aWoD: Continued

[Username17]

Hmm, I do like Iron for the wilds and silver for limbo, but it does mean the Fenris have no particular fear of silver.

As things currently stand, weaknesses are determined by type not by power source. So every type of lycanthrope takes special damage from silver and weakened by alcohol. Every type of vampire takes special damage from silver and is weakened by sunlight. So Blade's silver sword is effective against other Ventrue or Nosferatu, effective against Nezumi or Werewolves.

This would also mean that people wouldn't need to stress over much about the difference between the Soulless and the Headcrabs - because they all die the same (they just have a different special effect and possibly a slightly different power list.

---

However I noticed that the original list of major weapons was Iron, Silver, and Fire. But considering how easy it is to summon and/or become immune to fire, that probably has to change. So after the iron sword and the silver bullet, the monster hunters need a third iconic weapon. Maybe wooden stakes (like Buffy)? Or shotguns filled with rock salt (like Supernatural)? Not sure.

Even though Frankenstein's Monster classically says "Fire bad!" - walking through burning buildings is one of Der Golem's major schticks.

-Username17

[Orion]

As for easy summoning of fire: It's not like it's that hard to get iron or silver weapons, it's just hard to carry them inconscpicously. If you can just torch people with Walk of Flame, then the concealment beforehand is easy but in many cases covering up your use of fire will be impossible. It's a similar logistical burden, since in both cases the main restriction on your ability to bust out the attack is social sanction.

As for fire immunity, maybe it just doesn't apply to magic fire?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Do we really want Cthulhu to explicitly be a part of the World of Darkness? I think that certain allusions and references are fine: Herbert West, Pickman, and Innsmouth have all been mentioned, and are most excellent. There's also Charles Dexter Ward/Joseph Curwin, Dr. Muñoz, The Outsider, Ephraim Waite, The Beast In The Cave, Henry Wentworth Akeley, Wilbur Whateley, and probably more. Even Dreams in The Witch House and The Call of Cthulhu have their places.

However, they stand alone without the campy trans-dimensional unpronounceable horrors.

[Edit]
Wow, a lot of posts after I started writing this thing. I have to weight in on the 'special effects' issue: the pretty system should always be ignored when it violates vital parts of mythology. Regardless of how you rationalize it mechanically, werewolves must be vulnerable to silver and fey must be vulnerable to iron.

Aldo, please don't take this the wrong way, but the idea of having NPC monster types further divided into planar triads is just dumb. Ghosts are from the fucking Gloom, and there's no reason to have 'Gloom fey' and 'Silent Hill fey' when the fey should all obviously be from the Wilds, because they all hang out together there.

So all zombies are made by necromancers by imbuing corpses with something from the Gloom. All ghosts are from the Gloom. Demons are all from the Dark Reflection.

Do not let this devolve into vampire zombie space viruses.

[Username17]

Subheadings are a really good idea. Keep all the information on the same single list (so you'd repeat some subheadings on different lists), but the extra labels would help immensely.

As someone who has played neither WoD nor Shadowrun, the lists of 7 without subheadings really do hit that "wall of text" barrier. Subheadings fix that completely.

I haven't forgotten this, and I've been working on how to get that working. Something I'm running into is that "Intermediate Presets" sounds lame. And indeed, I think it's probably better if Disciplines just don't even have anything called intermediate. So how about if the first tier is still called "Basic" but the second tier is called "Advanced" and the third tier (the one players can't normally start with) is called "Elder". Then the one that's only for high Potency monsters and shows up only in expansion material can be called the "Legendary" tier.

So here's how that would look:

---

The Deep Ones: Scions of Dagon
“Those horrible eyes. Unblinking and inhuman, twas like looking at fish more than a man.”

According to legend, Dagon was spawned when Tiamat mated with the Tigris River. He was a powerful and fish-like creature, and his progeny all carry fish traits about their being. Hailing from the oceans, a Deep One gradually becomes scaled and gilled as he ages. His eyes flatten and rarely blink, and the lure of the sea becomes harder to ignore. There are few who can stomach long departures from the coast, for in their mind they can always listen for the strange whispered yet incessant call of the ocean.

Deep Ones can breathe water as easily as air. The strange whispers they hear in their own minds can also be shared with anyone foolish enough to look a Deep One in their strangely opaque eyes.

A Deep One has an Astral power source and a Lunar power schedule.

• Deep One Starting Disciplines
  
  - Core Discipline: Auspex -
• Aura Perception (Basic Auspex)
• Heightened Senses (Basic Auspex)
  
  - Basic Disciplines -
• Body Weaponry (Basic Protean)
• Patience of the Mountain (Basic Fortitude)
• Command (Basic Dominate)
• Rising Mists (Basic Chasing the Storm)
  
  -Advanced Disciplines -
• Telepathy (Advanced Auspex)
• Conditioning (Advanced Dominate)

---

How does that do?

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

So, does this look about right for White Wolf length flavor text on Ventrue?

