I’m sure most of you are wondering the billion nuyen question: What in the hell happened to the Excalibur project? Sure, every now and again, a product reaches the market with a few rough edges that could use some sandpaper. More often than not, those rough edges fall into a few different categories.
Flaws that are merely cosmetic don’t affect the actual usage of a product and serve only as a visual or tactile nuisance. Other design flaws may affect product performance to some degree, but the product still performs all or most of its functions to satisfaction. Hidden design flaws, the kind that manage to sneak unnoticed through product development and quality control, are usually subject to a recall and are generally easy to fix. The blame for many of these problems lies at the feet of the actual manufacturer, where cost- and corner-cutting practices are more common than corps want to admit. In most cases, the problem can be corrected on the manufacturing end, and further production runs will (theoretically) remain bug-free.
Some problems, however, not even a simple product recall will fix. This involves scrapping entire production runs, taking products off the market, and—assuming the damage done is not too great—reintroducing the improved model of the product at a later date.
The most glaring issues usually never make it out of the R&D department. In my experience, if any of these product-killing defects make it to market, it’s because someone wanted it to happen. Whether a shadowrun was responsible in some way or another, or someone sabotaged the project in order to make someone else look bad, or some other reason, these problems are engineered.
With regard to the Excalibur, this product defies all normal explanation because it falls into just about every category of problem I just mentioned. Any Jane Gunsmith can file off all of the M-256’s noticeable mold lines—a cosmetic issue—but the manufacturer’s use of cheap and flimsy parts in the rifle’s construction is more of a problem since Ms. Gunsmith can’t just recast the whole thing with higher quality material. The gun barrel overheating might prompt a product recall, but I’ve heard tell that even skilled electricians can’t get the internal smartlink to cooperate when it inevitably malfunctions.
mag is still empty—and the rifle refuses to fire. Around this point, the barghest grabs him by the ankle, pulls him to the ground, and chews off the arm holding the faulty Excalibur. This guy survived and, if you can believe it, he’s trying to slap Ares with a class action lawsuit over the ordeal—using a fake identity, of course.
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Good luck getting that kind of litigation to actually make it to court. He should know there are far easier ways to squeeze money out of a AAA megacorp. That guy must not be very creative.>
Mr. Bonds>
Man, I’ll bet that barghest had a rather disarming smile.>
Slamm-0!>
Is there a mute button on this thing somewhere?>
Glitch exhibit 3Here’s the real kicker. A runner hunting ghouls in Amazonia loaded his Excalibur with EX-explosive rounds. He fired no more than two or three rounds before the entire magazine exploded, taking his hand—and most of the rifle’s innards—right along with it.
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Served him right.>
HannibelleThe skeptic in me was inclined to believe this as sensationalism riding the coattails of other Excalibur horror stories, but a gunsmith friend who’d come across an Excalibur shipment that fell off the back of a truck decided to test the theory. Using EX-ex rounds and a remote trigger, she managed to duplicate the result on about three-fourths of the batch. Standard explosive rounds also did the trick, only with less reliability.
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Bah, that story’s apocryphal at best, and your friend’s re-enactment results are also dubious. I’ve never once heard of explosive rounds detonating inside the magazine like that. Sure, the ammo can misfire, or it could cook off if you’re—I dunno— inside a volcano or something, but this is a little ridiculous.>
Red Anya>
Caveat usor.>
Man-of-Many-Names>
On the other hand—no pun intended—this guy can now try out Evo’s new Adroit cyberlimb series.>
Plan 9 my analysisWhat bothers me most about the Excalibur’s problems is that bounty hunters and runners already have more than enough to worry about in a firefight. Now, thanks to the Excalibur, we need to worry about the possibility of our own weapons turning against us at the worst possible moment.
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As if I wasn’t already paranoid enough. Thanks.>
Turbo BunnyAres
Trembl
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Here’s where things get really interesting. About some time in ’72, I found traces of some major upheaval within the Avalon project. Ares reassigned nearly every major employee that I’ve linked as being attached to the project, from the product manager and lead developer to some of the lower developers and QC personnel. The lead developer’s name was always corrupted on every document I managed to get my hands on, but a hacker friend managed to reconstruct a handful of possible names. After cross- referencing these names with some corporate rosters, I found a plausible match: Penelope de la Renta, a self-styled “dragon expert” currently working for Aztechnology.
