I made a vampire Bloodline based off of a joke. While the core concept (catgirl vampire) seems a bit funny, I’ve made it so that the bloodline itself can be played seriously.
A monster chases you through the graveyard. It taunts you, always with a smile and two mismatched eyes staring out from the darkness. It comes with flickering ghost-light and yowling laughs. It dresses like an entertainer, but tonight you’re the entertainment. Claws run down your shoulder and you turn, only for another slash across the opposite hip. The cat plays with you, toying and laughing. A gentle kick to the back sends you stumbling forward, and you break into a run.
Originally from Japan, the nekomata are a strange bloodline of ghostcallers and mediums who take the form of the split-tailed cats of folklore. They deal with the dead and when they can, they taunt the living. Fickle and curious, the graveyard cats are dance with the dead and cause hauntings, as well as act as mediums to relay messages between the living–or damned–and the dead.
Often dressing like geisha or in the gothic lolita fashion, these strange yokai Mekhet often sit in graveyards, happily conversing with the dead and mocking the living and kindred alike. They deal in secrets like all of their clan, but where others pull them from the mind, this bloodline of primarily female felines prefers to use ephemeral entities as spies and go-betweens.
Background: In ancient Japan, domestic cats that lived long enough were said to become nekomata, their tails splitting in two. These catyokai would dance and cause poltergeist activity, and were often accompanied by the same pale glowing light that was often known as thekitsune-bi or foxfire. Other legends say that the yokai known as nekomata originated in the mountains, and that they were the size of dogs, and would devour unsuspecting villagers. There is many a woodcut of one of these nekomata tearing into the neck of a victim.
Some in the bloodline will say that they were the source of these legends of trickster cats and mauling monsters. Others say that the hundred-year old cats that became yokai were the first of their Bloodline, and embraced their human victims. The legend of being embraced by demon-cats is often dismissed by other kindred, but then again there are stranger things in the world of the damned.
The Becoming: There are many reasons for a Graveyard Cat to embrace, or to act as avus. The most common, though, is simply seeing something weird about their childer. In modern day, those with an affinity for the gothic and macabre are often seen as good candidates. The would-be poet who sits in the graveyard dressed in all black. Some are mortal mediums, who entice one of the nekomata. Many nekomata choose not to embrace but instead to uplift Revenants, seeing them as being close to the very corpses the cats talk with.
And of course some see a pretty young thing, embrace her, and quickly grow bored. The graveyard cats are, after all, as flighty as their namesakes were in life.
In the Danse Macabre: The nekomata are a strange clan, and many wonder why they’re allowed to exist in the All-Night Society when they’re clearly a potential masquerade breech. And it’s true, the Graveyard Cats do have strange physical traits that are clearly unnatural. Those who flaunt such traits quickly learn that a sheriff’s bite is as bad as his bark.
But many elder Kindred, particularly those from Japan who grew up hearing tales of both the folklore nekomata and the bloodline itself are unsure how much to attribute to either, and would rather not feel their claws. More than that, though, the nekomata are so damneduseful. Even amongst those Kindred aware they aren’t the only walking dead, ghosts are so often forgotten about. The corpse cats known otherwise, and dealing with them affords one knowledge that only the dead can know… for a price.
Nickname: Graveyard Cats, Catgirls
Clan: Mekhet
Bloodline Bane: Every Nekomata has the Tenebrous Curse of their parent clan. Common Banes are Cat Queen (as the Rat King Bane, but with cats) and Face of Hunger (the nekomata’s face often becomes more catlike). Repulsions and symbols often take the form of dogs, water, and other things that cats traditionally hate.
In addition to this, the bodies of the nekomata change and warp. The thing they all have in common is that each of them has heterochromia. One eye becomes a pale, steel blue while the other is either yellow, green, or brown. Their ears grow and become furred and feline, often moving up the side of their head until they’re at the top of their skull where a cat’s would be. Tails sprout from their backs, which on top of the masquerade breeching can also frighten the kine and make sitting difficult–though many nekomata prefer to sit seiza, on their knees, for this reason, though others sit seiza because it’s proper–and once they increase Blood Potency the first time after joining the Bloodline, the tail splits into two. Hands and feet having sharp nails and soft fur are also common.
While many choose to hide these the old fashion way, with hoods and gowns, as long as a member of the bloodline knows the Protean ability Aspect of the Predator, she can spend a point of Vitae to activate that power and remove these unnatural features.
The nekomata have a connection to Death. Every nekomata gains the yureigan, or Ghost Eye, devotion upon entry into the bloodline. By concentrating as an instant action, the cat can focus her senses beyond the material world and into Twilight. In addition, she can speak with and understand anything there, so long as they share a language. Dismissing theyureigan is a reflexive action, but while it’s active the nekomata is at a -3 penalty to notice anything physical that might draw her attention.
Legends among the clan say that the first of the bloodline was taught this devotion by an actual cat. It would certainly answer quite a few questions, but many see this as just a fairy tale.
Kitsune-bi
Though it’s more associated with the kitsune, foxfire is traditionally found dancing around the nekomata as well. By spending a point of Willpower, the nekomata conjures up a ball of blue-green light like a will-o’-th’-wisp or St. Elmo’s Fire. It dances around and illuminates an area equal to the graveyard cat’s Resolve + Composure. Those who’ve never seen this before gain the Spooked Condition if they fail a Resolve + Composure roll. This Devotion costs 2 Experiences
Dance of the Dead
Legend says that thenekomata dance and the dead rise. With this Devotion, one of the Graveyard cats can do exactly that. The song doesn’t matter, so long as it invokes the dead. Some catgirls prefer to use Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre. Others have been known to use J-Pop or Dia de los Meurtes music. The ceremony requires a corpse and a willing ghost as well. The ghost can be cajoled, but it has to be their choice to use the corpse as a vessel. Most are more than willing, though. The nekomata sprinkles three points worth of vitae on the corpse, and rolls Stamina + Expression. Each roll represents one minute of dancing, and the ceremony requires five successes per rank of the ghost. Zombies created this way are treated as ghouls of the nekomata.
The zombie created by this ceremony uses it’s Power, Finesse, and Resistance as usual, but gains three dots of Physical Disciplines that the Nekomata knows in any combination. Zombies created this way cannot talk, and can only move at half their speed, but unlike a ghost they can interact with the physical world. The zombie takes damage as a Kindred would from all nonmagical attacks, but loses one point of health after a number of days equal to it’s Stamina. Zombies can heal as a normal ghoul would, provided they’re fed vitae, but the ghost can’t heal damage that the body took before it began inhabiting the corpse.
Storytellers should feel free to start a zombie with less than full health if the body is older or in disrepair compared to a fresh corpse.
So I found a homebrew of mine lying around and figured I’d share it. Primarily, it’s a 2e update of the Coil of Blood, with a few tweaks. Most relevant to today (Thanksgiving) is the Taste of Life Scale, which exists entirely because I wanted vampire cooks.
But for the most part it’s pretty straightforward. Use less blood, get restricted by blood less.
Blood is power to the Kindred, but Blood has power over them as well. While vitae can allow a vampire to strengthen her body and enthrall others, the need for it still chains her. If there’s one thing that a Dragon despises, it’s another chain around her neck. With this Mystery, the limitations of the vampiric condition are mitigated.
The Defiant who study this Mystery seek to restore a semblance of life to themselves. This isn’t due to a desire to return to mortality, but to reclaim what undeath denies them. Scales of Life are often learned through massive vitae expenditures and experimenting with the border of life and death.
The Coil of Life
Blood Seeps Slowly
●
The Dead waste vitae simply through waking from the Daysleep. To a Dragon, this loss of power is akin to theft. With this Coil, the Defiant only needs to spend a point of vitae to wake after a number of days equal to the lower of her Coils of Life or Resolve.
The Chosen Drink
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A Lord of the Night should not be shackled by the restrictions of their Blood. A Defiant who has reached this level of mastery over Life has their effective Blood Potency lowered by their dots in the Coil of Life when determining feeding restrictions. A Dragon whose effective Blood Potency is less than one dot may drink from stored blood and gain two vitae for each liter she drinks.
The Full Faced Beast
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●
●
The vampire is a corpse. Not even a shambling one, but fully ambulatory and capable of logic and reason, undeterred by decay or rigor mortis. “Not good enough!” Says the Dragon. And with this Coil, she can cause her blood to pump once more through will alone. The Blush of Life costs only a point of Willpower, not vitae.
Keep the Red Hoard
●●●●
Like a greedy wyvern lying atop a pile of coins and precious treasures, the Defiant is unwilling to part with her well earned treasure. Any time she would spend two or more points of Vitae, she may spend up to two points less by paying a point of Willpower instead. This can never lower the ability’s cost below one point of vitae, and can only be used once per effect.
Perspicacious Blood
●
●
●
●
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While the Kindred metaphorically refer to vitae as “the Blood”, it’s so much more than that. Vitae is life essence, stolen and used by the damned–or, as the Dragons see it, blessed. The Dragon know how to stretch that stolen life for all she can. With this level of mastery, treat every mortal vessel the Dragon drinks from as if he had the Producer merit (Vampire: The Requiem pg 299), but treat his Stamina as one lower when determining whether he gains the Drained Condition.
Sample Scales of Life
Taste of Life
Prerequisite Coils: Full Faced Beast Procedure: Vitae is like euphoria in liquid form, but even Elder Kindred will sometimes long for the taste of mortal food. The procedure for this Scale is simple enough, albeit more time consuming than most, and some would say it serves no practical purpose: The Defiant must ghoul and raise an animal for a number of weeks equal to its Size. The animal’s feed must come from plants watered with the Dragon’s vitae. The Dragon then slaughters the animal and prepares it to taste. Outcome: Any animal raised in such a fashion gains a point of Size. When slaughtered and cooked, it will always retain a bloody, reddish hue no matter how ‘well done’ it is (there is of course still argument on how the meat should be cooked). Once prepared, the meat provides one point of vitae per health box of the animal, and any vampire may eat the meat and enjoy it as if they were using the Blush of Life. The taste is exceptional due to the infusion of vitae, and anyone who consumes it must roll for Vitae addiction if their Resolve is two or lower. Other than that the vitae is ‘neutral’ and doesn’t cause Vinculum. Eating food in this way doesn’t cause it to be vomited up, and provided half the meal is flesh, it can be garnished with vegetables or sauces.
Expand the Stomach
Prerequisite Coils: The Chosen Drink Procedure: The Dragon must binge on as much vitae as she can, drinking (or eating) until she has a taken in a number of points of vitae over her maximum equal to twice her Blood Potency within the scene. She holds the blood in by spending a point of Willpower each turn, looking like a bloated corpse. During this time, she forces herself into a Frenzy where the Beast does nothing but roil about in it’s own gorged stupor, only attacking if someone gets close. Outcome: The Dragon bleeds and vomits up the excess vitae, but for a number of nights equal to her dots in the Coil, her Blood Potency is treated a number of dots higher equal to her Coils solely for determining how much Vitae she can store.
Orphan the Blood
Prerequisite Coil: Perspicacious Blood Procedure: A large tub (such as that used for Epidermal Shielding Bath) is filled with an alchemic mixture of vitae (or blood), special salts, oils, and potent elixirs. The vitae must come at least in part from the subject. A Kindred subject is placed into the warm bath and over the course of an hour and allows the water to seep into their skin, and concentrates on their sense of self. A mortal may also be the subject, but at it takes three points of lethal damage to obtain enough water for the ritual. The dragon then bleeds into the tub, and the subject is forced to spend all of their Willpower.. Outcome: The Dragon spends a point of vitae for each point of Blood Potency of the vampire the subject has a stage three Blood Bond with. The Blood Bond is broken, and replaced by a stage two bond–never more–with the Defiant. For a number of nights equal to the Dragon’s dots in the Coil of Life, the subject is unable to move passed the second stage blood bond, but after that point if they drink from the original vampire, the bond is restored to full after only a single sip.
This is another World of Darkness homebrew. This time a friend wanted to have something similar to the game Muramasa: The Demon Blade, so I came up with this template for her game.
Geist isn’t actually updated to the GMC rules yet, but I’ve done my best to encorporate them here.
Long ago in Muromachi period of Japanese history there lived a swordsman named Sengo Muramasa. Second only to Soshu Masamune, his swords were of legendary quality, said to cleave any opponent in two. They were also claimed to be cursed, incapable of being drawn without drinking blood, even going so far as to cause bloodlust in whoever wielded one of his blades. They were said to go insane, slaughtering their kin or even turning the blade on themselves if it couldn’t have it’s bloodlust sated.
I’m going to try doing homebrew more often, and when I do I’ll link it on my Tumblog. This is for the 12 Days of Onyx Contest, creating holiday Conditions for new World of Darkness 2e Chronicles of Darkness
Basically it’s nominally Christmas themed status effects, but I’ve tried to take the Silver Bordered Magic approach and made it so that they could be renamed and used for something real. All of them are for any nWoD2e CofD game, except for the Siskur-Dah of the Lodge of The Krampus, which is Werewolf, and I Have A Machine Gun, which is Hunter, unless you want to let anyone get Risk benefits. For a prettier, pdf version, go here.
Grinch
(Persistent) Your
heart is three sizes too small. You have two additional doors in any
social maneuvering, but take a -2 penalty on social interactions
other than Intimidate. Possible
Sources: Being
a lonely curmudgeon Beat: You
ruin someone else’s fun Resolution: Have
someone reach out to brighten your day.
Scrooged You
know the true meaning of the holidays is spreading good tidings and
cheer. Your holiday spirit is invigorating, and you’re willing to buy
a whole goose. It’s enough to brighten the day of even other humbugs,
serving as an Anchor to all present. Possible
Sources: A
heartwarming television special, a series of ghosts showing you the
error of your ways Resolution: Resolve
this condition to be treated as a True Friend or the appropriate
Touchstone to as many characters as can fit at a dining room table
until the end of the Story.
Tacky
Sweater (Persistent) Your
sweater is so tacky that it can’t be beat. Everyone around you is in
complete awe of the sweater, even as it disgusts them. Anyone who
looks at the sweater suffers a Breaking Point when viewing it, but is
at -2 to notice anything else. You have the Open Condition for the
Storyteller’s choice of phenomena. Possible
Sources:An
Exceptional Success (or Dramatic Failure) on making or finding a
tacky sweater, then wearing it. Beat:Your
sweater frightens a child or causes spiritual
trouble. Resolution: You
take the sweater off and, ideally, burn it. In extreme cases
abjuration may be necessary, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.
