My guess is that the mana level is not strong/ high enoughi n 100+ years to support high-circle magic. Hell, there aren't any t'skrang in the 6th world now... Talents are based on research to a degree, agreed, but also on the mana level.

No No No i think it was brain overload that did it







I agree with nezumi on this, to think horrors simply retreat with the ebbing flow of magic and fight it out is a bit short sighted. It’s a big universe out there, when magic ebbs on earth who knows where it floods to. And where magic goes the horrors follow.

Bah if they last world they ate was full of tasty marshmallow men we shouldn't be worried at all. The world of chocolate puppies or graham cracker hookers will be next on the menu......

PS. haven't read anything on equinox yet, so you're right, having a new asteroid belt where earth used to be does point in a given direction. Though is there enough mass in the Earth to equal an asteroid belt? Hmm must be a pretty tinny one...

More likely: Maybe the magic level isn't high enough. Remember, the book of harrow was discovered what, 1000 years before the kaer's were sealed, and the level of magic didn't drop all the way back to where it was before people went in. Assuming the cycle is symmetrical, that means Earthdawn was ~900-1100 years after awakening magic level wise.

So yeah, over 40 years means 2/3rds of jack shit - or more accurately, at most less than 5% of the way to ED magic levels.

When we played SR1/2 and ED1 my impression was that ED's magic was noticably weaker in key points (damage and healing) than ED's magic. I never really got the hype about how magical ED was supposed to be, compared to how powerful magic was in SR2. We had to nerf mages quite a bit to keep the game playable.

Except We aren't talking about evolution we are talking about beings that are in fact constructs, all of them where created by Verjisgorm IIRC, and even more importantly it isn't a matter of evolution so much as a matter of expanding upon areas of knowledge and while one Horror may be able to grow their are limited by their own experiental framework which going by all the information we have on the Horrors and their native reality is fairly limited. Add to this that they don't wargame, they don't form think tanks to examine ideas and events... they are powerfull in terms of raw magical ability but not inconcievably so, most of the danger with named Horrors is their ability to manipulate emotions via their actions, which I have discussed elsewhere but suffice it to say I don't find sufficiently daunting to grant the Horrors even a draw.

We cannot allow the world of graham cracker hookers to fall!

*Stand up and raises fist into the air*

We must FIGHT! Stand with me brothers and sisters! The graham cracker hookers MUST BE PRESERVED!

ALL dragons are Awakened, even Great Dragons (pg 303 SR4A: "Dragons are all capable magicians..."), but that's not my point. A dragon could make a snack out of any magician without even resorting to their Sorcery or Conjuring skills. Lofwyr: "You got HOW many hits on your Sorcery Test for that mana spell?" Magician: "Uh, three?" Lofwyr: "Delicious. Now just let me roll my 13 Willpower plus my 20 Mystic Armor and hope I don't glitch. Then, after that tickle, I'll try hitting you with my 50+ dice worth of Strength. *chortle* I believe you may die more than just once."


I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this point, since I stand by my original thesis. Magical ability does not directly translate into fiscal, social, or political power. There are far more burnouts and wagemages wandering the gutters of society as there are Awakened AAA board members. Awakened immortal elves might have a lot of political sway, but that's just because they've been around for thousands of years and have learned how to influence people, which they don't even need magic for, and many of them were kings, queens, or princes in previous mana cycles. People with mindsets like that don't let power get away from them so easily, regardless of whether they have any magical ability or not.


I'm guessing you forgot that that particular spiritual and temporal master was so nearsighted he couldn't even foresee his own death by betrayal. Divination always has limits. Besides, if you already know what's going to happen, where's the fun in that?

Also, if a GM is new or doesn't understand a rule very well but the player knows how to work the system, it's still abuse. A player who is far more experienced with a particular game than the current GM can get away with all kinds of stuff simply because the GM doesn't know any better. For example, I've heard horror stories about players using their interpretation of the RAW Chemistry rules to basically fund the whole team's retirement, all because the GM didn't understand the kind of wealth it would generate, but the player knew it all along. This still falls under the umbrella of abuse.


