Should have used his lucky wasp bow there and not a crossbow.
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Virginia
The 3e rules are not mechanical descriptions of the world, they are resolution systems to produce evocative and tactical gameplay. You may as well ask how Starcraft models, I don't know, propaganda or something else totally out-of-domain.
Yep yep yep.
The rivers are all representations of things that take you into the underworld, ie each river is a means of death. The River of Dead Grain represents famine, for example. Famine rivers are very big ones, with irregular flows. Disease rivers... Well, they can be colossal. The rivers of the Contagion still scar the underworld
Greater Dead, therefore, take some of the nature of a river into them, just the Deathlords sup upon the power of the Neverborn themselves. They're lesser, but it's still an infusion of outside power which allows them to become a new level of being. They're 2CD-level in potency, but they're not really metaphysically 2CDs - they're not linked to the Deathlords or anything. They're almost a bit more like... hmm, synthetic elementals? Well, not really, but the way they're themed around their River does give them a certain elemental-like pattern (though their "Element" is a means of death).
Anyway, they get twisted around their River - it shifts the contexts of their Passions and gives them an avenue to grow and shift, becoming less and less human and more like embodiments of the means of the death. The context doesn't have to be direct, either.
So that means my example Greater Dead has a bunch of passions twisted towards things linked to hunger and famine. Obviously the most prominent of these is her Passion for eating other ghosts, but she also channels the same hunger metaphor into conquest and wanting power.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
@EarthScorpion, @Aleph, how do your Fast Demon rules apply to Demonic Familiar. A couple of my players want to use various species of Keruby as Demon Familiars (and one Zenekeruby as a Coadjucator), and we're looking for advice on how to translate them from easy to use sheets for extras to full sheets for important characters.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
So is the "Death by Exalted" river more of a canyon carved out by the descent of the Neverborn? I'd imagine the Contagion river is almost more of a vast shallow marsh at this point, like the Everglades. And would the Aging (maybe more accurately called Entropy, or Time) river be the Underworld equivalent of the Bolton Strid?
Jon Chung
=][=
First: Lol. Yes. "Good at setting concepts" does not in any way translate to "Good at writing a ruleset".
Second: You do realize that you're skipping over the entire, utterly terrible Chambers/2E era, right?
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They're not just one river. There are many famine rivers. Hence, there are many battle rivers and many war rivers and many murder rivers.
But yes, the dreadful rivers down in the Labyrinth are not ones that sane ghosts go anywhere near. They're the ones that the Nephrack Greater Dead crawl out of. They're fun. In a profoundly unfun way. Everyone loves a screaming insane monster that swam in a river of molten gold, right?
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Now I kind of want to do some research on cause of death in pre-industrial societies. I'd assume that age and disease would be the most common causes, but how would famine stack up against war? Or accident against murder? Or ever 'struck by lightening' against drowning?
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
MALARIA EVERYWHERE
Childbirth , making the being reborn in it part extra squicky.
Jon Chung
=][=
Remember to buy your paranoia combo.
I also suspect rivers that leave more ghosts are going to be proportionately bigger. Rivers of "Murdered By Your Best Friend With A Knife To The Back" are probably going to be swifter and stronger than Rivers of "Passed Away In Your Sleep Surrounded By Your Loving Family".
(Although the latter is also going to be broken up even more, because rivers of heart attack (black as tar, sudden, kill mortals who imbibe them instantly) are different from rivers of pneumonia and so on)
At the higher levels, of course, you have more tributaries - as you go deeper, the tributaries merge into larger rivers that are more abstract. And they're not necessarily rivers - in the North, for example, a River can be an expanse with a howling fast wind that tries to sweep you away. All that a River requires is that it's something that can take you where you don't want to go.
Because everyone loves a river made of mosquitoes, right?
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The suicide rivers can be surprisingly nasty - you wouldn't think that a Greater Dead themed around such would be dangerous, but you'd be wrong. And there are different facets to different rivers. The River of Dark Knives that flows through the Dead Scavenger Lands is "murder through betrayal", and is a pretty large and deep one.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
So, out of curiosity, does this make Oblivion more like the Ocean of Fragments from the nWoD Underworld?
