ashes so that they can be undisputed rulers of their particular pile of soot – others want to recreate Myanmar as a country and a nation. If you are interested in which way the winds are blowing, you probably want to keep tabs on the most important warlords.
Thakin Saw Bo
Thakin Saw Bo is a massive troll who sits on the Lion Throne in Naypyidaw and holds the Golden Gauntlet. He's kind of the head of state of Trollish Myanmar, and is listed as such in those publications as bother reporting that Myanmar has one. He has so far been unsuccessful in his attempts to get the warlords to unite again under the Golden Gauntlet or the Lion Throne. But he has sent his ork and troll thugs to butcher hundreds, maybe thousands.
The Communist Party of Burma
The CPB is the oldest political party in Myanmar. They predate any of the military dictatorships, they even predate the Japanese occupation. They've been fighting a red flag insurgency for 134 years. Sometimes they have been one of the stronger factions, sometimes they've been one of the weaker factions. Their ideology has wandered from Stalinism to Maoism to Juche to various homegrown communist pastiches. But they've always been around. And they've always been fighting against those they regard (today) as imperialists or fascists. Today they are promoting a vision of bringing “Maoist Freedom / Aztec Wealth” to the country. That seems to mean that they intend to conduct a Maoist insurgency across Myanmar and then establish a state/corporation unity like in Aztlan.
Honestly, these guys seem to have the best chance of uniting the country, their leadership is a seven person council of mixed racial and ethnic makeup, and their current grab bag of communist slogans and economic theories from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries is quite popular. More than that, they have a real possibility of reuniting the states that used to be part of Myanmar when it was a federated whole – which in turn is drawing warlords from Shan to attack communist strongholds inside Myanmar. Currently the head of the committee is Thakin Lwin, but the “party” is resiliant enough that her death wouldn't really do anything.
- Why is everyone named Thakin in this country?
- Groatster
- Thakin just means “Master” in Burmese. If you become the head of anything, you tend to rename yourself Thakin. It's a tradition that goes back to the revolts against European colonial powers.
- Chun The Unavoidable
The blue helmets in Myanmar have a pretty open mandate. Originally sent in to protect the children, the scope of the operation grew substantially once boots were on the ground. They can, and do, take whatever actions they deem necessary to “restore normality to the state of Myanmar and promote the public welfare.” And if that means taking hostages, attacking rival warlords, selling opium, or putting people to work in camps operated by MCT, then so be it. The UN mission to Myanmar lost its funding (but not its mandate) years ago and has been “self financing” for 3 years. This is largely done by selling the resources or labor that they capture from warlords to smugglers or corporations. Amazingly, they remain fairly popular doing this sort of thing – because UNICEF soldiers allow people they put to work to keep half of their earned wages.
U Law
U Law is a Chinese Myanmaran adept of considerable personal strength. He claims to be playing some elaborate game of Assassin, where he receives a specific target in a vision and then gains strength when he kills that person. He has created a gang from the remains of the 28 Cranes Triad that ruthlessly murder people and refuse to negotiate with anyone. They have grown strong in a short period of time, but U Law's complete inflexibility makes him a lot of enemies.
Suthi Pam Myat
Younger brother of deceased politician, corporate magnate, and opium warlord Suthi Pam Maung, Myat is now the overseer of MandalayIcon and its criminal empires. MandalayIcon doesn't even really bother to make telecommunication equipment, having not actually retooled after Crash 2.0. But they do make red orchid and BTL Chips, and have more foreign currency than most of the other warlord groups. The once-glittering corporate offices they had have been left to mildew in the humid monsoons for years, and most of their money goes to purchasing Japanese weaponry. Myat still dresses the part of a corporate mogul though, which is a weird juxtaposition when he is standing with his black clad guerrillas in the ruins of his brother's financial empire.
Yangon
“Why would you sell that? No seriously, who would even buy that?”
Yangon is a blight upon the Earth. Long enjoying the status as “the only city in Myanmar that foreigners could name” (even though many of them call it “Rangoon”), Yangon has been the go-to place for foreigners for centuries. Of course, it has also long been true that people wouldn't go to Myanmar at all if they weren't looking for drugs, weapons, slaves, sex, or something else that was unobtainable or frowned upon in their nations of origin. So Yangon has become something of a bazaar of the profane, and it is a blight upon the Earth.