Ventrue are inherently obsessive. They covet the life they once had, and hold an innate aversion for what they've become. As a result, Ventrues are unable to stand the sight of their own reflections. This gives them an aversion to mirrors of all kinds, including polished metal and still water. Ventrue will often display a strong aversion to certain things which remind them of their human lives, although such aversion is by no means consistent between individuals. Individual Ventrue usually display some other symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, such as counting, cleaning, and otherwise ritualizing their lives. This obsession is not without its benefits, and Ventrue notice details that might escape others.

A Ventrue must drink blood to maintain its appearance of life. As a Ventrue uses up its reserves of energy, it acquires a progressively more corpselike and sunken appearance, until feeding again restores the blush of life to its cheeks. A Ventrue starved for long enough is forced into a state of torpor and to all outward appearances is a wizened corpse. A Ventrue's bite is venomous, and causes amnesia and mild euphoria.

As they are dead, Ventrue are difficult to kill. With enough blood even terrible injuries can be repaired. Piercing a Ventrue though the heart will drain its blood supply and render it indefinitely incapacitated. Severe injuries to the central nervous system cannot be repaired, and so destroying a Ventrue's head will kill it for good.

Sunlight (and probably any sufficiently strong UV radiation) is harmful to Ventrue, and they must continuously exert energy repairing the damage it deals. If a Ventrue is reduced to torpor by the sun, its body will degrade to dust and bones, a permenant death.

Ventrue are capable of turning living humans into Ventrue. This is accomplished by killing the victim via desanguination while feeding it some of the Ventrue's own blood. However, few individuals can survive the process without going completely insane, and none come out unscathed (as evidenced by the neuroticism of all Ventrue). A Ventrue unable to cope with the transformation becomes a violent, mindless creature, driven only by hunger. Many Ventrue are terribly disappointed when they try to "embrace" loved ones. Some are able to develop powers of mesmerism that allow them to cloud and dominate the minds of humans and other Ventrue, giving them the ability to control their spawn.

I'm not covering much new ground, but I'd like to see how some of the more minor abilities and the weaknesses operate.

[Username17]

So all zombies are made by necromancers by imbuing corpses with something from the Gloom. All ghosts are from the Gloom. Demons are all from the Dark Reflection.

Do not let this devolve into vampire zombie space viruses.

I am highly sympathetic to this viewpoint. Although it would put us in quite a bind with Mirror Goblins if all Fey were from the Dreamlands. Which seems to have its own solution: none of them are. The split would be:

Dreamlands

• Giant Animals
  Evil Plants

The Gloom

• Ghosts
  Zombies

The Dark Reflection

• Demons
  Fey

And yeah, that means that the Fey are a lot more Warwick Davis and a lot less Titania. But since this is a horror movie, that's OK. This means that we get to use The Black Lodge from Twin Peaks and the Jazz Room from Soul Eater - since those are basically the same thing - and they'd consistently be in the Dark Reflection.

At that point the Dreamlands become a wild and wholly inhuman experience. When you cross over into them you are basically in Skull Island, and the only thing to talk to there are psychic evil plants. And Trifids and The Thing frankly don't want to talk to you very much - they mostly want to eat you and grow a pod copy of your body from the soil. But this works pretty well for the psychic and wild theme running through the Astrally empowered types.

The only major disadvantage I see out of this is that while Army of Darkness works very well as a Gloom Gate opening, Evil Dead 2 requires a teamup of disparate villainous elements. You just aren't going to get zombies rising from the corpses of women raped to death by evil trees without the use of cross planar sorcery or tag teams of baddies with different origins.

---

So, does this look about right for White Wolf length flavor text on Ventrue?

Well the first thing that leaps out at me is that I had written them in for Aura Perception, and your writeup seems to solidly indicate that they should be running with Heightened Senses instead. So I'll have to change that. The second thing that leaps out at me is that you have them taking damage from sunlight - which is out of scale with what other characters do. Their powers are stripped down by sunlight like Dracula, they don't burst into flame like a Blade vampire.

So yeah, it would look something like this:

---

The Ventrue
“There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”

Ventrue are inherently obsessive. They covet the life they once had, and hold an innate aversion for what they've become. As a result, Ventrues are unable to stand the sight of their own reflections. This gives them an aversion to mirrors of all kinds, including polished metal and still water. Ventrue will often display a strong aversion to certain things which remind them of their human lives, although such aversion is by no means consistent between individuals. Individual Ventrue usually display some other symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, such as counting, cleaning, and otherwise ritualizing their lives. This obsession is not without its benefits, and Ventrue notice details that might escape others.

A Ventrue must drink blood to maintain its appearance of life. As a Ventrue uses up its reserves of energy, it acquires a progressively more corpselike and sunken appearance, until feeding again restores the blush of life to its cheeks. A Ventrue starved for long enough is forced into a state of torpor and to all outward appearances is a wizened corpse. A Ventrue's bite is venomous, and causes amnesia and mild euphoria.

As they are dead, Ventrue are difficult to kill. With enough blood even terrible injuries can be repaired. Piercing a Ventrue though the heart will drain its blood supply and render it indefinitely incapacitated. Sunlight (and probably any sufficiently strong UV radiation) is harmful to Ventrue, and it renders their powers weak. As creatures drawing powers from Mictlan, their mere presence excites and offends natural animals. Cats hiss and dogs growl at their approach.

