[x] No, it is not worth the risk of leaving such dangerous foes at your back, these akuma, like the others shall perish, unable to return to their master even in spirit
-[x][STUNT] That's it, that's all the information you're getting out of her, you realize, and that only leaves you with a decision to make. But while the show she's proposing would benefit her, it wouldn't benefit you to give any impression that victory against you is possible, and you don't want her master to get any ideas about trying this again. If she was actually repentant rather than greedy, or she had a workable plan, that would be one thing, but as it is… "sleep isn't for me, today," you say aloud as you draw your sword, "and you'll be beyond even that, when this ends. You should have taken your freedom when it was offered to you." A flare of anima and raised hellfire sword sets off the fire sprinklers before you charge into battle, Clippy having already sent the call to your reinforcements.
-[x] use Melee Excellency and VLE
Ugh, and we're going along with this madness. Uuuuggggghhhhh.
And now we're going to leave people to think that you can mess with us and get away with it even when we bring the calvary coming with all of our scrounged up favors and allies, completely undermining the message we were supposed to be sending. Why.
Where was peoples' righteous anger over what happened to our people? Where was the vengeance over Adam's death? The indignation over the woman and her baby? The determination to send a message so that this never happens again?
Whatever, people want to make bad decisions, fine. Let the unrepentant monster with a sob story and a half-baked plan go. Whatever.
Ugh, and we're going along with this madness. Uuuuggggghhhhh.
And now we're going to leave people to think that you can mess with us and get away with it even when we bring the calvary coming with all of our scrounged up favors and allies, completely undermining the message we were supposed to be sending. Why.
Where was peoples' righteous anger over what happened to our people? Where was the vengeance over Adam's death? The indignation over the woman and her baby? The determination to send a message so that this never happens again?
Whatever, people want to make bad decisions, fine. Let the unrepentant monster with a sob story and a half-baked plan go. Whatever.
The problem with that is that from what we know it was the other half of the Kakuri-Crew that did that.
Sure, soul-killing them all regardless of distance to the actual act would propably send a stronger message.
But I feel that a perma-dead Greater Akuma is still enough of a message.
We are killing something that could pass as a minor god to some people for the sake of some ghouls.
That is as loud a "Don't fuck with mine" as Mab freezing a Naagloshii for harrassing a pack of her Malks.
Oh hey someone beat me to this! But yes, you have a thermal element (glass w/ colored water that expands at fixed temps or fusible links that melt) that will go off and then water from pre-pressured pipes goes off.
Yep, that is how they generally function. I wouldn't rule out the existence of fire sprinkler systems controlled by a central computer system, though I've never heard of them before, at least not IRL. And if they do actually exist, they almost certainly wouldn't be found in a hotel, even a high end luxury one, considering how much even a standard sprinkler system costs to install in a large building.
The prices eye watering, according to what I've heard from my sister who sales them for a living.
Yes and no. Sprinklers going off will likely (I'm not sure about exact 00's design criteria here) set off the fire alarm, which will report to a central station and likely whatever fire crew is responsible, so might want the cyberdevils to turn that off if we don't want attention (the flooded lobby will attract it eventually though). And yes there are very pricey systems that are more directly controlled/activated by sprinklers but are generally reserved for like data centers/server banks (if they don't use a non-water alternative that is) where you 100% dont want to risk accidental activation and some cases where you need to install sprinklers lower and so put smoke detectors up in the ceiling and have those like physically pull the sprinkler open if they detect smoke/heat. 99.99% of the time lmao no, not worth especially not a hotel which ranks rather low in terms of combustible loading.
In the end the choice isn't much of a one, you pity Eiiko, all the more so for not being willing to choose salvation over power, yet that is not to say the road she is on is an easy one, it might even be impossible. In all the dark and twisted history of Yomi there has never been a Yama King which has turned his face back towards the light, only the bare handful that still cling to some vestige of their proper station.
You nod slowly. "We are alone here, no witnesses?"
Swift and fierce burns the spark of hope behind the mask the ages had made of her face, but a moment later she rises from the couch with grace some might call feline, though to you it seems more like some boneless beast from the depths of the ocean arising to feed.
"Cameras?" she mirrors your question. There is something eerily precise about all of this, setting the stage only instead of raising the curtain you lower it that mortals should not know what walks among them.
"Will show what I wish them to." But she knew that already, the akuma is giving you time to communicate t the nature of the 'battle' to Gard and Lydia. Man, I wish we had headsets, should have asked for some from Monoc. Instead you have to settle for a seemingly cocky: "I'll settle this before the sun can."
