The Dark Reflection

[Username17]

Trolls
“An implacable enemy that will never stop.”

Trolls are big and nasty, but much more disciplined in temper and human in their appearance than the demonic Akuma that they are often compared to. Trolls are lumpy and sometimes have tusks or fangs. They can be anywhere from hairless to sasquatchianly shaggy. Trollish skin ranges across human skin tones (including the ones brought about by illness such as jaundiced yellow, drowning purple, and bed-ridden pale), and does not stray into the fanciful such as green or black. A Troll might be the kind of dark brown that humans call Black, but unlike an Akuma they wouldn't appear in an actually inhuman color scheme.

Trolls are frequently misshapen to one degree or another, but they have the same parts as a human. Trolls can have long or short arms, but they do not have extra arms. Sometimes they will lose a limb, but those things grow back pretty fast.

Troll Biology
“Time means nothing.”

Trolls do not hunger or thirst. Which is fortunate for them, because Limbo is pretty dry. Trolls are not born, they are revived. A Troll will be found as a stone corpse, and someone will figure out how to put some power points into it, and then there is one more Troll. Trolls come in two sexes, but that seems to be entirely cosmetic, because Trolls don't seem to reproduce at all. The secret histories do not contain a single instance of a Troll being born (or created, or whatever it is that made Trolls in the first place), and actual interviews and even telepathic probes of Trolls do not shed any light on Trollish origins. They have simple and confused minds, but they appear to believe that they have always existed, albeit on various different worlds.

Nevertheless, Trolls consider themselves to be in family groups. Tribes and kingdoms of trolls exist that are united by a vague feeling of kinship and divided against each other by ancient feuds. Trolls appear hideous to human sensibilities, but in their way they are incredibly appearance oriented. Trolls with the right physical traits are implicitly assumed to be part of the same tribe, and those with other combinations of physical traits are deemed outsiders. Trolls usually claim that there are 144 clans, but this is a lot more than the secret histories can account for, even including kingdoms that have been dusted and reformed under different management as distinct clan entries.

If Trolls become injured they heal with incredible speed, but while healing fro larger injuries their strength is generally reduced (power points are spent on Revive the Flesh in preference to Vigor). Despite their awe inspiring stamina and physical power, Trolls still feel pain. In fact, Trolls are usually quite arthritic and feel uncomfortable pretty much all the time. Trolls eat voraciously, but do not gain any sustenance from it. Their jaws have between 20 and 32 teeth, and sometimes one or more of those teeth are wildly over-sized. Their viscera are almost entirely given over to stomach, with hardly any intestine. As such, they can eat huge meals, fitting dozens of liters (even entire children) down their throat in a single sitting. The trollish stomach is more of a holding area than a digestive organ, and if a Troll decides to swallow something (or someone) whole, it actually can be cut out relatively safely within a few minutes or even (in rare cases) hours. Legends of Chronos and the Big Bad Wolf may be based upon that reality of Troll consumption.

Trolls and Death
“When Trolls say someone is gone that is not a euphemism. Their concept of death is literally identical to their concept of someone who is not in the room at the moment.”

Trolls do not ever really die. A “lethal” wound causes a Troll to revert to stone and stay that way, but if anyone should remove all offending iron and water from the remains and provide it some power by any means, it will turn back into a Troll and heal to perfect health in hours. Trolls do not become spirits while “dead” and some magical theorists believe that they do not have souls.

The Book of Nod is a set of Sumerian tablets that among other things describe a ritual of pouring thick beer and onions at sunset onto a stone troll to revive it. This ritual works and can be performed by anyone with the tome (or a copy of that section of the tome). This is probably the first ritual that humans developed that would give Power Points to a “dead” Troll, but the Trolls themselves know many, and no Troll whose body is recovered by its kin should be considered gone in any permanent sense.

The Troll Kingdoms
“Everything to the strongest.”

The Troll kingdoms are pale imitations of what they once were. There was an age when a Troll who held the status of “King” ruled in both the mortal world and the Dark Reflection. These kingdoms were ruled by a Troll of great strength until another Troll wrested the crown from them by overpowering them. With the coming of iron, human tribes were able to cast the Troll royalty down through force of arms, and the disorganized remnants fled into Limbo where some survivors took up the crown and attempted to revive the traditions. But the new “Kings” had not actually bested the last rightful owners in combat (the rightful owners being the human soldiers who laid in the incapacitating blow on the former owner), so many Trolls regarded these claims to rulership as illegitimate. The social hierarchy of the Trolls has been in disarray ever since.

The Wendigo
“Eating Flesh is our Birthright.”

The last “kingdom” of the Trolls that was conquered was a rather disorganized group of cannibals living in the Pacific Northwest called the “Wendigo” by the humans of the region. They built no monuments and their voracious appetites ensured that they kept few slaves. And they were ultimately routed and destroyed by Covenant conquistadors in 1633. This is a point of considerable consternation to many Trolls, as it is possible that whoever actually took out the leader (the Wendigo didn't have a “King” as such) is still alive, and would then be the rightful leader of the Wendigo.

