I decided to make this it's own seperate post so I could flesh out the idea some more. The more I read it the better I liked it

This idea is more than simply a new cabal for evil mages. It would entail getting rid of the anti-paladin class (somewhat) and offering up its abilities plus more in a new fashion.

I imagine this 'cabal' as a mix of cabal/becoming because once you join, your old class is consumed and your character is remade. It would be limited to melee classes (warriors, thieves, assassins, rangers) as the basis of the cabal besides what is outlined below is that these are people who want more power (magic) and are willing to deal with demons to get it.

Your 'Remaking' would depend on a variety of factors including your initial class, race, whether you were chaotic evil, orderly evil, or neutral evil, how many PKs you had before attempting to be Remade, etc.

In a nutshell for background, the Elder Demons of Thera are making a bid for power versus the Gods of Thera. Members of this cabal would thus be at war with anything reeking of divinity (paladins, healers, shaman, druids, etc. as well as of course lightwalkers in general) in addition since these aren't 'true' mages but merely men and women who damned themselves to gain access to magical power they are capable of having a envy/love/hate relationship with true magi.

To become part of this cabal you would have to seek out one of the twelve fiends of Coctyus in order to pledge. However each demon is attuned to different things and offers different powers and some will kill you outright if they find you unworthy. Example: You may have a demon that rules the aspect of 'Shadows' (thieves, assassins, rangers) and your fire giant warrior comes to pledge with that demon and it backstabs you and kills you immediately.

Once Remade you retain a few of the abilities of your former class but the vast majority of them are consumed and depending on the Demon you are granted new abilities more suited to being a Demon Seed.

One of the Demons would in effect be the Anti-Paladin class (likely the demon that likes warriors) which would strip the warrior of everything except what anti-paladins get now with a change I believe would be nice - the demon would forge you a demonic weapon to hold souls which otherwise grows in power same as always. To rid the weapon of souls however I would make it so it has to specifically be given to a Paladin and I would add a 'Purge' power to the Paladin class which allows them to take a demonic weapon and purge it of all its souls. Demonic weapons would not be able to be sacrificed until they are purged. This id hope would add a slight extra chance for the AP to get his weapon back. Destroying it would be a bit harder but not overly so.

As for the rest - I imagine powers like 'shadowstep' for Remade thieves/assassins which would allow them at night to have limited 'gate' if the target is inside a building at night the thief/assassin can step into one shadow and out next to a shadow near the target while remaining hidden/sneaking...lots of lag though I'd imagine and it would have failure risks like occasionally stepping out of the wrong shadow somewhere (bad teleport) or whatever happens to someone who has a bad tesseract.

I could come up with powers all day so I'll leave the rest up to your imaginations.

The twelve fiends of Coctyus?

Mind listing it here if you do? I'm thinking of working on this idea some more.

Cocytus is taken from Dante's Inferno, and there are no twelve fiends associated with it.

It was kind of awkward playing my demonologist conjurer because I wasn't sure if I could simply take IRL demonology as canon in a fantasy world whose hell is an adaptation of Dante and yet has a lot of original content. I.e. Israh worshipped Nabuurus and was asking me about other infernal entities, and I was giving names of, for example, demons presiding over lust and gluttony etc. Sort of improvisational world lore.

You were part of the inspiration for this idea. Maybe we could come up with a demon pantheon? You had Nabuurus, mabe name 11 more? I remember you had a few followers even. This is exactly what I was talking about in the other thread...being able to take things like what you did and with some player support maybe having these things become a permanent part of CF lore.

I was playing an evil conjurer at the same time as Israh, who got involved in Israh's storyline - actually through an imm coming down as a demon and speaking with my character. Israh's role too was part of the role contest and given to him by an immortal. Israh's player didn't know anything about the lore of demons in CF, and frankly nor did I. We wanted to summon a demon of gluttony and for want of any ideas, and while wanting to portray my conjurer as an expert on the subject, I provided a name of an IRL demon, but in the end nothing came of it.

Re: player driven stuff - I will always regret that I ran out of con with Mordwen a day too soon.

