As an old Earthdawn guy running an enduring Shadowrun game, I can't help but let the Fourth World bleed into the Sixth at my table. I've already sprinkled in a bit here and there, and I had an idea to possibly introduce Lightbringers, perhaps as a magical group with some particulars on which spells and metamagics initiates could select, and maybe inventing a few of both.

But, they're nowhere to be found, at least outwardly. I think it's spelled pretty plainly for those in the know with the Earthdawn esoterica that Harlequin is a Lightbringer, Aina is very likely, -H- is teaching Frosty the tradition, and I wouldn't be surprised if Ehran was as one well. Are there any others? Any inkling of a proper Lightbringer society actually coming together? The Horrors are already a serious threat in the Sixth.

Also, has anyone tried to homebrew any Lightbringer rules into their games? I'd be interested to see what others have done.

It's the sixth world, the world is hopelessly fucked and it is only a matter of time. Given the Azzies recent win, it is only going to get worse.

Aina could be likely, if she were alive (R.I.P., July 2073).

The group is called Lightbearers and maybe this old thread might help you out.

Who says she isn't? Wouldn't be the first time people who should have known better assumed she was dead.

Maybe, but with only one true confirmed reference from Ghostwalker's point of view, after the D.C. rift was closed Aina would no more be an immortal elf than Dunkelzahn is a great dragon (ref The Clutch Of Dragons).

The Lightbearers are rather too unambiguously good-guy for a cyberpunk setting, aren't they? (If Harlequin is meant to be one, this would go a long way to explaining why I've always disliked him in that setting.) Wouldn't early-stage Horror Stalkers make more sense?

Lightbringer, Lightbearer. Give a chum a break. My Earthdawn books haven't seen regular use in almost 20 years. 😝 I'm surprised I still remember as much as I do.

His comment wasn't meant offensive at all and the link given is interesting.

So maybe they should indeed be called "Lightbringers", that name carries some darker tones

Not offended at all. 😊 Sorry if it came off that way.

I'm leaning towards developing a magical group with some various strictures and prescribed ordeals. For the Lightbearer powers, I'm not sure if those translate best as metamagics, spells, powers, or a mix. Metamagic would make more sense as those could be accessed by mages and adepts alike.

I'd disagree. Nothing says that the LBs have to be "good" at all. In essence they are a secret society that taps into some great power (Great Pattern) to draw on it's essence and fight the horrors. Sure it's very easy to say that they are the good guys because they fight the horrors and don't use blood magic. But those are really the only strictures they face. There's nothing that says they have to be the paladins of Earthdawn.

One of the more likely discipline paths for a LB to follow would have been the Horror Stalker, and those guys are pretty serious bad asses. They're willing to do just about anything. Combine that with the LBs abilities and you've got someone whose very capable, and may not have the same moral issues as someone less experienced with dealing with horrors. They're survivors.

Now take that secret society, semi-cell system forward a few thousand years. The most powerful LBs could pass on some of their knowledge and power onto others, and potentially push that a good ways down the line and years. The tradition could have been passed on for quite a while. Besides the IE, there is certainly the possibility that it could have become a splinter sect of one church or another or it's own society. In our house games we have parallels between ED and SR come up fairly regularly, depending on the type of game. One of the links we used was the Illuminate, or some version of it, where the society of the LB remained and became more interested in perpetuating it's self than in it's original goals, since there were no longer any horrors around to continue fighting. There's plenty of ways to bring up old links to the past if you keep an open mind to how they might have drifted over the centuries.

I always found this idea very interesting for cross-over campaigning, and am finally running a campaign loosely based on it.

The Lightbearers won´t make an organized appearance in the campaign, more an alliance of like-minded people. So far there is an old Chinese elven woman they now as adept weaponsmith, but not as a Lightbearer. I´ll have more hidden in the background, with established bases of operation, but avoiding attention. A Lightbearer organisation would take away the special status from my players. The weaponsmith is hunted by Nyarlathotep, and the engagements have been fought by the runners.

