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[awakenedsalamander]

[awakenedsalamander]

It’s been awhile, huh?

Well, Requiem’s on my mind again, so I have something to say.

I’ve previously discussed how I like the ways in which Kindred in Requiem are portrayed as more alien than one might expect— they’re warped by the Blood, made into a kind of metaphysical wound, a contradiction in terms: A living corpse.*

Kindred aren’t human anymore, not really. Humans don’t live forever. Humans don’t catch fire in sunlight. Humans don’t have the Beast gnawing at them, pushing them to kill and conquer and control. And that’s the horror, as I’ve written on and as the test makes abundantly clear: to look human, to maybe even feel human, but to be something else… it’s a nightmare, and the only way to ward it off is to act the part of Humanity, even as it decays inside you.

Maybe there’s some kind of redemption in what you pretend to be, after all.

But something occurred to me as I was rereading the corebook, which is how the Strix play into all that. For those not in the know, Strix are these shadowy owl things that very clearly have a lot in common with vampires, but unlike the Kindred were never human. And as such the Strix don’t have a pretense toward Humanity, they only bother with empathy insofar as it helps them prey on their victims, and they have no interest in compassion or justice or mercy, because all that does is shackle them.

What’s interesting to me, though, is that the Strix are shown to hate Kindred. They reserve especial anger and cruelty for their once-mortal cousins, and are said to go out of their way to torment them and show them how useless human morality is.

And like… why? Why should they care? The book mostly just says that the Strix are insulted by how vampires try to act like humans, but what difference does it make to the Owls? Shouldn’t that just mean the Strix get more mortals to prey on?

I thought about this, and I think the answer lies in the sections about how the Strix have a history with vampires. At first, I kind of read this as more Chronicles of Darkness mystery building (which I’m a big fan of!)— “the Strix are enigmatic, here’s some plot hooks about how they might relate to Kindred, season to taste, etc.”— but then I thought more about it.

If the Strix are tied to the early history of Kindred, if they’re legitimately the reason vampires exist into modern nights, if they might even be the founders of the Clans, then of course they’re insulted by vampires still clinging to their Humanity.

Think of it— in the old nights, before sprawling cities and labyrinthine conspiracies, there were outcast undead, hungry monsters without a future or a purpose. And the Strix, stepping out of the primordial dark, gave them a gift— they showed their lesser cousins the way to master their Blood and become something more. They share a bond with these vampires, and they grant them power to foster it.

And then the vampires crawl back to the mortals.

The “Kindred” pretend to be the very thing the Strix delivered them from. The Strix dragged these wretched dead out of despair to become like them, and they threw that all away to play-act at grief and penance.

So what is there to do but show them the same scorn? What else is there but disdain? What a joke, from the Strix’s perspective— to be delivered by monsters, and then to worship Humanity.

Perhaps the greater joke is this: The Owls, defined by their inhumanity, are driven by a very human motivation indeed: Jealousy.

*It’s interesting to think about this contradiction in relation to Geist. The Bound are also life and death brought together in defiance of the natural order, but they’re generally portrayed as for more human and “normal” than vampires are. The difference, I suspect, lies in the type of symbiosis at play. Geists and their Bargain are a form of mutualism, where the dead and the living agree to cooperate to resist the call of the grave. The Blood, though, infests and infects, it crawls into the veins of a corpse and forces it to rise. If the Bargain is mutualism, then the Embrace is parasitism and predation— and that makes all the difference.

[awakenedsalamander]

What’s your opinion on the Bale Hounds, Soulless Wolf, and the Maeljin?

Extremely good antagonists, best used as part of a variety pack of threats to the pack and usually being the penultimate or final one. I usually see tons of Wounded spirits or the manifestation of Maeljin servitors as being a warning sign that a territory is heading towards total ecological collapse and an issue that the pack needs to deal with now. They're rarely the problem in and of itself but a symptom that is going to make everything significantly worse.

