Inspiration in the Dumbest Places

P

Persell

Ten Thousand Club
I get inspiration from the stupidest places.  I really do.


I finally got around to watching the animated TMNT movie, and found it surprisingly good.  I also found myself formulating a plotline for the Solar game I'm running based off the overplot in the movie.  


The basics of the movie: A great warrior finds a portal to another dimension, which happens during sidereal and planetary alignment once every 3000 years.  The energies from the portal's opening grant the warrior immortality, but have the drawback of turning his brotherhood -- four of his closest companions -- to stone.  The portal also releases 13 demons into the world.  In order to break his curse -- cos after 3000 years of immortal life, he's come to believe it to be more curse than blessing -- he has to capture all 13 demons and return them to their native dimension.  Plot twist: the statues of his brotherhood, who he has broken somewhat using some sort of amalgamated magitech, have no wish to be free of their stone prisons, and thus their immortality, and they begin in secret, and before long, openly to work against him.


The basics of the story arc: A great Dragon-Blood centuries ago learned of a secret power he could possess which would aid the Realm in stamping out the Anathema threat once and for all.  He and his Sworn Brotherhood enacted the ritual to grant them this power, but four of the Brotherhood were turned to statues (which cannot be undone with any spell of any level of sorcery).  He was given incredible power that has a serious drawback (haven't decided what yet), and over time came to regard it as more curse than blessing.  The ritual, powered by the alien energies of Malfeas, also released 13 great demon shadows into Creation, all of which must be returned before the ritual can be reversed.  Plot twist: What he doesn't know is that four of the shadows have extended their tendrils into the stone bodies of his closest companions, and when he enables their awakening through forgotten First Age technology, they have a rather large foothold in his camp.


Does anyone have any thoughts to offer me on finer details?
 
1. Replace the, "Cannot be countered by any effect" bit with, "could be countered with Adamant Circle sorcery, but of course this would clearly entail working with the hated Anathema and thus presents our protagonist with moral conflict."


2. Consider how your scenario can accomodate a group of player-characters. Are they the immortal's pawns? If so, how much does he tell them, what does he offer as payment, etc. Or are they his enemies instead - and if so, why?


3. Make the drawback count. Make it change the immortal on a level so fundamental he can barely be recognized as a Dragon-Blooded who follows the Immaculate Order. For example: as long as his sworn brothers remain stone, his Virtues are frozen - nothing can increase or decrease them and he can't channel them for any purpose. That might not be the best way to go about it, but the point is to make it something that gives this immortal character an alien worldview.
 
Rhapsody said:
I get inspiration from the stupidest places.  I really do.
I finally got around to watching the animated TMNT movie, and found it surprisingly good.  I also found myself formulating a plotline for the Solar game I'm running based off the overplot in the movie.  


The basics of the movie: A great warrior finds a portal to another dimension, which happens during sidereal and planetary alignment once every 3000 years.  The energies from the portal's opening grant the warrior immortality, but have the drawback of turning his brotherhood -- four of his closest companions -- to stone.  The portal also releases 13 demons into the world.  In order to break his curse -- cos after 3000 years of immortal life, he's come to believe it to be more curse than blessing -- he has to capture all 13 demons and return them to their native dimension.  Plot twist: the statues of his brotherhood, who he has broken somewhat using some sort of amalgamated magitech, have no wish to be free of their stone prisons, and thus their immortality, and they begin in secret, and before long, openly to work against him.


The basics of the story arc: A great Dragon-Blood centuries ago learned of a secret power he could possess which would aid the Realm in stamping out the Anathema threat once and for all.  He and his Sworn Brotherhood enacted the ritual to grant them this power, but four of the Brotherhood were turned to statues (which cannot be undone with any spell of any level of sorcery).  He was given incredible power that has a serious drawback (haven't decided what yet), and over time came to regard it as more curse than blessing.  The ritual, powered by the alien energies of Malfeas, also released 13 great demon shadows into Creation, all of which must be returned before the ritual can be reversed.  Plot twist: What he doesn't know is that four of the shadows have extended their tendrils into the stone bodies of his closest companions, and when he enables their awakening through forgotten First Age technology, they have a rather large foothold in his camp.


