History Characters / Shadowrun

* TheMagicComesBack: Metahumans appeared in two waves: The "Unexplained Genetic Expression" (UGE) births of 2011, where babies were born as elves and dwarves, and the "Goblinization" of 2021, where adult humans, elves and dwarves morphed into trolls and orks overnight. Also, SURGE (Sudden Recessive Genetic Expression) in 2061 brought changelings, which aren't exactly a specific sub-species, but more of a collection of odd mutations.

* StandardFantasyRaces: The metahuman breeds formed from humanity with the return of magic are, besides humanity itself, classic fantasy dwarves (short and stout, and good with technology), elves (long-lived, magical and reclusive, and often disdainful of other metahumans), and orks and trolls usually scorned and discriminated against by others, forcing them onto the fringes of society, but who tend to get along well with each other as a result.

!!Dwarves (''Homo sapiens pumilionis'')
Dwarves first appeared in 2011 alongside the elves. In sharp contrast to elves, dwarves are the most 'integrated' and least noticeable of the metahuman races, as they resemble 'baseline' humans with medical dwarfism if you add in pointy ears and a tendency towards chiselled, angular facial structures. With the exception of the physical needs that has created a burgeoning market for dwarf-size furniture, cars and other consumer goods, dwarves are more or less short humans, stereotyped as quiet and reliable and not interested in "rocking the boat".

* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: Querx, a type of German dwarves, have blue skin.

* FantasticRacism: Present, but dwarves face on average much less because they don't have a subculture of their own and integrate with humans, and because they resemble people with medical dwarfism.

* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: Zig-zagged. ''Shadowrun'' dwarves are short and bearded, although the facial hair is mostly to avoid being mistaken for children. Out of all metahumans, they're the only ones without their own nation or distinct subculture and the ones who fit the best in with humans. However, they still maintain a strong sense of cultural unity regardless of political and corporate ties. Almost all dwarves share a common set of values, typically focused on honoring one's word, stoicism and community. Their skill with technology also helps here, as dwarves are usually comfortable enough with the Matrix that they can easily keep in contract with large numbers of other dwarves across the world. They do have strange geographical variants, such as:
** [[OurGnomesAreWeirder Gnomes]]: Central European dwarves with no facial hair and even shorter statures than normal.
** Harumen: Indian dwarves with extensive body hair, longer limbs and prehensile tails, who were originally thought to be Awakened monkeys.
** Koborokuru: Japanese dwarves with thick body hair and large noses.
** Mene'hune: Amphibious Hawaiian dwarves with even thicker hair, nictitating membranes and webbed toes, claimed by myth to descend from Mu or {{Atlantis}}.
** Querx: Blue-skinned dwarves from Saxony in former Germany.
* OurGnomesAreWeirder: Gnomes are a sub-race of dwarf that are even smaller than the common dwarves -- they rarely reach a full meter -- and don't grow much body hair, causing them to be mistaken for children most often. They also have slightly pointed ears. They're mostly found in Europe and Asia Minor, prefer to live away from urban areas and are deeply distrustful of technology.

* OurGoblinsAreDifferent: Dwarves infected with HMHVV I become goblins, emaciated, hairless beings with only minimal intelligence, an immunity to fire and vulnerable to iron. They eat raw meat, often from sapient beings.

* FantasticSlur: "Tusker" and "trog". The orks have begun using them amongst themselves as a way of defanging it, and they feature heavily in orkish music as a way of expressing their frustration. [[NWordPrivileges You may be beginning to notice a theme here]]. They have their own slur for humans, elves, and dwarves -- "squishy". They also use "breeder" to refer to humans, specifically.

* PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy: Ork culture sometimes attracts young elves, dwarves or humans who dress and acting like orks and hang around ork crowds to fit in with them. (Unlike elven wannabes, body modification is rare.) "Ork posers" receive mixed reception from orks (ranging from "pretty orky for a norm" to "beat his ass and toss him in a dumpster" depending on how good they are at the fitting in) and are disparaged by anyone who looks down on actual orks.

* WeAreAsMayflies: Orks reach maturity at twelve, and commonly live to about fifty. 5th Edition's ''Complete Trog'' source book suggests that this might not naturally be the case; aside from revealing a rare genetic condition in orks and trolls that gives them a standard human lifespan (supposedly in less than 1% of all orks), other studies of orks and trolls living in the Congo (which they've been immigrating to from all over the world since goblinization happened) reveals first generation trogs still alive long after they should have keeled over from old age, with the researcher who discovered this concluding that various environmental factors artificially shorten trog life spans outside of mana-rich rural areas, and that natural orks would live about as long as humans and trolls would live about as long as dwarves.

