JonAbyssals
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Initial text is from an RPG.net thread and some discussion on IRC. More exposition as time permits.
So the Abyssals as their current mythos exists does not do anything positive for me. So I am thinking of alternates to how they exist.
First: You can only Exalt once.
Second: Bleach has great dead guy ideas, specifically the Shinigami, Vizards and Arrancar.
Three: The Deathlords are dead, it is lame for them to have living pawns.
So the idea thusly is, steal from another mythos and make Abyssals actually ghosts, who have received supernatural power boosting them from extra status to something that would affect the game. Specifcally the Deathlords have learned how to Exalt ghosts who have not been exalted in their life previous. The exaltation lets them form physical bodies and interact with the Creation normally when they are there, and gives these guys a reason to be creepy goth people.
Also these ghosts could be artificial creations that the Deathlords have made by joining random Huns and Pos with Abyssal shards to create the Abyssal they really want. They can't re-exalt themselves, but they can make their pawns very pliable or very rebellious depending on what the story requires of said Abyssals.
Ideas that come in regards with the Abyssals:
1) They are dead, or at least mostly dead. White wolf deals amusingly with dead people, lets tie that in.
2) They are tormented, but this is ok somehow, because like anime characters the torment gives them awesome powers.
3) It strikes me that they are more awesome if used like a vampire or some other irritating unkillable villain, who under certain circumstances is very killable. Also if they were like Bleach creatures they would be good.
So here are some thoughts on those thoughts:
1) Easily solved. Instead of being alive, they are essentially Frankenstein creatures with created bodies, created souls all jammed together by a shard of corrupted divinity. So one Abyssal could say have the equivalent lower soul of Lancelot, the higher soul of Winston Churchill and someone else. This creates torment, which is good.
2) Torment is a key point of being undead and gothy and a villain. Whining, crying and losing to the PCs gains them limit and for them limit is kinda good. Say that these guys can spend limit points to add their Essence to a die roll. If they ever hit full limit something super awesome happens, dunno what.
3) Abyssals don't die when they're killed normally in the Underworld or at night in Creation/Shadowland. Also you can use spirit killing charms on them to blast them out of existence proper. This should provide some good return of Abyssals until someone figures out how to totally kill them so there will be some retread value to start.
Also Bleach character type wise. The reason why I brought that up is cause there seem to be several items that act like Fetters to them, ie the Shinigami sword and the Hollow mask. I would assume it would be neat to have the Abyssal tied to stuff, such as the bunch of artifacts they will tend to accrue. Also it would be amusing though I am not sure how thematically it would work if Abyssals have to CARE more about things as they go up in circles of Necromancy.
Also the Vizards pose an amusing thing with their hollow mask unleashing their full abilities whatever they be. This would provide some alternate combat form something like Deadly Beastman Transformation, which again seems kinda nice for the scare factor.
The horribleness of Abyssals is something that is good but something I don't think is exactly necessary. I mean the souls that they could be building these Abyssals out of could be serial killers, rapists and horrifying other non-human monsters, but that they are horrible doesn't add anything particularly interesting I don't think, it makes them kinda Snidely Whiplash-like which while useful is somewhat one dimensional.
Of course the players won't see the whole thing right away, except for the chappie who's reading this :P but I think the tragedy is much more worth playing out than the horribleness. Instead of having them as a Cthonic super evil force have them sort of as a tragic but monstrous force.
Well since these guys are vaguely vampiric, the vampire mythos is a good one to exploit. You have creatures that are unnatural, and have to feed on people to continue to exist. You can have tragedy out of this, or monstrocity depending on what angle you want to play up. And they're ghostly and what is more tragic and messed up than a vampire-ghost-frankenstein creature.
One of the things I dislike about Abyssals is that they are a bit too low in their command hierarchy. The Neverborn control or can control quite tightly the Deathlords (look at the backgrounds of the First-and-Forsaken-Lion and of Princess-Magnificent-etc.). And the Deathlords control or can control quite tightly the Abyssals, having literally a "death switch" on them. In summary, Abyssals are pawns of pawns - that's not very cool!
In contrast, Solars, Lunars, Sidereals and Terrestrials, once Exalted, are pretty much free to do as they please: the Incarna are disinterested in anything but the Games of Divinity, they have officially given the Exalted mandate to rule Creation, and even if they wanted, they could not do much to reclaim the Essences (or the Primordial War would have ended as soon as it began). While most Sidereals and many Lunars and Terrestrials do have a social infrastructure to which they have to answer, they are at worst "least among peers" in it, rather than subordinates; and even those can always forsake the infrastructure without risking the same kind of retaliation Abyssals face.
