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

[Joe Chummer]

Double post.

Sumimasen, chummers.

[Joe Chummer]

1) If the stuff posited in Earthdawn is true, then 2170 will actually be a post demand society as anything plastic can be created from nothing. And once you're their, we can create all sorts of things from nothing. Seriously, humanity can build a dyson sphere under those conditions and it's not even hard.

You do realize how BIG a Dyson Sphere is, right? If humanity has the capability to build a Dyson Sphere, then why stop there? Why not build ourselves a whole new STAR, while we're at it, and leave this Ghostforsaken solar system behind?

Also, this is a bit OT towards the realm of astrophysics, but if one actually BUILT a full-on Dyson Sphere (as opposed to a Dyson Swarm or Dyson Ring), wouldn't the sheer amount of mass it takes to construct one -- and thus the gravitons its inherent mass creates -- seriously frag with the equilibrium of gravity of the planets INSIDE the sphere, especially since the Dyson sphere has more mass -- and thus more gravity -- than the sun? I mean, what's to keep the shell's gravity from exerting more force on the Earth than the sun does? What's to prevent it from tugging Earth right into Jupiter's orbital path? Hello, Giant Red Spot!

[Cthulhudreams]

It's extremely large. If you have unlimited energy, the suns energy as you build the sphere, and a fairly effective energy -> matter conversion scheme that draws off truely limited energy, why not.

There is no particular reason toassume a dyson sphere would have any particular amount of mass. I'd expect it to be most a web to catch solar energy, which could be (on the scale of things) compartively light.

[Joe Chummer]

It's extremely large. If you have unlimited energy, the suns energy as you build the sphere, and a fairly effective energy -> matter conversion scheme that draws off truely limited energy, why not.

There is no particular reason toassume a dyson sphere would have any particular amount of mass. I'd expect it to be most a web to catch solar energy, which could be (on the scale of things) compartively light.

The sun is not "unlimited energy." Its energy is quite finite, as it will burn out some day and shrink into a white dwarf (since it is well below the Chandrasekhar Limit and thus will not turn into a black hole).

Also, a Dyson Sphere or Dyson Shell has no holes in it. You are thinking of a Dyson Ring or Dyson Swarm, which are similar but made up of discrete parts rather than being a fully enclosed shell.

Even if a Dyson Sphere had a thickness of only a few millimeters, to encompass the whole solar system, it would have to have a RADIUS of at least 55 AUs (which is out to the Kuiper belt, where Pluto is), which means it would have a diameter of about 110 x 93,000,000 miles. Now, from that, calculate the area of a sphere that large, and multiply that by how much mass would be in each square meter of material that the sphere is made out of.

That is a LOT of fragging mass in an impossibly huge hollow ball. By comparison, Antares, a red supergiant that is 800 TIMES BIGGER in radius than the sun, has a radius of about 3 AUs (or 6 AUs in diameter). That's merely a drop in the Dyson bucket.

[Ol' Scratch]

I think a big problem people in this thread are having is that they're not really acknowledging what the Horrors are.

The Horrors aren't some static monster. They're the very thing of nightmares. They adapt to whatever the masses fear most. They exist because we exist. Just like spirits are shaped by a magician's beliefs, so too are the Horrors shaped by metahumanity's dreams. And when the mana cycle reaches the point where crossing the veil between reality and dream becomes possible, all those subconscious nightmares and horrors our mass conscious created and fueled come surging across.

Global enlightenment, peace, and harmony would be the only hope of truly stopping them. That or leaning how to manipulate the force of nature that is the mana cycle itself. Since neither of those options are possible, the only hope we have is to try and survive the assault until such time that the mana cycle drops enough for them to lose access to their plane.

But even if you don't buy into any of that, the simple fact is no matter what defenses or technologies we develop before that time comes, it only takes a single infiltration by a Horror for them to gain access to it, too. The more powerful our technology becomes, the more powerful their tools will be because, despite how advanced we become, we still have all the same frail weaknesses that the Horrors specialize in; ourselves.

