[Medicineman]

But many fans don't tie into Tolkien that much for the same reason we don't talk Gibson that much--The other author's camps just don't like us.

I Like 'em both 
and I play Hobbits in Shadowrun 

with a Dance in the shires
Medicineman

[Chaemera]

But many fans don't tie into Tolkien that much for the same reason we don't talk Gibson that much--The other author's camps just don't like us.

I Like 'em both 
and I play Hobbits in Shadowrun 

with a Dance in the shires
Medicineman

I'm with Medicineman, though I've never felt the inclination to specifically play a hobbit.

And yeah, Tolkien (the real one, as opposed to our hypothetical translator) knew full well he was writing revisionist history of elves and dwarves. I've a pile of stories he drew inspiration from (nicely compiled in a book called Tales Before Tolkien). somewhere not too far away is my copy of Neuromancer. What I really need to do is put my Tolkien books and Gibson books together, see if SR1 mysteriously appears in their place. For Science!

[Longshot23]

Just for kicks, and as a test, I put together a Tribal Shaman following Adversary, which the character (NPC intended) envisions as Melkor Morgoth from The Silmarillion.  The envisioning is more like a reality filter than anything else . . . but it fits.

[The_Gun_Nut]

The only problem with trying to tie Frodo in with the Fourth Age is that none of the creatures mentioned could exist prior to the Fourth Age in Earthdawn because there was no ambient mana.  The Third Age was another downcycle, i.e. no magic, no magical creatures (except those in hibernation).

I'm more curious as to what went on during the Second Age.  For that matter, what exactly defined the First Age?  Was it just a bunch of pre-history?  What launched the world into the Second Age?  Why was it called the "Age of Dragons?"

[Dead Monky]

I've always assumed it was the Age of Dragons because the dragons more or less directly ruled over the Young Races.

[Nomad Zophiel]

The only problem with trying to tie Frodo in with the Fourth Age is that none of the creatures mentioned could exist prior to the Fourth Age in Earthdawn because there was no ambient mana.  The Third Age was another downcycle, i.e. no magic, no magical creatures (except those in hibernation).

I'm more curious as to what went on during the Second Age.  For that matter, what exactly defined the First Age?  Was it just a bunch of pre-history?  What launched the world into the Second Age?  Why was it called the "Age of Dragons?"

Hmmm, everyone does pay a lot of attention to the Fourth Age. Now that was, what, about 10,000 years ago that it ended and presumably went for 10,000 years itself. All fine and good. But the
THIRD Age would be 10,000 years of no mana and no horrors. There's no reason to assume that the end of the Third Age was at least as technically advanced as the Fifth but with a completely different cultural arc. So the tech level would be about the same, but the course it took to get there would be totally different. Now that could be some interesting stuff.

[FastJack]

Some background info:

The Mayan calendar's b'ak'tun is almost 400 years. Each 'cycle' of 13 b'ak'tun is then about 5,200 years. The way I've calculated it out, to get five (going back from the start of the sixth age) "ages" since the dawn* of Homo Sapiens, it would be approximately 10 of these cycles. Therefore, each of these Mesoamerican Long-count periods are marking off a quarter of the mana cycle (see the sine wave below). An "age" begins everytime the mana cycle has an "equinox" (or it crosses the x-axis). So, the Fourth age begins at zero, peaks at π/2, then ends at π. The Fifth age begins at π, bottoms out at 3π/2 and ends on 2π. At the end, it then begins again, so the Sixth age starts at 0 again. This would put the time of horrors crossing over around 2,600 years from the beginning of the sixth age, or around 3600 AD (glad we've got BattleMechs by then... ). Of course, this wave graph is only as good when we're not putting huge strains on the mana level. So, next time your mage wants to overcast the fireball "just for show", slap him in the back of the head, Gibbs-style.




*Dawn of Homo Sapiens would be when most scientist consider us as a race achieving "behavioral modernity", which was about 50,000 years ago. As a species, we've been around almost 200,000 years...

[MJBurrage]

See Humans and the Cycle of Magic at the Sixth World Wiki for the original source of the dates used in Shadowrun.

[FastJack]

See Humans and the Cycle of Magic at the Sixth World Wiki for the original source of the dates used in Shadowrun.

Cool, thanks!

[Fizzygoo]

Yeah, the Cycles of Magic doc has Erhan stating Atlantis sinking (3114 BC) marked the end of the 4th Age, beginning of 5th, and that the start of the 6th Age was on 2011 (the Maya were a year off). So that gives the 5th cycle a length of 5125 years.

The big assumptions are that the whole flowery "Cycles of Magic" title is actually a close fit to a sin wave and that each Age is roughly equal in length (like maybe +/- x years).

Though having fun with those assumptions, since the total length of an age is 5125 years, then the peak/trough of each magic cycle happens at about 2562.5 (rounding to 2563) years after the cycle begins.

