Arguably you wouldn't need Space except for air-gapped systems. If you can ping the system your terminal probably counts for Remote Viewing.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
- Location
- Maryland
They get narced by the local Prince for the blatant Masquerade violation.
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
Very likely nothing. Too diluted.
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
would probably depend on How Much blood is in there i think...
but that would probably be a bit too difficult to pull off...so that particular plan would probably best stay in Dwarf Fortress
if you don't have enough to put at least fifty thousand Vitae in then I don't think you would see an change.
Now if you manage to contaminate the water tower of a much smaller town, the kind where it's small enough that everyone knows the names of everyone else, you might actually cause an observable effect.
Probably still not enough to turn anyone into a ghoul, but possibly enough to cause a few blood-bonds.
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So its possible, but you'd need a lot of Vitae, and it would need to be a small town.
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
Assuming you managed to get enough Vitae, it's far more likely you'll just make tons of human being Vitae-addict. Might be properly blood bonded if you have enough Vitae, but, uh, you likely don't have enough Vitae. Your own, I mean. The one in your vein.
This assumes no Disciple, special ritual, or that sort of thing shenanigan, of course.
This assumes no Disciple, special ritual, or that sort of thing shenanigan, of course.
AshenFox
Copy Control, we are a go.
- Location
- Sector 13
Unless the vampire is the size of a lake, can feed off animals, and has been drinking all the blood from slaughter houses and the tossed out remnants from blood banks, nothing.
Because, as said, dilution.
You need 1 point of Vitae per person you're making into a Ghoul and in Requiem a willpower point per too, which isn't just something that auto deducts from the potential Ghoul (this is specifically referenced in Requiem as something Vampires tend to specifically not tell Ghouls about SPECIFICALLY so Ghouls don't get ideas about sticking you on a wall like a living butterfly they can feed and feed off of).
Because, as said, dilution.
You need 1 point of Vitae per person you're making into a Ghoul and in Requiem a willpower point per too, which isn't just something that auto deducts from the potential Ghoul (this is specifically referenced in Requiem as something Vampires tend to specifically not tell Ghouls about SPECIFICALLY so Ghouls don't get ideas about sticking you on a wall like a living butterfly they can feed and feed off of).
There are ways around th-
-...yeah, I was about to mention slaughter houses. Just use yourself as a filter to convert the all that excess blood into proper vitae.
Actually it would be a lot easier to contaminate a fishing lake than a supply of drinking water.
Does eating a Ghouled fish turn a human into a Ghoul if the fish still has at least one point of Vitae?
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
If it isn't too diluted, do you honestly expect people to drink blood that came out of their tap tho.
I've seen people drink brown/orange/yellow/red tap water before.
Unfortunately pretty plausible.
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
It's blood.
Not water with strange color.
But, like,
blood.
You know. Blood. Who have different properties than water. Who congeals. Who you can't just add to your cooking or add to your coffee or-
Look, either it's too diluted, or it's not diluted and people can see they are about to drink blood, and sensibly, doesn't drink it.
But hypothetically, if they drink the Vitae, they could be blood-bound.
Again, some people are willing to drink tap water with chunks in it.
And very few individuals would be willing to admit that blood is what is pouring out of the tap.
I'm always happy to see people discover the true way of winning fights in Mage, oWoD or nWoD
To be good at fighting as a mage you don't throw around fireballs and spells like some D&D or Harry Potter wizard, you get good at fighting normally and do subtle stuff to push your advantage even harder
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
... anyway, the TLDR is, if you can believe random people would be wiling to eat tap water with chunks on it and it act like blood, your scheme to blood-bound entire population via flooding the water supply with your vitae could work. No guarantee how safe you'll be of course, or the consequence, but it could work.
Otherwise, it's probably DoA.
The Seers Servitors: The Unfated (Fate/Time Ministries)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The Unfated
String-Cutters, Bores, Masses
Exarchs that follow either The Ruin or The Prophet, and the ministries based on these concepts, can potentially gain access to these highly valued servants. Their greatest ability--the ability all the lesser beings should have before the Great Men who truly decide all of history--is their invisibility. They cannot be seen through prophecy, and attempts to establish Temporal sympathy with them always fail. In fact, they are not merely invisible to it, but unable to themselves understand what fate and destiny truly are. Such servants are created by a difficult process that scours them, burning off and then restoring their destiny and ties to fate so many times that at last it cannot be repaired.
