Good and AAA corporations do not mix. There is no such thing. The authors can do what they want, I'm free to ignore them

I don't really see why people would have to ignore the authors to do whatever they want with Horizon. Horizon is a PR company, and the books don't claim to give us much of anything that isn't common Sixth World knowledge when it comes to Horizon. I'm pretty OK with that. The other company with a friendly public face is Aztechnology and we already have too much dirt on them as far as I'm concerned. I'm glad to have a corp that's a credible threat rather than an outright satanically evil boogie man that I can hardly even use anymore without a truckload of baggage. Of course, I'm biased; few things make my skin crawl more than the entertainment and PR industries, so as far as I'm concerned Horizon never had a chance of being on my good side to begin with.

I'd rather say that's the use of words like era, age, age of magic, mana cycle, world, or b'ak'tun and how they should been numbered that are all messed up. If you leave vocabulary aside, sources seem pretty consistent to say magic stopped working on a global scale in 3113 BC and came back 5124 years later. I'm not even sure there is any source claiming the same amount of time elapsed between each disappearance and return of magic.

Well, the Maya are said to be more accurate than most.

I am kind of expecting Horizon to turn out to be doing some really nasty shit, and they are just covering with their PR departments. They are obviously Shadowruns response to companies like Google, and I think the authors are going to play on the ongoing concerns about such companies gathering and controlling large portions of our accessable knowledge. The Dawkins Group is dangerous and I can see a shadow war between JackPoint and their agents developing. They seem to be experimenting with either mind wiped individuals or remote skillwires. Their control of the masses could lead to wide manipulation of the crowds.

Honestly I am mucho happy that the IEs and the Dragons seem to be being played down at the moment. The IEs have always been one of those parts of Shadowrun I never liked (Something important happened? Oh, there was an Elf behind that!). Hoping that they dont do something similar with the current metaplot.

Problem is, that is a megacorp staple. It has been around since Findley's days.

It is suddenly playing something everyone does up as some sort of big boo, because some RL company is doing this. This may work for people who joined the line with 4th, but for me, it i rather bland and feels stupid.

And frankly, I am really done with bland, generic tech based metaplots. I'd really like to see the Shirow/Anime transplant transhuman stuff to take a bit of a backseat. There are many other systems out there doing this, and many are doing it better than SR4. SR's strengths are elsewhere.

Horizon is awesome. The more saccharine sweet they seem to be, the more Lovecraftian horror I'm expecting to blow out at any second. Sort of like what happened with Universal Brotherhood only they're dragging the foreplay out longer.

I guess my major thought is that metaplots are better for drumming up discussion than they are for planting the seeds of a good gaming session, so I don't really mind seeing a lot of them go. And that goes double for metaplots featuring Immortal Elves. They just got a bit silly for my tastes, particularly in regards to Leonardo.

Personally, I don't believe that the Immortals elves were 'alive and active' during the Down-cycle.
If they were around, they were like the Dragons, huddled up in Cocoons that keep them alive and in a safe magic bubble. The idea that Immortal elves survived the downturn as still elves, and running around since the days of Earthdawn? That's just silly. But the Immortal elves thing is amusing in other ways. I just hate when people belittle human accomplishment by blaming everything on super-powerful immortals instead.

Actully, they did. As humans who could never get sick nor die of old age. I actually would have prefered if the IE did the same as the dragons hid in lairs until the mana-level rised again.

I'm pretty sure that there's a biographical chronicle of immortal elves that was made into a TV series. Something about theme music from Queen, I think?

IE's heads popping off in a shower of lightning would improve my opinion of them considerably.

In my version of the backstory that's what they did.
They hid in lairs until the mana level could support elves

So no Dodger or other spike birth babies for you?

No..

The Immortal elves with the Curse of Thorns were hibernating in kaers during the down cycle. The Mana levels came up, and they came out to see what all the hubbub was about.

I think it is more Canadian "Vah! A moose! Run for your lives!"

