I will MC After Sundown

[Kaelik]

@Everyone.

So pretty much once per session, some little kid is going to look at one of you, scream, then turn to the next, scream, ect, then run in terror, because every one of you has Feared by Children, and that is hilarious.

"Infernal Politics" was one of the example backgrounds, so I assumed it was a safe bet. I'll try to figure out something.

Fair enough, it seems too broad for me, so I'm going to ask you to change it, but "it's a sample" is generally a good reason.

Speaking of Contacts, do we need one to have basic communication with our chosen Cults? If so, can we use low rating Duty to our chosen Cult to buy one or is that too close to getting points just for doing shit you already planned on doing anyway?

You can have basic communication with your chosen cult pretty easy, the difference between having a Contact or not is that when you communicate you basically have to do no work at all to be updated, as opposed to using social skills/doing favors/paying.

And you can definitely buy contacts or even assets in your organization for the corresponding duty. Every mentor has apprentices partly to make them do work, but also wants what is best for them.

Also, I noticed that aside from Giant Size it doesn't say anywhere whether personal effects change along with you or something when you activate Protean powers or if I should have budgeted for an enchanted Ring of Pants instead of that signet. My assumption was that we would just run off of movie logic and that there's some kinda arbitrary but small weight allowance so that shifters aren't constantly retrieving their clothes but can't use ratshifting to trivially smuggle nuclear weapons.

I'm thinking movie logic. Ratmen are so supposed to be hated with clothes on, so I'm not even sure what good it would do to the story to make you more hated by being naked.

[Prak]

Ok, so the examples of Assets 4 are "Ghoul family" and "The CDC." Given that "ghoul" is only other wise used as a nickname for Troglodytes, and that "A pack of werewolves" is Assets 5, I'm a bit adrift as to how to judge other supernatural stuff. So, which of the following could fit for Assets 4:

• A Behemoth
• A small squad of killbots
• An Asura

edit: also, I do not have Feared by Children, even if I am overcome with my own dumbassery and scrap the almost completed, if slightly one-note, character for a hastily thrown together Dryad with bugs. I can, however, take it if you want to retain the comedy.

Editedit: Here's what I have so far, the asset and the backgrounds are about the last things necessary:

Borghild/Baden/The Dresden Doll
"Dres"
"What, you want the accent? Look, you live for 70 years, you get tired of sounding like you walked out of a bad porn mag and learn to pronounce 'w's."
Borghild "was built in 1941 by a team of craftsmen from Germany's Hygeine Museum in Dresden. The project was supervised by the famous preparator and technician Franz Tschakert. The 'Father of the Woman of Glass,' which happened to be the sensation in 1930's Second International Hygiene Exhibition, used his skills and experience to create the kind of doll the world had never seen before."
Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler discovered that he was losing more men to the diseases of French prostitutes, and so, in the mechanical and inept tradition of the Nazi Party, he turned to creating a standin for women with which his men could vent their physical urges. The project, originally called Burghild, the German version of the dutch Borghild, was considered "more secret than top secret," but seemed to be, to the men working on it, quite promising.
She, and her sisters created in bronzemolds, were planned to follow the Stormtroopers into battle in disinfection tanks, the hard, inhumanity of the Nazi war machine standing in stark contrast to the camp followers of history. She was molded to be a physical avatar of lust. Her body was assembled from lifecasts of female German athletes. The scientists wished to copy the face of a famous actress, but, when she politely declined, instead decided to mold an "artificial face of lust," based upon descriptions of "the common wanton's face." Finally, she was given a boyish haircut, to underline the fact that she "was part of the fighting forces--a field-whore and not an honourable Mother."
Though no one is sure how it happened, Borghild found consciousness somewhere around the time of the Firebombing of Dresden. Which, alone, certainly suggests what happened. Walking out of the firestorms, the assembled supernaturals nicknamed the Android woman "The Dresden Doll." Later, a german werewolf saw her recharging in her chemical bath and sarcastically nicknamed her Baden (german for Bather), which stuck amongst her supernatural clients who caught the joke, then amongst her mundane clients, though they didn't know know what the joke was.