Warring
on Christmas (Persistent) For
whatever reason you choose not to celebrate Christmas, and some
people find that antagonistic. Your first impression with such people
is Hostile, and whenever someone tries to lecture you on how you’re
ruining the country, you lose a point of Willpower. Possible
Sources: Being
Jewish, Atheist, Agnostic, or Jehovah’s Witness Beat: Someone
fails to accept your nondenominational “Happy
Holidays” Resolution: You
give into secular commercialism or the holiday ends.
Siskur-Dah
(Persistent) Your
character is on the Siskur-Dah of
the Lodge of the Krampus. By concentrating on a subject you can tell
their Integrity or the equivalent, as well as a general sense of what
this means in terms of naughty or niceness. If the prey drops in
Integrity or the equivalent, you can sense it. Possible
Sources: The
Sacred Hunt rite of the Lodge of the Krampus Resolution: The
prey is brought down (a kill is not necessary) or the pack breaks off
the Siskur-Dah by taking any significant actions towards ends other
than the hunt. Beat: Your
character achieves an exceptional success on an action involving the
prey.
Naughty
(Persistent) You
enjoy doing bad things, and taking out your frustrations on others.
You need to spend a point of Willpower to not indulge
in your Vice if given the opportunity, and you take -2 on
non-Intimidate social rolls with anyone who witnesses you indulging
your vice. Possible
Sources: Losing
a point of Integrity for causing someone harm Resolution: Gain
a point of Integrity, lose another point of Integrity, get
Scrooged Beat: Cause
trouble indulging your Vice.
Nice
(Persistent) Being
good feels good to you. Once per scene in pursuit of your Virtue, if
it would benefit another character, you can choose to have a roll
count as Exceptional with three successes instead of five. Possible
Sources: Gaining
a point of Integrity, consistently playing to your
Virtues. Resolution: Cause
someone harm, lose a point of Integrity Beat: Cause
trouble trying to help someone else
Now
I have a Machine Gun There’s
one of you and more of them, but now you’re armed and that makes you
dangerous. As long as you’re on your own and without help, whenever
you spend Willpower on an action, you can choose one of
the Risking Willpower options without needing to Risk.
HO-HO-HO. Possible
Sources: Being
shoeless and trapped in a building with fake
terrorists Resolution: Save
the hostages
Not
A Terrorist (Persistent) Other
than telling everyone you were a terrorist, who said you were a
terrorist? Your motives are murky and your plan is convoluted,
meaning that any actions taken to figure out what you’re up to suffer
a -3 penalty. Possible
Sources: Pretending
you’re a terrorist to rob a building Beat: Lose
a henchman Resolution: Give
up and go to jail peacefully, get blown up by the hero.
This is a sample NPC for the Bishounen Senshi Yousei Kishi Hunter Conspiracy. She’s an atypical member of the Conspiracy, and I’ll be writing up a more typical member soon. By now I’ve binge watched Madoka finally, and she’s loosely inspired by Kyoko Sakura’s early attitude forgetting why she became a Magical Girl, as well as fan art of Bayonetta.
Fun fact: Her name is a reference to the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West, Margaret Hamilton.
Witch
Teacher
Quote:
“Come on, kid, don’t get in my way or I’ll have to give you a
spanking…”
Background:
When Maggie was 14 she saved her best friend from being taken off
into the Dark Forest by one of the Unseelie Lords. They hid in a
blanket fort in the living room, telling each other they weren’t
afraid of the thunderstorm even though they both were, holding each
other and putting on a brave face. Then a great big hand reached
through the blankets and grabbed her friend, pulling her out and
collapsing the fort. When Maggie finally got free there was an open
window, rain battering at the shutters and pouring in. Without even
thinking she grabbed a fire poker and climbed out the window after
the flame headed monster, running after the eldritch thing and
following the fiery footsteps to the park gate that now lead to the
Dark Forest. A track star back then, she managed to catch up and beat
on the creature, the Cold Iron burning it’s flesh with licking
tongues of green smoke. The monster hurt her badly, throwing her into
the thorns, which tore at her soul, but left her friend behind as
well.
Maggie
carried her friend in her arms, following the trail of bloody
footprints that seemed to go on forever until she finally collapsed.
That was when a goblin found her and offered her the bargain. It saw
what she did, and wanted to offer her a job. If she accepted, it
would lead her to the exit. She did.
Her
friend barely remembered the incident, thinking it was a nightmare
caused by the storm, rationalizing that she sleepwalked outside and
Maggie brought her in before she got hurt. They tried dating, but it
didn’t work out, and they grew apart because Maggie reminded her of
her nightmare. Maggie started to resent the Seelie that gave her a
second chance, blaming it for taking her friend away. In the end, she
threw herself into fighting.
Twelve
years later, Maggie is a teacher, having been a Senshi longer than
most others. She attributes her survival to her apathy. She gave up
her hopes and dreams and pours herself into fighting, both destroying
the Seelie’s enemies as well as aiding other Hunters. She tends to
stay away from the other magical
girls, but isn’t directly hostile to them. More often than not, they
tend to want to stay away from her. She spends her time drinking, and
trying to enjoy her life, surprised that she isn’t dead yet.
Description:
In her normal attire, Mrs. Hamilton is the kind of teacher Van Halen
wrote about. Attractive and sensual despite a professional and
buttoned down look. She does the sexy librarian thing well, often
dressing in long stockings, pencil skirts, and
tight-but-not-revealing blouses.
In
her Regalia, her Barrier Jacket takes the form of a sleek black dress
with no back and a high, ruffled collar. In both forms she wears a
pair of thick rimmed black glasses and has short, layered black hair
and ruby red lips. Her eyes are strangely pale, having traded their
colour away to a hobgoblin for overall beauty. When fighting, she
uses a Starlight Shooter that takes the form of a large, sleek, and
almost cartoonishly shaped revolver with rose inlay.
Storyteller
Hints:
While on the outside she seems completely capable, Maggie is broken
down by her life. She stopped caring about the fight against
darkness, but she doesn’t really know what else to do. When no one is
around, she drinks, always alone so that no one can see her when she
lets the tears come out. Ultimately she cares more than she lets on
or she wouldn’t still be a Hunter, but doesn’t want to show weakness
in that regard.
If
the characters find out her secret, she may break down and open up to
them, but it’s also possible that Maggie will become completely numb
and resent them for seeing through her. In a bid to stop hurting, she
may turn to the Unseelie, or even other powers within the World of
Darkness. If that happens, she is likely to become a Slasher. If not,
she would make a powerful ally to a group of Hunters, Faerie Knights
or not. She knows her way around the Dark Forest, and knows how to
cultivate many of the magical fruits found there.
In
her daily life, she teaches English and tends to use Big Sister Says
to make sure that the class learns. She honestly does care for her
students, and keeping them safe from nightmares is one thing that
keeps her from falling.
Merits:
Marksmanship Style 3, Professional Training 2, Area of Expertise
(English), Interdisciplinary Specialty (English), Striking Looks 2
(+4 with Big Sister Says), Inspiring, Resources 2, Status (Faerie
Knights) 3, Taste, Safe Place (a Hollow in the Dark Forest) 5,
Endowment: Pactio 5
Pactio
Bargains:
Big Sister Says, Starlight Shooter, Barrier Jacket, Hope’s Blessing*,
Kiss Kiss Fall In Love
Bans:
Must kiss the target (Kiss Kiss), must listen to her student’s
problems (Big Sister Says), must maintain Integrity 5+ (Hope’s
Blessing)*, Must handwash her clothes (Barrier Jacket), must use her
weapon once a week (Starlight Shooter)
Willpower:
7
Integrity:
4
Persistent
Conditions:
Madness, Deprived
Virtue:
Hopeful
(Maggie regains all Willpower when she actually manages to save an
innocent)
Vice:
Desperate
(When the chips are down she’ll do just about anything)
More WoD homebrew stuff. This time a Hunter conspiracy made of teenage girls who fight monsters and actually work for Exiled True Fae throwing wrenches into the work of the Real Actual Faeries because Exiles are bitter. I haven’t really thought how they’d interact with Changelings themselves. They’re ostensibly going to be Enscorcelled, and they’ve essentially got Contracts of a sort. They take on Banes the same way that Spirits and Ghosts have got and in exchange they have powers.
They also have a manga and an anime based on them, because I love the idea of propaganda for magical teenagers who might die fighting monsters.
Everyone dreams when they’re little of being something more. Firemen, police officers, superheroes, princesses. When we’re younger, we always think that adults can do amazing things, and we always wish we had some kind of power to change things. For many children since the late 90s, they grew up wanting to be Starlight Guardians, first a comic book series created by Kagome Yuzuki, a young Japanese woman living in LA, and then later as a Saturday morning cartoon. It was standard fare, well received. A story about young girls who fought against nightmares and a vaguely defined “Darkness”. The themes all centered on friendship and companions and it was praised for the fact that the girls struggled with protecting the world and going to school, as opposed to most other shows where classes are never missed and family is never worried. It was considered a deconstruction of the magical girl genre, showing what the fallout might be, but it remained hopeful and upbeat, and managed to find an audience across many age groups and demographics. Yuzuki has never really given an interview, despite her creation being so popular, licensed, translated, and dubbed in several languages. Starlight Guardian cosplay is common at anime and comic book conventions, and there have even been six video games and two stage musicals in Japan. All that’s known about her is that she moved to LA when she was 16, and that she’d been disabled when she was 19. Some fans speculate that she was shot, but there’s nothing but rumour to support that, certainly not medical records. The truth is that Yuzuki didn’t come up with the Starlight Guardians and their secret world of magic and fairy creatures. They’re a Conspiracy of Hunters, mostly young women, dedicated to fighting evil and stopping the creatures that live in the Dark Forest, that cause nightmares and steal away children. She belonged to them once, and they’re very real. They really do fight against darkness, creating citadels and fortresses in the magical realm known as the Dark Forest. They gain their powers by making deals with the creatures that live there that don’t want to devour the living, or cause nightmares. Everything written about in the comics is based on the experiences of Yuzuki and her cell, and later on stories she heard from other magical girls. Originally it was a way of coping with her injuries, which left her unable to fight. As time went on, the Starlight Guardians have used Yuzuki’s rather sizable media empire, rivaling that of Sanrio (of Hello Kitty fame) to act as a sort of propaganda. Young women take to the idea more easily when they can point to something. For many of them, their secret becomes a shared experience. Some turn away from the show, hating it. Others love the comics and cartoons, and hope that Yuzuki will immortalize their exploits so that they can encourage other young girls to be heroes. Kagome herself is now in her twilight years, an unassuming Asian woman in her mid eighties. She works with the Guardians still, though rarely as anything other than a figurehead. She doesn’t lead, and she sleeps with a gun underneath her pillow. The girls who join the Conspiracy are often young. Younger than most other Conspiracies by a long shot. Some are barely out of middle school. While most are high schoolers, there are some who make it to college before they’ve been brought into the fold. Almost every Starlight Guardian has had an interaction with the Unseelie, evil faeries from beyond the Dark Forest who feed on mortal children and pervert dreams. Some lost friends and loved ones, while others were taken themselves, and still bear the scars as their skin was torn at by the thorns before their rescue.
The Dark Forest The magical girls make their sanctuary in the Dark Forest, a dreamscape wilderness with all manner of strange entities. Much of it isn’t actual forest, but all throughout even the strange towns and markets are vines and branches, and the ever present thorns. All manner of faerie beastie lives in the Forest, some strange animals that almost but not quite look like mundane animals. Some of the stranger creatures can even talk. And in sometimes in little temples or caves, or even in the markets, the Starlight Guardians can find something even more powerful. They call them the Seelie. They claim to have been banished from their homes by the Unseelie, and they bargain with the Guardians, granting them powers to fight the Unseelie that manage to get to earth, stopping them from grabbing up children. Many of the Guardians have personal grudges against the Unseelie as well, for replacing siblings with doppelgangers, or trying to grab them through the Thorns. Many of the magical girls can sculpt the Dark Forest, creating new pathways that are safe, and even creating little bastions of hope against the darkness.
The Enemy The Unseelie are everywhere because the Dark Forest is everywhere. They poison dreams and steal away the innocent. Many a Starlight Guardian was born when a young woman was dragged out of bed at night and found herself pulled through the thorns of the Dark Forest, only to be rescued from whatever horrid fate awaited her in some far away faerie castle by an upperclasswoman who always seemed so distant and aloof. The Guardians make their Safe Houses far away from mortal eyes in the Dark Forest, and they do fight the nightmare beings there sometimes, but more often than not they chase down the monsters that creep out of the Dark Forest and threaten the innocent. Monsters of all stripes have their origins in the Dark Forest, from creepy crawly spidery things that hide in attics and wait to capture anyone exploring that old abandoned house, to strange batlike things that glide through the night sky. While faeries that steal away children are the primary enemy, more often than not the magical girls face inhuman creatures, animals that escaped the Forest and try to sate their hungers. There are also many doppelgangers, people left behind when the Unseelie take someone away. They often don’t even know what they are, and the Guardians are torn on how to deal with them. Some feel that as creatures of the Dark Forest they should either be destroyed–often resulting in the doppelganger turning into a pile of sticks and stones and snails and puppy dog tails–or sent back into the Dark Forest by force. Others feel that they’re as much victims as those who are stolen away, and that killing them just tears a family apart. At least with a doppelganger they think their son or mother or relative is alright. Sometimes, the Seelie beings that the Starlight Guardians make pacts with will have certain tasks for them. Sometimes finding rare ingredients, or dealing with the Hobgoblins in the Dark Forest itself, before they can even leave it. Most of them have no problem carrying out these ‘missions’. Even beyond the Unseelie and the monsters that crawl out of the Dark Forest, there are many other things that feed on the innocent. No magical girl worth her salt would ever refuse to fight an enemy because it’s “not my problem”.
Hunters College was a big change. You’d just gotten out of a bad relationship, you were away from home for the first time. You were on your own. At first you were okay with it, but as the weeks went on, your dreams became nightmares, all the horrors of loneliness magnified. They all came to a head when you were dragged out of your bed by a woman on horseback, her hair–her head–all on fire. She dragged you by the ankles and your flannel nightgown was torn to ribbons and your skin was bleeding, but before she could steal you away for good you were rescued. Now you work to keep others from experiencing what you did. You absolutely adored Starlight Guardians. It was your favourite show as a kid, you had all the toys, and even now you have a plushy of Hitomi, but as you got older you grew out of it, and called it kids stuff. That was before you were attacked in the park one night by a creature that looked like something out of a nightmare–or a TV show. Then a little white creature asked “Do you want to be a Starlight Guardian?” Now you’re living your dream, and you know twelve year old you would cream herself, but you just wish you could sleep soundly ever again. You’re a guy. Not a macho guy, but you always thought there was something wrong with the guys who obsessed over a cartoon for girls. Then you accidentally wandered into the Dark Forest somehow, and you were drafted. Now you obsess over the cartoon yourself, hoping that it will give you some idea of how to keep from dying now that you know there are monsters out there. And you really wish you’d listen to your mom when she said to cut your hair.
