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MJ12 posted:It is a legitimately brilliant idea if you want to make an enemy who will do exactly what you want for exactly as long as they need to set up a fallback cover and dedicate their life to setting you on fire. And if you're a Demon who doesn't already have a fallback Cover, you have made some Very Bad Simulacrum Of Life Decisions. Demon question: Can you use a supernatural being as a Cover? Because a Cover where it is 100% natural for you to be the world's biggest rear end in a top hat has certain uses.
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Aug 22, 2019 08:26
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Ratoslov posted:And if you're a Demon who doesn't already have a fallback Cover, you have made some Very Bad Simulacrum Of Life Decisions. I would love to actually play a Demon who uses those, but recently I got halfway in a WtA game where my character's wife was a Demon instead. (We heavily abridged the mechanics rather than try to combine two versions of WoD directly.)
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Aug 22, 2019 08:49
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Ratoslov posted:And if you're a Demon who doesn't already have a fallback Cover, you have made some Very Bad Simulacrum Of Life Decisions. Not completly. If you soul-pact a supernatural and then claim them as a cover, you only get the mortal bits, not their gribbly powers. (Sidebar of page 117 of DtD Revised). Assuming that Beasts have enough of a soul to be pact-able. Edit: And yeah, you need to do exploit trickery to sell the whole show. But you can't just pact a mage and get access to Supernal magic. Editedit: I kind of have vague memories of "Beasts can't make pacts with Demons" from somewhere, but I don't own a copy of Beast, and DtD existed before Beast, so yeah. Seatox fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 08:53
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Seatox posted:Not completly. If you soul-pact a supernatural and then claim them as a cover, you only get the mortal bits, not their gribbly powers. (Sidebar of page 117 of DtD Revised).
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Aug 22, 2019 09:52
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Zereth posted:Trying to blend in with Mages seems like an incredibly, incredibly bad idea for a Demon because they are the people that are by far the most qualified to be able to tell if somebody is actually doing their Thing, or faking it like a Demon using those exploits is. And then investigate further and whoops there goes your cover unraveling. Yeah, any demon that gets to the point that a mage is Scrutinizing them is basically totally boned, since mage's get rote Clash of Wills when attempting to peel apart the layers of a Mystery. Which seems like would be happening all the time in the contest between "you can't see me" vs "I can absolutely see you."
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Aug 22, 2019 10:19
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That Old Tree posted:Despite the relatively mainstream blasé attitude about them nowadays, they already make a good game where the protagonists no matter how sympathetic are fundamentally gross parasites on humanity.
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Aug 22, 2019 10:39
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Ain't no game, comrade. 
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Aug 22, 2019 10:50
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That Old Tree posted:Yeah, any demon that gets to the point that a mage is Scrutinizing them is basically totally boned, since mage's get rote Clash of Wills when attempting to peel apart the layers of a Mystery. Which seems like would be happening all the time in the contest between "you can't see me" vs "I can absolutely see you." Mages' "I'm looking right at you, you know" power is analogous to Demons' "you can't tell if I'm lying" and Changelings' "I can always escape". It's only Active mage sight that gets the Clash, and therefore the reroll failures, and concealment effects don't trigger Peripheral Mage Sight, so a) We left room for situations where you can escape by not provoking the Mage into scanning you. They don't use Active Mage Sight all the time - it's tiring. b) We were being nice by making it reroll failed dice. Similarly theme-centric things in the other games auto-succeed. And Demon is one of the worst offenders when it comes to that.
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Aug 22, 2019 10:52
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The Lone Badger posted:The other issue is that if you do rip away a demon's Cover then they get a brief period in which they are a) incredibly powerful b) incredibly angry and c) have nothing left to lose RIght? It's like 4 steps beyond stupid. Just have the Beasts be bad. Go all in on them being awful, because they already are and going "they're good actually" doesn't work when the best you can come up with is "maybe come up with a reason to hunt down and kill someone?" I hate it
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Aug 22, 2019 11:22
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I'm eager to see if Beast continues to bounce back and forth between 'born this way' and 'makes a choice.'
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Aug 22, 2019 12:32
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gently caress it, let's look at what it really looks like when an rear end in a top hat hollows out a human soul and uses it as power armor. Expect a post soon.
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Aug 22, 2019 12:47
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I don't see how you can be some sort of good guy when one of your powers "make them crash their car" Also, God drat there's a fucton of proper nouns up in this bitch. Horror, Hunger, Satiety, Lair, Return... Just loving burn it to the ground.
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Aug 22, 2019 12:47
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 Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon First, no, I don't actually know what monster in this book is Scissorwolf McChestface up there. He's a weirdo. I think he might be a Geryo-infected werewolf? This book is all about the villains, monsters and weird, gross, body horror poo poo that likes to fight werewolves. And, typically, is able to survive doing so for at least a notable time period. The book is divided into six chapters, plus an appendix on playing the Pure, if you feel like being purity-obsessed (and often racist) assholes, anarchoprimitivist serial killers or insane spirit worshippers. (There are, in theory, more chill versions of the Pure Tribes. In theory. In practice, you rarely meet them outside of a group of them among the Ohio Amish or the Predator Kings of Australia.) Chapter 1 covers the the groups of werewolves who are antagonists to most PC werewolves. Usually, those are the Pure Tribes - that'd be the Ivory Claws (the aforementioned usual racists), the Predator Kings (the anarchoprimitivists) and the Fire-Touched (the spirit worshippers). However, it also covers the Bale Hounds (evil Satanist werewolves) and weird poo poo that happens to Ghost Wolves (werewolves that refuse to join a tribe and thus forgo the spiritual protection of a tribal totem spirit). Chapter 2 covers spirits that are likely to cause you problems. These range from just 'assholes that like to possess and mutate people' to 'extremely dangerous spirits by nature' to the literal space aliens that are void spirits, the spirits of the darkness beyond Earth, which appear to exist to consume all light and all life. Because they're literally spirits of a nigh-infinite airless void. Chapter 3 is about the Hosts. The Hosts are the fragments of ancient magical spirit-gods that were destroyed in prehistory. These fragments largely want to recombine with each other to reform themselves into supergods. They also like to do so by physically hollowing out human beings and wearing them as a kind of flesh Voltron while they find others of their kind to merge with and pursue the obsessive agendas their ancient spirit-god nature compels them to. The core two are the Rat Hosts (Beshilu) that want to gnaw apart the walls between the physical and spiritual, and the Spider Hosts (Azlu) that want to make them completely, totally unbreachable. This book introduces a whole new bunch of Hosts. Chapter 4 is about humans who can and do form an actual threat to werewolves, from weird extragovernmental agents that kidnap werewolves and have accidentally found a way to breach the spirit dimension to werewolf cultists that worship werewolves and have discovered ways to subtly influence and control them to people who make pacts with spirits for power. Chapter 5 is the Geryo, who are weird ancient beings that are totally new to the line, and the idigam, the ancient primordial change-spirits that the progenitor of werewolves bound and trapped on the moon because even he was unable to find a good way to permanently kill them. Chapter 6 is a bunch of GM advice for werewolf. Next time: Purity
