No, I have a sense of humor. But what your "joke" was trying to convey was flat out wrong. Again.

Really, you're going to argue the accuracy of a joke? Really? Please do tell, precisely how long did it take to force an entire baseball bat up your backside?

It's true, he does.

(I missed you, Doc )

~J

When you use it as part of your argument in order to draw emphasis to it, yes... yes I will. I have this really bad habit of reading the whole of an argument rather than just one sentence at a time. Sue me.

I'd admit that this does something to help them understand us, but I've pointed out before why this isn't a major concern, namely the stated methods, motivations and psychology of the Horrors is such that the named Horrors don't really consider us a threat and are therefor in for a rather rude awakening. There are counters extant for all their stated advantages except for the "mind games" they pull, and those look more like the amateurish work of a "bigger hammer" style problem solver with a familiarity with 80's splatter-fest movies that anything else to me.

Except it was not central to the argument itself, it was a throw-away line, if you are incapable of understanding that when it has been fairly clearly stated I have to question your higher reasoning capabilities. Look at the way these things torment their prey, their understanding of human psychology is crude and basic at best. Does this mean they are bad techniques? Yes and no, in isolated incidents they can prove effective, but in an information age society the term isolated incident is a polite fiction.

Fine.


Apparently, someone isn't familiar with the dragons' creation myths, which state that the Horrors were basically the creators of all life. Which, in turn, makes them gods. Which, most defintely in turn, makes them very, very old gods. You're also incorrect about them being far removed from metahuman perspectives. Despite not being able to physically enter our realm, they influence our world on a daily basis. Aztechnology is all but corrupted by them already. Entire cults are dedicated to them. The Great Ghost Dance was all but orchestrated by either them or their agents in order to expedite their entry to our world. A world that they are very well versed in. Even the footsoldiers of the footsoldiers (ie, Shadow Spirits and Shedim) have had absolutely no trouble whatsoever acclimating to the world and fucking up people's bodies, minds and souls. Again, page 147 of Street Magic lists some of the myriad ways they do so. And despite your completely inaccurate and blatantly wrong hypothesis about modern metahumans being too complex to be influenced, they are easily influenced by every conceivable reference one can find in the game.

Do their footsoldiers more closely resemble "Freddy Kreuger ripoffs with an army of Deadites?" Sure. But the big guys are about as close to god-like as you can get in the game, especially if the dragon's creation myths are accurate. And they certainly seem to be.

Throw-away line my ass.

Actually, that's the thing, I've been aware of and moderately familiar with the dragon creation myth for some time. The line you seem so fixated upon was meant in jest as a comparison of Chantrel's Horror who has been discussed extensively in this selfsame thread to Freddy Kreuger, though in point of fact it is a fairly apt comparison of their methodologies. Your point about the shedim and such is exactly my point, turned on it's head. Shedim are limited beings with a fairly uniform baseline and upper end as well as fairly limited and therefor quantifiable capabilities. This is a serviceable description of all the lower end Horror-based threats that have come through whose job it is to prepare the way. The nature of their existence makes them suited to the task, form follows function and all that. The fact that they've managed to bring a group that was already aping the depravities of a culture based on bloody human sacrifice into the fold is not impressive in my eyes.

But Horrors are killable in the Earthdawn setting, even the big bad motherfuckers like Big V can be killed by a group of dedicated and well-prepared Circle-15-adepts (and a small army ).

I'm completely missing your point then.

You're saying that the Horrors are a dismissible threat because they have their own motives and outlooks that share next to nothing with metahumanity's? Despite being able to utterly corrupt, control, scar, and/or destroy nearly anything in their path regardless of that fact. And, again, these are the weak little nobodies in the Horror's arsenal we're talking about here. Minor little peons that aren't even a microscopic glint in the eye of a true Horror.

Hell, you can't really even look to Earthdawn for an accurate representation of what the Horrors have access to; that setting took place well after the majority of the Horrors had to retreat back to their realm, and the only ones that were still around were weak little nobodies and the occasional moderately powerful ones who found some way to stick around. And despite the veil being that far closed, they were still screwing people over left and right with ease. People who were already hardened to millenia of the terrors they unleashed.

And are you really implying that Daniel Howling Coyote and his followers were depraved and blood-thirsty? Or even weak-willed? I can answer that for you: No. But the road to Hell is often paved with good intentions, and the Horrors (much like the demons that were inspired by them within the context of the game's universe, including Satan himself) love to feed off that fact. As well as every other single weakness there is, and even some that we can't even dream of. But they can.

