Can we beatt he Horrors?, It needed its own thread. Options

[Ol' Scratch]

No, I have a sense of humor. But what your "joke" was trying to convey was flat out wrong. Again.

[Sixgun_Sage]

No, I have a sense of humor. But what your "joke" was trying to convey was flat out wrong. Again.

Really, you're going to argue the accuracy of a joke? Really? Please do tell, precisely how long did it take to force an entire baseball bat up your backside?

[Kagetenshi]

No, I have a sense of humor.

It's true, he does.

(I missed you, Doc (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) )

~J

[Ol' Scratch]

Really, you're going to argue the accuracy of a joke? Really?

When you use it as part of your argument in order to draw emphasis to it, yes... yes I will. I have this really bad habit of reading the whole of an argument rather than just one sentence at a time. Sue me.

[Sixgun_Sage]

Sixgun, you've lost this fight. The Horrors have been doing recon on us for quite awhile and there is no indication in the published material that they will even chip a tooth on your complex fears and modern understanding. Like the Doc said, if you don't want them in your game, then don't have them in your game. The only clear facts here are that they were an issue and have been foreshadowed as an issue in the future.

Can we beat them? My sources say no, but it's going to be interesting no matter what.

I'd admit that this does something to help them understand us, but I've pointed out before why this isn't a major concern, namely the stated methods, motivations and psychology of the Horrors is such that the named Horrors don't really consider us a threat and are therefor in for a rather rude awakening. There are counters extant for all their stated advantages except for the "mind games" they pull, and those look more like the amateurish work of a "bigger hammer" style problem solver with a familiarity with 80's splatter-fest movies that anything else to me.

[Sixgun_Sage]

When you use it as part of your argument in order to draw emphasis to it, yes... yes I will. I have this really bad habit of reading the whole of an argument rather than just one sentence at a time. Sue me.

Except it was not central to the argument itself, it was a throw-away line, if you are incapable of understanding that when it has been fairly clearly stated I have to question your higher reasoning capabilities. Look at the way these things torment their prey, their understanding of human psychology is crude and basic at best. Does this mean they are bad techniques? Yes and no, in isolated incidents they can prove effective, but in an information age society the term isolated incident is a polite fiction.

[Ol' Scratch]

Fine.

Except the amount of things, activities, objects and constructs has grown, this alone means greater complexity. And then, once again, you have the fact that Horrors are so far removed from human or metahuman perspective that the things the higher order ones, the named ones, do to gain sustenance is the fodder for schlocky horror movies. Gentlemen, the enemy are not old and unknowable gods, the enemy are a bunch of Freddy Kreuger ripoffs with an army of Deadites. Scary? Yes. Beatable? Certainly.

Apparently, someone isn't familiar with the dragons' creation myths, which state that the Horrors were basically the creators of all life. Which, in turn, makes them gods. Which, most defintely in turn, makes them very, very old gods. You're also incorrect about them being far removed from metahuman perspectives. Despite not being able to physically enter our realm, they influence our world on a daily basis. Aztechnology is all but corrupted by them already. Entire cults are dedicated to them. The Great Ghost Dance was all but orchestrated by either them or their agents in order to expedite their entry to our world. A world that they are very well versed in. Even the footsoldiers of the footsoldiers (ie, Shadow Spirits and Shedim) have had absolutely no trouble whatsoever acclimating to the world and fucking up people's bodies, minds and souls. Again, page 147 of Street Magic lists some of the myriad ways they do so. And despite your completely inaccurate and blatantly wrong hypothesis about modern metahumans being too complex to be influenced, they are easily influenced by every conceivable reference one can find in the game.

Do their footsoldiers more closely resemble "Freddy Kreuger ripoffs with an army of Deadites?" Sure. But the big guys are about as close to god-like as you can get in the game, especially if the dragon's creation myths are accurate. And they certainly seem to be.

Throw-away line my ass.

[Sixgun_Sage]

Actually, that's the thing, I've been aware of and moderately familiar with the dragon creation myth for some time. The line you seem so fixated upon was meant in jest as a comparison of Chantrel's Horror who has been discussed extensively in this selfsame thread to Freddy Kreuger, though in point of fact it is a fairly apt comparison of their methodologies. Your point about the shedim and such is exactly my point, turned on it's head. Shedim are limited beings with a fairly uniform baseline and upper end as well as fairly limited and therefor quantifiable capabilities. This is a serviceable description of all the lower end Horror-based threats that have come through whose job it is to prepare the way. The nature of their existence makes them suited to the task, form follows function and all that. The fact that they've managed to bring a group that was already aping the depravities of a culture based on bloody human sacrifice into the fold is not impressive in my eyes.

