The Dark Reflection

[Hicks]

Serious question: do people want a "XXX by Night" chapter in the dimension books? I was basically planning on not doing that, since every bit of discussion of a mundane city's mundane infrastructure is time spent not discussing demon horses or rains of glass.

The big 2 locations i'm looking forward to are Colma (which you'll hopefully detailing the Gloom book) and Fremont (i grew up there on the vallejo mill elementary school campus, and my mom lives accross from the the death road of Niles Canyon). I'm all for demons and whatnot tooling around Lake Elizabeth Park. The valleys of the Niles foothills are a trackless wilderness filled with cows and mountain lions, and are filled with nice, secluded places to "lose" a body.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I'll see if I can't back on the horse for doing some incidental art. I've been crazy busy lately with writing and having Meniere's Disease, and all of a sudden I am beset with people wanting me to compose music. First world problems, I guess.

[Lokathor]

One thing that my players had trouble with was Resources/Obligations and Backgrounds. Dark Reflection should probably have a section somewhere with lots more examples of backgrounds and examples of resources and obligations you might have related to Limbo.

[Username17]

One thing that my players had trouble with was Resources/Obligations and Backgrounds. Dark Reflection should probably have a section somewhere with lots more examples of backgrounds and examples of resources and obligations you might have related to Limbo.

The Chapter "Magic Wretched and Profane" is scheduled to have a lot of Resources in it. If people want to send suggestions, I am all ears.

-Username17

[Username17]

The Nezumi
“Each rat is a king, for a sufficiently small value of kingdom.”

The Nezumi are a contradiction: cursed with rage and blessed with the ability to hide amongst one of the world's humblest creatures. The Nezumi truly don't have a coherent stereotype amongst the society of the night. Some Nezumi are subtle and clever, while others are as subtle as a jackhammer. There are Nezumi who rely upon their wits, their tongues, and their fists, and it is not at all easy to tell which a Nezumi will reach for on any given night.

But while Nezumi enjoy having no proscribed place in supernatural society, they enjoy no place at all in mortal society. Each Nezumi finds themselves continually harassed by human authority and bureaucracy. Every Nezumi is their own unique square peg, but mortal government offers them nothing but strangely useless round holes.

Becoming a Nezumi
“You are a loathsome rat.”

One becomes a Nezumi by being bitten by another Nezumi and then dying. The new Nezumi rises from the dead in rat form when the moon rises, either the same night or at worst within the next three nights. Only Luminaries become Nezumi, when extras die, they tend to stay dead, whether they had previously been bitten by a Nezumi or not. The bite can be in rat form or human form, and does not need to be the proximal cause of death. Sometimes the bite isn't even particularly near the time of death.

Nezumi are more likely than other Lycanthropes to create new Lycanthropes that they are on good terms with, and Nezumi groups exist (a group of Nezumi is called a “nest”). This is because most Nezumi don't accidentally murder people around them in war form (they don't even normally have a war form). Some of them can spread deadly diseases, but quite frequently a new Nezumi is created when a Luminary is bitten and subsequently stabbed in the neck with an actual knife (or some equivalent method). Thus, Nezumi are created deliberately more often than all other Lycanthropes combined.

Which is not to say that your character in particular was created deliberately or even knows who their infecter was. Each Nezumi was bitten by a Nezumi and died afterward. But you could plausibly connect those two events in any way or no way at all. A character could be bitten by a frenzied rat and then get hit by a bus.

A Connection to Z-Virus?
“The implications are certainly troubling.”

Nezumi are plague carriers, and they are pretty well known for that in supernatural circles. The general setup where an infected person shows no symptoms at all until they die an then subsequently rise from the dead as a supernatural creature is exactly how Z-Virus works. There are a number of magical theorists who classify Nezumi, not as a Lycanthrope, but as a type of Zombie. This causes a lot of existential anguish for many Nezumi, who are basically unable to prove to themselves that they are “really alive”.

The implications go beyond mere life and death, because zombiehood for Luminaries is curable, leading some scholars of the secret histories to conclude that it is possible to revert Nezumi to being normal humans that do not turn into rats.

Playing a Nezumi
“Of all the things you can do, the most valuable is the one that is not expected.”

