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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Is the Dragon Cult really called "the Cleaning Fire"? "Cleansing Fire" sounds more appropriate. No, that's just another typo that I simply replicated without thinking. Fixed that too.
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Nov 12, 2018 06:47
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Polaron posted:So the orc's definitely Adrian, right? The name's too close to be a coincidence. Can goblinization kick in later in life? Yeah I wasn't sure if we could speculate yet (I've only ever played DMS) but that was my initial take as well. Plus it seems like something a dragon would do, basically turning their killer into a thrall of some sort.
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Nov 13, 2018 18:22
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Feel free to speculate anytime if you haven't played the game, though people who have done so oughta keep it in their pants (or skirt, or whatever) and avoid getting involved. And none of that speculation steering wink wink nudge nudge wouldn't it be funny if -business either, don't think for a second that I can't tell. 
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Nov 13, 2018 19:13
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What you mean you don't want us pondering that Blitz was the dragon all along! just because I played the game?
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Nov 13, 2018 19:27
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Is the Dragon Cult really called "the Cleaning Fire"? They're real big on housekeeping. They're also real big on building their houses out of asbestos, too.
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Nov 14, 2018 02:49
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Deep Dish Fuckfest posted:They're real big on housekeeping. They're also real big on building their houses out of asbestos, too. They're REALLY into self-cleaning ovens.
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Nov 14, 2018 04:55
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"I have called this cult meeting to present...THE ROOMBA OF DAMNATION" ...please clap.
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Nov 14, 2018 06:05
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FoolyCharged posted:What you mean you don't want us pondering that Blitz was the dragon all along! just because I played the game? That raises an interesting point. Could a dragon be a shaman? And could they have the Dragonslayer as a totem?
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Nov 14, 2018 10:26
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Nebrilos posted:That raises an interesting point. Could a dragon be a shaman? And could they have the Dragonslayer as a totem? Probably not, but not directly because of their species. It's just that as dragons, they're more likely than not to be on top of the food chain already, and I doubt many would wreck that position by compulsively punching up at the great powers above them.
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Nov 14, 2018 10:51
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Nebrilos posted:That raises an interesting point. Could a dragon be a shaman? And could they have the Dragonslayer as a totem? No, dragons have their own tradition that only works for them and a tiny number of people they may have taught it to. Hestaby, notably, had her own cult up on Mt Shasta that were both shamans and dragon casters.
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Nov 14, 2018 15:27
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Deadmeat5150 posted:No, dragons have their own tradition that only works for them and a tiny number of people they may have taught it to. Hestaby, notably, had her own cult up on Mt Shasta that were both shamans and dragon casters. I think the Big D's pet... let's still call him an adept for giggles had some kind of crazy dragon adept path, too.
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Nov 14, 2018 16:10
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Anticheese posted:Probably not, but not directly because of their species. It's just that as dragons, they're more likely than not to be on top of the food chain already, and I doubt many would wreck that position by compulsively punching up at the great powers above them. Big D could have gone Dragonslayer then, considering the stuff he was trying to fight off. Or is fighting off.
