Shadowrun History

The Sixth world, as we've come to call it, is a strange conglomerate of magic, technology, intrigue, deception, adventure, and corporate politics. How it got that way is just as important as what it is today. Welcome to your first history lesson of our world. If you don't want to listen to my abbreviated blather on history, you can get a bare-bones fact session that covers everything from the late 1990's to the mid-2050's. I've included that doc file with my post, so feel free to nab it if I bore you. I'll try to make this interesting.
Winter (12:14:52/04-03-56)
Attached file: Timeline.doc 297K

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Late 1990s-2010:

Here's where it really began, folks. Civil unrest is rampant, and the various corporations of the day started arming their security forces to make sure their assets were protected. In 1999, lovely New York city experienced a mass of food riots. The locals had been scared due to a 3 month truckers' strike that had virtually stopped all food coming into the city. People took to the streets, and several hundred people ended up dead due to the violence.
One incident was with a Seretech Medical Research truck that was carrying all sorts of nasty stuff needin' to be disposed of. Mistaking it for a food truck of some sort, the mob attacked it. Seretech defended their truck, and once housed, the facility it was hunkered in. By the next day, 20 of Seretech's security force were dead, and 200 rioters lay along with them.
The government decided it was time to squash the corporate security forces, and sued Seretech, claiming criminal negligance. Seretech won the case by pointing out that they saved the city from potentially lethal infections. The supreme court sided with them, and issued a statement saying that corporations were permitted to maintain their own armed security forces to protect their own assets and personel. This lovely decision eventually led to the Shiawase decision of 2001 in which Corporations effectively became their own nations. Corp ground was no longer under the government thumb, and boy did that make them happy.
Their happiness was obvious fairly quickly, as suddenly the corporations bought up land all over the nation. Most of the land grabbed was the little bits that had already been set aside for the Native Americans. Eventually, this erupted to a violent incident. The Sovereign American Indian Movement (SAIM), a group that had been heading resistance movements against the corporate land grab, went violent and seized a nuclear missle silo in northwest Montana. The incident in 2009 became later known as the Lone Eagle crisis. After 10 days of negotiations, the government sent in their Delta Team. They botched the job to a degree and the injuns managed to fire off one of the missles. Target? The Russian Republic.
Washington wached the missle streak towards it's target. Self destruct signals didn't respond (go figure) and so they informed Moscow of the missle's targets. A short time later, Moscow called back and said the missle had been shot down. So much for World war 3. Luckily, or unluckily at the time, the rest of the country was clueless to these events. Of course, that changed, and man were the American's pissed.
In 2010, the American public learned of the incident, and they let their opinion be known. They blaimed SAIM for the incident, and then started blaming all of the Native Americans. Unfortunately, this fit in perfectly with the plans of the corporate land grabbers. No more injuns, no more resistance. Nice, neh? So between the Government and the corporations, they managed to round up all Native Americans and place them into "re-education centers," the latest euphemism for conentration camps. One member of the Abilene Re-Education Center was Daniel Coleman. Keep him in mind. I'll mention him again in a bit.