Mystic Adept vs. Full Magician or Aspected Magician -- Let's say a newly-created mystic adept has a Magic rating of 6. He dedicates 5 of those points towards the "mystic" part of things and puts the remaining point towards a single Power Point.

Unless he's got an expensive power focus (and the ridiculously high amount of karma it costs to bond said focus), the highest Force he can cast without risking overcasting Drain is a 5. His partner, who is a full magician, also has a Magic of 6 and can cast Force 6 spells without risking overcasting. One extra die can mean the difference between life and death.

Also, mystic adepts can't astrally project at all. In this way they already lose the astral race against their full-magician cousins.

Mystic Adepts vs. Full Adepts -- Continuing with our example, with only one Power Point to spend on adept powers, the only way our mystic adept friend is going to keep up with full adepts is with several levels of magical initiation and opting for an extra Power Point rather than choosing a metamagic. But then again, any full adept starting with 6 Magic (and thus 6 Power Points) and does the same regarding initiation is still going to be far ahead of our mystic adept friend.

Out of curiosity, I checked the Threats book, and the proper name is indeed "Fat Bacteria Strain III."

I don't know where you got "FAB" from. I can't find a mention of it anywhere in SR4A's uber-index.

the term FAB origins from MitS (Magic in the Shadows) from SR3 iirc

Aw man, seriously?

FAB is the term used in MitS, but you're right, there appears to have been some continuity fail.

~J

The rate they've been publishing at it's any surprise? Atleast in this instance it is a relatively minor fail.

Or the magic level is high enough, but the knowledge level isn't. Several events have occured which have sped up the increase of magic. In ED, they had a long time to master these new arts. In SR, they're moving at lightning speed, but there still always seems to be SOMETHING new to learn. We have definitely not mastered the magic available to us right now, so our skill may indicate crude methods rather than lack of available magic.




Darkwing reproduced. The idea that 100% of horrors are constructs has been shown to be false. Meanwhile, even if they are 100% constructs, that implies Intelligent Design - i.e. every creature will be carefully crafted to the situation, and their danger level is exactly matched to Verjigorm's knowledge and skill. And since Verjigorm continues to accrue experience over time, across other worlds, through infinite battling, that implies that is constructs will also be superior. We may assume that the initial contact Verjigorm will not have sufficient information to properly react, but that won't last for long.



Where are you getting this?



No one said otherwise, and you're completely failing to address my point here.

Have you ever read up on how IED technology has been advancing in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you think there are think tanks who just spend time designing these things? Do you think they run war games?

Of course not. Someone makes a device. They set it up. If it's less effective than previous models, he improves on it, or drops it. If it's more successful, he shares the design with similarly minded individuals/groups, strengthening his allies, and therefore, himself. Similarly, other people study exploded or unexploded bombs and copy the design, for their own purposes. John Robb of Global Guerrillas has called this a 'bazaar of ideas'. It's a distributed, non-centralized web of relationships (not all mutual or friendly) by which experience and successful tactics spread quickly across disparate or even directly conflicting groups. There is little reason to assume that any creature able to learn from observed experience could not implement something similar, as long as it's in an environment where different tactics can be used and tested regularly (such as an eternity of combat). If Horrors can self-improve, by generations, by self-modification, etc., the results could be spectacular.

Hehe sorry just have to laugh at that. So you are saying that people always chose the most effective way of doing things or that politics never comes into account? Man I wish that was true, as an engineer it would make life so simpler. However, people want what they want regardless of cost, efficiency, or any other logical reason. Heck people in general are idiots and trying to get a group moving in one direction without hate (or other strong us vs. them mentality) is just about impossible. Even when people are moving together, rarely is it in a smart manner (see definition of a Mob Mind).