I always thought it'd make sense that they'd have squirreled away several large mana batteries or something such and that only the IEs with the foresight to build them would have survived. That would imply that immortality does require periodic exposure to mana for, if nothing else, "biological immortality maintenance."

That'd give the writers a fairly cool little mechanism to have a limited amount of magical activity during the down cycle. "Hmm, it's 1550 AD and I've only got 3 batteries left, but I really REALLY want to hell blast that army over there..."

Or:

"I've really gotta stop getting stabbed. All those Heal spells are eating through my reserves."

Yup, it's their omnipresence that bothers me. Dragons at least had to adjust to the new world on the fly and did so with varying degrees of success. I mean, yeah, guys like GD and Lofwyr are powered by plot, but a "normal" dragon could be used in a campaign fairly easily without things automatically getting too crazy. Immortal elves, on the other hand, theoretically had time to adjust and then a few went and tried to implement quasi-feudal states anyway. WTF?

Flash Gordon?

Horizon is being shown as the "We mess with your minds" corp. They reprogram prisoners, taking away their free will and stuff which is generally considered bad. I have no doubt that Horizon is corrupt as any mega...but the Consensus is what really drives their metaplot.

Who or what is the consensus? Well, considering Horizon's exponentially successful rise. I suspect some real players in the metaplot world are behind it.

"Hmmm...horrors feed off your misery? Hey, we can reprogram your mind so that you're happy all the time! They'll really think that sucks and go away!"

Or...

"We can reprogram your minds to make you all slaves to do our bidding! Bwa ha ha ha!"

Basically I'm saying make it what you want. If you like Immortal Elves and Great Dragons then have at it, make that the consensus. If you like evil badasses with no morals or mercy then go ahead and make that the consensus. Or anything in between. Heck, you could make it a technomancer conspiracy or have it actually be a branch of ORO, making Aztechnology and Horizon two AAA megas owned by one group!

But your version of the Story is not Canon... it has been established that they were indeed active during the Down Cycle... I don't like it, but there you go...

Keep the Faith

Well, that would be awesome indeed.
Specially if the Immortal Elves should to kill one another to get the other's mana to live another 2-3 centuries.

The consensus could simply be ... one person. It's all a sham to get the most out of the drones and manipulate public perception

Said person could actually be... A xenospaient AI with multiple personality disorder and several human drones with stirup implants...

best culprit: Pulsar

Evil gm mode: Pulsar being Deus reborn after the crash... damaged from the attacks and yet more powerful (with out the drive possesed in the SCRIE for haste, can take the long view on it's plans... instead of the monster Deus, it's not the savior Pulsar and has the resources of an entire mega corp to control and use. Learning to manipulate metahumans easier as well as still continuing it's other research projects in secret)

I'd like to get rid of the earth dawn context all together as it makes no sense that the presence of dwarfs, elves, dragons, manitcores etc. wouldn't have been in the fossil record somewhere.

First off, never seen a dinosaur?

Second, Shadowrun came first. Earthdawn came from all the backstory being told of the 4th World in Shadowrun. They wanted to do a fantasy game and discovered they had everything they needed right in front of them.

The lack of fossils is explained is it not? Something to do with the bones going *poof* when the mana levels dropped a significant amount?

Something like that.

And before you start complaining and saying it doesn't make sense. Well, A WIZARD DID IT!

Heheheh... Damn Wizards...

Keep the Faith

One of the old Europe sourcebooks mentioned ice mummies found in the alps, with tusks and pointy ears...

Personally, the thing about Shadowrun that has always been the biggest draw to me is the juxtaposition of magic and tech. Shadowrun needs them both.

Lately to me it seems that all the major plot elements have been magic fueled. At least the good ones. I don't mind this at all, I like it. But we need some good tech ones too otherwise Shadowrun just becomes a magic setting with tech in the background.

What I'd LOVE to see is some sort of horrible magical threat that had a unexpected tech solution. I think that would be great.

Kinda like the FAB in the Containment zone... a tech solution that caused issues.