I was looking through Earthdawn today and came across Verijigorm and had to think, damaging that monster is like damaging a battleship! Which got me to thinking, you know that monster is ONLY build like a battleship. That's hard to kill but certainly not impossible. We know the horror didn't wipe out all life on the planet (taking it back to barren dirt). That would indicate that while their might have a lot of them, we're not talking about overwhelm the ecosystem kill everything level (well that and the fact that people somehow survived the horrors the first time around). The world of Earthdawn has a population of what a couple hundred million max. Assuming Six Billion people with 1% being magically active that gives us about 60 million various magic users on the planet with another 1% being latent.

Chicago was a mess for the UCAS military but I have to wonder if, after it, any military in the world does NOT take the threat of invading spirits seriously after it. I suspect when it comes to magical talent many armies see aspected magicians as being just a good as full magicians (if you got enough people you can cover all of your bases with specialists). Horrors may be great an powerful but um UCAS has, estimated, 300 million people, 3 million mages. That's enough to make a 1000 magician regiment plausible (running towards likely if the UCAS has instituted a special needs draft, and even if the UCAS hasn't I'm sure other countries have). One thousand mages might not be enough to save the world but that's certainly a force to be reckoned with.

Could one of the ultimate ironies of the Shadowrun world be that all the "immortal watsits" seeing the coming of the end are wrong. The arrival of the lesser horror's, that made the surface world uninhabitable last time, are going to result in a first hand lesson in, assault rifles can damage force 3 spirits, and rifles like the M14 can ruin the day of even higher force spirits and it only gets worse if Ares combat lasers ever become a mass market weapon. Probably the bigger irony though is, given the numbers involved, I'm not sure the "major horrors that feed of pain and suffering" would equal even a statistical blip in what 6th worlders do to each other on a daily basis.

The Enemy is merely a red herring to make metahumanity think there is something worse than themselves, propagated by Dragons and Elves.

Most of the most dangerous Horrors are intelligent, and know how to succeed at longterm planning.
Killing all your food in the shortterm leaves no food in the longterm - you leave some to breed and only cull a few at a time, ensuring a food supply for the foreseeable future.

Looking through the Earthdwn rulebook, it's apparant that a high percentage of people in Earthdawn can use magic [much higher than is assumed in the present day realworld], but most of those only use it in simple, low-level ways.

Unfortunately, Spirits in shadowrun have gone from being Spiritual beings of Astral Space to being normal beings, and can be affected by things that they were not partial to in the past...
...Beings that can fade in-and-out of Astral Space to attack or evade are more than a match for some guys with guns - no matter how big the bullets.

Shadowrunners or military personnel are a very tiny percentage of the population, so unless the civilian population suddenly gains military skills and training overnight, there's not many people to fight a sudden influx of Astral beings.

Interestingly enough, Hellgate : London [the computer game and books] has that as the premise...
...And I'm sure to use some of the material from the books when i get round to reading them.

I think it would depend on where the Horror arrived. If they set up shop in Africa, they could amass a huge amount of power before stretching out and destroying the world. There had to be some reason that the Great Dragon gave his life to stop the Horrors from coming (even just for a short time).

A true Heroic Sacrifice. It's not often you see those in the Anyone Can Die genres (actually, it's more often seen in Killed Off For Real). Big D really is Deader Than Disco.

The really bad thing about Verjigorme, like about Great Dragons, is the magic they possess. Sure, without those,m they'd be easy targets for modern weaponry.

Verjigorme, I'd treat like a Great Old One from Cthulhu, actually.

I wonder if there are Horror-esque beings in the dark reaches of the Resonance Realms...

You mean like long lost copies of Windows Vista?

Don't you mean Microsoft BOB?

Sure are.


What the fuck.

Hot dang! Don't do that while I'm eating!

ROFLMAO

So true, so very true.

What about Bob?

Hm, I was thinking more along the old myths about a camera stealing part of one's soul. I mean, today we put our lives on the Internet: our pictures, our stories, our inner most thoughts and desires. We have private conversations, private lives, and even split personalities. Something that fed off our fears would know every single one. In the Sixth World, it would have access directly to your mind. (Does anyone remember Wraiths, from way back when?) What if having a picture taken does slice a little, an infinitesimally small sliver of soul? The Internet as a vampire, not just of time, but of essence, slowly, ever so slowly draining the world of its creative jucies... Anyway.

The Ring?


Interesting concept of a Horror, actually.

