ReaperofInterest, post: 80983570, member: 309377 Wrote:

So I have a question about Arcane affinities. We know about what they are, and that Arcane use them for magic, but I'm curious about their ability to change. Are they basically set in stone once someone starts using magic, or can a person's natural character growth and development cause major changes in base affinities? For example, if someone with a Fire affinity became pyrophobic, would that cause a weakening, if not complete change in their Fire affinity? Basically, at what point are a person's affinities set, and how tightly are they set?

So this is a bit of long explanation since it goes into the division of Arcane and Practitioner a bit, as well as a couple of the differences between Anima and the other primaries a bit, but I'll try to answer everything as accurately and clearly as I can.

Okay to start we should probably define an affinity as an attribute that a person's mind/body/soul is particularly in tune with. Meaning that a person can use these affinities more easily than they can other attributes, allowing them to develop these attributes faster and even use them at a lower cost and difficulty than what other attributes would hit them for.

With that defined, affinities have a bit of wiggle room and typically don't start narrowing themselves down until their early teens, with attempts to use magic in their younger years having more generic affinities and being based more on environmental affinities rather than personal. (I.E. Water magic is easier around water, nature magic is easier in forests, and wind in open windy fields.)

Now at a certain point of personal maturity, a person's affinities will begin to lock themselves in as they become a core part of that person's being, and despite the primary and secondary affinity thing, people actually have affinities for virtually every affinity in existence. It's just at a certain point it's influence on their magic becomes largely negligible, and so is ignored outside of rare cases where a person has zero or negative affinity preventing them from using that form of magic at all.

On that note we get to arguably one of the biggest difference between an Arcane and a Practitioner (outside of the need for a foci/battery), Arcane have the ability to take all of their affinities and develop them, allowing their affinity for any magic they focus on to develop and grow until it reaches a point of being indistinguishable from their main affinities or allowing their main affinities to become even stronger the more they use them. (If you check my anthology stories, you'll notice that instead of just having a Primary and Secondary affinity the Arcane there have ranked affinities with letter grades telling them how strong those affinities are on a roughly 1-21 scale.)

At this point you get an odd exception/extension to the rule above where powerful exposure to an Affinity can cause a person to develop a magical 'Trait' which can possess an influence on their magic and how it works, giving them a massive jump to one of their affinities, sometimes to the point of throwing their developmental balance off and slowing how fast they can build other affinities. (A common example of this is seen in doctors who through their profession are exposed to a large amount of life and death, which can cause them to develop a trait favoring one or the other depending on which carries a greater influence on their being.)

And while the above exception/extension does apply to both Arcane and Practitioners, it should be noted that it is more prominent in Arcane, allowing them to develop Traits far more easily, to the point where this ease of development actually offers them an exploit in the Nexus's Contracting system, an exploit that many Arcane use to accelerate their development of a specific affinity by contracting with a user of said affinity. Similarly Practioners have their own exploit in the fact that with a bit of teamwork, they can borrow their Contracted's affinities for their spellwork allowing them to work around their affinity limitations (though they still can't develop an affinity of their own even if they learn how to use said magic.)

All of this is actually what ties into making Incarnates so unique. Seeing as how they are limited to a single Affinity (and maybe it's immediate derivatives) despite having magic be a part of them in the same way it is for the more standard Arcane. Something that is made even odder when Practitioners can develop Spell Traits but Incarnates cannot.

Now moving onto the question about elemental-phobias, it should be noted that it actually won't weaken a person's affinities (maybe their willingness to use it but not the affinity itself.) In fact depending on how much their mind drifts towards that fear of fire it might actually strengthen it and reinforce it as they subconsciously use fire magic to suppress fire in their vicinity. Which brings us to the biggest difference of Anima when compared to Madness or Necro, it only grows, while the other two either change or feed on other things, Anima only ever builds on top of itself, and pushing raw Anima into something will only produce more of the thing you're pushing it into, with the Affinities being something of a filter for what should be built. Meaning that while affinities can be built up and even limited in their development they can never actually be lost.

rush99999, post: 81230917, member: 380992 Wrote:

Is Sanctuary a worldwide thing or does it only exist in the States?

Sanctuary is largely a US thing, with other countries having their own Deviant Management Organizations, though some of our closer allies may have a liaison office with a handful of Sanctuary officers. (And Sanctuary probably has a few small bases within some of the bigger international military bases the US has kept active in other countries, since they're still watching over US assets despite being on foreign soil, creating a unique political situation.)

