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Bits and Pieces from the NR Trivia Collection
#4: Proteus

by Jens Kreutzer

Since September 1996, Netrunner has had just the one Proteus expansion, with which all of us had to be content for such a long time. But why is it called "Proteus" of all things? Sounds like Latin to me; so what has it got to do with the 'Net?

The text on the back of a Proteus booster pack gives us a hint with the statement, "Flexible new ice and icebreakers". Apparently, it weren't so much the Bad Publicity and hidden resource cards the designers considered paramount about this expansion, but the "morphing" ice and icebreaker cards, although players might have a different opinion. In this light, the name "Proteus" is very fitting, because in ancient Roman mythology, Proteus was a god famous for his astounding shape-shifting abilities. To get a taste of it, here's a quote taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses (translated from the Latin by Mary M. Innes, Penguin Classics edition, 1955):

"There are some [...] whose shape has been changed just once, and has then remained permanently altered. Others again have power to change into several forms. Take, for instance, Proteus, the god who dwells in the sea that encircles the earth. People have seen him at one time in the shape of a young man, at another transformed into a lion; sometimes he used to appear to them as a raging wild boar, or again as a snake, which they shrank from touching; or else horns transformed him into a bull. Often he could be seen as a stone, or a tree, sometimes he presented the appearance of running water, and became a river, sometimes he was the very opposite, when he turned into fire."

It seems that Proteus has found a new abode in netspace, then. And what do you know: Recently, he has been seen morphing into sentries, code gates, and walls as well. :-)