Circles The Starlight Guardians aren’t a unanimous group. There are several smaller groups that make up the Conspiracy, each with a different way of approaching the Vigil. Within the Conspiracy, they’re known as “circles”, after the group of doujinshi artists. Big Sisters, Little Sisters is a group of magical girls who focus not so much on the Dark Forest or fighting monsters, but on helping those less fortunate. They even have a public face, acting openly as fans of theStarlight Guardians, dressing up in cosplay, and visiting sick children. They even put on skits at elementary schools. They believe they can make the world a safer place by making it less hospitable to the nightmare sustained Unseelie. Spreading information through doujinshi and fanfiction, as well as helping with the animated series, Starlight Projekt can help get the word out on tactics and chronicle the exploits of Guardians. Sometimes they even honour fallen Guardians, though they do have a tendency to dramatize events and “ship” members of the Conspiracy. They also manage to bring in money for the magical girls. Kagome Yuzuki belongs to this circle. The largest circle within the Guardians is the Starlight Sisterhood, who actually go out and fight the monsters up close and personal. Many of it do it out of a sense of justice, or regret at not being able to save a sibling. But a rather large number simply want to show up in one of Starlight Projekt’s doujinshi, or be immortalized by Yuzuki herself in the cartoon that inspired most of them to fight in the first place.
Status Status in the Sisterhood is gained by stopping evil, and by the number of pacts and agreements with the things in the Dark Forest. ● Entry into the Guardians comes from first defeating one of the evil faeries. You can purchase dots of Pactio, and have others who can look up to you. ●●● You’ve seen enough of the things that haunt nightmares that you know how to recognize them. You gain the Unseen Sense Merit fromThe God-Machine Chroniclep.175 towards the Fae. ●●●●● At the highest level of Status within the Conspiracy, you have several resources to call upon thanks to your pacts and bargains with your Sisters. Divide three dots however you like between Allies, Retainer, or Safehouse Merits.
New Endowment: Pactio By making deals with the more benign creatures of the Dark Forest, the Starlight Sisterhood gains some measure of supernatural power to do battle with the creatures of nightmares. Every time a member of the Starlight Guardians gains a new dot of Pactio, choose one of the following Endowments. A Guardian can change out which Pactio powers she has by sleeping for one night in the Dark Forest. Each point of Pactio comes with a cost, though: The magical girl takes on a Ban as if she were a Rank 1 spirit for each dot, representing the bargains made with the Seelie that allow her to use the powers. Her magic also suffers a specific Bane: Cold Iron.
Mascot Something from the Dark Forest agrees to help the magical girl, whether out of the goodness of it’s heart(?) or because she’s made a bargain with it. The mascot is rarely larger than a dog, and looks nothing like a normal animal. It understands simple commands, and will carry them out, though more complex actions might require a Presence + Animal Ken roll.
Attributes: 3/3/2 (divide among Power, Finesse, Resistance) Skills: 9/7/3 (divide among Mental, Physical, Social) Willpower: Power + Resistance Essence: 10 (10 max), used for casting Dread Powers. Speed: Strength + Dexterity + Species Factor Defense: Lower of Dexterity or Wits, plus Athletics Health: Stamina + Size. Virtue and Vice: Any. Some Mascots share the magical girl’s Virtue, while others might not. Size: 5 or less, based on the animal it mocks Dread Powers: Assign four dots Innocuous: Anyone but it’s magical girl suffers -2 to Perception rolls to notice the Mascot. Conditions: The bonded Guardian and the Dark Forests are considered suitable conditions for regaining Essence. Any time a Mascot resolves a condition, or would otherwise gain a Beat, it instead gains a point of Essence.
Barrier Jacket Battling evil is a tough job, and anything that you could call “evil” with a straight face generally isn’t going to pull punches, even against a teenage girl. The Barrier Jacket is a lightweight piece of armour that protects a Starlight Guardian. By spending a point of Willpower as a Reflexive action, she gains an armour rating equal to her Resolve for the scene. The “Jacket” covers her entire body, though it may not look it. It often takes the form of a cheerleading outfit or school uniform, and has touches of glittery moonlight in it. No matter what appearance the barrier jacket takes, it provides complete protection for the scene and is impossible to hide as mundane. Cold iron ignores the Barrier Jacket’s armour.
Light of Truth A bright light shines from the Guardian, centered on her heart. It emanates around her and reaches out a number of yards equal to her Presence, illuminating the area as if it were a flickering candle. In addition to creating light, anyone within the radius of the light talking to the magical girl must spend a point of Willpower to speak falsely, and takes a -2 to any rolls to obfuscate the truth. In addition, any supernatural creatures roll Composure + Potency contested by the Guardian’s Presence + Resolve to remain hidden, whether through invisibility or stealth. Mundane characters are spotted instantly. The light also causes hidden nooks and crannies to glow faintly, giving anyone looking for hidden objects a +3 to their rolls. A character must concentrate when using the Light of Truth, and can take no other actions besides moving her speed and using her Defense.
Costume Weapon No magical girl would be complete without a fancy sword or bow and arrow. By spending a point of Willpower, the Starlight Guardian summons a physical weapon that uses the Weaponry skill and takes the form of a staff, a mystical sword, or something of the type. The weapon is between size 1 and 4 with a damage rating of 1L, and an initiative penalty of -0. The weapon lasts for a single scene, and can never be lost or stolen. Any time it isn’t in the Guardian’s hand, she can summon it right back at the top of the initiative.
Light Steps Sometimes monsters can get places that people normally can’t. By making this bargain, a magical girl can reach those places as well. Provided she moves at double her speed, she can move along any surface, even one that couldn’t support her weight or is against gravity. A Guardian with this power can run up walls, across glass, or even over deep mud or shifting sand (but not water) without so much as ruining her shoes. When using this power, she can also leap incredible distances, doubling her successes on any such Athletics rolls.
Big Sister Says Blessed by the inner light–or at least the pacts with the Seelie–the magical girls can resonate an aura of authority. By spending a point of Willpower and rolling Presence + Intimidation + Striking Looks versus each opponent’s Composure + Potency, a Starlight Guardian can make herself appear to be someone more imposing or authoritative. She doesn’t actually become anyone different, but people perceive her as being in charge so long as she doesn’t do anything to go against that impression. In addition, so long as she doesn’t openly carry a weapon or strike at anyone, if an opponent does choose to attack her, they first have to spend a point of Willpower and roll Resolve + Composure.
Love Love Beam Originally this Pactio ability had a different name, but the silly one stuck after it showed up in a gaiden or sidestory in the original Starlight Guardian comic. Older or more uptight Guardians prefer to call it the Starlight Beam. It takes the form of a magical burst of light coming out of the magical girl’s chest or hand (though more than one Guardian has shot hers out of her mouth) with the spending of a point of Willpower and a roll of Dexterity + Athletics. The blast has a damage rating of 2 and does only bashing damage, but it ignores Defense. The short range for the Love Love Beam a number of yards equal to the magical girl’s Presence + Resolve.
Knockout Punch Sometimes enemies don’t stay down. Those enemies that just keep on coming just need a little assistance getting flat on their ass. By spending a point of Willpower for the rest of the scene the Guardian’s fists are cloaked in magic, or perhaps starry gauntlets appear. Any brawling attacks that she takes now do an additional 1 bashing damage on a successful hit, and the first time an opponent is hit they suffer the Knockdown Tilt.
Stereotypes
● The Malleus Maleficarum: These guys act like they’re straight out of an anime. Don’t they know The Church in those things is always evil? ● The Lucifuge: Sure, I guess they make great brooding and mysterious boyfriends, if you’re into that thing. ● Taskforce VALKRYIE: Boys and their toys are pretty useful, and there’s something about a guy in uniform. But if you’re gonna go out for drinks, get ready to hear them bitch about how the NCOs are incompetent. ● The Long Night: I don’t know what’d upset these guys more, kissing my girlfriend or working with fairies… uh, the other kind of fairies. ● Network Zero: Ugh, stop trying to take pictures, creep! I don’t want you ruining my life for your little conspiracy theory Youtube page.
● Vampires: Girls, I know, you think you can “fix” him and it’ll all work out. I’ve heard that story before. ● Werewolves: Bad dog, no treat. ● Mages: I’d make a D&D joke, but I’m wearing a bullet proof school uniform. Just remember that nerds rule the world. It’s kinda sexy, but kinda scary, so don’t let them know how much you know. ● Prometheans: I met this guy who was some kind of zombie and ended up writing THE most embarrassing sex fic. God, I felt so dirty I wanted to shoot him. Probably not a good sign. ● Changelings: Most of them remind us why we shouldn’t trust the things in the Dark Forest, but too many of them are Unseelie monsters going around giving nightmares. Just remember it’s not nice to glomp them even if some of them are just so cute and sad. ● Sin-eaters: If you ever wanna get white girl wasted in a graveyard, find one of these goths. ● Beasts: Woah there, Big Bad Wolf, what makes you think I’m Little Red Riding Hood?
Went through and seriously reworked the Starlight Guardians. The focus is that they’re a group of mostly teenage to early twenties girls who have gotten caught up in Changeling and Faerie bullshit. No idea how Changeling 2e will change things with the Huntsmen, but at the moment they mostly focus on dealing with things like dangerous Changelings, dream invading Hobgoblins, and the True Fae or hobs that come into the real world.
The theme is basically magical girl deconstruction stuff like you get with Nanoha or Madoka. I’ve actually not watched either of those shows, but I really like the concept; fiction where teen and young adult characters balance magical lives and keeping them secret while also dealing with mundane lives that doesn’t actually show a difficulty in the balance is lame.
That said, I tried to keep the tone one of hope in the face of hopelessness. Being bitter and jaded only works in a world where it’s possible to have hope. Feedback on the concept and mechanics would be appreciated. PDF version
“Hiyah! Die, creature of darkness! Don’t you know that
good and justice always prevails!”
When they’re little, everyone
dreams of being something more: Firemen, police officers,
superheroes, princesses. For many children since the late 90s, what
they grew up wanting to be was to be like the Bishoujo
Senshi (“Pretty Guardians”) from Pretty
Guardian Faerie Knights:first a comic
book created by Kagome Yuzuki in 1989, and then later a Saturday
morning cartoon.
The first season was a standard
magical girl story, with a bunch of teenage girls fighting evil
faeries and nightmare monsters from a dreamworld. It had fans, but
the story was rather generic. After a retool and a move to a later
time slot, critical reception skyrocketed as it became a
deconstruction of the genre, becoming closer to the original comics.
Characters were fleshed out and
fully realized, and much of the focus was on the lives that the girls
lead. They hid bruises. Worked through sleepless nights. Struggled to
protect family members and friends from the Unseelie Fae without
revealing their powers. Relationships were made and broken, and the
young girls in the show would even suffer injuries or die. In spite
of the grim setting, the tone managed to stay upbeat, with themes of
friendship and togetherness. It managed to find an audience across
all age groups and demographics, and it’s popularity has grown over
the years, with a thriving fan community.
What most of the fans don’t
realize is that it’s real.
Yuzuki didn’t create the Faerie
Knights from whole cloth. She based it on friends of hers who
became monster hunters after making a bargain with some thing in the
woods. A group of teenage girls who snuck off to drink and smoke in
the forest, a creature of nightmares attacked them, and dragged their
friend off. They followed it into the Dark Forest and tried to fight
back. One of the creatures there offered them the power to do so, and
since then young girls have been fighting nightmare monsters. Members
of the conspiracy tend to skew younger than in other Hunter
organizations, and already have social hang ups. To “vanilla”
fans the fan community can be an open and welcoming thing. To the
actual magical girls, it often serves as the only thing that allows
them to keep it together. They look after each other. Many Senshi
hope one day to inspire others, having their exploits canonized by
Yuzuki. She still takes an active role in the conspiracy, even after
the gunshot wound that left her crippled and caused her to originally
turn to comic books as an outlet.
The Dark
Forest
A
source of many of the yokai and monsters that the Starlight Guardians
face—and certainly the source of the Unseelie—the Dark Forest is
an alien dreamscape. Not all of it is wooded, but even in the Goblin
Markets and oceans seem to feature ever present thorns on the edges.
Strangeness
is common, and minor monsters and shady street vendors wanting to buy
“the sparkle of your eyes” are both constant dangers. The land
can shift and change when a traveler isn’t looking, or even react to
emotions.
Many Faerie Knights make
personal sanctuaries in the Dark Forest, carved out of the thorns and
made habitable, often represented by the Safe Place merit. While the
Guardians have no normal way to get into or out of the Dark Forest,
they often learn “Keys” to open Dark Gates into it. Usually these
are objects or short gestures, as long as an Instant action, but
other places are Keyed to more obscure, intricate rituals.
The Enemy
The Unseelie are everywhere
because the Dark Forest is everywhere. They poison dreams and snatch
away innocents. Many a Faerie Knight was born when she found herself
dragged from their bed through, a window and into a world of biting
thorns, only to be rescued by an upperclasswoman—clad in fanciful
armour in the form of her cheerleading uniform and whose natural
aloofness gave way to battle-hardened cool—or even one of the
Seelie who saw a potential pawn.
All
but the most naïve of the magical girls realizes that their
benefactors are potentially as dangerous as the things they Hunt, and
the conspiracy recognizes two major groups of faerie: The Seelie, who
while potential threats are mostly willing to work with Hunters, and
the Unseelie, who are dangerous creatures of nightmare that haunt
dreams, snatch away children, and sow chaos. The strongest of the
Seelie often claim to be exiles of great wars—though none ever
seems to have been from the same
war—or otherwise dispossessed of their noble lands.
The magical girls can rarely
directly harm the Unseelie nobles—and many come to find themselves
repeatedly dealing with foes they thought they defeated—but they do
their best to throw wrenches into their plans when they can. More
often they find themselves dealing with the repercussions of the
Unseelie machinations, like the Fetches they leave behind after an
abduction. Many of the Faerie Knights have had personal experiences
with these doppelgangers, having found friends or loved ones replaced
by them. Changelings are another result of the Unseelie messing with
mortals, but the Senshi are torn on how to approach them. Some are
clearly suffering and in need of the very same support that the
Pretty Guardians give each other. Others are vicious monsters that
sell innocents into captivity. And both types are dangerous.
Sometimes things are easy, and
some scuttling horror without a moral quandary is spitted out of the
Dark Forest or someone’s dreams, and it can be safely destroyed
without a second thought.
