[X] My Assistant

[emo samurai]

How powerful would they be in the 4th world? Magicians can right now conjure dragon-killing spirits and lift tanks with their minds. What would they do in a high-magic setting? And was there a magician/adept distinction in Earthdawn? Were magicians the elites or something?

[cetiah]

What's Earthdawn?

[emo samurai]

Whoah, n00b. :D

Earthdawn was a high-fantasy RPG that Fasa had before it made Shadowrun.

The basic premise of Earthdawn was that magic comes and goes in cycles. When it's really high in the world, then things from outside this dimension called Horrors, really big, nasty, and plentiful things, come here and eat everything. An elven magician found ancient texts that hinted at the coming of this scourging and with many generations of mages created a great library of magical lore and developed great wards that could protect whole underground cities from the Horrors. The empire that formed around this library was then called the Theran Empire.

Problem was, the Theran Empire wanted servitude in return for its protection, which many nations refused after the Scourge. This lead to a war between an alliance of the independent nations and the bureaucratic, slave-labor powered Theran Empire.

Pretty much all the fantasy elements from Shadowrun are either drawn from human mythology or Earthdawn.

[Grinder]

The actual pusblisher are Living Room Games (more or less defunct, they haven't released a single book in 2006) and RedBrick.

[hyzmarca]

In Earthdawn, there was no real distinction between Adepts and Magicians. Instead, all characters are a sort of Mystic Adept and a class system is used to differentiate them. Different classes, called Disciplines, have access to different magical and metamagical abilities and powers called Talents. Spellcasting disciplines have access to the Spellcasting Talent, in addition to Talents that enhance and aid spellcasting.

Any character with the Spellcasting talent may learn any spell.
However, every spell is assigned to a specific Circle (class level) of a specific Discipline.

Most spells require that Threads (of magical energy) be woven into them before they can be cast. In order to do so one must have the appropriate Thread Weaving Talent. Every discipline has its own version is this Talent. In order to weave Threads into Wizard spells you need Wizardry. In order to weave threads into Nethermantic spells you need Nethermancy.
It is impossible to cast a spell that requires threads without the appropriate version of the Thread Weaving Talent. Characters who want a large spell selection will have to take multiple Disciplines.

Anyone with the appropriate Thread Weaving Talent and the Spellcasting Talent may cast any spell Raw or from a Grimore. However, both of these methods carry dangers. Casting from a Spell Matrix, the safest and most convenient way to cast, can only be accomplished if you have attained the appropriate Circle in the spell's Discipline.
A 4th Circle Wizard /1st Circle Nethermancer should be able to Raw cast any Wizard Spell or Nethermancer spell, but they can only store 1st Circle Nethermancer spells and 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Circle Wizard spells in Matrices.

[cetiah]

Huh. That sounds really, cool. Especially the Discipline stuff.

But none of it sounds like Shadowrun.
Is there a Theran Empire underneath Shadowrun?!

[Ophis]

As magic becomes more powerful it becomes more formalised. Disciplines equal Adept ways pretty much.

The theran empire is noticable in two places in SR 1)A group called the Heavenherds where important in the Theran Empire, and in SR are involved with parts of South Africa and are noted as using cybermancy (in Cybertechnology). 2)The Theran empire was set up by elves, and the laws it had that eventually became slavery look a lot like Tir Tairngire's rules on megacorporate immigrants (as it was under the council of princes).

Oh and Emo SR came first.

[Kyrn]

Earthdawn is the story of the 4th World and the source of SR's mythology. There's perhaps two dozen entities in the 6th World who know of the 4th. They know because they were there. Immortal Elves, Great Dragons, and as far as I know that's about it. Well, outside of the Horrors.

And Earthdawn was an incredible setting. Sad to say, I really thought it was going to go D20.

Running a search on really old archives here will set you up with all the conspiracy theories concerning ancient powers from the 6th World you'll ever need. And then some.

[emo samurai]

Oh yeah, it did. Thanks.

[Ravor]

Well as someone who doesn't have a single Earthdawn Book, I don't think Emo's rather interesting question was really answered, exactly how powerful was the Magic in Earthdawn?

[hyzmarca]

Low level spells are pretty much the same then as now. High level ED spells include Create Life (which literally creates a living being), Call Forth the Army of Decay (Which creates a buttload of zombies under the magician's control), Journey to Life (a resurrection spell), Call of the Maelstrom (which creates a natural disaster), Other Place (an illusory teleportation spell which really teleports you if you fail to resist the illusion), and City in a Bottle (which shrinks an entire city and literally puts it in a bottle, sort of like Pre-Crisis Brainiac did).

It was much more powerful at the higher levels, to say the least. We'll know when the mana level reaches Earthdawn levels because some magician is going to put Seattle on his bookshelf when it does.

[Warmaster Lah]

Hmmm.

I didn't know everyone could cast magic in Earthdawn.

I had a theory that as the mana level increases more and more people would become awakened eventually leading to awakened beings as the normal state.

Looks like it does happen.

I wonder though: Could you initiate and travel to the Metaplanes? And was Astral Projection common?

I am interested in seeing what happens in the future of the 6th world. I remember in that SOTA book that the humans have created new techiques that they didn't have in the 4th world. New traditions, Shamanism (Is that a new thing?), New magical creatures, phenomena, etc. I doubt that every new breakthrough in magic is "rediscovering" something from past as well. Can't wait to see what the upstart humans can come up with and discover.

Plus we have the Technology, and the Space Frontier and Oceans as well. Once high magic kicks up I doubt anyone can predict what will really happen this cycle. Its going to be crazy.

[emo samurai]

CALL FORTH THE ARMY OF DECAY, YEAH!!!

Dude, that's, like, the name of a Dragonforce song or something. SWEET!

[Herald of Verjig...]

[cetiah]

So why do you say Shadowrun's mythology is based on this? They sound nothing alike. Shadowrun magic is very friendly and reliable. It's all harmonized in some sort of Universal Magic principle or some such and there isn't any differences between magicians.

I don't even see all that much 'mythology' in Shadowrun, beyond the magic system and the way mana/astral stuff works. Was there an awakening? Were there otaku? Human-Metahuman Mutation Virus? I don't know what else is exclusive to Shadowrun's mythology beyond that both settings apparently had elves and dwarves and dragons and stuff... but lots of settings have that. Might as well say Dragonlance was the 3rd World, no?

[Kagetenshi]

[cetiah]

[Kagetenshi]

Well, I might argue that, but what I was saying was that Shadowrun magic was not until very recently "harmonized in some sort of Universal Magic principle", and there most certainly were differences between magicians. I'm not even sure I'd agree with "friendly and reliable", but they definitely erred too far on that side anyway.

~J

[hyzmarca]

[Moto42 Again]

It may be more accurate to say that "Shadowrun's mythology is the source for earthdawn's reality."
Although, once Earthdawn was initially published and started developing it's own world independently, it certainly leaked back into SR's mythology.

[cetiah]

[Kagetenshi]

Someone clearly didn't play Harlequin's Back.

~J

[emo samurai]

That was, like, the last time SR was influenced by Earthdawn.

[Kagetenshi]

Dunkelzahn's death ring a bell? Ghostwalker?

~J

[emo samurai]

Oh yeah. But runners didn't really participate directly in those. Which sucks.