Jenna Moran Games (Nobilis, Chuubo's, Glitch, WTF)

[frank light]

Like, you feed or can be sustained by something unnatural

But it isn’t always available

Hence Immutable

[fleet harbor]

This girl is specifically pulled out of martial arts fiction where she was a supporting character that posed ominous riddles to the protagonist and was very very cool and defeated characters built up as powerful with ease, so I feel like it fits.

Anyway, that would let me do Persona 5, Aspect 2

Which is respectable

[frank light]

Yeah

That would work out quite nicely

[frank light]

It’s so fucking cute I love it

[fleet harbor]

Doing contacts

Legacy: The novels Red Evening Sky came from aren’t very good, but they do have fans and others who might recognize a character straight out of the books. They probably assume it’s cosplay, or else something less dramatic than “a giant snake did it”, but who knows, it might cause Dementia Animus in somebody!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8rTZLl0ZllhBvRrpl3XomUsIo7HjKWFWpul1mj5bRQ/edit?usp=sharing Unfinished character sheet

Still gotta do bonds/afflictions, two more contacts, and figure out some details of her superior skill

[frank light]

Nodnod

[sleek socket]

Unfortunately I cannot just lift the word for sparrow for the nobles name

I feel like calling her "the Passer" has gotta be offensive or terminally online in someway

[fleet harbor]

I couldn't tell you why but it does feel like it would be

[sleek socket]

there's the option of PD but that just makes her sound like a bird cop

[fleet harbor]

Bird Police

Somehow even worse than human police

[sleek socket]

they call me the "turn into a flock of birds and fly away" type of power

[fleet harbor]

Nice

3e's distribution of character points is really interesting to me, because there's always something you want a bit more of but can't quite fit

[sleek socket]

yeah

i want like oneeeeee more point

[fleet harbor]

Having an attribute at 5 is extremely attractive

[sleek socket]

just one! but i like this spread

[fleet harbor]

But can you swing it? I guess you're skipping gifts and bonus MP!

[fleet harbor]

For a number of reasons. Rank 5 miracles are sorta the gold standard for miraculous combat, so being able to do those freely helps a lot. Rank 6 miracles are where a lot of genuinely world-shaking stuff starts, so that's nice to be able to pull for only 1 MP. And having a 5 in an attribute is the only way to do rank 9 miracles without a word of command.

[sleek socket]

im not sure whether i want to shift into domain 5 and persona 2 or not

[fleet harbor]

Yeah, there's cases to make for either!

[sleek socket]

but i liked the idea of having a wide breadth of moderate powers

[fleet harbor]

And being hyperspecialized is less useful when outside of the area of specialization

But also depending on the nature of your hyperspecialization, you may not be hyperspecialized at all

I am a perpetual admirer of the way Jenna organizes numbers in her games

[sleek socket]

i turn into a bird and fly away

ok

refined estate

[fleet harbor]

Ooh

I like it

[sleek socket]

i refined them to all be rather vague but also very obvious connections

[fleet harbor]

Gods I love this book

[sleek socket]

so there's definitely quite an obvious line from bird to knowing the way, i mean

theyre migratory

they fly around and they know how to go places

and then you use the domain of knowing the way to define the sparrow moral code

[fleet harbor]

I like adding weird estate properties to concrete things

[sleek socket]

do these scan

this feels indulgent and silly but also i want it to be indulgent and silly

[patent tiger]

Bonds and Afflictions are kind of an invitation to be indulgent and silly tbh

Which is one of their virtues

[fleet harbor]

So the Bonds definitely work, but I would establish with a hypothetical GM what you want hearing the song of the sun to do

[sleek socket]

well yeah

but thats why its an affliction

as in like, i want it to be an invitation to allow the sun to be a terrible influence on my life

[patent tiger]

Secret pro tip, you can take the second Bond as a Treasure Bond for some questionable Words Of Command in the back pocket

[sleek socket]

look im sure being in love with an excrucian is a normal thing to do

[fleet harbor]

No it is

[sleek socket]

its perfectly fine to be the embodiment of a small prey animal and in a weird fucked up relationship with the incarnation of being hunted

that literally cannot end poorly

[patent tiger]

I'm not one to sass, I think most people give an Excrucian romance Bond situation a whirl at least once

[fleet harbor]

A Warmain being in love with you and not wanting to skin you and wear you like a costume, however, is more unusual

:D

[vivid wraith]

soooooo true

[sleek socket]

wait

hold on

insanely funny idea

[fleet harbor]

Usually one has a toxic relationship with a deceiver, or a strategist

[sleek socket]

no she still wants to do that

[fleet harbor]

Oh okay

Good good

Things are normal

[sleek socket]

crecerelle is the origin of the word Kestrel

which is a notable Predator of sparrows that tend to pick their bones and feathers

this is more like watatabe

[fleet harbor]

Anyway, lemme rephrase. Bonds and afflictions are easiest to work with when they describe something that you are concretely good at, or that concretely happens to you. When you get outside of that, it's easy for them to end up doing nothing in practice unless you or the HG make a special note of leveraging them. What I meant was that for something like "I can hear the song of the Sun!" a special effort needs to be made in practice. Does that make sense?

It's a good affliction, but also one that can potentially fall by the wayside if you're not attentive.

[sleek socket]

yeah that much i understand

[fleet harbor]

Alright, just wanted to communicate that, because it is a trap I've fallen into

[sleek socket]

i could rephrase it as "the sun speaks to me" but that would remove the birdsong connotations with daybreak

as an affliction its definitely something to talk with the gm about but it is also something i think is a very interesting idea and removing it would probably make it feel "less" to me

[fleet harbor]

Yeah, again, it's a good affliction

[sleek socket]

theyre calling her the worst to ever do it

[vivid wraith]

WOOOOO

[patent tiger]

Oh NO

[vivid wraith]

you are Nobilis-ing correctly

[sleek socket]

sparrow reportedly "smote repeatedly" for "violating basically every law laid out by Lord Entropy"

[obsidian dagger]

...so, what's up with the Power of Love, if nobles aren't allowed to feel love?

(I mean, obviously they do, but they're not allowed to.)

[sleek socket]

forbidd3en love

[obsidian dagger]

...for some reason I'm now thinking about Miquella.

[narrow tartan]

Sweet

[sleek socket]

its only gotten more birdy from there

and continously degenerated as i realise how terrible of an idea but compelling this character is

[vivid wraith]

you can wield the weapon against others, as long as you don't fall victim yourself

[sleek socket]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F4kFk6c_3BjQvU2LlMLcR0qMyH2tSZX2sJR7U_G5Jng/edit?usp=sharing

if you're interested, here's teh sheet so far

basically, this is the story of a power who was a bird that was eaten by a kestrel, and now her life is being the power of sparrows in love with the warmain of being Cruelly Hunted and Eaten for Sport

she's being Repeatedly Killed for an Amazing Reason

[obsidian dagger]

incredible.

[sleek socket]

now, this is made dramatically worse by a simple fact

the warmain of Cruelly Hunting and Eating for Sport is also in love with her

[patent tiger]

They don't get to have a great time

At best - they're not stationed on earth so Entropy doesn't really have jurisdiction

(Except for the laws are a lot more interesting if they aren't constrained to earth imo)

[obsidian dagger]

...I'm suddenly thinking about... a lot of concepts blurring together in my head, really, but also about the Divine Warrent in this context. Because Entropy II's Divine Warrant makes it okay to care about evil things, but you could just as much say something about the ethics of being biased towards (and caring more for) the person you love, and whether that's OK or not.

[patent tiger]

Love being forbidden by law does, on some grounds, have a legitimate justification!

[sleek socket]

i think i am a great argument for the banning of love

[obsidian dagger]

This is in part because of Pumpkin Scissors, where a major character declares her love for someone by stating that if everyone in the world was poisoned and she only had one vial of antidote, she absolutely would not give the antidote to him, and that's the way in which he loves her and she appreciates his love — now, there's one less person in her calculations of who to give the vial to, and that makes her burden slightly lighter.

Also Miquella, again, who is... maybe? equivalent to a Power of Compassion by the end although maybe a Mimic Power of Compassion, and who's opposed to love on exactly those grounds that it would introduce bias and treat some people better than others and true compassion benefits everyone equally.

[patent tiger]

My argument for the banning of love is that Lord Entropy is an aro icon and he deserves a little me time

[obsidian dagger]

Yeah, until you get told that this philosophy states that a parent should not love their own children one iota more than anyone else's, and also remember that Lord Entropy is a parent.

[sleek socket]

in total, i am happy with this character

[patent tiger]

Well, not in Nobilis' time

That's a future thing

[sleek socket]

i think its a good mix of "yeah thats a bird that suddenly was given immense power" and "what the fuck is wrong with this bird"

[patent tiger]

It's got some strong vibes to it, yeah

[obsidian dagger]

I just realized this may pose some problems to a creature with a beak.

[sleek socket]

she has a guise

its fine

the only issue is uh

just dont die and you'll be fineeeee

[patent tiger]

You can kiss with a beak, I think

[sleek socket]

the other girl also has a beak

[patent tiger]

This is, unfortunately, not very resistant to miraculous murder

[obsidian dagger]

I think that lips are regrettably pretty necessary to the kissing process.

[patent tiger]

Which is something to bear in mind

[obsidian dagger]

There's also a lot of things which are not strictly death but are still not good.

[sleek socket]

i dont have immortality

:(

but i do have durant, i guess

well, i should clarify the birds aree also part of me

its meant to read that if you kill all the birds you just start to get a cascading sort of hydra of birds

[patent tiger]

Durant helps a fair bit

[sleek socket]

which is Fine, Actually

[patent tiger]

That said - Immortality is such a rush

[sleek socket]

because as the power of Sparrows, which are uncountable, those birds can just become the power of Sparrows

[patent tiger]

I think Immortality plus Persona 5 plus a Bond 5 that I apply liberally is the most unfair build I've gotten to play

[sleek socket]

i cant afford it

i lost all my points in domain 5

[patent tiger]

The biggest sauce for Immortality is the most iffy part, the recovery time rules

Getting done with a Deadly Wound in a day means unless the game runs at a very rapid pace you can simply not have that problem even when someone burns their heart out to screw you over

[patent tiger]

You can have Immortality and a stat at 5! If you don't have much of anything else

[sleek socket]

i plan to just argue that the property of sparrows being uncountable and one from many with domain 5 means that dispersing repeatedly into flocks of birds means i can just come back together, or whatever

i would simply Not Die

im sure itll be fine

ok actually i could remove my persona for immortality but that seems iffy

fuck it actually

then i can go full toxic warmain yuri

[patent tiger]

Yeah!