[Grinder]

There is a difference between "PCs can only achieve X power, Horrors have Y power and Y>X" and "Horrors have player power + X".

But yeah, I don't play horror games. I'd not call Earthdown a horror game though, and I doubt many would - I'd call it a heroic fantasy game, like D&D. And in those games having eternally-unkillable enemies is bad design.

But Horrors are killable in the Earthdawn setting, even the big bad motherfuckers like Big V can be killed by a group of dedicated and well-prepared Circle-15-adepts (and a small army (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ).

[Ol' Scratch]

I'm completely missing your point then.

You're saying that the Horrors are a dismissible threat because they have their own motives and outlooks that share next to nothing with metahumanity's? Despite being able to utterly corrupt, control, scar, and/or destroy nearly anything in their path regardless of that fact. And, again, these are the weak little nobodies in the Horror's arsenal we're talking about here. Minor little peons that aren't even a microscopic glint in the eye of a true Horror.

Hell, you can't really even look to Earthdawn for an accurate representation of what the Horrors have access to; that setting took place well after the majority of the Horrors had to retreat back to their realm, and the only ones that were still around were weak little nobodies and the occasional moderately powerful ones who found some way to stick around. And despite the veil being that far closed, they were still screwing people over left and right with ease. People who were already hardened to millenia of the terrors they unleashed.

And are you really implying that Daniel Howling Coyote and his followers were depraved and blood-thirsty? Or even weak-willed? I can answer that for you: No. But the road to Hell is often paved with good intentions, and the Horrors (much like the demons that were inspired by them within the context of the game's universe, including Satan himself) love to feed off that fact. As well as every other single weakness there is, and even some that we can't even dream of. But they can.

Because, again, metahumanity is easy to influence, control and dominate. Despite your unfounded and wholly inaccurate theory to the contrary.

[Cthulhudreams]

Dunno, but it's on page 147 of MitS. This is, you may or may not have noticed, an SR3 and earlier thread.


It's about as useful as the plants are, noting that there's an implication that Spirits aren't actually limited in what they create with Wealth (since the example of certain spirits being able to make valuable tapestry, etc is given).

~J

What? Sugar cane is way more useful than precious metals for making machines of war (you need both, but you need much more petrol and plastic), because an Earth dawn adept can produce over 2200 kilos a day without breaking a sweat. Plus, he can do that with no risk every day, while invoking a great form spirit takes resource input and is not as repeatable because it is highly risky.

[Kagetenshi]

It doesn't help you with petroleum specifically, but you can simply stick the spirit or mage on a mountaintop and then capture kinetic energy with a scoop-bearing wheel. Why a mountaintop? Then you can just let the precious metals roll down it.

Great Form spirits do not have Wealth, Free Spirits do. Bind the Free Spirit and you're good to go for the rest of that mage's life.

~J

[Cthulhudreams]

My bad. Either way it certainly does not have the universal applicability of the ED adepts, and heck, it might not even work (due to the source being deliberately unclear, it could just be stealing it from bankvaults)

[Kagetenshi]

Even if it does steal from bank vaults, the let-it-turn-a-generating-wheel-and-then-fall-down-the-side-of-the-mountain plan still works; you no longer get matter from nothing, but you still get free energy.

~J

[Cthulhudreams]

No, because you still have the inputs needed to rebind the spirit with services. Plus, you will eventually die given how many times a day you need to do that to atch the energy production of 2200 kilos of sugar cane a day.

Given that magical binding stuff has to be manually harvested by people, I seriously doubt it's even close to energy positive, and I suspect is highly negative. Also there are not atleast ~6 million people capable of doing that ever day. (or thus producing 12.4 million tons a day).

It's not clear in Earthdawn how many people have the potential to do that every day, but it's atleast 1 in a 1000

[Kagetenshi]

Bound free spirits never run out of services. MitS, p115.

