I think that making a fine thrall is possible for a Black Court Vampire especially an elder able to use proper magic and not just the inherent gifts of their nature, it just takes a lot more time and effort than the 'zombies that still need to use the bathroom' that are most of their thralls.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
I think that making a fine thrall is possible for a Black Court Vampire especially an elder able to use proper magic and not just the inherent gifts of their nature, it just takes a lot more time and effort than the 'zombies that still need to use the bathroom' that are most of their thralls.
Dresden Files the list of magical factions that have a few human retainers, is mid thousands. Need more information to even attempt to narrow the list down.
- Location
- Germany
Okay, I missread that due to the contrast with the latter half of the Charm, where it is explicitly mentioned to take an action.
But you are right, the reflexive part is creating/drawing the sandstorm-weapon.
Mindbreaking seems to be their default, but I wouldn't rule out that some cunning old bastards (and the surviving Black Vamps are all cunning old bastards) learned a bit more careful methods of mind control to create long-term functional minions.
After all if mortal mages can do it and Blacks have an inherent talent for mind-control it doesn't seem absurd that they could be just as good at it.
Fair enough.
I dont think there are many BC Elders alive to try. The revelation of their weaknesses means they have to stay low and move fast, and be willing to abandon everything it necessary. Which doesnt really make for keeping retainers.
Drakul at least is probably snobbish enough to bother, but the rest?
I do wonder if we could fix a Renfield though. The RPG sourcebooks said it wasnt doable
Something to consider on the future.
The QM agrees at lesst.
Thing is, the only named Black Court Master Vampires we've seen are Mavra and Constance Bushnell. Both of them had an....attritional attitude towards their coterie, regarding them as expendable munitions rather than valued resources.
Small sample size, but it suggests thats the norm.
*insight brought to you by occult 5*
If their souls are still there and in one piece the power of the Chosen can fix their minds, if need by by rewinding them, expunging the memory of the psychic damage as the mind is rebuilt
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Haha, I don't know how many people here are old enough to remember video rental stores back when VHS was the go-to format, but this reminded me of the stickers that I used to see on the cases.
'Please be kind and rewind your Renfield!'
Hmm.
So Molly has to consider when she meets a scourge of BC vampires that their Renfields might be salvageable and worth taking alive instead of just Mozambique Protocoling them. Same with the Darkhounds they use as security.
Gonna need that High Security Gaol option for her inner Kingdom.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I would generally prefer to sword them all into bloody minion chunks, but I suppose there might occasionally be one worth trying to rehab.
- Location
- washington
one dude like a good portion of them are just random civies fucked over. Of course practically curing them all would basically take forever.
Note: Renfields are all victims.
You dont get a choice about being a thrall; someone just walks in and breaks your brain into something thats loyal guard dog shaped.
Black Court vampires otoh, well..
Word of Jim said:
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I wonder if we could unmake a vampire. Of any Court.
Straight up exorcise its Hunger with Sapphire Circle Banishment.
That would terrify some of them.
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- Location
- washington
in fairness I don't think goldfish thinks their bad or something just hes a bit evil and cares not for the uninteresting mooks.Note: Renfields are all victims.
You dont get a choice about being a thrall; someone just walks in and breaks your brain into shap.
Black Court vampires otoh, well..
Reddit - Dive into anything
I wonder if we could unmake a vampire.
Straight up exorcise its Hunger with Sapphire Circle Banishment.
Hey dp does our occult 5 tells us anything about how to cure a red court vampire fully turned and not?
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
True enough, but hesitating or trying to pull our punches against the thralls trying to kill us is a quick route to bad things happening.
It's not nice to kill them, but it's certainly a mercy to end them quickly and painlessly. Only when we are strong enough to laugh off Black Court Vampires themselves will I be comfortable trying to do anything but kill their minions as efficiently as possible.
- Location
- Germany
Well, a club or staff would deal as much bashing damage as our sword does lethal.
So hitting non-lethally is not really the detriment it is in some other games...
- Location
- washington
pffft no its not at least not for us they aren't very uh well intelligent beyond point and shoot type orders. We will be fine others not so much honestly we've got so many ways to incapacitate in the future.
Situational.
One in the knee and another in the elbow will probably disable the fuck out of a Renfield.
And thats assuming we dont use Demonic Primacy of Essence(1 dot charm) to social all of them into terrified compliance.