Warmains have a power that they can sustain to suppress a miraculous effect as long as it's active - but they can only do it to one thing at a time, so they have to sustain it to shut down Immortality and then fight fair for the rest of it

("Fight fair" isn't quite true since Divine Mantle is cracked - but as a Domain spec, you can also do that)

[sleek socket]

traded durant for elusive

swapped persona for immortal

[patent tiger]

Elusive is redundant with Immortal, actually

[sleek socket]

hgng

[patent tiger]

Immortal covers Durant, Elusive, and the third one I don't remember, all at a stronger level

[sleek socket]

its so hard to find a way to spend 1 point

[patent tiger]

More MP isn't a bad investment

[sleek socket]

other than mp

[patent tiger]

If you don't have a better idea

[sleek socket]

ill just buy mp i suppose

i dont think more shapeshifting is super useful

and i cant think of anything else id need

[patent tiger]

I spent a spare MP on this, to be a weird freak who shows up in other people's Chancels out of habit

It's frivolous but funny for harassing NPCs

[sleek socket]

world walker would actually be pretty peak

i do have wayfinder

and i do have uhh

sparrows know the way

[patent tiger]

Then, yeah, could be an angle

[sleek socket]

i think its funny enough to take

@restive ridge observe the horrible creations of mine when thou wakest

tomorrow ill go take a picture of that sparrow flock that lives in my hosue and replace the picture of a generic sparrow with that

as a whole it's very self indulgent and silly but that's nobilis

I'm incredibly proud of "passion: true loves kiss (-2)" though

[patent tiger]

Making the worst of Intentions

It's a good one

[restive ridge]

Frankly quite amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DPtClNqOEQ

She is perfect

[obsidian dagger]

Two questions:

• What would be the arc(s) for being a two-inch-tall Being which pilots a human-sized-and-shaped mech?
• Do those arcs change if the mech actually has a crew of pilots, rather than just one?

Possibly Child of the Ash? Possibly Awakening. Or maybe both, honestly; true gods certainly get both, and if the two-inch-tall beings are Aliens you could plausibly be Called Away to their home planet and use it to occasionally get useful alien gadgets.

Yeah, it'd be the True God set, I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNWnACxD-xE related (CW: some mild body horror, but it's a mech)

also the "ikemeshium" discussion (note: "ikemeshi" means crush) feels... not exactly Primordial necessarily so at least in the right direction... yup, this is a True God.

And now I'm thinking about a True God which isn't entirely clear on the distinction between a single person and a group of people.

...actually, playing This Exact Character, or a thinly veiled expy of them, in Chuubo's might be really fun, because you can have a character who thinks she's a singular person until she awakened to the fact that she's actually a mech piloted by multiple little things, and then she gets to have fun with the unitary nature of consciousness being revealed to be an illusion!

[ancient lagoon]

see that leans me toward Deceiver
because like
drawing other people into that world is covered by Star Quality
Typhon's Reality Syndrome explicitly manifests as having a bunch of extra agents outside her body
and Creature of Delirium could let you force the realization on other people

[obsidian dagger]

I mean, Awakening lets you enlighten others, but Deceivers also have that. (And isn’t Typhon a Serpent?)

[narrow tartan]

What about Imperial Human?

[sleek socket]

Average bird activity

[sleek socket]

cursed to love an excrucian, born to be a bird

[frank light]

LMAO

[sleek socket]

she's so bad

just dogwater at everything that isn't being A Bird

[frank light]

That’s so fuckin funny

[sleek socket]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F4kFk6c_3BjQvU2LlMLcR0qMyH2tSZX2sJR7U_G5Jng/edit?usp=sharing

This is the full sheet, if you're interested

there's a bunch of small amazing little Bird details in there

Like passion: i truly want oatmeal right next to skill: superior singing 5

[frank light]

I’ll read when I get home

[sleek socket]

very niche domain power i have selected that makes total sense but also sounds insane is that she can turn any game into mahjong

this is because mahjong literally means "tiny Sparrows"

[restive ridge]

But of course

[patent tiger]

Turning things into other things is I believe more Persona's remit - but that means Domain could blast someone with Mahjong so hard it kills them, so maybe that's a lateral move

[frank light]

True!

[sleek socket]

mahjong blast: thirteen orphans! Word of command!

[fleet harbor]

She could probably create a mahjong match that someone is now playing

[sleek socket]

true!

[fleet harbor]

Just whole-cloth, “we’re playing mahjong now”

Also with Domain 5 she can stop any mahjong game with similar ease >_<

[narrow tartan]

Lovely!

[sleek socket]

"cause a flock to last eternally or its memory to live forever (e.g. the fellowship of the ring)"

i am achieving englightenment

[frank light]

Oh my gosh

This bird is so cute

[fleet harbor]

Glad you reminded me that skills at negatives are a thing, so I could add "talking to people" to Red Evening Sky.

[frank light]

Skills and passions are so good to add

Fun fact your serpent only has four points of skills

Passions And Skills
Calligraphy 2.
Literature 1.
Fashion 1.
Grace -1.

[fleet harbor]

Imperators are so bad at stuff

[frank light]

Sulili is trying his best

But he is a little snake

He cannot change this

(He does have a mortal form that is a goth boy but)

(That goth boy is not much better at life)

[patent tiger]

Excrucians are the cool kids who bully Imperators like that

[frank light]

True

[fleet harbor]

Web search

[patent tiger]

🥁

[fleet harbor]

(Kinda stole this from a Sidereal exalted charm that the previous version of her had)

[obsidian dagger]

I had a strange dream I mostly don't remember about Valentine's Day in Town but specifically in School... I... think Billy Sovereign was trying to force Seizhi Schwan to tell him how to confess his crush (it was very unclear who this crush was on)?

[fleet harbor]

SEIZHI I HEAR YOU HAVE 3 POINTS IN "DO STUFF" GIVE ME A HAND HERE

[obsidian dagger]

possibly could go Cyrano de Bergerac on it.

[fleet harbor]

Also, I assert that the funniest person for him to have a crush on would be either Natalia or Rinley.

[obsidian dagger]

False. The funniest person for him to have a crush on would be Seizhi.

(He may not realize this! He is not very emotionally intelligent.)

[frank light]

Billy sovereign has a crush on
rolls dice

Typhon

[obsidian dagger]

Actually not that weird all things considered, since she's implied to possible be one of the teachers.

[fleet harbor]

True

Wait

[obsidian dagger]

(She's the alternate version of Psalida Ceasar, who is a puppet on the end of a tentacle of Sa'a Lingurth, and also teaches... band? History? Both?)

[fleet harbor]

Billy Sovereign asking Natalia for advice on how to ask out the teacher who is also Typhon.

[vivid wraith]

hmmmmmm

[obsidian dagger]

I mean, it would be awful for everyone involved! But it wouldn't be that weird.

[frank light]

Makes sense to me

[obsidian dagger]

...I feel like School would make everyone write Valentine's cards to everyone in their class, though?

Or maybe not, since people would probably get left out inevitably, but something like that.

[fleet harbor]

Entropy 2 got really confused about Tanabata once and now everyone has to tie anonymous valentine's day cards to a christmas tree

[narrow tartan]

hmm. I should have pulled out the sun dried aardvark tongue swizzle sticks for stuff Attaris Two inherited from Lord Entropy

elevator spirits resembling beanstalks climbing buildings

[sleek socket]

Oh Karen I never asked but what did you think of her!

she's very self indulgent and silly

[frank light]

I should read more of her sheet but she is absolutely delightful!

[obsidian dagger]

True Gods seem to have a complicated relationship with metaphor, which is to say that they tend to be probably mostly literal, or at least unclear. Like, many-armed deities traditionally have many arms because each arm is a metaphor for one particular thing they can do, and they have so many because they're multifaceted, but True Gods are also literally many-armed.

Like, they make metaphors more literal, because they lack any orange arcs that can help them understand and interact with things on a metaphorical level, so they make metaphors literal. Like the idea of their internal mental world.

[frank light]

Their ability to bring metaphors into reality and vice versa manifests in their deepness and symbolic

Metaphors for their capabilities become literal limbs and they can also trap you in a painting

[obsidian dagger]

...the more I think about it, the more True God coded I Can Friday By Day feels.

[narrow tartan]

I remember Jenna's work being described as 100% literal and 100% metaphorical

[gloomy oasis]

Sounds about right.

[fleet harbor]

Yeah, I dunno who said that first, might have been Suki?

I definitely got it from somebody

But I tend to say it

Like

It's like: there's a guy, the King of Evil, who directs the war effort of Creation and has blood on his hands at all times.

That is so much symbolism and also it's completely literal.

"He has blood on his hands" yes well on the one bloody hand subtext is for cowards, and on the other bloody hand that itself is a metaphor

[fleet harbor]

Alright so this has emerged

Y'all know how there's multiple estates called Destruction?

For different meanings of that word?

I'd imagine there's a few Powers of Death and similar things, and they like ... try to keep things cordial between them? So maybe there's a Convention on the Powers of Death and Dying which Red is a member of (to her intense discomfort).

[vivid wraith]

oooooh

[fleet harbor]

@hollow spruce Hey is a spider who's also a psychopomp a spycopomp

[ancient lagoon]

i would argue that that's not them doing anything, it's just how their existence operates
if anything it is those other non-True God perceivers who are separating metaphor from reality at the higher levels

[vivid wraith]

weirdos

[ancient lagoon]

(of course, the Angels would say that their perspective is correct and the condition of the True Gods is either somehow caused by them or else unique to Earth in some other fashion)

[fleet harbor]

Imperators in general are beings made of laws, and maybe True Gods are a little more in touch with that than some?

Since they seemed to have formed at least semi-emergently?

[ancient lagoon]

are you implying that Firstborn, it that is Existence, would be wrong about the nature of existence?
surely angels are above such things as failing at introspection-
this feels like the seed of a good Glitch campaign

[fleet harbor]

Also

[fleet harbor]

There's definitely an identifiable theme in my Nobilis characters.

[sleek socket]

Anxiety?

[fleet harbor]

Naw. That's more specific to Red.

[sleek socket]

I mean I can't talk like half the characters I make also have a very specific sort of theme

[fleet harbor]

More of like ... interest in the nature of life and death and Creation's interactions with the Lands Beyond.

[sleek socket]

ahhh

[fleet harbor]

The first character I played was the Power of Void

[sleek socket]

Yeah novilis is a very good game for that

[fleet harbor]

Specifically void in the sense of infinite creative potential

Excrucians hated her Estate, but she was oddly sympathetic to them in practice and had an abhorrent weapon buddy.

[sleek socket]

I tend to recreate characters that had a phoenixian? experience

[fleet harbor]

The second was Robin, who is history's greatest necromancer, a willing traitor power, and generally fascinated by death and the void.

And Red Evening Sky is the Power of Endings.

[sleek socket]

where they metaphorically or literally die and then return to life as the ideal version of themself

[fleet harbor]

So like, there's an identifiable theme there, I think.

[sleek socket]

definitely

Lot of focus on well for lack of a better word

Entropy?

[vivid wraith]

no that's a different guy

[fleet harbor]

I think maybe like ... the romantic view of death?

