Ares attempted to gather all the insect spirits in the world in Detroit into one huge mega-hive on par if not exceeding with the one in Chicago in 2055 (you know, the one so big they had to drop a nuke on downtown Chicago to get rid of) to wipe them all out.
The book starts with Ares Macrotechnology, a megacorporation whose major focus is military and security, attempting to resolve the Insect Spirit problem once and for all in a massive strike called Operation: Latvian Gambit. Because while I am giving away some of the events and this may seem like I'm spoiling a lot, I promise I’m not giving away the biggest twists. So here’s your delineation for spoilers as, while I won’t go into too much detail or spoil the biggest twists in the book, I will start talking about what happens in general so this is your final warning if you want to be completely surprised. Detroit in particular is given setting statistics and information from both before and after the events of the book, which is important because the city is completely different following everything that happens. Louis, and Atlanta with smaller sections on the United Kingdom, Quebec, and the Algonkian-Manitou Council.
#Shadowrun cutting aces 4shared full#
Full write-ups are given to the cities of Detroit, St. Without going too much into spoilers just yet.it doesn't look like that by the end of the book.īefore we get into the events, I wanted to talk about what the book covers in terms of locations. The result is a map that looks something like this: Also also, several indigenous North American tribes rebelled against the United States and formed their own countries out of most of the Western United States, known collectively as the Native American Nations (NAN). Also, the states of the Southern United States seceded to create the Confederate American States (CAS). At some point after the Awakening when magic returned to the world, the United States and Canada merged into one nation called the United Canadian American States (UCAS). So quick history for those who don't know Shadowrun that well. So, let’s talk about those changes…well, the entire theme of the book seems to be that the United Canadian American States is fraaaaaaaaged. That said, putting out these major changes at the start of the edition cycle works well for new players coming in, particularly returning players from older editions, as it puts the major changes right up front and in context of the events rather than summarized in a brief timeline in the core rulebook. It’s interesting this book came out after 6e released rather than at the tail end of 5e as it’s typical for the “world-shattering” event book to close out an edition to make way for the new one (as previously done with System Failure from 3rd to 4th and Storm Front from 4th to 5th).
They’re also pretty damn fun to read.Ĭutting Black covers the events of July 2080 through March 2081 which radically alter the entire setting of Shadowrun in more than a few major ways. These event books function in much the same way campaign setting books work in other games, acting as a massive collection of plot hooks for gamemasters to expand on. It gives the books a verisimilitudinous feel by putting you in the setting and also gives GMs the out of “unreliable narrator” for anything they want to adjust or skip over for their home games. The denizens of this message board will annotate the document with their own knowledge, thoughts, and random speculation (along with the occasional trolling of one another), which was one of the ways Shadowrun was a bit precognizant of FASA as the sourcebooks have been written this way all the way back to 1st Edition back in 1989, predating the modern social media landscape by at least a couple of decades. Event books like Cutting Black are presented as in-universe documents like news reports, blog posts, call recording transcripts, and the like posted to the illicit bulletin board system Jackpoint (which replaced Shadowland following Crash 2.0). The Shadowrun line has historically done things a little differently when it comes to expanding the core rules.