Ventrue are capable of turning living humans into Ventrue. This is accomplished by killing the victim via desanguination and then feeding it some of the Ventrue's own blood using their power of Blood Bondage. However, few individuals can survive the process without going completely insane, and none come out unscathed (as evidenced by the neuroticism of all Ventrue). A Ventrue unable to cope with the transformation becomes a violent, mindless creature, driven only by hunger – a Vampire Spawn. Many Ventrue are terribly disappointed when they try to "embrace" loved ones. Some use their powers of Mesmerism to cloud and dominate the minds of humans and other Ventrue, giving them the ability to control their spawn.

A Ventrue has an Orphic power source and a Feeding power schedule.

• Ventrue Starting Disciplines
  
  - Core Discipline: Fortitude -
• Patience of the Mountains (Basic Fortitude)
• Revive the Flesh (Basic Fortitude)
  
  - Basic Disciplines -
• Vigor (Basic Potence)
• Heightened Senses (Basic Auspex)
• Blood Bondage (Basic Path of Blood)
• Mesmerism (Basic Dominate)
  
  -Advanced Disciplines -
• Restoration (Advanced Fortitude)
• Indomitably (Advanced Fortitude)

---

-Username17

[Jacob_Orlove]

How does that do?

-Username17

That is great. Before, were I to play this, I could easily imagine forgetting the 7th power off the list and having a hard time remembering it. But with that setup, I could at least figure out which of the three groups it was from and then have a pretty good chance of remembering which 2-3 powers are in that group.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I am highly sympathetic to this viewpoint. Although it would put us in quite a bind with Mirror Goblins if all Fey were from the Dreamlands. Which seems to have its own solution: none of them are. The split would be:

Dreamlands

• Giant Animals
  Evil Plants

The Gloom

• Ghosts
  Zombies

The Dark Reflection

• Demons
  Fey

And yeah, that means that the Fey are a lot more Warwick Davis and a lot less Titania. But since this is a horror movie, that's OK. This means that we get to use The Black Lodge from Twin Peaks and the Jazz Room from Soul Eater - since those are basically the same thing - and they'd consistently be in the Dark Reflection.

The goblin of the jazz room is pretty much quintessentially diabolical. I think that a case can be made that 'goblins' in that case are not fey at all, and are simply demons of the most human sort. If fey are of the Dark Reflection, it seems as though there's no clear distinction between the mirror goblins and pyramid head in terms of fey vs. demon. Similarly, such a place is more likely to hold the four horsemen than the dark huntsman.

Unless there is some clear distinction I'm missing, I'd just have all the 'fey' of the Dark Reflection be demons (and have no relation to Wild fey, if such creatures still exist).

I also have no problem with 'special cases'. The Queen of Air and Darkness is clearly a fairy of great power that was banished or retreated to the gloom. That's fine because most of her acquired powers are "Orphic" anyway. The difference is, here we have a creature of the Wilds translated into the Gloom.

At that point the Dreamlands become a wild and wholly inhuman experience. When you cross over into them you are basically in Skull Island, and the only thing to talk to there are psychic evil plants. And Trifids and The Thing frankly don't want to talk to you very much - they mostly want to eat you and grow a pod copy of your body from the soil. But this works pretty well for the psychic and wild theme running through the Astrally empowered types.

The only major disadvantage I see out of this is that while Army of Darkness works very well as a Gloom Gate opening, Evil Dead 2 requires a teamup of disparate villainous elements. You just aren't going to get zombies rising from the corpses of women raped to death by evil trees without the use of cross planar sorcery or tag teams of baddies with different origins.

If nezumi can just purchase up to intermediate necromancy, I don't see why an ent can't do the same. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding power sources. Is a mummy's fire magic connected to the Gloom? If necromancy isn't a purely Gloomy enterprise, it seems as though your previous conclusion of living dead and pod people is unavoidable.

Anyway, the inhuman Wilds seems as compelling as the fey Wilds, so whether fey are fey or demons becomes a question of space.

So, does this look about right for White Wolf length flavor text on Ventrue?

Well the first thing that leaps out at me is that I had written them in for Aura Perception, and your writeup seems to solidly indicate that they should be running with Heightened Senses instead. So I'll have to change that. The second thing that leaps out at me is that you have them taking damage from sunlight - which is out of scale with what other characters do. Their powers are stripped down by sunlight like Dracula, they don't burst into flame like a Blade vampire.

Are there to be any creatures of darkness that don't have heightened senses? It seems to come with the mask. For Ventrue, I was thinking something more specifically like eidetic memory. Slight changes make a Ventrue's skin crawl, and that sort of thing might actually be better as aura reading or some sort of psychometry. Then again, I'm not really sure what either of the powers do at this point...

And yeah, I had forgotten about the daylight powerlessness. Oops.

So yeah, it would look something like this:

---

The Ventrue
...

---

-Username17

Looks good to me.

[Username17]

The imp from Soul Eater's Jazz Room could easily be played off as a Demon, I'll agree to that readily. But that entire sequence is based on The Black Lodge from Twin Peaks. We can get in on some of that action Here. Parts of the Dark Reflection are clearly like that, which means that making a Warwick Davis Leprechaun connection isn't much of a stretch.