Memento mori type of stuff

[sleek socket]

The concept not boss man

Vanitas?

[fleet harbor]

Not romantic in the sense of "death is good" per se but in the sense that there's a certain subtle beauty to how all that lives must die

Which is something in Jenna's writing that I engage strongly with

Robin was a little more extreme but has de-radicalized somewhat (or possibly radicalized in a different direction).

Reading Glitch messes with one's psyche in some fun ways, I think.

[sleek socket]

i feel like that one gag in uh

cultsim?

my brain has been so thoroughly poisoned by everything else I've ever read up to this point that i have somehow developed immunity to going more insane from reading things

[fleet harbor]

XD

[narrow tartan]

Strategist who quit the war getting addicted to social media and trying to defeat stupid stuff

[sleek socket]

ok contacts are being developed for cita

The previous power of sparrows went so unnoticed that they vanished from creation and nobody can find them

and that is how she has inherited her estate

[vivid wraith]

yesssss

i love past Power drama

[obsidian dagger]

Does Iruma (from Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun) have Become Somebody? I could see an argument either way, but a surprising number of plots seem to involve him randomly getting roped into something and then ending up going along with the flow (not least the latest one).

He almost certainly has Gatecrasher.

...probably, actually; I haven't read the mobster alt story but "this character takes on a similar role even in a totally different setting" is a strong indicator.

[narrow tartan]

I think. I had an idea for a noble whose predecesor became a mimic. And their Imperator grabbed a lookalike

[patent tiger]

How does a Noble end up becoming a Mimic, of all things?

[sleek socket]

transition, maybe

NtE

[frank light]

Strategist with the corpse of a mimic and a power they hate “you know what would be really funny”

[patent tiger]

Pitching the GM with the most dubious Greater Strategy possible

(A hotly contested title)

[candid compass]

Taking a wound for Hubris

[patent tiger]

The GM hitting you with one of the classic consequences for hubris but it's you who's the new Excrucian goes crazy

(The consequences of hubris as a mechanic are unfortunately an upside when you're traitors to Creation, as exploited by me in the Mimic game)

[sleek socket]

It's crazy that with 5 in a stat you can just do level 9 miracles

[candid compass]

That's the big thing about it, yeah

[sleek socket]

Ru do you think it's hubris to use treasure miracles on an anchor who is an excrucian

[patent tiger]

May that is like one of the first things I did in a Nobilis game lmao

That said - Excrucians are almost guaranteed to be miraculous anchors

So they aren't cheap to wield

Even at Treasure 5 you need to spend at least one MP for 'em

[sleek socket]

well I expect nothing to be cheap

[patent tiger]

(Which means they cut into your Imperial Miracle/Weaving Destiny budget)

[sleek socket]

Aside from 0mp miracles

[patent tiger]

The trick with buying a stat at 5 is that actually playing the game is incredibly free

[sleek socket]

wretched. I will have to determine other ways to poke holes in reality unwisely

[patent tiger]

You simply press your free buttons and casually distort the world around you

[candid compass]

Look, just get into trouble with a bond
Which your Treasures conveniently are

So really calling on a treasured Excrucian is win win

[patent tiger]

Yeah, damsel strats are incentivized in Nobilis for MP refreshes

[sleek socket]

wait

hole on ...

5mp for a treasure 4 miracle on the excrucian to trigger both my bond and affliction for a full refresh

[candid compass]

You will definitely solve problems and probably create new ones in the process

[patent tiger]

Usually you only regain MP from the single highest Bond or Affliction that applies

[sleek socket]

sometimes you just to create problems

[patent tiger]

So redundancy isn't that helpful there

[sleek socket]

it's still decent refunds

[patent tiger]

Verily

[sleek socket]

which can then be channeled into redefining birds

[patent tiger]

Treasure, if you invest heavily, gives you Strike on everything you do and MP refreshes

[sleek socket]

I will probably play treasure after domain

[patent tiger]

And the only source of direct "I am going to script this thing to happen" type powers

[sleek socket]

But I want to do domain first

[patent tiger]

Treasure builds are some of the most cracked you can get I think

[patent tiger]

Makes sense, yeah

[sleek socket]

Just because I find the scope comical

And more fitting

[patent tiger]

Persona is my personal favorite

I feel like it has the maximum weasel potential

[sleek socket]

I need to figure how to apply domain 9 of "snack on any seed"

there's definitely some really and truly regrettable actions there

[fleet harbor]

Yeah, the thing is that while any given anchor has a specific power, you can (a) do something somewhat different by going up one miracle rank, and (b) that's not really bounded by your estate.

[candid compass]

Treasure is very good yeah

And Flore in Glitch too

[patent tiger]

Glitch was the game I got to see in play first (as a GM, but still) and the allure of planning miracles are very tempting

And it's maybe possible to phrase Bindings or Motions in a weasely way so as to get something like them, but Treasure just has them

(Plus, Imperial Miracles doing two Deadly Wounds to tank and giving MP discounts makes them mechanically beefier than the other level 9s)

[fleet harbor]

Bindings and Motions are pretty crazy and don't take a long time

I think Aspect 9 is a little anemic, but Aspect 8 is crazy strong and 9 is where you bypass the limits of even that for a while

[patent tiger]

Yeah, Bindings have been a lot of fun to toss around

[sleek socket]

ok. loosely thinking but
"Eat the seed of your hatred" would go crazy

[fleet harbor]

Tbh I think the Treasure 6 miracle is the really wild thing to just be able to throw around

"Me and my rocket car bring peace and prosperity to Quebec"

But that is, as you say, the appeal of Planning

[patent tiger]

Yeah

Weaving Destiny is wild

...If I get a shot to play Nobilis again, I should do a proper Treasure spec

I tried one once, but that game was short-lived

[sleek socket]

how much hubris would it be to snack on the seed of creation and how many times should I be smote by heaven for it

[patent tiger]

Anfd it was very fun

[patent tiger]

Enough, and zero because it's a funny plan so you should get away with it

[sleek socket]

me when an excrucian baddie tells me to do something 🫡

*This user has been noted by Lord Entropy as an enemy of Creation and proponent of Love.

[patent tiger]

smh

[candid compass]

as you are of course very aware, I've been having a lot of fun with being able to just Design stuff on a whim 😛

but Divine Plan is also very powerful yeah

being probably significantly higher Flore than even most of the Nobles in our game is also pretty funny

[narrow tartan]

Mispoke. Meant deceiver

[patent tiger]

That makes more sense

[obsidian dagger]

I was looking for songs for arcs, randomly remembered one from an anime OP, and discovered that it sounds profoundly Bleak (some flashing lights but I don't think it needs a TW?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9RVh2bXA8M

[vivid wraith]

new Power orientation

[patent tiger]

Yeah

I work tirelessly every day to increase this number

...Actually - Strategist Bane that works like this

Most of the world isn't wrong but there's like seven assholes stalking you and sprinkling Wrongness Powder on everything you're about to touch

[fleet harbor]

That’s just gang stalking Ru

[sleek socket]

omg the Power of East Germany

[vivid wraith]

i really love chuubo's examples

[obsidian dagger]

since when does he use and/or need a magical stone?

[restive ridge]

Now!

[vivid wraith]

sometimes he likes trying things the old-fashioned way

[ancient lagoon]

maybe it's one of his Plot Devices

[ancient lagoon]

i'm thinking about Mimic Game
and how to make a game where everyone is Mimics
i have this idea that the characters are able to use the welken-law, or possibly some other magic, to communicate in a way that Powers and Excrucians alike can't track
they also probably pretend to be friends or enemies in the mortal world

it's probably Pastoral or Gothic, though I'm not sure if I can frame those XP Actions with the spotlight model

[patent tiger]

If everyone is Mimics, it's probably something like an espionage game

The party having to gather information and cover their tracks as the usual challenge and framing device

[ancient lagoon]

well, my thought is
them collaborating, three to six Imperators who actually get along and work as a team, would in itself be kind of suspicious, moreso if it's for nebulous purposes
and simultaneously it's probably not hard to cover one's tracks as a Mimic, or else they would be getting found out all the time
which, maybe they are, but that's not the thing i want to focus on, in the same way that Glitch explicitly gives the PCs a lower average Infection than you'd expect
It's just...the experience, of being an Imperator that isn't, and pretending and having Powers and faking whatever angels and giant snakes do
and also, the people that you can talk to about it, even if you can't show them your deepest truth

[gloomy oasis]

He throws the rock at your head.

[fleet harbor]

So much worse

[fleet harbor]

Shhhh! Everyone remembers the birthday hog, we just didn't want to say anything because cake is delicious and we're worried someone important will notice!

[obsidian dagger]

I have not played Disco Elysium and don't know much about it but Harry Dubois is Primordial and his limbs are... probably the skills? I know it's a whole big Mechanic where you define yourself based on the ideas others present to you. And I refuse to believe that he does not consume something highly inadvisable at some point in the game.

[obsidian dagger]

I just had an epiphany: Smoky the Bear, and all other such PSA figures, have Creature of the Light.

[vivid wraith]

Y'know I can see it

[obsidian dagger]

I was looking at A Sense For Sin, and how sometimes they get called to punish the sin and other times they get called to join in on the sin, but also one of the examples was "runaway children" and you could be drawn to runaways but then tend to protect them rather than punishing them... and then somehow my brain made the leap to fire safety.

[sleek socket]

ok

i have another insane idea for a power

the power of Phreaking

[obsidian dagger]

oh that sounds fun.

...I'm also thinking about time-limited Gardens. Which seem a bit weird, but intuitively it makes sense that someone's Garden could be a night market with stalls set up all through the strees, and also that during the day the stalls would all be taken down and the Gardener wouldn't control much of anything.

[vivid wraith]

I guess they're already limited in space

[obsidian dagger]

Yeah. It's a very weird thing, and potentially risks bad player feelings to sometimes not really have a garden, but also when I try to imagine how it'd work in practice it kind of just Makes Sense.

...I say that, but half of the things I'm imagining this character doing might be better-served by Spiritual or Star Quality (where you can see into the parts of people's hearts that run festival stands at night, and the rest of them is opaque to you).

[sleek socket]

phreaking...
... is forgotten.

[obsidian dagger]

Side note: a lot of old dragons have Indomitable. You'd think they'd have more serpentine stuff like Creature of the Ash, especially when they're described as serpents or wyrms... but the difference between a curse and a poison is ultimately a matter of perspective, and (I get the impression that) a lot of them could tell if even a single coin was taken from their vast hoard.

[fleet harbor]

Case in point, I have no idea what it is >_>

Child of the Ash is also about being a creature in the process of changing

[obsidian dagger]

basically spoofing dial tones to make free phone calls on a payphone as I understand it?

[fleet harbor]

So Indomitable seems like a better fit insofar as it's about not changing.

[sleek socket]

hacking a phone through the use of dial tone manipulation

[obsidian dagger]

I mean, a lot of mythological dragons (or... at least some of them) were originally people cursed by their greed.

