| From: | Edward.Chegwidden@****.int Edward.Chegwidden@****.int |
|---|---|
| Subject: | ShadowRN digest, Vol 1 #869 - 28 msgs |
| Date: | Tue, 9 May 2000 09:09:21 +1000 |
>
>
>According to dbuehrer@******.carl.org, at 8:06 on 8 May 00, the word on
>the street was...
>
>> >Unless I'm mistaken, those are Horror constructs, not actual Horrors. They
>> >are pretty tough to beat, even for well-armed shadowrunners, though...
>>
>> What's a horror construct, and how are they created?
>
>They're creatures made by the Horrors, usually to serve them in some way
>(though that should be interpreted widely -- they're not butlers :)
>Examples are cadaver men, ED's equivalent to zombies in other RPGs; the
>falsemen of Parlainth, which are basically golems of all sorts of
>materials, created to fight each other after the humanoid population of
>the city had been killed; and so on.
Kick that Idea in the balls right now.
Having just come from GMing Earthdawn and now moving back into the realm of
Shadowrun I feel reasonably qualified to answer these questions. Cadaver man
are far more complicated and complex than zombies ever were. Look on them more
as, say a Shadowrun Ghoul who is a lottle more life challenged than most.
They are sentient creatures who committed suicide and are then reanimated
by the horrors. They retain their intelligence, and I suppose depending on how
they dies, their abilities to communicate. They're just a little insane. From
the magical point of view, they are reanimated by powerful and complex magic,
something a little to complex to just dispel. Cadaver Men can outlast the
horror that created them, however most are just looking for a way to end it all.
Personally I give the cadaver men I use full memory of their past, and
total awareness of what has happened to them, and what is going on. They make
for great NPC's (sorta like the friend in the Orginal American Werewolf movie).
I agree with the Falseman summary, though it does appear that they have
some basic intelligence or driven instinct.
>Individually, most Horror constructs aren't too tough (though things like
>stone falsemen are not so easy to stop), most likely not as tough as the
>Horrors that created them, but they are often present in large numbers.
True of Earthdawns time period, after all the Horrors have had the run of the
place for the last 500 years. However I would say that in Shadowruns day and
age, when Horrors are just beginning to break through, you are going to find
more weak horrors than you are constructs, unless the horror's have got a head
start, and have been in the area for a while.
>How they are created, I don't know. Maybe it's in an ED book, but it's
>been some time since I read any or have played the game.
Horror constructs are created almost purely by the magical ability of the
horror's themselves. You have to remember that with horror's, they come from "a
pocket plane" beyond the astral, using it as a gate to get through into our
world. The higher the magical potential in our world, the greater the
connection to the astral plane, the easier it is for the horrors to use the
connection to create gates of their own.
Horrors spend most of their time sitting in the little world, plotting ways to
get to other worlds. They virtually dine on suffering, and would find the
larger sprawls in Shadowrun, 2060, to be a smorgousboard of pain and misery. In
fact I would not be suprised if quite a few horrors, who, being more intelligent
than some, have broken through in Seattle (or insert Sprawl here) and have set
up shop in the middle of the barrens or anywhere, imitating a metahuman, and
just thriving on the suffering produced by others. Just giving it a tweak here
and there to keep it suculent.
>
>--
>Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Regards,
Edward
