Jon Chung
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You haven't read Imperial Mysteries.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
You haven't read Imperial Mysteries.
Generalissimo
Generalissimo of SufficientVelocity
- Location
- Tropico, Tropico
I enjoy Cheiron Group's Board of Directors being corporate extradimensionals.
That being said it can easily be folded in your brilliant idea.
Corporate Extradimensionals with spirit, mage, glasswalker, and even technocratic investors!
I prefer the idea of Hexus, The Living Corporation, from Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy run. Basically, it doesn't matter who the board of directors are, because they're interchangeable cogs, just like all the other employees. The corporation itself is a supernatural entity, a living meme, that grows by absorbing employees. It is nothing more than idea, but an idea with a parasitical life of its own, which no one inside can possibly escape.
"It's a computer made of people, not like the Matrix or anything. It's more subtle than that. Every employee is part of the larger whole, without being aware of it. Their actions form its thoughts, its mind. It is nothing without them, dependent on them, but it also controls them. The relationship between the corporation and it's employees is much like that between you and your neurons. A neuron isn't you. What it wants doesn't matter, you're so much more than it. But cut out a big chunk of neurons, and that hurts. You might lose language, or motor control, or maybe your personality will drastically change. But the thing is, this corporation acts on a scale we can't begin to comprehend, any more than a single neuron could understand the workings of a man's mind. "
"It's a computer made of people, not like the Matrix or anything. It's more subtle than that. Every employee is part of the larger whole, without being aware of it. Their actions form its thoughts, its mind. It is nothing without them, dependent on them, but it also controls them. The relationship between the corporation and it's employees is much like that between you and your neurons. A neuron isn't you. What it wants doesn't matter, you're so much more than it. But cut out a big chunk of neurons, and that hurts. You might lose language, or motor control, or maybe your personality will drastically change. But the thing is, this corporation acts on a scale we can't begin to comprehend, any more than a single neuron could understand the workings of a man's mind. "
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You control a character that is heavily discouraged from directly interacting with the world and has to act through intermediaries instead, the main focus is gaining rare reagent and increasing your magical might.
I did read the book...
about three years ago.
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
Didn't even think of that one...no one below the board actually knows which way that is. People on the board may not know but they'll need say so.
Thing is I'm worried about setting/splat creep. Since potentially it could involve six plus splats interacting relatively closely.
Thinking I might just be using hunters with merits and or other stuff letting them access *some* thematic things and or templates like the ensorcelled in changeling or ghouls.
Generalissimo
Generalissimo of SufficientVelocity
- Location
- Tropico, Tropico
It's from Conspiracies and Compacts.
Gives multiple choice options for why Extradimensionals might back hunters in World of Darkness.
So far as random theory, rather divergent from what you have in mind, as why lots of groups backing Chiron?
Sure wacky Extradimensionals with hilariously different moral baselines aren't exactly kosher. . .
. . . but keeping them playing business and conspiracy game prevents them from ever becoming real problem.
I am suggesting Chiron Group is busywork to intentionally keep entities involved always distracted
Fortunately your players don't see 100% everything that's happening in Corporate Inner Circle all of the time?
Least not in the beginning?
Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
Aye Aye. You guys would see, stuff but a lot would be obscured. Both for wiggle room and because *someone* took care of those cosplay changelings over in Tokyo while you drank the garou chieftain under the table and it wasn't your staff.
DreamLogicCheiron Is filled with people too competent to waste and too eccentric to stay in their own factions. And shares canon Cheiron's love of the shinies(because why else would they do half of what they do?)
DreamLogicCheiron Is filled with people too competent to waste and too eccentric to stay in their own factions. And shares canon Cheiron's love of the shinies(because why else would they do half of what they do?)
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You control a character that is heavily discouraged from directly interacting with the world and has to act through intermediaries instead, the main focus is gaining rare reagent and increasing your magical might.
I did read the book...
"Vampire places a lot of focus on manipulating mortals, thus you should go play Ghoul: The Addicting instead."
Imperial Mysteries also explicitly mentions that you can cast normal Spells from the Common Practices and use Imperial Factors for them without breaking the Pax Arcanum, it just doesn't want you to break out the Imperial Magic. Imperial Mysteries is awesome, I've played it (once), and I fucking loved it.
