I can heartily recommend Mark Chadbourn's Kingdom of the Serpent trilogy for this kind of thing - Jack of Ravens, The Burning Man, Destroyer of Worlds. The main setting for the series (and indeed the two trilogies that precede it) is modern world with the old gods, magic and faerie creatures returning. The Faerie are organised into 20 or so courts with different methods and ideologies. The second and third books in the series take the main characters away from England and America, to Mediterranean Europe, Egypt and China, meeting with the local version of the Faerie in each place (they're trying to recruit them for a War).

The first two trilogies (The Age of Misrule and The Dark Ages) are set in Britain and are mostly concerned with celtic mythology, and I'd recommend anyone who wants ideas for how to bring Celtic mythology into a modern day setting should read them.

I know the first two trilogies were released in the US over the last couple of years. I think that the Kingdom of the Serpent may have just been released, or is due for release shortly. They've been out in the UK for a while.

And what is wrong with that?

Absolutely nothing, as long as you don't count to 4....

Actually - re-reading the rules - the way summoning works is by effectively making the summoning circle into a Ward (it explicitly states this in the description of summoning) so having a level higher that Legendary is actually fairly much common practice (pages 272 and 273), but the important distiction is that it is a Ward not a Threshold.  The conviction etc of the ritual participants has no real effect on the strength of the circle as a container for a demon, the caster (with help from any participants who can do so) sets the level of that ward when they summon the demon into the circle (the guideline in the book is a minimum complexity of 10). On it's own a circle has no threshold but what the caster gives it (basically by working it as a Ward).

Edit: I'm not sure that it would work as a prayer circle though, like Belial666 (and here was I beginning to think we weren't going to see eye to eye on anything!  ) I'm extremely dubious about an automatic Threshold rating for such a purpose. In fact I think I'd go as far as to say that it just wouldn't work. You could physically block a demon with a member of the faithful using Holy Touch (compelling their High Concept to force them to disregard the idea of a physical attack), or you could reinforce an existing threshold using Bless this House - but that power specifies that you need something to work with in the first place. I think the best idea for a Prayer Circle type effect (if that's what the original poster intended) is to look at a spectacular use of Righteousness (Desperate Hour) using the circle as a powerful focal point. I Guess you could kind of invert the effect into the circle of Prayer to eliminate or drive off a powerful demon, but that would generally be a scenario finale type event rather than a day to day one.

That said, if you don't think it would make the Faithfull ludicrously overpowered (bearing in mind you'd effectively be giving them the equivalent of a thematic Ritual power at no extra cost to any abilities they already have) then there's nothing stopping you from house-ruling it.

I'd go with a +0 catch of "Self Inflicted Wounds" - basicly his toughness won't work against someone with the same 'essence' as himself - i.e. himself, or the wizard whose essence he's drinking.

Feeding dependancy would work quite well for this power if you need to reduce the refresh cost, but you'll need to work out exactly how much of this stuff is available, and what - if anything - could replace it in a pinch (for example might he discover that blood from a living person will clear the hunger track?).

You could model the take-over like Magical Sponsor Debt. Maybe allow him the opportunity to shrug off an additional mild consequence in combat per scene as the way in which that debt accrues (since normally it's done by allowing a free invocation of an aspect, and I'm not sure that's as clear cut an application in this case. (It also makes it a conscious thing on the players part to allow the wizard more control, rather than an automatic gain every time he uses his toughness).

Trading Physical for Mental Consequences kind of negates the central healing portion of the ability. It could work if you want to allow him to choose on a case by case basis whether to make that switch or to allow the Inhuman Recovery to work as written. I'd look towards making the more powerful use a point of Sponsor debt as well as the mental consequence. It would after all be upping the Fast Recovery aspect of the power up to the level of Mythic Recovery (as far as physical wounds go), and it seems fair to me that the price for that would be significant - but a conscious choice by the player.

Obviously it comes down to whether you think the player would abuse that version of the power.