All that said I think they can be kind of tough to do right. No werewolf is ontologically evil from birth in 2e since the unihar got thankfully written out of existence, and writing characters who are unforgivably nasty but you can still see how they ended up where they are is an art form that's difficult to do. On some level I think Maeljin are easier to handle just because their mentality can be handwaved as entirely alien, much like other spirits. They're driven to do horrible things and live out the anti-virtues of Exposure, Consumption, Disharmony, Invasion, and Destruction in the same way cordyceps have to infect ant brains. Horrible as it is, it's just how they are. A lot of times I'll just have Bale Hounds as werewolves who picked the easy way out. Doing what's right, especially as a werewolf, is hard. When most of the things you do are monster-y, completely embracing that is easy to do. They're still people at the end of the day. They had hopes and dreams and loved ones at some point. They might still.

(Though, those probably don't last for long. When the Maeljin want the world in ruin, it's best to make sure that their soldiers doing just that don't have things they want to save. So whatever those things worth fighting for might be, they either need to be twisted to serve the Maeljin or destroyed.)

Soulless Wolf is a fun one, though. In the mythology used in Wilmington and a few other cities in the South, Soulless Wolf is a Firstborn who traded away their Ab, Ba, Ka, Ren, and Sheut* to the five main members of the Maeljin, each one having one fifth of Soulless Wolf, which effectively wrote them out of the physical world. This made them more of an anti-identity than a real Firstborn. Their general concept of existence is still around but they aren't. So they do and don't exist at the same time metaphysically. Soulless Wolf is definitely not their real name and whatever their real name was can never be recalled or recovered because it doesn't exist. Whether or not this makes them an Abyssal entity is ambiguous but I'd settle more on the fact that they just really, really strongly resemble an Abyssal being.

*important footnote, the Uratha don't use those exact names but it's effectively what they mean, I just really like Mummy

[awakenedsalamander]

I think one of my favorite choices the designers made in Chronicles of Darkness is in regards to the Scelesti.

When a Scelestus commits to the Abyssal Path, and ventures to their Ziggurat to embrace their new destiny, they replace their Wisdom stat (which roughly measures how responsibly and carefully a mage acts) with a stat called Joining (which roughly measures how close the mage is to the Abyss’s corruption).

Joining is always a deliberate thing, you can’t accidentally enter this stage of the Abyssal Path. And unlike earlier instances of antinomian sorcery the Scelestus might have performed, Joining can’t be done in ignorance— you always know what you’re getting into.

You increase Joining by performing yet more monstrous acts, usually involving destruction, cruelty, defilement, or other such blasphemous behaviors. They slowly become bigger and bigger, until the Scelestus is consorting with the most wicked powers of the Abyss.

It’s walking a path to damnation, and it’s considered one of the worst and most dangerous things a mage can even think about doing.

It’s also not permanent.

This might not seem like a big deal, but in a lot of CofD games, there are basically “failure states” where you are, at least for the purposes of the chronicle, permanently a villain. Turning into a draugr in Vampire, becoming a Slasher in Hunter, hell, going Rapt or Banisher in Mage. It would be really easy to say that Joining is the same way, and it wouldn’t really disrupt much.

But they went another way with Scelesti. There’s a whole system for refusing the Joining, for slowly and deliberately stepping back from the hate and the cruelty and the despair, and giving up the Abyss for the sake of yourself and the people around you.

It’s really hard. Mechanically, you have to consistently act in ways that are largely very inconvenient and even dangerous. Narratively, few characters will trust you and even if you succeed in redemption— it’s mentioned that the Orders are incredibly reticent to even admit that people can come back from being a Scelestus, because they worry it makes young mages more willing to dabble in Abyssal magic, if they know it’s not necessarily permanent. It’s a painful way home, and you still walk it knowing the mistakes you made in the past.

It’s still such a beautiful thing to put into the game, though. You can consciously choose to be a monster, indeed, to be even more monstrous than your fellows, and to indulge in nihilistic hatred. And… you can walk away. You don’t have to stay that way.

You can’t change the past. Your sins are still sins, and they shall ripple outward evermore.

But they are your sins, and thus you alone can deny them a future. They do not grow further unless you let them.

I’m probably get overwrought about all that, but it’s something that always stuck with me. When I think of tragic monsters, and whatever humanity they might still have, I think of those few Scelesti who defied the Abyss, and came back home.