If nezumi can just purchase up to intermediate necromancy, I don't see why an ent can't do the same. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding power sources. Is a mummy's fire magic connected to the Gloom? If necromancy isn't a purely Gloomy enterprise, it seems as though your previous conclusion of living dead and pod people is unavoidable.

Yes, when you activate a sorcery discipline you set off detectors for the type of magic it is regardless of what kind of magic you are. This means that Nezum can grab Reanimation (Advanced Necromancy) at chargen and raise a zombie or two out of the Gloom even though they personally are Infernal.

Are there to be any creatures of darkness that don't have heightened senses?

Well, it's a World of Darkness, so lots of people are creatures of darkness and only some of them get heightened senses. If you mean creatures powered by Mictlan, then the answer would still be yes. Troglodytes, Frankensteins, Returned, and Ventrue all get Enhanced Senses, but Khaibt and Bagheera don't.

-Username17

[Prak]

um, why wouldn't people that turn into cats get heightened sense? I can see a case for the snake mages, but cat shifters really should get heightened senses... unless that'll be an inherent part of cat form and their lack of heightened senses is in human form...

[Username17]

Heightened Senses is pretty epic. Just being a cat girl or dog boy is not enough to get darkvision or the ability to see through illusions, which is what Heightened Senses give you. Yeah, jaguars can see in low light. But they can't see in total darkness and they don't inherently get true sight.

-Username17

[Prak]

ah, ok, now it makes sense. But bagheera are getting auspex, right?

[Orion]

Frank,

I was trying to make a list of all the disciplines mentioned thus far so I could see the shape of things, how many disciplines we had and still needed and how effects might be divided up.

Question:

There are "Physical Disciplines," which I understand are not detectable outside of looking at their effects, and the whole discipline is turned on or off at any given time.

Then there are sorcerous disciplines, which divide into Infernal, Astral, and Orphic Sorcery. They set off detectors of and are countered by the countermeasures against their world, and they consist of lists of spells which are cast independently from one another.

What about stuff like Auspex, Obfuscate, and Protean? What about Path of Blood?

Auspex and Obfuscate I think can be lumped into physical disciplines. Using Auspex isn't channeling the power of any particular world, it's just perception. And it can probably be an on/off deal.

Protean is harder. It consists of separable abilities that are used one at a time. It felt like a physical discipline to me though, although I suppose we can throw it in as an Astral Sorcery.

Path of Blood is the way Vampires sire, no? Supposed we made it gloom-based, it would be a little odd if all vampires tripped gloom sensors when siring, no?

One last question: I like the idea of common realm association such that necromancy can always be dealt with the same way whether the necromancer is a vampire, a werewolf, or a robot. But by using the sorcery disciplines, as you have for some generic monsters abilities some odd effects happen.

Walk of Flame, for instance, is Infernal Sorcery, yet it's also the discipline you use for generic fire resistance. Mechanically that's fine, but conceptually your golem is fire-resistant because it's clay, right? It's a little odd that its presence suddenly curdles milk or tarnishes silver just because it happened to stroll through a furnace. Maybe distinguish in your sorcery disciplines between "spells," which carry thier realm descriptor, and passive buffs which don't?

[Username17]

So far, and cutting out the Elder disciplines and descriptions, we have:

Physical Disciplines

Auspex
Basic Disciplines

• Heightened Senses
• Aura Perception

Advanced Disciplines

• Spirit's touch
• Telepathy

Celerity
Basic Disciplines

• Quickness
• Nimble Feet

Advanced Disciplines

• Alacrity
• Quicken Sight

Dominate
Basic Disciplines

• Command
• Mesmerism

Advanced Disciplines

• Forgetful Mind
• Conditioning

Fortitude
Basic Disciplines

• Patience of the Mountains
• Revive the Flesh

Advanced Disciplines

• Restoration
• Indomitability

Obfuscation
Basic Disciplines

• Hide From Notice
• Mask of a Thousand Faces

Advanced Disciplines

• Touch of Shadow
• Vanish from the Mind's Eye

Potence
Basic Disciplines

• Feat of Strength
• Vigor

Advanced Disciplines

• Devastation
• Giant Size

Presence
Basic Disciplines

• Awe
• Dread Gaze

Advanced Disciplines

• Majesty
• Summons

Protean
Basic Disciplines

• Body Weaponry
• Form of the Beast

Advanced Disciplines

• Earth Meld
• War Form

Astral Sorcery

Animalism
Basic Disciplines

• Eyes of the Beast
• Feral Whispers

Advanced Disciplines

• The Beckoning

Chasing the Storm
Basic Disciplines

• Howling Winds
• Rising Mists

Advanced Disciplines

• Lightning Strike
• Tumultuous Rain

Trail of Tears
Basic Disciplines

• Curse of Failure
• Dark Night of the Soul

Advanced Disciplines

Veil of Morpheus
Basic Disciplines

• Enchanted Slumber

Advanced Disciplines

Infernal Sorcery

Descent of Entropy
Basic Disciplines

• Abyss of the Body
• Light of Ennui

Advanced Disciplines

• Aura of Decay
• Contradiction

Names of the Blasphemies
Basic Disciplines

• Learn the Heart's Pain
• Poison Heart

Advanced Disciplines

• Bind the Name
• Feed the Corruption

Song of Swarms
Basic Disciplines

• Body Colony
• Small Witness

Advanced Disciplines

• Magnify the Swarm

Walk of Flame
Basic Disciplines

• Fire Walking
• Hand of Flame

Advanced Disciplines

• Fire Starter
• Flames of Panic

Orphic Sorcery

Lure of Shadows
Basic Disciplines

• Tongue of the Serpent
• Touch of Darkness

Advanced Disciplines

• Withering

Necromancy
Basic Disciplines

• Compel Spirits
• Summon Spirit

Advanced Disciplines

• Nightcry
• Reanimate

Obtenebration
Basic Disciplines

• Eyes of the Night
• Shadow Play

Advanced Disciplines

• Call the Lamprey
• Solid Darkness

Path of Blood
Given time, blood does become thicker than water.
Basic Disciplines

• Blood Bondage
• Thaumaturgical Forensics

Advanced Disciplines

• Blood of Acid
• Theft of Vitae

---

So currently, there are 8 Physical disciplines and 4 Sorceries of each type (for a total of 12).

I want to fit plant control in there, and there is some space on a bunch of the Astral sorceries, but if there doesn't turn out to be room, it wouldn't be the end of the world to bust out a fifth kind of magic for each type.

But bagheera are getting auspex, right?

Nope. I mean, they can take it, because every Supernatural can grab some non-standard disciplines. But the fixed setup looks like this:

---

A Bagheera has an Orphic power source and a Lunar power schedule.

• Bagheera Starting Disciplines
  
  - Core Discipline: Protean -
• Beast Form (Basic Protean)
• Body Weaponry (Basic Protean)
  
  - Basic Disciplines -
• Vigor (Basic Potence)
• Hide From Notice (Basic Obfuscate)
• Quickness (Basic Celerity)
• Revive the Flesh (Basic Fortitude)
  
  -Advanced Disciplines -
• War Form (Advanced Protean)
• Alacrity (Advanced Celerity)

---

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

So the mummy probably looks something like this:

• Khaibt Starting Disciplines
  -Core Discipline: Necromancy-
• Compel Spirits
• Summon Spirits
  
  -Basic Disciplines-
• Patience of the Mountains (Fortitude)
• Tongue of the Serpent (Lure of Shadows)
• Dread Gaze (Presence)
• Command (Domination)
  
  -Advanced Disciplines-
• Reanimation (Necromancy)
• Conditioning (Domination)

Obviously some difference choices could (and probably should) be made...

I'm also wondering what Tongue of the Serpent vs. Mesmerism vs. Command do. I assume that Mesmerism is similar to a bard's Fascinate ability, where you can hypnotize a small group into losing their actions, while command issues a single order to a single creature. Tongue of the Serpent might let the user speak any language it's read and read any language it sees. Or it might act as suggestion. Or it might be a debuff...

---

For some reason I keep coming back the the idea of necromancers being tied to bugs (flesh eating scarabs that come from cocoons particularly, but any in general) and Ventrue being snake like. The hypnotism, venom, and hidden fangs of the Ventrue are all very snake like, while insects are tied to corpses, scarabs are tied to egyptian sorcery, and mummification is a metaphor metamorphosis.

It's just a scab I've got to pick at. I wonder if it would be possible to make the third leviathan some kind of wax-masked unholy fungus/crustacean. Something like cordyceps.

[Username17]

The Khaibit as they currently stand are like the Khabit from nWoD: a weird hybrid cross of Lasombra, Setites, Euthanatos, and Assamites, whose collective deal is that they are North African themed shadow death sorcerers. And with just a little more of the oWoD Setites thrown in they can be spitting black snakes at people and making mummies. So from the standpoint of starting disciplines, that looks like this:

---

The Khaibit Witch has an Orphic power source and a Ritual power schedule.

• Khaibit Starting Disciplines
  
  - Core Discipline: Obtenebration -
• Shadow Play (Basic Obtenebration)
• Eyes of Night (Basic Obtenebration)
  
  - Basic Disciplines -
• Aura Perception (Basic Auspex)
• Compel Spirits (Basic Necromancy)
• Tongue of the Serpent (Basic Lure of Shadows)
• Thaumaturgical Forensics (Basic Path of Blood)
  
  -Advanced Disciplines -
• Solid Darkness (Advanced Obtenebration)
• Nightcry (Advanced Necromancy)

---

So the Khaibit can - out of the box - spit asps out of her mouth, scry, move light and shadow around, see auras, gather information from blood and sorcerous traces, send poltergeists at people, and have dark shadowy telekinesis. That's a power set that sounds pretty wizardly, wouldn't you say?

As for the Insect Leviathan, I think I am going to give them swarm powers. Because frankly there are like no bug powers in the WoD and what few there are come in swarm flavors only. So there's the Melissidae mind swarms and there's the infernalist Dark Thaum Hive Mothers, and that's pretty much it unless we go with old school Werewolf Weaver gifts. And I genuinely don't think I want to go there.

