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Old 11-08-2021, 06:44 PM   #821
Prince Charon
 
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Default Re: Five Earths, All in a Row

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-Angelus engages in a reign of terror, until he encounters a young gypsy woman with the power of foresight. Knowing how this works, Angelus drives her mad with horror before he "sires" her. Her tortured soul gains release, but the vampire Drusilla not only gains access to the body's abilities as a seer, the horror-induced madness makes her into a twisted work of art.

-Enraged at the loss of their sweet young seer, and knowing how the demon acquired its sadistic traits, the Gypsy mages rip Liam's soul out of its afterlife, and reinsert it into its old corpse, where he constantly must fight for control of it, while enduring shattering guilt -- because the demonic possession of the brain rewired it for perfect recall.
This post is mostly correct (and I'd like to see or post a fixed version with a title to the threads on other forums), but here you're IIRC conflating two separate incidents, both for Five Earths and for Buffy: Drusilla was Spike's sire, and both had been vampires for some years before Angelus tortured and murdered a beloved daughter of the Kalderash (if the wiki is accurate, and it seems to be by my memories, Drusilla was sired in 1860, and Spike around 1880, while the curse was placed on Angelus and Liam in 1898).

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That gypsy curse was a nasty, twisted bit of black magic; the darkest necromancy. While Liam was hardly an "innocent soul," the punishment exceeded the crimes, if for no other reason than it brought horror to people who really were innocent, just to punish Liam who loved them.
This is very true, and is an important and tragic reminder that the more power you have, the more dangerous it is to make significant decisions when driven by strong emotions (something BtVS and Angel both touch on several times, e.g. Willow's horrifying reaction to Tara's death).
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Old 12-30-2021, 05:09 PM   #822
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Sanctity, or Astral Resonance

Sanctity is one of several terms used on the various Earths to refer to something that some of the more scientifically-minded psychics on Infopunk Earth have begun calling 'Astral Resonance.' Broadly, this is the general power, density, and authority of spirits of a particular type over a location, and where that varies to an important degree, over an object (living or otherwise), action, or time. The stronger the resonance, the less difficult it tends to be to get spirits of a particular type to enact a spell, and the more influence spirits of a particular type have on spells that did not invoke them (or were not intended to). Some of these are fairly obvious: Sun spirits will be more relevant at noon than at midnight, but will have greater resonance in a greenhouse or a sun temple at any time of day than they do in a typical basement; spirits of love and lust get a boost around St. Valentine's Day, but in part of Chicago, so do spirits of murder and (organized) crime; spirits of ending and renewal are stronger on December 31st and January 1st, but are also stronger in a hospital.

To clarify some terms: 'Density' is perhaps the simplest, being the number of spirits of a particular type in a volume of space. 'Power' is how powerful the spirits of that type are, who are either in the area or paying attention to the area (this can vary by a lot depending in the whims of gods and other major spirits, and the skills of psychics in the area at attracting that attention). 'Authority' is a bit more vague; part of it is how closely related to this situation at this time spirits of that type are, and thus the order of precedence; another aspect, relating to specific spirits of that type that are in the area or paying attention to the area, is their auctoritas relative to other spirits of different types that are in the area. It is the combination of all these factors that determines how 'strong' or 'weak' the resonance of that type of spirit is for a given situation.

Naturally, there will be multiple resonances overlapping in any given place or situation. (Sanctity is more narrow in actual use, as those who use the term most often refer to the resonance of the types of spirits that they are most used to invoking.) Imagine a house in a forest, at a bend in a river. One of the native tribes of the Americas once used the area as a burial ground, but were sent west to a reservation in the desert well before the first house was built on the site. The previous house had a happy and loving family in it for many years, until a serial killer came and murdered them. The killer set the house on fire to hide the evidence, but was trapped within and burned to death. Later, the land was bought, and a new house was built on the location. Think of how many resonances of various strengths overlap on that house and its yard at any given time.

All that said, it's not unusual for one or two resonances to stand out strongly over others in one area most of the time. The Sahara has a much stronger Earth (Sand) resonance than it does a Water resonance, even during the rare rains. Rome's City resonance is ancient and powerful, and its Imperial resonance lingers on quite strongly due to association, to the point that on Infopunk Earth, Rome's Imperial resonance is stronger than London's, despite the Roman Empire having been smaller, and dead for longer (though London on Dieselpunk Earth and especially Steampunk Earth has it beat in that area).


Mechanicswise, of course, all this only matters if your game uses complex resonances. If the GM and players just want to treat it all as unaspected 'psychic Sanctity' or 'psi mana' and not worry about which spirits matter more in each context, that's fair. All rules in GURPS are basically optional. If you want the complexity (and are the GM), I suggest listing the ones that you think will apply, and being prepared to fudge any that your players surprise you with, as you would if you were doing complex Aspected Mana zones or ley lines.



