Xavi
February 29, 2012, 12:12pm
132
Ah! Found it. I knew I had written this somewhere
Just for the fun of it, I figured on the fly what an angered Choir of 3 Hyperboreans could do to a covenant. Let’s see they want to punish their hubris because they thought they are better than Apollo. Punishment of Marsyas sounds adequate (I do not want to get over-original here).
Punishment of Marsyas (base 20) at Arcane Connection (+4), boundary target +4), +1 size (+1). Final effect: 65. Let’s add a healthy +50 penetration (+25 levels). For people that can teleport while invisible (Oai powe…
Here comes a slow, mass murder character in the name of Apollo. With a nice vis stack, he can destroy a tribunal before anyone notices what is happening. Do not mess with Apollo unles you plan to whipe them out fast and with purpose, like Trianoma and Tremere did.
The great thing about Hyperboreans is that they suck quite massively in their day to day magics, since they are zero-flexible (even if they do not suck as much as young vitkir here) BUT they have a crazy potential for ritual casting: they can cast anything in their art in ritual form, and while doing so they also get quite massive bonuses to the casting total. that means that they can cast really powerful spells that they would not be able to learn and/or cast using their normal lab total. The drawback is that the ritualistic casting costs vis, but well, it needed to have SOMETHING bad!
here comes a sample spell from a fairly normal dude (not optimized).
Xavi:
Just for the fun of it, I figured on the fly what an angered Choir of 3 Hyperboreans could do to a covenant. Let’s see they want to punish their hubris because they thought they are better than Apollo. Punishment of Marsyas sounds adequate (I do not want to get over-original here). Punishment of Marsyas flays the skin from the target. the target will die really fast if it does not get high level Corpus magic applied to him/her.
So...
Punishment of Marsyas (base 20) at Arcane Connection (+4), boundary target (+4), +1 size (+1). Final effect: 65. Let’s add a healthy +50 penetration (+25 levels). Getting an arcane connection to your covernant should not be that difficult for people that can teleport while invisible (Oai powers), or pay someone to bring them an AC (most Hyperborean powers have some form of wealth creation system).
The final spell level is 90 then, so they need a total of 30 to cast it. Difficult (there are only 3 hyperboreans in this Choir), but not impossible by a far stretch.
Now the casting. The leader has Communication +3, Pentiterouni at 4 and Ceremony 2. He speaks Hyperborean language at 2 (hymns specialization) and has the weaker version of hyperborean descent (+2). Far from extreme stats so far
CASTING TOTAL
GRAND TOTAL: 30.
RESULT: a covenant gets all their members (well, those at the covenant art the moment of casting) instantly flayed (incapacitating wound) with a +50 penetration. Except some magi, most of them are bound to die: this spell flays ALL the skin from your body. That means that it is quite possible that even the magi are incapacitated and unable to react in front of that attack if their magical defences are weak/average. Good bye covenant. Or town, for that matter. Talk about magical artillery spells!
This example is FAR from the most potent effects achievable with Ceremonial choir casting. Minmaxing a little bit, they can easily achieve a penetration of 70-75 or so. This was a small choir of fairly weak Hyperborean practitioners. The funny thing is that most of us can design A SINGLE character that can achieve that all by himself out of “apprenticeship”: strong hyperborean (additional +3 to his casting total from virtue plus mandatory honourable flaw) with slightly higher Pentiterouni and hyperborean language totals, a slightly higher aura (like the +8 of the Temple of a thousand columns) and preparing for a while, he could cast the spell all by himself, and destroy a covenant per month (more or less) until stopped.
[b]We should be glad Tremere and Trianoma left nobody alive to exact revenge. :mrgreen:
Ain’t Apollo a nice chap?
Cheers,