The second goblinized race and also the rarest metahuman variant, trolls appeared at the same time as orks and got much the same reception. Physically, they resemble gigantic humans or orks (commonly topping eight feet) with disproportionally large arms and upper bodies compared to their legs. They have dermal deposits on their forearms and chest areas that create natural armour plating. Their most noticeable feature are their horns: All trolls have horns on their heads, which can take forms from circular ram horns to bull horns to multiple smaller, straight ones. Similarly to Orks, Trolls face heavy discrimination. Trolls are usually depicted as included in the Ork subculture by common cause. Like dwarves, though, they have tended towards racial integration rather than standing out.

* WeAreAsMayflies: Trolls have a shorter lifespan than humans, though longer than orks. However, there's evidence in-universe that this is due in large part to poor conditions among the often impoverished troll populations and mana starvation in urban areas. In ideal conditions, such as in mana-rich rural lands, trolls might live as long as dwarves.

Seventh largest MegaCorp, granted AAA-prime status by vote. Began as a Japanese corporation known as Yamatetsu in the early editions of the game until they switched their corporate HQ to the Russian Far East and took on the name EVO. Focuses on biotech, nanotechnology, and consumer goods for metahumans: Most specialist devices built for trolls or dwarves are of EVO make and they also own offworld colonies, including one on Mars.

* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: The Night Ones, a type of European elves, have full-body coverings of short, fine fur that's typically black, violet or blue in color, and more rarely green or dark orange.

* HalfHumanHybrid: Thoroughly averted. If one metahuman procreates with another of a different metatype, the children would be one of their parents' metatypes. Meaning no halvsies, and an elf could be the biological sibling of a troll, and half-sibling to a human.

* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: The one acknowledged human metavariant, the Indian nartaki, come in red, blue, or gold skin colors.

* HumansAreAverage: Human stats (with the exception of Edge) are ranked from 1-6, this being the "baseline" for stats and making them competent at everything, but excellent at nothing. Playing a human also requires no priority or karma investment at character creation, freeing up points better spent elsewhere. Fluff-wise they're still the majority species on the planet and are in effective control of most of the political (and economical) climate, human-run or -majority countries being far more common than the alternatives. This is averted with the Nartaki, the only known metavariant of Humans, as they have [[MultiArmedAndDangerous at least one extra set of arms]] and [[AmazingTechnicolorPopulation distinctive skin hues]]. They arose out of India and the game devs clearly intended them to resemble Shiva. Otherwise, they're practically identical to humans other than missing that extra point of Edge.

* MultiArmedAndDangerous: The nartaki metavariant all have an extra set of arms.

* FaeriesDontBelieveInHumansEither: Apparently many synethetics don't believe that the physical world, or meatspace, exists. Being beings of the Matrix, they have a hard time comprehending world governed by the laws of physics, where gravity and friction exist.

** The trope has a notable aversion in one place: Guns (as well as any other ranged weapon) can never be enchanted or function as Weapon Foci because magic weapons basically become extensions of the wielder's internal magic circuit and requite physical connection with the wielder to remain operative. The best they can do is to allow you to PistolWhip spirits.

* SquishyWizard: Sort of. Mages are not prevented from wearing full-body milspec armour, but the heavy karma investment in magic skills and the inability to install cyberware without their magic potential dropping to near useleness means a mage will be limited in soak dice, and unlike the rigger or decker they have to be in direct line of sight for many of their spells to function.

* RageAgainstTheMentor: She makes it clear that there's little love between her and Harlequin. While she respects and appreciates what he taught her, she takes a dim view of his personal morals and ethics, and openly resents his habit for manipulating and deceiving others.

* ToCreateAPlaygroundForEvil: Alongside a coalition of lesser dragons, he turned northern Italy into his personal fiefdom and hunting ground in the [=2070s=], letting those who followed him hunt and torment metahumans as they pleased. This led three other Great Dragons into allying to take him down.

* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Their attempt at nationalising all non-Aztechnology industry in Aztlan, their forays into the First Nations, the Yucatan rebellion and snubbing the Catholic Church hasn't left Aztechnology with a lot of friends on the Corporate Court or on the higher echelons of power. Of course, Aztechnology is powerful enough that they don't really have to care, and all the above ones are too busy fighting each other to gang up on them anyway.

* KungFuWizard: A valid way to build a Mystical Adept.

* LightningBruiser: The optimal outcome of a purely combat-focused adept. While they cannot achieve quite the same level of raw offensive or defensive power as a street samurai (put simply, you'll run out of Power Points much faster than you can run out of money and Essence Limit for fancy cyberware), street samurai also can't walk on walls.

* HeroicSacrifice: The company CEO (aided by a group of Shadowrunners) infiltrated the Arcology to kill Deus. He died in the process of delivering the kill command... or so the official story goes. In reality he committed {{Seppuku}} upon realising the A.I. had been counting on their mission and had really manipulated them into freeing it from the Arcology.