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
That actually makes a fair amount of sense. Most suicides are acts of impulse, so I imagine a lot of the resulting Dead have powerful regrets and unfulfilled desires Fettering them.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I dunno, you call someone the Suicide Queen of the Black Sea of Trees, birthed from a "river" that's actually an endless dark wood where hanged corpses rock in the wind, and I feel plenty threatened.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
That's because Aokigahara is creepy enough as it is.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You know what, my players just reached E2, they'll grow complacent if I'm not careful. Stand by for terrible terrible stuff.
hahahahaha we're all gonna die
Speaking as someone from the far northwest, without the benefits of modernized technology (hell, even with it) you can't ever discount the sheer body count of simple exposure to the elements, even discounting in the kind of exotic and dangerous landscape that Creation plays host too. Pre-industrialized peoples had a lot more access to what we would typically consider the "rural wilds," but legitimate survival skills were taught about as extensively as they are today (ie, primarily to those expected to need it), while everyone else made due with traveling in groups with pack animals and well-stocked supplies.
In places with extreme temperatures or rapid hot-cold shifts once the sun goes down, all it takes is for someone suitably unprepared to get lost, isolated from a group or disoriented in the wrong place at the wrong time of year, decide the sensible thing would be to hunker down somewhere "safe" and until morning comes, and they will effectively disappear until the next spring thaw or passing bystander finds what became of them.
The midwinter North doesn't even need the frozen fog to be a deathtrap for lone wanders, it just needs fog and an overcast night.
In places with extreme temperatures or rapid hot-cold shifts once the sun goes down, all it takes is for someone suitably unprepared to get lost, isolated from a group or disoriented in the wrong place at the wrong time of year, decide the sensible thing would be to hunker down somewhere "safe" and until morning comes, and they will effectively disappear until the next spring thaw or passing bystander finds what became of them.
The midwinter North doesn't even need the frozen fog to be a deathtrap for lone wanders, it just needs fog and an overcast night.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The River of Ice is a very, very, very big river, then.
Mandragore, the Hangman's Daughter
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hey, she's not even that great a fighter!
Mandragore, the Hangman's Daughter, the Gallows-Queen
Greater Dead
In certain cultures of the Far East it is customary for youth who have brought irredeemable shame to their families and childless old men who have no one to support them to go out into the endless forest and hang themselves from a tree. With their bodies never to be found, their community can pretend that they have simply gone away to find a better life. But of late a new heresy is born, which claims that those who so die inadvertently dedicate their deaths as sacrifices to the Bone-White Stag, a god of death and the trees, and that their souls enter his court to live as his servants. Some foolish or hopeless have even taken their lives with intent to find a life in death in the court of a great deity, one better that they had before.
But the Bone-White Stag is no god, and her court is not in Creation. It is only because her power and the tales that surround her have grown so much that the living have even heard her name, however distorted. In the Eastern Underworld she is known as Mandragore, the Hangman's Daughter, the Gallows-Queen. Shrines to her are built in dark forests and on town plazas, featuring effigy hanged men - and sometimes real ones. Her passing is tracked and recorded, her trail followed by the fearful and hopeful.
The Stag is a towering creature over thirty feet tall, most of her body looking like that of a slender woman with skin of white bark; but on her head she wears a stag's skull, and great twisted antlers erupt from her back at irregular intervals. From this bristling horn forest, dozens of corpses hang by their twisted necks in various states of desiccation. Her shoulders are covered by a mantle of ropes cascading down her back and chest, from which she pulls new threads when she has a new offering. From her waist, oddly human-looking roots are hung to dry along with bleached skulls. None of dead memory has seen her face.
Once, the Hangman's Daughter was the daughter of the royal executioner of her kingdom; and when her father found the king among his own clients and climbed his throne, she was his right hand and enforcer. She died stabbed in the back, never getting to know who had ordered the blow. Political upheaval soon followed, and her corpse was burned among the masses of those who had been on the wrong side. In the Underworld she found herself with nothing, holding on only to the injustice of dying without knowing at whose hands. She tried to reclaim what she had lost many a time, to set herself up as a petty ghost queen or the strong arm of a ruler, but she had never before started from nothing, and she stumbled over and over again. In the end she thought to do what the youth of her people did, and sank into an endless black forest to hang herself. She did not know if ghosts could even commit suicide, but she hoped that spending enough time with her neck broken swinging from a tree would eventually erode all that tied her to this world.
