That just gave me an idea for the most pwn campaign ever. The player character are all catholics stationed at the Vatican and they're an anti-horror commando squad. So the priests are all mages, and the nuns all have RPG launchers under their ginormous habits. The horrors come out and terrorize some part of the world, and the Vatican sends the team out in an X-Men type superjet so they can rappel down and go Iwo Jima on the horrors' asses. It would kind of be like the premise of the movie Van Helsing, but with more firepower and more of a paramilitary aspect. And they'd all get silver bullets, and industrial strength squirt guns filled with holy water.

That sounds extremely awesome, but it makes me want to play In Nomine more than it makes me want to play SR. Now, if the Horrors were to hire the group to find out personal information about the commandos that they could use to ruin their minds when the Iwo Jima type raid happened.....

Get rid of the Van, stick another L in the Hellsing and we can talk.

I Vote:

In 2,227 years with all the genetic mods, bio, cyber experimentation, chemical augmentation and just general changes, we *will* be the Horrors our fathers warned us about.

So, my take is No, we won't beat them, we will join them. And that far far future world in which we discover and decide to take over will itself be inhabited by inferior beings that think they too can stand against us. Will hide in kaers until we retreat... rinse and repeat to infinitum.

I think technology will largely be useless. The horrors that even notice bullets (and beams) will be too numerous for normal weapons. Magic will be the real weapon.

However, I do see technology driving magical development. At least in the hermetic tradition, you can e-mail spell formula. You can share your discoveries with mages worldwide, and be inspired by their discoveries. You reach intellectual critical mass via peer-review journals.

Mass communication has revolutionized development of emergent technologies for the last several centuries, I don't see why the next several will be any different.

Give another 50 years for magic theory to really mature, and I think cutting edge magical research will be held back by the slowly increasing mana level, not the expertise of mages.

In a millennia or so, we may be able to drive the Horrors back with tails between legs.

Don't forget when the unit discovers an infant demon who they'll raise and will start fighting on the side of the humans. Fighting his 'inner demons' over his nature versus nurture, as he fights to protect those he cares about instead of following his destiny of being one of the hands of the darkness in destroying the world as he goes about slaying demons with his fists and huge arse guns. All the while the unit also employs psychics and other folks on the fringe as they fight against the dark forces that threaten to engulf the world... yeah, yeah, hellboy 2 is coming out soon.

You mean beatt hem.

HORRORS-TO-GO 24/7
A new human health supplement. A Horror a day keeps Verjigorm away.

Your momma so fat... she thought Verjigorm was a cheeseburger.

Well, arrows work just fine in Earthdawn. (Most) horrors have no "immunity to normal weapons" and are physical beings. Bullets should work just fine.

No? OK.

I was thinking "Horrors = spirits only nastier..."

My bad.

As I recall Earthdawn doesn't (or didn't) have the immunity mechanic. Unless is was specifically added as a unique Horror power.

The game mechanic was simply an armor rating specific to physical or mystic (spell) attacks. So the Horrors that were difficult to kill through physical just had higher physical armor and/ or higher physical defense. Conversely some Horrors were more spell resistant and so would have higher spell defense and mystic armor.

In the ED world almost no action would happen in astral (netherworld), largely because that was thought to be infested with Horrors. So nearly all abilities, spells and so on were geared toward SR style manifested bodies.


To directly convert Horrors too SR I would infact use the Immunity power as well as have them stick more to the astral if possible. Seeing as though astral is ripe with plenty of spirits to chew on and corrupt and astral active personalities. However, a two pronged approach would be mroe likely, with the more physical Horrors manifesting and skull fking those hapless projecting mages.

I think someone else posted this already. The only rule about Horrors abilities is there isn't one. Some feed on blood and flesh, some emotion, some fear, some rocks and dirt some trees. Some look (meta)human some are monsterous, some are astral only and so on. If you can dream it up it can exist, save for the big V is the bad mofo to rule them all.

I apparently am one of the few who do enjoy the connection between the worlds. I have used the connection in my games many times unknown to the players (that do actually play both systems) sometimes very obvious. Ala the Horror the eventually ripped the soul from one of the characters. However, I don't use it so often that it is expected of commonplace.

