Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
@DragonParadox threadmark that as an Informational post.
I mean, Kingdom charm borrows strongly from The Spirit of the Living World canon E2 Infernal charm, which is a heretical charm of Triumphant Devil Tigers (from Broken Winged Crane):On the topic of what Molly's hell is supposed to be, it's worth considering the charm description:
The hell is patterned after Yami Wan's bullshit, but it's formed of the substance of the infernal's own soul and exaltation in concert. It's located within them in the sense that it's grown into their spiritual existence.
My read is that this is supposed to be a true self willed miracle of dark creation; a mirror of the Yama Kings, but also of the primordials drawing themselves out of chaos by their own self contained power.
It looks like a horizon realm, but that's just fancy cosplay because the exaltation likes the look.
And one must note several things:Cost: —; Mins: Essence 6; Type: Permanent
Keywords: Heretical
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: The Face of the Titans
Through the power of her Exaltation, the
Infernal carves out a world from the substance of
her own soul. This Charm permits the Infernal to
create a world, piece by piece, as though with Con-
structive Convergence of Principles (including the
requisite mote cost and roll to expand and modify
that world). This does not count as a Charm use,
but the Infernal must remain in a meditative trance
while altering or expanding her inner world. She
may not create demesnes or magical things within
herself, and her creations do not unravel if they do
not interact with Creation. The Infernal's soul is
treated as Pure Chaos for this purpose.
This created world exists wholly within the
Infernal's soul, but is otherwise a real, ongoing,
self-contained place, which continues to exist
even when she is not paying attention to it. The
internal worlds of the Infernal Exalted are strange,
uncanny places—glassy citadels floating atop clouds
in a brazen sky; a massive upside-down fortress
hanging above a forest of ivory trees surrounding
a still, emerald lake; or a city of cyclopean basalt
towers beneath a jet-black sky in which a single
red eye hangs and stares. The world the Infernal
forges should be consistent with the mood and
themes of the Excellency she created through
Triumphant Howl of the Devil-Tiger, at the Sto-
ryteller's discretion.
The Infernal may mentally visit this world by
taking a miscellaneous action (Speed 5 long ticks,
DV -3) to enter an Inactive meditative state, always
appearing at the center of the first part of the world
she shaped into being. She may leave this trance at
any time with a Speed 5, DV -2 miscellaneous ac-
tion. Individuals created in her inner world do not
have souls of their own and cannot grant her Essence
through prayer, though they are otherwise real to
her while she is there (for instance, she might copy
such a person with Black Mirror Shintai, and any
damage suffered manifests on her physical body).
The Infernal cannot yet travel physically into this
world, bring anything from the outer world into it,
or bring anything from the inner world out. These
feats require additional Charms.
They do have some similarities though.Becoming a Primordial isn't really a thing mostly because Primordial isn't a species all the "Primordials" were about as different from each other as they were from everything else. The group is defined by being the group that created creation out of the chaos.
Place your bets, people: is that bottle of scotch coming out before or after our power spits out an entire nation just for us to rule?Odds of Michael breaking out the bottle of scotch he's had since before Molly was born rising
Managed to witness Nemesis' Shame right under Mab's nose without her catching on. Priceless.Bore witness to the shame of He Who Walks Beside and unraveled its plans for Maeve 3 XP
No.[X] Save xp for next turn
We are not guaranteed to get more xp next turn so let's save it, especially since we are going to have shorter arcs.
'less' should be 'more'?build counterfactuals for when it might have acted sooner for less harm
Wow. Charity really not meeting the standard she's set for herself with previous willpower rolls.
I'll concede.This is explicitely wrong. Here, on Malfeas (2E, Compass of Celestial Direcations, volume 5: Malfeas)
But he isnt. There arent two archangels in Hell; he's the only one.? Lucifer can be a department head, no problem. Doesn't mean he's the head honcho of the whole enterprise
Well. Not quite freely, but MORE freely, certainly. The Fallen bound in the coins are the freaking elite of Hell–everyone the big D didn't want trying to stab him in the back, basically. If they were suddenly freed it would do all kinds of horrible things to about a million balances of power, with repercussions that would last for centuries.It seems to me that as long as the Church has some of the coins, those paerticular Denarians are neutralized. Doing a Mt Doom with the coins might free up the spirits housed within to act freely in the world.