In order to best train these fateless beings, whose trauma almost always pushes them into becoming Sleepwalkers, most Seer Pylons that specialize in their creation take them from a young age, but not birth: a child of six or seven is usually the perfect age to shape and mold. They are more likely than the average ex-Sleeper to develop various non-Supernal psychic powers, and as Sleepwalkers they can see, hold, and be openly subject to all manner of magic from their Seer masters.
A Bore is named so because the process that sears their Fate and makes them invisible to time also makes it hard for them to stand out: they never find themselves getting exceptionally lucky, and history has a way of ignoring them: a rogue Unfated could murder a nation's president and find that somehow someone else was credited with the deed: they are not one of the Great Men, and so they do not have a voice in history, and struggle to understand the chance, contingency, and destiny that others--even those without a destiny--are part of.
However, this makes them very hard to track, if you can hide the physical signs and calm and clear the mind. Most often, the Seers who engage with the process--and they keep it hidden to increase the 'market value' of their services--also train the Unfated as a spy, assassin, or courier.
They have no special mental control over their creations, beyond what their abusive and cult-like indoctrination and training generally achieves--and whatever magic can do--but having been stolen from their lives and fundamentally scarred in a way that they might never recover from, it isn't surprising that few have anywhere else to go.
Game Systems
Arcana-Less: The Fate and Time Arcana cannot affect them directly. If you set up bad luck in an area and they're passing through they might incidentally get hit with a falling brick, but any attempt to target them or see them through Fate or Time fails, and fails utterly. At times this can--for a clever Mage who knows what to look for--make it easier to find them, if you can tell where there's a void that shouldn't be, but most Unfated have learned to be very clever about their acts.
Half-Blind: They struggle to connect to people in some fundamental ways. When in an environment devoted to time--ancient dig sites, museums--or to the randomness of chance (such as casinos), reduce their Presence, Manipulation, and Composure by 1. Some of them desperately want to get it, but most of them truly can't. All the worse if they can--as some do--remember a time when chance, luck, and the endless expanse of history made sense.
Scar Tissue: Despite being bizarrely--and sickeningly--free of being able to truly be touched by two of the Arcana, they are in a way sensitive to it: they can tell when anyone attempts to see them in the past, view their nonexistent fates, or otherwise interact with them with Time or Fate. This manifests as a sort of painful, even brutally disgusting, mental itching. In theory a Mage could cast dozens of Fate spells upon them, each doing nothing in truth, but driving them quite up a wall.
A Trained Person: This is not inherent to them: in theory a Seer could do the process on an adult and then leave them to make their way in the world. But practically speaking, unless they go rogue, every Unfated is either a spy, an assassin, or a courier. Their masters tend to ensure that they become a peerless one, or die in the process. For every Untamed that survives the brutal, potentially mind-destroying torture and supernal and sub-supernal alteration involved in their creation, and the years or decades of training that follows, a dozen or more die. And the creators of the Untamed are just fine with that: after all, scarcity breeds value.
Story Hooks
--A rogue Unfated approaches a Consilium, speaking of a plan to destroy it. But does he really mean it, or is he an enemy agent? He seems earnest, but minds can be wiped blank, and not just by Supernal magic, and without being able to read his future and his Fate, it can be hard to be sure.
--A maddened, desperate Untamed searches--between jobs for the Seers--for an Archmage of legend that is said to be able to restore the Fates of those like her. Before her surprisingly late 'recruiment' at ten, she says she was a lover of history and someone with a powerful Destiny that the Seers stole. Can they truly do that? Just steal destinities? And what are the hopes of the Untamed finding what she seeks?
--Your Cabal has made the wrong enemy, and now this Acanthus-heavy group has to deal with armed, fate-invisible assassins that seem to remorselessly chase after them, always in the right place to take the shots, and unwilling to give up.