Beyond fae creatures, the
Guardians are likely to come into contact with vampires,
dream-poisoning witches, and other beasties, but the Seelie who give
them their powers are often most interested in having their rivals
struck down or harassed.
Hunters
College
was a big change. You were on the other side of a break up, away from
home, and on your own for the first time. At first you were alright,
but then your dreams became nightmares, all the loneliness and fears
amplified. That all came to a head when you were dragged by the
ankles out your dorm window by a woman on horseback, her hair—her
head—wreathed
in flames. Your flannel gown was torn to shreds and covered in blood
from the thorns, but before you were lost forever you were saved. Now
you keep what happened to you from happening to anyone else.
You
absolutely adored Pretty
Guardian Faerie Knight
as a kid. You had all the toys and games and even wrote fanfic. You
still keep a plushy of Hitomi, and when you’re sad or scared you talk
to it, but as you grew older you pretended not to be interested and
called it “kid’s stuff”. That was before you were walking in the
park one night and got attacked by something out of an anime. A
little white cat offered to make you a magical girl and you accepted.
You know your twelve-year-old-you would cream herself in excitement,
but you wonder if it’s worth waking up screaming in the middle of the
night.
You
’re a guy. Not a manly guy or anything, but you always thought it was
weird that guys your age were obsessing over a cartoon for little
girls. Then your girlfriend convinced you to do cross-play as Hitomi
and you wandered into the Dark Forest and were drafted. Now you’re
obsessing over the cartoon, hoping it gives you better insight into
all this faerie crap so that you don’t get yourself killed. Your mom
was right, you really should
have cut your hair.
Ever since you were little, you
knew about the Dark Forest. You’ve been able to see them ever since
your dad came home and wasn’t your dad. No one believed you until
your real dad came back and killed your fake dad. You kept loving
him, even if he was a gargoyle. So after years of watching a show
that was so real to you, you walked up to Yuzuki at a convention and
told her you wanted to help.
Circles
Unlike most conspiracies, the
Senshi are both monster Hunters and a fandom. Some of the fans are
aware of what goes on behind the curtain, while others are oblivious.
The various groups that consider themselves Pretty Guardians are
known as “Circles”, after the term for a group of doujinshi
artists.
Big
Sisters, Little Sisters
is a circle dedicated not to directly stomping out the monsters of
the Dark Forest, but healing their damage. They act openly as fans of
Bishoujo Senshi
Yousei Kishi,
dressing up in cosplay, visiting sick children, putting on
inspirational skits at elementary schools, and helping the less
fortunate. Though they rarely directly fight, they are invaluable in
giving a shoulder to lean—or cry—on, acting as a release valve
for pent up emotions. It’s not unusual for members of other Circles
to have a friend or girlfriend who’s a Big Sister.
Spreading
information through doujinshi and fanfic—some of it used by other
Hunters as well—Starlight
Projekt
can help get the word out on tactics and chronicle the exploits of
the magical girls; some girls even draw doujinshi of their own cell,
and hope to work with Kagome Yuzuki herself on the animated series
(or one of it’s several media spin-offs). They honour living and
fallen Guardians, but have a tendency to “ship” their friends. As
a production focused circle, they also provide monetary aid to other
Guardians.
The
largest circle within the Guardians is The
Pretty Soldiers,
who dedicate their lives to fighting the creatures of darkness. Many
do it out of a sense of justice, regret at having failed someone, or
even a suicidal drive to take out as many enemies as they can (these
are the ones who most need Big Sisters), but there are a surprising
number of Guardians who are in the Pretty Soldiers Circle in the
hopes that they’ll end up immortalized in the comic books and anime
that first inspired them.
Status
Status as a Pretty Guardian
Faerie Knight is often a very informal thing. There are no ranks or
initiation ceremonies, and it can come through making an impact
defeating monsters or for a well received fan comic. Ultimately it
measures the impact that the Senshi has on the fandom.
● You
know the truth about the fandom, and have probably made a few Pacts
with the Seelie. You may purchase the Pactio Endowment.
●●●
You’ve seen terrible nightmares and may never sleep again, but you’ve
also caused a fair share of nightmares among those who threaten the
innocent. You gain the Unseen Sense merit for Faeries. Like the
God-Machine specific version, it allows you to see through the Mask.
If you already have it, an existing Ally is upgraded to a True
Friend.
●●●●●
Creatures of Darkness tremble when they hear your name, and hope is
brought to the hopeless. You likely have fandoms within the fandom
dedicated to you. You gain three dots to distribute among Mixed
Blessings merits, as per the Dread Power (the Willpower must be paid
over three turns before the power is rolled), and may purchase the
Dread Power as a Merit. You’re the one giving out bargains now.
Stereotypes
Network
Zero:
There was this guy who seemed like your typical con creeper. I
thought he was trying to get upskirts or something and when I went to
give him a piece of my mind he showed me the video he recorded. You’d
think I’d have realized by now looks can be deceiving. Still
not gonna let him put video of me on his little conspiracy theory
Youtube page.
The
Long Night:
I don’t know what would upset these guys more: seeing me kiss my
girlfriend or knowing I work with faeries. Uh… other kind of
faeries. I always expect them to be picketing something, or
complaining about gay marriage.
Taskforce
VALKYRIE:
Like my dad, in all the worst ways. Gruff, demanding, never answers
questions, and expects to be obeyed completely. These guys have great
toys, but don’t let them push you around.
Lucifuge:
I know how tempting a brooding boyfriend is, and it’s freakin’
awesome watching a guy in a leather jacket burn a demon to cinders,
but there’s always too much baggage. Don’t even think about getting
serious, keep it to the Vigil and try to find someone in a mask and
formal wear.
Ascending
Ones: I’ll admit I’ve made some
bad decisions. I turned to this guy I met on a Hunt, and he hooked me
up with some really
good stuff. It wasn’t worth it. I understand what it takes to hold
the Vigil, but we sell comics and they sell drugs. I’ll take
capitalism any day.
New Endowment
Pactio
By making
deals and bargains with the more benign creatures of the Dark Forest,
Guardians are able to call upon a measure of supernatural power to
defeat their foes. Every time a member of the Faerie Knights gains a
new dot of Pactio, she chooses one of the following powers. Each
power can be exchanged for another provided the Senshi performs an
oblation for one of the Seelie and is granted a new one (these are
rarely very difficult, but can often be uncomfortable, time
consuming, or both; for Storytellers who care more about how long it
takes than playing it out, assume an extended action requiring
successes equal to 10 minus Pactio, with each roll being a day).
Any
physical component of a Pactio bargain is summoned into reality from
dream-stuff with a point of Willpower. This summons together all of
the dream-woven regalia that a Senshi might have, though some
abilities can be held back. If they are, they’ll need to be summoned
on their own with another point of Willpower.
Each
Pactio bargain also comes with a minor Ban (as a Rank 1 ephemeral
being, God-Machine
Chronicle
pg. 221), representing the chiminage paid and favours performed in
return for being able to use the Pactio, and through performing the
Ban, or avoiding it’s restrictions, the magical girls provide their
benefactors with tithes of supernatural energy. Once the power is
given, the Seelie who bestowed it upon the Faerie Knight isn’t able
to unbestow it, but failing to uphold the agreement results in a
fixation that subtracts one die from all rolls and otherwise
functions as the Deprived Condition (God-Machine
Chronicle
pg. 181). As the Guardians gain more Pactio, they risk becoming
drawn into the same stories that govern the fae.
Storytellers
should decide the Ban that needs to be heeded when the Pactio bargain
is struck, and each power has a list of suggestions, though they
aren’t comprehensive.
Costume Weapon
Action:
Reflexive, as regalia
No magical
girl is complete without a magical weapon, and with this Pactio, you
gain the use of an ostentatious weapon. It has the weapon profile of
an existing melee weapon (chosen when the power is taken), but even
the most reserved Senshi will always have a Costume Weapon that looks
like exactly that: an over-dramatized weapon like something out of a
comic book. Big Sisters are known to have Costume weapons that look
like they’ve been peacebonded, perfect for the convention floor.
The weapon
has one less initiative penalty compared to it’s mundane equivalent,
has a Strength requirement of 1, and can be summoned from thin air as
regalia. If desired, you can do bashing damage instead of lethal, but
it’s considered a magical weapon when dealing with anything with
supernatural resistances. If the you ever get disarmed, the weapon
returns to your hand as a Reflexive action at the top of the
initiative. Costume Weapon lasts for one scene.
Suggested
Bans:
Must declare a challenge verbally, must practice an hour each day,
must use the weapon in combat once a week.
Starlight Shooter
Action:
Reflexive, as regalia
While up
close and personal is the favoured style of many Senshi, it never
hurts to have a ranged weapon. Much like Costume Weapon, this Pactio
allows you to summon a fanciful weapon for a scene by spending a
point of Willpower. The Starlight Shooter can take any form, but uses
Dexterity + Firearms. It has a short range of Presence + Resolve +
Pactio in yards, a damage rating of 2, and a clip size equal to your
Resolve + Composure + Pactio, which can be refilled with another
point of Willpower. As long as you have three dots of Pactio, you can
full autofire.
The
Starlight Shooter can be anything, from a crystal scepter or cartoon
musket to a winged bow with energy arrows that form when the
bowstring is drawn. If you have Starlight Shooter and Costume Weapon,
they can both be the same object (a sword swing sends out blasts of
energy, a bow has spikes or blades, magical staffs are just as good
for hitting as shooting lightning bolts).
Suggested
Bans:
As with Costume Weapon.
Barrier Jacket
Action:
Reflexive,
as regalia
Magical
girling is tough work, and evil isn’t going to pull it’s punches,
even against a teenage girl. It takes thick skin to keep going.
Literally. With this regalia Pactio bargain, energy crystalizes
around a Senshi and forms into a lightweight but protective piece of
armour. It gives a general armour rating equal to dots in Pactio, and
half that in ballistic armour, despite having the appearance of a
stylized uniform of some sort—seifuku is common, but candy stripper
uniforms and cheerleader outfits are possible; any costume that might
be associated with young women—it protects even uncovered limbs,
midriffs, or faces.
Suggested
Bans: Handwashing
clothing, sunbathing or sleeping naked, wearing the same outfit twice
in a row.
Light of Truth
Action:
Instant
Dice
Pool:
Presence + Expression
There are
a lot of beasties and monsters that lie as easily as they breathe,
and wear false faces. With this power, you can see through that,
whether it’s the Mask that fae wear or the way that some vampires
make themselves seem invisible. As an instant action you raise your
hand, a symbol of your faith, or light simply emanates from your
heart. A number of yards equal to your Integrity are illuminated as
if lit by a flickering candle.
In
addition to lighting things up, it becomes harder for anything to be
obfuscated, whether it’s the truth or an enemy. Anyone who would
speak falsely is unable to do so without spending a point of
Willpower, and any rolls for subterfuge or trickery are at -2.
Mundane means of stealth are instantly revealed, and anyone using
supernatural methods must roll Composure + Potency to stay hidden.
Hidden
nooks and crannies are also faintly illuminated, granting +3 to any
attempts to uncover them, but using this power requires
concentration, and means giving up your Defense.
Suggested
Bans:
Hide something in plain site and keep it hidden, use mundane means to
find something in the Dark Forest, choose one object and keep it
unhidden.
Knockout Punch
Sometimes
an enemy won’t stay down. This power fixes that. When you first
bargain for this Pactio, choose a Personal Tilt other than Beaten
Down or a Grave Tilt. Whenever you make a successful melee attack,
you may spend a point of Willpower to treat your damage rating as 0
and apply that tilt. The use of the power is always obvious.
Suggested
Bans:
an hour of physical training each day, outdoor meditation, calling
your attack
Mascot
Unlike
other Pactio bargains, a Mascot (sometimes called a Shikigami or for
the stuffy and serious a Familiar) isn’t just a Seelie bestowing the
Senshi with a vestige of power in exchange for fulfilling a contract.
The Mascot is
the Seelie, and the contract tends to be caring for it. Mascots are
small creatures from the Dark Forest, never bigger than a dog and
often taking forms like cat-rabbit hybrids or monkeys with strange
fur. They have a Mask, but it’s weak, and anyone making sustained
contact with them can roll Wits + Composure - 2 to notice something
“off” about them (or Wits + Occult, if they have a relevant
specialty, to notice telltale signs of fae creatures).
Mascot
Traits
Attributes:
5/4/3 (divided among
Mental, Physical, and Social)
Skills:
9/6/3 (divided among Mental, Physical, and Social); the Mascot
receives a free dot in Brawl, Larceny, or Stealth
Willpower:
Equal to Resolve + Composure
Glamour:
10 (10 max)
Initiative:
Equal to Dexterity + Composure
Defense:
Equal to lower of Dexterity or Wits, plus Athletics
Virtue
and Vice: Any, though they
often share their Senshi’s Virtue and Vice.
Integrity:
A Mascot has no Integrity rating.
Size:
5 or less (based on it’s
animal type)
Health:
Equal to Stamina + Size
Dread
Powers: One dot each of
Absorb Energy, Dark Gate, Dream Seeing, and Revelation as
described on Mortal Remains
pp. 46-47; Mascots don’t inherently have Mixed Blessings. In
addition, choose three dots of Dread Powers.
Bane:
All creatures of the Dark
Forest have a Bane of Cold Iron
Innocuous:
Mascots are very good at not being noticed by others. Anyone but
it’s bonded master suffers a -2 penalty on perception rolls to
notice the Mascot, unless it does something to draw attention to
itself.
Conditions:
The Senshi is considered to
have the Bonded Condition with her familiar, and she is
considered tagged with the Fettered Condition, preventing Glamour
Bleed outside of the Dark Forest. Whenever a Mascot would resolve
a Condition placed on it, instead of taking a Beat it gains a
point of Glamour.
Mascots
function in most ways similar to a Lucifuge’s Embodied Familiar
Castigation. It uses Glamour instead of Essence or Willpower
(regained through it’s Absorb Energy Dread Power), is emotionally
linked to it’s master, and doesn’t need to have commands spoken. You
may learn Merits such as the Falconry or K-9 Fighting Styles, but
lose them if your Mascot dies or you switch it out; the dots still
fall under Sanctity of Merits.
Suggested
Bans:
Taking care of a non-magical creature is a task of it’s own to begin
with.
Big Sister Says
Action:
Reflexive
The Big
Sister is a common stock character in many stories. Faeries too are
known for being implacable. It’s befitting then that with the power
of justice—or at least gifts granted by the Seelie—you’re able to
channel that older sister allure. You always draw eyes towards you
when you want to be seen. You suffer no social penalties and double
any Striking Looks bonuses.
