>>28821934
You are the Man. You are, in fact, *the* Man, the figurative representation of authority, control, and power. Symbolism is important to the Nobilis, the Lords and Ladies of Creation, and you’re quite proud of that one. It only took a few years to set up, and it caught on so well that it’s still a widely-used metaphor nearly fifty years later. You typically adopt a white suit in the styles of the old American South, and when you can get away with it, a white cowboy hat. That’s another piece of symbolism: if you’re wearing a white hat, you must be a good guy, and the good guys always win.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they can’t have setbacks. Like this little pain in the neck - your primary minion in the prosaic world has gone and gotten himself pinned under a building. And one of the drawbacks of making yourself so strongly a symbolic figure is that you lose a certain amount of your capability to act independently in the mundane, mortal world. That was why you created a direct proxy in the first place, someone you could control much more immediately than your usual whisper in the ear of the powerful. And what has he done with his power? Get himself laid repeatedly, and then get stuck under half a ton of rubble. Marvellous. Another Power could just step across the border between worlds and lift it off directly, but if you could do that, you wouldn’t have needed to empower some teenage idiot in the first place. You’ll have to be clever with your solutions. Very clever, in fact - there are still two Excrucians running around out there, and if you use all your power now you’ll be running on empty when the climatic showdown arrives. Not to mention that you need to set up a few things locally that will let you act directly in the mortal world, for a time. That won’t take much power, but it will take time and attention. If you could just drop everything, you would have done so the moment those two idiots showed up.

((Cont.))

>>28822002
[]Step into the idiot’s body and solve this by the direct route - pump miraculous power through his body and lift it off. You have plenty of other demands on your time and attention, you can’t waste too much time on something so simple. ((Aspect MP spent: 4 of 6)).
[]You’ve got another minion around here... Isobel? Something like that. Get her to sort this out. Somehow. She can organise a mundane fire crew or something. ((No MP cost, but slow.))
[]The kid’s minions are technically your minions as well. Or they ought to be - he controls them, and you control him. (More or less.) Bind the telekinetic girl and the plant girl to your Estate for a little while, and tell them to go shift the rubble - between the two of them, they should be able to handle a few tons of brick and concrete. ((Persona MP spent: 1 of 6.))
[]Get inventive. Remove the tendency of those bits of rubble to obey the law of gravity. Obedience is obedience, whatever its form. ((No MP cost... but this may be more noticeable.))
[]Other


((Archives are located at http://archive.foolz.us/tg/search/subject/monsterhearts%20quest/type/op/order/asc/
and also at
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Monsterhearts%20Quest
))

>>28822021
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON OR WHAT MP ARE
[X]Step into the idiot’s body and solve this by the direct route - pump miraculous power through his body and lift it off. You have plenty of other demands on your time and attention, you can’t waste too much time on something so simple. ((Aspect MP spent: 4 of 6)).

Just when I feel like I got the hang of Monsterhearts rules, something a new system comes up I've never heard of before
How hard are MP to regain?

>>28822021
[]You’ve got another minion around here... Isobel? Something like that. Get her to sort this out. Somehow. She can organise a mundane fire crew or something. ((No MP cost, but slow.))

Don't think they're gonna finde Chris under the rubble. Let's save the MP for more pressing matters.

>>28822057
((Okay! Brief rundown on the Nobilis system. Any Power can perform miracles of various types and strength - the stronger your innate abilities in that area, the more you can do for free. If you can't do something for free, but you still want to do it, you have to spend Miracle Points to make up the difference. Miracle Points are divided into four reservoirs by category, each of the same size, in this case 6 points.

The four categories are Aspect (miracles directly relating to your personal physical and mental abilities - miraculous strength, speed, intellect, etc.), Domain (the direct manipulation of the substance of your Estate - the Power of Fire can produce fire from thin air or move fire around, for instance), Persona (more metaphorical manipulation - making someone or something more 'fiery', or, say, making something more or less obedient, if you're the Power of control and domination), and Treasure (miracles around or involving magical items, mortal servants, immortal or magical servants, etc. This is what makes Chris an Anchor, and is what Coriander Hasp uses with respect to his rifle, Ritho, and its incendiary bullets.).

A Noble's reserves of MP are limited, although you can convert one type into another with substantial inefficiency. Once they're gone, regaining them is most easily done via your Bonds or Afflictions causing you trouble, which is why Chris has much more limited powers - not having any Bonds or Afflictions, he has very few ways to regain MP. I'm not going to post the Man's entire character sheet, but safe to say, if you spend any MP now, they're unlikely to be available to deal with Coriander Hasp and Iolithae Septimian if they catch up with you.))