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Aug 22, 2019 13:00
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juggalo baby coffin posted:why don't they just have the beasts explicitly be bad guys? theyd be way more tolerable if they werent trying to market them as somehow being good guys. Black Crusade has lots of gross poo poo in but its fine because the characters are explicitly the most bad guys in a universe already full of bad guys. The last 3 chapters of this book try very hard to have Beasts be the game's explicit bad guys. Hell even chapter 2 had rules for Beastio Kart and how to get the most XP from running over dogs. The main issue is that someone insisted on putting the Talassii in, and the hunger for transgression. The Inguma are on the fence of "This seems like a bad idea but if you look at their powers it's sort of okay." but the Talassii are just so far gone thematically that it's impossible for the rules to pull them out of the hole they've dug for themselves. Mors Rattus posted:Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon *May not actually be free of beast forever but we live in hope Kurieg fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 13:50
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Xiahou Dun posted:Yeah this isn't fun anymore and just makes me worried about the author's mental state. Not gonna armchair psychologist or whatever, but that reads a lot like what my friend with sever bi-polar disorder writes sometimes. No need to armchair psychologize. Finding the product on Lulu reveals that it was designed by headbanger Joseph Oberlander. Looking up his current whereabouts, headbanger Joseph Oberlander is in state care after stabbing a guy. I want to say I hope they can help him because schizophrenia sucks, but as someone who has seen first-hand the effects of untreated illness I suspect that won't happen. Now this isn't a "point and laugh" review. I'm genuinely interested in this game and I can see the hint of interesting mechanics under the layers of words. If I thought my brain could take parsing all hundred or so pages of content, I might even see if I can clean it up a bit just to see what it would look like. Personally, I find it more interesting that we don't know how many heads the races have but we know that they each have exactly one back-of-the-head.
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Aug 22, 2019 14:09
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juggalo baby coffin posted:why don't they just have the beasts explicitly be bad guys? theyd be way more tolerable if they werent trying to market them as somehow being good guys. Black Crusade has lots of gross poo poo in but its fine because the characters are explicitly the most bad guys in a universe already full of bad guys. The other thing is like, the sort of evil you do in Black Crusade is not the sort of evil people actually have to worry about. 'I'm gonna swear to Khorne I'll take this chainsaw and walk across this planet, chainsawing any building or person who doesn't get out of my way' isn't something that happens to people in real life. Hell, when they made the Slaanesh book for that line they explicitly avoided any sort sexual violence or creepy realistic emotional abused; they focused entirely on over the top supervillainy and dance fighting a guy so hard that his entourage all desert him and his hear explodes from shame while everyone does a musical number about how great you are. It's all about being so silly that it stops being awful. Then over here, you have people using superpowers, sure, but their tactics and goals are exactly those that real people have to worry about from real predators.
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Aug 22, 2019 14:14
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Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon MOON SLAVES The Pure Tribes descend from the werewolves (and Firstborn wolf spirits) who did not take part in the murder of Wolf/Urfarah. They blame Luna/Moon for convincing the Forsaken to destroy their father/mother/genderless wolfy progenitor, and the modern Forsaken they claim are Luna's slaves, mewling and lost without the mad teachings of their awful god. All three Pure tribes reject Luna entirely - an active rejection, more than just refusing to worship her. They have developed rites that are fueled by their hatred of the moon spirit in ways that resonate with Wolf's blood. Most notably and importantly, they have developed a rite that allows them to strip away the brands of Auspice, which they say marks Luna's enslavement of the Forsaken. They tear out their own spiritual scars and those of their recruits, removing her gifts and markings. Few werewolves are taken in by the Pure before Moon marks them, after all, claiming them against their will. The Pure cannot wait to remove these silver chains, and they know Luna will not give them freedom easily. How each tribe burns out the Auspice is different, but all of them are agonizingly painful and require great dedication and sacrifice. Free of auspice, their tribe becomes central to their life, more than it is for the Forsaken tribes. For the Forsaken, tribe is about philosophy and prey. It's something you have in common with other wolves of the same tribe, but it can easily be debated and taken in different ways. For the Pure, this is weakness - proof that the Forsaken do not take the duties and philosophy of Wolf seriously. For them, tribe is purpose, and each member of a tribe is a living avatar of their tribal totem's cause. Each tribe swears an oath to their Firstborn, obeying its ban as the Forsaken do theirs, but their oaths are different. The Fire-Touched swear: Geneb Aldh' Nunglu. Let no falsehood lie unchallenged. Faith demands honesty among the tribe, and the concept of deceit angers the Fire-Touched and their patron, Rabid Wolf. The Ivory Claws swear: Nu-ghima Zigh'esh. This has no direct translation into human language, but focuses on a concept of purity that is easily understood in the First Tongue of spirits. Most modern Ivory Claws interpret this oath to mean refusing to accept any impure werewolf as family, but others say it forbids acceptance of any impurity or any willingness to accept less than the highest quality in one's possessions and labor. Silver Wolf, the tribal patron, appears satisfied as long as each Ivory Claw is true and faithful to their understanding of the oath's meaning and refuses to accept anything less from themself, whether that means rejecting other, less pure werewolves or demanding the best from themselves (and everyone they deal with). The Predator Kings swear: Sehe Nu Lu'u Thim. Honor nothing of human craft. Dire Wolf, the Firstborn patron of the tribe, has decreed that all humans are prey, and the only honor prey receives is death at the fangs of the predator. That Wolf saw humanity as anything but food never sat well with Dire Wolf, and while killing and eating all of humanity would imbalance the tribe spiritually, defiling or destroying human-made things does not. The Pure also have their own equivalent of the Oath of the Moon that is sworn to the leaders of the spirit courts they work with. Specifics of these oaths vary by region and totem spirit, but the core tenets are broadly similar to those the Forsaken swear, and violating these oaths, which they typically known as the Oath of Urfarah, is just as big a problem for them as it is for the Forsaken. Because they lack an auspice, the Pure cannot call on the Hunter's Aspect as the Forsaken do. They are not weaker for that, though. Carving out the moon-brands leaves a void, but the first Pure saw this as a way to strengthen themselves, using their tribal oaths to grow closer to the Firstborn and taking on a fraction of their spiritual essence to fill in the gaps left by burning out Moon's gifts. Thus, when they hunt, they hunt not as symbols of a moon phase but as avatars of their wolf-gods. This can take on many different facets, for as