Let the games begin

   His specialty is a military funded class called Battle Alchemy, which he starts off by inviting any of his students to beat him in hand to hand for a conditionless passing grade (by the end of the first class, most students walk away sore and horrified).

    It takes half  the semester before they realize that Ed continues to beat them even when they use alchemy and he does not. They ask to see him use alchemy in battle. The next day, a man who looks almost the same as their professor shows up to class- he’s softspoken and polite, and the students expect a substitute lecture. Ed sits in the stands and laughs as Al proceeds to fight the entire class at once, and beat all of them. The students never ask again.

  (And sometimes, in the middle of practicals, students swear they can see the Fuhrer watching from the edge of the field.)  

   I can also see him causing a hell of a problem when it comes to conventional textbooks- 

  “This is definitely wrong.” 

  “Sir, this is the most recently updated textbook for theoretical alchemy-” 

“I’ve gazed at the Abyss, and it gazed back at me. Now what?”

The Watchers at the Shore are one of the ancient Legacies - their origins can be traced to the Awakened who first reached the Watchtowers post-Fall. Many of the even more primordial Legacies relying on the free connection between the Astral and Supernal were shocked, quickly fading as their members lost their power overnight, their remnants bonding over the shared loss of power. Recognizing that their former wisdom was now a mere mutilation of the soul, they casted it away into the newborn Abyss - hoping their vain sacrifices would at least appease it. Instead, it did shrink a bit, and the mages found themselves transformed, the void where their legacies used to be carved by the unmoving waters into new Attainments. Those were the first Watchers at the Shore, and they pledged to watch over the growing ocean of black blood, to perhaps bridge it one day.

The Gazers’ didn’t have a single origin place. In any city where humanity lived at the shore of a vast sea, they were there, contemplating similarity of the waters of the Fallen world and the primordial chaos of the Abyss, before using their insights to battle against the forces of the unmaking with knowledge, bringing the beings of the deepest darkness into light. They weren’t interested in politics, although they did join the Orders - a gesture meant only to ensure they weren’t hunted down for their suspicious practices and affiliations.

During the times of upheval surrounding the Great Refusal, the horrid practices of the Scelesti were more common, as was using the Abyssal shock troops, and the Watchers were needed more than ever - they did accept the Nameless, and later on, the Free Council amongst them, but for some time the youngest of Orders was treated with suspicion, as the veterans of the Nameless War were unsure if they won’t use the Ouroboreans’ knowledge to contact the Abyssal entities, as some of the worse of the Nameless did in the past.

Today, the relatively small Legacy still thrives, perhaps more vibrant than it ever was. The ease of travel, the need to learn, the enroaching Abyssal intrusions, all of them are refreshing the membership of the Watchers at the Shore - although, the borderline Left-Handed reputation doesn’t help their prospective students to find them, and find acceptance of their choices amongst the others, more mainstream Legacies.

(More under the cut)

I think something I like best about the World and Chronicles of Darkness is the potential for Tragic Monsters. As we all know, there’s particularly rough disagreements on the whole morality issue, and in many ways I lean towards the middle. Ultimately yes, I don’t think most characters can be good… by traditionally human standards. At the same time however, I do think it’s still possible to do acts of good, but they’ll never truly reach the same levels they had been before as far as overall morality is concerned.

But that’s the tragedy, because nearly every being, be they vampire or werewolf, mummy or ghosts was once a human being. It’s hard to truly take away that aspect from a person without years upon years of time, and even with the more alien moralities found in Chronicles and in groups like the Sabbat, you’ll still end up with someone who’s going to struggle with this new existence, and will likely follow their old selves to the best of their ability. This is something that helps define the tragedy, it bleeds sympathy into the characters during the start when they struggle to hold onto their sense of self, and it makes the actions they take, willingly or not all the more bitter as they come to terms with what they’ve become. How many have had their hearts hardened to adapt to new societies like the Camarilla and various Seasonal Courts, or lost themselves by becoming altered into a Deviant or dying and becoming a Wraith? How many lost pieces of themselves upon being transformed into a Deviant or a Changeling? It’s a sad thing, knowing they’ve become something else and likely won’t be able to experience what they did at one point for the most part. Only Demons and Prometheans really avoid this due to their unique situations but ultimately they too eventually end becoming more adjusted to morality due to Pacts/Possesion and the Pilgrimage but they’ll likely face difficulties in addressing it due to their statuses

When a Scelestus commits to the Abyssal Path, and ventures to their Ziggurat to embrace their new destiny, they replace their Wisdom stat (which roughly measures how responsibly and carefully a mage acts) with a stat called Joining (which roughly measures how close the mage is to the Abyss’s corruption).