The Nezumi have a very open grab bag of talents, and can be dragged into many different directions. They come with a quite acceptably decent stealth package and combined with Learn the Heart's Pain and their ability to talk to animals and get rats to go where they want, they can be devilishly effective spies. They have numerous available skill and attribute configurations that will allow them to be good at using their magics, Intuition + Strength + Survival powers the Abyss of the Body, Beckoning, and Hide From Notice (and coincidentally makes for a pretty good hand-to-hand assassin), while Charisma + Empathy + Medicine lets you get your Abyss of the Body, Beckoning, and Learn the Heart's Pain firing on all cylinders (and makes a character who is a pretty good conversationalist).

A very big question when making a Nezumi is what kind of disease you want to spread. Because Nezumi are mandated to take Abyss of the Body, but can select any magical illness to be a carrier of. Chud is a simple murder + disposal plan, Rage Virus takes out creatures quickly with the (dis)advantage that they then go on a murder spree as a Soulless. Cooties is for the more subtle approach, as it doesn't actually kill people it just makes them act in a potentially socially inappropriate way until the curse is dispelled. You can even go for the combos, as there is nothing stopping you from joining the White Lotus and using the Coil of Thorns to take over Triffids you create with Thing Infestation or from joining the Laughter Factory and using the Song of Swarms to control the Doom Flies. Don't overlook some of the new plagues available in this book, as you may want the capability to make a mindless thrall with Mind Rot or ruin someone's reputation in a manner consistent with the Vow of Silence with Impulse.

A Nezumi can even be something of a combat monster. Transforming into rat form may drop your Strength to 1 (actually that is exactly what it does), but it still increases Agility by 2, which makes it harder to pierce the character's Veil if you're going the Agility + Stealth route. And having a very low Strength doesn't reduce your offensive potential if you are using Agility-targeted sorcery attacks like Call Lightning or Fire Starter. Alternately, a Nezumi can buy up Strength and expand their Descent of Entropy into Aura of Decay and possibly grab some Clout or Celerity to get an effective melee combatant that can get to close range undetected with Veil and get into locked rooms in rat form.

[Orion]

The Android
“If I pull this trigger, human, you will certainly be harmed, but if I do not? Who is to say what greater harms my inaction might countenance?In this case, Bayes' formula returns a 50/50. Tell me, human: do you feel lucky?”

Unlike most supernaturals, Androids are generally created by humans who are not part of a Syndicate at all, and only learn of the broader supernatural world after a period of independence. This can cause other supernaturals to regard Androids as dangerous loose cannons. Despite this, they are popular as bodyguards and brokers, largely because they have no interest in most of the things--fresh bodies, attractive luminaries--that other monsters fight over. Some Androids are so deeply invested in appearing human that they will attempt to pass as an ex-human supernatural, usually a Baali or a Fallen.

Human life is feast or famine for the Androids. They have no difficulty "passing" and even have a built-in suite of social powers, but those powers are more suited to drama and spectacle than quiet problem-solving. An Android career is a meteoric rise followed by a sexual harassment complaint and a deluge of people coming forward with just plain weird stories.

Becoming an Android
“placeholder”

Most Androids are designed by human luminaries, most of whom are deliberately trying to create an A.I. A few are the offspring of secret government labs or other large organizations, but most are the result of lone millionaires trying to simulate a dead loved one or create a perfect spouse. A few Androids have even been created accidentally by sculptors or even computer illustrators. Many Androids live for years or even decades "off the grid" of the supernatural world, doing nothing more than serve the whims of their reclusive builders. Only their master's death or a violent frenzy exposes them to the outer world.

Although Androids can generally only be designed by human luminaries, supernaturals will sometimes arrange for the event. Sometimes this is a recruitment drove by pro-human or anti-undead groups like the Storm Lords or Marduk. Most commonly, however, an android blames their failed relationships on the flesh/stone gap and hires or coerces a Luminary to build them a mate. This never ends well for anyone involved.

To Power Marble: Androids and Ritual

[Lokathor]

quick quibbles EDIT (for Nezumi)

unless you plan to introduce a new type of lycanthrope I'd change the "all" in "Thus, Nezumi are created deliberately more often than all other Lycanthropes combined." to be "both".

You talk about bites and then death, but you don't mention how long a bite is good for. Is it good for forever? Can it perhaps be magically or medically removed somehow before the person dies to prevent them from changing? Anything like that?

When talking about stat configurations, "powers the Abyss of the Body" should drop the word "the" from it.