Luna is typically represented by five phases, so too do the Firstborn have many aspects. The game offers a few examples for the three tribes, but leaves room for the GM to make up different Hunter's Aspects for the Pure if they want. Rabid Wolf's children either hunt with the Fanatical or the Frenzied aspect. A Fanatical hunter reinforces in the prey their place in the natural cycle, with the werewolf predator being merely the world's agent in that cycle. Their prey were born to die in this moment, and all resistance is meaningless. Until wounded, these targets cannot spend Willpower to directly harm their hunters. Frenzied hunters bring madness onto the world, channeling the fury of Rabid Wolf. Their prey fight or run with total abandon, draining their endurance quickly. They know they must throw out everything they have, not realizing that their hunters wait for them to exhaust themselves. Until wounded, they must spend Willpower on every action if possible. Silver Wolf's children either hunt with the Agonized or the Insidious aspect. An Agonized hunter spreads pain in the world by their presence. The prey's breath burns to draw in, and every touch is like fire. Sound and light are overwhelming to the senses, and rest is impossible. The coming of the hunter becomes welcomed as an end to suffering. This causes a penalty to all rolls, cumulative with other penalties, until actually wounded. An Insidious hunter senses vulnerability. No matter where the prey goes, they are there. There is nowhere safe, no true ally, for the reach of Silver Wolf is infinite. This makes it easier to get exceptional success on tracking, finding or noticing the victim until they get wounded. Dire Wolf's children embody the hunt with either the Implacable or Primal spects. An Implacable hunter is unstoppable. They never stop coming, nothing can harm them and nothing can keep them away. The prey is already dead, and they know it. This causes a penalty to all direct actions against the hunter until wounded. A Primal hunter brings the world back to simplicity. The prey has no time for complex thought or planning - just action. They operate by instinct, unaware that the hunter is much better at that game. This gives a penalty to all social and mental rolls except Intimidation until wounded. Besides how they hunt, there's also who. Each tribe, Forsaken or Pure, has a special rpey they favor. Where the Forsaken specialize in the prey they consider most worthy or dangerous, however, the Pure hunt those they hate most. Each says that their chosen prey ended the perfection that was Pangaea, and only by destroying such awful foes can paradise be reclaimed. The Fire-Touched name as prey all who dishonor and direspect the Shadow. Anyone that harms or commands a spirit without provocation is valid as sacred prey, as is anyone that attempts to seal off the Shadow, with one exception: disrespect towards Luna and her servants is just fine. The Ivory Claws name as prey all who dishonor their lineage. Breaking family traditions and unreasonably defying family elders counts - but so do parents who weaken their blood by preventing their children from choosing strong mates or who consign their children to failure. All Forsaken always count, as they have all dishonored their ancestor, Wolf. The Predator Kings name as prey all who fail to honor the hunt. This includes any human who does not engage in hunting at least once per season, as well as any that try to interfere with or end hunting. Also included are any werewolves that end a Sacred Hunt without taking down their prey. Hunting as defined by the Predator Kings doesn't have to be for food, but does have to be for a purpose, such as teaching or gaining skill or culling an overgrown population. Hunting for sport is despicable. Forsaken and Pure share access to Gifts, with the exception of Moon Gifts which are Forsaken-only. Each Pure tribe favors certain Gifts, as the Forsaken tribes do, and the game introduces a handful of new Gifts here - the Gifts of Agony, Blood, Disease, Fervor, and Hunger. Forsaken can and do still learn these, but they are more common amongst the Pure. (The Fire-Touched favor Disease and Fervor, plus the core gifts of Insight and Inspiration. Ivory Claws favor Agony and Blood, plus the core gifts of Dominance and Warding. Predator Kings favor Hunger, plus the core gifts of Nature, Rage and Strength.) Facets of the Gift of Agony largely focus on the manipulation of pain and weakness - causing pain in others, transferring your own pain to them, and gaining strength from or resisting pain in various ways. Facets of the Gift of Blood focus on the manipulation of literal blood. You can do stuff like the Shining bleeding walls scene to terrify people and trip them up on blood, purge blood of toxins or drugs (including forcing them onto people that drink your blood), drink someone's blood (or that of their blood kin) to use magic on them over a distance, draw blood out of someone's wounds to hurt them, or speed healing. Facets of the Gift of Disease let you manipulate disease, ranging from having a toxic bite or poison breath to making people react with fear and revulsion due to the spiritual weight of disease to resisting diseases to growing them in your own body. Facets of the Gift of Fervor let you manipulate faith and belief, ranging from making people uncertain and easily swayed or fanatically loyal to their in-group to transferring Willpower to friends to just straight up having a bigger Willpower pool (which is probably a bad design choice) to telepathically dropping a mission into someone's brain as a religious vision. Facets of the Gift of Hunger let you manipulate hunger and consumption, ranging from eating someone's flesh to lock them off from social or mystic abilities (or stop investigations of a corpse you eat part of), cursing a massive area with famine (including draining the MP pools of all supernaturals nearby), cause a person or object to need to consume much more than normal to do things (such as making a gun use multiple bullets per shot or a person need massive amounts of food), get extra Essence from eating wolves, humans or spirits, or letting you split your jaw open into a giant grabby maw that can grapple at range. The Pure also get some unique powers - the Fire-Touched get a bunch of special rites that let them warp and control the Shadow and spiritual power sources, the Ivory Claws can take merits that basically just improve their base werewolf capabilities like size, healing or rank (or weaken the danger of silver), and the Predator Kings can take merits that draw on the nature of Pangaea and hunting to improve their abilities while performing the Sacred Hunt, like controlling the environment, empowering spirits by sacrificing prey or be better at spirit powers while hunting. Next time: The Kingmaker, the Party Animal, the Visionary of Flesh and Luna's Bane
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Aug 22, 2019 17:21
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Angry Salami posted:This seems like another 'really fun idea if you weren't playing the Beast' - I'd be down for a game where you're all cultists who've realized the thing you're worshiping is actually just a colossal rear end in a top hat and have decided to take him down. I like the phrasing "colossal rear end in a top hat," because I can read it less as "our Dark Master is so evil he must be destroyed for the good of all" and more "Oh, I have loving had it with Drakthar the Despoiler whining about how our sacrifices aren't as good as the Mesopotamians."
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Aug 22, 2019 17:54
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Night10194 posted:The other thing is like, the sort of evil you do in Black Crusade is not the sort of evil people actually have to worry about. 'I'm gonna swear to Khorne I'll take this chainsaw and walk across this planet, chainsawing any building or person who doesn't get out of my way' isn't something that happens to people in real life. Hell, when they made the Slaanesh book for that line they explicitly avoided any sort sexual violence or creepy realistic emotional abused; they focused entirely on over the top supervillainy and dance fighting a guy so hard that his entourage all desert him and his hear explodes from shame while everyone does a musical number about how great you are. It's all about being so silly that it stops being awful. yeah, i think the writers of Black Crusade really understood that there's a difference between fun evil and real evil, and that a roleplaying game is supposed to be fun.
