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Canon Q&A With Storytellers

Posted: 17 Nov 2012, 16:11
by Mooncalf
Use this thread to ask canon / mythos questions, and I'll do my best to answer all of them when I can.

Feel free to ask anything you can think of, including things that you find confusing. Please remember that I won't answer all questions to do with secrets, origins, and certain plot twists, but I will reply telling you why I can't tell you the answer if you ask such a question.

Please do not answer the questions people ask yourselves unless the answer is in the wiki. Keep this thread as clean as possible. No chatter please!

Wiki mods can use this thread to update the wiki if they see something that is missing.

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 17 Nov 2012, 19:17
by River Illia
List of Canon Questions asked to date.

Below is a list of questions already asked by the player base and answered by David. Please check the wiki and read through the questions below to see if you can answer your question(s) before posting your own. Thank you!

Feeding/Blood: Human PCs: Illness/Injury: Necuratism: NPCs: Powers: Path specific; Mystic and Killer: Quarantine Zones: Rituals: Spirits: Vampire History: Vampire Pregnancy: Wraiths: Miscellaneous:

Updated to here.
Note: Post hijacked and updated by Path Mods with River Illia's permission.

New question template: [*]Question[/size]

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 17 Nov 2012, 19:24
by Wendigo
Sure, I'll bite first.

Question #1
When I bite a human wrote:You successfully feed on the human, and steal $15 from them.
You seal their wound, and leave the human dazed and confused.
How am I "sealing" their wounds? In V:tM a vampire could "lick" a wound closed, but I don't want to assume that's the same here. Also, can any vampire seal any bite wound in this manner, or only ones caused by their own teeth like in V:tM?

Question #2
The spirits that Mediums see, what are they? Are they deceased humans? Can Mediums speak to them? What happens when they are "dispersed"? How do they compare to the Spirits in the Shadow Realm? Do deceased humans go to the Shadow Realm?

Question #3
What is the current human understanding of the Quarantine Zone? What actions, if any, are the authorities/government taking with regard to it?

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 17 Nov 2012, 22:06
by Mooncalf
Wendigo wrote:How am I "sealing" their wounds? In V:tM a vampire could "lick" a wound closed, but I don't want to assume that's the same here. Also, can any vampire seal any bite wound in this manner, or only ones caused by their own teeth like in V:tM?
I'll be honest with this: when I first made the game I intended it to be slightly more basic than it turned out, and when I wrote that I didn't put a lot of thought into it. Having to choose now that I look back, however, I have to go with the explanation that the wound seals automatically without any need for a lick. It's possible that you could attach a scientific explanation to that, regarding how a vampire's wounds heal faster, and their saliva would contain some of their blood and therefore seal up the wound shortly afterwards, and that would make sense.

However, with vampires in Path lore I prefer not to go with any pseudo-scientific explanation (contrary to the style of my previous projects), and would say that the wounds close up for the same reasons vampires in Path are able to morph their teeth into fangs at will (ie. nobody quite knows, but they are spirit creatures, so nothing is beyond the realms of possibility for them). Up to your characters which of those spins they put on it.

The spirits that Mediums see, what are they? Are they deceased humans? Can Mediums speak to them? What happens when they are "dispersed"? How do they compare to the Spirits in the Shadow Realm? Do deceased humans go to the Shadow Realm?
The spirits vampires see are indeed deceased humans. Mediums can sometimes speak to them, but like the ghost stories of our own world, the spirits don't always give very direct replies. When "dispersed" (drained of anima) they temporarily lose the power to manifest any kind of image or power over the physical realm. Some go on to what ever afterlife they have waiting for them (if there is an afterlife for humans), and some stay trapped in a limbo reality and can re-appear once their anima has built back up.

As for the spirits in the shadow realm, these are also humans, but these are spirits who have been dragged into the shadow realm by the proximity of the rift. No human who ever died outside of the area surrounding Harper Rock ever ended up in the shadow realm, and the Shadow Realm only began swallowing human spirits a decade or so before the sundering.

As for zombies, they are re-animated by spirits due to the proximity of the shadow realm rift. Although I originally said that humans cannot return from the shadow realm, I realised that it would have made zombies an impossibility, according to their wiki description. As such I've amended the wiki article regarding the shadow realm and human spirits. The shadow realm swallows humans spirits, and some of these spirits are lost forever, but others are released and often take hold of their dead bodies.

What is the current human understanding of the Quarantine Zone? What actions, if any, are the authorities/government taking with regard to it?
I believe I've answered that elsewhere, but I can't find it on the wiki.