It did not. Hanging from a black oak tree for ninety-nine days and ninety-nine nights, she found no release - but she found enlightenment of a sort. When she came out of the forest she carried the rope around her neck, strips of the oak's bark as her only clothing, and a doe's skull as a mask. Legend says that on that hundredth day she crossed path with a lesser ghost who had hoped like her to find release from death in the forest; this release she offered him, if his Essence were to be hers. He agreed, and she tied his neck with his own entrails.
The Hangman's Daughter holds no kingdom among the dead, but her power is respected, for she makes deals. She can sense those ghosts who tire of undeath, who are lost and aimless, who desire release from their fetters but are still held in undeath by passions that gnaw at them. To those, she offers untimely release. She hangs them from her great antler-spines, and over three days and nights their consciousness wastes away. Then their Essence drains into her, and their corpus, drying on their rope, is her business matter. Twice in her centuries-long existence, the Gallows-Queen has managed to convince a living Exalt that their worthless life could be given up to the benefit of someone else, and these two corpses are still hanging from their branches. Each one represented a tremendous bound in her power, and she is eager to repeat the experience.
The wares of the Stag are many. After stripping them of all their possessions, she sells the weakest of hanged ghosts to spectre-smiths, who forge them into a quiescent soulsteel, useful in the forging of Artifacts swallowing sound and emotion or concealing themselves as other items. The more powerful, who still hold power in their corpus, she sells to necromancers and dead-engineers, who use them in constructing many cunning and violent devices. When a ghost's ennui is too heavy, it weighs as a burden, and the rope snaps his neck; these ropes she sells to slave-masters who use them as whips, for their strike dull pain and passion, making servants obedient and enduring. In exchange she asks for prayers, for servants willing to surrender themselves to be hanged, for talismans and magical trinkets, and for simple sustenance.
Perhaps the strangest of her goods is her namesake. Over their three days of desiccation her offerings ooze out black fluids that fall to the ground; often this causes a strange plant to sprout. Unremarkable on the surface, digging it up reveals a root with four appendages like a tiny homunculus. These are prized by ghosts, as their roots can be crushed to brew potent medicines that give a ghost great power and insight but afflict them with madness, or dry them and make them into amulets said to protect from the gaze of nephwracks. The Stag gives them no attention, and so ghosts follow in her wake to gather and sell them. A few of these roots, however, hum faintly in the ground; these Mandragore dig up herself, for they have not only four limbs but a twisted child-like face, and on being pulled the scream a wail that shred ghosts' tethers and sends them to Lethe. Then she hangs them at her waist, and crafts potent talismans from them, the most expensive of her gifts.
Lately, however, the ghostly lords of the East have begun to take umbrage to her passing. When the Hangman's Daughter was but a peddler of magical power they enjoyed her service; but lately ghosts who managed to hold a scrap of her goods have hoarded them and built shrines out of them. It is unclear who started this trend, and for a while it seemed like madness - shrines to no effect, prayers to someone who didn't care. They were wrong. If enough ghosts build an altar to a small icon of the Stag's panoply - a finger from a hanged man, the frayed thread of his rope, the broken limb of a mandrake root - power flows to her, and a little part of it is invested in that icon. With enough power, the icon can be burned or smashed, and the Stag will appear from the trees of the nearest woods, and offer a service proportionate to the power invested in the icon.
With more and more lords realizing the foothold she has in remote communities, fear spreads of what she could do with a true cult. For now, the Daughter shows no desire to declare herself a queen of the dead - but already the monicker is applied to her anyway, for she is now called the Gallows-Queen. Many who hope to ingratiate themselves to her go much farther than the arrangement she offers; they craft effigies to hang in her name in secret places - or in some cases, they find a true ghost to lynch. They build altars and open-air churches in the woods around these gallows, and there they offer prayers. These do not summon her - but they offer her power all the same.
