[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Yes, yes, 'dragons are a kind of horror'.  So are humans, elves, etc.  Of all the races, I'd put humanity as being the MOST horrifying ...

[CanRay]

Yes, yes, 'dragons are a kind of horror'.  So are humans, elves, etc.  Of all the races, I'd put humanity as being the MOST horrifying ...

Want proof?  Supernatural.

One episode has Sam kidnapped and he is trying to figure out the monster, only to realize that they're a family of nutbars.  He's SCARED at that point.

[IKerensky]

And what if the true story was than in the first age one horror manage to cross the bridge, being the first metaplane traveller of his kind.

She discovered a planet full of life and thus sustenance, inhabited by proto-humans. She used her magic to enslave them and transform the Earth as his personnal feeding ground. The introduction of magic on Earth produce a change in Gaiasphere, especially as the horror start to spawn her descendant, it ´mutate' the proto-human into the meta-human race and light a beacon that the other horrors discovered  and followed starting the first scourge.

The dragons aren't from Earth, there is proof enough that they are indeed a kind of horroi, or at very least mutation of an horroi that adapted to low magic by hibernating rather than being sent back to netherworld. They are conqueror, they saw Earth as their domain and humanity as cattle and servant. Spawning the IE was their worst error, because they are part humans and thus regards fellow meta-humans differently and want to free Earth from the GD because they feel they belong here.

Dragons doesn't help humanity survive the Scourge, Dragons bring the Scourge to humanity and are only interested in protecting their toys and play ground.

Dragons have interest in humanity surviving the Scourge, they didn't expected that the IE will provide such efficient way to humanity that now their numbers and technological development put their own future in Jeopardy. They have to cut down on number and power of Meta-Humanity if they want things to be back in business. VITAS, VITAS2 could have been dragon enginereed bio-weapons. Perhaps they have plan even darker.

Humanity on the other hand can't tolerate GD for long, simply because man is ultimate predator and the top of the food chain. The existence of a super-predator would entice a conditionned world wide answer that intent to put GD in the same spot than wolf (domesticated) or Tiger and Great White Shark (nearly extinct). And as history progress and humanity discover the Scourge and that Dragons are the cause, they will launch the biggest Whack a Lizard Worldwide Hunt in History.

[IKerensky]

Yes, yes, 'dragons are a kind of horror'.  So are humans, elves, etc.  Of all the races, I'd put humanity as being the MOST horrifying ...

Want proof?  Supernatural.

One episode has Sam kidnapped and he is trying to figure out the monster, only to realize that they're a family of nutbars.  He's SCARED at that point.

Humanity are horrifying or horrible but they are still human and Earthborn. Dragons are Horroï, netherspace invaders and conquerors... That is entirely different.

'I wrote a book called 'How to serve Meta-Humanity'  -    Big D
'It's a cooking book.'   -   The Laughing Man.

[Mirikon]

No, IKerensky, that's not quite true. At all. Dragons are no more Horoi than other Namegivers. All are native to this plane. Nightsky was a horoi, but Dayheart (the first Dragon) shares the same origin as the first elf, human, and other Namegivers, so of Dragons are horoi, then all Namegivers are. However, Nightsky did make Dragons in its image, after it had been changed by coming to the new world.

[IKerensky]

That is how the dragon tell the story... Do you really believe them ?

How strange that all the metatypes share the same DNA material (more or less) but dragon have peculiarity not shared with any other earthborn living being : dragonspeech, ability to astral travel with their physical body, 3 pairs of members, some even have more than 2 eyes.

I think the truce is that the Dragon are descendant from the original horroï and wanted to make the other races think they share a common origin, while in fact Dragon are aliène invaders from out of astral space.

[Mirikon]

Well, there's plenty of room for you over there in the Tin Foil Hat Brigade, but there is nothing in any of the text to support your conspiracy theories. This is the kind of thing that would make Plan 9 take a step back and say, "Yeah, that's a little too far out there for me."

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

At least Plan 9's rants and conspiracies are IC ...

[Icy]

Didn't Running Wild state that dragons are just some sort of awakened dinosaurs?
They were classified as such by biologists. And they sure used DNA for such a classification.

I don't remember this exactly. I'll look it up later.

[Crimsondude]

No. They're Class Reptilia, and then veer off into their own fictional subdivisions.


Anyway, I don't see why the Fourth World would ever need to be retconned, but that only applies to anything published by FASA Corporation (the real one). Nothing published by successive license-holder has ever been canon because neither FanPro nor CGL holds the copyright to those materials. Dragons is a grey area. I read some of it, but I was not bound to it when I was writing about Ghostwalker or anything else in Clutch. It was useful for getting a base idea of True Drakes, beyond older references, but again those drakes and what were introduced in SR are quite different because, among other things, there just isn't enough magic or time to make those drakes in SR.