Left hand extended you snap your fingers, the sprinklers come on and the water starts to come down, a rain of tainted emeralds by the light of your anima yet as your right hand frees Usum with an eager rasp the Akuma moves, faster than unenhanced eyes can follow she leaps behind the couch, crouching ready to strike...
No, as you raise the burning blade to strike you realize she is twisted in pain of body and soul. The veil of Eiko's hair snuffs out the spark of gold flowing together with the dark silk of her suit like a wellspring of tar bubbling outwards from some dreadful core. The reek of daemon chi is on the air, like burning plastic mixed with rotten meat to your sharpened senses.
Indeed 'demon' is the only word that can describe the being now before you, twelve feet tall plates of black iron melded into her flesh in mockery of a samurai's armor, upon her pale fingers claws as long as any dagger and sharp as nightmare's edge and from her shoulders sprouting great raven's wings, shadows fit to darken even your blazing light. Only the vampire's face remains unchanged, a serene death mask all the more chilling in the face of demonic transmutation of the flesh, at least so it might seem to most. Here and now you are just glad to see her control holding even as she invokes the rage of her Po.
How to make your safe from any hint of sandbagging? Apparently Eiko's answer is drink of the cup of black rage refusing to let the poison to take hold. "Clever," a voice that might have been Usum and it might have been you whispers at the back of your mind. "This way she can blame errors in her from on being overmastered by her Po, a common failure of the Wan Kuei veiling arcane treason."
That part has to be Usum, you are more worried about her about her ripping someone's face off if she loses focus.
Apparent Changes in Eiko due to her Demon Form
Significantly more resilient, stronger and more dexterous
Can fly though probably not very well
Claws deal Aggravated Damage
Black Wind makes her unnaturally swift
How do you Lydia and Gard fight in this mock battle fought with deadly weapons?
[] Write in
OOC: As long as she is in control her Shadow Soul Eiko will be using all those powers to help make a good show so the fight does not look staged, but you guys might want a plan for what to do if she fails her will save.
Eiko is presently not trying to win, she made her save, which means she is going to do things like miss on purpose, 'accidentally' step into blows etc, but she has enough health levels and armor that you guys might have to go at this for a few rounds and at the start of every round she uses Black Wind (which she has to do to sell 'too enraged to fight properly') there is a risk her rage actually overcomes her
One on one? Yeah, she would require us going in Shintai too I think to reduce the risks as much as we can. With allies on our side? I think the most difficult thing is, as Dragon say, what we do if she lose herself to her rage.
We are going to need that later. If we were going to use murder is meat on her it would reset, but we aren't now.
Actually I think that we accidentally made this fight harder for us then it would have been if we hadn't agreed to a mock fight.
Although so long as she focuses on Molly and only does lethal damage it should not be a problem. We were planning on a bleach bath after this in any case to restore essence might as well heal damage at the same time.
nice. Though some features work... weird. like demonic weapon potentially giving you +5 aggro, but demon armor only giving +1 armor per purchase. Much cheaper and easier to just buy folding jade armor as a merit/perk.
Still, demon disciplines are pretty great. Specifically, if you combine Demon Shintai and Iron Mountain you get to be some of the toughest things in non-legendary WoD.
Demon shintai (taking demon armor every time) +7 soak, good stamina +5 soak, iron mountain soak +5. 17 soak - would need enchanted anti-tank artillery to get through. XD
MIS gives perfect self control (well more like their inner demon serves us as well) so long as they act in our service so Eiko should auto pass all willpower rolls to not hurt us. Black wind is not an excuse for her against us.
MIS gives perfect self control (well more like their inner demon serves us as well) so long as they act in our service so Eiko should auto pass all willpower rolls to not hurt us. Black wind is not an excuse for her against us.
OOC: As long as she is in control her Shadow Soul Eiko will be using all those powers to help make a good show so the fight does not look staged, but you guys might want a plan for what to do if she fails her will save.
A very minor note, but Eiko is not at risk of Shadow Soul from Black Wind (that one is eliminated by being an Akuma, even a lesser one, anyway).
Eiko is at risk of entering Fire Soul, which lesser Akuma are not immune to.
That effectivly means berserking and ignoring wound-penalties, unlike Shadow Soul which is a takeover by a totally different but not necessarily irrational part of your soul.
A very minor note, but Eiko is not at risk of Shadow Soul from Black Wind (that one is eliminated by being an Akuma, even a lesser one, anyway).
Eiko is at risk of entering Fire Soul, which lesser Akuma are not immune to.
That effectivly means berserking and ignoring wound-penalties, unlike Shadow Soul which is a takeover by a totally different but not necessarily irrational part of your soul.