[narrow tartan]

I wonder. Could i roleplay a villain?

[patent tiger]

Presumably

[narrow tartan]

Yay!

[ancient lagoon]

by transforming and devouring Enormous Quantities of Drugs, Harry DuBois develops the Amnesia limb

[obsidian dagger]

I actually think that’s what defeat (or, correspondingly, losing all your health levels and thus your limbs) might look like?

When limbs are personality effects, that is. Which they explicitly can be.

[ancient lagoon]

probably

[frank light]

Gatecrasher actually tbh

[narrow tartan]

Oh. I had a drean which mashed up Nobilis and what I think was JJKS. Or something with the vibes of Jujitsu High before the shibuya incident.

But. It involves some people running around sometimes contacting nobles. Which were called spirits.

And. The Nobles were very scary. And if you got their attention they would be hard to avoid.

[frank light]

Ooooo

[narrow tartan]

Like. The dream said something like, "You need about twenty-four top level fighters to have a chance fighting one [of them]"

And. Veiwpoint character contacted one by messing around with a book. But i think the one contacted was a jerk. But willing to listen

[narrow tartan]

Warmain creating shards to try out different hunting styles and personalities

[frank light]

Death was born first. There are many faces and many shapes to Death, but as you and I would regard it, she was born first.

It was a strange time, a primordial time. When Death came to us we did not know what it was. We knew that there was nothing afterwards, but it came and it destroyed and we were left hollow and broken in its wake. We knew not how to understand it, how to *live* in the face of it. It was insurmountable.

And then Stories were born, and from its enormous 930 mile body came Endings and Gravity. It slithered through our worlds and from its rustling of space came weight and attraction and orbits. From its snaking between us and our moons came our understanding of space.

From its body came our Stories. From its motions came our fictions and the way we told each other what was. We told each other what could be, what might be, what never is but what that never is could be.

And from its body came Endings.

We could live in the face of Death, after that. We could see Death and live afterwards. We could tell stories about those we lost. We could tell stories about what they did. And that story would have an ending. We could say "after this, it was over", and it finally was.

It could finally End. 

-History of serpents, excerpt attributed to Sulili

I did a bit of writing for a nobilis thing, for the serpent of stories endings and gravity

[vivid wraith]

yesssssss

[frank light]

Endings being born after death makes the time before endings really weird

endings are part of our ability to grieve, here

but before them we couldnt say it was over

people would die and be gone from our lives but it didnt...end. the ghost of them haunted us

but we could finally say the story of their life, and say where it ended.

[narrow tartan]

Huh

[fleet harbor]

I like serpents.

[frank light]

they're quite nice

[fleet harbor]

Very snenevolent.

[frank light]

LMAO

[patent tiger]

I have too much hatred in my heart for serpents

But the good thing about liking them is they probably like you back

[frank light]

lol

[narrow tartan]

Mhmm. Exalted third circle demon showing up in Town.

[magic mason]

Warmain looking for someone with a beautiful singing voice

[narrow tartan]

Level twelve miracles are useful for reshaping the cosmos or getting a part time job

[fleet harbor]

That’s true

[fleet harbor]

Ligier absolutely bewildered by beings of miraculous power

[candid compass]

Ligier and Jasper should chat

Being both suns and all

[fleet harbor]

Now imagining Ligier and the UCS hanging out with Jasper and both feeling protective and uncomfortable.

[narrow tartan]

nodnod

I think. The thing that amuses me about it is i would have them as miraculous but.

But. The way people relate to the world in different settings is different

[obsidian dagger]

Reading a random fanfic and I'm not sure why this give de Montreal vibes but it does:

Going for a walk was an excellent idea with inspired implementation! Truly!

(note that the character in question has broken out of his hospital room and promptly gotten lost)

[vestal mist]

Yeah, no, that me

[ancient lagoon]

how should one play an Estate being excruciated
like
suppose that Lucifer dies
what does it mean that Pride and Persuasion are gone from the world
…well, the chunks of reality that fall under each of those are probably laid out better by their by their Properties than their english names
but then once you’ve come to that conclusion what do you do
do you shut down players who try to enact pride or persuasion
does everyone just have to remember all the time

[vivid wraith]

for behaviors I think it might still be physically/emotionally possible, but it just won't catch on. It won't become a repeated pattern

....object or nature estates are easier

[frank light]

One of the weirder ones is “ad hominem used to be a valid argument”

[fleet harbor]

I think it's gonna depend a lot on how the table is capable of handling it.

[frank light]

Which is weird because almost by nature it isn’t

But somehow there was a reality where it was

An actual valid argument

Somehow

[fleet harbor]

There was a moment in mimic game where there was a real possibility I would end up killing Mammon, imperator of Gold, Hunger, and Desire

Which would have sent the game some really strange places

[frank light]

Another one is “the rule of kings” as an excruciated estate, mentioned in a passage in some quest previews.

Now kings aren’t divinely ordained just rulers

[frank light]

Thank fucking god that didn’t happen

[fleet harbor]

And honestly I don't think I would have been able to run with that

Yeah

[obsidian dagger]

Thought: Creature of the Light's Well-Lit may invoke a moonbeam or sunbeam or conveniently reflective windows nearby, but all of that is in fact a post hoc rationalization for why the actor playing as you just recieved a spotlight.

[fleet harbor]

Yeah

You now have a spotlight, nature can figure out the details

[narrow tartan]

I realized. One of my strategist OCs would not be able to use Destruction on. The clown pirate from one piece

[obsidian dagger]

Randomly found a fic that is not Glitch but is very Glitch-coded, featuring a character who accidentally made themself immortal in a way that also gave them chronic fatigue, general chronic illness issues I think including memory issues, and also a total inability to benefit from any alchemical potions ever (this especially sucks since she is an alchemist and is fully capable of brewing potions that would manage her other symptoms).

also it did not make their wife or child immortal.

I feel like there ought to be at least one arc whose idiom strongly includes healing powers that specifically don't work on the person with the powers, but I suppose that's just... a common interpretation of Wounded Angel.

still not quite as Strategist-coded as Josef from The Ancient Magus' Bride, but up there.

[ancient lagoon]

thinking about this more for pride and persuasion in particular
if, say, Persuasion...
:: slithers through defenses
:: glints and gleams
:: seems harmless
:: brings you to its side
:: uses words alone*

then possibly it's intrinsically harder to get people to lower their defenses through words alone, or to manipulate someone with them in a way that seems harmless
Players can enact the same actions that they would in a world where it did exist, and arguably there's IC justification since miraculous beings will remember it having existed, but they'll have reduced effect

*persuasion often goes hand in hand with trade or bribery but this version of Persuasion is explicitly a separate thing, which you layer on top of that (or use on its own)

i don't know if this solution works great but like
it is a concept that I would have some idea how to arbitrate as the HG

[fleet harbor]

Meon

I’d love to know what subreddit this is from

[frank light]

True

[patent tiger]

Meeeeee

[narrow tartan]

Ruler with divine warrant (cannibalism)

[obsidian dagger]

I think that pertains to a particular brand of heroic vampire where their feeding upon people is treated as harmless, or where their theft from blood banks is treated as a victimless crime.

[narrow tartan]

oh thats interesting

[obsidian dagger]

Like... think of how often a good vampire says "oh I just use blood from blood banks" and the narrative treats that as total moral exculpation. Or they only feed on bad people. Stuff like that.

Alternatively it applies to ancient tyrants who, for Nonsense Fairy Tale Reasons, are required to commit cannibalism but somehow their population just puts up with this.

[narrow tartan]

Ooh. Face made of faces.

[fleet harbor]

snrrk

[narrow tartan]

Legs as a universal human feature is a relatively new invention

In the old days most women were more akin to daleks

[grand knot]

Communication is violence
So is perception
So is existence
Oblivion shall free all from this prison into the glorious Kingdom of the Not

[patent tiger]

So true

[obsidian dagger]

Just envisioned Principal Attaris II doing the villainess laugh (she is, technically speaking, evil, after all). You know.

She's kind of the only Chuubo's character who I could imagine doing that. Maybe the Rival version of Dulcinea de Montreal, but even then it doesn't quite fit. Or Seizhi if they fell in with a really bad crowd, maybe, but it'd be a sign they were losing track of who they were.

Shoukyou might do it to be goofy, I guess.

You would think it would fit Miramie, and it almost does, but it's just not quite right.

[frank light]

omg perfect

[obsidian dagger]

Strange thoughts: a Creature of Fable might be the only singular person in a superhero costume in an otherwise normal setting (possibly with superpowers which it's surprisingly difficult to prove they don't have), but in any sort of superhero setting where most characters have costumes, a Creature of Fable would be most likely to be the one singular character who just looks like an ordinary person in a trench coat.

[vestal mist]

So Constantine

[obsidian dagger]

basically, yes. Although I think he arguably wants Gatecrasher more?

Either way, I think that a Creature of Fable's signature outfit... well, it isn't always out of place, but they're a more interesting character when it is (or, rather, are more noticably on Creature of Fable).

I keep forgetting Renegade can also get you a costume.

[obsidian dagger]

Rediscovered an old song which feels really Bleak-coded. Like, "we're fragile and can never succeed and reality is corrupt and flawed, and it's better to join a force that will make everything equal in nothingness than to live with this hopelessness and weakeness". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9RVh2bXA8M

I think that's the core thesis of what the Bleak is. It's not pain; it's numbness. It's a rejection of the idea that things could ever be better. It's looking at the pain of the world, and saying that the only alternative is emptiness.

And the Strategists are right to say that the world is painful, and the Decievers are right to say that a better True Thing could exist if not for this world, and the Warmains are right to say that there is a beautiful thing in this world worthy of preservation even should all else be winnowed away, and the Mimics are right to say that a livid blasphemy burns away at the world and is burnt in return. But the trick is to know that truth and know that, despite all that, the world could be a beautiful and good place. That's what Making Answer to the Bleak means.

[grand knot]

Attaris II with ojou ringlets

[grand knot]

To accept and rebel against meaninglessness and the absurd

[fleet harbor]

How very excrucian

[gloomy oasis]

I posted it here for a reason.

[fleet harbor]

This is somewhat complicated by gestures at Ninuan

[frank light]

Tbf the bleak academy is Death’s thing and his philosophy

Ninuan itself is…beyond that

A far and sunless land

[fleet harbor]

Yeah, and insofar as the bleak is one thing, it's a particular guy's thing, and I'd hesitate to put all Excrucians under that heading

But also bleak effects are kind of an umbrella concept and I don't know that they even strike me as uniquely excrucian

[narrow tartan]

IIRC i saw something about how tje Bleak tag gets applied to "unfair" powers

[obsidian dagger]

It's actually somewhat unclear whether the Headmaster of the Bleak Academy even believes in the Bleak ideology, or if that's just a test. (I thought I hit enter on this.)