By contrast the Heroes' Guild -despite being largely based in the US- has begun to pick up steam with a number of international branches as other countries mimic the organization, (if with their own local flavors.) With all of these different guilds technically being a part of the same organization, despite it largely being in name only. The guild's idea being that by spreading the brand across the globe as 'peaceful' alternatives to the various law enforcement agencies it creates a counterbalance that helps maintain a public acceptance of Deviants without starting another bout of Rift Riots. (which were an international thing, despite the US being one of the worst cases.)

rush99999, post: 81281167, member: 380992 Wrote:

If that's the case, are Deviants in the military discharged if they become too strong?

Not typically as that leaves them out in the wild, and often with the usual problems that vets face after being discharged, just with more firepower on them and more often then not a grudge against the system for unfairly throwing them away.

So instead they'll typically have Deviants focus more on their post/base jobs rather than their field/combat jobs, and typically weigh them down with bureaucracy and management duties while keeping them out of combat intensive zones unless strictly needed, at least until their tours/contracts run out. (Which they'll try to get the Deviants to extend/renew with various benefits.)

From there if they retire the only real difference from a regular soldier is that they're (unknowingly) put on a permanent watch list, and get a more active response from the VA to keep better tabs on them while they're out on their own, and keep the government/military in their good graces. Then if a Deviant Vet seems to be getting antsy or have trouble adjusting to a non-military environment, the VA will try to push them towards Sanctuary so that they return to being a government asset, and if not the Heroes' Guild so that they at the very least have a support structure that can handle them should something go wrong or help them adjust.

---

Side Note: For most Deviants it takes years to jump power ranks, with the gap growing each rank, which translates to the 'growing too strong' thing being a rare (though not unheard of) problem.

The quest characters are exceptions to this rule in that Maya was a powerful Deviant from the get-go, just inexperienced and underequipped, while Josh has Malice and an existing Wonderland speeding him up, and then the Man In The Mask/Cheshire screwed with Jon's Neuroplasticity increasing his learning speed to peak human, which only helped his high power ranking mentors push him further faster.

rush99999, post: 81282916, member: 380992 Wrote:

Do they do something different with the more violent Deviancies? I doubt they'd take kindly to being red taped to a base away from all the violence.

As far as Deviancies go, of the common ones, Slashers, Deadmen, and Malcontent are the only ones naturally inclined to violence. (Excluding anomalies such as [Fight] and [Vengeance] affinities in an Arcane, which are usually too rebellious for military living.) Of those three Slashers are typically put on black op suicide squads. Deadmen usually don't join the military outside of rare [Obsessions] because said Obsessions and their Hunger are always their priorities and often can't be accomplished in a living-human military. And as for the Malcontent -sidestepping how rare they are- they have, well... issues with any military-esque structure after what Asylum did to them.

rush99999, post: 81297862, member: 380992 Wrote:

How would one go about violating a Wonderlander's understanding of the world? Also, when a Wonderlander rejects someone's very existence in the world, is that a "I'm just gonna pretend you don't exist." sort of rejection or more of a "ONCE I'VE KILLED YOU, I'M GOING TO THROW EVERY SINGLE TRACE OF YOU ONTO A MASSIVE BONFIRE SO THAT NO ONE WILL EVER REMEMBER THAT YOU EXISTED!" sort of rejection?

That's a bit of a complicated thing due to the fact that there are different levels to it and different Wonderlanders will respond to different people on different scales. But for the most part it involves treating their Wonderland and Dreams as fake or imaginary, telling them that the core [theme] of their Wonderland is wrong or that the laws of their Wonderland aren't how things work, or harming the psychological anchors of their reality.

Now depending on the Wonderlander they may accept that their Wonderland is a different world from the real world and that they have different rules from the Waking World, so it may take people a minute to figure out that things are different and that they can't really be blamed for learning, the less stable ones on the other hand will take greater offense. (For the former it means ignoring them -maybe with a light scolding- for the later it means trying to force them to acknowledge that their Wonderland is real or wiping them out. (By any means necessary.))

The big part of this that has it put as a warning though is when someone is trying to force a Wonderlander to acknowledge that their world is an imaginary dream, (for most Wonderlanders this would be when the abusive adult or teenager goes through their things and destroys anything related to the Wonderland while telling them it's fake and that they need to live in the real world) It's typically scenes like this that result in otherwise stable Wonderlanders distancing themselves from reality and occasionally manifesting their powers in reality for the first (and often violent) time, which in turn kicks off a cycle as they spiral into an unstable insanity.