Eiko is presently not trying to win, she made her save, which means she is going to do things like miss on purpose, 'accidentally' step into blows etc, but she has enough health levels and armor that you guys might have to go at this for a few rounds and at the start of every round she uses Black Wind (which she has to do to sell 'too enraged to fight properly') there is a risk her rage actually overcomes her
She can't spread specific stories, but it's possible to be subtle about your displeasure with someone and still imply that they're untrustworthy. She might have to sit on it for a while before she can try, but old supernaturals can be patient. Overall it's just not a good habit to get into.
In ExWoD, Yomi is the mess it is because the Infernal Exaltations are buried beneath it. And yes, the influence goes both ways, but the Exaltations were there first and are why Yomi is Yomi. The particular Hells them influenced the way the Exaltations express themselves back. It's quite possibly a feedback loop.
And my suggestion isn't that this is the case in canon ExWoD but the intersection between ExWoD and the changes DP has suggested he's making to Emma-O's history to make his fall gradual. In that case, yes he chose to be a Yama King, but he may not have realised what effect that would have on him. Not all Yama Kings are evil, and he may have resisted corruption for centuries before being increasing degraded by it.
I doubt it, if only because the Yama Kings spent significantly longer than him around them and didn't go full evil for a very long time. He moved to hell specifically to become a demon lord, which he was very successful at. I see no reason to pin the responsibility on distant sleeping evils corrupting his mind.
I strongly doubt there's anything you could learn from an Exaltation that could help an akuma get more powerful. Knowing how to redeem a Yama King wouldn't make them more powerful, probably less. Learning about the metaphysics of the Hells doesn't make an akuma more powerful, as their powers aren't based on understanding, they're all given to them.
I do think you could probably study an Exaltation and learn things that would help a Wan Kuei, but that's because I think that the Wan Xian were a type of celestial Exalt analagous to Alchemicals and the Wan Kuei are a cursed and degraded version. Learning how to reverse the degradation of a Yama King may help do the same with the Wan Xian, as may understanding more about the nature of Exaltation.
Learning deep secrets of Kakuri and the functions of the hells should be helpful for exploiting their properties, as the big book of Yami Wan does. I don't expect it to immediately empower her in that sense, but she appears to have enough access to benefit significantly from that sort of knowledge.
I still find your jades = celestial exalts thing ridiculous. Thematic similarity in why they were made doesn't change that it goes against the grain of or outright breaks the outline set by the world building and creates a type of exalt that acts nothing like an exalt straight down to not having an anima banner.
Significantly more common than that in ExWoD are factions that create lesser off brand equivalents of an exaltation, like Hunter and Mummy both do. The imbued of Hunter are even supposed to be chopped up solars and the recommended play is to make them something else instead.
Unless you're specifically working towards the end of making the jades as strong and important as possible it makes more sense for them to work along those lines.
We can use Eiko's pretend-madness by letting Gard draw a runic trap and then lure her on it.
If I remember uju's quotes correctly Gard could produce a pretty heavy explosion by drawing a rune on the inside of some door or locker, which explodeson opening?
We can use Eiko's pretend-madness by letting Gard draw a runic trap and then lure her on it.
If I remember uju's quotes correctly Gard could produce a pretty heavy explosion by drawing a rune on the inside of some door or locker, which explodeson opening?
*checks again*
No, I was correct. They are forbidden to, because the Yama Kings reserve that privilege for greater akuma.
That suggests they are entirely capable of doing so if given the permission.
If nothing else, it answers the question of what lesser akuma feed on when in Yomi Wan.
Sure as hell isnt living humans or shen.
All lesser akuma have sold all their soul. That's what makes it possible to turn them into lesser akuma by compelling them to perform the Rite of Renunciation. Most of the investments and all the better ones cost five or six points. As a result they'll have six or seven of them on top of mask of Yomi, as they'll have spent all their soul points. When bargaining they can also get cheaper investments if they make a good deal, so it should roughly net out.
Then, after they become lesser akuma they are then given as many additional investments as the Yama King pleases to best suit their mission, with no limits at all. It's apparently common for them to be given multiple iterations of Touch of the Yama Kings.
Soul Commerce is a Intelligence + Law roll at DC8, and kueijin have no Key Abilities.
Furthermore, if the kuejin dont have No Mind or Harmony With The All from the Internalize Discipline, the difficulty becomes a DC 9 roll. Not to mention that Yama Kings and the like are free to ignore people they dont want to bargain with.
2) Most lesser akuma are not minmaxed for combat.
Kueijin go to the Yama Kings for their own purposes, which rarely involve Better Fight as a primary goal.