>>28822239
What are Bonds and Afflictions?
How does Chris regain MP?

>>28822021
>[]Get inventive. Remove the tendency of those bits of rubble to obey the law of gravity. Obedience is obedience, whatever its form. ((No MP cost... but this may be more noticeable.))

>[x]The kid’s minions are technically your minions as well. Or they ought to be - he controls them, and you control him. (More or less.) Bind the telekinetic girl and the plant girl to your Estate for a little while, and tell them to go shift the rubble - between the two of them, they should be able to handle a few tons of brick and concrete. ((Persona MP spent: 1 of 6.))

Let's not attract unwanted attention.

>>28822021
[X]Get inventive. Remove the tendency of those bits of rubble to obey the law of gravity. Obedience is obedience, whatever its form. ((No MP cost... but this may be more noticeable.))

>>28822239
If everyone has four different kinds of MP, does that mean that Chris still has three of his full after using his Voice? What could he do with the other ones?

>>28822239
((In general, for free, Chris can do that perception thing that marks clearly anything with strong connections to power and control, and that's it. The Man in the White Suit himself can do that, and basically everything that was listed under Chris's powers, including supernatural powers of command, and making some other person, object, or abstract concept extremely dominant over everything else in the area. (An example from the rulebook involves the Power of Forbidden Love making the Second Law of Thermodynamics into a social prohibition. Filthy perverts and their perpetual motion machines.) He can also do the opposite - removing the properties of his Estate from something, making it not be obeyed, not protect the things it controls, or not able to take things from others. And that's all for free. If you're familiar with the Nobilis rules already, he has Persona 5, the highest possible base rating.

>>28822291
Bonds and Afflictions are... properties of how a Noble interacts with the world. Some of them are actual laws of their existence, some are codes of conduct they've sworn themselves to, some are just long-established habits. Chris is basically just a magically-enhanced mortal, and hence doesn't need to worry about them. However, he regains MP only when the GM (i.e. me) decides it is dramatically appropriate. The Man has to worry about breaking his Bonds and falling prey to his Afflictions, but as a trade-off, is much more able to control his own powers... except that he's an NPC most of the time, so he doesn't.))

((Hmm. Having trouble getting my name to stick. Sorry.

>>28822473
A Noble has four different kinds of MP, Aspect MP, Domain MP, Persona MP and Treasure MP. Chris has a very tiny piece of the full powers of a Noble, and shouldn't even really have that. He has Persona 0 and 5 Persona MP (currently 1), and that's it.))

>>28822516
((I'm going to extend voting time a bit, because this is a new thing and people are still getting the hang of what's going on. I'll try to answer all rules questions as quickly and clearly as possible, but if there's anything else you're not clear on, feel free to ask.))

>>28822558
The guys we are fighting, what exactly can they do?

>>28822021
>[]You’ve got another minion around here... Isobel? Something like that. Get her to sort this out. Somehow. She can organise a mundane fire crew or something. ((No MP cost, but slow.))
Might be a bad idea, but if the worst happens, we aren't in a particularly worse situation.

"Hey, boring chick, our mutual connection to the land of the living is now lying under a pile of rubble because his dumb ass decided to try something clever. Be a dear and come up with a simple solution, then implement it."

>>28822021
>[]Get inventive. Remove the tendency of those bits of rubble to obey the law of gravity. Obedience is obedience, whatever its form. ((No MP cost... but this may be more noticeable.))
The laws of nature are our bitch

>your primary minion in the prosaic world has gone and gotten himself pinned under a building.
It's not our fault the building suddenly collapsed beneath us.
It wasn't our fault, right?

>>28822628
((That's a bit more complicated. A Deceiver has pretty similar powers to a Noble using Persona - metaphorically change how something relates to your Estate, add or subtract its properties from something, enhance yourself with the properties of your Estate - but their Estates are all odd, self-referential things: "The Lies of Iolithae Septimian", "Those Who Listen to Coriander Hasp", "The Philosophy of Tairté Ut-napishtim". For instance, Iolithae can remove the property of being one of her Lies from something she says, making it true (usually), regardless of whether it was previously true or not. It's said that she told the seas they were salt, and made it so, and hence killed every freshwater fish that swam in them. Coriander Hasp is a lot less powerful when it comes to tricks like that, although he can raise the dead, which is a neat trick in and of itself. He does, however, wield Ritho, also called 'Indiscretion', an Abhorrent Weapon of the Excrucians, which is a seriously powerful magical artifact fully capable of killing a Power. Although Coriander will insist that actually, you are not dead, and tell you to get up again. Listening to him is generally a bad idea, particularly if you are still on fire.))

