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

[Marwynn]

So we can't nuke them orbit to be sure? Darn. Someone work on Plan B.

[toturi]

Background count (i.e the warping of astral space by metahumans and/or the environment) and Horror-tainted astral space are not even remotely the same thing.

Sure metahumanity is no stranger to suffering, but they do not subsist on the suffering and pain of others. Some may enjoy it, yes, but you cannot EAT someone else's pain and suffering for breakfast (or lunch, dinner, afternoon tea, or otherwise). Horrors, on the other hand, thrive on causing pain and torment. They are the most sadistic entities that we even know of. A metahuman might experience pain and loss in the Sixth World as it stands, but just imagine a Horror's very presence causing you to suffer delusions so horrid that you want to peel your brain out of your skull with your bare hands, and you're driven to do just that. The kind of visions the crew members in "Event Horizon" saw don't even begin to scratch the surface. And the Horror doesn't just feed off of this mental anguish it inflicts. It strengthens the Horror. And the Horror enjoys it. The Horror LAUGHS. And then it kills you just for its own amusement.

When it comes right down to it, it seems to me your side of the conversation comes across more like fanatical jingoism than based on any actual, established game-world mechanics. Whenever I read one of these "We'll kill ALL the Horrors!" posts, I keep hearing in my head (to the tune of the "Team America: World Police" theme song): "Sixth World! FRAG YEAH! Here we come to save the motherfraggin day, YEAH!"

How do you know that Background Count isn't Horror-tainted Astral space? You may be correct, they may not even remotely the same thing, Background Count may be worse!

Metahumans are the most sadistic entities we know of, the Horrors are simply metahumans' way of blaming someone else. And that in itself is another level of evil that metahumans are capable of. A Horror's presence is no more horrid than a BTL that can do the same and metahumanity does it for enjoyment. We enjoy it, it enables us, we laugh too. Then we slot another one just for our own amusement.

And that's the point. None of us has any Shadowrun rules to back our sides of the argument! Fortunately for me, I am insane (see my sig). What's your excuse? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

Nuking from orbit works, you just have to destroy the Earth doing so. But what the hell... Earth was getting boring anyway...

[Joe Chummer]

How do you know that Background Count isn't Horror-tainted Astral space? You may be correct, they may not even remotely the same thing, Background Count may be worse!
Metahumans are the most sadistic entities we know of, the Horrors are simply metahumans' way of blaming someone else. And that in itself is another level of evil that metahumans are capable of. A Horror's presence is no more horrid than a BTL that can do the same and metahumanity does it for enjoyment. We enjoy it, it enables us, we laugh too. Then we slot another one just for our own amusement.

And that's the point. None of us has any Shadowrun rules to back our sides of the argument! Fortunately for me, I am insane (see my sig). What's your excuse? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

Pardon me for applying logic to a clearly illogical situation.

[toturi]

Pardon me for applying logic to a clearly illogical situation.

See? You are already mad too! What's a little Horror to flavor our madness?

[3278]

There are so many ridiculous things being said in this thread that I don't even know where to start. Some people need to reacquaint themselves with the SR and ED back-catalog, as well as some basic texts on planetary ecology and biology.

[Ravor]

Well 3278 you could start by declaring which side of the debate you belong to so the other saide can tar and feather you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)


toturi I disagree, looking at some of the seriously fucked up shit that has happened throughout the history of mankind, the only "real" difference between ancient man and us is that we have technology to do the same evil on a larger scale, the horrors of the Holocaust literally used to happen all of the fragging time whenever one village decided to wipe out their nieghbors, Twentith Century man just had the ability to round people up from a much larger area.

And tell me, in the ancient world, would the end result of "salting the wells" and razing the land have been any different if they had instead nuked the area?


So I guess the rambling point that I'm trying to make is that the people in the Sixth World are no more evil than the people of the Fourth World and in fact our "evil" would simply make us taste better to many Horrors, remember what Horror Marked actually does to people.

[Warlordtheft]

Of course we can win---Dunklezahn will save us!!