[narrow tartan]

Hmm. The Test of the Bleak

[obsidian dagger]

And the Bleak tag gets applied to unfair powers specifically when those powers reject wishes. That's why Cut the Soul from Creature of Fable has it. Also, having the Bleak tag is a detriment, because it implicitly says "this can be defeated by making answer to it".

[obsidian dagger]

Mrs. Senko explicitly believes this to be the case! The Headmaster is probably a Warmain, after all, and she believes his Test is finding those who can retain hope even after knowing the fullness of despair.

[fleet harbor]

I would say that most Excrucians do not really cleave to bleak ideology. Warmains in particular are actively invested in finding things of value.

But Strategists and Deceivers are pretty muddled, too

And the fundamental mimic position seems to be silent nonstop screaming in terror

[obsidian dagger]

There's an argument that literally nobody thinks the Bleak ideology is good or especially likes it, but that's the point. When you give into despair, you don't do it while singing about how awesome despair is and throwing nihilism parties. You do it because you think that it's inevitable, or because you can't imagine anything better.

[patent tiger]

I think we should throw nihilism parties

Despair rules imo

(This is the Aaron's Serpent Lord Entropy angle)

[obsidian dagger]

go back to danganronpa, Ru

[fleet harbor]

Aye but my point is that placing excrucians into the bleak box misses a lot of their weirdness and variety

[obsidian dagger]

That's fair. Iolithae Septimian, for instance, is many things, but I would not describe her current state of being as Bleak.

[fleet harbor]

Also some Deceivers definitely do this

[obsidian dagger]

I think... I think that some Excrucians are Bleak (regardless of type), and those that very decidedly are not Bleak are likely to be the ones who looked at the state of Town and declared victory and are solidly satisfied with the overall state of reality?

Because it's noted there's a reasonable Excrucian population in Town who have stopped fighting the war because they're convinced they've already won it.

I also suspect Iolithae Septimian makes problems for reasons totally unrelated to the Bleak Academy. Like, she also thinks that the Excrucians won the war! She's locked up for other, unrelated reasons.

[frank light]

I think excrucians are in general pretty bleak

But the void itself is…something outside that

The void includes the bleakness

[narrow tartan]

I imagine that a lot of the Excrucians of town are like footsoldiers rather than full void gods?

[frank light]

But there’s something beautiful in it

[frank light]

Like, they do wield bleak miracles. And judge the world as unworthy of living

But they each get some unique expressions of that

[narrow tartan]

And like. Some of them do become full void gods but that requires getting a scholarship to the Bleak Academy.

Bleak Academy as Ivy League school

[fleet harbor]

But like, I would not call Jasmine very bleak

If at all

Salute, apocynum!

[frank light]

its complicated

but she does believe that this current world is not worth it
because there's something more beautiful beyond it

then again though, she hates the Headmaster

so

[fleet harbor]

I would say her strong ties to Bluebell Park are also meaningful here

Since Bluebell Park has more ninuan vibes than bleak academy vibes

[narrow tartan]

Its interesting that. Wildlords are very self absorbed but also self reflective

[fleet harbor]

Alright but what does the fiddle with Cneph stuck in it do

[vivid wraith]

doesn't help you win bets, I assume

[patent tiger]

Fiddles are a type of musical instrument

Hope that helps

[fleet harbor]

Can you use the cneph fiddle to play violin

[obsidian dagger]

I am for some reason contemplating the possibility of using the Chuubo's system to make a Star Trek-inspired non-Miraculous oneshot game.

[obsidian dagger]

Has anyone here run, or played in, a Chuubo's one-shot?

[fleet harbor]

I think Karen ran one

[frank light]

I did

[obsidian dagger]

Do you have any advice, or tips on how you did it? I'd be doing this for people unfamiliar with Chuubo's so I'd be making their characters; I'm assuming just one anytime quest + one accelerated-style quest?

[fleet harbor]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1115788957289037844/1432063982809645106/48qtr1bmr5xf1.png?ex=68ffb103&is=68fe5f83&hm=06d8d81745e5caddcae6e3001807fa8ae0f787fc6d95cebec1b896cc07f0d67d&

Extremely Excrucian statement

[vivid wraith]

democracy dies because they fail to recognize me as lost royalty of the silvered lands so i have no choice but to wbh

[obsidian dagger]

Being a Creature of Fable is inherently a bit lonely; you see the world through your own lens, which you can explain to others but never truly share with them.

Although I suppose that's true of all qualia, so.

[obsidian dagger]

Huh. I thought Star Trek would be a Blue campaign, since it has a lot of uncertainty to it, but it's not epic. It'd be... Adventure Fantasy, probably? Since the characters are powerful and epic but much more human.

[narrow tartan]

Quests in an episodic story. Major goals are big moments. Quest flavor pops up in different episodes. Then when you finish a quest there is an episode about it.

[obsidian dagger]

Thinking about basic quests for Star Trek characters/archetypes. The captain might have an Orange basic quest with "I am a brave, competent, captain and leader"/(the academy didn't prepare me for this!). The engineer probably has a Gold basic quest, for when everything's spitting out sparks and you go Over The Top jury-rigging everything to desperately function. Maybe someone with a symbiont and a Green basic quest for Young, eager officer/Memories of ancient times or somesuch?

[fleet harbor]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/449651567948464128/1432269531379798096/crab.webp?ex=69007072&is=68ff1ef2&hm=3f4469e32f5871a99b00cec9e40c671e6ac9154b99ea7faabd664658ccbab272&

[gloomy oasis]

you can't share qualia
Skill issue, I can.

[fleet harbor]

Just gotta pick up the Awakening arc, really

[restive ridge]

Still thinking about Divine Warrant (Adulthood)

[fleet harbor]

Hmmmmm is it valid to have an Affliction version of Cool?

[patent tiger]

Well, it won’t do what Cool natively does since that opposed mundane actions, but I don’t see why not

[narrow tartan]

The tree of worlds fears its own death

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/no-heaven-of-mine-a-fallen-angel-quest.41815/

Really short quest i really like

It dier far too young

Offended by life in its vibrancy and motion – the tell-tale signs of entropy - the lords of Silence hopes to preserve Creation like an insect drowned in amber. They style themselves as the Last Kings, who will reign motionlessly over a quieted cosmos, for all eternity to come. If that is impossible, they will bring it to the final annihilation, so that all matter is rendered back into the perfect uniformity of non-existence. They are the champions of death and abolishers of rebirth.

Their power is entropy and death; with one hand they still the hearts of the living and with the other, they raise the dead to their will. They know the anti-language, the dissolution of understanding and shredding of mind. They are known as the Peacebringers for they follow the path of ultimate quieting. The angels that fall to the Silence can be told by their pallid demanour and merciful aspect. The ones that fall all the way through become gaunt monarchs of the dead, as inimical to life as they are exalted in death.```

The option chosen in the first vote for what has corrupted the angel.

Just. Cool cosmic stuff

Waged beyond sunset, the Western War is perhaps the least explosive of all the Fourfold. The Silence practices patience and consideration and the expanse of the Hadean Plain is such that not even the eye of Heaven can survey it all. It is acknowledged that in its far reaches, vast armies lie in stasis, waiting for the Final Kings to step down from their bleached-stone thrones and lead them against the battlements of Creation. Such assaults are things of nightmares. Extinct nations rise in entirety and march to war and hundred times-slain beasts are again animated and smashed into the bulwarks of the Celestial Host, not stopping until the heavenly fury melts them down to slag. Yet, such adversity would be nothing if not for the power behind it; over the eerily silent armies, mellifluous voices of the Final Kings spread far, promising peace and liberation from the failings of motion. Their lure is such that not even the angelic minds are fully proof to it: you are an evidence of that. But it is not enough to reject their bleak gift; in their dread presence, common life is snuffed as easily as a candle and immediately brought under their command in death. Those who – through their celestial nature – resist this deathly command are still weighed down, rendered sluggish and susceptible.

Not mine

[patent tiger]

SO true

[fleet harbor]

"God is dead, and we have killed him. Good job, us!"

[obsidian dagger]

For a Chuubo's one-shot, I'm giving each character a standard anytime chibi-quest, as well as one other quest. Should that second quest also be an anytime quest, or should it just be a small storyline quest?

[vivid wraith]

For a single session? prooobably another anytime

[obsidian dagger]

It's probably going to be a single session. And if it's another anytime, that means making premades is going to be much simpler.

[obsidian dagger]

Green and Black sometimes blur together in my mind more than they should.

[frank light]

They’re deeply connected

[obsidian dagger]

I feel like they probably shouldn't be more connected than any other pair of colors, and their connection is an illusion? But it's a hard illusion to break, if it's there.

[fleet harbor]

Green/Black is a fun color combination even if the Golgari are a sucky representation of it

[frank light]

some stats kinda are a bit connected to eachother by nature

mystic and spiritual are about mystical, miraculous, and religious experiences

inherently so

i almost want to say emptiness and storyteller arcs also share a bit of connection

not in vibe but
i feel like theyre two sides of a coin

[obsidian dagger]

no yeah they make sense, but so do emptiness and shepherd

[frank light]

for sure

[obsidian dagger]

I'm still thinking about my pseudo-Star Trek oneshot (which I am going to run), and the basic characters for it, and I think I want to give each one some sort of "special sauce" in the form of a superior skill or a magical skill or a bond/affliction? But... hm. I don't want them to be complicated but I also don't want anyone feeling like they got a worse character.

Also one of the characters is Phil from Undead Unluck! The science officer is basically just a brain and a minimal amount of biological tissue in a robotic frame.

I definitely want at least one character with each color of quest somewhere.

[ancient lagoon]

i might be wrong but i think that Jenna herself thought they blurred together a bit too

[obsidian dagger]

So. I'm making a character to be played in a oneshot, and giving them two anytime quests, and I want to make sure they aren't too similar to each other. The specific quests are:

• A Green quest with a card reading Disciplined/Bloodthirsty, notionally their chibi-quest.
• An Orange quest reading "Proper, Respected Officer"/(I'm just a dirty thug.), notionally a shortened version of their storyline quest which they would at some point move past (but I'm not expecting them to in a one-shot).

I may end up changing their core vice to something other than bloodthirstiness, which might differentiate the quests more?

I was doing it wrong and figuring out quests because for some reason I thought the quests suggested by arcs were all storyline quests. Nope! They suggest anytime quests too, and I should use one of those.

[obsidian dagger]

...no, I stand by giving them a custom mini quest, because I'm using only mini quests for the one-shot to minimize the amount people have to learn and keep track of.

[obsidian dagger]

Hm. Coming up with XP actions for these characters is, somehow, the hardest.

[obsidian dagger]

On an unrelated note, I think I found a rare example of a character with Accursed 0 or maybe 1 but just recently. They haven't fallen from the world fully yet (...I think; they sure do spend a whole bunch of time in this arc being stealthy and minimally interacting with people, though!), and they have a power which is not quite a power of unmaking yet but which is definitely in that general direction and which I could absolutely imagine evolving into something closer to the World-Breaker's Hand.