From there it should also be noted that the more [Interesting] a Wonderlander finds someone, or the more fond of them they are, the more they'll be willing to let slide as long as the person doesn't cross some kind of hard line. After all Wonderlanders are still people and will still act like it even if they have slightly different triggers than most people.

Lastly I will add that some Wonderlanders will have those 'you hurt my friends now I'll hurt you' moments as they view their friends, family, Dreams, and home as a core part of their reality. In which case they may take it to the quoted extreme regardless of temperament because someone hurt the anchors of their reality.

rush99999, post: 81308857, member: 380992 Wrote:

Are there any Slashers out there known as the Hash-Slinging Slasher?

Yeah, he's a fry cook who snapped one day and replaced his hand with a spatula. His body count isn't the highest, but he covers the night shifts at Mrs. Lovett's diner. (He also makes surprisingly good hamburgers if you ask the local Deadmen and Malcontent.)

rush99999, post: 81309412, member: 380992 Wrote:

Is he often followed around by a pale, bald Deadman whose Obsessions drive him to flicker light switches?

Of course, Nos is his best friend after all. (They met after crossing paths when Hash was applying for a job at this twenty-four hour fast food place.)

rush99999, post: 81309412, member: 380992 Wrote:

On a more serious note, I notice you don't add an S to the end of the word Malcontent when referring to the Deviancy in plural. Is that intentional?

Yeah, in this context its one of those words that's both singular and plural of itself. (Sort of like An Arcane and The Arcane)

(Fun Fact: In setting some people may still add the S to the end depending on their dialect of English due to it being the proper English, that said it's usually only posh people who've never met or researched the Malcontent who do that. (Note: Malcontent all use the S-less version. (The ones who think about it enjoy the fact that it gives them this uncountable threat feel to their Deviancy.)))

ReaperofInterest, post: 81309979, member: 309377 Wrote:

Regarding Arcane Affinities, while we know history and personality determine a person's starting Affinities, does cultivating an Affinity affect a person's personality? For example, if someone without an Affinity related to [Combat] decided to develop one for whatever reason, would developing that Affinity cause them to become more confrontational or combative?

Well, let me offer you a counter question how much of our personality is based on us and how much is based on the things that happens to us?

To elaborate in order to develop a [Combat] affinity a person will have to go through a bunch of combat situations, so technically any personality that would result from those situations could sustain the affinity. Meaning that while their personality will change -as will anyone's who goes through a life changing situation- the questions of how and how much are up to the person in question.

ReaperofInterest, post: 81323047, member: 309377 Wrote:

Hmm...while I'm on the subject, what sorts of ways are there for Arcane to train Affinities? The [Combat] Affinity, for example, seems to require going through combat situations, while in The Huntsman's Quest Josh was able to buy a book capable of training, or at least giving access to, multiple basic Elemental Affinities. How would someone go about training for an Affinity like Smoke, Sand, Time, or...say, Wolf, or any other animal Affinity? Or how about the more exotic Affinities, such as various colors?

First to clear up the murky bit, Jon didn't actually unlock those Affinities so much as learn how to use them, because the rules for using a type of magic don't really change based on one's affinities so much as your affinities make a certain type of magic easier to use. Meaning theoretically that anyone can learn how to use any attribute but those with affinities can do so faster and cheaper than those without.

Now for most Arcane the simplest way to increase their affinities (and with minimal personality change) is repetition, like an obscene years worth of repetition. (Typically after learning how to use an attribute from study of some kind.) After that would be exposure to the attribute in question, with anima infused versions of these attributes developing an affinity faster. Then in a mix of the two you have the contracting system, which allows an Arcane to borrow the affinities of their contracted via exposure through their contract bond, eventually developing their own affinity regardless of contract.

As for training more esoteric concepts, one would have to understand the concept enough to make use of it, typically through Will craft if more literary methods are unavailable. At which point it becomes a mix of philosophy, psychology, science, and magical capacity as to how easily they can learn an esoteric affinity.