<This message brought to you by the Children of the Dragon>

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

[Ravor]

Meh if Big D wasn't Horror Marked al-fragging-along he'll be by the time humanity sees him again. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[Sixgun_Sage]

I've been playing SR for about 8 years now, not exactly outstanding in such august company but I've been running it for 7 and can honestly say I can see exactly how my players would respond to the Horrors, and it is an attitude I think prevalent enough in the shadows where you don't need the AAA's or governments to resist these metaplanar creeps. That attitude is "I've lost my respectable job, had to chop my body away piece by piece, and do things for money that at one point I was convinced are evil. And I survived it all because I'm my own damn person, so if you think you can show me something new tall, dark, and gruesome... bring it. I'll still be standing." This is the attitude that defines shadowrunners, the casual disregard for the powers that be that from all descriptions the vast majority of Horrors would be incapable of dealing with. When you consider how innovative, how smart, and how pure deadly someone has to be to make it in the shadows, and the level of trust and social interaction implied in the fluff in the books, it isn't militaries or corporate SWAT teams that'll be kicking Horror ass, it's the bastards on Jackpoint who decide "Can't trust anyone Marked, and the only way to make sure no body is Marked is to send the squid-faced beasties packing."

[Ravor]

Excellent point Sixgun_Sage and I agree whole heartedly with it, but the only problem that I see is that there aren't nearly enough Runners to be able to turn the tide, remember there are maybe a few hundred Runners in any given Sprawl and an untold mutlitude of Horrors swarming over the same area.

[toturi]

toturi I disagree, looking at some of the seriously fucked up shit that has happened throughout the history of mankind, the only "real" difference between ancient man and us is that we have technology to do the same evil on a larger scale, the horrors of the Holocaust literally used to happen all of the fragging time whenever one village decided to wipe out their nieghbors, Twentith Century man just had the ability to round people up from a much larger area.

And tell me, in the ancient world, would the end result of "salting the wells" and razing the land have been any different if they had instead nuked the area?


So I guess the rambling point that I'm trying to make is that the people in the Sixth World are no more evil than the people of the Fourth World and in fact our "evil" would simply make us taste better to many Horrors, remember what Horror Marked actually does to people.

Yet, the scale of the atrocity perpetrated has a quality of its own.

Well, salting the land and poisoning the wells does not often create mutants or toxic monsters.

Well, my point is that people in the 6th World are capable of much more evil than the people of the 4th, in only because there is so much more mischief they can be up to.

Remember the Blood Elves managed to make themselves unplatable to many Horrors. Horror marking simply creates a bond between the marked and the Horror. Eventually the Horror kills the marked. If a Horror actually likes the taste, then it would act to preserve its Marked, since they keep tasting better and better.

[NeoSilver]

Remember the Blood Elves managed to make themselves unplatable to many Horrors. Horror marking simply creates a bond between the marked and the Horror. Eventually the Horror kills the marked. If a Horror actually likes the taste, then it would act to preserve its Marked, since they keep tasting better and better.

Knowing exactly what the Blood Elves did, I wouldn't recommend it as a method of defense. It's a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

As for a horror liking the taste of a marked...well, that's spot on. And they can keep it up for a looooong time- witness the novels Scars and Worlds Without End.

[Cthulhudreams]

Umm Cthulhudreams you do realize that only some of the Horrors would even care about your "laser rifle", and some would die for a time before simply getting back up again.

Hell, given the nature of the Horrors, you can't even claim that space is denied to them, sure they might not be able to cross over in space now that Fourth Edition has made it a Mana Void as opposed to a Warp of alien mana but the physical ones at least could live there as easily as humans can.

As for going the nuke route, ... sure ... scroached Earth is always the way to go, even if it doesn't do a damned thing other than remove the Horror's favorite food source from the planet. Good work.

Nah, the correct route is to deliberately punch the barrier in once specific place. Then the horrors have to come through there, then you kill them all as they stream out into you. If laser rifles arn't enough, you turn the power sats away from their intended targets and towards the hellmouth so they pour out into solar fire. If the horrors have a physical presence they will be unable to survive that.

If you were particularly nasty you'd gene engineer every human and animal and plant to feature the radiation resistance from some of the more tenacious bacteria that can reassamble their own RNA/DNA when attacked by radiation, then nuke the site, or the area around to site so the horrors cannot escape. The radioactive material in the ecology won't harm you as you have the resistance of organisms that live on the walls of nuclear reactors and eat plutonium and feed on energy from radiation.