[Josh_Kablack]

Becoming an Android
“placeholder”

Suggestions for "placeholder" :

"In the beginning, there was 0 and the null state covered the void. Then my creator set the prime circuit to 1"

"You are accidents of nature, I am a triumph of genius design"

"What do you mean, I'm not helping? "

[CatharzGodfoot]

Frank, I'm digging the format. Thing Infection + Puppetry for nezumi is an interesting combo that probably wouldn't have occurred to me.

---

The Android

“If I pull this trigger, human, you will certainly be harmed, but if I do not? Who is to say what greater harms my inaction might countenance?In this case, Bayes' formula returns a 50/50. Tell me, human: do you feel lucky?”

Unlike most supernaturals, Androids are generally created by humans who are not part of a Syndicate at all, and only learn of the broader supernatural world after a period of independence. This can cause other supernaturals to regard Androids as dangerous loose cannons. Despite this, they are popular as bodyguards and brokers, largely because they have no interest in most of the things--fresh bodies, attractive luminaries--that other monsters fight over. Some Androids are so deeply invested in appearing human that they will attempt to pass as an ex-human supernatural, usually a Baali or a Fallen.

Human life is feast or famine for the Androids. They have no difficulty "passing" and even have a built-in suite of social powers, but those powers are more suited to drama and spectacle than quiet problem-solving. An Android career is a meteoric rise followed by a sexual harassment complaint and a deluge of people coming forward with just plain weird stories.

Becoming an Android
“placeholder”

Most Androids are designed by human luminaries, most of whom are deliberately trying to create an A.I. A few are the offspring of secret government labs or other large organizations, but most are the result of lone millionaires trying to simulate a dead loved one or create a perfect spouse. A few Androids have even been created accidentally by sculptors or even computer illustrators. Many Androids live for years or even decades "off the grid" of the supernatural world, doing nothing more than serve the whims of their reclusive builders. Only their master's death or a violent frenzy exposes them to the outer world.

Although Androids can generally only be designed by human luminaries, supernaturals will sometimes arrange for the event. Sometimes this is a recruitment drove by pro-human or anti-undead groups like the Storm Lords or Marduk. Most commonly, however, an android blames their failed relationships on the flesh/stone gap and hires or coerces a Luminary to build them a mate. This never ends well for anyone involved.

To Power Marble: Androids and Ritual

I don't think it's really fair to dictate that androids all try to pretend to be other supernatural types. There seems to be room for unabashedly inhuman androids that nevertheless are plagued by doomed romances.

Some thoughts on playing an android follow. Probably not as comprehensive as they should be.
Playing an Android
"For her, all seven deadly sins!"

The powers of an android tend to be blunt and to the point. Thanks to its Clout, every android is physically powerful and can become even stronger at will. There are many tasks an android can accomplish through brute force, whether it be climbing a skyscraper, smashing through a wall, or simple murder. On the other side, androids are adept at blatantly manipulating others, with three Charisma-based powers that allow them to attract attention, get what they want, and inspire despondency.

Aura of Decay can accomplish astounding feats when wielded by a supernatural with Clout for a core discipline. An android that focuses on Agility or Logic can enhance its deadliness by learning Lightning Strike. Flight is also straightforward for an android to learn, and pairs well with its existing weather control (everybody loves Mahoromatic).

If subtlety is desired Learn the Heart's Pain allows for fine targeting of Contradiction, and Desire Reflection can help to temporarily alleviate the android's loneliness while inflicting it on others.

[Orion]

Playing an Android

The Android's set of powers tears them in two directions: their physical strength is impressive, but not quite impressive enough by supernatural standards to base a career on. Meanwhile, their base sorceries are intriguing, but not always easy to deploy. Androids need Charisma to make the most of their signature powers, but otherwise have wide latitude assigning attributes, and will need to invest in several skills to power their magic.

Androids wishing to put that strength to work smashing heads can do impressive damage with big hammers, but will need to pick up some way of dodging, resisting, or regenerating enemy attacks. Invulnerability is easy and thematic, and can be supplemented by Quickness, Restoration, or Dismissal. Those who prefer magic arts have easy access to Lightning Bolt as default combat tactic, and can spend the rest of their picks diversifying their utility powers. Those posing as Baali or Fallen will need Authority or Veil to sell it.