See above.
Yomi Wan is not really equivalent to the Christian Hell.Also running hell just isn't as big a deal when there are at least 10 thousand hells. It like "Lucifer runs hell"
"Which one?"
"You know that fire and brimstone hell."
"Which one?"
"The one in opposition to the white god"
"Not exactly narrowing things down."
See my reply to Yog.not sure why your referencing me for the world stuff I don't know enough to comment. Unless you meant the previous stuff.
As for me misreading stuff I mean I'm not it quite literally says he is not the ruler of hell how can that be more clear.
Essentially this.I don't think telling Charity everything here is a problem.
It might make her a little bit more of a target for Nemesis, but that one will attack us through our family anyway if it can.
And other people learning about Nemesis is not such a problem, since even people who would generally be willing to summon Outsiders would propably hesitate to invite a mind-controling virus into themselves.
This is an entirely different case from when we didn't tell her about the situation with Eiko, because in that case another person's life depended on Charity's ability to keep secrets from Wan Kuei and Devils, while in this case we are the main-party involved.
COMMENTSThis is what I have for the vampires and wizards, the fey I'll have to think about how to break it up
@DragonParadox as I parse it,
'less' should be 'more'?
Unless I misunderstand things, perhaps something along the lines of: 'for when it might have caused more harm by acting sooner'
Why? Our tech score is trash and we won't ignore 1s even if we buy the excellency. It's wasteful for the direction we chose in Molly's build at this point.Technology Excellency. Still want it just as much as before. Just saying.
8 exp is painful when we can make ourselves a gun and use TA to make it scary for basically free.a ranged attack. We had a use for one this last arc. We let Lydia take the shot instead and it wasn't quite enough.
TA?8 exp is painful when we can make ourselves a gun and use TA to make it scary for basically free.
I'll concede.
I might revisit this when my computer is back up.
But he isnt. There arent two archangels in Hell; he's the only one.
And its explicitly stated by Word of Jim that the Denarians are in Coins because they are the elite of Hell, and the ones most likely to stab him in the back, so he shunted them into the Coins when the opportunity arose:
Quote from: Bob on November 30, 2006, 09:31:59 PM
Well. Not quite freely, but MORE freely, certainly. The Fallen bound in the coins are the freaking elite of Hell–everyone the big D didn't want trying to stab him in the back, basically. If they were suddenly freed it would do all kinds of horrible things to about a million balances of power, with repercussions that would last for centuries.
Which assumes that they /can/ be destroyed. I mean, don't think that in 2,000 years, no one has ever TRIED it. And there are still thirty of them kicking around.
Which isn't necessarily to say that it's impossible. But it sure as Hell wouldn't be easy. And given that, while in the coins, they ARE effectively frozen in carbonite without a human agent to assist them, containment certainly seems to be a prudent course.
Funny you should mention that whole notion about redeeming Lasciel . . . >
Jim
See above.
Yomi Wan is not really equivalent to the Christian Hell.
For one thing, Hell has an Archangel, and Archangels are benchmarked with people like Uriel who can explicitly shatter galaxies in DF canon, while Yama Kings rate below Mab.
See my reply to Yog.
Essentially this.
Keeping information from Charity about Eiko's plot is justified because if it leaks, it causes deaths and geopolitical destabilization.
Keeping information from her about Nemesis? Not so much.
Nemesis is targeting her family anyway, and Nemesis is known to pretty much all the major players in this setting, from the Archangels, Dragons and Mothers of the Fae Courts all the way down to hundred and twenty year old wizards like Donald Morgan.
If relatively young wizards like Morgan and Maggie LeFay knew about them, then its not really a forbidden topic.
Just a dicuss with care.
COMMENTS
-Whampires can suffer whats essentially autoimmune damage from their Hunger if damaged enough.
Happened to Thomas in Peace Talks after the svartalfar tortured him.
-Red Court vampires take either soak lethal damage as bashing, or take reduced damage after soak.
In the Love Hurts short story, Murphy shot one, a Baron, in the head and it kept moving.
