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I say witch it up witch it up, hup hup.
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Jun 2, 2015 05:46
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Yeah, let's find some witches. I want to see what Mage society looks like from the outside.
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Jun 2, 2015 08:39
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Witchfinders.
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Jun 2, 2015 13:08
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Siivola posted:Yeah, let's find some witches. I want to see what Mage society looks like from the outside. I don't know that you'll find that in Witchfinders, which I seem to recall took some criticism for not being particularly compatible with Awakening.
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Jun 2, 2015 14:03
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Rand Brittain posted:I don't know that you'll find that in Witchfinders, which I seem to recall took some criticism for not being particularly compatible with Awakening.
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Jun 2, 2015 14:26
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I would say Witch Finders mirrors Awakening's mage society about the same amount that Night Stalkers did Requiem's vampire society. There's connections, but it is explicitly designed to let you do more than that and to do things that don't fit. Witch Finders  Reality is ambiguous. We think it has laws, but they are all too often bent. Someone draws a star in fresh blood on a freezer door - now it never rises above freezing inside. A woman uses a glance and secret whisper to enslave the hearts of men. A laptop carved with ancient runes suddenly restores data long wiped. Magic exists, and it is the tool of hidden witches. It is dangerous, and they cannot be trusted. History is clear: magic is not good. Ancient Roman law outlaws curses, incantations and spells. Hammurabi's code punishes unjust use of magic. Early Judeo-Christian texts are unequivocal: magic is an abomination and evil, and its users must be driven out or killed. You can argue magic's just a tool, morally neutral, like a knife or a bullet. But all too oftne, it falls into the wrong hands. The shaman who intercedes between village and spirits is tempted by the spirits offering power. The witch who shackles a demon to study its weakness is tempted by it. The magician who uses magic to win money at gambling to pay for his soup kitchen is soon tempted to turn to pure greed. Hunters know that magic is dangerous, that witches must be watched. Some must lose their magic, have it stolen from them, while others need to die. It seems easy to say 'kill them all, let God sort them out.' For some hunters, that's the end of it. The Aegis Kai Doru, often, feel that way. But it's not so clear-cut. Witches are hard to identify - they are usually human, and magic is rarely obvious. Besides, what exactly is the difference between a woman who tattoos her pagan faith's symbols on her body and the guy who secretly carves them into his floorboards? Why does one of them get magic while the other doesn't have the spark? If the guy's magic is only to protect his home and family, what's the actual problem? Some hunters will say that there isn't one. Others say it's a slippery slope - as soon as he realizes he could gain so much, he'll become tempted to darkness. Better to deal with it now, before that happens. And, of course, witches have secrets - secrets many hunters want to know. Secrets, especially, that ancient conspiracies claim as their own. For many conspiracies, witches are less about war and more about rather bloody competition. And, of course, some witches put themselves over other humans, and hunters don't buy into that. Witches are full of hubris, believing themselves perfect. Maybe they don't mean harm, maybe they are benevolent, but they're children playing with loaded guns. Magic is dangerous, both to its wielder and its hunters. It seems to encourage hubris, and its users often turn to it for every problem - rather like hammering nails with loaded guns. It works, but...well, someone's gonna lose a hand eventually. Magic is unpredictable. It seems to be able to do anything. One witch can raise the dead, another can turn one thing into another, a third manipulates coincidence to serve them in all ways, a fourth shoots lightning. The rules that govern one witch don't often apply to others. Magic is insane. It is terrifying. It's not sickening like zombies or fearful like the sound of a werewolf hunting you, but it is insidious. It summons power from strange places, it is practically invisible, it can turn your mind to chaos with a single word. Witches look like you. They act like hunters do, often. And even if you ally with them, they are scary, blasphemous beings. Any bargain always feels a little wrong, like at any point your soul might be forfeit. Humanity has always believed in magic. Some say it predates us. One theory is that magic is how we're supposed to be, that human evolution depends on us discovering how to manipulate other dimensions. We're supposed to be able to do magic, we just don't know it. Most, however, think that's insane and dumb. If that were so, then why don't the witches share their knowledge and power? Most of them are dedicated to gathering power in secret and keeping it for themselves. If magic is something everyone should be able to do, how is it that in thousands of years we still haven't gotten it? You'd think people have managed it by now. Sure, you can point to pop culture for heroic wizards like Gandalf and Harry Potter. But you can also see the Wicked Witch of the West and more. For every harmless healer, there's dozens of power-crazed madmen. They have power and want more. Even millenia ago, people spoke in hushed tons of lost, primal times and myths. Many cultures have legends of a primal state where good and evil did not exist. Eden, the Golden Age. Later, it was imagined as a time of lost civilization. Atlantis, Thule, Pan. It's not really a healthy idea, historically used by those who want to, say, prove all civilization rose from white folks and that the people of Egypt, Great Zimbabwe or Central America weren't smart enough to figure out how to do things on their own. Archaeologists have never found evidence of an ur-civilization. Occult scholars know the truth is, as they say on South Park, in the middle. There was some civilization that thrived before written history. It destroyed itself. Its legacy was not building or writing or pyramids - it was magic. The world has suffered for millenia for that. The Loyalists' senior archivist Stefanie Hoffman once gave a lecture on prima grace. Magic is not, she says, of human origin. It predates us. The Rmoahals of the Steinerian schema are inhuman and predate us - enormus, blue-skinned giants. This inhumanity was more than physical. They were hunter-gatherers, but with quite sophisticated language and tools. No personalities we would recognize, though. They lacked imagination and reasoning, but had perfect memory. All thought was past thought. Still, this memory manifested itself in their ability to conceptualize formerly-seen things perfectly. Their language was unique in that anything it said was true. Not that it couldn't lie, though apparently they could not. Anything said, however, was true in a cosmic sense as soon as the words were spoken. These words were more than signifiers - they were conceptual representations. Perfect ones. A human word is like a picture of what it represents, while a Rmoahal word was like a hologram - perfect, three dimensional, ephemeral. Now imagine you could edit that hologram, and by changing it, change the original. That's magic. Every word of the Rmoahal language was a word of power, limited only by the Rmoahal's own innate psychological limits. Thesophy says that the Rmoahals were our ancestors, but some doubt that. Some say they were a parallel evolution, the end of a seperate branch. Either way, their inheritors were more conventional humans, though with the same intellectual limits as the Rmoahals. They lived in a primal state of grace, unable to imagine and thus grasp good or evil. Unable to abuse their perfect power. This was the Eden of legend. Their descendants would eventually sacrifice perfect memory and natural ability to manipulate the True Language for human traits like reason and imagination - and ambition. This is where the first witch-kings came from, the ones who led to the end of the Primal Age. The Rmoahals had coexisted with humans, and all they needed to do was re-learn the True Language. This is purely conjecture, of course. Shadow histories are fragmentary and contradictory on this. But the point is that the human mind rendered True Language unnecessary, and that to learn it was disastrous. The Rmoahals were unable to use True Language to effect change because they could not conceive of ways to abuse it. Humans, however, instituted a bizarre conceptual world with fluid history and world-spanning tyranny. In what seemed like and may have been mere moments, the witch-kings transformed past, present and future. They created flying machines manipulated by the mind, remade and destroyed the bodies and minds of those they didn't like or care about. They made vast towers, great cities spanning continents. They created Manichaean gods, monsters and demons. It couldn't last. Their power was unstable, something they could not control fully. Atlantis fell, Eden was closed off forever. They apparently ceased to exist. Again, it's all conjecture, drawn from documents liberated from organized magical groups and from spirit channeling or automatic writing. It may not be factual, but it may be true. A possible history. No one has, since, been able to perform magic on a scale like those of the myths. But there is documented proof of magic existing. Surely the magicians have explanations. Perhaps their magic does come from those ancient kings, who altered the minds of their subjects as well as bodies. Fortunately, the True Language does not exist any more - were someone to find it, it could end the world as we know it. Except...what if a document exists that would be like the Rosetta Stone for True Language? Or what if someone learned it? They'd go mad, of course, but they could reshape the world - even the past. What do you do when the timeline changes around you? What do you do when you're the only one that notices? How do you fix something like that? Suppose you find a Rmoahal, buried but alive. It flees in panic - a giant accidentally destroying things in its wake. It's essentially harmless, but it speaks True Language, and the witches are after it. What do you do with it? Dr. Madeleine Ogilvy of the Aegis Kai Doru wrote a report in 2008. It talks about one of their severed heads. Not John the Baptist - a woman, between 30 and 40 years old when she "died." Neck was cleanly severed at the suprasternal notch, skin stitched to a leather covering which can barely be seen above the edge of the solid gold neck cap. She has not decayed or edged in over 4000 years. She is beautiful, but in a way that is very ancient. Her hair is braided and adorned with always-fresh oil and gold ornaments in ancient styles not conforming to any known civilization. The nose and ears are pierced with gold. Tattoos are on her eyelids and cheekbones. The eyeballs are removed, replaced with golden spheres. She sits on a stone pedestal from a later era, designed by her original keepers, perhaps. She is guarded by three sisters, all of the same female line that has guarded since the head was moved to Marrakesh in 1476. They are old and have no relatives, so when they die, new guards will be needed. The head sings. Not every night, but on nights when the moon is clear, at least half-full and not covered by cloud. She sings until it sets. She cannot see the moon, because she is housed in an underground vault. But she knows. Since 1995, Madeleine has been translating the songs. She and her colleagues believe the head sings in three distinct languages, perhaps more. One of them is an early Sumerian dialect. The voice is hypnotic and dangerous to mental health, causing fixation on the head, a belief that the messages are for the listener. The Sumerian song is an epic poem, an apocryphal tale of Gilgamesh and his death at the hands of the nine daughters of Nibiru. It seems to be a lost sequel to a lost version of the story of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh did not lose his immortality and in which Enkidu, an inhuman monster created or summoned by Gilgamesh, never died. The morality is ambiguous. The daughters are not pure, but Gilgamesh is negative to the extreme. He molds monsters from newborns, he and Enkidu slaughter an entire city with a giant mortar and pestle, he fathers monstrous children with demons, he kills his own human children, he teaches magic to 99 eunuchs who serve him as spies. He steals the sun. It is this and the mutilation of the narrator's child by magic that inspires the nine daughters of Nibiru, of whom the narrator is one, to fight. The nine women embark on a quest to destroy Gilgamesh. They visit Utnapishtim, whose granddaughter tells them they must steal the bloom of immortality from Gilgamesh's stomach. They find the corpse of Humbaba and harvest seven iron scales, which they grind to powder and dissolve in a bottle of wine made the year Gilgamesh was born. They take three of Humbaba's claws and fix them to handles to be daggers, then go home and adorn themselves with jewels, paint and oils before offering themselves to Gilgamesh. He takes three of them to his bed, where they ply him with the poisoned wine and song. He drinks, becoming blind. He has the three sisters cut to pieces, but his magic keeps them alive, and he keeps the three heads, marking them for their crime and gouging out their eyes to be replaced by gold. They are to sing to him forever, and can do nothing else. But now he is blind. The three middle daughters come the next night to Gilgamesh's bed, and they use the claws of Humbaba to gouge a hole in his stomach, that anyone could reach in to steal the flower. However, before they can do so, Gilgamesh transforms the eldest into a worm, the next to a blackbird who can do nothing but eat her sister and the last to a cat, which eats the blackbird and is strangled by Gilgamesh. The heads sing a dirge for them. The thrtee youngest daughters come the next night to the bed of Gilgamesh, graphically pleasure him and then pluck the flower from his gut. He dies, his magic failing. The three youngest daughters steal the heads. The narrator is one of the heads, and unlike the others, she does not decay, but sings on. Madeleine hopes that singing heads may have other stories, but she is done here. She does not believe the story in any literal sense, but the head is here and it tells the story. She wants to be done now. The original Nibiru did exist - a society of women dedicated to overthrowing Sumerian witches. They evidently had powers of their own, similar ot those of the Aegis or Ascending Ones. Perhaps some of those artifacts or pwoers yet survive, or at least knowledge of them may. Perhaps even the daughters live on, a secret passed on in family lines - a conspriacy like the others. Or maybe the magicians absorbed them and enslaved htem. Or perhaps they're actually gone. MAybe there's just an old woman left, dying in Basra. Or not even that. And it's not as though this is the only song the head sings. Translators sit and listen to to it when it sings - never any recording devices, on pain of death. This will not be the last of its tales. Kemal al-Hamadi of the Ascending Ones keeps a document talking about the ancient and forgotten Pharaoh Nitocris. She is mentioned only by Herodotus and Mentho, long after the Egyptians have excised her name, and many believe she never eixsted. Herodotus says she was made queen by force of the mob, who slew her brother and thought her easy to manipulate. She ordered a vast hall be built near the Nile, underground. She invited hundreds to dine, then drowned them in the room, to kill her brother's murderers. Then, she cast herself into a room of ashes, whatever that means, to escape retritubiton. And most of the world says she didn't exist. The AScending Ones know this is a lie. Nitocris' brother was a witch. He had sold his soul for command of the dead and of spirits. He ruled a kingdom of monsters as the Empty Pharaoh. His dead army was joined by an army of machines, pwoered by spirits - locusts of chalcedony and ants of bronze. They devoured the people and their livestock at the soulless king's command. A thousand men of the Cult of Set fought the locusts, ants and army. A thousand men of the Cult of the Phoenix dedicated themselves to the death of the king, though only via the aid of the sister, Nitocris, who was of the cult. By the time the king died, the men were three hudnred in all. His army surrendered and returned to their graves, as did his undead laborers. The ants and locusts dispersed, but the Three Hundred Survivors were mistaken in believing them gone. As Nitocris slept, the ants returned. One gouged under her skin and burrowed to her heart, which it devoured, along with her soul. It excreted her soul to dust and she became its vessel. She was made Pharaoh, and the Survivors ignored the subtler tyrannies she reinstituted. She preferred to desecrate the living, sending the spirit-ants out by night to eat another heart, night by night, to make more witches. The Cult of Set drove off the locusts, but were weakened in doing so, and the seeds of their fall were sown. It was two years into Nitocris' reign that the drowning story occurred. It is true, and it is where the Three Hundred Survivors died. The chamber of ashes was true, too - and it was there that the ants vanished. It is unclear why. The Setite archive is long lost and the Phoenix lost their be st that day, leaving only the untried young. Perhaps Nitocris regained enough will to sacrifice herself, taking her ants with her. Perhaps she had taken precautions. Or perhaps the ants achieved their goal and went into hiding. There is a tomb in Egypt for Nitocris, though no credible archaeologist would believe it. Inside is an urn containing her ashes. Those who hold it dream of Nitocris. The ants never really went away. They still exist. There aren't so many now, though - a hundred at most. They haven't had a purpose in millenia. They were summoned by the Empty Pharaoh, and now they are tarnished green-black by age. They still burrow into their victims, to the seat of the soul - the brain these days, because it's about where the victim thinks the soul is rather than any biology. When they eat the soul, they control the victim. These beings have great power and urge to cause chaos. They have no true motivations, having long gone senile. They exist only to find a host, and leave when the host dies or the spot a better one. (At which point the old host dies.) These ant-creatures only spread anarchy and destruction, the method depending on the subtlety and cleverness of the host. An ant that could find the ashes of Nitocris would do anything to claim them, or perhaps destroy them. Unclear which. I am going to reproduce some information from Cheiron's Public Relations Training Handbook in its entirety. quote:You will in the field occasionally find yourself approached by individuals who insist that Cheiron Ltd and the Cheiron Group are in fact the product of a conspiracy that long predates Cheiron Ltd's original foundation. You must be prepared to counter these accusations ince, as a member of Cheiron's Field Projects Divison (FPD), you will be the public face of the Cheiron Group and likely the only Cheiron Group employee most people will ever meet. Yeah, the Cheiron logo shows up in that temple - that exact logo, close enough that you can overlay it on the current logo with no stretching or skewing whatsoever. It also shows up on the shield of a Greek hoplite in a grave; the skeleton's right arm hasn't decomposed, but is shaped very, very strangely. Cheiron bought the site, suppressed the research, blew it up and sued anyone who said anything in public. The logo shows up in stuff over 3000 years - always things that stink of witchcraft. Always the same logo, no matter what legal tries to tel lyou. The origins are mixed up - a cabal of immortal witches, demons summoned by an ancient Greek sorcerer, members of some ancient sect of esoteric wizards worshipping some throne, five men and women who speak the True Language, a cabal of men with bronze ants in their brains and o goal but to use money and power to destabilize the world. Get close enough and they'll send you on suicide missions. Get lucky enough and you may even get targeted by your buddies. The truth is very hard to find. But hey, maybe it's all totally innocent. At least, that's what they say when they exit the board meetings... Next time: Simon Magus.