Summoning: There are two main reasons necromancers summon mandragore. One is to avail themselves of her wares; if they are willing to trade fairly, this requires no binding. If she is bound and made to surrender her precious wares without a fair return, she shrugs and accepts it as the price of ghostly existence once her time is done - only three times have necromancers abused her binding to take too much from her and actually aroused her anger, and only one survived it.
More commonly, and more darkly, she is summoned for her talking skills. The Gallows-Queen can sense the weaknesses in a soul that induce one to the temptation of death, and she is excellent at playing on them until she can convince a man who thought he had a good life to accept the peace of the grave - and her powers are just as effective on the living as the dead. Bound in a human corpse to allow her more discretion, she is sent by her summoners to the side of a target they want dead, and seduces them to hang themselves - preferably in a manner that makes it an offering to herself.
Necromancers beware that there is a core of sincerity to the Hangman's Daughter's arguments; she is guided in all she does by that moment of weakness where she thought dissipation better than existence, and when she induces one to such surrender it is with sympathy, compassion, and sincerity - the belief that their lives are as hollow as her own was, and that they would be better off making room for someone else. This can make her a dangerous servant, as the loyalty induced by her binding does not alone prevent her from trying to show her master that they would do better to give up their lives in the service of a more worthwhile cause - such as her own.
Essence: 6; Willpower: 9; Join Battle: 9
Health Track: -0x4/-1x7/-2x7/-4x4
Personal Motes: 110
Actions: Read Motives: 10 dice; Social Influence: 11 dice; Underworld Lore: 8 dice; Command: 6 dice; Feats of Strength: 13 (may attempt Strength 5 feats); Senses: 9 dice.
Appearance 5 (Hideous, except when trying to bargain suicide), Resolve 5, Guile 6
Sample Intimacies
Attack (Whipping Ropes): accuracy 14, damage 16, minimum 3
Attack (Antler Gore): accuracy 12, damage 19
Attack (Noose Grapple): accuracy 11 (12 dice to control)
Evasion: 3, Parry 6
Soak/Hardness: 14/5
Merits
Treasure Trove: The Gallows-Queen has many trinkets and talismans hanging from her waist and mantle, some she crafted herself and many she bought. Once per scene, she can access any minor power fitting of a powerful undead talisman. Examples include creating a ward against a single type of spirit causing them a -3 penalty, seeing through any darkness, attempting an exorcism against a ghost possessing an object or person, materializing for a reduced cost, or simply a burst of five motes of Essence or one point of temporary Willpower.
Cult 3: Mandragore is forming a growing cult throughout the East, and even mortals have begun worshipping her out of a misconception of her nature and attributes.
Sweet Rustling of Ropes: The Gallows-Queen is a consummate peddler of death, and has learned to put her skills to use even in the middle of battle. When she flurries a combat action and a social influence action, only one of the two actions suffers the -3 penalty (her choice).
Legendary Size: The Bone-White Stag's size makes it extraordinarily difficult for human-scale enemies to engage her in combat. She does not take onslaught penalties from any attack made by a smaller opponent, though magically inflicted onslaught penalties still apply against her. Withering attacks made by smaller enemies cannot drop her below 1 Initiative unless they have a post-soak damage of 10 dice (although attackers can still gain the full amount of Initiative damage dealt). Decisive attacks made by smaller enemies cannot deal more than (3 + attacker's Strength) levels of damage to her with a single attack, not counting any levels of damage added by Charms or other magic.
Offensive Powers
Merchant of Suicides (1m per die; Supplemental; Instant): The Gallows-Queen can add two dice to an action for each of the following criteria that holds true:
Cascade of Ropes (10m, 1wp; Simple; Withering-only; Instant; Essence 2): The Gallows-Queen makes a single withering attack against any number of enemies in close range. She gains Initiative as normal from the damage roll that inflicted the highest amount of damage, but the total Initiative she receives from all other damage rolls cannot raise the total award above 10 (not counting Initiative breaks). Against a battle group, this doubles 7s on the damage roll of an attack. Once per fight, unless reset by incapacitating an enemy.