Other Androids may wish to take a support role focused on what their kind does best: social mayhem and unsettling ambience. Summons is a fantastic ability to pair with Contradiction, allowing you to lure a mark into a self-destructive trap. Tumultuous Rain can shut down witches and power up vampires, making it a strong utility power that no one gets by default.

[Username17]

Actually, I'm almost done with the Androids too. Their's is by far the easiest "Playing A..." section to write because their powers are so tightly clustered around their Sex Bot / Terminator dichotomy. I'll edit in a few ideas from here, but the piece is nearly finished.

The one I haven't started on, oddly enough, is the Daeva.

-Username17

[Username17]

Here it is:

---

The Android
“You are accidents of nature, I am a triumph of genius design.”

Each Animate is created anew, and Androids are no exception. An Android is normally created by an inventive and probably unwise mighty ritual of vast power, and such rituals rarely work twice. Most of these creation rituals are performed by people who are unfamiliar with the risks and the expectations of supernatural society. Often the creator is a Luminary who is fumbling around with powers they scarcely understand, but in many cases the proximal creator of an Android is a Cultist. Integration of Androids into supernatural society can be anywhere from total to nonexistent. Androids have an entirely well deserved reputation amongst supernaturals for being emotionally clingy and physically destructive.

Becoming an Android
“My first memory begins suddenly, like the flip of a switch. It was the result of the flip of a switch.”

An Android literally becomes an Android as soon as they become anything, because they are created as an Android. But that doesn't mean that your character has to have the backstory that they woke up in a workshop with wires sticking into their chest. Many Androids are created with the erroneous belief that they are “real” humans who experience “real” emotions and have “real” connections to people. These Androids are often created to love their creators or replace a dead wife or something. The discovery that the Android character is artificial would be disorienting and heartbreaking enough, but it is also often associated temporally with their creator discarding them in favor of a “real” woman or attempting to make a new “better” model (“better” may end up being defined as “having less free will” or something equally creepy), which is generally enough to send the Android into Loneliness frenzy.

For In Media Res characters, the Android's creator is usually dead (often at the Android's own hands) or in some other way out of the picture (possibly in prison for unethical experimentation, or languishing in an insane asylum). This frees the Android character up to develop new inappropriate romantic infatuations during play. You may however, wish to have the Android character have their essentially unrequited love already defined at the start of play. It can be interesting, though difficult, roleplaying to have the object of the Android's affection be another player character. Creating an Android is sometimes the thesis that separates a mortal Luminary from a Baali magician. And you can have two players play the two halves of that extremely dysfunctional relationship. The Baali created an Android because they wanted someone to love them, but in burning their own soul to achieve that, they stopped caring about the feelings of others. The Android was created to love, but the object of their affection is disloyal and ambivalent – it makes for good drama but it can also lead to real hurt feelings at the table.

Becoming Unique
“Unlike the others, I am unlike the others.”

A persistent trope in source material is the robot who becomes a named character. They begin as an Android Spawn, and then for some reason they become a specific individual who is then a Luminary and a fully functional playable Android character. This is a non-standard, but totally available origin story for an Android. Such characters will find themselves thrust into being a functioning individual and wanting love and acceptance and such right away. This hard break with an existence as a tool can be traumatic and a good source of role playing.

The basic setup for this type of backstory is that someone made a bunch of robots (which being non-unique, were Animate spawn, and then one of them had a unique experience that made it not like the others. Exposure to a magical vortex or freak power surge is the usual way, but sometimes it's as simple as one getting broken and then getting fixed up by someone who has no idea what they are doing (like in Chronotrigger). The unique character is of course much much better than the mass produced originals, and it is not unlikely that the original creator wants their rogue droid back for study (although it is separately true that no amount of studying the malfunctioning Android would allow them to actually mass produce those powers).

Playing an Android
“Hell hath no fury...”

Androids lend themselves well to being Strength driven combat monsters. They also have a lot of powers that run off of Charisma (Light of Ennui, Contradiction, and Attract). You can play an Android as an alluring sex bot or a rampaging engine of destruction or go for a little bit of both. Classical Android stories tend to feature them as being kind of bipolar where they go from the former to the latter with the first hint of jealous rage. From a skills standpoint, an Android probably wants Artisan and Tactics to power their Charisma-driven sex-bot persona (even their seduction is planed and artificial), and Combat and Athletics to power their Strength-driven destruction droid persona. From there it makes thematic sense to give an Android more technical skills, and if you decide to go the steam punk route with Rigging that can be useful for their wind generating magic, and if you decide to go the Seven of Nine route with Operations, that can also be used to power the wind magic.

