General World of Darkness Discussion Thread QQ Edition

something I just wanted to put down since it is fun

My campaign used Fair is Foul as a basis for the backstory and I made what is essentially a telenovela mess of personal relationships when it comes to the antediluvians using various bits of old lore and my own stuff

Full House of Caine

Tzimisice: Is the first Third Generation but was embraced illegally because Irad and Enoch were experimenting with how vampirism worked and were both thinking about how to get supporters for their internal power struggles with other members of the 2nd gen. Enoch did put his beast in Tzimisce when he was a human, followed by Irad embracing him because they wanted to see if that would result in a Double Up on the Beast. This resulted in his personality and mind being shattered upon coming back from the dead and the warring beasts in him causing the destruction of his body into a mass of blood and flesh on the floor that they locked up to run more experiments upon. Eventually the sheer spite and attempts to regenerate resulted in his Vicissitude. Before that he had been one of many scribes and pages in the First City.

Ventrue: The first member of the Third Generation who was embraced legally. She had been sent to the first city as a child along with various other children of various early warlords when Caine was subjugating human tribes and had been the daughter of one of the larger ones that had first managed to breed and tame horses. Caine basically just walked in and Presenced them into joining. She was actually good at administration and levelheaded so Caine had Enoch ghoul her and work as another of the daytime bureaucracy. She, Lasombra, and Mekhet had been ghouls and investigated Enoch due to wanting to undermine him. They found out about Tzimisce and brought the information to Caine who punished Enoch by having him embrace Ventrue and then place Ventrue in Enoch's old role before staking him and leaving him deep underneath the palace.

Mekhet, Ravnos, Toreador, Gangrel, Malkav, Malakai: three sets of twins born by Lilith by Adam, Caine, and Lucifer. None of them were told which father which had and were early mages. They went to the first city in their wanderings due to hearing that Caine was there and he ghouled them (and later had them Embraced) to reduce Lilith's access to reality warping mages. He had a bit of buyers remorse since Magic got replaced with Blood Magic but considered it good enough.

Set: One of Irad's childer, actually started out as a overall good warrior and bodyguard whose job was to protect the second generation when they were sleeping and organize the war against werecreatures. His brother Osiris had sex with his wife and managed to get her pregnant while Set had difficulty doing so due to his ghoul nature, starting their hatred for each other. Saulot had come to him and explained what he knew of the situation with Werewolf cosmology after they had both become vampires and convinced him that he could devour Wyrm spirits to prevent their attacks on others (the third generation already knew about diablerie at this point so it made sense to Set that drinking a monster dry could mean the destruction of their soul while he gained the power). This had bad results.

Saulot: Actually is as bad as all the rumors say. He had gone East in an expedition to figure out "What the fuck is going on over there, we keep hearing stories about blooddrinkers that aren't us" and came back after having sampled Deviil Tiger and other Kuei-Jin philosophy and gone full ham. He went around posing questions to the other Antediluvians and nudging them towards different fucked up paths due to wanting to see if he could make similar "Dharmas" which could result in enlightenment and use the others as examples for what to do himself by seeing who crashed and burned and who gained "enlightenment." He created the Baali and manipulated the situation so he would be one of those in charge of hunting them so he could keep more of his experiments running.

Cappadocius: Really did lose part of his soul when he came back and is crazy due to that, fully believing that he needs to eat god and remove the barrier between life and death to have full control over the world and reunite everyone who has ever lost anyone while he is loved and adored as the one true merciful God.

Nosferatu: Was embraced by Zillah and was offended by the fact that she didn't want to bone him, the difficulties he had in boning woman after becoming a vampire, and the tiny scar on his face from when he was hunted by her. An extreme egotist who tried to date Gangrel and Toreador at the same time while not telling them about each other and the subsequent beatdown by them when Malakai said it during a meeting led to him having an eternal grudge.

Lasombra: Was part of a seafaring culture and sent to Enoch as a hostage like Ventrue, eventually becoming a ghoul in charge of the river and sea operations. Competition with Ventrue was a constant element of his existence and he grew increasingly vain, using the wealth from his operations to flaunt success and become increasingly conscious of how he looked, the wealth around him, and everything else in an attempt to one up Ventrue. Legends of creatures of the deep came to him and Saulot pointed out Set's new powers as evidence that devouring supernatural beings could grant amazing abilities, resulting in him going to the deepest depths of the ocean and devouring monsters within to obtain Obtenebratioin. Is full sitcom arch-nemesis with Ventrue and snubs her by wearing better and more expensive clothes by figuring out the exact materials and tailors she used.