Symphony of Woe (5m, 1wp; Supplemental; Instant; Essence 3): The Hangman's Daughter may treat her Join Battle roll as an inspire roll against all enemies to fill them with sadness, despair, or self-loathing. Characters who pay Willpower to resist this influence lose three Initiative. Those who don't pay lose two Initiative at the start of each round as they succumb to their dark emotions.
Uncoiling Rope Throw (5m; Reflexive; Instant): After dealing 3+ levels of damage to an enemy with a decisive rope attack, Mandragore may reflexively grapple and immediately slam him for additional damage, wrapping her ropes around him and tossing him aside. She makes a control roll, and may then throw the enemy out to short range. Once per fight unless reset by incapacitating an opponent.
Necks Like Snapping Wood (10m, 1wp; Reflexive; Instant): After successfully crashing an enemy with a withering rope attack, Mandragore may reflexively grapple him, wrapping the rope that struck into a noose around their neck. She makes a reflexive grappling attack roll, and if successful immediately savages her target as a decisive attack.
Hangman's Army (3m per ghost; Simple; Instant): Infusing some of her precious Essence into the desiccated bodies on her back, the Gallows-Queen summons an army fitting of her status. The ropes release them, and the corpses walk into battle. Each ghost rolled into battle has the traits of a war-ghost unless she uses a specific ghost - the Hangman's Daughter has two Exalted corpses which she will only use in the direst of extremities for fear of losing them. She cannot send out more chained ghosts than she has points of temporary Willpower, although if her Willpower falls below the current number of ghosts she does not have to retract any.
Social Powers
How Sweet The Sting (4m; Supplemental; Instant): The Gallows-Queen treats social influence that would cause a character to kill himself or do something he knows would result in certain death as merely a 'life-changing task,' rather than an unacceptable influence.
Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair (4m; Supplemental; Instant): When selling others their own death, the most important thing is to not provoke outrage or terror at the indecency of the proposal. A social influence attempt enhanced by this Charm may succeed or fail, but either way it will be taken as a reasonable proposition, one not worthy of getting upset over it. This prevents any Intimacy from being degraded as an unwanted result of the action. Characters must pay a point of Willpower to deliberately take offense.
Spot the Soul's Faultlines (6m, 1wp; Reflexive; Instant): The Hangman's Daughter is an expert at seeing the cracks in a soul's structure that would have them embrace perdition. This Charm induces a read intention action that identifies any Intimacies of fear, despair, shame, guilt or self-loathing a character holds, adding double-8s to the roll.
Hangman in the Hallway (5m; Supplemental; Instant): Once the merchant of suicides has found a weak spot to exploit, it is almost impossible to deny her. When she exploits an Intimacy to support a bargain or persuade action to make a trade and/or convince someone to commit suicide, forcing a decision point costs one additional Willpower point.
Path to the Gallows (10m, 1wp; Reflexive; Instant): Having lodged the seed of doubt and self-loathing in an opponent, the Hangman's Daughter makes an immediate follow-up argument to anchor them on their fatal path. This Charm follows a successful install action that created a Minor Intimacy that furthers the goal of negotiating a trade or convincing a character to commit suicide. It allows Mandragore to immediately perform a second, reflexive social influence to increase that Intimacy to Major, provided there is a valid Intimacy to support that attempt. The cost to trigger a decision point against that influence is increased by one Willpower point. Once per story per character.
Miscellaneous Charms
Hurry Home (10m, 1wp; Simple; Instant; Essence 5): The Hangman's Daughter fades away and vanishes on her next turn, reappearing in the endless black forests of the Underworld.
Materialize (50m, 1wp; Simple; Instant; Essence 4): The Gallows-Queen can manifest herself in the living world, sprouting from the ground like a great bony tree.