******
A/N: Each of the four major Seer ministries has special Foot Soldiers, and I thought of an idea for one for The Ruin and/or The Prophet. At the baseline, this is a grudging collaboration for the methods. But that can change.
Also, not sure what the dot cost for a Seer player to 'have' one of these people are, someone else can figure that out if interested.
I'm not sure if this should theoretically or metaphysically be possible, but there was one form of these Servitors that was made by a Lower Depths being that basically stripped them of their minds and turned them into empty dolls. I keep the process vague to allow people to fit their lore into it, but if it's too vague I can become more specific.
String-Cutters, Bores, Masses
Exarchs that follow either The Ruin or The Prophet, and the ministries based on these concepts, can potentially gain access to these highly valued servants. Their greatest ability--the ability all the lesser beings should have before the Great Men who truly decide all of history--is their invisibility. They cannot be seen through prophecy, and attempts to establish Temporal sympathy with them always fail. In fact, they are not merely invisible to it, but unable to themselves understand what fate and destiny truly are. Such servants are created by a difficult process that scours them, burning off and then restoring their destiny and ties to fate so many times that at last it cannot be repaired.
In order to best train these fateless beings, whose trauma almost always pushes them into becoming Sleepwalkers, most Seer Pylons that specialize in their creation take them from a young age, but not birth: a child of six or seven is usually the perfect age to shape and mold. They are more likely than the average ex-Sleeper to develop various non-Supernal psychic powers, and as Sleepwalkers they can see, hold, and be openly subject to all manner of magic from their Seer masters.
A Bore is named so because the process that sears their Fate and makes them invisible to time also makes it hard for them to stand out: they never find themselves getting exceptionally lucky, and history has a way of ignoring them: a rogue Unfated could murder a nation's president and find that somehow someone else was credited with the deed: they are not one of the Great Men, and so they do not have a voice in history, and struggle to understand the chance, contingency, and destiny that others--even those without a destiny--are part of.
However, this makes them very hard to track, if you can hide the physical signs and calm and clear the mind. Most often, the Seers who engage with the process--and they keep it hidden to increase the 'market value' of their services--also train the Unfated as a spy, assassin, or courier.
They have no special mental control over their creations, beyond what their abusive and cult-like indoctrination and training generally achieves--and whatever magic can do--but having been stolen from their lives and fundamentally scarred in a way that they might never recover from, it isn't surprising that few have anywhere else to go.
Game Systems
Arcana-Less: The Fate and Time Arcana cannot affect them directly. If you set up bad luck in an area and they're passing through they might incidentally get hit with a falling brick, but any attempt to target them or see them through Fate or Time fails, and fails utterly. At times this can--for a clever Mage who knows what to look for--make it easier to find them, if you can tell where there's a void that shouldn't be, but most Unfated have learned to be very clever about their acts.
Half-Blind: They struggle to connect to people in some fundamental ways. When in an environment devoted to time--ancient dig sites, museums--or to the randomness of chance (such as casinos), reduce their Presence, Manipulation, and Composure by 1. Some of them desperately want to get it, but most of them truly can't. All the worse if they can--as some do--remember a time when chance, luck, and the endless expanse of history made sense.
Scar Tissue: Despite being bizarrely--and sickeningly--free of being able to truly be touched by two of the Arcana, they are in a way sensitive to it: they can tell when anyone attempts to see them in the past, view their nonexistent fates, or otherwise interact with them with Time or Fate. This manifests as a sort of painful, even brutally disgusting, mental itching. In theory a Mage could cast dozens of Fate spells upon them, each doing nothing in truth, but driving them quite up a wall.
A Trained Person: This is not inherent to them: in theory a Seer could do the process on an adult and then leave them to make their way in the world. But practically speaking, unless they go rogue, every Unfated is either a spy, an assassin, or a courier. Their masters tend to ensure that they become a peerless one, or die in the process. For every Untamed that survives the brutal, potentially mind-destroying torture and supernal and sub-supernal alteration involved in their creation, and the years or decades of training that follows, a dozen or more die. And the creators of the Untamed are just fine with that: after all, scarcity breeds value.
