Ask a simple question, get a simple answer - Beast edition.

[nalak42]

The former, I think.

The actual scenario that came up in play had a Beast using Skeleton Key on a Synese, which are a kind of Astral portal from Mage. They "provide direct access to an Astral Realm. Synesi allow anyone with the Key or another means of entrance to enter the linked realm while sleeping or meditating. Travelers don’t physically enter the Astral through a Synese, but enter the usual trance state for Astral journeys." So the Beast hacked his way through the Synese, leaving his body unconscious on the floor, while his mind as a Dream Form got up to some shenanigans in the Tenemos. He had to retreat from some angry cat dreamborn (long story), so opened a Pathway back to his Lair. Rather than trek across the Nightmare to get back to the Tenemos and then leave through the Synese, he opened another Pathway back to his body in the physical. At which point I realized I wasn't sure what would happen when his Dream Form and body started existing on the same metaphysical layer of reality. (The situation is especially trippy because one of his Chambers is based on the physical site of the Synese. Though I don't think that changes the outcome.)

Okay, so I checked the player's guide as that has the whole section on trying to leave the Lair while merged with a Horror and there's not much else about a Beghotten having a form in the astral. It kind of runs into the issue that the Devouring is stated to be the last time a Beghotten Dreams and the Horror eating and replacing their soul/whatever passed for a soul essnetially leads to the bit that the Horror would be the dream form the Beghotten would take.

This is a complication since the Horror can't leave the Lair, so technically what this would likely do is dreamform the mages into the Astral Realm or whatever and the Beghotten would "wake up" being their Horror wandering the Lair. Considering the dreamform wouldn't normally exist I'd say entering the Lair of course leads to merger and returning to the material plane would result in just a snap back to the body.

[Scriptorian]

Okay, so I checked the player's guide as that has the whole section on trying to leave the Lair while merged with a Horror and there's not much else about a Beghotten having a form in the astral...

Page 151, Leaving the Lair:

When a Beast leaves her Lair without using a Primordial Pathway, she separates from her Horror and leaves it behind in her Chambers while she wanders the wider dreamscape as a Dream Form.

It doesn't, unless this scenario has gotten even more convoluted and the Beast being in his Lair didn't merge his Dream Form with his Horror because of Slumbering or other very specific circumstances. Beasts can get away with this — their approach to the Astral is fundamentally different to how the Awakened experience it, after all, the root example of which is "these people can enter the Astral bodily."

Shakier ground may be found for what would happen to any astral-projected mages ejected from an open Pathway into the material, but that's more of a question for the Mage version of this thread. The Beast is opening a Pathway from his Lair to the location of his physical body while (presumably) merged with his Horror, so the worst case scenarios that spring to mind are all relatively minor things like losing a dot of Satiety or suffering the side-effects of the Dark Mother's Guidance or taking a Condition that drives him to fulfill his Legend.

After the Player's Guide, my understanding that it's only when in a Lair/Chamber/Pathway that the normal Astral mechanics of Dream Form get sidestepped. As soon as the Beast (and presumably anyone else physically in the Lair) exits the Lair into the Astral proper, they leave their body behind like 90% of other means of astral travel. In any case, the Core book makes it sound like it's not that uncommon for Dream Forms (Beast or otherwise) to end up inside a Lair (Dream Form section page 99).

I phrased my question initially to apply to Beasts, since I thought that would be the most generally applicable version of the question (though it raised the question of getting a Beast into their Lair as a Dream Form in the first place), but the thrust of the scenario in my Chronicle is that the players were rescuing a mortal who'd been trapped in the Astral without natural means to return to his body. So the ultimate concern was what would happen to the dream form of the mortal when pathway-ed back to the physical. While that scenario is a bit niche, I still think the question is a valid one, since the Core explicitly says that Dream Forms in the Lair is a thing that happens.

I did think about the question from the Mage perspective, where their general rule for Astral entities is that, on the rare occasion they leave the Astral, they enter Twilight. So far as I know, Mage does not actually have much precedent for things physically entering or leaving the Astral. In any case, Beast doesn't seem to have actually considered the question either, so I'll stick with my ruling for now.

[Satchel]

In any case, Beast doesn't seem to have actually considered the question either, so I'll stick with my ruling for now.

Then the scenario has gotten even weirder, because Beast's primary way of addressing foreign Dream Forms in the Lair is that they're food and someone getting "killed" while in Dream Form outside of their own dreams wakes up with the Soul-Shocked Condition.

