Editing Shadowrun (section)

==History==
The game is set in a world that is [[awesome]] to play in and [[fail]] to live in. The history of Shadowrun begins with, of all things, a truckers' strike in New York. The strike lasted for about three months, causing massive hunger not just in NYC itself but across the whole state. New Yorkers being New Yorkers, this resulted in massive rioting. One particularly inspired group of rioters attacked a truck belonging to Seretech Corporation, believing that it was full of food. Predictably, it was actually full of infectious medical waste, and the corporate security assigned to the truck ended up gunning down 200-something civilians to save Staten Island from getting plagued. The United States Supreme Court vindicates the actions of the Seretech employees, choosing to concentrate on the whole "saved thousands of lives" part rather than the "ended hundreds" one. This, combined with an attack on a Shiawase Corporation-owned nuclear power plant, set the stage for corporate extraterritoriality, a principle which essentially turned corporations into their own sovereign states and made corporate land untouchable by national laws. This is why Ares Macrotechnology can tie you up in the basement and forget you exist without invoking the wrath of your government.

A few years go by, and a whole bunch of awful shit happens; Israel nukes Libya, New York gets fucked over by an earthquake, and Japan gets into a war with Korea. This last one is important, because Korea decides that if two nukes worked so well for Japan's health back in the 40's, then fifty nukes should do wonders! However, the missiles never reach their targets. Japan then overruns Korea and creates the Japanese Imperial State. Meanwhile, the US is telling the Native Americans to bite the pillow and drills for oil on their reservations (again). Naturally there's some resistance, so the US deals with it in their usual calm, reasonable way: by shipping all the protesting Natives off to concentration camps. During this time, some terrorists from the Sovereign American Indian Movement take over a US nuclear silo and launch a single Lone Eagle ICBM towards Russia. As with the Korean ICBMs, the Lone Eagle is never heard from again.

Things are then quiet for roughly ten minutes before a disease called VITAS takes the top quarter off of the Earth's population. While everyone's still reeling from losing one out of every four people they ever knew, the craziest shit on record happens. [[what|People start giving birth to Tolkien-style Elves and Dwarves]]. With all the shit going on in the world, nobody wants to hear about your pointy-eared baby, and the backlash is substantial. Finally, on December 24th, 2011, it all goes to hell in a handbasket. Dragons are recorded flying over Japan, ley lines in Britain and Ireland start flickering on, and an activist named Daniel Howling Coyote leads a now apparently bulletproof group of Native Americans right out the front gate of one of the concentration camps and into a sandstorm. In an interview with the media, one of the more talkative dragons reveals that the Mayan calendar doomsday predictions were right- all the shit that was going on was a sign that the Fifth World that humanity had lived in for all this time was ending, and Earth is just about to enter the cycle of existence the Mayans called the Sixth World. 2012 comes. Magic is back- or more precisely, it had never left in the first place. In reality, countless beings that had lived in the Fourth World had been in hiding through much of human history, and the low ebb of magic in the Fifth World had kept the elves and dwarves from manifesting their characteristic features, making them indistinguishable from ordinary humans until the Sixth World came about (no word on where the freaking dragons were hiding, though).

The final phase of the Great Shitstorm is set in motion, and lines are being redrawn all over the map. First, Daniel Howling Coyote reappears and declares that the whole west half of the North American continent is now a coalition of countries called the Native American Nations. The US is all set to slap them down hard, but Daniel and a few of his closest friends perform the soon-to-be-infamous ritual known as the Great Ghost Dance. It's at this point that people start to really accept that magic is now a thing; rather than do nothing like every other ritual dance ever recorded by modern man, the GGD blows the tops off of volcanoes all over the US. Shortly afterwards, ten percent of pubescent humans in the world suddenly turn into Orks and Trolls in a process called Goblinization that involves random hardened calcium growths growing on their body. It's painful, and not exactly treated like your typical case of acne. If you thought pretty little Elf babies made people mad, this shit caused some blown gaskets. Religions all over the world simultaneously get to their feet and screamed either "WE KNEW IT ALL ALONG!" or "WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS FUCK!?" resulting in a lot of split faiths, ranging from believing that Jesus/Mohammed/Siddhartha were Dragons, to Ku Klux Klan-esque hate groups worldwide looking to wipe out everything that didn't exist back in 1950. Subsequent race riots cost a lot of very confused people their lives, although plenty of folks stepped in on the side of the mutants, resulting in large numbers of casualties on all sides and breeding a lot of bitterness. Within time, many old faiths splintered into warring sects or radically restructured themselves, with various forms of paganism becoming the dominant faiths of the world.