- Location
- Spain
Yeah, Archies are way too powerful to use in proper play.
That said, you don't actually need them to have multiple timelines. (See The Prince of Ten Thousand leaves et all).
Yeah, the thing is, in a gnostic game that's actually the desired reaction.
Timelines A, B and C, that preceded timeline D, aren't no more nor less true than the current one. All of them are different reflections of the True Forms. Shadows in the walls.
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- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That depends on whether or not the other players are Archmasters too.
Because, if that's the case it works perfectly fine.
Otherwise, any reason to use the Prince of Ten Thousand Leaves is a good thing and should be taken.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sorry for doubleposting, but I need your help here:
Especially you @MJ12 Commando and @EarthScorpion.
So I'm about to run a solo game focusing on a WWII-era Virtual Adept of the WRAITH Methodology, and I need a bunch of dudes he can requisition, I'm reasonably experienced with various examples of technology, so I explicitly need examples of Technocratic soldiery and units that can be requisitioned.
Especially you @MJ12 Commando and @EarthScorpion.
So I'm about to run a solo game focusing on a WWII-era Virtual Adept of the WRAITH Methodology, and I need a bunch of dudes he can requisition, I'm reasonably experienced with various examples of technology, so I explicitly need examples of Technocratic soldiery and units that can be requisitioned.
ES Homebrew: Old School Technocrat Things
Your best source material here is Captain America: the First Avenger. Both the Hydra stuff and the Allied stuff.
Then there's the stuff that Panopticon produced for SECRET NAZI WEAPONS OF WW2.
But on top of that:
HITMark III
A cutting edge product of Iteration X's factories, the HITMark III is a walking tank proof against hostile reality deviant forces. With an ultra-modern mechanical-electronic brain with 4 kB of RAM and combat skills derived from the Mechanically Emulated Movement (MEMory) of the top combatants of the Union, the HITMark III is a sign of the development of designed intellects. HITMark IIIs are temperamental in the field and prone to breakdown in damp environments - like, sadly, much of Europe - but with trained engineers and the proper water-resistant drab olive paint their breakdown can be delayed.
HITMark IIIs are slow, heavily armoured and cumbersome. They can't move faster than a slow, inexorable walk, and can't pass as human - after all, they're two and a half metres tall and make audible mechanical noises when they move. HITMarks deployed on the European front are customarily painted in military colours and are depicted as experimental tech from the boffins back in the lab. On the other hand, a HITMark III can carry ultra-heavy weapons more suitable for a light armoured vehicle, or simply heft several units' worth of ammunition and provide all the suppressive fire you'd ever want.
The HITMark III will later be replaced by the HITMark IV and V, which are smaller, smarter, and able to pass as human - especially once the problems with the early prototype rubber skins are resolved.
WRAITH Esper Computer Unit
Highly trained women who have been taught to exceed the cognitive limits of baseline humans, these computers can perform prodigious calculations in their head in seconds. Such real-time data analysis permits them to make localised manipulations of circumstances to support units in the field, rapidly analyse combat situations, and in extreme circumstances or in self defence overload the brains of hostiles with sensory data.
WRAITH Espers are linear sorcerers trained to perform ultra-rapid computations in their heads. This gives them access to paths allowing them to curse enemies, analyse situations rapidly, bless allies, and the ability to rapidly profile and so 'read the minds' of captured enemies.
With the defection of the Virtual Adepts, most of WRAITH's espers stay loyal to the Technocratic Union. To a large extent they are absorbed by the Watchers in the New World Order, and play a major role in the NWO's later psychic programmes. They survive the suppression of psychic powers nearly untouched, and many of their techniques are retained for use in the modern New World Order as "cognitive tricks" and "analytical training".
Ladislov-Treated Soldiers
The Ladislov treatment is a relatively low cost treatment consisting of a tailored regime of vitamins combined with intense physical therapy and blood transfusions from gorillas. These combined factors allow weak recruits to pile on the muscles and acquire the traits of their genetic betters. These's a few small risks of bestial behaviour and other atavisms, but that's just one of the consequences of drawing on the inner ape that hides within man.
