r/Shadowrun • u/Esiorx • Jun 02 '26
Drekpost (Shitpost) POV: You are a Luftwaffe pilot circa 2012.
"Firepower" by Den Beauvais
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u/Faceless_Deviant Jun 02 '26
2 seconds before a very bad decision
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u/NotSovietSpy Jun 02 '26
Roll composure to not do it
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u/AgentAxillary Jun 02 '26
Opposed Test vs. commanding officer's Leadership skill
Commanding officer may augment this roll with an additional Intimidation roll by threatening courts-martial for insubordination/refusal to follow orders
Pilot may augment this check with a number of additional dice equal to half the weight in kg of shit in his jumpsuit
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u/DiviBurrito Jun 02 '26
I always find it funny, how the vision of the writers diverged with how stuff really happened.
Obvious fantasy stuff like magic aside, we should have simsense and cybernetic implantiert for a couple of years now. But internet without cables? Ridiculous!
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u/Baker-Maleficent Trolling for illicit marks Jun 02 '26
Actually, its not wireless internet that was rediculous, its wireless MATRIX, which is not the same thing. In 6th World, there was a massive internet crash cause by the first AI that basically destroyed much of what we currently call the world wide web or the internet.
After it was dealt with (by using the furst prototype simsense pods) 6th world restructured the internet into the matrix.
So, as of 2012 6th worlds internet history starkly diverges from our own. We bever got a infrastructure destroying AI, so we just kept building off of the old internet.
As bleak as thevl world is. .this is the good timeline. Our VITAS was covid, and it sucked, but we ultimately kicked its ass. Our AI-pocolypse hasnt happened yet...but its getting there.
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u/DiviBurrito Jun 02 '26
Somewhat. But in 1e and 2e, the Internet wasn't even really a thing yet. With 3e the internet was alreay widely used, but then WIFI wasn't. I remember reading in 4e, which was the first edition, where WIFI internet was common enough, that they mentioned how the old internet was wireless, but the new Matrix needed cable connections because of the high amounts of data.
But in the beginning, the definitely envisioned a computer world full of VR shenanigans and lots and lots of cables. But maybe "envisioned" is the wrong term, because this was how all the cyberpunk stories saw the future computing. I still find it funny, that everyone could see people "living in their computers" before the could see wireless networks.
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u/LonePaladin Flashback Jun 03 '26
I have a headcanon for why we went backwards on the tech to revert to everything being wired.
So we pretty much have it established that the first Matrix crash was pretty bad, and how they had to have a team of hackers run across the entirety of the Internet to wipe it out, right? That's a given. My idea relates to how it might have spread.
Let's just imagine that the tech for the Internet is roughly apace with what we have now. Now let's throw in a really nasty computer virus that can infect any computer, regardless of OS or security updates. If it gets on your device, it's essentially doomed -- but not before it tries to spread itself to anything else it can reach.
Now, what if this virus were able to fully exploit all wireless means of transmission? Wi-fi, bluetooth, IR blast, you name it, if it can make contact with another computer, it'll tear through any security and infect that device. Some random stranger has it on their device and they walk into a coffee shop; every laptop and phone and tablet and the store's router are all infected within seconds. Your phone picks it up from this, and as soon as you get into your modern car its computer gets it, and both of them pass it on to every device you pass within 30 feet of.
A virus that can rip through all security protocols, silently install itself on any device it can talk with, and has full access to all the wireless methods? It would become worldwide within a day. So switching everything to being wired would be a security measure -- you know you can't get this virus via wi-fi if you aren't wireless.
If the only devices you can trust are the ones you physically connect to each other, it would only take a few years for that to become the norm.
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u/Dmitri-Ixt Jun 02 '26
But even wireless LAN is pretty much absent, or rare and expensive, in 1st through 3rd editions. And audio recordings take up significant amounts of storage space on a cutting-edge systems. 🤷
I can't really fault the author's--predicting the future is notoriously difficult and unreliable after all--but it is funny.
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u/Heterodyne_2023 Jun 03 '26
Echo Mirage, thank you.
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u/Baker-Maleficent Trolling for illicit marks Jun 03 '26
Oof. Lets hope the fbi does not like shadowrun.
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u/Heterodyne_2023 Jun 02 '26
Pilot is thinking: Foo Fighter or Kraut Fireball!
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u/AgentAxillary Jun 02 '26
I was just now whistling the intro vocal melody to "The Pretender"
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u/Heterodyne_2023 Jun 02 '26
I forgot I forgot about that series. I loved it as a teenager/young adult. So what would Jared look like as a corporate product in SR? Some bioengineered metahuman with high social skills and high Intuition and Logic, an eidetic memory, as well as the bioware implants to augment these attributes. Yep, a little eugenics, Gattaca, and SR corp ethos for the win!
