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[Michael]

That makes sense.



I dunno, these seem more like references than a coherent idea. Like, there's usually some kind of magical story or archetype that explains why a Proximi dynasty is the way it is.



So, is the idea that they're perpetually haunted by the events of their ancestors? That would maybe fit more with being a Moros dynasty, and would explain why their blessings are all references.

That would make me think more Seers dedicated to the Psychopomp.



That's right. I misremembered it as being a more...

[Michael]

Your main question is going to be very reliant on who are they now. Like, how do they relate to their past? Do they revere their past, as the point where they learned cannibalism was a way to power, or do they maybe see it as an enduring moral stain.

More practically, is cannibalism a part of their Curse, or is it an Oblation?



Strikes me as more Thyrsus tbh, though again, it'd depend how they see it.

I could actually see them as Mastigos if they view their past in a bad light (also, Space magic has a relevance for people who were stranded)....

[Michael]

That's a reasonable inference, though consider that Vampire 2e still mentions vampire hunters as a potential problem. They're not given a huge amount of direct space, but they're clearly meant to be an important threat in the background of the setting. That isn't the case for Mages.

More importantly, if you dig through the forum to a 2014 thread called 'The Lie and The Vigil', you can actually find what the developer (Dave Brookshaw) of the 2e core was thinking at the time:...

[Michael]

Sort of, sort of not. Hunter has 'witches', of which the most powerful are the Awakened. But then, they're very much a Hunter-centric reinterpretation of the Awakened....

[Michael]

They appear in the 1e core and never again as far as I can remember.



But the point of the thread is precisely why they have that opinion in the first place?...

[Michael]

That's sounds like a good idea for a Psychopomp-centred legacy....

[Michael]

I mean, that may well be true for Seers themselves. Doing this stuff in-person is not terribly efficient.

Also, I'd keep in mind that as we're shown, there a lot of ways to oppress the sleepers without doing things that are all that bad....

[Michael]

Well, to a degree that's kinda the point. Like, each of the CofD lines is about playing a version of a monster from pop culture. Awakening is about playing wizards, so the Lovecraftian cultist is certainly a common strand of inspiration.



Yes and no. Like, that's the plan for some of the Orders, but they're all aware that it's not that easy. Sleepers going mad is not the plan.



As has already been said, no (I get the impulse, but as written, the Seers are not subtle). The Seers serve precisely the entities that cause sleepers to go mad when they...

[Michael]

Well, it's not assumed hostility exactly on the individual level. Like, the section provides a sample ally character.



But this returns us to the original issue of the thread. It's a handwave; using narrative to paper over mechanics. (To be clear that's not a criticism, I think it's just the natural result of the way the game is constructed.)

Sure, if your players don't care, then it works fine. But if they get into vampire hunting, and suddenly find that it's actually very easy, then that's potentially the issue.



I mean, keep in...

[Michael]

I would suggest actually reading the book that he was summarising, it's a little more complex. To clarify, what it actually says on the matter of other monsters in the SL's plans:



Vampires explicitly do not fall into that category. There's an entire section dedicated to how much the SL want to genocide vampires, and how they simply don't have the resources.



It's not hard to imagine, but again, it's not what their book says. It's not as dogmatic as the Ladder, but it's explicit that plenty of them see vampires as 'servants of the Lie', and that...

[Michael]

Sorry, what are you saying no to?...

[Michael]

Presumably, it should be on their [the Ladder and Council] radar because it's the logical outcome of their beliefs....

[Michael]

They just sorta don't.

Like, yeah, the Pentacle should probably be pretty violently anti-vampire... But that would require rewriting the two settings to be radically different, so it's easier to just handwave it.