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Jun 2, 2015 14:28
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Bieeardo posted:Didn't help Polyphemos much, did it? This reminds me of the typical D&D minotaur never getting lost in any maze ever despite the source material having the minotaur trapped inside the maze.
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Jun 2, 2015 18:04
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 Oh look, it's Afterthought 7 in which we keep the conversation about supplements rolling for a little while and then, you guessed it, answer listener questions.
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Jun 2, 2015 18:09
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Witch Finders The Middle Ages brought Christianity and the delineation of magic and miracle within it. Jesus did things that seem like necromancy, but was an avid foe of sorcery and magic. The Malleus has an essay by Dom Petur Vuorinen, on Simon of Gitta in Samaria, better known as Simon Magus, the first heretic. He appears only once in the Canon, in Acts 8:9-24, where he is a sorcerer that hears the Gospel, repents and tries to buy the power to heal and do miracles from Deacon Philip the Evangelist. He is rebuked, asks the Evangelist to pray for him, and it's over. Other sources claim Simon did not repent, but instead followed his own occult understanding in the creation of a Gnostic heresy, spoken of by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Simon claimed that the First Thought of God created the angels, but they rebelled and imprisoned the First Thought in the body of a woman, who incarnated in the form of a prostitute-slave named Helene. God descended in the form of Simon, who bought and freed Helene and made her his lover. He claimed he was the true Son of God and that he and Helene were destined to join and save the world. He had the power of flight, able to leap from a mountain and rise unhurt. He could free himself from bindings, control wind and flame, and create homunculi from the air. Simon claimed he was pupil to and then teacher of Dositheus, who led the sect of John the Baptist - those that did not follow Crhsti, that is - and so therefore he was the true inheritor of John the Baptist. Saint Clement of Rome tells of Simon's challenge to the Apostle Peter. Simon challenges him to a contest of teaching, then delivers a homily, then Peter, and so on, until after three days Peter wins and Simon flees, to incite a mob. Simon uses his magic to discredit Peter, and when the authorities turn ohim he smears magic juice in the face of Faustus, Clement's father, to get him executed in Simon's place. Peter sees through the illusion but sends Faustus to Antioch, to use him to unravel Simon's cult. Peter and Simon Magus have their final confrontation, according to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, in the Roman forum. Simon flies and preaches, but Peter sinks to his knees and prays. Simon falls to earth and the mob tears hi mto bits. The Church of Santa Francesca Romana supposedly stands where Simon fell and still bears the imprints of Peter's knees. Simon's cult continues for a while, than vanishes, according to official history. The Black Library of the Malleus Maleficarum holds a single 9th century text of a cycle of stories and poems protraying Simon Magus as a hero who uses magic to defeat secret demons. Some of his foes - for every story or poem details a conflict - seem familiar. One poem, dating back to just before the fall of the Western Empire, speaks of a struggle against The Name That Must Not Be Written, a demon of darkness, which hides within the Catholic Church somehow, presumably as an allegory for the corruption the Gnostic sect saw in the Church. In another poem, he is pursued by the Seven Daughters of Nibiru, but eludes them by magic and cunning. In the segment on the Apostles, the story seems almost apologetic. The Magus falls to earth because "the people ceased to believe" rather than Peter's prayer. Later in the same document, Simon defeats Peter and Paul in debate, but convinces them to malign him in public and make him a monster and heretic. The longest and most bizarre poem deals with other magicians as Simon's foes, particularly a group described sometimes as Christian and sometimes as pagan, known as the Three Seers of the Throne - a rather Gnostic term, perhaps to do with angels. They have many of the powers of Simon Magus, perhaps from a common source. The collection, known as the Simon Romance, is very hard to translate properly - it's full of esoteric terms and was written in Greek by someone whose Greek was not their first language. Simon does not die, it says, but joins with Helene by alchemy and the aide of a priest of the pagan Thoth-Hermes, a 'Thrice-Great' magician as the text calls it, and form a perfect Rebis, both male and female, at peace with both halves. The Rebis ascends to 'the higher emanations.' It is hard to know what to make of it, and seems written by witches, for witches. It uses much allergory and jargon, so it is very hard to unlock without knowing their secrets. What the Malleus does not realize is that the Simon Romance is a grimoire, meant to be used by those awakened to the secrets of high magic. It is a very dangerous book - Simon's mystic order was ancient in his day, but still exists, still fighting its ancient foes. The secrets contained within the grimoire would be amazingly dangerous in their hands - forgotten incantations could be unlocked, or the location of the true Head of John the Baptist (which is not numbered among the many possessed by the Aegis Kai Doru). It also supposedly reveals the secret of the ultimate cosmic plan of the Lords of the Aeon, called Archons or Exarchs of the Outer Church. Simon's followers preserved the knowledge, but died out before it could be given to their order. That order would kill to discover the truth - and so would the servants of the Lords of the Aeon, for their masters do not often give them instructions not shrouded by obscure, bizarre allergory. The possibility of a direct and obvious plan? They'd kill for that, oh my, yes. And now, the Malleus has a report written by a Finnish Dominican named Petur Vuorinen, a copy of which was among his effects when witches killed him. And they do keep tabs on each other, you know, so if one side gets busy cracking heads and setting folks on fire, the other knows something's up. There is a record from 1191 from the crusader Count Reynard of Derby, Knight of Saint George, recoutning the Capture of Acre. He was siege commander, casting the heads of the dead over the walls at the Muslims, sending pestilence and fear. On the second day, however, the siege engineers were torn apart somehow, yet without blood and smeared with blue acid. The heads were gone. The men spoke of devils, for were the Saracens not as terrible as Jews? Reynard held back his laughter and went to find the culprits. He knew there was a hated sect in the Saracens called the Batini, seen by Muslims much as Christians vew Cathars or schismatics. Among them are a few who hide amongst the Muslims in secret, worshipping not Allah but a Faceless Angel, One frm Outside, and these Batini call the Angel's servants to do their bidding. Reynard knows the signs of the Outer Ones, so he continues his work and waits for nightfall, where he keeps vigil alone for four nights. On the fourth night, the sky opens and a shadow claws forth, entering his quarters. He ambushes it and cuts it in half, falling away and bleeding blue acid. Reynard performs a ritual with the 'blood', to sense where it was summoned, and seeks it out, where he ambushes the Batin. He cannot pierce the wizard's shields of wind and fire, but the wizard cannot harm him through his shield of faith. The Batin calls on his Outer God, a lesser god that comes through the sky with black tendrils and one great green eye. Reynard stands firm and reveals the sign inscribed on his chest, calling on the Unbegotten Source of Growth, the Shapeless Walker ACross the Planets, and speaks the Words That Must Not Be WRitten, sacrificing the wizard to his own god. The god, He Whose Name Must Not Be Written, consumes the wizard and takes him away, to devour his soul. Reynard prays to the beast, as he has done and will do, and names himself a Christian and hunter of witches. Batini is an Arabic pejorative term to refer to mystics within Islam. And hidden among those mystics during the Crusades were true witches, like the one Reynard fought. There's no guarantee they are gone, or in fact that they were ever confined to Islam. The worship of these "faceless angels," these gods from outside, spread from Saladin's court across the Himalaya to Tibet and China, reaching Japan by the 1500s. They spread south to Great Zimbabwe by the 1400s. They traveled across the world, though few of their cults survived in Spain due to the Inquisition. A few survive in England to this day, right under the noses of the Knights of Saint George. They came to America with Columbus and Francis Drake. They remained secret there until the 1920s, when a writer of pulp fiction learned of them by chance, changed some details and sold horror stories about them to magazines. Few took it seriously - they praised the authenticity and coherent mythology but never believed them more than story. Whether the writer even understood them at all is unclear. He died young, of a particularly virulent and swift-onset cancer, perhaps the doing of a witch. The cults do still exist today, hidden in the Catholic Church, in New Age movements, in boardrooms and Alpine villages. Some of them seek to bring about the end of the world, while others believe that by sacrifice they can keep their outer gods from consuming the world. Some just want power. All of them believe that in knowing how to contact these gods, they must care about what the cults do. This is false - they are beneath the gods' notice, but are dangerous nonetheless, creating entire invented justifications for their actions and insane plots. We'll learn more about the Knights of Saint George later. There's always been guides to help witch-hunters find witches, guides that name how to identify them. Open questioning of authority, unnatural carnal desires, knowledge of herbs, seeing visions, losing your Bible, having strange marks on your body, especially if they do not bleed. Some hunters still use these texts, for lack of anything better. Hell, the Field Projects Divison handbook of the Cheiron Group reads like them, except with added psuedo-scientific explanations. Witch-marks become mutations caused by wasteful extrusion of channeled extranormal energy. MAterial on witches is some of the largest parts of the short handbook, because Cheiron fears witches. They are particularly bothered by reports of miracle cures and faith healing - magical healing becoming common is Cheiron's worst nightmare, because then what use is there for pharmaceuticals? They lose all profit. Best to deny them to competitors (not that Cheiron has any direct competition, but they're paranoid), to take them in and strip them down of their secrets. We find a tale, From Vendemiaire to Thermidor by Louis Giraud, pulbished in 1821. It is a story of a French revolutionary who makes the mistake of claiming that perhaps abolishing history is not required - perhaps they can understand the past that it might not be repeated. Saint-Just, leader of his salon, says the REvolution is perfect, but the man, Cajean, debates. And so, soon, he is arrested for treason. He ends up in a cell, awaiting trial alongside many others. He knows he is going to die by guillotine. He shares his cell with a small man who names himself Panurge, Chevalier Theleme - obviously a false title, but that's hardly uncommon among poor revolutinaries, especially readers of Rabelais. The jail is overstocked, far too many to kill quickly, so they are together three days. The Chevalier proves charming, though Cajean never learns his name. They discuss literature and politics, and he proves to know Rabelais and Voltaire both, quoting even more readily than Cajean. Eventually, they discuss why they are imprisoned. The Chevalier is sympathetic to Cajean, and says he is here because he hunts witches. This, Cajean says, seems to be the principle motive of the Committee of Public Safety. The Chevalier explains that he means magicians, though Cajean doubts they exist, for surely a belief in God is unneeded, and so therefore there can be no Lucifer, and thus no witchcraft. The Chevalier is certain there is a Lucifer, by family tradition, but also believes there is an absent, if not nonexistent, God. They debate the nature of God and the devil, and the Chevalier laughs at the idea that demons are no more than creations of human imagination, and so have no power. You see, the Chevalier says, demons surely are of our imagination, but the idea that they are powerless does not follow. After all, did not the Revolution begin with talk of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity - and so all that came about was a product of human imagining. Cajean is uncomfortable equating the idea of Revolution with a Devil, but certainly the Terror does give him some weight. The Chevalier suggests that the mob may have brought the Revolution to quite literal life, that they are unknown witches selling their souls to a devil they created - or perhaps that the creators of the Terror, its leaders, are knowing witches. This is no metaphor, he says. He plans to do battle with the Revolution itself, and plans to start by taking down the witches who sit on the Committee for Public Safety. Cajean believes him insane, but he will find a way. Overnight, the Chevalier escapes by unknown means, leaving only the smell of brimstone. They blame Cajean, but can think of no way to punish a condemned man. Two days later, unexpectedly, Robespierre and Saint-Just are a rrested and put to death after brief show trials. The Terror ends, and Cajean is set free just before he would die. He does not understand how, but likes to believe that the Chevalier found a way to defeat the idea of the Revolution. The Ashwood Abbey London Chapter has a transcript of a talk given in the late 1800s by one Eustace Faranshaugh, who traveled to India in search of the Thuggee in 1876. He traveled to Delhi, where he met some native guides whose names he can barely remember, and a Pirzada - a Muslim magician, a sort of Sufi that has pwoer over wind-demons or djinn. He wanted to fight a djinn but decided not to ask to avoid offending the magician, since he needed to know where the Thuggee might hide and hoped the man would point him right. Also, he wanted to buy drugs from the guy. The drugs were good but not very cheap, and the man sent him to Moradabad, northwest of Delhi - a place of little trouble and known for its brass goods, so he decided to buy a hookah there. He hired new servants and met with the local commander, Colonel Albert Cholmondely-Warner, who volutneered to join the hunt mostly out of boredom. He asnd his troops wer mostly looking for an excuse to shoot natives. They share the drugs and set out. After a fortnight they find no sign of any "heathen cults" and are about to go home when one Sergeant Arthur Mainwaring smells smoke nearby. They are bored, so they go to beat up whatever they find, no matter what it is. What they do find is a statue of Kali, which Eustace is fascinated by because he thinks it's super hot. He sketches it, and he assures us he keeps the sketches in his badchamber, and will happily show it to any ladies present, along with his Tantric skills. Also it was surrounded by rotting corpses, but he didn't really care about them They were butchered from the inside out, all young adults with signs of strangulation - surely by the Thuggee. They decide to make camp and wait for the Thuggee, who soon appear. Eustace is highly disappointed by their lack of ceremony - not even chanting. They had captives to sacrifice, not even cleaning up the mess, and are led by a masked figure. The group decides to wait for them to strangle the sacrifices, since they'll be distracted then and, besides, none of the captives are European so no one cares if they die. However, the Sergeant steps out mid-ceremony to threaten the high priest, who turns his rifle into a cobra and kills him with it. Eustace shoots the high priest and kill all the Thuggee, two of his own men and all but one of the victims, who only agreed to lead them back to Moradabad at gunpoint. Examination of the body showed that all of the cultists were branded with the mark of a British prison from the next province over, which ahd usffered a rebellion and mass escape. He hadn't realized brandings were still used, and was assured it was uncommon and used only on natives. Eustace considers the story over, but for mentioning that he'd have invited Cholondely-Warner to join the Abbey had he not subsequently died of malaria. What really happened here? Well, the cultists weren't Thuggees. The real Thuggee weren't a cult. They are politically motivated bandits who killed European travelers and their collaborators. They were defeated in the early 19th century by the East India Company, who spread the story that they were a Kali cult. In 1875, some prisoners got sick of being abused, and they rebelled under the leadership of a magician. He used his powers to do terrible things to the guards, far more than he'd