* CoverBlowingSuperpower: Shapeshifters have up to three of these depending upon edition. First of which is regeneration where healing too fast when injured is a give away. By Shadowrun 4E this [[LogicalWeakness would mean RFIDs would not stay implanted]]. Second is being dual natured meaning they exist upon the physical and astral simultaneously, and may wind up reacting to astral sights in addition to being tangible astrally. This also means any ward which they lack permission to pass acts as an InvisibleWall. Third they [[UpToEleven have an essence rating of eight instead of six]]. This means that even if they are also an awakened initiate who took masking to disguise themselves as a metahuman astrally, they are obviously either not a metahuman or one of the Infected.

* OldMaster: Why he's one of the best hackers out there. He got his start on old command line interfaces. He has gone through every single Operating System and generation of the Matrix. He knows all the old tricks that have been carried through each generation. Occasionally he has to remind young upstarts exactly how he earned his rep.
-->'''[Casanova]''' Please, old man. What are you going to do, have a stroke in my general direction? This isn't [=JackPoint=], and I don’t care if you boot me.\\
'''[=FastJack=]''' Ghostwalker probably doesn't know that [[TheVillainKnowsWhereYouLive you’re sitting on the third floor of the Tower of Babel drinking martinis right now]] any more than he knows that [[{{Blackmail}} you helped fix up the team that’s tearing his city apart]]. But Diane the waitress you've been hitting on does. She thinks you’re cute, tagged you as such on her [=MeFeed=]. And since she knows where you are, so do I. Should I clue Ghostwalker's Liaison Office in? [[ShameIfSomethingHappened I'm pretty sure the [=ZDF=] has a headquarters just two blocks from there. Not to mention you’re violating curfew.]] Oh, don’t bother getting up—[[SinisterSurveillance I can see you looking around on the club’s security feed]]—I'm not in the room. [[TheOmniscient I'm not even in the sector]].
-->'''[Casanova]''' [[{{Touche}} Fuck me like a goat]].

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Like Masaru and Hestaby, she appears to be generally benevolent towards meta-humanity, though more through her actions than her intentions. Saving meta-humanity from magical calamity appears to be more a by-product than her end-goal.

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Alongside Masaru, Hestaby is probably the closest to a "benevolent" Great Dragon.

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: By MegaCorp standards, they're this towards their Shadowrunners. Which isn't saying much.

* ALighterShadeOfBlack: Certainly gives off this impression, given their focus on "people first". Their employees are remarkably well-treated, as are their shadowrunners.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Tír na nÓg implemented some very archaic social structures such as effective family run guilds drawn upon arbitrary domains. They got [[CurbStompBattle utterly crushed economically in a matter of decades by regular corporations, let alone]] [=MegaCorps=]. Stubbornly using Bronze Age guild social structures in a modern economy is doomed to failure even with [[spoiler: advantages related to immortal elves and their advanced knowledge from the Fifth Era]].

* ClassicalCyclops: Cyclopes are mediterranean trolls with a single eye and no dermal armor. Most don't grow horns; those that do have a single one in the middle of their foreheads. They first arose in the Aegean Sea and spread to Mediterranean ports in general, and often work in docks and shipyards as heavy lifters and security. This, combined with historical myth, has led many of them to adopt worship of Poseidon.

* PragmaticVillainy: Averted, unusually for a MegaCorp. Mitsuhama's corporate culture is badly tied up in their twisted bushido, they allow their multi-trillion-nuyen business to be used to support multi-million-dollar {{Yakuza}} concerns, and their "zero-zone" policy of killing anyone who runs against them can be taken far beyond the point where it's economical to hunt the shadowrunners, and also leads to said shadowrunners not worrying about killing the guards or causing collateral damage.

* ServantRace: They were created by dragons, for dragons, to serve dragons, and in the sixth world, dragons want them back. Most great dragons have open bounties for drakes and hunting them is a profitable, if risky, proposition for unscrupulous shadowrunners. They still desire control over their descendents over [[NoodleIncident what happened previously with uncontrolled creations]].

Pixies are a rare, poorly understood race of humanoids that resemble miniature elves of various human ethnicities. They stand roughly half a meter in height and possess a pair of wings (most commonly resmbling dragonfly wings but bat, bird, butterfly, and grasshopper wings have been observed and pixies claim a wider variety is possible) with a wingspan of about a meter. Generally thought of as primitive, pixies rarely interact with metahuman society, living in forested regions away from civilization. France is the only nation that recognizes them as citizens, Neo-Net and EVO are the only corporations that do likewise.