And then, that demon will eat of pancakes and be lost to evil forever!

Well, we finally have an official answer to this question.

http://www.equinox-rpg.com/#start

Horrors will eventually find a way to travel into Space and the only way to stop them from systematically eating all of metahumanity's space kaers is to blow up the Earth. By that time metahumanity will possess the capability to do so.

I suspect drop bears then become launch bears.

...FASA?

RUN and HiDE!

Horrors can't be stopped. In the Shadowrun metaplot, Magic is the end all argument. Read everything published until now and you'll notice a large weight on the immortal great elf dragon super magic side of the scales. Only recently someone argumented that Thor Shots could be misdirected relatively easy by powerful spirits with the accident power. The Great Dragons are arguably the most powerful beings on earth (since a Great Dragon single handedly destroyed Denver and effed the Azzies - not only an AAA but effectively a whole continent - in the a, I think that point needs no further argument. Yay official metaplot!). And those were not crazy enough to try and fight the Horrors, no sir, they burrowed into the earth like the smart little worms they are.

And those Horrors who do not hunt Dragons for fun, are mind rapers who will turn your attempts of resistance against itself.

I'll take a look at Equinox, but honestly, Immortal Magical Great Elf Dragons in Space? Why not take Star Wars in the first place?

The difference between Earthdawn and Shadowrun, is that we may have 2,500+ years to plan.

Or wipe ourselves out of existance before they even get here.

well damn this was quite a discussion. I like it, namely the horrors aspect and how everyone with experience has good points and those without have bad points. If Catalyst wants to do a horror come SR, so be it however ultimately mind you it is up them unless you're a particularly daring GM who says, "f the paradigm. I'mma do what I want!"

Said the Horror before being ripped apart by coaxial gauss rifles and a barrage of heavy pulse lasers.

Immunity To Normal Weapons?
Well, just use vehicle weapons.
An Itzcoatl railgun could take out an average great dragon or Force12 spirit with one or two well-placed shots, so i'd say it could also take out a bloatform, wormskull or despairthought.
And that's 2070's technology, imagine what would be available 2000 years down the timeline.




Until someone brings in nukes or FAB.

Or simply ignores plot immunity and applies the rules correctly.



Gaaah, i read that, too and that person was just plain wrong, as Accident doesn't even remotely work this way.



And if that worm had tried it in my game, the Azzies would now have a truckload of white and blue dragon parts for their talismongers, as i don't hand out plot immunities to annoying NPCs.
Ghostwalker behaved completely retarded in Denver.

*snickersnickerSNARF*

Player 1: "I invoke Accident!"
GM: "Outstanding - on what?"
Player 1: "An orbiting THOR shot."
Player 2: "..."

-Siege

Actually, the horrors will, after about six months...

...get bored and leave.

Why would they snarl at humanity and slink away with their tails tucked between their legs? The answer is the Blood Elves. When the Blood Elves realized they were well and truly screwed back in the 4th world, they basically made themselves unappetizing to the Horrors.

With a datajack, you could do the same thing. Hell, you could loop almost any emotion you wanted permanently, and the horrors would have no joy at all in dismembering your carcass. Pain editor on? The horror might as well go rend furniture than you. Pain center rewired to pleasure? The horror is trying to get you to stop begging it for another shot of onion skin.

As far as I recall, the Horrors thrived on inflicting pain and horror and sheer agony and misery upon the denizens of the 4th world. With the invention of mood-altering drugs, we took one step closer to defeating them forever.

Now what we have that the 4th world folks didn't have is guns. Lots of guns. And pharmaceuticals, and drones.

Hell, the AIs might join the cause and with them controlling drone fleets, the horrors wouldn't be able to twitch without swarms of AVMs rocking right up their... well, you get the point.

Oh well, the exquisite pain when you give them your newborn to protect yourself, or when your beloved gets torn to shreds before your eyes just to shamble to her feet again to taunt you through the window at night with a voice that sounds like the rustling of leaves - as soon as you get the pain monitor to work on these, humanity should be dandy with the Horrors.

