... so I was talking to a friend about the amusing bit where Keris systematically slaughtered everything in the shadowland, and, uh
i'm so sorry
EarthScorpion: ((Dicepool is Physique + Melee, difficulty 8 to systematically exterminate every single Dead thing outside the armed encampments and avoid threatening the mortals))
Aleph: ((5+5+3 Friagem Serpent+2 stunt+5 Adorjani ExSux {always in motion, kills because it is in her nature, balancing force of wickedness}=15. 6+5=11 sux.))
Aleph: ((o keris. u so lethal. <3))
Aleph: ... sigh
Aleph: keris
Aleph: stop developing Foe-Clearing Spiral Style, which is quite a powerful Style that requires immense speed and concentrated lethality to learn, and is based around, uh, systematically killing every single target in a largeish area without any of them escaping.
*ten minutes later*
Aleph: GODDAMMIT KERIS
Foe-Clearing Spiral Style (Melee)
Sometimes, the only way to win is to clear the board. And the only way to clear the board is to kill everything on it. This Style requires enormous speed and terrible power - it can only be practiced alone against opponents who are utterly outclassed in combat by its user. With spiralling sweeps of an area and overwhelming superiority over their foes; adherents will systematically cull every walking corpse in a shadowland, or every soldier in a field camp, without letting a single target escape destruction.
1: +1 to spotting and identifying targets when sweeping an area.
2: +1 to tracking down targets that escape from the containment zone.
3: Negate one DV penalty when attacking clustered groups of targets.
I remember reading somewhere(I think it was this forum, but i am not sure) about an artifact which had as one of its powers(It wasn't the only power it had, of that i am sure) the ability of allowing its user to craft an artifact using one less exotic ingredient.
Did i imagined it, or someone can point me to it?
Thanks!
I remember reading somewhere(I think it was this forum, but i am not sure) about an artifact which had as one of its powers(It wasn't the only power it had, of that i am sure) the ability of allowing its user to craft an artifact using one less exotic ingredient.
Did i imagined it, or someone can point me to it?
Thanks!
Interesting take on a Shadowland, you made it seem like a very dangerous, different place even for the Exalted. Flaring your anima as a shaping defense... is that one of your modifications to the system or a new charm?
The interactions between her child-souls are great. Rathan trolling everyone, Haneyl trying to edge in on others' territory and getting caught in her own argument... good stuff.
How do Essence rankings work with your Enlightenment system? Because Sacred Kamilla's Inhalation lets you lolno zombies pretty easily at E5.
Interesting take on a Shadowland, you made it seem like a very dangerous, different place even for the Exalted. Flaring your anima as a shaping defense... is that one of your modifications to the system or a new charm?
More like the Bordermarches, really - most people don't decide to just jump into one of the rivers of death, after all. And Keris would probably have been protected from it had she been wearing her moonsilver plate, which I... really should probably start using more, because it is fucking awesome now that it's been vitriol-tainted and I've been shamefully neglecting it despite the fact that it's awesome stunt-fodder and invaluable mechanical protection. Anima-flare isn't actually a Shaping Defence; it's the equivalent of whatever that Solar Charm is that imposes Creation's rules around you. Keris can still be turned into a duck by a Sidereal when she's doing that, but she's immune to things like mutagenic environmental essence because she's basically going "NO FUCK U WE'RE WORKING ON MAH RULES NOW" and creating a little bubble of Kerisian Mythos around her.
(Doing this at totemic flare is liable to cause Omen Weather to start happening, because that makes the little bubble of Kerisian Mythos a rather larger bubble that can in fact be seen from several miles away [1].)
How do Essence rankings work with your Enlightenment system? Because Sacred Kamilla's Inhalation lets you lolno zombies pretty easily at E5.
For Solaroid Charms; add 5 to get the equivalent Enlightenment rating. So she can't do that until En10.
Though let's be honest here; Keris can already lolno standard zombies effortlessly at Essence 3.