On the other side of things, see the Fellowship of St Giles, and, well:
Use that on their older members with Verdant Emptiness Endowment, then Sapphire Circle Banishment to get rid of their vampiric copilot. They lose their superpowers, but also the temptation to eat people, without dying.Oh it gets even more One Ring-y if you really want to open the box of infernal goodies. You know how wizards age slowly... well
Unaging (2 pt. Merit)
The years seem to pass you by. Time moves on, but you remain essentially the same physical age as you were when this Merit stopped your aging process. Maybe you discovered the Fountain of Youth, upgraded yourself to perpetual stability, assumed an odd relationship with the time stream, or entered an uncanny bargain that preserved your current age. And so, although you continue to accumulate the scars, experience, and perspective of age, your body maintains a consistent state of chronological development. Note that this is not the same thing as immortality – injuries and sickness can kill you just as surely as they'll kill any other person. Age-based decrepitude,however, is not something you'll have to worry about.
Use it wisely
And if they want new superpowers...well, we can now bargain.
- Location
- washington
I mean wiki says renfields get more and more violent until they self destruct they last a couple years tops. I'm not sure thralls have any powers beyond being pain resistant and single minded to the extreme end. oh wait you mean blackcourt not renfields lol no. Like it'd work and take away temptations black court vampires are literally soulless (and without stuff like love or mercy as far as I know) though also what do you mean by copilot the only ones who theoretically have copilots are white court?
I'm not really a fan of the direct attack charms. The effects are neat, but we have a bottleneck in terms of essence expenditure per turn and our essence pool overall. With all the other competing places to invest it I'm not convinced it's worth the effort at this point. It also costs us eight exp to get.
How is this preferable to building ourselves a gun for the cost of a crafting project? I'd still prefer a dot or two in firearms, but even that is still cheaper exp wise.
You guys are acting like guns are a joke when we're probably going to play through the first quarter to half of the game being fairly vulnerable to being killed by them and fighting things that are pretty much the same.
How is this preferable to building ourselves a gun for the cost of a crafting project? I'd still prefer a dot or two in firearms, but even that is still cheaper exp wise.
You guys are acting like guns are a joke when we're probably going to play through the first quarter to half of the game being fairly vulnerable to being killed by them and fighting things that are pretty much the same.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I tend to treat guns in fiction as a joke unless it can compete with a heavy bolter. Irl however I'm fucking terrified of them and will never be going to America ever.
- Location
- Germany
As far as I understand it only costs one Essence to "activate" the Sandstrike for a scene.
You can use the single-target version like a gun after that, at no extra-cost.
Ok, looks like Molly is going to be a bit noisy. Since she is at max Essence I think it makes sense to do it with Excellency
Arc 1 Post 38: A Way with Words
A Way with Words
15th of July 2006 A.D.
"Soo..." you look between Daniel and Lydia as the girl sips her milkshake and he does his best to pretend he is more interested in his soda than in staring dopely at her. "What got you interested in my dorky younger brother Lydia?" At the inevitable dirty look you raise your hands in mock surrender. "I'm asking so I know which of your many sterling qualities she missed the better to point them out."
Lost 1 Essence
Lydia giggles at his long-suffering sigh before threading her fingers through his on the table.
"First off you have to understand my dad and me, we move around a lot. It's rare for me to have more than one term in a school so I'm always the new girl wherever go and it doesn't help that he used to be really protective of me. 'We don't know who the girl's parents are Lydia, you can't go to her sleepover'. Nevermind that it would be easier to get to know people if we stuck around longer than a turn of the season. I mean honestly it's 2005 not 1905, he can just talk to people over the internet, they have video conferences and everything." She looks around a little tentatively. "I'm not boring you am I?"
"Of course not, go on, " you assure her and Izzy nods along, though with less enthusiasm
"But we've been in Chicago since November of last year and he said he doesn't know how long it will take for him to close the last deal in town so I decided to take another tack to meeting people, go someplace here you don't really expect people to stick around for four years like a club or a gym or something. Dad thinks pottery classes are silly..." She smiles at the memory. "'Most humans haven't had to make their own pots for a long time Lyda' he said to me so I went with something he has been serious about ever since I can remember, self defense. Well alright not self-defense, he hired people for that..."
The pizza arrives, pausing her story, though not for long with your prompting. "I bet the looming bodyguards didn't help with the whole making friends thing huh?"
"Eh... it's not so bad, part of the job is knowing when not to loom, it's not like I'm a movie star who needs to scare off paparazzi..."
"You're certainly pretty enough to be in movies," Daniel blurts out the compliment, blushing as Izzy and you turn to look at him.
"I was a goat in the Nativity Play in Palermo in second grade and I messed up the lines," Lydia cuts his off with a shake of the head and the slice of pizza in her hand as well.
"Froze up?" Izzy asks halfway between sympathy and amusement.
"Worse, tried to improvise, I told the kids playing the wisemen to pretty please not cut up my entrails for divination."