In regards to think tanks, that only really works when everyone has a similar level of experience. Am thinking horrors if they have a culture (that we would recognize) would be more similar to feudal compared to anything else. And when your KING has supreme power and an IQ off the charts what others think really doesn't matter.

Ok, I may be wrong about the nature of horrors on the construct or evolution thing, as I've said I find Earthdawn a bit boring as a setting so I haven't read the sourcebooks extensively. However one thing that has not been disputed is that they are completely lacking in anything resembling culture or cooperation. It has been repeatedly stated in this thread by several posters that they exist on the downcycle purely making war on eachother, this might be an effective model for forced evolution (might, it's also possible such a state is so violent that beneficial traits get eliminated just as quickly as traits that limit survival) but it isn't anywhere near ideal for learning and expanding a set of skills or powers since, due to the nature of Horrors and the arcane powers they use, namely their likely mana warping presence alone they leave effectively no actionable information on the metaphysics (for lack of a better term, if I where an SR mage I'd follow the chaos tradition, sue me) of what they did. You'd have to be there, witnessing the powers use to get anything out of it, and as the higher powers among them all seem to be solitary hunters... Listen, except for a few jokes I've never claimed this would be an easy fight for metahumanity but every point of refferance I've seen about the Horrors and their adaptibility indicates they, well, don't care for it. They're modus operandi as a species seems to be more similar to be that of certain insects that use scouts to find prey or find out if a potential prey is ready than anything else and even the named Horrors are more similar to serial killers with defined pathologies than tacticians and strategists. Compare this to metahumanity, composed of social creatures capable of forming complex responses independantly or as groups, with information age technology that allows such said groups to exchange information as part of a constantly adaptive model. A model that drives technological and metaphysical research at a pace less advanced societies could not come close to matching even on vastly smaller scales... It'll be a hellish fight, we are after all talking about the settings take on the Lovecraftian Old Ones, but as they are written and have been defined in the books and this discussion metahumanity should eventually stand triumphant.

to Sixgun_Sage: lets consider for a moment that you'd be right about Horror's having no cultures, thus are at a disadvantage compared to Namegivers/Metahumanity (even if i dont think so, but lets suppose you are right)

well who said Horrors NEED to develop themselves, since EVERYTHING Metahumanity can use can be used INDIRECTLY by the Horrors, even if you'd be right about them being unable/hampered in developing stuff themselves...

the Horrors' solution to that problem is simply called corruption/horror marking, and then the subverted individuum can use the Metahuman/Namegiver stuff for the 'Great Cause'

now more generally some stuff i have been thinking about:

and to add just a tidbit here and there: during the Earthdawn Scourge era Verjigorm cocooned some dragon eggs, and thus corrupted them, one of them now awakened might be the dragon with the corrupted aura from the Aztlan sourcebook (just a example)

and it still isnt sure whether the twisted/corrupted(maybe even the toxic) paths of magic are in fact the first signs of Horror-corrupted Namegivers/Metahumans. (my personnal favourite theory is that Winternight's action between SR3 and SR4 was in fact induced by Cauthronne(spelling?) a Named ED Horror from the second Horror Sourcebook 'Scourge Unending', and that the whole stuff with making technomagical nukes explode at certain geological sites and the whole chaotic 'make-the-world-end' stuff they used (bio-weapons,nano-weapons and others) was used to further advance the bridge between the worlds (creating manaspikes, where crossing over is faster due to higher mana level), and if you read Year of the Comet, there is a group of Awakened advancing the bridge even long after Dunkelzahn/Lethe/Burnout went to keep the bridgebuilders in check after Tayla's struggle with Aztech's Blood Mages (Darke and the Blood Mage Gestalt; Threats 1 and the Dragonheart Trilogy) (they are mentioned in the news articles throughout the book)

cybermancy's astral taint might in fact be a hint at Horror Magic involved here (in Cybyertechnology iirc its indicated that Blood Magician's Cybermancy creates a link to 'somewhere' in the deep metaplanes/netherworlds to offset the drain suffered by the participating mages), thus it may not be an alternative to fighting the Horrors.

