General World of Darkness Discussion Thread QQ Edition

Understandable, although I prefer my protags smarter.

 

shadowdice , gereh , can I have your opinion on this long piece of exposition and whether it accurately reflects Mage the Awakening's lore (not Ascension, Awakening)?

Spoiler: Hidden For Size

 

So what exactly are you looking for? You asking if I 100% agree with everything they say? I mean those are peoples "observation", which of course are subjective and I definitely can see were they are coming from. I'm not sure what the context for

is, so can't say how accurate that is.

 

It's a snippet from my 'Reincarnated into CofD' story, Mixed Family. Context is a lecture and comparison of Silver Ladder and Free Council's beliefs, and what needs to be checked is how accurate they are to the lore in the sourcebooks.

Context for the second quote you made is the fact that I did buff Hunters (the Hunter:The Vigil ones) to be more powerful than in Canon and be able to go toe-to-toe with Mages if they are 'advanced' enough.

Here is the exposition session in full:

Spoiler: Hidden for Size

Feel free to just skip past the character actions and other fluff if you found this snippet too long, btw. Or just skim if you don't have the time.

 

Fair warning: I started to ramble a bit at some points and don't have the energy to go through it and clear everything up, I hope my points will still be clear.

That's difficult for one the "Free Council" is pretty diverse in their way of thinking and where they stand on different subjects. There seems to be a clear bias from the MC against the Silver Ladder here:

which depending on the character may very well fit. The way it reads is that the "Silver Ladder" acts out of selfish reason, making them sound a lot like the Technocracy in M20, which they really aren't. The idea in the Ladder philosophy is a lot closer to a teacher than that of a leader, their "right to lead" comes from being trained in it and knowing what they are doing and not from a selfish desire to be in charge (even if there are some individuals who do so but that in general doesn't fit the Ladder doctrine).

It's like let's say you have a big international company and you have to decide who to put in charge of it, do you choose the guy who has gone to buisnes and managment school or do you take some average joe who works a normal job and put them in charge?

If you mean by "mundane law" the "physical" laws of the fallen world, that holds true, also many don't do much to disguise their practice. Magic is their birth right after all they use it freely. Which brings the risk of becoming "Mad" (aka Wisdom reaching 0).

If we talk about "mortal laws" like in actual laws to use in a court that statement is debatable. Not falling the laws makes you an outcast in society, which is contraproduktiv to their goal of shepherding humanity to awakening. In general they are thought culture norms and how to act with mortals to best work to their goal, which would obviously include not breaking the law.

Hunter, Defiant, and Promethean are the CoFD books I don't own, because I never really cared about those settings, so I can only talk about what I tend to know about them. From my understand conspiracy hunters can already take one Mages, especially if they work together as a cell and I don't think technology is there way to do so (for most). I know there is like a group of half-demon/demon descendants that can fuck Mages up really bad by drawing on the Abyss. And of course the Mage Hunter conspiracy "Knights of Saint George" who use "Demons". So I don't know if going with more tech'd up hunters is the way to go. Especially as that would of course "destroy" the balance between Hunters and other supernatural, if a Hunter can go toe-to-toe with a Mage, he can also do so with a Vamp or Were, so they should be a lot more efficient. (But yeah that not really a critique point now that I think about it, it's just I would have gone a slightly different way, but it's your story so it's fine to do it your way)

The one thing Ladder Mages as an organization is known for is that they will do what is necessary to save the Mage communities from bigger threats, even if it means working together with enemies an example given for that is them working together with the Seers doing the Crusade to stop a demon from killing all mages around. So if the Hunters got so much more dangerous the Ladder would most likely adapt, they wouldn't like it, but from what we know of how they handled stuff in the past they would do so.

*Looks at Knights of Saint George with concern*

 

Thanks! And the discussion, once I finished it elsewhere, ended with the MC's bias being overcome and him considering the Silver Ladder as a viable option to join.

 

i am thinking of a fic. Question would ki affect kindred? Would they be badly affected by life-force energy?

 

Which Ki? DBZ ki?

 

Probably not? Not unless it's specifically used to harm them anyway. Though I can see Yang-Ki burning them away if it's potent enough.

At least that's what I remember from Kindred of the East and Demon Hunter X. I would suggest giving them a read.

 

Standard life energy. Would kindred being undead suffer from its opposite life energy.

 

Honestly, I don't think so; it's Holy Energy they suffer from, I think?

 

I mean not really. True faith hurts every supernatural. I am thinking more of the lines of hamon from jojo. Solar powered life energy

 

No

If they bite kuei jin, who are the guys that collect ki in their bodies, nothing really happens

Tremere also make their chantries over ley lines which is also what Kuei Jin do to try and tap ki from the world and bid just humans

Kindred aren’t really powered by an “undead energy” if anything they need to take life energy/bits of the soul via blood

 

The only life energy types I can think of that do something to vampires are mummies. Possibly specifically just the ones under the remit of Ra and Horus's crusade, but possibly also others. Their supercharged blood gives temporary Humanity.

 

shadowdice , realistically, how would Zeltretch from the Nasuverse react to someone (a Mage) from the Chronicles of Darkness using Spirit 5 + Prime 5 to steal a Servant from Fate/Grand Order to fight for them?

We're also going to assume that Mana from the Nasuverse can be converted to Mana from Mage the Awakening or Quintessence from Mage the Ascension, with 2 units of Nasuverse Mana converting to 1 unit of Mage!Mana and vice versa.

For that matter, how would Chaldea react to the Chronicles of Darkness/New World of Darkness 2e?

 

People do heroic spirit summoning all the time o don’t think he’d care

 

So... what would Chaldea think of the Chronicles of Darkness?

Or even the Old World of Darkness?

