Judgment Adventure seed idea feedback requested.

[Omegonthesane]

Originally Posted by Cally

This is certainly fair. Kronos actually being present was just a backup idea for if the PCs could reasonably overpower the defenses and still be in great shape.

If they manage it, I say let them have the victory - Team Horn set a trap, and they broke it Gordian style.

Originally Posted by Cally

Well, actually it does. In the best resolution of the adventure, the PCs will be able to capture the Jumped Seraph and then Dominic will hold a trial. The trial isn't so much to show that she's guilty (because if the game reached this stage that's a foregone conclusion), but whether the appropriate punishment is 'soul death' or 'imprisonment until ready to attempt redemption.' The discord she has will be a factor. Either as an argument to kill her, or a reason to keep her alive.

This wasn't clear from the above description, and even then, any form of Discord is going to be an argument to kill or not kill a newly captured traitor.

Originally Posted by Cally

I'm hoping the PCs more pick up the implication of 'The Seraph has been kidnapped and being Pushed into falling' than 'the Seraph's already fallen and is working specifically to trap them.'

That doesn't actually reduce "proper" paranoia levels in the slightest, you realise.

Honestly, I would just run it and accept that players will be in a position to assume the worst. It is not worth setting the, er, setting on fire in order to slightly amplify the mystery of one adventure, and if a hitherto spotless angel has just Jumped the most likely explanation is that something pushed her (Will shackles + "Do not turn any of your dissonance into Discord" would explain the lack of discordant cracks in her heart, if the party were not aware of how she fell.)

[Cally]

Originally Posted by Omegonthesane

if a hitherto spotless angel has just Jumped the most likely explanation is that something pushed her (Will shackles + "Do not turn any of your dissonance into Discord" would explain the lack of discordant cracks in her heart, if the party were not aware of how she fell.)

I understand that, but my reasoning is, if I'm a Demon Prince, and my servitors have just successfully 'pushed' an angel into fully falling, not just going Outcast, I'm going to take that new demon and drop her into Hell for a few decades/centuries until she gets appropriately 'used' to the idea of being a demon. Even if she refuses to bind to the Demon Prince right there, why keep her locked up corporeally on Earth where she can be feasibly rescued? (Sure, to set a trap, but 'a bird in the hand'...)

[Omegonthesane]

Originally Posted by Cally

I understand that, but my reasoning is, if I'm a Demon Prince, and my servitors have just successfully 'pushed' an angel into fully falling, not just going Outcast, I'm going to take that new demon and drop her into Hell for a few decades/centuries until she gets appropriately 'used' to the idea of being a demon. Even if she refuses to bind to the Demon Prince right there, why keep her locked up corporeally on Earth where she can be feasibly rescued? (Sure, to set a trap, but 'a bird in the hand'...)

She can be just as viably rescued by angels (or "rescued" by the Prince she wanted to defect to) in Hell. There is literally no increase in security by taking her down there, if anything there is a decrease because there are more fully-powered celestials capable of breaking things down.

A new demon's previous Role is useless if they are confined Downstairs for any length of time whatsoever.

If she willingly follows you downstairs, that's eleven points of disturbance right there (9 Forces + 2 Essence) - easily enough to risk that the nearby Judges will auto-pass their Perception roll with a bonus and know instantly that a celestial has cel-formed in Asmodeus' Tether. If she doesn't come quietly, then you need to drag her with a Noose, causing 22 points of Disturbance - 11 for her and 11 for the guy with the noose.

The PCs do not know that Asmodeus himself has shown up. As far as the PCs are meant to know, she has been captured and just now has Fallen. There is no method I know about typically available to demons to directly ascertain that an angel who refuses to enter celestial form has Fallen - Bal-Malakim of Fate are a rare resource even for Kronos so he cannot be counted on to even have one in the entire state for his own purposes, let alone one to loan to another Prince just to double check that the Seraph is no longer a Balseraph. So, the demons might keep her physically imprisoned because she is keeping them in the dark about her Fall, in the hope that her erstwhile comrades will bail her out, understand that she broke under torture, and give her a second chance.

[Cally]

Originally Posted by Omegonthesane

The PCs do not know that Asmodeus himself has shown up. As far as the PCs are meant to know, she has been captured and just now has Fallen. There is no method I know about typically available to demons to directly ascertain that an angel who refuses to enter celestial form has Fallen

Mirror of Truth? I don't have the relics book in front of me, but it's supposed to reflect back a true celestial form of a demon/angel in a vessel.

Originally Posted by Omegonthesane

Bal-Malakim of Fate are a rare resource even for Kronos

Do you have a source for this? Is it in the IPG?

[Omegonthesane]

Originally Posted by Cally

Mirror of Truth? I don't have the relics book in front of me, but it's supposed to reflect back a true celestial form of a demon/angel in a vessel.

Touché, but those are pretty niche items for anything but a dedicated demonic brainwashing facility to have. Giant magical mirrors? Really?

Originally Posted by Cally

Do you have a source for this? Is it in the IPG?

I don't have a specific source.

Bal-Malakim of Fate being rarer than, say, Djinn of Fate is an extrapolation from the fact that they are a fraction of one Choir and that Kronos already has Djinn and Calabim to be his dumb muscle so would not have any good reason to encourage large numbers of Balseraphs to be faux Malakim.

Bal-Malakim of Fate being too rare to call in lightly is an extrapolation from the fact that every individual Band-Prince combination in the entire game is too rare to call in lightly. You can probably count on Kronos having a something within the relevant operating area, but for him to specifically have a Bal-Malakite as opposed to an Impudite, Shedite, Lilim, Habbalite, Calabite, Djinn, or even Bal-any-of-the-other-six-Choirs within the deployment zone isn't remotely guaranteed.

