Verjigorm Works In Mysterious Ways... He's so fricken übercool, that he frequently outsmarts himself. And he could destroy any universe that someone else has created in the blink of an eye, so he had to create himself a new universe so he could have some challenge. [Sorry for the rant, I don't think you guys are that bad yet. ]

my thanks, ae. it looks like i'll have to tip my hat to you on your ed superiority as well.

and merry xmas all from the inbred lands of PA

no, coraopolis doesn't count as inbred tanka!

1) The first dragon was, according to dragon myth, a fluke.

2) Destroying the world is not the priority. He wants to destroy and/or corrupt us. Aren't we special?

3) Other metaplanes are not spared, even the elemental planes are corrupted durign the Scourge.

as i recall didn't he threaten all wings that he would hunt her and her kind for eternity or something like that? she stood up to him or something and he decided that he wanted to get back at her for it cause it was his world.

i could read it, it's on the puter, but i am notoriously lazy.

Well that would explain the hobby of re-writing dragons.

I don't think it was all-wings that defied Verjigorm, it was one long before all-wings, it was the first dragon-esque thing that created the first dragons. That's according to the dragon creation myth from the earthdawn dragons book (that was never released but is freely downloadable).

*looks stuff up*

Yup. According to dragon myth Verjigorm was initially the only living creature in existance. It created Horoi and made them fight endless battles against eachother. Then it created one that named itself Nightslayer (they put great emphasis on the fact that he named himself) who in-turn spawned all of the lesser races (including Dayheart, the first dragon, made in Nightslayer's image, who again named himself).

Obviously Verjigorm wasn't happy so he sent his minions to destroy Nightslayer, but Nightslayer somehow kicked all of their sorry asses (including Verjigorm) into the netherlands. Verjigorm cursed Nightslayer, swearing that he would hunt-down and destroy all of his creations, specifically the dragons as they were Nightslayer's favourite.

As a parting gift, Verjigorm toasted Nightslayer, but he managed to save the younger races who lived on.

Hope that helps. Take it with a pinch of salt because it is a Dragon myth.

[edit]Also it's not explicitly stated in the dragon myth, but Nightslayer defeated the Horoi by creating something and naming it a "Can-O-Whoop-Ass" then opening it...[/edit]

What's with the double post?

FAB is good. The problem is that it really does make sense to have some form of KAER around but I think there'd be a chance the FAB would eat any wards they made. ALso a force 10 FAB cloud is quite something, but I still doubt it could handle one of the big ones. We'd also have to deal with a planet *covered* with FAB once the scourge finally ended.

Another point about artificer: I reckon that the way to deal with him is to make all our technology biological. Replace the matrix with a bigass biologically engineered version, replace ctberware with bioware (or make cyberware out of ceramics) and I doubt he'd have power over it.

FAB3 can survive on background count without draining it at all... Ristul is background count. Looks like Ristul has a new friend.

First off, there is one thing that is important to remember with horrors. There is no rule that applies to every horror.

That being said. I'd like to paint a few pictures for you who aren't aware of what kind of a fight the sixth world is in for.

Let's take 2 very minor horrors.

The Gnasher: Imagine a piranha the size of a doberman that's as tough as a troll. It has a taste for sentient flesh, but is more than willing to eat anything. Now try and imagine what you and your team plan to do when they start pouring out of the metaplanes by the millions.

Dread Iota: These guys are just as intelligent as you or me, pack as much magical firepower as a 3rd grade initiate and are the size of bacteria. They like to hang out in water supplies, in animals, and in you. You don't know they're there until they start talking to you. Letting you know that they are eating you from the inside, that they are multiplying. They whisper to you at all times of the day, they're willing to negotiate. They'll stop eatting you for a little while if you help them infect others. In fact, not only will they stop but they're will to l pump you full of magical kamikaze while you do it.

We are going to need kaers.
Look at how many resources Ares has tied up fighting the bugs. They're fairly benign. I'd say a master shedim is more like a run of the mill astrally based horror.

And one last thing. Verjigorm isn't the only one capable of taking on great dragons. Taint (who's MO bares a striking resemblance to Tutor from Threats) was able to destroy a great dragon.

