Subject says it all....

- J.

No, I do not think we have seen the last of giant, radiation mutated ants....At least, I hope not!
Who is going to keep the Eight Legged Freaks down?!

No. The challenges will only become greater.

We'll probably see quite a bit more of them. They're supporting Oasis on their 2009 tour.

Harly can handle those alone.

I think they won't be back for a long time; per the Dragonheart Trilogy of novels, Dunkie now spends all his time running around stopping them from crossing the chasm from the netherworld to our world...

well, he is breaking down bridges being built, yes.
but the chasm itself gets smaller over time, so they will some day simply not need a bridge to come over and play nasty.
granted, that's probably not going to happen before SR5 D20 gets released, but eh . .

Perhaps Verjigorm's "HAY GUYZ LOL LETS LET OUT THEY KORRUPTED DRAGONS HAWHAW" plan will be put into action. A horror corrupted dragon running around (a confirmed one, anway) would be awesome just so the Shadowrun world has a Satan aside from Aztechnology/Colloton. Avatars of the Horrors in the Sixth World, able to bring over lesser horrors under a tightly proscribed set of circumstances.

A man can dream.

well, if firewings is still alive, there'd be at least one corrupted/toxic dragon O.o

OK, horror corrupted dragon in SR4 would be incredibly cool, escpecially if they did it subtly. With the kind of political influence a lot of dragons weild, it could do a lot of damage before anyone even realised what it was up to.

Horror Dragon? No thank you.

I'm inclined to agree with GreyBrother. I really don't want to see anything of the Horrors in Shadowrun. There are enough possible evils floating around already from Corps to Shedim to Sentient Paracritters to Metahumanity itself. A little imagination can make anything evil...

Horrors? We don't need no stinking Horrors!

Sorry, I had to.

was the body of the big D actually ever found after the big bang?

Additional question (rhetorical):
Where did Shedim come from, and what are they, given that they are not typical spirits, and are pretty similar to Wraiths in terms of feeding habits?

The Enemy is already around. Just not en masse.

Shedim come from that one Meta Place of the (un)dead, the hellish one, if i remember correctly

"I'm a level 5 street sam! <giggle, bounce>"

Oh, it burns! it buurrrrrrns!

Would that be the Aztechnology great feathered serpent with the black patches in its aura?



I believe the shedim are a form of horror too.

- J.

If we think about the time gap betwen the SR timeline and our own it's easy to deduce that the game time is kept at a fixed distance of 62-63 years in the future (like they didn't explicitly stated it), so it's probable that we will see the horrors arriving in about 2000-2500 years from now.

Well, being the Big Bang the act of creation of the universe, yes the Big D came after; unless you mean the clock tower in London, in which case the dragon came much before it, and was found running around Denver sometimes after it was built.
If what you did mean was the Big D going boom well, no; but there's a wyvern that looks remarcably like him that calls the Chicago's CZ home. What's the meaning of it I know not, so don't ask.

imagine a shedim coming out of the rift immediately after the fact and possessing the big d's body . .

You forget, humanity's use of Corrupt metamagics has accelerated this 'bridging' (pun intended) dramatically. This is what led to the Big D sacrificing himself.

Given recent events/progression of magic, I suspect it will be a lot sooner than you think....

(Imagine a campaign where they started to arrive..!).

- J.

"Just another day in the barens. Better than normal; you managed to kill and cook a devil rat this morning. Your neighbours are all screaming for some reason in tones that suggest ultimate suffering. Glancing out the window you see fires and mind twisting horrors from nowhere in the universe devouring the matter of the world and others tormenting yet more metahumans. This is probably the megacorps fault."

I recommend reading the Aztlan Sourcebook (or AniH´s file on it), then the short story on the sr4-page. I must say that I see an old plot continued, and in a way that might affect street-level shadowrun - without getting world-saving, or obviously an ED thing. (I will now lock the fanboy self in the basement, be back in a minute.)