She ended up shooting it half a dozen times in the head before it went down, and had to empty her pistol magazine in its head to be sure.
In Death Masks, Martin blows out chunks of Paolo Ortega's chest and breaks his femur with bullets from a high caliber sniper rifle and he keeps taking shots at Dresden, throws Susan so hard she smashes into a wall and loses consciousness, then makes it home even with Kincaid and the Archive throwing hands.
Then in Changes, we see a Reds suffering bisection from Dresden fire damage and still being alive and screaming for sustained periods of time."You can't," I said. I shot a glance toward home plate, but the Archive apparently hadn't noticed anything amiss. My will wavered, and the mordite sphere bobbed back and forth. "They'll hear the shot. They'll kill you."
Chapter Thirty
"Quite possibly," he agreed. "As I said, I am prepared to accept that."
His words chilled me, and the mordite sphere darted at my head. I caught it a couple of feet from me and held it, but just barely.
"I told you, Dresden. There's only one way this can end. I would have preferred an honorable demise for you, but any death will do."
I stared at the hidden gun.
A dot of bright scarlet light appeared on Ortega's chest, and tracked slowly up.
My expression must have changed, because Ortega glanced down too. The bright pinpoint of the laser sight settled over his heart and became still.
Ortega's eyes widened and his expression twisted into fury.
A lot of things happened at once.
There was a hissing sound, a thump, and a big section of Ortega's chest dented in. Scarlet sprayed out behind him. An instant later, a booming sound much deeper than the crack of a rifle echoed around the stadium.
Ortega let out a screech that went off the high end of the scale. Fire erupted from the hidden gun, burning through Ortega's flesh mask and shirt to reveal the muzzle of a small-caliber revolver clenched in an inhuman black hand. The bullet Ortega had taken had half twisted him, and he missed. I thought hanging around to let him try again was a bad idea, so I threw myself to one side and gave the mordite sphere another shove.
Ortega dodged the mordite, and even wounded, he was fast. A bright red dot appeared on his thigh for half a second, and with another hiss-thump-boom, the unseen gunman hit him again. I heard the bones of Ortega's leg break.
Susan threw my staff and rod to me and leapt for Ortega, grabbing his free arm and twisting as if to throw him. Instead, the vampire writhed weirdly, and she wound up tearing the flesh mask from him, peeling it away like a banana skin to reveal the slime-slick, flabby-bodied creature beneath it-the true Ortega. He still held the gun though, and he turned to shoot at me again.
I screamed, "Ventas servitas!" at the top of my lungs, throwing my will at dirt of the pitcher's mound. It whirled up into a miniature cyclone of fine brown soil, forcing the vampire to turn its head and shield its eyes. The second shot went wild as well, and I scrambled to get my blasting rod.
The flying dirt slowed her down, but Susan still went for Ortega's gun hand. It was a mistake. Even with only one leg to support him, Ortega screeched again, twisted, and flung Susan from the pitcher's mound into the third row of seats behind first base. She hit with bone-breaking force and dropped out of sight.
Sudden screeches filled the air, and I looked up to see as many as a dozen of the Red Court, revealed in their true forms, coming into the stadium. Some climbed over the walls, some jumped in from the upper levels, and some came bursting out of private boxes in showers of exploding glass.
-Blampires take bashing damage and/or reduced damage from gunfire.
See the fight scene in Blood Rites, where Lara literally shot one of them in the eye, and it told her it wouldnt stop him, and she replied that she knew, but that it would slow it down.
The Blampires in that scene were killed by entropy curse, impalement, True Faith, and in the case of the last, Lara Raith physically bashing its skull in with her bare hands before tearing its head off its shoulders.Lara Raith wasn't doing badly for herself. The wind was blowing the short little black silk robe back off of her, so it was all black lace and pale flesh that somehow did not present a contrast to the gun. One-ear had fallen on his side. Shards of brittle bone protruded from both thighs and both knees, where Lara Raith had exercised her marksmanship. One-ear pushed himself up, and Lara put a shot in the arm supporting the vampire's weight, One-ear's elbow exploded in a cloud of ruined cloth, moldy flesh, and bone splinters, and the creature fell back to the ground.