>>28822021
>[]Get inventive. Remove the tendency of those bits of rubble to obey the law of gravity. Obedience is obedience, whatever its form. ((No MP cost... but this may be more noticeable.))
Let the kid sort it out, for fuck's sake. Not our problem!

>>28822731
>For instance, Iolithae can remove the property of being one of her Lies from something she says, making it true (usually), regardless of whether it was previously true or not. It's said that she told the seas they were salt, and made it so, and hence killed every freshwater fish that swam in them.
So she can just say " everyone on this planet is dead" and everything dies?

>>28822836
((With enough expenditure of power, and assuming no-one who also had access to Miracles intervened to stop her?

Yes. Absolutely.

This is why Powers exist, though - to intervene. Any Excrucian who tried to affect the whole planet at once would instantly catch the attention, pretty much reflexively, of hundreds or thousands of Powers at once, who would presumably do something to stop them and drive the Excrucian back out into the Lands Beyond Creation. Fighting the Excrucians is, technically speaking, the reason the Nobilis exist at all. That's why the Excrucians typically work on a much smaller scale, where they won't attract too much notice and they only have to face down maybe one or two Powers at once.

It's worth noting that, say, the Power of Death could totally do exactly the same thing, if they really wanted to. But again, quite a few other Nobles would very likely intervene, both on Estate-based grounds (not just the Estate of Life or Humanity or whatever, but also things like Schools or Love or Friendship that wouldn't exist if everyone was dead), and on personal grounds ("Hey, that's my aunt you're killing." "Hey, that's where I keep my stuff, don't mess it up with all those corpses.) The Nobilis are pretty powerful, but they do have limits.))

>>28822057

>>28822223
>>28822632

>>28822359

>>28822335
>>28822372
>>28822646
>>28822816
((Okay, that ought to be more than enough time. Writing.))

>>28822021
Do not get inventive when near the guy who makes clever ideas go wrong. Remember how we got into this mess.

>>28823034
>>28823073
Crap

>>28823073
who?

>>28823073
RIP, Chris. We hardly knew ye.

>>28823138
Coriander Hasp. AKA (most likely) the guy with the bitchin sniper rifle of boominess who may or may not have shot us when we climbed out of the well-covered alleyway and onto the completely exposed and fragile roof like a doofus.
Why did we do that, again?

>>28823034
You glance through the kid's eyes for a moment and invoke your power, feeling the familiar rush as the world bends to your will. Hmm. Maybe overdid it a little bit, but it's nothing major. Problem solved. Hopefully he can sort things out for himself for a bit - this is delicate work and you really don't need any more distractions.

*****

You are Christopher Phillips, and this is a surprisingly heavy piece of wall you're pinned under. What is this, reinforced concrete? Who makes a warehouse out of reinforced concrete? Anyway, maybe you can wriggle out from under it if you just -

Um. Okay. You just shifted the entire slab. The massive, half-ton slab of solid wall that wasn't moving an inch a minute ago just rose up when you pushed. Maybe if you push a little more, you can get your legs free.

Yeah, they're free. And the rubble is... floating. You scrabble out from under it and gingerly give it another push, and it lazily floats across the room before bumping against the far wall of the building with a crash. What the hell? The pieces that fall off when it hits the wall don't fall to the ground, either, they just go spinning off in all directions, like they're in freefall. You duck as one goes over your head, bounces off the wall behind you and floats up through the missing roof.

You take a moment to look around and take stock. You're in a warehouse full of large crates. It looks like there were previously a bunch of different storerooms and some offices, but all the interior walls have collapsed, and the roof has caved in on top of them. There are probably doors somewhere under the rubble, but you're not sure how to get to them.

Over on the far side is a massive loading door, and you carefully make your way across the rubble, dodging the occasional floating rock. It shifts strangely as you step across. It seems like everything here, except yourself, is now weightless. When you reach the door, it swings wide at the slightest push.

((Cont.))

>>28823693
The street beyond looks to be clear, for the moment. You listen carefully, but you don’t hear the crack of gun fire, or any explosions. Time to get out of here as fast as possible, then. Is there anything around here that... oh, hey, a car. That’ll do.

You don’t actually know how to hotwire a car, but you’re sure it can’t be that complicated. Break a window, short some stuff in the steering column, and it starts, right? And you don’t really need to drive it for long, just long enough to get back to the populated bit of town where the guy with the rifle can’t find you so easily, so it doesn’t really matter that you don’t know how to drive. This is a plan without a flaw nor any possibility of error.