We'll we be able to put up one hell of a fight compared to the 4th World? Sure. Especially if those self-centered fuckwits more commonly known as Immortal Elves and Great Dragons would just come out and warn us so we can prepare. But that fight is just going to make the outcome all the worse, because we won't win; at best a fraction of us will survive. And the world itself will likely be worse off for it than it was in the 4th age. They didn't exactly have caches of nuclear weapons, unthinkable biological weapons, orbital bombardments, or whatever other crazy weapons of mass destruction we come up before that time arrives.

I don't even want to think about what the 8th World will have to endure.

[Fuchs]

I think a big problem people in this thread are having is that they're not really acknowledging what the Horrors are.

The Horrors aren't some static monster. They're the very thing of nightmares. They adapt to whatever the masses fear most. They exist because we exist. Just like spirits are shaped by a magician's beliefs, so too are the Horrors shaped by metahumanity's dreams. And when the mana cycle reaches the point where crossing the veil between reality and dream becomes possible, all those subconscious nightmares and horrors our mass conscious created and fueled come surging across.

That's your view. Not everyone shares this view, and sees the Horrors as "Always uber, no matter what they face". In fact I consider monsters that are defined as "Powerlevel of opponent, +X" as bad design for any roleplaying game.

[toturi]

I think a big problem people in this thread are having is that they're not really acknowledging what the Horrors are.

The Horrors aren't some static monster. They're the very thing of nightmares. They adapt to whatever the masses fear most. They exist because we exist. Just like spirits are shaped by a magician's beliefs, so too are the Horrors shaped by metahumanity's dreams. And when the mana cycle reaches the point where crossing the veil between reality and dream becomes possible, all those subconscious nightmares and horrors our mass conscious created and fueled come surging across.

But even if you don't buy into any of that, the simple fact is no matter what defenses or technologies we develop before that time comes, it only takes a single infiltration by a Horror for them to gain access to it, too. The more powerful our technology becomes, the more powerful their tools will be because, despite how advanced we become, we still have all the same frail weaknesses that the Horrors specialize in; ourselves.

That's the point. Using whatever methods, we can change and condition ourselves into the very stuff that the Horrors can't feed on and that the Horrors themselves are prey to. If they are fueled by our subconscious nightmares, then all we need to do is to enjoy and feed upon those nightmares our mass conscious creates. If the Horrors want to use our technologies to feed on themselves, they are very welcome. We no longer have the same frail weaknesses of ourselves, using whatever means, we are no longer ourselves. We can become not-ourselves and the very stuff that the Horrors will come to fear.

Either we learn global enlightenment and banish our nightmares, or we can learn to enjoy our nightmares or even feed on them ourselves. Given the state of the 6th World and what happened in the 8th, I think turning the Horrors into just another furry hard vore BDSM session sounds just about right.

So the next time a Horror comes around, you should be wanting to take a bite out of it.

[Cthulhudreams]

The sun is not "unlimited energy." Its energy is quite finite, as it will burn out some day and shrink into a white dwarf (since it is well below the Chandrasekhar Limit and thus will not turn into a black hole).

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

The Tsar Bomba is the single most physically powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity

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.

[Grinder]

So, no harm, no foul. Carry on.

Cool. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Kagetenshi]

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 adepts in earth dawn had functionally unlimited energy.

By this logic SR already has unlimited energy. Create Food and Wealth both exist.

~J

[Cthulhudreams]

What page of SR4A is create food on?

Wealth doesn't create anything in usable form, so it's pretty rubbish. If it made uranium, petrol or electricity, then we might be onto something.

[Kagetenshi]

What page of SR4A is create food on?

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

Wealth doesn't create anything in usable form, so it's pretty rubbish. If it made uranium, petrol or electricity, then we might be onto something.

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

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

That's your view. Not everyone shares this view, and sees the Horrors as "Always uber, no matter what they face". In fact I consider monsters that are defined as "Powerlevel of opponent, +X" as bad design for any roleplaying game.

So, no horror rpgs (gameplay style) for you then, right?

[Sixgun_Sage]

If the horrors make themselves into whatever humanity fears every scourge, yes they win, because they effectively aren't beings but are in fact psychological constructs given form. The Earthdawn setting says that isn't the case though, the Horrors came first, then created the "lower" beings. Too bad for them we've expanded our collective bag of tricks into something they won't even recognize.

