- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
no i think i'll go back to just disregarding tremere ngl
I may not have phrased it clearly enough, but my point was mostly that the Technocracy didn't do much better than the Kuei-Jin did.The Kuei-Jin were most certainly not doing a good job killing it, given this is the reaction of one of them after the Technocracy blasted it.
Well yes, that was the Technocratic plan. They used the bombs to blow away the cover of clouds and mirrors to focus the sunlight specifically on Zapathasura.I may not have phrased it clearly enough, but my point was mostly that the Technocracy didn't do much better than the Kuei-Jin did.
IIRC it was the sun that actually killed the him.
I'm also thinking about the Lancea and how to break up their weird hegemony on Monotheism. Like, there's supposedly creeds that I'm slowly working my way in the book towards that appeal more to Jews and Muslims, but at the same time I feel like it's a bit cheap to try to sweep all of this stuff under the big tent. Makes it less fun, too.
(Religious squabbles are fun to write about, right?)
Just shrug, and call the bits of the books which say that the Lancea et Sanctum is anything other than a Vampire Christian Heresy "dumb things that should be ignored".
There's no reason for Jews to ascribe any credit to the Lance's story, because it has at a fundamental level the idea that Jesus was the Son of God. And while Islam recognises Jesus as a prophet, it's really IMO not worth the effort to try to finagle "this is how Muslims fit into the Lancea" when you could just sit down with @Havocfett and talk about weird vampire Islamic heresies that could be a thing.
Well, yeah, goofy heterodox Christians tend to have a bee in their bonnet one way or another about that sort of thingTo be fair, I can kinda imagine the Lancea et Sanctum attempting to finagle Muslim and Jewish now-Kindred believers under one roof, because it seems like the kind of thing they'd try to do.
vampire kharijites babyJust shrug, and call the bits of the books which say that the Lancea et Sanctum is anything other than a Vampire Christian Heresy "dumb things that should be ignored".
There's no reason for Jews to ascribe any credit to the Lance's story, because it has at a fundamental level the idea that Jesus was the Son of God. And while Islam recognises Jesus as a prophet, it's really IMO not worth the effort to try to finagle "this is how Muslims fit into the Lancea" when you could just sit down with @Havocfett and talk about weird vampire Islamic heresies that could be a thing.
The Salubri are decent people, but their Antediluvian is one of the biggest assholes in the setting, and from what I can see is mostly using Tremere as a Witness Protection thing to keep himself out of the sight of the other Antes.When I got into WoD I was told everybody hates the Tremere because they ate the nice healer vampires. That seems to be one account of Saulot but it's just one of many that don't line up with this saintly image.
Because of the way that Requiem handled Blood Potency and Torpor.
Because of the way that Requiem handled Blood Potency and Torpor.
I checked to make sure, and now that I know nobody has talked about them, I've been reading through the Covenant Books, and Damnation city, and soon the Clan books, and... Cyclical Dynasties are stupid. Cyclical dynasties are silly.
Why.
Why. Why.
Honestly, I suspect it - much like gun-swords - is a brainbug that vampires will try time and time again to get working, because if it actually worked it would be great for two elders.
And every time it's tried, it goes wrong quickly.
To put it another way, they exist for the two of how it goes wrong with a senile elder trying to take over a city they used to rule 50 years ago, and then promptly either getting turned into a pawn or usurped.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
It's been a real trip through the Covenant books. A lot to love. Also weird stuff. Some bad stuff that I'm gonna ignore.
I'm pretty sure the fact that I actually love (or at least enjoy thinking about) the Carthians puts me at odds with you, but somehow weirdly they don't hit the 'do not want' part of my brain the way that the Free Council does. The book somehow sold me on them, or at least on them as a thing that really could and does exist in vampire society, in a way that the Free Council book never did for Mage society.
The Carthians are pretty cool...
... right until the gameline dragged Carthian Law into existence, which is fucking awful, dumb, and should die in a goddamn fire. Self-enforcing law is BS, ruins stories and the complexities of actually being a government, and fuck the ruining of a political covenant that way just because "everyone should get magic powers". I hate Carthian Law almost as much as I hate the Blood Sorcery book.