ever dreamed he'd do after being arrested for bread theft, and he had a mental breakdown and believed he heard the voice of Kali. He had no reason to disbelieve the official line on the Thugee, so he decided to recreate a cult that never existed. He was a monster made by the British Raj, a kind of early terrorist with magic powers. Sad story, really. Elder Lucas Gray, a Marshal of Salt Like City, recounts the events of 1879. He saw a man, John Houghton, claw his way from the grave after being hanged for four murders and a bank robbbery. One of the dead was his brother and partner. Lucas was glad to see him go. Less so to see him as a zombie whispering his name. He came by daylight, and none dared stop him. A bullet in the heart did nothing, but one in the head worked fine. Lucas pretended he was just someone broke out of jail and hid the corpse. It was not the last. Next was Kurt Sterne - a man who killed his own mother for the money and got hanged for it. Then it was Henry Gordon, cattle thief killed by Lucas in self defense. Then it was Frank Henry Chase, who came for revenge after Lucas hanged his brother for murder and got shot for his trouble. That one was just rotting skin and bones, and would've killed Lucas had he not taken to sleeping with his gun. When at last Jack Chase came for him in the night after Bible Study, he decided to find out what was going on. After all, while Joseph Smith was persecuted as a boy, he was a prophet and Lucas was just a lawman, and not a clever one. Eventually, he checked the graveyard at midnight. He wasn't expecting a little woman to come along and stop by the grave of Francis Lee, hanged three years ago for murder. The woman knelt at the grave and spoke to it, and then the corpse started to dig its way out. That'd be when Lucas stepped out and surprised the woman. She started to laugh madly, terribly, and he was forced to shoot her when the corpse ripped from the earth. It went no further after the woman fell, just sat there and then retreated back beneath the soil. Lucas didn't enjoy the shooting, but he knew his bible: Suffer not a witch to live, and if that wasn't a witch, what was? He reasoned, though, that he should keep it secret, so he left the body. Next morning he gets called in for it - Leah Houghton, aunt to John Houghton. Her home was normal, except for a basement full of books about things like a Name That Must Not Be Written, which made no sense, and strange drawings, horrible drawings. He took it all home and set it ablaze. The funeral was attended by some folks no one knew, who looked at him funny, but he couldn't do anything just on suspicion, and they left. He never saw them again. Yeah, witches can raise dea servants. Sometimes it's just muscle, sometimes it's more than that. The problem is when these necromancers aren't working alone - whole conspiracies eixst, reinforcing each other. And they have long, long memories. Thirty years after the death of Leah Houghton, Lucas Gray, retired and age 76, was strangled by a mystery assasilant. Three days later, his grave was violated, the body apparently stolen. The modern age has brought new horrors. In 1944, Task Force: VALKYRIE launched its maiden operation, Operation WALPURGIS. They eliminated the Eisler group, reporting events including distracting optical effects similar to foo fighters, unusual heat and cold, the freezing of gun barrels or burning of them at the behest of the Eisler group (including the spontaneous combustion of one soldier). Some of the Eislers could absorb bullets, others had supernatural speed and strength - enough to push a tank across a street singlehanded. Others could harm with a touch, and at least one could change their appearance, infiltrating the squad and killing four soldiers before being caught by his inability to speak English. The bodies were all found, every one, to be perfectly hermaphroditic, with both male and female genitalia and reproductive organs. While each probably began as just male or female, the doctors couldn't confidently say which in any case. Each had a single eye in the back of their heads, though if they functioned properly is unknown. The lab techs also recovered some devices, a few of which they believe they can reverse engineer and make use of. Colonel Purchase, the commanding officer, requests more members, however, having had only three survivors including himself - not enough for a task force. Jack Merrygold's last dispatch was recorded on top and left in a post box two days before his disappearance in 1994. He was looking into a man named Andrew Dunn, whom he found about it from a member of the Willardston Grove Full Gospel Church, who wanted to talk to him about their new pastor. She never shows up at her meetign with Jack, though. She was, instead, in a lake. In pieces. He knows it's her, though he's not sure how. His Long Night buddies say he's nuts, but he's certain. He decides to go look into the new pastor's past. He discovers that no one can agree where he came from, which is weird, but not enough that he might be a killer. Police work reveals that it was, in fact, Kathy in the lake. No one comes from Willardston to her funeral - not even her mother. Odd, that, she was well beloved by others. Jack tries to talk to the Willardston people, but they say absolutely nothing about Kathy, ever. They just claim up, saying she committed the unforgivable sin and had to be cast out. They seem scared. Only one sin is unforgivable, he knows: Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. There's a lot of argument in the community these days over what counts, what with the New Work of the Holy Spirit and the Toronot Blessing revival movement. Jack finds the idea of Kathy committing it monstrous, though, and if Pastor Dunn was behind her death - which he thinks is so - well, that seems unforgivable. He heads to Willardston with Lars from the cable access show, who's good at getting stuff on film. He's a heathen, but a good man. Lars starts recording the sermon on his tape recorder. IT's a weird one - lots of songs where Jesus is more boyfriend than Savior, some speaking in tongues, something about the Spirit coming on, and then a lot of people laughing madly and weeping. Someone crows like a rooster, some people scream, then one of them falls on her back, weeping, at the touch of the Pastor. So do a few others he touches. Jack decides it's time to go. Everyone in the place is affected...except PAstor Dunn, Jack, the security guards and maybe Lars. Jack flees, leaving Lars to escape on his own. Lars got hit by a car that afteroon, walking on the Interstate. No one knew why he was there. Jack finds he has LArs' tape recorder in his pcoket somehow. He doesn't know how. He listens. There's the singing, the fleeing Jack...and then ten minutes of service. The recording ends, then starts again. Quietly, someone is talking to Lars. Lars is calmly telling him who Jack is, who his friends are, and that they know all about what's going on. Then the tape ends. Strange? Yes. But is it magic? If you ignore the bizarre deaths and bizarre appearance of the tape recorder, it sounds a lot like stuff happening in evangelical churches across the world. It could be magic. It could be totally mundane. How do you tell? Hell, even the murders could just be a crazy minister blinded by his own cult of personality. Or they might be done without his awareness, by members of the church believing themselves doing God's will. Or...or it could be magic. Detective Inspector Franke Crowe of the South Wales constabulary receives a document in 2008, a transcript of his visit to the Cathays Young Offenders' Detention Centre alongside social worker Simon May. They are coming about allegations of abuse. Lewis, the man in charge, thinks this is about Crowe's daughter, Bianca, who had attended the centre several times. Crowe insists this has nothing to do with the investigation. This is about Satanic abuse. May says it's not Satanic, just occult. They argue briefly, and Lewis insists this is about Crowe's daughter, who somehow escaped the institution after two years of imprisonment there. He shouldn't be here and is using this to find out about how the investigaiton is going. May tries to convince Lewis to let them speak to the children, but Lewis refuses, saying they're thugs who won't tell anyone anything, without conscience or empathy. Lewis does something, knocking Croew out briefly. He tells May that he is going to go and turn in a report that all allegations are false, and that he won't have a choice or even remember the conversation. However, May stops whatever it was Lewis did, revealing that Lewis isn't the only one with secrets. He does something himself, and Lewis falls out of a window. May wakes Crowe up, assures him that he didn't kill Leiws and the Lewis is dead. May says that Lewis broke down and hurled himself from the window. So yeah, Lewis was a magician of some kind, perhaps abusing the children in his care for some occult purpose, using them as resources. But Simon May is a magician himself - one helping Crowe, though keeping his nature secret. You can't trust a witch, and they don't expect you to. They hide things, so you don't trust them, and they see you don't trust them. But that's nto to say you can't work with them, regularly or just once. You just have to be careful. Or maybe they hide their powers from you, or pretend they're miracles or something similar to what the conspiracies use. Is it really any weirder than those guys, anyway? Or maybe they're honest. It's not out of the question. But if they are, they'd better not trust their hunter buddies when their friends show up - the friends with hardcore views on Bible verses about witches. Next time: The various groups on witchcraft. I'll probably get a ways into that tonight, but after that I'm off to Origins until Sunday night.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:57
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theironjef posted:
There is an Official Tenchi Muyo RPG, it uses the BESM rules. I have it. I wish I didn't.
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Jun 2, 2015 22:18
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Rifts Dimension Book 2: Phase World Part 8: Naruni Enterprises, arms merchants to the stars  These guys were introduced in Mercenaries, and they appear here in larger, spacefaring form. They are not native to the Three Galaxies, but they have a strong presence there. They sell top-notch equipments, at top-notch prices. They are generous with their credit plans and payment options as well. Many people, armies, even entire planets have gone into debt to try and pay off the Naruni pipers, who will use legal methods for collection first, accepting any and all forms of tender including slaves and other questionable goods. If legal methods fail, however, then they send their feared Debt Collectors into action. The Debt Collectors are apparently a massive super-army that can be brought down on nearly anything to extract payments owed. They have equipment that isn’t sold to the regular public and there’s lots of them, whole space navies apparently. This is kind of silly, much as I understand why the Naruni would want to collect their payments. I guess everybody wants their  But really, if they have that much firepower and are already engaged in military logistics, you rapidly start reaching that point where the public/government divide becomes invisible and you might as well call a state a state.Being a corporation, the Naruni are run by a mysterious board of directors. Two-thirds of their seats are held by True Naruni and Uteni traders, holding 60% of the total stock. Thraxus is another one, holding 5%, and the rest of the board is varied, including a demon lord and alien intelligence. They have the usual corporate goal of expanding their sales, including maintaining an atmosphere of war in the Megaverse so people will keep buying guns. They don’t do forcible conquest themselves despite making all the weapons and see it as a wasteful activity that they nonetheless profit from tremendously. (?!) They even have a special Social Studies Branch that does things like that Facebook experiment with spreading depression and conflict around, though they don’t directly instigate wars.  this walking stick cost the output of a small farming province and is kind of rickety, but it can fire plasma bolts! They also have an R&D branch, though they’ve hit some kind of technological plateau and have struggled to develop anything new or radically innovative in the last several decades. This...is weird but I guess we’ll just have to run with itI guess we can just run with that, though 'decades' is a long time. Of course, being written in 1995 by a guy doing layout with a wax machine, a lot of the super-futuristic technology looks fairly tame and outdated now. Naruni Enterprises has notably been unable to crack the secrets of Phase Technology and aren’t much good at techno-wizardry, for I guess reasons. Rifts Earth has Triax and the Coalition who are...nearly on-par with a lot of Naruni toys already and this worries them because clearly no other species has come close to this?  NE has had issues with trying to expand into Rifts Earth given the often very xenophobic competition, and now they’re stepping up the activities of the Social Studies Branch to try and provoke the Coalition to war with its magicky neighbors or co-opting rival companies. This is actually several paragraphs of potential scheming and that’s all well and good but why is it in here? Like all this stuff about the Naruni on Rifts Earth seems like it should have either gone in Mercenaries or saved for later. We’ve talked a bit about the company and their schemes, so the next thing we need is a way to take an active role in some of these enterprises. This brings us to the Naruni Repo-Bot RCC. I admit, the idea of playing a repo-bot by itself sounds amusing to me, but ultimately might be kind of limited. They are robots, sadly not designed to look like Emilio Estevez, with organic brains--so full-conversion cyborgs or mechanoids really. Nobody knows where they get the brains, nobody’s asking. They always have the best interests of the company in mind, and are very versatile and ruthless. They are described as individually being ‘as tough as a squad of power-armored soldiers’ and can operate in any environment. Let’s see how the stats hold up: Individual parts with hundreds of MDC, main body 600 + 300 MDC forcefield, 200 MDC head. Inhumanly strong and fast, built-in particle beam cannon at 1D4x10, 2000ft range, plasma flamethrower at 5D6, 4D6 finger-laser, and they can use regular handheld weaponry as needed, energy weapons can plug into their nuclear power supply for unlimited payload. So that is fairly tuff.  do these robots reproduce sexually in a way that requires dimorphism? does bad credit get them hot in the coils? The repo-bots also have a bunch of sensory systems, a bunch of combat bonuses, a bunch of skills, a standard plasma hand-cannon that does 2D6x10 MDC (!), and probably a ship to go get their targets with. Also they get 1D4 additional cybernetic implants as part of their robot bodies. Finally, it notes that repo-bots are better NPCs than player characters since they have loyalty chips and all. If you give one of these a gun that shoots bullets instead of lasers they can give the Cosmo-Knight a run for their money--more on those later. Next, in case you didn’t want to play an overpowered super-cyborg with a glitch in the personality matrix, you can play a squat tentacleface True Naruni. Most people think the Uteni from Mercenaries are the real Naruni but they’re just front-men. True Naruni are ugly even by interdimensional monster standards so they try to stay out of the spotlight. Their supernatural presence also disturbs psychics and sensitive people, leading to sinister speculation about their origin and goals for the Megaverse. I didn’t realize that ‘supernatural’ was a specific state of being rather than just an origin outside of Earth. Also, I mean, they're not pretty by human standards but given the number of writhing eye-tentacles roaming the universe, this seems pretty tame. I guess the compromise is that they don't just have a massive horror factor.  at least this is probably not a racial stereotype Their attributes range from good (IQ) to human-average, except for PB which is 1D6 because, you know, squat hideous. They have some natural MDC and some automatic psionic powers but no listed ISP score, well rats. They take double damage from rune and holy weapons like an evil monster so clearly they are. Also, they are described as ‘squat’ and then listed as 6 to 8 feet tall. The RCC doesn’t say they have to be NPCs but it seems to clearly imply this, since they will be feared and hated pretty quickly if they go outside around people. They also have no listed equipment or moneys. Also, since we didn’t get enough Gene-Splicers in Mindwerks, they’re presented here in the last corner of the NE section. Their genetic engineering abilities are better than anybody else’s you guys, only ancient gods are their equals when it comes to makin’ monsters. Some people think they’re actually the tattered remnants of the First, or perhaps the One, the bad one who turned the Forge on people. All of this is conjecture though, since they travel in small groups and don’t have a home planet.  have some generic stars Next: The Three Galaxies, at last.