The Covenant for its part cares not a whit for Trollish traditions and when questioned about it, the Military Ordinal of the time explicitly stated that no records were kept of who actually took out the leader or of which Troll the burden of leadership actually fell upon.

Legitimacy Through Robbery
“A crime of sufficient age is a legend.”

A persistent rumor abounds among Troll-kind that the King with Three Shadows actually is the rightful heir to a Troll Kingdom that once stood near the source of the Nile. The story goes that a Troll King held a magic necklace that was cursed such that the owner would always die by violence. That he was slain (for a certain value of “slain” as applies to Trolls) is not in doubt, but the idea is that every subsequent owner was eventually slain in turn by another human and the necklace changed from one set of human hands to another in a chain of robbery and murder until eventually the man who would become the King with Three Shadows murdered his own wife and took it for himself. If the story is true, it means that there is at least one person who has bested the previous rightful ruler of a Troll kingdom who had in turn defeated the previous owner and so on all the way back to when the Troll Kingdoms were considered legitimate and whole.

The King with Three Shadows doesn't comment on this story, but he hasn't come out and denied it either. And many Trolls view the King with Three Shadows as the only being in the worlds that has the “right” to command Trolls and take the title of King. Of course, many of those Trolls are also preparing themselves to eventually fight the King with Three Shadows, since of course by the very same logic, any Troll who defeats the King with Three Shadows in hand to hand combat would become the only legitimate Troll King in over two thousand years. In the meantime, more Trolls follow the King with Three Shadows than any Trollish chief.

[Endovior]

Hrm....Howzabout:

Mirror Paint

Metalic silver hooby paint enchanted to dry within minutes and form a smooth surface in minutes, this can be used to turn most wood, brick or concrete surfaces into mirrors, allowing characters to use it as a gate to or from Limbo as per normal. The enchantments on such paint cause it to not merely dry more rapidly than normal paint, but to also fade and crack much faster. A surface treated with Mirror Paint fades to a non-reflective dingy grey in one day and peels and cracks inside a week.

The fact that such paint must be mixed using powdered silver and pure water means that most denizens of Limbo cannot prepare it themselves.

I've never been comfortable with this kind of item, a thing that's limited in use and assumed to not really be refillable. It's like having a car in mad max land instead of in the normal modern society.

I was thinking more like an amulet that shifts you about, or a doohicky that shoots a beam at a wall and opens up a circle like in Sliders.

Maybe some kind of fire-starting thing that guarantees that any big enough fire you start with it will be a portal to Limbo, and that things/people thrown in to such a fire will be transported intact?

It could even be, like, a coal or a bunch of them or something, and when it burns, it ends up transported intact to the dark reflection and taking stuff with it. And if you use it to go with, you can retrieve it.

I think Mirror Paint itself would be more like a Secret than a Destiny, and a rating 1 Secret would be something like "You have a drum of mirror paint" which you can parcel out to trade for stuff.

I think you're right on the money there... although you can probably go a little ways parceling out bits of paint from your drum (a gallon of paint will get you about 350 square feet of coverage, so a five-gallon drum could get you a lot of portals), that's not actually a huge sum of magic you're carrying around there. More relevant, perhaps, would be the Destiny that constitutes a recipe for Mirror Paint. 'Everyone knows' that you prepare Mirror Paint with pure water and powdered silver (two ingredients easily available in the mortal world and hazardous to beings of Limbo); just as common knowledge is that you also need a bit of ash from Limbo (which is somewhat less easy for your average mortal savant to get). The other six ingredients, though, that you need to actually combine these disparate ingredients into something that actually resembles paint, on the other hand, are not widely known; similarly, the alchemical process that actually produces the paint, as well as the incantation that provides the paint with it's useful properties, are both secret. The reason for this is obvious; anyone in possession of one of the few books that contain the complete formula tends to be far more interested in selling Mirror Paint then in sharing his recipe.

Of course, silver is fairly expensive in quantity, and Limbo ash requires safe access to Limbo (not to mention any of the other ingredients, at least one of which is probably nontrivial), so even if you do have a relevant book of Destiny that'll let you brew Mirror Paint (as a single book, that's probably not even more then a one-point Destiny), you'll need both Finances and Secrets to actually make the stuff. And while having all three does technically enable you to produce lots and lots of Mirror Paint over time... this is still a fairly low-tier magic, and there is accordingly a finite amount of value to even an infinite supply of Mirror Paint.

[Username17]

One of the things I am putting into the book is Mighty Rituals Of Vast Power, some of which are called out as being in specific books. Like the ritual to give power points to a Troll in stony torpor.

Having a book that told you how to go about spending a bunch of power points to make some mirror paint seems reasonable.

-Username17

[Blicero]

That was some really neat fluff for Trolls, Frank. However, my immediate question upon finishing it is, what happens if Trolls get chunky salsa-fied by some stupidly powerful attack (A bomb, a tank shell, etc), such that any remaining pieces of the Troll are seriously tiny? Does one of those pieces just regrow into a stone Troll?