(Fun Fact: The method of learning DeSade taught Jon isn't the normal one and is actually based on the man's own obscene Occult level as he used Jon as a guinea pig for an experimental teaching method to know if it was safe for his daughter to learn via. Which is half the reason why Jon can pick them up so fast, compared to other people who would take weeks if not months to figure even the derivatives of their own affinities out.)

rush99999, post: 81331084, member: 380992 Wrote:

Speaking of a**holes who can't live and let live, are there any notable Anti-Deviant groups currently active in the setting?

There are several branches of Sanctuary where the organization is synonymous with Anti-Deviant, regardless of the larger organization's views or policies, and typically the Anti-Deviants will join up with said branches making the problem worse there. Additionally there are several small militias and religious groups that view Deviants as unnatural and typically protest against them, but those groups rarely branch out beyond a few small towns or cities. With a mix of pro-Deviant Sanctuary, the Heroes' Guild, violent vigilantes, and fear from both Asylum's near genocide and the Tallman's Rampage, keeping most of those groups from growing too big as they're kept as local problems.

That said, several of these groups are known to let themselves become part of larger more hateful supremacist groups that view Deviants as unnatural even if they just blanket Deviants under the rest of their hateful policies and activities towards minorities.

rush99999, post: 81354730, member: 380992 Wrote:

Do Malice and Psionics also try to drive their users crazy?

Malice makes the user more aggressive, feral, or high depending on the user. With some people becoming more combative, some acting more like animals than humans, and some laughing as you shoot them in the head. That said, all of that ties into how much Malice is running through them, with them often calming down over time. (It's debatable on whether the bits they retain in their passive state is because of Malice or the way they've adapted to it personally. Seeing as a lot of Malice users tend to partially act like cats/dogs and/or be blood knights even when not using Malice.)

Psionics on the other hand is more stable, but the users of it are often eccentric by normal people's standards, either shamelessly flaunting their emotions or repressing them hard. Both things that can become problematic when they can pick up a sort of psionic corruption by overusing their powers, whether on themselves or on other people. (Though using telepathics on others causes more of it due to the fact that they're taking in a sort of personality bleed by syncing their nervous systems up.) Depending on the kind of emotional corruption they take on the self control and lack of control offer different defenses.

rush99999, post: 81354730, member: 380992 Wrote:

If an M.A.D. creates a C Rank or higher Artificial and also has a child the usual way, would the Artificial and the child be considered half siblings or full siblings? On the one hand, they only share one parent. But on the other hand, that's simply because the Artificial only needed one parent to be crated rather than the two parents required to make an ordinary child.

This is one of those ones where the answer is more of a personal/cultural answer than a hard one. What I mean by that is that it's technically up to the people in question, as I'm sure there's more than one child that would reject the AI as not being their sibling, in the same way that there'd probably be more than one spouse who refuses to see the AI as their child. But at the same time for every person that rejects the AI, there'd be another seeing them as a child or sibling regardless of whether or not their spouse/parent created them.

(Fun Fact: At the moment there are there are two AI characters in-setting I have set as named protagonists. With one of them being adopted by their mother's husband and the other being adopted into a family of heroes that rescued them from their villain creator.)

rush99999, post: 81387526, member: 380992 Wrote:

What makes a thing 'greater'?

Alright this one is a mix of philosophical and quantitative, because in this context 'greater' means a sort of existential weight. Which is essentially a combinative of everything that makes an existence (I.E. power, intelligence, social presence, life span, spirituality, emotions, etc.) and how big of a vacuum will be formed by their death.

(Again, since this about Slashers horror content warning.)

Now for the most part Slashers target people because there are a lot of them, but at the same time they're worth more than an unsocial non-predatory non-sapient animal, which would be a much more socially acceptable target. (And would still give them a slight malice buzz, but it's a beer vs a shot of whiskey in comparison.) From there if they're confidant enough they'll occasionally target 'greater' humans over the more common ones, which would be defined as the people who if they died it would be felt in their communities. (Which is also how the lesser Slashers get caught more often than not.)

In setting since they have Deviants this would include them as 'greater' (regardless of community presence), with Masks being a step above the common Deviants, and the leaders of the Mask/Deviant communities being a step above them. All of whom due to having more 'power' would be capable of fighting back on a greater scale than a civilian. (And are how greater Slashers are caught more often than not.)

Honestly there are about a dozen factors that determine someone's 'existential weight' vs another, and diving too deep into it can give you (and me) an existential crisis, so I'm trying not to go much deeper than the previously given definition on the matter.

rush99999, post: 81415048, member: 380992 Wrote:

How easy is it to make distilled Malice? Does it always create Bleeds when it's poured into a kitchen sink?