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Aug 22, 2019 18:04
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Kurieg posted:Next Time: This fantastic sidebar (amongst other things)
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Aug 22, 2019 18:17
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Man, "the worst part of Beast" is a tough competition, but the winner might how loving smug it is about everything. "Killing an innocent person in cold blood might sound bad. But have you considered that maybe the problem is that you're just not mature enough? Heh. Maybe when you learn to handle moral relativism you can play with the big boys  "
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Aug 22, 2019 18:29
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megane posted:Man, "the worst part of Beast" is a tough competition, but the winner might how loving smug it is about everything. "Killing an innocent person in cold blood might sound bad. But have you considered that maybe the problem is that you're just not mature enough? Heh. Maybe when you learn to handle moral relativism you can play with the big boys This same attitude is a large part of what's turned me off on Warhammer 40k in the last couple years. I used to think that attitude was actually kind of cool. Now it's just obnoxious.
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Aug 22, 2019 18:47
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Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon A Fiery Crown  Those are probably ribs? I think they're ribs. Cyrus Silver-Scarred, the Kingmaker, is a Fire-Touched prophet that's well over a century old. Since the turn of the century or so, he's been traveling America in search of Werewolf Jesus, without his own territory and without his own pack, at the will of the greatest totems of the Pure. He enters the lands of Pure packs like a blazing comet, screaming the gospel of fury and blood. He's an old man who energizes and destroys the werewolf societies around him, always seeking someone worthy of his crown - a Pure wolf of immaculate zeal, fiery heart and diamond-hard soul. The crown is literal, and he was never meant to have it, a fact that he can never forget and which leaves him bitter. The Crown of Shadow is a working of the Pure Firstborn and their allies, appearing as a flickering halo of spiritual fire and shadow in Twilight (read: spirit vision) when its power is tapped. Wherever he goes, he demands the Pure prove themselves to him in the hopes that one will be Werewolf Jesus, chosen by the totem spirits to lead the Pure in a terrible crusade. He can never join a pack thanks to the sheer power of the Crown, and he couldn't stop his hunt now even if the totems hadn't cursed him with terrible punishments if he ever did. Seeking out the Werewolf Messiah is his entire existence. So, what does the Crown do? For Cyrus, its full power is inaccessible. He knows at a touch if a Pure is worthy of it, though, and it raises his effective spirit rank. It lets him mix his blood with that of another werewolf to temporarily count as a member of their pack for purposes of a single rite he leads. Last, he gets the rote quality on all rolls to resist the powers of any spirit whatsoever, making him essentially impossible for them to harm or control, thanks to the investiture of power from the Pure spirits. It is entirely unclear what the Crown would do in the hands of its actual intended wielder, but whatever it is, it'd be huge. The GM can make up whatever they want, but examples include bonding all werewolves in a region together, give total authority over all spirits or begin an apotheosis process to turn the bearer into a totem spirit of great power. Cyrus may be old and powerful, but he's not the chosen one, and neither is any other elder among the Pure - he's tested all of them, and the totems find them wanting. Their time is spent, and their potential has been reached. Werewolf Jesus is going to be a young visionary, strong enough to bear the power of the Crown. To find Werewolf Jesus, Cyrus shows up without warning and shouts at the local Pure, demanding they listen. While a few Pure packs have ignored or mocked him, they soon regretted it - his savage power is enough to beat most of them in a fight, and more importantly, their own totems tend to tell them to shut up and listen to the crazed old man, for their spiritual masters set him to his task. Most Pure are eager to gain his favor anyway, because Cyrus Silver-Scarred is a legend among them, and they want to become even greater. Everyone wants to be Werewolf Jesus. Even the elders know that earning his eye may earn them favor with the Pure totems. Thus, his mere presence tends to send the Pure into overdrive as they try to prove their worth to him and their spiritual patrons. He encourages this frenzied competition, whipping the Pure into a fury. He is unsatisfied with words - they must act. He breaks the status quo with ordeals and trials. Where the Pure are peaceful, he demands Forsaken scalps. Where their elders choke the ambitions of the young in stratified hierarchies, he leads the mob of youths in outrage and demands ordeals from the placid elders with the threat of removing their totemic support. Where the Pure have had their morale ground down by endless war, he empowers the cunning and challenges them to schemes that can turn it all upside down. This is what makes Cyrus so dangerous to the Forsaken. Monster of personal combat he may be, but a pack could handle that. The problem is that he improves the Pure. He makes them think, adapt and seek new and unpredictable strategies. He shakes everything up and spreads a messianic frenzy among them that drives them to atrocity and extremes of heroic action. And he does this all without caring if they die. Cyrus doesn't give the slightest poo poo about Pure lives or their long-term strategy. All he wants is a pressure cooker of fury to forge the Pure into either heroes or corpses, and either is an acceptable outcome. If they die, they weren't worthy. One day, he will find his diamond in the ashes, and any cost is worth that. If there's no one to fight, he'll happily set the Pure against themselves. Cyrus is a scarred, ancient figure, his body covered in the marks of old battles - particularly those left by his sister's silver bullets. She was a Wolf-Blood and a Hunter, and while he killed her, it wasn't without cost. Despite being over 150 years old, though, he's still got the vigor and strength of his prime...though he complains a lot about aches and pains and creaky bones. His teeth are yellowed, his body blistered, and as a wolf he is a huge, red-furred thing with snaggleteeth. He spends very little time in his less human forms, though, preferring humanity and dressing as a biker. (Sure, he's old, but he's more at home with the Hell's Angels than he is with history.) He is a harsh and stern man, prone to brutal violence when disrespected. He doesn't appreciate when the spirits do his disciplining for him - he feels it robs him of the agency to do it himself. They demand he avoid fighting where possible so that the other Pure can prove themselves, and he chafes against that, too, as he actually really likes fighting. He is a potent ritemaster, having undertaken may vile blasphemies to claw dark secrets from the spirit world. During his battles against his sister's cell in 1899, Cyrus lost his pack to her bullets. The spiritual weight of the Crown has prevented him from being able to form pack bonds ever since, and he's far too proud and bitter to see anyone as a peer anyway. Rumors claim that he murdered his own pack and family to earn the right to carry the Crown, though in truth that was mostly his sister and him feuding. Other rumors say he carries on the legacy of its first bearer, the Wolf-Queen of Texas. She was a Fire-Touched warlord in the 1800s who led a grand alliance of Pure across Texas and Oklahoma. Legend among the Pure was that she defeated all the Forsaken packs she found and stapled the bodies of dying Lunes to the sky itself. Cyrus certainly rose to prominence after her death, but it's entirely unclear if she ever bore the Crown. Oh, and about his sister? She left a legacy. In a hospital somewhere in the Midwest, an ancient woman clings to life, aided by the best medical machines and a whole lot of spite. Her family has been stockpiling silver weapons and gathering allies among Hunter cells for a long time, laying out the groundwork for the old woman's last battle. Soon, she will give her final order: finish the job her grandmother begin in 1899. Kill her great-uncle, Cyrus, and destroy the sinful crown he bears - a mark of the devil his own self. Cyrus is exceptionally powerful in personal combat, if you can manage to get the spirits to let him fight. He's exceptionally strong and has a ton of willpower, and he knows pretty much every rite that isn't banned to him by tribe. He has the spiritual ban that he must always challenge any werewolf he first meets to prove themself, and can never accept their worth by reputation.  