Physical(Secondary)		Mental(Tertiary)		Social(Primary)
Strength	5	Intuition	2	Willpower	2
Agility	4	Logic	4	Charisma	5
Edge	4	Potency	1	Power	13

Derived Values
Physical Resist	11	Mental Resist	6	Social Resist	6
Initiative	6

[/td][td]Physical(Tertiary)[/td][td][/td][td]Social(Primary)[/td][td][/td][td]Technical(Secondary) [/td][/tr]

Athletics	4	Animal Ken	-	Artisan (Painting)	6
Combat(Pistols)	4	Bureauc.(Gov't)	6	Electronics(Wiring)	1
Drive(Agg. Driving)	3	Empathy	-	Medicine(First Aid)	6
Larceny	-	Expression	2	Operations(Repairs)	2
Perception	3	Intimidation (Interrogation)	4	Research(Archives)	4
Stealth	-	Persuasion	6	Rigging (Gears)	2
Survival	+1(CtS)	Tactics	6	Sabotage (Explosion)	4+2(WoF)

Backgrounds
Academic
-Wines 5
-WW2 Technology 5
-Codes 2
-Animate Construction 6
-Limbo Portals 5
Occult
-French Resistance 4
-Axis Secrets 3
Social
-Intelligence Gathering 5


Resources
Assets 4 (-)
Languages 3 (German, French, Spanish)
Destiny 2 (Sorcerous Tomes)
Finances 4 (From investing pillaged Nazi Gold and running a brothel)
Science 1 (Nazi records)

Obligations
Enemies 2 (Nazi War Criminal Scientists)

Master Passion- Loneliness
Driving Passion- Freeing People


Advantages & Disadvantages
-Doomed Romance (Dis)

Powers
Android Powers
-Vigor (Basic Clout) 1 pow:1 str
-Clinging (Basic Clout)
-Light of Ennui (Basic Desc. of Entropy) 11dice
-Attract (Basic Magnetism) 11dice
-Patience of the Mountains (Basic Fortitude)
-Howling Winds (Basic Chasing the Storm) 6dice
-Devastation (Adv. Clout) 11dice
-Contradiction (Adv. Desc. of Entropy) 11dice
Personal
-Fire Walking (Basic Walk of Flame)
-Hand of Flame (Basic Walk of Flame) 4dam
-Abyss of the Body (Basic Desc. of Entropy)- Cooties, 11dice
-Invulnerability (Fort/Clout Devotion) 2 pow:+4 phys soak, +2 str
Cult
-Aura of Decay (Adv. Desc. of Entropy) 11dice

Clout- +2 Str (figured in)
Fort- +2 phys. resist (figured in)
Magnetism- +2 socialization with cha/will
Chase the Storm- Know weather 1 week ahead, +1 survival (figured in)
Descent of Entropy- +2 to diagnose illness, piece together events from evidence, repair objects which have fallen apart
Walk of Flame- +2 sabotage (figured in)