Does anyone have any thoughts to offer me on finer details?
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never saw the movie (the newer one I am guessing), but if you presented that plot to me as one of your players, without seeing the movie, a) I would think it was cool and B) I'd have no frackin idea that it came from TMNT, lol.


Hmm.... for some reason, I starting thinking of "Peleps Deled" while I read this. Go figure. Then I thought of the comic of him and that monk arguing, and the monk giving him props for taking out the bile blackstone (think that was his name) and was thinking, perhaps that was one of the 13 demons. You definitely got something to work with there.


And, on a final note, as long as you get inspired by something somewhere, that leads to an interesting and fun, (badass) game, then I wouldn't think it was stupid. (I guess if you told me it came from TMNT that'd be my response though, so who knows). Ok, enough rambling from me.
 
1. Replace the' date=' "Cannot be countered by any effect" bit with, "could be countered with Adamant Circle sorcery, but of course this would clearly entail working with the hated Anathema and thus presents our protagonist with moral conflict."[/quote']
Given that I have no Adamant Circle sorcerers in the group, that shouldn't be too difficult to tweak. However, I'm leery of making sorcery, even the highest Circle, the be-all end-all, because that sets a precedent I'm not sure I want in the game.


So maybe it can't be countered by sorcery... but lost, powerful artifacts of the First Age on par with the technology and materials the Brotherhood used to enact the ritual in the first place, when Solar brilliance was at its purest and Lunar and Sidereal alike freely contributed to the projects.  

2. Consider how your scenario can accomodate a group of player-characters. Are they the immortal's pawns? If so' date=' how much does he tell them, what does he offer as payment, etc. Or are they his enemies instead - and if so, why?[/quote']
Mostly, they stumble across it in pursuit of another problem that's been cropping up: someone's been disappearing people with a touch of divinity (Exalts and god-bloods alike), and the Twilight in his research turned up the reason why there's a Nexus Civility against opening the Tombs of Nexus.  Almost four hundred years prior to the game setting, someone sacrificed 300 mortal-born God-Touched in a ritual so dark it nearly gave birth to a shadowlands then and there.  What truly scared the Council of Entities wasn't the shadowland so much as the outer defense system of the Tomb of Singing Blades -- the singing, lethal blades that surround the structure -- actually vanished for a brief period of time in response to this thaumaturgy.


I've already decided that one of the demon shadows has taken refuge in the Tomb of Singing Blades.  By investigating the matter, they're going to be drawn into the larger plot.  While this doesn't necessarily make them enemies of the immortal, it doesn't necessarily make them allies either.

3. Make the drawback count. Make it change the immortal on a level so fundamental he can barely be recognized as a Dragon-Blooded who follows the Immaculate Order. For example: as long as his sworn brothers remain stone' date=' his Virtues are frozen - nothing can increase or decrease them and he can't channel them for any purpose. That might not be the best way to go about it, but the point is to make it something that gives this immortal character an alien worldview.[/quote']
I've been considering this most of the day.  I'm thinking about laying some heavy penalties on the immortal Dragon-Blooded for fundamentally screwing with the very nature of Creation.  Things like: not being able to access certain of his Charms, like the Terrestrial or Immaculate Styles; Virtues replaced with a tweaked version of automaton Virtues; he counts as both a creature outside fate and a creature of darkness as he's basically severed his ties in Creation and stained his soul through this and other acts; he would be haunted with a flawed version of the old WoD Medium merit, and thus would never know rest.  Of course, there are benefits.  He cannot die. Simply cannot.  Kinda like Ramses the Damned.  Or Rasputin.  He has terrible and ancient knowledge that has not been seen since the First Age and in some cases, ever, in Creation.  He's unearthed many more secrets than the Chosen of Jupiter would ever, ever want revealed.  Given the right motivations, this being could be the key to rebuilding the heyday of the old Realm... Chances of this, though, are very slim indeed.
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I have to agree with NOT letting it be fixable with simple countermagic. For one, if it's not a spell...that'd seem inappropriate anyhow. For another, its far more interesting to have an interesting long term quest with various things needing to be done than simply having someone flare their anima and shrug as it goes away.
 
