From: | Luke Kendall <luke@********.CANON.OZ.AU> |
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Subject: | Secret agencies (Was: What happened in the future ?) |
Date: | Tue, 10 Jan 1995 10:18:43 +1100 |
> Right now I am working on a big plot which involves some secret service
> agencies. So I like to know what happened to orghanizations like the CIA
> and NSA after tghe fragmentation of the USA. What happened to their
> operations in the CAS and NAN lands. I know that they still existed
> during the crash of '29 and that they worked together to kill the virus
> in Echo Mirage.
We play that they went through a bad patch when the USA broke up; but
they had so many contacts with business and drug lords etc. that they
were able to continue to fund their own activities. Naturally, they
had to scale down their operations a great deal, though.
Because of this change, they became much more autonomous (and if you
don't find that a frightening concept, you should). As well, one
assumes that prolonged association with criminals and reliance on
criminal means of obtaining funds, would have have similar unpleasant
effects on the nature of the organisation.
However, the organisation would still be occasionally useful to the
UCAS government. Just that the master-servant roles would no longer
be pretended to.
We also play that the FBI still exists, but its nature is little changed
from what it is today.
You may like to use a personal `invention', the Bureau of Internal
Development, a low-profile organisation whose aim is the (impossible?)
re-creation of the USA.
Overall, the social and political environment of Shadowrun would
be as fertile for secret agencies, as the Cold War period was, IMHO.
Except it would be equally fertile for secret societies and criminal
organisations such as the Triads and Yakuza.
As far as Hawaii - with things like that, there's often the surface
story (what the news media reports), the `real' story (what the people
involved think they're doing it for), and then there's the facts
(what strings were pulled to start the thing in the first place).
Anyway, that's my 2c.
luke
`Good god, man - he's travelling at twice the speed of light!'