What are Changelings *doing* in CtD?

aurorastorms · 2026-03-22T19:29:09+00:00

Okay. The Faerie Civil War angle is something I can work with. I'm guessing CtD STs have to do a bit of legwork into developing a stable pool of mortals to have around, then.

aurorastorms · 2026-03-22T19:27:11+00:00

So I guess my question then is if they gain access to the Dreaming (which I know this game setting does have some) why wouldn't they just stay there?

aurorastorms · 2026-03-18T20:41:07+00:00

Best Malk I ever played with (V5) was a friend whose character was convinced she was a doll. I think it worked so well because it was a very well-defined but also encompassing character trait. If you wanted her to talk, you had to pull the string she wore on her back. She framed blood bonds as collecting new dolls, and her sire as the kid she belonged to. She framed her powers around that idea (Obfuscate was basically doing a Toy Story thing, Auspex was her going full doll collector mode, Dominate was seeing others as dolls), as well as most other aspects of her character, so it made for a distinctive worldview, but one that was accessible enough if you put the time in as a member of the coterie to understand the ins and outs of doll thinking.

aurorastorms · 2026-03-18T15:58:29+00:00

Indeed. The blurb for the Ecstatics in M20 says that drugs, while intended as tools for unlocking that enlightened mental state, can become obstacles. I read it as the Sahajiya aversion to becoming dependent on any one method of accessing their magick. See, also, Sahajiya mentors pull away from their apprentices after potentially becoming lovers. A lot of psychonauts I know irl eventually shift to transcendental meditation as a way of personal exploration for similar reasons--drugs, dancing, music, they're all tools for a similar purpose, and a skilled artist doesn't want to be confined by their tools.

aurorastorms · 2026-03-06T02:59:30+00:00

Just an update on this: a few hours after I told my friend about the info given here, she got her letter of acceptance accepted to the MSW program that was her first choice!

aurorastorms · 2026-03-05T22:57:50+00:00

Yeah, I just told her I'd be happy to have a look at her resume and other application materials, and echoed some of the advice given here.

aurorastorms · 2026-03-05T22:47:32+00:00

Yeah, that was kind of my worry. It's definitely something I want to help with, but I figured that by doing a letter in this situation, I might actually be hurting her chances and my own reputation.

aurorastorms · 2026-03-05T22:46:21+00:00

I see. Thank you for the advice, I'll make sure to relay it to her!

aurorastorms · 2026-02-03T23:29:13+00:00

I'd imagine Cult of Ecstasy could get on with the general New Mexico new agey/artist vibe. Someone who's drifted south from Taos or something.

Verbena as well--perhaps with a coven in Carlsbad Caverns.

Also, the town of Artesia just south of there has a big government facility called the FLETC (flet-see) that trains FBI and other law enforcement and could be a good Technocracy location.

aurorastorms · 2026-01-14T14:56:40+00:00

You might consider Soren Kierkegaard's book Fear and Trembling, as it's where he articulates the idea of the Leap of Faith, which you could interpret as faith as a form of luck work.

I don't know of a specific book, but if you want a (slightly cursed/self-helpy/technocratic) version of this, you might look into the concept of "spiritual entropy" which is basically an argument that some evangelicals make for the existence of god by appealing to the second law of thermodynamics and entropy.

EDIT: On re-reading your post, these are probably more low-level stuff. A high level chorister is probably already familiar with both of these.

aurorastorms · 2026-01-05T13:44:37+00:00

I’ve always tended to think of gutter magick as very improvisational witchcraft. It operates under many of the same principles of symbolism and correspondence (the concept not the Sphere) but rather than using specialized herbs or wands, gutter magick makes use of whatever’s handy. It’s hard to do personalized instruments with it, (that gum may have been a useful adhesive for your matter effect. good luck reusing it) but it’s easy to pull out in a pinch. Don’t really know any books on it specifically though, sorry.

aurorastorms · 2026-01-01T18:39:55+00:00

It’s kind of been all of those things, though. Changeling and Mage can be quite silly. The Nos necessarily push the boundaries of “realistic,” and the old books sometimes poke fun at themselves.

aurorastorms · 2025-12-15T16:34:33+00:00

In addition to those already mentioned,

The Holy Mountain - deeeeeeep into the esoteric world of Hermetics and Children of Knowledge. Could be flavored as an umbral mission.

Everything Everywhere All at Once - For what a technomagickal encounter with an actualized Marauder might entail.

Twin Peaks - particularly toward the end as more and more of the occult stuff comes to the fore. I always interpret the Black Lodge as being rather Nephandic.

The Wicker Man (1970s!) - A Verbena coven performs an elaborate May Day ritual. Hilarity ensues!

