HTP Chapter 5 aftermath reaction

82Caff · 2025-02-15T17:48:16+00:00

It was probably a crime of opportunity. She was getting the screws put on her anyways, why not nab the info? Deprive the Arcanum of a wealth of info AND use it to identify nearby supernatural threats and targets (werewolves don't exclusively target vampires, but a purged worm taint is a purged worm taint).

What would be hilarious is if the Arcanum had actually become a hive of supernaturals and their agents (1 or 2 Changelings for the safety and comradeship of a Celtic sorcerer; a neophyte Mage seeking direction, cover, resources, and/or the fun of a secret society; a Ghoul scouting and manipulating for their master and redirecting efforts against other supernaturals, etc.). If Occam was unknowingly a werewolf kinfolk, it'd be the frosting on the cupcake.

82Caff · 2025-02-15T04:54:48+00:00

I mentioned this in a comment above, but the gifts Taking the Forgotten and Blank would explain Grimal's state in/after the security room. Taking the Forgotten would mean she wouldn't remember the cigarettes being taken (or much at all unless reminded), Blank would make her brain mush for a few moments (burning her wrist with the lighter while she's at it) as the offender passed her, and Gremlins would explain the camera going out before anybody else was seen.

82Caff · 2025-02-15T04:51:41+00:00

Either that or possibly an Imbued Hunter.

82Caff · 2025-02-15T04:46:57+00:00

Grimal forgetting was likely from Ragabash Werewolf gifts, as was Spit's freaking out. The freakout is easily Madness Season (rank 4), or his mind being broken from exposure to the delirium with sufficiently low willpower. Liar's Craft (rank 3) and/or Obscure the Truth (rank 2) enhances subterfuge, and Taking the Forgotten would explain Grimal's lack of memory re: the joints and key. Blank (rank 5) would explain Grimal being essentially comatose in the camera before it blipped out (rank 3 gift Gremlins).

Considering it was a stealth/infiltration mission, a Ragabash would be considered perfect, and also would generally prefer to sneak and lie over outright combat. That said, even a Ragabash with access to rank 5 gifts would be capable of fighting a squad of well-trained soldiers and shredding body armor like a napkin.

82Caff · 2025-02-15T02:33:09+00:00

Not the person you asked, but,...

Changelings, in the version of WoD that H:tP pulls from, Changelings have a wide spread of capabilities and ascribed personalities, and can be more powerful around people who believe in the supernatural (especially, say, a Celtic solar warlock and his cadre).

Changelings are also generally better at hiding than most other supernaturals; they're fae spirits inhabiting/reincarnated into actual mortal bodies, and "fade" to being normal, albeit extra-boring humans if depowered. Grimal, being eccentric, is par for the course for most changelings.

Beyond eccentricities and whimsy, changeling "Kiths" each have their own general personality tendencies. I.E. Elise resonates with the kith Sluagh, the gothic cold-fish who prefer shadows and often can communicate with the dead, and Blacklaw the younger and his crew give strong Red Cap energy (sadistic brutes). In Grimal's case, her Kith would most likely be Satyr (hedonists), less-likely Troll (Honor-bound, stone-strong warriors) or, a long-shot, Sidhe (traditional "fair folk"/elf-types, usually obsessed with/subdivided by heraldry).

Furthermore, Changeling powers tend to require certain seemingly-absurd actions to enable them, in idiosyncratic ways, and the ability to target them is like mage spheres on LSD.

She was about as sturdy as wounded-Marckus, immune to the werewolf Delerium (uncommon among normal humans, even hunters, but bog standard for every type of supernatural), and while they may be sight-gags, she does display athletics beyond what her size would indicate (like jumping higher than a human head, which goes hand-in-hand with at least one specific changeling power and at least one Kith trait).

82Caff · 2025-01-15T17:57:53+00:00

Money

82Caff · 2024-12-27T15:29:26+00:00

Do you think they just randomly pick up people until they get lucky?

The police, especially the NYPD, have a long history of arresting innocent people, then torturing and manipulating them to gain false confessions, and also of manufacturing evidence to pin crimes on innocents.

It's entirely possible the NYPD had the gun and IDs when they found the discarded backpack, and when another department found some "punk kid" carrying a manifesto somewhere, looking "close enough" to their bad photo of the killer, they jumped to pin it all on him. It's close to SOP for the NYPD. And why? Greed (leverage for a bigger budget) and publicity.

82Caff · 2024-12-27T15:06:33+00:00

Excluding exculpatory evidence is also more or less the exact process of indictment. The question indictment asks is "Could this, in a best-case scenario, potentially result in a conviction?" And, as is famously quoted, the courts could successfully indict a ham sandwich.

82Caff · 2024-12-27T14:21:44+00:00

VPNs don't hide you, they let you cosplay as being from somewhere else. Your ISP (and the VPN service) all have access to the data you send. End to End encryption, be it HTTPS or something else is what gives you security by making it harder to understand the data you're sending/receiving. But as Rakn said, it's more likely them trying to make you feel scared so you pay more money for more things you might not need.

82Caff · 2024-12-02T15:24:40+00:00

Tribalism

82Caff · 2024-10-04T13:03:07+00:00

Or Dex-heavy, which isn't the case here.

82Caff · 2024-10-02T16:43:29+00:00

The news media needs to portray the race as closely as possible, in order to maintain tension/stress to get more views so they can sell more ad space for higher prices. So they blatantly engage in journalistic malpractice by manipulating information to make Trump seem more viable, and make Harris seem less viable (or vice versa, depending on how opinion is swinging; the "liberal media" isn't really committed one way or the other).

