Neverborn Akuma?

S

SagaciousAscendingHero

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Ok, since the RPG.net forumites are being mostly unhelpful, lets try again. (Why I didn't come here in the first place? IDK)


I had an idea for the Neverborn to create their own version of the Investiture of Infernal Glory and make death-akumas. Can anyone give me a reason why this wouldn't work as per canon?


Btw, someone on the other thread mentioned that apparently this was one of the possible explanations for the Emissary of Nexus, but I don't have the book in front of me to confirm.
 
Well, if you want them to have it, then give it to them.


There are certainly reasons you could come up with why they can't do it. Like, say, investiture of death essence being awful for your health. But, honestly, none of them are good enough if you decide it's what you want in your game.


Granted, the Underworld ALREADY has effective means of fielding its forces on Creation, unlike Malfeas, so it would imbalance the threats, but if you feel more like dealing with the Underworld than Malfeas, imbalance away!
 
Don't really see a reason you couldn't do so. Of course, you'd need to come up with a charm set for the Neverborn that is doing so. I'd suggest looking at some of the Infernal charmsets, then thinking of the personality of the Neverborn you're dealing with, twist it further into death tainted and even more insane, and then, see about making the charms of such. After all Akuma have access to the charms of their master. Actually, I've done something similar in a game set during the end of the Shogunate, though that was more a creation of a death lord, where part of how the Contagion was spread was by an unknowing creation of the Dowager of the Irreverant Vulgate in Unrent Veils sent out, who was effectively an Akuma like being with access to Ghost charms, all levels of Necromancy and one caste's Abyssal charms, infected with the Great Contagion and sent out as a child into the world to spread it, slowly going crazier as everyone around them kept dying, continually traveling as an apparently healthy refugee who never seemed to come down with the illness, actively trying to help as she got older...and in the very act spreading the disease even further...
 
The main reason I see it not working is because being a Neverborn sucks.


These aren't the evil masterminds. They're dead. Not even awesome dead. Just regular, sucky, dead. All they can really do is shoot crazy horror mindrays and rot. The whole point about being a Neverborn is that you suck, you are dead, and you want it to stop. Their motivation is to enter Oblivion. Any Akuma they have probably gets Urged to kill themselves.


Regardless, I had a shot at writing up a Neverborn's charmset. Here's their complete charmtree:


Hurt


Essence 1


Keywords: Permanent


Description:


Make It Stop
 
I'd say being capable of making the Deathlords implies the Neverborn have a lot more ability than just sit, rot and suffer. If anything, the Deathlords themselves are almost a form of Neverborn Akuma.
 
I'd say being capable of making the Deathlords implies the Neverborn have a lot more ability than just sit' date=' rot and suffer. If anything, the Deathlords themselves are almost a form of Neverborn Akuma.[/quote']
I'd say the sheer ineffectiveness of the Deathlords as a group at their stated goal imply a lot less ability to provide anything remotely resembling an Urge, let alone a full charmset.
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You're saying that the Yozi's have exactly been competent with their own Akuma? They haven't succeeded anymore...in fact, quite a bit less. The Contagion came quite close to destroying Creation. Akuma...not so much.
 
Here's how effective everyone was in Creation


The Primordials - Goal: Create awesome world to rule over forever. Status: FAILURE. Usurped by gods.


The Gods - Goal: Usurp the Primordials and rule over the world for themselves forever. Status: SUCCESS, BUT THEY'RE JERKS ABOUT IT


The Solars - Goal: Make the world more awesome than it was and rule over it forever. Status: FAILURE. Made the world suck and THEN lost it


The Lunars - Goal: Protect the world and the Solars. Status: FAILURE.


The Sidereals - Goal: Govern the world so that it doesn't get blown up. Status: PARTIAL SUCCESS KINDA SORTA NOT REALLY. Most of the world sucks right now, and some of it's blown up, and they're not running nearly as much as they would need to be to keep it all together, but the world has not yet blown up.


The Dragon-Blooded - Goal: Make the world more awesome than it was under the evil Anathema and rule over it forever. Status: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAno


The Neverborn - Goal: Destroy Creation so they can stop being eternally tormented. Status: FAILURE. And they got so close, too.


The Yozis - Goal: Reclaim Creation for themselves. Status: FAILURE


The Fae - Goal: Okay, let's just pretend that, as a group, the Fae want to destroy Creation so that it stops ruining the Wyld, even though that's a gross misrepresentation. Status: FAILURE


Mortals - Goal: Live. Status: FAILURE


The moral of Exalted is that everyone absolutely sucks. EVERYONE.
 