Like, the book doesn't necessarily address this situation directly in the same way that the mechanics of how easy or hard it is for strangers to get into your Lair are a little unclear, but basic door security and the fact that you have to dedicate conscious attention to marking people as guests and making your Horror not do as it pleases in the Lair means Astral intruders are generally going to be dispatched in short order well before being dumped into the material world is a problem.

Prior examples of the Golden Road suggest your reading is probably the way to handle this particular conundrum, but either this wasn't a simple question or the consequences of Astral death were being drastically overestimated.

[Scriptorian]

Aha! Behold, Changeling 2e:

Occasionally, an oneiropomp careens all the way back to the mortal world — if she was in dream form at the time, she exists in Twilight and must return to her body before her player can make the roll to wake her up.

(I came across this completely randomly. Why was I reading Changeling when I've already said I'm running a Mage game? Reasons. Reasons is why.) Assuming the metaphysics of a Dream Form originating from the Gate of Ivory are much the same as an Astral Dream Form, I think this is our answer: Dream Forms that wind up in the physical enter the appropriate phase of Twilight, and must return to their body before they can make the usual role to "wake up".

[Strictura]

Aha! Behold, Changeling 2e:



(I came across this completely randomly. Why was I reading Changeling when I've already said I'm running a Mage game? Reasons. Reasons is why.) Assuming the metaphysics of a Dream Form originating from the Gate of Ivory are much the same as an Astral Dream Form, I think this is our answer: Dream Forms that wind up in the physical enter the appropriate phase of Twilight, and must return to their body before they can make the usual role to "wake up".

I feel this is correct. This scenario actually happened in a recent Changeling game I ran where several of the Player characters ended up falling out of a collapsing dream.

[Neos01]

Do you think it s possible to use Basilisk touch to poison the tip of an arrow/blade and then injecting the poison with an attack of the weapon in the following turn?

[nalak42]

Do you think it s possible to use Basilisk touch to poison the tip of an arrow/blade and then injecting the poison with an attack of the weapon in the following turn?

Eh, it depends on the level you're using the atavism at. Technically nothing in actual wording of the ability says that's possible, so this is very much an ST call. From my own I might allow it at the Satiety expenditure level, due to the thematic mention of the Beast dripping poison and such. That said I'm iffy on the tactic as a whole because the ability is inherantly a touch attack, and so there isn't really a point to it in my mind. I mean the point of applying poison to a weapon would be to get the poison into a person's system when other methods don't work, but since all you need is physical contact the blade isn't necessary as a delivery option, especially as you can Basilisk Touch turn one and slash turn two as opposed to the proposed plan which requires two turn to accomplish the plan assuming the roll goes to plan.

So the only advantage to being able to envenom other objects would be to either A) Gain a large supply of poison that basically can't be taken from you, or detected on you. And B) turning it into a ranged power, which again your ST might object to based on how much of a problem the Tilts the ability applies would be for the game.

[Neos01]

Eh, it depends on the level you're using the atavism at. Technically nothing in actual wording of the ability says that's possible, so this is very much an ST call. From my own I might allow it at the Satiety expenditure level, due to the thematic mention of the Beast dripping poison and such. That said I'm iffy on the tactic as a whole because the ability is inherantly a touch attack, and so there isn't really a point to it in my mind. I mean the point of applying poison to a weapon would be to get the poison into a person's system when other methods don't work, but since all you need is physical contact the blade isn't necessary as a delivery option, especially as you can Basilisk Touch turn one and slash turn two as opposed to the proposed plan which requires two turn to accomplish the plan assuming the roll goes to plan.

So the only advantage to being able to envenom other objects would be to either A) Gain a large supply of poison that basically can't be taken from you, or detected on you. And B) turning it into a ranged power, which again your ST might object to based on how much of a problem the Tilts the ability applies would be for the game.

True, but considering that it s possible to buy or craft a poison of similar toxicity with the Streetwise or Science/medicine skill the ST should not be worried about the Tilts impact.
Another thing is that if you have dots in athletic or weaponry but not brawl the power could be more versatile.

[Cleverest of Things]

I haven't read the Players Guide yet, so I apologize if this is directly answered there, but.. the discussion on here has made me wonder. Can a Beast have Chambers in it's Lair from all around the globe? More specifically, can an Apex?