Heroically you manage not to spit out your drink in sudden laughter. "No... How on earth did you know what haruspicy was in primary school?"
"Dad has a really big library in French, Sicilian, Italian, Latin... Old Welsh too but I was never able to read that." Lydia makes a face, making it clear she had tried at least.
"Oh no, it's a nerd-off. Run while you still can," Izzy 'whispers' to Daniel loud enough they probably heard her two tables over. To his credit he really does try to keep a smile off his face.
"But you can read French and Italian and Latin," you continue, too caught up in the story to pay much mind to the byplay. Sicilian is a dialect you are pretty sure.
"Well yeah, I think Sicilian or French might technically be my native languages, I learned them more or less from the cradle as it was. I started learning English at... three I think. "
"Wow, you don't have an accent or anything," you note impressed. You are still not sure what to think of Lydia's father the banker with a multilingual library, but she sure is interesting.
"I talk English or French most places and I have an ear for accents, you know so I don't sound extra weird," the younger girl explains. "I also don't usually explain I can read Latin on first meeting someone. You're very easy to talk to Molly."
I cheat, you think just a little guiltily, she seems like a nice enough girl and not any kind of threat to Daniel. "You did not compel her to speak my princess, merely found the right words to make her feel at ease," Usum reminds you. "If skill is cheating than all in the world should strive for mediocrity."
"So where'd you fit the martial arts?" you reel things back on track.
"In the gaping void where my social life should be," she deadpans. "Have you ever been to a fancy cocktail party? Cure for insomnia for sure, the only good part is the food and you can never take as much as you like if you want to be polite. So I just dropped all of those in favor of martial arts and didn't miss anything."
"And she is really good at it for someone just starting out," Daniel cuts in.
"Eh... I'm light on my feet and not scared of getting hit," Lydia says modestly. "Fact is I wished people would hit me already, that's how I met Daniel more or less. See I'm pretty tall for a girl so sensei would usually pair me off with boys, but most boys were scared to actually follow the forms all the way, or they were trying to go easy with me to flirt... urgh. Daniel was the only one who would act normal."
"That's me normal as they come," your brother says self-deprecatingly as he takes another bite of Pizza.
"Hey! Don't sell yourself short." Lydia turns to look at him "You were also the one who walked me though how public transport worked, clueless foreigner that I am and you didn't laugh when I told you I didn't have a phone until last year and I barely knew what a video game was."
"Er... what?" Izzy has many fine qualities but she is not the most tactful of souls.
"Dad says playing a game against a machine is like eating cardboard and probably about as unhealthy for you." Lydia shrugs helplessly.
"Multiplayer exists you know," Izzy points out.
"I know that now, Mario is cool," the younger girl says.
"Wait you are from Italy and you don't know what Mario is?" Izzy asks confounded.
"If you could not know what the Lucky Charms leprechaun was wouldn't you choose not to to?" Daniel says in defense of his girlfriend.
Izzy stops to think for a moment. "Point."
All of you laugh, but you keep coming back to the reason Lydia's father dislikes video games. Wanting to play against people with something to gain and something to lose... that sounds like something one of the fey would say. Is Lydia a changeling, one of the mortal scions of faerie? Many of them have gifts beyond what mortals can boast, in wit, in charm in grace... If she is what is her father doing traveling around the mortal world with her in mortal guise? Does she even know what she is?
Lost 1 Essence
"If she is of fey blood it is likely of the Winter Court," Usum notes clinically. "Else knowing or unknowing she would have been repelled by the chill of your presence Crown of the World's Wisdom."
Crown... that reminds you. I could look, know for certain what she is hiding, what is being hidden from her even, but should I? This is the first time you have considered turning the power of the Crown on someone who is not an enemy like Gorfel, who might even be a friend. On the other hand she is close to Daniel... what if she does know, what if she has some plan for him? Even if she is unknowing a changeling might put your brother in danger just being that she is, involved in that world.
What do you do?
[] Ask a question of your Crown
-[] Write in
[] Just go out and have fun
-[] Write in suggestion
[] Write in
OOC: Excellency comes through again. Now comes the hard part, what do you do about it?
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Rolls
DC 7 because you are asking for her life's story minutes after meeting her, not that it matters with this roll
Opposed willpower Roll, I forgot to do this in time so if it came up high I would have had to rewrite some of the update, but well... fail
Occult Roll with Excellency, DC 8 because you are trying to guess a lot from a relatively small amount of information
DC 7 because you are asking for her life's story minutes after meeting her, not that it matters with this roll
Opposed willpower Roll, I forgot to do this in time so if it came up high I would have had to rewrite some of the update, but well... fail
Occult Roll with Excellency, DC 8 because you are trying to guess a lot from a relatively small amount of information