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Nov 14, 2018 17:58
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Part 32 - Breaking and Later Entering NEW MUSIC:  (It's been a while since we last had some completely new music to listen to. Everist handles most Director's Cut tracks and they're always well worth a listen.)  This place looks like it hasn't seen a street sweeper in years. And judging by the size of the spider web attached to that bike rack over there, the sweeping might best be done with a flamethrower.   That's our target. Sutterlin BioScience. I wonder what happened in there. It might still be happening, for all that we know. There's a cheerful thought. Come on, chief. Let's get this over with. We're here to find Ezkibel's precious biotech, but to do that we first have to figure out a way to enter the facility itself. That's what today's update will focus on, so let's get started by looking around.  This courtyard was probably a pretty nice sight once, but now it's just a drat mess. Only particularly ill-natured garden gnomes could call this place home, the kind that stab you in the shin while you're passing by and steal your credsticks while you're on the ground.  No sense in getting all fancy with our entry methods before trying the front door first.  Doesn't look like we'll be kicking this thing down anytime soon. Still, we did bring the ol' reliable which hasn't let us down yet.   Man, and you had such a good streak going too. Kinda disappointed in you Eiger, not gonna lie. There a couple of Strength-based options available here. Strength 4 allows for pounding on the door (why that requires so much muscle is anyone's guess) which normally gives this result:  I mention this because there's a cool detail here; if you have a cyberarm installed, the description also changes appropriately:  Dragonfall's pretty good with this kinda stuff already, but Director's Cut content definitely stands out when it comes to this sort of care and detail. Now curiously, you can in fact successfully force the door open with Strength 6 despite Eiger failing to do so with the same. This is obviously not an option for our goup, but it's impressive enough to be worth showing off:  Just physically forcing open what is in practice a vault door with your bare hands, no big deal.  Those of us who lack the musculature or physical enhancements required for such astonishing feats will have to find some other way in. Perhaps this strangely inviting garbage pile can somehow help us accomplish the task?  God drat, that's rank. I'll stay back here, if you don't mind... I have better things to do than dig through a pile of decomposing trash. That steam might not be comin' from the trash. Could be there's a vent or a grate underneath all of that. Yeah, well. I ain't touching it.Fine fine, we'll do it. This isn't exactly what we meant when we signed up to do other people's dirty work though...   Well what do you know. Good call, Dietrich.  As the description states, a dwarf can hop into the vent but all other races are out of luck regardless of how much yoga practice they might have. Fortunately for us, there are other things that come in dwarf-sized packages.   Max embarks on his grand quest and finds itself in what appears to be a small maze of vents.  Most mazes are a plague on gamekind, but luckily this is one in name only as there's only two very short paths and one of them quickly leads to our destination.  Convenient... though it probably stands to reason that this system was specifically designed for drones rather than dwarves.   If you thought Max was only capable of murdering (and occasionally tasering) people, I hope this serves as an eye-opening lesson about drone prejudice.   And we're in! From here it's just a matter of returning back to street level and heading in through the now open doors. Now even though we are free to proceed, for the sake of completeness and having enough material for a proper update we'll cover the remaining available methods as well.  If it so happens that you lack awe-inspiring muscles, a dwarf or a drone, the next option is making use of a jack-in point found close by. Obviously if you brought Blitz you can simply use the drone method, unless you for some reason chose not to ever return Max to him.  There's a minor twist to this Matrix bit as well. The node you need to reach is visible pretty much from the start, but the direct path to it is blocked. The White IC protection here includes a pair of ranged and one melee IC, one support Sentry and one charge-up Sparky.  Since the melee IC can't do anything and the Sparky takes multiple turns to charge before it can attack, this is a pretty advantageous setup and clearing everything out before heading through the arc to the south is not a problem.  The aforementioned pathway simply leads to the other side, and from here you're free to just waltz over to the door node which upon activation also causes the central barriers to vanish. No bothersome reinforcements or anything either, that's Director's Cut quality for ya. Now normally this would be the final way to get in as there's nothing else our group can interact with in the courtyard. However, if you start the run without meeting the requirements for any of the aforementioned methods, the game is kind enough to provide a fallback. To show this final method off I had to go back and make sure not to bring Blitz as it's only possible to trigger if you have no other way in.  This backup method can be found on the western side of the courtyard near some loiterers who can't be interacted with. Fittingly enough, your garbage crew building decisions force you to dig through the very stuff.  Mm-mm. Time to dig in!  [Dietrich coughs and chokes on the stench that's wafting out of the dumpster.] That's pretty vile, boss.Blitz can also make a similar comment in Dietrich's place, though the only way to trigger that which I can think of would be to bring him after unequipping both his cyberdeck and his drone.  That's not gonna do it. Gotta really get in there, oh yeah.  This has got to be the developers' way of mocking you for managing to completely miss all the other methods, right? You knew you were going to have to break into a locked down building, shoulda maybe brought an electronics expert. Enjoy swimming in literal trash and poo poo you idiot garbage-dweller.   Victory. But at what cost?   And the hardships don't end there.  To add insult to injury, you now get harassed by some ganger wannabes. Ways to deal with this situation include Street etiquette: quote:
Paying them: quote:
Or the usual method of not having any of that poo poo. quote:
 Taking that last option then leads to a fight against the trio who are actually surprisingly strong for random thugs literally off the street, the mage especially packing quite a punch with his Flamethrower spell. There's still only three of them though, so you shouldn't have any real trouble doing your part in cleaning up the neighborhood.  And that just about covers everything. Our group didn't have to rely on dumpster-diving, so we can proceed inside confident that our body odor won't invite anything worse than maybe a rat or two. It's not like we've showered in a while. We didn't exactly make a ton of progress today, but hopefully it was at least interesting. What horrors await our heroes(?) within the sealed-off facility? Let's find out together! Next time!