Society
-Cauchemar Communes
-Church of Set

After the bombing of Dresden, Borghild was picked up by the Allies, or more accurately, Supernaturals who worked for them. When interrogated under Betrayal of the Tongue, it was found that not only did she not ascribe to Nazi ideology, but that she was actively repulsed by it. "They built a lover, not a fighter." she told them (followed by "Well... really more of an unmoving, uncaring, lust toy that they could rape than a lover, but, you know what I'm saying.") They immediately introduced her to superiors, seeing her potential usefulness, which she lived up to. She worked as a deep cover agent, returning to the Nazi forces, and having to answer some complicated questions. Eventually she decided it was just simpler to lie with the truth, or at least that part of the truth where she was supernatural. In the last half year of the way, she fed what information she could to the Allies, while picking up other skills, mostly mechanics and repair, along the way.
Mostly her work was in France, imbedded into the occupying nazi forces and feeding information to the Cauchemar Communes who were involved in the French Resistance (and a lot of other things, of course, but as a number of elder supernaturals were in bed with the nazis...), which led to her eventual petitioning for citizenship in the society. At the same time, a lot of the things she had to do in her work as a spy was stuff that she literally could not bring herself to do, if not for the fact that every second of it brought her closer to helping to end the reign of her creators, and so it wasn't long before the Followers of Set found her and convinced her that they could help her, since she was kind of already doing their thing anyway.
After the war, she was exonerated of all ties with the Nazis in thanks for her work against them.
She came out of all of this with the general opinion that freedom is good, and oppression or being told what to do is bad. The upshot of this is that simply doing what she's told to do by the Church of Set is then Setian, and that many people think they should or need to be told what to do, and so freeing them is also fairly Setian. The downside is that her actual driving passion, freeing people, has essentially no real end in sight, and is often at odds with what the Church of Set tells her to do, what with the addictive nature of people and vices.


Advancement picks-
-4 pts resources
-Increase Edge
-One Basic Power or Sorcery

[Endovior]

@Everyone

On reviewing resources I'm going to reduce the resources to 4 and not allow anyone to increase a resource higher than 4 using it.

@Endovior

3 Points is good, but to be clear, it has to physically eat other things to obtain the information, it cannot copy them, so no one is going to lend you anything, and it doesn't guide you to what you are looking for much better than an archiving system in a library.

Conveniently, I was already not planning on taking any Resource above 4. But yeah, 6 points of resources was pretty huge, so that's a reasonable nerf.

And yeah, I totally had 'physically eat' in mind, there; though after coming up with the idea, I immediately failed to envision how to make the process appropriately sinister and disturbing, rather then some kind of comical 'om nom nom'. So far as the referencing process goes, I had envisioned that the book would have some kind of hidden 'cooperativeness' rating, which would reduce the time and threshold of any research using it, but which would slowly decrease over time... potentially, until a point wherin the book is actually more time-consuming to comb through then a library full of unlabelled books. You might appease it a little by feeding it non-magical writings, preferably on appropriately dark and mystical subjects... but it's hunger can only truly be sated by feeding it written works of Destiny, which are permanently destroyed in the process.

Ideally, that would wind up looking something like this... when in possession of a book of Destiny, the quickest way to get the information most relevant to the matter at hand out of it would be to immediately feed it to the Grimoire; which will quickly devour it, and then fall contentedly open to the page with exactly what you wanted to know on it. Unfortunately, next month, it'll be somewhat difficult to find that book again... you'll have to spend some time just looking for the book, which is time you wouldn't have had to waste if you still had the book on hand. And the month after that, assuming you weren't able to acquire another priceless magical book you're willing to permanently part with, you'll need to blow through some cash and shopping time just to acquire a stack of sacrifice works to prime the Grimoire with, or it will deliberately troll you with irrelevancies... and that's not an effort that actually solves the problem, it just lets you make your attempt right that moment, after which it'll still be just as hungry as before.

In other words, I'd like to trade the potential of being significantly more useful then a library reference catalogue, in exchange for a baseline which is notably less useful; like any dark wizard worth his salt, I'm all about the short term benefits, and I'll worry about the long term once it happens.
eg:
"Damn, it's going to take me forever to find the specifics of the Ritual of Shadows Past... it'd be much quicker to just steal the Tome of the Dread Names from the vault here; I can probably get away with it, no one will be able to prove it was me, and nobody's needed anything from that book in centuries anyway."
...
"Damn, now we actually do need the true name of the Dread King of the Twilight, and since they know by now that the Tome of the Dread Names was stolen, they're going to do rituals to track down the thief. It's an expensive ritual, so they might stop if I could somehow find the name from 'some other source', but I don't have enough time to find it... looks I'll need to steal another book."
...
"Damn, the Order of Daziban wants to set me on fire for stealing books, and have sent pictures of me out all over the place, so no one will let me see their books anymore. I remember seeing a ritual somewhere that would let me permanently transform, and thus get around that... but I don't remember what book that was in, so it'd be impossible to find. Guess I'll have to steal another book."