(Clutch of Dragons is one of the books considered "untrue until told otherwise" at our table. I prefer to have Dragon continuity, even if they don´t play a part in the campaign. Yet. )

See, I don't agree with this viewpoint.

Mankind may have built itself an empire of technology and greed which has won some impressive battles, but magic has been winning the war from day one - and it's only getting stronger.

Human population levels have been ravaged over and over by plagues and catastrophes, and metahumanity itself continues to fragment with each new burst of magic - first Elves and Dwarves, then Orks and Trolls, now changelings and drakes and exotic metavariants, not to mention the growing numbers of completely non-metahuman sapients. There have even been early changeling expressions of proto T'skrang and Obsidimen, made possible by the powers of The Great Comet. Even entirely discounting the influence of the dragons, humanity is slowly losing its place as the dominant species, and this process will only accelerate as time goes on and mana levels rise.

Urban megacities like Seattle are considered the heart of the setting, but the truth is that the world has more untamed wilderness in it than it has had for centuries - largely as a direct result of nature itself becoming more and more Awakened. People don't just eat soy because it's cheap - they eat soy because in a lot of places, running a farm these days is a dangerous proposition. Rogue spirits, paracritters, ecoterrorists, and all the rest make living out in the boonies a real challenge, and even the corporations can only do so much against the green tide - and it's gonna get harder and harder as more magic comes back into the world, and the wilds become nastier and nastier.

The Awakened may only comprise 1% of the population, but that number is going to keep growing as mana levels rise. Spellcasting is common enough in the Shadows and among the wealthy elite, but in the rest of society magic is still rare and frightening - the sort of thing you see in the movies, but nowhere else. But with each passing year, there are going to be more - and more powerful - Awakened running around. You thought the Ghost Dance was bad? Wait until the wretched masses start to Awaken left and right, and with their newfound powers they decide enough is enough.

The Infected are also a very real problem, with numbers directly comparable to the number of Awakened, but far greater personal powers, all conveniently packaged in the form of contagious disease with the wonderful side effects of immense suffering and frequent insanity. And while the average response is to shoot for the head and burn the body, things aren't so simple when you factor in the inconvenient truth that many Infected are not feral, but are just ordinary people suffering from horrible diseases - and they won't take kindly to the world backing them into a corner trying to eradicate them.

And then there are the Dragons. Sure, they largely see us as cattle - but they also see us as one of the only means of preventing (or perhaps merely surviving) the next big Scourge. It is in their direct interests (and technically in ours as well) for them to rig the game such that metahumanity continues to develop magically.

The corps might profit off of magic for the present, but ultimately they're at the mercy of time. The balance of power is going to slowly tip out of their favor. Whether they adapt, or fail to survive, remains to be seen.

If the world is hopelessly fucked, it's not because of humanity and the corps - it's because of the Horrors, and our inability to combat them.

~Umi

the corps control more magic than anyone else. if magic becomes more common, the corps will still own more of it than anyone else.

i'm still not sold on the situation being hopeless, mind you, but it has nothing to do with how common magic is. in fact, even in earthdawn, the great majority of people were not magical (apart from many having a race which requires higher magic levels).

It has been discussed before.

Until the magic starts fighting back - which it already is.

Siberia is controlled by a cabal of shapeshifters and other awakened. Cambodia is ruled by naga. The Elves have their own nations, and while they tolerate and even exploit corporate presence in the present, their isolationist and elitist culture could, empowered by stronger magic, allow them to become fully insular in the future. The UCAS was briefly led by a great dragon, and the strongest corporation in the world is solely owner by another. The most technologically oriented corp is run by a free spirit, and the most magically oriented one is dabbling in blood magic and trying to revive the Aztec empire. The USA was torn apart at the hands of a small army of Native American shamans. Japan lost its empire due to magical catastrophe. Et cetera.