Half or more of the canon Investments available to a lesser akuma are for things like knowledge or Background dots or once daily extra chi regen, all of which are important to a kuejin trying to get ahead in society, or for an infiltrator working their way into position, but with very little applicability to high end combat.
How many akuma sold their soul for occult knowledge? An enemy's secrets? 4 dots of Background?
And while its not stated, there have to be hard limits to how many additional Investments a lesser akuma can hold.
Else greater akuma would not be as much of a big deal as they are.
Not if a Yama King can stack Iron Hands or Breath of Knowledge as they choose to the limit cap.
3)Yama Kings are both paranoid and sadistic.
None of them is out there building up their subordinates unnecessarily. Note how they dont allow lesser akuma feed from environmental chi in the material world, even though it would make their lives much easier and cost the Yama Kings nothing.
Yep, that is how they generally function. I wouldn't rule out the existence of fire sprinkler systems controlled by a central computer system, though I've never heard of them before, at least not IRL. And if they do actually exist, they almost certainly wouldn't be found in a hotel, even a high end luxury one, considering how much even a standard sprinkler system costs to install in a large building.
The prices eye watering, according to what I've heard from my sister who sales them for a living.
Oh hey someone beat me to this! But yes, you have a thermal element (glass w/ colored water that expands at fixed temps or fusible links that melt) that will go off and then water from pre-pressured pipes goes off.
Yes and no. Sprinklers going off will likely (I'm not sure about exact 00's design criteria here) set off the fire alarm, which will report to a central station and likely whatever fire crew is responsible, so might want the cyberdevils to turn that off if we don't want attention (the flooded lobby will attract it eventually though). And yes there are very pricey systems that are more directly controlled/activated by sprinklers but are generally reserved for like data centers/server banks (if they don't use a non-water alternative that is) where you 100% dont want to risk accidental activation and some cases where you need to install sprinklers lower and so put smoke detectors up in the ceiling and have those like physically pull the sprinkler open if they detect smoke/heat. 99.99% of the time lmao no, not worth especially not a hotel which ranks rather low in terms of combustible loading.
I was under the impression a 3 star, hundred suite hotel in the middle of Chicago would rate precisely those systems.
Pricey piece of real estate, after all.
Moot point now anyway.
COMMENTARY
So she gets a powerup sequence.
It takes at three turns and three points of Demon Chi to activate Demon Shintai, which is at least 9 seconds.
Molly should have her buffs running by then.
Winged tengu in armor basically.
Good visual reference would be one of the Perfect Susanoos from the Naruto series
Just with the mask being the sculpted face of a beautiful woman.
Wings + Black Wind would be enough to make a getaway under most circumstances.
25mph flight with all 2x Black Wind points in movement speed would have made her a 75mph mover.
With a little distraction from mortals in the hotel, she'd get away clean.
Point of order:
Black Wind does not require a Willpower roll for activation; they just start burning Demon Chi per turn like nitrous in a street racer and get the benefit of their Black Wind level automatically, in addition to Demon Chi regen per turn.
▪▪▪
Black Wind mechanics
This power costs the Kuei-jin one point of Demon Chi per turn of use. For each dot in the power, the vampire may take an extra action (as with Celerity), arithmetically increase running speed, or add one automatic success to a Brawl or Melee damage dice pool. Each turn, the vampire may reassign the dots. So, a vampire with Black Wind 4 may choose to take two extra actions, run at double speed, and add one success to all Brawl damage dice pools. The next turn, he may choose to take four extra actions and add no dice to damage. Extra actions gained by Black Wind occur after all other characters have taken their actions for the turn.
While using Black Wind, the vampire may not use any other Discipline except Demon Shintai, although he may manipulate previously activated powers. Moreover, each turn the power is used, the vampire must roll P'o (difficulty 8); if he fails this roll, he enters fire soul. A frenzied vampire suffers no wound penalties, but may not use firearms or any other missile weapons; he instead prefers to shred foes face-to-face — of course, such is the intent of most who use Black Wind. The problem lies in the fact that a vampire using this power just as readily attacks allies as enemies.
That translates to
+1x base speed per point allocation
+1x extra action per point allocation
+1x automatic successes on Brawl or Melee per point allocation
She has 2 sux/points to spend and/or reshuffle per turn.
=== Demon Shintai
You get one Aspect per dot up to 5 dots, and +1 Attribute to different Attributes per level.
Looking at what Demon Aspects we can see:
•Huge Size: 12 feet tall, +3 Bruised HLs
•Claws: Str + 2 Agg
•Armor: +1 soak
•Wings: Flight at 25mph
She could have multiple Armor aspects; there's no evidence of it, but I'll assume she has 2 Armor aspects instead of just one.
