NPC: Lonely Assassins / Weeping Angels

[DesertCoyote]

I don't know how many Doctor Who fans there are around here, but this is a port of my favorite villains from that show, the weeping angels.


Weeping Angel
[+2] Human Form* with involuntary change 
--Trigger: Any character or creature is looking at Weeping Angel, reverts when no one is looking
[-2] Inhuman Strength
[-2] Inhuman Speed
[-1] Mana Static
[+1] Feeding Dependancy
--Must use "Potential Energy" Consumption (see below) to avoid hunger stress unless a source of radiation is available.  Consequences must involve losing supernatural powers.

[-2] Beast Change (Angel Statue)
[-8] Physical Immunity (tied to beast form)
--Catch: Cannot make any action while immunity is active, any action in progress is interupted.


Custom Supernatural Powers

[-3] Corrupt Soulgaze
Any character that looks into a Weeping Angel's eyes long enough for a soulgaze must roll their conviction score against the Weeping Angel's deception score.  If that character fails to win, he or she suffers from hallucinations that get increasingly worse as time progresses, eventually resulting in the affected character becoming a Weeping Angel in reality.

The effects of the hallucinations include, but are not limited to:
Weeping Dust- reduces awareness by 1
Body parts made from stone- reduces athletics by 1 per body part

Characters affected by hallucinations may choose to keep their eyes closed to negate the effects as long as their eyes are kept shut.  Normal penalties for taking action in total darkness apply, any abilites that allow characters to see in the dark do not affect this state.

To permanently clear the hallucinations, the angel that triggered the corrupt soulgaze must be destroyed, or the be cured by ritual means (spiritual or arcane)

[-4] Image of an Angel
Any depiction, be it digital, analog, or simple drawing, of the Weeping Angel gains sentience and will attempt to become a full Weeping Angel.  The process will begin with the image moving while no one is looking at it and progress to the image being projected anywhere in the zone that contains the image.  Shortly after, the image gains solid form.  The change will be complete when the projected image kills another sentient being.

This change can be stopped if the original image can be disrupted.  For example, if the image is displayed on a Television, unplugging it would disrupt the image and stop the change.  Careful note:  The image will attempt to resist disruption.  Simply pressing the power button on the Television will not work, as the angel will turn it back on before it fades away.  The ability to resist disruption is at the discretion of the GM.

[-2] Perfectly Silent
Weeping Angels make no noise when they move.

[-4] "Potential Energy" Consumption
If a weeping angel connects with a melee attack, the weeping angel can choose to feed.  If the angel chooses to do so, the target of the attack is sent into the past where they will "live to death" and the weeping angel gains energy from the "unlived life"


Total:  -25 refresh




What do you guys think?

Source Material:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH0R01gP3m0

[Mal_Luck]

Shiny. I like it. The Weeping Angels are some of my favorite DW villains. I think you underestimated their speed, I think it's at least Supernatural... maybe even Mythic. Same with it's strength. It seems they also have some sort of Recovery or Toughness. Stated in the Dresdenverse, Weeping Angels could be one of the most deadly threats when encountered.

How would you go about killing a Weeping Angel in the Dresdenverse? So far the only thing we've seen is total annihilation via a crack in Time.