The whole tattoo markings thing is a werewolf aesthetic. Garima Khatri, the Party Animal, is a young Predator King. She stalks nightclubs, but it is the heartbeat that she moves to, not the backbeat. He is always followed around by decadent rich assholes like herself - high on blood-stained coke. She brings them savagery and blood as a thrill, letting them hunt or be hunted, singing the praises of Dire Wolf where it would least be suspected. Garima was born to wealth and lots of it. She's an heiress and has never known anything but luxury, and yet none of it could fill the yawning void that existed within her, leaving her unfulfilled no matter how much excess she partook in. That all changed with her on the night she first discovered her true werewolf nature - a night of blood and carnage, a night she exalted in, for it was the first time she truly felt alive. She had found what was missing: hunting and killing. She sees her former friends and human "peers" as in dire need of the glorious truth of the hunt. She knows how empty their lives feel, how their decadence is just a way to drown themselves and distract from civilization. And so, Garima Khatri has become a serial killer for her cause. Her cause is simple: the rich, the young and the dissolute are slaves to law and empty morality. Garima is a sadistic monster who knows that they must assume their true roles, as nature intended: predator and prey, alive imn the hunt and dead in a pool of blood. It is her purpose in life to tear away the false masks of civilization and show them what they could be. She may frame it as a holy cause, but her work is pretty dang debasing. She pushes people to give in to their worst instincts, to indulge in their basest desires and to hunt their peers. She tortures and terrifies, and she calls it a holy gift. The pain and fear and death - these are her sacraments, and they give human life more worth and feeling than, she says, could ever be found in a hollow life of wealth and civilization. Garima stalks the parties and nightclubs using her family's money and connections, allowing her to hunt prey far out of reach of most of her anarchoprimitivist tribe. She uses her persuasive talents and her mystic Gifts to promise the fulfillment of dark desire, seeking out the idle rich looking for a greater high and a bigger thrill. She pushes her "acolytes" to greater transgressions and the breaking of civilized boundaries, framing morality and law as chains placed on the strong by the weak. She encourages base overindulgence, giving the chances to partake in brutality, violence and carnality. She operates out of exclusive clubs, where the law cannot reach, overseeing torture of the homeless, bloodstained orgies and drug binges. This degradation, she preaches, is natural...and that's a deliberate lie. What she is really doing is, yes, luring humans to give in to their instincts as predator and prey - but she is also providing a hunting ground for the Predator Kings. Even the most zealous of her human followers is, ultimately, her prey. When she hunts, she chooses from among the rich and famous, playing a sick, seductive game with her chosen prey before revealing her true nature. She savors the terror, drawing out the hunt as long as possible as she tells her victims that hey, at least they'll die with their heart pounding. She knows she's making their last hours really mean something - a sacred role as prey in the truest of sacraments, a life of self-deceit forever shattered. In her human form, Garima is a young Indian woman of intense confidence. She wears designer clothes and expensive jewelry, using it to hide the many scars she is accumulating. She has a knack for skinning her victims and wearing their forms, impersonating them so that she never gets into too much trouble herself. This is extremely useful to her, because as a wealthy jetsetter, she's appeared on magazine covers before, and sometimes she needs to be someone else. In her wolf form, she is a glossy-furred black beast with perfect teeth and a vicious bite. She loves to isolate and torment her prey sadistically, seeing their fear and sense of isolation while surrounded by other people as the greatest symptom of civilization's weakness, as the herd loses its own natural defenses. She is no lone wolf, and has gathered a rather unlikely Predator King pack to herself, serving as its face and philosophical center while they provide the support she needs to actually orchestrate her festivals of depravity and choose her prey. For a werewolf, Garima Khatri is incredibly high-profile in the human world - she shows up at parties and red carpet events, and that can make her life harder. Sometimes, she heads to Thailand for "rehab" in the form of visiting the local Predator King elders there for spiritual guidance. She also has a Wolf-Blooded lover whom she attempts to keep at some length from her work, as she feels very protective of him and doesn't want him caught up in the dangers of her crusade. She spends a lot of money on funding drug labs in search of new designer concoctions, which she then uses her pack's criminal connections to put on the street, whether they're party drugs or military stimulants. The goal here? Get people hosed up, because she thinks it's funny to watch someone lose their poo poo entirely and try to bite someone else's face off at a party. She's recently got ahold of a strange sort of honey-like nectar that seems addictive, and she's trying to find out where it comes from. One of her biggest problems, though, is her own tribe. Garima violates the tribal oath constantly, a necessity of her lifestyle. She has convinced some powerful elders to protect her politically from the fallout of this, on the basis that it's a price worth paying to bring Dire Wolf's revelation to the cities. She does what she can to mitigate her sin, regularly burning her wardrobe as offerings to the tribal totem and self-mortifying out of guilt and penance, but even so, many Predator Kings do not appreciate her actions. Her continued influence is entirely dependent on support from tribal elders. Garima's a pretty midrange foe. She's no pushover, but she's not an elder and her main power (besides, y'know, werewolf fighting abilities) is her social connections and extreme wealth. Next time: The Visionary of Flesh, Luna's Bane.
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Aug 22, 2019 19:02
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megane posted:Man, "the worst part of Beast" is a tough competition, but the winner might how loving smug it is about everything. "Killing an innocent person in cold blood might sound bad. But have you considered that maybe the problem is that you're just not mature enough? Heh. Maybe when you learn to handle moral relativism you can play with the big boys TBF i read that sidebar more as "Beasts literally torture and kill people to survive, even if you tell yourself it's for their own good, ya dingus." it's not directed at people who already think Beast is bad, it's directed at people who think Beasts are good.