Yaaaaay creepy eugenics logic that's probably pretty racist too. Basically, buff your soldiers to Captain America levels at the small cost of a few ape-like paradox flaws.
The Ladislov treatment is later discredited by the increased focus of DNA manipulation by the Progenitors. It is recorded as a lamentable misguided effort based on unsound theories, but which still worked due to the steroid doses given to the suspects. The evidence of ape-like transformation among test subjects is suppressed and forgotten, and the mental effects are blamed on the steroids
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Wonderful, we're starting at the beginning of the war in Denmark (What war? Those nice German soldiers? A war? What are you talking about? 
) and he's currently a HIGH VALUE scientist that a bunch of British SPECTRE soldiers are gonna exfiltrate the shit out of Denmark. Until then, he's working on Copenhagen university and ordering around the other Technocrats there, because Denmark's Technocracy is probably reeeeaaally laid back.
Like, reeeeaally laid back.
As of yet, he can also requisition German assets, because the Technocracy hasn't been completely fucked over by the war yet, but when we start to progress into the war, he'll slowly start losing access to one side of the war's requisitions, and given that he seems pretty interested in doing Flame and Citron: Enlightened Scientist Edition, it'll most likely be the German stuff he'll lose.
) and he's currently a HIGH VALUE scientist that a bunch of British SPECTRE soldiers are gonna exfiltrate the shit out of Denmark. Until then, he's working on Copenhagen university and ordering around the other Technocrats there, because Denmark's Technocracy is probably reeeeaaally laid back.Like, reeeeaally laid back.
As of yet, he can also requisition German assets, because the Technocracy hasn't been completely fucked over by the war yet, but when we start to progress into the war, he'll slowly start losing access to one side of the war's requisitions, and given that he seems pretty interested in doing Flame and Citron: Enlightened Scientist Edition, it'll most likely be the German stuff he'll lose.
Wonderful, we're starting at the beginning of the war in Denmark (What war? Those nice German soldiers? A war? What are you talking about?
Like, reeeeaally laid back.
As of yet, he can also requisition German assets, because the Technocracy hasn't been completely fucked over by the war yet, but when we start to progress into the war, he'll slowly start losing access to one side of the war's requisitions, and given that he seems pretty interested in doing Flame and Citron: Enlightened Scientist Edition, it'll most likely be the German stuff he'll lose.
If you're using the broad PQ version of history, an interesting note is that it's only in the aftermath of WW2 that the Technocracy goes full "One world order, no loyalties before us, Conditioning for everything, we can't trust anyone". In the PQ history, that's basically a backlash against the institutional trauma of WW2 and how the nationalistic loyalties of most Technocrats split the Union - and that to a large extent plays a big role in the breakaway of the Anglo-American dominated Virtual Adepts, who considered themselves the "winners" and so the fact that they too got cracked down on was the breaking point.
That means that the pre-WW2 Technocracy is a lot more factionalised-by-nation, and high Conditioning is a thing only given to defectors and people who've been repeatedly reprimanded - it's a punishment and a guarantor of loyalty. Most people are going to be way down the scale - low enough that Reality Deviancy is no harder for them than any other cross-paradigm casting is for other mages.
But yes, it means that among other things, you'll have things like how the Virtual Adepts are culturally anglosphere-centric, and the Progenitors want the war to go away so they can deal with their real enemy, those damn Progenitors from a different country to them.
Also, hmm, this is also post-dating the Radicalist Syndicate split, so the capitalist Syndicate in the past few decades lost a lot of its youngest and brightest to the communist Internationalist branch of the Syndicate (that is currently petitioning Control for recognition as a new Convention).
