Does anyone else get the feeling that the Powers-That-Be will continually throw up sacrificial figures to attempt to delay the horrors? Great and powerful warrior-mystics, laden with the technology of the sixth world.. and at the peak of their ability and power, get a surprise visit to the metaplanes where they die horribly giving the patrolling dragon spirit time to knock down another bridge. You know, because Harlequin is a lazy tool.

That's what would happen if this were being run by a corp of some kind, or maybe one of the Tirs, but Harlequin would do it himself, cuz that guy's running mainly on survivor's guilt and booze.

Of course, he'd need to get out of the booze long enough to notice a problem. . .

Last time, he nearly died and that was to some fairly poncy servants of the Enemy, thus the need for a GREAT AND POWERFUL.. sacrifice. And it took a Passion to wake him up last time. Or, what is heavily implied to be a Passion.

I didn't say he'd be good at it, I just said he'd do it. Besides, he seems fairly sober as of DOTA3 I don't know what he's up to, but he's dressed and standing. There may be need for a sacrifice, and I guarantee it won't be Harlequin, but I doubt he'd be able to take much more blood on his hands, whether it's his fault or if he just thinks it is.

He was happy to let Thayla die, thinking himself far too important for the task. But maybe. After all these years, probably looks on the hairless monkeys running around as little more than sacks of blood and bone.

I've been operating under the impression that letting Thayla die has been the primary cause of his survivor's guilt. I don't doubt that he has little regard for metahumanity aside from the ideal that they need to defeat The Enemy. I just think that he's insane enough that he doesn't want to warn the world about them because that's no fun. He seems like he's trying really hard to remain an observer, but keeps having to get involved because "no one else is going to" But no one else is involved because he hasn't told anyone what's up. Of course, this causes a bit of a problem for his retirement dream. I don't know, I'm interpreting the trip through Harlie's head in Harlequin's Back and I just call it as I see it. I really don't think that he's sane enough to act in a predictable manner. That guy seems bipolar.

I think he's sane, but he's entirely devoted to his philosophy of chaos. I think it was the first Harlequin in which he had written "One must know the chaos within to give birth to a dancing star" and I remember an immortal saying something like "Time just makes us more of what we are" - he's just become an extreme adherent which accounts for the bipolar. I think he probably already had a good share of guilt, if he can feel such a thing - from death of Atlantis.

Oh god, I sound like I have an english professor jammed straight up my arse working me like a puppet.

I think the answer is Eclipse Phase

When is that not the answer?

When you are looking for an inelegant system.

I GOT IT!

Soylent Black! An unlimited supply of food!!!

Except we didn't really beat the horrors, we escaped... at least for the time being.

Which I think is the most accurate answer. You don't beatt them, but you CAN escape them.

If you deny them their food they lose, sometimes that is all that is required for victory.

So, start searching for the Halo Rings?

One of the principles of a lot of post-Shadowrun settings is that if we leave Earth, the Horrors won't bother us anymore. But Shadowrun's position on "is there mana places other than Earth" has vacillated greatly over the years; it's really quite possible that anywhere name-givers live for a long enough period is going to develop a manasphere, and pretty soon you're right back where you started. I think there's probably an interesting setting there.

You are, of course, correct. However, it could be just as easily justified that that threshold of 'sufficient magic for horrors' can be met by a living planet (Earth provides the majority of the Earth's manasphere), but not by a tincan habitat.

Most definitely! Or - as I think most people assume - that Earth is somehow unique [which seems silly to me], and that the Horrors will only cross over here, for some obscure reason. I prefer to ignore Dragon cosmology - they could be lying, if nothing else - and like the idea that wherever there are living things of any sort in the universe, there is the cycle of magic, and there are Horrors. That means you could easily have a post-Shadowrun setting with cyberware, bioware, aliens, ghosts, Horrors, Dragons [and creatures of legend from all the alien planets], riggers, spellcasters, free spirits, the lot. To some degree, I think it'd get too complicated to be an easy game to pick up, but I like the idea of the universe in which it exists, anyway.

*points at mars*
*points at photos of draconic bones on mars*

Weren't those photos hoax?

Lets not forget.

