Remove ads

An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)

Reader mode
deadcrystal said:
Very pleased to see this update, only found it on SV after the, hiatus I guess? So I never had a chance to comment.

So I don't know all that much about Mage, so I can't speak to that, but...rather a lot of this is reminding me of Demon. Very very heavily reminding me of Demon, in fact. With Agents Butcher and Baker, which are exceedingly Demon names, to the stuff with the general rotting of stuff against the holy light stuff, and what may have been an Angel over the city...I'm q worried. The God-Machine is not your friend.

I'm also concerned that Taylor's powers may entirely literally making the world a fundamentally worse place.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Is that another story? Link please?

I was actually thinking this was much more like a SensiblyTainted story. Lots of psycjology, overcoming problems, and adventure tied into a great story.
 
Last edited:
OWOD Demon was not...regarded all that well. It came out at the end of the product line, late in the narrative of owod, and it was pretty classic Abrahamic mythology. God, Lucifer, Hell etc. Don't know all that much about it tbh.

In any case Imago is nwod based rather than owd.

NWOD Demon on the other hand...I've played nwod demon, it's pretty rad. The tagline is "techgnostic espionage". Basically there's an invisible god-machine running reality and maintaining the status quo to preserve its own existence. Saying it doesn't care about people would be misleading, it would be more accurate to say it lacks the capacity to care about people, or really conceptually grasp them. The GMC is huge. Fracking Huge. It has Infrastructure everywhere doing mysterious things for mysterious reasons, and it's also probably very badly broken. The GMC is kind of...too big? So it has agents, with, well, agency and self-awareness, but no free will. These are angels. It needs them in order to create, arrange and protect Infrastructure on the small scale people operate on. Occasionally one of these Angels will fall, becoming a Demon by breaking free of the GMC and then fleeing for its newfound life. It's basically a very heavy spy thriller theme, mixed with gnostic mysticism.
 
NWoD Demon lives in a grey area of existence with the new remakes of the core books and rules. Seeing as part of the newest mage packet is 'unseen sense ALL' and Taylor isn't spotting demons, angles, or god machine infrastructure in her wanderings It probably isn't relevant to the story yet if at all.
 
Well I dunno about that. Like I said, I don't know about Mage, but...
Nwod rules for demons are p neat. Since they don't have souls, and the bodies they use are sort of people they're wearing decoupled from their actual selves...all demons are perfect liars. Like, actually perfect liars. If a demon has a box full of money and lies, saying the box is empty, every single test on the demon and what they're saying will say they're telling the truth. You can of course bypass this by just opening the box, or using magic to determine the contents without regards to the demon, but all the same. Also every single test to check if a demon is human will show them as human, if a demon is in cover. If they aren't in cover it's fairly obvious monstrosity made of gears, razor blades and television screens isn't human.

Edit: Pertinent parts:

While disguised by Cover, a demon is completely human. A medical examination of his body would reveal nothing out of the ordinary. He feels hunger, lethargy, pain, irritation, and every other physical quirk and complication that comes along with being composed of meat and blood. [Demon: The Descent -- Page 182]

A demon's mind does not reside in the fleshy tissue of the brain. It is a construct of his Primum, a vestige of his prior being piloting a human form. [Demon: The Descent -- Page 182]

Demons do not possess the unconscious tics and inadvertent displays one would expect from a human being. A demon never expresses a thought or emotion involuntarily. This precise trait makes it almost completely impossible to read his true intentions. All rolls made to judge a demon's emotional state, detect lies, or assess desires based on involuntary physical indicators fail automatically. [Demon: The Descent -- Page 182, 183]

In addition, all of the Unchained are fluent in every native human language currently in use. This includes local dialects as well as slang and innuendo -- the demon can speak any language like a native speaker. Demons only speak native languages, however. No one in modern times grows up speaking ancient Sumerian or Latin.[Demon: The Descent -- Page 183]

A demon has no soul. In its place he has Primum, which is simultaneously the origin of his thoughts, reactor for his powers, and the shapeless state of his various forms. [Demon: The Descent -- Page 183]

Demons are perfect liars, but it's not because of infernal origin or abiding evil. Their superlative ability to lie comes from a confluence of their gift for language, their Primum, and the fact that their mind is so completely de-coupled from their Covers. Likewise, the demon can tell the truth -- but have it read as a lie. Even a power that detects whether a statement is true rather than whether the speaking is deliberately lying still fails to work reliably against one of the Unchained. A statement will read as true if the demon says it is. [Demon: The Descent -- Page 183, 184]
 
Last edited:
Okay, people can stop talking about nDemon.