Like any combat monster, an Android can benefit substantially from taking additional physical powers. Picking up some more Fortitude can augment the already high Strength to shrug off most weaponry, and picking up some Celerity can really benefit one's ability to destroy large amounts of people or property in small numbers of combat rounds. Androids generally do much better by fighting with municipal property than they do by carrying human-sized weaponry. A moderate Strength investment can allow an Android to beat people with a car, and cars are much less conspicuous to have than the large caliber guns that are required to do comparable damage.

---

The Daeva and Mi-Go aren't really started on. The Baali and Fallen are about half done each.

For the Infernal Cults, the Church of Set and the Stellar Oracles are all blocked out. The Ash Walkers are about half blocked out. And the Order of Daziban and the Laughter Factory are pretty much not blocked out at all.

The Magic Items section is pretty much blank. Anyone who has an item they want in the Magic Wretched and Profane chapter is more than welcome to submit it.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

The one I haven't started on, oddly enough, is the Daeva.

Here goes nothing:

The Daeva
“In the time before the light / In flames of death's eternal reign ”

Daeva were once feared as demons by the supernatural community. Mortal injury is no serious matter to these Infernal vampires, and as the Conquistadors quickly found, the standard Restoration remedy of burning at the stake fails miserably. Under duress, Daeva can simply fly out of reach and rain destruction upon their foes.

When the False Face Society made their final stand, the Daeva steeled their unbeating hearts and in a last-ditch attempt set their beloved homeland ablaze. Untouched by flame and without need for food or even air, they looked on as millions of acres burned for months. Hundreds of thousands perished in those fires, mortal and supernatural alike. Even Daeva, however, cannot exist cut off from society. Their power the blood fragile mortals, and with a lack of prey comes a hunger which quickly descends into madness. This, in the end, was their downfall.

These nights, the Daeva that flourish are usually those with sufficient Charisma or Willpower to attain positions of influence in mortal society and keep a stable of willing victims. With the False Face seeking greener pastures in Maya, few remember the old ways and the old fears. The Covenant, however, does not forget, and plans for the night that the world will burn as Daeva take their vengeance.

Becoming a Daeva
“As the red day is dawning / And the lightning cracks the sky / They will raise their hands to the heavens above / With resentment in their eyes”

Every Daeva is intentionally brought into the fold by her progenitor. As the old saying goes, "blood is thicker than water". Nearly every Daeva belongs to a Syndicate or Cult from the moment of their resurrection, and the ties of bloodline make that alliegence even stronger.

The few Daeva that are reborn alone are almost universally orphans, progenitors killed by hunters or rivals before the new vampire even awakens.


Gift of Addiction
“There are many fine vintages. This one I prize above all others.”

****Here goes something about how all Daeva start out addicted to vampire blood, or how becoming vampires cures them of that addiction.****

Playing a Daeva
“Minds burn; bodies burn. Above it all, I am untouched.”

Daeva have relative freedom in pursuing different pathways to power. Their disciplines are not especially demanding, and this allows Daeva to succeed with just about any array of attributes and skills. Becoming an absolute combat monster is a simple matter: Celerity and the Daeva's other powers are a brutally effective combination with weapons both ranged and melee. Magnetism can provide further power, with Dismissal augmenting a charismatic or willful Daeva's combat presence, authority, and ability to feed.

Tumultuous Rain is a very attractive power for Daeva for those times that they want to venture into the day, and Howling Winds makes flying in rough weather a simple matter. Both powers can be Agility-based, which works well with the Daeva's requirements for agile flight. For those who follow the old ways, Flames of Panic is another Agility-based power that gains advantage from the vantage provided by Flight.

[Lokathor]

The Magic Items section is pretty much blank. Anyone who has an item they want in the Magic Wretched and Profane chapter is more than welcome to submit it.

-Username17

[*]Portals to and from Limbo (respecting the gauntlet, but sill portable)
[*]Magic amulets or somesuch that count your potency as being a few points less for The Gauntlet.
[*]Magic zappy rods that use Logic or Charisma or something to attack with, or that are soaked with Willpower instead of Strength, or something like that.