For comparison - during a campaign set in the Roman Empire, my Stone Ofanite and his Reliever constituted the entirety of the David presence in Rome during the height of the Empire. Clearly, one could not have counted on there being a Malakite of Stone in Rome, because the only angel of Stone in the entire city was an Ofanite.

If you're absolutely determined to have the game happen more or less as above, then make the Seraph a little less proud and a little more willing to actually deceive. Have her get enough dissonance to be Outcast, cracking her Heart and calling in the hunters, then have her Jump only when the building raises the alarms, giving the angels only the briefest time window for her Heart's shattering to be noticed and for them to be informed before they enter the trap.

Alternately, accept that her plan is kind of incompetent under your own axioms - NPCs are allowed to make mistakes and be incompetent.

[alexondria]

Originally Posted by Omegonthesane

Stick on Will Shackles, force the Seraph to say "I am a teapot" 7 times without converting any of the resulting dissonance into Discord.

For a more serious game, torture the Seraph instead of or in addition to using Will shackles to force it to tell seven consecutive lies.

Does it work to create discord though if the lies are told without the intent of deceiving? In the games I've ran it's always been the intent that mattered. So for example in one of my games I had a npc that was a strange character, but seemed viable to me. They were a seraph who worked for Blandine and they worked with stories. So their whole thing was working with children in particular. In the course of this they said lots of things that weren't true, after all most stories are fiction not fact, but as they never tried to convince the children that they were true it didn't trigger this discord. What they instead focused on was the truth at the center of the story. Take little red riding hood for example, one of the truths at the center of the story is to listen to your elders, they are just looking out for you. Another could be to be weary of strangers and telling them too much, though for me that one was more of a stretch as the hero was also a stranger.

[Omegonthesane]

Originally Posted by alexondria

Does it work to create discord though if the lies are told without the intent of deceiving?

If it doesn't, capture a human and force the Seraph to lie to them, and torture the Seraph if the human doesn't buy it.

You might argue that this is lying "to not be tortured by demons" but if that logic flies then so does "to achieve <insert objective>" so no dice.

Also, I rather imagine Seraphim telling fiction as starting with "The following recital is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events, locations or persons, living or dead, is coincidental for tax purposes."

[alexondria]

Originally Posted by Omegonthesane

If it doesn't, capture a human and force the Seraph to lie to them, and torture the Seraph if the human doesn't buy it.

You might argue that this is lying "to not be tortured by demons" but if that logic flies then so does "to achieve <insert objective>" so no dice.

Also, I rather imagine Seraphim telling fiction as starting with "The following recital is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events, locations or persons, living or dead, is coincidental for tax purposes."

I'd look at that as the intent to deceive, even if you are trying to deceive just to stop the pain. I guess the key for me is that you need to say something to the person you are trying to convince that is plausible for them to believe. So the sky is pink polka dotted probably not so much, I believe I'm a teapot, well you'd be nuts, but you might... but just saying a false statement without someone there to potentially believe it I think misses half the components of a lie

[Cally]

Originally Posted by Omegonthesane

Touché, but those are pretty niche items for anything but a dedicated demonic brainwashing facility to have. Giant magical mirrors? Really?

Assuming Lockets of Truth aren't exclusive to Judgment, those could work too.

Originally Posted by Omegonthesane

I don't have a specific source.

The only source I could find (admittedly I don't have access to every supplement) is that there's a small blurb in the Asmodeus expansion that says although Kronos and Asmodeus are friendly, Kronos doesn't have enough Balseraphs to loan Asmodeus just so he can train all of his servitors in how to deal with angelic resonances.

But, it is mentioned in several sources that some combinations of Choir/Band and Word are just a lot more prevalent than others. Flowers doesn't have a lot of Malakim because they're predisposed to smiting with violence. Judgment has a LOT of Seraphim and Cherubim because nearly every Triad has one of each. Very few Lilim serve Death, etc. Given this, and given how powerful the BalOfFate attunement is, I could see Kronos having a large number of Balseraphs compared to other bands. And if you anticipate a situation where outright deadly combat will be necessary, why not use Malakite-Bals who will experience no trauma?

Of course this can also depend on the GM's interpretation of 'how many celestials are on Earth at any given time.' If there's so few that one angel and his reliever constitute the entirety of an Archangel's presence in a large area, then sure, that would be a little less plausible.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's easier to just house rule that an angel's Heart shatters when they go Outcast. Unless there's some event in the timeline that hinged on a Heart only going dark.

Looking over the rules for Outcasting, it's hard to imagine an angel ever falling unless they deliberately chose to do so. All an angel has to do is get rid of their dissonance (to discord, most likely) then go celestial and try to ascend to Heaven. Why wouldn't they do this? Once they're in Heaven again, I doubt they would get kicked out. Even if their Archangel won't forgive them, they could possibly go serve a different Word. Worst case scenario: Judgment decides they need to serve some kind of penance and/or decides they can never have Earth duty again.

In any case, the only way for an angel to fall would be if they did something which gave them a lot of dissonance at once, if they somehow got a form of permanent dissonance that couldn't be converted (like from the optional rules of perverting their resonance), or if they were genuinely selfish and didn't care about serving Heaven in any capacity anymore. If Hearts shatter with Outcasting, then at least the angel has to get themselves to a Tether and likely have a Long Talk with their Superior before getting back to Heaven.

[alexondria]

You could also have an Angel that knows they are walking the edge, but thinks that they are doing what they have to do for the greater good. Yeah they could go back to Heaven and get better. Yeah that would be better for them. But that would take them away from whatever they think needs done for the greater good and that could be disastrous in their eyes.