For your information, new Demon can fuck right off back to the oWoD sensibilities it lives in, and go die in a fire for how it took the cool God Machine hints of the early nWoD and ruined them by making them central, and stole so much from Promethean which did "weird freaky angels and mechanical gods" much better. The mechanics are bad, @Eukie has said quite a bit about how it does exactly what you shouldn't do in a game about spies, and I dislike the thematics and feel and consider it entirely unfitting for what I consider to be the core of the nWoD. So there's no goddamn way I'm using it, because I detest it and consider it entirely symptomatic of the problems the current nWoD line has.
 
Jackercracks said:
Taylor seems to have made a rather major mistake, and she's been making it for a while. She thinks because the Other Place shows a truth that it shows the truth. It shows easily verifiable facts about the nature of people and places, and so she has naturally assumed that it is showing their true nature, rather than just the negative aspects. The whole place is designed to introduce sampling bias, in that it only ever shows the worst things about people. She's never seen symbolism about someone helping stray cats or volunteering to help the homeless, but I bet she'd see plenty if someone went around kicking cats and lobbying to close shelters.

It might not seem so bad, but the problem is this mistake is the type of compound in on itself. The more she thinks she is seeing people's true nature, the worse she thinks everyone is, and then she can justify thinking everyone is terrible because clearly they're evil just look at their Other form. Then eventually she just ends up thinking humanity is awful and wretched apart from parahumans because they're her heroin who she can go heroing with. It's a self-reinforcing mental failure spiral. Not good.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

So neffandery is an open option. Well, that fits.
 
EarthScorpion said:
"Liar," I breathed. Oozing black smoke crept out of my mouth, reaching out to her through the Other Place. To do what, I didn't know. I just had to stop her lies. The whispers, the bugs, told me she was a liar. That she lied to everyone close to her. Not just about me. That she lied and lied and lied and lied. She had her pencil case in her hand. "You were going to jab me in the back of the neck with a sharp pencil again, huh?"

I had her there, I knew it. I could taste her fear even over the smell of rot and wet books. "Look, just, go away, weirdo," she retorted, backing up. She was taking shallow, gulping breaths even as her face twisted into its real shape. Leaning away from the spreading Other Place, it was like she could smell the filth all around her. Staining her hands. Staining her forever.

"You won't be able to keep on lying," I said. My own distorted voice begged me to tell her, insisted she had to know. "I know what you did. So will everyone else. What'll you do then?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's a pretty heavy curse.
 
Jackercracks said:
Taylor seems to have made a rather major mistake, and she's been making it for a while. She thinks because the Other Place shows a truth that it shows the truth. It shows easily verifiable facts about the nature of people and places, and so she has naturally assumed that it is showing their true nature, rather than just the negative aspects. The whole place is designed to introduce sampling bias, in that it only ever shows the worst things about people. She's never seen symbolism about someone helping stray cats or volunteering to help the homeless, but I bet she'd see plenty if someone went around kicking cats and lobbying to close shelters.

It might not seem so bad, but the problem is this mistake is the type of compound in on itself. The more she thinks she is seeing people's true nature, the worse she thinks everyone is, and then she can justify thinking everyone is terrible because clearly they're evil just look at their Other form. Then eventually she just ends up thinking humanity is awful and wretched apart from parahumans because they're her heroin who she can go heroing with. It's a self-reinforcing mental failure spiral. Not good.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Actually, she did see one positive unconnected to parahumans thing. In the Asylum. Which she is heading back to soon.

I sort of expect it to be relevant, simply because it stands out.
 
In order:
1) Taylor is falling apart.
2) So wait, has there been a Stranger around her? Because signs point to Stranger.
3)Also, I'm curious how Taylor will feel when Madison finally apologizes.
 
Nice update which makes me wish for more as it's mostly setup for things yet to come.

Taylor has a pretty cool lair that grows creepier by the chapter.

Taylor's visit to the psych ward should prove interesting, both psychologically and plot-wise, given S IX girl and the weird presence she once felt there.

EarthScorpion said:
no fate no chains no ONE but you exists
slicE OPen thiS lyIng wOrld Taylor u r REAL
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

PS: Bring me a sandwich on your way back. Sliced sandwich.

EarthScorpion said:
I'd show them they shouldn't be scared of me. I'd show them that I didn't have anything to be scared of.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

"They called me crazy! But I'll show them! I'll show them all!"

Yeah, I foresee a great future for her once she meets those government agents.
 
It's looking pretty possible that the slaughterhouse uh, contagion might be an actual thing. Aaand that Taylor might have it. Aaaaaand that those infected cause horrible events to happen. Maybe.

I dunno. Butcher and Baker certainly acted...odd. To say the least. The way they talked isn't really the way that people ever talk, though it is vaguely reminiscent of something I can't recall. To say nothing of how suspicious it is that they mentioned it being caused by 'improper knowledge'.
Shenanigans are going on and it doesn't look like it'll end well for anyone.
 
