Ask a simple question: Fallen World edition

[21C Hermit]

Do you think Prime Veiling/Fraying can enhance already existing illusions? Like for example, a hologram, or a Changeling’s Mask?

I suspect only indirectly, via layering additional Veils.

[orathaic]

What happens if you mind is in your Temporal Pocket but your body isn't?

Can you, for example, project a dream form into mind twilight, then create a Temporal pocket around your mind, possibly with indefinite duration.

Maybe you are using possession, and using someone else's body, or a create Life body for indefinite life experience within the Temporal pocket... Can you just spend infinite time there before returning to your own body - possibly completely changed?

[TempleBuilder]

What happens if you mind is in your Temporal Pocket but your body isn't?

Pretty much exactly what you would expect. The Mind experiences the extra “stopped” time, the body doesn’t.

Can you, for example, project a dream form into mind twilight, then create a Temporal pocket around your mind, possibly with indefinite duration.

I mean yeah? Still breaks if you interact with anything, so “stopped” time isn’t the best for a indefinite spell.

Maybe you are using possession, and using someone else's body, or a create Life body for indefinite life experience within the Temporal pocket... Can you just spend infinite time there before returning to your own body - possibly completely changed?

Uh? Temporal Pocket doesn’t let you really interact with world without breaking? But yeah, even if it’s been a thousand years, it’s still your body by default. You should to return just fine. Though, if you wanted to do a story about how someone can’t return to their body and is stuck in Mind Twilight or in other people’s bodies, that would be pretty cool and fun. Maybe it’s similar process to whatever makes people go rapt for having superhuman stats or being an animal forever. Or maybe absorbing people’s thoughts and memories isn’t a great idea for keeping your identity.

[Cauthon]

I think Orathiac might have gotten Veil of Moments and Temporal Pocket confused. VoM would have some utility for Astral Journeys or possessing another entity, since it would suspend your metabolic functions.

Of course, a high Potency Body Control (and maybe Surpress Life?) Can do much the same without limiting your ability to learn and grow. VoM would keep you from aging though, which does have benefits.

[orathaic]

I think Orathiac might have gotten Veil of Moments and Temporal Pocket confused

Nope, though casting Ceoil of Moments while ina Temporal pocket should stop your mind from going insane...

Uh? Temporal Pocket doesn’t let you really interact with world without breaking? But yeah, even if it’s been a thousand years, it’s still your body by default.

Yes, my usual thinking is that you have to cast Temporal pocket as an AoE effect (more like faerie glade from 1e) and you can touch or interact with anything within the area. Drink the water, eat the food, probably absorb the mana from your local hallow but it not refill.

Maybe all the trees die from a lack of sunlight. Or all the rest of the life dies from a lack of oxygen.

But anything leaving the area exits the time pocket rather than ending it. I suspect the only way to space to 'touch' something outside of itself would be a co-locate. (Doing a combined Temporal Pocket with a Space Ban and a Veil of Moments might be best - so things can't wander out nor can they get wrecked by the natural progression of time... Actually that makes a terrifying prison.).

Pretty much exactly what you would expect. <Snip> But yeah, even if it’s been a thousand years, it’s still your body by default. You should to return just fine. Though, if you wanted to do a story about how someone can’t return to their body and is stuck in Mind Twilight or in other people’s bodies, that would be pretty cool and fun. Maybe it’s similar process to whatever makes people go rapt for having superhuman stats or being an animal forever. Or maybe absorbing people’s thoughts and memories isn’t a great idea for keeping your identity.

I think the going Rapt or losing your identity/being an animal forever is the kind of messed up result i am curious about.

Pretty much tracks with the direction i was thinking about. Thanks

[jsnider3]

Why is the General associated with Forces? The Unity is using Mind to spread Xenophobia, the Eye is Surveillance through Space, the Father is using Prime to hide the truth and trap people in fake religions, but why is the General's Militarism associated with Forces? It seems like Militarism should be just as achievable through Death, Matter, Life, Mind, or Fate.

[KaiserAfini]

Why is the General associated with Forces? The Unity is using Mind to spread Xenophobia, the Eye is Surveillance through Space, the Father is using Prime to hide the truth and trap people in fake religions, but why is the General's Militarism associated with Forces? It seems like Militarism should be just as achievable through Death, Matter, Life, Mind, or Fate.

Firearms, explosives, tazers, swords, armor, martial arts techniques, claws, fangs and many more. All of them are essentially manipulating forces to inflict or prevent violence. Even atomic weapons, which can devastate the planet, are primarily using forces. All Arcanum are tremendously flexible, but Forces is the most symbolically associated with the dehumanizing violence that defines the General.

[jsnider3]

Firearms, explosives, tazers, swords, armor,

All forms of Matter.

martial arts techniques, claws, fangs

All forms of Life, with a bit of Mind for martial arts.

All Arcanum are tremendously flexible, but Forces is the most symbolically associated with the dehumanizing violence that defines the General.