[1] This also makes magically-assisted stealing and the casual slaughter of vast numbers of enemies Consensual, and makes paying for things and carefully planning things out and ignoring random reckless impulses Vulgar.
I am pretty sure it was something linked to this forum, and not something written by someone on this forum, but it is still an interesting artifact.
I am reasonably sure it was called ?Something?(Alchion? Elchion? something like that. Maybe Hyperion? Fake Edit: i am now remembering that is was a write up of an Hyperion Key) key, and it was part of a pdf, or something PDF like.
True edit: found it, it was part of some material written by plague of hats.
Whee! It's time to explain Kerisgame underworld metaphysics via the medium of MS Paint!
So, in modern creation, we have a town and a nearby village. The town has a shadowland in it. The shadowland connects up to the Underworld, much like canon - but that's where we diverge. You see, in the Kerisgame Underworld, the Underworld is stolen from nWoD rather than oWoD. That means each domain is a bounded space, and it's very hard to get from place to place. Domains are finite spaces, bordered by the rivers of Death, and there's no way to get from domain to domain save by crossing one of the rivers.
Here, we're going to use "up" and "down" to define the "height" in the Underworld. As a concept, though, the "Height" is how far you'd need to travel along a river, against the current, to reach Creation. So the deeper you are, the further you'd need to travel along a river to get back to Creation. The Shadowland Keris is in is coterminous with Creation - there's no river travel at all.
The Underworld is defined by memory and nostalgia, and so that's how a domain of the Dead is basically defined. A domain is "a place where most of the people who died in this place would think of it as being the same place". Sudden transitions or changes tend to cut off the old domain, and make a new one "above" it (forcing the old Domain "down"). So we see on the diagram that the town has two Realm-era Domains linked to it, because at once point it was conquered and a new culture emerged. That forced the Realm era domain down, cutting it off from new Dead, and that means it slowly but inexorably declines to entropy...
... well, unless you take from others. We see this with the giant Shogunate city which the village was built on the ruins. Because it was a giant city and millions died there in the Contagion, it's a superpower - and it's managed to maintain that power there for 700 years. It's conquered all the local domains, and pillages them and forces the local ghosts to pray to it. This gives it the vital infusion of Essence which allow it to remain 'higher' in the Underworld. It's a superpower, with its ruling elite made up of the original 700+ year old Shogunate ghosts. But they're being slowly whittled away by time and transcendence, and they worry because more and more of their military and their workers are made up of captives they've taken from more recent places. It's fighting off entropy, but without constant influxes of new Dead it's a lot harder than it would be. The Shogunate town has especially been pillaged by the Shogunate city, and is run as a colony - the city is trying to fuse the two domains, which can be done.
However, they haven't had time for that recently because Dead from the Labyrinth swim up-river or attack in war-barges, insane and murderous. Dead Domains which don't have a buffer domain between them and the Labyrinth have to be armed encampments - but they're also going to be deeper ones, so they either need to conquer shallower ones or be conquered by them. Sane ghost society (well, sanish) is very heavily based around the constant threat from the nephwracks and other such things coming up river.
If a domain can't withstand the force of entropy and decay, eventually it descends into the memory-nightmares of the Neverborn and becomes part of the Labyrinth. The nightmares dominate these places, the Whispers are heard everywhere, and Greater Dead and Deathlords can be found ruling such places. Most First Age domains have descended into the Labyrinth by now. Only a few places have withstood it, first among them Sijan, which is the eldest domain due to its remarkable cultural continuity. Most of the East is within the Sjianese sphere of influence, and it is Sijanese troopers who hold the hellish rivermouths that flow to Dead Meru and the post-apocalyptic Labyrinth that dominates almost all the Blessed Isles.
Mockery domains are places which only ever existed in the nightmares of the Neverborn. They're only found in the Labyrinth. They are very very bad places.
Cysts are tainted domains which haven't descended into the Labyrinth because they are part of the Labyrinth while also being closer to Creation. They are also very very bad places.
