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

[Kagetenshi]

Would UV treatment be available at the village well?

~J

[hyzmarca]

[otakusensei]

I think he nailed it with the fluorine, once they get bathed in that they will be susceptible to the governments mind control system.

Don't drink the water!

[/Conspiracy_Theory]

[Ravor]

Do the Dread Iota follow the same LOS rules as normal mages in casting their spells? If so then why couldn't they use Mind Controling spells to force you to drink unfiltered water (Or turn the Filtering System for the entire town off.), or otherwise simply destroy any non-living object that comes close to them to prevent being 'filtered' in the first place?

And even if they need to 'touch' their target then why couldn't they use 'Levitate' in order to get around having to passively wait for a meta-human to decide he/she was thirsty?

[otakusensei]

LOS could be hard if you didn't have eyes, and it's possible they just aren't sophisticated enough to go looking for trouble.

What book are they out of?

[Kagetenshi]

They have eyes. There's a picture in Scourge Unending, though they also appear in Horrors, where they're given the following description:

[Herald of Verjig...]

Attributes in ED range from 2-18 before racial mods at chargen. A troll's strength ranges from 6 to 22, a dwarf's toughness ranges from 5 to 21.

That said, the attribute priority seems different between SR and ED for the common races.

[G.NOME]

[Gerzel]

Ok, I've not read the whole thread yet so I might be saying what's been said before, but I've had my own theory on the Horrors in ED and SR and how they operate.

My theory is that they are kindo like farmers. They scourge several worlds. leaving behind survivors to rebuild and regrow before the next harvest. What the worlds see is only the equivalent of their harvester combines.

The Dragons know this to a point, and also know that any world that gets too upity, is probably liable to be plowed under completely and re-transplanted. Some want to put up a resistance while others don't. Some may even be cooperating, making sure the new crop (aka metahumanity) matures well in exchange for not being harvested. Others probably resist, and still others probably are puppets and don't know it.

Another assumption I have is that the Horrors never left, nor did they go asleep. There has always been a few around, keeping an eye on things, much like a farmer will watch growing crops.

A further thought is that ED is set in the LATE 4th age, after the scourge. We really don't know how advanced they were before.

It has happened before. It will happen again. And yet metahumans are not told.

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Crakkerjakk]

My opinion(haven't read the whole thread) to the original question, is "of course not."

OK, so we can get sufficiently better tech. Three thousand years, I'm guessing zero point energy, weapons using antimatter/black holes(at least) and robotics/nanotech/biotech/etc such that "humanity" is a much more esoteric term than it is currently.

Nonetheless. They're the "Horrors." Who says that we haven't had all the fancy tech before, and gotten wiped out time and time again? Who says that this time is different? I mean, six thousand years is more than recorded history. The first language in written form appeared in 3400BC(ish) with the appearance of cuneiform writing. That means that we have no written records until about 600 years after the end of the fourth age.

The way I see it, there's always hope. However. The Horrors are the ultimate monster in the closet. I view them as somewhat "Call of Cthulhu"-esque. Honestly, I'm surprised so many people thing we can take them this time around. I figure, they're so alien that most folks are literally unable to imagine them, and the more one is exposed to them, the more likely one is to go batshit. Technology is cool and all, but some of the higher tier Horrors I see as nigh Godlike in power.

[toturi]

And (meta)humans are worse than the Horrors. They are the ultimate monsters in the closet, we are the ultimate monsters. They are born evil, we work at it and we have gotten better at evil.

[mfb]

why does this thread still live?

WHY?

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Kagetenshi]

Cthulhu is fairly weak and probably mostly mundane matter, but you have to have a matter composition for antimatter to bother you—Yog-Sothoth, for example, or Azathoth, wouldn't blink an eye.

Ok, Azathoth might blink, but that's because he's so mindlessly insane that he might do anything.

~J

[knasser]

[Kagetenshi]

Cthulhu Now probably overrates him. In The Call of Cthulhu, he was injured at least badly enough to allow escape by a steamship ramming into him. How he got as popular as he is, I'll never know.

~J

[knasser]

[Gerzel]

[Kagetenshi]

The story doesn't really leave much room for interpretation there.

~J

[Crakkerjakk]

Yeah, what I meant by nigh godlike, was (among other things) being able to choose not to be affected by anti-matter. Really. God-like. Not just scary, but able to warp the fundamental laws of nature. Perhaps the comparison to Cthulhu was a bad idea, because now people are debating how hard it would be to kill the various Lovecraft Pantheon members, but I was merely using them as an example of beings of unimaginable power that have minds that work in ways that are fundamentally alien to our own.

I don't think something as mundane as technology could stop them. I'm thinking the only weapon that could be used against them is conviction. If you were absolutely certain that something would work against them, it probably would. As I understand it, thats generally how magic works in the sixth world. People are so certain about the way something is or their ability to influence it, that it actually becomes whatever they think it is.

Now, if you were absolutely certain that an antimatter bomb would kill a horror, then it would, but not because it's an antimatter bomb. A spoon could kill one just as easily, so long as the person wielding it held the same conviction. Unfortunately, I think the level of conviction it would require is beyond the ken of most mortals.

[knasser]

I don't think I can go along with the conviction idea. For a start, to a world that had developed anti-matter weapons and seen the way they can level mountains with a teaspoon of the stuff, they probably would already be pretty confident that it would destroy a horror (or anything else). Personally, I've not subscribed to the recent vogue for Shadowrun magic working in this Mage:The Ascension like way. If it did, then sufficiently enlightened magicians would be able to transcend their need for spells and magical formulae would be redundant. So would expensive foci, come to think of it.

Along the lines of the conviction idea however, I would play it that emotional or psychological state would be your best weapon against them. They feed on despair, pain, fear, et al., as I understand it. Faith, Hope, Love, Self-Sacrifice would be anathema to them. That's why my approach to the coming horrors is not based on what weaponry human-kind can marshall against them, but on how well humanity can maintain unity, hope and compassion in the rising chaos. I see a highly milataristic, weapon-heavy society turning on itself under the Horrors' influence.

You have two or more heavily armed societies? Fine, the horrors will come in whispering promises of alliance to just one of them. You have gross divisions between the rich and poor? Fine, the horrors will come to foster revolution, or else promise more power to the ruling classes, co-opting them as allies and turning them into monsters in the process. Friend against friend, neighbour against neighbour. They only need the smallest entrance, and they will start to come through. The most advanced weaponry you can wield is useless when the society is mad. They will bring war and strife and once it has a foothold, they will wander through the chaos picking and choosing and feeding on it.

After all, a bunch of tentacally monsters coming down from space and going "Rarghh!" is not in the least frightening compared to a rising tide of madness and fear. I know which I'd play them as in my game.

[Crakkerjakk]

Don't think it's the current vogue. I think it's been presented that way in the fluff since 2nd Edition. Plus in literature at least as far back as the Bug City/FBI book, whichever one that was. Been a while since I read the older stuff, but when I was starting up shadowrun, thats how it was explained to me by my GM and nothing I read ever contradicted it.

[hyzmarca]

Magic is influenced by belief, but this has to do with superficial appearances more than fundamental nature. It means that an adept who watches a lot of DBZ will scream kamehameha and shoot a blue energy wave from his hands, but it will still cause the same (STR)M Stun that every other plain old Distance Strike inflicts.
Likewise, a Catholic mage may summon Angels instead of Elementals, but they'll still have the same stats as an Elemental.