since Shedim' and Imps' descriptions both explicitly state them NOT to be free spirits but to be handled in a similar fashion by the rules, i strongly think they might be the first manifestations of minor unnamed Horrors already able to pass through at spikes like f.e. the Dunkelzahn Rift;
heck Gaf of the Aleph society might in fact be a malicious Imp residing in the Book of Gaf and corrupting the burned out mages (even the power by which it 'restores' the burnouts' magic is no big issue if you take ED's thread magic and Horror Mark's in consideration..

also the Ibn Eisa stuff and increased Wraith sightings in the middle east during the 60's strongly hints at the agenda to create pain, suffering and feed off/enjoy it

and to the last point, if you'd counter that those are mere Shadow Free Spirits at the work here, i think we actually have some hints that Shadow Spirits may be nothing more than Horror corrupted Free Spirits (Artificer one of the major Named Horrors is in fact not truely a Horror but a corrupted Free Elemental Spirit, and inherited his Horror powers after the corruption)

back to the discussion, my major point is that if the Horrors would be unable to do something themselves they'll just pick someone to corrupt and do their dirty work for them, and thats why it will take first of all MAJOR willpower by Namgivers/Metahumanity not to succumb to the Horrors, because only if more than half the necessary Manpower can be saved from corruption there is even the slightest opportunity to win a direct confrontation, cus else you might stand against an overwhelming unfriendly mass of Metahumanity/Namegivers giving you a hard time before you can even start with hunting down Horrors

just my thoughts

ps: looking forward to Equinox...

Well, my statement about their lack of culture is based on the consensus established on what they do during the downcycle Cyronc, and I believe it poses a greater problem for them than what you claim. First off they will lack the proper points of refferance to understand the advances metahumanity has made in tactics, weapons and defensive technology and a whole host of other areas so they'll start off the scourge the same way they always do, trying to deal with mages, elves and dragons the named Horrors will likely realize how dangerous a troll with a minigun and depleted uranium rounds is fairly quickly, but the subtler threat of brain benders like personafixes and mood chips will take longer to deal with because atleast on the surface the person can function with no obvious detriment for extended periods of time and since these screw with the subjects brain chemistry and emotions it is highly likely, atleast in my opinion that the emotion feeding of said named Horrors will at the very least be inhibited if not stopped until said beings figure out a way around that. Then you have things like autohypnotic suggestions and programming, cybernetic and bioware brain modifications and metahuman mind altering magic. Admittadly none of these are fixes, and mind altering magic did exist in the 4th age but likely in a differant form if the changes in other areas are an indication, but they are all factors. Metahumanity is "bigger, better, faster, stronger" in every concievable area whereas going by all information that has been presented the Horrors should be essentially a static-level threat. They have no established social structure which means the transmission of new ideas, techniques and the like is effectively a non-issue amongst Horrors.

Actually, now that I reread some more of the Earthdawn books, humanity may have screwed itself. We've gotten awesome at research and communication.

Horrors mess up people who learn about them or talk about them. "[I]t is unwise to communicate about a Horror through a messenger", for example.

~J

Mostly because it calls their attention to you, but if you want that attention and are prepared to "greet" them appropriately...

there is an exception to that: Nebis a minor but nasty Horror that relies on you calling his name sometimes first and then you simply cant stop calling Nebis anymore. When you Nebis him often enough he Nebis take your body parts and Nebis his own body out of it even if you killed him previously...

just a thought or Nebis...

/damn, gotta check those virus filters again

I'd agrue that there is more than one "exception", Horrors such as Taint simply can't be fought and then there is at least one Horror that marks solely on physical objects you might handle.