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Aug 22, 2019 20:04
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Every time we play EP2 or even look at it everything we do raises another question. The book says that all bots and machines come with their own ALI, but doesn't list which. The cheapest bot costs 1GP, the simplest ALI costs 2GP. If every bot already has a simple ALI rolled into the price, then the simplest ALI has no reason to exist since you'd never buy one on its own. If, on the other hand, it means you need to always factor in the cost of an ALI alongside, then any even vaguely independent bot is riotously expensive(it literally triples the price of the cheapest scouting bots). Either situation is something you could play with, but the game never says which it is. There's also the issue of paying for software, for instance ALI's, since it feels like the rules text never even attempts to address the fact that it can just be copied if it's at any point acquired from argonauts or anarchists(since they would intentionally have no IP protection), thus giving you an infinite supply of it. Or for that matter, the issues related to copying software once you note there are multiple Infomorph variants and some of them cost MP. Considering that an Infomorph is basically just an ego sleeved in a shouldn't every backup of an informorph wearing a non-basic infomorph type also include a free copy of that Infomorph?
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Aug 22, 2019 20:06
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Is the GP here meant to represent like supply/access more than literal cash money? I can see value in having something like a practical scarcity for a software-fluffed tool or asset even if in-setting such would not exist in any meaningful way.
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Aug 22, 2019 20:41
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Kurieg posted:TBF i read that sidebar more as "Beasts literally torture and kill people to survive, even if you tell yourself it's for their own good, ya dingus." it's not directed at people who already think Beast is bad, it's directed at people who think Beasts are good. Please compare and contrast Garima and a Beast; I think you will find their basic beliefs and goals are quite similar. Garima is explicitly a deluded, sadistic serial killer who your players are meant to fight.
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Aug 22, 2019 20:44
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Man, I really like Night Horrors and all, but I feel like Garima's such an absurd stretch to fit anything Predator Kings that she was either an expectations-subverting NPC in someone's home campaign they shoehorned in, or they already had enough Fire-Touched and Ivory Claws. She doesn't do anything related to the hunt (lower OR upper-case H), she explicitly just ignores the tribal ban except for the stupid "and then she BURNS HER CLOTHES!!!!" thing, and even her methodology makes way more sense as a Ivory Claw (everyone destroying the purity of their body with these poisons should die) or even a Fire-Touched (trying to manufacture a chemical plague to reduce people to their closest-to-nature state). Like I get that not all Predator Kings need to be Luddite Wendigo but also, maybe the example characters shouldn't ignore every single thing about the groups they're supposed to be examples from?
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Aug 22, 2019 20:50
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That's fair. Cyrus owns, tho, and I will hear nothing against Post-Civil War Biker Prophet.
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Aug 22, 2019 20:54
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Mors Rattus posted:That's fair. Cyrus owns, tho, and I will hear nothing against Post-Civil War Biker Prophet.
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Aug 22, 2019 21:07
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I like his nemesis on life support. She and her family promise to be a barrel of laughs when the poo poo hits the fan.
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Aug 22, 2019 21:24
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I like her specifically because she's not a good Predator King- she's going to implode someday soon, because she has the ideological commitment to hunting and murder that Predator Kings have but doesn't walk the walk regarding the actual spirit oath. She's a ticking time bomb for herself and others. I think that if the book said 'oh yeah she's totally a valid Predator King and it's going fine' she'd be hugely uninteresting, and that's what the mold-breaking NPC often is, but she's pretty explicitly not that. She's someone who thinks she can be part of the tribe without giving up the trappings of the life she leads and is only getting by because she's managed to convince some older werewolves to support her for now. That's very different from, say, the Beast sample characters who almost all go 'haha you thought there were rules but I ignore them!!' And instead creates a situation where one could, for example, take her down by convincing other Predator Kings that it's too much to be borne and she needs to be stopped from defiling the oath any further.
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Aug 22, 2019 21:25
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Mors Rattus posted:Please compare and contrast Garima and a Beast; I think you will find their basic beliefs and goals are quite similar. Correct. I'm not saying Beasts are good. I'm just saying I don't think "Lol this game's too mature for you  " is the intended message since this is the part of the book that isn't treating Beasts like perfect snowflake ubermensch who are everyone's best friend.
Kurieg fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 21:49
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Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon I WILL MURDER THE MOON  Science genius. Tejumola Tide-Breaker is the Visionary of Flesh. When she first Changed, it was a very painful experience. Most werewolves feel nothing negative about transforming - it is freeing, even fun. For Tejumola, it was torture. Her skin sloughed off, her bones broke and re-broke and regenerated. She felt terrible hatred for the distant moon that had "gifted" this to her, for what loving mother could do this to her child? This painful experience is a rare phenomenon among werewolves, a fault in their transformative ability that they typically overcome in time. While the Forsaken found her first, Tejumola was quick to abandon them for the Pure, remembering the torments Luna's gift put her through. That was 20 years ago. Now, the Tide-Breaker is a changed woman. She has overcome the old pains of transformation, becoming one of the greatest researchers and lorekeepers of the Ivory Claws. She believes the pain of her First Change was an ordeal sent to her by Silver Wolf, to make her more like him and his own pain. The pain of the Ivory Claw initiation rites was nothing compared to it, and that brought her access to their labs, both mystic and scientific. The tribe as a whole practically reveres the Tide-Breaker, for she has found the truth of many of Moon's mysteries, laying bare the flaws of the Traitor Goddess. She has discovered the secrets of Wolf's flesh, and her groundbreaking research has led the Ivory Claws much closer to his perfection. It has also created new weapons for use against the Forsaken by unlocking the power of the Geryo. Tejumola's experience during the First Change was not unique to her, and indeed, modern werewolf scientists have discovered why it happens. (Tejumola actually helped do the research.) These painful First Changes and the insanely potent regenerative capacity that accompanies them, happen when the First Change occurs at the same moment as a moon-quake. Somehow, the physical shock to the moon is reflected through the spirit Luna, connecting the Warden Moon's wounds to those of the new werewolf for a tiny moment. Tejumola has, of course, torn free from Luna's chains, but learning this has led her to a deep curiosity about the moon's mysteries, largely driven by her spite towards Luna. She has recorded a number of variations in the Change linked to unusual lunar alignments and gravitational or tidal events and even matched her observations of Lune manifestation against scientific records of cloud cover and moonlight penetration. She wields both mystic lore and science as tools in her experimentation and has become equally potent with genetic editing and blood sorcery. This is what earned her the name Tide-Breaker, as the Ivory Claws have declared her to have more influence over the Changes