 

From my "fanfic" Fate knowledge I would assume some on also would need "Fate Arcana" to summon/steal a servant to form a contract and/or stabilize them by binding them to a "grail" or any other power source. I would say at least level 3 to alter the servant contract so they fight for you instead of whoever they did so before. But with Fate 3 they can also "hide destinies" which should allow them to hide their servant (I think Fate is weird).

At that point they should already be able to manipulate the "contract" they have with a "grail" in the war, allowing them to become "cheating cheaters who cheat". Probably allowing them to curb-stomp anyone else in the war.

Such an existence of course would be on "recruit or kill" for any magical organization around. As they aren't a treat to the survival of humanity I would assume Chaldea would be favouring "recruiting" (any given individual in it may of course be of an other opinion).

 

Actually, while the Fate Arcana (CofD) governs oaths and contracts, Servants would be bound by Spirit and Prime, and it would be Space that hides identities and names from scrying.

The Holy Grail in Fate is basically just a large collection of Magical Energy/Mana that emulates the real Holy Grail (its complicated) and uses that to grant wishes. So it can actually be controlled with Prime 4 or 5.

 

Yes and from my understanding a "summoner" makes a "contract" with the "grail" and the "servant" when they summon one. So to steal someones servant I assume you would need to change the contract to be with you instead of the original summoner. At least from my understanding.

Space hides you from "scrying" but anyone who sees you would still regocnize your servant as one, while with Fate you can "hide your servants destiny" which if I understand Fate correctly (let's be real there is no chance for that) would make them appear as normal person as their "destiny/story/fate" is what gives them their power.

There are still some rules in the "war" right? Like only starting when everyone has summoned a servant, everyone gets one servant and so on. I would assume with Fate you could changes those rules. (Which means a Mage with at least 3 dots in Fate would make a great antagonist for a crossover fic)

 

Ah, and yep, all those ought to be true.

shadowdice , can I ask for your opinion on this?

 

I assume that you meant to access the throne to summon one

summoning a servant is like downloading part of a pdf for what you need, printing it out, and later sending a file on what you did with it rather than getting the original spirit

 

Yes.

So Spirit is the primary Arcana/Sphere for stealing a Servant from the Throne, then?

 

Eh, I'm not super sure how great of an idea that is. The Throne is meant to be used as one of the most powerful defenses the Planet has available to it from my understanding, it's okay with loaning a limited partial copy that will eventually be returned but actually stealing a spirit from the Throne? Which is a subset of the Akasha Record... that could potentially get a rather violent response. What with that being the equivalent of the Nasu-verse afterlife, Heroic Spirits are just bookmarked as being effective tools for potential use later on by the planet.

To be honest? Nasu!Magus are pretty similar-ish to NWoD Mages from what I understand in attitude but work more like oWoD Mages where Magic is controlled by belief, for the most part, so they're pretty much reclusive magical academics that only care about their personal benefit first and their family legacy second(If they can't achieve their goal then their Heir will; repeat ad infinitum) while looking to expand their understanding and skills while the clock slowly clicks downwards as Mystery is breathing its last breath pushing them to ever more extremes.

Err... in other words, Magus generally have tunnel vision to what's relevant to themselves unless it's something that's an opportunity of a lifetime(IE The Grail War). So Chaldea as an organization honestly wouldn't care about the WoD in general unless it somehow culminated in an existential threat to humanity, though potentially like most Magus they wouldn't mind putting bodies on the operating table to find what makes various WoD!Splats tick and see if they can't get any benefits out of them.

 

1.) Point; so just using Spirit + Prime to summon one of those copies without needing a Holy Grail, then?

2.) Understandable. Note that the crossover(s) I am planning involve the God-Machine from CofD/nWoD 2e eventually threatening both Nasuverse and the Old World of Darkness.

3.) Fun fact: I genuinely thought that the Nasuverse!Mages' obsession with The Root was so that they can find the supernatural concepts of tyranny and control and fuse with those to oppress Reality, like the Seers of the Throne from CofD/nWoD 2e. Let's just say I was 'corrected' very brutally by other folk...

 

I'm not super familiar with how M:tAw nor M:tAsc spell systems work so I'd go with what was recommended/said by the others. So, probably yeah.

Sure, though I will note that the God-Machine was/is in favor of the Masquerade but I won't get too finicky over what amounts to a Mad God.

Also, so this is a crossover between oWoD/nWoD and Nasu?

Yeah, Nasu is one of those fandoms where being wrong or going against the common consensus of the Lore^TM is likely to get you put to the stake. Ignoring the fact that the lore is obscure and obtuse and most translations were rather poor so the entire english fate community has very conflicting info about a setting that lives in the details.

 

1.) Understood.

2.) Thanks!

3.) Eventually, but the crossover will only be revealed in-story in the Epilogue(s) and the Sequel.

4.) Yes!

 

I have a question I want to ask. I'm trying to play and create an NPC character in Vampire the Masquerade the Dark Ages. Is there anything else I should get before I play it here?

Also does anyone know the best places to talk about Vampire the Masquerade Dark Ages online? total newbie here.

 

Not sure myself, but we have a few knowledgable people here.

 

Just play the Crusader Kings "Prince of Darkness" mod and you should be good (jk).

The V20 Dark Ages book has about everything one would need. I personally like the "old" Dark Age Companion book, it comes with a complete chapter about "faith" and one about "infernalism", so it can be highly useful, but if you don't plan to take your character in those directions you can safely skip it.

Depending on the location the play is in you may want to big some other book e.g. there is a chapter aboute "Rome" in the V20 dark age companion, or if it set in Britain there is a whole book about Britain during the "Dark Ages". But that depends.

So if you know what kind of character you want to make and the city/location the chronicle is that one I maybe could recommend something else, but overall the v20 dark ages book should give you about everything you should need.