#the problem of athiest vampires

[princess-of-the-corner]

SomeBird Theorizing About Ghosts and Magic in the Crossover (ft. some D&D logic) (In a submission instead of an ask because character limit): So, ghosts can’t really be hurt by conventional means, so some people, like the Fentons, have to use whatever kind of paratech to get rid of them. The resident magic users have only a slightly easier time. Ghosts, like most undead, are probably vulnerable to holy magic, if that exists. But being usually incorporeal, they are difficult to target with anything other than the equivalent of force damage, aka pure magical energy. So magic users have to resort to brute force overpowering ghosts. Which is very difficult, not to mention impractical, because it is one for one, and ghosts are usually very powerful. Haven’t watched DP, so I am not really sure how accurate this is, but I like speculating.

-

I mean yeah basically!

So like. Sure you can hit a Ghost with any old object. But the problem comes from 1.) General durability and 2.) They can go intangible and dodge your attack. Magic has an easier time, but not the best.

So it kinda works on Pokemon Rules. Ghost is effective against Ghost. The Fentons use Ectoplasm and Ecto-Energy to make their tech, putting them back on equal ground with the Ghosts.

Holy Stuff is..... Complicated.

Holy Items/Magic are only as effective as both parties believe they are.

So an Athiest can't pull out a crucifix and have any effect on the Ghost unless the Ghost is a devout Christian. Same with the reverse of a Christian using the Crucifix and the Ghost/Vampire/whatever going "ha bitch I'm Jewish!".

[onethrills]

hey all, i have a full bio written for him here, but i’m going to just post the tl;dr beneath the cut. from there, if anyone feels like plotting with my problem child, let me know either with a like or by hitting me up on discord! btw i’m hazel (they/them), 25, est. 

Trigger Warnings: Mental illness/Ableism, only mentioned. Drugs. Violence.

Kangdae grew up in a small, two-bedroom house in a rather down-trodden neighborhood of Las Vegas, Nevada. His mother immigrated from South Korea several years prior, and his father was a Las Vegas native born and raised. He was given the nickname “Dane” by his father, before he abandoned him and his mother at the age of five. It stuck.

Korean was the only language spoken in his home after his father left. He was quick to absorb it, and he communicated smoothly both with his mother and with his English-speaking peers around his neighborhood and in his school.

It became apparent that his mother’s mental health was beginning to deteriorate by the age of seven, for Dane. By the age of ten he realized he couldn’t fix it. She suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, and though there were times when she was taking the medicine she was prescribed for it, she more often did not. She began disappearing, a strange behavior considering the way she acted when she was home, as if going out into the world would be the end of everyone. She often kept Dane home with her during such episodes.

It wasn’t until he turned twelve that he realized the real reason his mother had been disappearing was to self-medicate with drugs off the street. She did this during her more lucid times, and because of it, she did not come back when she should have. Eventually, she didn’t come back at all.

From age sixteen, Dane was essentially taking care of himself, if not years before that. This was a turning point for him, though. He was often belligerent and guarded when he was at school, a result of his classmates not being particularly fond of his off-putting demeanor and tendency to prefer being alone as opposed to being around them. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be social, it was just that he didn’t want to be social with them. They didn’t take it well when he explained that.

Fights were commonplace for him. They hurt him academically as well as physically, but he never seemed to care. All he cared about was getting the last word, and with a calculating mind and a penchant for going for the throat, both figuratively and literally, that’s exactly what he did.

Despite this, he managed to graduate on time, and then following that, he did what he’d always planned to: found a way to get out of that place.

Scamming older men in bars out of their money was easy enough, but the aftermath? Well, not so much. Dane earned himself quite a few bumps and bruises and even a broken bone or two during his months doing that, and he slept in cheap motels, or in other peoples’ beds. It was fun, for a time. Exciting, even. Eventually, though, even his migration to Reno seemed to get old, and he decided it was time to leave.

Ending up in Boulder was entirely by accident. So was falling in love with somebody there. He stayed longer than he wanted to, far longer, and he got in way deeper than he expected. He took college courses in computer science and coding, excelling without the violence and chaos of what he’d dealt with in high school, and he loved. He was in love with love.

Unfortunately, his restless nature and tendency to get into trouble eventually won out. He dug too deep, learned too much, and did too much. Discovering the ins and outs of what it takes to crack into anything he wanted to took some time, of course, but he managed it — he also managed to get himself kicked out onto his ass after he hacked into the personal files of his lover, invasive in a sudden bout of jealousy brought on by seeing them in a seemingly intimate position with somebody else.

From there, he once again did what he did best: he moved on. He didn’t exactly intend for his final destination to be New York, but as it turns out, that’s just how it was. He spent his time in the city wisely, doing freelance work coding websites and other such things, and underneath the facade doing things perhaps a bit more… morally ambiguous than he strictly should have been.

Being turned was a traumatic experience for him. He often recalls it in nightmares that he can’t quite shake, though it’s been years since then. His adjustment to becoming a vampire was a rough one. There was nobody there to teach him for a long time, until finally someone tracked him down due to his feeding habits and helped him understand the rules, the way things worked (WANTED CONNECTION!!!)