2011-2020

VITAS. Even today people will run screaming if you just mention the word. Virally Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome broke out first in 2010, and had a significant percentage of the world dead or dying by the end of 2010. 2011 marked the beginning of the Year of Chaos, as some people call it. Starting in 2011 and spanning the next 5 years, more governments fell than could possibly be thought of. Famine stalked the on the back of VITAS, making that epidemic only worse. Civilian protests in Europe led to raids on Nuclear power plants, 3 of which suffered meltdowns. Let's just say this was a bad year.
Oh, but that was only the beginning. We suddenly had UGE to compete with. Unexplained Genetic Expression (the scientific term for "I'm clueless about your condition") started and suddenly Elves and Dwarves started being born all over the world. All sorts of other drek flew in and out of the dying 5th world. On December 24, 2011, the Great Dragon Ryumyo was seen flying past Mount Fuji in Japan. At that same moment, Danial Coleman (remember him?), now known as Daniel Howling Coyote, led himself and his followers out of the Abilene center. They just walked on by as guards shot at them. The first public display of working magic left the guards stupified over how they couldn't have killed the escapees.
Turns out that historians started looking at the ancient cultures about this time and realized the Mayans had predicted that all this crud would happen. Of course, they also predicted the world outright ending and starting anew, but nobody's perfect.
For the next 3 years, things kinda calmed down, except for that whole goverments collapsing thing. Elves and dwarves slowly but surely started getting accepted... Then Howling Coyote showed up again. He had spent the past few years teaching people dances, and a guerrilla war against the federal army of the United States began. In 2014 he popped his head out and declared he was a Shaman of the Ghost Dance. He and a nice group of fanatics announced the formation of the Native American Nations (NAN). They ordered the immediate withdrawl of all people of European, African, and Asian descent from the entire continent of North America. They threatened that if the demand was not complied with, they'd retaliate with significant magical force. Of course, no one believed them.
After being made fun of for a short while, they demonstrated their power. Redondo Peak in New Mexico suddenly errupted, burying Los Alamos. Howling Coyote appeard on a vid-cast and laid claim to the disaster. The US Government immediately dispatched a team of troops to the traced location of the transmission. However, a violent wave of tornatdos appeared and wiped out the choppers en route. By the time a 2nd team got to the location, The indians were long gone.
The Native Americans spent the next 2 years playing hide and come get me games, and finally ended everything at 10:32 PST on August 17, 2017. On that day, the Great Ghost dance brought it's power down on the whole of the Northwest. Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, Mount Rainier and Mount Adams all erupted simultaneously. It seemed the good Earth had even chosen sides.
In 2018, the Federal Governments of Canada, the United States, and Mexico agreed to meet with the Ghost Dancers. Their meetings eventually produced the Treaty of Denver. Basically most of the Northwest of the US was given to the Native American Nations. Certain lovely places, such as California, Seattle, and Denver were kept as extensions of the much smaller US. Denver itself was kept as a Treaty City, bordering several nations.

2021-2030

And with all this, you'd think life would finally start trying to get back to normal, right? Not a chance. On April 30, 2021, 10% of the world population "goblinized" into Orks and Trolls. Between the already horrific transformations, and the media's hyping of the incident, people all over the globe became scared, and started retaliating against the 2 new races. The goblinization didn't stop though. Kids would be born as Orks or Trolls, or sometimes "normal" children would transform at pueberty. Scary stuff. Race riots spread far and wide, and in some countries as Japan, the new races were banished from the island nation.
Through all this carnage, it seemed science had marched on. In 2024, the first simsense entertainment unit (a kind of sensory VCR) became available. It offered the slag who used it some rudimentary sense impressions with full awareness that the experience was a simulation. Also, the first "remote-vote" system was put into effect. Figures that Pres Jarman at the time won by a landslide. Everyone claimed fraud, but no one proved it, so he stayed in office.
In 2025, technology and magic finally joined up and universities started offering courses in occult studies. It started with UCLA, and later even MIT came into the fold. Texas A&M also joined in this. Of course, only MIT altered their name by adding an &M at the end standing for "and Magic." Cute, huh?
As of 2026, the Matrix started being built. The first cyberterminals, AKA Oversized Sensory Deprivation Tanks, went online. The first users went insane. Go figure. 2027 brought cold fusion from science fiction to science fact. Large power plants were constructed to allow for another easily accessible source of power.
By 2029, the cyberterminals had progressed to the point of being able to interface with the user's nervous system. Again, sensory deprivation tanks were necessary, but this time, the government was able to put together strike teams of "super hackers." These teams became known as Echo Mirage. They recruited and trained people to become virtual cyber-commandos. It was rough, and when they were first needed, they were no where near prepared.
On February 8, 2029 a computer virus of unprecedented power struck computer systems across the globe at random. The Grid which held the world data network together was shattered. As the virus moved through systems, it wiped their data clean and burned out the hardware. Viscious sucker, neh? Well, obviously, the newly formed Echo Mirage was called into action. They died. So in response to their failure, the Echo Mirage management recruited the best and brightest (and craziest in some cases) that they could find. They spent the next 4 months in intensive training so they could combat the virus. 32 members survived the training with some semblance of sanity.
It was in August of 2029 that Echo Mirage launched their second attack against the virus. Eighteen minutes into the attack, 4 members were already dead. When the data logs of the attack got studied, they found out the virus was somehow able to send feedback to humans in the matrix that could kill them, and also that anyone using a cyberterminal was unstoppable in the Matrix. The corps didn't like this, and began secret research to duplicate the virus. These duplications became the first Intrusion Countermeasures of the Matrix. IC, or "ice" had been born. By 2031 the virus was wiped out. Took them long enough, but at least by this time, the technology had been upgraded enough to make the job relatively easy.