By
spending a point of Willpower you may treat yourself as having a Good
Impression towards someone for the purposes of Social Maneuvering,
and characters who choose to Go With The Flow take an additional
Beat. In combat if you haven’t acted with hostility or drawn a
weapon, anyone who wants to engage you violently must first spend a
point of Willpower and roll Resolve + Composure.
Suggested
Bans:
Always listen to your cell’s problems, care for a child or animal.
Fenix Down
Action:
Instant or Extended, each roll is one turn
Something
of a last resort power, this ability allows one of the Senshi to heal
the most grievous of injuries, provided you get to them in time. By
spending a point of Willpower and rolling Presence + Resolve you can
heal others injuries. Each success heals one point of lethal or
bashing damage that was incurred during the scene. This use of the
power can’t be used to heal Aggravated damage, but can downgrade it,
though wounds that were originally Aggravated can’t be healed any
further.
If
an ally completely falls in battle, it isn’t the end for them.
Provided you manage to reach them in a number of turns equal to their
Willpower, you can return them to life, at a cost. Spend a dot
of Integrity as well as a point of Willpower and make an Extended
Integrity + Pactio roll, with a target number of 15 minus the
subject’s Integrity.
Roll
Results
Dramatic
Failure:
You fail, but subtract one from the maximum number of rolls you can
make. If you do manage to succeed, your ally gains a Persistent
Condition, such as Broken, Fugue, or Madness. If you fail, you gain
the Guilty Condition. Either way the psychic backlash causes you a
point of aggravated damage.
Failure:
You don’t make headway, and may take a minor Condition or give up.
Success:
You make headway, and the body stirs, letting out a ragged gasp or
twitching as the soul struggles not to release itself. Once the
target number is met, the previously dead ally violently wakes up,
convulsing and shivering and usually crying. Both girls are treated
as if they got a Dramatic Failure on a Breaking Point roll, but the
subject’s aggravated damage is made lethal, and her rightmost health
box is cleared.
Exceptional
Success:
As above, but you manage to heal damage equal to your Presence and
both of you are treated as if you only had a normal failure on a
Breaking Point roll.
Suggested
Bans:
Must kiss those you heal, can’t refuse a sincere gift
Kiss Kiss Fall In Love
Action:
Instant
Sometimes
people love you all on their own. Sometimes they need a little help.
With a subtle display of confidence and a contested roll of Presence
+ Expression + Striking Looks versus Composure + Potency you give
someone you make eye contact with a suitable Condition, chosen when
the power is taken.
Roll
Results
Dramatic
Failure: You
gain the Condition towards the target instead, or
the target gains the Informed Condition towards you.
Failure:
Nothing happens. You can use the power on the same target again after
24 hours.
Success:
You can impart the chosen condition on the target. Conditions like
Swooning, Inspired, or Leveraged give this bargain it’s name, but
Conditions like Shaken and Spooked are also acceptable.
Exceptional
Success:
You can give the target the Addicted or Obsessed Condition focused on
yourself. They can’t help but want to jockey for your attention and
affection.
Suggested
Bans:
ten minutes spent in front of a mirror admiring yourself each night,
must kiss the target, cannot turn down flattery
Pain
isn’t Pretty
Action:
Passive
Fighting
monsters and evil faeries isn’t easy. They have ways of causing
searing pain, like the Agonize Dread Power (Hunter:
the Vigil
pg. 276-277) or blows that target limbs to cripple. With this Pactio,
you’re completely able to ignore Tilts and combat penalties that are
inflicted on you during battle with the forces of darkness up to your
Pactio dots. Any Persistent Conditions that might result from the
Example:
Akemi has Pactio ●●●.
During a fight with a powerful yokai, she has her arm and leg hit
with powerful blows, leaving her with the Arm and Leg Wrack Tilts. On
top of that, the nightmare’s claws Sickened her and through
supernatural means it forced her to accept the Beaten Down Tilt. She
still notes that she has the Arm and Leg Wrack Tilts, as well as
Sickness, but doesn’t suffer any ill effects from them (at least so
long as she continues to fight). Because of the Beaten Down Tilt,
which puts her over three ignored Tilts, she’ll still have to spend a
point of Willpower to keep on fighting, but it’s a small price to pay
to keep her friends safe.
When
she finally defeats the monster that’s been plaguing her
neighborhood’s dreams, she collapses in pain and vomits all over
herself before struggling to get back to her Safe Space, where she
can rest. During the battle she was able to ignore her Wound
Penalties, but now that the danger is over, her injuries are
hampering her.
In
addition, you don’t take any physical indications of damage, and your
Regalia remains untorn. After all, Pain Isn’t Pretty, but magical
girls are.
Suggested
Bans:
Subject yourself to injury or conditions that would cause a Tilt
outside combat (a thumbtack in the thigh, cold or inclement weather),
keep a candle lit, go without sleep for 24 hours a week.
Hope’s
Blessing
Action:
Passive
All
that it takes for evil to succeed is for good girls to do nothing.
The senshi know this, and know that the hope that what they’re doing
is right is a powerful force. Called Hope’s Curse by more jaded
Guardians, this ability allows you to shrug off debilitating injuries
and continue fighting so long as you continue to hold out hope for a
better world. All healing times are cut in half: Bashing heals in
fifteen minutes, lethal in a day, and aggravated in only three days.
Any
Conditions resulting from crippling injuries that are otherwise
mundane (not the result of a direct magical curse, like a sorcerer
blinding you) are resolved after a week. So long as you survive a
fight, you can—and likely will—continue fighting until you
finally can fight no more.
Suggested
Bans:
three hours or intense physical training, prayer, or volunteer work a
week.
Hammer
Space
Action:
Passive
In
both Japanese and western cartoons, characters will often pull
objects out of nowhere, seemingly from behind their backs (or out of
their asses). With this Pactio bargain—called the Handy Haversack
in one Starlight Projekt doujin game—you have that ability as well.
When you take this power, you gain the ability to store objects in a
pocket dimension. The dimension has a total space of twice your
Pactio + Resolve.
No
single object stored in Hammer Space can have Size larger than the
lesser of Resolve or Pactio, and you’re considered to have the Quick
Draw merit for any objects within your Hammer Space. If another character
with Pactio dots (not necessarily the Hammer Space bargain) is close
enough to reach into your clothing and knows you well enough, they
can even share your Hammer Space, removing objects but not being able
to store them (for mechanical purposes, assume two characters that
know the same version of a Tactic are able to use Hammer Space
together, even if taking from the Hammer Space of an unconscious
character). The total weight of Hammer Space is never more than one
pound, and you must be wearing at least some type of clothing or in
reach of an enclosed space to benefit. You can’t actually
pull things from your ass, even if it might seem that way.
Example:
Realizing that her powers aren’t strong enough on their own, Akemi
decides to store heavier armaments inside of her Hammer Space. After
tracking down and assaulting a man who sold illegal weapons from the
trunk of his car, Akemi takes his guns for herself. With her Pactio
●●●
and Resolve ●●●● she has a total Hammer Space of 14, she
takes two assault rifles (Size 3), a riot shield (Size 3), a gas mask
(Size 2) and three heavy pistols (Size 1). She couldn’t, however,
store a grenade machine gun in her Hammer Space because it’s Size (4)
is larger than her Pactio dots (If her Pactio was ●●●● and
her Resolve ●●●, she couldn’t, but if both were ●●●●
she could).
Later,
when fighting a strange robotic angel, she’s knocked unconscious.
Knowing about her Hammer Space, Takamichi, one of Akemi’s cellmates
who knew about her hidden armoury, reaches into Akemi’s shirt and
pulls out an assault rifle to finish off the monster and get her
friend to safety.
Suggested
Bans:
Only storing a specific type of item (weapons, first aid supplies,
clothing), carrying a specific item on you at all times outside of
your Hammer Space, wearing a specific article of clothing.
With 2009’s National Novel Writing Month already ten days old, and with nothing but a pile of notes to show for it, I’m going to try writing something a little different here, just to get the creative juices flowing. I’m going to write about the Hero’s Journey, something that I really love, but that I don’t research nearly as much as I should. It’s something that’s an incredible asset to a writer of any kind. Without even getting into the psychological aspects of it—Joseph Campbell, the man who introduced the concept of the Monomyth in his book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, was a student of Carl Jung, and the concept features numerous Jungian archetypes, such as the Hero, the Mentor, the Temptress, the Shadow, etcetera etcetera—the concept itself is useful because it’s archetypical. The Hero’s Journey is, in it’s purest form, a template. At least, that’s the way that I see it.
Of course, this is all my own take on it, and in a way, every story is the exact same thing told a million times over with a million variations. It’s been said that there are only three distinct plots: Man vs Man, Man vs Himself, and Man vs Nature. “There is nothing new under the sun”. “Creativity is about hiding your sources.” Not only does this come from research into the Hero’s Journey (without actually reading much of Campbell’s book), a lot of it comes from http://www.TVTropes.org. Almost everything capitalized has an entry, so check it out.
Well, that’s what the Monomyth is. The source of all stories, consciously or unconsciously. You can see it in everything from the journey of Christ and Buddha, and since Campbell’s book was one of the inspirations, you can see it in Star Wars. Pieces are rearranged and flipped over, some are left out, some are doubled up while others are barely mentioned, but every story has the Hero’s Journey at it’s heart. Especially a fantasy story.
The Journey is broken down into three main elements, from there broken up more. They are: The Departure: The Hero meets with the Herald, and either accepts the Call, or it is thrust upon him. He is forced to leave his idyllic world, and experience the supernatural. The supernatural in this case need not be ghosts and wizards. It could be the world of fashion, as seen in The Devil Wears Prada. It could be just on the edge of an affair in I Think I Love My Wife. More obviously, Luke learns the ways of the Force, and goes from a life of boring moisture farming to the world of the Rebellion. The ‘supernatural’ might even be just the opposite. A supersoldier is thrust into a world of the mundane.
The Initiation: Wherein the Hero deals with the world he’s been thrust into, and goes down the Road of Trials. Now in the supernatural world, the Hero is tested in ways he hasn’t been before. They deal with Temptresses and slay Dragons. They encounter death in ways, from the literal—Luke could have died when rescuing Leia, and without his more competent allies, Frodo would have been Orc chow. This is the bulk of the story, where the hero undergoes the great adventure, meets his allies and enemies, and is tempted and tested.
The Return: Having survived the Road of Trials, the Hero uses all that he’s learned to go back to the beginning and put everything that he’s learned to the test. He returns the McGuffin to where it belongs, he starts a New Jedi Order, or realizes that he doesn’t need another woman because he really does love his wife. Often, the Return is in the form of a race. The Hero makes a flight with the Elixer, running from the last of the forces that want to destroy him. The archetypical castle falling apart as the Big Bad is destroyed, or the villain inputting the self destruct sequence when the Hero thinks he’s won. With the end of this stage, the Hero returns to his life, changed by the experiences he’s had throughout the journey.
Each of the three stages is broken down, often into 12 stages. Each one represents another stepping stone for the Hero. Another trial, or a hurdle to leap over.
At the start of the story, the Hero is in The Ordinary World. This is where they live, and whether or not it’s ordinary for the reader, viewer, or player, it is for them. Often, they wish that something would happen, something to take them away from their home, and give them an adventure. This is the stage where the bored farmboy sits looking out at the stars, or listening to the tales of travelers in the pubs.
Soon, the hero gets their wish, and the Herald comes into their life. Not necessarily a person, the Herald is the character or object in the story that brings the Hero The Call to Adventure. A man might stumble into the room shouting that zombies are coming, or a robot might play a message asking for help. Whatever it is, this is what will begin the Hero’s journey. Often times, despite their wishful thinking, there is a Refusal of the Call. The Hero is reluctant, either out of fear, or insecurity. Sometimes, they might not even know the Call was the Call. If this happens, The Call Knows Where You Live. The stormtroopers hunt down the droids, and kill Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. The Call is an important part of the story, and in some cases it’s a little more complicated. Luke Skywalker gets the Call for Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan trains Luke as his apprentice. In Kingdom Hearts, Sora unknowingly takes Riku’s call from him. He later receives another. In Harry Potter, Hermione and Ron decide to make it a Conference Call. In some cases, the Hero’s Call might just be that they couldn’t deal with waiting for it. One case of a different Call is when the Hero Can’t Stay Normal. They already have some supernatural power, and they strain to hide it. This is seen in modern stories such as X-Men and Heroes.
Whatever the case, in the end the Hero is thrust into The Supernatural whether they like it or not. They encounterSupernatural Aid, often in the form of a Mentor. Luke is given a lightsaber by Obi-wan. Neo becomes a Red Pill, and becomes a member of the Nebuchadnezzar, with Morpheus as his mentor. In some cases, the Mentor and the Supernatural Aid are one and the same. The Hero might find an ancient book of spells, and set about teaching himself magic.
With the aid, the hero undergoes The Crossing of the First Threshold. This is where the Hero can no longer turn back. They enter the world of monsters. It is here that the first true test of the hero is made. They face one or more Threshold Guardians, who while not necessarily antagonistic, will attempt to test the Hero to see if they are worthy to go on. This is the Council of Elrond, where Frodo speaks up and announces that he will take the ring to Mordor. This is Mos Eisley, where Luke has to convince Han Solo to aid them in saving Princess Leia from the first Death Star. The Hero may actually 'die’ here, failing their journey, only to once more be pulled back. They may sit like Achilles in his Tent, only to renew themselves to the adventure, and return—often just in the nick of time to save those they love—This happens all the time in Spiderman.
Once the Threshold is crossed, there’s no turning back. The Hero is exiled, the spaceship has launched, the train has started moving. This begins the Road of Trials. This is the bulk of the story, and the most open. Here, anything can happen, and the Hero will be tested. They will meet Allies and Enemies, and the adventures that they have will strengthen them for the climax.