* CoverBlowingSuperpower: Shapeshifters have up to three of these depending upon edition. First of which is regeneration where healing too fast when injured is a give away. By Shadowrun 4E this [[LogicalWeakness would mean RFIDs would not stay implanted]]. Second is being dual natured meaning they exist upon the physical and astral simultaneously, and may wind up reacting to astral sights in addition to being tangible astrally. This also means any ward which they lack permission to pass acts as an InvisibleWall. Third they [[UpToEleven have an essence rating off eight instead of six]]. This means that even if they are also an awakened initiate who took masking to disguise themselves as a metahuman astrally they are obviously either not a metahuman or one of the Infected.

* MundaneUtility: While a lot of adept powers are aimed at combat, some instead boost skills and attributes. Meaning they can get a boost to things like mechanic work or artistic pursuits.

* AdultFear: Amazingly, [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]; her parents get trapped in Boston once the city goes into lockdown and she's stuck on the outside; she's an accomplished shadowrunner who has to worry helplessly about her wageslave parents with no way of contacting them or knowing if they're still alive.

* BiggerIsBetterInBed: At least she thinks so. One of her ex-boyfriends was a BiggusDickus.

* FantasticRacism: Against technomancers, to the point where he betrayed Netcat to one of the megacorporations and has threatened to [[MoralEventHorizon have her "freak-baby" shipped to a laboratory]].

* FantasticRacism: In earliest editions [[DamnedByFaintPraise Native American Nations treating them as second class citizens but destroying them without hesitation if they were a threat was far better than most]]. CAS and Quebec have longstanding bounties on them. The Infected have more nations friendly to them!

* WeAreAsMayFlys: A sort of zigzagged example as well. Previously it was declared to be ork length, still longer than the base species but short by metahuman standards. Later works indicate that they may actually technically be immortal in sufficently high mana levels. Either way they tend to die from violence well before that, either from a wild lifestyle or from metahuman involvement.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Tír na nÓg implemented some very archaic social structures such as effective family run guilds. They got [[CurbStompBattle utterly crushed economically in a matter of decades by regular corporations, let alone]] MegaCorps. Stubbornly using Bronze Age guild social structures in a modern economy is doomed to failure even with [[spoiler: advantages related to immortal elves and their advanced knowledge from the Fifth Era]].

* VoluntaryShapeshifting: They transform between an animal and metahuman form, both forms being fixed. Their animal forms are usually abnormally large, impressive versions of their species while their metahuman forms are usually a LittleBitBeastly, though rarely in a cute way.

* WitchSpecies: Again, just a stereotype that some Elves like to perpetuate, but broadly untrue. A Dryad's natural CharmPerson effect does fit the bill better.

* WitchSpecies: Gnomes have an inherent magical resistance.

* WitchSpecies: The fomori metavariant has a higher percentage of awakened individuals than any other troll subspecies, and, whether awakened or mundane, possess a natural resistance to magic.

* WitchSpecies: Except for AI, they all have some degree of innate magical powers.

* WitchSpecies: All naga are naturally dual natured and can perceive both the physical and astral planes, and virtually all of them are spellcasters.

* WitchSpecies: All pixies are inherently magical creatures, capable of astral perception, magical invisibility, and magical flight.

* WitchSpecies: Sasquatches are naturally dual natured and their mimicry ability is magical in nature. Enwontzane are known to possess a magical camouflage, making them dangerous hunters.

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: A darker example, in most awakened-first nations where have rights they infamously often wind up being part of the SecretPolice. A slightly lighter example is merely being powerful soldiers that leave the mundane humans as canon fodder in comparison.

* CoverBlowingSuperpower: Shapeshifters have up to three of these depending upon edition. First of which is regeneration where healing too fast when injured is a give away. By Shadowrun 4E this [[LogicalWeakness would mean RFIDs would not stay implanted]]. Second is being dual natured meaning they exist upon the physical and astral simultaneously, and may wind up reacting to astral sights. In addition to a ward which they lack permission to pass acts as an InvisibleWall. Third they [[UpToEleven have an essence rating off eight instead of six]]. This means that even if they are also an awakened initiate who took masking to disguise themselves as a metahuman astrally they are obviously either not a metahuman or one of the Infected.

* MorphicResonance: Shapeshifters generally retain some animalistic features in their metahuman forms that can clue others into their identity, though how easy it is to blend in depends on the species and the specific trait, and even the most distinct traits can be passed off as SURGE expression or cosmetic bioware modification.

* CoverBlowingSuperpower: Shapeshifters have up to three of these depending upon edition. First of which is regeneration. Second is being dual natured meaning they exist upon the physical and astral simutaniously and wards which they lack permission to pass act as InvisibleWalls. Third they [[UpToEleven have an essence rating off eight instead of six]]. This means that even if they are also an awakened initiate who took masking to disguise themselves as a metahuman astrally they are obviously either not a metahuman or one of the Infected.