Because, again, metahumanity is easy to influence, control and dominate. Despite your unfounded and wholly inaccurate theory to the contrary.

What? Sugar cane is way more useful than precious metals for making machines of war (you need both, but you need much more petrol and plastic), because an Earth dawn adept can produce over 2200 kilos a day without breaking a sweat. Plus, he can do that with no risk every day, while invoking a great form spirit takes resource input and is not as repeatable because it is highly risky.

It doesn't help you with petroleum specifically, but you can simply stick the spirit or mage on a mountaintop and then capture kinetic energy with a scoop-bearing wheel. Why a mountaintop? Then you can just let the precious metals roll down it.

Great Form spirits do not have Wealth, Free Spirits do. Bind the Free Spirit and you're good to go for the rest of that mage's life.

~J

My bad. Either way it certainly does not have the universal applicability of the ED adepts, and heck, it might not even work (due to the source being deliberately unclear, it could just be stealing it from bankvaults)

Even if it does steal from bank vaults, the let-it-turn-a-generating-wheel-and-then-fall-down-the-side-of-the-mountain plan still works; you no longer get matter from nothing, but you still get free energy.

~J

No, because you still have the inputs needed to rebind the spirit with services. Plus, you will eventually die given how many times a day you need to do that to atch the energy production of 2200 kilos of sugar cane a day.

Given that magical binding stuff has to be manually harvested by people, I seriously doubt it's even close to energy positive, and I suspect is highly negative. Also there are not atleast ~6 million people capable of doing that ever day. (or thus producing 12.4 million tons a day).

It's not clear in Earthdawn how many people have the potential to do that every day, but it's atleast 1 in a 1000

Bound free spirits never run out of services. MitS, p115.

~J

Sorry, I never played 3rd edition, no do I have the books, no do I particularly care, sorry. Obviously unlimited energy got retconned out with 4th

Okay, so adepts in Earthdawn may have "functionally unlimited energy," but all magic -- which is what adept talents are -- has to have a price or a drawback or else -- from a character and a roleplaying perspective -- the process is essentially overpowered, unbalanced, and boring. A lot of adept talents require Strain to use, which translates to voluntary physical damage -- essentially a personal sacrifice. Adepts also sacrifice a bit for their worldview, because they must see the world through the lens of their chosen discipline, must adhere to its rituals or risk losing faith in their talents.

Let's face it: an adept who can wave his hand and make food or whatnot appear out of thin air without ever having to concentrate on weaving complicated spell threads into a spell matrix or sacrifice points of strain would be relentlessly boring and completely unfair.

MAGIC (or any other power, for that matter) ALWAYS CARRIES A PRICE, whether you know exactly what that price is nor not, and any writer worth their salt will tell you the same. So unless your ethics allows for a world with sweatshops filled with malnourished adepts forced to use their talents every waking minute until they strain themselves into sleep, death, or a coma, I don't think this is feasible.

They had to do something right, so I guess this is it.

~J

Earthdawn adepts did it every day for 800 years without dying from drain. Whatever price they paid is far less than the actual cost of production. Incidently, it's hardly a sweatshop. With todays prices, you'd make 600 dollars a day making sugar cane, which makes you quite wealthy by my estimate (230 working days a year = salary of $138,000).

Then the 6th world should have no problem at all, since whatever people in the 4th world could do, the 6th world will be able to do as well in a hundred yearts, tops. And when we add technology the 4th world could not even dream of the outcome should be clear.

So basically you're writing it off as the "It's MAGIC... *shrug*" argument?

Mana, astral space, the metaplanes, and all of that -- they might seem mysterious to us mundanes, but they at least work on the same rigid set of rules laid out since time immemorial. Mana has to come FROM SOMEWHERE, and thus, there is always a price.

Also, if an adept capable of making sugarcane showed up in some country that is lacking in human-rights laws (China, for example) and started feeding the masses with his gift (whether altruistically or by profiting off of it), I can guarantee you one of the feudal governments or some megacorp (like Wuxing) would snatch him up, make him vanish, and exploit the hell out of him until he can't even move, forcing him to create 100 times more magical sugar than he was making before they nabbed him. If more of these candy-slingers cropped up, they would also disappear into the cogs of the machine. No rights = no problem, as far as a government like this is concerned. Forced metahuman labor: it's not as far-fetched of an idea as you might think, especially in the 6th world.

