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[Isator Levi]

Things off the top of my head that The Realm does which set it apart from depictions of the Blessed Isle in prior Editions:

History of the Realm itself has been overhauled to make it feel more dynamic; things like the origins of the Great Houses being pegged to particular times and given a sense of context and consequence, and a few more crises for it to face.

Goes into more depth of the everyday culture of the Isle's inhabitants. Diversifies the landscape a lot and creates some different societies as a result of that. More description for the ethnic composition of the...

[Isator Levi]

I don't think a point that the Adamantine Arrow is wary of cannibalism needs to revolve around a single Legacy, considering that it can still be a motif across a few warrior traditions that the Order might be wary of for Supernal connotations and what it means to their core ethos.

I feel as though when it comes to a Proximus Dynasty, the important question isn't who they fit with so much as what use the Order you assign them to can make of them. I would think that the Orders can find value in almost every approach, and that they don't exactly divvy up authority over a lineage based...

[Isator Levi]

Also, for the point of vampires being vulnerable during the day, that's what ghouls are for....

[Isator Levi]

I think it's possible to approach such a subject with about as much nuance as the things that Lunars do to acquire human shapes....

[Isator Levi]

Not all vampire Clans have Obfuscate as one of their particular Disciplines, but it's a Discipline that any vampire can learn without requiring a teacher....

[Isator Levi]

Then bringing up Space 4 is irrelevant.



A vampire is not a corpse, and the closest equivalent magic to seizing control of something that can move under its own power is also a four dot spell.

Mind, Animal Minion is also one where how it interacts with some spell factors becomes a tad ambiguous, in a way that casts doubt over casting it over an area.



I wouldn't find that consistent with how the use of conjunctional Arcana is typically depicted, broadening the scope of the spell rather than limiting it.



...

[Isator Levi]

I mostly wouldn't expect Havesh to be referenced again because he's not really a prominent enough personage of the setting or writing to be worth it over any new Solars a person might write, and doesn't have much significance beyond meme status.

I'm really more concerned with using him as a reference point to what some of the parameters for the Solar Exalted might be, and how such choices might be seen in terms other than the Unconquered Sun being totally callous or indifferent.

Which is not to say that there's nothing a bit callous in the act of empowering somebody who...

[Isator Levi]

If that's Psychic Domination, that's going to affect every thinking being within the boundary unless any of them have already had the Fate spell Warding Gesture cast on them.

Sure, an order could be phrased in terms of "if, and only if, you are a vampire, do this thing".

But people under that spell know that they're doing a thing based on an impulse that does not originate within them, so that's going to lead to hundreds of people being made to actively think about whether or not they're vampires.

Which means that many people are having Integrity...

[Isator Levi]

That first post (from more than a year ago by a person who has not logged on in about as long) is informed more by the reductive internet version of Havesh.

Havesh killed the people at the pinnacle of his society, who were the greatest beneficiaries of the system that left him crushed and despised in his mortal life, in exchange for large sums of money. He did this to gratify himself in defiance of how he has once been discriminated against.

The exception was a guy with a top place in the caste system who was socializing with Havesh while in disguise and went out of his...

[Isator Levi]

My references there are in response to your own statement that it needs to be Instant Casting, which would seem to be pivotal to the assertion that it would be useless as an Attainment because of how much Reach it requires.



A sleeping person has to be the absolute most convenient target of a ritual spell even when it requires several hours to cast. Reducing that time to a scene is just gravy.

They're easily somebody you can touch, and you probably don't need to have it work on very many at once, so have it as a Third Attainment and you've got the Reach you...

[Isator Levi]

I have a preference for interpreting what it means for a mage to be able to sense a subject for the purposes of casting at sensory range a bit strictly, so in a lot of cases casting an area spell over a very large range isn't going to cut it. It can tell a person where a subject is, but they'll have to move in closer to get a good shot.