[Fuchs]

So, no horror rpgs (gameplay style) for you then, right?

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.

[Ol' Scratch]

That's your view. Not everyone shares this view, and sees the Horrors as "Always uber, no matter what they face". In fact I consider monsters that are defined as "Powerlevel of opponent, +X" as bad design for any roleplaying game.

And that's your view. A very flawed view since I wasn't talking about fucking stats. From a purely in-game perspective, their whole deal is that they screw YOU over. It doesn't matter if YOU have super kung fu magic power armor on. All they have to do is get inside your head once and guess what, now THEY have super kung fu magic power armor. Change "super kung fu magic power armor" to anything else and the point is made.

Get over this metagaming mental block you obviously have and look at them the way they're presented. Hell, I don't even know why you're going off ranting about them being "powerlevel of opponent +X." They're not even in the fucking game. They're a distant threat, a nightmare waiting to happen. Jesus. You may as well be going off the handle about that street bum carrying a "The End is Nigh!" placard or spells like Control Thoughts that essentially do the same thing.

The most humorous part in your response is that you sound like some little powergaming twit who's upset that he can't get his character's stats high enough to kill everything he comes across single-handedly. Do you get as worked up when you find out that, no, you don't get to make a roll to see if you survive being at point-blank range of a nuclear detonation despite having a Body of 1,000? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif) Some dangers and some threats are simply too much, and the Horrors are the pinnacle of such a threat on a purely in-game level.

[Sixgun_Sage]

And that's your view. A very flawed view since I wasn't talking about fucking stats. From a purely in-game perspective, their whole deal is that they screw YOU over. It doesn't matter if YOU have super kung fu magic power armor on. All they have to do is get inside your head once and guess what, now THEY have super kung fu magic power armor. Change "super kung fu magic power armor" to anything else and the point is made.

Get over this metagaming mental block you obviously have and look at them the way they're presented. Hell, I don't even know why you're going off ranting about them being "powerlevel of opponent +X." They're not even in the fucking game. They're a distant threat, a nightmare waiting to happen. Jesus. You may as well be going off the handle about that street bum carrying a "The End is Nigh!" placard or spells like Control Thoughts that essentially do the same thing.

The most humorous part in your response is that you sound like some little powergaming twit who's upset that he can't get his character's stats high enough to kill everything he comes across single-handedly. Do you get as worked up when you find out that, no, you don't get to make a roll to see if you survive being at point-blank range of a nuclear detonation despite having a Body of 1,000? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif) Some dangers and some threats are simply too much, and the Horrors are the pinnacle of such a threat on a purely in-game level.

Actually, you're the one that comes off poorly, he is merely stating a viewpoint concerned with game design, you are allowing yourself to resort to personal attacks. And no, the horrors are not the pinnacle threat anymore in many people's views, hence the thread. I alone have pointed out several limitations the "home setting" gives the horrors. Here's another one, psychologically humans have changed over the ages due to having differant cultural signa loci, couple that with post-humanist philosophy and logically it will be harder for the named Horrors to "get inside your head."

[Ol' Scratch]

Actually, you're the one that comes off poorly, he is merely stating a viewpoint concerned with game design

"Actually," he was condemning mine (read his very first sentence) while ranting on about metagame malarkey that had no bearing on anything I said. So I replied in kind.

And no, the horrors are not the pinnacle threat anymore in many people's views, hence the thread.

And those views are wrong (and yes, views and opinions can be wrong). There's a reason Dunkelzahn offed himself to stop them from coming over. What I think you meant to say was more along the lines of "And no, people like me don't want to see the Horrors as a pinnacle threat because I don't like them in my game."

Here's another one, psychologically humans have changed over the ages due to having differant cultural signa loci, couple that with post-humanist philosophy and logically it will be harder for the named Horrors to "get inside your head."