Tragic Monsters

I think something I like best about the World and Chronicles of Darkness is the potential for Tragic Monsters. As we all know, there’s particularly rough disagreements on the whole morality issue, and in many ways I lean towards the middle. Ultimately yes, I don’t think most characters can be good… by traditionally human standards. At the same time however, I do think it’s still possible to do acts of good, but they’ll never truly reach the same levels they had been before as far as overall morality is concerned.

But that’s the tragedy, because nearly every being, be they vampire or werewolf, mummy or ghosts was once a human being. It’s hard to truly take away that aspect from a person without years upon years of time, and even with the more alien moralities found in Chronicles and in groups like the Sabbat, you’ll still end up with someone who’s going to struggle with this new existence, and will likely follow their old selves to the best of their ability. This is something that helps define the tragedy, it bleeds sympathy into the characters during the start when they struggle to hold onto their sense of self, and it makes the actions they take, willingly or not all the more bitter as they come to terms with what they’ve become. How many have had their hearts hardened to adapt to new societies like the Camarilla and various Seasonal Courts, or lost themselves by becoming altered into a Deviant or dying and becoming a Wraith? How many lost pieces of themselves upon being transformed into a Deviant or a Changeling? It’s a sad thing, knowing they’ve become something else and likely won’t be able to experience what they did at one point for the most part. Only Demons and Prometheans really avoid this due to their unique situations but ultimately they too eventually end becoming more adjusted to morality due to Pacts/Possesion and the Pilgrimage but they’ll likely face difficulties in addressing it due to their statuses

Even those such as the Black Spiral Dancers, the Scelesti, the Baali and the Centimani aren’t above sympathy to me since how many truly embraced evil for the sake of evil? How many simply cracked and gave in, either because they were forced into it or they fell to despair and wanted the pain to stop? Can one feel compassion for the fallen? I think so, although perhaps I’m too much of a bleeding heart, but I believe even in the darkest corners can one find a glimmer of light.

[awakenedsalamander]

Hey I got acouple questions retaining the Awaking! Mage I have heard that Paradox is a non issue, is this true? Do you have any tips for making custom wisdom breaking points? Mages can bring each other back form the dead pretty easy using time shit form what I heard, what do you do for that?

Sorry for the wait!

So, regarding these three points:

1. Paradox in Awakening is not a non-issue, exactly, but it is a lot easier to avoid. You can spend Mana and use a Dedicated Magical Tool to mitigate it, for one, and even if you get a bad one you can usually contain it for just a little bit of bashing damage (which has to be healed naturally). That said, I feel that Awakening is designed to make Paradox less an ever-present problem and more a severe punishment for when you really go loud with magic. Like, if you do release a Paradox, even one success on the roll for it is bad news. Also, remember the rule that every time you risk Paradox in a scene, you add another die to the Paradox roll for every other time you did so that scene.

2. My advice would be to focus on the character in question, in a similar way you would for Integrity breaking points for mortals. What do they think is a cruel, arrogant, or selfish use of magic? What do they believe are lines that should not be crossed? It’s often different for every mage. You’ll find that some mages are really uncomfortable with using Mind magic to manipulate people, but others think that’s fine— yet burning someone alive with Forces? That’s terrifying to them. Never be afraid to ask a player if their character would really be okay with what they’re doing, upon reflection. I find players are often surprisingly honest in that regard.

3. There’s a few approaches with Time magic in general. First, it’s actually not that easy to just roll back the clock if you’re going back a substantial portion of time (i.e., more than a few hours), and repeated attempts can risk Paradox fast. If you want to lean harder on that as a Storyteller I think that’s fair play. Also, there’s a lot of potential Hubris in deciding who lives and dies by messing with the flow of time— I’m not saying don’t let them do it, but I am saying there might be interesting consequences to do doing so. As always with Awakening, sometimes the best answer is to respond to a use of magic with “Yes, and… it’s gonna cost you later.”