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Jun 2, 2015 22:22
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Lynx Winters posted:There is an Official Tenchi Muyo RPG, it uses the BESM rules. I have it. I wish I didn't. They also did a Slayers book. Also is "Bruce" Greenwood a joke I don't get? Isn't his name "Ed"?
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Jun 2, 2015 22:23
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Witch Finders Ashwood Abbey gives us one of the more infamous quotes in nWoD. Have you ever hosed a man who can fly? Now, the thing about Ashwood Abbey is that, really, they don't think of witches as enemies, per se. They're just people who can do all the stuff you wish you could. They're just humans, unfettered by reality. That's amazing! They get to break physics, not just taboo. Sure, some witches are dangerous and have to be put down, but you can say the same of humans in general. The Abbey does like hunting those witches, though - they're unpredictable which is really fun. They don't bother trying to figure out or analyze witches or what they can do. They tend to be focused more on stories about the witches they've met. They have a fairly wide range of information, then, on what witches might be able to do, but very little on what they are. They tend to think of anything not obviously possessed or inhuman as being a witch. Often, when they invite a witch to a party, the witch will try to explain how the magic works. They tend to smile, nod, and not listen to a word. As for what the Abbey does? They often approach them as they would a prospective member, watching them for a while and, if they seem interesting, inviting them to a party as a guest, where they're asked about what they do and can do. And often about if they'll have sex with the Abbey members. At the end of the night, the hunters hold a private vote on whether or not the witch is an entertaining and friendly guest. If they are, everyone goes home with stories and they stay friendly. If not...well, then it's time for the secondary entertainment. They might roofie the witch and have their way with her - no, really, that's a thing they mention - or they might go hunting the now-drunk witch. And, of course, they realize not all witches are suitable party guests. Some are too pious, some too obsessed with secrecy, some too depraved even for Ashwood Abbey, or working for dark entities that you wouldn't want hanging around the table. There's lines, even here. In those cases, they ignore the less harmful ones most of the time and go a-hunting the dangerous ones if no one has any better ideas for a fun evening. In Boston, on the annual Hathorne Ball (held on leap years, so not really annual), on the anniversary of the first arrests of the Salem Witch Trials, the Abbey dress up in period garb for a costume ball, and at midnight they head to a hedge maze or labyrinth containing a captive witch. Whoever strikes the killing blow is given the title Justice Hathorne for the year, and is given great status and honor until the next ball. The Long Night find witches a bit of a dilemma. Some things obviously need to die - monsters, serial killers, you know. But witches are human - more human than slashers, whose very thoughts make them alien. Witches act normal. They're still people, just with magic powers. Doesn't matter what kind of power - a witch is a witch, and Exodus 22:18 is very clear on that. Doesn't have anything about how they act. At least with werewolves, you know that they're proof someone laid with a beast at some point, the sin's in their blood. Witches aren't carrying their father's sins - they have power that they asked for. They don't even try to return to a state of grace. If the curse of magic is so bad, suciide's an honest cure. Most witches enjoy what they are, revel in it. That's bad. That's real bad. Sadly, the Long Night lack centralized information, and so often all they know is that witches have dark power and will go to any length to get more of it. Magic's addictive. They're often underprepared for what witches can do, especially the ones that operate by coincidence or utterly lack subtlety at all. The first are hard to pin down and frustrating to deal with. The second just have lots of minions and monsters and fire to hurl at you, which kill you dead or control your minds. Now, the real scary thing is when you realize what witches are doing. Their powers come from the Devil (mostly; a few Long Night admit some might do miracles granted by God). They are the scouts of the End Times. They serve the Devil's interests, and with them around, the Apocalypse can't come yet. Witches are a sign that the Long Night is losing - that Christ can't come back yet. The lengths they go to show their true colors. They use their powers for personal gain, to benefit themselves. They sacrifice people for yet more power. They bring the end just by using magic. The Long Night fight magic. They don't know a lot, but they know all magic comes from the Devil, even if he appears in a nice-looking form. Even the rituals anyone can do are Satanic. The ancient chants and strange runes are giveaways. But for some reason, God doesn't stop magic from existing. That's their job, apparently. The hard part is when magic looks like miracles. Miracle, in theory, is proof of the Holy Spirit infusing your soul. But what makes the difference between magic and miracle? You just have to know it when you see it. Miracles come the right way - healing, stigmata, speaking in tongues - and they serve the congregation, not the witch. Still, it's possible for witches to pretend at being miracle-workers, and Long Night cells each respond differently to such things. Conversion is always an option, and many try their best to convert witches first. It's safer and nicer. Some, particularly those that sacrifice people, are clearly beyond redemption, but many could be saved. Magic strengthens the will, however, so extreme methods can be necessary...but hey, isn't there value in turning magic toward God's will? Some cells have had success with conversion via...well, cultic programming. They don't attack the understanding of magic, but the witch's personality, breaking down the parts that drive them to evil and building up new traits to enable them to serve the Lord. It's a hell of a lot of work, but valuable if you can do it. Other cells are more drastic - they force situations where a witch must sue their power to save the hunters from another evil, often something obviously Hellish. It's easier to convince witches in high-stress situations, after all. A few even try deathbed conversions, sometimes to the point of arranging near-death experiences to shock them into a state where they can be convinced of Jesus' love. The Loyalists of Thule do not have a unified outlook, but they do communicate. They don't blanket classify witches as enemies like they might demons or zombies. They are a potential source of information - witches have the means to unearth lots of hidden knowledge, after all. With a glance and spell, they can find out secrets of monsters that would take years to learn normally. It'd be foolish to ignore that. Still, they don't entirely trust mages. The concept of some people being spiritually superior to others hits too close to home. Plus, they have records, if not always accurate ones, of occultists and witches among the Nazis. Suspicion is common, and witches are kept at arm's length, used only as needed. There's no telling how much they learn about you, after all, when you learn from them. It is fairly common, usually unspoken by the Loyalists, to blame the worst horrors n Hitler's personal occultists and witches rather than the Thule Gesellschaft. They bear some of the blame, yes, and they admit that. It was their theories that inspired Nazi ideology. But the real horrors, they hold, were devised only when the witches moved in. They tell themselves it was them that caused the Holocaust, not the Thule theories. As evidence, they point to encounters with Nazi wizards. The fact that numerous historians, both mundane and occult, have dismissed the idea of the Nazi leadership being influenced in any way by occultists seldom comes up - it's easier to believe a pretty lie. Senior members of the group frown on this, though - the responsibility is the Loyalists' and shunting it onto Nazi witches cheapens their debt. The Loyalists usually don't take an active hand in killing witches that hurt people, but they make sure someone else does. They maintain contact with other hunters with more experience in, you know, killing stuff. When possible, thy prefer to hand off wizard jobs to others who specialize in them, but if they don't know anyone who can, they will do it themselves. Especially if the witches are Nazis. They hunt those folks down - and also any witches whose practices echo those of the Nazis, regardless of ideology. In that, they are very proactive. You make monsters by stitching parts of animals and people together? You might not believe the same poo poo as Mengele and may consider him repugnant, but to the Loyalists, you're the same. They will not allow you to live. Most Loyalists believe the Nazi witches mostly survived the fall of the Nazis, along with many Nazi leaders. They think it's likely those magicians still live - they can extend their lives, after all. In the past, the Loyalists maintained ties with Nazi hunters - mostly Israeli Jews dedicating their lives to hunting down escaped Nazis in the decades after the war. At least one "Mossad assassination" of a death camp commandant in Argentina is rumored to have been a joint operation between the Loyalists and some Catholics allied to the Malleus. As the years roll on, though, most Nazis, magical or not, have died of old age and there aren't som any Nazi hunters, so the Loyalists have less of an information network there. Network Zero doesn't really kill witches. They want to interview them and preserve what they see for posterity. Witches are lucid and several respond well to interview requests. Plus, they have a hell of a special effects budget. There's a division on how to deal with them. Most of Network Zero believes it's a chance to be investigative - find out what a witch is doing and why. They dig deeper than anyone else, following occasionally iffy links until they find a source - a fact or event that explains what's going on. They recast everything in light of that, to predict what'll come next. They focus on why witches use the magic when they do. Unfortunately, they often vastly overestimate the importance of random events and can jump to false conclusions. A smaller faction believe that the why is less important than that a witch is doing magic. They focus on shadowing their targets to understand who they associate with, then strike deals. Sometimes, the witches will take them to places that shouldn't exist, like the underground river of blood running through Chicago or a house where time and space work differently. If the reporter survives, they can sell those videos and views of them to other hunters for a mint. In LA, a cell filmed a 20-minute interview with a magical EMT, including a segment on how he used magic to save lives. In New York, another cell taped a detective with the NYPD Special Victims Squad using ritual magic at a crime scene, though without an interview. On the other hand, the video hosts had to pull a video of a witch's campaign to become state senator when it became clear that the video enchanted people to vote for him. Some witches try to use interviews to point hunters at nastier targets, or just enemies. They generally don't stay so naive long, though - militant cells can start fights for any number of reasons, and other cellls often like to show up the witches that tried to manipulate them on live video. Of course, not everyone with a book of spells is a real witch. Some of them are just using magical books or strange rituals. They lack spontaneous magic that other witches can use, and the Network often thinks they're not really prime material, but they have enough archived video of these rituals to last a lifetime. They have very little footage of psychic phenomna, however - they're hard to film and often easy to fake. Most hunters who take their time to do studies in front of a camera get no useful results. In the field, you need some tricks to deal with the witches that don't like people witnessing or filming their magic. That's a lot of them, really. They can get violent. Posting rituals online can get whole covens mad at you - and it's not just hunters that watch videos. If the footage is good quality and the audio's decent, another coven can work out or counter what the witches in the video are doing. In some places, a coven will agree to work with Network Zero, though. They'll do interviews, even help track serial killers and monsters. In return, the hunters don't film them doing magic. Of course, if the cell finds a new coven not part of the agreement, all bets are off. Other witches don't want any involvement at all, and you have be careful with them Telephoto lenses and webcams with cell modems are good for that. And, of course, not all cells are so forgiving. In Kanses, a cell alliance called the Red Harvest has started hunting and burning witches, catching their hunts on camera for the Network. Snuff films, really. They still get posted, in the interest of freedom of expression, but are heavily password protected. They include torture that'd sicken the Abbey, and at least one witch burned alive on caera for the "crime" of healing the terminall ill. Null Mysteriis is fascinated by the sheer variety of witches. Everyone can have their own pet theory! And all of them might be true. You just need more information to figure it out. But that means everything can be equally false, too. This cynicism is usually a sign that you've been focused on magic too long and need something new to think about, though a unified theory of magic is highly sought after. The real problem is just that every witch does something different. While any one ability could be the subject of a number of theories, a few witches can do all of them, it seems. The best hypotheses focus on the power a witch demonstrates, the powers those powers infer, and how a witch uses them. A master over fate doesn't use the same energies as a devout priest, even if they do the same effect. The power of human sacrifice or scarification is likely something else entirely. They've proven that hte coincidences that many witches are surrounded by are functions of their other abilities, which is often not helpful. Sure, the witch who can manipulate space can hop into a waiting taxi, but no amount of research can prep you for that - or whatever given coincidence the witch might use that day. It's infuriating, but fascinating, each time you fail to predict a coincidence. Psychis are a bit of a nedge case. Some scientists have found records of government research in the 60s and 70s, basic at best, focused more on application than IDing a source. The researchers interested in it tend to be rather different than normal witchfinders - they can at least ocntent themselves with the knowledge that their subjects have a limited range of abilities, allowing them to focus on the mechanisms of psychics, rather than predicting what they can do. Ritual magic may be yet another thing, or an offshoot of larger magic, depending on who you ask. It does allow scientists to study single defined instances of magic in controlled circumstances...though often that means being in the right forest under a full moon and sacrificing an animal with a silver-handled knife. Most scientists, at least, will happily do that if they're hunters and it means the chance of understanding. Investigation and theorizing are the core response to witches for Null MYsteriis. They research, surveill, shadow and profile. They never stop researching. Everything is data to support or break a theory. The current frontrunner for unified theory involves localized manipulation of probability fields. Normally, magic involves changing probabilities - a gas main blows, bullets miss. Somehow, the witch hooks into probability and skews it. Blatant use of magic requires the mage to create the possibility of it happening, then increase the probability. This can happen subconsciously at times or by ritual to focus conscious perceptions in order to create possibility from nothing. This is really littlem ore than a framework for observed data, but hey. It's there. Null Mysteriis tend to specialize in testing theories on the fly with witches, fudging things to work out later in order to reach a useful conclusion. Whether a countermeasure works is just as important as the holes in theories - assuming you live. Generalist researchers often worry that the dedicated witch-finders are mavericks, often forgetting to paper over glaring holes in their hypotheses thanks to adrenaline, too busy focusing on how to stay alive. More academic hunters often call them FErmats, for their habit of having an answer too large for the paper - or anything else. Hell, one hunter even submitted two papers in swift succession that referred to and contradicted each other. The psychic researchers, though, they're as close as it gets to the old guard, used to quasi-acceptability and repeatable testing. Most don't 'hunt' psychics - they sit in a room with them along with some Zener cards, etheric resonance meters and coffee. They talk to them, priding themselves on traditional methods, even if they rely on theories long since debunked, like orgone. The Union are reactive. No problem, no involvement. So their perspective is skewed - they only notice witches that cause trouble. They have a forum to talk on with no organization and a broken search tool. A few of them spend their free time trying to extract accoutns others post in search of trends, but they know they're lacking in categorizaiton. They just don't care. No other group is better placed to witness the damage witches can do. They're small picture people. Sorcerers are around? Listen to the word on the street. A witch loves sacred geometry, so she's on the city planning board. No one can build anything without her altering it for her own power. Another walks the streets, patching up the homeless with strange medicine - he replaces their hearts with clockwork, and any day now he could turn them against his foes. A third witch is running for mayor, embedding spells in her flyers to get votes. She might go for senate after that. The Union tends to split witches into two types - immediate trouble and postponed trouble. Even witches that try to help you are postponed trouble. They're up to something, it's just not a problem right this second. Some witches think you're useful, especially after bad experiences iwth strict hierarchies, but they're passive - they share knowledge, watch your back. They very rarely offer magical assistance. Any Union member who thinks such a deal could be relied on anyway is either stupid or naive. Witches are tricky and will use you for their own ends. They are not friends, they're trouble, now or later. Witches exploit the cracks in a community - but you can fight back. Bring normal people to help you, not as cannon fodder but because normal people have this weird tendency to make the most outrageous types of magic flicker out. It doesn't really level the field, but it helps. The Union doesn't bother trying to split psychics from witches. No point. They're the same thing - the how and why are what matters, not the kind of power. They're just problems you need to solve, and where the power comes from doesn't actually matter. When a witch is immediate trouble, you go break heads. Don't bother with background checks or interviews, don't bother with talking them out of their powers - it won't work anyway. Just take them out. It means they don't come back and can't hurt anyone. The problem is doing it. Most Union aren't ex-military and those who are still can't get heavy duty firepower easily. Better to go after a witch's organization. You have ties to the community. Use them. Force them to fight a battle they're not ready for. Infilitrate the company they rely on, use harassment claims to ruin them - five of 'em in a month? Doesn't matter if they're false. Anyone with Photoshop can ruin a local politician's dreams. The street doctor's army? They have to go up against their friends and loved ones now. Witches exploiit the cracks in the community, but you can fill those in. When you can't, either because you fail or they have too much of a power-base, well, violence works. Because most Union hunters start with social tools and weapons, most witches neve realize how far they'll go if pressed. They expect the kind of people who use violence as a last resort, and badly. Instead, they find people willing to kill. There are no specific witch-hunters in the Union - everyone's a generalist. Their information is from discussion boards. Sure, specific members may claim expertise, but that means nothing without useful information. The real specialists tend towards a skewed view, too - use anyhting as a weapon. Anything. News footage, HR policies, anything. Everything. Sometimes they forget their weapons are people, too. Next time: Conspiracies.