I run a DC comics based RP group, and I didn't have an Apex for Gotham and the Metropolis in the past (Batman is the modern day one, despite the big secret that it is human). When the new families and hungers were revealed, I decided on a Lair 10 Inguma Whisper, the Phantom Stranger. His design is perfect (even if I have yet to actually read some of his powers or even his x and y splat write-up), but one feature I gave him was that each of his seven Chambers was from a different part of the globe. He is a wanderer, settling down and creating ripples and often chaos wherever he goes, revitalizing his legend, then a few days later is across the world in a different place doing the same thing. In my head, he was the Apex of at least a majority of the cities where his Chambers spawned from, and he is known among supernatural and mortals alike.

However, after reading this thread, I'm not sure if having Chambers that far apart is appropriate, especially for an Apex. Can someone clarify this for me? Is it possible? If so, does his Lair effectively link ALL the Hives in his seven cities? Can he do this, but only be Apex of one Hive? Is the whole thing against the RAW?

[ArcaneArts]

Disregarding some of the homebrew, the short answer is that yes, a Beast can have chambers across the whole world-and even across different worlds (Chambers in the Shadow/Underworld/Hedge/Odd corners of the cosmology), can serve as the Apex of multiple Hives, and as such would be the wheel hub of all those Hives.

The longer answer is the same....with a notation that this is a lot of heavy lifting for a Beast to get up to. While their Lair is collective, the Beast effectively has to become a whispered big deal in all those cities-You don't get to be Apex without having a reputation, and building the Lair necessary for that span of real estate likewise for that number of chambers means that's a lot of legend building. The main reason a lot of Beasts focus on one area is that it's easier to cultivate coherent and prominent Legend/Lair while still having time to attend to their Life or, you know. Have some time off. A Beast whose establishing their Lair in multiple cities has to account for whether or not those have synergy of story spread-If you have seven chambers across NYC, Boston, Baltimore and a few other New ENgland cities, it's not impossible for those to flow more synergistically with each other, but if a Beast has one chamber in NYC and another in Tokyo, conventionally those are not going to help feed each other organically, or at least easily. The nature of the astral allowing for magnified waves and the global effect of the news and the internet definitely help, but if a Beast is operating globally, they're still basically having to run all over the place to keep themselves prominent urban legends and nightmares despite those advantages.

The final interesting twist is the effect being an Apex across multiple cities and therefore uniting different Hives together would have, but since we lack written text on that, it's the realm of speculation/storyteller judication.

So TL;DRing all of that, it basically means that while it's doable, it's a lot of work to establish and maintain.

[Satchel]

More prosaically:

The book indicates in one or two places that Beasts tend to feel uncomfortable spreading themselves too thin, Lair-wise, and your personal Chambers are technically as much vulnerabilities as places of power for you specifically. Every Chamber is a place where someone can more easily get into your Lair, and the more you use them, the more likely someone is to cotton onto that. Heightened defensibility is one of the more obvious reasons for a common Lair structure being one "front door" and a bunch of more obscure Chambers that you don't typically use for transport, and that's a lot harder to pull off without particularly convoluted Burrow management if you're splitting that role between seven different areas.

Maintaining the geographic Apex in multiple locales is a requirement that makes this harder still, because Destabilization is going to make that either a full-time job or given up as a loss outright. You can more easily be the Apex of one city with Chambers in other areas, but that only connects those hives in the same way that any Lair would. Even the Old Man of the Mountains doesn't fuck around to that degree, not least because there's no definite point to risking your Incarnation on that kind of flex.

Inguma being what they are, you could definitely manage something with international crime/fixing/etc, but you don't need outright overseas Chambers for that — that's what hunting to build up a better similarity modifier is for, and it works as well for connecting transAtlantic wharves to each other as it does for linking your forest to the woods on the other side of town. (If there's an Antarctic Chamber, though, that's definitely a strong candidate for insulating the Heart without dipping into other dimensions.)

[Cleverest of Things]

Thank you. Arc and Satchel, you two have always been my favorites,and I appreciate the insight. So it all boils down to whether the Phantom Stranger can maintain Apex status in a world without Internet to help spread his legend..