[awakenedsalamander]

Wrought Iron Gates formerly in the entrance to the executive offices at the Chanin Building in New York City, USA

Designed by René Chambellan in 1928

Later donated in 1993 to the Cooper Hewitt Museum by Marcy Chanin

Photo from Cooper Hewitt

[awakenedsalamander]

God this is good stuff. Love the Camarilla art in particular

As promised bonus cards for Anarch, Sabbat, Camarilla and Tal'Mahe'Ra!

[awakenedsalamander]

Since I was mentioned (thank you, by the way!) I will stop by to say that I do agree with the general notion that the Masquerade is actually quite stable in the modern day, in VTM and VTR. I know this discussion is largely centered around the former but there’s a section from the latter (it’s actually the paragraph immediately preceding the one I quoted in my referenced post) that I want to highlight:

Belief does not come into it. People can believe in the supernatural. They can even believe in vampires. Knowledge is the key. So long as the paranoid man does not suspect the bartender, the one he tells all his crazy theories to, is Kindred, his beliefs do not matter.

Vampire: The Requiem, Second Edition (p. 60)

I think this “there aren’t vampires on my floor” thing is pretty much exactly right. It’s not about what you and the other mortals think, it’s about what you do. The Masquerade isn’t your blissful ignorance, or your willful blindness. It’s your hesitation to pull back the curtain and stare the monster in the face.

Maybe there are things in the dark. Indistinct, hazy shapes that linger just at the edges of normal life. And so long as you’re too afraid to find out whether they really exist, or really even as long as you’re scared enough to just let them be things, and not find out what they really are… well, then the Masquerade is intact.

And it’s better for everyone that way, right?

The Modern Masquerade

the concept of the "Masquerade" in 2024 is kind of funny to think about, because I'm decreasingly certain it CAN be broken.

what if a vampire ran a livestream where they announced "Hi, I'm a vampire, and I will prove it," and then they use their vampire strength to tear apart some furniture or transform into an animal? we already had photoshop and CGI, now we have a culture of AI generation and deep fake videos. why should anyone believe that what they're seeing on-screen is real? it's clearly just a prank, or maybe a campaign for a new horror movie that some studio is hoping will go viral.

what if a vampire stood in front of a bunch of humans where they announced, "Hi, I'm a vampire, and I will prove it," and then waited for the sunshine of the dawn to set them on fire and destroy them in front of a ton of witnesses? we have real life events such as the Sandy Hook school shooting or COVID-19, with ample witnesses, physical evidence, and deaths, which people argue were "false flags", "psy-ops", and "hoaxes". the best case scenario is that folks will think this "vampire" was a sad case of someone with mental health issues who created this spectacle. the worst case scenario is that the witnesses are criticized as being in on the stunt somehow, as paid actors or cultish collaborators.

I'm not saying that there are no more consequences for a vampire who slips up and breaks the Masquerade. an individual or a Coterie can still catch the attention of hunters or Second Inquisition agents. maybe their Sect will help them clean the mess up and stay hidden, maybe instead they become troublesome and are abandoned or punished. powerless individuals still need to keep cautious. I'm just not sure that outside of an extended mass revealing event, humanity would be willing to believe the supernatural has existed beside them for so long, especially as misinformation has become so easily generated and spread.

[awakenedsalamander]

[awakenedsalamander]

@l-una-c’s character in a Werewolf: The Apocalypse chronicle I’m running!

Background beneath the cut - cw abuse

Klea Tends-the-hidden was born as a lupus to non-garou parents. One of the few wolf packs to still roam the Balkans, she lived a relatively isolated life. She was the runt of her litter, but possessed and unnatural cunning compared to her littermates, and was able to eke out a humble existence, and, eventually, ran away from her pack, where she started a new one with another lone wolf.

During her first pregnancy with a litter of cubs, Klea was captured by a group of poachers, following her curious interactions with one of their traps. However, she was caught, given her unfamiliarity with their methods. Caged, angered, she felt the rage boil up within her.

An hour later, a naked pregnant woman was found, in the snow, near the wreckage of a pickup truck which had fallen into a ravine. Unable to speak a human language and covered in blood, she was taken to a local hospital, where, in a stroke of luck, the nurse operating the ultrasound noticed the litter of wolf cubs in her belly. The kinfolk called the local sept, the House of Thunder, and they came and promply picked up the newly changed Garou, and helped teach her their ways.