So setting the start of the first age at 0, you have:

0 - 23,614 BC - 1st Age start
2563 - 21,052 BC - 1st Age trough
5125 - 18,489 BC - 1st Age end/2nd Age start
7688 - 15,927 BC - 2nd Age peak
10,250 - 13,364 BC - 2nd Age end/3rd Age start
12,813 - 10,802 BC - 3rd Age trough
15,375 - 8239 BC - 3rd Age end/4th Age start (Earthdawn age)
17,938 - 5677 BC - 4th Age peak
20,500 - 3114 BC - 4th Age end/5th Age start
23,063 - 552 BC - 5th Age trough
25,625 - 2011 AD - 5th Age end/6th Age start

Now if I remember correctly, in Earthdawn everyone went underground to avoid the Horrors for 400 years. Averaging it to an even split (200 years on either side of the peak) this means that the Horrors started coming in earnest around 5477 BC and dwindled low by 5877 BC.

So here's where my math diverges from FastJack, I get the peak of the 6th Age at 4574 AD, with the Horror-Hoedown starting around 4374 AD (assuming 200 years on either side of the peak).

Again, the dates are all based on the Cycle of Magic document. And there's a good helping of assumptions.

Fun things to add as flavor in campaigns...
Earth's precession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession_%28astronomy%29#Astronomy) is approximately 26,000 years...about the time from the start of the 1st Age to the end of the 5th. Making the 6th "special" ... how you want to define special of course is up to you; Horrors come early and often, new Age of Dragons, rise of the Jackalopes, etc. Anyway, the "Great Cycle of the Precession passing through 5 Ages and starting over again" is one of those nice semi-anchored in reality plot devices at your disposal.

As FastJack pointed out, with modern humans emerging around 50,000 years ago, that's about two Precession cycles or 10 Ages, with the 6th Age being the 11th Age from then.

Anyway, love the Cycle of Magic doc for the info it plays with. Lots of fun to play with the cycles, fitting mana spikes to it. Like the "mini-awakening" which happened in the Middle Ages in Europe (I think that's from the old Germany Sourcebook, or maybe an adventure. If I remember I'll check when I get home.). With the spike of Kabbalah, Alchemy, Goetic magic, and Hermeticism, all really taking off during that time period you can incorporate Dr. Dee's Enochian language as an actual language/script of spirits, Kabbalah Tree of Life as an initiate's path and so on.

[MJBurrage]

A similar table with calculations down to the day is in the background section of Humans and the Cycle of Magic.

Using the consensus of modern scholars, a Mesoamerican "world" is 1,872,000 days long. However, according to Ehran, the mundane Fifth World lasted 1,871,270 days, and the Sixth World will last 1,871,970 days.  It seems a safe assumption that Ehran is using the age of Fourth World as his basis.  The differences might not seem like much, but rounding errors start to add up over time.

Anyway, based on Ehran, one can deduce that the Fourth World began on 3 May 8238 BC (Gregorian), and peaked around 23 December 5676 BC (Gregorian), setting Earthdawn a few hundred years later.

By the same calculations, the Sixth World will peak around 14 August 4574 AD (Gregorian), so we have a couple thousand years to get ready.

[Fizzygoo]

That's awesome, thanks MJBurrage. I didn't know there were two versions of the text, hehe. Cool to see the editing process between the two. "Oh that tickles me in a way that if Loretta tickled me I would say "oh...that's nice."

[MJBurrage]

An interesting point is that if I recall correctly, the zeroth world is the one in which the horrors created the dragons. No source has gone into how long the zeroth world lasted, and I got the impression that it was possible that the the mother of dragons defeating the rest of the horrors started the cycle.

So the dragons essentially won (or at least thought they had won) and then magic faded away, and they went into hibernation during the First World. By the time they woke for the Second World, many had been killed by humans during the down-cycle, and the dragons created immortal elves to be their guardians during the Third World. The return of the horrors at the peak of the Second World may have been unexpected. Regardless, in Earthdawn this age ruled by dragons is known as "The Age of Dragons"

Early in the Fourth World, the dragons realized that the immortal elves were too independent to make trustworthy guardians, and so the dragons explored other routes, leading to drakes.  At the same time the immortal elves and dragons both knew that the horrors would return, hence the creation of Kaers.

So we get Earthdawn during the latter half of the Fourth World, and the Shadowrun at the dawn of the Sixth.

[Fizzygoo]

I bet that's just dragon propaganda, they don't want to admit the dwarves made the dragons to watch over their mountain fungal farms

I need to break out my Earthdawn books again and re-read a lot of the history, it's been over 10 years now and much has faded.

That would be a good thread to start (if it hasn't been created already) a list of Earthdawn books for GMs by background/historical relevance to Shadowrun. 10 being, "GMs need this book over their first born because of all the connections to Shadowrun" and 1 being "Well, it's Earthdawn, which is same universe as Shadowrun, but that's about all the connection." [begin homey-southern accent] If any'ya'll know uv such a list, could'ya be so kind as ta point me tuh the url [end homey-southern accent].

[MJBurrage]

Right of the top of my head there are three books I would rate a 10 then.

• Book of Dragons - Earthdawn sourcebook, which covers some great dragons still alive in Shadowrun, and their recollection of the Second World
• Immortals trilogy by Caroline Spector (since part 3 is the SR novel Worlds Without End):
  
  • Part 1: Scars
  • Part 2: Little Treasures

See Shadowrun/Earthdawn Crossovers by Ancient History for much more.