Lesser Dead are the Dead who are the closest to human. All hun ghosts start at Enlightenment 1, regardless of who they were in life. Yes, an Enlightenment 10 Solar who got murdered in the Usurpation wound up as a Enlightenment 1 ghost - it's their po which is an Enlightenment 10 monster who's about as hard to kill as a Third Circle Demon. Lesser Dead live in the rough power range of First Circle Demons.
Greater Dead are those Dead with remarkable will and strength of mind, who have managed to claw their way out of deep in Death and gained power from it. Most of them have lost much of their humanity - whether in mind or in body, because Death takes its price. Some Greater Dead are the rulers of domains, the monstrous tyrants of city-states. Others are Labyrinth monsters that seek to destroy. They're viewed with awe and terror by other ghosts - they're exceptional, but they're also terrifying and you never know how sane they might be. Might your queen, who's a human-faced scorpion made of bone and shadow, be working for the Neverborn? You don't know. They live in the Second Circle ballpark, and they're all strong-willed, driven individuals because the weak lose themselves to the rivers.
Deathlords are those few ghosts who have ventured down to the Tombs of the Neverborn in the depths of the Labyrinth and returned. Returned intact? Well, that's dubious. But they went to the tombs of the Neverborn, and the Neverborn now remember them. They live in the Third Circle ballpark, and every one of them is exceptional. All of them have an inner strength that let them retain at least a bit of themselves and let them swim up from the rivers and make their way out through the hellhole of Dead Meru. They're all twisted mentally and twisted physically, and even if they wear human-ish forms, that's not who they really are if you stripped away their lies. The First and Forsaken Lion forged his iron armour to contain his form, and rules as a tyrant across the Southern Underworld, dreadful in his brilliance. He claims to oppose the Neverborn - but who can trust a Deathlord, someone who gazed upon the tombs of the Neverborn who claims they didn't go instantly mad?
They are also entirely killable by spirit-killing Charms, and there's nothing about them which mean they have to be a Solar. At least one of them is known to have died as a peasant farmer before finding a core of inner strength they never knew they had - and what does that say about the Neverborn, that they have nightmares of mere ghosts of peasants becoming powerful beings? Anyway, no one knows how many Deathlords there are - and no doubt many of them are too mad and too monstrous to ever leave the Labyrinth of their own volition.
(PS Void Circle Necromancy summons and binds them. Hint hint)
Deathlords are those few ghosts who have ventured down to the Tombs of the Neverborn in the depths of the Labyrinth and returned. Returned intact? Well, that's dubious. But they went to the tombs of the Neverborn, and the Neverborn now remember them. They live in the Third Circle ballpark, and every one of them is exceptional. All of them have an inner strength that let them retain at least a bit of themselves and let them swim up from the rivers and make their way out through the hellhole of Dead Meru. They're all twisted mentally and twisted physically, and even if they wear human-ish forms, that's not who they really are if you stripped away their lies. The First and Forsaken Lion forged his iron armour to contain his form, and rules as a tyrant across the Southern Underworld, dreadful in his brilliance. He claims to oppose the Neverborn - but who can trust a Deathlord, someone who gazed upon the tombs of the Neverborn who claims they didn't go instantly mad?
They are also entirely killable by spirit-killing Charms, and there's nothing about them which mean they have to be a Solar. At least one of them is known to have died as a peasant farmer before finding a core of inner strength they never knew they had - and what does that say about the Neverborn, that they have nightmares of mere ghosts of peasants becoming powerful beings? Anyway, no one knows how many Deathlords there are - and no doubt many of them are too mad and too monstrous to ever leave the Labyrinth of their own volition.
(PS Void Circle Necromancy summons and binds them. Hint hint)
Anima-flare isn't actually a Shaping Defence; it's the equivalent of whatever that Solar Charm is that imposes Creation's rules around you. Keris can still be turned into a duck by a Sidereal when she's doing that, but she's immune to things like mutagenic environmental essence because she's basically going "NO FUCK U WE'RE WORKING ON MAH RULES NOW" and creating a little bubble of Kerisian Mythos around her.
