Clearly it's a sect of Pastafarianism.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Alt Motto: Consume His Noodley Appendage."

Well, I didn't mean "haunted" in a sense that automatically implied some sort of evil--just that there's definitely something supernatural going on. Two somethings supernatural, actually, since the machine produces noodles out of nothing and just sort of... appears wherever the con is happening each year.

>An opportunity like that comes by but rarely; the god
>moved into the machine like a hermit crab, gave someone noodles
>despite the lack of supplies, and their residence became a shrine. By
>itself, not especially malevolent, but there may be conext or spoilers
>I don't have showing they actually have a malign plot.
>
>But I want to believe in Noodle God.

Yeah, it's probably something like that. There's no suggestion that it's ever done any harm, apart from a mention that one unsuspecting con worker got a bit scalded on the hand because the machine produced hot noodles when no noodles were expected. I think the con organizers are more freaked out by the fact that they can't get rid of it than they are about the noodles-from-nothing part itself. It's a world where magic is real and has been for 44 years at the time of the game (the Awakening happened in 2012 and SRHK is set in 2056), after all. Just the noodles themselves shouldn't be grounds for panic. :)

Also, I have just discovered that the Noodle Extruder appears in the expansion, Shadows of Hong Kong (which you can only play once you've completed the main campaign). One of the members of your crew is a Rat shaman named Gobbet (no, seriously--there's even a conversation branch which will reveal that that's her real name, not a street name), and there's a running joke that a) her room in your safehouse is a hideous mess at all times and b) she can and will eat absolutely anything even vaguely foodlike, up to and including oysters that have gone off. Apparently, and I haven't verified this myself because I don't have a complete-game save yet, but apparently in Shadows of Hong Kong the DeckCon Noodle Extruder has mysteriously appeared in Gobbet's room.

As one Steam commenter put it upon learning this detail, "12/10 game of all the years." :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I am desperately trying to think of a TARDIS-pasta pun and failing miserably.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

After a mission replay and a bit of screencapping and cropping, I bring you: the Noodle Extruder Saga.

(In the reading screens, you're on the phone with your team's NPC decker, who is the one actually standing at the computer, on a different floor of the hotel, disguised as a caterer.)

As a bonus, here is an NPC you met in a nightclub dropping a titanic dis on both Cyberpunk 2020 and a (now-disgraced former, but not at the time the game was made, I guess?) HBS employee.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Silverhand and Blackheart are both pokes at Cyberpunk--"Morgan Blackheart" is the street name of a legendary Solo who gets mentioned a bunch in the game manuals.

As for the third one mentioned, that's the handle of one Tyler Carpenter, who was at the time a writer at HBS. He's... not any more, evidently having been caught up with a couple years ago by a Pattern of Behavior.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Johnny Silverhand's back story in Burnin' Out is from pause to Google the Cyberpunk 2020 short adventure Never Fade Away.

Here, have a link.

I remember it as a short story, but memory is weird that way.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

In CP2020, at least, it is a story, with the occasional sidebar bearing game mechanics data in case you want to try running it as an adventure.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And now, 25 years after release, I finally get what Rob’s story was about! Looks like all I needed was for the game to enter the popular consciousness for me to grok it! :)

—- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions

Sadly, Goose is not an available totem for shamans, although I suppose a case could be made that Coyote and/or Raccoon are close enough for RP purposes. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Weirdly, Lofwyr is mentioned more often in Dead Man's Switch, which takes place in Seattle, than Dragonfall. He's actually involved (indirectly) in the endgame of DMS, whereas in Dragonfall his name just comes up a few times in the flavor text, despite the fact that the action takes place on his turf.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

Yeah, he's in the endgame of Dead Man's Switch too, but he actually does something there, rather than just showing up after it's all over and retroactively claiming credit for everything without a shred of credible evidence. I do... not find his claim persuasive. I think he just had recently played the end of Half-Life and thought "Hey... I could do something like that." :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Now that you mention Berlin, I might as well point folks at the Shadowrun campaign we were in up until the virus screwed everything up. We were all playing children in the North Rhine-Ruhr metroplex, getting caught up matters well above their heads. I was playing a corporate kid whose dad worked for S-K, and who was a street kid poser after school... until he turned out to be a Dog shaman. (He spent most of his starting allotment of magic points on getting a grade of initiation and a familiar -- and had something like five weak spells in his repertoire.) Things were starting to accelerate, plotwise, when the campaign went on hiatus, and now that we're not totally locked down I've been trying to talk our GM into picking it up again.

If anyone's interested in seeing what happened, I ended up documenting the entire campaign in a thread in my forums.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

Holy crap, how did I miss this conversation yesterday?

