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[orathaic]

There is nothing stopping a deeply committed member of the mysterium from retaining status 1 after years if they don't take on any status related work/roles, right?

But i think mechanically the bigger issue is that a guardian or ladder member can take mysterium status 1 and thus would have earned the pre-req for taking the eregore merit.

Which i think the fluff does not support at all.

[orathaic]

In this timeline...

I feel like this dream of civilisation makes sense as a step toward how human actual civilisation came about. But it may have been one of many steps.



From a tiny bit of reading, i can't find any reference to Omphalos stones rrlated to the Vinca culture, best estimate seems to he about 4,000 years later in greek and jewish traditions (which is a rough hand wavey estimate on my part, but would place them closer to today than to the Vinca).

In CofD are there two things called Omphalos stones or are they the same?...

[orathaic]

I am assuming there would be other steps required... what happened with humans? Was it language and the Omphalos stones in the Astral? (And are thry related to the Hearts of Pangeans? And also what relationship do Pangeans have to the Astral?)...

[orathaic]

I think you can get a pen, remove the non-silver parts (so long as the silver bits are pure silver) pass them in and out of twilight, and then once you have Lunargent you should be able to put the pen back together....

[orathaic]

I'd like to pick ypur brain about this. Was seeing similar between Sekhem and Pryos (from lots of reading i was doing on 'fallen magics') and i came up with some ideas (however poorly structured) regarding a Mummy/Demon/Promethean crossover game (ie how you would run a game where there is some similarity between these ideas...)

Of course i have gone full in on the God-machine being made from the Principle (or whatever the Principle actualky looked like before it was turned into the God-machine, with the current Principle merely a shadow/ghost of what it was before...)...

[orathaic]

Roughly (if you can find it*) when an animal drinks from the Wellspring it gains human level intelligence; if a human level intelligence (with a soul, presumably) drinks from the wellspring it is implied it may awaken. If an Awakened being drinks from the Wellspring maybe it Ascends...

*It is somewhere deep in the Astral, not easy to get to, and surrounded by extinct civilisations of various creatures, some obviously not humanoid (like the Bees).

The only thing i am not clear about is how animals reach the wellspring. Is it their representation within the Anima Mundi...

[orathaic]

I am just assuming the drinking from the wellspring (which seemingly allows for Awakening if not outright Ascension, as suggested by Queen Bee) allows not just civilisation to develop, but also requires a soul (becuase you need a soul to Awaken, afaik).

Maybe fire and religion are the first two civilised thing that humans did. ┐⁠(⁠ ⁠∵⁠ ⁠)⁠┌

But i am not sure what happened to humans to gain souls in the first place if the Strix were driven away by fire... did the souls come first or did they find humans awakening to fire and belief and come to fuel it?...

[orathaic]

Assuming that the evolution of the human soul and the development of civilization are both necessary and sufficient then:

This suggests the existence of other entities which could exist if entities other than humans evolved souls (like Bee or Octopus cultures where their astral forms? have created civilisations by drinking from the well-spring). What would happen to the Bee spirits if Bees had souls?

Or alternatively the existence of soulless apes who have spirits. Some kind of entity which is co-evolved along-side humans but who never developed a soul (like homo floresis...

[orathaic]

I like the Demon bit, but would raise you that the Time Before is actually also that same future the God-machine comes from (whether it is also Ascension) where the world was broken by the Ascension wars, and the winners became the Exarchs.

With Shards of the future split and scattered throughout time...

The Ascension war ended with the current Pax Imperial, to prevent the world shattering again.

EDIT: which i guess means blaming the Technocracy for making the God-machine....

[orathaic]

[Optional Rules]
A New Dawn, Hell and the Rite of Return.

Ok, so i think these rules might be a bit more contraversial, so optional because if you don't like them, don't use them* (not that this entire setting hack isn't optional).

1) Can Demons have a New Dawn?

Yes, equivalent in difficulty to them making their own Hell, infact becoming human is one definition of hell; this is likely rare specifically because Demons - in general- don't necessarily have any reason to want to become human. But if an individual Demon learns about the New Dawn and wants...

[orathaic]

Are you asking what Dispel Magic does? And what it would do with a potency of 6 in an area of affect?...

[orathaic]

Yeah, i think your reading is consistent enough that there have been a number of aruments about it.

I suspect i was on the other side the first time I came across it. There is a clear Word of God statement on it floating around somewhere, that is, you make a choice between Area of Effect type spell and a Subject type spell. And each has a downside.

For a spell with duration longer than the caster's gnosis-derived ritual duration, you could have a house which heals you as you spend time there, or a damaging effect to ward off anyone who tries to invade your Sanctum/temple/Ruin...

[orathaic]

I don't think Mage has specifics written about how many reflexive spells you can cast in a turn, but they are so rare and circumstantial as to not be worth the word count.

Are there reflexive powers in other games?

[orathaic]

Can you always do a reflexive thing the same turn you take an instant action?

I meant the only example I can think of is using a yantra (apart from high speech) reflexively while casting a spell in Mage. But I don't think that breaks the action economy......

[orathaic]

I am pretty sure that is exactly the opposite of how the rules are meant.

Area of effect spells auto-check that subjects are still in the area.

Spells which have specific subjects continue to effect them where-ever they go.

These are the two options for spell casting Afaik. This has been discussed several times.

---

Aside: spells also auto-check the withstand rating hasn't changed and alter their potency if it has, or check the size of the subject (so if it gets bigger it may shrug off the spell while larger than the biggest valid...

[orathaic]

Just to clarify, this example was to highlight you could get information from all over the world of you could spread a thing all over... arguably it requires each bacterium to be targeted seperately, which would require a lot of scale (but Afaik only Area is limited, number of subjects just keeps going up, right?)

But yeah, you would get no surveillance beyond the subject. But if your name is the subject, and isn't too abstract a concept (like you can't target the concept of Life, just actual examples of life) then why couldn't you do something similar... it is still your name even...

[orathaic]

Just the idea that a spell which had a relatively small scale can continue to he active over a large area.

I was thinking of aerosolizing the bacteria, and seeing how far they spread. Might work better with water molecules than bacteria inany case.. the principle was how can you get global scale without global scale.

For Life, instead of a knowing spell on it's own, maybe you could use weaving to add traits to a bacteria which it will pass down the generations (of course this is questionable as to how the scale/spell works anyway, but assuming it does) a combined weaving...

[orathaic]

I think I get what you are saying, and i just to reply to this part, players understanding and character understanding are of course different.

Making the metaphysics a bit closer should make it much easier for the players to understand while still leaving room for the characters to explore. The main meta-plot decisions are to encourage cross-over events, which then goes to make it more likely that these character types will have more base knowledge while still not knowing the details of how the other works.

So I am aiming for somewhere inbetween - say - Forsaken and...

[orathaic]

That's a good question, Jovian Athanors are clearly vessels... well not clearly, the pouring of emotion and feelings into them by a living being would definitely make a Jovian Athanors into a vessel, so for this purpose i am just going to say that yes Prometheans count as 'living beings' for this purpose.

Unfortunately this presents a problem, because Mummys are encouraged to hand over the vessels to the Judges, and i am not sure i know enough about the Mummy meta-physics. But just dumping them in Duat seems a little cheap.

So the first step would be to clarify, a Mummy...

[orathaic]

And two on

"The rules about Electroshock Therapy and Aether Storage is also just a quick, easy, and good clarification that I'm gonna have filed in my head forever."

I am wondering if there are other little bits of magical loopholes i am missing. There are a lot of source books and i just happened to come across this bit from the corebook of Demon while Promethean is fresh in my head.