[vivid wraith]

oho?

[obsidian dagger]

The more he tried to hold onto the world, the more his soul found things it rejected.

I don't want to spoil it because it's good, but it's just... very weird to see happening in front of your eyes, you know? Especially since Accursed doesn't look much like Accursed when you're not actively in your Sanctuary. ...and also strange because this character's Sanctuary appears to be "using a stealth technique to hide from everyone, because otherwise I end up entangling myself and the people I deeply care about in Politics".

...honestly at first I just thought that one line was the only evidence for it, but the more I look, the better it fits this character.

Also of note, the events immediately before this... I mean, they could be considered Orange, but they could also be considered Silver, and the crux of the arc is basically "trying to turn my soul into literally anything else that doesn't reject reality". And, of course, they failed.

Actually I think this character arguably fits all the Strategist arcs. They don't look like a Strategist at first blush, but they definitely do Blue stuff, and they certainly wouldn't mind Renegade's self-healing abilities.

...and, actually, they do actually do a few things that could be interpreted as Strategist stuff, come to think of it.

...I say that. There's also an argument for Warmain arcs for them, weirdly. But that one line is very Accursed.

[narrow tartan]

Him as a strategist goes hard

[fleet harbor]

Sharing Red Evening Sky here because she is a much more tweaked character than I usually make and also I think she's funny https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8rTZLl0ZllhBvRrpl3XomUsIo7HjKWFWpul1mj5bRQ/edit?tab=t.0

[narrow tartan]

Should we excruciate D&D 5e?

[narrow tartan]

False aaron's serpent. Titanic snakes that arent imperators.

[obsidian dagger]

Shouldn't those be legless lizards, then?

[narrow tartan]

Nah they are snakes. They have just evolved to resemble aarons serpents in order to fool predators

[obsidian dagger]

oh, funny.

[vivid wraith]

predators???

[wheat cobalt]

yeah

like weasels

(not magic weasels, regular weasels)

[fleet harbor]

Weasels can defeat larger prey using a hypnotic war dance

[narrow tartan]

But they know that eating aarons serpents is bad for the enviroment

[narrow tartan]

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/d6gBu2Zd7Bc

Typical Rulelords experience

[fleet harbor]

Wait what does the kid say?

I can’t make it out

[candid compass]

A knife

[fleet harbor]

… yeah okay I’ll buy it

[narrow tartan]

Noble of pigs. Or maybe ham. Song of the dark. Wants to upgrade more animals

[patent tiger]

Yoooo

[grand knot]

Strategist trying to twist baseball

[obsidian dagger]

Honestly this feels more like something a Deciever would do.

Seeing occult symbolism, but only able to convince others of it if they were inducted. ...that, or an unusual Power of Baseball who views it as a ritual (which it is).

[vivid wraith]

The Symbols Read by Deceivername

[fleet harbor]

And we’re back to Summerland XD

[obsidian dagger]

oh yeah Summerland, that was good and very Chuubo's.

[narrow tartan]

Logically. The mimic serpents are known as Pharaohs Serpents

[vivid wraith]

ha

[obsidian dagger]

Thinking about giving the Storyteller character a quest where they get to boast about how they actually went through something similar to this in the past... with an explicit note that the stories being told do not have to be true or plausible, and that if they're ridiculous and contradictory that's just as fun.

for my one-shot, I mean. Although arguably that's a Red chibi-quest and I want each character to have two different quests...

[tall jolt]

I bet a noble of being a Contrarian would be fun to play.

[narrow tartan]

Noble of Manslaughter

[fleet harbor]

Not a chance.

[obsidian dagger]

I did once have an idea for a Noble of Bullheadedness! They were a commander in the Great Emu War, on the side of the emus.

[narrow tartan]

Unhinged tired thought: Wyrd and Vastness are similar

[obsidian dagger]

They're both Sickly, so that makes some sense.

[vivid wraith]

Expans on this

[obsidian dagger]

Both are about not being at home in the world because your real home is estranged from normal existence, I'm guessing?

[vivid wraith]

Vastness is Immortal

[obsidian dagger]

why did I think it was Awakening? It's Primordial. What am I on about?

[vivid wraith]

Vastness is Child of the Ash

[narrow tartan]

My tired brain line of thought was. Shattering resembles Moodsplosion

As i sai.d it was tired brain thinking

[obsidian dagger]

Moodsplosions are frequently not harmful. They absolutely can be but they can also be entirely beneficial.

[narrow tartan]

Yeah.

Agreed.

This was me being too sleepy

contemplates what animated jenna moran setting would look like

[vivid wraith]

lord entropy fancam real

[patent tiger]

I would do this

[fleet harbor]

You know, I can see it, insofar as both are about having a troubled relationship with oneself in their Chuubo's iterations

They go different places and have different tones but

In both cases, one starts not knowing quite what to do with one's own nature

[obsidian dagger]

The same is arguably true of Green arcs, and sometimes Orange arcs depending on how you define "one's own nature".

[restive ridge]

What would the pokemon evolution of Nobles be

[narrow tartan]

The evolved form of nobles

Royals?

[magic mason]

the obvious thing is "Imperator of their estate"

The alternative route is a sort of Song Of The Wild thing

Wheree Nobles start off as Humans(or whatever) with Divine Superpowers and sorta grow into Acting Like A God

[fleet harbor]

That is a fascinating question

[ancient lagoon]

I have known about Shed Scales for like 5 years and I just now realized the pun

[vivid wraith]

hehehehe

[obsidian dagger]

yeah it took me a long time also

[narrow tartan]

False-hydra whose name is Overused

[ancient lagoon]

so there's a bit in The Far Roofs where it mentions that, for a roof-settlement, you should generally think about where it gets food and water and supplies from
but it occurs to me
I have no clue what the rats eat
like, on the Near Roofs

...I guess it's some combination of fishing and food from the lower world that would otherwise be wasted?

[obsidian dagger]

There are also vending machines, I think?

[ancient lagoon]

is there anything in, like, Docks of Big Lake or Legendary 139 that talks about what Fortitude Rats eat

[obsidian dagger]

I mean, I made a list of random flavors for the purpose of determining the flavors of strange vending machine offerings, so I think vending machines are canon?

[ancient lagoon]

yeah i think that is

on the Far Roofs

[obsidian dagger]

Ah. I may have misremembered.

Probably a combination of fishing and lower world food, then? Especially since they do not require that much food, since they're physically small and also have very low population density.

[narrow tartan]

Trained crows bring stolen cash. Then use those to pay for vending machines

Alternatively. They trained a dog to put leaves into the vending machine for them.

[narrow tartan]

Basic ruleslord personality types.

1. Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss.
2. Genuinely friendly but extremely manager brained.
3. Caring but distant father.
4. Public schoolteacher who is just done.
5. Friendly neighborhood technocrat.

Hmm. 5 is too similar to 2. I had w different version that felt too mean

Wait

6. Professor X with surprised pikachu face.

[patent tiger]

I wrote one in my Glitch campaign who's an aggrieved tradwife

[narrow tartan]

Oh thats a good one

[candid compass]

she's very annoying

[fleet harbor]

Yo if El Ahrairah is an Imperator what are his estates

Let's assumes Rabbits are a given

"El Ahrairah, The Prince With A Thousand Enemies" sounds like an imperator

[patent tiger]

Consider:

The Thousand Enemies Of Prince El Ahrairah...

[fleet harbor]

I've pondered Strategist before

You speak true that could be a pstate

[vivid wraith]

https://www.deviantart.com/ponytailedslacker/art/Nobilis-Stone-Cold-Eeyore-204763270

does that not embed

[patent tiger]

I-

What is the context for this

[vivid wraith]

Stone Cold Eeyore

[vivid wraith]

I just think she's neat

[patent tiger]

Wow

[vivid wraith]

(neither of these are the third phone-associated miraculous entity mentioned in Glitch)

[fleet harbor]

What does she do now that most public phones are gone

[vivid wraith]

Mostly that just increases your odds of finding the right one

[fleet harbor]

Thought: it's now borrowed phones

It can't be your phone

But it can be a stranger's cell phone that they lend

[frank light]

we dont like that guy

[vivid wraith]

https://fairiesrpg.blogspot.com/?m=1

[ancient lagoon]

session 2 of the far roofs went well
three seperate players licked the cintamani

[obsidian dagger]

incredible. Was it at least a giant glowing popsicle? (That's an unnecessarily obscure reference.)

[fleet harbor]

Nice

I do love that one of the most powerful tricks in Nobilis is to just talk to people.

Very few miraculous defenses against that which don't involve clamping one's hands over their ears

[patent tiger]

Glorious sweep

[fleet harbor]

Tragically Glorious compromises this approach when dealing with those who can resist it

No the real trick is to talk like a real person :P

[obsidian dagger]

Funnily enough I made a character who specifically counters that, or at least an idea for them in Chuubo's, with the affliction "If I speak to you, you can tell what I'm saying". This character primarily uses it to stand on distant rooftops and whisper to you about how he's responsible for all the problems in your life.

and you just have to ignore him! You can't cover your ears or drown him out or anything. Just ignore him. He will come to you when you're looking for someone to blame for your life's problems and he will present himself but if you try to fight him the fight will keep going until you die of exhaustion.

[fleet harbor]

Just gotta find him and punch him in the face

[obsidian dagger]

That is in fact the exact wrong thing to do, actually. He'll even offer you a dueling sword if you want to use one instead of fistfighting, but either way, you will keep roughly even with him in a fight and keep almost winning and almost winning and almost winning up until the point you physically collapse.

Also the top half of his face is protected/obscured by a tangled mass of curling horns, which probably wouldn't help.

[fleet harbor]

spends 4 MP Legendary Master, go! (If this fails I will be out of luck)

[obsidian dagger]

Hm. I think that if you are trying to swordfight he might still win, since he's Warmain-coded and has Indomitable. But to punch him... you probably could? But I doubt it would help.

Because when he claims responsibility for all of your problems he is not being honest. He is Azazel, who is named Abomination, and he represents seeking out an opponent to blame for your failures rather than putting in the slow, boring, hard work to work on fixing them.

He represents seeking a Gold or Red or Orange solution to a Purple or Silver problem. If you go looking for an enemy to quest against, he will present himself.

[fleet harbor]

Natalia does all of that anyway she just thinks he should shut it >_>

Jen ... hm, how would Jen react

Jen already has voices in her head claiming responsibility for her problems and they're telling the truth, so she would probably do opposition research and then find him in order to talk about all of his failings.

"Go, my evil librarians! Bring me the file on this one jerk!"

[obsidian dagger]

I feel like she might not fall into this particular trap, honestly? Like, you invite yourself into a Unicorn story by esteeming someone or something too highly, and you invite yourself into an Azazel story by looking for someone to blame.