Aside from that, I notice that everyone's already posting their character sheets and such. I'm not quite about to do that, since I tend to find the need to rejigger things once I'm finished with the background, which I'm not quite done as of yet. Hope to have something for you soonish, though.

[Prak]

I'm now envisioning Endovior's character as an Evil Wizard version of House: "It's never sanskrit blood magic, let my book eat it."

[Whipstitch]

Alright, now that my internet connection isn't being a pain in the ass--I HATE being stuck with just my smartphone-- here's an updated character sheet with some slight tweaks to Physical traits, Skills and most of all, Resources. Big takeaways are that he has the Destiny we discussed, a Daziban contact and he can at least attempt non-magical stealth and his lifting capacity would now be described as merely sad instead of completely hopeless. Overall, I think this sheet could play nice with pretty much any other character concept you guys come up with.


With that said, I put a bunch of David Bowie on repeat earlier today and inadvertantly got the line "We could be heroes, just for one day!" stuck in my head, so I felt compelled to throw together an alternate sheet that shares most of the same chassis but instead of being a flame-retardant penny pincher with multiple forms he's more of a traditional WoD character--i.e, he watches out for the other PCs and sometimes mopes a lot. Mechanically, the biggest differences lie in the Flaws/Advantages and the fact that it has Clinging and the +2 to attributes option instead of Fire Walking and a second level of Beast Form. I'm actually a bit taken with this version and would like to play it but I am less confident in its ability to fit into virtually any group although I would stress that he considers his affiliations to be mostly nominal. The biggest sticking point is that he's not on particularly good terms with the Hashashins since they gave him his scars at some point, but that could be easily changed to some other group nobody decides to belong to.

[Endovior]

Not entirely done, but I'm firm enough on the basics to post.

"Once you've got the immortality thing down, the only kind of power worth having is power over other people. After all, there's a lot of things out there that can disable an immortal, and the only way to ensure that you come back from them is having someone out there to fetch and reanimate your corpse for you. Whether they're friends, allies, minions, cultists, or slaves... it hardly matters; the only really important thing is having as many people as possible out there ready, willing, and able to track down your corpse and rez you. This, and this alone, is why Dracula is so feared; despite being a pariah, hunted by all four Syndicates and generally reviled, he's still got enough competent allies to ensure that he'll never permanently die. Of course, the flip side to that is that it's generally advisable not to anger any given person to the degree that not only will they kill you, but they'll also do something nasty to your corpse to make it difficult to revive, and then take precautions to let them more easily kill you next time you revive. That's what Dracula did wrong, but it's an easy mistake to make; it's far easier to make enemies then friends, after all."

Diego falls somewhat outside the usual norm for a Baali. Most Witches feel driven to acquire things, usually things of magical power; Diego, instead, feels driven to acquire people; and has Master Passion Loneliness as a consequence. He surrounds himself with mindslaves to help fill both personal and professional needs... but though he retains an appreciation for the process of breaking mortals to his will, he ultimately finds all that comes after hollow and meaningless. He tends to view social interactions in hierarchical terms, with everyone either being master or slave... but he has a hard time trusting anyone who has power over him, and feels contemptuous towards those over whom he gains power, so that doesn't leave him much room for proper relationships. Finally, all philosophical views about the importance of cultivating allies and avoiding enmity aside... he's pretty much an asshole, and tends to get himself in trouble when pursuing simple tasks, because he frequently opts for short-term high-risk solutions instead of a more sedate, practical pace (it doesn't help that his one magical artifact rewards a 'damn the consequences' approach to problem-solving). That's why he's now working in Ciudad de Mexico instead of San Francisco; he's too ambitious to simply accept a slot in the rank-and-file, but has been deemed too troublesome to be allowed at any real power. His present position, being one that's seen five failed Ministers in as many years, isn't especially well-regarded, and was considered a question of giving a troublemaker exactly enough rope. That said, he's not totally incompetent, and has begun to figure out where he's been going wrong. Of course, he might not have time to correct his situation before he finds himself in entirely more trouble then he can handle.