There's no indication in the published material they won't chip tooth or they won't simply just die when they come into contact with modern concepts.

The Horrors were the ultimate bogeymen in Earthdawn. In Earthdawn literature, that was their purpose. In SR literature, they were foreshadowed as harbingers of doom, but they were temporarily thwarted and later more permanently delayed. The point is that in SR up till 4A, the Horrors were beat. What happens later is up to the writers. In Equinox, they are ultimately beaten.

Can we beat them? Foresight tell me yes, but at the cost of destroying a planet.

Yes, imprisoning people who can cast magical fireballs and summon elementals that can destroy tanks in situations where they can still cast magic and torturing them is a survivable idea that will turn out well for the captors.

Actually no wait that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Why would you do that? It's like stepping into a lions cage and repeatedly poking him with a stick. Yes he can cast magic spells that summon sugar cane, but he can also summon the magic spells that make you explode in giant balls of fire right before they astrally teleport to the rest of your family and kill them to.

Remember this guy can do something that is literally impossible with SR4 magic. Hell maybe he can just make a gun and give out sugar candy like it's Halloween except that instead of candy he's giving out bullets.

Talk about an imagination not bound by rules. You don't think governments and megacorps have surefire methods for dealing with rogue magicians? If not, then the 1% of magically active people on this planet could singlehandedly take on the corps and governments and literally rule the planet. Magicians are just not that powerful. Introduce some Strain 3 Fat-Bacteria into a mage's system, and let's just see how long it takes him to drop. Or send a free spirit (bound by a spirit pact or some other deal) or a great form spirit after him if he's still acting up. He's just not going to last very long unless he's got a bevy of bound spirits in his astral pocket. And once you've incapacitated him and trapped him in a room with biofiber walls, a bit of leverage (his family held hostage, perhaps?), some mind-altering drugs, and/or a dual-natured critter sentry will help keep him in line.

I would also like to point out that an "adept" (of the Earthdawn variety) and a "magician" (of the "blowing up tanks" variety) are completely different things. In the ED sense, there are only 4 "adepts" capable of casting "spells" (wizards, nethermancers, elementalists, and illusionists), and all the rest use magic somatically to amplify their skills. In the SR sense, all "adepts" use somatic magic unless they happen to be mystic adepts, in which case their limited spellcasting abilities wouldn't easily be able to take out a tank.

As amused as I am by the thought of defeating mages with fat bacteria, I'm compelled to point out that you want FAB.

(Not FAB bacteria, either, that's what the B is for)

~J

Well, you get what I meant, anyway. I knew I was forgetting some part of the name, as I haven't read that book in a long while.

Governments and megacorps do not have surefire methods for dealing with rogue magicians, that's precisely why government and megacorps label them rogue. Part of the 1% of magically active people already rule the corps and the government. Magicians are that powerful. Magicians with the Divination Metamagic could possibly know what you are up to before you even think it. All of your methods are simply not cost effective, they are simply a lot of work simply to subdue a single rogue mage.

In SR, a mystic adept do not necessarily need to have limited spellcasting abilities. A mystic adept that put the majority or all of his Magic into the Magician side of things is as strong as a full Magician although less versatile due to his lack of astral capabilities.

So, by this statement you're essentially saying that any "rogue magician" is capable of essentially holding an entire government hostage all by his lonesome? A powerful magician can try to hold back an army, and he might be successful for a little while, but eventually the drain from his spells is either going to knock him out or kill him. Unless you're performing cantrips or other less-than-impressive spells, the drain is gonna get you in the end. No man can cast spells forever. Magicians may be able to tap into a lot of power, but that's doesn't make them omnipotent, not by a long shot. If you want to test this hypothesis, send your best mage alone against a Great Dragon and see how long it takes for him to piss himself.th



I beg to differ. Check the majority shareholders of all the AAA and even AA megacorps and tell me how many of them are Awakened. Sure there's a free spirit here, a dragon there, but those aren't what I'm talking about. Spellcasting magicians, whether they be mystic adepts, aspected magicians, or full magicians, just do not have that kind of political and social power. A few might, here or there, but it's not solely because of their magical ability. Being able to torch a tank does not automatically make you rich and popular. It makes you dangerous and may make people notice you (and not necessarily in a good way), but that alone doesn't put you on top of the social pyramid.



