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Post by Grigori on May 18, 2015 6:09:23 GMT
Questions relevant to my world/characters can go here.
For reference, the specific version of the World of Darkness that I'm using is a mix of nWoD and oWoD to suit my desired plot needs (specifically, I wanted to include the Technocracy as a Mage faction); the main focus of attention is on the various Inspired organizations, but the other supernatural factions are known to also exist. The basic principle of the WoD is "There's always a bigger fish". Anyone attempting to mess with the world on a large scale tends to run into increasingly absurd levels of opposition, as the major factions all seem to have ancient and powerful reality warpers of various types, and there are even bigger and nastier threats to all of the everything lurking beyond.
Current WoD characters include Grigori and Argus; additional reps from various factions may arise as the plot requires their presence.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 18, 2015 8:05:39 GMT
This is totally off-topic, but do you read Panopticon Quest over on Sufficient Velocity? If you enjoy the WoD I think you'd enjoy it.
Aside from that, ME is most definitely going to poke the WoD at some point with a scry, and the Gauntlet is going to poke back. How... subtle is it? Entelechy magic is very good at dealing with raw power - conceptual invulnerability to mental magic is totally a thing, for example - but turns out, absolute effects aren't very desirable for people who aren't completely and thoroughly paranoid, which means that you almost always have to leave loopholes in your wards. No amount of quint is going to get you through his wards, but an intelligent, malevolent, and reasonably invulnerable force might.
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Post by Grigori on May 18, 2015 9:03:26 GMT
Not familiar with Panopticon Quest; I'll give it a look.
The Gauntlet itself is not terribly subtle. "You fail to see the thing you were trying to see; instead, you go insane and suffer grievous physical damage to your receptive organs" is a typical response to poking it with a scry. That said, it's not a perfect defence, either; being subtle and working small can get through it.
Attacking the Gauntlet unsubtly will trigger alerts, and result in a Response from nasty things. They aren't particularly intelligent (not stupid, per se, just not brilliant), but they're big on powerful, malevolent, and invulnerable.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 18, 2015 10:35:47 GMT
Powerful and malevolent will get them nowhere, they'll be lucky if they even find Entelechy. Honestly it should be impossible to find Entelechy without being somehow told it exists, I'm just not willing to put bounds that hard on superintelligent beings. (Merely near-omnipotent beings, on the other hand, I am much more comfortable with  ). Sherlock or Senex have a much better chance of getting past that first gate, honestly. So it sounds like what happens here is that ME does a rather large unsubtle working, not knowing any better, runs up against a universe-class infoward of a brick wall (and his mental wards get pinged by a big blunt force trauma, but blunt force will not get through). He will then have to go figure out how to get what he wants out of smaller scries. Meanwhile, a bunch of god-y things get annoyed and start combing the multiverse for him, but they're looking in entirely the wrong place to find him. May be relevant if he ever comes to the WoD, though. |
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Post by Grigori on May 18, 2015 21:17:14 GMT
Note that WoD has pretty good information magic, up to and including "reveal absolute truth" effects. They tend to even include helpful explanations, if you're doing it properly.
"Show me the being whose magic just bounced off my wards" is a valid scrying command, and if that one is blocked by some other ward, "Tell me why my spell just failed" should also be valid.
You don't need to be superintelligent if most of the relevant complexity has already been built into your magic system.
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Post by Daniel H on May 18, 2015 21:30:10 GMT
As I understand it, the first spell would fail, and the second would return “No such being exists”.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 18, 2015 23:01:59 GMT
Basically that. The Entelechy is really more of a different way to look at an existing world, one which has its own beings and worlds.
Even if the gods found him, interfacing with the Entelechy is nontrivial. I'd have to know more about what exactly they'd be trying in order to predict the results, though.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 19, 2015 0:32:35 GMT
On a side note - the Entelechy will in general respect Mage-ish rules. In particular, paradox will be a thing if ME tries to do something vulgar, though it will not have the WoD's general ability to decline to be defended against by anything other than Prime; Consensus can affect anything he imports, though he and non-imported workings are still too "weird" for it.
IC, this is because certain pieces of the Entelechy's magic look rather Mage-ish; OOC, this is because Mage: the Ascension was one of the inspirations for the Entelechy.
In general, interactions between the WoD and the Entelechy are the easiest of all the worlds; this does not mean "easy," but it does mean "easier by an order of magnitude." Astronomical, but no longer stellar in scale.
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Post by Meletiti Entelecheiai on May 21, 2015 22:13:01 GMT
So, elaboration on the above - I have decided that Mage magic in particular, and WoD powers on a similar scale, does have the conceptual oomph to contest Entelechy magic. Entelechy magic is going to read as whatever spheres seem appropriate, and is always backed by an amount of Prime-based resistance to countermagic proportional to the amount of mana spent on the casting of the spell. Generally assume that on-the-fly spells can be contested by someone of around Arete 4-5, researched spells the same but requires multiple rolls/a distinct effort, and I-really-want-this-to-stick high-end wards require Arete 7+ or Archspheres.
In particular, Skafoi, Apokalypsi, and Dimensional Science all can find Entelechy, but doing so is a high-difficulty feat and can't be done at all without insight into the nature of Entelechy's Truth. If someone with very high Int or Occult (is Occult a WoD thing or just an Exalted thing, I forget?) reads ME's posts, they probably have enough and can teach it to others; the actual finding requires high dots of Axioms but generally only one dot of DimSci. Spirit will have a very hard time finding Entelechy, but may get away with it if the casting mage has a mathemagic paradigm.
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Post by Grigori on May 21, 2015 23:09:20 GMT
Noted. That's likely to become relevant soon-ish.
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). Sherlock or Senex have a much better chance of getting past that first gate, honestly.