This build CAN do epic rituals just fine. If you want an "Epic" ritual, just spend 8 hours applying aspects on yourself with minor rituals. That gives you 240 aspects. Tag them all into a single big ritual, add your effective lore and you have a ritual complexity of 485 for any type of ritual, 490 for disruption.

A very similar point was raised on a different thread. I didn't agree with it there either - but chose not to say anything. In my view, if you're performing a little ritual to give yourself a bonus to the effect in a larger ritual, all you're doing is performing a small ritual as part of the Preparation stage of casting, it's not a separate ritual at all. As a GM I'd view it as a grotesque abuse of the spirit of both the system and setting to allow a character to do what you're describing. It's the equivalent of saying "Well, I've been jogging on this treadmill for the last eight hours, but only in 2 minute bursts - one after another, why should I feel tired?". I'd concede to using small rituals to give you Aspects that could be tagged or invoked to give you a bonus on the control rolls during the casting of the big ritual, but they wouldn't add anything to the effect of the ritual at all.

You got an effective control of 6 for lethal thaumaturgies and a conviction of 3. You fail to control 3 shifts of power (and thus need to take 1 backlash to keep casting) every 81 exchanges. You could, potentially, cast a spell of 2187 shifts taking a total of 9 backlash

As far as I read it when you take backlash on Thaumaturgy, you take ALL of the shifts of power accumulated up to the point where you fail the control roll as Backlash, so in that example if you fail your control roll at the 2000 shift point, you'd be taking a 2000 stress hit in backlash to continue the spell.

PapaGruff raises a good point actually, it does seem that the Host has to give up the coin, not the Denarian give up the Host. It may be that once someone has picked up the coin the Denarian is bound to that person for better or worse until that person dies, or gives up the coin. Lash appears to be a somewhat special case, and cheats in that respect by allowing an external attack to destroy her rather than Harry. In that case, no amount of threat or torture will induce a Denarian to give up the host - and that makes sense, it's the mortal that has the free will to choose here(whether they realise or not).

I'd go with a twist on #2. You say this is one of three that have come to the city. He's obviously been sent in to attract the attention of the local Knight of the Cross so that the other two can see who's working with him, what his base of operations is, and where he keeps the sword.

Why shouldn't the sword be stolen as a bargaining chip to get the PCs to do the work of locating the artifact, and then work in an exchange? It's a temporary loss of a major character artifact rather than a permanent one, thrusts the character's doubt of his own worth direct to the fore-front (after all, if he was worthy of the sword, would god have let it be taken from him so easily?).

There's no reason for him to burn the church and kill the priest, maybe he takes the priest hostage and they release him later to deliver the offer of the sword for the artifact. (It's even more fun if they have no idea what the artifact is - like Harry didn't know what the Word of Kemmler was in Dead Beat). If you're feeling particularly evil you could one of the two unrevealed Denarians being still in their coin and have it slipped to the priest while he's a hostage, which gives you a nasty little twist at the end of the scenario. You could even try to set it up so that the final confrontation in the scenario gives the PCs a clear choice of saving the sword or saving the priest from being possessed. With the reward for making the hard choice to sacrifice the sword to save the priest being that while the sword is destroyed it doesn't pass from the PCs hands and can be reforged to their own design. Obviously if they choose the sword over the priest their doubts about their worth are ongoing and they've lost a friend and ally to the darkness. Either way the character doesn't actually lose the sword - but the players don't know that, and it's nicely dramatic.

Which is why you would want to add World Walker as a prereq before someone could use that item.

Richard

I'd respectfully disagree. World Walker gives a slight bonus to survival and lore checks concerning the Never Never, otherwise it just allows you to open rifts to and from, and sense where the membrane is thin enough to do so. While I don't agree that the teleporter enchanted item should work as described with any sort of predictable exit point, what your suggesting is the equivalent of saying that a character who possesses a wand that generates a fireball effect, should have to buy Channelling (Pyromancy) in order to use the wand. If the item already creates a given effect you shouldn't have to also buy a Power that creates mostly the same effect.