That's the chicken-and-the-egg problem. Forces is associated with the General's dehumanizing violence because the General is the Exarch of Forces, but if the developers had made the General an Exarch of not-Forces, then Forces would have been written differently and the not-Forces arcana would be associated with dehumanizing violence.

[Michael]

That's the chicken-and-the-egg problem. Forces is associated with the General's dehumanizing violence because the General is the Exarch of Forces, but if the developers had made the General an Exarch of not-Forces, then Forces would have been written differently and the not-Forces arcana would be associated with dehumanizing violence.

I think you've just answered your own question. Like, you're right it's fairly arbitrary, but if you want the major Exarchs to map onto the Arcana, you need to make a choice. Interestingly, Mammon actually changed from Mind to Matter (At least if I remember Reign of the Exarchs correct).

You can see a similar thing going on with the Paths and their arcana. A lot of the reasons for inferior arcana could fairly easily be flipped.

[TempleBuilder]

I think generally a fist hurts because it’s transferring a large amount of Force into your face, not because it’s made of the right organic compounds. Swords don’t hurt because they are are made of acid, they hurt because the shape is good for transferring Force into a small area, making a cut. Large amounts of Forces cause pain to our fragile bodies. Pretty much every Exarch can be covered under Mind, because they are all Symbols of Tyranny, and oppression is a mental Phenomena. Thus the Exarch’s associated Arcana is on how the use of a phenomenon under an Arcana can be tyrannical.

Edit: The General is the symbolism of the Unstoppable Force, and you are not an Immovable Object, but very tiny and ephemeral. You can move yourself out of the way, or be moved anyways. And one’s a lot less likely to have you being trampled.

[jsnider3]

I think generally a fist hurts because it’s transferring a large amount of Force into your face, not because it’s made of the right organic compounds. Swords don’t hurt because they are are made of acid, they hurt because the shape is good for transferring Force into a small area, making a cut. Large amounts of Forces cause pain to our fragile bodies. Pretty much every Exarch can be covered under Mind, because they are all Symbols of Tyranny, and oppression is a mental Phenomena. Thus the Exarch’s associated Arcana is on how the use of a phenomenon under an Arcana can be tyrannical.

Edit: The General is the symbolism of the Unstoppable Force, and you are not an Immovable Object, but very tiny and ephemeral. You can move yourself out of the way, or be moved anyways. And one’s a lot less likely to have you being trampled.

The first part is a decent explanation, but the edit is what really convinced me that Forces is a good fit for the General.

[Cauthon]

What kind of spell would you typically Imbue with Imbue Room? I guess you could make a Persistent defense like Ward, but it's not a huge step up from just casting and then relinquishing a given spell.

[orathaic]

What kind of spell would you typically Imbue with Imbue Room? I guess you could make a Persistent defense like Ward, but it's not a huge step up from just casting and then relinquishing a given spell.

Veil of Moments? So you can have an emergency room where time is switched off and casualties don't bleed out.

[21C Hermit]

What kind of spell would you typically Imbue with Imbue Room? I guess you could make a Persistent defense like Ward, but it's not a huge step up from just casting and then relinquishing a given spell.

Laying booby traps on an area comes to mind. Such as: have Imbue Room cast on your Sleeper-identity’s house, then Imbue something like Hallucination with the contingent trigger of “uninvited intrusion”, and voila.

[Isator Levi]

Why is the General associated with Forces? The Unity is using Mind to spread Xenophobia, the Eye is Surveillance through Space, the Father is using Prime to hide the truth and trap people in fake religions, but why is the General's Militarism associated with Forces? It seems like Militarism should be just as achievable through Death, Matter, Life, Mind, or Fate.

I don't think the Iron Seals were devised by beginning with a form of oppression and then figuring out which Arcanum accomplishes it, but starting with each Arcanum and devising a form of tyranny that could be mapped to it.

There's also the fact that each of the Arcana are not just their literal, materialistic expressions, but their underlying symbolism. Violence is intertwined with Forces because those are the terms that the Supernal Realm of the Aether were described in long before any Exarch was written in particular detail (which is also something that informs the Obrimos Path beyond them just harnessing Forces for things like signals intelligence). The storm is not a thing used to accomplish violence, it is a metaphor for a deeper idea of violence (albeit a metaphor that impresses itself very strongly in instances where storms destroy people's lives with all the shocking abruptness of a random mugging or home invasion).

On a similar note, I would broaden the idea of what the Eye is to incorporate the metaphysics. It's not just about which Arcanum can be used for purposes of surveillance (certainly it's bigger than just using a lot of scrying), it's about the fact that in the Supernal the very idea of things being separate from one another is a perceptual phenomenon, rendered most concrete by the Lie but even without it a matter of how thinking entities are really only as far away from things as they feel (and thus also a bulwark against things they don't want to feel close to, which Pandemonium says ought to be overcome). The Eye isn't just about watching people, it's the alienation created by the sense that you're always being watched, the enforcement of conformity and feeling of being on edge by uncertainty about whether you are in any given instance.