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Not Quite Lovecraft

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_brightwing said:
A memory of helpless searching for someone taken by the king in yellow

With all due respect, this is a memory. Oliver as he is now is a much more veteran practitioner than the Oliver before. And do you remember the last time we used the Nightmare spell? It was a domain that was in our full control. Like a lucid dream. We have safely interacted with vestiges of Eldritch, like Hunger. I appreciate your concern, but I don't think we have to worry about it in this juncture. We even painted something once inspired by the King in the Yellow and Elle and suffered no ill effects - or drew attention from the main entity.
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Safely? Did this sound safe to you?
Blacksheep said:
Sanity Roll
DC: 18
Roll: 13
Cost: 7(-1)=6

Getting the director was fairly easy. You just invited him out for dinner and drugged him. Then you laid him out in the circle with runes Emily had aided you in transcribing. The runes burned and writhed in your mind, their meaning seeking deep within. You knew intimately each word's meaning and weight. You couldn't forget it, not even if you wanted to. The sentences you'd formed with them seemed terrible, a horror that you should have never unleashed. But you wouldn't back down. Not even as you felt yourself fall into the nightmare you had created, screaming silently in terror that you might not ever wake up.
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Or this?
Blacksheep said:
Sanity Roll
DC: 15
Roll: 11
Loss: 7(-1)=6

It was a tear in reality. All around it everything bent, as if striving to seal this wound in the world. Within it were rows and rows of sharp piercing jagged teeth. You touched the picture.

HUNGERHUNGERHUNGERFLESH/MEAT/SUSTENANCE-OFFER-RECEIVE SCRAPS/CRUMBS-SITTINGATAFEAST/ABANQUET-FOODUNTOUCHED-CANNOTREACH-NEEDMORE-HUNGRYSTARVINGCONSUME
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These still persist on our character sheet:
Blacksheep said:
Conditions
Insomnia
Memory of Hunger - you have instances of craving
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I would say my concern and worry is entirely warranted.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding what the actions you propose are? That we would be experimenting in including the nightmare ritual in our painting which also involves our memory of the King in Yellow business? The nightmare ritual described as "a horror that you should have never unleashed"?
Then while doing so we would confront the shadow of Elle, a person who has been claimed by the King in Yellow and use it as the metaphysical price of our magic?
All while lacking our memories of the the King in Yellow and what evil they represent?

And you are expecting this to be either beneficial or benign?

All of this sounds like "Connect our brain to the King in Yellow's realm via bridge of the nightmare realm while entirely ignorant to the danger of the King in Yellow" to me.
 
JayTar said:
Safely? Did this sound safe to you?

Or this?
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We were unprepared the first time.

Few key differences..

There isn't actually an alive target. We aren't torturing anyone, that Oliver would get a mental whiplash from.
We're trying to just use an aspect of the main spell, the dream as a gateway in this instance.
And we already paid the price as the memory that we're going to confront.

What do we even know about the King of Yellow really? Nothing. We only have grief of those left behind.
We only dealt with their manifestations. We missed our chances to delve deeper into that mystery.

But we remember Ellie still. Burying memories away is not the way. Take back the memory, master the pain.
I have faith that even if Oliver is confronted by an aspect of him and this isn't a memory of grief, he will crush that aspect under his heels in the dream world. It would be cathartic as hell.


Edit:
As for Hunger, I meant we can now use the Hunger lure without Hunger descending on us from Arkham. A vestige of him without experiencing ill effects. And yes, we already paid the price - but that was from dealing with the main entity in the first place.
 
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_brightwing said:
We were unprepared the first time.

Few key differences..

There isn't actually an alive target. We aren't torturing anyone, that Oliver would get a mental whiplash from.
We're trying to just use an aspect of the main spell, the dream as a gateway in this instance.
And we already paid the price as the memory that we're going to confront.

What do we even know about the King of Yellow really? Nothing. We only have grief of those left behind.
We only dealt with their manifestations. We missed our chances to delve deeper into that mystery.

But we remember Ellie still. Burying memories away is not the way. Take back the memory, master the pain.
I have faith that even if Oliver is confronted by an aspect of him and this isn't a memory of grief, he will crush that aspect under his heels in the dream world. It would be cathartic as hell.

Edit:
As for Hunger, I meant we can now use the Hunger lure without Hunger descending on us from Arkham. A vestige of him without experiencing ill effects. And yes, we already paid the price - but that was from dealing with the main entity in the first place.
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Some magic stuff we can use relatively safely, the nightmare ritual stuff is not one of them.
Blacksheep said:
Yup! You can do that without her now

Though I would be very careful about doing so. This is not like your other spells
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What do we know about the King in Yellow? Not much, but they didn't seem like a happy fun time patron.
Blacksheep said:
Panic Roll
DC: 12
Roll: 10
Sanity Loss: 4(-1)

There's a body. There's a body, and there's blood and brains on a giant yellow sign, and you can't help but think that it's perfect, it completes the art somehow, and the artist is dead, and you can't stop yourself from staring, frozen, at the art before you. The blood completes the art. The life completes the art. The artist is dead, and the yellow sign burns into your mind, but you can't stop looking. If you stop looking you have to look down, and the artist is dead. His brains are splattered on the art and it makes it complete. You never wanted art to be like this. Art is wonder. Look how some of the blood dripped down the canvas. It really symbolizes what the artist made. He made it with his death. He died, and the art is stained with his blood and brains but it belongs.
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Perhaps if burying memories is bad, we should have chosen something else to sacrifice besides a memory. It's quite effectively buried right now and we are going to have to wait for it to come back. Not "take" it back. Trying to confront Oliver's memories of Ellie right now would just result in confusion, as he has no idea why she is gone. Trying to force it just sounds like inviting something worse to happen.