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Jun 2, 2015 23:04
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Chevalier Theleme is a pretty cool guy.
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Jun 2, 2015 23:38
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LEVIATHAN: THE TEMPEST DAGONITES, Children of Dagon the Hierarch, Dagon the Arch-Heretic (or the Brady Bunch from Black Lagoon, Innsmouth Deep Ones, the Prosperous Children) "When you put your trust in me, that makes me responsible for what you do. I know you did it out of love, and I know you regret it now. But what happened is still inexcusable. And I’m sorry, I really am, but I can’t trust that it won’t happen again. For what it’s worth, I will miss you." The Progenitor Dagon is based on the Mesopotamian/Babylonian deity as much as the great Lovecraftian fish god. Out and out inspired by Lovecraft, the blood of Dagonites behave the most like "real genetics". Dagonites are cold and calculating and obsessed with growth and progress. Be aggressive, be bold because that's how fortunes are gained and empires are made. They like to be leaders, and because they tend to be the most numerous Leviathans in the Tribe, they will often get to realize that dream. Puberty for Dagonites is a lot more physical and visible in the real world than for the other bloodlines. A budding Leviathan will notice that something is different with their body, and not in the "oh I have hair there" sense. Dagonites start growing bumps and rashes that reveal patches of scales and webbing and gills; burst that strange lump on your arm and you'll release a handful of mutated, gribbly sea life that were living in a lump full of your own blood. From there, the big question is how much of those things within you are you, and how much comes from your strange heritage? What comes from your power and what comes naturally from your flesh? See, Dagonites can't fail puberty and ascending to being a Leviathan like the other bloodlines can. The blood of Dagon is a dominant trait, and the more blood you have in your heritage, the stronger it is in you. Once it reaches a high enough saturation within you, bang zoom you're a Leviathan, it's happening whether you want to or not. And once one kid becomes a Leviathan in a generation, that tends to cause a metaphysical overflow of saturation that will kick off the puberty of a bunch more. It's not uncommon for one kid to become a Leviathan and then over the span of a year you end up with six more. Puberty as a Dagonite reaches a peak where the other members of your family will take you aside and begin the rituals. Most Dagonites are born to Dagonites, and they have their own ways to celebrate the rising of a new Leviathan. Ritual is a strong facet of the life of a Dagonite family, so a Dagonite's puberty ritual can be the equivalent of a Quinceanera or a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, a grim moment of hoods and torches and chanting and daggers or a strange mixture of both. The big capstone to puberty is the urge to leave and make your own way in the world. Too many Dagonite Leviathans in one place can have...consequences, and not just in the sense of competition with your parents. The Lahmasu of Dagonites are called Abuu (fathers) and they're simply your relatives whose blood doesn't have enough Dagonite blood in it. Physically, Dagonites and Abuu have bodies that scream "HELLO WORLD, I AM FERTILE AS HELL". Birthing hips, curves and soft features for girls, fit bodies, muscle, height and hair for boys. The Abuu take this to a weird extreme, in addition to bulging piscine eyes, possible slime, gaping mouths and patches of scales. The blood of Dagon makes men look like dads and makes women look like moms, and that's important for Abuu because in Dagonite families, Abuu are tools to use in breeding like mixing Chocobo types. They're still people, they're still family, they just have DNA you can use to continue your breeding experiments. In case it's not clear, being in a Dagonite family is often a hosed up affair. When a Dagonite roams and leaves their family, they tend to carry the life lessons of how mom or dad ran the family and use them on people who've been caught up in their Wake. Dagonites also use their cults and families pretty interchangeably; Mother or Father Is God. Your family is your congregation or a business, you're the boss, what you say goes. The leader will tend to have concubines or paramours, breeding with them to make big ol' mess of children and from there you start pairing off people within your group to strengthen the blood. It's very easy for a Dagonite family to be abusive or unhealthy. And that's even for the people who try to be smart and careful about it. Dagonite parents can be distant, leaving you to be raised by other family members as they lead. They may not remember your name, they may only pay attention to you when you start to manifest the same powers they have. The families tend to be isolated and kept away from the world, the familiar faces only changing when a new worshipper is brought into the fold. Family life can be backwards and stagnant, mired in blind tradition and brainwashed obedience. Too many Dagonites in one place will lead to a stagnation of blood and DNA, breeding with the same people and pumping the same genes and blood into the pool. And because Dagonites are prone to "real genetics", they tend to be very unhealthy. A big enough family will end up with widespread disease, rampantly recurring genetic defects and feral, uneducated Abuu running around. And sometimes a Dagonite parent will just cut their losses and go out for a pack of smokes in the middle of the night. Dagonites favor the Vestige of Fecundity, capable of strange abilities involving fertility and growth. Their secondary Vestiges are Elemenets, Predation and Sanctity. The true forms of Dagonites and their general heritage favor creatures from the deep; anglerfishes, eels, lancetfish mixed with mammalian traits. And, surprisingly, Dagonites embody the sin of Pride. Even though it's not lust, it still makes a good deal of sense. They have ideas, big ideas, they try to put in motion but might never be able to back up. A common one is the idea that they can breed pure again, pool together enough humans significant blood heritages and systematically breed the Progenitors back into being. And it's their pride that causes their societies and works for the Tribe to crumble and implode, because in the end no matter their dreams and power they're still the little guy for now. NEXT TIME: The Lahamin, children of the bloodline of Lahamu. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 01:04
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Ashwood Abbey would be way more interesting if they'd cool it with the constant rape.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:12
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Lynx Winters posted:There is an Official Tenchi Muyo RPG, it uses the BESM rules. I have it. I wish I didn't. We always do terrible at the anime questions, because neither of us really follows it all that much, so we can maybe name like 10 shows between us. It's not surprising there's already a Tenchi Muyo one though.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:15
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pkfan2004 posted:LEVIATHAN: THE TEMPEST  I'm surprised I didn't see an explicit mention of compounds and poo poo in all of that
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Jun 3, 2015 01:20
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Witch Finders The Aegis Kai Doru hate witches. It's a very old grudge. They also, however, believe that not only did witches cause the end of primordial paradise, but they exiled the only people wise enough to stop them - the progenitors of the Aegis. So, their hate is full of smugness and superiority, comforting them with the knowledge that they're better than witches. This belief is only reinforced when they take down crazy wizards who summon demons or when a magic spell slips out of control and kills an innocent. They pat themselves on the back in the solid assurance that witches today or no wiser than they ever were, and are utterly incapable of restoring the pre-Fall paradise, no matter what they say. Despite this, those who know the full history often feel some envy towards witches. After all, the oldest records say that the early Aegis were not just relic-keepers, but wizards. Doctrine holds that they would have stopped the cataclysm, had they not been exiled. And if they were magicians and wise enough to foresee and avert the disaster, mustn't it be possible that other magicians could be wise enough to fix things? Officially, the Aegis Kai Doru kill all witches. That's the party line, and the sum total of it. In practice, individual members react differently. Many do follow the basic line, but others are more case-by-case. All witches are suspect, of course, and any causing harm must die, but if you have to choose between hunting down a vampire feeding on college kids or going for a coven that seems to just be doing some weird astronomy, many Aegis hunters will take the vampires out first. Of course, there are those witches that claim to want to restore the world to its glorious, pre-cataclysm state. They are the most dangerous, because history shows that magicians cannot be trusted with the world. What might have happened if the people of Babel had tried a second time? We could all be unable to speak at all. Same with witches. The Aegis do their best to stamp out that kind of crazy whenever they find them, even if they secretly hope such a scheme might work. It is possible for an Aegis cell and a coven to coexist. The grudge of the Aegis is historical, not religious. It's hard to hate over things from millenia ago, really, and if a witch isn't hurting anyone or mucking around with the building blocks of reality, aren't they beng kept in check, just like they should be? The leaders of the conspiracy heavily discourage this attitude, but it's relatively common on the ground level. Actual alliance is pushing it, though in extreme cases the Aegis might consider allying with a harmless coven to take down a much worse foe. This is inevitably short-lived and often ends violently, however. The Aegis is also deeply uninterested in collecting lore on how witches actually work. They already know. They'll study individuals to hunt them, but they don't care about the how. The fact that their records and much of what they know is millenia out of date, distorted or just wrong doesn't really matter to them. They have only two real responses to witchcraft: murder and ignoring it. The Ascending Ones do not reckon tha all mystic powers are eivl. After all, they use magic themselves. They know some of it is fune, while other types are sins as bad as murder or rape. Figuring out what kind of magic you're dealing with is the hard part, and no one wants to be responsible for killing a man so righteous that angels take their requests directly to God. Traditionalists who keep to the ways of the Cult of the Phoenix are happy to ignore where witch powers come from, so long as it's not bargaining with demons. The Order of the Southern Temple tend only to care what you do with it, and often try to be professional or friendly with mages that seem nice enough, even allying with them. The more modern and pragmatic arm of the conspiracy has little to do with witches. Some sorcerers are in the drug trade, but less so than, say, vampires. Plus, most places where dealers hang out just don't attract witches - no libraries, no antiquities dealers. Some witches, usually the worst of the lot, see the inner city as a good source for victims, since no one's going to mess a gangbanger or crack addict. They often find themselves surprised when they run into Ascending One cells, which even at their worst are fiercely protective of their people. Alchemist wizards are particularly interesting to the Ascending Ones, who often want to study their brews, no matter what kind of alchemy they do. Sometimes that means a truce or pact, and other times it means breaking in to steal stuff or kill the guy and take his poo poo. Anyone who can get back a formula that can be adapted into an Elixir is sure to gain prestige. The Ascending Ones judge witches by their actions. They're not going to be hypocritical and go after a witch just because they can do magic without relying on elixirs. Those who act in the interest of the community are ignored or approached in the interest of conversion. The AScending Ones prefer converts to corpses, but refusal to convert does mean you have to take them out as heretics. Those who prefer to use power for personal gain are often warned to mend their ways - leave a dagger or poison on their pillow as they sleep, to let them know they're being watched. Sometimes it works, sometimes the witch uses it to trace back to you with magic. In that case, well, gotta kill 'em. Honor-bound duty. Take them down as spectacularly as possible, for preference. Of course, if you find a witch engaged in true blasphemy and wickedness - dealing with demons, harming innocents, that sort of thing - there is no mercy or warning. They must be slain. Period. Even the Jagged Crescent, pragmatic as they can be, mobilize everything they have to take down depraved magicians. More than one witch, especially along the Mexico/US border or in Latin America, has gone too far and ended up a drug war casualty. Cheiron is fascinated by witches. They, of all monsters, show no biological change unless they alter themselves. This is a real problem. Even slashers tend to abnormal brain structure or hormonal imbalance. Witches don't. Their studies have shown that some have odd nerve clusters and neural arrangements in and aroudn the hippocampus, so that's a place to start, but it's not universal or even common. Sure, you sometimes run into witches that alter their own bodies - and they're valuable, make no mistake - but they're not common, either. This has made mages a bit of an obsession for osme Cheiron scientists. They're fascinating - externally, their powers are very diverse and unique, but inside, they're just like any human. It makes no sense at all. Ultimately, Cheiron just doesn't accept that magic can be spiritual or mental - all of their theories are about exploiting bodies, so magic must have a biological origin of some kind or else what's the point? Cheiron does stalk witches, but it also goes hunting for places where magic has weakened reality and pulses up closer to the world than normal. They don't care about any mystical wellbein - it's just, there's weird poo poo sometimes. Often, there's nothing, but sometimes you find a living creature that shouldn't exist. Catch it if possible. Dissect it if you must, but if you can get it to breed, do it. These things slip through the reality cracks that magic leaves behind. Most witches hate them, say they shouldn't exist. Hunters sometimes catch the word 'Abyssal' over surveillence gear. A number of them seem tied to magic, hunting witches or feeding on etheric energies. These are very useful indeed. Others just kill everything nearby. Some are obvious targets, but Cheiron's not likely to notice a magically sentient, evil house until it starts changing its inhabitants. (Yes, magic can cause that by accident.) The closest they have to dedicated witchfinders are the guys who specialize in hunting down those manifestations. A few don't even wait for the wizards to leave, trying to get a double bag. (They die very often.) Cheiron tries to avoid physical combat with witches - they're paranoid monsters, sure, but Cheiron agents aren't religious or government. They can usually get a witch to talk a little bit, maybe even set up a meeting on home turf. Some of them are more like counselors than monster hunters, wanting to understand where magic comes from. Sometimes, witches help willingly, others need bagging and tagging. Two cells, in New York and LA, have set up as "parapsychological experts," debunking psychic frauds and helping true psychics. One of their big lines is electrostimulation to remove trace powers - often, people view visions of death to be a curse, after all, and Cheiron has a record for results and discretion. The Lucifuge know that all powers are either angelic or demonic. Werewolves? Demon inside you. Weird poo poo coming out of the earth? Demon. Witches? Not possessed by angels or demons. They don't fit. They're people who steal divine power, and the Lucifuge are very interested. Most witches understand the source of their power, but not how they got it. The closest ones, say the Lucifuge, are the ones who say they stole their