Common elements of the Road of Trials are: The Temptress, often a female figure who will attempt to distract the Hero from his quest. In a romantic movie, this is the other woman. Of course, if the Hero is swayed by the other woman, it can be a story in itself. After all, in Act I, Romeo was pining for Rozalin until he saw Juliet. The Temptress may not even know herself as such. The reason that Spiderman acts as Achilles in his tent so often is because of Mary Jane Watson(Parker, depending on the writer). The Goddess, the Hero meets a woman of power. She may offer him aid, or might serve as another test. Galadril offering to take the One Ring serves as both a test of Frodo’s resolve, as well as the Woman As Temptress of above. Atonement With the Father. The Hero reconciles with the father, or their father figure. Perhaps they never saw eye to eye, and the Hero wants to resolve their differences, or perhaps the character’s father is dead, and they want to live up to a name. Luke Skywalker convinces his father, Anakin, to turn on Palpatine, and he takes him over the edge with him. In this case, the Atonement also serves as the climax. The Innermost Cave. The Hero journeys into the heart of his fears. Literally into a cave, or perhaps into the stronghold of the enemy. There they face their problems, hopefully coming out on the other side victorious. Quite literally, Luke journeys into the Jedi cave on Dantooine, and encounters the shade of Darth Vader. In angrily attacking it, he sees that he will only symbolically kill himself, the same way that Obi-wan claims Vader killed Anakin on Mustafar. Often, there is a Rescue from Without. The Hero is saved by something outside of themselves. A good example of this is Han Solo coming to Luke’s rescue after he got his reward and went their separate ways. Something saves the Hero, whether it’s another character, or fate, or even that they’re spared by one of the villains. The Dragon. A right hand man to the Big Bad, or possibly even a real dragon or other monster that serves as a final test before the climax. They are the one who guards the lair to the final battle, and the one who serves to give the Hero that last bit of XP before they face the end boss. Before the final showdown, there is often a time out. This is the Action Movie Quiet Drama Scene. It’s the moment where the Hero and his crew sit around a campfire, preparing for the attack on the Big Bad’s stronghold, where many of them will surely die, and the Hero will face the Final Boss of the story. Confessions are made, and the characters try not to think about the fact that they’re most likely going to die. In modern stories, this could be the agents planning for a raid on the terrorist cell, or the plucky young heroine getting up the nerve to do something that will make her lose her job, but keep her dignity or integrity. Then comes the Final Battle. The Hero fights against the Big Bad, and one of them may die. Whether it is the hero or not, there comes a Resurrection. The Hero is dead, the Big Bad has triumphed. When all seems lost, the Hero’s hand comes up over the edge, and he climbs back up, determined once more. It is after this symbolic death that the Hero finally triumphs. Likewise, it’s not uncommon for the Big Bad to return, only for the Hero to defeat them for real. Often in a jRPG, this will happen at least twice, with the Big Bad changing forms. In a romance, the Hero will confess their love, only for the girl of his dreams to be with someone else. Often, this false 'death’ turns out to be just a good friend of her’s, or a brother, or the Hero convinces her that he’s the one. With the defeat of the Big Bad, the Hero is granted The Ultimate Boon. Whether it is some mystical ability, some special item, or just a quality of character that the Hero needed to possess doesn’t matter. The Hero now takes what he’s gained or learned, called The Elixer by Campbell, and races along The Road Back. Oftentimes, the Hero will make a harrowing flight home, returning to the original world with the Elixer, often using it to save someone from their normal life. The Elixer itself may have served early on as the Call, where the Hero’s Journey revolved around the quest for the Elixer. Once the journey is complete, the Hero has The Freedom to Live. They are no longer under threat from the supernatural, and they often become The Master of Two Worlds. Mulan manages to save the world by using the skills she learned masquerading as a man, as well as no longer needing to hide her femininity. Luke Skywalker is no longer ordinary, he is now a full fledged Jedi, and creates a New Jedi Order. That isn’t always the end, though. The Hero’s Journey is cyclic. When one journey is complete, the next can begin. This is most obvious in trilogies, where the first movie often encompasses it’s own journey, while the sequels are a two part Hero’s Journey. In The Matrix, Neo becomes the Master of Two Worlds by defeating Smith, and in Revolutions and Reloaded, he again undergoes a journey. The second movie even ends with a spiritual death, leading into the next. In Curse of the Black Pearl, Will Turner answers the Call and becomes a Pirate, saving Elizabeth and ending one cycle, only to begin another contained in Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End.
After the Emperor is defeated, and a New Republic instated in the Galaxy, Luke, Han, and Leia are forced to deal with Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Heir to the Empire. Years later, Jacen Solo has to save the galaxy from the Yuzhang Vong.
Now, none of this needs to be taken at face value. The Wise Old Man that serves as a Mentor can just as easily be a Wise Old Man or a Magical Negro, but in modern times we don’t always have old people or racist caricatures to aid us. Sometimes instead we have the cop’s Rabbi, or the student’s unique teacher. The Mentor can be a coach, or a doctor, or even a boss. The Mentor might be a Marine sniper who runs the team and smacks you on the back of the head when you act stupid.
Even the term Hero can be altered. The Hero could just as easily be a Villain, going along the same journey. He’s called to adventure by himself, deciding that he needs to take over the world. The final battle is nothing more than the Hero—in this case a villain—attempting to defeat the one hero who could stop him. It can also just as easily be a heroine.
The character’s atonement with the 'father’ could be with their mother. Or it could be with a brother or a friend that they betrayed, or that they feel betrayed them. It can be Luke and Anakin making nice, or it can be Han coming back to save Luke, deciding he doesn’t need to be a smuggler.
While the original reason for the Temptress is as an aspect of the Hero’s Anima, his female soul, the Temptress could just as easily be something else. Aunt May is just as much reason for Peter Parker to put away the Spiderman costume as Mary Jane is. It could be doubts and fears that the Hero faces, things they experienced during the Refusal of the Call and never quite got over.
The Final Battle could easily, easily be anything else. The last game of the championship game, the Hero standing up for something they believe in. It could represent nothing more than a turning point. The Hero 'defeats’ the Big Bad, where the Big Bad is themselves. They make a choice they have to make, to save something or someone, whether metaphorically or literally. It could be Peter Parker realizing that the world needs Spiderman.
The pieces themselves are all just symbolism. Change them around and the story becomes more interesting, more varied. Rearrange the pieces if you want. Creativity is about hiding the sources, after all, because there’s nothing new under the sun.
That’s what the Hero’s Journey is, though. It’s the Monomyth. It’s a template, tried and tested from the dawn of civilization, speaking to us from something archetypical. It’s a guideline for anyone who chooses to write anything. Change the pieces, flip them around. The story is the same and yet different every time. From drama to action, and everything in between. One Hero, of a Thousand Faces.
This was my submission for Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition’s Open Call. It’s been months with no word, so I’m going to finally share it. I may not have gotten picked, but I’m still proud of it, even if I did have to consolidate and cut down a lot of ideas to make the wordcount limit.
The main idea is that it’s a Compact based on the trope of the Final Girl; i.e. the last of the Slasher’s victims, who manages to turn the tables and kill him. It’s also fucking filled with stupid references, since the slasher genre has been very meta since even before Scream. There’s a lot of references to other movies, a few video games, Scooby Doo, and quite a bit of Hack/Slash. Count them all and get a NoPrize. The core concept of the Conspiracy is that they’re the would-be murder victims who are trying to prevent other Slasher attacks. There’s also an underlying fear that they could become Slashers themselves, due to either being related to them or having been changed by the event. You know, that old twist.
The
Final Girl’s Club
Summer,
1980. The camp at Toluca Lake was shaken by the killing spree of an
implacable psychopath wearing a kabuki mask. Seventeen people were
dead because a land developer wanted the camp owners to sell. After
hefty hush money settlements to the surviors, the company got the
land anyway.
When rumours began springing up that the Toluca
Lake Resort was haunted by the killer’s ghost, Laurie Carpenter set
out to gain closure. Unfortunately what she learned as the killer lay
dying was that her own brother had taken up the kabuki’s mantle,
wanting revenge for being silenced.
With another incident came
more survivors, who looked to Carpenter for guidance. After a class
action lawsuit over the company’s cover up, the Toluca Lake
Survivor Foundation was formed. Their mission was to aid slasher
victims. Secretly, Laurie hoped to prevent people from becoming like
her brother. The organization researched the slasher phenomena, and
as it grew it became more of a proactive compact, with the survivors
of attacks now actively looking for slasher activity. By the early
90s, when people began talking about the often gendered violence of
these killers, the compact part of the Foundation took on its
unofficial name: The Final Girls Club.
The
Enemy Many
of the Final Girls (and guys) were victims of supernatural stalkers.
Creepy admirers who wouldn’t take no for an answer and escalated to
murder. Others were chosen for revenge, often for something they had
no part in, or broke some taboo they had no way of knowing about.
Almost every hunter in the compact was the victim of a slasher of
some kind, though the compact plays fast and loose with the term.
Stalker vampires and rampaging werewolves both leave victims with
nightmares, and wizards and faeries have a way of punishing whoever
they consider a rulebreaker. The slasher phenomena is their
greatest concern, and the members who aren’t survivors tend to be
relatives of victims, or even the slashers themselves. The phenomena
primarily affects teens, and while other orgs might prioritize youth,
the Final Girls aren’t just protecting kids, they’re protecting
their friends. This kind of closeness is as much a blessing as a
curse.
Hunters
When
you were too young to remember, there was this creepy guy in the
neighborhood. The parents didn’t like the way he looked at the kids,
so they burned him alive. Whether he was a monster then or not, he
came back a decade later for revenge on the parents. He still haunts
your dreams, but at least he can’t hurt anyone else after you stopped
him.
Every kid gets picked on, especially the lunch lady’s. Not
every kid’s mom starts murdering the bullies and serving them up as
Mystery Meat Special™. The look of betrayal on her face when you
brought the cops in–right before she shoved it into the fry oil and
killed herself–is something you’ll never forget.
Dolls always
made you uncomfortable. Something about those lifeless eyes. It was
almost vindication when your deadbeat dad was brought to life
possessing one and tried to kill your family. You sent him back to
hell, and in the last few years your cell has given him a lot of
company.
Camps Groups
within the compact tend to be based around how they approach
combating the slasher phenomena.
Slayers
want to give their nightmares nightmares, and teach others to
fight. Exorcists
were often victims of demonic possession and research the occult The
Loomis Group
focuses on trauma therapy to aid victims, and hope to even cure the
slashers themselves.
Status Status
is earned not by hunting down or dealing with slashers–though it
certainly is impressive–but supporting and protecting the victims of
their attacks.
● Having already been up close with Slashers,
you gain your choice of Tolerance for Biology, Relentless, or
Greyhound. ●●● You gain the Mind of a Madman merit. You’ve
likely given up on restful sleep. ●●●●● You’ve no
doubt seen many killers who started out with good motives or looking
for revenge. Even though you still have your Integrity, you can
understand them. The fact that it worries you is probably a good
sign. Work with the Storyteller and choose an appropriate Dread
Power.
Stereotypes
VASCU:
Vigilantism is illegal. We’ve got girls who work at Langley, so try
not to make it hard for them to turn a blind eye to our little after
school program.
Ashwood
Abbey:
Usually I’d say something like “I’m glad they’re on our
side”. Don’t make that mistake. They’re slashers, or might as
well be.
Maiden’s
Blood Sisterhood:
I guess they’ve got fall and we’ve got summer?
Small
Unit Tactics, Advanced (●●●) Prerequisite:
Small Unit Tactics When you coordinate a group and spend a point
of Willpower, a number of characters equal to twice your Presence may
choose from the Risk options, even if they aren’t a Hunter. If
their roll succeeds, they regain a point of Willpower, but for each
of those rolls that fails, you lose a point of Willpower as if you
had Risked.
Endowment:
Know Thy Enemy (● to ●●●) One
thing that keeps coming up when researching the slasher phenomena is
rules. The slut-shaming priest with the sharp silver crucifix hates
sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. If a woman with a slit-mouth asks if
she’s pretty, be ambiguous or offer her an orange unless you want
to be cut to pieces by rusty scissors. You can use these rules to
your advantage. By using a Clue gained from a successful
Investigation, you can discern the killer’s pattern. So long as you
follow their rules, you might as well be invisible. It takes a point
of Willpower and a Resolve + Composure roll to harm you, and actions
against you suffer your dots in this endowment. Drawback: The rules
only work if you abide by them. Break the rules and you’re fair
game.