Also I'm not so sure of the basic premise, if the only danger in studying the Horrors was in drawing their attention then it seems to me that the preface of Earthdawn Horrors wouldn't be written in the manner in which it was.

Page 126-127 of street magic and page 65 of Arsenal discuss FAB I-III.

You couldn't find it because it's listed in the SR4A index under Fluorescing Astral Bacteria.

Huh. I guess I didn't realize the two were the same thing (or at least, FAB III and Fat Bacteria Strain III are the same, anyways). Wonder why/when they changed the name? "Strain III" always had an ominous ring to it.

Also, I still have no idea what "fat bacteria" is. The Threats book said the lab in question was trying to "reverse-engineer Ares Fat Bacteria," but the only real-world reference I can find for "fat bacteria" was an article or two about bacteria that live in the intestinal tract and can be partially responsible for a person's obesity. However, the article I saw talking about "fat (or obesity) bacteria" was dated 2006, and Threats has been around since 1996. Did Shadowrun successfully predict the future, albeit a mundane one?

If I had to guess I'd say that "Fat bacteria" was chosen to be vague and ominously simple. FAB was probably a back-formation when they decided to introduce the other strains and decided they didn't want to explain the name.

This is all with a very vague memory of the timeline of introductions, etc., though.

~J

afaik FAB originally was short for Fat Astral Bacteria or Fat Awakened Bacteria, gotta check my books though to be sure

"Strain III" was first mentioned in Threats, published in 1996, and its full name was "Fat Bacteria Strain III." A some point between then and now, it was renamed FAB III, which is short for Fluorescing Astral Bacteria Strain III, and strains I and II were also introduced. FAB III isn't true bacteria in the sense that it acts more like an astral entity than a bacteria, since it only exists on the astral plane and it searches for magically active objects, sustained/quickened spells, spirits, dual-natured beings, magicians, or anything else with an astral presence that it can feed off of. In a sense it's more like a disembodied astral vampire than anything else, only it feeds on Force and Magic rather than Essence, and when it gets powerful enough, it splits apart and goes separate ways.

It just occurred to me that they should do a Battletech vs. Horrors campaign setting. It would be like Wh40K, but less British.

Merry Christmas to you too, motherfragger.

I'd play it! ALthough really, why not make it Battlerun to match up with the run we already have written?

On the first age of cthulhumas my beloved gave to me, a gnasher in a pear tree...

After Perusing the Horror Book and Re-reading Aztlan....I think Verjigorm (sp?) is the thing being fed by all the Blood Sacrifice in Aztlan.....which leads to all sorts of nasty implications

Big V had more selective tastes IIRC, and for him to interact with the material plane of reality things wouldn't be in question about if there are horrors, they'd be snacking on people in the evening news... or getting blown to bits by all those amoral gun nuts in the SR world that finally have a socially acceptable target for their .50 cal.

Going from memory (and a bit of logic).

1 How do we build such defenses? Regardless this isn't winning, it's averting a fight (which I think would be our best solution, but not the same thing).

1 (again sorta) We have no evidence that people can be born or created with greater magical powers than is normal. There may someday be in the womb initiation, but there may not (the rules and flavor both lean towards not).

2 I am ok with not an infinite number.

3 How would you defeat verjigorm?

4 Verjigorm didn't enter the world in the last scourge. We have no knowledge of his ability to break a kaer. Nor do we know with certainty any of the rest (is he the creator, is he still responsible for creation etc.)


Instinctively I would fall on the we could win side, but . . .

War with the horrors would be extremely asymmetrical. The stupid ones would appear out of thin air in the mall, and kill dozens or hundreds of civilians before they were put down. The smart ones would take over influential people, gain control of strategic and military assets. Nukes would not be our salvation, they would be our downfall. The horrors and humanity drawing up into neat battle lines and march slowly at each other ala civil war era tactics would favor us nicely, sadly it won't happen that way.