Something similar to that is mentioned in one of the versions of the Mage Digital Web books (IIRC). Basically the necessary magical juice that powered the wiz-web was drained from computer users worldwide. It's what lead to carpal tunnel, lower back pain and eyestrain headaches. And that was just for folks using desktop computers, not AR/VR systems, which could be much more draining if you wanted them to be.

Ok so there are a couple things going on here. Cheifly that stating things like Great dragons and /the hunter of great dragons/ is just a bad move. If you want these guy to be the kind of entities who's sleep troubles nations and who's waking threatens planets you can't have stats on them. GD's and Vejy just don't have the stats to back the way they are talked about in the fluff. And yes yes yes the scariest stat on the sheet should actually be the 12 logic and intuition, yes but really these guys are way way to killable to be god-like.

As for fighting though the next scourge? that's actually more an issue of horror marks. You are likely right that a modern hardened facility could hold off most of what comes across the veil in a fair fight ... but the horrors will slip in the cracks physical and astral, mark good old bob and twist him to the point he will full choices to open the gate for the privilege of being allowed to stab his eyes out of suck off a shot gun. That's how the horrors get you why people had to bunker up under magical protection.

Lastly I also had the idea horrors coming in from the resonance realms. My thinking is that the matrix is a newly emerging plan like the physical or astral. Big D made warded this the physical and astral from the horrors but not the resonance realms.

Depends. There are places in the world where kids get their first AK at ten or where hunting with an assault rifle is the norm (and yes it has been remarked that an assault rifle is not met as a hunting weapon).

Which as I believe was pointed out in Delta Green, are likely to go splat if hit with modern weaponry with an Elder Sign on it. The problem is getting the modern weaponry and getting the people who own it to let you put an elder sign on it.

You know starting about 30,000 years ago, all the predators that hunted humans started to go extinct (as did most of the megafauna). The general consensus among archaeologists is that this was as a result of human action. Humans are an apex predator, anything above the microbial level that hunts humans or actually in some way threatens them, tends to go either extinct or near extinct. Magic is great, but in the SR universe it has problems dealing with missiles moving several times the speed of sound fired from over the horizon. This is after all the species that coined the term "take off and nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" then (in the SR universe) built orbital bombardment platforms to do just that.

So yes I am having visions of the Horror's emerging in Africa and finding that "demonic horror of a low tech world" equals "not able to do anything worse then they're already doing to themselves".

The scariest thing about the horrors is their manipulation. What good would it do to have an army of civilians or even military personnel. The horrors feed on jealousy, vengeance, lies, selfishness etc. to take over... say generals or warlords with careful plotting. Now think how many people of power would be bent because of the fore mentioned traits. Almost everyone at a level of power is tainted with these and easily manipulated. This is why conventional weaponry or anything you could throw @ them would be in there control. They will patiently acquire these targets without us knowing and play out their sadistic game of chess before they strike.

Don't mess with Texas?



Besides for that, I don't think the OP really satisfactorily addressed the issues of beatt he in the context of horrors.

By how you described Horrors, would the Shadow Spirits be Horrors? Maybe the same enemy under a different name? They siphon life energy (Energy Drain) from people through evoked emotions.

Maybe the 6th World's siege is already underway...

If the SR metaplot even gets to the horrors invading, I think they'll be beatable by some combo of technology and magic. Maybe cyberzombies, maybe some kind of cybered mages or adepts, or maybe something else that hasn't been created yet. But however it is, I don't think it'll be by direct application of firepower alone. There may be some of the horrors that can be beaten by big guns, but I imagine that others are going to require a more nuanced approach.

They are just the best manipulators ever written about ... even more than the sith or shadow entities. Just think of one goal and how smooth and prepared they usually are , sure there are lots of savage horror soldiers but think of how long and carefully they would plan before a serious attack. And how many powerful pawns they would acquire to line their pockets with. It's one of the reasons the big D did what he did and in his will why he put bounties on practitioners of blood magic. The azzies are just helping bring them over.

Manipulate one man and you can wipe out whole regions with that orbital bombardment mentioned earlier.

"Take a taste of your own medicine" as it were.

While the Horrors, collectively, are Eldridge abominations, individually, they are people with their own hopes, dreams, and goals. With the odd exception of Ristul, they aren't meant to be distant unknowable things, but rather larger-than-life villains. Verjigorm can kick ass, yes, but he isn't a god. If he were then he'd rule the Earth right now. He can defeat GDs one at a time, yeah, and sometimes in large groups with sufficient deception. But what really makes him dangerous is the fact that he is a leader. He has minions. Some are even corrupted dragons and great dragons. He's a general.

