What?

I is lazeeee...

That sounds like a pretty cool idea Cang. Is your group at all familiar with ED? If not they'll be filling their drawers with brown stuff. You may want to make the transformation gradual too to really make it look like some sort of cancer/mutation. BTW, it isn't exactly in canon ED but in my group we assume that T'skrang only have cloacas (sp?) so males and females both look exactly the same gender wise and have no easily discernable sex bits. It is canon that the males are the ones who raise the young and produce the milk for the babies. That might provide some added OMG! for the player.

Really? Where did you read this? I must have missed it, but I would love to read up on it.

And Since I'm out of the loop, what about Obsidimen? And windlings?

Because they're windlings, dude.

Windlings aren't sentient. They're little bugs that pretend to be

The overall magic/mana level isn't high enough to support the existence of these races. Or powerful magic like the adepts of ED and the high-circle spells of that age.

Denizens of Earthdawn Books I and II. T'skrang do indeed lay eggs, though they aren't always fertile, especially in low-mana areas.

Obsidimen are kinda like flesh-form earth spirits.

The mana level is not high enough in the current SR-setting.

I wouldn't equate drakes to T'skrangs. Yeah, both are scaly, but they're not the same critter.

Also, "spike babies" have precedent (the current SR mana levels aren't supposed to be sufficient for drakes to exist, but there are circumstances that have let a few express). So having a few population pockets in very high-mana areas doesn't sound out of the question.

Yeah, but SR mages get body damage when they cast a spell. And ED adepts can perfomr stunts noone in SR is capable of at the moment.

What this comes from is the corruption of astral space that took place during the Scourge in Earthdawn. Spellcasters had to come up with something called a spell matrix (presented as the Filtering metamagic ability in SR3) which was essentially a safe pocket of astral space in which they could place their spell threads and cast from. If you didn't use one then you were in for a whole world of hurt/torment.

ED magic is still far more powerful than SR magic but whether that is because it is "lost" or because it is impossible to do has not yet been clarified. With the current bias towards adding ED links in canon material I'm sure this will get clarified more in the future. If you've ever tried to convert ED adepts into SR ones and seen what ED mages can do you'd be shocked.

Taking the baseline conversion the Elementalists in my party have ED effect step of 24 for Throne of Air. So about 22 dice in SR3 converts to 14 dice for free dodge tests against any attack that the Elementalist is aware of in combat. The Warrior/Sky Raider has Shield Bash, Battle Shout & Bellow, Melee Weapons, Momentum Attack, and Air Dance. This means he gives up to 5 opponents -3 SR4 dice to all actions, has two attacks at 7 dice one of which causes an automatic knockdown check, if he gets a critical success on the melee attack he gets another free attack at 5 dice, and if he doubles your initiative then he gets another attack for free. All of this costs him about one box of stun damage (and that's over inflating since his Durability and Wood Skin could make it even less). The T'skrang I used to play would split his pool dice to do 2 attacks (melee plus unarmed with tail) at about 8 dice each, would get another attack at 4 dice and if he doubled your initiative he'd get to do it all again at the cost of about half a box of stun, or he could roll everything at half effect, take a full box, and add 4 dice to all defense rolls.

Comparing ED to SR is apples to oranges right now. Unless you're going up against 4th Agers in which case you'd need to do the crossover.