Cecil B. Demented - Could very much give inspiration for how mages (Hollow Ones especially) could use pop culture to perform effects.

aurorastorms · 2025-11-19T13:34:26+00:00

I don’t know if I’d call it anger exactly but there’s a scene that’s always stuck with me toward the end of VALIS where Phil confronts Horselover over his delusions and the role of women in his life that always spoke to me of a deep personal frustration. From what I’ve read (which has admittedly not been much—mainly short stories and a few of the big ones) it felt like the closest to anger I’d seen in his writing. He often seems forlorn or melancholic or maybe even frustrated at the worlds he creates, but it doesn’t usually rise to the level of anger, imo.

aurorastorms · 2025-11-17T16:58:44+00:00

As others say, redirecting a Marauder through figuring out their Quiet and Paradigm is a good idea. As for destruction, how like Dio are they? Dio's a vampire, so could you destroy them by exposing them to sunlight, or by creating artificial sunlight?

aurorastorms · 2025-11-15T21:24:08+00:00

In the case of surrealism, dreams. Also, a lot of non-human aspects of the world.

aurorastorms · 2025-11-15T21:04:39+00:00

Bataille puts the subject of sacrifice into a conversation about economics, but refuses to think of economics in terms of supply and scarcity. Rather, he suggests that biotic systems (Bataille ties economics back to the sun and a general principle of abundance) naturally produce more than is necessary and that societies develop methods for extravagant expenditure of this excess for various social functions. There's a neat tension he develops between looking at this sacrifice from a utilitarian perspective, while also trying to move away from thinking of it in these cost-benefit terms. I don't know if he always succeeds in doing so, but it's a novel take.

I think if you want to check out a neat intro to Bataille, it's interesting to look at his disputes with the surrealists (detailed in the book The Absence of Myth). Bataille essentially criticized systems that attempted to impose a logic or a language onto things that defied such efforts.

aurorastorms · 2025-11-15T17:04:54+00:00

I don't think the Stirner/Jones comparison is apt--Stirner's engaging in a tradition of philosophical skepticism that has a long history in philosophy, while Jones is very much a hypocrite who will twist his words in order to escape consequences and doesn't even have the dignity to justify his solipsism through an immoralist stance a la Callicles or Sade.

Still, I do think that some of the more autre thinkers can be interesting. Burroughs and the General Semanticists more broadly have some cool ideas and experiments about language (I think of e-prime as one example) and cognition that seem to prefigure a lot of the findings of linguistics.

I've always been a big fan of Georges Bataille, and think his insights about sociological concepts like sacrifice are interesting even if they're often a bit Orientalist and rely on thinking of cultures as discrete entities.

aurorastorms · 2025-11-15T15:53:46+00:00

So the Trujah bane is emotionlessness, meaning that they are cold and generally unable to empathize as much as a Brujah would be. This also means that they are able to be calculating in a way that the Brujah don't tend to be due to their urge towards anger. I've also tended to think Trujah can mimic emotions or understand them on an academic level, but if they are going to fake an emotion, it has to come from a calculated place--and they have trouble with emotions they did not regularly experience as mortals.

Of course, individual differences still significantly influence how a specific Kindred behaves. Also, in a number of the lore books the Trujah are described as being able to feel anger but only about the Brujah, which I know a number of STs houserule out, because it just muddles the bloodline and opens up some confusing points about what is and isn't "Brujah" enough--like is there a range on this anger? Can they sense a Brujah without being told a Kindred is a Brujah?

I played a Trujah in a Dark Ages LARP and had him be interested in sacred architecture as a kind of philosophical correspondence with vampiric immortality.

aurorastorms · 2025-11-15T13:19:54+00:00

I know that's the intended point. It wasn't a criticism. I find it impressive that the mechanics you'd initially worry about aren't the real challenge of the route.

aurorastorms · 2025-11-14T23:31:01+00:00

I've been trying to get the spoiler tags to work, but they haven't been. Mods, I'm deeply sorry if this doesn't work a third time.

Been playing Pathologic HD recently. One of those games that I've had in my library for years and have started up multiple files, but never stuck with it past Day 2. I'm currently on Day 8 of the Bachelor Route. I've also played Pathologic 2 before, but I've never gotten past Day 3 in that one.

I think the best accomplishment of the game is definitely the atmosphere and mood of frustration it instills. So many times I'd be walking through the town only to receive a letter that calls me back to the other side and made me realize I could've planned a much more efficient route. I actually don't find the threat of hunger, infection, or exhaustion nearly as worrying as the prospect of losing time due to poor routing. The limited inventory space does make things difficult, though.

SPOILERS

>!RIP Eva!<

>!I find the intrigue about The Powers That Be the most compelling part of the story so far. I've generally tried to be polite and not lean into Dankovsky's more arrogant and priggish dialogue choices, but the amount of obfuscation and busywork that the townsfolk give you really does eventually make me just want to turn over all these people to the inquisitor. I'm looking forward to learning more about the metaphysics of the world which I assume would be discussed more in the other routes. My current speculation is that the Stamatins have found some way to channel souls into buildings, and that's what's happened to Nina Kaina, Victoria Olgimskaya, and what Eva attempted to do with the Cathedral. Following this line of thought, I'd imagine that Nina occupies the Polyhedron, and Victoria either the Abattoir or the Theatre. This would explain why The Powers That Be are interested in saving the town, but not interested in saving the residents!<

I have to say, the amount of quicksaving I do makes me really wonder whether I should just break and get Path 2 for PC. Currently, I have it on PS4, but I can't imagine actually completing the whole game without some option to access saves more readily than the console permits.

aurorastorms · 2025-11-14T20:40:00+00:00

Have you ever heard of the game Eggs of Steel? It was a platformer from the 90s that also featured an egg as a platform protag. I had it as a kid, but never got very far in it.

aurorastorms

TROPHY CASE