The process is little known, takes several hours, and requires several difficult to acquire reagents that you don't want to know about if you're drinking it and/or putting it in your body. (Though if you've read the entire anthology maybe you can guess the two key ingredients.)

Also it's less that it forms Bleeds when poured in the sink so much as it works as Creep Bait when exposed to open air. Though that's not necessarily unique to the distilled version as seen when Raimundo tore open his arm to catch that Ravager's attention due to the Malice in his blood. Which is why his living in that house long-term accelerated the rate at which the Creeps found them. (He and his sister usually move place to place when distilling to prevent that.)

Just noticed these sitting here.

ReaperofInterest, post: 81431383, member: 309377 Wrote:

1: Is there a way to forcefully sever Arcane summoning contracts, and if so, what sorts of side effects are there? I imagine that there's a certain point where people just aren't allowed to keep the ability to summon whatever demon, hellbeast, or massively destructive elemental they've got a contract with when they're using them to commit crimes, but at the same time, considering the summoning contracts take the form of tattoos on a person's body, I can't imagine that severing such a contract instead of just temporarily dispelling the summon wouldn't have consequences of its own.

Yes a contract can be severed, but it can only really be severed on the Contractee's side. Meaning that unless the creature that someone is connected to or the Nexus running all of this decides to void the contract, it's pretty much for life on their end. But should the contract be severed the 'Contract Capacity' spent on it will not be refunded to the Contractor and they'll lose any 'perks' their Contract offered them.

The reason for this being so much in the Contractee's favor as far as severance goes is because technically the contractor is hiring them, and so its their call whether they accept or reject the job, and in turn they can permenantly sever a contract if they feel they can't work for their Contractor anymore.

Additionally the reason why this can't be severed by an external source is due to the fact that the Arcane Nexus is basically a supercomputer made via magic that only a handful of people can actually reprogram, and as such very few people have the Admin Rights necessary for banning someone outside of the Nexus's relatively simple guidelines. (Note: There is a bit of an exception to this rule since some people do have admin rights, but there are maybe half a dozen people in-setting with those and if you tick them off they'll just kill you or make you wish they had.)

All of that said, there are ways to suppress someone's contracts by putting a sort of inhibitor over their marks. (Usually this looks like a sort of tattoo on a tattoo kind of thing.) But in that case should they remove the inhibitor marks it'll be like they never lost their contracts.

ReaperofInterest, post: 81431383, member: 309377 Wrote:

2: Considering the varied range of magic and science on the various worlds connected to the "main" Deviant's Masquerade world, that actual sapient non-humans exist, and part of humanity's...reputation, are hybrids an actual thing here?

This is a weird one because it's a yes and a no kind of answer. Yes there are some hybrids out there, but not all species are capable of reproducing with a human. In fact even the cases where it happens are usually because someone used magic/mad science or the two 'species' are related in some way with a distant ancestor or one being a sub-species of the other. Unfortunately however like with real life hybrids, most hybrids have a much lower fertility rate than their parents if born without magic/science, with some being flat out sterile.

(Fun Fact: Some sapient species are actually other species with a large number of Deviant mutations. A common such case being certain Demon species that were born from other species or elves who in-setting have an Anima mutation. Sub-Note: It should be remembered that this can vary a bit between dimensional iterations of a species due to the whole multi-verse thing, even if the majority of the setting curve species follow this rule.)

ReaperofInterest, post: 81431383, member: 309377 Wrote:

3: I remember in the anthology that strong Shadow and/or Ice Affinities on young people were generally considered a sign that they need some major help. Are there any other Affinities that are considered to serve as major red flags that something isn't going well?

Well [Death] for one, but for the most part it would be the emotions you'd usually associate with an Affinity given how virtually anything can be an affinity. For instance if someone had the [Caged] or [Secret] Affinities those would probably be red flags for someone, just like [Poison], [Pain], [Blood] or a number of other negatively associated Affinities. (Note: I feel it goes without saying that just because someone has a darker affinity doesn't mean they have a darker personality.)

Now an exception to the above rule is the fact that it is fully possible for some people to develop these attributes from an environmental factor rather than an emotional one. For instance the [Ice] affinity was a flag in a snow-less city during late summer/early fall, but it wouldn't be as out of place for someone born in Canada or Greenland who might pick up the affinity due to the nearby ice and snow in their environment.