So I think we're looking at having the awakening Leviathan have their blood turn black and thick and sweet smelling while they get a hive growing out of their back like they were in Vampire Hunter D.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Gotcha. Mushizo (Ninja Scroll) and Medusa (Soul Eater).

[Prak]

so, this never got responded to:

ok, that needs more explanation because the way I see it...

skin-wearing shaman- talks to spirits, puts on animal hides and turns into animals, and probably has some magic that reflects the qualities of whatever they turn into.

Jafar-well, if we go deeper into arabic myth and such than disney did... talks to elemental spirits, turns into a giant snake, and has a silver tongue that drips with verbal venom, ie, a quality associated with snakes.

Imhotep-raises sandstorms, directs them as if he's part of them, and vomits forth massive quantities of vermin while he goes off and does other stuff. There's some speaking to the dead and the gods in there to....

(I'm using Imhotep from the Brendan Fraiser movies, I don't know any other incarnation if others are using other incarnations, and I know nothing about Thulsa Doom)

Anyway, it seems to me these three archetypes exhibit pretty much the same stuff, with the notable exception of Imhotep because making him act like a scarab would be out of genre as far as the movies are concerned...

edit: ok, actually I suppose he did act somewhat buglike, in that he had his goals and pursued them, regardless of what he had to do to attain what he wanted, he didn't care about anyone around him, except for Anacksunamon, and bugs are pretty much the same, except they don't even care about they mates.. But other than that... yeah, Imhotep's the notable exception here.

Edit a-fucking-gain:
What about just having a desert tied group of mages? That way we can have psuedo-arabic mages that are surrounded by snakes, can turn their staves into cobras, and turn into gigantic snakes themselves, and sandstorm raising, bug vomiting mages who seek the power of the scorpion king (whether to have power over scorpions, or just to have MOAR POWAH)

though, granted, things seem pretty locked down in this respect, I still want to raise the subject.

I was also wondering if at least general descriptions of what the discipline powers do will be edited in later, in the post that lists all the disciplines.

and... Frank, you mentioned the Daeva were being inspired by the Aztec Onaqui... I found nothing on that online... though I did find mention of the aztec vampiric creatures called "cihauteteo" on wikipedia... Im just wondering what the deal with Onaqui is, and how to learn up on them.

Hm... I just noticed that, short of taking Beast Form (Bat) or the like... there's no power allowing flight... there's also nothing allowing vampires to take the classic "red mist" form...

[Username17]

and... Frank, you mentioned the Daeva were being inspired by the Aztec Onaqui... I found nothing on that online... though I did find mention of the aztec vampiric creatures called "cihauteteo" on wikipedia... Im just wondering what the deal with Onaqui is, and how to learn up on them.

First of all, let's talk about the Civateteo and the Tlahuelpuchi. The Civateteo is a noblewoman who died in childbirth and is now a sacred baby-eating ghost who serves the setting sun. The Tlahuelpuchi is a bloodsucking witch who can change into animals and fly around by chopping their feet off. They serve the evil night and eat babies not out of sacred duty but because they are jerks. The ritual to summon a Civateteo is to go fast in a graveyard covered in chalk for seven days. The ritual to summon a Tlahuelpuchi is to leave a trail of infants up to a Loony Tunes style box trap. I'm not making those up.

The Onaqui is a heart eating, blood drinking, villainous man-bat-jaguar. They command swarms of bats and have huge fangs that they use to suck the life blood out of people. Human arms and torso, bat wings, monstrous head, jaguar claws and (usually) a tail. They are nocturnal, and in some versions they suffer some kind of mishap if they don't get back to a cave before dawn. In others they actually die every day because they are responsible for killing the sun every day (they come back to life at noon to do this). The Aztec word for setting sun is Onaqui Tonatiuh - literally "The Onaqui's Sun"

Tlahuelpuchis and Onaqui are much closer to vampires than Civateteos. Civateteos are more like Wraiths in the WoD nomenclature.

---

As for wanting to spit swarms out of your mouth as a mummy - that's totally possible. You just take Body Colony and Magnify the Swarm. Anyone can do that, it's just that it's only a preset for whatever the bee queen Leviathans get called.

Hm... I just noticed that, short of taking Beast Form (Bat) or the like... there's no power allowing flight... there's also nothing allowing vampires to take the classic "red mist" form...

Form of Mist is Elder Protean, where it has always been in World of Darkness. I'm open to arguments that it should be more available than that, but it's been the top of the Protean tree in every version and edition of World of Darkness, new and old.

As for straight Flight, you're right. There's a couple of places I could see it fitting in easily:

• I could see it as Advanced Potence. Currently that would boot Giant Size up to Elder levels, which might be just as well.
• I could see it as an Advanced discipline in one of the Sorcerous paths. Song of Swarms would make some sense, as would Animalism or Lure of Shadows.
• We could pull in the concept of Devotions from any of the WoD variants. Special discipline levels that get unlocked when you have two separate disciplines. Assuming for the moment that we did something vaguely logical and made them all standalone Advanced disciplines that required the basic levels of two others and we put our foot down that only combos of Physical disciplines unlocked stuff - that would bring in essentially 28 more advanced disciplines we had to write. Many of them are already concepted in WoD source material (such as the Protean/Fortitude combo of Flesh of Marble or the Protean/Presence combo of Facial Sculpting), and Flight could very plausibly go in as a Potence/Celerity devotion.

