AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
If you want, the real question is if you recognize what just happened.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
- Pronouns
- They/Them
If you want, the real question is if you recognize what just happened.
Okay, going back to read it all closely again. My first guess would be something Changeling related, since everyone knows I'm the Changeling freak.
Is that on the right track?
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And as you are the resident expert on Changlings, I was wondering what homerules/homwbrew you use to make it better.
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
It's technically an Arcadian Realm / Hollow.
Scattered though the base personnel are a few of the Gentry, while the rest are assorted other entities, endlessly playing out a doomsday scenario until everyone dies. Then it resets, and everyone wakes up back where they started as the base reappears in another cold ass spot in Siberia, and everyone plays out their roles again. If you all had gone down into the base and been there when the 'nuke' landed, you would have been trapped in there with only one way out. Well... ok technically two ways out, but the second option would end with you a changeling, which since it's a Hunter Quest kind of defeats the purpose of making it Hunter from the start.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It's technically an Arcadian Realm / Hollow.
Scattered though the base personnel are a few of the Gentry, while the rest are assorted other entities, endlessly playing out a doomsday scenario until everyone dies. Then it resets, and everyone wakes up back where they started as the base reappears in another cold ass spot in Siberia, and everyone plays out their roles again. If you all had gone down into the base and been there when the 'nuke' landed, you would have been trapped in there with only one way out. Well... ok technically two ways out, but the second option would end with you a changeling, which since it's a Hunter Quest kind of defeats the purpose of making it Hunter from the start.
Ah, that actually works. Also, a Changeling could sorta be a Hunter. One of the Monarchs in one of my new Quests was a (successful) Hunter who got turned into a Changeling, became a King, and now sorta, uh, polices/hunts bad supernatural beings.
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
It is theoretically possible, true. In fact, Mortal Remains goes into how it's basically impossible to root out Changelings if they get inside your organization, unless they do something to tip their hand (like, say, being a Member of the Ascended Ones and being able to make potions that no one else can because they're cheating and using Goblin Fruit). Of course, if the background had played out that way, I would have rolled with it. Would have been hilarious.
Edit: I should also point out that it also says that it would be a miracle for any Hunter Changelings to last any length of time as a Hunter due to the inherently instability in the 'hunter lifestyle'. Also all the kidnapping, torturing, and murdering kind of destroys their clarity.
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- They/Them
Are there any specific super-dangerous/hostile types of ghosts that it would be impressive for someone to be able to defeat/deal with?
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
If you're looking for something in the Exalted 2CD+ range, potency-wise, Orpheus: End Game has some great stuff on the Malfeans to snag and port over. Wraith: Doomslayers: Into the Labyrinth has some as well, but less page count is devoted to them and it's a bit less gameable iirc.
Nephwracks in general (I'm not sure what Wraith book would contain the best writeup) would also be pretty good for things under that level.
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- They/Them
Okay, to explain. As part of the potential character-creation process should a certain (Changeling) option win that involves 'do a lot of stuff with ghosts', one of the areas they can choose options from are Experiences, which are epic things the character (who is high-level to start with) has done that greatly impact who they are and what they are known for. Epic feats of magic, slaying Hydras (not unaided, of course), routing bands of pirates (ditto), gaining fame for journeying deep into the Underworld, etc, etc...
And one of the ideas for a name/possible choice is, you know, 'What if they did some ghost-buster style stuff.'
I know that's more Wraith's baliwick, of course. Though they do have a Mage-style Ghost Familiar.
Of course, the vote is still open, so this might turn out to be for nothing, but it's good research anyways.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Oops, I meant End Game not End Times.Okay, to explain. As part of the potential character-creation process should a certain (Changeling) option win that involves 'do a lot of stuff with ghosts', one of the areas they can choose options from are Experiences, which are epic things the character (who is high-level to start with) has done that greatly impact who they are and what they are known for. Epic feats of magic, slaying Hydras (not unaided, of course), routing bands of pirates (ditto), gaining fame for journeying deep into the Underworld, etc, etc...
And one of the ideas for a name/possible choice is, you know, 'What if they did some ghost-buster style stuff.'
I know that's more Wraith's baliwick, of course. Though they do have a Mage-style Ghost Familiar.
Of course, the vote is still open, so this might turn out to be for nothing, but it's good research anyways.
Anyway, sounds nifty. End Game's chapter four has some great underworld gribblies, on examination, some of them lower on the totem pole than things like Malfeans, such as Omophagia, Irrumo, and Sparagmoi.
Take for instance, Kakak the Wounder, who was once the Spectre of a tortured falcon, and has since mutated into something larger and more horrible; we're talking Strength 4, Dexterity 8, Stamina 6, Brawl 5, the ability to absorb other Spectres for power, regenerate, some other ghostly powers, and claws infused with pure Oblivion, dealing a whole dose of extra Agg on top of his normal attacks.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Are you throwing out the Geist underworld? If not, you can use Kereboi, who are less ghosts and more 'manifested wills of the various realms of the underworld who enforce the laws of those realms but are unable to act outside those laws'.