Give the players, 5 preferably, dreams, flashbacks, visions in the middle of the day or battle, of great battles, warriors, terror, silence. Somewhat in that order of time. And what the players do not know as they are descended from the 5 great warriors, with one of them obviously being descended from the Immortal. And with the tendrils of said shadows slowly working their way into the statues it begins to affect the 4 other characters slowly, possibly attracting the attention of the other escaped shadows. Perhaps it makes them notice the characters above all other, especially the 4, and they work to end their "suffering" for unknowingly the characters are the last of the line and their deaths are they key components to releasing their ancestors from their prisons.


I have more if you like. Just let me know.
 
Vanman said:
Rhapsody said:
He cannot die. Simply cannot.  Kinda like Ramses the Damned.  Or Rasputin.
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Except last time I checked, Rasputin.....died.......


;-)
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Yes, but they had to shoot him, stab him, poison him, hang him and finally drown him to get the bastard to stay down. ;)
 
Rhapsody said:
Vanman said:
Rhapsody said:
He cannot die. Simply cannot.  Kinda like Ramses the Damned.  Or Rasputin.
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Except last time I checked, Rasputin.....died.......


;-)
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Yes, but they had to shoot him, stab him, poison him, hang him and finally drown him to get the bastard to stay down. ;)
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I understand that. But, having said that, you can't really include him in the list when you say your boy cannot die. Simply cannot. Because Rasputin did die. Yes, it took a lot, but in the end, he was dead dead dead. Now, if you said "He's powerfully difficult to kill. Like Rasputin." then I'd have no problem with your statement. The inherent flaw here is that your boy cannot die. Whereas, as repeated ad nauseum, Rasputin did......


:P
 
They shot him, stab him, poison him, then dumb the supposed body in an icy lake. Then the autopsy later reveals the cause of death to be drowning.
 
You really don't believe Rasputin died? Who do you think President Putin is, a normal guy? These days he dropped the beard, otherwise he would be too easy to recognise.
 
No, because Rasputin was a real gargantuan asskicker; while Chuck Norris in Real life is a good martial artist mind you, but he is like 5'2'' or some shit (I've seen him, I live in Dallas).
 
magnificentmomo said:
No, because Rasputin was a real gargantuan asskicker; while Chuck Norris in Real life is a good martial artist mind you, but he is like 5'2'' or some shit (I've seen him, I live in Dallas).
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Yeah, but did he go to Ramadi?


Sorry, was a joke flying around in Ramadi.  We didn't get any celebs, musicians, cheerleaders.


Until Chuck Norris showed up.  After that we got someone's backup cheerleaders and some WWF folks.  But Chuck was the first.
 
RasPutin / Putin lost a foot in height too? Darn Lunar’s, you just can’t trust them.
 
It still amazes me to know he was just a young Air Force SP that trained in one of the classes taught on base at Osan AB, South Korea. I trained under one of his instructors, a really nice guy.
 
Just found some strange inspiration.


Music video with Sugarbabes, Changed.


They may be spirits or fair folk.
 
Your mind might reject this out of hand, but the Aladdin tv series has a lot of the stuff you'd get in Exalted. Obviously since it's based off arabian-nights style adventures, which were most likely a big source of inspiration for Exalted as well. But in any case there are plenty of spirits, artifacts, behemoths and so forth if you take a look.


One that I particularly liked was about this plant guy, easily a wood elemental or forest god in Exalted terms, who kidnapped the princess because the sultan had previously stolen a flower from his garden. He was sort of a villain but was actually treated with surprising sympathy; he just valued the plants he'd grown as if they were his children. It was a bit cheesy at the end, but, that's probably unavoidable.


So that's a good sample for portraying the way spirits think in Exalted.
 
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