That's a cool and fluff-appropriate effect; so she's basically got an anti environmental-shaping anima power.
As for the Underworld info: It's a neat rewrite, but how does it fit with the Neverborn's agenda to kill Creation? Or is that no longer a thing? It doesn't seem like they have enough agency, if any.
Well, theoretically if one managed to infect a Shadowland...
... it'd be burned to a crisp by the Sun. Because sunlight is very bad no good unfun for the Dead.
(moonlight is also very bad no good unfun for the dead, but in a different way. Moonlight makes the Dead stupid, slow-witted, clumsy and incapable of higher thought. Hence, at full moon reanimated corpses are shambling zombies, while at the new moon they're runners. Sensible necromancers invest in weather control and blot out the skies, or make sure their Dead are fully dressed in skin-covering clothing.)
That's a cool and fluff-appropriate effect; so she's basically got an anti environmental-shaping anima power.
As for the Underworld info: It's a neat rewrite, but how does it fit with the Neverborn's agenda to kill Creation? Or is that no longer a thing? It doesn't seem like they have enough agency, if any.
The Neverborn no more have an agenda than a rotting corpse, twitching with maggots and decomposing gases, has an agenda.
That the Whispers seem to guide the Dead to a greater plan and that the Abyssals get orders from those among the Deathlords who openly serve the Neverborn... well, that tells you just how much above the thought processes of mortal men that the Primordials are. Even the rotting of a Primordial corpse seems in its decay and its putrefaction to guide lesser beings - and of course the screaming of something which is dead and yet has not ceased to be stirs a great sympathy in the lesser forms of the Dead so they are driven in their insanity to work to end the suffering of the Never Born.
Standard to all Exalts, incidentally, not just Infernals. Sidereals make little bubbles of Maiden-Aspected Fate, Dragonblooded put out RAW GAIAN POWAH, Abyssals drown everything under the entropic beat of the Calender and Solars just go "YO I'M IN CHARGE BITCHES SHUT UP SIT DOWN AND TAKE NOTES."
Seeing two or more totemic animas clash can be... interesting.
As for the Underworld info: It's a neat rewrite, but how does it fit with the Neverborn's agenda to kill Creation? Or is that no longer a thing? It doesn't seem like they have enough agency, if any.
The Neverborn have even less agency than the Yozis. For exactly the same reasons. Because if they have any agency at all, then the only interesting thing about the Underworld is OH NOES THE NEVERBORN ARE GOING TO DESTROY CREATION. And frankly, fuck that. That's a boring-as-hell plot. Deathlords you can make deals with and who keep a wary eye on Greater Dead who have their eye on their titles and whose machinations span centuries and are fundamentally centred on clinging to what life and power they have clawed from the Realm of the Dead are much more interesting, as are functional societies warped by the eternal war against the nephwrack plagues from the Labyrinth and Shogunate city-domains subjugating villages of ancestor-ghosts from the modern age to put off and delay their inevitable entropic slide into the Void.
Fuck the Neverborn. They don't matter. They haven't mattered since they were killed, and for all their desperate wishes to destroy Creation, they're powerless to do anything but writhe in agony now, and perhaps to grant Exalts their nihilistic power in the hopes that the monsters that killed them and ruined the world might finally finish the job.
In the High First Age, things were much more... organised. By and large, the continuity allowed the Solar-loyal Dead Domains to grow and prosper, and the Black Legions of the Deliberative (a mix of ghost recruits and specialised trained Dragonblooded - who over time started to have Dragons of Another Colour appear among their ranks) kept the Labyrinth tamed and contained. If any Greater Dead or Deathlord got uppity, there were Solars around and Solar animas are sunlight and thus fuck up ghosts big time even before they start swording them.