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
Either that or you just just use impressively old ghosts. A thousand years old shade is an impressive thing, and truly prodigiously ancient / antediluvian specters of the multiple thousand years category are minor gods in their own right if they've lasted that long.
This is especially true in nWoD's cosmology, as the underworld has this natural sort of gravity that pulls shades further and further down as they age, until the end of all roads at the Great Sea, which in turn pulls shades through / into it. Said 'sea' proceeds to rip all of the concepts out of them until they dissolve into beings without any kind of... well anything.
Unless of course, they manage to get the Dredger to give them passage to the city at the center of the Sea...
What's this about a Dredger? I've read Book of the Dead, but don't recall anything about him or a city
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
I'll find and quote the relevant passages when I get home in about an hour or so. I know for a fact that the Dredger exists, though that is only what I personally call it, I can't remember the name of it for the life of me. I may, admittedly, be confusing one of the personal flourishes / additions in the city though.
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
Book of the Dead
Chapter Five: Dead Dominions
Page 192 - The Ocean of Fragments
"The Freighter
As mentioned, only one ship sails the Ocean of Fragments. It changes form every so often. It has, in the past, resembled a Phoenician trade ship, a Viking longship, a schooner, or even a steamship (one fevered tale claims the Titanic had the honor for a time, in fact). Whether it changes its form in response to some external factor or whether newer ships somehow replace the older ones is unknown, but the Laws of the Dominion are clear - the Freighter is the only ship permitted to sail the waters."
That is "the Dredger".
As for the city, I will confess that that was, in fact, a personal flourish. Specifically, it was the Ghost of Atlantis. Personally, given WoD's cosmology, it seemed fitting that at the end of the underworld, the deepest thing pulling everything down with its inescapable gravity, would be Dead Atlantis.
Wow, how the fuck did that get past me?It's technically an Arcadian Realm / Hollow.
Scattered though the base personnel are a few of the Gentry, while the rest are assorted other entities, endlessly playing out a doomsday scenario until everyone dies. Then it resets, and everyone wakes up back where they started as the base reappears in another cold ass spot in Siberia, and everyone plays out their roles again. If you all had gone down into the base and been there when the 'nuke' landed, you would have been trapped in there with only one way out. Well... ok technically two ways out, but the second option would end with you a changeling, which since it's a Hunter Quest kind of defeats the purpose of making it Hunter from the start.
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
You were running around on the surface, admittedly most of the 'weird' stuff that would have started to 'pull back the curtain' as it were was below ground in the 'base proper'.
That's a pity - the first thing I felt upon reading about the Ocean of Fragments was a desire to see what was past or below it. Something about declaring the Ocean to be the uttermost nadir just doesn't sit right with me - It comes across as too human and too modern in conception to be a true edge of reality. I mean, the fact that the Admiral's ship varies with the times is nice, but it's still a bunch of spooky skeleton sailors and an admiral on a boat, with a sea monster in the water. I just wanna somehow bring in a submarine (or at least an atmospheric diving suit / some other way of going under without getting wet), sneak past the Leviathan somehow, and find the REAL bottom.
Also, the Admiral is sold as this ancient, mysterious figure despite being entirely killable in a few different ways and the fact that, y'know, the actual first humans wouldn't have had much knowledge of naval organization, sailing, or the existence of boats. But you can't really argue "he's just a latecomer pretending to be something primordial" when four of the twelve laws of the Ocean relate to him or his boat unless you take as a given the entire Dominion is a false bottom.
Well...going deeper would also be more dangerous I guess.
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
To quote Book of the Dead:
"Finding the Ocean of Fragments isn't easy. It's a long away from the surface. This Dominion lies deep within the Underworld, past many of the other realms that reflect (or at least call to mind) human notions of death and what comes after. Considering the appearance and effects of the Dominion, it might well be the deepest of any known realm. Certainly, the travelers who have found the Ocean and returned report feeling a sense of finality when touching its waters, as if they have truly arrived, and no further progress is possible."
Of course, on page 11 when it discusses the general topography of the Underworld, what it says about what is 'below' the Dead Dominions such as the Ocean is, "... well, who knows? What lurks beneath the Dead Dominions is subject to mystery. Is it the Abyss? Another world? Absolute oblivion? A Land of dreams? None can say, because if anybody's ever made it that deep, they damn sure didn't come back up."
The Maritime Law: Only the Freighter may sail these waters.
Good luck with that.
You're also not thinking correctly when it comes to this. You don't go DEEPER by digging, you go deeper by moving forward. Even if something is 'past' the Ocean, it would be found in the same way one would find the rest of the underworld. You would cross the Ocean, which means getting the Freighter to ferry you, then you would have to swim ashore, then you would have to cross the next River.
