So, for those of you familiar with the FASA-era supplements (some of which I'm working with for my setting), it's heavily hinted* that during early mana spikes, certain Horrors have managed to cross into the Sixth World and are influencing events. I think it's more or less canonical that Yrsgrathe has made the crossing and has marked Aina Dupree, and that there's at least one Horror (maybe more than one) active at the highest levels of Aztechnology and Aztlan (cf. the 3E Aztlan supplement).

For those of you who are familiar with both the Earthdawn Horrors supplement and the Sixth World, I'd be interested to get your takes on which Horrors from Earthdawn are active in the Shadowrun setting and why you think so. (I have some ideas of my own but would love to get some external perspective before I go trotting them out.)

* I'm not counting the novels here, with which I'm not familiar but a number of which I gather go into a lot more detail. So if you know more about those than I do... love to hear your perspectives too.

You can't really discount novels since the "Worlds without End" is one of the major sources of information. Case in point, Yrthgrathe is dead, killed by Aina.

Regarding horrors active in SR. You want to have a look at the 2nd edition threats. Darke uses horrorlike creatures and Mentor, while presented as a spirit, seems a lot like a horror. As for greaters, I would love Artificer in Shadowrun, but the one that I could see actually being there is Nemesis.

More recently, Shadow Spells introduced Crystaline Entities which bear a striking resemblence to Earthdawn's minor horrors of the same name.

Bear in mind, one of the defining points of horrors is the sheer diversity of them. I've used horrors as plot elements several times, and never by pulling on ones written up in the books.

He was destroyed on this plane, that may or may not necessarily equate to truly destroyed or merely banished back beyond the veil until the next time the mana rises enough for him and his sort to cross over.

Even Aina realized his defeat was a little too easy, he had sacrificed his physical form there to let her cut loose and cause a massive spike, just hurrying along the coming that little bit more.

I recommend Nebis: It is not too powerful, so he can be beaten. Then the visions start, the first great deed for the "Power That Is", followed by the tattoos which give you power (raised attributes, extra power points, raised limits). After they became the greatest heroes of the shadows (or something like that), they perform the ritual which rips them apart - Nebis rises from their lost pieces/limbs.
Some cybernetic protheses later, the team is out for revenge and has to defeat the next chosen bunch, it they can pin down the horror.

Yeah, if I was going to bring Horrors into a campaign, I'd just brainstorm weird monstrosities of my own dark imagination, rather than try to turn existing named Horrors into the "Monster of The Week", so to speak.

Although "Monster of The Week" gives me a fabulous idea...

- The Adventures of Boas Mungo, Horror Stalker -

A new terror every week! Fridays at nine!

~Umi

But which is more horrific, Mungo or the Horror?

I know of at least two Horrors who have had restraining orders issued against Mungo for Stalking, so take that for what it is worth.

Can Mungo read restraining orders? Or understand the concept of restraint?

I´ve used unnamed stuff - a bloat form, a jehutra, various forms of undead that are not really specific to ED after the rules transformation. Else I´ve been borrowing from Lovecraft and someone doing nice "books of harrow" pages. And yeah, one of the chars has read a few pages of that book.

Artificer is interesting in ED (the group found traces of it there), but somewhat harder to pull of in SR due to the much higher tech level.

Since reading this thread, I've kinda started kicking around the idea of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : SoC "Monolith" inspired Horror, with all that would entail.

Especially snorks. Lots and lots of snorks.

~Umi

Probably not, and anyway who is going to enforce it on Mungo?


Plus a lot will depend on which jurisdiction they are in.

Saw a runner once whose team had run afoul of a Master Shedim in New Orleans and had the bright idea to try bringing the cops as the big guns to deal with it.

The GM said they wouldn't interfere and when asked why not, he told the party with a totally deadpan face 'Because down here Possession is 9/10th of the Law'.


@Umi: quite possible though I have to admit at first I thought you meant those Other Snorks

I'd class them as Horrors too, personally.

~Umi

Be careful, it´s not just a class, it´s a named one. It´s quite inventive and might attack from the air...

"Joy" could make a good campaign, where the characters first believe BTL could be the reasons for happy suicides before digging deeper and finding a group of blood mages and a step further that powerfull astral creature.

Fla Tra Lys (Earthdawn GM compendium p. 458)

A musician seeks out some runners, presumably your party, seeking a "cure" to the curse laid on him by whatever foul source took his music away. An oracle had promised him riches, after all. He needs to get his abilities back. It will turn out to be a series of misfortunes laid out by Fla Tra Lys, the entity responsible for both the promise of riches and the curse.