Horrors would be immune to nukes. In cannon (Bug City) and 2nd edition rules spirits would not be directly effected by nukes (or drones, or anything else that lacks willpower). 4th edition rules don't support this, but 4th edition rules are a lot less well thought out or comprehensive (but potentially more balanced) in comparison to previous rules, for evidence see the thread on whether spirits are effected by nuerostun et. al..

While the horrors presumably are not infinite in number, we don't know the rate at which they replenish losses, or what their numbers are. Many and infinite might as well be the same thing in this scenario.

Fab etc would be good solutions, but would they be good enough? Specifically would they be fast enough to prevent morale collapse? I am not convinced. I am also not convinced of SR humanities ability to form together as a single war machine to fight an enemy, we are a very balkanized people in the dark future.

All of this comes down to a war that would be disastrous in terms of morale. We couldn't maintain the war effort for any relevant amount of time before the civilian back would break. Taking to the stars is just another version of kaers, it would work, but to me it counts as hiding. Given the technology we would leave the horror when we went into hiding it is unlikely warded underground holes would work, so the stars would be the solution.

Alternatives could include bleeding off the mana level so that the horrors don't emerge, guarding the bridge etc. But again none of these are winning an open conflict, I suspect preventing a conflict is the best we can hope for.

(Of course prevention elements would make much better SR plots than the war angle. You know what I liked about earthdawn, and I think what the goal was? It was DnD with logic. Massive underground complexes are filled with loot and hideous incomprehensible monsters, your job is to kick in the door and take the loot. The beholder (and many other d&d monsters) are mega stupid. But if the beholder was a horror? Suddenly it seems sensible, I find myself accepting in ED things that would rub me raw in D&D. So as some folks have pointed out the horrors were a literary element, unless the point of the story is the extinction of mankind, it won't happen that way .

Remember, children: thread necromancy is bad.

How can we possibly "beatt he Horrors" when we can't even beat this thread!?

Edit: Ninja'd by Tanegar

Hehe, sorry, didn't even look at the date.

This thread is such a classic I don't mind. It's second only to Creepwoodrun.

Actually Creepwoodrun could be a Cthulu like "mod" of Shadowrun complete with horrors. Every time you lost SAN there'd be a chance you pee your pants we'd have to roll for.

I've made my points about this in the past, even the so called "intelligent" horrors seem to be... locked into a behavior pattern whereas humans are the ultimate in adaptivity because we've transcended adapting through purely brute physical means, we develop complex tools both physical and mental to examine and then overcome.

Why?




Seems moot - the difference between a static form able to adapt to any of an infinite number of behaviors vs. an infinite variety of forms each statically caught in a single behavior.

For example, imagine there's a matrix horror. We wouldn't know about it because this would be the first time in our experience that its niche is available to it. It may have existed for a billion years previously, but as far as we're concerned it's new, and it will happily jack our drek up. It will also move books, which tells me it seems pretty likely.

Except how would it have survived all this time without a matrix to provide it a food source? it has no niche previously so why would it come into existence and if you accept the argument that they don't evolve then a Matrix Horror is a non-issue, it simply cannot reasonably exist. Then there is the "infinite number" argument, I'll accept there being a number of horrors so large that to the human mind it is indistinguishable from infinite, after all, human brains start dissociating after numbers in the low thousands, but an infinite number of horrors, each with it's own specialization is ludicrous in that with infinite specialization of form and function there would have to be Horrors that exist independent of the mana cycle or perhaps feeds solely on it's own kind, such is not in evidence to the best of my knowledge so there must be a limit on the numbers of the Horrors that has yet to be discovered, this is before we get into arguments over their methods of generation and the obvious restrictions time places on such. Simply put it is a logical impossibility to state that while Horrors are individually static in methodology their numbers are infinite and therefor a Horror exists for every situation.

I'm really tempted to reiterate my comparison of these beasties to a certain Mr. Kreuger.