Sometimes, the dead aren’t restful. They die alone, lonely, sad and pathetically. Sometimes they die by diseases that aren’t content to leave the soul untouched, and consume it as readily as the body. Sometimes it’s violence and hatred that takes them out, leaving a harsh stain on their echoes. Sometimes it’s not how they left the world that matters, but how they existed in it. A young girl teased and tormented by her classmates because she’s quiet and dresses all in black, her long hair covering her face. A middle aged man who put up with abuse from his mother now goes out and enacts revenge on women who look like her, raping them and leaving them in the woods for the coyotes. Another man runs with a crew of three, each one as bad as the next, they hit every bank in town and shoot the place up before anyone can get there. A woman knows her client’s guilt, and how he’ll kill again if he’s not locked up and treated, but still she smiles when the verdict comes, because the money helps her sleep at night. Dying cold and alone, wasting away in a hospital bed, murder most foul. A life of quiet pain and depression, or one of violence and hatred, one driven by avarice and pride. These are the things that cause a death to go bad. In these circumstances, the dead aren’t restful. They scream, and they shout, and they rage against any they encounter. A death stained with sadness creates an echo that takes others into that sadness, making them weep until they die, laying in a bathtub drawn with hot water, they lean back and let the blackness embrace them as the blood drains from their wrists. Misery loves company. A brutal murderer and rapist escapes prosecution only to meet his death at the hands of the survivor. His anger and hatred fuel his echo, and he returns to continue his bloody ‘work’. A man does nothing more than stumble into the wrong place at the wrong time. His car broke down in front of an old mansion. If he was able to look back now with cognizance, he would laugh at something so cliche. He stumbled in from the rain and looked around for the owner only to find just that, the owner. The only one who’s truly ever owned the estate, and killed anyone who would claim otherwise. Now he’s among the number, just one more echo in the cacophony of anguish that haunts the site. I’ve met them. The echoes. Some are quiet, and some are restful. Others aren’t. They’re cold, and cruel, their corpus twisted and altered from years or decades of self inflicted pain that most of them can’t even see. The dangers to themselves that comes from indulging those malicious desires. The desire to write a wrong or save a loved one, a desire that mutates and manifests as something wholly unlike what it might have been. When echoes become obsessed with a concept, they grow Hungry, feeding off of mortals and creating more of their kind.Those echoes that become something unhuman, something almost primordial, they torment the living and destroy reality with their existence, passively fraying the ends of everything and chewing and digesting it just by being there. The worst of it is that they consume souls. They do it to sustain their blasphemous unlife, or perhaps to fill some hollow part of themselves, to fill up the empty shell that they know are. The Buddhists have a name for them. They call them Preta, the Hungry Ghosts. They have “mouths as small as needles, and stomaches the size of mountains.” Colourful imagery. That’s what they do, though, they eat and feed, trying to fill that mountain with needle sized bites of humanity. The Japanese call them the gaki or Jikininki, and they were greedy, jealous people in life. They come back with an insatiable hunger, be it for corpses or shit. In the Book of Enoch, something similar is described. Great beings with unrivaled hunger, completely devoid of a mouth to sate it. Whatever their origins, people who die deaths with a great stain might become one. What’s worse, one of these hungry echoes will often leave more of it’s own kind birthed by it’s voracious wake. They’re hard to stop, the echoes of people who died terrible deaths–and even those who had their echoes stained before they even died. They come back when you kill them, because they’re already dead. They can be banished back to whatever Hell they came from, but that’s a stopgap. The dead come back, until you can kill them once and for all. Sometimes it’s as simple as offering something to them. A simple meal. Sometimes you’ll have to find a corpse, dig it up, salt it and burn it. If only it was always that simple. Sometimes you have to take an exceptionally old and well made sword, blessed by some religious figure, and cut the echo until it dies once and for all and never plagues the living with it’s Hunger. Sometimes even that, a fight to the death with steel and will, is too simple. Sometimes you have to reenact the death. An act that can be painful even if the echo in question is terrorizing innocents with it’s Hunger. How much conviction does a hunter need to find the soul of a little girl causing young women to take their own lives in depression and berate her and torment her until she takes her own life again, this time with a definite finality. Or what of dragging an innocent man unaware of what his Hunger is doing along the same road he was murdered on, scaring him to death as he’s pulled from a car by chains soaked in holy water. That’s what it’s like to see the dead. It means seeing the innocents who are lost, and doomed to repeat their actions, echoes of hurt who can’t move on. It means helping them, whether by destroying what ties them to the world, or resolving their issues. It unfortunately also means dealing with the restless dead, the merciless demons that a person can become when they don’t get help, when they’re hung up on it all and can’t move on to the Beyond. They become predators, their Hunger withering and killing lives both metaphorically and literally. It means dealing with the things that are wrong in society, and sometimes it means doing things that shouldn’t be done, things that leave a bad taste in your mouth. You’d damned well better swallow it down and chase it with something less bitter. Sometimes you have to fight off the echo of a lonely girl who met her end in an alleyway at the tip of a knife. Sometimes the innocents go bad. It isn’t their fault. What happened to them would scare anyone shitless. They don’t even know what’s going on half of the time. They just exist, like animals. Fear drives them. The fear of a death they’ve already faced but refuse to face. Refuse to accept and acknowledge. They lash out, frightened and alone. When they become like that, when an echo’s Hunger starts to take them over, starts to become all they are, they change. Usually it’s the face that changes the most. Their eyes and mouths become… less. Less than human, mostly, but sometimes they become smaller. They may even vanish. Their clothing becomes less clothing, and more symbolic. The old image of Jacob Marley in chains, his earthly greed tethering him to the mortal world, denying him entry into heaven. This is how the Hunger starts for an echo. They think they’re missing something. Something that ties them to the world, something that they can get from others, but they’re too simple, too animalistic, to do anything more than Hunger for that thing. That’s when they try to take it. That’s when they start to become defined by their Hunger and feed off of the resonance left behind by whatever it is they think they lack. Even the kindest soul can become Hungry after death, no one knows what causes it, other than a thick and ponderous stain on their echo. Even the innocent can become monsters after death, their echoes feeding on friends and family. Their essence shifts and twists until they become nothing more than a living symbol of their Hunger, a demonic and tortured soul that can do nothing more than attempt to ease that torture by spreading it on to others and consuming what’s left in the wake, all while hoping that they can obtain whatever ephemeral quality it is that they’re missing. Feeding their Hunger just makes them Hungrier. With every bite, their stomachs grow emptier, and their souls become hollow.
I decided to go rewatch the first Harry Potter movie and randomly joke about it and keep track of my observations with some friends in Discord. Here’s the log, which I will hopefully do something with later. Maybe review a movie that’s been reviewed to death. I should do the same with the other movies as well.
Rory-Last Thursday at 8:52 PM
I want to liveblog Harry Potter.
Tribuna Mcclay-Last Thursday at 8:52 PM
do it nerd
Rory-Last Thursday at 8:56 PM
Dumbledore and McGonagall greet each other in a very “As you know” sort of way. Calling each other Professor. This opening kind of looks like a stage play. They never mention the flying motorcycle is Sirius’ I also feel like the way they throw around the word muggle is just super problematic. “They’re the worst sort of muggles imaginable”. Like, damn, Minerva, way to be racist. It’s kind of super weird to watch a video essay on Swiss Army Man and then see baby Danny Radcliff. Uncle Vernon’s facial features are pretty cartoonish.
Rory-Last Thursday at 9:01 PM
How does this snake read the “Bread in Captivity” sign when it’s on the other side of the glass? And also he’s a snake so he shouldn’t understand English. It’s also weird how cheap and cheesy these special effects are. This is like, NuWho levels of CG, “There’s no such thing as MAGIC" 😬 I love how the first major story in Harry Potter is about Vernon committing a federal crime. You’d think he’d want Harry to go to Hogwarts. Sure, he learns MAGICK, but he also gets out of Vernon’s house."not one miserable blasted letter! Let me repeat myself for emphasis because I lack genre savvy!” The dialogue is so cheesy I love how Hagrid casually uses magic around strangers, then later tells Harry not to mention that he gave Dudely a pig tail. Just… casually disfigures a kid who happens to have been a little shit. Except that he gave Dudely a pig tail just to piss off Vernon. “I can’t be a wizard…” Man, I can’t believe how bad all this line delivery is.
ur bad Also Radcliffe was like, fucking 12 at the time or something Rory-Last Thursday at 9:12 PM Petunia giving this monologue about how Lily was a Freak is good. Not bad, at least. She does a good delivery. “A car crash? A car crash kill Lily and James Potter!?” Seriously, Hagrid, Muggle? That’s our word. “Never insult Albus Dumbledore in front of me” [disfigures a child] Jfc Hagrid Wizards: no sense of right or wrong.
Gilboron-Last Thursday at 9:14 PM
Mugglephobic Down With Muggles Van I’m gonna go to bed, g'night
Rory-Last Thursday at 9:15 PM
You don’t just disfigure a minor ‘cause they’re dad was slandering your boss. No matter how bratty the minor is. Night, Gil. I actually do really like the Leaky Couldron. It’s the kind of set that I really like “No thanks, Tom, I’m on official Hogwarts Business” [wink] “Just helpin’ Harry here buy his school supplies.” And then everyone understands that Harry=Harry Potter. No other wizard was named Harry. Though I guess he does look like famous James Potter Quirrel is another good character. The introduction to Diagon Alley is another great set. Although, fuck, wizard architecture is like out of fucking Tim Burton. Everything is crooked and lopsided. And the paint is flaking. And then the Nimbus 2000 is a fucking iBroom. There’s fucking flaking paint and rotted wood everywhere and then this big obviously plastic iBroom in the window of a shop older than the Americas. The prosthetics on the Goblins at Gringotts are also really cheesy. Though they’re not quite NuWho level. Not quite, but close. Also, the head Gringott’s Goblin, who’s name I can’t be assed to remember, is Warwick Davis. Wicket the Ewok and Willow and the evil Leprechaun. Also I love how obviously fucking prop the lantern is. It looks like a toy. So do the Gringott’s vaults. This stone looks like the fake stone of an amusement park ride. “Can’t tell you what’s in that vault, Harry, HOGWART’S BUSINESS, VERY SECRET. But it’s a good thing I didn’t do this after dropping you off, or the plot wouldn’t move forward in the second act.” Olivander’s shop sign looks like it was painted in the 1600s and never repainted. Seriously why are wizards apparently so gross? Everything is fucking old and dusty. All of Diagon Alley is like a really shitty antique store. I should look up how they did the special effects on this Olivander scene. Oh, hey, this is John Hurt. No wonder everything he says sounds good, even though the actual words are dumb.
Rory-Last Thursday at 10:19 PM
The Ollivander scene is really good because of John Hurt. But they really just sort of bring the whole phoenix tailfeather thing out of nowhere, because they skipped explaining the wand materials. In the book there were like five of them, mentioning dragon heartstrings and so on. “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible things… but great” “Not all wizards are bad” yeah, as if hundreds of years of stigmatizing witchcraft wasn’t a thing in this world. This flashback murder is another cheesy scene. Little baby Harry staring down the barrel of a wand.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:01 PM
“Stick to your ticket”, and then he doesn’t explain how the magical pocket dimension train station works. Everyone in the Harry Potter world has weird priorities. And of course Mrs Weasely is just loudly talking about Muggles. Fucking racist ass Wizards. Goddamned crackers. This bit about “I’m not really Fred. Just kidding, I am Fred” is delivered in such an unfunny way. I do love Ron’s smug ass smile, though. The transition to Platform 9¾ isn’t as good as the other magical transitions. The train itself is pretty magical and Thomas the Tank Engine-y “We’ll take the lot of the candy trolly. I don’t even know how this currency works, but it’s a handful of gold!” Fucking petite bourgoesie. How were Lily and James so fucking rich again anyway>
Pillow-Last Thursday at 11:05 PM
Rich families.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:06 PM
But Lily was a mudblood. I can’t really remember anything about James. You’d have expected them to spend all their money on being freedom fighters.
Pillow-Last Thursday at 11:07 PM
Well he probably came from a rich family.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:07 PM
Also, why is Ron surprised at Hermione fixing Harry’s glasses? He’s lived with wizards all his life.
Pillow-Last Thursday at 11:07 PM
He was a stereotypical rich douchebag, with rich friends.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:07 PM
Then again, I suppose 11 years of magical interest is probably a thing. Though I don’t know the economy of gold coins. When they stop off the train, the bench is labeled Hogsmeade.
Pillow-Last Thursday at 11:08 PM
I also always thought Hermione was kinda justified in her pride about knowing so much about magic.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:08 PM
I forget when the movies were made. Book three was out, right? She’s super justified. She’s also kind of insufferable.
Pillow-Last Thursday at 11:08 PM
Because she’s a muggle-born girl who gets to demonstrate that she knows more about magic than any of these people who grew up with it. Plus it’s probably SUPER EXCITING to her. Also, when her family shows up later in the books, everyone is SO DOUCHEY to them!
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:09 PM
Hogwarts Castle is also dirty and dusty. How does Filch have a job? There are real world castles cleaner than this. I love the utter contempt McGonagall has when she lists the four houses and gets to Slytherin. I also don’t understand the whole House Cup thing. Like, what? Is that a thing in English boarding school? Everyone is given arbitrary points? Of all the kids in this movie, Tom Felton has the best line delivery. He’s such a slimy little fuck. “I read about it in Hogwarts: A History” ugh, this dialogue. It’s so “as you know”. People don’t talk like that. “Our caretaker Mr Filch has asked I remind you that the upstairs is out of bounds to anyone who does not wish to die a most painful death”. I forget which Dumbledore this was (Gambon?) but he’s also got good line delivery as an old nutter who doesn’t understand how fucked up his school is. There wasn’t a wizard or witch who went bad that wasn’t in Slytherin, and yet they don’t send the Slytherins to the incinerator. Also, there are evil Gryffindors, but “sometimes we sort too soon”. Fuck I hate the the morality of the Potterverse.
Pillow-Last Thursday at 11:14 PM
I think Rowling realized how fucked up it was by the end of it.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:14 PM
It’s so Calvinist.
Pillow-Last Thursday at 11:15 PM
Which is why James Potter turned out to be a scumbag. And Snape turned out to be okay.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:15 PM
Yeah, but at the end they still had that whole “sometimes we sort too soon” bullshit, which is basically saying “well Snape should have been Gryffindor and Wormtail should have been Slytherin”. Anyway, Harry gets sorted into the House Of People Who Get To Go To Heaven. Who’s this black witch next to Dumbledore?
“I’m half'n'half. Me dad’s a muggle, me mom’s a witch”. Jesus, you’ve got internalized bigotry already, Seamus God, these ghost effects are shitty. John Cleese, so underutilized here. They keep that scene in, but leave out Peeves. The ghosts aren’t even important. Does Nick get basilisksed in the Chamber movie? The moving pictures and staircases are done really poorly. They’re so stiff.
Tribuna Mcclay-Last Thursday at 11:34 PM
Wasn’t this movie made in 2004?
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:34 PM
I’m really only watching Philosorcer’s Stone because I don’t want to just jump to the visually stunning Prisoner of Azkaban. 2001.
Tribuna Mcclay-Last Thursday at 11:34 PM
yea, thass why they look bad
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:34 PM
But, like, I feel like the budget was small. I swear there were better special effects in 2001.
CircuitBreak-Last Thursday at 11:35 PM
I’d say probably comparable. It was only when Avatar came out when CGI really started to try and push itself farther.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:35 PM
I do like the McGonagall transfiguration scene, though. Another place where the line delivery is on point: Snape. Fuck, Rickman was gone from this world too soon. Even if he was like 70
CircuitBreak-Last Thursday at 11:37 PM
I take it you’re going back to watch all the movies you missed out on?
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:38 PM
Nah, I just felt like rewatching them because a while back I watched two different video essays on why Prisoner of Azkaban is a great movie and Alfonso Cuaron is amazing. I also wanted to rewatch them over NaNoWriMo, since the one year I was successful was also the year I marathoned all 8 movies through the month.
CircuitBreak-Last Thursday at 11:39 PM
Ah.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:39 PM
I just didn’t want to jump to the third movie. I was also planning on watching all 7 Star Wars. Marathon all the long ass series. And just randomly babble about them. Speaking of: DID YOU KNOW Asphodel in the language of flowers is a type of lily associated with death, and wormwood is bitterness and regret, so when Snape asks what you get when you add powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood it’s totally a SECRET REFERENCE AND JK ROWLING IS AMAZING. Or it’s a coincidence and the language of flowers isn’t actually something where you can form sentences. Seriously, owls just fucking dropping shit is a terrible postal service. How the fuck does shit not get broken?
Pillow-Last Thursday at 11:49 PM
There are many, many problems with the setting.
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:49 PM
Also, how much time has passed between the intro feast and the thirty classes we saw? It’s an hour into the movie and I can’t tell if they’ve only been there for two days or what. MOUNT your brooms ;^) How does Neville fuck up flying so bad that he uncontrollably takes off and bounces across the wall and drops 40 feet? And how does he only break his wrist from that shit. Also, let’s talk about nepotism. Madam Hooch says anyone who gets on a broom will be out of Hogwarts before they can say “Quidditch”. But then Harry is just SO GOOD at brooming and catching that he gets rewarded with being the first first year seeker. And also McGonagall somehow travels like half a mile’s worth of school halls in five seconds. They don’t even give Harry a real try out. McGonagall didn’t even see what happened, she just looked up and Harry was flying on a broom holding a tiny glass sphere. “Rough game, Quidditch. Brutal. But no one’s died in years. Someone will vanish occassionally, but they’ll turn up in a month or two” Fred and George aren’t even lying. How the fuck is this game a thing that people play? Also, fuck you, Hermione, Seeking is in Harry’s blood? You know what’s in your blood? Dentistry.
