Threshold of Gloaming

Shy and sharing whatever I feel like. Non-binary. Pronouns: Unsure, call me whatever maybe it will help me figure things out.

[uncertainchiroptera]

I think one of my favourite things about Marble Hornets is that none of the characters really do anything to deserve what happens to them. All of their misdeeds occur well after they come under the influence of the Operator. Their lives just get utterly destroyed seemingly at random by this alien force of nature. It really is a perfectly tragic cosmic horror story.

[girlvasectomy]

if i was alex kralie in s2, i would have gone postal much sooner because he was literally stalked by the operator, hoodie, masky and jay (and by extension, the youtube audience) like i feel really bad for the guy

[sockpupfinn]

when yo fandoms dont overlap so you gotta start getting delusional abt it

[lookslikevespa]

Making a new friend.

[goldensunset]

ah shoot stop stop you gotta rewind the song i forgot to imagine the animatic to the good part!

[whatamidoinghere56]

Demon: The Descent's exploration of Clarke's Third Law in regards to the God Machine and its angels is really fascinating to me.

Some context. Demon: The Descent is the ninth gameline in Chronicles of Darkness (formerly the New World of Darkness), and it focuses on playing as fallen angels known as the Unchained. Unlike with most angels vs demons stories (and most stories in CoD), DTD uses more science-fiction tropes than fantasy.

The God-Machine is a giant machine that is so advanced that it can leverage all of the natural and occult laws of CoD to perform miracles on par with genuine magic. Angels, including the Unchained, are biomechanical monstrosities designed to do exactly that.

And the story runs with this with all of the Unchained's abilities. Their basic powers, Embeds and Exploits, aren't spells so much as they are tricks of occult physics programmed into them. Warping probability, silencing opponents, pulling random objects out of their pockets; all of that is explained as being some scientific or occult corner case that the God-Machine discovered and built Infrastructure around to take advantage of them. The core rulebook compares it to a child finding a loose board in a fence and using it for a shortcut. Even the more blatant Exploits (which include things like guns that shoot hellfire and turning animals into smaller biomechanical monstrosities) are explained as the demon brute-forcing an Embed to do what they want. Even with the most blatantly unnatural powers, there's an explanation that fits into the God-Machine's techno-mystical paradigm.

The other aspects of demonic powers are also explained in technobabble form. Why can demons disguise as humans? They have a Cover stitched together from their old job as an angel and bits of human lives they've bargained for. Why are they such good liars? They have perfect control of their unconscious reactions, and all their statements exist in a Schrödinger's cat state where they decide if it reads as true or false. Why do they bargain for souls? The Pact gives them a claim on the person's life that lets them hollow out the contractor and steal their entire existence as a new Cover. The supernatural becomes mechanical.

I wish more stories took this route of genre-bending. It's really fun.

[marblehornetsupdates]

happy birthday to our beloved film student alex kralie!

[lavandinosaure]

A Prehistoric Park tribute 🦕

[the-smiling-grinner]

"My fandom is so small we could fit on-" SHUT UP. PLS SHUT THE FUCK UP.

[whatamidoinghere56]

Random bits of Chronicles of Darkness lore because too few people are talking about how wild this setting is:

There are shadow owls that possess corpses. Vampires count as corpses. It is entirely possible that a vampire could go to sleep and wake up with an owl in their brain. This is not a good thing

God is Skynet meets Yog-Sothoth. If you look at it too long, it gives you robot cancer and psychic powers.

If you kill enough people, there's a chance you'll get superpowers.

There's an entire category of supernatural people whose only power is being lucky. This somehow lets them "oopsie" their way out of death.

Werewolves are border patrol for the spirit world. Well, 1/3 of them are. The other 2/3 are either spirit cultists, social Darwinists, or straight-up Nazis.

Almost every human on Earth has a portal to anti-reality lodged in their brain that throws tantrums when it sees magic. These tantrums sometimes involve vomiting Lovecraftian nightmares.

Mad science is the result of people who are so batshit insane that they can bend reality through sheer force of crazy. Also, normal people touching mad science causes it to explode.

The reason why #6 happened is because a bunch of Atlantean wizard-gods got pissy and tore reality in half.

