[orcmeat]

So I want harley to give a run, but in the mean time for him to give some cool stories about the 4th world or legends and such. There is one that I seem to remember but are fuzzy on. Was there a 15th circle ork adept that would travel to the metaplane of death to steal more time for himself?

[Namikaze]

Harlequin just barely survived a one-on-one battle with Ghostwalker while wearing King Arthur's armor.  So there's that, and that's recent history (2074).  He could tell stories about Atlantis and stuff, I suppose.  Dinosaurs are actually dragons, maybe?

[BetaCAV]

Dinosaurs are actually dragons, maybe?

I suppose the origins of Dragons will depend somewhat on whether or not Catalyst ever obtains the Earthdawn rights. The are pretty clearly "not from here", to a similar extent (or greater, likely) that the Immortal Elves are not. Even in Earthdawn, I don't recall any explanation of their nature or their departure from that world, though I may have just missed it.

I will speculate wildly, for whatever that's worth, that Dragons are/were similar in nature to Horrors, but taking forms from the collective subconscious of the metaplane they arrive at, appearing as dragons because of the qualities attributed to dragons in legend. Perhaps by "staying in character", they gain some sort of karmic sustenance. That, as opposed to taking forms of nightmares we blot out, to feed upon negative emotions.

Perhaps the Immortal Elves exist by some similar means as well, but could not arrive until elves native to Shadowrun's metaplane existed, and did something by way of the magical influx to bring about metahumanity. Orks and trolls may have actually been an afterthought -- and possibly an effort by some other entity entirely -- which nudges the social finger toward Thera, for not including them initially. The proliferation of Or'zet would be hard to attribute to anyone other than a planar refugee, but if there is an "immortal Ork", it's reasonable to presume there are several, in which case they've done a better job than the Elves of keeping it on the down-low.

But if Horrors don't exist... then who knows? We might never.

[Reaver]

small note:


Or'zet got it's jump start when Dunkie handed over the ancient language in his Will. From there it exploded. Foronce, there was this shining little ray of hope that orks were not just the "trogs" that metahumanity treated them as....

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

BetaCAV, just as an FYI, the EarthDawn history up until the game system's departure from FASA is Shadowrun-canonical - including the Horror-based origin of dragons and all the other races, the origin of the Immortal Elves/Human/Ork/Whateverelse Immortal there is/was, etc. etc.  Each GM, of course, can make up his/her mind how much (if any) of that to include in their game; I just keep it in the back of my mind as a fact, and tend not to bring it into the game, as much as Frederick the Great is a fact, but never winds up getting brought into the game.

orcmeat, feel free to go to town.  In your game, you don't have to keep to canon - or even to truth.  Anything that Harlequin says can be taken as fact, as metaphor, or even as a whomping big lie that just so happens to be fun to tell.