So I've been digging more into the SR setting lately, and I was wondering if anybody could point me towards some good resources for learning more about the immortal elves--at least the ones that have been verified as being around in the Shadowrun setting.

What are their names? What are their personalities/agendas like? I've got the broad strokes on Harlequin, and the general backstory as to the IE's origin, but I'm curious to know about the others that have shown up in SR--particularly any that have been shown to still be active as of the 2070's.

Ehran The Scribe, Aina Dupree (officially dead July 2073), & Jane "Frosty" Foster are the only ones I know right off hand. Check the Dawn Of The Artifacts series & Artifacts Unbound for some details. There's also a few older edition (and self titled) adventures I'm aware of involving Harlequin.

But beyond that I too would love some additional info on IE's. Like, do they always have to be awakened in some fashion or can they be mundane or even emergent now? Is it strictly a familial deal, or can a first generation IE appear in the 6th world?

They are not for common, plebeian players - they are strictly Gary-Stu GMPCs of the writers.

If that link still works, Ancient History had many infos about IE:

http://danvolodar.ru/ancientfiles/index.html

Ah, thanks for the link sk8bcn, that has exactly what I was looking for.

I'll also check out the Dawn of the Artifacts series, as per SpellBinder's suggestion. Pretty sure I have those laying around somewhere in a pile of adventures I've yet to actually look through...

Check out the old Tir Tairngire book. It has the most, like Lugh Surehand, Ehran, allusions to Alachia. The Big D's Will also makes some references to a few of them. Plenty of tie ins if you can reference some of the old Earthdawn stuff too. Check out also Sean Laverty (reference in the Tir books).

Yeah, I noticed that going over the data on AH's site. The only problem with Dunk's will is that he lists a bunch of people by name and doesn't bother to specify who or what they are--so without a separate list of IE's to cross reference it's useless as a source of info on them.

I'll look into some of those other books though, thanks.

The version of the will at AH is annotated, though - all the names and items are explained, or at least guessed at with reasonable accuracy. And there's a section on all the known Immortal Elves as well, so anything that isn't directly explained you can just cross reference that way.

~Umi

I'm just saying, the will itself isn't a very good resource for info on the Immortal Elves.

Not in and of itself.

One of the other sections of the book is composed of a discussion of Shadowland Posters, many of which are IEs & Dragons. Follow the Aliases link for their Shadowlands handles.

People complain about that all the time. They're no worse than the emphasis 4th edition placed on undefeatable Great Dragons.

Headcases look like they could become the Gary-Stus of 5th edition, which to me is even worse.

People complain about undefeatable Great Dragons, too. Not so much that the PCs can't defeat them, but that modern militaries can't defeat them.

Headcases, to me, are part of the problem of using contrivances to turn the clock back on SR4's technology to appease the grognards. All of the fluff about nanotechnology and genetech going bad seems forced and unrealistic - technology shouldn't go backwards.

The most idiotic part is the fact that dragons lost their hidden pull-stringers status to battleforces....

Hasn't the sheer difficulty of killing dragons always been a thing, though?

It took a specially developed manatech weapon to secure the first kill on a dragon in 2012, and not only did that not even actually kill her, but she also was literally insane and just rampaging on pure instincts without any capacity for rational thought or scheming at the time.

From purely a setting standpoint, dragons - particularly the Greats - essentially have to be supremely hard to kill. If they could be reliably downed, they would be driven extinct in a very short while, or at the least driven out of power and into hiding, and made irrelevant.

~Umi

Well, I still think that the question whether they should be killable by an army should never have been a question. They should be killable with ease (I mean look at the power some missiles just have) if they are unpreparred (battery of spells and spirit maybe) and, even then, it would be a dangerous game to play.

So why would a dragon even try such an hazard? If they're way superior to humans in terms of intelligence, to pull the strings should have been their way to handle things.

Epic battles with militaries and dragons is epicly stupid, IMO.

Never underestimate the stupidity of an intelligent being whose temper has been tweaked.

That was a retcon. In 1st edition it was presented as her just being shot down and the great who went to rescue her was fought off by two ganging up on him.