Lara put a bullet through One-ear's left eye. The smell was indescribably nauseating. Lara aimed at the vampire's other eye.
"This won't kill me," the creature snarled.
"I don't need to," Lara responded. "Just to slow you down."
"I'll be after you in hours," One-ear-one-eye said.
"Look somewhere sunny," she responded. "Au revoir, darling."
The gun's hammer clicked down and silence ensued.
Lara had time to blink in disbelief at the gun. Then the vampire Thomas had stunned rushed at Lara's back. The creature wasn't quite a blur, but it was fast as hell. I tried to shout a warning at her, but it came out more of a croak than anything.
Lara shot a glance over her shoulder and started to move, but my warning had come too late. The vampire seized her by her dark hair and spun her around. Then it hit her with a broad swing of its arm and literally knocked her out of her high-heeled shoes. She flew at the nearest wall, half spinning in the air, and hit hard. The gun tumbled from her fingers and she fell, her eyes wide and frightened, her expression stunned. Her face had been cut on the cheek, at the corner of her mouth, and on her forehead. She was bleeding odd, pale blood in thick, trickling lines.
The vampire shuddered and leapt after her, landing on all fours. It was graceful, but alien, far more arachnid than feline. The corpse prowled over to her, seized her throat, and shoved her shoulders against the wall. Then it thrust out a long, leathery tongue and started licking her blood, hissing in mounting pleasure.
One- ear slithered over to her as well, using his unwounded arm and a serpentine writhing of the rest of his body. "Raith's second in command," the vampire rasped. "As well as the White who betrayed us. Now you're both mine."
Lara tried to push the vampire licking her blood away, but she wasn't strong enough, and she still looked dazed. "Get away from me."
"Mine," One-ear repeated. It drew Lara's hair back away from her throat. The other vampire took her hands and pinned them against the wall above her head.
One- ear touched its tongue to Lara's mouth and shivered. "I'll show you what real vampires are like. You'll see things differently soon. And you'll be lovely, still. For a little while. I'll enjoy that."
Lara struggled, but the haze of confusion over her eyes did not clear, and her motions had a dreamlike lack of coordination. Her face took on an expression of horror as both vampires leaned into her, their withered teeth settling onto her flesh. They bit her, and she bucked in terror and agony. There were ugly, slurping sounds beneath Lara Raith's screams.
Which was what I'd been waiting for. Once they had bitten down, I gathered up momentum as quietly as I could, closed the last few yards in the springing strides I would have used on a fencing strip, and drove the six-inch heel of one of Lara's black pumps as hard as I could into the space between the unwounded vampire's shoulder blades. I had the heel of my hand and the full weight of my body behind the blow, and I hit square and hard, so that the heel drove into its back, just left of its spine, directly at the vampire's withered heart.
I didn't get the response I would have liked best. The vampire didn't disintegrate or explode into dust. But it did convulse with a sudden scream, its body going into almost the same kind of spastic seizure the other one had displayed on having a turkey rammed through its chest. It staggered and fell to the ground, its dead face locked into a grimace of surprise and helpless pain.
One- ear was slow to react. By the time it tore its mouth from the gnawed and bleeding slope of Lara Raith's left breast, I had my mother's pentacle out and had focused all of my attention on it.
Now I've heard that the power of faith is simply another aspect of the magic I used all the time. I've also heard that it is a completely different kind of energy, totally unrelated to the living power I felt all around me. Certainly it garnered a very different reaction from various supernatural entities than my everyday wizardry did, so maybe they weren't related at all.
But that didn't matter. I wasn't holding a crucifix in the thing's face. I was holding the symbol of what I believed in. The five-pointed star of the pentacle represented the five forces of the universe, those of air, fire, water, earth, and of spiritual energy, laid into patterns of order and life and bound within a circle of human thought, human will. I believed that magic was fundamentally a force of life, of good, something meant to protect and preserve. I believed that those who wielded it therefore had a responsibility to use that power in the way it was meant to be used-and that was belief enough to tap into the vast power of faith, and to direct it against One-ear.