Yangon is where most foreign currency comes into the country – and that includes Nuyen, because Myanmar's corporate presence isn't enough to justify a Corporate Court mint. So it's far too valuable to every faction to allow it to fall into “enemy hands”. As such, Yangon hasn't been under the control of anyone since the contested 2065 election. And yeah, that means that no one has worked on the roads or the power grid since 2065. Yangon stinks, and there are barricades everywhere, and some of them are on fire. Any particular neighborhood is likely “run” by a minor gang or militant religious group. But don't expect any of them to invest in infrastructure, because they don't.
Nevertheless, people go here because of the bazaars and auction houses. No one is going to go to Alezu to buy sketchy Myanmaran wares, because no one has heard of Alezu, they have only heard of Yangon. So when someone in Alezu has something they wish to sell to foreigners and cannot manage to smuggle it to Assam, they take it to Yangon and try to find a buyer. This reality perpetuates itself, as now when you want to purchase one of Myanmar's products, you couldn't get it in Azelu even if you knew where that was, because the people wanting to sell to you are in Yangon. Further, because people who come to Yangon for commerce are incredibly sketchy people who are there to buy and sell incredibly dubious services and products, the marketplace fills up with questionable materials, and people come from all over the world to buy and sell in stuff you can't find anywhere else.
Major auction houses and gangs will have their own generators and water purifiers. So while pretty much everything looks like an endless shanty on the outside, some buildings are actually pretty posh on the inside. Some of the auction houses specialize in specific kinds of contraband (such as slaves, or stolen artwork), but others have lots that are more eclectic. Several auction houses have explicit deals with pirate or triad bands. The time between when something is stolen by Malaccan pirates and the point a barker starts calling bids for it in Yangon is usually only a couple of days. Residents of Yangon will often say “You could buy a nuclear bomb here” and that is technically true, although the number of nuclear devices that have actually gone on sale here is pretty small.
A very important part of the economy in Yangon is the hospitality industry. In Yangon that is brothels, opium dens, and casinos. The Star of the Sea Casino is actually a ship from the Canton Confederation that is permanently docked and used as, well, a casino. Enough stuff goes on there that's illegal in Hong Kong that it is not expected to ever return to its port of origin. The brothels try to maintain the party atmosphere they had in the early sixties, but while they can (and do) still offer young children for the sex tourists, years of neglect of the city's infrastructure has been hard on them. Most of the neon signs are dull and gray, with the place having a rather depressing atmosphere even if underaged rentboys is your thing. Years of declining profits have left the Yakuza in Yangon in a hard place – they've now lost enough face that they have been uninvited back to the empire.
A major exception to the race to the bottom is Yangon Airport itself. It has always had its own water and power, and is run entirely by MCT, which keeps it in good working order. The brothels in the airport don't have anyone under 14. But they are clean, well lit, and air conditioned. That means that a lot of sex tourists never bother to leave the grounds of the airport.
Last edited by Username17 on Sun Jan 09, 2011 6:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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CatharzGodfoot
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You'll probably want to complete that thought. Other than that, it looks great.UNICEF
The blue helmets in Myanmar have a pretty open mandate. They can, and do, take whatever actions they deem necessary to “restore normality to the state of Myanmar and promote the public welfare.” And if that means taking hostages, attacking rival warlords, selling opium, or putting people to work in camps operated by MCT. The UN mission to Myanmar lost its funding (but not its mandate) years ago and has been “self financing” for 3 years.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
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Username17
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Thank you. Fixed.CatharzGodfoot wrote:You'll probably want to complete that thought. Other than that, it looks great.UNICEF
The blue helmets in Myanmar have a pretty open mandate. They can, and do, take whatever actions they deem necessary to “restore normality to the state of Myanmar and promote the public welfare.” And if that means taking hostages, attacking rival warlords, selling opium, or putting people to work in camps operated by MCT. The UN mission to Myanmar lost its funding (but not its mandate) years ago and has been “self financing” for 3 years.
-Username17
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Username17
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Here's the timeline of Laos:
Laos: a Humanitarian Crisis
“The lower the stakes, the more vicious the conflict.”
Posted by: Immortal
Laotian History Timeline
Laos: a Humanitarian Crisis
“The lower the stakes, the more vicious the conflict.”
Posted by: Immortal
Laotian History Timeline
1904: France takes Laotian territories from Siam and incorporates them into French Indochina.
1940: Vichy France cedes Laotian territories to Japanese occupation.
