- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
no i think i'll go back to just disregarding tremere ngl
White Wolf's World of Darkness
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.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
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.
(it still took a solid three minutes)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
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?)
(Religious squabbles are fun to write about, right?)
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.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
To 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.
But there's a difference between that and meaningful success.
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grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Well, yeah, goofy heterodox Christians tend to have a bee in their bonnet one way or another about that sort of thing
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Texas, US
Still reading House of Tremere, I don't understand this Saulot fellow. Apparently he and the demon Kupala are responsible for the Tremere becoming vampires. They manipulated them into it.
So...he wanted to be eaten? Why? So he could come back and do stuff a thousand years later? Why did he need Tremere's body for this? The book says you can just make up whoever Root of All and Stars Above are for your game. I wanna make up somebody else just because this doesn't make any sense and according to the wiki there are a ton of retcons and nobody knows what the hell is going on with Saulot.
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.
So...he wanted to be eaten? Why? So he could come back and do stuff a thousand years later? Why did he need Tremere's body for this? The book says you can just make up whoever Root of All and Stars Above are for your game. I wanna make up somebody else just because this doesn't make any sense and according to the wiki there are a ton of retcons and nobody knows what the hell is going on with Saulot.
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.
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.
Also note the Salubri Antitribu, who aren't Antitribu in the traditional sense but actually the Salubri Warrior Caste that existed since before the Sabat did.
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Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Clan Tziminsce has done nothing wrong ever and if according to certain highly subjective definitions of "wrong" they did one or two things wrong it will all be worth it when they finally unlock the secrets of these fleshly shells and transcend this limited existence so there.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
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.
Why.
Why. Why.
Because of the way that Requiem handled Blood Potency and Torpor.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
But even then, it's kinda just... silly? It doesn't really make sense. It doesn't fit the 'vibe' of Requiem generally.
They responded to the Hungarian Marriage idea by pointing out that it's a stupid bad idea that's always ended badly, so why do they make Cyclical Dynasties a thing that actually work and are powerful and important?
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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.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
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.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
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.
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- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
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.
Second, Carthians are generally at the vanguard of vampiric awareness regarding modern technologies and social currents. Again, it's not necessarily that they're the only vampires who would realize you can bulk-order Tannerite, or try to chip away at a rival's power by doxxing their mortal minions, but they're the most likely to come up with such an idea seemingly out of nowhere, rather than it being an institutional thing or a matter of having one member for whom this is well-trod territory.
(Also, if there are Carthian ancillae or near-enough who hail from the civil rights era... well, shit got pretty wild, and has since been largely buried and forgotten by the public at large. A hypothetical Carthian ancilla who went under in the late 70s could wake up and say "why don't we just shoot the damn cops, it's not like their names and locations aren't easily obtainable" or "just set off a bomb somewhere without any people and leave a note, that'll give them a good kick in the pants" and be, within modern context, thinking well outside the usual box despite not actually thinking outside the box of their own personal context.)
- Location
- Texas, US
Probably my favorite Kindred character in WoD and he has been for some time. Reading Ashen Cults and this section, it sums it up well. These have been my thoughts ever since I played Bloodlines a year or two ago.
There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it. . . . Oh wait that was Voldemort..... Whatever.
Somebody had an interesting summation of VTM though:
Think I might get the Cappadocian Clanbook along with some other stuff this Friday.
- Location
- Texas, US
So ever since I played Bloodlines I've been really interested in the idea of True Faith and how it works in oWoD.
Reading Infernalism: The Path of Screams and came across this intriguing info:
I guess nobody ever told me in so many words that TF is limited to Godly folks, even evil Godly folks, but I just kinda always assumed given all the times I've seen it or read about it.
Granted, maybe this idea was retconned or changed. I noticed there's two books about infernalism in the Dark Age, this one and the much later Devil's Due. I wondered why these two books existed, why TDA needed two books dedicated to just demon worship and pacts, but then I realized the Devil's Due came after DTF and I guess was trying to explain how it all fits together while Path of Screams seems to just be operating with "yeah there's demons and Hell and stuff."
I know some people I've talked to on here or maybe elsewhere kinda criticize oWoD for ultimately being very "Judao-Christian." There are gods and the Triat and all the rest of it but at its heart, they think the World of Darkness adheres to the metaphysics or worldview of the "People of teh Book." Apparently New World of Darkness escapes this and some prefer that.
But I personally don't mind. It's like how in the first Book of Madness each Tradition offers their perspective on what demons are. The Akashic Brotherhood views demons as just figments of the mind, the evil of man projected outward And the rest all had their own theories, too. Ultimately, only one view is right but that doesn't bother me.
Reading Infernalism: The Path of Screams and came across this intriguing info:
I guess nobody ever told me in so many words that TF is limited to Godly folks, even evil Godly folks, but I just kinda always assumed given all the times I've seen it or read about it.
Granted, maybe this idea was retconned or changed. I noticed there's two books about infernalism in the Dark Age, this one and the much later Devil's Due. I wondered why these two books existed, why TDA needed two books dedicated to just demon worship and pacts, but then I realized the Devil's Due came after DTF and I guess was trying to explain how it all fits together while Path of Screams seems to just be operating with "yeah there's demons and Hell and stuff."
I know some people I've talked to on here or maybe elsewhere kinda criticize oWoD for ultimately being very "Judao-Christian." There are gods and the Triat and all the rest of it but at its heart, they think the World of Darkness adheres to the metaphysics or worldview of the "People of teh Book." Apparently New World of Darkness escapes this and some prefer that.
But I personally don't mind. It's like how in the first Book of Madness each Tradition offers their perspective on what demons are. The Akashic Brotherhood views demons as just figments of the mind, the evil of man projected outward And the rest all had their own theories, too. Ultimately, only one view is right but that doesn't bother me.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
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.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Eh, I feel like some Bloodlines fit more as, like, bloodlines. Special quirks and things you can do. Families more than ideals.
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.'"
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
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).
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