The pentacle burst into silver and blue light, a blaze as bright as an airborne flare. One-ear's stretched facial skin began to peel away, and the thick fluids oozing from its ruined eye socket burst into silver flame. The vampire screamed and threw itself away from that silver fire. If he'd had a crony left, they could have come at me from opposite directions, so that the blazing light from the pentacle could sear only one. But he didn't, and I followed after One-ear, keeping the pentacle held before me, my concentration locked upon it.
One- ear scrambled over the writhing vampire with the turkey-crushed chest, and the creature, maybe younger or more vulnerable than its leader, simply burst into flame as the pentacle glared down upon it. I had to skip back a step from that sudden heat, and the fallen vampire was consumed by blinding fire until nothing was left of it.
By the time my eyes had adjusted to the comparative darkness of the parking lot again, One-ear was nowhere to be seen. I checked over my shoulder and saw the transformed Lara Raith straddle the staked vampire, her eyes blazing silver and bright, her skin shining as Thomas's had. She drove blows down at its face, crushing it with the first few, then driving into its skull with sickening squelching sounds during subsequent blows. She continued, screaming at the top of her lungs the whole while, until she'd crushed its face and moved onto its neck, beating it into shapeless pulp.
And then she tore the vampire's head off its shoulders, killing it.
She rose slowly, pale eyes distant and inhuman. Her white skin was streaked with ichor of black, brown, and dark green, mingling with the pale, pinkish blood around her cuts and the bite wounds. Her dark hair had fallen from its mostly up style, and hung around her in a wild tangle. She looked terrified and furious and sexy as hell.
-Blampires are also weak to garlic.
In the short story Its My Birthday Too, Dresden maims a master Blampire with pizza store garlic powder.
And holy water is also an issue, I think.
We still roll 6 dice for Intelligence + Technology, same as our pool for Craft (Metalworking) and other Craft specialties one degree of separation away from our Mechanics specialty. That's still enough to go superhuman with an Excellency. And we can still use our dice adders and difficulty reducers like WHWH, BSM, and CCC just as well as we can with Craft. And TTC applies to Technology rolls as well, and pretty much always at the improved 10x rate instead of the 5x rate of most Craft projects.Why? Our tech score is trash and we won't ignore 1s even if we buy the excellency. It's wasteful for the direction we chose in Molly's build at this point.
Transcendent Anathema, it's what allows us to deal universal agg. The ability isn't native to the sword, any weapon we wield can be made to do the same.
COMMENTARY
Michael rolls like a paladin. Just saying.Rolls
Willpower Charity to deal with the Cosmic Horror around the Coffee Table... she is as fine as a normal person can be
Willpower Michael... Paladin Ahoy
Molly giving an account, no excellency because she is exhausted and almost mote-tapped
Does Lydia know who the Big Bad is? Easy roll because of the hint
Charity Willpower roll to object to her daughter looking things Man was Not Meant to know not so much in the eye as in the soul... this is just not her night it seems
*Michael does not roll an objection due to the serenity he gained above*
Counter-argument:8 exp is painful when we can make ourselves a gun and use TA to make it scary for basically free.
We're a bad shot, but guns can have stuff added to them to help with that which fall under the purview of craft.
If we're getting an attack charm we should go straight for our perfect instead. It's more expensive, but will always be relevant and we're starting to hit the point where perfect combat effects become important.
In this quest, it gives +2 dice in a given specialty IIRC.Speciality is useless. It gives us double 10s but as exalted we already get that.
Probably, I think.Changed some stuff to make Blacks and Reds more resistant. Not sure how to do the Whites consuming themselves. Allow them to take wounds to get more lifeforce maybe?
Then we should just get SBS and use that. We aren't going to be taking out a flight of sorcerers with thrown cars or something.Counter-argument:
The naagloshii is out there with a coven of 13+ cannibalistic lesser skinwalkers as backup in the greater Chicago area, and skinwalkers can generally fly. That directly impacts our choices this spending period.
I'd probably buy Mind Hand Manipulation over Sandstrike Blast right now, though.
Range is just line of sight, you roll Brawl or Occult, and it has utility uses for moving other people, manipulating heavy objects at a distance and for construction.
And its stunt worthy for doing stuff like lifting objects too heavy for Molly to physically carry, which is handy for when someone throws a car at us.
Or when we throw a car through someone's front porch.