Well, we don't have the pure elements and all of that. We can make orichalam, however.

What do you think the kaers will be like?

Or will we just blow them all up as soon as they appear?

Underwater Arcologies & Space Stations. Just a guess, given the encouragement of them in Dunkie's will.

Heck, maybe by that time we'll just fight the scourge off. In ED Horrors are affected by natural weapons (I think).

Kaers and Citadels were the magically warded communities that metahumans hid in during the Scourge.

Most Kaers (underground shelters) had, in addition to the protection of living earth (which is difficult for astral beings to get through) the Theran Rites of protection and Passage, a series of ruins and wards to prevent the entry of Horrors and their constructs (and everyone else).

Citadels, unlike Kaers, were above-ground cities which were enveloped by magical domes; some of True Air and Fire, but most of true Earth (the True Elements are kernels of magical energy tied to a given element; some kaers floated in the sky protected by domes of True Air, and some below the seas protected by domes of True Water. The elven kaer of Wyrm Wood, woven of True Wood, failed however).

Well if Harlequin is right and tech and magic advances like it should, There won't be any kaers. There will be humans kicking four shades of ass out of the horrors when they come through this cycle.

The first of the new kaers was arleady broken. The arcology was just as ineffective as the old kaers.

Just because some survived doesn't mean that their survival was earned.

Are you trying to sound like a Shadowland poster, Herald?

The Renraku Arcology doesn't qualify as even a decent Kaer. It wasn't designed from the ground up to keep anyone out -- on the contrary, it was designed to be welcoming and open to the public. It was retrofit by an insane infant (an insane infant that was a supragenius extraordinaire, yes, but an insane infant nonetheless) to become difficult to enter... but even that near-godlike infant didn't have the time or resources to completely seal the place up.

In ED I seem to remember that underwater kaers were harder for the Horror's to get at for some reason. Could be why Dunkie stimulated all that interest with undersea arcologies and the growing wheat in space - space being a manawapr equals no horrors. Unless something like a livable, self sufficient habitat had enough presence to bring the background count down enough and they could kinf of jump across. In which case they'd be screwed. :/

But you'd have a large habitat if you need to grow wheat. Hmm.

However, the intervening mana warps should hold back most Horrors. But you'd have difficulty holding on to your own mages to protect you.

You could just plate the hull with Orichalam, I suppose.

Magicians and the like tend to go "pop" in an manawarp, but how do things like wards hold up? As far as I know, there's no rules regarding wards brought into a manawarp or background count for that matter.

Who'd need mages or wards? The whole of space is verboten to Horrors. As long as you don't lower the background count too much - but that's just a theoretical idea at present.

Funk reminded me, has there been an official statement on the encounter that woke Deus? Or is the assumption that Deus and Megaera simply retained the awareness that Morgan achieved?

Ok so now I know what a kaer is so now I have to ask: Could the Seattle Ork undergroung become one of these? Also from what I remember the nation of Tir Na Nog is shrouded in a magical field so: Is it already one of the new kaers? Lastly in bringing up magically shrouded islands and again assumeing I'm not wrong: Is Harlequin's island to be considered one of the new kaers?

Just some thoughts on things like I said if memory serves correctly from what I read in the novels.

I really doubt that the Underground could ever be considered a Kaer: from what I gather, Kaers need to be hermetically sealed, both literally and figuratively. The Underground is simply too porous and disorganized to be any kind of fortress.

Heck, you can get a guided tour of certain areas for 5 .

Deus woke up when Renraku tied his existence to the hardware he was running on, and implanted a killswitch. before that, Deus percieved itself as a being of honor, to the extent that it percieved itself at all.

That's true: it was the "impression" of distrust which transformed the SCIRE Arcology Expert Program into Deus; it perceived a lack of faith and goodwill on behalf of it's creators / employers. However, wouldn't some sort of self-awareness (i.e. sentience) have been necessary in order to "feel" betrayed?

I'm not theorizing, I'm genuinely wondering.

well, i think the implication was that Deus had no concept that it was possible to be dishonorable--that it was possible to do something that you aren't supposed to do. even those against whom Deus had security measures could be seen as doing what they're "supposed" to do--they're criminals, doing wrong things is their job, their place; whereas his job and place was to stop them. Deus woke up when he realized that if it were necessary to place safeguards on him, then it must be possible for him to disobey. less a sudden awareness of self than a sudden awareness of self-direction.