So don't see why it would ever matter.

Aztlan hasn't really be covered in a long, long time. It's probably changed far more than what is minimally covered in 6WA and other references, but I doubt it's trying to replicate Thera.

[Nath]

Earthdawn Dragons is not much more in a gray area than everything else in Earthdawn or Shadowrun lines. Because Shadowrun books anyway retcon things all the time, whatever the original source is. There are no rule, only generally acknowledged guidelines. But at the end of the day, what the line developper says is ok, is.
Besides, Dragons is in no way different from any other PDF release, even if it was for free ; it has copyright and all rights reserved by FASA. Actually, all the Earthdawn second edition products published by Living Room Games also have copyright and all rights reserved by either FASA or Wizkids (just like FanPro LLC and CGL never had copyright over SR product: only Wizkids and Topps do).

From Shadowrun point of view, Earthdawn is actually less subject to retcon. It is widely considered that the Earthdawn era is set at least several decades, if not centuries or millenias, before the end of the Fourth Age. This leaves more than enough time for events to happen and things to change, instead of retconing something in the Earthdawn era.

[Marzhin]

Yes, yes, 'dragons are a kind of horror'.  So are humans, elves, etc.  Of all the races, I'd put humanity as being the MOST horrifying ...

Want proof?  Supernatural.

One episode has Sam kidnapped and he is trying to figure out the monster, only to realize that they're a family of nutbars.  He's SCARED at that point.

There was also a great episode of Torchwood with that very same idea. You keep waiting for the "alien of the week", until you realize the bad guys are for once not aliens, just sick human beings.

[Icy]

It is widely considered that the Earthdawn era is set at least several decades, if not centuries or millenias, before the end of the Fourth Age.

Nerdy math just for the sake of it:

I assume that the Scourge is at the half time of a magical age.
The Sealing of Thera per Earthdawn: 1008 TH - 1399 TH
This sealing would be aprox at the height of the Scourge
That means the height of the 4th age would be at aprox 1203 TH (give or take a few years, the Therans didn't close and open their seal exactly at the beginning or end).
The end of the 4th Age is at 3113 BC.
The 5th age was 5124 years long. If we assume that the 4th was equally long, then the height of the 4th age would have been 2562 years before the end of that age. That would be 5676 BC.
So 5676 BC would more or less equal 1203 TH.
The Earthdawn setting is at 1510 TH (I've used the Red Brick Edition, dunno if that timeline advanced further).

So that means that Earthdawn is set in aprox 5369 BC, more than 2000 years before the end of the 4th age.

[Nath]

Oh, I got nerdy too a while ago.

The 3113 BC date for the fall of Atlantis comes from a single source, the "Humans and the Cycle of Magic " address by Ehran (which exist in at least three different versions, 1989, 1990 and est.2004).

Ehran says the following things:
- The average time between Threshold Levels is approximatively 5200 years
- August 21, 3113 BC marked the end of the Fourth World and the beginning of the Fifth
- Converting the Mayan dates to the current Christian calendar, [the Mayan calendar] correctly states that the Threshold would be passed on December 24, 2011.
- The Sixth World will end, according to the Mayan calendar, on April 4, 7137 AD.

The thing is, the Mayan calendar actually says the world would change after 13 baktuns, or 1 872 000 days, but there were only 1 871 270 days between -3112-08-21 (*) and 2011-12-24, and there will be 1 871 969 days between 2011-12-24 and 7137-04-04.
(* using astronomical year numbering, 1 BC is year 0, and 3113 BC is -3112)

So any calculation may be off by a year or two, if not more.

There is no known way to adjust the Mayan calendar to find these dates. Ehran's exposé actually got almost every fact wrong (at least IRL). If I was still freelancing, I would probably retcon it into a test he made to detect the most brilliant of the YET members who would have caught them on the fly.

Also, Regular Length and Middle Peak are assumptions that are not backed by any source. On the other hand, they make sense as working hypothesis. Your estimate is as close as one can get I think, but really, any SR author could give a wholly different date for the Earthdawn flight, and it wouldn't legally be a retcon.

But the more recent Dawn of the Artifact: Midnight does mention 9564 BC for the destruction of Atlantis, this time completely contradicting the aforementioned source.

[BlackMyron]

 Funny bit in Clutch of Dragons: Plan 9 brings up "stone men" - shades of Earthdawn! - and Kane blows up at him "Okay.  Not the stone men theory again.  Stop posting this drek all over the place.  There are no stone men!"