Joining is always a deliberate thing, you can’t accidentally enter this stage of the Abyssal Path. And unlike earlier instances of antinomian sorcery the Scelestus might have performed, Joining can’t be done in ignorance— you always know what you’re getting into.

You increase Joining by performing yet more monstrous acts, usually involving destruction, cruelty, defilement, or other such blasphemous behaviors. They slowly become bigger and bigger, until the Scelestus is consorting with the most wicked powers of the Abyss.

It’s walking a path to damnation, and it’s considered one of the worst and most dangerous things a mage can even think about doing.

It’s also not permanent.

This might not seem like a big deal, but in a lot of CofD games, there are basically “failure states” where you are, at least for the purposes of the chronicle, permanently a villain. Turning into a draugr in Vampire, becoming a Slasher in Hunter, hell, going Rapt or Banisher in Mage. It would be really easy to say that Joining is the same way, and it wouldn’t really disrupt much.

But they went another way with Scelesti. There’s a whole system for refusing the Joining, for slowly and deliberately stepping back from the hate and the cruelty and the despair, and giving up the Abyss for the sake of yourself and the people around you.

It’s really hard. Mechanically, you have to consistently act in ways that are largely very inconvenient and even dangerous. Narratively, few characters will trust you and even if you succeed in redemption— it’s mentioned that the Orders are incredibly reticent to even admit that people can come back from being a Scelestus, because they worry it makes young mages more willing to dabble in Abyssal magic, if they know it’s not necessarily permanent. It’s a painful way home, and you still walk it knowing the mistakes you made in the past.

It’s still such a beautiful thing to put into the game, though. You can consciously choose to be a monster, indeed, to be even more monstrous than your fellows, and to indulge in nihilistic hatred. And… you can walk away. You don’t have to stay that way.

You can’t change the past. Your sins are still sins, and they shall ripple outward evermore.

But they are your sins, and thus you alone can deny them a future. They do not grow further unless you let them.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA this scene hits me right where I goddamn live, and it really does justice to both Gangle and Jax's characters.

Even though she wants to feel sorry for her because being abstracted is such a terrible and horrific fate to suffer, she can't bring herself to do so because of how terribly and horrifically she treated her. It shows that she knows that even a person like her doesn't deserve to abstract as some kind of punishment for everything she's done. But how can she feel bad for her for everything she's done? For how cruel and malicious she was to her from the very moment she entered the circus! And the damage it did to her mental and emotional well-being!

And what I also love about this scene is that it reinforces the theme that, despite all of the hurt that she's experiencing (even before she abstracted), it doesn't automatically excuse the hurt she chose to inflict.

P.S. Also love how Zooble is comforting Gangle!

Not only does it give us a sweet moment between the two that shows that Moon's love was always genuine, it also confirms a plot point that we suspected all along.

The NPCs are totally autonomous beings outside of Caine. He may be able to kill or despawn them at will, but a lot of their behaviors are out of his control.

Throughout the series, we saw Caine coveting the humans and disposing the NPCs. He had no problem snapping Gumigoo and Abel out of existence.

At the beginning of the episode, we find out that the humans are brain scans. At the end, we find out that the NPCs have a separate will from Caine.

I believe this shows us that the difference between NPCs and humans in TADC are not so different. They may have different origins, but they all ended up in the same place.

This was so important for both Caine and the humans to learn. They vast divide between humans and NPCs suddenly doesn't feel so large.

My bee Caine will sometimes detach his head and chase Bubble around if he gets mad enough jhbdjhbd