1945: Japanese forces withdraw from Laos. Laos declares independence.
1946: France reinvades Laos. Communist Pathet Lao resistance formed.
1954: Laos achieves independence from France.
1958: Laotian government collapses amid intervention by the United States.
1960: Year of three coups. Laos has several short lived military governments as different factions vie for control.
1962: Laos negotiates a neutralist government. Neutrality is roundly ignored and both the United States and Viet Cong forces are fighting in Laotian territory within the year.
1973: The United States loses its war against the Vietnamese, withdraws from Laos.
1975: Vietnamese backed Pathet Lao take over the country, the king is forced to abdicate.
1991: Vietnamese and Soviet military aid to Laos discontinued, centralized management of the economy abandoned.
2011: Laos suffers extremely badly from
2029: Thailand invades Laos. Laos calls to Vietnam for military aid, which is provided. Thailand is driven back.
2034: Jungles dominated by the Plig grow stronger along the Vietnamese border, forcing Vietnamese withdrawal. Thailand invades and annexes part of Southern Laos.
2037: Laos is used as a staging ground for Vietnamese attacks on Montagnards and Drug Lords in Cambodia. Laotian territories in Thailand are not recaptured.
2043: Vietnamese military bases set up in southern regions to fight drug gangs and Montagnards.
2052: Khoung Combine builds a modest arcology in Ban Nape.
2065: The Dai Lao faction that is openly hostile to Vietnamese presence takes control of the government in the wake of the Crash and the economic turmoil that accompanies it. Vietnamese ordered to leave their military bases.
2066: Portions of Southern Laos fall under the complete control of the Plig. Montagnard Confederation recognized as a state.
2067: The Dai Lao government expels Vietnamese merchants from the country. Laotian credit rating lowered to D grade by the Corporate Court. Laotian economic crisis begins.
2069: Laotian elections postponed indefinitely due to instability. Corporate Court cancels all lines of credit. Mass protests begin.
2071: Pathet Lao branded a terrorist organization and barred from standing for election. Dai Lao wins over 90% of the seats in parliament, civil war begins.
1940: Vichy France cedes Laotian territories to Japanese occupation.
1945: Japanese forces withdraw from Laos. Laos declares independence.
1946: France reinvades Laos. Communist Pathet Lao resistance formed.
1954: Laos achieves independence from France.
1958: Laotian government collapses amid intervention by the United States.
1960: Year of three coups. Laos has several short lived military governments as different factions vie for control.
1962: Laos negotiates a neutralist government. Neutrality is roundly ignored and both the United States and Viet Cong forces are fighting in Laotian territory within the year.
1973: The United States loses its war against the Vietnamese, withdraws from Laos.
1975: Vietnamese backed Pathet Lao take over the country, the king is forced to abdicate.
1991: Vietnamese and Soviet military aid to Laos discontinued, centralized management of the economy abandoned.
2011: Laos suffers extremely badly from
2029: Thailand invades Laos. Laos calls to Vietnam for military aid, which is provided. Thailand is driven back.
2034: Jungles dominated by the Plig grow stronger along the Vietnamese border, forcing Vietnamese withdrawal. Thailand invades and annexes part of Southern Laos.
2037: Laos is used as a staging ground for Vietnamese attacks on Montagnards and Drug Lords in Cambodia. Laotian territories in Thailand are not recaptured.
2043: Vietnamese military bases set up in southern regions to fight drug gangs and Montagnards.
2052: Khoung Combine builds a modest arcology in Ban Nape.
2065: The Dai Lao faction that is openly hostile to Vietnamese presence takes control of the government in the wake of the Crash and the economic turmoil that accompanies it. Vietnamese ordered to leave their military bases.
2066: Portions of Southern Laos fall under the complete control of the Plig. Montagnard Confederation recognized as a state.
2067: The Dai Lao government expels Vietnamese merchants from the country. Laotian credit rating lowered to D grade by the Corporate Court. Laotian economic crisis begins.
2069: Laotian elections postponed indefinitely due to instability. Corporate Court cancels all lines of credit. Mass protests begin.
2071: Pathet Lao branded a terrorist organization and barred from standing for election. Dai Lao wins over 90% of the seats in parliament, civil war begins.
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Username17
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Sure. I mean, right now it is in a word document. It's actually written in bbcode though, so it's a little hard to read in places. It's about 15k words right now, so I'd say it's about a quarter finished. But the timelines are mostly done, and that takes the longest to write (what with all the reading and cross referencing), so maybe it's closer to a third finished in real terms.hermit wrote:This is coming along very nicely. Frank, can you put that into a word document and upload it somewhere?
