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?

What's Earthdawn?

Whoah, n00b.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Oh yeah, it did. Thanks.

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?

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.

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.

CALL FORTH THE ARMY OF DECAY, YEAH!!!

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

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?

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

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.

Someone clearly didn't play Harlequin's Back.

~J

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

Dunkelzahn's death ring a bell? Ghostwalker?

~J

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

I think there's a Wraith in Survival of the Fittest.

~J

Well, in an effort to answer the original question while completely ignorant of anything Earthdawn-related...

I guess in a high(er) magic setting, the Universal Whachamacallit would have been proven and there would no longer be any differences in magical traditions. Magic would work like hacking in 2070, where everyone can dabble in it a little without much problem... it's not like they'd have to purchase another quality or a seperate attribute or anything... just make sure they have some decent spells.

The concepts behind spells and foci would have probably merged in a weird way, where a mage literally merged with the astral signiture of his living environment, enhancing and being enhanced by it. "Pollution" wouldn't be a physical concept, but an astral one, with disruptions in astral signatures being considered offensive and punished.

Further, possession would have expanded to the point where mages could directly possess people. Or even spirits, if they wanted to go explore the other planes for awhile.

All people would be goblinized. Orks and awakened cockroaches would rule the earth.

Magical astrologers would be seeking ways to "awaken" dead planets, bringing life and astral signatures to them.

The existence of God would have been proven, and direct lines of communication would exist in the form of awakened mushrooms.

Wuxing would be entering into the fifth state of Wu Xing, transferring between an astrology-based corporate agenda to one based on feng shui. It's dominance over the economies of the world would have triggered a shift in the world's basic trade currency from the nuyen to the yuan.

The man on the moon would have been eaten by a dragon.

In this time era you speak of Cetiah. May I have an army of soul sucking vampiric kittens to unleash uppon the world?

What about the people who awaken when the mana level's really low? If they were born in 4th world mana levels, would they be really bumblefucking powerful?

No, they'd bleed from every pore when trying to cast a force 1 treat on a light wound.

Why?

Drek, miscounted. 5th world magic is suicide, 4th world magic leads to massive potential. Your low mana level comment threw me off (and still does).

So if somebody who awakens at the age of 5 in 2070 were to be born in 4th world power levels, then they'd be master mages?

4 and 6 are both high curves. Earthdawn is set in the latter half of 4 (maybe even last third, I don't remember just how close it is to dragon sleepytime) and Shadowrun is set in the very early stages of 6.

5 is effectively similar to a rating 10 mana warp, only mages with more than 6 initiations and full natural magic can retain anything (effective magic rating is reduced by 12) and drain is increased enough that a force 1, light drain spell can be lethal.
I think there was some comment about being able to geas against the lower ambient mana, but that would not change the TN modifiers or drain increases.

Consider the Great Ghost Dance. It was basically a ritual version of Call of the Maelstrom with mass Sacrificing to reduce drain. At Earthdawn mana levels, any two-bit Elementalist can cast Call of the Maelstrom from a Grimoire without taking damage. Raw casting is still rather suicidal, however, due to the average of Step 20 Warping, Step 23 damage, and Step 17 Horror Marks.

Consider it an advanced version of Call of the Maelstrom? A magician could use the spell fomulae and worked on it to create a more powerful version (which is of a higher circle).

I dunno AH, CAll Forth... is a 14th circle spell. Right up there with City i na bottle. It's got a huge area of effect, and says that it does a lot more than jsut make big storms. Massve earthquakes and tidal waves for example.

Even though the ambiant mana levels were very low when they performed the Ghost Dance, the Dancers had several benefits over their 4th world counterparts.

For starters, they were able to draw on modern geological knowledge and used the interconnectedness of the volcanoes and faultlines they targeted as a mundane force multiplier, allowing them to generate a much greater effect than they would have if they'd tried to use raw (or threaded) mana by itself. And the residual effects of that many volcanic eruptions would easily create at least the seeds of the aberrant weather that the Dancers later sent against their enemies. As with the eruptions, it's alot easier to use magic to nudge a natural phenomenon along than to try to generate it yourself. You see a similar effect in the difference in drain codes between spells that tweak the physical state of an object (Ignite) versus a spell that generates a similar state of matter out of nothing (flamethrower).

And the ritual itself was massive - multiple ritual sites with probably thousands of participants and sacrifices each, all focused on a single metaplanar location.

But almost as importantly, they weren't hobbled by the 4th world magical paradigms, which would probably tell an high-Circle Adept that doing something on the scale of the Ghost Dance would be stupidly suicidal, if not outright impossible. Much of the way SR magic functions is predicated on belief - so if the Dancers didn't know that what they were doing was impossible, it wasn't. It's similar to the utter lack of Circles in 6th world magic and the break-down of the Mage/Shaman split - their approach to and understanding of magic doesn't call for them, so they've had no reason to adhere to them.

I think part of it is that in Earthdawn, magic is designed in a way to minimize risk, since there's so much of it going around polluted astral space. In the case of the Great Ghost Dance, they were desperate, so they took every risk they needed to take. The thing is, in Earthdawn, they are never put in a position where they're as desperate as the participants of the Great Ghost Dance. Sure, there's war, but there's never that level of genocide in Earthdawn, and they don't have an immortal elf half-horror to teach them to do it.

I'm sure if they had a really old half-horror to teach them the ritual and they had a bajillion sacrifices, they could do it. But I don't think anybody in Earthdawn ever really has both of them.

Bone Crown does.

~J