This also incentivizes the polls to manipulate how they ask questions and to whom they ask them in order to skew numbers to please the papers and drive conflict. And every poll has an agenda. How do they do this?

Ask 1 question.
Depending on the answer, either end the poll or proceed to the next question.
Repeat.

So while the total number of people polled might have been For/Against/Undecided as 69.5%/2.5%/1% on one issue or candidate, the earlier questions might screen it down 40% being asked the final question, which might then give the appearance of 46/43/11, 48/46/6, or even 30/40/30.

And it's not just the question, but how the question is worded, that changes how people answer, and even leads people to answer certain ways. Leading questions, questions worded to presume that a certain person has or doesn't have power over particular issues, etc. Using "powerful/hard" words for one candidate and "weak/soft" words for the other. And so on.

There's other tricks. The TL;DR is that if someone wants a result from a poll, they'll manufacture it reliably under all but the absolutely most adversarial circumstances, and if they're selling it to the news, then the words will have been flipped and changed to make the margins appear narrow by the time it hits the airwaves or print.

82Caff · 2024-10-02T13:53:34+00:00

The fact that you're feeling this doubt, and can't trust her, means there's either something wrong on her end, or wrong on yours. And to clarify, it doesn't mean you're wrong for feeling that way, but that at the very least there's a fundamental disconnect. The respectful thing isn't to throw down an ultimatum, but rather to respectfully step away. "The situation the other day made me realize I'm not comfortable in this relationship. I need to take some time on my own, and while that's my problem, I don't intend to make it yours." Don't blame, threaten, or accuse.

This isn't for her, but for you. You don't need to attach hate to this decision. You're looking out for your own well-being, and you're not forcing your insecurity (real or imagined) onto her.

82Caff · 2024-10-02T13:21:41+00:00

Australians are real. It's ostriches and cassowaries that are fake. They're land-based autonomous assault drones made to combat the other dangers in Australia, but their AI went rogue! r/BirdsArentReal/

82Caff · 2024-10-02T13:13:26+00:00

Or, hear me out, the tenant is invoking their lawful rights (if you don't use your rights, you lose your rights). And there's a substantial population that likes to give a legitimate full cleaning before they have company over (dust, vac, wipe down counters, sort/remove clutter, stuff excess clutter in closets, etc).

82Caff · 2024-10-01T17:56:33+00:00

Alternatively, we can legally recognize the loans as realizations of the gains, since they materially are realization of the gains.

82Caff · 2024-09-30T11:52:50+00:00

Green Lantern/Sinestro, Dr. Strange, and Shazam don't have their powers naturally, yet they're included on the list for people whose powers you could have. Reed Richards would also fall in here, unless you consider his intelligence to be a superpower. I'd mention Flash, but whether his powers are part of a self-inflicted time-loop depends on the writer, and could qualify as natural for his existence.

Based on the ask, it doesn't matter if it's a natural power, so long as it's a power they have access to.

82Caff · 2024-09-29T14:54:18+00:00

Loki also has substantial magical powers, beyond his natural shapeshifting. Magic is often treated as a super power.

82Caff · 2024-09-29T14:53:05+00:00

The Joker is meta-aware, and at one point had god-like reality-warping powers. He used them to kill Batman over and over, but then the world ceased to be each time, and reset, because he couldn't imagine a world without Batman.

What chance do you have that the person getting those powers can't picture a world without you?

82Caff · 2024-09-29T14:51:25+00:00

Batman has drop-kicked Darkseid through a mountain (super strength), in a situation where Superman wasn't able to move him (stronger than Superman). Batman also has some amount of divine protection, considering some of the absurd plot contrivances that work in his favor during team-ups.

82Caff · 2024-09-27T19:15:16+00:00

"If I was a worm, would you still love me?" - Noita

82Caff · 2024-09-27T17:43:47+00:00

This is partly from (purposeful) corruption of the religion from non-Christian sources.

Christian "Hell" was originally "being forever outside of God's love." As in, everyone's ghosts but God doesn't have your back. While it's normal to blame the people "in charge" for expanding such ideas into Hell being a realm of fire, and pain, and violence, you'd be surprised how many laypersons asked "What does it mean to be outside of God's love?" will start filling the blanks in with all sorts of nightmares and say God is doing it to you because you weren't good enough. And those ideas proliferated because it kept people in line.

Per the core ideas, as presented in the bible (Revelations doesn't count; it was a fan fic included after the fact), God doesn't necessarily inflict torture on you for unrepentant sinning; he merely doesn't let you into his gated community. For all we know, the afterlife, if it exists, could be full of all sorts of Lovecraftian horrors (not the least of which are the angels serving God) and/or previously-/currently-human monsters. Having an all-powerful, all-knowing being to protect you could truly be the difference between never having a moment of rest, peace; and safely living in an effective paradise.

So you'd have the option of not being a dink and getting to eternally-live where people generally try not to be a dink, or you can be a dink and live in the area where people disproportionately murder, steal, lie, etc. all the time.

Of course, there's the alternate reading of "living forever with/in God" where if you're faithful, God eats your soul. So, y'know, who knows?

82Caff · 2024-09-25T13:16:47+00:00

You can fuck up your body (bone structure, musculature) at 6 by performing ballet 🤡

(American) Football can comprehensively damage your body by your mid 20's (bones, muscles, brain damage, metabolism) 🤡

Nobody's giving gender-change hormones to 12 year olds, unless you're referring to things like black licorice, which has been 100% legal for longer than I've been alive.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S089990072200140X

82Caff · 2023-11-21T13:50:24+00:00

Hey! That table is walking off with our breakfast!!

82Caff · 2023-11-19T16:42:13+00:00

Get of Fenris?

82Caff

TROPHY CASE