Tribuna Mcclay-Last Thursday at 11:55 PM
Rugy exists
Rory-Last Thursday at 11:55 PM
Altough I notice that Minerva McGonagall was on the trophy list. Rugby doesn’t have people mysteriously vanish. I love how they run from Filch’s cat and all the torches light up. And also everything is dirty and dusty and covered in cobwebs. Why is wizard shit so dirty? They have fucking cleaning spells. You know, the CGI on Fluffy isn’t so bad. Though the way his heads work is weird. It’s like giraffe necks. Also, the entire plan of putting a dangerous animal in the school to protect a dangerous weapon is fucking fucked up. Oh, the Quidditch explanation scene! Quidditch makes no fucking sense. What the fuck is the point of the Seeker? Why would a Seeker ever catch the Snitch when their team wasn’t up however many points the Snitch costs?
Rory-Yesterday at 12:00 AM
It’s literally a minor plotpoint in Goblet of Fire, but no one comments on how fucking stupid that is. Flitwick’s facial prosthetics are so thick. Also, they do a terrible job of conveying the passage of time.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:01 AM
Rowling released a whole book about the history of Quidditch.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:01 AM
Like, it’s like this is their first Charm’s class, but it’s also fucking Halloween.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:02 AM
It turns out that the snitch wasn’t even originally part of the game.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:02 AM
Also, Flitwick (in the films) was apparently assumed to be a goblin. It wasn’t? I actually don’t remember Quidditch Through The Ages. I do remember the one they just made a movie of. Fantastic Beasts.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:04 AM
Well anyway, some asshole walked out onto the field DURING A GAME and released a live bird and said “whomever catches it gets 150 gold coins!” and they stopped playing to chase the fucking thing. And then in “honor” of that, they made it a permanent part of the game (but with a dedicated role) until the bird became endangered.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:05 AM
There is not a single fucking aspect of that what makes sense… Speaking of line delivery: “TROOOOOOLL IN THE DUNGEON!” “thought you ought to know…” [thud} And of course Dumbeldore wants everyone to go back to their dorms, but the Slytherin dorms are in the dungeons. But fuck them, amirite?
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:06 AM
Who cares about the evil kids?
Rory-Yesterday at 12:07 AM
#gastheslytherins This whole scene with the troll. This is sub-NuWho CG
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:08 AM
It’s implied that the idea behind the sorting hat was to put the kids in houses based on the kind of kids the four founders thought they should teach. But Slytherin hated muggleborns. So why are muggleborn kids ever put in slytherin?
Rory-Yesterday at 12:08 AM
One of the founders was a racist evil fuck. Race traitors? Slytherin is for people like Milo. I mean, Riddle probably hated muggles more than Salazar Slytherin, even
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:10 AM
It’s the other way around, I think.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:10 AM
In what way? I mean, he was the Heir of Slytherin Also, how did Snape and Quirrel get back to the girl’s bathroom so fast? I love Quirrel. The nervous ticks and giggles are great. Seriously, though, how much time has passed here? It was Halloween, and now it’s the first Quidditch game. There’s been no scenes of training. Also, McGonagall buys Harry a fucking top of the line broom. Nepotism, they name is Potter. “That’s not just a broomstick, Harry, it’s an iBroom!” Why is it even legal for them to have different brooms? It feels like “this broom is literally magically faster” should be against the rools.
Tribuna Mcclay-Yesterday at 12:14 AM
British public schools are incredibly nepotistic
Rory-Yesterday at 12:14 AM
This scene is like from a PS2 game.
Tribuna Mcclay-Yesterday at 12:14 AM
Because they’re made up of rich kids usually descended from nobility And this is Public Schools I’m talking about not public schools
Rory-Yesterday at 12:15 AM
Yes, thank you for explaining the rules of Quidditch to us, Lee. We never would have known how Snitches work, even though we live in this fucking world. All this dialogue that’s “as you know”. Flint literally kicks a guy in the face. How is that not a fucking redcard? Then again, this is a game where you have magically enchanted murderballs. Flint grabs the fucking beater stick. How is that legal? What are the rules of this damned game. A player is literally unconscious and the game is continuing. Two players are unconscious and the game is continuing.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:17 AM
Don’t be silly.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:18 AM
Literally how is Quirrel jinxing Harry’s broom? Like, how is an anti-magic field not a thing? Does this game even have rules? The scene where Harry reaches for the Snitch is legitimately pretty good, though. Standing on the edge of his broom and tumbling forward. “Harry Potter gets 150 points for catching the Snitch, in case you didn’t know how the rules of the sporting event you’re watching worked!” My pet peeve is really unnatural fantasy/scifi dialogue. People don’t explain standard aspects of their day to day world. “I know about spells, I’ve read all about them” You’ve also been going to school for spells for at least two fucking months now. Also, if Snape knew Quirrel was a problem, why didn’t he just… turn around and slap Quirrel for jinxing Harry’s broom, instead of counterjinxing it? “That’s barbaric” “That’s wizard’s chess”. It’s just fucking regular chess, but the pieces move. That’s not even interesting.
Tribuna Mcclay-Yesterday at 12:24 AM
Snape is a wierd dude
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:24 AM
Also the pieces break each other so you can only play once.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:24 AM
I assume they reform, since it’s magic.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:24 AM
And wizards have tons of magical solutions to petty mundane problems that muggles just have to fucking put up with. Like broken bones.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:25 AM
Also, how is there nothing in Nicholas Flamel at all outside of the super restricted dangerous book section that shouldn’t even exist in a Goddamned school in the first place? He literally has a baseball card.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:25 AM
There is stuff. They don’t find anything about him in there. they find it in a normal history book.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:25 AM
Well. In the books. They leave out the Chocolate Frog card of Flamel in this. Nah, here they say that they couldn’t find anything.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:25 AM
Scene after this.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:26 AM
The first movie has really bad pacing problems. The invisibility cloak is another good effect, though it’s also a really simple one. Fucking evil screaming chained up books. And Harry drops his obviously electric lamp.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:27 AM
I think you mean “magic”.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:27 AM
So magic. Snape interrogating Quirrel. And with the pacing of this plot, we can only assume he’s just been… really terrible at things. The Mirror of Desire Spelled Backwards. I assume this is in the Room of Requirement? But, like… wasn’t there more of an explanation of that in the book? I also think they changed the actors for Lily and James. I can’t remember.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:30 AM
Nah, that didn’t get introduced until later, I think.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:31 AM
I mean, this is the Room of Requirement, isn’t it? Where the Mirror is kept?
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:31 AM
Was it? I don’t fucking remember.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:31 AM
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:31 AM
I don’t even actually like Harry Potter.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:31 AM
I think the movies are pretty good. But I have… a lot of problems with the books/world. Specifically the morality. So Harry just sits here in front of the mirror. But for how long? The passage of time in this movie is just so bad. “It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live” – The tattoo of people obsessed with Harry Potter nearly to the point of social isolation. Oh, they are callling it the Philosopher’s Stone. This rip is titled Sorcerer’s.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:35 AM
They are? I was pretty sure they called it the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:36 AM
The title in America was Sorcerer’s Stone (allegedly they didn’t think Americans would know what the Philosopher’s Stone is… even though they made up a new thing). So they filmed some of the scenes twice, so that in America they’d have Sorcerer, and in Britain they’d be Philosopher. Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback. A stranger at the pub seemed glad to be rid of a dragon egg. How does Hagrid still have a job? Oh, right, Dumbledore likes him. NEPOTISM Why would a Norwegian Ridgeback be in Romania? That is a really cute dragon, though Oh, right, Malfoy’s in this movie. McGonagall is like the only one who’s “fair” when it comes to dolling out the arbitrary points. Except she’s also a ridiculous ballbuster. And still arbitrary. “You defeated a troll? Five points.” “You stayed out after dark? Minus fifty points.” “There’s more than werewolves in those trees, lad. You can be sure of that.” Filch is great. Cartoonishly great. He’s like straight out of a Goosesbumps episode. So is this forest here, with the fog. Oh look, it’s that weird silvery water effect. I hate that CG effect.
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:43 AM
The one that is full of sapient creatures that the government fucking abuses like they’re minorities in America and that they send students into as punishment?
Rory-Yesterday at 12:43 AM
Yes. Also, do they remember Fang in the other movies?
Pillow-Yesterday at 12:43 AM
I dunno.
Rory-Yesterday at 12:43 AM
I can’t remember. I think they might just stop having him exist. I’ll have to see. Also, the sentient creatures that literally rape a woman and it’s treated as comic relief. Well. Not “literally”. Just “very definitely probably” Speaking of Centaurs. This centaur effect is such an awkward effect. I think they had the actor/model keep it’s arms away from its side to keep from clipping Also, what even does that mean? “if you drink unicorn blood you’ll be returned to life, but it will be a half-life” Like, is that a value judgement, or are we talking numerically? Because if they mean numerically, then there’s basically a Zeno’s paradox of unicorn blood drinking. Did they mention the Elixir of Life earlier? Okay, they did. Just double checking. I remember one of these movies it felt like they cut so much that if you hadn’t read the book you wouldn’t know what was going on. And now they cut to the end of the year. It was just after Christmas. Or maybe it wasn’t? Seriously, pacing. This is like the opposite of a Marvel movie. Instead of two week’s worth of shit happening in three days, it feels like three days worth of shit has happened in 9 months. Man, this scene out at Hagrid’s is all… CG backgrounded. “You’ll be safe as long as Dumbledore is here” “Dumbledore is gone!” what a twist. “I don’t know how you children found out about this literal national security threat, but I assure you it’s clearly safe, even though three children found out about the dangerous magical bullshit that we put into a school where children can get in trouble.” Neville’s standing up to the Trio is less meaningful when they only snuck out once. Pacing! Also the Petrificus Totalis effect is so fucking cheap. NuWho isn’t even that bad. It was just a fucking photoshop filter. So Fluffy’s snoring blew the Invisibility Cloak off of them. Next cut they’re still standing there. So, what, they leave the cloak on the floor? You know, I’ve seen a lot of dogs, but never once has one of them drooled in a way that looked like that fake cum effect that monsters always drool with. “Lucky Hermione pays attention in Herbology, a class that was never mentioned before now, and this scene wasn’t foreshadowed in the movie at all”
Rory-Yesterday at 1:00 AM
“We’re looking for a big old fashioned rusty key” fucking everything in the wizard world is rusty. Also, how does Quirrel somehow manage this magical super skilled broom riding test? Especially with Voldemort on the back of his head?
Pillow-Yesterday at 1:01 AM
I bet Voldemort is the worst backseat driver.
Rory-Yesterday at 1:02 AM
“This is no graveyard… it’s a chess board” [Dramatic music] Why are there empty squares on the chess board? How did Quirrel get through here? Like, there was clearly a board reset before they came in. Unless Quirrel is so good he literally beat the game only losing two pieces. And also the Knight’s rider but not the horse. This is the Dark Souls of chess.
Tribuna Mcclay-Yesterday at 1:05 AM
FUCK OFF God, I love “This is the Dark Souls of …’ meme it gives me life and life has four letters and dick has four letters so it gives me dick and thats amazing
Rory-Yesterday at 1:05 AM
"I’m going to sacrifice myself. In chess. Because reasons.” Just get off the fucking horse, kid.
Tribuna Mcclay-Yesterday at 1:06 AM
And be a coward?
Rory-Yesterday at 1:06 AM
Also, I don’t know chess, but I feel like the Queen’s better move would actually have been to attack Harry. THE QUEEN DIDN’T EVEN ATTACK RON. She just stabbed his horse and he fell. He only fell like four feet. Why is he basically acting dead. This isn’t even checkmate. Harry was the bishop and he was standing like two squares in front of the King. There was nothing else around the king. “I’m not as good a wizard as you, Harry, because the true wizardry was the friends we made along the way” Fuck you, Hermione, you’re a better witch and Harry probably could have used back up. Fuck, give Ron a good shaking and all three of you could go in the room together. Then Harry wouldn’t have passed out as Quirrel badtouched him. I actually prefer Quirrel when he’s stuttering and stammering. Like, I feel like that was good acting. But now that he’s outright evil, it just feels cheesy as fuck. Like he wants to be scenery chewing, but can’t manage it. Oh no, under the turban… He’s BALD! IT HAS A NOSE Would Voldemort have had a nose before he killed Harry’s parents? Are there any flashbacks later? I don’t remember. Quirrel just sort of awkwardly stands around. While Voldemort talks from the back of his head. “There is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it”. But, man, you’re a fucking head. That’s pretty weak. Also, can we talk about the fact that Harry straight up fucking kills a guy here? I mean, in the book it’s a bit more ambiguous, and he passes out from the pain, instead of from SMOKE VOLDY doing the whole Imhotep thing at him, but he fucking murders a guy. Which makes the whole Undead zombie horse thing a bit confusing. “You can only see thestrals if you’ve WATCHED SOMEONE DIE. Except for all the arbitrary times that’s not true.” “It’s a secret, so everyone knows.” Dumbledore is a shitty headmaster. Like, he’s pretty fucking dangerous to the students of Hogwarts. “Only a person who wanted to find the stone and not use it would be able to get it” THEN WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT OF ALL THE DANGEROUS BULLSHIT YOU PUT INTO A SCHOOL YOU DOTTERING OLD FUCK? As an example of the Potterverse’s morality being shitty: Apparently Lily Potter is literally the only time that anyone has ever loved someone and been murc’d by an evil curse. “It’s time for the House Cup. Slytherin did the best and Gryfindor the worst, but you know we have to reward nepotism, so Gryffindor gets enough points to win because fuck Slytherin” Then again, I can’t imagine anyone other than Snape giving the Slytherins points. In the daylight the Hogwart’s trainstop looks like something out of a really cheap tourist attraction thing. Also this Lily and James photo album is the only time in the first movie that the moving pictures feel right. I do remember Azkaban does it better (though they still have a sort of animated gif feel, with looping) Anyway. Time to sleep. I think I’ll do this tomorrow for Chamber of Secrets. I might also put this on my blag.
Pillow-Yesterday at 1:27 AM
The moving pictures can talk in later parts.
Rory-Yesterday at 1:27 AM
They talk in this one, too, just not much. It’s only the Fat Lady asking for the password.Jeez, Philosopher’s Stone was two and a half hours?It felt shorter, what with all the rushed pacing.
