Fourth Age Ends?, Earthdawn/Shadowrun X-Over Question Options

[Dashifen]

To all you ED/SR gurus on the board: Did the fourth age end before, during, or after the last Ice Age. I suspect before but since I have zero knowledge of ED timescales, it'd be a shot in the dark. 'Course, my players have less than zero knowledge of ED timescales (some of them looked at me like :| when I asked the about earthdawn) so I could just make it all up, but my own perfectionist nature wants the "true" answer.

[Ol' Scratch]

The Fourth World ended a little more than 6,000 years ago while the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Assuming my memory holds true.

[Nath]

The Fourth Age ended in 3,113 BC according to Ehran The Scribe. IIRC, the last real glacial period ended around 8,000 BC, which would be the beginning of the Fourth Age, assuming mana cycles are regular in length.

[Ol' Scratch]

Actually the Fourth Age would have started in the middle of the last Ice Age, not at the end of it.

[Dashifen]

Eitherway, if my plot is using shedim during the last ice age then I'm not totally out in left field .... well no more so than usual at least.

[Dashifen]

By the way, am I the only that does research to write plot lines for runs? Currently connecting the migration of native Asian peoples across the Berring sea and the Ice Age to the Year of the Comet.

[Ol' Scratch]

No, you're not the only one. Thought I rarely do anything like that. Most of my research deals with mythology and weaving it into the game.

[Dashifen]

I'm just creating my own mythology and stealing a little from Neil Gaiman for this one.

Gaiman spoiler:

[ Spoiler ]

In American Gods Gaiman tells a brief interlude where a group of native Asian peoples are crossing the land bridge through the Bering Straight to become the native American peoples. They bring with them the skull of a mastadon that was their god. When they reach the new world, their god was no longer necessary to them as they found other animal totems to worship in the Americas. The skull is left somewhere in the Aleutians.

So, for my game, that skull wasn't their god, but rather an enchanted skull that could ward of shedim spirits. The times of the real world don't quite coinside with the way I'd like things to work out so things in My World ™ will just be different. So now that the shedim have re-entered the world, they're trying to move on the artifacts that helped keep metahumanity safe last time. If they can succeed, they'll be able to cause havok and strife and all the things that shedim like to do.

[Kagetenshi]

That's a misreading of the text.

[ Spoiler ]

The mastadon skull no longer is necessary because in Gaiman's North America, the land itself is the only God that will exist without fighting tooth and nail for it, not that there were other animal gods.

~J

[Dashifen]

True.

[Sepherim]

I do some researching, but mostly indirectly. I mean, I sometimes read something that gives me an idea, which then serves as the base for a run. So I didn't actually do some research, but works as if I had.