~J

[Cthulhudreams]

Sorry, I never played 3rd edition, no do I have the books, no do I particularly care, sorry. Obviously unlimited energy got retconned out with 4th (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Joe Chummer]

Read earthdawn - the adepts have actual unlimited energy. In a system that loses energy via waste head and mechanical effort exerted by humans and has no energy input, the adepts kept people fed for 800 years by growing plants magically - or transmuting energy into matter.

The embodied energy in 1 persons food for 1 day is 1.79751036 × 10^17 joules of energy per person per day for 800 years supporting communities of 1000s. Which is the almost (2.1 x 10^17) the amount of energy, per day, per person released in by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba



Now, you can presume some recycling, so it might only be that much per 1000 per year, but it's still unlimited as long as the magic cycle is up. And that is a lot of energy. Like, total global energy consumption is 474 x 10^20 annually so it's quite possible the adepts alive in earth dawn in the Ukraine (only) could produce enough electrical power to power the entire world. Note: Ukraine had a lot less people.

This makes a bunch of assumptions about the ability to skip the transmutation phase and just barf out the energy, or atleast be able to make uranium or whatever, but yeah. The adepts in earth dawn had functionally unlimited energy.

Okay, so adepts in Earthdawn may have "functionally unlimited energy," but all magic -- which is what adept talents are -- has to have a price or a drawback or else -- from a character and a roleplaying perspective -- the process is essentially overpowered, unbalanced, and boring. A lot of adept talents require Strain to use, which translates to voluntary physical damage -- essentially a personal sacrifice. Adepts also sacrifice a bit for their worldview, because they must see the world through the lens of their chosen discipline, must adhere to its rituals or risk losing faith in their talents.

Let's face it: an adept who can wave his hand and make food or whatnot appear out of thin air without ever having to concentrate on weaving complicated spell threads into a spell matrix or sacrifice points of strain would be relentlessly boring and completely unfair.

MAGIC (or any other power, for that matter) ALWAYS CARRIES A PRICE, whether you know exactly what that price is nor not, and any writer worth their salt will tell you the same. So unless your ethics allows for a world with sweatshops filled with malnourished adepts forced to use their talents every waking minute until they strain themselves into sleep, death, or a coma, I don't think this is feasible.

[Kagetenshi]

Obviously unlimited energy got retconned out with 4th (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

They had to do something right, so I guess this is it.

~J

[Cthulhudreams]

Earthdawn adepts did it every day for 800 years without dying from drain. Whatever price they paid is far less than the actual cost of production. Incidently, it's hardly a sweatshop. With todays prices, you'd make 600 dollars a day making sugar cane, which makes you quite wealthy by my estimate (230 working days a year = salary of $138,000).

[Fuchs]

But Horrors are killable in the Earthdawn setting, even the big bad motherfuckers like Big V can be killed by a group of dedicated and well-prepared Circle-15-adepts (and a small army (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ).

Then the 6th world should have no problem at all, since whatever people in the 4th world could do, the 6th world will be able to do as well in a hundred yearts, tops. And when we add technology the 4th world could not even dream of the outcome should be clear.

[Joe Chummer]

Earthdawn adepts did it every day for 800 years without dying from drain. Whatever price they paid is far less than the actual cost of production. Incidently, it's hardly a sweatshop. With todays prices, you'd make 600 dollars a day making sugar cane, which makes you quite wealthy by my estimate (230 working days a year = salary of $138,000).

So basically you're writing it off as the "It's MAGIC... *shrug*" argument?

Mana, astral space, the metaplanes, and all of that -- they might seem mysterious to us mundanes, but they at least work on the same rigid set of rules laid out since time immemorial. Mana has to come FROM SOMEWHERE, and thus, there is always a price.

Also, if an adept capable of making sugarcane showed up in some country that is lacking in human-rights laws (China, for example) and started feeding the masses with his gift (whether altruistically or by profiting off of it), I can guarantee you one of the feudal governments or some megacorp (like Wuxing) would snatch him up, make him vanish, and exploit the hell out of him until he can't even move, forcing him to create 100 times more magical sugar than he was making before they nabbed him. If more of these candy-slingers cropped up, they would also disappear into the cogs of the machine. No rights = no problem, as far as a government like this is concerned. Forced metahuman labor: it's not as far-fetched of an idea as you might think, especially in the 6th world.