A big question of course is what kind of "rules" section it gets. Obviously, I can write subsystems and even entire systems if need be. Fuck, I could write an entire core book of SR5. I'm pretty sure it would be better than what CGL is capable of.
But for purposes of Alt.War, probably the biggest thing (pun intended) is how things interact with vehicles. Simply put: the game's rules fall apart with big weapons, big armor, and high speed. That's just a fact. So if people want to drive tanks around and shoot weapons at people who are driving tanks around (and I submit that if they reading something called alt.war - that they do), then that portion of the game needs an overhaul.
The obvious method to do that to begin with (in addition to having a chase mechanic that works better), is to go to proportional damage. And in doing that, write a section with new damage codes. Because all SR4 weapons have damage codes for non-proportional damage - meaning that you get into bullshit like 120P - but also many other problems. With a new, more aWoD-like damage system that could actually handle tanks without breaking, a new chart with new damage codes would need to be produced as well.
I could totally do that.
-Username17
That would be great, because we need that. The current system is horrible. I have said that since Arsenal, and it just isn't getting better with mega pools of 120 dice. What shall I do at the table with that? Collect every last dice from my players -should be around 70 - and roll them twice? That'll take way unnecessatily much time, nevermind the bookkeeping with all these hits.
That system is a stillbirth. We need a new one. Maybe call it optinal, whatever, but it needs to be robust and be able to handle the large scales that are necessary for true vehicles of war (maybe two scales, one for large land vehicles, one for really huge things like carriers and cruisers, which could also simulate bunkers and small buildings?). Because right now, there's no solution for what happens if you shoot an entrenched position with your new artillery. But if you're awesome you can sink a patrol ship with a shotgun.
Question is what we do with the rules in general though. Either put them into every download, a separate book, or publish them as we go.
Would be cool if you could do that. And I read your sugestions about SR5. That sounds actually pretty good.
That system is a stillbirth. We need a new one. Maybe call it optinal, whatever, but it needs to be robust and be able to handle the large scales that are necessary for true vehicles of war (maybe two scales, one for large land vehicles, one for really huge things like carriers and cruisers, which could also simulate bunkers and small buildings?). Because right now, there's no solution for what happens if you shoot an entrenched position with your new artillery. But if you're awesome you can sink a patrol ship with a shotgun.
Question is what we do with the rules in general though. Either put them into every download, a separate book, or publish them as we go.
Would be cool if you could do that. And I read your sugestions about SR5. That sounds actually pretty good.
Creative Fanboy Rage: Channeling your anger by writing the book the author should have written.
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Username17
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Yeah, at the high end of armor those are the only possibilities. It's pretty stupid, and it needs to change. An LMSD damage system fixes that, as does converting hardened armor into auto-hits (this also has the advantage of making AP values inherently better against things with hardened armor than they are against other targets).sabs wrote:I'm in a PbP game where another player used an antimaterial sniper round on my drone. 4 body 18 armor, vs 9P -6AP. Either, he bounced off my armor and did no damage, or he destroyed the drone in 1 shot. There was basically no alternative.
I'm down for whatever.Hermit wrote:Question is what we do with the rules in general though. Either put them into every download, a separate book, or publish them as we go.
In a lighter note, here is a first draft of a section from the Cambodia. What is being said about the French Foreign Legion and ESPRIT in other sections? For obvious reasons, those are really important to the Cambodia writeup.
Immigration and You
“I no longer recognize my home. It has become someone else's home.”
Six years ago, Cambodia's population hit rock bottom. Between wars and plagues and grinding poverty, there were waves and waves of people leaving the country. From a high of about 15 million people early in this century, the population had fallen to less than 8 million by 2067. And most of that is Khmer diaspora. People who simply could not handle living in a narco-state with no jobs and no healthcare to speak of. As the country's economy has been hitting double digit growth figures since then, the population has boomed up to a bit under 14 million. And most of that population growth has been immigrants. As you might imagine, this has caused some friction. And where there is friction, there are business opportunities.