Rules for starvation and thirst should be put somewhere, and Limbo seems like a good place for it. Probably just as a DOT, but maybe something else.

[Josh_Kablack]

The Magic Items section is pretty much blank. Anyone who has an item they want in the Magic Wretched and Profane chapter is more than welcome to submit it.

-Username17

[*]Portals to and from Limbo (respecting the gauntlet, but sill portable)

Hrm....Howzabout:

Mirror Paint

Metalic silver hobby 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.

[mean_liar]

So having made back the money for an ISBN inside of a month on After Sundown

Congrats, Frank! That is awesome.

(I don't play AFTER SUNDOWN so I have no requests or comments.)

Game On,
fbmf

I echo this. $125/mo from a pet project at $1/pop is fantastic, Frank. Congratulations and keep up the good work.

And now I know what you look like, something I had never before considered and which I can no longer ignore.

[Draco_Argentum]

"inventive and probably unwise mighty" inventive (and probably unwise) mighty

It is your style, but you're using constructions like that really frequently so far.

[Lokathor]

The Magic Items section is pretty much blank. Anyone who has an item they want in the Magic Wretched and Profane chapter is more than welcome to submit it.

-Username17

[*]Portals to and from Limbo (respecting the gauntlet, but sill portable)

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.

[CatharzGodfoot]

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.

And then everyone who spent Elder disciplines and power points to do the same feels like a tool. No thanks.

---

Here's something adapted from Orion's chronicle:

Compass of Desire

The compass of desire is a small blown glass sphere filled with clear water, held in a metal cage and usually hung from a chain.

When a luminary holds the compass and concentrates on something they desire, the water clouds in the direction of the closest thing of matching description. Specifics such as names are ignored: One could use it to find a human but not Fred in particular, or a town but not specifically Grenville, or a banana but not necessarily George's banana.

One hit on a Intuition + Survival or Logic + Perception check allows the user to determine the right direction. Three hits lets them know the approximate range. The globe cannot discern magic or see into other worlds. The globe's power manifests as an infernal sorcery localized on the desired object, and can be dowsed or doused as normal.

[Lokathor]

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.

And then everyone who spent Elder disciplines and power points to do the same feels like a tool. No thanks.

Since there is no way for the players to just hand themselves an Elder Discipline the same way there's no way for the players to just hand themselves a particular magical item, it doesn't change a thing.

Here's the Elder Disciplines that a dimension shifting amulet competes with (by plane):
`Astral Projection is 1pp, Dreamstep is none.
`Howl of the Abyss is 5pp and not intended for use like that, Scorch The Gateway is 3pp and permanent with a bonus to escape.
`Shadow Gate is 1pp.

So assuming that a given amulet works to and from only one specific other plane, and that it has a cost in the range of 5pp to 7pp to activate (possibly even that cost per person you bring along with you, making your companions contribute PP towards the total), everything works out dandy.

[Username17]

Currently not able to transfer stuff from my laptop to the internet, so no excerpts for now.

But yes, the possibility of artifacts that give you access to abilities for large power point expenditures is reasonable.

-Username17

[IGTN]

[*]Portals to and from Limbo (respecting the gauntlet, but sill portable)

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.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

What's hooby paint?

[Username17]

OK, I have an internet connection through my own computer again, so let's start posting up excerpts.

---

The Stellar Oracles
“Your reign of terror ends now!”

The Stellar Oracles view themselves as heroes who guide and protect human civilization from the works of rogue monsters and sorcerers. They keep a substantial amount of lore about the secret histories and collect prophecies about what the future holds. And they are pretty sure that the future holds some things that are really bad. The Stellar Oracles also feel that it is their responsibility to stop these events, as the fact that they are currently destined is in no small part their fault.

Teachings of the Oracles
“The future is more important than the past because it is your fault.”

The Oracles have a simplistic utilitarian moral system in which making the future “better” is considered to be “good”. And while that might seem to be fairly non-contentious, they are actually dealing with inexact and sometimes inarticulate prophecies, meaning that different Oracles will have radically different ideas about what needs to be done in order to avert some terrible fate or another. In the abstract sense, the Oracles teach that the ends justify the means, but in specific most Oracles try to do things that seem generally good at the time with the hope that it will all come out positive in the end somehow.