Story Hooks
--A rogue Unfated approaches a Consilium, speaking of a plan to destroy it. But does he really mean it, or is he an enemy agent? He seems earnest, but minds can be wiped blank, and not just by Supernal magic, and without being able to read his future and his Fate, it can be hard to be sure.
--A maddened, desperate Untamed searches--between jobs for the Seers--for an Archmage of legend that is said to be able to restore the Fates of those like her. Before her surprisingly late 'recruiment' at ten, she says she was a lover of history and someone with a powerful Destiny that the Seers stole. Can they truly do that? Just steal destinities? And what are the hopes of the Untamed finding what she seeks?
--Your Cabal has made the wrong enemy, and now this Acanthus-heavy group has to deal with armed, fate-invisible assassins that seem to remorselessly chase after them, always in the right place to take the shots, and unwilling to give up.
******
A/N: Each of the four major Seer ministries has special Foot Soldiers, and I thought of an idea for one for The Ruin and/or The Prophet. At the baseline, this is a grudging collaboration for the methods. But that can change.
Also, not sure what the dot cost for a Seer player to 'have' one of these people are, someone else can figure that out if interested.
I'm not sure if this should theoretically or metaphysically be possible, but there was one form of these Servitors that was made by a Lower Depths being that basically stripped them of their minds and turned them into empty dolls. I keep the process vague to allow people to fit their lore into it, but if it's too vague I can become more specific.
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Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Oh hello there NWOD Sidereals.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
I'm now imagining the Moros Death/Matter version being humans turned into perfectly materialistic, scientifically deterministic entities. They cannot be affected by Life or Mind, because while they may contain proteins and organic molecules, while they may breathe and blink and even shed blood if wounded, they are no more alive (in the Supernal sense) than a meticulously reassembled corpse. Their 'minds' are entirely predicated on perfectly predictable chemical and electrical patterns, and they possess no connection to the Oneiros. Imagine a nightmare that a 19th-century biologist might have had after the revelation that there was no actual difference between the molecules which make up living things and those which make up inanimate matter, and you're not far off from what the Lifeless are.
More pressingly, this lifelessness, this purely material nature, means that they can heal a cut by pressing wads of tissue paper or dirt into the wound - for they are Supernally endowed, for all that it has been made a curse upon them, and thus they can refute the trivial differences between the lifeless Matter of the world and that of their own bodies. Cut off their arm and glue a mannequin limb to the stump, and they will be able to manipulate the lifeless plastic as if it were flesh. Given time, the prosthetic will be consumed by the relentless march of the Lifeless' Pattern, and become as organic as any other part of them could ever be. Even having their head burnt to ash or their organs torn out will only incapacitate them; if sufficient matter is left where the missing parts once rested, they will eventually rise again. For this reason, Seers often outfit their Lifeless servants with full-body clothing or armor, as a helmet or gauntlet can be repurposed as a skull or hand if the original is lost.
Ironically, while they are certainly lesser than they were, the Lifeless are not mindless automata. They can experience pain, emotion, and even doubt, even if they do so within a completely materialistic framework, and a sufficient application of Fate or Time allows their every thought and feeling to be predicted with perfect accuracy. Much of the indoctrination and conditioning they are subjected to is intended to deaden these remnants of humanity, often with the assistance of chemical cocktails and creative applications of the Matter Arcana, which can affect their Lifeless brains and bodies.
More pressingly, this lifelessness, this purely material nature, means that they can heal a cut by pressing wads of tissue paper or dirt into the wound - for they are Supernally endowed, for all that it has been made a curse upon them, and thus they can refute the trivial differences between the lifeless Matter of the world and that of their own bodies. Cut off their arm and glue a mannequin limb to the stump, and they will be able to manipulate the lifeless plastic as if it were flesh. Given time, the prosthetic will be consumed by the relentless march of the Lifeless' Pattern, and become as organic as any other part of them could ever be. Even having their head burnt to ash or their organs torn out will only incapacitate them; if sufficient matter is left where the missing parts once rested, they will eventually rise again. For this reason, Seers often outfit their Lifeless servants with full-body clothing or armor, as a helmet or gauntlet can be repurposed as a skull or hand if the original is lost.