And really, I never quite got the Wyrmwood story. These elves were not totally numb. They had little thorns in their body for god's sake. How gay. If I were an Earthdawn Horror, I had made them eat their eyes and sacrifice their children to a dog before ending their miserable tree hugging existences.

" published by RedBrick Limited in cooperation with FASA Corporation. "

Wow, I didn't FASA still existed as a corporate entity.

Yep. It still owns the rights to Earthdawn and other properties. Right now it doesn't have any sort of game-making apparatus and just licenses them out to other companies, which is why Redbrick and Living Room Games each have their own mutually exclusive editions of Earthdawn.

This thread has died more times than Lazarus, why oh why didn't we start a new thread?

I would instead point to Eclipse Phase and CthulhuTech for my transhumanist, horror in space needs.

Extinction is approaching.
Fight It.

Dude, with the drugs and mind altering tech, humans can feed on the Horrors' trying to feed on the humans' suffering.


Until those that claim the Horrors will win repent and recant, this thread will never truly die.

GO GO HUMANS!

Contemporary-world Cyberpunk-style apathy > moody gothic crap.

Hey, I didn't make the Horrors an integral part of ED/SR, FASA did. So that's what should have happened. If you don't want moody gothic crap, go play Cyberpunk.

Yes, but in SR, most of the time the Horrors are the ones getting slaughtered.

In Earthdawn, the majority of horrors encountered were the sort that just ate a particular sort of thing, or enjoyed physical pain. Most of these will be easily fought with modern technology. The problem is that a few of them feed on other things that pain editors and the like don't address, and they're the challenge. The question is, given the ability to pwn one group but not the other, how will the demographics of the horror population change over time? Will there be a constant flow of approximately the same proportion of monsters to fill in the gap, but only those 'higher' monsters tend to survive, resulting in a gradually increasing population of them? Will the entering horror population naturally shift to address what sort of food is available (so if everyone has pain editors, no more horrors will come to Earth looking to feed on pain)? Is there a set number of horrors which can come over, so hypothetically you could kill all the horrors before the magic level lowers again?

I thought that was only because they showed up like a thousand years too early?

Imagine you getting up after a rough night and only three hours of sleep, and then having to brawl a guy who knows you're coming for him and is crazy prepared, brought some friends and won't hestitate to shoot you in the back with miniguns and the goddam soul of a dragon, before the bell even rings.

Subjective, and you know how derided the first is also at times...

Orrrr, it's 'L337 bang-bang D&D IN CYBAH!'.

Tastes are plural...

What? Isn't that what the Vietnamese prostitute said in "Full Metal Jacket"?

Um...how is Cyberpunk not moody and gothic?

C'mon now - two of the functional stats were Cool and Attractiveness.

Wardrobe & Style was a viable skill.

-Siege

Before we were ready for them. In a thousand years, we'll be even stronger. I saw Verjigorm's stats in one of the Earthdawn books. He wasn't that much better than a dragon. If he shows up, a KE Firewatch company will shiv him in the kidneys like Lex Luthor did Superman. Welcome to the 6th World, Mr. V. Hope you have a DocWagon account.

This is really going to sound NOOBish, but I haven't invested any time into Earthdawn, so I know nothing about the Horrors. I know about them through various Shadowrun characters constantly fighting to find a way to beat them (I know Harlequin and the Big D were advocates for finding ways to beat them), and various bits of the fluff hinting at their coming with the increase in the waveform that is the flow of mana, but what exactly are they? Just mean spirits? So far we've seen bugs, and shedim, are they part of the horror clan? Who's this big V and are they more or less other worldly (metaplaner) akin to something out of the Cthulhu Mythos?

My understanding is Horrors are from the outer metaplanes, arrive in our world once the mana cycle reaches a certain level, & Insect & Shedim are supposed to be precursors - think of them like an omen of things to come &/or child Horrors.

Or Insects and Shedim are just different species of spirits that have their metaplanes closer to that of Earth's Gaiasphere. Not stronger or weaker, just a different place.