Yes we did escape in Eclipse Phase but...

We don't know WHY. The TITANs in EP have more than enough tech, resources and facilities to chase down every last scrap of humanity and catch us.

Their viruses are already seeded through humanity.

They have several known outposts on other worlds, Luna, Mars.


Rather than escape, it is more accurate to say that they let us go.

Which I would argue is exactly what happened in the fourth age too.

If they eat all of us then they have no more food left for the next harvest. We might not be the only world they take, and we may have only seen the horrors' farmers and not their true warriors.

Moo?

No, we didn't: we escaped in Equinox; Eclipse Phase is a different setting altogether.

Equinox isn't looking hopeful; they're 3 years behind schedule, and now a Twilight RPG has come along and used the name. Oh, RedBrick: good ideas, lax execution.

I want Equinox so bad.

Alien vs. Predator vs. Horror?

vs. Freddy.

My 2

Can we bait the Horrors?

Yes, yes we can.

Beat on the other hand....
I think I'll start digging a Kaer now, unless I Awaken tomorrow and can start initiating now in preparation.

Now I have to wonder if those in what will be Tir Tairngire will have a higher than normal percentage of Elven UGE and hope for some Immortal genes.

In one of my EP games, they found magic on Mars ... but it's a completely alien form of magic, with some VERY hostile spirits. Now the characters need to relearn magic all over again, with a completely new set of rules. They went on also to start 'seeding' magic around Jupiter. But because it's still in its infancy, they can actually watch the magical paradigm 'form', and new creatures spawn to fill the vacuum. I don't think a lot of people have explored the idea of what an alien manafield would be like, and frankly, I'm loving it!

Let's suppose that the Horrors can come across in places other than Earth, it still benefits humanity to go out in to the stars because with corresponding locations between the astral and physical it enormously complicates things for the Horrors. Suddenly they have to go find their favorite food instead of just plopping out on to the earth and snacking. There is the additional issue of humanity becoming more spread out, with weaker mana fields only weaker Horrors can come through. A tin can habitat might not be able to support even the lowest of the low for them, and we don't know how well they would adjust to the alien manafields of other planets. I'm not saying they would see no activity on, say a habitat on planet x, but their powers might not be as strong, or function in quite the same way, due to the differences in the energy of the place. Between this and the advances in technology the Horrors cannot achieve their victory conditions if those victory conditions are "feed on metahumanity with impunity."

Does it work like that?
Or can the stronger horrors come through with less mana than the weaker ones?

A little of both, oddly, probably for dramatic reasons more than anything. Some very powerful Horrors [Ysrthgrathe, for example, which, yes, I can stills spell from memory] can pierce the veil very early, and stay very late, but it requires the very peak for the real army-eating stuff [my main man Verjigorm, for instance] to come out and play.

Which is to say: whatever suited the story that week.

The point could be made that Ysrthgrathe is one of the most metahuman of the Horrors, in thought process at least. That certainly seems to be what I took away from the various Earthdawn supplements and Clockwork Asylum. His motivations might be relatively inscrutable, but his desires and the very personal nature of his preferred suffering make him a creature that can at least perceive reality on the same level as Metahumans more or less.

Its a bit of a disturbing thought, but if the Horrors only need a certain baseline level of Mana to cross over into reality from the deeps, maybe its only that the highly inhuman ones or the ones that perceive reality differently just don't notice or care until the mana level is so high that they can't help but feel it/see it.

Just a thought.

That's an interesting perception. Much was made of how human he'd become, by spending so much time tormenting a [meta]human. He's also more...determined than perhaps other Horrors might be, as you note: we don't know what the others might think about swinging by, for all they seem to dig being here, but we know for certain he'd been quite looking forward to it.

"Are you kidding? Have you seen the Buffets they have in Las Vegas? It's like a smorgasbord of GREED!"

Twelve years, no Awakening, no Goblinization, the mana cycle doesn't seem to want to rise… perhaps we did beatt he horrors after all?

~J

I dunno. I think the Murder-hornets were proto-invae, covid/birdflu is the precursor to vitas, and 5G radios corrupt astral space so no goblinization but people can get Horror Marked through their cell phone.