Dunkelzahn is Barack Obama.
Barring, of course, canon.- They are both massively popular (and still are).
- They're quite charismatic.
- Share a love of comics (read Dunkelzahn's will.)
- America (or, in the case of Dunk, the UCAS) was in trouble at the time of their election (then again, America's always in trouble).
The Matrix is a metaplane
It would explain why it seems to act like the idea of Cyberspace as a place you go to visit.- And why so many of the authors had a hard time remember that decking does not equal astral projection...
- A technomancer's sprites do behave much like a magician's spirits. And the Data Trails sourcebook has rules for going into host foundations, full of metaphoric imagery and rules that mirror a magician's astral quests.
- It looks a bit closer to say the Matrix is an ASTRAL plane, the Resonance Realm is a Metaplane.
Edge is coded into standard humanity's 'Junk DNA'
Before the Awakening, metahumans were standard humans, with their metatypes traits in their junk DNA. But, what is in the junk DNA of baseline humans; it's not metahuman traits, after all. Well, what attribute do humans have different from the other metatypes? Edge. Humans have lucky genes.Earthdawn is set in the Nth age
An alternative theory goes that Shadowrun occurs BEFORE Earthdawn; unknown to the people of Earthdawn, it's now the year 5000 and the past 2000 years have been "things" coming through, kicking the planet and people over until it has managed to return to the state it's found in Earthdawn.- Very subtly jossed by Dunkelzahn's will. Go to the Crowning Moment of Awesome page and read the part about the Everliving Flower.
- The fact that Dunkelzahn is very much alive in Earthdawn also precludes it taking place after Shadowrun.
The "car bomb" that killed Dunkelzahn was based on the designs of Adrian Vauclair.
According to the Sixth World Almanac, after Dunkelzahn's "death" witnesses reported seeing his astral form rise into the rift. Vauclair's bomb from Dragonfall separates the astral and material forms of a dragon, as tested on Feuerschwinge. It seems plausible that the bombs were one and the same. Dr. Penelope Ann Xavier is Pax
- Dr. Xavier is referenced in Stolen Souls. She is implied to be connected to the origin of cognitive fragmentation disorder, a nanotechnology-based weapon that overwrites its victims with one or more new, often hostile, personalities. One of her peers notes that he could not find any documentation for Dr. Xavier that pre-dates Crash 2.0.
- Pax was one of Deus's otaku followers. After Deus abandoned her, she formed the Ex Pacis otaku tribe and claimed allegiance to a force called the Dissonance. She is largely responsible for the Jormungand code worm that contributed to Crash 2.0. Her whereabouts after that are unknown.
- The possible connection is that Pax is using her knowledge and skills to subvert metahumanity with a new weapon. CFD doesn't seem to affect technomancers (the successors to the otaku), which would make her and her most trusted followers immune to its effects. And of course, Penelope Ann Xavier.
- Outright confirmed in Lockdown
Lofwyr might be the reincarnation of Smaug
Celedyr made magic leak into the matrix and sprites, A.I.s, etc are "Matrix Spirits"
A great dragon getting a datajack (and to a lesser extent every mage who does so as well) caused magic to leak into the matrix. The unbound by hardware sprites, A.I.s and related phenomenon emerged because of it and allowed for Otaku and technomancers. Knowing great dragons this is probably intentional. There's a fourth Eastern dragon and she's masquerading as the Tibetan State Oracle
It was stated that the Tibetan state oracle have gold eyes and never seem to age. Also, there is a Yin Yang symbolism going on. With Lung as Yin, Ryumyo as Yang, Masaru learning from both Lung and Ryumyo so he might be seen as trying to balance both Yin and Yang in the symbol of Taiji and the Tibetan dragon being centered on Wuji, or emptiness. She could also be the cause of the Maya Cloud to further her plans, which might be something to do with the astral mandala in the sky surrounding Mt. Kailash. Man-Of-Many-Names has multiple personality disorder. And each personality is a cryptic, sagacious shaman.
And that's how he can appear to follow so many different mentor spirits. Dunkelzahn is Bernie Sanders.
He was the hero we needed, but who was denied to us. Harlequin's motive for keeping Joshua in the dark (Genesis game)
It's clear that Harlequin is playing Figure It Out Yourself games with Joshua, and Frosty forces him to go on the Spirit Eyes quest before she'll point him to Harlequin. It also seems reasonable that Harlequin knew the requirements of Spirit Eyes' ritual, particularly including the dragon scale. And Harlequin had reason to believe that Thon was likely to be entirely too powerful for Joshua to beat in a straight fight. So, the Laughing Man's actual motivation wasn't just to make you Figure It Out Yourself, or even to make sure that Joshua had the necessary strength to succeed where his brother failed. His objective was to get Licourtrix involved, preferably without Licourtrix learning that Harlequin was pulling the puppet strings. The Human Meta-Human Vampiric Virus is an Eldritch Abomination
It's repeatedly pointed out in multiple sources how HMHVV breaks the fundamental rules of magic as it's known; any victim, however mundane, will be given awakened powers by it, something that shouldn't be possible otherwise. The way the virus mutates, the effects it has on its host, the various horrible expressions of it are all wrong in one way or another. Many infected remark that even in cases where they don't go feral and retain their identity, they undergo very real personality changes that even they aren't sure can simply be attributed to the shock and trauma, both emotional and physical, of the transformation, or if they're really the same person at all. If they haven't been possessed by something, and rather than being the person they were, they're really the thing that killed that person, inhabiting it's meat & inheriting it's memories. Then Dark Terrors comes along and shows us what happens when ghouls engage in regular cannibalism of other ghouls; it's as if they become possessed by a greater power — a Horror — and are capable of magical feats that shouldn't be possible. Both Red and Hannibelle observe that the goal of the experiment may have been to "concentrate" whatever was already inside of them. Those ghouls didn't become possessed, they had always been possessed, and all that had happened was that the presence possessing them finally manifested and asserted dominance over the original personalities. Bull is an Immortal Ork
Born in 2032, he's almost in his 50s as of 2080, the current year in Shadowrun. Orks only live for about 35-40 years, according to the first edition rules. Also consider:- Lack of magical affinity could be explained by all the cyberware he's accumulated. If he started doing that early enough, he might not have even noticed any magical aptitude
- His daughter has magical aptitude, implying that somewhere in his or his family's line is a magic user
- Parents are dead: One of them could have been a descendant of the Denairastas (Immortal Humans from Earthdawn), or a dragon.
- Like many other immortals, he detests Harlequin
- Complete Trog, I believe, has Bull reveal that he has a medical condition that, according to him, affects less than 1% of the ork and troll population, that gives them a normal human life span and maturation rate. The book also includes a positive quality that trog characters can take at character creation to reflect this. The book also has a section suggesting that the whole, orks live forty years thing, might not be natural, as there are apparently first generation trogs in the Congo area who are pushing 70. I suspect this retconning of the ork life span, from a meta perspective, is being done at least partly because they do like Bull and want to keep using the character even though he should be retired or dead by now. Also it's possible that they don't think they'll get the Earthdawn license back anytime soon so they don't feel as beholden to its established rules.
The Witcher Crossover Theory
- Now obviously this will never be explicitly confirmed and wasn't intended by the part of the developers, but I like to think that the cyberpunk world Ciri mentions visiting in Wild Hunt, while yes obviously intended as a shout out to Cyberpunk 2077, was in actually the Shadowrun world. When describing the place to Geralt, she doesn't mention anything about it lacking magic, or having only humans. She does mention flying cars which aren't a Shadowrun staple but that aside, everything else would fit.
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