Name: Diego Gallagos, Age 29
Supernatural Type: Baali (Infernal Power Source, Feeding Power Schedule)
Syndicate: World Crime League
Master Passion: Loneliness (Willpower+Intimidate Controls)
Driving Passion: Pending Game Start
Taboos: Privacy Ethics
Honor: Immortality, Having Allies, Demonstrating Power, Controlling Others, Being Wealthy, Physical Strength
Despise: Displaying Weakness, Not Seeking Immortality, Being Controlled, Making Enemies, Killing People

**Attributes**
-Physical- {Ter}
Strength: 4
Agility: 3
-Mental- {Sec}
Intuition: 2
Logic: 5
-Social- {Pri}
Willpower: 7
Charisma: 1

Edge 4
Potency: 1
Power Reserve: 13


**Skills**
-Physical- {Sec}
Athletics: 6 [Running]
Combat: 6 [Unarmed]
Perception: 3 (+2)
Stealth: 3
Survival: 3
-Social- {Pri}
Bureaucracy: 3
Empathy: 6 [Anticipation]
Expression: 6
Intimidate: 6 [Interrogation]
Persuasion: 6
-Technical- {Ter}
Medicine: 3 [Psychiatric]
Research: 6 [Interrogation]
Sabotage: 6 (+4) [Structural]


**Backgrounds**
-Social-
Fringe Cults: 4
Prostitution: 6
Street Gangs: 1
-Academic-
Mesoamerican History: 1
Pharmacology: 6
-Occult-
Demonology: 1
Ritual Magic: 6
Tarot Readings: 6
WCL Operations: 4

**Resources**
+Assets: 3 (Lots of Mindslaves)
+Contacts: 3 (Vampiric Lawyer)
+Destiny: 3 (The Grand Grimoire)
+Finances: 4 (Indirect control over a nontrivial fraction of Mexico City's prostitution)
+Languages: 2 (English Native: Spanish, Latin)
-Duty: 3 (Serve as Minister of Prostitution for the WCL)

**Advantages/Disadvantages**
+Attractive
-Diplomatic Incident (Originally, I'd intended the Order of Daziban thing to be an example, but on reflection, I found it too compelling to pass up. Diego's realization that it's a bad idea for an immortal to make enemies of immortals is a matter of experience.)
-Disloyal

**Powers**
Command (Basic Authority) [Wil+Intim / Log+Persu]
Mesmerism (Basic Authority) [Wil+Intim / Log+Persu]
Cloud Memory (Advanced Authority) [Wil+Exprs / Log+Artis]
Conditioning (Advanced Authority) [Wil+Intim / Log+Tactc]
Vigor (Basic Clout) [-]
Aura Perception (Basic Discernment) [Int+Empat / Log+Reser]
Light of Ennui (Basic Descent of Entropy) [Cha+Artis / Cha+Empat]
Revive the Flesh (Basic Fortitude) [-]
Restoration (Advanced Fortitude) [-]
Learn the Heart's Pain (Basic Names of the Blasphemies) [Cha+Empat / Int+Larc]
Hand of Flame (Basic Walk of Flame) [Log]
Fire Starter (Advanced Walk of Flame) [Log | Agi+Combt / Log+Reser]

-Power-Derived Bonuses-
+4 Sabotage [Adv Walk of Flame]
+4 Resistance [Adv Fortitude]
+1 Strength [Bas Clout]
+2 Perception [Bas Discernment]
+2 diagnosis, reconstruction, repair [Bas Descent of Entropy]
* Can see the Shallow Limbo at will [Bas Names of the Blasphemies]

-Buffs-
1 Edge Point
2 Attribute Points
4 Resource Points

[Whipstitch]

If you're looking at overall group utility and are taking combo potential into consideration keep in mind that two other sheets have Learn The Heart's Pain as a sorcery intrinsic to their type and they're both stupid good at it. It might be worth considering taking Poison Heart instead and tag teaming people socially; one of us Learns The Heart and drops a few comments about friends and family and then your character starts up with the insinuations. Meanwhile, you can still see the Shallow Limbo.