And of course, Dead Meru was the shining jewel of the Underworld and the Blessed Isles were a place of civilisation and splendour. Rather than a ruined wasteland which still hasn't healed from the Usurpation and whose attempts to recover were utterly wrecked by the Great Contagion. Kerisgame Underworld is not just like Creation in its power structure - the Centre is not the centre of the world unlike the Realm. The centre is where the monsters come from and civilisation is in the Dead Threshold.
Living Creation may have forgotten that Creation is a post-apocalypse setting. The Underworld is a place of memory, and it cannot forget. If Malfeas is cyberpunk and biopunk, then the Underworld is more like Fallout. Ghosts squatting among the ruins of the old world, salvaging what they can before it's lost, and building their new encampments to try to fight off the monsters that live away from the safer shallows and their armed encampments.
I don't understand that argument. The Neverborn giving mad orders to kill the world doesn't stop the Deathlords from saying "yes sir!" and promptly doing their own thing. And it's not like it's happening right now either; killing Creation is a very long-term project that allows plenty of time for other plots to occur, and can be reversed even as it progresses. I think having a large overarching plotline that reaches down to touch smaller ones every so often could be cool. Same with the Reclamation - shutting out that plotline doesn't enhance others, it just closes an avenue of exploration.
They're in the Black and White Treatise, in the Necromancy section. Rarely a Dragonblooded is born pale and sickly, with an anima with weak colours. They seem normal, until it turns out that they can learn Necromancy rather than Sorcery (the First circle only). Once they learn Necromancy, their anima shifts, becoming a blend of the normal element and the matching Underworld element.
They're kinda interesting for the rare person who'd want to use Necromancy rather than Sorcery - someone who's doing it for character reasons obviously, because lol Necromancy.
(they also might respire motes better in the underworld, I can't remember)
…well, I'm stealing the idea that the centre of the Underworld is where Bad Things come from (the biggest entrance to the Labrynth is right fucking there, come on) even if I might otherwise keep it more Dark Mirror than steal from the nWoD.
One thing I sort of didn't really cover on this is just how small some domains can be. You can have domains which are a single house, if the people who live there wouldn't consider it part of a greater community. In the Far East there are domains which are a single tree, in a land where giant bone-white trees are surrounded by rivers of blood. Quite often those domains are abandoned, or they join the ferryman guilds which are various organisations made of ghosts who travel the rivers and who always appreciate a friendly harbour along their trade routes.
However, on the other hand, you might get a domain of an entire uplands country, if everyone there is sheep herders who considers that a unifying trait. It all depends on how people associate things - and of course, because domains don't exist in three dimensions, you can have some shepherds going to the Uplands Country domain where rolling uplands of grey grass cover as far as the eye can see and they herd the echoes of sheep, selling their black, white or grey wool to other places, while others wind up on a tiny island hut with a small kitchen garden.
…well, I'm stealing the idea that the centre of the Underworld is where Bad Things come from (the biggest entrance to the Labrynth is right fucking there, come on) even if I might otherwise keep it more Dark Mirror than steal from the nWoD.
Yeah, honestly? Canon Stygia bores me, and it's boring to have the Centre dominate the Underworld just as it does Creation. That's why we built the Underworld politics to be radically different from Creation, where Dead Lookshy is a vassal state of Dead Deheleshen and Dead Nexus ferments with rebellion against Dead Hollow and the stifling imperialism of Sijaan.
Depends on the area of Creation and how deep you are. In the West, for example, you need to navigate the hidden currents in a quiet dead sea to find the other islands - and resist the tides which try to drag you into stranger seas. In the East, the rivers tend to be made of "living" things - blood, locusts, flies - and they cut their way through dense sunless forests under canopies which blot out the sky. In the South, you might have to walk through a sandstorm which tries to drag you away, the hot sand somehow freezing you to the bone, and some experts wear suits made of strange Underworld creatures or ride the ghosts of camels while others made sandships. As you go deeper, often you wind up in tunnels - and that's a bad sign to experts, because if you can't see the sky and the Calendar, that means you're getting close to the Labyrinth.
