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

[toturi]

[Thane36425]

[nezumi]

I feel like the horrors' most dangerous weapon is diversity in their attacks. In response, our best solution is diversity in defenses. With billions of people around, I see no reason why we wouldn't implement most of the ideas suggested, including an autonomous lab that, a few thousand years in the future, takes a bunch of preserved embryos or eggs and sperm and creates a new group of metahumans in the case that everyone previous has been killed off.

Actually, that would make for a very interesting RPG. You and your companions are alive on this bountiful planet where once a great civilization thrived, but now has been left to seed and the remains of whatever the horrors twisted and mutated during their stay.

[will_rj]

at least this time i voted.
I was a lurker without a login back in those days. Now i am a lurker with a login, big deal.

Edit: I was just promoted to Moving Target, oh my. :|

[hyzmarca]

Their diversity does not make them dangerous, it makes them weak. Because they do not have any sort of coordination their ability to damage metahuman society is rather limited. Their strength comes in sheer numbers and sheer power, but a cordinated effort by a group of metahumans can take down even the most powerful of Horrors. In fact, many solitary Horrors have been been slain by bands of metahuman adventurers and crusaders.

[emo samurai]

hyzmarca, diversity isn't always a barrier to coordination. After all, we have a navy, an army, and an air force, not a bunch of redcoats marching around with airsoft rifles. If coordination works well enough, then diversity will help them kick our ass.

Not that they will, of course. I have a feeling that they need to get to our plane of existence because outside of it, they can't develop all that well. There's something special about the physical plane for them, and I think they need to feed here. So while we're inventing shit, they're eating each other alive, because whatever metaplane they're on isn't enough for them to survive easily.

[James McMurray]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

If the Horrors come on a global because your GM wants them, then whether we can beat them or not will be up to him.

If they come in a FanPro product then whether we beat them or not will depend on the continued marketability of a Horror-blasted Earth.

From an in-game perspective whether we can beat them or not isn't really determinable, because so little is known about them. Heck, we don't even know if they can be nuked or not, and whether it requires one like was used on Chicago or a regular one will do the job.

[hyzmarca]

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Ravor]

Although I have to agree with James on whether 'offical Fan-Pro' Horrors could be beaten or not, I'd say more then likely they would simply skip ahead to Earthdawn II instead of playing through the actual Scrouge...

However, a common theme that I've noticed in the Pro-Human side is the idea that meta-humanity would band together in unity to face the Horrors and thus be able to hold them at bay if not wipe the floor with them, and to that I ask this simple question, when has humanity ever banded in near-total unity to accomplish anything at all? (Look at the panic over terrorism/security and how quickly people are to rush to judgement there.)

Now on the flip-side, I don't believe that the Horrors are paragons of unity either but then again I don't think they really have to be as my understanding is that they don't really have an over-arching goal other then to feed, so that even if they could wipe meta-humanity out completely as a 'race' they wouldn't...

Of course I could be wrong given that I'm not a huge Earthdawn fan. *winks*

*Edit*

For those who don't like my terrorism example, then think about the various factions and their disagreements on how best to wage the Cold War.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Interesting... And long-running... Topic.

I know it's probably worthless to say it, but...

Here's the ways I see it going down.

1: The world is flooded by some descendant of FAB-III. Suddenly the majority of Horrors are no longer a threat. Military drone riggers, hidden in very deep bunkers whose connections to the surface are either flooded with FAB-III, Mana Warps, or both. These will deal with any manifested horrors, and plenty of them are going to wind up having to manifest. The war drags on for a Very Long Time, with the Horrors unable to breach the underground bunkers except through the old-fasioned way of breaking down the door - doors which are guarded by main battle tanks, emplaced guns, and Dragons. (Dragons will by now have learned that if you don't work with Metahumanity, you die opposed to them.) The war drags on a very long time, Horrors scrimping by, wandering a blasted wasteland, hunted from the skies above and the black above it, ranging from surface holdout to holdout for what meals they can find, preying on themselves as they can, and eventually get forced to abandon Earth.


2: Metahumanity cannot stand and fight as they would like to do. As the Horrors start threatening to cross over, Metahumanity builds huge arcs and lifts off to claim their birthright amongst the stars. As the Scourge starts in full, Metahumanity turns their most powerful weapons and destructive magics back on the cradle of their civilization, cracking the planet Earth like an egg. In an instant, the horrors are flashed out of existance - those which were manifested by obvious means, those which were inhabiting the Astral find themselves in the middle of a Grade-A Mana Warp which is rapidly dissipating into a Mana Nothingness.

