How do you think homosexuals reproduce?

Metrosexual refers to people who are attracted to, in a word, city slickers. It doesn't specify male or female, just that the partner is also related to (or literally is) the city.

According to whom?

The same way everyone else does. With creativity and determination (and sometimes by accident).

Oh damn. Some movie trailer I saw recently had a clip of something to that effect.

"Gays can't reproduce."
"No, but sure try our damnedest!"

They can with the opposite sex ...

Well, yes. But the quote was implied with a same-sex partner.

[RAFbrigadier] Alright Alright! This thread has gone too far off topic! Let's get back on track, shall we? Right! And....CUE![/RAFbrigadier]

Mmm, sounds like The Marker is the source of magic.

Simply, the source of magic is mana. Mana come from somewhre outside the planet (neutrinos ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino ) And when it enter our system we skim it to make it viable so that the wielder can use it without killing them self (most of the time). Then if we are more and more people (how many living in shadowrun with full essence ?) We would process more and more mana. But the Mana need the soul essence to be processes and washes our soul filth to create horrors with it.

I like David Eddings' explanation. In the Belgariad (and the various other related novels, of course), magical effects are achieved by the Will and the Word. Essentially, you focus your willpower, your intentions, then provide a physical means to translate your intention into physical form (the Word). Awakened characters have the ability to create these physical manifestations of their willpower.

As for the nature of magic, I discount the Yoda explanation that life creates it. If mana is created by the collection of multiple life-forms in a single area, then the wave-form of the mana cycle suddenly becomes nonsensical. It also wouldn't follow a set pattern, since it is all but impossible to make long-term predictions concerning a complex ecology as large as the Earth, and we *know* that the mana cycle follows a set pattern because the Mayan Calendar that gives us the name of the Sixth World; Hell, Ehran said flat-out that the mana cycle's wave-form was regular and predictable in his speech to the Young Elven Technologists.

As to what the source of magic and mana are, I have no answer. If I were to postulate wildly, I might suggest that mana is just the effluvient from Mother Earth's 5,200 year-long menstrual cycle.

I like that ^_^

Back to Shadowrun...

How do cat-girls reproduce?

Is it by magic?

With tom-boys, obviously.

Damn, why didn't I see that?

Note that this is false in Earthdawn. The mana levels in gameplay are unexpectedly steady post-Scourge.

But the Scourge is over and most of the Horrors have been forced to retreat back to their home metaplane, yes? . . . . as a result of the mana level dropping again.

Yes, the mana level dropped, but it unexpectedly plateaued just high enough that there are plenty of Horrors leftover. The mana level is actually higher than was originally spec'd "safe".

Wasn't that due to the Theran's doing it FOR THE LULZ? With those colossal Orichalcum pillars?

I believe it's one of those things that's officially unexplained.

Ok in the last era of magic : They made floating forteress ! Now can we do that ? Is there something that can do that ? I just found the goal of my new mage ... make a floating Archology !

Yes you can, and yes there are. Its the orbital fortress where the Corporate Council hangs out . Takes a lot of karma to bind enough spirits supporting the number of levitate spells necessary.

If then, the mana is out of control because of the mass population. We are on a time bomb before Battletech...

I never liked as a gm of Earthdawn being the history of Shadowrun. I know it is the unofficial official history but alot of the lore we use from earthdawn did not happen in the 4th age. I prefer to believe that anytime a GD or IE talks about history or magic, they know alot more then anyone else but also that alot of it is their own lore and religion used as history. Of course the Dragons like to believe that they created the meta races (i think that is how it goes) but you can't blame them for thinking that even if it isn't true. Shadowrun magic has been built alot around the mages thoughts and beliefs shape the manifistation, so i wouldn't be surprised if it is the same for dragons and the IE.

Also magic comes from hockey and drum sticks.

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Awesome!

IOC: ED was the official history until the line was sold to someone else when FASA broke up.

ICC: Mana levels have stabilized and are creeping up slowly. Soem reports are that they raced ahead for some reason ,like a power surge, just prior to the assassination of president Dunkelzahn and then stopped after hailey's comet passed. It is almost like osmething was pushing it but that inmplies soem sort of intellect. If it was just based on population that hit critical mass and caused the awakening in 2012, it should have faded when VITAS destroyed such a significant portion of the population. So there's soemthing else at work. If we knew what we might have the ultimate secret of magic.

Also, there must be a correlation or not, but Ork litters have diminished for no known reason.

Citation?

Orks or homo sapiens robustus metatype are the second most
common metatype in the world according to recent statistics,
though birthrates have plunged in industrialized countries over
the past few years. Several sociologial and medical studies into the
matter have proved inconclusive, but it seems safe to suggest that
such a drop off is unlikely to be natural.