[toturi]

Sixgun, you've lost this fight. The Horrors have been doing recon on us for quite awhile and there is no indication in the published material that they will even chip a tooth on your complex fears and modern understanding. Like the Doc said, if you don't want them in your game, then don't have them in your game. The only clear facts here are that they were an issue and have been foreshadowed as an issue in the future.

Can we beat them? My sources say no, but it's going to be interesting no matter what.

There's no indication in the published material they won't chip tooth or they won't simply just die when they come into contact with modern concepts.

The Horrors were the ultimate bogeymen in Earthdawn. In Earthdawn literature, that was their purpose. In SR literature, they were foreshadowed as harbingers of doom, but they were temporarily thwarted and later more permanently delayed. The point is that in SR up till 4A, the Horrors were beat. What happens later is up to the writers. In Equinox, they are ultimately beaten.

Can we beat them? Foresight tell me yes, but at the cost of destroying a planet.

[Cthulhudreams]

So basically you're writing it off as the "It's MAGIC... *shrug*" argument?

Mana, astral space, the metaplanes, and all of that -- they might seem mysterious to us mundanes, but they at least work on the same rigid set of rules laid out since time immemorial. Mana has to come FROM SOMEWHERE, and thus, there is always a price.

Also, if an adept capable of making sugarcane showed up in some country that is lacking in human-rights laws (China, for example) and started feeding the masses with his gift (whether altruistically or by profiting off of it), I can guarantee you one of the feudal governments or some megacorp (like Wuxing) would snatch him up, make him vanish, and exploit the hell out of him until he can't even move, forcing him to create 100 times more magical sugar than he was making before they nabbed him. If more of these candy-slingers cropped up, they would also disappear into the cogs of the machine. No rights = no problem, as far as a government like this is concerned. Forced metahuman labor: it's not as far-fetched of an idea as you might think, especially in the 6th world.

Yes, imprisoning people who can cast magical fireballs and summon elementals that can destroy tanks in situations where they can still cast magic and torturing them is a survivable idea that will turn out well for the captors.

Actually no wait that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Why would you do that? It's like stepping into a lions cage and repeatedly poking him with a stick. Yes he can cast magic spells that summon sugar cane, but he can also summon the magic spells that make you explode in giant balls of fire right before they astrally teleport to the rest of your family and kill them to.

Remember this guy can do something that is literally impossible with SR4 magic. Hell maybe he can just make a gun and give out sugar candy like it's Halloween except that instead of candy he's giving out bullets.

[Joe Chummer]

Yes, imprisoning people who can cast magical fireballs and summon elementals that can destroy tanks in situations where they can still cast magic and torturing them is a survivable idea that will turn out well for the captors.

Actually no wait that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Why would you do that? It's like stepping into a lions cage and repeatedly poking him with a stick. Yes he can cast magic spells that summon sugar cane, but he can also summon the magic spells that make you explode in giant balls of fire right before they astrally teleport to the rest of your family and kill them to.

Remember this guy can do something that is literally impossible with SR4 magic. Hell maybe he can just make a gun and give out sugar candy like it's Halloween except that instead of candy he's giving out bullets.

Talk about an imagination not bound by rules. You don't think governments and megacorps have surefire methods for dealing with rogue magicians? If not, then the 1% of magically active people on this planet could singlehandedly take on the corps and governments and literally rule the planet. Magicians are just not that powerful. Introduce some Strain 3 Fat-Bacteria into a mage's system, and let's just see how long it takes him to drop. Or send a free spirit (bound by a spirit pact or some other deal) or a great form spirit after him if he's still acting up. He's just not going to last very long unless he's got a bevy of bound spirits in his astral pocket. And once you've incapacitated him and trapped him in a room with biofiber walls, a bit of leverage (his family held hostage, perhaps?), some mind-altering drugs, and/or a dual-natured critter sentry will help keep him in line.

I would also like to point out that an "adept" (of the Earthdawn variety) and a "magician" (of the "blowing up tanks" variety) are completely different things. In the ED sense, there are only 4 "adepts" capable of casting "spells" (wizards, nethermancers, elementalists, and illusionists), and all the rest use magic somatically to amplify their skills. In the SR sense, all "adepts" use somatic magic unless they happen to be mystic adepts, in which case their limited spellcasting abilities wouldn't easily be able to take out a tank.