Just sat down and did the math. The Wastes in Earthdawn has a background count of 7 or so (depending on what assumptions you make) based on how quickly a astrally projecting mage will die in it. The Wastes were crawling with horrors. Further the netherworld of Sylvar was completely stripped of life by horrors and is described as having some horrors still there "glorying in the devestration". As there is clear evidence that horrors can survive manawarp and none that manawarp hurts them I think it's safe to say that a multi-megaton nuke (dual natured any other) would just result in damaging astral space and further poisoning the world. Exactly what the horrors are wanting to do.

I'll toss out a couple of things concerning the astral taint of earthdawn, to try to finish off this "how do horrors deal with mana warps" debate.

1) Taint is measured in four steps: Safe, Open, Tainted, Corrupted
2) Most spellcasting done in ED used "matrices". These are basically permanent versions of the Filtering metamagic from SOTA:2063. They filter the mana coming in to use the spell, so the caster is unharmed.
3) It is possible to cast without matrices. This is known as "raw casting". Any time this is done, the spell is cast much faster (1 action, rather than potentially many), and the caster has the possibility of suffering damage. The possibility rises in relation to how currupted the area is (even "safe" poses a risk, especially for powerful spells), and the damage rises as well. There is also a risk of being "marked" by a horror when raw casting.
4) Any form of astral perception is made more difficult in high-taint areas, though no damage is taken.
5) Astral projection is almost unheard of (only nethermancers, a form of spellcaster specializing in non-elemental spirits, can normally perform it (known as "netherwalk")). Each round of astral projection deals damage to the user, more taint = more damage.
6) It is possible, though difficult, to physically enter the astral plane through gateways, either natural, or formed by a magically active individual. Again, damage every round, more taint, more damage (starting to sound like a warp, huh?)
7) Areas high in Horror activity show a marked rise in taint levels (easily reaching the "corrupt" level).
9) As has been mentioned before, there is a Horror known as "Taint" (aka, Ristul, I believe). It's only manifestation is as the astral Taint itself. Whether this means Taint is all astral taint, or only disguising itself among it is unknown.

Taken all together, I'd say that horrors would be happy in most mana warps. However, in my mind, this raises a different point. Space is generally defined as "the absence of mana", implying that horrors (dependent on a high-mana environment) would not survive. If this is the case, however, how does a spellcaster manage to cast spells in a rating 10 warp? (other than the answer of very poorly) It may just mean that, as the mana level rises, the mana level in space does, too, but warped so badly as to be unusable by a normal spellcaster.

[Edit: skipped item 8, b/c it causes an obnoxious smiley]

Say an evil GM were wanting to delve into Earthdawn, but wanted first and foremost to learn about the Horrors. Any particular book you'd suggest?

~J

I believe that a spellcaster casts spells in space purely off of the mana that his presence represents. This is why according to MITS the background count on a populated space station is only a 9 (if I'm remembering right). There is a bit more mana to work with.

But yeah, back to topic.

My question is who's got the data on making the wards for a kaer and are they going to share?

Horrors by FASA.

Failing that, Scourge Unending by Living Room Games.

Also, The Parlainth Boxed Set by FASA is probably one of their best products.

oh, and the Earthdawn books Horrors(FASA) and Scourage Unending(Living Room Games) will tell you lots about horrors. The stats will be pretty meaningless to you unless you actually read a copy of the earthdawn core rules but the flavor text and GM's information should give you a good understanding of what they are all about. If you want horrors in your game you should get a copy of Threats and Threats 2. They have some horrors in there (Tutor, Master Shedim, Aleph Society).
[looks like Ancient beat me to the punch on that one]

Many thanks. I'll have to pick those up at some point. Already got Threats 2, though I hadn't really thought of Gaf in terms of Horrors...

~J

And that's just the way he wants it to be.

Right. Check out Mr. Darke's little friends, though.

taint and ristul are two separate entities. also the earthdawn novel prophesy, though poorly written, features ristul exclusively and the driving force behind it is that he is trying to manifest on the physical plane. so i would think that although we know ristul as purely astral, it would seem there is a way for him to manifest, though it seemed to require a ritual sacrificing an entire village.

So again I ask where are the books of Harrow?
Dunkelzahn tried to put a lot of pressur on people share information on this topic, so do you think whoever has them will share or try and corner the market on self preservation when the time is right?