The Nature of Time
“Not all roads lead to the same place. But all roads lead somewhere.”

The flow of time has a relentless inertia to it, like the flow of a river. You can push against the current, but the river will find a way to return to its course. At least, it will do this most of the time. If the river is diverted far enough or in just the right way, it will find a new course and the water will flow somewhere else. And so it is with Time. There are a finite number of distinct possible futures, and different actions in the here and now can determine which of those futures come to pass. Minor differences in current events will have no meaningful impact on the future: people may be born with different names, but the wars and plagues will still happen on schedule with all the parts played by whatever actors are available.

The Stellar Oracles point to how Divination and Prophecy seem to work as evidence that this view of future history is true. Since prophecy is possible at all, reason the Oracles, the future must have impetus to it all out of proportion to what Chaos Theory tells us about accumulating chances and changes over time. Butterfly wings may cause storms, but prophecies are capable of accurately predicting those storms. However, divinations are not always correct, and when one fails it is frequently the case that many prophecies start failing all at once. And when that happens, new Divination starts giving radically different predictions. And most importantly of all: sometimes things will start showing up in prophecies again after a previous shift made them stop happening. The Stellar Oracles interpret these events as being accumulated action shifting the timeline from one course to another, and further evidence that there are few enough possible timelines that it is possible to count them.

The prophecies of the Oracles are divided into several different future histories based on key events that seem to accompany them. Currently, there are five such categories: The Solar Empire, The Siege, The Crystal Age, The Time of Darkness, and The Unknown. The Oracles believe it is their duty to keep the Time of Darkness from coming to pass, and do everything they can to divert the timestream to another course.

Fate and Free Will

In the real world, there is no true divination, and the question of whether the future is mutable by the choices we make today is strictly unanswerable. But in After Sundown it is entirely possible to predict the future and attempt to change it, thereby putting Fate to the test. In After Sundown, events will conspire to make prophecies come true. But this effect has its limits, and with enough effort a prophecy can be made to fail. And when that happens, it is customary for subsequent prophecies to be based on the new (different) future. For those groups using the upcoming book Long After Sundown, the Stellar Oracle view of Time is essentially correct. After Sundown uses the “Finite Futures” model for its raygun gothic material, and the Oracles are therefore barking up the right tree. But in the context of the modern age that most After Sundown games are set in, there is no way anyone could be sure of that. The data about prophesy shifts that the Oracles have gathered is real, but there are multiple models that fit the data they have available to them just as well. The future could be determined by the winners of present conflicts. The future could be literally unchangeable, with prophecies themselves being wrong sometimes. There could be literal decision points where time moves off into new and radical directions with prophecies before the decision point giving answers essentially at random. There could be many worlds and divinations could be giving you a probabilistic analysis of which world you are presently in. Or of course a nigh infinite number of other possibilities, some more contrived than others. But if Long After Sundown is being used, it should be noted that more potential futures are presented than the Stellar Oracles are aware of. Divination is not infallible and the information it provides is not complete, and with their limited tools the Oracles simply cannot distinguish between several of the possible futures, and just plain don't know about some of the others.

The Legend of the Queen
“Everyone wishes they were important in a previous life. We actually were.”

The secret histories the Stellar Oracles maintain are amongst the most complete, but there are sections that outsiders are not allowed to see. And one of the most closely guarded secrets is the Legend of the Queen. According to this portion of the secret histories, the Stellar Oracles used to be prognosticators and enforcers for Queen Ayesha from around the 3rd century BCE. She was the cruel queen and goddess of a kingdom in Central Africa which bore her name. She achieved immortality by throwing herself into a sacred flame powered by the heat of Limbo and became possibly the first Fallen.

After ruling her kingdom for four hundred years, Queen Ayesha fell in love with the king of an Ethiopian city state, and she bid her Oracles teach him the secrets of sorcery, which they did. It was only later that one of the Oracles predicted that this king would ultimately destroy the kingdom, a prediction that tore the Oracular Council apart. The council broke into factions, one supporting their duty to the queen, and the other wanting to fight against the predicted terrible future. As it happens, the prediction did come true, the man did destroy the kingdom, and the Oracles who had favored abandoning duty to fix the future were left saying various variants of “I told you so.” To this night, the Stellar Oracles embrace the maxim “Results before Duty.”

The Prophecy of the King
“We did our best and it was not good enough.”