Her cubhood was rough, to say the least, and she often faced derison and abuse, especially at the hand of the sept's men. She left the sept before she could be inducted into the Shadow Lords, and fled down to Greece, where she found a refuge and acceptance among the Children of Gaia, Black Furies, and Bone Gnawers. She ran with them for a year, learning a little bit about human society, and picking up an eclectic set of anarchist-oriented politics, and finding a love for music.

Eventually, she was drawn to visit America through a visit from Pegasus in her dreams, who told her that she must, once again, tend to the hidden things.

[awakenedsalamander]

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the dynamics between one of the Bound and their geist, the weird and terrifying intimacy of a body shared between its owner and a thing so changed by time and the essence of death it is nearly alien.

It’s the kind of relationship that is both incredibly distant and intensely personal. Two strangers occupying the same vessel, and getting glimpses of one another’s thoughts just by the sheer closeness of that.

From the Bound’s perspective, she is the specter always there, watching and judging him, replacing his conscience, since he can’t help but evaluate himself through her eyes rather than his own.

From the geist’s, he’s the still-beating heart that makes her remember the pain, the purpose, the potential— it was lost to her, but now he is what keeps her tied to this world that has changed so much over so many long, silent years.

Those perspectives blur, and while neither loses themselves, they do gain the other. It is horror, to never be alone; it is bliss, to never be abandoned again.

[awakenedsalamander]

Alchemists (Chronicles of Darkness)

I’m a lot of things, but one of them is a science person. I’m driven to learn about the new and discover the unknown. All reality is one great big puzzle, and I get to see how the pieces fit together in new and exciting ways. So in fiction, I tend to have sympathy with academics, scientists, and explorers. I will die on my bed raving about how science wasn’t the problem in Jurassic Park. The problem was capitalism.

But alchemists? Alchemists in the Chronicles of Darkness scare me. Alchemists are the dark side of scientific progress, which transgresses and doesn’t care about the harm it causes. Alchemists are the western tradition’s deep connection with imperialism and its arrogance in disenfranchising other knowledge traditions. They are the “ends justify the means” people and the “it’s for your own good” people. They want knowledge, they want power (even if they won’t admit it to themselves), and they ultimately don’t care about anything that stops them from getting either.

Alchemists are mortals who tap into the secrets of Pyros, allowing them to learn Promethean’s Distillations, modify their bodies, and gain Dread Powers. Body modification? In a game crawling with body horror? Totally not going to backfire on you, but you do you. The catch is that most Alchemists get the barest trickle of Pyros and can’t stablize much of it at a time - unless they steal it from Prometheans. And those modifications? They need Vitrol to do that, so at best, they are delaying a Promethean’s progress toward becoming human for their own game. Most of the time, they just murder them.

If Promethean: the Created is a game that embraces humanity, its Alchemists represent the rejection of human nature. If you want to play a game where transhumanism leads to the loss of what makes humanity important, Alchemists are a great place to start.

Graveyard Gary’s been at this a long, long time. He considers himself a reanimator, in the “grand” tradition of Herbert West, while rather missing the point about West’s grizzly fate. In fact, Gary’s missed the point so completely that he didn’t even notice when his body died, but by that point, it was so laced with Spark of Life Distillations that it just kept moving. As a result, Gary’s lack of heartbeat and unblinking stare unnerve anyone who visits his cemetery, but other than the faint smell of formaldehyde and ozone, there is no decay. Gary wouldn’t even mind even if it was pointed out to him; this is the best he’s felt in years. Honestly. Mostly. Probably.

N0V4 thinks he’s big shit, with the corner office in his father’s company and a hacker alias, so he can pretend he’s on the worker’s side. He’s not untalented, but he’s a relentless taskmaster who isn’t half as bright as those who work for him. Unfortunately for every Promethean who comes near Toronto, the world of corporate ruthlessness trained him well for being an Alchemist. He’s mastered various Electrification and Luciferus Distillations, he even sees the electromagnetic spectrum’s invisible colours, but now the electricity is stalking him back. An electricity spirit has latched onto N0V4’s resonance, and it has no intention of letting its food source slow down his experiments.