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Nov 15, 2018 12:02
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All right, friend. We don't want any trouble with someone like you. We'll share the dumpster.
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Honestly, I didn't remember which mission this was that people were hyping up until I saw the building on the loading screen. Yeah, this is a good one. I'd never seen the dumpster diving part. Was half expecting you to just take some of the trash back to Ezekiel. Here's your research, doc. Would be kind of funny to make you miss the whole mission for failing to bring any of the required entry methods. And by funny I mean douchey.
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Nov 15, 2018 13:13
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Kanfy posted:NEW MUSIC: This is probably one of my favorite tracks in the whole game. Very atmospheric. Also, I'd never done the dumpster diving and that is hilarious.
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Nov 15, 2018 17:40
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Fighting Trousers posted:This is probably one of my favorite tracks in the whole game. Very atmospheric. Yeah, I think it's very reminiscence of his work in Hong Kong which definitely nailed it in the atmospheric music department.
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Nov 15, 2018 18:27
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Kanfy posted:Part 32 - Breaking and Later Entering That reason being that Max deserves someone better to take care of her.
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Nov 16, 2018 02:27
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HardDiskD posted:That reason being that Max deserves someone better to take care of her. That was my reason for not giving Max back to him. Besides, there was only room in that team for one rear end in a top hat dronelord: me. AceOfFlames fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Nov 16, 2018 |
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Nov 16, 2018 08:49
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Ahahaha that dumpster diving bit is great
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Nov 16, 2018 13:57
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If you want proper music for this game and theme, I must recommend pure 90's post-wall punk angst Die Toten Hosen - Hier Kommt Alex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X-yqPhItr8 Best in German but if you want a translation they kindly provided an English version too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEhnegRT6Y4
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Nov 19, 2018 10:02
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Rutkowski posted:If you want proper music for this game and theme, I must recommend pure 90's post-wall punk angst Die Toten Hosen - Hier Kommt Alex: I used to fondly play that song in Guitar Hero. It translates remarkably well from German to English, and I mean that both figuratively and literally.
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Nov 19, 2018 16:49
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Captain Foo posted:Ahahaha that dumpster diving bit is great West of Loathing clearly took some inspiration from it. And ran.
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Nov 20, 2018 03:00
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Glazius posted:West of Loathing clearly took some inspiration from it. And ran. Jick, Skullhead, Riff, HotStuff, and the rest of the Asymmetric Team has always had that kind of humor though, as it shows up super often in KoL before this game was even conceived of at Harebrained Studios (hell, before Weismann even brought together the studio prior to the Kickstarter launch for SR:R). I really should get around to playing West of Loathing though, with the amount of hours (and donations for Mr. As!) I sunk into KoL over the past decade up until like 5 years ago... GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Nov 20, 2018 |
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Nov 20, 2018 06:48
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The very idea that Asymmetric would need to be inspired by anything is absurd. They are a unique and vibrant wellspring of humor in our dreary world.