We aren't just dealing with Oliver's internal demons here when we mix magic in. Magic is dangerous. The metaphorical becomes the literal, and things associated with a greater power can draw its attention. Sure we have managed to turn lemons into lemonade, but that didn't mean we didn't get burnt in the first place. I very much want to avoid getting burnt by the King in Yellow.

We have zero stakes here. Should we risk our sanity for this? It would be an act of selfishness.
 
JayTar said:
We have zero stakes here. Should we risk our sanity for this? It would be an act of selfishness.
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Oliver isn't blind here. He has us, his soul guiding his actions. His natural occultist's intuition that he picked up from the journey. He has the hand of two goddesses. And he has Emily watching over him.

And he is smart enough to recognise that he painted an aspect of his memory as a part of the banishing ritual.

I think precisely because we have no stakes here, it positions us to dare. We stand to gain so much. The loss with Elle was an important part of his journey that try as he might, he hasn't managed to resolve. He painted her. He asked Isis and then talked about it with Jackson. He still essentially has managed to do nothing for her - except to gain a resolve to protect. And that resolve stays with him, despite the memory gone. And it will see him through.

If we are successful.. Learning to seal Eldrich is something that could change the course of this entire adventure.
The question here is if we think we are ready for this. Victory, or we fall like Icarus.
 
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[X] Try to experiment with the aspect of the Nightmare spell with the banishing.
-[X] The problem is the corpse must have somewhere to go
-[X] Attempt to connect the new painting with the dream world
-[X] Confront the shadow of Elle as your price. It is time you faced your first failing.
 
[X]Relax, you had success with the ritual

Confronting the King in Yellow by ourselves doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
 
[X]Relax, you had success with the ritual

Once our memory is back, I'd support using the nightmare ritual to directly address the trauma of the king in yellow, but trying to solve a problem we can't remember having sounds ineffective to me
 
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  • Voting
    • Scheduled vote count started by Blacksheep on Oct 20, 2023 at 9:13 PM, finished with 24 posts and 9 votes.
    • [X]Relax, you had success with the ritual
      [X] Try to experiment with the aspect of the Nightmare spell with the banishing.
      -[X] The problem is the corpse must have somewhere to go
      -[X] Attempt to connect the new painting with the dream world
      -[X] Confront the shadow of Elle as your price. It is time you faced your first failing.
    Click to expand...
     
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    THIRTEEN An Interruption
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    • You tucked the painting away, relieved that you had been able to help with the corpse. You hadn't removed all of it, but you had removed a chunk. That would make cleaning it up easier. It was nice to take some time to just relax at home, talking with Emily and enjoying playing with Nemo. It was good to be home. You wrote up letters for your family and sent them out with cheer, thoughts turning to your next art project.

    You didn't get far before you heard screaming in the house. You rushed down to the parlor to find Nemo doing their best to kill an intruder.

    [ ]Call Nemo off
    [ ]Let Nemo kill the intruder
    [ ]Write-in
     
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    • [X]Call Nemo off
    we are protectors, not killers, nemo, but good work
     
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    Were we to call Nemo off in the middle of a fight and if the intruder is eldritch they might go on the offensive potentially injuring Nemo.
    What are our other options?

    Sense share to see? Use the water of forgiveness to cut connection between Nemo and the target if it is an innocent..

    Seems like.. there was a potential culprit in our investigtions after all who have followed us to our home.
    Or it could be a new Kharisiri agent..

    Remember we explicitly took an action to train Nemo not to attack humans using a body.

    [X] Without disturbing Nemo from the fight use your connection to them to get a glimpse of the intruder
     
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    [X] Without disturbing Nemo from the fight use your connection to them to get a glimpse of the intruder
    [X]Call Nemo off, but then draw your gun and point it at the Intruder and interrogate them.
     
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    [X]Call Nemo off, but then draw your gun and point it at the Intruder and interrogate them.

    I am not taking the risk of Nemo killing a random thief who broke into the house.

    We have a gun, if something goes wrong and they appear a threat. We can just shoot them
     
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    [X]Call Nemo off, but then draw your gun and point it at the Intruder and interrogate them

    Not much of a question for me. Detain the intruder, and get Nemo out of the way of potential danger.
     
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  • Voting
    • Scheduled vote count started by Blacksheep on Oct 25, 2023 at 7:15 PM, finished with 8 posts and 8 votes.
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