If Divination gives any one individual THAT kind of power, then your GM is either abusing the power (in terms of NPC magicians) or letting his PC magicians get away with far too much. Divination is meant to be a guide to the future, not a written-in-stone, "THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN" manifesto. Ask anyone who deals with tarot, runes, I Ching or any other modern oracle or divination device: the results are always up for interpretation. Each person will see something different. "Always in motion, the future is," to quote a certain, diminutive spiritual master.

Can Divination metamagic be used to make PCs (or NPCs) apprehensive? Sure. But no one should be able to use it to get winning lottery numbers.


Jack of all trades, master of none. You can either be a good magician or a good adept, not both. A mystic adept with most of his Magic devoted to spellcasting will never be as good at slinging mojo as his full magician brethren, and he'll never be able to physically keep up with his full-adept cohorts.

This thread reads like a religious pamphlet.

GO HUMANS!

The difference being, most religions don't include the other side of the argument in their pamphlets.

They do. They shoot them in the head. Or they pay them 100k, then do the distribution themselves and clear the 50k as straight up profit. All the stuff you suggest is just the same as killing him.

Saddly there are some rather munchy spirit pacts which make this statement less relevant then it could be.

1) If the Great Dragon is not himself Awakened, let's see how fast the Great Dragon pisses itself. Hell, the very fact that the dragon is a magician makes my point for me.

2) I beg to differ as well. Those precisely are the people I am talking about or have the backing of the people who are Awakened. Magical ability is an edge few mundanes can overcome without the aid of another Awakened.

3) As many people keep telling me when I quote RAW, when the GM does or allows something, it is then no longer abuse. However, the actual wording of Divination is intentionally vague, while higher successes will increase how specific the information would be. "Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen," to quote a certain spiritual and temporal master.

4) A mystic adept created using the same amount of resources can match his full magician brethren, he might even surpass them in certain circumstances. While he might not be able to fully match his physical adept counterpart, he can keep up with them.

Please keep in mind that all knowledge about the supercool-circle-15-powers come from the timeframe shortly after the peak of the mana level, of which the 6th world is a bit more away than 100 years. Anyway. The chance is there for humanity to beatt the Horrors the next time they come around (more likely in a few centuries and not in the next century). Or maybe not - there have been many good arguments against it, so the questions remains:
Can we beatt the Horrors?

It's "Can we beatt he Horrors?"

My whole point is that "the super-cool-circle-15-powers" is not supposed to be "super cool" by the standards of the 6th world in 2170 or 2200. That's what progress means - whatever the 4th world has the 6th world will surpass far more easily and quickly. What the rather primitive culture of Earthdawn had at the peak of the mana cycle will be a footnote compared to what the 6th world will be able to do by merging science and magic at their peak. And the 8th world will render even those accomplishments insignificant.

If there is no such progress then we're not playing with (meta)humanity as it is, but with some alternate (meta)humanity which has been dumbed down by cheap and lazy plot-decrees so the stupid "in olden times, man had legendary powers, alas it was lost" trope can be used despite it being nonsense.

There's a reason Shadowrun has SOTA and not "legendary old tech that beats all we can do now".

Actually SOTA is not so much new tech that beats old but legendary old tech that we can make even better (or worse, if it suits our needs )

We're on the same page, I guess. All I'm saying is that progress in the understanding and use of magic (including developing of talents) takes some time, and probably more than one century.

I'm not familiar enough with Earthdown backsground to have an informed opinion on this simple question : while metahumanity can an indeed does invent and develop, are the Horrors frozen in some timeless stagnation, or can they too experiment, learn and adapt ? Faster or slower than us ?

This IMHO more than anything else is the key factor in how the coming confrontation turns out.

They spend all their time in the downcycle warring on eachother, individual named Horrors might be able to evolve but because of the nature of their existence they don't share advancements such as newly developed powers, insights and tactics. Regardless of IF they advance slower or faster than us on an individual level as a total their power level should effectively be the same as it was in the 4th age, or near enough to it as to make no differance.

