This is just a pet theory but I thought I'd see what you all make of it.

Aztlan has no Horror corrupted or possesed or whatever being in charge. All the blood magic and crap with Sr. Oscuro (who thinks he does serve the horrors) is an attempt to get the scourge going early. "Obvious!" you say. I say "Why?"

Aztlan has some Immortal (elf or dragon or both) at the top. This Immortal(s) longs for the days when they were large and in charge (works better here if it's a dragon) and is scehming to bring this about. Aztlan is a deliberate attempt to recreate Thera (which implies an IE).

An early Scourge means that only the prepared will survive, mostly the great dragons. There may be some IE's left and if ED is any yardstick a few enclaves of the young races (some primitives did manage to avoid the scourge). After the Horrors leave the being who was able to prepare the best starts from a position of strength. All the Immortals know this and are maneuvering to shore up strength.

The Immortal(s) in charge of Aztlan were going to bring the Scourge early to cath the others with their pants down. They want to use the Horrors as a gambit in their game. Ego!

...and cuz Herr Oscuro can summon Horror constructs, implying he's not just deluded.

First, the "obvious" line was an attempt to break up the monotony of writing. Harlequins Back does not give any motivation for Darkes' desire to bring the Horrors here early except that he is evil. That's fine for Darke's Why, but it leaves out the Why for Aztlan.

Second, I never said Darke only thought he could conjure horror constucts. I said that his bosses weren't working for the horrors, just using them in a grand power grab. Darke may or may not have known this, but he wouldn't care if it got the horrors here early.

Since I can't put any better....

I'm not talking about Darke's motivation, he is a sick puppy, agreed.
But Aztlan was bankrolling (or whatever) him. What was their motivation?

I just noticed the other thread. I'm going to repost my theory over there cause the topic is so similiar. I don't want to be accused of threadjacking.

yeah. i mean, i doubt O put the horrible screaming death of all life on the planet part in a bullet on his powerpoint presentation, when he was proposing this in the Boardroom of Doom.

Evil for the sake of evil is perfectly fine in an epic, and the whole creation-and-fate-of-all-humanity scope of the ED-SR saga certainly qualifies it. It's not sloppy writing.

keep your epic the hell away from my SR.

SR is epic... What are you playing if not epic?

i'm playing it right!

seriously, though. the 'focus' of SR, if it has one, is street-level grittiness--noir. in noir, no one is simple; everyone has a motivation. a bad guy who is evil for the sake of evil is fine, in the occasional righteous crusader campaign--but generally, SR villains should be more than cardboard cutout bad guys.

Really? Then there are no IEs and GDs then? No, Thayla? No Darke? No AZTEC??? My God, there's no Aztec!

all those things exist. but the gameplay focuses pretty squarely on street-level combat. that stuff, mainly, is background. if the game were intended to focus on interaction with GDs, IEs, and the rest of the power players, don't you think that maybe there'd be more clearly-defined rules for them?

i'm not saying a given game can't shoot up into those levels of power. i'm saying that, in general, that stuff is supposed to be the backdrop against which the gameplay is set.

They did come up with them... and those rules are just as Canon as the rest... Case in point: SotF

The problem is that IEs and GDs and the Horrors are big and epic. Everyone (mostly) wants to read about them.
Some people mistake this with everyone wanting to play with them, and thus introducing them left and right. I make this error myself, though I try to keep things relatively quiet.
In my opinion, if your characters ever end up in a situation where they've got Inazo Aneki hostage or something like that, their first reaction should be "oh SHIT, what do we do now?" rather than "ok, now we can negotiate for XYZ billion nuyen..."
If they start realizing they're out of their league, you're doing it right.

~J

eh? SotF has stats on Hestaby and the other major players involved? golly, i'll have to pick that up.

if the rules for a given NPC are "this NPC is better than the PCs in every possible way", that's rule-ese for "not intended for use in everyday gaming." yes, for the occaisonal game, you can bring in Harlequinn or whoever. but the rules aren't designed to have them pop up every time you sit down to play.

Not quite stats on Hestaby more the amount of dice she rolls for perception (and thus her Intelligence) Which to be frank is a lot lower than i expected. I have a totally legal PC with only point lower without any magic involved.....

yeah. i've got violent allergies to that sort of thing, myself. you may have noticed!