Nemissary's Ride (20, 1wp; Simple; Indefinite; Essence 1): While the Hangman's Daughter can materialize, she finds use in possessing human corpses to make deals with the living who would be frightened by her appearance. She uses the physical Attributes, soak, and health track of the corpse's former life in place of her own, but otherwise retain her traits (including Appearance). Freshly dead or well-embalmed bodies suffer a -1 penalty on rolls to disguise their dead nature; this penalty rises with advancing decay until disguise becomes impossible. The possessor is ejected if the animated corpse runs out of health levels. Attacks capable of striking the immaterial damage both the corpse's health track and Mandragore's.
Health Track: -0x4/-1x7/-2x7/-4x4
Personal Motes: 110
Actions: Read Motives: 10 dice; Social Influence: 11 dice; Underworld Lore: 8 dice; Command: 6 dice; Feats of Strength: 13 (may attempt Strength 5 feats); Senses: 9 dice.
Appearance 5 (Hideous, except when trying to bargain suicide), Resolve 5, Guile 6
Sample Intimacies
- Defining Principle: "As long as I have power and worship, I am not worthless."
- Major Principle: "A fair deal is an iron law."
- Major Principle: "I deserve more."
- Major Tie: Suicides (Perverse Compassion)
- Minor Principle: "Never show your true self."
Attack (Whipping Ropes): accuracy 14, damage 16, minimum 3
Attack (Antler Gore): accuracy 12, damage 19
Attack (Noose Grapple): accuracy 11 (12 dice to control)
Evasion: 3, Parry 6
Soak/Hardness: 14/5
Merits
Treasure Trove: The Gallows-Queen has many trinkets and talismans hanging from her waist and mantle, some she crafted herself and many she bought. Once per scene, she can access any minor power fitting of a powerful undead talisman. Examples include creating a ward against a single type of spirit causing them a -3 penalty, seeing through any darkness, attempting an exorcism against a ghost possessing an object or person, materializing for a reduced cost, or simply a burst of five motes of Essence or one point of temporary Willpower.
Cult 3: Mandragore is forming a growing cult throughout the East, and even mortals have begun worshipping her out of a misconception of her nature and attributes.
Sweet Rustling of Ropes: The Gallows-Queen is a consummate peddler of death, and has learned to put her skills to use even in the middle of battle. When she flurries a combat action and a social influence action, only one of the two actions suffers the -3 penalty (her choice).
Legendary Size: The Bone-White Stag's size makes it extraordinarily difficult for human-scale enemies to engage her in combat. She does not take onslaught penalties from any attack made by a smaller opponent, though magically inflicted onslaught penalties still apply against her. Withering attacks made by smaller enemies cannot drop her below 1 Initiative unless they have a post-soak damage of 10 dice (although attackers can still gain the full amount of Initiative damage dealt). Decisive attacks made by smaller enemies cannot deal more than (3 + attacker's Strength) levels of damage to her with a single attack, not counting any levels of damage added by Charms or other magic.
Offensive Powers
Merchant of Suicides (1m per die; Supplemental; Instant): The Gallows-Queen can add two dice to an action for each of the following criteria that holds true:
- She is negotiating a deal or a trade.
- She is trying to convince someone to commit suicide.
- She is engaged in combat.
- She is flurrying a social influence action and a combat action.
Cascade of Ropes (10m, 1wp; Simple; Withering-only; Instant; Essence 2): The Gallows-Queen makes a single withering attack against any number of enemies in close range. She gains Initiative as normal from the damage roll that inflicted the highest amount of damage, but the total Initiative she receives from all other damage rolls cannot raise the total award above 10 (not counting Initiative breaks). Against a battle group, this doubles 7s on the damage roll of an attack. Once per fight, unless reset by incapacitating an enemy.
Symphony of Woe (5m, 1wp; Supplemental; Instant; Essence 3): The Hangman's Daughter may treat her Join Battle roll as an inspire roll against all enemies to fill them with sadness, despair, or self-loathing. Characters who pay Willpower to resist this influence lose three Initiative. Those who don't pay lose two Initiative at the start of each round as they succumb to their dark emotions.
Uncoiling Rope Throw (5m; Reflexive; Instant): After dealing 3+ levels of damage to an enemy with a decisive rope attack, Mandragore may reflexively grapple and immediately slam him for additional damage, wrapping her ropes around him and tossing him aside. She makes a control roll, and may then throw the enemy out to short range. Once per fight unless reset by incapacitating an opponent.