Brujah (The Younger): Is full redhead muscle girl delinquent who caused the nerdy scholar to fall in love at first sight. The Elder's panic over the fact that he had illegally embraced and knowledge of what happened with Enoch made him want to destroy her, which resulted in her rampaging too get away and eventually hiding out with Toreador who got very into Tall Musclegirl aesthetic and hid Brujah while they worked on an art project for a hundred years before presenting it to Caine while revealing Brujah's presence. This is the "Past Transgression" which the two were forgiven of in one of their myths as the transgression was Toreador sheltering Brujah.

Assam: Another of the war leader ghouls. He was one of the last to be embraced among the original third gen, having earned it after killing the "king and queen" under Caine's orders and trying to suck all their blood only to learn that it hadn't transformed him. The transformation was more of a bit of amusement on Caine's part as he made him take their old role instead of continue on the Go Go Murder War train, forcing Assam to calm down and work on other Projects. Gangrel, Assam, Set, Mekhet, Tzimisce, and Lasombra worked together in researching blood magic, creating a great laboratory in their studies while Brujah the Elder was involved in more mundane research, causing the the two institutions to have a low key hate of each other and the former helping conceal Brujah the Younger after Ariel came up with an idea to have the Elder replaced.

Ravnos: Mentioned earlier and lover of his sister Ennoia/Gangrel, they were sent to the east after Saulot came back and were to make a border state to make sure the Kuei-Jin didn't invade, but Saulot's influence caused them to have a falling out and attack each other. with Gangrel returning to the third city after several of their lesser third gen subordinates (Laibon/Ikopabe and Lhiannan) left to avoid the commanders fighting. is actually still on Caine's order to eradicate all of the Kuei-Jin due to the weirdness with hell and barely ever went back west because he was monofocused on killing them all to spite Gangrel and show that he didn't need her help.

the lot of them are a mess of family relationships, friendships, and rivalries where anyone actually killing anyone one will result in the rest coming down to kick the offenders teeth in which is why they all managed to survive for so long. anytime someone got close to ending a grudge resulted in someone else getting involved either out of friednship or refusal to let anyone else kill their nemesis (and they rarely actually plan on killing their nemesis since the grudges and plots are a way of life where they have no idea what they'd do if hit ever ended)

 

Female blood mages seem to be the bane of Antediluvians in my campaign when I think about it

The Tremere player accidentally diablerized one of the Aralu because she did not read the room when it came to the giant sarcophagus that got stolen by the Bahari after there had been a previous long scene about the other three sarcophagi, with one of them having woken up when people were trying to break another one.

Tremere Character/Basket: Did I ruin your plotline

Me: No...you just made it so one of the at least second gen really hates you for eating one of her kids and your boss needs to desperately plead for you to not get your throat ripped out.

later

Basket: *hands Tzimisce Antediluvian a tailored plague that sends humans into comas* And we agree about giving me Tremere/Saulot so we can just, get rid of that problem

*Proceeds to let the original Lhiannan diableriize Saulot*

Me: Okay I need to roll...oh what the fuck

Basket: Did Witch Grandma die?

Me: No, Saulot and Tremere both botched

we get a lot of weird stuff though

Basket: So, this ritual to use the Underworld as fast travel requires me to stab myself in the heart...with a silver dagger

Me: Which you took the drawback of being weak to

Basket: Am I about to die?

Me: I will say that you only need to nick your heart, and need someone to do an int+medicine roll followed by a dexterity+medicine roll to not kill you

Basket: I am suffering for you guys

Saint Basket of House Tremere, Patron of Taxi Cabs and other Public Transportation

Caine shall remember this for the final judgement.

 

What a way to end up diablerizing antediluvians, lmao

 

CofD/nWoD 2e viability check:

An Academy, secretly backed by a Demon Agency, where multiple types of Supernaturals (Werewolves and Wolf-Blooded, Changelings, Mages, and Demons' own human progeny, the Demon-blooded) can coexist and learn from each other in relative peace. How nerfed would CofD/nWoD Hunters have to be in order to allow this to exist?