Funny Mayan Glyphmaker:
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2004/maya/glyphmaker.shtm

Uh... Blackpool? What do you think the Shedim and especially Master Shedim are?

We're seeing Horrors in SR now. The scary part is that the Shedim/Master shedim are minor Horrors. Not Named. I shudder to think at what a Named Horror could do in the SR world.

The Enemy is a myth perpetuated by those who would instill fear in the hearts of all good, hard-working citizens and who seek to destabilize the economic foundations which have led to the prosperity of the Sixth World. They do not exist. Move along.

Personally, I don't view Shedim as Horrors. They arrived by following Ghostwalker through the Rift from wherever he was. Why would a Great Dragon, who is also Big D's brother, bring minor Horrors to the Sixth World? He had to notice them following him, should know what they do since he's supposed to be a master of spirit knowledge. If they were Horrors, Harly would have walked into Denver and bitchslapped him by now. I'm sorry it just makes no sense for them to be Horrors and not just evil, undead type spirits.

Sometime, when you've got a few minutes, I'd appreciate a rundown of the salient differences between "evil, undead-type spirit from the metaplanes" and "minor Horror".

I think the difference is one likes his bodies above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and the other likes his above 0 degrees Celsius.

I'll get to that right around the time you tell me why a Great Dragon led them to the Rift.

I don't like the idea of Horrors in Shadowrun, period. Good for fluff history, but not for in the game. If you do, use them, I don't care. But I'm not going to argue about it.

This thread confuses me ;_;

Unfortunately, that's half the fun for us.

I know I consider wraiths and shedim as horrors. Shedim are reported to have come through the rift after Ghostwalker, did it ever occur that he might have been running? Or perhaps being evil and craft as they are they managed to follow in secret? Maybe Ghostwalker wasn't on his A game at the time? Plenty of reasons, lots of ways to dump new and frieghtening situations on your players.

And Larme, go hit the Sixth World Wiki at http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Main_Page , you'll like what you find.

Ghostwalker may also have been desperate or half-crazed when he made his way back into the Material World. After all, if he was someplace in the metaplanes were Shedim also were, it probably wasn't a very nice place to vacation.

"He didn´t create the spike, he just used it" would be my initial answer. The first priority would have been to get back to his body, and upon arrival, he would have found out about the Aztec presence at his doorstep. Which would take priority over a few minor shedim coming along.

Hmmm ... am I missing something here?

Aztechnology has been in Denver for years. Would kicking them out a few hours later make a difference? I don't think so.

Shedim (minor Horrors) are sleazing into the physical plane behind him. Would preventing them coming through make a difference? I think so.

Peter

Since when did the Shedim come out with Ghostwalker from the rift? News to me. Does anyone have a book/page reference?

I always thought it was because the ambient levels of mana had risen.

Oh and I'm pretty sure there is a canonical reference somewhere stating shedim/wraiths are pretty much Horrors. Even if they aren't, they're all from the Deep Metaplanes so its all the same to the human perspective anyway....

- J.

What if Ghostwalker did notice and did know that Shedim and the other spirits followed him on his way, but didn't have the means to stop them from doing so. Or didn't really care.

Year of the Comet, p. 150.

Peter

I stand corrected. My apologies.

- J.

I've got my dubts on it.
SR may have changed but there are a few things that stay the same; one of this things is that is about a dystopian world ruled by corrupted powers in which respect for (meta)human life holds no real value, a world divided in many factions that spend their time backstabbing eachother and are willing to do almost anything to reap some profit, a world where the haves can do (almost) whatever they want while have-nots can't have even the minimum metahuman rights granted. In this world the horrors exist to point out how much the society is nearsighted in its allconsuming search for profit and edonistic gratification (world is coming to its end and they are too busy in their petty bickering to see it).
The advent of horrors would turn SR from cyberpunk(moving toward post-cyberpunk)/fantasy to Apocaliptic, I don't think that it is what most of players want.