Don't think of the horrors of learning and adapting and having a culture like what we do Dahrken. Probably the best way to describe them would be to consider them simular to free spirits ranging from a magic of 1 to infinity and beyond (higher magic typically means they need a higher mana level to be in this plane) that can feed on pretty much anything depending on what type they are. The lower more common ones typically eat matter, while the more intelligent ones typically feed from emotions. They can have any power, therefore anything that we have they can make use of also (see guardian and task spirits). The problem is that they are all completely different and it's extremely hard to describe them as a single entity other than what has been done saying they are nightmare for the future. It also makes it harder since they don’t really work together (typically) and sometimes clash because what they want is different. You know it’s hard to feed hate if your cattle are all T-bones already. Intelligence in general also varies quite a bit some making great dragons seem like kids and some like goldfish. However, intelligence generally is a very hard thing to determine (ever watch the show “Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader?”) and that is just younger versions of us. What happens when it goes in completely different directions? Heck we cannot even figure out why people from other countries act like they do half the time, what makes you think we can understand them? (Actually we could if people were not idiots that always assume that everyone thinks like them)

Sorry Fuchs don’t agree with you there. Sometimes there are huge steps back when it comes to development (where would we be if the Roman Empire would not have fallen for example?) and also development in one area doesn’t translate to development in everything. Have to remember magic in Earthdawn is lightyears ahead of magic in Shadowrun (those 15 circle powers don’t exist now remember?) and actually mage tech was much higher before everyone had to hide away in protected areas. Mage tech in general isn’t even close to being used yet in Shadowrun. Yes technology is much higher than it was there, but we are dealing with spiritual entities. Who knows what, if any affect it will have on them. Heck with all the different types a nuke might kill one, tickle one, and feed another.

But by the same token as stated in the 8th age we won, if you consider destroying your home planet winning .

Nukes may be a bad example. Those things are notoriously ineffective in the 6th world.

Desperate times call for desperate solutions.

The "dark ages" were not as dark as people assume - techology advanced still after the fall of the roman empire. And What I am saying is that even in the few decades since magic returned Shadowrun's mages advanced far, and advance farther still each year - at a pace Earthdawn never had. Knowledge is preading much quicker in the 6th world, allwoing far quicker advancement. In a hundred years the 15ht circle powers will be common metamagics, nothing more.

You're seriously arguing that 6th World magical research is supposedly exponentially better at accumulating knowledge about the subject but yet can't even manage to produce Circle 1 spells like Experience Death, Pauper's Purse, Flameweapon, or Plant Talk over 40 years after the Awakening?

~J

Maybe they've not had reason to do so yet?

Actually am sure research is better, but how much do you lose transering magical ideas through a technical standpoint. Remember in earthdawn, if you don't ALWAYS view yourself (and act like) a Mage/Elementalist/whatever and follow the "way" you start losing your magic (cannot remember mechanics but story wise it's there). I follow the high tech it looks like magic standpoint, but you cannot reverse it in saying all magic can be explained by high tech. Regardless though on how good our research techs are it doesn't really matter, since it already has been said the mana levels are rising much faster than the last time.

Everyone also considers your dragons and IEs to be lazy bums. What if there is a reason they don't share info besides the fact they are a-holes?

As far as destroying the planet, who knows how it was done. That far in the future they might have just thrown it into the Sun or even sent it too the horror's own plane *shrug*. Doesn't really matter, just doubt it was nukes, since in time that would mean that the planet could be recoverable. Am sure at that time too cleaning up a bit of fallout wouldn't be too hard, lol.

YAAARRGHHH!!! My brain, it burns!!!

By your logic, evolution would be impossible because a single individual can't share its experience with its neighbors.

Horrors have the potential of being the best example of open-source warfare.

It may be that Horrors have evolved that they are specialized in a way that is not especially beneficial on Earth. It may be that the last planet the Horrors invaded was full of tasty marshmallow men. But given what's written - that more Horrors are made continuously, and are immediately tested by a lifetime of combat and violence and weeded out based solely on their individual capability, and accepting that this success can be passed on via observation, communication, procreation or another method, Horrors should on the whole be continuously advancing at an extraordinary rate. I would fully expect that the next wave is full of creatures we have never encountered before. The initial wave may not be properly acclimated to eating humans specifically, but then again, they may be.

I'm guessing equinox is going to be using some kind of mass driver to do it.

the end result is a new asteroid belt in earth orbit, so that kind botches the 'send it to another plane' or 'throw it into the sun' ideas.

but enough gravitational force would make it very easy to smear the planet out across the orbit, and there's plenty of ways to do that with sufficient energy.