Or not. Just a thought.

[Endovior]

I didn't have a choice about Learn the Heart's Pain, actually; that's a Baali intrinsic. I would not have taken it otherwise, and am not particularly good at it as is.

The optional powers I did take were Conditioning, to do the mindslave thing, Revive the Flesh > Restoration, to be immortal, and Clout, so that the next advanced power I take can be Will to Power.

[Whipstitch]

Ah, right, it's the other two Witches that have Aura Perception. That's what I get for going by memory when running my mouth off.


Also, I did some minor edits to those DropBox character sheets, so if you noticed that they're different , it's not shenanigans, I just added the Initiative scores, weaknesses, animal stats and put the Legerdemain specialization next to Larceny, which is where it was supposed to be.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Sounds like the easiest hook might be to put everyone in the Stellar Oracles or the Couchmar Communes.

Oh, and speaking of stupid good, how min/maxed are we thinking of making these characters? Right now I'm looking at a few dice pools of 17 and wondering if that's too high.

[Prak]

well, I didn't min Max at all, just put points where they made sense, but I've been meaning to go back and make sure I can actually use all my powers

[Endovior]

Stellar Oracles... ew. Too self-righteous for my tastes.

And the Communes are technically PNG in Mexico, so there's basically none of them there. WCL would work better IMO, if you're trying to get everyone in the same side, without all being part of the dominant faction.

That said, I get the idea that optimization is kind of expected in AS characters; the system seems to be built for it. I've not actually played any games thus far, so I couldn't say for sure... but yeah; Diego can technically drop four power points into Vigor and then throw down 20 dice on demolishing buildings with his bare hands, thus phoning in crazy extreme stunts of ruination, so I see where you're coming from. That's not even something he particularly focuses on, it's mostly an incidental thing he can just do.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Oh, and I can swap out Poison Heart if it's redundant. It's already a little redundant for me with Desire Reflection.

[Prak]

Switched some things around to have a vaguely optimized character, noted dice pools for powers, etc.

[Whipstitch]

Of all of the Syndicates I like the WCL the least by far although I don't really have a strong preference when picking between the Communes, Covenant or Makhzen. I don't really think we need to all be in lock step as far as Syndicates and Cults go anyway though. One of Frank's explicit design goals in starting aWoD was avoiding the stupid nWoD problem where nobody has any reason to interact or even co-exist and even the Communes are apparently tolerated, probably in part due to ambivalence the Padres feel towards the Heresiarchy--quite a few Covenant members live in Ciudad de Mexico because they didn't feel like fighting the Anti-Pope's battles. In any case, the book is pretty pointed about Ciudad de Mexico being too much city for one Syndicate to truly handle.

As far as the Oracles go, I have a mild interest in them but that is just because I like the notion of prophecies and rounding up new supernaturals and showing them the ropes. The part where the Oracles prefer humans over monsters and the whole theme is actually cannibalized from a Thinly Veiled Sailor Moon project Frank worked on makes me sad though. I dunno, it'd be easier if actually liked any of the other Cults more. Neither Finances or Sciences really hit me as interesting and Nezumi have a hard time holding onto and enjoying those things anyway.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Fair enough. I was trying to think of an easy reason for us all to be working together, but there are better reasons than syndicate and cult.