Because Azazel does not actually do much besides trying to trick people into fighting him, and certainly doesn't do half the stuff he claims he does.

[fleet harbor]

Jen already has someone to blame and it's herself -_-

Technically it's Jonah Magnus, but she's trans amnesiac Jonah Magnus so that doesn't help

[obsidian dagger]

That is... a way to beat Azazel! It's not good. I'm not sure if Azazel is literally a Warmain, but I think turning to Azazel and saying "no, you can't say everything is your fault and you need to be punished for it, because actually everything is my fault and I need to be punished for it" would probably be how you pass his Test.

[patent tiger]

I would literally never do that

I will exhaust every single other mechanical option before doing that

[ancient lagoon]

rather than describe its taste i decided to invoke a Transition and read excerpts of For the Fallen

[vivid wraith]

yes

excellent

[obsidian dagger]

honestly that seems correct

(the popsicle thing was a refeence to the Daniel Pinkwater novel Borgel by the way)

[narrow tartan]

Hmm. If. A Strategist has a destruction that is physical how powerful should it be?

[patent tiger]

Depends what you mean by "powerful"

Like, it is an instamurder power that anything nonmiraculous just cannot deal with unless it's well-loved

[narrow tartan]

nodnod

Basically. Thinking about the park ranger strategist dying of climate change.

Their destruction is hitting something with all types of weather simultaneously.

[obsidian dagger]

I realize I made a Red character whose core thesis is basically this: https://xkcd.com/877/

xkcd: Beauty

The best hugs are probably from hagfish, which can extrude microscopic filaments that convert a huge volume of water around them to slime in seconds. Instant cozy blanket!

Turns out, "extremely smart scientist" and "reacts to every new thing with wonder and awe" are not opposites!

[grand knot]

Yeah "scientists/scholars are against wonder" is a take by shitty writers

[grand knot]

Yeah
You can have shadows dissolve things, the target explode, a mini black hole consumes it

[patent tiger]

I have one who reveals that things are just stage props - someone was a cardboard cutout, the locked door was just a trick door, etcetera

[grand knot]

Incineration
The target fading into contained but potent flames

[narrow tartan]

-Acid Rain. Blast thing with universal weather. Can destroy a lot of stuff but it doesnt annihilate.
-Unstitching. Unravels people (and with Wailing Rite objects). Ive always conceptualized this as short range.
-???. Melts things the strategist can feel to slush. Can be used to defend against physical force. Destroy physical objects and people. With Wailing Rite it can do weird things to emotions.
-Red Queen. Treats reality like a video and edits the user out of it. This can be used for weird time manipulation and trickery.
-???. Destroys someones history. At the lesser level it just makes things vary confusing. But the greater version can just outright wonderful life people.
-???. Selectively causes death through the medium of the users blood. A drop can be lethal.

-???. Reveal something as rotten and essentially already dead.

[obsidian dagger]

The Hollow Knight (not the Little Ghost, the big one) is so clearly Wounded Angel. But the more interesting question is whether they're more like a Fallen Angel or a Mimic, because there's a strong argument for both.

[fleet harbor]

The meanest combination of arcs is Wounded Angel and Indomitable

Season with Ace as needed.

[obsidian dagger]

How so? I think I understand but I'm curious what you think of it.

[narrow tartan]

Chuubos but its Phineas and Ferb.

Wait. Leonardo Doofenschnirtz

[vivid wraith]

yeah

[narrow tartan]

Wait. Candace and Creature of Fable from the point of veiw of mom

[fleet harbor]

Just in the sense of being able to throw around a phenomenal amount of bullshit.

[narrow tartan]

And. Leonardo Doofenschmirts is probably on a Troubled arc.

Or has some of that already

[fleet harbor]

If you made players contend with an Indomitable/Wounded NPC they would scream

[vivid wraith]

what stats did i give hearteater

okay Indomitable didn't reach the final draft

[vivid wraith]

https://bsky.app/profile/naomielizabeth.bsky.social/post/3m4vhwk2kjs2b

Naomi Elizabeth (@naomielizabeth.bsky.social)

If you’re looking for an interesting alternative to light, I suggest checking out shadows

Likes

176

Bluesky · Nov 5, 2025, 4:30 PM

[obsidian dagger]

would it be gilding the lily to give a character Optimism 2 and Bond : I always see the best in people (2)?

[fleet harbor]

Naw

I mean maybe in Chuubo's, where the focus isn't on being extremely optimized for doing your thing and then suffering a lot during bad matchups

[narrow tartan]

What if. Warship spirits were ship girls

[narrow tartan]

I think. I would be well suited to being a strategist.

The kind who does internal monologues the audience is somehow aware of

[narrow tartan]

Divine Warrant: ADHD

[narrow tartan]

Is professor layton a warmain?

[magic mason]

thaat seems accurate

[obsidian dagger]

...huh, yeah, he probably is (I do not know much about Layton).

Hm. I was going to ask "what kind of character schemes too much and hurts the people around them by not interacting genuinely" and then realized that is literally entirely what being a Strategist is.

[vivid wraith]

https://bsky.app/profile/tunditur-unda.itch.io/post/3m55qzokegk2c

F SHID caster (@tunditur-unda.itch.io)

i believe that somewhere there is a world of ice. there is nothing good there but you have go there anyway

Bluesky · Nov 8, 2025, 11:35 PM

[narrow tartan]

I think. One weird direction i thought of. Is. Beavers not really being their own things. The purpose of their existence is being turned into hats

[grand knot]

Red shoes strategist or deceiver
Strategist dying of performance and obsession, starting from when her mom got her into dance and bought beautiful shoes, and becoming a strategist upon her mother's death. She becomes more and more obsessed with things, until the shoes carrying her legs once again attach to her, and she either dances to death or cuts her feet off abd bleeds out

Deceiver
The red shoes of x

• Dance
• Grip feet tightly

[narrow tartan]

Proposal: we find the noble of sugar and force them to lower calories in sugar

[gloomy oasis]

Carmen Sandiego is absolutely a Noble, right?

[fleet harbor]

Carmen classic is definitely more of an Excrucian

The hero-ized version from the recent show ... I could go either way

https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-literary-criticism

[candid compass]

she feels Deceiver-esque

[vivid wraith]

I'm seeing one Warmain take

[frank light]

this is what it was like reading unsong

[fleet harbor]

?

[frank light]

unsong is a web serial about kabbalism and also deeply about establishing biblical parallels where biblical parallels were not intended

[obsidian dagger]

Oh yeah, Unsong, I need to get back to that.

Also Carmen Sandiego makes sense as some kind of Exrucian but I'm not sure what. I still remember playing the game where she stole language from people, and getting existentially disturbed when the voice on the radio devolved into word salad.

[fleet harbor]

That sounds extremely Deceiver

[obsidian dagger]

Yes, and that wouldn't be at all wrong for her. But I could also see Warmain reasonably well.

[obsidian dagger]

Extremely strange question: how would you represent the vulcan nerve pinch in Chuubo's? A bond saying you can do that, leashed to a standard skill to actually execute it? An implicit feature of Superior Vulcan? An affliction?

[vivid wraith]

feature of Superior Vulcan sounds right

for a little higher resolution, maybe a Gift/Perk for it

[narrow tartan]

Ninuan sounds nice.

Just. Vibing in the nothingness

Getting hugged through the correlative continuum

[grand knot]

Yeah

[magic mason]

https://youtu.be/gmNZIXqVJ_Y?si=e6fFbnykYM6ESwSN
Still one of my fav songs for gamers

[magic mason]

What do y'all think gamelord curses are like
Because they do have indomitable

[restive ridge]

Your Steam acc is banned and you always lose at Monopoly

[wheat cobalt]

mysteriously turned into a girl, a thing I definitely didn't secretly want and which I will huff and puff about if it's ever mentioned to me

[magic mason]

holy shit I can actually see the vision here

Like
Warmain indomitable curses are like "My demon arm is too good at killing peeople" and Gamelord indomitable curses are like "Oh NOOOOOO my romantic comedy anime premise curse is acting up again :("

[narrow tartan]

Author from stranger than fiction as a Gamer

[wheat cobalt]

right?!

fundamentally indomitable curses are like, "wish fulfillment but it's technically a curse, but not really"

smash cut to every gender bend anime

[narrow tartan]

Except she doesnt save main characxter or feel guilt

[fleet harbor]

You always win at Monopoly, but everyone hates you for it

[obsidian dagger]

I encountered a Warmain-coded character whose curse appears to be "being a peerless genius" and actually, it does sort of feel like a curse if you read between the lines.

Because... looking at Warmain arcs, there's a fundamental impression of loneliness. Allegory frequently isolates you from those around you by trapping you in a story, and Indomitable's curse doesn't directly hurt you but still isolates you from others. Even Creature of Fable is about having an understanding of the world which you can't share with anyone else. And then Impresario is the sort of balm to that loneliness, except even then, your friendships are Sickly and not of this world because they're fighting the pull of your other arcs.

OK, here's a toughie: is Satsuki Uruma from Otherside Picnic a Deciever, or a Warmain? I could see strong arguments for either.

...Warmain.

[obsidian dagger]

So there is apparently a new book written by the author of a webcomic I read, and the book's premise seems very Chuubo's:

Sawyer Lee is an illustrated middle grade novel starring an unadventurous kid who'd rather dig a deep dent in the couch than make a mark on the world, as many in his illustrious family of astronauts, scientists, spies, champion athletes... blah blah blah... have. He has decided that after generations of effort, it’s time to spend one lifetime relaxing.

The problem is that Sawyer keeps getting caught up in the exhausting expectations of his wicked aunt Celia, his complex relationship with his ambitious other friend, Angela, and the shenanigans of everybody else in town hoping to win the yearly Gourd Thump festival celebrating nature’s dullest vegetable.

In this tale of mystery, treachery, conspiracy, plant husbandry, and an imaginary love triangle, Sawyer knows it will take a regrettable amount of energy to escape these entanglements and find a way back to his happy place on Gary’s couch, with a cozy throw blanket, a steaming mug of chamomile tea, and an empty schedule.

[vivid wraith]

oh yeah very chuubo's

[obsidian dagger]

I mean, "hypercompetent person tries to avoid being involved in adventures" is not a new premise, and it can easily get very dull. But something about the middle paragraph in particular... like, this is what happens when Natalia tries to relax.

(not that she would. But if a hypothetical Ace did.)

[obsidian dagger]

...hm. Maybe Stop Hurting People is Primordial.

[narrow tartan]

I desire to destroy early medeival france

[patent tiger]

Time beat you to it

[narrow tartan]

Go back and kill charlemagne.

[vivid wraith]

https://bsky.app/profile/wascie.bsky.social/post/3m5f2aapmh224

Ms. Washywishes (@wascie.bsky.social)

Aliza and I have a blood pact to one day write a young adult fiction novel called The Ceilingers about the day gravity turned upside down and everyone fell off of earth except the people stuck on the ceilings and theyre called Ceilingers

Bluesky · Nov 11, 2025, 9:08 PM

[fleet harbor]

I think there's a part of Mary Poppins about this

[narrow tartan]

What is birds were also fruit

[fleet harbor]

Aren't they?

