#koyukon

Let Us Have a Story - Mask

Kathleen Carlo (Koyukon Athabascan)

bass wood, pigments, buttit shells, hair, feathers, mexican milagros, copper tacks. 24” x 21” x 2”

This mask features a number of non-traditional objects that are hallmarks of Kathleen Carlo’s style: bullet casings, Mexican milagros charms, and automobile inspection mirrors. Each of these elements is significant: the halo of mirrors is a tribute to the passing of fellow mask-maker Lawrence Beck (Yup’ik) who taught Carlo at a seminal two week workshop at the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and helped her on the path to her career. The milagros charms in the mask’s mouth are traditional Mexican prayer charms: a parishioner would buy one in the form of a trouble or ill in their lives and take it to church with them. For Carlo, her masks speak of these troubles and ills, perhaps solving them through prayer, story or song. The addition of bullet casings–or buttit shells–signifies the importance of hunting for Carlo and many natives in Alaska. Raised on a subsistence diet of gathered and hunted foods–such as salmon, berries and moose meat–Carlo adds the shells to connote the human element in the more spiritual world of the mask.

A note on spelling: NAN Vol. 2 spells it as above, though the map at the back spells it as “Athabaskan”, and future Shadowrun editions use the “k” spelling. There are two other spelling variants, at least for the eponymous language family, exchanging the “b” with a “p” to make Athapascan and Athapaskan.

Notice that splotch in the American Southwest? That’s the Navajo Nation, as discussed here.

And ironically, the Athabascan tribes (Koyukon, Yellowknife, Chilcotin, Dené) make up a minority (40%) of the population, with the non-Athabascan Aleut and Inuit making up the majority.

Let’s be honest: Athabascan Council is boring.

If the NAN were the Seattle Metroplex, Athabasca would be Snohomish: way up north, beautiful land, but no one goes there.

As such I don’t have a lot to say about it, so instead, I’ve decided to take some of the plot hooks peppering this section and spruce them up into Sprawl Sites style mini-adventures. Roll a d6...

Six Runs in the Athabascan Council

1.       Kraken Attacken’

The Plot Hook: “What about that ferry that got taken down by a fragging kraken two years back?”

The Mr. Johnson: Rich eccentric old man, Ahab Ishmael, hires the team to recover valuables from a relative who was on that kraken-sunken ferry. He offers to fully fund an expedition, provided he can come with.

The Twist: Ahab is really hunting for the kraken, and of course, being shadowrunners, they get attacked by one.

2.       Snow Moose Hunt

The Plot Hook: “You know what a snow moose is? I’ll put it in words of one syllable: twice as tall as a man, big as a house, mean as a cage of rats.”

The Mr. Johnson: Another rich eccentric old man, Pequod Starbuck, wants some shadowrunners to poach a snow moose so he can mount its head and giant antlers in his office.

The Twist: The team starts tracking a snow moose, only to find a group of Dené doing the same – except the tribe wants it for its meat and hide to help survive the winter. ETHICAL CONFLICT!

3.       Biogene back again

The Plot Hook: “In 2011 Biogene Laboratories Inc. marketed the first efficient oil-leeching bacteria and the Tar Sands were once more an economic boon.”

The Mr. Johnson: A standard mirror-shades black-suited ultra-corper, hiring the runners to retrieve a Biogene bacterial sample from the Athabascan Tar Sands.

The Twist: Biogene was the company behind the run against Aztechnology in DNA/DOA, and so it was Aztechnology that has hired the team for a bit of payback.

4.       Free Willies

The Plot Hook: “You’ve heard about fish farming, right? Well, how about whale farming?”

The Mr. Johnson: The team is hired by “Deerhunter”, who is an Athabaskan native looking to arrange a meet with Hollis Baynes, CEO of Farm-the-Sea, Inc., who is in Seattle to pitch a whale farming project to Salish-Shidhe Council representatives.

The Twist: When it becomes apparent that “Deerhunter” aims to slaughter Baynes in a toxic ritual, the team must rush to Edmonton to save their rep.

5.       Let’s Start a War!

The Plot Hook: “The Athabascan Council continues to insist, according to its 2035 decision, that the UCAS remove all DEW sensor stations from Athabascan lands.”

The Mr. Johnson: Dick Herman, a grizzled, military lumberjack type, needs a decker to crash a “cold” network, as in, not connected to the Matrix, but also, it’s the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar station network. A decker and friends are to meet a contact in the town of Deadhorse, Athabasca, who will help them infiltration the station on Oliktok Point.

The Twist: Clues from their Johnson, and their contact, indicate they have UCAS military ties, and some investigation from the locals in Prudhoe Bay reveal that crashing the DEW network could be viewed as a provocation that could lead to war.

6.       Snow-Snow-Snow Gangs

The Plot Hook: “The go-gangs adapt to the conditions, of course. In the winter, they don’t use bikes, they use snowmobiles and customized Hovercats, with weapons fixed on hardpoints or firmpoints.”

No Mr. Johnson or Twist here – just the runners getting attacked by a snowmobile gang.

Fish On in Spirit - Mask

Kathleen Carlo (Koyukon Athabascan)