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Old 02-01-2023, 01:14 AM   #1
ehrbar
 
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Default Vojaltri, Kyriotate of Creation

Vojaltri
Kyriotate of Creation

Corporeal Forces -- 6 -- Strength 12, Agility 12
Ethereal Forces -- 2 -- Intelligence 6, Precision 2
Celestial Forces -- 2 -- Will 5, Perception 3

Skills: *Acrobatics/1, Dodge/1, Escape/1, Fighting/6, Knowledge/2 (Circuses), Language/3* (Italian), Move Silently/6, Throwing/1.

Songs: *Healing (Corporeal/6), Numinous Corpus/6 (Tongue), Tongues (Corporeal/6).

Attunements: *Kyriotate of Animals, Kyriotate of Creation, Kyriotate of Trade.

Vojaltri used to be a bigger Kyriotate, hanging out with one mid-sized Italian circus, which was used as a cover for hiding or relocating various angels and Soldiers of God. Even if the "new hires" didn't have any relevant skills of their own, Vojaltri could possess them to make them passable acrobats, knife-throwers, or strongmen, or possess animals to let the agents of Heaven pass as skilled animal trainers, snake charmers, and the like. In the meantime, Vojaltri appreciated and promoted the circus arts, while helping prevent abuse of animals and financial scams on enough occasions to get the approbation of both Jordi and Marc.

However, with the popularization of cinema and then television, circuses declined, and Vojaltri's circus eventually folded. Eli sent the Kyriotate on a series of special missions after this, which unfortunately culminated in an encounter on the Ethereal involving celestial combat. Vojaltri lost several Forces and a good deal of their memories in that battle, and Eli sent them for recovery to Creation's secret Tether in Cremona, Italy (Stradivarius' Workshop; Liber Castellorum, p.77).

Now, the thing about the Cremona Tether is that it is the nearest Divine Tether to Milan, a city under demonic control (Fall of the Malakim, p.60). After they felt recovered (enough, if not restored to former strength), Vojaltri got frustrated waiting for a new assignment from Eli, and started poking around in Milan. After early experiments showed that diabolic forces were quite secure in the city, they regrouped, realizing they needed to develop a long-term plan, which they are now executing.

With the Kyrotate of Animals attunement, ten total Forces, and six Corporeal Forces, Vojaltri can possess up to sixty Forces' worth of nonhuman animals at a time. Their chosen allocation of those sixty Forces' worth of possession is:
* * 1) 12 Forces, distributed 2 each in a cat-sized host at six Tethers in Italy, where they uses a cat or similar animal to operate a computer, to actively write up what they're doing and observing in their other hosts;
* * 2) 12 Forces, distributed 2 Forces each in a small animal or animals near each of those six Tethers, carrying out tasks to assist their Seneschals, both to generally aid the cause of Heaven and to build up a fund of favors to draw on; and
* * 3) 36 Forces, distributed among 12-36 hosts, in Milan, sneaking around and spying on diabolic Forces.
This, of course, brings in just oodles of observational evidence as to what the demons of Milan are doing, fed directly to Words that Vojaltri expects will want to do something about the situation.

Vojaltri has been quietly suggesting to Lightning that they might be more effective if someone arranged to teach them Helltongue, so they can report on demonic conversations in that tongue. They have also been pointing out to War that if their hosts could speak Angelic on the Corporeal, they could more effectively communicate with angelic strike teams in Milan; indeed, with the associated rank, they could often even order those teams to retreat in untenable situations without anyone taking dissonance.

However, Vojaltri is not only spying. Nor merely adding some low-level sabotage (rats chewing on things can be annoying, if not usually disastrous). No, they're also attempting to completely undermine Hell's human agents in Milan.

You see, if someone's sleeping, they're pretty reliably a human. Such a sleeping person also has very little ability to notice a small animal or swarm of insects sneaking into a bedroom, nor to avoid an attack. Someone who's asleep generally won't notice if they're rendered unconscious by an additional effect. And the average human has 8 Mind hits; very few have more than 16. And Mind hits don't make Disturbance that anyone other than Grigori can hear.

So, if some ants were to slip into the room of such a human and strike for 15+CD Mind hits (Strength 12, +6 Corporeal Forces, +6 Fighting skill, +2 Accuracy from Numinous Corpus Tongue equals a target number of 26, or autosuccess with a +14 to CD, and a Power of +1 brings that to 15+CD damage, with a swap to Mind hits from Numinous Corpus Tongue), the human generally just wakes up in the morning with an Ethereal disadvantage, no one the wiser. Wait ten days and repeat, the target gets worse. 36 levels of Ethereal disadvantages in a year should be pretty crippling, no? And Vojaltri can hit dozens of humans every night.