(FYI for non-ED people, the books of Harrow warn of, and explain the scrouge and how to ward against Horrors).

Second. I didn't include Mr.Darke's friends because Darke is dead. But I went and reread his entry anyway to see if there was anything more useful. I think I did find something. The last line in game information says that if Darke is killed another will take his place.

The other horrors I mentioned are the closest approximation to horrors currently availible. I suppose technically they are all just malign free spirits out to corrupt, destroy, and sew misery for all metahumanity (except Gaf, who just hasn't made his move yet). To me that sounds an awful lot like a horror's job description, so I call them horrors.

The Books of Harrow are likely gone. Althought, the Roggoth'Shoth and Ehran's copy of Al Azif likely had at least a distillate of their lore.

[/edit] The Books warn against the Scourge, but the process of warding-the Theran Rites of Protection and Passage-were developed seperately. Dragons have their own (possibly superior) means of protection. In fact, there is some speculation that the location of the cache holding the Books of Harrow was stolen from a Alamais' hoard.

Cheese Emperor just asked about my nuclear warhead Damage Code calculation, so I checked it and noticed it was WRONG! Here's what I sent back to C.E.:

500 megatons = 500,000,000 tons (five hundred million tons) of TNT in explosive power. The square root of 500,000,000,000 is ~707,106.78.

That times the Power of 1kg of Commercial (3) is about 2,121,320, for 2,121,320D.

Using the optional explosion staging rules, the 500 megaton nuke rolls 1,060,660 dice against a TN of 4, succeeding an average of 530,330 times, staging the damage up by 265,165 times (one level for each 2 successes).

The final damage code is therefore 2,121,320D+265,165. The Blast is -3/meter. It would still do 6D after 707,104 meters, or ~439 miles away.

Which is a bit odd since, like I said, it shouldn't even light up forests more than 208 kilometers/129 miles away, and the actual shock wave wouldn't get nearly as far.

Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised that SR rules do not correctly represent nuclear warheads... Is there a RPG system anywhere that does?

My understanding was that the Rite of Protection was developed using information from the books.

*runs off and checks*

My bad, the books of Navarim explain how to protect against horrors.

also, my understanding (and we see where that gets me) was that the Therans were better mages than the dragons (because the dragons aren't so stupid as to try the sorts of things the Therans did).

The Heavenherds are likely each on par, magically, with an adult dragon. All together, they have sufficient resources to kill a great dragon (i.e. Vasdenjas, Yuchoitol, Cloudtamer).

What do you do when you nuke the first group (and lets say that it works), and then they just keep coming. Then you keep firing nukes, and the radiation slowly starts building up, even using low minimal force weapons of mass destruction. However, the horrors, just keep coming.

So giving the defending force the benefit of the doubt, they're able to keep the horrors in one area for any amount of time. But eventually they spread. Now they're all over the place, and they're STILL coming and they're obscenely nasty and powerful. You're nuking everything you see.

What do you get? You get a rad-filled earth, plus horrors that just keep coming anyway. For hundreds of years.

Yah.. um.. good luck with that. I'll be deep in a kaer somewhere buried underneat the sea floor. Warded and with a multitude of defense weaponry in case the horrors manage to break through. And it'll be with full understanding that I'll probably die of old age before metahumanity is able to come out again.

Predator Omega, if memory serves, is a cyber-assassin lurking on the Alternate PC Archtypes thread.

You know, the kind of PC that GMs laugh at and say, "No, really...where's your character?"

-Siege

Predator Omega in all his... its splendor... No Comment.

An immortal elf is what you get when an Earthdawn GM lets a Predator Omega into the game, then lets it cook for a few thousand years.

So in short an immortal elf is REEEAALLYYY BAD ASS!

does anyone know the stats for one?

I would assume that horrors are at least as numerous as humans, but probably as numerous as all the life on earth.

History teaches us that a war strategy of "If we kill 3 of them for every one of us that dies we win" is a bad idea. That was the general strategy of WW-1.

Insofar as I know, there are no canon rules for Immortal elves -- which argues there may very well be unique to each one.

Imagine anyone living for a thousand years with an urge to fight is gonna be pretty dangerous with or without magic.

Can you picture all the shadowruns they had to go on in the Dark Ages to earn enough karma to raise any skill?

-Siege