she studies than the power of the Moon itself. Tejumola finds the Geryo fascinating, but researching these twisted ancients is not easy. Containment facilities for them require peerless occult engineering to prevent them from escaping via the Gauntlet (read: entering the spirit world) or just warping reality around themselves, and their violently infectious nature has proven too much even for the Tide-Breaker to risk dealing with. She can't do much to further the Ivory Claw cause if she gets turned into a flesh-warped monstrosity, after all. Her big breakthrough came in 2009, and it's shot her way up in tribal esteem. In 2009, NASA fired a kinetic impact device into the moon. (This is real, btw.) Werewolves across the globe were terrified that it'd do something awful, but nothing appeared to happen - even the First Changes in the moment of impact weren't really any more traumatic than usual. This is because the Tide-Breaker's lunar blasphemies harnessed all of it. The tribe's elders backed her play in the months leading up to the impact, allowing her to set up in their highest security facility in Nigeria. There, she used her occult and scientific skills in a series of experiments that broke the minds of many aides and consumed massive amounts of resources. In the exact moment of impact, it all paid off. Tejumola was able to artificially prevent the First Change in a number of young werewolves, turning them into foci for the impact wound. As it struck, the young werewolves were transformed into vessels of Luna's essence by forcibly induced First Change. They screamed and thrashed with the blood of a goddess, the warping madness of Moon crushing their minds and turning them into monsters of uncontrolled change. Now, Tejumola has a nest of artificial Geryo, held in place by a set of pipes that pump them full of chemicals and wires that flood their brains with electricity and Essence. Their bodies twist and mutate constantly, trapped between transformations or growing extra limbs or heads or forming exoskeletons of bone and fury. These are the proof of the Tide-Breaker's genius - Geryo without any risk of infection or contagion, weapons to be wielded by the Ivory Claws against their foes. She has spent years tinkering with these creatures, programming them to obey, or at least restraining their rage enough to make them useful. However, they are merely the first stage of her plan. She and her followers are now looking for power sources across the world that could be used to further her research and create new weapons. Tejumola is a thin Nigerian woman who always seems somewhat sickly. She has a number of terrible scars from her First Change and early days, when all of her transformations involved ruptured flesh. Even now, it takes her a few painful moments more than most werewolves to change shape. In wolf form, she is lean, wiry and always seems to look hungry. Her cold demeanor and clinical approach to things is legend among the Ivory Claws, and even when dealing with screaming, thrashing flesh monsters, she remains calmly, creepily analytical. Every encounter is a new chance to expand her knowledge, and she sees even her fellow werewolves more as things than people. Despite her fame being for knowledge alone, she is a brutally efficient fighter who is more than happy to head into combat personally if it means securing a test subject or gaining information. She prefers - and, in fact, needs - to fight with a weapon most of the time, which is unusual for a werewolf. She has a collection of fetish weaponry (that's fetish as in 'there's a magic spirit bound in this' not 'someone is jacking off') to fight with, and if she finds her foe interesting she likes to take her time with them, as long as it's practical and she feels in control of the situation. In these cases, she fights to wound the foe in different ways to test their reactions, reflexes and abilities. When she loses her cool, her fury is brief but entirely uncontrolled until she bottles it back up again and pretends it never happened. Tejumola's labs are rumored to be full of horrific, blood-spattered monsters and vivisected werewolves. This is true. She conducts absolutely horrific, unethical experiments on humans, Claimed and werewolves alike, with a special interest in those whose First Changes were unusual or went wrong somehow. She actively collects new "specimens," and is happy to set Ivory Claw blood-hunters on the trail of anything that catches her interest, including Wolf-Bloods she thinks will undergo unusual Changes due to some detail or other she's mapped in their ancestry via the tribe's lineage records and genetic mapping. She is also one of the world's leading experts on Pangaean history, as she and her agents have spent years scouring the globe for artifacts, relics and ancient specimens. She has collected, among other things, pieces of half-eaten meat from unnaturally immense mummified crocodiles in Egypt, gibbering fragments of an ancient shard of the moon that was torn away in some ancient impact, and piece of crystal that shines into some other place, revealing a bright and insane-looking eye staring out of it. Despite her best efforts, however, she has proven unable to fully remove Luna's influence over her. Her Auspice has been torn away, but their shared bond of pain remains, and the Lunes (read: minor moon spirits) still whisper to her sometimes. She does her best to block it out, to the point that she occasionally claws out her own eardrums to get some silence before they heal again. Tejumola is not a bad fighter, but it's not her real focus. She is a genius, though, with a wide array of Gifts and extensive combat training and stat buffs from merits rather than raw dots. Overall, the fact that she tends to have monster backup is probably her big combat trick, however. She is powerful enough to have a ban: she must use a weapon when entering combat and can't switch to her fangs or claws until she draws blood with it or fails to do so on three attacks, whichever comes first.  This is my fursona, Murderface. Mimi Moon-Shunned is Luna's Bane, at least according to her. According to her, her First Change was an orgy of violence and blood. She transformed under the full moon, screaming defiance at Luna and killing everyone she met, her refusal so potent that Luna could not even touch her, and she was still without Auspice when she was discovered by the Pure. All of this except that last bit is not true, though Pure audiences tend to love hearing the story anyway, and Mimi's heard enough First Change stories herself to make up a convincingly gruesome tale. In truth, she can't actually remember her First Change because of how uneventful it was. The red mist did not descend. She did not awaken surrounded by gore. She did not repress the horror of killing her friends and family. It was just really boring. She was a kid and wasn't a werewolf, and then she was a werewolf. No sickness, no Lune whispers, no bloodthirst. No pull of the moon. She was just a werewolf. Shortly after, her clumsy efforts to understand werewolfiness drew the Pure to her, and it was her lack of Auspice marks that amazed them. The Fire-Touched declared it a holy sign, the Ivory Claws a symbol of Silver Wolf's purity. Both wanted her to join them. She resisted, not because she felt some desire to go tribeless, but because the oaths felt...not right. She knew in her blood that she was a werewolf, but even among the Pure she felt no kinship. She chose not to join a tribe, despite being Pure, and explained to her pack that she clearly had a unique destiny to walk alone, not with any one tribe. They doubted her, but they decided to give her time to find her place. As she worked with them, Mimi found her place and purpose. When they scouted out a nearby Forsaken territory, she saw a Lune overseeing some rites. She felt an innate fury, charging into the middle of the rite before anyone could stop her. When her rage ended, three of her pack and all of the Forsaken were dead. The survivors watched her with awe as she tore apart the remnants of a once-potent Ralunim with her claws and her flesh burned red with Renown markings. (The magic tattoos that make werewolves more powerful, normally given by spirits as gifts for true stories of great personal valor.) Tales of her fury spread, as well as tales of the Lune's utter confusion and helplessness against her. Since then, she has become famouas the Moon-Shunned, Luna's Bane. Dozens of crazy, fervent Pure now follow her in a large pack dedicated to hunting Lunes. They claim no physical territory, instead moving constantly in their endless quest. Each of them would gladly die for Mimi, who leads them to victory after victory. Mimi comes off as distant and aloof from other Pure. She's not rude or uninterested - she just, on an instinctual level, doesn't feel like kin. Even among her pack, it is clear that the dynamics of werewolf instinct do not include her. Despite this, she craves connection and spends a lot of time trying to make friends outside her pack. When not hunting, she can be found at clubs, cafes and other popular hangouts to mingle with humans. While she's a werewolf, she feels much more at home among people who don't have expectations of her for being one. She also uses her interactions with people to scout places out and find traces of her prey. She's a tall, thin woman - taller than most men she's met - and has deep olive skin. Her skin seems to get darker when the moon rises, regardless of time or light level, and her eyes become inky black. She likes pop culture and fashions associated with it, typically wearing t-shirts and jeans everywhere. She easily fits into any crowd, quickly picking up local mannerisms. Her warform is not the bulky monster that most werewolves become but rather a lithe, sinuous one, tall and fragile-looking compared to her pack, though she is no less tough than any other werewolf. In all forms, her hair is a very dark black. When she kills a Lune or a Lune dies in her presence, blood-red Renown brands shine and weep across her form. So, what is Mimi? Well, Luna's still a spirit, you understand. She is a god of immense potence, possibly the source of Father Wolf and possibly not. Even Luna has forgotten, that far back. She inflicted terrible scars on the world, cementing her rules of dominance and influence into it. The tides are hers, the night is hers. She can enter the day hours if she wants, and is permitted to occasionally obscure even Helios himself, which he can do nothing about. The price of all this is the Moon-Shunned. They are her Banes, and they have always existed - her children, who will kill her. She cannot see or touch them. She cannot stop them. They are her reminder that she is fallible and vulnerable, yet she can never know them. Historically, there have never been many Moon-Shunned at any given time, and they appear randomly across the world, so they've never been organized before. Mimi thinks she's unique, the only one like her. She is not. In the modern age of social media and interconnectedness, word is spreading. Two other Moon-Shunned have heard about Mimi's actions and have independently reached out to her via the Internet, trying to tentatively confirm her kinship to them. Mimi's cautious, understandably so, but the possibility of connecting with werewolves like herself stirs her deepest instincts. If they can find each other and unite to slay Luna, the world might change forever - especially because she and her servants can never see the Moon-Shunned. At all. Lunes in the area where Mimi is active tend to stop showing up to help out werewolves. Every dead Lune is one less spirit to help them and judge their deeds, but the thing is, all Lunes are worried now. They know their siblings are vanishing and they can't see why. They know werewolves call them, and then sometimes the Lunes don't come back, and there's no reason. They just...vanish, because the Lunes can't see Mimi. While they are unable to forsake their duties to Luna, the Lunes have never been ordered to pay attention to werewolves that call them from afar. Some now, in areas where Mimi's been active for a while, they're just...ignoring the calls. Strange signs and prophecies are appearing - new moons when they shouldn't happen, for example. Luna is afraid, and that's making the Forsaken very worried. Mimi's pretty average, as werewolf combatants go. She's a good fighter, but she's not really that much better than any given PC. She's powerful, but it's on a normal level of 'this is just a decently powerful mid-range werewolf.' She's certainly no elder monstrosity. Rather, it is her nature as Moon-Shunned that is the threat. Moon-Shunned are given rules, and they work like this: 1. Moon-Shunned have no Auspice. They may never gain Moon Gifts and cannot access the Hunter's Aspect. Their death rage triggers cannot be linked to the moon in anyway. 2. Moon-Shunned do not cause Lunacy, no matter what form they're in. People don't get the instinctive moon freakout. 3. Moon-Shunned do not take extra damage from silver. 4. Moonlight cannot touch them, which makes it easier for them to get exceptional success on Stealth rolls or to avoid notice while the moon is out. 5. Lunes and Luna cannot perceive them by any means. Ever. They automatically fail at any attempt to detect or perceive a Moon-Shunned, no matter what. Lunes tend to become irritated and vindictive if people interact with a Moon-Shunned in their presence, or even discuss their existence around the spirits. 6. Moon-Shunned gain Renown when a Lune dies in their presence - typically, the Renown associated with the Auspice of the Lune. If multiple Moon-Shunned are present, only one of them can get this bonus. 7. If a Lune's body is destroyed in the presence of a Moon-Shunned, they can spend Essence to permanently kill the Lune. 8. Moon-Shunned cannot join a tribe, gain bonuses from packmates' Hunter's Aspect or be targeted by a Sacred Hunt. Ever. Attempts just automatically fail for no apparent reason. 9. When a Moon-Shunned leads a Sacred Hunt, they and their pack can automatically sense the distance and direction to the nearest Lune, which lasts until the turning of the lunar cycle and only marks that one Lune. 10. The natural weapons of a Moon-Shunned are considered a Bane to all Lunes, and to Luna herself if that were ever to become relevant. #9 also would apply to Luna herself, if that ever became relevant. Next time: SATAN'S WOLVES Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 22:25
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Mors Rattus posted:Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon it's actually a musky tusk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzF-drvzpso
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Aug 22, 2019 22:25
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Mors Rattus posted:I WILL MURDER THE MOON
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Aug 22, 2019 22:29
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Tejumola is a really interesting take on thing that comes up a few times in WtF antagonists: those so traumatized by their first change that they decided gently caress this, time to villain. Another good example of this is in the first WtF Night Horrors book, in the guy who made an on-the-spot pact with a pain spirit to not die terribly, so now he goes around being The Heavy from a kung fu movie and brutally dismantling people in single combat. Mimi is cool because I really like the idea of a werewolf antagonist who's that way because their life was so uneventful and they're boring on a cosmic scale, so they just leaned into it hard enough they came out an edgelord. Which I also think will be a good segue into the next section!
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Aug 22, 2019 22:45
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Mors Rattus posted:Werewolf Dr. Moreau and Werewolf Anti-Christ It's stuff like this that makes me really enjoy Forsaken 2e in a way that Werewolf: the Apocalypse doesn't scratch. The world of Forsaken is super weird and full of mysteries. What's more, those mysteries seem like they'd be fun for a GM to make up solutions to and for players to solve. There's no expectation that whatever strangeness you find was intended to have a canon solution in a book that you don't own or that was never released.
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Aug 22, 2019 22:50
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Joe Slowboat posted:I like her specifically because she's not a good Predator King- she's going to implode someday soon, because she has the ideological commitment to hunting and murder that Predator Kings have but doesn't walk the walk regarding the actual spirit oath. She's a ticking time bomb for herself and others. It's always nice to be reminded that that sort of thing works both ways, for both the Forsaken and the Pure.
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Aug 22, 2019 22:54
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Mimi is cool because I really like the idea of a werewolf antagonist who's that way because their life was so uneventful and they're boring on a cosmic scale, so they just leaned into it hard enough they came out an edgelord. Which I also think will be a good segue into the next section! The star of our next section is literally named Soulless Wolf and he's amazing and dumb and I love him.
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Aug 22, 2019 23:12
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