Basically, the Rivers have to take the form of something which can take you where you don't want to go. But they don't have to be rivers. Close to Creation, the 'currents' aren't that strong, but the deeper you go the swifter they get - there are often waterfalls leading down into Cysts or the Labyrinth.
The fundamental point, though, is that you're only safe when you're in a domain, and the environment is trying to drag you away otherwise and it seeps into you and changes you for the worse if you let it. Beyond that, you can play with the visuals as you see fit.
So basically in the North you can end up soaring through the sky in a farmhouse riding a twister, or carried across ice floes on a wind surfboard and a stiff breeze?
I really like this alternative version of the Underworld. How do the Abyssal Exalted fit within this system? I don't think that their origin will need to be significantly altered as the Deathlords seem like they would be powerful enough to work with the Yozi and free the Solar Exaltations from the Jade Prison. The key distinction would be that they would be working together in a alliance motivated by mutual benefit rather than all the Deathlords working in concert under the direction of the Neverborn to raise an army of Celestial Exalted capable of destroying Creation.
I think that this change could have some very interesting implications in regards to encouraging conflict between the Abyssal Exalted by allowing for a greater focus on conflict within the Underworld between opposing factions.
What are your ideas for the role of the Abyssal Exalted?
It's not exactly a subtle thing. Even if you ignore that it sets off alarms both in Heaven and in the Realm Defense Grid, the ripples in Hell won't be trivial. Unlike their lesser progeny, the Unquestionables are not accustomed to being enslaved and put to the slaughter in Creation's petty wars. Yet.
Considering that any newly-minted Solar Sorcerer was almost certainly an extremely prodigious Celestial Sorcerer, they probably already have. While not nearly so unique, any Celestial Circle Sorcerer is a force to be reckoned with, able to single-handedly wipe out unprotected armies and cities with a bit of preparation. You can't ignore someone who can, in theory, throw around a dozen or more second circle demons.
The ability to wipe out a city in a fit of pique will do that for you. Then we have summoning. Even if you don't want to summon a Third Circle, everyone has to assume that you can. Given the extremely limited window for doing so, can you really afford not to just because you don't see a pressing need right now? Sure, summoning one is risky, but is it more risky then being caught without the power you needed to survive? Surely it's better to have the bomb Ligier and not need him than to allow your enemy to have him while you have nothing.
While Ligier himself is not generally a good choice, it really, really sucks when you find out that your sworn enemy bound a Third Circle Demon and you didn't.
The ability to wipe out a city in a fit of pique will do that for you. Then we have summoning. Even if you don't want to summon a Third Circle, everyone has to assume that you can. Given the extremely limited window for doing so, can you really afford not to just because you don't see a pressing need right now? Sure, summoning one is risky, but is it more risky then being caught without the power you needed to survive? Surely it's better to have the bomb Ligier and not need him than to allow your enemy to have him while you have nothing.
3CDs are very, very hard to control after summoning them. Let's look at Ligier as an example. He has a base pool (in 2e) of 25 dice, compared to a maximum of 15 dice for any non-Elder Exalt. In order to make the field even, you need to burn an extra 100m, making the total cost of the summoning 140m, 3wp.
Essence 5, Willpower 10, and 20 dots of virtues gets you a Personal+Peripheral pool of 90m. So - assuming you have 5 in all four Virtues, making you completely fucking nuts - you're actually rocking a pool of 15-17 dice against a pool of 20 dice. You can get up to 20-22 dice by channeling a Virtue (did I mention that reaching this requires being completely fucking nuts? I think I mentioned it. A reasonably sane person is losing out on ~10m).
Ligier is probably offended by your arrogance in attempting to bind him. If you fail this roll - on which you need significant investment to have 50/50 chance of success - he will likely express said offense. Violently.
Have fun with the nuclear weapon analogue you just emptied your mote pool unleashing.
You can, of course, bypass the issue by bargaining with whichever demon, but that creates its own problems (as in "you're bargaining with the fucking Yozi" problems).