[fleet harbor]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuJqUvBj4rE&list=RDMMiqH5TKWrL3Q&index=10 Jennagame song

[restive ridge]

That one mutual who hasn't advanced one inch on the karmic wheel despite being on their eighth cycle of samsara

[fleet harbor]

Morgana, this is the World Ash, that's everybody

[grand knot]

I gotta explore samsara more before advancing the main quest

[narrow tartan]

Something. Causing damage to the past leading to the present rotting

An abscess in history

[obsidian dagger]

That feels very Actual-coded. Decay is an extant form of life, after all.

Also an argument that the Botfly is an Actual rather than a Deciever if I look at it from that angle, which is something I'm still not sure about.

[narrow tartan]

More. Hmm. Imagining it as a phenomenon. Than something tjat is distinct enemy.

Or maybe a strategists bane.

Watched cow hoof trimming videos. And. The past would be the hoof. The present is where new hoof is grown. And so a crack in the past can get infected and render the present weird

[narrow tartan]

I read a book that was kind of Nobilis but. Main character pretty much had spiritual (spirits) in a world where magic is based on spirits.

[vivid wraith]

oho?

[narrow tartan]

He couldnt do everything a Noble does with them. But he was capable of convincing an Ocean spirit to agree to a contract with someone else. And like technically the spirit could have like fouhht him. But he was favored by a goddess of spirits that they all owed loyalty to

The other options were: moving to another ocean and being torn apart by bigger spirits. And just dieing. (The sea preferred just dying)

The characters motivation consisted of: Avoiding his patron who wants to keep him close like a toy. And running up the bounty on his head to taunt his dad

[vivid wraith]

incredible

[narrow tartan]

Also their was worlds greatest swordsman with worlds greatest sword. The two dont get along because the worlds greatest sword wants to be used but the swordsman thinks that makes things too easy.

And.

Woman who has some Wounded Angel vibes. Being a half contained cage for a world ending force

[obsidian dagger]

Glitch pokemon really are just Actuals. If you take part of the fabric of reality, which was supposed to be working in the background and never exposed, and you interpret an arbitrary chunk of it as an Entity, it turns into an 80-foot-tall column of unreadable runes forever shrouded in twilight which freezes time as it sings.

[narrow tartan]

nodnod

[obsidian dagger]

And, like... they're not breaking reality maliciously. They aren't even necessarily consciously trying to break reality. They are just... a hole in the fabric of the world, gradually fraying wider.

...you know that one meme that's like "no pets/ok I will make an exception becausehe looks very polite"? That, but with Actuals and Seizhi.

This reminds me of my other stupid Seizhi-related idea, which is "Seizhi becomes convinced that the mysterious masked wrestler who keeps showing up to save them, and who seems to personally know them somehow, is Laodemus's 'partner' Aiden."

[narrow tartan]

Thats good

[vestal mist]

Is Seizhi the owner or the pet here?

[obsidian dagger]

it would be someone telling Chuubo "no Actuals allowed"

because Seizhi does, in fact, look very polite

[grand knot]

Missingno seizhi

[obsidian dagger]

kind of yeah. Look Into Your Local Error: out of bounds exception And You Will Find A Friend And Child

[grand knot]

Seizhi passing a school test with half an a press

Accidentally misaligns people's QPUs

[obsidian dagger]

So. I still need to watch a full playthrough of Silksong. But... Primordial is allowed to ask "what is <thing I'm becoming/embodying>" instead of "what is <Principle>", and I wonder if ||the crests are limbs representing answers to the question "what is a spider"|| (pretty early mechanic spoiler) because it would make sense for her to share True God arcs with the Little Ghost.

[narrow tartan]

...thats pretty cool idea

Bluh need to be smart and play skong more

Next week

[obsidian dagger]

Because the Little Ghost is probably a True God taking Primordial but with implications of Creature of the Ash and/or Awakening not being wrong for it, and I'm convinced Hornet is acively being Called Away to Pharloom but I'm not sure since I haven't seen enough of the game.

[restive ridge]

||They are not||

||What they are is a midgame spoiler for optional content||

[grand knot]

???

[vivid wraith]

Gamelord chancel right

[restive ridge]

100%

[patent tiger]

Slumping home dejectedly ‘cause I lost it all at the slots and no longer have the capacity for love in my heart

[grand knot]

Trauma center but you are doing surgery on the timeline

Excrucian strategist in Dispatch: she doesn't get downed, but rest takes longer
She can learn to enhance allies, specially when there's synergy

[obsidian dagger]

...whoops.

[reef perch]

midgame? you can easily wander into ||getting a new crest|| before you get the wall jump. midway through the early game, maybe

[obsidian dagger]

Yeah, I saw someone get ||their second crest|| and they looked pretty early game.

[vestal mist]

||Crests are early game. Lore on them is midgame||

[restive ridge]

|| Oh getting a crest is very early yeah, I was reffering on the lore of what they actually are||

[obsidian dagger]

Ahhh, okay. I was basically guessing about them.

[reef perch]

the lore's a bit later in act 1, maybe beginning of the midgame

[narrow tartan]

I once played around with. Excrucian strategist being dragged into a prewritten adventure by a deceiver friend who thought she needed a break

And. I played with idea of. The Strategist could sort of unfocus and see the different versions of the story. The paths innumerable games took.

[narrow tartan]

What would. Channeling the idea of batman be?

[vivid wraith]

Eide...?

[narrow tartan]

Like.

Someone who can invole the archetype of Batman and express the various forms batman has taken

[vestal mist]

That's just Leo, innit?

[ancient lagoon]

If it's specifically "doing things that Batman does", then Become Somebody (Batman)

[narrow tartan]

Mhmm i see

[ancient lagoon]

if it's "having a bunch of gadgets and being a superheroic detective while still ostensibly being a normal human" then probably Troubled/Eide

[grand knot]

Very fun

Game dev with excrucians

[narrow tartan]

Its. Specifically. Someone who can invoke the different versions pf batman.

[grand knot]

Library of ruina making me think of like, a strategist hanging out with a bunch of nobles, who try to help her deal with her issues

[ancient lagoon]

yeah

[ancient lagoon]

Become Somebody is probably still best for that
but it could maybe also be a weird version of Reality Syndrome? 1/chapter, you become a new Batman.
Gatekeeper (Batmans) would probably imply that you're taking Batmans from the Batman Dimension and binding them to yourself, which is weird, and also explicitly lets you infuse others with the powers of those Batmans
Star Quality is more suited to being a specific Batman
You could hypothetically like, do Sentimental (Various Batmans) with a Perk letting you channel them with your powers even though they're abstract ideas rather than things or people
Prophet (Principle: Batman) could work pretty well, since Divine Guidance and Materialization of Possibility let you do things in Batman's name and be pretty good at being Batman.

Or, Primordial (Principle: Vengeance, Element: The Night, Transformation: Batman), which lets you gain powers based on others' ideas of Batman, which sounds amazing but I don't think it's what you're going for

[magic mason]

Was combining my knowledge of multiple games in my head and came up with the phrase “infinite variety wicked mode”

[ancient lagoon]

i guess that over time Prophet (Batman) would lead to you gaining distinctly non-Batman-related powers which you still use "in Batman's name" and being able to warn people of terrible fates that will befall them unless they repent and follow the way of Batman and probably getting your hands on a mint condition Detective Comics #27
but who doesn't want to do that?

[obsidian dagger]

I think if you have Prophet (Batman) you'd probably say "this is happening just like in this one specific Batman comic, and if you're not careful a bad thing will happen to you just like it did in the story!" because if you are on Prophet (Batman), you are asserting that Batman is a fundamental force of the universe.

Which sounds like a Creature of Fable thing in some ways, but the two do go together.

[obsidian dagger]

Today in “convergent evolution of ideas”: https://youtu.be/y1km4mOL4-k (I have not yet watched this)

[fleet harbor]

For a second I read "guilt" as "guitar"

[gloomy oasis]

guiltar

[vivid wraith]

https://xenosagaepisodeone.tumblr.com/post/783664468102168576

real organic human experience

the world's first ethical yandere has died of a broken heart

Tumblr · May 16, 2025, 1:57 AM

[narrow tartan]

Ruleslord of Cancer, Tidepools Daffodils, and Quilting

[patent tiger]

A Ruleslord of Cancer is definitely not doing their job right

[narrow tartan]

Making a small change

They had no choice in their estates. And they are very old

[candid compass]

Maybe Cancer is an Estate they Rescued
Due to external pressure

[frank light]

maybe cancer is part of the drive of human life from replications and growth

a price we pay for having cells that replicate

[narrow tartan]

The drive to survive and the bitter truth of death

[fleet harbor]

Mutation is definitely a Rules estate though

[frank light]

NOOO

[obsidian dagger]

clearly the solution is to just be an ordinary boy instead

[ancient lagoon]

"Nightmare is a science. If I appear to interface with the numinous, it's because you don't understand what I'm doing."

[narrow tartan]

I dont.

[obsidian dagger]

Brain blast which I need to share: A lot of versions of Link have Called Away, as evinced by rooms locking you up until you clear them:

It is a standard game convention that when a character with Break the Boundaries receives emotion XP, something near them unlocks or opens.

(Also, you know, all the time he spends exploring strange places, gathering strange treasures, and being thrust into a new world. Sometimes he's on Allegory, though? Or on something orange at least, but probably Allegory.)

[obsidian dagger]

I think Link might be on Serpent arcs. He's frequently on Allegory and/or Called Away.

Also, yes, Link is technically a bunch of different people, but he's a single character, so I think it's fine.

There's also an argument for Gamer stats with Creature of Fable (he has a very signature appearance!) but I think Allegory is too crucial.

[narrow tartan]

Nodnod serpent stats are fun

I once imagined that a serpent game. Would be told in past tense except when you use spotlight

[narrow tartan]

I desire to trap the world in eternal stillness

[grand knot]

Lord manifestation imminent

[obsidian dagger]

Just remembered my idea for Fortitude NPCs who I might end up have existing in the background if I ever run another GMD campaign. They're octogenerian Jewish lesbians named Shelley and Ivana Goldburg. One draws, the other embroiders, and both of them do jigsaw puzzles and bake. If you visit them they will pinch your cheeks and remark upon how much you're growing, but if you put up with this you may recieve a slice of pineapple upside-down cake, or possibly a cookie with an almond pressed into the top.

They're just... people, basically. There isn't any grand secret behind them, or anything particularly exciting about their pasts (at least, as far as I know, but I might be wrong). The greatest danger they might pose is a cheek-pinching, or, if you're very unlucky, they might flirt with each other in front of you. They're just... they have no children, but somehow are nevertheless spiritually grandmothers.