Who would you rather go to war against, Rambo or Ender Wiggins? One of them is an incredibly badass soldier who can take done entire battalions. The other is a 10 year old boy who annihilated an interstellar empire by using superior strategies and tactics.

Imagine if a T-1000 went back in time, killed Hitler, and impersonated him. Do you think that the liquid-metal guy pretending to be Hitler is dangerous because he is a super-strong terminator from the future who can survive anything short of being melted in a pool of liquid iron and who can turn his arms into swords, or that he's dangerous because he commands the entire German Army.

Compared to an entire army, a couple of sword-arms feel kind of weak.

Drones can't be magically manipulated. The drone controller could. Free Machine Sprites and AI's = our last hope?

The horrors are highly overrated. Us metahumans can enslave our population, crush our souls and destroy the planet by ourselves... By the time they'll arrive, they'll be happy if they find anything left for them to do.

I prefer to think of horrors as beings of horrendous power, but they NEED the magic curve to be higher before they can begin manipulating the world. Magic is rising but slowly. If you take it as one age is 5000 years from peak to troph as indicated from a few difference sources (one by Miyan) then you are talking at least 1000 years before magic might be plausably high enough for a horror such as Vij to get out of whatever horror plain he resides in. Any horror that we see in shadowrun is mearly a weak and pathetic minion of a greater horror. Yet, they ought to be considered born of mana, and thus know how to manipulate it much more efficiently than any metahuman.

Regarding a battallion of Mages to kick some ass, even that might not be powerful enough. With SR3 in mind (I haven't played SR4), a horror would easily have Spell shielding, reflecting and absorption... thus the 1000 mages would all have to be quite high initiated adepts to overpower it.

As mentioned also, I agree that horrors a decietful and cunning creatures who bide their time and take control over decades or centuries.

In the campaign I am a PC in, we released a horror, but essentially had little choice about it. We subsequently had to fight different aspects of it individually. For now, we have weakened it, but asking questions and knowing exactly what it is, what i can do, and how to defeat it is counter productive. The more we know about it, the more powerful it becomes. We have met a few "immortals" none of whom are willing to tell us anything about the horrors. We have only just recently stumbled upon the passions of which we also know very little.

All it comes down to is one thing:

Fear them.

Direct firepower is likely to be ineffective against spirits of such power. Mass meets momentum works great against those of us with a corporeal form, against noncorporeals though...Might as well try to kill a totem.

In fact, I think that the "Horrors" are just that: evil totems. How effective do you think your rocket launcher is going to be against grandfather Coyote? Exactly.

As for Horrors in cyberspace, of course there are horrors in cyberspace. We created them. Don't tell me you've forgotten Deus already. By the time the traditional Horrors get here they're likely to find that humanity has already been conquered by the horrors mankind created himself.

The 3e writers were pretty clear that a Great Dragon (Ghostwalker) and his spirit pack could whup all sorts of ass and metahumans couldn't really do squat about it. Didn't matter that game stats said it should have never happened, it was the fluff that they pushed. The Horror threat would be much the same and would create just as much hard feelings by those that still want to know why you couldn't just blast their supernatural asses from the sky with lasers, autocannons, and missiles.

It's been ages since have played Earthdawn. But thinking a lot of you are forgetting a couple things.

1st: Pretty much everyone in Earthdawn are adapts or mages of some form. Learning to use magic would be like taking swimming lessons as a kid (ok that's a bit much). The conversion would be a pita but am betting any of them would destroy any runner if the tech each had was equal. Best example is an encounter with a great dragon wasn't an automatic death. The likelihood of a party killing one was low, but being able to hold your own was possible.

2nd: You better hope the Immortals show everyone else how to do spell matrixes or all your powerful casters that everyone is counting on to defend the world will become Verjigorm's or one of his brother's love slaves and well that's that.

3rd: Out of all the spells only a couple where created and effective against horrors.

4th: Human Versatility FTW. (just had to say it because it was THAT GOOD )

Explain N°2

A totem spirit chooses you right? Well, the Horrors are like evil totem spirits and the people they choose to serve them are driven insane. You're really talking a Cthulu level threat here. It's not really the size of the Horror, or your incapacity physically harm the Horror, the real threat is the insanity that you'll acquire just being in the Horror's presence. And since just about everyone is magically awakened by the time the Horror's are capable of making the trip...