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Nov 20, 2018 06:51
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Since this seems to be the only active Shadowrun thread, can I get some advice for Hong Kong? I'm playing a gunslinger/conjurer and I'm trying to figure out how to get the most out of cyberware without impacting my spellcasting. So I will get cyber-affinity 3 and only use the one spare essence I get from that. In Dragonfall on very hard, in needed as much accuracy I could get to keep up with the enemies higher defensive stats. I'm a few missions into HK, but there hasn't been much combat yet. Does this still hold true? There's no very hard difficulty anymore, so I'm not quite sure. It seems with only 1 essence to spend, it's fairly straightforward to get Alpha Vision Enhancement and two SK skillwires, skipping a Datajack and smartlinked guns. Am I right, or does anyone have a better suggestion?
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Nov 20, 2018 12:59
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So how does acquiring a spirit patron work in this universe? Do you set out to find one in the astral realm, or do they find you? Like in the Robocop joke discussion upthread, can you actually spawn a spirit patron capable of granting power into being through sheer faith and willpower alone? Are Pig, Dog, and Dragonslayer specific entities or just, like, general sets of principles not attached to a sapient will? What's this Skyfather thing I've seen mentioned?
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Nov 20, 2018 14:28
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fluffyDeathbringer posted:So how does acquiring a spirit patron work in this universe? Do you set out to find one in the astral realm, or do they find you? Like in the Robocop joke discussion upthread, can you actually spawn a spirit patron capable of granting power into being through sheer faith and willpower alone? Are Pig, Dog, and Dragonslayer specific entities or just, like, general sets of principles not attached to a sapient will? What's this Skyfather thing I've seen mentioned? Generally Cat or Dog or Gator or whomever contact you when you realize you're Awakened (which is typically a teenage thing but can be earlier). The totems do exist, or at least the shamans think so, and usually shamans come out of a community that's already shamanistic although exceptions exist with a few coming out of the most super secular hermetic corporate programs ever. The opposite can also happen and sometimes it can be a bit of a stigma if you aren't a shaman if your people tend to have them as you might expect.
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Nov 20, 2018 15:09
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fluffyDeathbringer posted:So how does acquiring a spirit patron work in this universe? Do you set out to find one in the astral realm, or do they find you? Like in the Robocop joke discussion upthread, can you actually spawn a spirit patron capable of granting power into being through sheer faith and willpower alone? Are Pig, Dog, and Dragonslayer specific entities or just, like, general sets of principles not attached to a sapient will? What's this Skyfather thing I've seen mentioned? I'll try to answer based on what I remember. This is mostly from 2nd edition, so some stuff may be retro-conned/otherwise out of date. 1) In universe, the totem spirit finds you. A shamans powers may wax and wain depending on how happier their patron spirit is with their personal conduct. The Shaman themselves will tell you their powers come from their totem and that will be their own lived experience, but its impossible to say for sure. 2) Most Totem spirits are animals, but they seem to be more grounded in people beliefs than the actual biology of the animal. For example, most of the spirits are divided as rural or urban totems, but gator spirit can be considered as either. The old magic splatbook included an aside about how common belief that gators live in sewers is enough for gator to also be an urban totem. This is of course an urban legend, but belief is more important than the objective reality. So could an organized effort to to create a robocop spirit come about from peoples beliefs? Maybe, it's hard to say for certain. Magic follows certain rules since it has to for a game system to work, but the old magic splat book included instructions to GM to periodically break the rules if their players seemed to be too comfortable. Emphasizing, that in the setting, magic is fundamentally unpredictable. 3)The totems seem to be entities with specific wills. That said, they may not be. The exact nature of totem spirits is unknown, but there seems to be implied that Shamans are actually tapping into Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious and the totems represent Jungian Archetypes. Totem spirits like Dragon Slayer, Adversary, and Skyfather all come directly from comparative mythology as ways of classifying mythical archetypes that reoccur independently across cultures (I.E. the Monomyth). 4) Another comparative mythology totem. Skyfather is the bearded paternal spirit that lives in the clouds and provides rules, order, and judgements, often in the form of lightning. Examples include, Zeus, Thor, the Abrahamic god.