The list goes on and on and on. Magic has directly and drastically shaped the face of the world and the balance of power, and it's going to continue to do so. How long before an Ork nation arises? How long before the next bug spirit infestation takes place? Where will the next major magical crisis occur, and how much will it reshape the political landscape?

It's a Jurassic Park situation, really. The corps have only the illusion of power. They have lots of money and resources, obviously, but they're toying with forces beyond their true understanding or control. They can cage it sometimes and try to sell it, but they are not magic's masters and they routinely fall prey to their own attempts to control it, with disastrous consequences.

Magic is chaos. Magic is change. The corporations thrive because they maintain a semi-stable status quo, but as the world around them changes faster and faster, their grip becomes more tenuous and their ability to adapt more limited. They are an inflexible sort of institution, designed for the world of humanity, based on economics and technology, dependent on the proper "environmental conditions" to survive. And even if they adapt to a changing magical environment, the rest of the world is adapting too, and they may find themselves in direct competition with other, increasingly more magical, forces.


What does the fact that not every single person in Earthdawn was magical have to do with anything?

The vast majority of the world was magical, even if only in nature. The fact that there were so many different races, and that they each had a wildly different agenda and viewpoint on the world, contributed to the overarching world order. So, too, did the fact that magic was the primary source of power in the world - it shaped nations, destroyed armies, dictated politics, et cetera.

I honestly cannot see the corps surviving in a mana-rich world, because they would be unable to compete without becoming something else entirely. They either go the way of the dodo, or they embrace magic and turn into full fledged nations and empires. If nothing else, their structure as businesses would fall apart as the world's economic basis changed entirely.

You are right about the situation not being hopeless - but in a lot of ways, the return of magic is the end of the world as we know it. It's not the apocalypse, but it certainly is the start of a transition to a world where everything is different - where the current systems break down and end up replaced by others. Life goes on, but not in the same way as before.

That's why the Shadowrun universe is so compelling. It breeds conflict through clashing interests. Things matter, not least of all because the fate of the world is still undecided. We know magic levels are rising, but there are so many ways that could play out, with so many different sorts of outcomes to be had along the way. It is inherently interesting.

In contrast, in your generic boring cyberpunk setting, the world is fucked over and that's it, end of story. For something like a book or a movie, it can make for an interesting sort of social commentary contrasting the imagined future with our present day reality. But for a game system it's suicide - there's no future, there's no point, so what's the driving force behind any of your actions? How can your characters have any motivation if everything they do is pointless? Unless you're there purely for the visceral experience of shooting drekheads in the face and need "the world is fucked" as justification?

If you want an interesting story, the future has to be undecided. If you just want guns, chrome, and violence, isn't that what Cyperpunk 2077 is for?

~Umi

+1

That's actually... very interesting, and does change how I was looking at it. And gives me some ideas.

Thanks man.

on a side note, "initiates of the new dawn" sounds like it could be in some way related, by name at least

And you made me think of the Mythic Dawn from a completely unrelated universe.

See I always thought they were just huge fans of Buffy's little sister.


What?


Don't judge me.

I won't, but watch out for any Firefly fans out there - the BtVS / Firefly rivalry has claimed many victims.

~Umi

Aina is the exact opposite of what Lightbearers are. Lightbearers forgo all bloodmagic and oppose the scourge in thought and form. There's also the matter of Thais.

Regarding Lightbearers in general, it is way way way to early. When Elianar Messias discovered the Books of Harrow founded the eternal library, long before he even predicted the scourge, magic was everywhere. It took 150 years for the first horrors to appear and another 800 years of constant rising magic level for the scourge to come and the Lightbearers to be founded. Lightbearers require the magic level to be strong enough for adepts in the earthdawn sense of the term and pattern magic. Neither of which seems to be the case in 2070. Things seem to be faster this time around, but not that much faster.

Finally, there is a Lightbearer in Shadowrun. He calls himself the laughing man.