[A Man In Black]

That was some really neat fluff for Trolls, Frank. However, my immediate question upon finishing it is, what happens if Trolls get chunky salsa-fied by some stupidly powerful attack (A bomb, a tank shell, etc), such that any remaining pieces of the Troll are seriously tiny? Does one of those pieces just regrow into a stone Troll?

Similarly, what happens when a calcified troll is violently obliterated, such as by a bunch of monster hunters getting out a rock drill and the dynamite? Or even nonviolently obliterated, such as by erosion?

[Draco_Argentum]

"while healing fro larger" fro = from

[Endovior]

That was some really neat fluff for Trolls, Frank. However, my immediate question upon finishing it is, what happens if Trolls get chunky salsa-fied by some stupidly powerful attack (A bomb, a tank shell, etc), such that any remaining pieces of the Troll are seriously tiny? Does one of those pieces just regrow into a stone Troll?

Similarly, what happens when a calcified troll is violently obliterated, such as by a bunch of monster hunters getting out a rock drill and the dynamite? Or even nonviolently obliterated, such as by erosion?

Perhaps a better question is... can that even happen? If this is the currently-inert body of a temporarily powerless immortal, it might seriously just be indestructible... or, at least, have an indestructible seed in it from which the rest of the body will regrow once the power comes on. Or multiple such seeds, from which you can grow multiple trolls if you break it up right.

[Username17]

Mighty Rituals of Vast Power
“Why are we wearing these outfits?”

Ritual magic is an important part of the horror genre, and it is included in After Sundown for that reason. It is important to note that using magic of this kind is almost universally a terrible idea. While these rituals work, they are also usually cursed. And so players (who are generally aware of genre conventions) will be understandably reticent to use them. But there are still magic books that have recipes for performing ritual magic in them. The rituals presented below are found in Infernal Tomes, but the guidelines apply to those found in Astral or Orphic Tomes as well.

Magical Tomes have a lot of pages in them. And while they don't usually have (sane) editors, and thus frequently use a lot of space on pointless asides, scratched-out failed experiments, personal anecdotes, and philosophical musings, the reality is that they do still contain a lot of magic. And yet, when someone reads a Tome and acquires magical powers, only a very small number of Powers are actually written down on their character sheet. Some of that is that you simply don't learn everything all at once, and some magical techniques are more difficult than others. But a very large amount of it is that when perusing an eldritch manuscript the savvy reader will find themselves excaiming “Why the fuck would I want to do that!” at the recipes on almost every page. The majority of magical rituals are expensive (in many ways), most of them have hideous drawbacks, and most importantly the things they actually do are frequently either too specific or too pointless to be worth pursuing for most would-be Witches.

When using Ritual Magic, the first thing you'll need is Power. And lots of it. Mighty Rituals of Vast Power require a vast amount of Power Points, which is in part why they are called that. Ordinary humans and cultists can supply some or all of those Power Points, but remember that most people have no way to recover Power Points, meaning that there is a profoundly limited umber of Rituals they can use in their lifetimes. More powerful rituals require more Power Points than a single character probably has, which requires more than one character to participate or for a single character to extend the ritual across their own Power Schedule.

Infernal Enchantments and Alchemy
“We are making things that should not be made.”

One thing that Mighty Rituals of Vast Power can do is to create magic items that can be used later. These items should usually be temporary items that are “used up”. This is roughly the same as allowing a ritual to be performed during down time and then actually used later on during a dramatic scene. This allows the ritual to be useful when the situation has time limitations while still preserving the ritual as something that is time consuming and expensive. Rituals can produce more permanent magic items, and indeed that is where most Destiny Resources come from in an ultimate sense, but these rituals should generally not be repeatable for credit. That means that rituals that create permanent magic items should have specific time requirements or require ingredients that are sufficiently unique that the ritual will only be done once during a story.

Mirror Paint
Mirror paint is a slightly reddish silvery fluid that looks like rusty mercury. When painted on a surface, it makes a temporary Mirror Gate into the Shallow Reflection. These gates don't last very long, and can only be applied from the mortal world side. So if you use it to get into the Shallow Reflection, you'd better hurry back or have another way back. The Mirror Gate that is made lasts for about an hour. Once applied, mirror paint will crack, peel, and blow away as black dust within a week.

• Creating a batch of mirror paint is an hour-long ritual that requires the expenditure of 10 Power Points and one wound box worth of blood, as well as mixing half a pound of silver (as of this writing, that's about $275 worth of the metal, and buying small amounts of it generally cost some sort of retailer's fee) with pure water by hand. The rest of the materials range from the bizarre to the obscure, but are not particularly dangerous to most supernatural creatures. The additional goods cost about a hundred dollars. Actually making it requires someone reading the recipe to make a Logic + Sabotage or Charisma + Bueaucracy test, and the resulting Mirror Gate has a Gauntlet Rating of six minus the number of hits received when making the stuff. A copy of the recipe can be found in Unaussprechlichen Kulten.