Cocytus is taken from Dante's Inferno, and there are no twelve fiends associated with it.

There are in CF.

Hell in CF was long gone before I started playing, making any associated lore inaccessible. My best guess for what's supposed to be in there is Dante.

That's fine. I'm simply saying that the fiends are in CF, regardless. If I were clever, I would add something about them to the HM library.

I thought I remember'd you saying you lost the stuff in the great crash.

I used to love that library for vague CF lore. Ma'rin included.

A small portion of the materials were saved by folks who had copied information for personal use; that was re-posted after the big crash. That took a little wind out of the library/research sails, but hopefully something like that can never be an issue again.

Went to HM library, couldn't figure out how to read any of the books. Tried Look book(s), shelf(s), bookshelf and bookshelves, etc. Am I missing something?

NT

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I've noticed quite a few 'demon worshippers' in the game lately so this is what has served as the basis for this idea - props to that dude who was the 'philanthropist' or whatever and a couple current characters who I won't name.

Anyways....

As mentioned in the first post this cabal would be at war with all empowerment classes and lightwalkers, due to their nature the outlanders would war with them and of course the battleragers.

Each Demon Lord would cover the aspects already covered plus a few more that as far as I know haven't been mentioned'

I'm thinking the ones we have (fire, ice, lightning, acid, defilement) plus a few more (shadow, blood, rage, death, chaos, etc.)

I added this post to underline that not every 'demon seed' should have the same powers thus not every demon lord offers the ability to forge and wield a 'demonic weapon' that takes souls. So no - no Remade thieves/assassin/rangers with an unholy.

Each Demon Lord would have different requirements for being considered worthy including a set amount of PKs (some would have more than others I would imagine) This I think would allow with some researh for someone to decide if they want better powers but have to wait for them or pledge with a demon whose powers arent as good but has easier requirements. This is like how we haven't really had a lich since they made mummies and wights - most folks don't want to go through what is required to become a lich, but in this case everything should be automated so for the dedicated player they could go for the best but for someone who likes the lower-tier stuff they don't have to kill themselves.

Also instead of a central cabal HQ each demon lord would have a 'Realm' (I understand how difficult writing an area could be so maybe just a handful of rooms led to by 'demonic portals' spread around Thera in appropriate places. Taking an 'item of power' from each demon would shut down MOST of the abilities of that specific demon's followers.

For example lets say the demon of death is the one which closely resembles the unmodified AP class (minus controls), take its item and those 'APs' (for lack of a better term) lose the ability to gather new souls but they can still rest on the power of any souls they have already taken.

All followers of any demon would here a specific portal being attacked.

More to come as I think of it.

I'm not going to even try and seperate these as to which demon has which obviously. Just a few ideas and which class it would go with.

Bloodfang: this power lets (thief/assassin Remade)forge a dagger made from their own magically infused blood that grants a small bit of health during battle (it drinks the blood of whose body it pierces and passes their essence to the wielder). Also after a certain rank the knife gains the ability to potentially plague (it passes deadly magic back through the blood into the target).

Demonform (Remade warriors/rangers) A shapeshift option to turn into a demon. Only available for a high-ranking remade of this demon (whichever has this power)

Demonwings (remade rangers) ability to grow a pair of scaled demonwings allowing a period of limited flight.

Demonspeed (all Remades) small temporary boost to dexterity

Bloodmark (Remade assassins) If the target is 'marked' (im thinking assassins get to keep their ability to mark)this ability triggers when the target is spilling or having their blood spilled in battle
and lets the remade assassin 'hear' who or what is attacking or being attacked by their mark.

As I said I could do this all day long...

For what it's worth, this would be pretty epically awesome.

I'll be honest, I don't really dig the whole Scion backstory. It was cool at one point but it's gotten a bit dry.

Most of the cabals I'd actually argue could use some "freshening up" in the form of slightly more story development and power modifications.

Tribunal for instance could benefit from a "bounty hunter" add-on - given how boring cities are these days (Whew, Galadon's empty again!).