Good intentions, hell, and all that. Annabel started her study of Alchemy after hearing rumours of the Created and hoped to help them. She’s even knowledgeable enough about Disquietism to help Prometheans learn the Transmutation. The problem is that she now inflicts Disquiet on those around her, and the temptation to use Weaponize to her advantage grows stronger daily.

[awakenedsalamander]

Mage the Ascension : everyone is neurodivergent :D

Changeling the Lost : everyone is neurodivergent :(

[awakenedsalamander]

[awakenedsalamander]

I keep thinking about the section at the very end of the 2E Mage: The Awakening Corebook that discusses Ascension.

Obviously, Ascension is the big goal of both Mage games (the WoD version is, of course, literally named for it), and so it makes sense for a Mage fan like myself to be kind of captivated by any hints of it I get.

And I am in love with the little details we get of how mages Ascend; the strange behaviors and otherworldliness of the Awakened on the threshold of another sublime transformation— how their very names and symbols become charged with power once they cross beyond the Abyss.

But what really keeps my attention is this section:

[None of the Ascended are] remembered by the Sleepers who once knew them. The Ascended slip out of Sleeper memory like water through a sieve. The Quiescence sits heaviest upon close friends and family. People who saw the Ascended every day, if she kept any in her life, wax nostalgic for a short while, as though their loved one had simply gone on a long trip. They quickly change the subject, and resist attempts to return to it. The more distantly a Sleeper orbited the Ascended’s life, the foggier the memories get, until no one remembers her at all.

(Mage: The Awakening, Second Edition, Page 313.)

How deeply melancholic a thought— you become an incarnate symbol of magic, finally complete your journey… and so, of course, the Sleepers forget you.

I’m not here to say that Ascending to the Supernal is a bad thing, I think that’s probably up to the individual mage, but what a heavy price. It really frames the Silver Ladder and the Free Council, and their vastly different but still related dreams of freedom for Sleepers and the Awakened alike.

It was always a painful goodbye, to leave for a world beyond worlds. But the parting is not made easier, knowing only one of us shall remember it.

[awakenedsalamander]

What are some of your favorite parts of Changeling?

I’ll just talk about a few.

Firstly, I’ve waxed lyrical about how much I love the Fae-Touched, but I really do find it beautiful how Changeling: The Lost gives a space for regular mortals to be heroic purely on the strength of their commitments. Hunters may be dedicated to the Vigil, but few of them feel as personally touching as those who walk to Arcadia to save their loved ones.

Next, in sort of the exact opposite, I really adore the Huntsmen as villains. They’re ominous, distantly sympathetic, and mysterious. The stakes are immediately raised just by one announcing their presence, and you can’t help but relate to them if you’re a changeling— your Keeper reshaped their Huntsman just like they reshaped you.

It’s a broad thing, but I find myself really compelled by the Courts as organizations. I like how creative you can get in making your own and feeling out their themes, but I also love how they give space for changelings to respond to their trauma and rebuild their lives. The Courts feel very tender in a way that few factions in the Chronicles do.

Finally, I just love the Hedge. This vast liminal space full of strange goblins, that is forged by dreams and links to the terrible domain of the True Fae. I’d love to play a game just about exploring the Hedge, trying to find the secrets of something older than stardust but as young as tomorrow, and map the boundaries of something with as many doorways as there are ways to say goodbye.

[awakenedsalamander]

Your enthusiasm towards Chronicles has made me way more interested than I thought I'd ever be and I thank you for that

The drawback is that now I'm desperately looking for people willing to play Deviant, which is proving to be a living hell

Well, first— that’s incredibly kind! Sharing this setting has been something I’ve been very passionate about for years, and I think many folks who know me could attest that I’m quite vocal about it. To hear that my blog has managed to get folks into Chronicles of Darkness is really quite meaningful.

Secondly, uh, sorry. I stand by the first paragraph and all, but I do know that by sharing the setting I am also trapping people in a prison I know quite well— wanting to play the games and not being able to. I feel your pain.

Would that I had a solution, I would offer it! Instead, I can only say: Welcome, and my apologies.