Necks Like Snapping Wood (10m, 1wp; Reflexive; Instant): After successfully crashing an enemy with a withering rope attack, Mandragore may reflexively grapple him, wrapping the rope that struck into a noose around their neck. She makes a reflexive grappling attack roll, and if successful immediately savages her target as a decisive attack.
Hangman's Army (3m per ghost; Simple; Instant): Infusing some of her precious Essence into the desiccated bodies on her back, the Gallows-Queen summons an army fitting of her status. The ropes release them, and the corpses walk into battle. Each ghost rolled into battle has the traits of a war-ghost unless she uses a specific ghost - the Hangman's Daughter has two Exalted corpses which she will only use in the direst of extremities for fear of losing them. She cannot send out more chained ghosts than she has points of temporary Willpower, although if her Willpower falls below the current number of ghosts she does not have to retract any.
Social Powers
How Sweet The Sting (4m; Supplemental; Instant): The Gallows-Queen treats social influence that would cause a character to kill himself or do something he knows would result in certain death as merely a 'life-changing task,' rather than an unacceptable influence.
Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair (4m; Supplemental; Instant): When selling others their own death, the most important thing is to not provoke outrage or terror at the indecency of the proposal. A social influence attempt enhanced by this Charm may succeed or fail, but either way it will be taken as a reasonable proposition, one not worthy of getting upset over it. This prevents any Intimacy from being degraded as an unwanted result of the action. Characters must pay a point of Willpower to deliberately take offense.
Spot the Soul's Faultlines (6m, 1wp; Reflexive; Instant): The Hangman's Daughter is an expert at seeing the cracks in a soul's structure that would have them embrace perdition. This Charm induces a read intention action that identifies any Intimacies of fear, despair, shame, guilt or self-loathing a character holds, adding double-8s to the roll.
Hangman in the Hallway (5m; Supplemental; Instant): Once the merchant of suicides has found a weak spot to exploit, it is almost impossible to deny her. When she exploits an Intimacy to support a bargain or persuade action to make a trade and/or convince someone to commit suicide, forcing a decision point costs one additional Willpower point.
Path to the Gallows (10m, 1wp; Reflexive; Instant): Having lodged the seed of doubt and self-loathing in an opponent, the Hangman's Daughter makes an immediate follow-up argument to anchor them on their fatal path. This Charm follows a successful install action that created a Minor Intimacy that furthers the goal of negotiating a trade or convincing a character to commit suicide. It allows Mandragore to immediately perform a second, reflexive social influence to increase that Intimacy to Major, provided there is a valid Intimacy to support that attempt. The cost to trigger a decision point against that influence is increased by one Willpower point. Once per story per character.
Miscellaneous Charms
Hurry Home (10m, 1wp; Simple; Instant; Essence 5): The Hangman's Daughter fades away and vanishes on her next turn, reappearing in the endless black forests of the Underworld.
Materialize (50m, 1wp; Simple; Instant; Essence 4): The Gallows-Queen can manifest herself in the living world, sprouting from the ground like a great bony tree.
Nemissary's Ride (20, 1wp; Simple; Indefinite; Essence 1): While the Hangman's Daughter can materialize, she finds use in possessing human corpses to make deals with the living who would be frightened by her appearance. She uses the physical Attributes, soak, and health track of the corpse's former life in place of her own, but otherwise retain her traits (including Appearance). Freshly dead or well-embalmed bodies suffer a -1 penalty on rolls to disguise their dead nature; this penalty rises with advancing decay until disguise becomes impossible. The possessor is ejected if the animated corpse runs out of health levels. Attacks capable of striking the immaterial damage both the corpse's health track and Mandragore's.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's only a giant superpowered ghost that feeds on suicide and has social influence powers geared to convince people to hang themselves, I don't see what's the big deal.
Romantic_Kaiju
Romantic Kaiju
- Location
- National Battlefield
Omicron, grammar error it should read
It is customary for youths who have shamed themselves,
or
It is customary for youths who have brought irredeemable shame to their families,