knowledge from the great city of Pandemonium. Others claim to have heard a chour of angels as they do their magic. They're almost right. Others come nowhere close - New Ager spirit types, or those who say they're doing the work of the dead. They're so wrong it's almost funny. The Lucifuge know that all magic powers are divine, angelic or demonic. They aren't given easy, and witches have the will to steal a little spark, exchanging a fragment of their soul for an angel or demon's power. That's why some witches go on and on about the Supernal - they mean Heaven and Hell. But their understanding is incomplete - power but not knowledge. A terrible burden. The Lucifuge hate them for that - they weren't born with Lucifer's blood or power, but took it anyway, and they have more than any of Lucifer's true children. Worse, they seek even more power as if they have some right to it. The Lucifuge hunt them to return those shards where they belong, hoping it'll balance the books before anyone notices. Plus, witches get the Lucifuge mistaken for witches by other hunters. Sometimes, they got hunted. Now, the Lucifuge have no explanation for psychics. Some say it's a revolutionary quirk or perhaps a sign of something else out there taking an interest. But no divine or demonic intervention, at least. They also know of ritual books, rituals that can bind the power of minor demons via words and actions rather than any power of the soul. These get sent to the Lucifuge libraries, but they never leave any living witnesses to remember the rituals. Some witches may claim the power of Heaven, but the Lucifuge hunt them anyway. It's their job to return that power ot its rightful place - and the only way they know to do that is murder. Some hunters try to use elaborate rituals to return the shards once the witch is dead, while others believe it'll go home on its own. Some say the witch must die a specific way - one New England cell says you must put out both eyes, so the power can exit the empty sockets. Sure, some witches can do good work, so they can live as long as you can allow, maybe. But other ssay that even if they don't mean to, demons will seek them out. Demons love magic, and witches are so easy to tempt. Many feel like they have total control of their power but want even more of it, which demons can offer. Others seek to grasp more of what's available to them - and dmeons help with that, to. All they have to do is help the demon. Just a little. It's a slippery slope, and best to take them out before it starts. The Lucifuge do take their time in witch-hunting, though, to study how the witch acts, who they used to be before being a witch, what they were like. This often holds clues to the witch's mindset that can be taken advantage of. Those people who use strange rituals have already proven evil intent by using powers drawn from demons. You might educate them or recruit them, but your job is to collect any copies of the ritual and ensure no one remembers how to use it. Can't just leave demonic rites around where any idiot with a scanner can post them online, you know. The Malleus Maleficarum are the Hammer of the Witches. They have strong feelings on them. Only the Aegis and Long Night come close. Where the Aegis hate witches for history and the Long Night hate them as willing servants of Satan, the Malleus love witches. They lvoe them so much that they'll torture and brainwash them into recanting heresy and becoming good Catholics once more. They are old-school inquisitors - the Long Night might vary between trying to redeem witches or killing them, the Malleus know that witches are misguided and can be forced to see the light - by torture, confession and death. Works over faith, you know, and death is often the only restitution that can be offered. That's the party line, anyway, but 'love the sinner, hate the sin' is so often warped to 'hate the sinner, really, really hate the sin.' For every priest that claims to torture from love, six make no disguise of their hatred and their eagerness to torture witches to death. Witches seldom see any distinction there. Theologically, there is only one explanation for witchcraft: a witch has, by free will or guile, sold their soul to the devil for power. Everything they know bears that out, and the properties of magic are proof of Satanic origin. One key study described that, in the words of a magician, no sorcery could be made to last forever on a human being. The Malleus point to this as proof that magic is of Satan, for only God can make permanent, lasting change in His creations. Witchcraft can take many froms, from Satanic rites to neopaganism to psychics, and sometimes it comes in the guise of miracles. Theologically, the Malleus are on shaky ground there. Some say it's proof of God's love, others say that the Devil can quote Scripture, too, and why not disguise his works? The Hammer's leadership has never given clear policy here.  Witchcraft is heresy. Period. Doesn't matter how, it's all heresy, and heresy must be punished. Confession os the key - a witch must be captured and made to confess. It might be private, gained however you see fit. Those who freely repent and seem properly penitent, well, that's fine. But most confessions must be forced by torture. It's a long tradition, and most Malleus chapter houses have at least one antique torture device prominently displayed, usually an Iron Maiden. It's not for use - it's a reminder that extreme measures can be needed to save the soul. Some hunters are staunch traditionalists, bust most have moved on to sonic torture, electrocution and waterboarding - less lasting harm, after all. It's incentive, not punishment. Most witches don't understand they're the servants of Satan, requiring pain and purification by ordeal to open their eyes. The most painful to deal with are those that think their magic is a gift from God, who can't understand why brothers in Christ want to hurt them so much, who resist confession fervently. Once broken, though, their confession is swift. Some confessions are public, before a gathered congregation of hunters, and the witch will read their own sentence. Not all, however, rely on medieval methods. Within the last 50 years there's been a growing faction trying to apply more modern and liberal methods. Sometimes, that means religious counseling and interfaith discussion, sometimes it means cult deprogramming. Once you get confession, you send word to the Vatican for judgment. For minor sins, conversion may be enough, but it frequently isn't an option. Some must walk a pilgrimage (under surveillence), some are captured and imprisoned, and there are a number of hidden prisons across Europe, plus a few in cities like Boston or Philadelphia. If the crimes are severe enough, heresy means death. Burning is traditional, but most prefer nooses, bullets or forced overdose. While confession is policy, cells ultimately operate alone and on their own initiative, so some leave harmless witches alone until they prove dangerous, and some skip the confession and go straight to murder - though the crimes needed for that kind of sanction are extreme. Selling the souls of innocents, say. Those who recant but return to evil are not generally given more chances, and it's not unheard of for those that cause terrible casualties to a cell to 'tragically succumb' before they can be captured. Vengeance may be un-Christian, but hey, that's what confession's for. Task Force: VALYKRIE treat witches the same way other agencies treat suspected terrorists. They're under a lot of pressure to take out the threat and can get clearance for heavy weapons just by saying the word 'witch.' On the other hand, analysts need information, which means sleepers to infiltirate covens, setting up elaborate surveillence, tracking down every link. There are no mid-level sanctions, no way to deal with suspects you're unsure of. There's no magical no-fly list, and ID checks are useless against magical mind control. Like terrorists, witches look like normal people. Unlike terrorists, there's a hell of a lot of 'em on American soil - and these guys, terrorist or reality deviant or whatever you want to call them, can do a lot more than blow up buildings. VALKYRIE's got a lot of theories on where witches come from, all with some proof. (Sometimes they even steal Null Mysteriis theses and claim them as records with the names removed.) Witches might be possessed by or servants of the First People - pissed off Native Americans trying to take revenge. Maybe they're genetically modified insurgents, brains and souls tinkered with by a supernaturally potent Middle Eastern nation or a returning Soviet Union. Maybe they're the result of an anthrax-like magical contagion. Maybe all of the above. Pet theories abound, and often do more harm than good. False information falls too easily into agents' hands, especially when a CO's pride is on the line. VALKYRIE knows psychics like the back of their hand, though. They've got MK-ULTRA's research, KGB remote sensing experiments stolen or trickled after the Iron Curtain fell, maybe even some active MK-ULTRA researchers. But the point is, witches and psychics damage the culture of democracy. Sorcerers gently caress the vote, mind controlling politicians - or worse, becoming politicians. They can conjure up infectious bacterial weapons just by wishing it. If the American people knew how often they needed to be protected from witches, they'd poo poo themselves. TFV's main response is shock tactics. Bursting through the door with flashbombs and guns blazing often helps, though not always. Big guns are actually less useful against witches - unlike shapeshifters or vampires, witches die just the same as anyone else. Anything bigger than a bullet is probably a waste of ammo, though sometimes you get guys who can turn bullets into roses or bugs. When surprise fails, you're on your own. Most of their tools are great at regaining surprise by knocking out concentration or focusing witches on other targets, but when they're not effect, it's time to use the secret weapon: everyone. When it comes to witches, you have a two-stage strategy. First, find out who they are, putting surveillence on them via Homeland Security, FBI or NSA. VALKYRIE has a lot of leeway, and hundreds of witches are under surveillence, maybe more. It used to be hard to get warrants, but the Patriot Act did away with all that. Hooray America! There's a number of dedicated witch-hunter units, normally in urban areas - not because of any concentration of witches, but because if an occult WMD were detonated, that's where you'd want to protect. On top of that, many agents go through EOCHAI training as part of Project TWILIGHT. Most who do that but don't join a witch-hunter squad are sent into cells as mission experts or specialists. Unlike other training programs, EOCHAI is prized for tactical knowledge more than weapons access. As for folks with neither conspiracy nor compact...well, it's hard to ID a witch. Most cells don't know much, but it seems like there's some kind of occult underground, with the "heirs of Atlantis" on top and other witches serving them or hating them. That means witches tend to congregate together, and a group of witches is easier to spot than just one. Watch the occult bookstores and their regular customers. Learn to tell the NEw Age fluff from real magic. Witches tend to be a little off-kilter - eccentric weirdos, mostly. The guy who keeps adding to his labyrinthine mansion? The girl with the pack of hoillow-eyed boys following her and drooling a bit? The homeless guy drawing weird sigils, which people always stop and leave change on? Witches. Great job, you've found one. Now what? You get all kins of reactions, depending on motivations. Some are violent, others are more fascinated. Either way, it's best to watch before you act. You can usually trace one witch back to others, or to magical hotspots. In 1980s Phoenix, a cell calling itself the Desert Rats IDed a witch as a murderer, but shadowed him for a year and investigated everyone they saw him meet rather than kill him. In the end, the witch killed three more, but they were able ot take out the entire coven plus three other witches before getting killed going after a guy they claimed was the chief warlock of Arizona. People are divided over that - three people died, after all. That could've been prvented. But a lot of the witches they found were low profile and would never have been spotted otherwise. On the other hand, there was no evidence they had anything to do with the killing - indeed, the killer's coven may not have known and, when they found out, may have tried to stop him. PEaceful relations are rarer but hardly impossible. Witches are the easiest things to get along with - vampires hunt, werewolves are feral and violent, but a witch is a person.  Just so you know, ritual Satanic cults don't actually exist in the real world. It's not a thing. At all. Anywhere. Ever. Next time: Origins! And after that, THE CONSENSUS
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Jun 3, 2015 01:24
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Xelkelvos posted:
For certain values of healthy or normal. (compounds would make it super easy to keep the outside world out of your business restoring the glory of the Wicked Tribe to the world, though!)
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Jun 3, 2015 01:46
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theironjef posted:We always do terrible at the anime questions, because neither of us really follows it all that much, so we can maybe name like 10 shows between us. It's not surprising there's already a Tenchi Muyo one though. Yeah. I actually ran it, but it was a different time, as they say. I agreed to run only six sessions, though, and people enjoyed it enough that I ran a "second series" of another seven and then called it there. It was a massively broken game even by BESM standards, I remember just giving a gently caress off to point levels or balance, because who wants to worry about mathing poo poo in what's a short-run comedy (ish) game? Licensed anime games just died completely after the collapse of Guardians of Order and the near-collapse of R. Talsorian, though, I can't think of any since 2004 unless you count Palladium's Robotech releases. I guess they were a warning to those who remained. Granted, there are other trad games based on animes, but I can't think of any RPGs.
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Jun 3, 2015 03:16
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah. I actually ran it, but it was a different time, as they say. I agreed to run only six sessions, though, and people enjoyed it enough that I ran a "second series" of another seven and then called it there. It was a massively broken game even by BESM standards, I remember just giving a gently caress off to point levels or balance, because who wants to worry about mathing poo poo in what's a short-run comedy (ish) game? Licensed anime RPGs probably don't show up in the US any more. There's still some being produced in Japan like the Log Horizon one, but that might be more of the creator's whims than anything else. I don't know about the frequency otherwise. There are a few fan RPGs based on anime like Adeptus Evangelion and Pokemon Tabletop United.
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Jun 3, 2015 03:31
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There was also an official A-Ko RPG.
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Jun 3, 2015 03:39
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Slowly picking through Mors' posts because they're fascinating but I only read this thread before lunch while I wait for the labs to open up. The Cainite Heresy sounds like a horror movie shot the vampire's perspective, the cattle, the kine, the human masses that you're so used to infiltrating, to moving amongst like a wolf through sheep... and then suddenly they're LOOKING AT YOU and they have knives and enough hate and insanity to drown you in.pkfan2004 posted:Puberty for Dagonites is a lot more physical and visible in the real world than for the other bloodlines. A budding Leviathan will notice that something is different with their body, and not in the "oh I have hair there" sense. Dagonites start growing bumps and rashes that reveal patches of scales and webbing and gills; burst that strange lump on your arm and you'll release a handful of mutated, gribbly sea life that were living in a lump full of your own blood. From there, the big question is how much of those things within you are you, and how much comes from your strange heritage? What comes from your power and what comes naturally from your flesh? This immediately came to mind. 