The window-breaking part goes fine - just wrap your jacket around your hand so you don’t get cut, and punch hard. The shards of glass slowly floating away in a straight line, turning end over end without falling, are disconcerting, but easy enough to avoid. And whoever owns this car has been helpful enough to keep a spare key tucked in the rear view mirror. The only issue comes when you actually start up the car to drive it.

Cars, it seems, do not react well to being made weightless. The car starts, lurchs forward suddenly, then suddenly smashes its front bumper into the pavement and goes catapulting into the air. You’re held in place by the seatbelt, but it doesn’t look like you’re going to -

There’s a sudden crash as the car roof impacts a lamp post, which seems to have stopped it in place for now. You carefully undo your seatbelt, clamber out of the side window, and make your way onto the lamp post, which seems to be in pretty good shape, but is really too narrow for you to stay on for long.

What the hell are you going to do now?

((Cont.))

>>28823708
[]Push the car downwards, ride it back to the ground, and try and find some way out of here without causing too much more carnage. Eventually someone’s going to come along and notice all this.
[]You’ve got a floating transport, might as well use it. With a bit of care, you could turn the car over, sit on the bottom, and push it along the street from post to post like a raft. You’ll get back to the centre of town much more quickly, but you’ll certainly attract attention when you do.
[]All you really need is a little bit of anti-gravity, right? Pull off a little bit of the car, and start jumping from lamp post to lamp post, Spiderman-style. Fast, but much easier to hide - the best of both worlds.
[]Other

>>28823730
>[]All you really need is a little bit of anti-gravity, right? Pull off a little bit of the car, and start jumping from lamp post to lamp post, Spiderman-style. Fast, but much easier to hide - the best of both worlds.

>>28823730
Get out of the car, and physically walk away, placing one foot in front of each other, until this effect dissipates.

>28823730

>[]All you really need is a little bit of anti-gravity, right? Pull off a little bit of the car, and start jumping from lamp post to lamp post, Spiderman-style. Fast, but much easier to hide - the best of both worlds.

Spectacular it.

>>28823755
>>28823835
Stop trying to be clever you idiots.

>>28823803
seconded

>>28823803
>>28823948
((Do you mean pushing the car back down to the ground first? You already have gotten out of it - you're currently balancing somewhat precariously on a lamp post quite a long way up in the air. Just stepping off is likely to be painful.))

Why did he get into the car in the first place?

>>28824034
((Chris wanted to get out of the area as fast as possible, before the guy with the magical rifle and the explosive bullets came back. And it seemed like a good idea at the time.))

>>28823993
Ah, then try to climb down, only grabbing things that we're reasonably certain is safe to grab. If climbing down turns out to be impossible, try to fall without hurting ourselves. We've already learned the folly of trying to mess with stuff in wacky physics world.

>>28823730
Pull yourself down the lamppost, and then cheese it on foot.

>>28823803
>>28823948
>>28824062
>>28824065

>>28823755
>>28823835

((Writing))

>>28824188
This is tricky. Wait, you just had a great idea. If you make use of this anti-gravity thing, you could leap down the street like Spiderman. You just need to pull a bit of the car off, then...

No, wait. Hang on. The car is floating, that doesn't mean it'll make *you* float. Let's just climb down, slowly and carefully, and walk. Boring, but much less likely to lead to you impacting the tarmac at an unpleasant speed.

You slowly make your way to the ground, giving the car the gentlest possible push on your way. Hopefully the whole weightless thing will wear off at some point and it'll just look like a regular crash.

Nothing else you encounter on your walk seems to be weightless. You don't hear any more explosions, or bump into any red-haired lunatics wielding rifles. Or anyone else, for that matter. It's getting late, but the streets are still unusually quiet. You walk all the way to the centre of town, to the place near the library and the park where you met Ajani and his gang on Tuesday, without seeing a single soul.

Ajani and Gloria haven't arrived yet - assuming they're coming at all. What do you want to do?

>>28824534
Hide nearby, and wait.
Just because we can't see crazy sniper, doesn't mean crazy sniper isn't there.

>>28824534

Hide and wait. Stay only one hour, at most. If anything dangerous even threatens to get near, GTFO.

>>28824534
Hide, wait, and in the meantime if our cellphone isn't broken, call up Esther to let her know that there is a major problem around.

>>28824608
>>28824712
>>28824879
((Writing))

>>28824963
You settle down just inside the entrance to the park, somewhat concealed by the bushes, and wait. Ajani and Gloria will be along soon, right? Surely they will.

Just in case, you take out your phone and call Esther. The phone rings for a few times, which is disconcerting itself, before she picks up.