Which leads to some interesting thoughts that the only way to kill a Weeping Angel would be to violate the Sixth Law.
~~~~~~
And I think there are a fair amount of DW fans here. I've seen Jack Harkness immortality discussion and Psychic Paper discussions.

I'm waiting for someone to fully stat up The Doctor, of course since there is 11.5 of him... there could be a large amount of variations.

[DesertCoyote]

About killing an angel:

There's a couple theories among myself and friends about how to take it out in Dresdenverse

Look at the angel so it can't move.
Put a few pounds of C4 on it.
Get away.
Stop looking at the angel.
Detonate C4.
The theory here is that it won't be invulnerable while you're not looking at it.

The other major theory:
Look at the angel so it can't move.
Pour salt around it in a small circle and dump some will into the circle.
Close your eyes and spray the angel with a heavy automatic weapon
Open your eyes quickly since shooting the angel breaks the circle.
This has basically the same theory as the other as that it would be vulnerable while nobody is looking at it, but the circle would contain it while nobody is looking.



About their speed:
I'm not real sure about that one.  I think I've got it right with inhuman.  They're fast, but either they have to build up momentum or something because they only move a few feet at a time and four of them were bested by two mundane mortals with instructions from the Doctor.

About the strength:
Maybe I've got that one wrong, they were opening those doors on the ship, but that could have been more than one of them trying there.

[Mal_Luck]

Not sure I think a Weeping Angel would be vulnerable to circle defenses, the angels are solid and have physical form. I suppose it depends on their origin in the Dresdenverse.

I'm sticking to my guns about the speed, reading Supernatural speed...  it's effects are almost a definition for a Weeping Angel and how the Doctor describes them (Effortless Movement and Faster Than the Eye).

Plus if you remember, he describes Blink's angels as being malnourished and scavengers. The ones in Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone were not (at least Angel Bob wasn't).

[DesertCoyote]

Physical form isn't what matters with circle defenses.  It's free will.  Fae have physical bodies, but no free will, therefore they cannot defend against circle defenses.  Otherwise Toot-Toot would have turned into ectoplasm when Harry captured him in Storm Front.  Shag Nasty had a physical body and free will, therefore could use a circle defense against Harry.  We don't really know if the Angels have free will or not.

I'll give you Angel Bob being stronger than inhuman, but I'm not convinced on better than inhuman speed.  The rest of the angels in the new episodes were on the verge of starvation also as Angel Bob was on a "rescue mission" to save the others.  My beef with making angels "faster than the eye" is that if they were, looking at them would not stop them since moving would mean you couldn't see them anymore.

[DesertCoyote]

Also in Blink, the Doctor describes the angels' speed as "faster than you can believe"  not "faster than you can see"

[Mal_Luck]

But they can't move while you look a them, they have no choice in that  

Plus game mechanics, Faster Than the Eye only affects Stealth check difficulties. Which, from the Angel the creeped up on Father Octavian... is pretty damn fast.

It's Effortless Movement that's the ringer for them, we've seen Angels move great distances in the span of an eye blink.

For Corrupt Soulgaze, maybe have it cause Mental Damage and when it knocks them out they die.

My only tick about the C. Soulgaze is that anything seen with the Sight can't be unseen... so... it'd make removing the Angel from the eye nigh impossible.

Let me rewatch Blink and the new episodes and I'll give some more opinions.

[Esoteric]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFKa9tQqzrs&feature=related

Another good scene of them. It appears that you can indeed look away from them for a split second without them being able to instantly get to you

(warning: this scene is actually very creepy in some parts)

[DesertCoyote]

Corrupt Soulgaze:
I wasn't writing it to be a proper soulgaze.  I don't think the angels would have souls (especially since some of them are made from inanimate objects), therefore whatever you saw looking into one's eyes would not be seen with The Sight.  Harry does make a point of describing eyes as the window to the soul, and the door for some things.  I forget which book that's in... proven guilty I think.  I think it's more on par with a psychic attack.


On Speed:
You're right.  Father Octavian was taken out from a pretty good distance away.  Perhaps speed should be scaled by hunger stress level?  Anything worse than mild hunger stress consequences takes the speed down to inhuman.

[Mal_Luck]

That sounds about right for speed, and anything greater causes them to fall to normal speed (How the wingless angels were moving before they regrew their wings).