Runner's Companion

Thank you. I didn't disbelieve you; I just never read that part, or read and forgot it.

Yet more evidence for my locker of "Why Shadowrun isn't Earthdawn". Thank you.

Couldn't this be due to the different chemicals present in food, drinking water, clothes, the atmosphere of cities, ect., ect.? You know, mean old Aztechnology is anti-ork and puts anti-ork proteins in its Krillbars or something? Eugenics movement, circa-2072?

ED is Shadowrun past and Red Brick corobored by send me an Email about that. They keep in touch with Catalyst to keep balance between the past and the future. And Battletech has also been pointed has the 7th age. The Booklet ShadowTech or Battlerun (don't remember) is in the 8th age of Magic. I think eclipse phase is the 9th/10th age because of the psyche. But not on earth anymore

Well, it took me some time to find that quote...one of those things you know, but have to look hard for a source.


@Delarn: The CBT timeline is not only missing all key events from the Shadowrun backstory, but also the general tone is not really cyberpunk-ish

I hate that, hate hate hate it. So many little pieces of science and popular culture trivia I know (ex. scientists managed to make light travel 360 times the speed of light about two weeks before they managed to slow light down to the speed of a bicycle--two separate articles that showed up in the paper and I never saved) that I wish I could find again. Or youtube videos that I think about, or things that are probably in a youtube video if I could remember the name of the episode of the show it was on.

So many little things...

I'm fairly certain the Eclipse Phase is in fact, totally divorced from the ShadowRun/Earthdawn timeline/'verse. I have virtually no support for this, but that's just my gut feeling based on my time on the EP boards. That said, I'd play a crossover game of Shadowclipse Phaserun.

I think Battletech/SR crossover is an old theory/gag. Eclipse Phase, with an implied date of early 22nd century at the latest (to my eyes at least, it is vague).

It's Battlerun, and although I can't tell you if it's real (it's sold on BattleCorps though...) I don know that the Devs of Eclipse Phase have explicitly stated there's no specific date for EP, although a few rough estimates have been bandied about,

They've actually been able to speed up light to over 1,000 times the speed of light, as well as slow it down to 0 mph.

Which begs the question: if the speed of light is not a constant, why are physicists maintaining it is? Or that the "red shift" seen in starlight might be caused by light slowing down, instead of the doppler effect.

It's interesting that the speed of light was actually seen to become slower, until the invention of the atomic clock, which tells time by the radio wavelengths of a cesium atom at 0 magnetic field, which is light. So now we're timing the speed of light using time that we figure out by the speed of light...

I thought this has something to do with projecting light into different mediums. If someone had managed to slow or speed up light through a vacuum, that would be big news indeed.

I'm... not... sure. I thought it had something to do with the tempurature of either the medium or the vaccum they were using, as if getting light itself cold enough slowed it down. I think MIT was doing some of the experiments.

It's not (entirely) in a vacuum, no. The "faster than" light is primed by a 2.4" box of [some super heated gas], the pulse enters and a second pulse (a clone) leaves the box at the same instant. The resulting beam out of the box speeds down a vacuum distance some 72 feet in the same span of time as it takes the original beam to travel the width of the box.

Note that it is impossible to send information this way. Regardless of what you try to do to implement some "high speed morse code" with it, at the other end the data will be garbage unless you send it at a "speed" equivalent of e or lower.

Yea, that's right they managed to speed it up with plasma. Still I don't think Einstein's in trouble with this one.

He's not. The "metadata" that they use to clone the light still travels at the speed of light. In the case of the cloned beam the packet starts at the front, but finishes at the back end.

This is speculation, but I think the cloned beam has a duration equal to the time it takes light to move 72 feet.

They didn't exactly 'slow light down to 0 MPH" they just forgot to pay the electic company and the power was cut off.

Seriously though this has drifted badly off topic, let's drift back, ok?

It's not off topic, if we say that light makes magic. Then the speed of light is directly proportional to the rating of your Magic score.

My light travels at approximately 1,000 times the speed of light, which gives me a Magic attribute of..... 3. I think my math's off.

Nobody claimed the speed of a light beam was the same regardless of the medium. In a FO cable, light "only" moves at ~2/3c and inside a Bose–Einstein condensate it slows down to a crawl. An individual photon on the other hand will always move at c - yes, this is a bit paradox.



And the Middle Ages were invented by crazy scientists

Not as paradoxical as getting photons to interact with themselves to produce a wave interference pattern.

So you think that light is magic ? That's non sense...

All of this sounds like magic to me; particle and wave physics have always mystified me. Combine them and you get more than double the mystification.