The Space Arcanum is referenced in the first post, but it's not particularly relevant; you don't have sympathetic connections to strangers, and you need to get within sensory range to cast the spell that creates them wholecloth.

I'm also...

[Isator Levi]

Two things.

One, you don't actually need to Reach to use area for your scale factor; basic scale can either be based on number of targets or on area, it's just that the area is small. Reaching means that your basic area scale becomes as big as a house, and can move up to the size of multiple city blocks.

The other is that you are, in fact, obligated to use area as your scale for an Aimed Spell. It becomes centred on whatever your target for throwing is.

You only need to aim the spell at one person, and the rest will be affected by it if they're within the...

[Isator Levi]

Masters get four Reach for 2-dot spells.



Depending on the personality of the Legacy.

And indeed, how often one really needs to force people to take suicidal actions. Yields one more reach back to factors.

Still, funny that lots of Reach in order to get the broadest range of utility out of it is acceptable for this but not for invading people's dreams.

Which needs to be done with Instant casting because a sleeping person certainly can't spare a scene for having the Attainment cast in a ritual function.

Indeed, I would...

[Isator Levi]

Psychic Domination.

Like, take that as a one or two-dot Attainment, and your only Reach probably wants to go to Instant casting, meaning that all you get out of it is a one-word command that lasts seconds, only works on people with Resolve 1, and you need to touch the person to do it.

Considerations do change a bit if you have it as a higher rated Attainment, mind.

[Isator Levi]

While I certainly assume that most people who join the Seers weren't exactly informed of alternatives, at this point I think that reality bears out that there are quite enough people who really are just terrible or insufficiently motivated to challenge terrible systems in which they find themselves, and that pretty much anybody with a rank higher than the bottom is investing themselves in it. I think a sense of fatalism is more often ritualistic than it is some overwhelming rational argument they make to justify themselves.

I think that where what a lot of Seers do induces them with...

[Isator Levi]

I have a feeling that writing something for a personal project like this would go out of its way to not make them how they were intended to be for publication.

[Isator Levi]

A thing worth keeping in mind is that the Seers of the Throne often take actions that might seem to make no sense. If the commands from their superiors in Ministry and tetrarchy are often obscure*, those from the Exarchs are truly esoteric.

The direct dream commands are one thing; they might be conveyed largely in terms of image rather than word, but they're supposed to be understandable enough. Just think about how where they're coming from can mean one's actions are very much part of a strategy of three-dimensional chess, a move being directed from a vantage point of space and time...

[Isator Levi]

I also think that something inherent to the pyramidal structure of the Seers is that the majority of them are engaged in work that is primarily about building their capital. Acts of infiltration, subversion, deal making. The busywork of making large numbers of influential people beholden, which then gets transmitted from the person who made the deal up to the level of a superior who employs that leverage on the strategic level, coordinated with numerous other operations, in order to apply the pressure that cultivates and nurtures the oppressive systems that the Seers are concerned with.
...

[Isator Levi]

This makes me think of devotees of the Chancellor who see a lot of value in promoting the idea that recycling is actually a lot more useful than it is as a way of keeping people ever more invested in systems of consuming scarce resources to create universally employed products with brief shelf lives and a very long time to exist is non-degradable waste. Certainly, the extent to which plastic pervades in modern society and consumer goods seems like the sort of thing that would evince the principles of that Exarch.

Oh, I'm also now remembering Good Omens. Crowley's frustration with...

[Isator Levi]

I find that Last Week Tonight with John Oliver gives me a lot of insight into all of the many and varied low-key ways in which modern society is constructed to exploit people, and to me all of that feels like exactly the sort of thing Seers of the Throne across the world would latch onto and employ their powers to preserve and perpetuate it.

I mean, look at the characters in Nameless and Accursed. There's a person who functions as a social chameleon to occupy whatever position might absorb information useful to eir Pylon and the Ministry of Panopticon as a whole, a woman who promotes...