Still, were one to look on them with the Sight... it could prove fatal.

[DesertCoyote]

About looking at them with their sight;

I think lethality would depend on how the involuntary change worked.

If looking at the angel banished the entity to the Nevernever to which it returned once no one was looking at the statue, then I think looking at the statue with one's sight would show only an angel statue.  Precedence for this theory covered under mention of the were-raven from Your Story and the character's intelligence being stored in the Nevernever.

If the angel's "spirit" stayed in the statue while it was being observed, then yeah, anyone looking at it with their sight would be pretty boned since their head would now contain the image of an angel.

[Ihadris]

Very glad to see this up here- the Weeping Angels are one of my favourite concepts from DW.

Just as a question though how would you mechanically simulate that clip from youtube, specifically the PC's looking at the angel? More to the point, maintaining line of sight such as when Larry is alone in the room?

 In the latter case, perhaps a series of dicipline rolls against some sort of difficulty my get across some of the drama. But other then that I'm really not sure.

[lordoracle]

I am fairly sure that my players would KILL me for these. Could be fun, though.

I don't know how many Doctor Who fans there are around here, but this is a port of my favorite villains from that show, the weeping angels.


Weeping Angel
[+2] Human Form* with involuntary change 
--Trigger: Any character or creature is looking at Weeping Angel, reverts when no one is looking
[-2] Inhuman Strength
[-2] Inhuman Speed
[-1] Mana Static
[+1] Feeding Dependancy
--Must use "Potential Energy" Consumption (see below) to avoid hunger stress unless a source of radiation is available.  Consequences must involve losing supernatural powers.

[-2] Beast Change (Angel Statue)
[-8] Physical Immunity (tied to beast form)
--Catch: Cannot make any action while immunity is active, any action in progress is interupted.


Custom Supernatural Powers

[-3] Corrupt Soulgaze
Any character that looks into a Weeping Angel's eyes long enough for a soulgaze must roll their conviction score against the Weeping Angel's deception score.  If that character fails to win, he or she suffers from hallucinations that get increasingly worse as time progresses, eventually resulting in the affected character becoming a Weeping Angel in reality.

The effects of the hallucinations include, but are not limited to:
Weeping Dust- reduces awareness by 1
Body parts made from stone- reduces athletics by 1 per body part

Characters affected by hallucinations may choose to keep their eyes closed to negate the effects as long as their eyes are kept shut.  Normal penalties for taking action in total darkness apply, any abilites that allow characters to see in the dark do not affect this state.

To permanently clear the hallucinations, the angel that triggered the corrupt soulgaze must be destroyed, or the be cured by ritual means (spiritual or arcane)

[-4] Image of an Angel
Any depiction, be it digital, analog, or simple drawing, of the Weeping Angel gains sentience and will attempt to become a full Weeping Angel.  The process will begin with the image moving while no one is looking at it and progress to the image being projected anywhere in the zone that contains the image.  Shortly after, the image gains solid form.  The change will be complete when the projected image kills another sentient being.

This change can be stopped if the original image can be disrupted.  For example, if the image is displayed on a Television, unplugging it would disrupt the image and stop the change.  Careful note:  The image will attempt to resist disruption.  Simply pressing the power button on the Television will not work, as the angel will turn it back on before it fades away.  The ability to resist disruption is at the discretion of the GM.

[-2] Perfectly Silent
Weeping Angels make no noise when they move.

[-4] "Potential Energy" Consumption
If a weeping angel connects with a melee attack, the weeping angel can choose to feed.  If the angel chooses to do so, the target of the attack is sent into the past where they will "live to death" and the weeping angel gains energy from the "unlived life"


Total:  -25 refresh




What do you guys think?

Source Material:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH0R01gP3m0

[DesertCoyote]

I am fairly sure that my players would KILL me for these. Could be fun, though.

I've already dropped them on mine once.  My players ended up getting sent back in time and harassed by the wardens as suspected 6th law breakers, but did manage to get back to their own time with some help from a not-quite-sympathetic fae that could mess with the local rate of time at a certain spot in the Nevernever.

Of course, the Angels are still out there.