Ironically, while they are certainly lesser than they were, the Lifeless are not mindless automata. They can experience pain, emotion, and even doubt, even if they do so within a completely materialistic framework, and a sufficient application of Fate or Time allows their every thought and feeling to be predicted with perfect accuracy. Much of the indoctrination and conditioning they are subjected to is intended to deaden these remnants of humanity, often with the assistance of chemical cocktails and creative applications of the Matter Arcana, which can affect their Lifeless brains and bodies.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I wish I could remember where I'd seen it, but I recall someone having a very different take on the "Matter" servitor. Basically, they were perfectly normal people that just didn't trigger an empathy response from anyone else. Even extremely kind and empathetic individuals would instinctively regard them as being equivalent to a piece of a furniture, and everyone would unconsciously refer to them with "it" pronouns. Even if somebody brought to your attention what was happening, it took conscious effort to fight it, and your empathy for them would still be more of an intellectual, "I know that logically I should feel this way" sort of thing than any emotional reaction. It's the Ministry of Mammon's materialistic, humans-as-commodities mindset taken to its logical endpoint.
In game terms, the way it worked was that nothing you did to them would ever count as a sin against Wisdom (or Integrity, or Humanity, or whatever your equivalent was). There were probably also some social penalties, but that was the key bit.
By the time you extract that much blood, there is no small town left
On a more serious note, sell the blood as sauce, by the bottle. The difficulty is finding something that preserves it while maintaining its mystical porperties.
Or open a gourmet restaurant, or even just a fast food stand crewed by a loyal ghoul. Mind the local strays, they could be werewolves.
Throw fake hand grenades that explode for real. Carry something that could pass as a flamethrower.
Throw psychedelic grenades - if people are in the right altered state of mind they will believe anything (then again you would need at least 3 dots in Science (Chemistry) for that).
If you go mixed party, have a Garou that is willing to use Delirium as a weapon* , or a vampire specializing in Presence.
Princesses or Geniuses have their own minions that have seen enough to not question what you do.
*There was a fanmade totem, the Haunted House, that lets you cause Delirium (or no Delirium) at will in any form.
The Ban was kind of nasty - the House wants a regular influx of fresh visitors it can "test" and they have a risk of dying.
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With all this talk about servitors with one or more Arcana stripped from them, I'd expect that some of the super-low Wisdom mages would try push the limits of how far can one take these kind of conceptual flensing and end up with abominations that are indistinguishable from the kind of stuff summonable from the Lower Depths.
At that point, it might actually be easier to summon such a creature than to craft one.
At that point, it might actually be easier to summon such a creature than to craft one.
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- Pronouns
- Him/He
I'm not sure if you all know, but Mage Victorian for M20 is being funded on Indiegogo. Check it out and fund it if that is what you desire.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I've been thinking about how the CofD books often suggest alternate settings for the various games. I'm not talking about the Dark Eras stuff or other historical settings (though those are still cool), I'm talking about all the genre-bending, "Have you considered vampires in space?" type shit. Setups that pitch the game as magic meets cyberpunk, or space opera, or post apocalyptic, etc. However, while a lot of these alternate settings look super interesting to me (some more than others), and while they show up in a lot of the books, I don't think I've ever heard about somebody actually running a game like that.
So has anyone here run/played one of the CofD games in a vastly altered setting? Not necessarily one of the ones in the books, but something really genre-busting that does away with the base assumption of "on the surface, this is the world you know" that all the games take for granted. Changelings in space, post apocalyptic werewolves, vampires with no masquerade, whatever. If so, what was your experience like? What worked and what didn't?
So has anyone here run/played one of the CofD games in a vastly altered setting? Not necessarily one of the ones in the books, but something really genre-busting that does away with the base assumption of "on the surface, this is the world you know" that all the games take for granted. Changelings in space, post apocalyptic werewolves, vampires with no masquerade, whatever. If so, what was your experience like? What worked and what didn't?