[Prak]

I picked Communes and Church of Set because they fit Dres and her back story well. Plus Descent of Entropy.

yeah, kaelik says he has tons of plotlines, so we should be fine. Hell, if everyone had Master Passion Loneliness, we would actually have good reason to meet in a bar…

[Whipstitch]

Also, full disclosure: At one point I did have WCL and The Hollow Ones on that second character sheet, but then I realized I had basically made a shadowrunner. Again.

[Prak]

looking back at the last thing I brought up on the AS thread has me kind of wanting to play a doctor with Song of Swarms.

[Whipstitch]

I keep trying to come up with a reason why my character wouldn't steal Endovior's book and failing miserably.

[Endovior]

First things first; Diego doesn't advertise the fact that he has it, nor what it does. Now, the Order of Daziban probably has a pretty good idea, given the unpleasantness between them... so if you're playing the Daziban flavor instead of the Oracle flavor (you haven't indicated which version you actually want to use yet), that might be an issue. Indeed, that might be why you're in Mexico to begin with, period: "That bastard cleaned out a whole vault, despite the wards designed to stop people from taking our books out of the place. Obviously, he must have some kind of magic that lets him ignore our wards... but that doesn't mean we'll just let him steal with impunity. Sources say he's got a job down in Mexico... so it's now your job to track him down there, find out how he got into our vaults, and recover everything he stole."

Now, that's a bit more intra-party conflict then some people tend to like, but I'm okay with it if you are; you won't know the actual truth about how Diego got around the wards, or the actual state of the missing books... and Diego won't know that you're really with the Order and there to extract stolen books from him. That could easily be a back-burner plot that goes on while we handle the everything else we're doing. Of course, actually resolving it could easily be a 'one of us leaves the party and/or is dead afterwards' thing, but that's the thing about intra-party conflicts, and why people tend to not like doing them.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, see, the problem with that is the Daziban version tends to solve problems by sneaking up on things while they sleep and taking their stuff or literally drenching them in pure, unadulterated misery before asking if they want to be rat food or driving them insane with Cooties. He's basically a blunt instrument with good camouflage. It might be easier if we were acquaintances for other reasons and we played it off as you owing me an informal favor sticking up for you.

[Endovior]

I get where you're coming from, but Diego has excellent resistances, and is therefore very unlikely to be defeated before he's aware there is a combat. So Diego wakes up, there's a quick Veil vs Discernment test, which probably goes Diego's way since it's harder to Veil while actively attacking (in any event, you won't keep Veil up long while actively attacking someone who is actively searching for you with magic; too many modifiers against you), and then either physical combat or a chase scene ensues. Diego wins the physical combat, but can't fly, so he probably fails the chase scene.

That's not a very interesting story, though; so what I assumed would happen is that you'd insinuate your way in some other way, and he'd find out the truth later on.

[Whipstitch]

Perhaps. I'd note that Marco has a higher initiative in his animal forms, is immune to fire, flies, has a contact vector disease and is rocking a 15 dice 7 damage Pain Drops. I mean, it's entirely co-incidental but this character actually has some roots from a "What kind of outsider could assert himself among Baali and possibly get away with it?" thought experiment I did while making a character for another game. It's not like I think it's some uber sheet but I am pretty confident in its ability to bushwhack people who aren't jacked up on super speed and detection magic.

[Endovior]

Not much point in getting into a dick-waving contest, but for reference: fire really isn't Diego's go-to option, for Vow of Silence related reasons. When I said physical combat, I actually meant unarmed, grappling-type stuff, which Diego is especially good at. But combat is combat... if you insist on flying around and sniping at range, he'll just use bullets. Your strength is terrible, so you'll die significantly quicker to bullets then Diego will to mind venom. Particularly since Diego, not being an idiot, will use silver bullets against a magical flying animal, thus negating much of your soak. Ultimately, then, it comes down to 9 dice 6 aggravated damage vs 6 soak against 15 dice 7 nonlethal damage vs 11 soak; Diego has more HP and can burn PP to heal the damage if necessary. I like my odds.