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Jun 3, 2015 03:54
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Crasical posted:This immediately came to mind. Ha ha, oh man, Fecundity can let you do some weird poo poo like that. LEVIATHAN: THE TEMPEST LAHAMIN, Children of Watchful Lahamu, Lahamu the Celestial Eye (Sea Witches, Sunken Prophets, Fish With Three Eyes) "You heard that I pay well for juicy gossip. So you've decided to come here, find out what you can take from me. But as it turns out, there is nothing you know I'm interested in, because I've been watching you, honey, and everything you know, I already know. So the question now becomes, what are you willing to pay to get out of here in one piece?" Lahamu was the first-born daughter of Tiamat, sister and wife of Lahmu. The two of them are associated with silt and the sea bed, and that carries over to the children of their bloodline. Lahamin naturally favor the mystic elements of their heritage, placing more importance on the God over Man and Beast. Their Progenitor was gifted with preternatural sight and abilities and they follow suit, keeping eyes and tabs on everything they can. They're expected to act with subtly and to be secretive, to prize knowledge and prophecy and power to control people and money. Other relatives in the Tribe think they're cowards, too scared to get involved in a fair fight. Like other sea life that lives in the silt and sand, they're packing a few tricks up their sleeves that help like poisoned spines and potent venom. Lahamin have...weird requirements to be a Leviathan. The purity of the blood within you really doesn't amount to much. They can predict genetics; the more Lahamin you're directly descended from, the better your chances. Environmentally, if you're the direct child of a Lahamin your chances are pretty good. The problem in predicting future Leviathans comes from the more mystical side of things. They can't control all of the variables and that annoys them; most Lahamin have another Leviathan of a different bloodline in their direct family tree. They just tend to slip in unannounced compared to the other races, there's no limit to how many of them can be born and there's no telling how many will manifest. It's the one nut they can't really crack besides assuming that they will be born when you least expect them. Puberty for a Lahamin is a trying affair. The first thing that happens is that their Wake manifests. The second is that they can see into the hearts of men. And when you consider that the Wake forces people to love a Leviathan, it really makes them question just how much of what they know is a lie. A Lahamin who is able to find help from another Leviathan is likely to come through the whole mess with an answer and a handle on their humanity; no small feat when most Lahamin come into being alone. They're also forced to understand quickly that acting on what they can see will have rippling consequences. Get the foreman at the lumber mill arrested because you know he killed his wife in a drunken rage and the company will be in a panic, jobs will be lost and the mill might even be shut down. Some of them end up seeing themselves as part of some ancient plan or system while others simply see themselves as manipulators with a guiding hand, or as powerful beings with the ability to help. As a consequence of their genetics and upbringing, most Lahamin don't grow up knowing about Tribal society and politics. While this can be helpful, they also might be out of their depth when they meet more of their kind, forcing them to become the sly planners the others expect them to be. Lahamin families are not happy ones most of the time. The descendents of Lahamu give birth in numbers and they're playing those numbers. It's common for parents to have a long, sad history of stillborn births and deaths at a young age from failure to thrive. If you're the direct descendent of a Leviathan, things get worse. Most Lahamin parents are either emotionally distant or literally not there, abandoning their families and children not long after birth. If they're distant, it's because they didn't expect you to live anyway. If they left, it's because you have to face nature and survive on your own without their help; that's the way it's done to be tough and thrive. Most of the time, if a Lahamin finds the Tribe without being born into it, it's because they set out into the world to find the parent who abandoned them. The Lahmasu of the Lahamin are called Mahhu (translation unknown, etymology unknown). Mahhu end up with the gift of sight as well. While they don't get the Wake, in return they wear their aquatic heritage quite openly. This is a big problem for Mahhu. The true form of Lahamin hew towards things that live in the seabed. Lahamin mix soft bodies with hard shells; molluscs, shellfish, trilobites, snails, soft worms, things with antennae and big unblinking eyes. Most Mahhu are abandoned quickly out of horror or shunned by mankind out of fear and live their lives protected by the Tribe or alone in hiding, living by using their powers to get business and survive. Like Mahhu, Lahamin cults tend to be quiet, insular affairs. Most Lahamin limit the amount of people they convert into cultists by being selective in looking for people with formal power and status and skill. The majority of their cults are small or an informal web of contacts who don't know each other but all work for their Lahamin master. The Vestige they are born mastering is Awareness, with a secondary preference for Fecundity, Predation and Sanctity. Their sin is Envy; a lot of Lahamin need to know or live vicariously through the exploits and knowledge of others. They're also envious of the general success the other bloodlines tend to have, comparatively speaking. But they have the plans to change that if they really want to. NEXT TIME: NU, children of the Progenitor...Nu. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 03:55
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I couldn't sleep, so I wrote instead. I'll sleep on the plane. Witch Finders So, everyone knows there's how the world is supposed to work. We don't understand it yet, but there are rules. Laws. Gravity works. Inertia works. Fundamentally, the universe is rational...except when it suddenly isn't. Someone pushes the bounds, and sometimes they break. When that happens, Division Six comes in to clean up. Division Six claims to be governmental; it's not. It claims to operate worldwide; it doesn't. It claims to date back to the Culper Ring of George Washington; nope. It can be traced reliably only back to 1976 and the Vicentennial. A hunter working for a prominent New England congressman, a hunter named Thomas Major, teams up with a few other DC power players who had become aware of a shadow war between occult societies. They're unclear on the details, but based on interrogation of three witches captured trying to influence the government, the theory was that the Bicentennial could be of huge occult significance, and any policy changes during this mystically potent period would ripple out over the next two centuries. Major and his cell are rather bothered by this, so they set out to kill any and all witches they can find in the capital. Whether it'd have actually had any real, lasting effects on America's future can't be determined - not long after the hunts started, most witches in the city fled or went to ground, and the Bicentennial passed without incident. This was not the end, though. In January 1977, Major is contacted by a man who calls himself only MisteR Jones. Jones says he belongs to the Panopticon, a secret, to-level bureau monitoring "reality deviants" and attempting to minimize their impact on the government. The Panopticon had, he said, monitoring and information-finding tools that dwarfed the NSA, but they had no force projection capability. To minimize red tape, Jones was authorized to establish a pilot program to test the feasibility of using a small group of extragovernmental operatives to directly deal with reality deviants. Major and his allies agreed, and Division Six was born. By the early 80s, it was an unqualified success. Major and most of the original cell were dead, but later members expanded into several major cities, including New York, Philly, Chicago and Las Vegas. It was around then that their false history started to take root, claiming to be dating back to the Revolution and involved in key events in history. A few old hands, who'd been around since Major, know the truth, but they assume it's just meant to overawe new recruits. AGents are paid by direct deposit of cash into bank account, given nonspecific but vaguely federal-looking ID, which carries no actual weight but often gains cooperation. The whole thing looks like what you'd expect from a top-secret agency, so few ever question why there's no chain of command, performance reviews or due process. Division Six operates largely as it has for the last 30 years. Each cell's leader gets instructions between once a week and once a month from someone they believe to be a Panopticon spy. They get a list of names of known reality deviants, sometimes just one nome, sometimes over a dozen. None of them come from a central clearinghouse - the lists are Jones' enemies, revals and potential threats. Division Six eliminates them, believing they are keeping the laws of the cosmos intact. Some day, Jones will die or his cabal of hunters will become known to his enemies. It remains to be seen whether Division Six will survive such an event. The facts as laid out by Jones say that the laws of reality are meant to be static. Some flex room is built in to allow for weird events, but there's a set framework. Unfortunately, due to entropy, it's no longer as rigid as it should be. Flaws creep in, and the careless or power-mad can exploit those flaws to gain powers that appear magical. Division Six focuses almost entirely on human witches. Their theories say that all supernatural beings are a symptom of reality breakdowns, but humans deliberately forcing their minds into the cracks and pushing them open wider are the cause. Eliminating monsters just treats the symptoms, not the disease: mages. In hunting reality deviants, Division Six's members are their own greatest assets. For reasons they don't really understand, the human mind can apparently hold the universe together temporarily, not just pull it apart. When Division Six agents are present during a manifestation of reality deviance, many times the witch will find their spells harder to control or failing outright. The superstructure of reality is reinforced by the same power that can pull it apart. It's nt perfect protection, and it can be overcome by determined willworkers, and it doesn't seem to stop others at all. Division Six operatives are conditions to expect any form of weirdness near reality deviants. Often they are subtle, easily overlooked, and the mental reinforcement agents rely on is much less effective if a witch can do magic without them noticing. At times, the conditioning takes too well, and the agents become inured to reality deviance, unable to separate it from reality. They can no longer disrupt magic when this happens, and they usually get retired to teaching positions or "promoted" to the Panopticon, rarely to be seen again. At least three such agents have been confirmed as ending up on Division Six hitlists.  Seers of the Throne, man. Division Six is cell-based, but each member also gets assigned to a specific department with particular duties. They're expected to cross-train for each other's jobs so that operational readiness is maintained in the case of an agent's death. Department Alpha are the planners and logistics guys. Nominally in charge, they organize resources provided by the rest of the team and turn them into viable strategy for kills. They are also the ones that get lists from the Panopticon. Department Charlie is surveillence and intel, dangerous work. Charlie agents are often also used to place traps due to their infiltration skills. They especially like car bombs, and most have some explosives experience. Department Whiskey is not well trusted - they're the ones who make the kills, either at range or up close and personal. It takes a special kind of crazy to kill people just because they do magic, but they don't seem to mind. Status in Division Six is gained by performing duties well and killing wizards. More academically inclined members can get some by publishing new theories on reality deviance, psychological studies and profiling techniques. At one dot, you're a recruit. You don't know the real history and probalby buy into the fake one. You probably think you work for the government. Whenever you risk Willpower to intimidate someone with your status, you get an additional Willpower point as a result, even on top of your normal pool. At 3 dots, you've gotten extensive condition to reinforce reality and have helped eliminate several reality deviants. Whenever you witness a Vulgar spell, the caster suffers an additional -1 Paradox penalty. At five dots, you're a hotshot agent, the top of the list. They tell stories about you. You never pay for beers. You're a mentor, and you have taken an agent on as a protege. You get three dots of Retainer. Stereotypes posted:Aegis Kai Doru: These are some spooky sonsabitches, my friend. I'm not sure if an object can be called a "reality deviant," but that stuff they carry around isn't quite right. Magic's the bloodstream of the universe, according to the Keepers of the Source. It flows through Earth in invisible patterns, following terrain and the spirit world. In some places, it pools, making sacred places of power. The ignorant assume these pools are merely natural collection points, that the energy is there to be taken, another resource to use. They are wrong. The Earth is a living organism, and those places where the Source pools up are her organs. Draining the energy from these holy places is like stealing blood from a human heart. It causes the Earth Mother intense pain, and that must be stopped at any cost. They started as the Dowsers,i n the Summer of Love, and were founded by Meredith Lehane, AKA Starflower, a New Ager in San Francisco. She had a minor psychic gift that let her perceive the flow of mystic forces around her, and she and several associates adapted the practice of dowsing to map that flow. She believed that a complete map would be the key to achieving a higher plane of consciousness. As her techniques got more precise and elaborate, Starflower became a local celebrity among occultists, and even a real witch followered her work with interest. She got many new members, some of whom shared her gift. One of them was an idealistic man named Duncan Redgrove, a prodigy she took under her wing. In 1970, they attended a Samhain festival in Balboa Park, a key confluence of ley lines. By this point, they were familiar with the idea of Source pools and had begun to theorize the pools were organs of the Earth Mother, but they didn't realize they could be harvested. At midnight, as the moon reached its zenith, one of celebrants, a witch named Cassandra, siphoned ths ource - and to Starflower and the other Dowser psychics, it was as if the Earth itself screamed in pain. It wasn't until a week later that they figured it out. Starflower went to Cassandra, begging her to return what was stolen, but the witch just gave some convoluted explanation about Mana and something called a Hallow and insisted it was perfectly natural. Starflower tried to explain, but Cassandra wouldn't listen - her mentor had taught her that harvesting the enrgy was natural and vital, and surely a mystic adept knew more than a New Age psychic girl. Starflower left, disheartened, and went back to the Dowsers. When Redgrove heard, he was outraged. He'd felt the Earth scream, and anyone that could willingly do that to their Mother was a monster. He advocated usng force to make Cassandra return the Earth's blood, but Starflower refused - she was a pacifist, and believed it'd make them no better than the Earth's life-stealing rapists. Redgrove wasn't convinced, but Starflower was still the leader. For five years, the Dowsers were a joke in San Francisco occult society. Whenever a witch drew Source, within a week they'd show up in the street or at the witch's house, to ask them to put it back. Most just smiled and nodded and ignored them. Others verbally abused them, assaulted them or cursed them. Three, at least, died in mysterious accidents that some thought were the work of witches afraid of those who knew the truth. Discontent grew, and Redgrove led a group favoring more drastic action. In 1975, the Dowsers interrupted a ritual in Golden Gate Park, stopping four people at a sacred outcropping. Fourteen Dowsers were there, including Starflower, blocking the stones from the werewolf pack that claimed them as territory. Twelve died, and Starflower was hospitalized for three months. With her down, Redgrove moved to take over, abandoning peace for direct action. The next time they found a witch stealing Source, they beat him into a coma mid-ritual. They got more militant and innovative over time. The witches retaliated spectacularly against direct assault, so they turned to ambush and traps, particularly ritually tempering Source pools to draw in witches after letting out deadly traps. A fire at one such pool in 1977 killed at least five witches and a dozen innocents after the next door apartment building caught fire. In 1979, the werewolf pack that maimed Starflower were killed via fertilizer bomb at their sacred site. Starflower tried to control it, but by the time she recovered Redgrove had too much control. OVer the years, she was marginalized, until 1985, when Redgrove officially asked her to leave and changed the group name to the Keepers of the Source. She left the group and the city altogether. Today, the Keepers operate much as they have since Redgrove took over. He died in 1996 - freak lightning strike, surely no accident. His daughter, Karen, leads now. She's more moderate, pushing people to give witches a chance to see their error before beating them to death, but she's not afraid of violence. Starflower is still alive, living in Philadelphia under her real name now - Meredith Lehane. She's an advertising executive and has shed her hippy lifestyle. Some days, she even convinces herself she can't hear the Earth Mother screaming any more. Since 9/11, they've moved to subtler attacks - car bombs are terrorism now, not mob hits, and that gets Homeland Security on your rear end. They favore "accidents" - ruptured gas main, electrical fire and so on. They are still largely based in San Francisco, especially areas with strong hippy connections, though some have struck out for other cities. Joining is easy - they proslytize on campuses and corners, where they are usually seen as nuts. Most of their literature is about corporations bleeding the Earth Mother - they've learned that witches strike back violently if discussed openly. New recruits are encouraged to protest and demonstrate, and only brought to the hunt if they seem amenable to extreme methods.  Turns out the hippies are nuts, who knew? The Keepers don't actually object to witches or monsters. They're fringe New Agers, after all, and several practice "magic" as part of their religion, identifying as witches, vampires or other stuff. They don't even mind actual magicians - it's just stealing Source that bothers them. Most of the people that do that are magicians, but cultists, werewolves and demons sometimes do, too. They're not nearly so good at fighting those, though, so they often call in more militant groups for it. Despite their history, their understanding of the supernatural world is very narrow due to their monofocus. They're barely aware vampires even exist. They are familiar with werewolves, and generally avoid them since it goes very poorly when they fight them. Demons, ghosts and other entities that anchor themselves to sacred sites occasionally pop up, but the Keepers lack the knowledge and skill to detect or deal with them well. They are equally active against non-Source-based threats to the Earth, though. Since the mid-80s, when they found that logging, development and other environmental shifts could destroy Source pools, they've been active environmental campaigners. They protest destruction of historic neighborhoods, spike trees and devote a lot of energy to fighting environmental threats from mundane foes. A trio of deaths in the late 90s after sabotaging a construction site nearly made them national news, but coincidental chaos ensured that it never quite made it to the evening news. Stereotypes posted:Ashwood Abbey: Free love is a beautiful thing, but this...this is just degenerate. Three primary philosophies exist in the Keepers. The Children of Gaia are a small but growing group, inspired by resurgent interest in Starflower's old pacifist teachings. On the other hand, the Hand of the Mother are still a large, influential philosophy even after Duncan Redgrove's death, preaching a no-mercy attitude towards defilers. The Dynasts fllow Karen Redgrove, vacillating between the two extremes but never settling. Both of the other philosophies have been courting Karen to get the rest of the compact behind them. You get status in the Keepers by protecing Source and developing new philosophies on the world and Source. At one dot, you've been to a few meetings and protests, maybe a few police incidents. You get a specialty in Weaponry (Improvised Weapons), Express (Protests) or Science (Environmentalism). At three dots, you've proven willing to go to extreme lengths to protect Mother Earth. The rest of the Keepers look up to you and you'll always have crash space and bail money in San Francisco, and you get 2 dots of Allies. At five dots, you've gotten the attention of leadership. Through use of drugs and meditation, you have opened yourself to the Earth Mother's pain so you can protect her, gaining the Unseen Sense (Source) merit, or a three dot Mentor if you already have it. Next time: What I desire is man's red fire to make my dream come true.
