Ancient History Q&A

[Abstruse]

Shadowrun was my first roleplaying game. I have a large collection of books (both game books and novels) and I still, over two decades later, read them regularly. I love the history and the world, but there's a lot of little stuff that slips under the radar if you don't read ALL the books, especially in the earlier editions of the game. So I figured I'd offer my expertise and answer any questions anyone has about the Shadowrun game world.

While I'd be happy to answer rules questions somewhere else, that's not what this thread is about. It's about the default setting world of Shadowrun that has been detailed in hundreds of sourcebooks and novels. Also, I'm good up until about 2070, then my knowledge gets fuzzy (FanPro screwed the pooch on the metaplot when they hit publishing delays that prevented the first plot-related book from being published for three or four years, and CGL shifted a lot of the plot onto their small mini-sourcebooks and their Missions seasons. But anything from the 1999 timeline split from the real world up until the Crash 2.0, I should be able to answer if there's an answer to be had.

 

[darjr]

It's an alternate universe that includes Earthdawn, right? Did elves and dragons survive in the world since the last time magic was around?

Also what about the planets and the rest of the solar system and the galaxy. Are there inhabitants of mars and beyond?

 

[Derren]

It's an alternate universe that includes Earthdawn, right? Did elves and dragons survive in the world since the last time magic was around?

Also what about the planets and the rest of the solar system and the galaxy. Are there inhabitants of mars and beyond?

Earthdawn was the 4th world where magic was active. Then came the 5th world which was our mundane world and the 6th world is the one Shadowrun takes place in.
And yes, elves and dragons did survive from the 4th world. Several great dragons in Shadowrun were also around in the 4th world. For example Earthdawns Mountainshadow was Shadowruns Dunkelzahn. Also you have several immortal elves who were around in both Earthdawn and Shadowrun.

One thing to have in mind, Catalyst does not have the Earthdawn license, so they can't make any further connections to Earthdawn lore.

The rest of the solar system is uninhabited (there were some recordings of a dragon skeleton on Mars, but that was a hoax), except for a Mars colony and several Lunar colonies owned by several Megacorps. Generally, space is very hostile to awakened (=magical) characters as magic depends on the existence of life which is rather lacking in cold space.

 

[Abstruse]

What he said. The manacycle is on the same 6000ish year cycle that the Mayan Long Count calendar uses. Every 6000 years, magic returns to the world. The Second World was the Age of Dragons, while the Fourth World was Earthdawn. Earthdawn takes place at the end of that cycle, while Shadowrun takes place at the start of the Sixth. Between downcycles (the Third and Fifth worlds), magic is dormant and very difficult to work. Dragons don't have enough mana to sustain them so they go into a sort of hibernation (they can still telepathically learn about the world through osmosis or something...it's never explained that well in-universe because the dragons are notoriously closed-lipped about themselves). There's also Immortal Elves who survived through the Fourth World and lived through all the Fifth World, giving them a HUGE advantage when the mana levels started to rise again because they knew what was coming.

At the peak of every manacycle, it becomes possible for metaplanar beings that feed on fear and pain to come through to this world. In Earthdawn, they were called Horrors. Shadowrun used them a bit in the mid-90s, but the plotline was closed out between the Harlequin's Back adventure and the Dragonheart Trilogy of novels. When FASA closed, the BattleTech and Shadowrun licenses when to a company called FanPro, while the Earthdawn license went...somewhere else I can't remember because the company closed down. While the two were careful not to step on each other's toes so the worlds could remain linked, there haven't been any other crossovers between the two game lines since then with the exception of a few shared dragon and immortal elf characters.

As far as other planets, again, nail on the head. There used to be three Mars colonies, but I believe two of them were evacuated during Storm Front (the eventbook that bridged SR4 to SR5). There's about half a dozen lunar bases and about two dozen space stations. The Corporate Court (the self-regulatory group that keeps the various megacorporations in line) is actually housed on one of the space stations called Zurich Orbital (this was originally a heavily-modified MIR in the fiction, but when MIR was decommissioned and deorbited, they either retconned it to be the International Space Station or they just stopped mentioning the connection altogether). There's been work on a space elevator in South Africa for...crap, since at least 2062 I think (current game year is 2075) and it just keeps getting plagued with problems. There's a lot of information about space in a couple of the download-only sourcebooks for SR4 if you're really interested.

 

[RockingHurricane]

Did the immortal elves remained elves or became humans in the 5th cycle?

 

[Abstruse]

Did the immortal elves remained elves or became humans in the 5th cycle?

Ehhhh...neither and both? They still remained elves, but they appeared for all intents and purposes as humans. There's only two sources I know for sure that showed IEs during the downcycle, and that's the introductory fiction to the original Harlequin adventure and the novel Worlds Without End. I'm not sure if anything is stated about their eyes (which would make them look vaguely Asian at worst), but the definitely had rounded ears rather than pointed. There's several other places that imply a few historical characters were actually IEs, but the biggest one (Leonardo di Vinci) was most likely bluster from an IE who liked to play with technology and he had no relation whatsoever to the historical Leonardo. Oh, and there's implications that Jack the Ripper (maybe? I can't remember exactly) was actually a crazed half-IE half-Horror.

Anyway, I'm digressing. Basically they were still genetically elves and had all the elf special abilities, but they looked human and many held places in high society during times that had strong racial intolerance with no issues.

 

[Jhaelen]

the Earthdawn license went...somewhere else I can't remember because the company closed down.

That would be Livingroom Games.
It wasn't until RedBrick took over that Earthdawn received the new edition it deserved. I'm unsure what happened to the license after they decided to releasr everything via Mongoose, though.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

It wasn't until RedBrick took over that Earthdawn received the new edition it deserved. I'm unsure what happened to the license after they decided to releasr everything via Mongoose, though.

The agreement with Mongoose was terminated last (?) year. Nowadays Earthdawn is offered by Fasa Games, which essentially is Red Brick under another name and relocated to the US.

 

[Abstruse]

And they're doing Earthdawn as a setting for other systems now, mostly Savage Worlds but they also have a Pathfinder version. Not sure I like that. Doesn't fit the setting as well, but it's more likely my players will try a new setting for a system they know than a whole new system.

 

[darjr]

Whatever happened to the D&D 4e version of Earthdawn?