If Harlequin thinks the horrors can be beat with a combination of magic and technology, maybe cyberzombies are the ticket. If anything could beat some extraplanar horrors that feed on your fear, it'd probably be an unstoppable warrior that has no emotions.

Or just make sure whatever meat soldiers you have face them have all their emotions P-fixed away.

Or maybe instead of a combination of tech and magic. Just tech all the way. *looks to legions of AIs in tank drones*

I beg to differ. Some Horrors likely to stick to the astral or are dual-natured (I believe this was touched on earlier). Therefore, cyberzombies will help cull the physically manifested ones, but we're going to need some slick combat mages to put down the spooky ones.

The current ruleset seems to suggest that cyberzombies maybe part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Augmentation P156-157

You fool! Didn't Terminator teach you anything!

So? There are already AIs around. Skynet's gotta stand in line for the self-aware apocalypse sthick.

Remember, the last few passages of Emergence detail the covert war between good and rogue AIs and with the Undernet Alliance leading the way. Could we end up seeing enemies amassing on both the astral and the digital realms?

We are doomed! Doooooooomed!

They are the Horrors, there's really no other taxonomy which properly deals with them. However, let me relate them back to everything else.

According to the dragon creation myth, originally the earth was nothing but a horror feasting grounds. There were uncountable horrors who just ate each other and only the guys on top were happy. One day one of the horrors, Nightwing, decided this wasn't for her and she found a quiet place to stop and rest a bit. As it happens, she is the first dragon. According to the story, she created all of the metahuman races (including a few that appear to have since gone extinct).

So in theory, we are horror creations, and dragons are horror descendants. It may be that the world itself was created by horrors, that's not clear.

Horrors, like I said, don't appear to fall into any taxonomy. Some are dual-natured, some astral-only, some physical only. Some thrive on emotional pain, others on physical pain, others just need to eat like everything else. Hypothetically, there are horrors on the bottom of the food chain, who don't eat anything else but just metabolize energy from another source, but there's been no evidence of this. They all corrupt the astral (although given our history, it could be us who are corrupting and they who are purifying), and they are all limited to some degree or another by the local magic level, hence the wave theory you brought up. I think it can safely be said they are all magical creatures.

Bug spirits and shedim are not believed to be horrors, however given how little we know about any of them, that might be technically incorrect. There is one Shadowrun creature, the wraith I believe, which seems to match a type of horror, but otherwise it would appear that as of yet Earth is safe from any horror interlopers.



'Big V' is Verjigorm, I believe his official title is Great Dragon Hunter. He was the 'king horror' back in Nightwing's time, killed her personally, and swore to kill all other dragons. As of yet, he is believed to be the biggest, baddest horror there is, but since we have no idea how many horrors there are, that may be wrong. Suffice to say, at his level, he doesn't really notice people. They aren't worth his time. He hunts and kills great dragons, although will make detours for lesser dragons, since he's proving a point.

Many of the horrors do seem similar to what you'd see in the Cthulhu Mythos, although to be fair, the Horrors source book was a lot more frightening than anything I read by Lovecraft.

That's just because the Horrors are more modern in terms of concept than Lovecraft's stuff from back in the 30s.

Incidentally, Blood demonstrated how emotionally satisfying it is to pwn a Lovecraftian beast with a Thomspon submachinegun.

In that vein, as long as we're considering the pwnability of big scary mythos creatures to Tommy Guns, I feel like I should set up a real world analogy. If you took a tommy gun and unloaded it into an elephant, would the elephant get pwnt, or would it just get mad and stomp you? Or how about a bear? Bears are tough and all, but what if we're talking like 50 rounds of .45 ACP delivered through automatic fire?

Probably, but against an elephant you'll really want something heftier than .45 ACP, just to ensure that the wounds are immediately fatal. Blood loss and sepsis would certainly kill the elephant eventually, if a Tommy gun were unloaded into it, but it still might survive lone enough to crush your skull underfoot. An Ak-47 would probably produce more reliable results.

Bears? Yeah, A Tommy gun would kill a bear.