The native Khmers, of which there are about seven and a half million, were the undisputed majority of the country until fairly recently. Like, seriously over ninety percent of the people looked Khmer, spoke Khmer, and ate Khmer food. Anyone over the age of ten remembers things being like that or they are from another country themselves (or in the case of the early immigrants, both). Immigration has come with prosperity, but it has also come with the rise of ethnic gangs. The Năm Cam gang tries to overthrow Vietnam from Cambodia, the Myanmaran warlords try to turn the refugee camps into more Myanmar, and the Four Winds Triad tries to annex more of Cambodia into Nag Kampuchea. Criminal ethnic gangs really have been pushing the country into cross-border conflict with all of its neighbors. This isn't just a theoretical problem either, as the overextension of Chen gangs seriously provoked the Vietnamese army to flatten the place in 2037. With the country going to war with Nag Kampuchea and Siam, fears that criminal activity may draw the Vietnamese to conquer the place again are rather high in the talk show rotations.
With all the immigration, it can be hard to keep track of who all these people are. It isn't just Khmer anymore, and that means that for the first time in generations, you can have “weird” behavioral patterns in Phnom Penh and have people accept that as normal. Here are the most major non-Khmer ethnicities in Cambodia:
Cham
The Cham people are a despised, but native minority. Of the roughly half million Cham, almost all are either “Muslims” or Nagavenshi Hindus. While we have to use finger quotes to talk about their Islamicness (Cham Muslims do not even wear colorful Malaysian style scarves and most only pray on Fridays), the fact that the Hindus are unabashed supporters of the Naga has made them incredibly unpopular with the local authorities. They live in the southwest, mostly along the Vietnamese border in Kampong Cham – which is pretty much on the other side of the country from the Nag Kampuchea border. Nevertheless, there is quite a concern that Cham people will take up arms on behalf of the Naga, they did do it before in 2065. Also of concern is the growing communication between the local Cham and the Cham of Pattani – because the Pattani Cham are crazy Muslims. Like, the blowing yourself up to kill infidels kind. Kampong Cham has its own little Islamic insurgency going, as it turns out that Apostasy is an even bigger crime to conservative Muslims than Paganism is. Mostly they've been targeting Islamic Cham who aren't Islamic enough, but that could change. The Cham have their own language, but you don't have to learn it unless you want to run with a Chamic gang, because they all speak Khmer or French or both.
- The Cambodian parliament has seriously considered making a Cham registry, to keep track of all the potential Cham dissidents. It didn't pass this time, but it sounds disturbingly like policies used in Sri Lanka and The United States.
- Immortal
- Just because it didn't pass doesn't mean they aren't doing it. You don't think that Zeta-ImpChem got the contract to make a genealogy database for the country for health reasons, do you?
- Mamasan
Between the numerous invasions and the recent economic investment in Cambodia by the Khouang Combine, there have been a lot of Vietnamese people passing through Cambodia. But for all the Vietnamese who've been through the country, there are still less than a million Vietnamese actually living here. The local Vietnamese joke is “Cambodia: nice enough to invade, but you wouldn't want to live here.” That goes over about as well with the natives as you'd expect. But the Vietnamese expats are nothing like unified. There are basically two camps: the ones who like the nation of Vietnam, and the ones who hate it. The former camp is generally rich and powerful – folks who came in with the Vietnamese army and bought up land when it was cheap and made a killing or who came in with the Combine and make corp money. The latter group has an incredible wealth disparity, as the majority eek out a marginal existence while the leaders of the Năm Cam gang rake in mad money.
Chen
The Chen are what the Cambodians call Chinese people. Most of them are Cantonese or Teochiu, which means that one way or another they have family in Hainan or the Canton Confederation. There are about half a million of these people. Back in the 30s and 40s, a coalition of Chen dominated drug cartels pretty much ran the place, and they ran it into the ground until the armies of Vietnam came and shot them all in the face. Still, a not-inconsiderable number of Chen managed to get out of the game and “go legit” before the hammer and sickle came down. So there are a fair number of Chen growing up with money that they didn't personally have to shoot anyone for, and they go to the best corp schools and speak flawless French and run businesses and stuff. But there are also Chen who gravitate back to the Triads. Yeah, you'll never hear about the Triads that the Vietnamese busted up (on account of them being busted up), but many join the Four Winds or the Red Lotus. And the Four Winds Triad runs guns to the Naga.