“Hello? Christopher? I am a touch... busy at the moment.” There’s a scream somewhere in the background, and the sound of smashing glass. “Can this wait?”

“I just wanted to warn you about some big trouble that’s just come up, but it sounds like you’re already aware.”

“The mysterious sound? Yes, it was quite disconcerting to some of my family. They claimed they could make out words in it. My advice would be not to listen too hard to it. And if you could get any help up here, that would be appreciated. Not all of my family are as...” She breaks off, and you hear the loud crack of a gun going off. The screaming in the background cuts out suddenly. “As composed as myself.”

“Okay. If you hear from Gloria or Ajani, let me know. We got separated. And if you see a red-haired guy with an old rifle, uh... run.”

“Running is undignified. But thank you for the warning nonetheless.”

Okay, that was worrying. You put your phone away, and settle down to watch a bit longer, when suddenly it goes off again. It’s Ajani calling.

“Ajani? Thank god, I was getting worried. Where are you?”

“You might not want to go thankin’ God just yet. I reckon he ain’t got anything to do with this one.”

You’ve only heard the voice on the other end briefly, but you recognise it at once. It’s the man with the rifle. Coriander Hasp.

“Your friends were a bit of a pain, but they’ve settled down now. We just want a chat, really. Why don’t you come back here, and we’ll all sit down for a nice talk? How does that sound? We’ll let you go afterwards, cross me heart and hope to die and all that malarkey.”

>>28825990
Fffuuuck that

>>28825990
"Please, Ajani probably just dropped his phone. You obviously don't have them, or you'd offer some kind of evidence."

Everyone has died it seems.

>>28825990
...well then, Captain Boomy. It seems, to me, that you want me for some reason. From what we all heard before, the last time you had a 'talk' with us, you apparently want to 'help' us.
Slight problem there. Your supposed 'help' is not needed; it's not wanted; it is, in fact, refused.
So, counteroffer - sod off. Cheerio!
*hang up*

>>28825990
w/ magic voice
>"Let them go, sit on your hands for a half hour."

>>28825990

"Yeah, it just so happens that chatting with you is a big no. So is simply looking at you, I've been told. At best, send messages; you have a contact number now."

>>28826295
I think that might qualify as a clever plan that will go horribly wrong, but I can't really see how it would go wrong...

>>28826372
We don't have enough juice left.

>>28826440
((You do not, in fact, have enough juice left, but you're aware of this, so you won't try it anyway and then fail.))

>>28826078
>>28826098
>>28826219
>>28826309
((Writing.))

>>28826440
How much juice do we have?

>>28825990
Ask to talk with them to make sure we aren't being RUSED and ask The Man if maybe we can command them to come to us unharmed

>>28826469
((Chris has 1MP left - enough to give yourself or someone else a very minor boost or a very minor curse, but nowhere near enough to order an Excrucian around and have him do anything but laugh at you. 4MP would be the very minimum to even start a miracle fight, really, and unlike the dance, you're dealing with a guy who can fight back.))

>>28826535
But maybe we could get our benefactor to intervene!

>>28826574

He's is busy. Read the first two psots of the thread.

>>28826702
>He's is

*He is.

>>28826468
"You know, I don't really believe you have them. And even if you do, the last time you had a talk with us, you said you wanted to help us. Right?"

"Well, I -"

"Right?"

"Yeah, we do. You just -"

"Thing is, we don't want your help. We don't need your help. So how about you just fuck off?"

You hang up the phone. Well. That may not have been massively productive, but it sure as hell felt good.

There's still the issue of finding Ajani and Gloria, whether they got away or not. And helping Esther. You can't just sit here in the bushes forever. You need to do something. You're just not entirely sure what.

>>28827570
((Sorry for the long wait and short post, and sorry for this too, but I really need to go and get some sleep. Thank you all for being awesome players, and I'll see you all again on Tuesday, when we figure out how to get out of this mess. Same place, same time (roughly). Questions, comments, etc. below.))

>>28826702
He's busy, he's pretty sure Chris is an idiot, and is regretting using us as his minion.

What's the point of having a minion to fight your enemies if your orders for that minion is to run away from said enemies as soon as he sees them?

>>28831014
The minion wasn't meant to do the fighting, the minion is an anchor to allow actions in the real world more efficiently.

>>28827606
Info dump about the Nobilis is helpful since i am unfamiliar with it.
I wonder how the hell will we expalin this gravity situation to ajani and gloria. We'll probably just tell them we ran away and they made a mess trying to catch us.
Also, these guys seem a few levels above our comprehension, i have no idea how we will fight them.