He definitely does the legwork. I imagine he's always at low Satiety except in rare occasions, because a Lair 10 beast is hard to keep fed. As a Whisper, he doesn't usually have to worry about hiding bodies or dealing with huge legal ramifications, especially back in 1912. Plus, his Atavisms are almost unfair. He can ignore the need to eat, drink, or sleep, provided he is stalking someone to gain their dirty secrets. Is it a glitch or a meant feature, that having Eyes of Heaven and Mimit's wisdom means he can just... Know those secrets by being around people, and thus feed his hunger without even really trying?; I found it odd that I think Mimit's Wisdom let's you touch someone and find out their secrets, and Whispers need that to feed.it almost seems OP, unless I am reading it wrong and it somehow breaks the RAW.

So long and short of it, as a non-Apex,he is most certainly still possible, but as Apex of multiple cities, the caveat is that he has to sufficiently annoy/disrupt/affect all of these cities on a regular basis, and will have little "downtime" doing so? I don't often design a powerstat 10 Npc, but it seemed to fit him, and as a character concept of the literal embodiment of the stranger that shows up and knows everything, I think that's possible. He's not outright a douche, but he had a habit of just showing up and telling people the secrets they need to keep the story going, then disappears, letting people ask "who the f was that guy...". And he does it often, at least daily for his feeding. And across the globe. And in every city,he is still a foreigner, an alien, and nobody besides a few learned monsters know how he knows what he knows. Does that qualify him, if most monsters and police/criminals are half excited and half afraid he can just show up at any time and spoiler their plans?

[Satchel]

Is it a glitch or a meant feature, that having Eyes of Heaven and Mimit's wisdom means he can just... Know those secrets by being around people, and thus feed his hunger without even really trying?; I found it odd that I think Mimit's Wisdom let's you touch someone and find out their secrets, and Whispers need that to feed.it almost seems OP, unless I am reading it wrong and it somehow breaks the RAW.

Remember the way feeding works — feeding the Hunger for Secrets requires the target to know that someone knows their secret, you don't make a feeding roll unless the Satiety potential is above your current Satiety, base Satiety potential scales proportionately with difficulty, and the roll happens at the end of the scene unless you spend Willpower.

The Stranger, like many high-Lair-low-average-Satiety Beasts, is going to have to make a lot of little rolls often, tilt his Aspirations toward his Hunger, rope in other monsters for Family Dinner, lean hard into his Legend, Life, and/or Myth, and make use of Lair resonance for the Satiety Expenditure effects of his Atavisms to keep up with the demands of Lair 10 with or without Incarnation safeguarding him from becoming fully Ravenous, on top of being a fairly constant beacon for Heroic attention in his area (which might not be a problem for him personally, but will definitely make trouble for any other Beasts active in the area).

At the very least, his shtick seems like it would strongly benefit from maintaining some Horrorspawn (particularly if he's not going to be using that top half of his Satiety track anyway), but those present their own tricky balancing act to manage.

So long and short of it, as a non-Apex,he is most certainly still possible, but as Apex of multiple cities, the caveat is that he has to sufficiently annoy/disrupt/affect all of these cities on a regular basis, and will have little "downtime" doing so? I don't often design a powerstat 10 Npc, but it seemed to fit him, and as a character concept of the literal embodiment of the stranger that shows up and knows everything, I think that's possible. He's not outright a douche, but he had a habit of just showing up and telling people the secrets they need to keep the story going, then disappears, letting people ask "who the f was that guy...". And he does it often, at least daily for his feeding. And across the globe. And in every city,he is still a foreigner, an alien, and nobody besides a few learned monsters know how he knows what he knows. Does that qualify him, if most monsters and police/criminals are half excited and half afraid he can just show up at any time and spoiler their plans?

This is definitely a character you're going to have to paint around as much as with — if this guy's not just an Apex but Incarnate then he's sharing a level of storied infamy with the likes of Bigfoot and Nessie while sporting a Hunger that people aren't likely to want to talk specifics about if they don't have to, which means probably engaging with some Elf-On-The-Shelf Santa's-Watching-You levels of inspired paranoia and implicit or explicit conspiracy that practically demands leveraging some degree of symbolism.

There's a reason a lot of the things Beasts resonate with in mythology are temple guardians — if he's gone worldwide in the years before American commercial airlines, it's not inconceivable that on some distant shore, a band of thieves with no personal affiliation to him keeps a little wall fixture bearing his mark around as an apotropaic against double-dealing or snitching or attending meetings undisguised, because his Legend is such that he's become a kind of patron saint of secret-keeping. (He's not a Nemesis, but neither are most Beasts who partake of lesson culture, and most humans don't know the difference, much less the ones consuming the whisper-down-the-lane fringes of a Myth.)