Making all the human agents of Hell in Milan a combination of Angry, Berserk, Cowardly, Fearful, Guilt-wracked, Hate-filled, and Paranoid would be fairly subtle done slowly (these are people who work with Hell, after all), but the faster it happens, the faster the demons will catch on. However, their most likely first conclusion, since the humans are taking ethereal damage when asleep, is that Dreams or Nightmares is stalking them in their dreams.

Of course, if there are Grigori in Milan, they're the most likely to notice, as they can hear the Disturbance from the strikes. Other angels might notice the rising tide of insanity, and may try to chase down the presumably-demonic forces behind it. There even may be cherubim overseeing humans who are unknowingly or involuntarily working for Hell, who will notice the threat to their charges and wind up hunting Vojaltri. Angels of Destiny, Dreams, and Flowers all seem likely to object to the tactic if they learn of it, as may other angels, particularly depending on how selective Vojaltri is about their targets.

****

Six suggested Tethers to find Vojaltri at:

1) Lightning, Bologna, Luigi Galvani's Laboratory (site of Galvini's experiments in animal electricity).
2) Stone, Rome, the Catacombs (Liber Castellorum, p.75).
3) The Sword, Rome, St. Peter's Basilica (Liber Castellorum, p.83).
4) Trade, Genoa, the Palazzo San Giorgio (site of Marco Polo's imprisonment, the pioneering Bank of San Giorgio, and now the headquarters of the authority overseeing one of Europe's major ports).
5) War, Turin, the National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento (Italy's national museum of its unification).
6) The Wind, Nivolet Pass, the winding and windy road famously featured in The Italian Job (1969).
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Old 02-01-2023, 08:59 AM   #2
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Default Re: Vojaltri, Kyriotate of Creation

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Originally Posted by ehrbar View Post
Vojaltri
Kyriotate of Creation
I like it. Thank you.
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Old 02-03-2023, 10:33 AM   #3
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Default Re: Vojaltri, Kyriotate of Creation

That's a well-thought up character with a nice alien mindset and a nicely thought up plan. And perhaps an angel headed for a Fall, as it's abusing humans even if not harming its own hosts.

Vojaltri is a Judgement posterchild for why Creationers shouldn't be unsupervised!
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Old 02-03-2023, 05:02 PM   #4
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Default Re: Vojaltri, Kyriotate of Creation

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Originally Posted by thorr-kan View Post
And perhaps an angel headed for a Fall, as it's abusing humans even if not harming its own hosts.
Perhaps! Depends a lot on 1) the campaign's dark/bright and contrast settings, and 2) exactly how choosy the GM decides to make Vojaltri about targets.

In a bright, high-contrast game where Vojaltri is knocking out a lot of innocent dupes of Hell, well, they're treating humans a lot like a Shedite would, even if they're not directly possessing to do the corrupting. If the tones are darker, the contrast is lower, and/or Vojaltri is careful that the targets are actively bad (maybe even only actual Hellsworn), well, the approach is not inherently worse than angels of Fire punishing human cruelty.

Lots of implicit knobs on this one for GMs to twiddle as they like for their campaigns, a potential adventure seed whichever side the PCs are on and whatever their Words served. Also reasonably easy to adapt to the canonical Los Angeles, or any other demon-dominated city (Bogota is the other one named in Fall of the Malakim).

The anti-human approach also adapts to a Kyrio of Animals that's decided to take the fight against animal cruelty into a city. For the same starting-Celestial-plus-20 CP balance, delete Kyrio of Creation & Kyrio of Trade, and add a Celestial Force, pushing the character's Will up so it can reliably grab hosts without the Trade attunement. Then probably move the points in Knowledge and Throwing elsewhere, possibly Climbing and/or Tracking.

By the way, for the curious, "vojaltri" is an archaic form of "voialtri", an Italian word which Wiktionary defines as "you (everyone except me or us, "you lot")". Vojaltri's Los Angeles- or Bogota-centered alternate version might accordingly be named "Vosotros" (the Spanish equivalent).
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Old 02-04-2023, 07:53 PM   #5
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Default Re: Vojaltri, Kyriotate of Creation

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Originally Posted by ehrbar View Post
Perhaps! Depends a lot on 1) the campaign's dark/bright and contrast settings, and 2) exactly how choosy the GM decides to make Vojaltri about targets.
Agreed; this one is ALL about the setting dials. (Aside: love that terminology!)

Still an excellently crafted creation.
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