Max Deadroom is the posting handle of a living contradiction, he's simultaneously one of the most hated, and one of the safest, people in the metroplex. How did he accomplish this? Simply put, because he's very careful, he pays attention to detail, and he knows how to turn a situation to his advantage. But to really understand why, you need to be conversant with a 'runner tactic called deadmail. Deadmail is a form of insurance where information is left with someone with instructions to release it to the public in case you die. You leave data on whatever you are currently involved in so anyone with an urge to cack you will only guarantee drawing attention to themselves. Shadowrunners don't die of old age, and people pay a lot of attention to deadmail - because when a corp or crimelord has someone killed, it's usually because they have something to hide... and that something is usually worth big money to someone. Really clever slots will split the paydata, giving some people an encrypted file and arranging for the decryption key to be publicly broadcast by other agents if they die. There are dozens of ways to do it.
Max Furstenberger made his name after the death of another KSAF flack who was investigating illegal waste dumping by a Mitsuhama subsidiary. Two days after her death in a suspicous car accident, Max received a copy of her notes. Through a combination of perseverence, dumb luck, and selling his car to pay for some shadowrunners, he managed to crucify the CEO of Molino Plastics, leading to his very messy public suicide in court when he apparently detonated his own cortex bomb in an attempt to take Max with him as he finished his testimony. It didn't hurt his story's popularity that he actually accompanied the runners into the Molino compound, and his recordings of the run (with the runners faces blotted out, of course) made him a small mint in syndication.
So what does this have to do with his current status? Well, after the story broke, everyone and his mother could see how effective Deadmail could be in the hands of a trained reporter... like Max. They could also see how he played straight with the runners he hired (they mentioned the recording a couple of times during the run, spirits know I wouldn't let someone see all my tricks, so he must have paid them a bundle) and the facial blurs and voice distortions were first rate to protect their identities as 'sources'. So everyone and their uncle put Max on their Deadmail distributions 'just in case'.
Only, I don't think anyone had any idea just how many people did this. Deadmail is one of those things you don't discuss with strangers (for obvious reasons). But everyone found out a couple of years later when Max was investigating allegations of corruption within a certain precinct at Lone Star. The corruption went a lot higher than anyone thought - at least to the precinct manager - and Max was quietly scooped up while a body double was killed in a fiery crash after a high speed chase. Someone was smart enough to make sure no one looked for Max while they sweated him - only the law of unintended consequences bit them on the hoop.
When the story broke, someone commented on ShadowSea, wondering where Max kept the deadmail files the person in question had sent him. Then someone echoed that concern. And someone else. Then after innumerable "me too" posts, we realized that fragging near everyone with a commlink had gotten the same brilliant idea. Only now they had no idea where Max had hidden the goods. And that was probably a good thing, right?
The crooked Star cops must have had at least one stoolie monitoring the Dark Emerald, because according to Max, they interrupted the interrogation to ask him where he stored all the dead mail everyone had sent him to keep. Max just smiled then, and said he'd been waiting for someone to ask an intelligent question. (I dunno if he really said that though. It would take some cojones to do that to someone that literally had a gun to your head.) The answer was simple. He'd placed copies of the files, along with his own deadmail, with fourteen different lawyers, chosen at random from the Seattle directory, with instructions on how to get it to every senior reporter on the KSAF network, Hisato-Turner Broadcasting, and Newsnet. Their orders specified to release it 24 hours after his confirmed death, or if he ever asked for the files back. (There was also a shunt set up between his matrix account and law offices... if he didn't periodically rescind the order, anything mailed to him went into that paydata for distribution as well. Very slick.)
Evidently, Max figured those files were the most likely cause of his eventual death, and wanted to make sure he took his murderer with him.
Needless to say, this threw his captors into a bit of a quandry. Some of the tarnished Stars wanted to waste him anyway, some wanted to release him and cut a plea bargain, and some wanted to try out some experimental brain-benders on Max and then release him.
