Feir Fireb
First Post
Chancel Development
Hey all, sorry about the delay. When I haven't been busy, I've been recovering from being busy. I expect it's been much the same for all of you. But I want to get things back on track.
With regards to Chancel ideas, I've tried to find a common thread or theme for the Estates, and one that seems particularly promising is Opportunity, or Possibilities: Doors divide and actualize them, Time unfolds them, Mythology idealizes them, Luck increases them, and Vermin economize them. Assuming that the locus for the chancel is Chicago, we could make the locus for the new Chancel the Museum of Science and Industry, which is itself a monument to possibilities and was created for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. To get a sense of how well this ties into these themes, I strongly recommend reading at least some of the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition
The Exposition was a source of optimisim and confidence for the city and the country, so much that "the White City" built in Jackson Park were at least partial inspirations for Oz and Disneyland, but it had its dark side: the closing ceremony was cancelled due to mayor Harrison's assasination and a year later the impressive buildings created for the exposition all burned down, probably as a result of arson from the Pullman strike. Only two buildings from the Exposition survived, one being what is now the Museum of Science and Industry.
Jackson Park is itself very close to the University Chicago, which as a bastion of learning and scholarship has its own symbolism for possibilities. But go a little ways out from the Museum and the University to other parts of the South Side, and you have some very poor and dangerous neighborhoods that stand in very stark contrast, just the sort of neighborhoods that Bridgett might have been in when Nowhere was turned into a Chancel.
The Museum itself would be an excellent place for the mystical heart of the Chancel and a primary palace, if you all were so inclined.
We could suppose that the area just bubbles with raw possibilities, with the untapped dreams of the imaginative and ambitious, as well as the fallow dreams of the desperate. Call it a "Mana Mine" like Cariset had previously suggested. Tapping this Mana is a bit tricky, since it manifests through a strange sort of beelike vermin that resides in the Chancel. These creatures are descended in part from the Megalith Wasps of the Appian Way and from the local computer sprites. The "might bees" might be as big as a bear and have the demeanor of killer bees, as well as a fairly subjective nature. They protect the doings of the somewhat smaller "could bees" who in Autumn freeze the untapped dreams and fantasies of those who pass by, which sit and ripen during winter until they are thawed by passing "may bees" in Spring. A clever and powerful individual can harvest the mana of these frozen dreams just before the may bees run off to the hives with them.
If we're talking about Cariset's magical fairy-tale setup, including a sort of Faerie hole as Bridgett mentioned, there are a few possible properties that come to mind (with a few extra possible permutations). First off is some sort of magic, of which there are two basic types that can have some extra properties: Normal Magic, the sort that earthly wizards can do, is 3 points. Faery magic, the magic of glamourie and powerful illusions, is 2 points and I think makes the most sense. Buying either of these means you can use them in the outside world, whereas stuff created in-Chancel tends to naturally dissipate on the outside.
If you want magical inhabitants, that's 1 point, and for them to be common costs a second point. Perhaps the creation of a Chancel has transformed much of the populace into elves and fairies of a diverse sort, but with the demeanors and backgrounds of folks who previously lived either in a slum or a University area. Gangs become dark and powerful Unseelie Courts. Academics and yuppies become brighter and more arrogant. All become more beautiful and work their magics on the unsuspecting to their own advantage. There can be strange magical creatures, too, such as living machines (wild car-horses?), trash can monsters that prey on the unsuspecting, colonies of intelligent rats, and other stranger creatures, dragons made of cinder blocks that pose as buildings, etc. Or the transformation could be even more radical than that, such that the Chancel no longer even remotely resembles part of a modern city, it's that 'Faery-tale-ish'.
Another facet that might be useful to play with is accessibility, especially given Bridgett's tendency to whisk off mortals from Prosaic Earth, as well as the 'Possibilities' theme. Normally a Chancel can only be reached from a handful of entrances in the same general area as where the Chancel used to be. But for 2 points, the Chancel can be "convenient", with multiple gates sparsely dotted all over the world, on the order of hundreds of miles apart. I'd be willing to let them be even a little more common than that with some sort of mystical restriction, such as they're only usable when it's locally twilight. There are ways of making them even more convenient than that, but it gets expensive point-wise. For 6 points they can be "ubiquitous", "mobile" for 7.
All of these are quite handy, though assuming, say a Mana Mine of 3, plus 2 plus 2 for the others, we get 7 points which leaves one point to spare assuming no disads. Plausible disads include Banes, powerful ghosts who plot against the PCs, and an Erus, an NPC "landlord" entrusted by the Imperator with co-governence of the Chancel and a Realm score (the highest I'd recommend given he or she would compete with you Realm-wise is 3, giving the PCs 3 spare Chancel points to spend).
It's wise to consider defensive possibilities, such as a potent Borderguard or Defender's Blessing.
Other possibilities include Extrapolitive Technology and its exenstion, Weird Science (keeping with ties to the Museum and University), High Summonings from Beyond Creation supplementing Fairy or Normal magic (given a number of PCs are summonable, maybe they have a mystic tie to the art). Or you might even have special gates to other Chancels, other Times, and mystical parts of Creation.
Anyways, let me know how this stuff sounds, if it sparks any ideas, if you've already thought of weird and wacky things you'd like to see, or if you'd like more explanation of some of the possibilities I've mentioned.