EarthScorpion said:
I wouldn't need to go back and forth with evidence and photos and phonecalls if I found a drug den, not when I could have a cherub drop a smoke grenade on the roof. One emergency call later, and the firefighters would find the lab.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
... There is clearly no way that sending emergency workers accustomed to dealing with natural disasters into a den of violent criminals can go horribly wrong. Nope, nope, nope.
 
Ridiculously Average Guy said:
2) So wait, has there been a Stranger around her? Because signs point to Stranger.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
How would a Stranger be seen by Taylor? Since she sees Parahumans as glowing humanoid heroin and Stranger powers generally alter peoples perceptions, would she still be able to perceive, say, Aisha as a Parahuman? If she doesn't then her power relies on visual sight to reveal to Taylor the glory of Parahumans, and if she does then her power is probably working beyond mere reality (not to mention how she would see a gaze-averting Stranger, probably just feel a sense of goodness in a general area until the Parahuman moves on.)
Either way greater insight will be gained.
 
TheLastOne said:
Actually, she did see one positive unconnected to parahumans thing. In the Asylum. Which she is heading back to soon.

I sort of expect it to be relevant, simply because it stands out.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Remind me? Was it the 666 girl?
Chet Betera said:
How would a Stranger be seen by Taylor? Since she sees Parahumans as glowing humanoid heroin and Stranger powers generally alter peoples perceptions, would she still be able to perceive, say, Aisha as a Parahuman? If she doesn't then her power relies on visual sight to reveal to Taylor the glory of Parahumans, and if she does then her power is probably working beyond mere reality (not to mention how she would see a gaze-averting Stranger, probably just feel a sense of goodness in a general area until the Parahuman moves on.)
Either way greater insight will be gained.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, one of the canon interludes shows that Aisha's power works by physically reaching into the brains of people looking at her and physically changing the input in their brains so that they don't see her. So it depends. Does the shard understand her mage sight enough to alter what she sees? Does mage sight use physical things at all within her brain to transfer images, or is it done by soul/magic stuff? If the answer to either of those questions is no, then she should still be able to see Aisha just fine in the Other Place though not with normal sight.
 
deadcrystal said:
I dunno. Butcher and Baker certainly acted...odd. To say the least. The way they talked isn't really the way that people ever talk, though it is vaguely reminiscent of something I can't recall. To say nothing of how suspicious it is that they mentioned it being caused by 'improper knowledge'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They may remind you of every time this trope is invoked.
 
Chet Betera said:
How would a Stranger be seen by Taylor? Since she sees Parahumans as glowing humanoid heroin and Stranger powers generally alter peoples perceptions, would she still be able to perceive, say, Aisha as a Parahuman? If she doesn't then her power relies on visual sight to reveal to Taylor the glory of Parahumans, and if she does then her power is probably working beyond mere reality (not to mention how she would see a gaze-averting Stranger, probably just feel a sense of goodness in a general area until the Parahuman moves on.)
Either way greater insight will be gained.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Aisha's power causes people to actively forget she even exist, so it's possible that Taylor would be able to see her just fine but wouldn't realize she sees anything due to instantly forgetting about a girl in her room.

Of course, it's also possible that Aisha can be seen just fine through the Other Place or that by the time she appears in the story Taylor would tie her mind into a pretzel twisted enough to capture Aisha's image inside, but I am inclined to believe Aisha's power (and other Strangers who actively affect minds rather than merely blending with surroundings and such) would work on Taylor just fine, barring specific protections against them. It's just more fun to gaslight readers with a first person narrator not aware about someone like that being present and active.

In fact, who's to say she isn't already here?
 
One possibility about the S9 contagion is that it exists, but it isn't what we've been told. It's entirely possible that they work for the Seers of the Throne or some local equivalent, hunting down people like Taylor to keep the magic, power and wealth for themselves. Broadly applicable powers with excellent capacities for information gathering, manipulation and stealth are exactly the kind of thing an ancient conspiracy would worry about.

If course, it's also possible that Taylor really does have some form of corruption or taint, and they're hunting her because "holy shit this is a contagious Abyssal intrusion, oh god oh fuck it infects the part of the brain that makes Parahumans, send in the lobotomized mind-slaves to kill it now jesus christ." I wouldn't put it past ES to make this a tragedy about Taylor falling into madness while trying to be a hero.
 
Which is itself 3 rows + 3 S' + 3 9's = 9. And then we'll all laugh about it when we found it the S IX times 3 means something completely different. A completely different memetic infection masquerading as the S9 virus.
 
Salty said:
Oh, Taylor.

You keep hurting yourself for the sake of your goals, tearing away at your own body, your own soul.

Perhaps...perhaps it's time to chain your nightmares.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hey, she's trying. She's already chained up her guilt and nailed her fear down stigmata-style so she's doing well on that.

Pretty soon she can shoot her conscience in the head and she'll be FINE. :)
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top