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Leliel

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  1. Because I'm both a huge fan of the game, and I want to know if it's possible to make such a behavior-focused game in 6e. For those of you who don't know, Unknown Armies is an Urban Fantasy/Horror RPG with the fundamental premise that humanity actually is the center of the universe; it's human will that ultimately will decide what the form the next iteration of the universe will take, when the Invisible Clergy (the post-human embodiments of universal archetypes-the Warrior, the Hunter, the True King, the MVP, etc.) reaches 333 members (well, 332-the last seat is reserved for the embodiment of the concept of humanity as a species). Upon that day, the divine realm of the Stratosphere will collapse, returning all to primal chaos-except for the Clergy, who will fuse into one being whose first and last act will be to create a new universe informed by the personality, goals, and aspirations of the full Clergy. In effect, the fabric of reality is the ultimate representative democracy, to use 3rd Edition's analogy; the Clergy is born of and part of every human to exist, and so if we elevate saints, heroes, and generally nice people to the majority of the seats, the next universe will be a paradise. By contrast, jerks, villains, and monsters will create a regular hell. Of course, the thing about representative democracies is that everything is done by committee-which means there are places in the universe where universal constants and laws just don't fit together. This is the origin of magick (and the 'k' is important), and all its products; without the laws of the previous Clergy, the universe defaults to the universal subconsciousness of humans to figure out what some undefined force or energy is supposed to be. And of course, certain humans have become the flaws; avatars, people who (intentionally or not) embody the archetypes of the current Clergy and gain power from them, and adepts, who have had what could easily have been a psychotic break and now understand a fundamental occult law of reality (or possibly believe in it so strong reality plays along) and have learned to channel that law through symbolic paradox into mystical power. And of course, there are proper rituals and true monsters born of the unnatural that has come to life-most infamous of these are demons, who are actually what the unlearned ponies (ie, the occult underground term for "easily manipulated idiots") call "ghosts"; the only thing that allows the dead to remain active is raw obsession, and being a spiritual entity boils away just about everything but that obsession. It doesn't matter if the demon was your best friend, your wife, your most frequent Wal-Mart greeter; to her, it's either something that gets her closer to her obsession, and thus important and useful, or it's not, and thus utterly irrelevant. Thing is, the big thing about UA is that magick requires sacrifice, and the greater the power, the greater the sacrifice. Avatars have to remain in character at all times lest they lose their connection to the Clergy (Merchants must always be looking to maximize their profits, while Warriors can never compromise with the enemy), while adepts have to perform outright insane acts in order to absorb magickal charges, and have a taboo that, should they break it, drains all of their power (chance-altering entropomancers have to take Jackass-and-up caliber risks to gather charges, and can never dare someone else to take a risk they wouldn't, while movie-obsessed cinemancers must get people, including themselves, to invoke common tropes and cliches to fill the tank, and must always complete an archetypal scene they notice-if you're in a car chase with a cinemancer, any nearby fruit stands are not long for this world). That, and it's all pretty subtle when it comes down to it; the normal extent of magick is that it can retroactively change things to fit a specific spell so long as that doesn't undo death, and that requires a lot of juice or mojo (and must fit within the magick school or avatar; a cinemancer can talk smack about someone and then note he's probably right behind her to rewrite history so that he was somehow able to overhear the entire tirade in person, but they can't make it rain unless someone else was verbally relieved it wasn't). This is a game where playing a normal or mostly-normal person is viable, because said person is likely the only one keeping her nutcase mystic buddies out of jail or insane asylums. Operative word is "normal" here-in a world where human will is the only true universal constant, wanting things hard enough, and working for them, is what decides what is and is not possible. Reveal existence of magick to the world? Create an alternate universe? Found a mystical dynasty that will govern the shadow of the world? Ascend to the Clergy? Replace a member of the Clergy? Or just get that creepy cult leader arrested before he hurts people? If you're willing to accept the cost and are lucky enough, anything you want, friend. Just remember; the catch-phrase Sleepers (a mystical conspiracy of magick-hunters who exist to make it secret, and safe-so long as you aren't endangering the general public, they're cool with you, in theory-they still kill people, and generally aren't that sane) is "You Did It" for a reason. It implies "You Fix It." So, any tips on how I would convert the setting to Dark Champions? It's ultimately a very mystical noir-ish game that wouldn't be out of place in default Hudson (it doesn't take a stretch to imagine Card Shark as leading a cabal of entropomancers who enhance their crimes with chance magic, knowing full well they're taking the kind of risks that power them up simply by doing their jobs). I don't want it to be perfect, of course (Unknown Armies is also a game based around avoiding violence by any means necessary, and this is superhero comics), but I'm open to suggestions on how the Power Loss of adepts and avatars would function.
  2. Well, actually...yeah, I could do with a simpler name. It's just that, well, old Tetz has his name. Also, Hadmar: Excellent points, all. Didn't think of it that way, but that's a very distinct style to her and her powers. Probably make it a lot less disgusting (more to emphasize duality than any squeamishness, actually), but it makes her different from Tezcatlipoca. Also ties in with my idea of the climatic scheme, where she attempts to summon her son into his own avatar (her son being Mixcoatl, god of hunters-he being around wouldn't be Game Over, but he'd help with making her impossible to remove from the world. Worse, I'm taking something from Scion 1E and making it so that he's followed around by Xolotl, the god of lightning, fire and guardian of the dead-aka Hope You Don't Need Electricity To Fight Zombies).
  3. Anyway, hello there! Newbie who can't work the character sheet reporting, hence why I'm asking for advice. I'm a bit of an Aztec Mythology Nerd, and I must say, I...really don't mind Black Tezcatlipoca being a master villain. However, having just him as the main evil force from Mexica mythology is really selling them short, because Aztec gods are actually really creative. So, the idea is that some wannabe hero with more power than patience for actual research decides he's tired of Tetz menacing the world, and thinking that the Aztecs saw things in terms of good vs. evil, summons a fertility and guardian goddess cited as the nemesis of Tezcatlipoca and ancestor of all modern humanity. As evinced by the fact I am trying to write her as a villain, the Obsidian Butterfly is, shall we say, a bit more ambiguous than that. In fact, she's a bloodthirsty berserker who hates everyone except midwives, pregnant women, and children-and the reason she's an enemy of the other Teotl is that she wants to destroy the sun and replace it with one of her own design (those stars that you can see during an eclipse? Those were taken to be Itzpapalotl's sisters and minions, the tzitzimimeh, launching a massive offensive against the daystar, with human sacrifice being a pick-me-up to the gods to fight them off). I'm trying to think of a build that represents her as both a goddess of death and a goddess of fertility. I'm thinking she's not a subtle schemer by any sense of the term, but she's not stupid, and she knows ignorant mortals see "mother goddess" and think "good guy" (particularly given how her sacred animal is the ferocious deer), a confusion she plans to take advantage of. She uses a lot more mythical beasts and less humans than Tezcatlipoca does (both because she cares more about human cultists than he does and that she revels in chaos and destruction), in particular the chiuateteo (ghosts of women who died in childbirth, taken to be her guests in the starry heaven of Tamoachan-vengeful ones agree with her that the world needs to be remade in the image of humanity's ancestor, savage and pure).
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