MJ Homebrew: Prostheses
Prostheses-The Man That Was Used Up
Although the term "cyborg" does not become used until the 1960s, Iteration X has made continuous use of combat prostheses ever since its renaming. Unlike 'modern' Technocratic designs, which use spun-carbon myomers and lightweight biomimetics and seamlessly integrate into human bodies, Iteration X's earlier tools tend to be much more primitive. Oftentimes they run on external power sources, meaning an early cyborg must find a constant source of electricity to scavenge from or be brought down to merely human-in fact, below human, because unlike 'modern' neuroprosthetics these bionic systems generally lacked basic features. They rarely had more than the most rudimentary sense feedbacks, and were often difficult to hide from people. Minor electronic implants also existed, but those were generally minor and provided small boosts. The Shock Corps of 1940s is fearsome because of its battery-powered mechanized armor and its rocket-bullet firing weapons wielded by war veterans, not because of its augmented killers.
Furthermore, they're much more Paradoxical. The transhuman revolution in the Progenitors and Iteration X has not occurred yet, and the consensus does not accept prosthetics as easily. The result is that these prosthetics peak at a much lower level. Full body conversions are rare-The Man That Was Used Up might be a true story, but most of the Shock Corps don't need to be assembled. In fact, surprisingly few members of Iteration X are cyborgs, because at this point the quality of life loss is such that only the most fanatical, or those who have already lost their original body functions-are willing to submit to mechanization. The march of Consensus are not kind to these prostheses-they become part of consensus, certainly, but in a way which makes them laughable. By the present day, most of them are literally museum pieces, which are barely paradoxical and can be used by any technically-inclined Sleeper but provide little benefit.
The one exception is, of course, Autochthonia. Autochthonia's Machine Cult was never limited by the aesthetics of mere consensus, and with the power of Autochthonia behind it as well as its close ties with the Inner Circle and Control, its augmented soldiers are inhuman, with a biomechanic aesthetic that's more Deus Ex than Das Boot-and also often too paradoxical to see more than limited deployment in very select areas. However, as shell-shock and numbness to the horrors of war and technology grow, Autochthonian 'observers' see increasing combat duty, especially in the Void. These soldiers are largely written out of the Union's history of WW2-but the rumors never die.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I sorta get that, but it's not that interesting because it makes all of the low-level struggles pointless. I mean, Gnostic Truth has to have a 'Truth' that is out there, and the actual answer 'It's all true' is tawdry and boring. Sure, Truth or TRUTH should be mysterious and complex and confusing and you should probably never really find it, but I mean, you have multiple Pentacle Orders devoted to something where apparently the real answer is "It never actually mattered, your Truths aren't part of a complex process of trying to sift to a Gnostic Truth by bits and pieces and research. They're *all* Truth."
Which kinda, uh, gets a little Syndrome on us, honestly.
******
But yeah, considering my interests in both the Silver Ladder and Mysterium, I'm not really digging it.
Also feels a little too similar to the oMage "Everything is true because none of it is true" thing with Consensual Reality. I mean, it is related in the sense that it has the same name, but eh.
- Location
- Spain
Oh, yeah, i agree with that. You should be able to find bits and pieces of the Supernal here and there, parts of the Truth* that have survived the Fall.
And multiple timelines actually help for that. The rewites aren't never perfect; a metahistorian can find physical evidence of their existence, and possibly reconstruct how those where.... up
to the original, pre-fall timeline.
*(And that Truth should be something different for each storyteller).
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
The other difficulty is where that puts the Silver Ladder and their quest/attempt to recreate Atlantis. I mean, it seems that *if* you have a MAD situation, that'd still create the danger of if one side seems to be actually winning forever, the other side would be willing to launch the nukes because the alternative is destruction anyways.
"Oh God, the Seers have almost won everything forever, I guess I have no choice but to discard MAD and launch the nukes even if it means my destruction, because my name is Gandhi."
Or, you know, the inverse.
- Location
- Spain
Yeah, that's a trouble of the whole Archmastery thing. (But, as i already said, i don't actually like Archmasters).
And of course you can remade Atlantis. I certainly have my own ideas of what the Silver ladder (Not the organization, the Working) is, and how you can build one...
Also, when i said that you can only see shadows of the truth, i meant it literally. A shadow is not the thing, but i reveals something about it, and the more data for more angles that you have, the more you know about it. So the answer isn't so much 'It's all true' as it is 'There are bits of truth everywhere if you know what to look for'.