Dane sort of stands on neutral ground when it comes to the tensions with the lycans. He’ll sell his exceptional abilities to the highest bidder, and that’s how it’s always been — how it always will be.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: kangdae won. NICKNAME: dane. AGE: twenty-six years old. DOB: january fifteenth, 1993. SUN SIGN: capricorn. SPOKEN LANGUAGES: english, korean, spanish, japanese, some mandarin. RELIGION: athiest; borderline nihilist, being honest, though he does not follow these views strictly. GENDER: cis male. PRONOUNS: he/him/his. ORIENTATION: bisexual. SPECIES: non-pureborn vampire. FROM: las vegas, nevada. CURRENTLY: new york city, new york. EDUCATION: completed high school; some university. PERSONALITY TYPE: INTP (The Logician) ALIGNMENT: chaotic neutral.

— he has a playlist, if anybody is interested.

[overfedvenison]

Right...

So I went off to the Plane of Shadow to do a few deeds, investigate a few leads... And find a certain Celestial I was asked to investigate

I first asked at the church, a charnel house dedicated to the current God of Death. Then I investigated on the Shadow Plane, fighting my way through some monsters. Around this time my lack of a decent weapon is really shining through... My battles are wars of attrition. Wizard squishiness also means that my wizard is dying a lot due to bad AI... I'm really appreciating my Fighter, I've gone from a very weak and unoptimized character to someone able to take on armies and fight long after the wizard is out of decent spells. Sometimes I have to out-think enemies - A group of Mummy Priests were slow, but would chain-Knockdown me, so I had to use Dash and Mobility to outrun them while attacking with arrows (Their spells were no problem... They mostly did mind-effects, which I am immune to)

I encountered the Celestial, and was surprised when the area was actually very plot-important. There is a mural of a warrior leading an army and using the Sword of Gith, and I suspect prophecy or time travel is involved. I also found a group of Shadow Priests speaking of Akachi's Betrayer's Crusade against the city of judgement... I previously heard of this from the priest in the church to the god of the dead, who also told me of the Wall of the Faithless.

...

To summerize... When you die, you go to the City of Judgement to await your place in the afterlife. Those that have served a God well in life get to go, those who have served poorly get to work off their debt, and those that have refused to worship a God... Get mortared and bricked into a screaming wall for all eternity.

The Wall is a big deal, because Gods need worship to exist. If they aren't properly prayed to and worshipped, they'll lose power and... I suppose die? Which wreaks havoc on the cosmic scale since they can be in charge of some important things

Akachi led a "Betrayer's Crusade" against the City of Judgement, to tear down the wall. My character is involved in this, somehow, and must return when I learn of my "deception." This is also somewhat interesting as I made my character a devout athiest. As in, I have no God and the Devout background... I'm Neutral, remember.

The scribes of this area live on as ghosts, still loyal to Akachi.

It's all... Very interesting, and feels like it's building up to something. ...

I'd like to talk about how much I love the atmosphere, as well. I said before that it immediately had a great feel, and once you get to Mulsantir that's definitely fulfilled on. It's set in Rasheman, an area full of hags and witches where people live in thatched longhouses ... It's a very 'Dark Fantasy' setting which I'm a huge sucker for. Add to that an emphasis on lore aspects such as Red Wizards (Sort of a Sith-like organization of very powerful wizards only concerned with gaining power,) the Plane of Shadows (A dead plane of gray colours that shadows the prime material plane,) and undead/demons... Yeah, this game is really engrossing.

...

- So you get a quest to learn more of the Betrayer's Crusade from a book you find on a corpse in Okko's warren. You get a quest advancement on it here in the church and fill in the backstory... I wonder if it's just possible to miss that quest entirely?

- Also! There's a dialogue option to just murder Kaelyn the Dove! For basically no reason when you were asked to find her! That's amazing! I won't do that, but I'm curious and impressed that you can just... Murder a potential party member.

- I had to fight some Death Knights to get a key, who attack me for interrupting their ritual. Death Knights are overwhelmingly powerful, even with my now-390 HP, so I had to get clever... I ran away down a path, while Safiya cast Extended Incendiary Cloud. Then I used Ethereal Jaunt using my Telthor Leg Bone (An excellent item I found early in) to disappear while the three Death Knights killed my wizard. I ran off and waited until the spell wore off, at which point two death knights were dead and one had about 1 HP left. I got a good ring afterward that gives me Slashing and Piercing resistance.

- The spirit energy system is a little wierd. Basically the concept is that you have a terrible curse placed upon you where you have to eat spirits to stay alive. As such you have a spirit meter that ticks down... As a Fighter, I'm lucky in that I can stay fighting for days to ignore this for as long as possible. But I imagine a wizard would be pretty boned by this. I got an encounter with like, 20 spirits, around a furnace. I milked something like 15 Spirit Energy off of this with a Suppress...

- The same furnace has hundreds of spirits bound to it, those of criminals and those that would end up in the Wall of the Faithless. This is... Such a cool concept. There are a few ways through, and I ended up unlocking an "Exorcize" ability to siphon spirit energy from hostile undead... I got a lot of Good karma for that, but I'm still a bit lower than at the end of Core Campaign so that's fine

- Using my new Exorcize ability will rapidly increase my Good karma and is a good attack to use on undead enemies... Alas, that means I have to avoid it >:

- The downstairs area is full of ridiculously strong enemies... I can take out the Mummy Priests no problem, and Death Knights with difficulty, but the Ancient Vampires are impossible for me to defeat even one at a time and they come in swarms. ...I used Etheralness and Greater Invisibility to sneak through this area, and used my ranks in Open Lock to get a +8 Sickle and +7 Shortsword with other special abilities, hyeh hyeh hyeh.

Mmm, I may have stumbled in to an important area... I can see door that may lead me to the City of Judgement? But it's surrounded by incredibly powerful enemies. I may have to leave and return later...