A spell matrix is designed to allow the caster to draw the mana from the astral plane without getting spotted by the Horrors/sucking in taint. Without one any horror watching will see you cast the spell (from a *VERY LONG* way away) and reach out through the astral (which you won't be able to notice) and shove his "Tentacle'O'Evil" tm right up your astral bung hole and make you his personal meat puppet.

Basicly you cast spells without it after the Horrors have arrived and you will slowly (or not so slowly if you get spotted) be corrupted and enslaved to a Horror.

PS: The above bolded text is *Magic*

Edit: Fixed and thanks for bringing it up. I forgot about the slower casting compared to raw magic.

> Explain N°2
He's being a little over specific, you wouldn't become the bitch of either of those two unless they there around. It is well established in ED that the first wave of 4th world magicians who confronted the horrors were decimated because they were all using raw magic which means the horrors just get to win you. Casting grimoires provided some protection and the technique of spell matrices was extrapolated from that. But ED gives us reason to think that Magicians would all be fish food before the horrors until they learned a meta magic that doesn't exists yet. All SR magic is either self-sacrificing blood magic or raw magic. Either way fish food.

Also about AIs and drones being untouchable? Well first off one of the more powerful canon horrors, the Artificer, could conjure traps and warp minerals without dice. He could drop drones at the speed of thought. Now here is the other thing. Calling the horrors legion is enough. They come in nigh or perhaps actually infinite numbers and variety. Just because ED, understandably failed to mention all the horrors with EM jamming that can mark you via radio should in no way be taken to mean that they don't exist or didn't come on over for the party last time. Remember for a second that these guys are literally older than dragons. Dragons got on the tech wagon pretty quick. Horrors are no less capable

Infinity said it perfectly (except last line should have read "you cast spells without it after" hehe). That and well since you are hiding the spell from the astral it takes longer to cast.

Am thinking Horrors shouldn't be considered the same as totems. Totems are ideals, horrors are completely "real" and do have a form and therefor can be destroyed. Probably the best way to look at them would be smaller versions and less powerfull versions of the critters from the other side of the gate from Hellboy.

So not all is lost, if a nethermancer? with the highest circle of spells gets the drop on any horror (good luck with that) he can turn it into mashed goo. Oops SR doesn't have nethermancers o'well, guess it doesn't matter since only about 1% of them are sane anyway .

Totems are spirits that dwell in the metaplanes. Horrors are spirits that dwell in the metaplanes. Totems are incomprehensibly powerful. The Horrors are incomprehensibly powerful. Sounds like the same animal to me.

Horrors can be summoned and stabbed. That doesn't sound like a totem to me. Some horrors can be literal squished under your heel. Some squish you. SR people tend to think of horrors as ephemeral spirits because horrors are "from the meta-planes" and linked with bug and shadow spirits. This is not the case. Horrors didn't have ItNW, blead real blood(or black vapor, or maggots, or ...), they were physical once they got here.

I see two possibilities then:

1. What we call horrors are a wide variety of different things, some more powerful than others.

2. Totem Spirit of Bear would bleed too if Bear made the crossing to the terrestrial plane. Maybe that's why Bear stays where he is.

I absolutely agree with #1

#2 works just fine if you have some reason to want totems to be the same thing as horrors. Personally I don't see why one would want to to make that the case. IMO Totem spirits are well spirits, and horrors are things ... mostly

Am far from an expert though in this regard but I guess it depends on what SR version of totems you are using. If it's 2nd or 3rd totems could be astral spirits that guild you on a path. If it's 4th totems are mostly likely ideals created by the thoughts of people. I myself like the 4th ed version better, since they seem so one dimensional. It's as though your (or everyones) subconscious is creating and guiding you through the trials that you face.

Guess one way to look at it is that totems just are. Horrors on the other hand are completely the opposite. They have an interest in feeding on people, corrupting anything, and generally doing whatever they want to do.

It would be possible in Earthdawn for example to summon any of your greater horrors and permanently destroy them if you where stupid enough to try and extremely lucky. I cannot imagine being able to do that to any totems can imagine the conversation now "hey bud, call a couple friends over, Mountain has annoyed me the last time, I'm going tear his essence apart and spread it across the nether <insert evil laugh here>".

someone mentioned the Shadow Spirits being Horrors, well not exactly but close, they are the quasi-horrors that come right before the invasion, they'd be called Demi-Wraiths in Earthdawn.