Maran I've felt has always been lacking since Shokai left - it's just silly how it works now - hunt the one dude in your range and hope to kill him to get in, then get promoted based on PKpH when you've got like one enemy that you can attack...

Empire is pretty cool. Battle is still pretty cool. Nexus - not really sure to be honest but I never was a fan of the concept. Outlander - well variety is the spice of life.

I mean most of these haven't really changed in 13-14 years now? Couple changes here or there even if they're largely cosmetic would be welcome I think.

This one is fairly complex as it involves a seperate idea, that being of the old video-game idea of 'power-ups' only in this case 'power-ups' are fueled by 'soul energy'.

Certain elder demons instead of offering a weapon that can be infinitely powered up by unlimited souls instead bestow access to certain powers on a temporary basis based on a limited amount of soul energy their followers can hold.

Basically this would be the demonic version of 'mana' but it doesnt regen on its own. It would require a PK in order to regen more power. The better the PK the more 'soul energy' is replenished.

Outside of this, the higher level abilites would work just like any other spell only drawing energy from 'soul energy' instead of mana. Thus the more you depend on your higher level abilities the greater need you will have to go out an PK to get more energy.

Sacrificial Offering:

This would be strictly for Remade Assassins. They would lose assassinate/stalk but would get this spell which prepares the Remade assasin to make an offering to their patron demon of their target. If either the target or the user of the spell falls to writhing, this spells kicks in and sends tendrils connecting the sacrifice and the sacrificer preventing the death of either. Instead of dying the first to fall below 0 health (preferably the target) is held in suspended animation (no health gains, any affects like poison,plague, etc. stopped, cannot communicate while in this state)

If the target is the one to fall into this state the remade assassin can proceed to 'offer' the soul of the target to their patron demon who will send a lesser demon to collect the soul in a nice little lag-inducing bit of text which if the offering is pleasing will provide the remade assassin a variable amount of 'soul energy' that can be utilized to access and use other powers. Since the offering is done in a ritualistic fashion following a demons preferred method of sacrifice a 'sacrificial offering' will typically maximize the amount of 'soul energy' gained.

If the Remade assassin somehow falls under this state while in battle and are then killed, the demon will send their lesser demon to take a large portion of the soul energy from the caster as punishment for their failure. As with mana or hp this can even mean negative S.E.

Sorry, I know most dont care or none of this will happen, im just crazy ok One can always hope!

Anyways...


Thought about how this idea would work vs. Conjurers and came up with the AP (demon seed) answer to conjies.

Remade Rangers only

Hellspawn -

A demon seed of (insert demon name) can call upon the demons of Hell. They open a portal to Hell and a demon steps through at their call. This demon will vary in power/circle of Hell based on the level of the Demon Seed. This is NOT a conjuration...no bindings/etc. The called demon will appear in the same room as the caller and aggro on anyone who enters the room and track them including the caller if they leave the room and return before its on someone else. Since this isn't a conjuration the demon will not go away until it is killed! Even killing the caller will not send the demon away. If the demon kills whoever it is tracking it will aggro on the next person who enters the room with it.

Demonology -

A demon seed of (insert demon name here) is more well versed in demonolgy than most, including conjurers due to their more intimate relationship with demons . This allows them to do things with and for demons others cannot. They have a chance to automatically break the bindings of any demon that has been conjured and used against them ( I imagine this working like 'charge set' in that if a conjurer attacks you with demons theres a chance the bindings will break but not from you the demon seed attacking the conjurer or during a fight), any demon they call using Hellspawn will be higher in power/circle of Hell than normal for their level, they can sense when a demon is being conjured by someone in their range and can get a momentary view of the location and while fighting demons of any type they gain an 'evade' like ability based on knowing the various ways demons think and fight.

Demonmask -

Casting a spell, the caster takes on the aura and visage of a demon. Basically this is 'gentlewalk' for demon seeds. The caster is able to enter the room with an aggro demon and not be attacked - but it could also not work. Obviously works well with Hellspawn. All demon seeds can learn this.