OR:

(refer to "Pipes of Wrongness", ED GM Compendium, p. 439)

The runners have come into possession of a storage locker that has been left unattended for some time. Perhaps they inherited it from an old mage, or maybe got it as a pay bonus on a job well done. Whatever the reason, it's been abandoned for so long that it's caked in dust. Most of the tech in it is outdated, but there will be a few things of interest. One of the items, however, sill be a pan flute. Whoever discovers this flute will be overcome with a desire to play the flute. If the player is too smart to choose to play the flute, he will have to resist magic (target numbers at GM's discretion) to stop himself from playing anyway. When the pipes are blown, they only issue a rusty whine, and cannot be played as an instrument. Within a few hours, however, a walking cadaver will appear (treat this as a cadaver man from ED, or some kind of ghoul from SR for body stats) and offer to be the player's personal slave for one year and one day. During this time, if he is killed, he will rise to continue serving. Nothing apart from magical imprisonment will prevent service from being rendered, and even imprisonment will not stop the countdown to a year and a day. If the cadaver is able to complete his service, or is imprisoned for the duration of it, Fla Tra Lys will appear to reclaim his servant and to kill the one who played his flute. If the player is killed by Fla Tra Lys, he will be resurrected as an Undead Servant as well. If the party manages to kill Fla Tra Lys, the curse will be broken on all undead servants, sending them to eternal rest. To break the spell before a year and a day, the pipes must be dropped into lava at an awakened site, or burned by dragon fire. No other way exists to break that curse.

For a supposedly-happy bunch of trees you are abnormaly fond of fire. I´ll steal that idea.

Feel free, but remember it's the writers of ED who are fond of fire, not I. I only updated the item description to allow it to be tossed into magical lava, where the original item description require it to be tossed into The Death's Sea, a sea of magical lava used to imprison death. When magic left Barsaive, the Death sea was returned to water, and death was released to wander free. I switched to "magical lava" because the Black Sea is no longer Death's Sea, and so cannot destroy the pipes.

All of that aside, I sincerely hope you and your group have fun with this one!

I am certain we will. Thanks for that!

Our current campain started about three years ago with the idea that playing over-powered characters that are always changeing to the "concept of the month" is not really good for long-term fun. So our back-then newest player decided to become GM for a fresh group of 656 karma chars. The idea was to have relevant chars with established history once they hit the 750 karma mark. That worked, even if he dropped out due to getting children and starting that carreer stuff.

Fast-forward more than a year the group has become a trouble-shooter for the Holy-C, grown up from Italian mafia work to the point of almost forgetting their roots. The Enemy exists and is fought by secret organisations. As of this year, the TM has learned that some old powers consider him to be a Nethermancer, the adept has discovered that she is a better Scout than others (mainly by the traditional "karma ritual" granting a Edge regeneration), and the Street Samurai has gotten new toys.

At the current point the TM is about to change into a ki-mage (improved hacking + spirits instead of CF and sprites), the ki-ad is getting to be a ki-mage with focus on powers and anti-magic, and even the street sam will be an adept, as long as there is little background count (likely Way of the Warrior). Did I mention the group managed to end up in ED times for a few (in-game) days? (Search for the Bosnian-pyramids hoax used in Dawn of the Artifacts. Much work went into that, nice stuff for gameing even if fake.)

So that "summon undead" ED artifact fits the bill for the nethermancer perfectly. And I just know the players will be paranoid about the free servant from the get-go.


(Not classic SR. We know.)

Wow, my first post on Dumpshock in years!

While I can't remember the exact details, I did run a campaign using a rising cult that was trying to summon the Horror known
as Bone Crown The Usurper. It was quite a shock to the players at the time as their Earthdawn characters had encountered it just several
months before.

Bone Crown is one of my favorites.

You got this, and you will certainly have a lot of fun with it. And who cares if it's classic? We've been doing "classic" for 30 years!

Azzavat-Many-Eyes would be a nightmarish thing to deal with in SR. even not fully summoned, it's influence is nasty as all get out

Especially in a world where television monitors, headlights, and various other eyeports exist so ubiquitously.

Has the use of Horrors come up in SR4/SR5 material at all, or has that all gone by the wayside since FASA? Just curious for my own campaign reasons.

Yeah, I'd be interested to know how all that horror/invae/mana spike stuff has been worked since then too? Any posters here savvy with the up-to-date facts?

The pipes have been placed, played willingly, and cadaverman "Brains" is now a servant with so far undiscovered use. Any ideas for what it can do?


It was played more subtle in the beginning of SR4, and is IMO dead with Clutch of Dragons at the latest (lots of continuity lost with that one).

This is touchy from a legality standpoint especially since they are no longer owned by the same developers. So, openly there has been zero cross-over between SR and ED in SR4/SR5.

What you do at your table is your business.

Personally I would be interested in any SR4a ED conversions floating around out there in the SR community.