My angle would be that the "Carthian magic" is twofold. First, they're more willing to dig deep into the other sorts of weirdness that can be found in the World of Darkness. Not other splats, necessarily (or even preferably), but just all sorts of strange shit. Alchemy, psychics, mediums, feng shui, ghosts, past life recall, any damn thing you're willing to allow in your chronicle. You might well see individual vampires in other covenants who explore such things (alchemy, for example, seems a very appropriate topic for study in the Ordo Dracul), but the Carthians are the most likely to have outright research and implementation efforts on a large scale. It's not really an inherent goal of the Carthians as a covenant, but it's something that enough individual segments of the group have done to provide a trend.I do have an idea for it. Well, not exactly it. But imagine a modified version of Invictus Oath-stuff, where instead everyone (who actually is there, and takes part in whatever non-hierarchial ritual of state, and who doesn't find a way to weasel out of it) is party to particular oaths/ritualistic pledges to uphold this or that specific law (which they can immediately scheme to get around), and the Invictus go, "Wait, wait... this looks oddly familiar" since of course plenty of the first Carthians and so on were in fact angry, disillusioned Invictus back in the 18th century. But even that's just an idea (might be a bad one), and perhaps you dislike Invictus' style oaths as well, since they might hit some of the same problems/complaints as Carthian Law, though at least they require (with some exceptions) both parties to actually do shit for it to work, and can include loopholes and etc.
I might or might not actually try to have this be a thing at all[1], I'm just thinking about it right now. It feels like it'd make sense to have some minor leakage that way, in terms of Invictus Oaths, or low-level tidbits of other Covenants repurposed or refashioned.
[1] In the Quest I'm doing. I still have time to decide stuff like this.
There's also a running theme in VtM where things were good once and are becoming increasingly worse, bastardized as they get closer to Gehenna. The Salubri, the healers and balanced in terms of humanity and power, is devoured by the Tremere, vampires obsessed with power and domination to the point that they gave up real power for fast temporal power. The Cappadocians, philosopher necromancers who wanted to ultimately dethrone God, are replaced by incestuous gangster necromancers.
There's a lot of stuff about Salubri being bad, the Baali, and selfish, Wu Zao Salubri, but the take originally and ultimately is that shit's getting worse. I think in terms of metaplot it ultimately comes down to Salubri is in it for Salubri and everything he does is one variant of him trying to find the cheat code that allows him to beat God and/or the wheel of ages.
EDIT:
I think a simpler way to frame it is that Saulot ultimately wants to ascend his condition and the Tremere gave up a chance at ascension for "immortality" and temporal power free of paradox. The Cappadocians ultimately wanted to ascend the bridge between mortality and death by subsuming God and the Giovanni just want to destroy the veil between life and death so they can rule as kings. It's very much the big concept vs. the lazier, quicker path to power.
Supposedly, devils cannot inspire True Faith — such power is thought to belong to God (or the gods) alone. But as any Infernalist can vouch, that idea is fairly naíve; although some people claim there cannot be an "anti-faith," diabolists with strong ties to malignant gods can (and do) manifest frightening abilities. Pulsating with greenish-black light, these damned souls revel in their perversity. Perhaps some connection to the Qlippoth, the decaying shells of old worlds, fuels this sinister devotion; or maybe the forces of Light and Darkness are far more evenly matched than the "good guys" would like to admit. Although some folk would like to deny that such Faith is possible, it infests a small but powerful elite. With it, Black Monks and Queens of Hell defile holy places, menace angels and drive the children of God from their sight.
At its core, Infernal Faith is more than a confidence in the Abyss. It's a close personal tie with the Void, a direct channel between the inner Adversary and the outer Darkness. Although an Infernalist focuses this channel by worshipping some devil or dark god, the power itself is older and far more primeval than even the lost deities of Bhât. An Infernalist with deep Faith in the Darkness knows that there are greater things than Satan; the Devil may be a potent symbol, but ultimately even Old Scratch is just a mask for the ultimate, eternal Darkness beyond.
Just make all of the Factions much smaller and make all of the Bloodlines Factions.Hot take: The Septemi should be an entire (small) faction/group, rather than just a Bloodline.
Just make all of the Factions much smaller and make all of the Bloodlines Factions.
It's actually kind of weird. Until I knew the Septemi were a thing, I just assumed the mainline Christian vampires were found in all the sects except Longinus (which is a splinter of Christianity) and the Circle of the Crone. You'd think at the very least a sizable contingent of Carthians would be Christians and probably lots of Invictus, too. It'd be strange if all vampires almost immediately dropped their religious beliefs upon transformation (though I can definitely see it forcing them to amend their beliefs somewhat).And then there's the Bloodline that represents all of, "All the vampires that are actually mainline Christian rather than worshiping some bizarre Longinus heresy that declares the Kindred 'God's Perfect Predators.'"