As far as the 6th World's technological edge, two words; Damage Shift.
nuclear weaponry might work, but even odds that the use of them and the collateral damage they are inflicting, is probably just feeding some uber horror, that planted the idea that nuking his brethern is cool. And even then you aren't doing anything but banishing them to their metaplane.

it is made abundantly clear in ED that you do not have a stand up fight against the horrors, you run, you hide, you live...maybe.

an aside. Verj ain't no hunter of Great Dragons I've ever seen, he is so owned in a fight between the two it's not even funny. Unfortunately there might be 2 dozen GDs tops, there are nearly an infinite variety of horrors. Remember the baddest of the baddest horrors aren't even around in Earthdawn, (they are forced home when the mana levels receed), you just get the rtards that are left, and they are more than enough to defeat most any Adept.

Horrors have a few advantages that have to be accounted for;

1) Numbers - we aren't sure of their numbers, but they're big, certainly more than our number of mages, likely more than our entire human population. They can afford to lose a lot of battles, and still win the war.

2) Variability/versatility - they don't fall into a single template, so they are unpredictable. As Sun Tzu said, if you don't know your enemy, you will only win half of your battles.

3) Mystery - we don't understand them. As above, know your enemy - and we don't. However, some of them will certainly understand us.

4) Preparedness - they are always ready to go - always. We are not. It will take time to prepare for full-scale war, and even then, there's no saying if we'll be able to move past internal politics and bickering.

I have some more, I'm sure, but my little boy is counting down seconds until I log off

Here's the thing, in SR4 anything that materializes can be killed (or at least discorporated) by enough damage. This reminds me of an old argument I had about the use of nuclear weapons in the robotech world.

How much damage does it take to kill a major horror.
A stick of Dynamite.
One hundred pounds of Dynamite?
One thousand pound of Dynamite?
Ten thousand points of Dynamite?
One hundred Thousand Pounds of Dynamte?
One million pounds of Dynamite?

Lets say for the sake are argument that one million pounds of dynamite going off on a materialized spirit is pretty much going to make it as dead a spirits can get. Hell even if it makes it back into the astral the mass of living earth suddenly exploding away from a point has a good chance to kill the thing.

So lets stop and think one million pounds of dynamite. There are 2000 pounds to the ton. So that's 500 tons of dynamite. Massive, and literally half a kiloton. While nuclear weapons are questionable in the shadowrun universe, creatures who are going to be vape'd by a half kiloton blast might do better not to proclaim themselves the great destroyer of worlds.

Yes the Horror's can try taking over world leaders, but, with a few exceptions, who'd notice. It's not like leadership by bloody thirsty spirit inspired madmen is all that rare in the 6th world.

I don't see why. IE's weren't the source of Matrixe's in Earthdawn. For that matter earthdawn states that before they where perfected spell matrixes where placed into objects. Hum use of object to case spell we have:

1. Druids (as per surviving Celtic folklore's many mention of wands).
2. Various Traditions of Rune magic.
3. Kabahlistic amulets.
4. The Ars Notaria of midieval magic.

Seems like some form of basic spell matrix should already be in game.

Horrors have stats and die all the time in -- for instance -- published Earthdawn adventures.

I don't recall ever getting sent out to kick Wolf's ass on a Shadowrun.

It may be possible that in ED, due to the mana cycle being on the downswing, that the Horrors still around are "stuck" here until the mana cycles back up again and when discorporated they actually do 'die' because they can't make the trip to or from their native realm. Which is why you can conjure and stab them. The really bad asses already went home for a brew. That probably won't apply to SR as the mana tide is on the upswing.
As far as I'm concerned, sending the Big Bad back to his home realm and then counting the days until a really pissed off uber-spirit gets back is not the same as killing it. But that's just me.
Like I said man, Cthulu. Dynamite just ain't gonna do it.

You've obviously never played Clive Barker's Undying. In the final boss fight against the Cthulu-esque monstrous manipulator and corruptor of souls you're supposed to avoid his attacks, open fire with your various weapons, but when he tries to suck you into his maw, hang back and drop a bundle of dynamite in. Repeat till he dies.


EDIT:

Doom 3 was fun.

System Shock was fun.

Cthulu getting rammed by a steamboat was fun.

"The horrors automatically win and their stats don't count" is actually boring by comparison, IMO.

You should read a bit more Lovecraft to understand what I mean.

for most greater horrors, you have to kill both their physical body AND their astral form at the same time. the lesser horrors will die by the dozens in SR4 era, but the named horrors? They're cunning and powerful. Yes, they are killable, but it takes a helluva lot more than most of the world will be able to put together in time to make a difference.