Sure it will. I guess that's why Control Thoughts, Influence, Compulsion and every other mentally-oriented spell and critter power in the game is so utterly useless. Because humanity is just so gosh darn hard to manipulate, control or undermine. Especially in the Sixth World where the vast majority of the population is crushed under the heels of the megacorporations and other sundry superpowers. The same people who are told that Aztechnology is an a-okay company by spindoctors, so obviously Aztechnology is an a-okay company. Yep. Humanity is all but immune to that. Nailed it.

[Sixgun_Sage]

"Actually," he was condemning mine (read his very first sentence) while ranting on about metagame malarkey that had no bearing on anything I said. So I replied in kind.


And those views are wrong (and yes, views and opinions can be wrong). There's a reason Dunkelzahn offed himself to stop them from coming over. What I think you meant to say was more along the lines of "And no, people like me don't want to see the Horrors as a pinnacle threat because I don't like them in my game."


Sure it will. I guess that's why Control Thoughts, Influence, Compulsion and every other mentally-oriented spell and critter power in the game is so utterly useless. Because humanity is just so gosh darn hard to manipulate, control or undermine. Especially in the Sixth World where the vast majority of the population is crushed under the heels of the megacorporations and other sundry superpowers. The same people who are told that Aztechnology is an a-okay company by spindoctors, so obviously Aztechnology is an a-okay company. Yep. Humanity is all but immune to that. Nailed it.

I've yet to see him make a clear and uncalled for personal attack on you, and you miss the point of my argument entirely, the human, or in the games terms metahuman, mind is a construct of symbols that are all inter-related, as the world becomes more complex the mind's catalog by necessity does as well, creating a wider variation of connections. Metahuma-on-metahuman manipulation spells may work as well as they do thanks the fact that so many shared points of refferance exist because of the fact that the world is an information age society. It's just a hypothesis but as it is internally logical it atleast bears consideration, especially since there is some corroborating evidence of atleast a circumstantial nature. I'd ask you to respond with reason instead of venom, as you seem to be so comfortable doing.

[Ol' Scratch]

Well, it's pretty amazing how some of the very, very minor Horror-related entites that have already made it over are doing a great job at messing with people. Namely the Shedim and Shadow Spirits. The fact that they have large cults and possibly even one megacorporation under their control without even being here certainly doesn't imply anything either.

Street Magic p. 147 lists a whole slew of Shadow Spirits that are having absolutely no problem whatsoever messing with people's heads. And these guys aren't even the footsoldiers of the Horrors. They're minor, insignificant pests compared to the real deal.

Ignoring that, you may have missed the fact that I mentioned critter powers, too. Using your logic, all the myriad monsters and non-metahuman creatures out there with powers like Compulsion, Fear and Influence shouldn't be a concern to anyone, as they don't have any hope at all of impacting a metahuman's modern psyche. Despite the fact that they do. With ease in most cases. Even if you're cowering behind a suit of heavy milspec armor.

[Dahrken]

More complex not necessarily. While the average Shadowrun denizen is more proficient in using technology than, say, a Middle Age farmer, but comparatively he lacks a lot of knowledge about nature and manual crafts.

Add to that the lowest common denominator consume/conform mass bombardment of the corporate medias, and I doubt their respective "mind catalog" of concepts and knowledge is that much different in size and complexity...

Also the intricacies of high-level magic are probably at least as complex as those of high-level technology, and not only in their development but also in their use.

[Sixgun_Sage]

More complex not necessarily. While the average Shadowrun denizen is more proficient in using technology than, say, a Middle Age farmer, but comparatively he lacks a lot of knowledge about nature and manual crafts.

Add to that the lowest common denominator consume/conform mass bombardment of the corporate medias, and I doubt their respective "mind catalog" of concepts and knowledge is that much different in size and complexity...

Also the intricacies of high-level magic are probably at least as complex as those of high-level technology, and not only in their development but also in their use.

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.

[otakusensei]

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.

[Ol' Scratch]

Gentlemen, the enemy are not old and unknowable gods

Apparently someone hasn't heard the dragons' creation myths.

[Sixgun_Sage]

Apparently someone hasn't heard the dragons' creation myths.

Apparently someone is deeply lacking in something often reffered to as a sense of humor. Thankfully there is a cure, I'll have to reffer you to my associate, Dr Fozz E. Bear for treatment.