Fast forward a bit: the internet is destroyed by a super-virus, and a bunch of cyber-commandos kill it in virtual reality combat. In true computer fashion, their VR tech goes from room-sized to book-sized within ten years. The VR Matrix replaces the Internet. The southern United States split off into the Confederate American States. California threatens to join them, so the US says 'fuck you' and kicks them out. The remaining northern states then bro it up with the remains of Canada, forming the United Canadian and American States. Two Elf nations form in North America and Ireland, a Ghoul nation forms in Africa, and a nation of weird beasties forms in the Amazon. Mexico, which is almost completely run by the Aztechnology megacorp, renames itself to Aztlan and starts dabbling in blood magic (really REALLY fucked up shit). The same dragon that explained what the hell was going on earlier is elected President of the UCAS and is then assassinated at his inaugural ball, with him leaving behind a cryptic will promising huge sums of cash to anyone who develops certain technologies (like VR connections dragons can safely use), financial assistance to mothers who keep their metahuman children, and a bounty on Blood Mages. National governments lose more and more of their power in the face of corporate influence until the Corporate Court replaces the United Nations as the great global political alliance and national governments are little more than figureheads. People are identified in corporate and national databases by their System Identification Numbers (SINs), but an increasingly large number of the poor, referred to as SINless lack one and the basic human rights that come with it yet at the same time are free from the constant surveillance that being a SINner entails. People are increasingly born with an inherent gift for manipulating mana, and magic becomes as much a part of everyday life as electricity.

That's the history of Shadowrun up to the start of First Edition, from the in-game years of 1999 to 2057. Take a second to process all of that crazy shit. You may be wondering where the players fit into all this madness. Well, ever since that truckers' strike in 1999 an underclass of criminals has slowly been gaining influence and importance. Often SINless, they are untraceable ghosts in the machinery of the world, simultaneously free and enslaved. They are deniable assets used by corporations, nations, and even wealthy private citizens to snipe at each other without sparking off feuds or wars. They steal, they hack databases, they weave magical illusions, and often they kill. They are called Shadowrunners, and your character is one of them.

Since then, even more crazy shit has happened. The original Matrix was destroyed in a fight between another super-virus and a mad AI, and replaced with a wireless version accessible from almost anywhere while the devices that can be used to tap into it have shrunk from essentially a Casio keyboard strapped to your back to a smartphone or smaller; megacorporations have risen and fallen in their dozens; Halley's Comet flew by and fucked with magic something fierce, transforming people into bizarre half-animal hybrids referred to as "changelings", the brother of the previously mentioned dragon president showed up with an army of ghosts and carved out his own empire in the Midwest, people have started being born not with magical talent, but with biological wi-fi hardwired into their brains, and a nanomachine plague has begun to spread and take over people's minds. And through it all, Shadowrunners have not only held onto their power, but have achieved a sort of collective celebrity, becoming permanently ingrained on global culture.

Talk about job security, eh chummer?

The Sixth World is expected to end in-universe around 7137 AD, with what the Seventh World will look like being anybody's guess but presumably civilization will take a severe beating due to the Horrors overwhelming the world due to the high levels of magic but with the next one being vastly more advanced than the present one.

What you can count on however is that a deal with a dragon will still be a bad idea, elfs will be shifty pricks and mages will still need some good 'ol geeking.