Edit: For full disclosure, I'm already writing a fanfic in SFW Creative Writing about such an Academy but want to refine it.

 

I don't know hard numbers, but aren't Hunters generally pretty trash in terms of direct ability? They're not buffy the vampire slayer, they're sarah conner or something. They're also not super organized either.

 

CofD/nWoD 2e Hunters, not oWoD/WoD ones.

 

I have to ask, though: Why did you think I was asking about Old World of Darkness Hunters when I literally specified CofD/nWoD 2e ones?

 

Why not just Edit the post instead of making a new one?

 

He won't be pinged by an edit, right?

Edit: Wait, bad reason.

 

Agency is the regional level power stucture of the Demons right? Then, depending of the level of support from other supernaturals, I can see it working. If they can get a Mage with enought Time to regularly check wether there is some trouble growing, an Agency should have enough power to stop lone hunters and independent cells dead, and should manage quite good even against Conpacts.

The power of Hunters is concentrated in the Conspirancies, which are global organisations. If Task Force Valkyre rolls into town, then the project is pretty fucked. They are not gonna be able to protect the school against government backed military force trained against supernatuals. At least continuing to run it as a school while the Government is trying to kill it takes more than your average agency has.

So they either need top secrecy that would make recruitment hard, or make some deal with the local big guns.

 

I was actually thinking of a deal with the Barrett Commission being sealed in a future chapter and the protagonists helping clear Task Force: VALKYRIE of Vampiric influence in exchange for official toleration.

Or the protags taking control of TF: Valkyrie by providing the funding the Vamps were using to control the Conspiracy.

 

Actually, as the more important question: What of the God-Machine?

They are planning to put multiple Demonblooded children, something that the machine is actively looking for and trying to get its hand on, and then they are opening up the place to the wider supernatural community, rendering perfect information security impossible.
Even if it is just an angel that checks it out as a random gathering of supernatural that the machine did not predicts, that is more attention/scrutiny than most demons are willing to put things they care about under. And considering the potential power such an uncharacteristic gathering represents, constant surveillance, as either future asset or threat, is likely.

 

Yeah... That is a problem, but in my fic, the God Machine has had pieces of vital Infrastructure hijacked by the Demon Agency in question in cooperation with a force from Princess: The Hopeful (a homebrew), The Light. Other parts are infected by the Contagion from the Contagion Chronicle, thus 'sickening' the God-Machine and preventing it from acting against the protags overmuch.

This is the fanfic in question, btw:

Mixed Family.

 

ok a lot of unpack.

Kitten has 3 brothers will we get to see the striptopes again. 1 sister maybe st celestine

The first kindred kitten encountered was eating organs so nagarajah

Now horse. I don`t know what he is maybe demon

Boy is refered as an oracle thats a game changer.

The 3rd eye maybe mention of saulot.

Mention of the moon spirit, and the triat.
'
In the armegedon, humans, werewolves, vampires and faes will and its inperupted with door waking up

 

A Fomori? Constant blood vomiting and not dying from it implies that. Fomori often are suffering from alignment that should kill anyone or anything else but it doesn't, they end trapped in constant suffering.

His eyes become Horus Armor Eyes which is nice callback.And dear god they better never let local veterinarian, Dr. Eric Bus nearby this animal . Or maybe he already is "healing" Horse. Medicine for Horses obtained on black market stinks of Pentex.

 

I mean when do fomori get prophecy vision. That'd something in the lines of demon or fae

 

My players had a "Wonderful" time in the Western Sahara

Kokoro: So, we are in the desert, without a car, that won't be good.

Lasombra Pirate Abbas: We can sand-surf

Thus the players ended up surfing in the saharan desert, with the player who wasn't there unconscious and being dragged behind them while a cat and raven hold their limbs up to have the wind in their face.

Several thrown daggers, lightning bolts, and a high caliber sniper round later, they eventually killed one of Lilith's halfbreed children to the ground and endured the effects of Demon Lore. Basket's arm turned into a mass of screaming tentacles and the desert became a man-eating forest of thorny vines and hallucinogenic flowers constantly growing and chasing them through the desert slowly turning into a murder forest.