Javans and Sunda
I'm a Javan myself, and I can tell you exactly what makes Sunda different from Javans. But nobody in Cambodia can, so Javans and Sunda get lumped together something fierce. The thing is though, that through the magic of ethnic discrimination, it is becoming true. The Urang Sunda are discriminated against in the same way and by the same people as actual Javans, and that has pushed the people together in a way that has not happened in the actual Republic of Java. Urang Sunda in Cambodia are more nationalistic about Java than actual people who live on Java. It's wacky. But despite how misty eyed they get about the Green and White, Javans in Cambodia are also very nationalistic about Cambodia. Originally Cambodia brought in about a million people from the Republic of Java, mostly as construction workers for the major development programs of the late sixties, most of the original wave of immigrants have been fast tracked into citizenship with the Queen's Employed Person Road to Citizenship plan, so they aren't going anywhere. In fact, as people follow family members, our numbers have swelled to roughly twice that.
- The first construction projects were less ambitious than the “New Cambodia” stuff the Technocratic Party is jamming through parliament now, but it was also much less mechanized. There just isn't the need for construction labor today that there was five years ago. A lot of the new Javans get jobs in the expanding manufacturing and service sectors. The rest... well there's always the army and the expanding Javan criminal gangs.
- Kerrigan
There are about a million Europeans living in Cambodia today, which makes it with the country with the highest percentage of Europeans in it in Southeast Asia unless you count the Singapore Incorporated as a country. The French have come back to Indochina in a big way, and while they have the rallying cry “This time will be different”, a lot of people are unconvinced. Still, White people have on average better education, better health, and more technical training than the locals and are hired preferentially for the better jobs. That causes some resentment too. An important thing to remember though is that if something bad happens to poor person, that gets handled by the Khmer Police. If something happens to a rich or important person, that gets handled by the Royal Cambodian Military Police. But if something bad happens to a White person, that gets handled by the ESPRIT Investigative Forces. So a lot of low end criminals keep away from French people. You might even see them clear out of a club just because French people came in.
- If you're White in Cambodia, you are considered French. It doesn't matter if you're from the Scandinavian Union, Poland, or California, you are “French” to everyone who lives here.
- Monkeywrencher
The Javans may be the “good” immigrants, but the Burmese are surely the “bad”. There are nearly a million refugees from Myanmar living in Cambodia, and very few of them have jobs. There are refugee camps all along the coast and the government is basically at a loss for what to do with them. The parallels between them and the Cambodians living in Siam, Malaysia, and Vietnam are too obvious to ignore, but that doesn't mean anyone is happy about it. The camps are filled with crime and divided on ethnic, tribal, and racial grounds. Christian gangs monopolize aid from Europe and Africa despite their small numbers and it drives tensions up even higher.
Last edited by Username17 on Tue Jan 11, 2011 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
We're still trying to figure out what we're saying about the French Foreign Legion, and France, and ESPRIT in general. But we're going back to the 'Good old days' in feel. Napoleonic era Nobility, turn of the century FFL.
The FFL is a bully squad that gets used by the French Nobility to meddle in places it doesn't belong. They're well funded, but filled with "foreigners" including an amazing amount of Canadians who speak with a Parisien or Marseille accent. The training is extensive, brutal, and FFL guys are going to be pound for pound.
ESPRIT officially has nothing to do with the FFL (other than selling them equipment) but unofficially, ESPRIT has good relations with them, and FFL groups often get assigned to do ESPRIT Grunt work.
The FFL is a bully squad that gets used by the French Nobility to meddle in places it doesn't belong. They're well funded, but filled with "foreigners" including an amazing amount of Canadians who speak with a Parisien or Marseille accent. The training is extensive, brutal, and FFL guys are going to be pound for pound.
ESPRIT officially has nothing to do with the FFL (other than selling them equipment) but unofficially, ESPRIT has good relations with them, and FFL groups often get assigned to do ESPRIT Grunt work.
This is an opinion, Frank, and unsupported by anything I'm aware of.FrankTrollman wrote:"Things" that don't exist at all, but are merely relationships between things (such as electronic data) don't exist on the astral at all and you can't do anything about them (spirits other than Flesh Forms can't even see them).
The limits of magic are known and explicit. Everything else is, at worst, just a roll on the Object Resistance Table.
Your interest is better expended in expanding on the explicit limit of "Magic is not Intelligent". For example, while you can affect electronic data held on a server, your spell would have to be pretty fucking specific to be able to navigate the architecture of the computer successfully enough to actually do anything other than a memory wipe. The stress should be on, "how?", and referencing that answer back to the limit of intelligence, rather than relying on an opinion.