Hey all, sorry about the delay. When I haven't been busy, I've been recovering from being busy. I expect it's been much the same for all of you. But I want to get things back on track.
With regards to Chancel ideas, I've tried to find a common thread or theme for the Estates, and one that seems particularly promising is Opportunity, or Possibilities: Doors divide and actualize them, Time unfolds them, Mythology idealizes them, Luck increases them, and Vermin economize them. Assuming that the locus for the chancel is Chicago, we could make the locus for the new Chancel the Museum of Science and Industry, which is itself a monument to possibilities and was created for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. To get a sense of how well this ties into these themes, I strongly recommend reading at least some of the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition
The Exposition was a source of optimisim and confidence for the city and the country, so much that "the White City" built in Jackson Park were at least partial inspirations for Oz and Disneyland, but it had its dark side: the closing ceremony was cancelled due to mayor Harrison's assasination and a year later the impressive buildings created for the exposition all burned down, probably as a result of arson from the Pullman strike. Only two buildings from the Exposition survived, one being what is now the Museum of Science and Industry.
Jackson Park is itself very close to the University Chicago, which as a bastion of learning and scholarship has its own symbolism for possibilities. But go a little ways out from the Museum and the University to other parts of the South Side, and you have some very poor and dangerous neighborhoods that stand in very stark contrast, just the sort of neighborhoods that Bridgett might have been in when Nowhere was turned into a Chancel.
The Museum itself would be an excellent place for the mystical heart of the Chancel and a primary palace, if you all were so inclined.
We could suppose that the area just bubbles with raw possibilities, with the untapped dreams of the imaginative and ambitious, as well as the fallow dreams of the desperate. Call it a "Mana Mine" like Cariset had previously suggested. Tapping this Mana is a bit tricky, since it manifests through a strange sort of beelike vermin that resides in the Chancel. These creatures are descended in part from the Megalith Wasps of the Appian Way and from the local computer sprites. The "might bees" might be as big as a bear and have the demeanor of killer bees, as well as a fairly subjective nature. They protect the doings of the somewhat smaller "could bees" who in Autumn freeze the untapped dreams and fantasies of those who pass by, which sit and ripen during winter until they are thawed by passing "may bees" in Spring. A clever and powerful individual can harvest the mana of these frozen dreams just before the may bees run off to the hives with them.
If we're talking about Cariset's magical fairy-tale setup, including a sort of Faerie hole as Bridgett mentioned, there are a few possible properties that come to mind (with a few extra possible permutations). First off is some sort of magic, of which there are two basic types that can have some extra properties: Normal Magic, the sort that earthly wizards can do, is 3 points. Faery magic, the magic of glamourie and powerful illusions, is 2 points and I think makes the most sense. Buying either of these means you can use them in the outside world, whereas stuff created in-Chancel tends to naturally dissipate on the outside.
If you want magical inhabitants, that's 1 point, and for them to be common costs a second point. Perhaps the creation of a Chancel has transformed much of the populace into elves and fairies of a diverse sort, but with the demeanors and backgrounds of folks who previously lived either in a slum or a University area. Gangs become dark and powerful Unseelie Courts. Academics and yuppies become brighter and more arrogant. All become more beautiful and work their magics on the unsuspecting to their own advantage. There can be strange magical creatures, too, such as living machines (wild car-horses?), trash can monsters that prey on the unsuspecting, colonies of intelligent rats, and other stranger creatures, dragons made of cinder blocks that pose as buildings, etc. Or the transformation could be even more radical than that, such that the Chancel no longer even remotely resembles part of a modern city, it's that 'Faery-tale-ish'.
Another facet that might be useful to play with is accessibility, especially given Bridgett's tendency to whisk off mortals from Prosaic Earth, as well as the 'Possibilities' theme. Normally a Chancel can only be reached from a handful of entrances in the same general area as where the Chancel used to be. But for 2 points, the Chancel can be "convenient", with multiple gates sparsely dotted all over the world, on the order of hundreds of miles apart. I'd be willing to let them be even a little more common than that with some sort of mystical restriction, such as they're only usable when it's locally twilight. There are ways of making them even more convenient than that, but it gets expensive point-wise. For 6 points they can be "ubiquitous", "mobile" for 7.
All of these are quite handy, though assuming, say a Mana Mine of 3, plus 2 plus 2 for the others, we get 7 points which leaves one point to spare assuming no disads. Plausible disads include Banes, powerful ghosts who plot against the PCs, and an Erus, an NPC "landlord" entrusted by the Imperator with co-governence of the Chancel and a Realm score (the highest I'd recommend given he or she would compete with you Realm-wise is 3, giving the PCs 3 spare Chancel points to spend).
It's wise to consider defensive possibilities, such as a potent Borderguard or Defender's Blessing.
Other possibilities include Extrapolitive Technology and its exenstion, Weird Science (keeping with ties to the Museum and University), High Summonings from Beyond Creation supplementing Fairy or Normal magic (given a number of PCs are summonable, maybe they have a mystic tie to the art). Or you might even have special gates to other Chancels, other Times, and mystical parts of Creation.
Anyways, let me know how this stuff sounds, if it sparks any ideas, if you've already thought of weird and wacky things you'd like to see, or if you'd like more explanation of some of the possibilities I've mentioned.