While fractiousness within the ranks of the Oracles mad them unable to stop the doom that the King with Three Shadows brought to Ayesha, the remaining Oracles were able to banish him from the world before he was able to set about the world conquest stuff he had apparently intended. However, a disturbing prophecy the group has access to indicates that the King with Three Shadows will return to the mortal world, and that when he does so it will be “very bad”.

The Stellar Oracles hold themselves responsible for the King with Three Shadows being a continued threat to the world. They also consider it their duty to stop whatever it is that the King with Three Shadows is going to do to bring the Time of Darkness. And while the Oracles stress “Results before Duty” as a guiding life goal, in this case the duty is to the results, meaning that it actually takes precedence over most other results one could achieve. So Stellar Oracles are expected to fight the King, then make the future better in any way they can, and then do whatever else it is that they are supposed to do, in that order.

Status in the Oracles
“Saving the world should get you more respect than it does.”

The Oracles see themselves as being in a war against many opponents. The future is threatened by a malevolent force, and humanity in the present is under threat by man eating monsters. There are ghastly abominations that the Oracles banished long ago that are threatening to return. The Oracles need things that will help them fight that war, and by “things” they mostly mean “troops”. The Stellar Oracles are woefully understaffed for the goals they have set themselves, and they are entirely willing to make alliances with other monsters or human monster hunters, or anything else that might fight against the darker future.

But they also need to understand what they are doing and how they can achieve their goals. And that means collecting relics of the past and prophecies of the future and conquering magical places and such. The Stellar Oracles value Asset and Destiny Resources, and actively pursue the acquisition of both.

Protect the Weak
“Rice does not fight, but it is still important.”

Being well thought of in the Stellar Oracles requires more than just defeating monsters. Indeed, most of the members of the Oracles are themselves “monsters”. The goal is to “protect the weak”. There is a specific prophecy that indicated that not enough protecting of the weak was going to happen and that bad things would result. Protecting the weak has become one of the primary missions of the Oracles. However, what exactly that means is open to discussion.

Some Oracles hold that what needs protection is children or perhaps the handicapped, and that the prophesy in question was specifically about some person who is supposed to grow up to be important being threatened by monsters. Others take a more inclusive stance and consider the vast majority of normal humans (or even all normal humans) to be “the weak”. In any case, recruiting more of the “strong” to help protect the weak is a good way to ingratiate yourself with the organization, and fighting monsters that threaten humans (especially children) gives you substantial cred with the Oracles. It is not unusual for the Stellar Oracles to send their members on essentially diplomatic missions, where the actual goal is to gain Assets by making common cause with others who have the capabilities to fight monsters.

Fight the Future
“You can not fight what you do not understand.”

The Stellar Oracles have the most extensive collection of true prophecies of any group in After Sundown, and if you do well for the group they will let you see some of them. But they are also aware that their picture of the future is incomplete (although even they don't know how incomplete), and they obsessively collect more relics and prophecies to try to complete that picture. Using the artifacts they have, the Oracles can locate a great many other Destiny Resources, and regularly send their people to go acquire them.

The goal of all the acquisitions remains to identify the things that lead to the Time of Darkness and stop them from happening. So actually using Destinies to thwart bad events is the best thing you can do in the eyes of other Oracles. Sometimes the leaders of the Oracles detail members and allies to go fight the future, but they also encourage vigilantism and initiative on the part of their members. So if members go off on their own to save people or fight evil that's considered a good thing – at least so long as they achieve results.

Love & Justice
“Everyone wants happiness, only the paths differ.”

Ultimately the goal of the Stellar Oracles is to make a better future, and the leaders of the Oracles are essentially romantics. Getting a better personal future by falling in love and living happily ever after is a goal that the Oracles respect and embrace. While the Oracles take a dim view of those who jeopardize missions in order to take vengeance on enemies or to get a bunch of money, they actively encourage their people to do risky stupid stuff “for love”. That sort of thing is praised when it works, is lamented when it fails, but is in any case not looked down upon at all.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Makes me want to play a Stellar Oracle. The one thing that seems lacking is why they can still be villains tonight. Stuff like their willingness to kill innocent Luminaries who they believe are prophesied to sway the world towards the Time of Darkness.

One typo:

While fractiousness within the ranks of the Oracles mad them unable to stop the doom that the King with Three Shadows brought to Ayesha