The thing about the Neverborn is that they aren't really conscious or aware in quite the same "Terrifying Cthonic Intelligence" way the Yozis are. They're ludicrously powerful, yeah, but that's mainly cos in a way they are the Underworld - a typhoon or volcanic eruption is ludicrously powerful, but you wouldn't expect one to make Akuma.


Akuma are the hollowed-out shells of Creation-Born filled with the malign intent of a being that needs dozens of subsidiary minds just to make up its sense of self. The Neverborn don't really have a sense of self in that way - just vast power and a desire to not exist any more that exceeds sane understanding. Or, as Thanquol put it up there, the only Urge they could possibly impart would be KILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLMENOWPLEASEKILLME.


So my suggestion would be, rather than working out a way to make Neverborn Akuma work, come up with something even cooler that fits with the MAKE IT ALL STOP theme of the Neverborn in the same way as Akuma fit with the Faustian corruption theme of the Yozis. Mortals/Exalts suffering from an infectious form of Resonance. Shadowland earthworms that eat Creation's detritus and shit out Oblivion into the soil. "Death Bombs" that eradicate all mortal life within a certain range when they die due to a critical mass of Death (and which then encounter your PCs). Necrotic Radiolarii. The list is endless.
 
chalicier said:
So my suggestion would be, rather than working out a way to make Neverborn Akuma work, come up with something even cooler that fits with the MAKE IT ALL STOP theme of the Neverborn in the same way as Akuma fit with the Faustian corruption theme of the Yozis. Mortals/Exalts suffering from an infectious form of Resonance. Shadowland earthworms that eat Creation's detritus and shit out Oblivion into the soil. "Death Bombs" that eradicate all mortal life within a certain range when they die due to a critical mass of Death (and which then encounter your PCs). Necrotic Radiolarii. The list is endless.
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This is cool and something I will steal posthaste.
 
Hmmm, Walking Shadowlands. Constantly bleeding Resonance into Creation and blighting everything they encounter. The personifications of entropy and decay. Pale Riders on deathless steeds bringing death by slow means to all they encounter. Plague rats bearing fatal diseases that they themselves are immune to. Empty, hateful people dispossessed of all they once had and embittered by the callousness of their own kind intent on sending everything, everyone to Oblivion just so they can get rid of their own pain.


Captain Hesperus
 
What I might do in my own campaign is have Death Bombs as unwitting, unwilling, nearly soulless Creatures Of Darkness - their hun and po hollowed out and replaced with a vast well of Oblivion, leaving them with nothing more than tatters of identity and a desperate need to get near to life and energy and meaning. Of course, when they get there, they're half-dead and pouring Resonance everywhere, killing crops simply by passing them, rotting everything in sight and starting diseases, all the while trying desperately to get close to people. And when someone finally does the decent thing and kills them... everything mortal within a hundred yards falls over dead from a cascade reaction of death Essence.


And the best/worst part is that my party of Solars has a habit of using Sagacious Reading Of Intent on everything (I tend strongly towards conspiracies in my games, see). Which means when the half-dead CoD slumps into town chased by undead, and attempts to talk to the players, and they SROI it and get "Get Back To People And Find Help" and at the same time Per+Occ rolls demonstrate that the Resonance effects cropping up all around are the fault of the poor wretch in front of them, they're left with no choice but to kill him. And then to deal with the results, with some not very difficult Occult rolls allowing them to know everything about the nightmare that just happened.


I anticipate Limit Breaks galore.
 
I suggest that anything slain by said Death Bombs should rise as a zombie carrying a hungry ghost.
 
Kyeudo said:
I suggest that anything slain by said Death Bombs should rise as a zombie carrying a hungry ghost.
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Reminds me a little of the late-series episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer where she's confronted by the vengeful ghosts of the Sunnydale High students/victims she wasn't able to save. Especially now my players are scraping Essence 4 territory and beginning to do the Glorious Hero thing openly - "HAIL, THE GLORIOUS HERO, BUT YOU DIDN'T SAVE MEEEE!" *omnomnom*


And yet more Limit Breaks ensue. Half my party has VFs triggered by their own or others imperfection, and two of them have Heart of Tears. It'll be even more Limit-tastic than their failure to win in Yu Shan was, and that triggered 4 of them in one session.
 
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