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Nov 20, 2018 15:12
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I dont know posted:3)The totems seem to be entities with specific wills. That said, they may not be. The exact nature of totem spirits is unknown, but there seems to be implied that Shamans are actually tapping into Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious and the totems represent Jungian Archetypes. Totem spirits like Dragon Slayer, Adversary, and Skyfather all come directly from comparative mythology as ways of classifying mythical archetypes that reoccur independently across cultures (I.E. the Monomyth). Small note: Game mechanics wise, those are all termed "idols" distinct from "totems" and I think this was a way to satisfy players who wanted to play like a shaman of one of the Aesir/Olympians/Saints/etc without having to stat up the Norse, Greek, Catholic saintly, and whatever else pantheons.
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Nov 20, 2018 15:55
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I dont know posted:Examples include, Zeus, Thor, the Abrahamic god. Bringing that up around a Catholic shaman is a good way to lose some teeth though. Comparative religion gets trickier when the people claiming to be a conduit for their god’s power can actually hit you with lightning.
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Nov 20, 2018 15:55
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Also, never argue religion near the Vatican. Also: is the Pope the strongest shaman alive?
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Nov 20, 2018 17:51
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This suddenly makes papal conclaves much more exciting.
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Nov 20, 2018 18:18
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I have to assume that spiritual heads (the pope, dali lama, etc..) have some sort of avatar state where they can go toe to toe with a dragon....presuming that they aren't already one.
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Nov 20, 2018 18:21
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I would love to see the Church rise up and bitchslap Aztlan/Aztechnology for banning it. Actually, religion seems like a promising but unmined area for Shadowrun lore.
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Nov 20, 2018 18:42
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habeasdorkus posted:I would love to see the Church rise up and bitchslap Aztlan/Aztechnology for banning it. Actually, religion seems like a promising but unmined area for Shadowrun lore. Particularly in the 80's, I think Tabletop companies were reluctant to wade into that territory after what happened with DnD. I dont know fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Nov 20, 2018 |
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Nov 20, 2018 18:53
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GunnerJ posted:Small note: Game mechanics wise, those are all termed "idols" distinct from "totems" and I think this was a way to satisfy players who wanted to play like a shaman of one of the Aesir/Olympians/Saints/etc without having to stat up the Norse, Greek, Catholic saintly, and whatever else pantheons. Newer editions lumped totems and idols together into "mentor spirits" and opened up to things like hermetics with mentors and shamans of pantheons who don't focus on a specific patron. The Catholic Church challenging Aztechnology on their home ground would mean fighting in an area where neo-Aztec religion and magic are dominant. The Azzies have been deliberately gaming things this way by suppressing Catholicism and tying the Aztlan government and religion together at the hip. And that's before blood magic comes into play. But New Jesuit operatives have plenty of interest in Aztlan and the Catholic holdouts and relics still present.
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Nov 20, 2018 19:32
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Awwwww bullshit. Talking as a Latam native, Catholicism is so engrained in this subcontinent that you would have to run at least a whole century of pogroms to unroot it. I ain't even religious, but come on!
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Nov 20, 2018 19:47
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There seems to be some wiggle room on the religion issue. Certainly in DF, Dietrich doesn't seem to treat his relationship with the Dragonslayer as his religion.
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Nov 20, 2018 20:19
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Siegkrow posted:Awwwww bullshit. Talking as a Latam native, Catholicism is so engrained in this subcontinent that you would have to run at least a whole century of pogroms to unroot it. That's basically what they did. Advanced technology, all the money, and literal mind control magic just created new efficiencies, so they got a century of brutal oppression done in half the time. The Pope declaring large swaths of the population devil spawn probably didn't help either. paragon1 fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Nov 20, 2018 |
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Nov 20, 2018 22:49
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It helps that Aztechnology has terrifying cybervampire blood mage supersoldiers that can wipe out a hundred men in minutes.
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Nov 20, 2018 22:53
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