Due to botched rolls, Basket got knocked off her board and had her Third Generation Blood drunk by the forest, which spontaneously developed disciplines due to that. Abbas used Movement of the Mind to speed up his board and fly to save her while Kokoro got mind controlled and needed to get tackled by her boyfriend to not walk into the murder forest while UN troops on jeeps raced through the desert, firing rockets at the murder forest.

Basket made up to her body weight in White Phosphorus and dropped it on the forest, making it get weaker while they continued to run, while Kokoro and her NPC blood husband had to spend willpower to not frenzy.

The forest kept chasing them, so the Lhiannan NPC Sieve ripped off a soldier's head and made blood glyphs for an Ogham spell that would devour the magic of the forest. Basket frenzied while drinking from a UN soldier, remembered that only vampire blood gave her sustenance anymore, and ghouled the soldier to save her life before Mass Dominating the group to lead them to a refugee camp (because it is the apocalypse)

The Player group also had a realization

Me: So, you succeeded the politics roll to know the history of Morocco. So, the southern half is claimed by a breakaway state that has been in a state of intermittent war for over thirty years, though this is world of darkness. The USA is on the side of the Moroccans against them.

Basket: Don't speak English, what if we speak Portuguese

Me: They'd probably think you were speaking Spanish, the country which used to rule over this area and they rebelled against in the first place

Basket: God damnit. Wait, we killed Satan. Wouldn't that give us points?

Me: You are a woman proclaiming that Cain is God. This group has part one of their constitution be Islam is the law of the land and is now in the middle of an apocalypse where multiple forms of demons are invading them, and you are an Arabic Egyptian woman who turned to a weird subset of christianity. This is also a group of Cainite Priestess, Pseudo-Catholic Japanese Crusader, Malaysian man who turned to worshipping an ancient blood god and Cain, an ancient demon summoning woods witch. The only guy they might like is Abbas, who is currently listening to the two of you, and Bruce who is in a coma. You also kind of invaded a country and took it over, so they'd first think that "Vampires are trying to take our country" given what you did in Brazil

Basket: Wow, we became an incredibly diverse group.

 

What are vampires doing in the desert?

 

They were told that they had head over to Carthage to wake up Troile. The Tremere had learned necromancy and wanted to try using the underworld as fast travel, but the spell to do so required stabbing herself with silver which she has a weakness to. Thus they ended up on an island instead of Carthage. Then they commandeered a boat and sailed through monster infested waters while one of the players was tentacled to near death by Slenderman, they didn't want to stay on the water so they beached the ship and ripped planks off the boat and carved them into boards,

 

You be surprised, ever since Set and his childe banished Silent Striders (Egyptian Werewolfs) from Egypt (including from Umbral realms of Egypt) The Followers of Set are one of the primary supernatural in there, with only Mummies and some Mages having significant presence there.

Plus the Followers of Set can reenact the film "The Mummy" pretty well, turning into sandstorms and such.

Spoiler: Sawafi's Form

 

They also don't need to deal with dehydration

 

They sorta do though.
We all know what happens if vampires don't have enough to drink.

 

How do I buff Chronicles of Darkness/New World of Darkness 2e Hunters to stand against Mages in my fanfic?

Would giving them 'Essence Cannons' which convert their willpower into blasts which negate all magic work?

 

set up car bomb

have the hunter watch through cctv cameras

 

The main problem is that Mage the Awakening 2e literally says that Hunters only very rarely kill actual Awakened, and that most of the 'Witches' they hunt are merely 'Hedge Witches'.

 

That is because high power mages aren’t likely to deal with people instead of be off in space or the astral plane

Mage is an entirely different setting from Everyone else

 

Whoever wrote the Witch Hunter's book has a massive hard-on for mages. Just ignore them, they're on the 'Mages are the best and anyone else is wrong' train.

 

Thanks.

Edit: By the way, are any of you a fan of Princess: The Hopeful? It's a homebrew, btw.

 

Read it a while ago, but it's probably updated since I last looked it up. It's a surprisingly well-thought out idea for something that started as a joke.

 

Yes, it is. Note that while it's a good idea, its two versions have problems of their own.

(Dream has really bad mechanics while I've had disagreements with Vocation's creator that would violate Rule 8 if elaborated on.)

And both don't want Princesses to be as powerful as Mages.