Then you keep pounding away with whatever it takes as they cannot break out of the killing field. Whats more by using power sats you cannot even run out of ammo. You only need a solar array 850 kilometers across to hit ground zero with one seriously large nuclear weapon (10 times more powerful than nagaski, and 30 times more powerful than hiroshima) every second, which is probably achievable!

[toturi]

Knowing exactly what the Blood Elves did, I wouldn't recommend it as a method of defense. It's a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

As for a horror liking the taste of a marked...well, that's spot on. And they can keep it up for a looooong time- witness the novels Scars and Worlds Without End.

The horror kept it up a long time because it needed to. Killing your source of food when it is your only source of food is stupid. They like the taste of the marked but it is not because of the mark that the marked taste better.

And knowing the Blood Elves, the cure was worse because they screwed the cure up.

Hell, given the nature of the Horrors, you can't even claim that space is denied to them, sure they might not be able to cross over in space now that Fourth Edition has made it a Mana Void as opposed to a Warp of alien mana but the physical ones at least could live there as easily as humans can.

Unless the Horrors cross over now, the fact it is 4th Edition rules now doesn't really matter. Actually until the writers choose to add the Horrors into the setting, it doesn't matter which edition it is, which brings me back to my earlier post. I am crazy, are you?

[Cthulhudreams]

Thats the other thing - if the blood elves can survive by reducing their essential spirit, all humans in Sr4 have to do is install a heap of cyberware.

[Ravor]

toturi I would argue that salting wells and razing land would create the same types of monsters that chemical wastedumps and nukes do in the Sixth World, albeit probably shorter lived as the effects go away sooner. Good point about scale matters, I agree but I'm simply not convinced that the "greater mischief simply because of greater numbers" would do anything to the Horrors given the nature of what the Horrors are.

However, the Blood Elves did have an excellent idea, but they just went about it in the wrong way, you probably could get a simliar effect by making the Pain Editor part of everyone's DNA. Of course remember that although the Blood Elves did survive the Scorge, they weren't immune to the Horrors and if I remember correctly their "kaer" jsut barely survived, which is not the same thing as being able to win.

Cthulhudreams there are a few problems with your theory, firstly your "Hellmouth" would only be a tempory fix since as soon as the mana levels rose high enough elsewhere the Horrors would simply cross over everywhere and woudl simply ignore your "killing field". Secondly if you had to starty using the killstats which I believe you would have to against the really nasty Horrors you are talking about causing widespread damage to the enviroment, I'm not sure that using lasers to "nuke" an area repeatable for ~800 years is viable without causing some really nasty worldwide side effects, even if the Horrors had to cross over in that one spot.

*EDIT*

For those that might not know, the Blood Elves used magic to create painful thorns all over their bodies, that way the Horrors who fed upon causing suffering mostly passed them by since there wasn't really much the Horrors coudl do to increase the Elve's painwracked lives.

However, they still had to be on consistant guard and other Horrors were still a threat that nearly wiped them out as I recall. It allowed them to survive, not to win.

[toturi]

Thats the other thing - if the blood elves can survive by reducing their essential spirit, all humans in Sr4 have to do is install a heap of cyberware.

Or just do drugs and BTLs.

[Cthulhudreams]

Sure, but whats the other option? Wait for the horrors to eat all organic matter on earth?

What you're actually going to do is use part of the array as a solar shield to try and keep down the effects.

Finally, you're not going to need 800 years. Presumably the horrors all (or at least a substantial minority) come over to the earth when the barrier is down. Which means there is a definable number of them. Which means you can kill all of them. It might take a couple of months, but hey.


I mean heck if the blood thorns thing worked for the elves, there isn't enough horrors to cover earth so there is nowhere left to stand, which means there isn't really that many. Once you know how many of them their are and what they can do (and it's seriously not all that crash hot, the blood elves managed it, and laser cannons would screw them in about 5 seconds), it's just a matter of systematically killing them all.

Just make sure you're on to them coming before they come, because if you don't know where they are coming from it gets tricky.