What happened next is a little murky. We don't know if the corps already had moles inside the precinct, or if some enterprising soul saw an opportunity to sell out his brothers in blue. But we all know approximately when it happened, because that's when everyone's commlink went off at the same time.
Nineteen different runner crews were hired to hit that precinct immediately, in broad daylight, and secure Max's release. Spirits know how much dirt he had on the various corps, but I don't think anyone was willing to take any chances. As far as we can tell, almost every AAA and AA corp with offices in the metroplex was at least partially behind what looked less like a shadowrun and more like armed insurrection.
That afternoon, the public was treated to the spectacle of seeing a Lone Star precinct house getting flattened like a Nuke-it Burger wrapper. The matrix assault kicked it off when nearly a score of combat deckers seized their node and held it for over two hours. Star deckers from all over North America converged on the beseiged node, but in their arrogance they came in piecemeal, rather than coordinating a combined strike. The hackers included some hardened survivors from Crash2.0, not to mention people who'd fought off Deus's Otaku back in the day. The Star deckers had a very bad day, and were savaged as soon as they arrived, embarassing the Matrix division even more than Internal Affairs once the day was over. It was an impressive show of solidarity, though I think Slamm-O! altering the exterior iconography to look like someone had spray painted "Come and get it, b*tches!" was a little over the top.
Of course, the matrix assault was only the prelude. The rest of the runners blew down their defenses nearly as quickly though. My awakened friends swears he'd never seen that many summoned spirits in one place before, and reputedly the building had a substantial background count biased toward chaotic magic for weeks afterward. Between the fireballs and the weapons fire, an estimated $85 million nuyen worth of damage was inflicted on the site, though the Star claimed the building as a total loss to their insurance. Starting over on a new site with new officers was probably they only way they could play it.
The Johnsons who organized this little "Corporate Court Zero Order on the Cheap" must have had some inkling what was happening, because their instructions to the teams were just to make sure Max made it out alive - not that they had to deliver him. Which was good thinking, because nineteen teams fighting over the same prisoner could have gotten very ugly very fast.
In the end, Max was freed, his deadmail didn't go public, but to the public he himself came back from being dead in the midst of the most violent story of 2069. The Pulitzer for the first person account of his captivity definitely helped his career, as did the book deal. Though most of the money he made from the two departed with his ex-wife. Nice timing there, Marcia.
And now everyone has realized that Max is like a walking dead man switch for the frigging metroplex. No corp dares make a move on him, because no one knows what the hell he might have squirrelled away in his deadmail, just waiting to be released. Of course, his immunity doesn't extend to ignorant street punks and random chance, so he has a DocWagon Platinum Plus contract paid up through 2100 by 'anonymous donations'.
And Max? Well, he's never wanted to be anything but a reporter, so he's still going out and raking the muck, looking for things he thinks the public needs to know. If you have hard data on something like that, Max will see that it gets out. If you try to play him, he'll burn you to the ground, so be warned. And don't even think of trying to hurt him.
<<< Dr. Spin>>>
With all the info he has, I think it says something that he's never once tried to blackmail anyone or try to get something for himself. If he receives a file with instuctions on when to open it, he treats it like a confidential source and abides by the restriction. It's probably one of the main reasons he's still alive.
<<<Greeneyes>>>
Over the top? It took those Star wannbees 24 hours to restore the iconography, even after they rebooted the node. That ROM-hack was a work of a art!
<<<Slamm-O!>>>
The man's co-workers tend to call him "Mad Max" and he goes through producers and camera jocks like tissue paper. 18-hour days are not that unusual for his team, and he guzzles cheap soy-kaf constantly. Serious workaholic.
<<<El Guapo>>>
His holier-than-thou schtick gets tiresome after a while, but he's good at what he does. He's like a damn bulldog, never letting go of a story. Just don't think he'll let friendship get in the way of a good story.
<<<Burned Notice>>>