My GIN Campaign Setting

[Fox]

Originally Posted by William

Does the same threshold (a few million people knowing and thinking about the being) hold for creating Ethereal versions of fictional characters in your campaign, or must humans believe the base type actually exists, such as in the case of missing persons and honestly-worshiped gods?

Absolutely. That's how Fox Mulder got created, after all. Every human who knows who Fox Mulder is also knows that Fox is just a portrayal of a character by an actor, but there are enough humans in the world who could answer the question "Who is Fox Mulder?" with "He's a government agent that works on paranormal cases" to make an Ethereal being who corresponds with that description.

And the strength of the Ethereal being is directly related to the number of humans who know and think about him/her. The strongest such Ethereal being for a long time was Archie Bunker, but he's not so strong any more. Fox himself has gotten weaker since "The X-Files" got canceled.

Different Ethereal beings can be created from different characters a human actor plays. For instance, one of the other Ethereal NPCs in the game is Agent J (from "Men in Black"). He says that once a year, all the Ethereals who were characters played by Will Smith get together and have a reunion. They drink, laugh, tell old stories, and make fun of Bagger Vance.

If the former, a good artist (Eli) or con man (Nybbas) with access to communications networks could conceivably make an Ethereal "to spec", which could certainly be a service worth a great deal to those who needed a particular kind of ally or servant.

For sure, but without an easy way to cross to the Corporeal plane, such a made-to-spec Ethereal being would be of limited use. Which is another reason why the Pagan Gods are so desperate to keep the weakened border a secret.


Here's another bad pun.
While Black Out lets users share dreamscapes, it doesn't actually put their bodies in a dream state. Specifically, it doesn't put them in a state of sleep paralysis. So a Black Out user is acting out his dream with his body, while his mind is in a dreamscape. this can be extremely dangerous, so people have set up padded rooms in buildings to protect the Black Out users' bodies. Such buildings are, of course, nicknamed... wait for it... "Out houses."