So we assume this puts her at Demon Shintai 5.
Which means she also has +3 Strength, + 2 Stamina and +2 Dexterity, which are the additional bonuses up to DS 5.
No visible Yin Prana use.
Running the numbers, with current buffs active for Eiko, and Molly restricted to VLE + Steelskin + Excellency(ATB + BSM + WBS already active), you get the following numbers:
Eiko in Demon Shintai Warform
•+2 Dex
•Base attack pool : Dex 5 + Melee 5 + Dex 2 bonus = 12 dice pool at DC6.
•10 HLs (Base 7 +3 Bruised HLs)
•2 Agg soak
•+4 Lethal/bashing soak(+2 Sta, + 2 Armor)
•Damage: Base Str + 5 Agg (Str + Claws 2 + Str buff 3) = <10 Agg
•Wings: 25mph/40kph
•2 point Black Wind pool
Basically, Eiko has great offense, but cant apply most of her soak against the Agg weapon Molly wields casually, making her a glass cannon. And she cant use several arts while Black Wind is active.
Unless she has something big in reserve, in a one on one fight Molly goes first because of all her initiative boosters, pops a Melee Excellency and murders Eiko in under ten seconds/three combat turns without taking damage.
3 seconds if she spends 1 Essence for GSNF.
Hence my argument that a prepared arena with civilians was playing to Eiko's advantages; elsewhere we wouldnt care.
Its a good thing for everyone that this is a showfight.
In a fight against Dresden she'd also be a glass cannon, because Dresden wields fire which deals Agg.
Dresdenverse wizards seem to soak lethal and agg damage with Stamina, judging from Dresden's burned hand thanks to Mavra's thralls, but Eiko would still be doing around 10+ Agg damage.
Eggshells with sledgehammers, basically; if she cant take him by surprise he probably kills her, and vice versa.
She would be absolute murder against any group without Agg though. QM has ruled that holy water and oils dont work against lesser akuma, and her warform has upwards of 8 lethal soak, which is more than a mortal with the heaviest armor suit in ExWoD, and she can use people as juice packs to regen chi for healing, even without the sbility to drain environmental chi.
And if she frenzies, she just doesnt stop killing.
Special Investigations or the Daedalus people would just evaporate like butter in a furnace.
And even the Einherjar might well have issues going up against her or akuma like her without magical support.
Hence Odin's sudden interest in magical weapons.
We might want to keep the video footage from the security cameras for the next time we want to make a strong argument to mortals about the inadvisability of stumbling into fights with supernaturals.
Actually, since we're wet and rolling at -1 DC, we average 3.6 successes for steel skin activation, and that affects VLE, so we're looking more at 13 soak than 11, possibly 15, at DC4 due to SWSS and being wet.
Although, seriously, did anyone have a useable plan for successfully winning a mock fight when we only do Aggravated damage, and our opponent does the same? And now we're in an objectively worse spot than if we were fighting for real, and can't even use MiM for the trouble.
I hate to say "I told you so," but… oh, wait, no I don't. This was dumb.
Actually, since we're wet and rolling at -1 DC, we average 3.6 successes for steel skin activation, and that affects VLE, so we're looking more at 13 soak than 11, possibly 15, at DC4 due to SWSS and being wet.
Although, seriously, did anyone have a useable plan for successfully winning a mock fight when we only do Aggravated damage, and our opponent does the same? And now we're in an objectively worse spot than if we were fighting for real, and can't even use MiM for the trouble.
I hate to say "I told you so," but… oh, wait, no I don't. This was dumb.
If you had told us giving that reason you could say that yes. Also she is undead we can fill all her health tracks but the last one with agg damage only do a single lethal damage. We have friends here they should be able to make at least a little damage. I don't really want to use essence if we don't have to. Every essence used is 15 more minutes of recovery time.
Actually, since we're wet and rolling at -1 DC, we average 3.6 successes for steel skin activation, and that affects VLE, so we're looking more at 13 soak than 11, possibly 15, at DC4 due to SWSS and being wet.
Although, seriously, did anyone have a useable plan for successfully winning a mock fight when we only do Aggravated damage, and our opponent does the same? And now we're in an objectively worse spot than if we were fighting for real, and can't even use MiM for the trouble.
I hate to say "I told you so," but… oh, wait, no I don't. This was dumb.
2)As long as we dont kill her, she's good. She expects to take pain, after all.
Hit her with Agg, then coup de grace with Bashing damage if its necessary due to her falling into frenzy.
Or just impale her with wood for paralysis.
Have Gard in backup; takes her two turns to prepare explosive runes, so roughly that long to produce binding runes.