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You have got to be kidding me. I was only half serious.>
Butch>
I smell extraction.>
DangerSenseiWhy a dragon expert was working on a manatech weapon is anyone’s guess, but the part that truly intrigues me is the aftermath of the employee shuffle. Avalon uprooted its entire operation and moved locations. Now, it’s not uncommon for a lab to move from one floor to another to make room for a new project, but we’re talking about something on a completely different scale here. What’s weirder is the old lab location is on complete lockdown. Best I can tell, the site’s been abandoned except for on-site security. I hired a shaman friend to assense the lab as best he could, and he wouldn’t speak to me for weeks afterwards. Something went down in that lab that forced Avalon to relocate, and I’d bet my next bounty (and then some) that de la Renta or Aztechnology is directly responsible.
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Let me guess: location withheld to protect the innocent?>
Plan 9>
Hey, if you want to do some digging to find out where this abandoned lab is, be my guest. All I’m saying is, that shaman friend of mine? He still isn’t returning my calls.>
SticksThe Excalibur project ultimately rose from Avalon’s ashes. According to accounting files I’ve nabbed, Ares had sunk so much money into Avalon, and the project had nothing to show for it. The lead developer was gone, and most of the employees had either jumped ship or been reassigned to other divisions. Rather than absorb the loss, Ares decided to repurpose Avalon into a more mundane direction to help recoup at least some of their investment. All of those unnecessarily ornate workings along the whole rifle? Those are throwbacks to the Hermetic aspects of the original project. Even the name provides a casual link.
The costs to engineer a standard firearm are dramatically lower than those to create anything with manatech applications, so theoretically Excalibur should’ve been so cheap to produce that the balance sheets of Ares Arms wouldn’t even notice. To take advantage of this, Ares drafted fiscally conservative employee Kellie Douglas as Excalibur’s product manager and lead developer. Despite her efforts, the seemingly simple task of converting a magical weapon into a slug-thrower went beyond even her capabilities. The project developed countless gremlins. Prototypes
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I’m more concerned about whether or not a recall would manageto keep the Excalibur from—I dunno—blowing up in my hand?
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Hard Exit>
That visual is never getting old.>
Slamm-0!So, aside from gross incompetence, how did such drastic problems make it to market? Well, I’ve done a little digging, and here’s what I’ve been able to uncover.
Codename: avalon
What we’ve all come to know and love as the Excalibur M-256 Battle Rifle began with humble origins as a top secret Ares project codenamed Avalon. I’ve found evidence going as far back as ’70, but my nuyen is on the true genesis of the project being Crash 2.0 or even earlier. While early details about the project are sketchy, my research shows that Avalon had definite manatech applications. By assembling the pieces I had and seeing the shape of the negative space, the picture became much clearer.
Avalon was a weapon unlike any Ares had developed before. Initial forays into the design entailed a crude, grenade-launcher- like apparatus. The magazine would be loaded with special capsules made of magical reagents, and magicians would anchor a spell to each capsule. Theory was, the capsules would release their anchored spells on impact and do a lot of damage when the fireball or what-have-you went off. Early Avalon R&D intended for the device to be a poor man’s portable combat mage: less need for expensive magical support while on a battlefield.
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Wait. Don’t tell me this is the granddaddy of that super-secret anti-dragon weapon Aztechnology’s supposedly been working on for the last number of years.>
ButchAll of the prototypes failed spectacularly. In most cases, the anchored spells would not activate at all without the presence of a magician nearby to trigger them. In other, more extreme cases, the spells would literally fire off while still in the magazine. To quote from various status reports I managed to resurrect, the Avalon often “caused the spontaneous immolation of the firer” or “inflicted explosive trauma to the phalanges and metacarpals of the
subject’s firing hand.”