Thoughts?
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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Old 12-31-2021, 10:46 AM   #823
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Default Re: Five Earths, All in a Row

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This post is mostly correct (and I'd like to see or post a fixed version with a title to the threads on other forums), but here you're IIRC conflating two separate incidents, both for Five Earths and for Buffy: Drusilla was Spike's sire, and both had been vampires for some years before Angelus tortured and murdered a beloved daughter of the Kalderash (if the wiki is accurate, and it seems to be by my memories, Drusilla was sired in 1860, and Spike around 1880, while the curse was placed on Angelus and Liam in 1898).

(SNIP)
Okay, I checked the Wiki and corrected the post.
Angelus destroyed two Gypsy girls -- Drusilla first, after murdering her family in front of her to drive her mad -- and then, years later, the daughter of the Kalderash.

I apparently conflated the two events.
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Old 12-31-2021, 11:14 PM   #824
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Has anyone considered writing a short overview of the setting to serve as an introduction? There's lots of detail to these interesting worlds and it can be a little overwhelming.
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Old 01-01-2022, 10:20 AM   #825
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Has anyone considered writing a short overview of the setting to serve as an introduction? There's lots of detail to these interesting worlds and it can be a little overwhelming.
Five Earths, All in a Row on the GURPSwiki should fit the bill.
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Old 01-01-2022, 04:20 PM   #826
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Five Earths, All in a Row on the GURPSwiki should fit the bill.
Yeah, I consider it to be a good summary, and I don't really have a better summary than that.
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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Old 01-01-2022, 05:47 PM   #827
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I dunno, the summary doesn't tell me anything I didn't know in my previous attempts to digest this, and I still don't understand why all kinds of weirdness started happening on the circa 2012 era Earth (both for Doylian and Watsonian reasons).
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Old 01-01-2022, 05:53 PM   #828
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I dunno, the summary doesn't tell me anything I didn't know in my previous attempts to digest this, and I still don't understand why all kinds of weirdness started happening on the circa 2012 era Earth (both for Doylian and Watsonian reasons).
That is likely blanks for the GM to fill in. Sort of why would there be dinosaurs in the Roman afterlife issue in Roma Arcana

Some of the explanations are in the links. You want to keep things to a simple framework for the lead in.
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Old 01-01-2022, 08:46 PM   #829
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I dunno, the summary doesn't tell me anything I didn't know in my previous attempts to digest this, and I still don't understand why all kinds of weirdness started happening on the circa 2012 era Earth (both for Doylian and Watsonian reasons).
They happen because these space portals suddenly showed up, and allowed psi-magic and these psi spirits/tulpas to start manifesting, which allowed supernatural shenanigans and powers, based on our popular culture, to start happening.
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Old 01-01-2022, 09:53 PM   #830
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They happen because these space portals suddenly showed up, and allowed psi-magic and these psi spirits/tulpas to start manifesting, which allowed supernatural shenanigans and powers, based on our popular culture, to start happening.
As the wiki tried to sum it up "As presented Magic is actually a form of psi power operating along Effect Shaping with a strong element of Semiotic Ghosts ala Gibson's The Gernsback Continuum as an undercurrent."

The concept pulls elements from various GURPS sources: Religion, Voodoo/Spirits, Faerie, and Roma Arcana

"Sanctity is a measure of the deity's power in a given locale." (Religion p 102). In the Roma Arcana setting "deities" are little more than more powerful spirits; the closest modern version of that belief would be the concept of Kami. Just keep replacing "deity" with "spirit" and things will make more sense.

A deity's power may also vary according to the time of year. (Religion p 103)

Angel, Animal Spirit, Apparition, Ascended Spirits, Demon, Djinni, Elementals, Faerie, Ghost, Personification, Spirit of Place, Thought Form, and Ultraterrstrial (Ancient One and minon) all appear in Spirits (wiki uses 4e versions of Classic write ups for most of these)

Spirit's "Thought Form" fits into what is going on in the Five Earths setting very well though there are differences:

"A thought form is a spirit created by a person or persons with psychic ability, either as a short-term agent or as an independent being."

Temporary thought forms "don't really have game stats, but might be one of the mechanisms of ritual magic (see Chapter 6 for more information on ritual magic). Those affected by a ritual might sense the presence of a thought form nearby, although they may not know what the feeling implies". They are more robots than self-willed.

"Some schools of magic suggest that all spirits are thought forms, or at least that all spirits started out that way. Some have gained independence and drawn strength from worship and belief over the years to become powerful beings. But ultimately, the theory says, all spirits sprang from human belief and spiritual power". This ties into Religion's idea that deities get everything...even their very existence from their worshipers.
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