If there are horrors able to manifest in the Matrix, then there should be horrors able to manifest in the meta and astral planes.

I believe this thread illustrates why the Horrors can't be beaten. Just when we think it's finally dead, it pops back up when you least expect it. Mwahaha.

Isn't it possible that such Horrors may have invaded other worlds before and only now find our world palatable? SR may in fact have multiple realities of which the baseline SR material is only one. The Horrors may bridge to others too.

I believe the opposite. Just when the Horrors think it is safe to pop up again, the metahumans beat them down again. It is good that the Horrors keep popping back up, it simply means metahumans have entertainment.

Now, That is just Crazy Talk..... I hope...

Keep the Faith

Just one of the Prime Horrors would be a nightmare in shadowrun if it could access modern Telecom.... Azzvat Many Eyes able to play in the matrix (shudder)

"Tonight, stocks fall 5% as Saeder Krupp takes a blow in the biodrone market. Verjigorm, the Great Hunter, strikes again, eating his third city in two weeks. Should we send him a sternly worded letter? Try our matrix poll."

Like HappyDaze said:
1) You assume there is no matrix-analogue in Horrorville (which I doubt you have any evidence for)
2) You assume that none of the other planes the horrors have access to have something like the matrix

Keep in mind, ALL of the documented horrors need a food source. That means they have to be SOMEWHERE eating when they aren't doing it here. Since no book really says anything about what that "Somewhere" is like (except that it's horrible), speculating on what is or isn't possible there is necessarily ungrounded.




That was my intention - I was using rhetoric Just like humans can't actually adapt to an infinite number of behaviors.



1) "there would have to be" is flawed logic. There is an infinite set of numbers between 0 and 1. That doesn't mean that any of them are greater than 1.

2) It has been suggested that there are horrors that feed only on their own kind, and one could argue that the namegivers themselves share horror blood. Keep in mind that dragons are from Horror stock, and listening to them, dragons created humans. There's no reason to suspect there are no horrors not tied to mana cycles because, keep in mind, if there were, we wouldn't recognize them as horrors any more. They aren't alien if they're already here, living among us, having settled into niches in the ecosystem.

Technical issues, no quote for Nezumi but here goes.... In point of fact one CAN assume that there isn't a matrix analog the horrors had access to upon generation because the Matrix is an artificial system and since the horrors came first and have no defined culture of cooperation beyond swarm tactics, they could not have developed such. In all the fictional history having to deal with Horrors it states that they where created before the rest of reality, they are the first from before time was time and so on and so forth. They predate the Matrix and unless they can evolve then they have no means of interacting therewith that brings their powers to bear. Possible some of them might learn to apply their standard tactics through a technomancer proxy but even that is a low probability even.

As to the trade in rhetoric, ok, I see your point, but bear in mind that we know at what point human brains start shutting down and numbers become indistinquishable from infinite but those are still several orders of magnitude simpler than modelling an event that destroys humanity.

As to the last set of points, well I believe they aren't very good points to argue. You previously argued that while each individual Horror may be defined by a set of recognizable traits, such as powers and methodology that horrors as a species are infinitely diverse, I was pointing out that for them to be infinitely diverse there would have to be examples of what I stated and such does not exist in the material on the species in question.

I have not once said a war with the Horrors would be easy, unless I was deliberately being flippant, it would quite literally be hell on earth but all the material I have seen and the arguments in this thread point, atleast in my opinion, to humanity eventually kicking the ever loving crap out of the big bad beasties because humanity is a cooperative, adaptive species whereas the horrors are only cooperative in the most rudimentary meaning of the word and are not at all adaptive.

Oh, hey, did y'all play Clive Barker's Jericho? That's a bit like this thread.


IMHO 5.56 NATO cartridges should do more damage to Clive Barker monstrosities than is portrayed in that game. Rifles are really awesome compared to swords, really.