At this point, number 2 diverges.

2a. Metahumanity moves forth to settle other planets, finding them devoid of the Horrors. Terraforming is done, and in not too long, Mars and other inhabitable planets farther away have Manaspheres capable of supporting the suspended Dragons and other such creatures that Metahumanity brought with it.


2b. Metahumanity finds that the other worlds offer no safe haven from the Horrors. The great ships ply the void, forging asteroids and planets for materials, using robotic drones, and eventually the ships grow greater, until they sustain their own manaspheres strong enough to support the Dragons and other such dual-natured beasts that Metahumanity adopted on their great voyage. These great arcs are carefully regulated, never allowed to grow in Mana strength to such lengths that Horrors could find them livable - arcs that do so are evacuated and destroyed, the dragons placed back into suspension until they can be woken up again. As the Sixth World draws to a close, presuming that the mana cycle even matters in space, research into ways to sustain the fading magic begins, and the cycle is rendered more or less meaningless, with the conditions of the early Sixth World maintained indefinately.


3: Horrorws r0xx0r our s0xx0rs, just like last time. The ED-humping crowd is vindicated, until they realize that includes them too, and suddenly they wish for giant space arcs that give the finger to the Horrors.

[toturi]

Not me. I'd say (meta)humanity is worse than the Horrors can ever be. That's why we'd win. To take the Cold War example, we are too greedy for Communism and we'd be too evil for the Horrors. They are obsolete.

[ShadowDragon8685]

[Lindt]

I have to agree with toturi on this. Man isnt a naturally 'nice' race.
And one thing mankind has always done well is make up new and exciting ways to kill things. Im fairly convinced that the horrors would be no exception.
If they had issues cracking open a karn before, wait untill they crack one open to look down the barrel of a tank.
Look at the last time we came into conflict. We had pointy sticks, and wicked good magic. Now we have much pointer sticks, and a bit less magic. But are also WAY better orginized.

[emo samurai]

We're gonna have much better magic; we have both the immortal elves and more extensive magical research (6 billion people, 60 million magicians, way more than in the 4th world.)

[Wounded Ronin]

Well, if we can't beatt the horrors, we certainly can beatt the dead horse. :rotfl:


On the subject of horrors, I was recently corresponding with Nisarg/RPGPundit about why things like Cthulu are scary. This is what he told me:

[emo samurai]

I don't get what he means by post-modernism. I thought postmodernism is the acceptance that life has no meaning, of one's ignoring that life has no meaning. It seems as if the postmodernist would be likely to shake hands/tentacles with Cthulhu.

And I don't think that Horrors are Lovecraftian; Horrors are too anthropomorphic. They care about us, or rather, our suffering way too much to be truly alien. What's alien are the invae, and even those resemble real insects at heart.

And it doesn't matter whether the Horrors can be beaten on their home plane; to exist on the physical plane and therefore harm us, they have to, well, you know, exist on the physical plane. And that means they can be hurt with a frigging shotgun.

[nezumi]

[Kagetenshi]

They did win the first time. If they lost, it was only in that the magic levels dropped. They're not fighting a war of extermination here.

~J

[Herald of Verjig...]

Well, if you believe the dragons egotistical tale:
They had won, then lost, then were winning until they couldn't stay, and then all of recorded human history.

Possibly with a few repeats of the "winning until they couldn't stay then something".

[Lindt]

Yeah, they won round 1. Imean we took to cowering in magical bunkers to wait it out like an atomic war. And eventually (1500 years?) later it was safe to come outside again.

But with bigger and badder everything, unless THEY have evolved and learned, I dont think they can do it again. But if they have.... eek.

[emo samurai]

I noticed your deliberate misspelling of "beat." Nice.

The only problem is that you didn't misspell "the."

[nezumi]

[Herald of Verjig...]

[otakusensei]

He's a question, a bit off topic but related.

Could something like the Dissonance be Artificer learning to take the matrix after slipping by before the bridge was secured?

Also, are the metaplanes/netherworlds connected to each other or is Earth's Astral space a "hub". Are we the choke point for extraplanier entities to spread? Or do they just like to eat us cause we're so tasty?

Edit:

Should point out "Eat our pain and fear because it's so tasty".