There's, like, four different kinds of demon and none of them are related at all. Probably?

Roman Catholic vampire blood wizards. That is all.

[sistersorrow]

Chronicles of Darkness is rightfully adverse to the possibility of placing certain gamelines "above" others in terms of how true their statements about the fundamental nature of the universe are, so they intentionally leave a lot of wiggle room, but this also ends up introducing a bunch of concerning implications

For example, in Mage: The Awakening, mages are stated to be partially linked to the Supernal Realms, a higher realm of existence filled with Platonic symbols that material reality is simply a pale reflection of, and the Imperial Mysteries sourcebook added rules outlining playing as Archmasters, mages which have strengthened their bond with the Supernal Realms to such a degree that they can physically enter it for a time and perform powerful spells that rewrite reality and even the simple act of becoming an Archmage rewrites history to a degree

This and other details like the lore of the Exarchs and other mages who had ascended to live permanently in the Supernal as transcendant wizard gods could've easily made it so WoD is basically a mage's world and all the other game lines were just living in it, so they threw in some lines mentioning that other categories of supernatural creatures (eg. vampires, werewolves, changelings, etc) have "sponsors" that archmages really don't want to risk pissing off because they are at or above their level

So could an archmaster cure someone's vampirism? Canonically, yes, but they won't because there's SOMETHING or mor likely MULTIPLE SOMETHINGS out there that, for unknown reasons, want to ensure that vampires and other supernatural nasties exist in any conceivable timeline and even the Exarchs, beings who got their current authority by KILLlNG GODS are hesitant to get on their bad side

A very reassuring thought

[uncertainchiroptera]

Fun Chapter today! Spent half of it preparing to go to the library and the other half being chased through an underground tunnel by a monster xD So, to chase down further leads in regards to pretty much all her current investigations, Brooke decided to go to the big public library in hopes of being able to find something there. However, going out into the wider world required some degree of preparation to attract as little attention as possible, so a fair bit of time was spent assembling a disguise, deciding what and whatnot to bring, and casting some Veiling magic! I'm using a somewhat improvised version of the Deviant Surveillance Conspiracy Action combined with the Surveilled and Hunted Conditions from Hurt Locker to represent not a specific entity or group honing in on her, but just the threat of attracting something's attention in general. While nobody specifically has it out for her at the moment, Brooke's a very small fish in a very big pond and adding mechanical incentive to keeping a low profile has been quite fun! However, as soon as she exited into the tunnels, she was sidetracked by a voice of someone calling for help. With the help of a flashlight which she managed to luckily find, she tracked them down thinking it was some poor lost maintenance worker or something. Instead she found a monstrous spider/scorpion hybrid with six wings who's buzzing could somehow imitate a human voice! She did try communicating with it initially, but when it promptly tried to skewer her with its stinger she turned tail resulting in a rather tense chase through the tunnels till she managed to lose it. Library next time then! Assuming Brooke's recovered from the shock by then. And that nothing else happens to sidetrack things once more xD

[ecto-hazard]

love when stories inflict unspeakable horrors onto a person for no real reason. its not karma. its not payback. its not a lesson. its not your fault. no ones even out to get you in particular. youre not the chosen one or special or anything. it just sorta happened and you were there. sorry man

[uncertainchiroptera]

Almost forgot to do the regularly-scheduled Mage posting today! It was an almost entirely research-focused Chapter, as Brooke decided to poke around the Chambers small archive/study to see if the previous occupants left anything behind regarding who they might have been. She found some answers in a rather strange place. A set of five ceremonial knives each with a uniquely-shaped blade, inscribed into the metal was an explication of the cosmological perspective of the group who once inhabited this place. To put it rather simply, the group believes(ed?) that the soul of reality can be viewed through five aspects or 'lenses'. Five filters through which the fundament of existence might be known (hello Mummy). Each of the knives represents/symbolizes one aspect and has a short description of said aspect inscribed into its blade. While it didn't teach her an immense amount about them, it did give her a couple of leads to pursue further. Also Brooke's rather curious about the cosmological theory itself, as she's currently identifying the five aspects with the five Paths and wondering if there might be some kind of overlap. Where the previous inhabitants mages? Furthermore she spent some time looking into Soul Stones. Brooke's well-aware of her (lack of) magical capabilities and the fact that she is entirely without a support structure. Meaning that if she runs into trouble it could well be the end of her. To that end, she's been looking into other ways to boost or augment her capabilities, and creating a Soul Stone to use as a magical tool is part of that. (For myself, I've been eyeing some of the Merits in Signs of Sorcery, such as Profligate Dedication, it seems like a fun process to spend time investigating).