-Username17

[TavishArtair]

Nomenclature point - Auspex's Heightened Senses, while technically accurate, should probably be given a slightly more poetic name in order to give people a stronger impression, and not have the discussion we just had (re: Bagheera and Heightened Senses) recreated at any game table that plays these rules and someone starts a Bagheera character for the first time. Because I guarantee you, it will happen, and if you have a group like I do and people tend to play various different characters over time then eventually you are looking at the entire group having it and it will get tiresome to have this discussion like five times.

So let's call it something like The Sight or ESP or Gleam of Red Eyes or Supernatural Perceptions or whatever.

[Username17]

Nomenclature point - Auspex's Heightened Senses, while technically accurate, should probably be given a slightly more poetic name in order to give people a stronger impression, and not have the discussion we just had (re: Bagheera and Heightened Senses) recreated at any game table that plays these rules and someone starts a Bagheera character for the first time.

You're probably right. It's been called either Heightened Senses or Enhanced Senses since the early nineties, but fucking nobody ever groks what that power actually does. Not even the freelance authors.

True story: in nWoD getting access to Obtenebration is something that you can unlock if you do some shit and are already a character who has Auspex as their unique discipline. Nevertheless, despite the fact that in nWoD these powers are tiered and Heightened Senses is literally the first and most unavoidable level of the power, the first level of Obtenebration allows you to spend blood to see in the dark. Heightened Senses lets you see in pitch black darkness whenever you want for fucking free!

Pant.

So yeah. I guess it should be called something else. Like Acumen or Melange. While we can get all authors on the same page and not give people who already have the power to see in the dark the ability to see in the dark in exchange for power points - it seems that the term "Enhanced Senses" is simply too loaded for people to handle and it has to go away.

Weird thought: if we made three Basic Disciplines in each physical discipline (which would be hardest on Potence), we could have a type of perception for each type of magic. Aura Perception can be thought of as Astral Perception, there could easily be Gloom Perception and Infernal Perception as well. Not really looking forward to stretching out Potence and Celerity enough to do that though.

-Username17

[Prak]

and... Frank, you mentioned the Daeva were being inspired by the Aztec Onaqui... I found nothing on that online... though I did find mention of the aztec vampiric creatures called "cihauteteo" on wikipedia... Im just wondering what the deal with Onaqui is, and how to learn up on them.

First of all, let's talk about the Civateteo and the Tlahuelpuchi. The Civateteo is a noblewoman who died in childbirth and is now a sacred baby-eating ghost who serves the setting sun. The Tlahuelpuchi is a bloodsucking witch who can change into animals and fly around by chopping their feet off. They serve the evil night and eat babies not out of sacred duty but because they are jerks. The ritual to summon a Civateteo is to go fast in a graveyard covered in chalk for seven days. The ritual to summon a Tlahuelpuchi is to leave a trail of infants up to a Loony Tunes style box trap. I'm not making those up.

The Onaqui is a heart eating, blood drinking, villainous man-bat-jaguar. They command swarms of bats and have huge fangs that they use to suck the life blood out of people. Human arms and torso, bat wings, monstrous head, jaguar claws and (usually) a tail. They are nocturnal, and in some versions they suffer some kind of mishap if they don't get back to a cave before dawn. In others they actually die every day because they are responsible for killing the sun every day (they come back to life at noon to do this). The Aztec word for setting sun is Onaqui Tonatiuh - literally "The Onaqui's Sun"

Tlahuelpuchis and Onaqui are much closer to vampires than Civateteos. Civateteos are more like Wraiths in the WoD nomenclature.

Ok, good to know, I've never known much about aztec myth, other than the big stuff, so when wiki mentioned one thing under "Vampires" and didn't even have an entry for the other...

As for wanting to spit swarms out of your mouth as a mummy - that's totally possible. You just take Body Colony and Magnify the Swarm. Anyone can do that, it's just that it's only a preset for whatever the bee queen Leviathans get called.

makes sense... I take it Body Colony is "I have evil bugs. In my body." and Magnify the Swarm is "hey look, three ants is suddenly a thousand!"

...have we figured out the nature of the bug leviathans yet? I'm starting to do some writing based on this project, and am personally going with my earlier suggestion of "Bug people with bug sacks as servitors" that just pick a type of bug to manifest traits of, but I'm wondering how it's working out here...

Hm... I just noticed that, short of taking Beast Form (Bat) or the like... there's no power allowing flight... there's also nothing allowing vampires to take the classic "red mist" form...

Form of Mist is Elder Protean, where it has always been in World of Darkness. I'm open to arguments that it should be more available than that, but it's been the top of the Protean tree in every version and edition of World of Darkness, new and old.