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That's the point. The Silver Ladder's plan works on:
a) As Above, So Below THEREFORE As Below, So Above. As a result, we can operate on quintessence denial and ensure the Iron Pyramid can't carry out imperial spells.
b) It's very hard to hack reality when the unified armies of mankind are invading Heaven right now, shiving you repeatedly.
c) Our own archmasters will defensively protect us, because a MAD war between archmasters is something no one wants.
The Silver Ladder plan in essence is to redefine the rules of play. The Exarchs will - the plan goes - be no more able to stop it than the Old Gods could stop the Exarchs, because at the point when you have access to Heaven, you're suddenly not playing the same game anymore and now you're stabbing the Eye in the eyeball and the Father in the junk.
The important thing to recall is that the Silver Ladder have basically taken a look at the Matrix, and gone "Right! Let's build up such a huge army of people who are unplugged that we can seize control of the internal structure and use that to DDOS the overall system. Then we can become the Machines."
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hmm, that does sorta make sense.
- Location
- England
It could be a lot of things. I mean, with as many crazy theories as Mage throws around, to a certain extent you (in a game) have to pick what is true. Or *not* pick and leave it a mystery. Or pick *all of the above* which in a way is saying none of them are true...now, I'm going to admit that it might be that Imperial Mysteries goes deeper into the cosmology/lays out it (it is a high level book, so it might have to), but to a certain extent it's your will to decide.
If you want the person who thinks the world began on January 1st, 2000, and have that be the canonical right answer...more power to you. Or at least, there's nothing stopping you from doing so.
Time is mostly linear. it just changes a lot, both from the in-Fallen World action of Time spells and the external action of rewriting the Supernal so that the Fallen has always been as you desire it.
The former can be defended against with other Time spells. The latter can't.
There's also more time travel out there than the actions of mages. The world is a very strange place, and sometimes you just find doors to the past lying around, or bubble-timelines running in pocket dimensions. The nWoD is not afraid of time travel the way the cWoD is, as we don't have a metaplot to screw up by allowing it.
Remember the golden rules
1) The past is set, unless someone changes it
2) The "present" is constantly advancing
3) The future is unwritten, and any prophecy powers just reveal hypotheticals or most likely outcomes, which you can then change with foreknowledge
4) small p-Time Paradoxes are not a concern. If some poor bastard goes back in time and kills his parents, then returns to the present, he doesn't vanish Back To The Future style; he just arrives in a present where no one knows who he is. How he's still alive is the same universal principle as "why, if you are shot, then use Shifting Sands to go back three combat rounds and prevent yourself from being shot, does your wound not vanish?"
You may be wondering about physics, causality, and other science facts. The answer is Magic.
As for archmages, things like the archmaster who Ascended in 1977 and created Christianity as a side-effect are in the slightly fungible "story hooks" sections, where Imperial Mysteries goes a little hog-wild. On the opposite page there's a "what if we're all Abyssal entities, and what we know as one of the Annunanki is actually the real world" and so on.
The only "canon" archmasters achieving Imperium and changing reality wholesale are Merlin (side effects included altering Fate's symbolism) and the Corpus Author (who founded the Mysterium, possibly by accident, although her Ochemata do appear to take an interest).
The degree to which the World of Darkness is actually a wiki in the midst of a furious edit-war is entirely up to you. As Imperium-level shenanigans affect everyone not in the Supernal, it doesn't matter - the only World of Darkness is the one that exists now, and mages who consider such things philosophically tend to take a "we really should just relax" approach. After all, if the world was created ten days ago fully-formed and moving, would it really, practically, change anything?
It is purely a thing for archmaster PCs. With one exception. Mages-to-be who are in the process of Awakening are in the Supernal Realms, you see, so if someone "edits the wiki" while they're at the Watchtower... You get someone dealing with both having Awakened and, as far as they can tell, coming back to a parallel world. The differences might be tremendously subtle. They might be really, really obvious.
Which is a shame, since Prince of Persia style rewind is a darn useful power.
Legend of Ruina
Growing eyes on the inside
Which is why you always have two time mages working together simultaneously. The instant the first one comes back wounded the second casts Shifting Sands themselves, losing foreknowledge but preventing wounds.