[uncertainchiroptera]

So I finally started my new Mage game today. It went well, really well actually, I think I missed writing this way! Nothing much happened, mainly just getting a feel my character and for playing again. And when I say nothing happened I mean I wrote almost three thousand words of just wandering around while being introspectively angsty xD I did fail at casting a ritual spell though, which left both me and my character feeling rather discouraged. My character spent six hours on said ritual and as for me I put a lot of effort into writing the ritual + weird Supernal Imago construction that was going on only to roll the dice at the end and get zero successes! In general I've been trying to write this a lot more 'immersively'. Really getting into the details of what's occurring rather than giving more bird-eye overview (e.g. 'She wrapped the Mists tight around her Pattern in her mind's eye, dampening the connections that bound her into Fate's Weave' instead of 'she cast the spell'). I've also worked to add some more mystery and threads to pull into my characters 'starting situation'. She lives in a chamber/pocket dimension connected to an abandoned stretch of subway maintenance tunnels. The chambers were clearly made by somebody and intended to be occupied by a small group of people, with a bunkroom, kitchen and bathroom as well as a central ritual chamber, a study filled with bookshelves and a small meditation chamber. And yet, it was completely abandoned when she found it, having been seemingly cleared out almost entirely with only a handful of books on the occult and a strange Wheel of Fortune tarot card left behind. Who the previous occupants were and why they left is a bit of a mystery, especially as the chamber contains no obvious threats or dangers. There's also the question of what the deal is with the five-spoked wheel that is the ritual altar and why it reflects the five-spoked Wheel of Fortune on the tarot card (the number five is going to be a bit of reoccurring symbolism). The stretch of maintenance tunnels is also a bit of a mystery as its off the beaten path, with one end leading back towards 'civilization' while the other tilts subtly downwards into the depths, stretching on further than my character has dared explore so far. Further than such a tunnel should be able to. I've added the character sheet of my character here as well for posterity's sake. I'm curious to see how things are going to change for her in the future!

[moth-belly]

[uncertainchiroptera]

So having been spending time on my new solorpg game, I've decided that I'm almost certainly going to be playing Mage. The potential for existential horror and isolated vibe is something I really want to lean in to. Plus the versatility and insight of Awakened characters works quite well in a solo game imo. Biggest stepping stone at this point is deciding where exactly I want to set my story. Up till now I've been playing in a fictional city of my own design, which is cool but I feel like one of the fun things in CofD is that you can set a game in your literal backyard. So I kind of want to set it in a real place that I'm familiar with. What's holding me back is that the city (and country) I live is not English-speaking, and yet I do most of my writing and thinking in English. Which makes it feel kind of weird to me, but perhaps that's just a feeling I need to get over. My character is going to be... my same one oc I always play as xD reinterpreted to be one of the Awakened. Why fix what's broken after all, and I'm quite attached to my little brain blorbo at this point. I've already been writing a compilation of in-character notes, spells and insights to immerse myself which has been pretty cool! As for her mage 'stats', here's what I got so far: Shadow Name: Dolorifuge Path: Acanthus Order: Nameless Arcana: Fate 2, Time 1, Prime 1, Space 1 and Spirit 1 As I already mentioned I want to lean into a general feeling of isolation so no major Order presence or Awakened society. She did have a Pentacle-aligned mentor at one point (mainly to justify having Rotes and the High Speech Merit) but they essentially just gave a crash course on being a mage and didn't stick around, having no interest in taking on a pupil at the time. I want her magical style to feel rather cobbled-together, she leans heavily on Fate to get what she needs to survive and do her stuff and generally sticks to the outskirts of urban society. So a lot of her magical workings are going to be done with scavenged urban detritus and the like, her main Yantra's will be a pocket knife (cause doubling up on self-defense and magical ability just seems smart) and a weird wizard staff of some description.