Great Dragons should be a military challenge, not nearly-invincible.

Exactly



The threat was enough for the technology change. I object to them being unstoppable & uncurable monsters. Once Shadowrun tech behaves more like magic than Shadowrun magic. Insect spirits were scary because they were introduced with subtly and massively took over. Head cases are being presented overtly and just work as Deus ex machina villians who unstoppably keep coming back in underwhelming force.

Creatures with a magic rating of 27 are unkillable by militaries in general. Forget the physical specs, with the hardened armor that only ship mounted guns could penetrate, and ability to shred a tank with a slash of a claw. Forget the piles of force 10+ bound spirits. How are you going to kill something that can sustain a couple force 27 physical barriers, control thoughts your soldiers by the 100s, and can disarm you force without even hurting them if he wants (force 27 demolish guns will wipe out anything that shoots within 27 meters of where he centers it). You can't hit him by surprise because even without the other stuff, he's got a force 27 detect enemies (extended) running.

I'm fine with them being almost completely invulnerable gods.

Dragons could be powerless on the physical plane, that shouldn't change anything. It doesn't take an army to kill an oligarch, but old money still rule vast segments of the world in one way or another. Great Dragons are these off-the-scene players taken to the extreme, planning many more steps ahead, knowing more than any metahuman born in the last hundred of years could hope for, and possessing vast amounts of personal wealth. The fact that they're also powerful magicians just adds that little extra kick. Great Dragons have literally no reason to test their mettle in open battle (except maybe against their own kind, ritualistically), just the way you don't expect a Rothschild to settle down his family's business conflicts assault rifle at hand.

Unless he was sure he would win.
Many of the rich and powerful have fought duels. Not many have lost. Leading one to believe that either God was on their sides or they only fought when they were sure they were going to win, but they have fought.

Duels were fought between peers (and aren't, to the best of my knowledge, anymore). Who are a Great Dragon's peers, other than the other Great Dragons, and maybe the Immortal Elves?
That's who he might duel, and the setting even has canonically established rituals and instances of such. And these do not always include face-to-face combat in true form.

I think the "dragons in the sixth world" book has in its "game information" some advices to gamemaster not to use Dragons as direct adversaries, not only because dragons could slaughter the runners, but because a group of trained runners with huge firepower could take one out if he's unprepared…

Dragons were not always "unkillable", even great ones, crunch wise. They could be wounded by an assault canon or explosives fairly easily if they had no active spells, for example. So an army shouldn't have too much difficulties if faced with one. Personnaly, I actually found it logic, because it explained why, despite their strenght, they would prefer to pull strings.

Regarding the OP, reason I asked about IEs was in part pertaining to what it would take for any elf to be Immortal (ignoring the NPCs only bit). IIRC Frosty doesn't know she's an IE, though Harlequin (I believe) & Ehran do. Is being an IE a genetic thing only, or is it possible for a newborn elf in the sixth world to be a spontaneously new IE? So far, from one post, the only thing I've got is, "Because the writer says so."

Well. Canonically, I believe,

How do in-game stats justify anything? They only demonstrate how retarded magic can get when it isn't capped when everything else is.


That's the better, less lazy-ass way I like seeing IE's and great dragons played. Not as ludicrously overpowered monstrosities with stats completely out of scale with the rest of the game world. Instead, I like to see them as powerful beings who might not be able to no-sell nukes (able to no-sell lots of other stuff, though), but who are still all but untouchable, because of their connections, their resources, and their planning.

I've got a strong "the less, the better" attitude towards Greats, IEs, etc, myself. I like knowing they're there, in theory, for the flavor they add -- as just another type of "as unbeatable and inhuman as a megacorporation" enemy, basically -- but I hate using them. To me, they're best as background noise, rumors, and boogeymen.

They're the shadows you're scared of, they're not the guy under the spotlight.

/me wishes to see Goldorak vs Lofwyr soon


(looks at Ren )

Well, what's stopping from using them as just that - the hidden powers with their agenda that act through many intermediaries? If the runners are employed from the megacorp very high, they're not introduced to the CEO. Similarly, they could as well be working for a dragon without ever knowing that.