Yes, Earthdawn is indeed ancient Shadowrun, not unlike how Exalted is (usually) ancient World of Darkness. I know next to nothing about Earthdawn, but that is an awesome, if terrifying, ending.

As for Shadowrun? I still have my ratty Shadowrun Returns kickstarter backer T-shirt, to give you all an idea. And yet I somehow never finished Dragonfall, and never played Hong Kong. Gods I need to go back and play those.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

Well....sort of. If you know anything of the SR lore, you'll know that it takes place in the Sixth World. Time runs in cycles, based on the background level of mana, with each up or down being a "world". ShadowRun, the Sixth World, began in 2011, when the level of ambient mana reached a high enough level for magic to trigger the Awakening.

The time before 2011 was the Fifth World, and it happened when the level of mana dipped low enough that magic became IMPOSSIBLE, as well as preventing birth of species other than pure-strain humans. Incidentally, that one began in 3113 BC.

The world before THAT one, again, was obviously the Fourth. That one had magic, species like trolls and orks and others not(yet) seen in ShadowRun. That's the world of Earthdawn.

Incidentally, one of the "Not (yet) seen" species of Earthdawn? Is the T'skrang. Also seen in UF in the form of Lisa's friend and shipmate Sky, or
T'skaia Vorkoshiga'ar Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt Ishkarat if you want to be fully formal. Who comes from "Barsaive", which is the name of the area where Earthdawn takes place.

>As for Shadowrun? I still have my ratty Shadowrun Returns kickstarter
>backer T-shirt, to give you all an idea. And yet I somehow never
>finished Dragonfall, and never played Hong Kong. Gods I need to go
>back and play those.

Do! They're amazing games, they are. Of course, made by the guy who MADE ShadowRun, they would be.

(For those that didn't know, HBS was founded by Jordan Weisman, who started FASA and, well, made ShadowRun and other games)

(Edited for Auto-corrupt)
...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

If I remember right, the part of the world where Earthdawn is set is basically western Russia and the Ukraine, and the River Serpent (home, uh... turf? of the t'skrang) will one day be the Volga, but I could be misremembering the precise details. It's definitely eastern Europe, I remember noticing the Black Sea on the map.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It's been a while since I played Earthdawn, but I seem to recall part of the lore is that a Horror Overrun eventually happens in every era. So you basically just kicked off the Sixth World's a bit early.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

This is what I remember too. I've never played Earthdawn myself, but I was in a long-running Shadowrun campaign that was set in Tir Tairngire (that's the elven nation that took over Oregon). There's a bunch of official backstory for the elven nations that has to do with how a handful of elves are genuinely immortal, have survived since the Earthdawn era (or, in at least two cases, the magical era before Earthdawn) and their high-handed dictatorial rule, scheming, rivalry with the dragons, etc. etc. is all about preparing as quickly as possible for what they know is coming.

That even made it into a couple of published adventures, involving one of those nigh-unto-godlike immortal elves, who called himself "Harlequin".

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

Well, there are very few people whose dead bodies would improve the feng shui of a room.

"Look, the last, what, three times we killed him, he managed to slither out of oblivion. This time, we're keeping an eye on the bastard at all times."

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

That seems likely to drip on the floor and stain. Carbonite storage is probably a better bet. Assuming leaving him on the event horizon of a black hole is deemed too risky somehow.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "This Space For Rent."

Now there's an idea. Make Akio Ohtori's corpse improve the feng shui of the entire galaxy.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

I heard that, the Matrix rework for Hong Kong is annoying as balls. Turns out that Metal Gear "avoid the sight cones" stealth mechanic and isometric click-the-map movement isn't really a great combination, who knew? I always punt and just try to set off the alarm as fast as possible. Once all the ICE is dead, it's so much easier to move around the system. :)

I haven't run up against a time-limited Matrix run yet, though, apart from the one in the Ares office, where you have something ridiculously lenient like 15 rounds to get the job done. Not looking forward to that...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yeah, exactly.

>I always punt and just try to set off the
>alarm as fast as possible. Once all the ICE is dead, it's so much
>easier to move around the system. :)

That's what I was doing too. I couldn't make it work for me on the mission I was talking about; IIRC there was just too much ICE and not enough rounds to kill it all and still hit the switches in time.

You'll know when you've gotten there, it's unmistakable.

Well, I'm-a give it a fair shot when I get to it, but if it's too much of a hassle, I'm not above cheating in a single-player game, and I know the console command for "kill all enemies on screen right now". :)

--G.
and you can too, if you're interested, but it's cool if you have more gaming self-respect than me ;)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.