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[Michael]

So? Mummies don't need a big population.



The era covers the height of the Swedish Empire; lots of Arisen like political influence and power.



Which they have thousands of years to do. They've gone everywhere else, but Scandinavia is a step too far.

Also, unless all the clans originated in Scandinavia, then vampires did have to travel there at some point.



Unless there's some kind of special reason for there to be more relics than might be expected. That's the kind of special case that we can reasonably...

[Michael]

They move. More specifically, Sothis Ascends reveals that Egypt wasn't really safe for the Arisen. Aside from there being a lot of shuankhsen, the Arisen cause problems when they gather together....

[Michael]

Hunting for relics which appear pretty much everywhere. Maybe there's something specifically there that's of interest to the Arisen. Maybe an Arisen has decided to run their own project there.

There are any number of potential reasons.



Most Arisen left Egypt over 4000 years ago. They don't need to have migrated straight there.



If a modern city can have twenty Arisen, a whole region can probably have the same....

[Michael]

The thing I'd wonder about is what effect higher generation will actually have.

Does your version of generation have the same impact on Dominate as it did in Masquerade? For a Ventrue, that'd be an interesting change, suddenly your sire can't dominate you on a whim.

Also, are Gen 14 vampires still thin-bloods? (I can't actually remember if gen 14 were still full kindred or not) A boost to gen 12 would allow your players to start siring full vampires which would be an interesting step up.

[Michael]

I vaguely remember Morpheans being something else in Changeling....

[Michael]

Yeah, nofather's right. I didn't read it properly....

[Michael]

I'm really not sure. My difficulty is that the organisation gives a definite Nephandi vibe, but at this point, Scientology has been an enemy in RPGs for thirty years almost, it's just so obvious.

I like what Awakening did with Scientology where it's a cult of Banishers, (so it's basically a group of low level Marauders).

[Michael]

I doubt it would do anything if you staked it.

[Michael]

Prometheans....

[Michael]

I think there was character background stuff released as publicity at launch, but there's no novel....

[Michael]

Okay, but SunlessNick was directly comparing it to 50s USA. The implication I took was that the themes present in such an era would be better served in the USSR. I guess i jumped to the conclusion that it was the paranoia element that was being discussed.

That said, Prometheans suffering from being perpetual outsiders is a central theme of the game, and that fear of outsiders is a big element in sparking the mass operations that actually killed most of the victims of the purges....

[Michael]

Though, if you're doing Soviet Promethean, wouldn't you just go with the era of the Great Purges?...

[Michael]

Not really, though that's part of it. The focus of Sin Eaters is in dealing with ghosts. They can see ghosts, and sin eaters are in turn beacons to ghosts. So whether a sin eater likes it or not, they attract the attention of ghosts who want their help. They're free to react to that as they see fit, but it's almost impossible to ignore.

Many sin eaters translate that niche into a moral responsibility to help ghosts. It's not that far from the way Beasts turn their predatory nature towards something vaguely positive....

[Michael]

I suppose they could in that case. That's just generally not where the monsters tend to gather; or to be exact, it's not where the monsters the Technocracy cares about are.

I mean, a sleeping methuselah is extremely dangerous, but if it's asleep in some tomb in the middle of nowhere, who cares? The Technocracy has more pressing issues to deal with, and only limited resources.

One other thing that I just realised. Your point about it being efficient is not quite right. The Technocrats are going to have to cover up the detonation which is going to be quite a bit of work,...

[Michael]

Well, it's context dependant. In-setting the Technocracy did in fact use nuclear weapons against the Ravnos Antediluvian. So if the threat is big enough they will use them.

But bear in mind the Technocracy already defeated the Nephandi and they probably think about the Nephandi in those terms. Why use weapons that murder thousands of innocent people when your foe is basically already defeated. Things might be different if the Technocracy were presently in an open war with the Nephandi.

Also, as I said, the Technocracy runs on secrecy and hypocrisy. If the higher ups start...

[Michael]

Presumably the same reason the USA doesn't use nukes against ISIS. They tend to kill everything around them and leave the area permanently damaged. The latter is doubly so for the World of Darkness where they tend to blow holes in the Umbra and spiritually poison the local area.

Also, the Technos aren't monsters (generally). There's a difference between their brand of subtle hypocrisy and blatant mass murder.

[Michael]

There's a couple of table of the runes floating around. Try putting Mage Awakening runes into google images.

[Michael]

Not literally, but clay is a common metaphor for flesh. Indeed that metaphor and the golem folklore both come from the same myth that God formed Adam from the earth.

Seeing as the CofD setting is about reverse engineering monsters from their appearance in pop culture and folklore, it makes a dark kind of sense that someone would use 'clay' as a stand in for corpse....