[toturi]

Heck, if Equinox is the far future, we've already won.

[Cthulhudreams]

Yeah it just seems slightly weird. The blood elves couldn't use magic because of the horror taint, so they seriously survive by poking the horrors with sticks. If you can fend off the horrors with sticks, you can certainly kill them with guass rifles. If you can kill them with guass rifles, what are the guys in equinox even doing?

[Ravor]

Hmm, my post got ate, anyways, here's take two.


You keep forgetting that the Blood Elves did not win against the Horrors, they were able to barely surive within their "shield" of magical wood that in theory was supposed to grow as quickly as the Horrors could chew it up. The thorns were merely in place to help shield them against the typically smarter Horrors who fed on human suffering and were seen as more dangerous since they were normally the ones that were responcible for causing the magical wards to crash that protected the various kaers from the Horrors. Remember that the Blood Elves were never able to take back any territory from the Horrors, like any other kaer they were merely able to protect what amounted to a sprawl.

Hell, people in other kaers were able to survive too, although they typically used the wards that Atlantis (I forget it's Fourth World Name at the moment.) sold to various cities for slaves and other outragious prices. Still, no-one ventured outside and only the foolish ones let anyone back in, hell, even with the wards in place many of the kaers fell as the Horrors found ways in.

As for the numbers of Horrors, let's not forget that Big V supposedly spawns an ever growing number of Horrors to eat each other in a perverse survival of the fitting mold, all waiting until the Mana Level rises and the Horrors can come back home. Yes, you heard right, the Horrors are native to Earth and at best the Dragons and metahumanity are nothing more than Horror Spawn ourselves, which may be why we are so tasty to them. (The Dragon's own legends protray them as the closest in form to the Horror that spawned them and everyone else, but who can trust a Dragon?)

Also "something major" supposely already crossed over before Big D was able to close the last Mana Bridge, so let's just hope and pray that it wasn't something like Browncrown or we are already fragged even before the Scrouge starts.


*EDIT*


Oh, and people did still have access to magic, just not the "raw magic" that people can still use in the Sixth World.

[Joe Chummer]

Finally, you're not going to need 800 years. Presumably the horrors all (or at least a substantial minority) come over to the earth when the barrier is down. Which means there is a definable number of them. Which means you can kill all of them. It might take a couple of months, but hey.

This is assuming that the Horrors' numbers are finite.

And seeing as how they are not physical beings until they manifest in our world, I don't believe you can apply physical world logic such as the concept of numbers on such a race.

I've always pictures the Horrors, as they exist in their native plane, to be more along the lines of spiritual/astral amoebas: they simply divide into two, four, six, etc. different copies (or mutations) of themselves whenever they feel the need to have more than one of them in existence, and thus their numbers are limitless (unless it is even conceptually possible to collapse an entire metaplane at once, and good luck trying to figure out how to do THAT).

[Joe Chummer]

Heck, if Equinox is the far future, we've already won.

Maybe you didn't read the Equinox premise right: even with all of their Eighth World technology, humanity LOST the war against the Horrors.

Just because metahumanity didn't get wiped out in the 6th World's Scourge DOES NOT mean we won. It just means we figured out a way to survive long enough for the Horrors to go back home. A few thousand survivors in the 6th World would be more than enough to populate an 8th world future.

[toturi]

Maybe you didn't read the Equinox premise right: even with all of their Eighth World technology, humanity LOST the war against the Horrors.

Just because metahumanity didn't get wiped out in the 6th World's Scourge DOES NOT mean we won. It just means we figured out a way to survive long enough for the Horrors to go back home. A few thousand survivors in the 6th World would be more than enough to populate an 8th world future.

The Great War was over, humanity had won, but Earth lay shattered to pieces, pieces left strung along its former orbital path.

Maybe I have difficulties understanding English. So please explain to me what those words I underlined mean.

[Joe Chummer]

Maybe I have difficulties understanding English. So please explain to me what those words I underlined mean.

Uh, they won... by blowing up the entire planet! That sound suspiciously like someone blowing up their own house just to put out a fire. It may have worked, but losing their home doesn't sound like humanity won.

Survival and winning are two different things, omae.