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Huh. Where have I heard that before?>
Slamm-0!>
Seriously? You are incorrigible.>
Glitch>
No, no, for real this time. I vaguely recall hearing a rumor about some project the Big A was working on. A weapon that accidentally set the user on fire or something stupid like that.>
Slamm-0!>
Well, well. Maybe this is the Azzie’s solution to the Sirrurg problem…Ares
Trembl
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pull off the kind of sabotage required for this fiasco. If Erdmann was responsible, someone else had to be pulling his strings. theory no. 3
This is the explanation is perhaps the most farfetched, but there are enough threads leading to it that I can’t discount it entirely. Honestly, this theory is the one that disturbs me the most. I’ve recently uncovered what may be a tenuous link between Avalon and Ares board member Nicholas Aurelius. According to one source, Aurelius signed off on Avalon. I can’t find any evidence of his hands in Avalon’s day-to-day operations, however, so it could have merely been a rubber-stamp approval of a project proposal he just skimmed over. Given Aurelius’ other areas of interest, Avalon would normally fall into Damien Knight’s wheelhouse.
Another disturbing bit of information among the surviving Avalon documents is a lone, isolated reference to insect spirits that immediately piqued my interest. Following that lead resulted in another dead end.
So what would Aurelius and bug spirits have to do with a failed product launch? It’s my current belief that Aurelius secretly commissioned the original Avalon specifically for combatting bugs. The product didn’t perform to spec, and Aurelius ordered it scrapped. However, someone else in the Ares boardroom caught wind of the failure and decided to sabotage Avalon’s legacy. Despite Avalon being canceled, Excalibur still fell under Aurelius’ aegis and would be the best vehicle for his enemies to publicly shame him before the rest of the board.
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My nuyen is on Knight. Aurelius and Arthur Vogel have gotten along in the past, but mostly as allies of convenience against Knight’s voting bloc. Of course, that doesn’t mean Vogel’s not above trying to even the playing field in his favor.>
Fianchetto>
We still don’t know who ordered that failed hit on Vogel. For all we know, Aurelius (with prior approval of Gavilan Ventures, of course) ordered it. And for the last time: no, I didn’t have anything to do with the attempted hit, thanks for asking. If I were, Vogel wouldn’t still be breathing.>
Riser>
Am I the only one still trying to figure out what possible link Avalon—and by extension, Aurelius—would have with bug spirits? Ares has a sordid history with bugs, but Aurelius doesn’t strike me as the type to either take up the crusade against them or enter into any kind of Faustian bargain with the bastards.>
Ethernaut>
It’s the ones you never suspect that you need to watch out for.>
Plan 9>
Still, it makes me wonder whether there’s more to the story. If I weren’t so creeped out by what Sticks said earlier about the Avalon lab being mysteriously abandoned, I’d have half a mind to check it out myself. For personal edification, of course.>
Ethernaut>
Let the dead sleep in peace. problems. This thing was already a disaster. Avalon losses aside,Excalibur was costing too much to design a firearm that, according to internal documents, “was never intended to dispense normal munitions.” Douglas’s eventual replacement did such a terrible job that Ares put Douglas back on the project to staunch the fiscal bleeding. This didn’t help, of course, because the Excalibur was already too close to missing its launch window, which would cost Ares untold sums spent on marketing and advertisements.
At some point Douglas got a memo from Ares Arms CEO General Zachary Clausen, which told her to send the latest prototype to production. “We’ll fix the problem in manufacturing,” the message claimed. The best part of this sordid little exchange? Clausen never sent this message. A trace on the data trail was inconclusive, but it certainly doesn’t lead to any Ares Arms nodes.
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Or anything even peripherally Ares-related, for that matter.>
NetcatAs we all know, manufacturing alone couldn’t solve the Excalibur’s manifold problems. And manufacturing never received any feedback on the finished product, either positive or negative. As far as Ares Arms manufacturing was concerned, the M-256 produced in the factory performed exactly up to spec and was flying off the shelves. Who was responsible for squelching this feedback is something I’m still trying to figure out.