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Jun 3, 2015 04:46
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theironjef posted:We always do terrible at the anime questions, because neither of us really follows it all that much, so we can maybe name like 10 shows between us. It's not surprising there's already a Tenchi Muyo one though. Don't know about High School of the Dead or Kill la Kill, but there is an Apocalypse World hack for Attack on Titan that seems pretty good. Was kind of hoping the multi-part question would trip one of you up enough to blank out and end up explaining why "Tentacle☆Panty Fighter: City of Violence" would be the best RPG.
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Jun 3, 2015 04:56
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I can't imagine you'd need a special system for High School of the Dead other than rules for interrupting a scene randomly every XdX minutes to roll lovely fanservice. Roll for body or parts (boobs, butt, nape), the effect (bounce, twist, squish), and the special effects table. Then feel lovely and embarrassed and try to get on with your game.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:13
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Why the nape?
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Jun 3, 2015 05:19
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I can't imagine you'd need a special system for High School of the Dead other than rules for interrupting a scene randomly every XdX minutes to roll lovely fanservice. Roll for body or parts (boobs, butt, nape), the effect (bounce, twist, squish), and the special effects table. Then feel lovely and embarrassed and try to get on with your game.  
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Jun 3, 2015 05:29
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I'm sure someone's homebrewed some weird and perverse RPG that's the Japanese bastard offspring of FATAL.. Would like to see it, but never ever play it. Speaking of Japanese bastard offspring RPGs, here's more Magical Girls! Princess: the Hoepful Another short post before we dig into Charms. Blessed Places quote:The classroom of an inspirational teacher. A humble yet gifted artist’s studio. The best, hardest working hospital in town and the underfunded free clinic opening against the odds in the most deprived area. A truly welcoming and tolerant church. The laboratory tirelessly working on the latest disease to evolve and the library that preserves wisdom of ages gone by. These are the Blessed places, they stand on a legacy of the very best of humanity. For STs, to stat up a proper Blessed Place (without the easier handwaving) or to determine the type of actions necessary to create a certain amount of Beauty. I'm not exactly sure how to read the chart, but the Wiki has a more comprehensible version. I still can't discern completely what it all means so someone who cares enough can try it on their own (Link to it). Blessings can do a variety of things and a list is provided as to what one can choose a Blessing to do. Most can be chosen any number of times and stack while the rest can only be chosen once. Blessings that can be chosen multiple times include Attribute, Skill (or special Attribute+Attribute pools like Perception), and Specialty boosts at a net +1, +2 or +3 across one or more of each respectively. Others include a penalty to combat by individuals with "evil intentions," a bonus to resist supernatural effects via Resolve or Composure or a temporary extra point of Willpower within the location once per day. Blessings that can only be applied once include one that doubles natural healing times (which would include Werewolf healing, but nothing applied externally), a bonus to Breaking Point/Compromise checks if done for a noble cause, and an extra Virtue for those within that can only be fulfilled with a "genuine goodness of heart" (the example they use is for Righteous with a judge being allowed to fulfill but a vigilante killer not allowed). Additionally, Mortals, Beacons, Sworn and Princesses also gain benefits from sleeping within a Blessed Place. The first is a greater resistance to being lured into the Dreamlands against their will. The nightly roll for anyone with Shadows to be lured in is reduced by the Beauty rating of the location. I won't elaborate on the other because it seems to involve gaining a point in something that is not a part of the game anymore (Lux) and it not referenced in the wiki at all being replaced with something about Vocations. Also, there seems to be a few other Blessings and modifications to Blessings included in the wiki that I wont elaborate on since I haven't done so already for the most part and starting now would probably be more of a headache than its worth. Suffice to say, they need to get their poo poo together and make the wiki consistent with the book or vice-versa. Blessed places can be harmed in three broad ways. The first is through Invocations To refresh, there are eight with each one associated with a Queen. While I assumed a Princess could only apply the special catches for Invocations that apply to their Queen, the book seems to imply that all of them are open for discount if done in accordance with their catches, though any may be locked out based on the character's actions. The different kinds of Invocations and what they mean and do were mostly described in the Queens section due to what the book says is an "intimate tie to the Queens." While this might be a bit of classic White Wolf layout chicanery, the act that all of them are open to Princesses and all have positive and negative catches makes me think that they should all be centralized with reference to their Queen rather than distributed amongst the Queens that favor them. Because of this, to know about all of the Invocations, it requires flipping through two sections to know about all of them: the Queens section and the Twilight Queens subsection in the Antagonists chapter. This is of particular importance because the Invocations related to the Twilight Queens have drawbacks when used. At least the PDF is bookmarked and the catches aren't totally contradictory. To use an Invocation, while using a Charm, a Princess spends an additional Wisp on top of the Charm's costs and adds the dots in the Invocation as dice to the Charm's activation pool. Permanent Charms or those that don't require a roll can use Invocations in other ways. Invocations cannot be stacked because the rules say so. Invoked Charms are special versions of Charms that require a certain Invocation rating to use. Those Charms can also only be enhanced by that specific Invocation. However, violating an Invocation's ban does not stop one's use of an Invoked charm Additionally, a Princess can Invoke for Willpower. Similar to channeling Virtues in Exalted 2e, if the ST agrees, if a Princess's actions during a scene reflect the values of an Invocation and they haven't violated its ban, they may roll their Invocation dots once per session per Invocation. On a success, they regain a Willpower. On a failure, nothing happens. On an exceptional success, all Willpower is regained and on a Dramatic failure Willpower can't be spent on actions that reflect that Invocation. The book advises, when choosing Invocations to choose those tied to philosophies that reflect their character rather than because they're connected to Charms they want to get more mileage out of. Philosophies that they can only fulfill occasionally or rarely shouldn't be obtained past one or two dots while those that they can adhere to should be those of focus. Ostensibly all character choices should follow the concept, but, like the other supernatural splats, if part of a character's concept is to eat fire and poo poo lightning, then buying any and all abilities and things that would allow it are at the top of the priority list and drat everything that wont get there. At least, that's my experience. Preface on Charms Before I start listing Charms by the bucket-load (or just summarizing each category and pointing out interesting ones), I'll explain how Charms work and any other little caveats. I'll skip over the sections on learning charms and the types of actions charms can be since the former was explained in a previous post and the latter is more of a general rules mechanics thing that's for deciphering the text. Intimacy was mentioned before in terms of linking a Princess's two identities. More specifically, it's akin to how the Mind and Space Arcana of Mage modify or penalize rolls on distant or otherwise not present targets. In this case, Intimacy is the emotional closeness of a target when they're not present. There are six levels from 0 being within sensory range of the Princess and -2 being one of Love or intimate closeness (like a longtime friend, a family member or a treasured keepsake) to -8 being one of acquaintance where casual contact has been made but nothing more and -10 being one of less than casual acquaintance (i.e. you know it exists and have a description of it). This can be modified or enhanced by using another person's emotional connection, though the connection is treated as one step lower (or at an additional -2 unless it's already -10), a connection between a person and an object they treasure though that's two steps lower, or both someone else's connection and an object they treasure (the text isn't clear if it's the target's keepsake or if it's the keepsake of the person being piggybacked off of) at a reduction of the penalty by one (equivalent to +1). Alternatively, if the Princess has a keepsake connecting them and the target, the penalty is also reduced by 1. Commonality is an alternate modifier for Charms intended for multiple targets. Charms with Commonality don't use Intimacy so all targets must be present. The Commonality penalty is dependent on their commitment towards each other or towards the goal the group was organized for. This penalty ranges from 0 being an individual and -3 being of a dedicated commitment (i.e. a family, a group of close friends, or a group whose goal takes up most of their time) to -12 being of casual commitment (i.e. a group of strangers). If resisted, the highest resistance trait amongst the group's members is used. If contested, each member contests individually. For extended Charm actions (and Embassy Privileges, a Z-splat thing), there's a slight risk and reward to its use. Failure imposes the Stuck Magic condition (a -2 to a Charm or Transformation roll at the ST's discretion) and a Dramatic Failure induces the Shaken condition. Exceptional Success on the other hand gives the Luminous condition which can be cashed in for a Luminous beat when they or someone else within a certain range of the Princess does an action that falls under the Princess's Calling. That action also gains a +1 to the roll or a +2 if the Charm that gave the Luminous condition was Invoked and the action matched both the Queen and Calling. If two Princesses (or anyone with magical powers) tries to use conflicting magics on the same target, a Clash of Wills occurs and all involved parties must make a contested roll to determine whose powers actually wins out. A series of dicepools are listed but are essentially the listed being's powerstat+half of their Integrity equivalent if applicable. This list does not include any of the other Supernatural splats though. Only entities listed in this book, so if a Sin-Eater, a Mage and a Princess all want to levitate an object the ST will have to figure something out on their own. Certain Charms will summon object for the Princess to use in their transformed self. These are Regalia. They have the same stats as Phylacteries and be restored the same way if lost or destroyed. Any number of Regalia can be summoned or dismissed with a single Transformation roll (the same is done with Charms with passive or automatic effects). Going back into mundane form obviously dismisses all Regalia. Next: Charms! 100 pages worth over, likely, several posts.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:31
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Xelkelvos posted:I'm sure someone's homebrewed some weird and perverse RPG that's the Japanese bastard offspring of FATAL.. Would like to see it, but never ever play it. I've got a WoD: Tentacle Beast floating around somewhere, though that's not quite the same. Got it off Geocities.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:33
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Kavak posted:Why the nape? It's a fetishized area in Japan, particularly historically, since that's one of the few "revealing" areas of some kimonos. Like reverse cleavage. 
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Jun 3, 2015 05:53
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I think there's a Japanese TRPG about sexy zombies or something?
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Jun 3, 2015 06:06
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I really want to run or play a Division Six game for Hunter and do some Declare-style occult spy games. You could even do some crossover with the new Demon and the God-Machine stuff for extra conspiracy craziness.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:14
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Traveller posted:I think there's a Japanese TRPG about sexy zombies or something? Depending on whether or not you think they're pedophiles that could be the creator's intention with Nechronica.
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Jun 3, 2015 07:46
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Night10194 posted:Ashwood Abbey would be way more interesting if they'd cool it with the constant rape. They're the villains from half the Vertigo comics in the 80s. Hellblazer had dozens of these guys and so did Swamp Thing and The Invisibles. I heard that new investigations in Britain are turning up the real thing too. Still I'd rather they were more like the Sensates from Planescape. Shooting up vampire blood, getting Mages to mindfuck them, eating cryptid meat - anything for new experiences. And most of them would leave the supernaturals they did that WITH - not TO - alive. Then they could be PCs. The Hunt Club could be the old Ashwood Abbey, since 'depraved aristocrats' still make good villians.
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Jun 3, 2015 09:16
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It probably says something not very flattering about me that I just read you guys tearing into Genius for about 8 forum pages between Cythereal's description and the rest of the comments and I still love it. It probably helps that I never read nor cared for oWoD Mage and that I am very bad at statistics.
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Jun 3, 2015 10:19
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paradoxGentleman posted:It probably says something not very flattering about me that I just read you guys tearing into Genius for about 8 forum pages between Cythereal's description and the rest of the comments and I still love it. Genius isn't all that bad of a game really. It's just that it takes more than a bit from oMage and doesn't fit all that well into the World of Darkness. Also the rules for making things is a bit clunky. Otherwise, it's a perfectly serviceable game.
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Jun 3, 2015 10:52
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It was a massively broken game even by BESM standards, I remember just giving a gently caress off to point levels or balance, because who wants to worry about mathing poo poo in what's a short-run comedy (ish) game? Well, maybe 3e was alright, but by the time it finally got released I already had Mutants & Masterminds 2e which could handle the same sort of powered action genres in a much more elegant and balanced manner so I never really tried it much. And M&M itself is pretty easy to break, so that says a lot...
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Jun 3, 2015 11:13
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