P.S.
You might take a look to that Cthulhu RPG that was annunced some time ago, it gave me the impression of having a certain apocaliptic feel.

1) Location. Horrors are from a rather specific set of metaplanes, though the bounds of this set have not been disclosed. Shedim are unlikely to originate into it due to topographical issues which would make it impossible for them to cross over otherwise.

2)Corruption. Horrors corrupt the world around them by virtue of their very existence. Shedim don't seem to bring a background count with them.

3)Creation. Horrors cannot create anything. They can only corrupt that which has already been created. To the best of my knowledge, the jury is still out on Shedim artistic abilities. I wouldn't put the ability to create things of beauty past them, however.

4)Magic. Some rather powerful Fourth-World anti-Horror magics work on Horrors, but they don't work on things that aren't Horrors.

But the term evil is inappropriate. There is no evil, just as there is no good. There is only different. Shedim are very different, very alien, and thus we have difficulty empathizing with them. That doesn't make them evil, it just means that we are limited in our understanding.

I forsee this thread devolving into a philosophy thread on good, evil, consensual reality and the ways that the majority determines what is right and wrong.

Damnit.

Heh. I'm well aware of that. Its obviously not a change that is inline with the SR development. I just thought it was an interesting mental exercise imagining it....

Yes, I know Cthulu and CthuluTech .

- J.

just a question on the whole shedim followed Ghostwalker statement. Wasn't Ibn Elsa's "resurrection" explained as possession of his body by a master shedim ? If so that puts the arrival of the shedim more than 3 months ahead of Ghostwalker.l

Counterquestion: Does YotC explicitly state that the Shedim arrived with Ghostwalker or could it be possible that they are a kind of spirit "activated" by the comets manasurge?

I know they said something about "strange spirits around the rift" when Ghostwalker arrived, so it wouldn't be impossible.

Possibly, but it is just a theory on my behalf. I think that the Aztec people have a few "traditional" enemies, GW being one of them. And:


You come home, and find it demolished. You are not only armed to the with teeth, but have no concept of law beyond "I don´t like". The party that wronged you has setup a base of operations in your living room.


Something (say Big D´s death) created a bridge across the barrier that protects earth. GW und the shedim didn´t even come from the same plane necessarily. The counterpoint to the Shedim being horrors is the lack of a very distinct aura (black and blank patches that writhe), AFAIK.

Horrors originate in the Deep Metaplanes. Shedim also originate in the Deep Metaplanes. Does that make Shedim Horrors? Hard to say, really, as the Invae also come from the Deep Metaplanes. But really that's mostly semantics. They are all still very nasty things coming from the Deep Metaplanes. And one thing common among Deep Metaplanar beings is that they need some special method to continue to exist in the Gaiasphere. Invae need to invest hosts. Shedim need to inhabit corpses. Many Horrors needed to feed off the anguish and suffering of (meta)humanity in some way.

Considering Shadowrun has officially passed from Fan Pro, who seemed to indicate they're not interested in Horrors, but would rather make a completely new line, to Catalyst Labs, who said they've been fans of Shadowrun for a long time and seem to be working to bring back a lot of the old flavor back, I'd have to expect we'll see maybe a 40% chance of afternoon horrors.

iirc, wraiths are mentioned as being possibly minor horrors somewhere.

shedim, i'm not so sure. if so, then they would be very minor... personally, i would class them as just being more like the invae. they come along before the horrors, but are not actually themselves horrors.

on a side note, as far as horrors being unable to create... i don't think that's necessarily accurate. i could be wrong, i guess, but i don't recall seeing that explicitly mentioned anywhere.

It's mentioned somewhere in the ED-books, but I can't give you a reference now due to a lack of time for searching.

The ED main book has a few minor bits that hint at it (no discernible species), but I would dare to refer you to the Horrors sourcebook for more detail, without having it at hand. (Did I mention that I get to play BOTH SR and ED right now?)