As for straight Flight, you're right. There's a couple of places I could see it fitting in easily:

• I could see it as Advanced Potence. Currently that would boot Giant Size up to Elder levels, which might be just as well.
• I could see it as an Advanced discipline in one of the Sorcerous paths. Song of Swarms would make some sense, as would Animalism or Lure of Shadows.
• We could pull in the concept of Devotions from any of the WoD variants. Special discipline levels that get unlocked when you have two separate disciplines. Assuming for the moment that we did something vaguely logical and made them all standalone Advanced disciplines that required the basic levels of two others and we put our foot down that only combos of Physical disciplines unlocked stuff - that would bring in essentially 28 more advanced disciplines we had to write. Many of them are already concepted in WoD source material (such as the Protean/Fortitude combo of Flesh of Marble or the Protean/Presence combo of Facial Sculpting), and Flight could very plausibly go in as a Potence/Celerity devotion.

I like the last idea, actually, especially since at least a couple of the types come with an entire discipline in their preset (short of elder powers...)

as for Form of Mist being an elder power, that makes a lot of sense, really, it's the most obscure vampire power, so if it's an elder power, there's an in world reason for it's obscurity.

Nomenclature: yeah, it'd probably be good to call it something more intuitive... people may still go in with preconceptions of Bagheera having the "See auras" stuff, based on cat folk lore, but at least the whole "Heightened Senses" thing should be avoided...

Weird thought: if we made three Basic Disciplines in each physical discipline (which would be hardest on Potence), we could have a type of perception for each type of magic. Aura Perception can be thought of as Astral Perception, there could easily be Gloom Perception and Infernal Perception as well. Not really looking forward to stretching out Potence and Celerity enough to do that though.

Well, on the one hand, as Crissa said, "empty sets are better than overloaded sets, so if potence and celerity are the odd men out... it's not a big deal, I don't think.

[DragonChild]

So, for the third Leviathan type, I had a thought. What about instead of a bug-person, we had a type instead based off of the New Jersey Devil and gargoyles? Tall, brutish creatures, with wings and claws. They hide in forests well, and can camouflage themselves (possibly with a stone form), and have magical powers that make it so your mind doesn't take them as out of place. You think the sudden sounds of wings you heard in the woods was just a bird, or that the gargoyle statue was always there.

The third type still seemed up in the air, and not many people could seem to agree on what kind of bug type, so I'm just throwing this out there. It also gives a sea / underground+land / forest+air separation to the leviathans.

[Prak]

while the crypto-critter Leviathan is an interesting concept, I think the bug people are a better fit for the world. They're more visceral, more alien, and more terrifying.

[Judging__Eagle]

So, for the third Leviathan type, I had a thought. What about instead of a bug-person, we had a type instead based off of the New Jersey Devil and gargoyles? Tall, brutish creatures, with wings and claws. They hide in forests well, and can camouflage themselves (possibly with a stone form), and have magical powers that make it so your mind doesn't take them as out of place. You think the sudden sounds of wings you heard in the woods was just a bird, or that the gargoyle statue was always there.

The third type still seemed up in the air, and not many people could seem to agree on what kind of bug type, so I'm just throwing this out there. It also gives a sea / underground+land / forest+air separation to the leviathans.

Those could also be Troglodytes.

The X-Files take on the Jersey Devil is basically a Troglodyte, no actual wings, but a person with great speed and endurance from living in the wild all of their lives. Giving them the appearance of 'wings', b/c they can travel over rough appalachian forest terrain with an ease that most people do not have.

Also, that episode was actually frightening. The idea is frightening. People have seriously been abandoned in the woods before, and grown wild.

It's not some myth to explain why a dead person's muscles relax after a while, or that when you stake a corpse that they will yell (vampires), or allegory to explain serial killers in the middle ages (werewolves); troglodytes are seriously people that live in the wilds and don't give a shit about killing and eating you.

That's fucking scary as hell. They have human brains, and a wild animals conditioning and sense of self preservation.

I dare anyone who doesn't think that is scary to go into the woods at night, and imagine that an other human is out there, watching you, ready to pounce and snap your neck and eat you.

Because humans seriously have been brought up wild, so it's not some myth you can handwave.

I think that's why Troglodytes are not discussed that much. They're too plausible, too visceral, and too close to ourselves to want to discuss.

Also, before writing this, I had to go through my unlit apartment after recalling the entire X-files episode that I mentioned earlier in my head.

I've lived here for 15 years, and we're 11 stories up, but I was scared of the dark for the 40-50' that I had to walk. That's the sort of irrational fear that a "wild human" can evoke in people, and it's why we don't tell stories about them that often, they're too scary.

Even Native American myths about Wendigos try to have a child, or hero find out how to kill the Wendigos. When they don't, they simply do not show the Wendigo at all. Only the results of their actions. Men's footprints in snow, that stop, with no man remaining either.

The Inuit actaully have a lot of stories about this sort of thing, mostly b/c cannibalism is a very likely possibility, and the dangers of being obsessed with the flesh of man and this madness is warned about in several stories. With villans putting the flesh of men into the soup of a rival in order to drive them into becoming murderous madmen.

The idea of 'zombies' eating human flesh being so popular is probably touching off on centuries of repression on the discussion of the hideous discussion of caniballism. Since 'dead' people are eating people, we are able to accept the horrors we see.

I'm not as scared now, but I'm definitely not happy, and frankly, a little disgusted by talking about this. There's a lot of cannibalism stories that I know about; if now only in parts since I've forgotten details. As well as several "wild human" stories.