An interesting change to the Abyssals would be to simply remove the Deathlords - or rather, identify the Abyssals with the Deathlords - and say that the Abyssals gain power from the Neverborn themselves. A further step would be to say that the Neverborn cannot really say "do this and that" to their servants. They are dead, and they cannot think or plan coherently, being instead driven by a blind, mindless need to "end it all before we rest" - the same drive that makes the Underworld exist. The Abyssals shards are drawn to exceptional people who are dead (or on the cusp of death) but do not want - or simply are not capable - of "letting go", and would rather drag everything with them into oblivion than let something outlive them.
This premise would require reconsidering a few things in the setting, but I think one could get a coherent whole out of it.
For example, where do the Abyssal Shards come from? Perhaps a very, very, very, bitter and vengeful Solar (perhaps one with a ton of limit?) can, upon death, leave behind a shard that is so heavily tainted by the Curse that it refuses to be "wiped clean", at least not before it has "wiped clean" everything it was connected to; very much like the Neverborn cannot really stop existing until Creation does. This might be a simple (and unforeseen) consequence of the Curse, and of the birth of the Underworld and of the-things-that-cannot-rest. The shard turns abyssal, drawing power through the Curse from the Neverborn, and is then attracted to some sufficiently heroic dying/dead mortal with the same needs - bring his world down with him.
This would create an interesting dynamic between the needs of the shard, and the needs of the host. Perhaps the set of things that the host *needs* to see destroyed (from empires to relationships to philosophies) grows to encompass those of the shard (some limit mechanism would work nicely); perhaps the set of what the shard needs to see destroyed also grows with time to encompass all of Creation (after all, after sufficient time even the smallest thing becomes, directly or indirectly tied to everything that exists). What if the mortal host realizes that there is something that he wants to be saved but that is part of what the shard needs destroyed? This could lead to the same kind of dramatic tension that you have with rebel Abyssals. In some sense, it would be a mirror of the tension between the "righteousness" of Solar shard and the occasional pettiness of their hosts (wanting save one person when you have embraced a destiny of world destruction is, in its own way, pettiness). One could play it as the terrible tragedy that it is, with Resonance "punishing" the Abyssal that denies his nature, or perhaps allow something like true love, or true wisdom, to redeem the host *and* the shard.
The "Deathlords" could then be 1500 years old Abyssals exalted by those bitter solar Essences that at the end of the First Age were not brought into the Jade Prison, and managed to hide from the Wyld Hunt in the Underworld (where the Sidereals are blind). They slowly grew in power there until, after seven or eight centuries (with the most powerful of them having reached essence 7 or 8), they felt strong enough to attempt to bring down Creation by unleashing the Contagion. The new generation of Abyssals springing up 5 years ago could be that exalted by those bitter Solar Essences that just escaped from the Jade Prison (yes, a good 40% of the original Solar Essences are sufficiently upset that they want Creation shut down, rather than see it go on as the pale shadow of what it used to be). The Deathlords would then treat them more or less the way Elder Lunars treat newly exalted ones.
[Attributed to babayaga]
Key concepts: Frankenstein, undead, unlame, Fetters keep the Abyssal together + focused on something, "true form" expresses their true horribleness, shown through resonance.
Fetters are both emotional and physical representations of what binds them to reality. Sometimes its an artifact, or a tattoo or a scar or whatever.
The goal is to create an opponent who is:
1) Very narratively inhuman when needed.
2) Has the ability to come back a couple of times for rematches until finally utterly and satisfactorily destroyed.
3) If having to deal with the internal monologues and motivations there has to be large sums of conflict within.
4) Have the anime power of "freak out and kill you when stressed" which ties in with the internal conflict thing earlier.
This being said lets start poking at this mythos.
The Abyssals are the servants of the Deathlords who are further the servants of the Yozi. They are humans who have been coerced by a Deathlord into accepting one of the tainted Abyssal shards and becoming an Exalt in the service of the Deathlord.
This is a neat idea. However it feels somewhat incomplete. Why do I think this?
1) This seems to suggest that only living humans can be Exalted, that's kinda uncool. 2) They are mortal and thusly they can be killed like mortals, ok well like Exalted. This meaning that they can only be killed once. This also means that they are alive. 3) There isn't as much horror as there could be.
Solution: Steal from current mythoi, blend for a couple of thoughts then pour out.
Things that are scary and that follow the themes we want are 1) Vampires 2) Frankenstein 3) Ghosts
So ideally what we want here is an artificial creation, something generated out of the myriad souls that the Deathlords have in their thrall. So these creations will be created souls, jammed into created bodies held together by the Abyssal shard, but only barely. To sustain its existance it will require essence, preferably in the form of living flesh or fear and the creation of a Fetter, something along the ideological lines of "Serve the cause of Oblivion to destroy Creation" So long as the Abyssal wants to exist it will feed on essence and try to follow its fetter to the best of its abilities.
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