The government's official stance on the QZ is that it was the site of a virus outbreak, which they are studying in order to understand. Unofficially, they know something isn't right about that area of the city, but they also know that blowing it up would cause too much attention, and would likely cause major problems for Canada. They were able to catch the "outbreak" before it spread outside of a concentrated area of 2-3 city blocks, but they shut down the entire district to be safe.

The government, as you can imagine, sees the potential for studying this anomaly, and so they are trying to play the seriousness of the situation down as much as possible, while they study victims of this "virus". They have no immediate plans to re-open the area, as they realise that the dead are still rising in that district, so they are simply using the site for research. They have longer term goals, but I can't reveal those just yet.

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 18 Nov 2012, 15:08
by Stephanie Wylde
Mooncalf wrote:The government, as you can imagine, sees the potential for studying this anomaly, and so they are trying to play the seriousness of the situation down as much as possible, while they study victims of this "virus". They have no immediate plans to re-open the area, as they realise that the dead are still rising in that district, so they are simply using the site for research. They have longer term goals, but I can't reveal those just yet.
Why do we not see any military personell in the quarantine zone? Surely there would be scientists or something wandering around in there.

Now for my question....

Where are the fadebeasts coming from? If they are the result of vampire copulation, and there is no fadebeast birth deaths being roleplayed out, Where are they coming from? If they were the result of Feral Vampires going at it like rabbits, then surely they would be confined to the quarantine zone like all the other monsters spawned from the realm of darkness.

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 18 Nov 2012, 23:56
by Mooncalf
Stephanie Wylde wrote: Why do we not see any military personell in the quarantine zone? Surely there would be scientists or something wandering around in there.
There are some in there, yes, but their research is conducted on their base buildings at the corners of the south fence. You could roleplay coming across a military team but they aren't fightable yet.

Now for my question....

Where are the fadebeasts coming from? If they are the result of vampire copulation, and there is no fadebeast birth deaths being roleplayed out, Where are they coming from? If they were the result of Feral Vampires going at it like rabbits, then surely they would be confined to the quarantine zone like all the other monsters spawned from the realm of darkness.
"Feral vampires" are zombies with vampire blood, and can't create fade beasts.

Fadebeats are one of the only creatures who can jump between realms very easily, as they exist more in the shadow realm than they do in the real world. As such, many of these fadebeasts have simply escaped the shadow realm, and have been there for hundreds of years.

However, just because people refuse to roleplay that particular consequence, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. When unwanted human pregnancies are a thing of the past in real life, then perhaps somebody will convince me that there are no fadebeasts being born in Path.

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 19 Nov 2012, 00:00
by Monique (DELETED 725)
On the fadebeasts and vampire pregnancy thing - If a vampire was sterile as a mortal either naturally or via some sort of surgery, does that continue to hold true for them as a vampire?

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 19 Nov 2012, 00:03
by Cliff Worthington
Mooncalf wrote:"Feral vampires" are zombies with vampire blood, and can't create fade beasts.

Fadebeats are one of the only creatures who can jump between realms very easily, as they exist more in the shadow realm than they do in the real world. As such, many of these fadebeasts have simply escaped the shadow realm, and have been there for hundreds of years.

However, just because people refuse to roleplay that particular consequence, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. When unwanted human pregnancies are a thing of the past in real life, then perhaps somebody will convince me that there are no fadebeasts being born in Path.

My question is this, Why do Ferals drop Fadeling Corpses then? How does that process happen if Feral Vampires can't create them.

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 19 Nov 2012, 00:04
by Alexandrea
I hated it in that 'other' game when vampires got pregnant but since no one else has done it yet, I'd like to try having Alex gets knocked up. So my questions are;

What physical reactions would she experiences that would be different from human ones? I understand they grow at a faster rate.

And what sort of damage are we talking about that she would suffer when it was born (talking stat wise here, I get the whole ripped to heck idea) and can that be done on grid to reflect what happened? If I was to have her 'die' from the event, would have have to find another way to send her to the sr? Even if I had someone summon a fadebeast npc, that isn't going to kill her and would rather her 'death wound' was accurate.

Re: Canon Q&A With David

Posted: 19 Nov 2012, 00:16
by Mooncalf
PsychoCliff wrote: My question is this, Why do Ferals drop Fadeling Corpses then? How does that process happen if Feral Vampires can't create them.
Somebody should correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember explaining that -- not with zombie sex -- but with mothers who died while pregnant?