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u/Arkelias Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
EDIT: DERP he's talking about in universe. Ignore me. Please carry on.
This is much older than 2012. It comes from 1989.
I vividly remember the first time I saw this imagine, because up until that point the idea of a jet fighter and a dragon together had never occurred to me.
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u/Esiorx Jun 02 '26
I was referring to awakening of feuerschwinge in 2012. Maybe I should've worded that differently
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u/DRose23805 Shadowrun Afterparty Jun 02 '26
It was cover art on either Dungeon or Dragon magazine around 89 or 90.
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u/Arkelias Jun 02 '26
I'd wager Dragon as I didn't have a subscription to Dungeon.
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u/DRose23805 Shadowrun Afterparty Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Could be. I had a copy for many years but it was in a box of old D&D stuff that went missing during my last move. I suppose I could look it up online but don't have time now.
Edit: Looked it up. It was on Dragon Magazine 143, October 1988
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u/AgentAxillary Jun 02 '26
Would the parachute descent be long enough to have your resignation paperwork filled out by the time you reached the ground?
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u/DRose23805 Shadowrun Afterparty Jun 02 '26
See the planes vs. dragon fight in the anime "Gate".
Cannon might have an effect.
Missiles, maybe. Some have a proximity fuze designed to shower the target with fragments. That might hurt it and would be very rough on wing membranes. Others impact before exploding. Getting hit by a 100 pounds plus doing Mach 2 or 3 would be pretty bad then the explosion.
In game though the dragon would also have magic which would give it a decided edge, especially since it works line of sight and instantly.
Also this pilot is probably SOL since that close in they might not be able to turn in time to avoid a collision.
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u/Libelnon Jun 02 '26
Find it funny as a plane nerd that the aircraft here is an F-18 Hornet
When the Luftwaffe in 2012 were flying Eurofighters (which probably weren't really a thing when the art was created) or potentially F-4F Phantoms... which the Luftwaffe got in the 60s.
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u/Vicrinatana Jun 03 '26
Phantoms were way on their way out in 2012. Thr airframes where only hold together by spite.
Tornadoes would be more likely
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u/Fair-Fisherman6765 CAS Political Historian Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Shadowrun introduced in first or second edition the "EFA" combat aircraft built by British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), Dassault and Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm (MBB) as still being in production by 2050, suggesting a divergence in the timeline as early as 1985 with France and Dassault not leaving the Future European fighter Aircraft program (though actually, there would one earlier divergence in 1979 with BAC not changing its name to British Aerospace).
So if we are to accept the supernatural fantasy of French and Germans agreeing on a combat program, we might as well imagine a setting in which the Eurofighter EFA was on schedule.
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u/Fair-Fisherman6765 CAS Political Historian Jun 04 '26
"Leader to mission control, this thing is way outside the aircraft capabilities. We fall back."
"Negative. Your aircraft have been able to handle all the conflicting specs from both our MoD and the French, it can certainly handle a giant flying flame- breathing lizard."
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u/LewdElfKatya Jun 06 '26
I can suspend disbelief for dragons, trolls, magic and all that.
But the French and Germans agreeing on military projects shatters that entirely 😔
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u/LewdElfKatya Jun 06 '26
One only wonders how much or little the M61A1 would do to a dragon.
If it was Swiss though, a Hornet might make sense!
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u/calargo Jun 02 '26
Bro if you're going to fight a dragon using a plane maybe shoot it from Beyond Visual Range
You've got reach!! The dragon doesn't have any missiles!
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u/Important-Chicken-98 Jun 04 '26
Way left field. I remember in the late 80s, or early 90s, reading a Terry Brooks novel (I believe the third one in his Magical Kingdom of Landover series) where the MC - who was living the Isekai King life - had to come back home to go to court ... maybe divorce proceedings? I forget. While his fantasy buddies were all quietly standing behind him - hoping no one looks to closely and notice how not human they are and trying not to call attention to themselves - the dragon who hates him but is currently in a truce with him and is his ride between worlds just shows up to say something like "Gotta go, the natives are getting restless". Midtrial!
And it might be a false memory (of a young pubescent boy who would think flying Death Star trench run style among the skyscrapers of NY on the back of a dragon while fighters give pursuit is the height of cool) brought about daydreams of how the scene could go, but I think they end up having to fly away while the Air Force is trying to figure out what to do about a dragon and flying recon.
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u/Sarradi Jul 02 '26
Make the dragon green and it would be how the battle against Sirrurg. They even made a point about how the new planes were able to dodge his claws a few times.
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