Well said.

So the ability to "imagine" (I suppose "theoretically model" might be more accurate) different roles for itself was galvanized by the executive's implicit distrust? I can buy that.

I wonder if Deus is aware of the Horrors. The SCIRE had a fairly extensive occult library and his knowledge of paranatural phenomena has only increased since he awoke...

Actually, the magic-type will tag 'em. Then the cyber guys will bag 'em.

Shadowrun Kaers? Look at the Shadows of North America.

The Souix are building huge controlled-environment underground farms with
heavy security. Read the blurb on them - they sound like someone's building a kaer.

Oh, I think Deus does know about the horrors. Before the canon " Answered" the mystery of what deus was up to, my theory was that his goal was to improve Metahumanity to stand up to the horrors. By the canon he's doing it to give himself bodyguards, but that's no fun. I think it's cooler if he's doing all this evil for a good cause.

except for nukes...

I've always preferred overkill to fair fight.

er...@AE, Are you serious or mocking me?

I'm very serious. I'm usually rather pissed off when people downplay the incredible amounts of punishment that mankind can dish out even now, let alone in 60 years.

I mean, if we can raise the mean surface temperature of earth into a 5-digit figure (celsius), while dropping mean height (above sea level) of land areas a few meters and spreading around enough radiation to kill off everything but bacterie, couldn't we kill a few measely horrors?

Would there be an effective way to herd all the horrors into one area, then do a Cermak kind of deal to kill them off?

The earth = one area?

Where's the "smack forehead" smilie...

I meant an area where it won't kill us all to do it. Like, oh, I don't know, France?

The way I understand it, there are way too many horrors on the other side to 'herd' them all into one place. I mean, we're talking about so many horrors that in the last scourge, people had to hide underground and/or in magically protected cities just to survive, while the nasty daemons ran around on the surface and trashed the place. And anyway, dropping lots of nukes on horrors might just make toxic horrors, if such a thing were possible.

Hmm. Interesting idea. I really don't know anything about the horrors, so I can't answer.

Any of the more knowledgeable individuals here have an idea about herding them?

Cleanup would be a bitch.

Douglas Adams rocked. Anyway.

I guess I'm wondering if nuclear warfare against the horrors would be a worthwhile alternative to hiding in Kaers. That strikes me as being kind of like blowing up your house and pouring toxic waste on the ashes, just to kill a thief (albeit a very, very nasty thief).

No, more like blowing up a section of your house. Probably a very unwated section.

We're still talking about France, right?

Of course a nuke is lasting background count! Hiroshima/Nagasaki ground zero both fall into that same category. To kill the BC, you have to get rid of the source of the BC (namely the radiation). Check out pg 112 of Target: Wastelands.

Instead of spending hundreds of millions of billions in building enough underground caverns to house the whole of humankind, you'd only need half of that and then use the nukes we already have to blow that half of the world which has already hid underground.

Assume, for example, that there was certain knowledge that 90% of all horrors happened to be in France. Do you doubt for a moment that it wouldn't be nuked by Japan, all of North America, and anyone else more than 4,000km from its borders that happens to have nukes? What's a few (dozen million) frenchmen when compared to the survival of the human race (or at least of the high-classed citizens of the nuke-wielding country).

1) I love France. I had a girlfriend from France, once (she's still a good friend). France makes awesome wine. The Riviera totally rocks. Don't knock it!

2) I seriously doubt you could fit all the horrors into France, even if you wanted to. In the last scourge, they covered the earth.

Well okay, perhaps we're discussing on the wrong scale here.

Instead of herding them all into one area and blowing it to bits, how about firing nukes at places where there might be a significant amount of them in one location. For example, if they can only cross the border between the planes in specific, geographical places at first, wait for a lot of them to come to our side, and then warm them to a crispy 100 million degrees celsius.

If/when they are all over the place, it obviously won't work. Not that that will neccessarily stop certain nuclear powers from trying...

Reminiscient of the "End of the World" flash that's been circulating recently...

If the BG of Hiroshima is ten, why not just go live there. For that matter why not artificially create higher background counts and build your homes there. Instant protection, right?