2031-Present

After the virus was wiped out, 4 of the surviving 7 members of Echo Mirage retired into the private sector. 3 years later, Matrix system of Boston came out with the first marketable cyberterminal. 6 weeks later their main systems crashed and their founders died in "unrelated" accidents. (Riiiiiight.) 2 years after that Fuchi Industrial marketed it's first commercial cyberdeck. The more powerful cyberterminal was now only the size of a desk, and more powerful than what Echo Mirage had originally used.
Unfortunately, the virus that Echo Mirage had taken the time to wipe out had dealt a series of gutpunches to the entire world. Certain countries were hit harder than others, but the sudden dissintegration of the world data network resulted in goverments toppeling, and even brought most of Asia and Europe into conflict. The Russian Republblic shattered, and the ensuing battle brought in various countries from Europe. The Euro-wars would last another 12 years until forcibly ended by a combined strike by an unknown force destroyed key communications and command centers on both sides of the front. Small battles continued, but the major fighting was over, and borders eventually were redrawn.
In North America, the virus practically brought the US and Canada to their knees. Seeing no other choice, they merged their remaining lands, forming the United Canadian and American States (UCAS). In 2034, 10 of the southern states seceded from the union to form the Confederate American States (CAS). This time though, no civil war errupted. Forces divided with relative peace and all was happy. Around the same time, Aztlan (old Mexico) seceded from NAN. Texas decided this was a good time to rekindle the "Remember the Alamo" spirit and tried to invade Aztlan to regain their "lost land." The CAS wouldn't support them and Texes got bested. They're still upset about that.
In NAN, several secessions took place. First Aztlan, then the Elves that they'd let into the country took over what used to be Oregon and renamed it Tir Tangire (the land of promise), and the Tsimshian areas also pulled away from NAN. Howling Coyote took this as his cue to step down off the Sovereign Council and he disappeared.
Apparently everyone got the independence bug, because even the long isolated California declared independance. Of course, then the Japanese came in and took over San Fransisco, but I guess that's what happens when you think you're too good for the rest of the continent.
In 2036, more race crimes occurred as the group called Alamos 20,000 started killing metahumans in streaks of violence. This all came to a head on the Night of Rage when hundreds of metahumans were killed. In NYC alone, 836 people died. The Awakened didn't just sit back. In 2041, a dragon attacked a flight en route to Atlanta from London and destroyed the plane, killing the entirety of it's crew and passengers.
Things got hairy down south around this time too. Aztlan decided to take all foreign assets and nationalize them. That's right kiddies. They basically took possession of all the assets of every foreign corporation. Did they like this idea? No in the least. in 2048, 7 of the 8 megacorporations (Aztechnology wasn't included for obvious reasons) initiated a combined strike against the Aztlan/Aztechnology military site of Enenada. Though it didn't cripple the country's defenses by any means, it sent a warning to Aztlan. Aztlan turned around and signed the Veracruz settlement, and reimbursed the other 7 megas it'd upset.
Now we're in 2056. Technology can replace your body, magic can do most anything, and the world seems relatively peaceful. But in this world, that is probably as likely to last as long as the sun stays shining in Seattle.