Or, the Admiral is a Title, not a Person. Like 'The Captain' of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean. Similarly, what else is more the ultimate 'source' of death, then where life began, the Source of Life, if you will. As well, what place has seen the most death in all of history, probably that place that life started in.
And, you're forgetting your WoD Cosmology / Mythology. In nWoD, Atlantis was the FIRST CITY. An island where Dragons lived and died, guarding the source of all magic until their time had passed. And then it was discovered by Man.
Also, you're just plain wrong. Humans have been sailing since forever, it's how we managed to populate basically the entire planet, even remote islands, before the 'great age of sailing'.
From whence we came, so do we return. And beyond that horrible expanse that seeks to rip from us all that we are and either make us into new men or leave us dead and forgotten, lies a land of myth. A realm from which none might return and speak of what they have seen.
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Unverified, and probably unverifiable. Oh, sure, that's the story in the corebook, but Secrets of the Ruined Temple pretty clearly indicates that that story is somewhere between "woefully incomplete", "one particular configuration of the timeline" and "an absolute tissue of lies" (this can vary on GM whim, and also between times in a single game).
The Awakened City now has never existed (or may possibly not exist yet, if the theories about the 'Fall' being the point where the echoes of the creation of Atlantis entered the timeline are true) and such things are of dubious veracity.
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
Until we have some proof, I'll accept the account as accurate in the sweeping details. Not the least of which because it's corroborated in Hunter, as the AKD's entire history is, "Those mages? They fucked everything up! Let loose all kinds of monsters playing around with their fancy magics! Lets go steal their magic wands and then use them to murder the fuck out of them and make sure it doesn't happen again!"
This is also, admittedly, all up to personal interpretation and ST decisions. Chronicles / nWoD is a Tool Box more then anything else. Excise what you want, change what you want, remix how you please. Which is why you can have Ancient Rome and Techno Thriller both happen with Chronicles.
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I gave you evidence that demonstrates fairly well that the corebook story is at best woefully incomplete and probably mostly wrong. It's called Secrets of the Ruined Temple, which spends a lot of time showing how that's far from the only idea and a lot of mages have had radically different ideas. It's reinforced by Astral Realms, which indicates that nothing of the Truth of the Awakened City exists within the Tenemos, and furthermore is reinforced by the late line which with its reality wars and changing history indicates that none of these things will be fundamentally true - it's all the twisting of the Lie.
The fact that the AKD cite something which resembles the classical story is:
a) Entirely unsurprising, considering the fairly strong implications that the AKD are a rogue Guardian Labyrinth so of course they're going repeat the Greek-inspired story, and
b) Good evidence that it's wrong. Because if it was right, the fact that the Sleeper Hunters know it would mean that the knowledge would be affected by pancryptia and thus scattered and erased. The fact that it isn't scattered, erased and hidden indicates that it lacks Truth.
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- They/Them
You know, you're actually more arguing for a fundamental weakness of the Mage 1e gameline, if it's really that vital that the Atlantis Story be mostly to totally false, because they lead with it (which even they acknowledge was a mistake), they devote significant time to it, and at least in theory, one should be able to run a competent game using only the Corebook, not run a campaign and then at the last moment buy a supplement book and learn everything was a lie...but maybe it wasn't, but maybe it was, and this other book hints that this is a lie, but also isn't.
Mage the Awakening was released in August 2005. Secrets of the Ruined Temple was released in November 2005. It was incredibly early on in the line.
And... uh. Mage is a game about realising everything you know is a lie. That's intrinsic to a gnostic game. They talk about that a lot in the game. Yes, the way that nMage presents things in the corebook isn't as well done as the expanded later line does it, but... that's a thing that first editions of RPGs do. They always have issues with the initial corebook as the line develops and expands. Compare Requiem as of the corebook to Requiem as of the Clanbooks, and you can see the same phenomenon there. The nWoD limited run games are unusual there, because they were all done in a very short period of time (the entire gameline released over the course of a year) which meant that they didn't have time to really adapt and evolve and find their own niche different from the line intent thing. You can't judge Mage or Vampire by Changeling standards.
(You can judge Werewolf, because bluntly Werewolf would have worked a lot better as a limited run game with a tighter thematic focus. "Werewolves" can't cover as much thematic ground as vampires or mages from pop culture.)
And I for one like my nMage weird, gnostic, and with quite a lot of things I borrowed from Unknown Armies worked in. I like Astral Realms, the Seers book, the Guardians book, Secrets of the Ruined Temple and Intruders. So of course I'm going to jump straight for the option where odds are that vast swathes of history are a lie, that the Seers can whisper "Hail Hydra" in any Sleeper's ear and they'll obey because the Prelacy of Unity says they must, and where mages look half-mad because they sift through occult trivia and science and obscure saints to find nuggets of the Truth because they're addicted to Arcane XP. The corebook story is boring. The Secrets of the Ruined Temple multitudes of stories, all with their own supporting evidence, are neat.