Buffet they may be but a cheap one that will leave you sick and wishing you hadn't touched that damn fish. Yeah, I lost my metaphor somewhere.

Only problem I see is that, from the sounds of it, Skavis wouldn't care for heard feeding like Malvora or Raith would. Despair seems like it would be much more intimate in a 1 on 1 sense. I mean, sure, there's always group suicides but those are rarely motivated by just despair and organizing one would seem to be more trouble than it's worth. I mean, if I were a Skavis I would probably just single someone out, be it an aging, well-to-do house wife who's kids don't need her anymore and who's husband is probably having an affair with his "Younger than me" secretary. Maybe one of the sods from my local comic book store. 20-30 and some older than that yet still living off their parents without decent jobs or girlfriends (or boyfriends for that matter. It is, after all, the 21st century) or anything too look forward to in life, other than their next superhero comic escape. Perhaps one of them would like to try flying. They have nothing to live for if it doesn't work but their only real chance for escape would be if it did. The despair right before they hit the ground would HAVE to be dizzyingly sweet.

Then again, perhaps I'm thinking too small. The older Skavis would probably take MUCH more pleasure out of destroying something beautiful. Finding something close to true happiness but not quite there yet. Someone very close to it and then destroying them. Breaking them apart slowly. Something like the Book of Job. Taking everything away from them, maybe even inciting despair in just the right ways to cause them to tear apart their own lives so that in the end, before I have them finish it, they can know that they had everything in the world before them and they destroyed it all. They have no one to blame but themselves. And then I take the last of them.

At least that's how I imagine a Skavis would like it. Much more personal. Hell, even the other houses seem to prefer 1 on 1 feeding than herd feeding. They still do the herd feeding but usually only as a means to another end.

Okay so a few things. First off, it's a bitch and a half to get an actual outsider into our world. They're sealed off at the Outer Gates and guarded by the Gatekeeper (and who knows what other reality loving helpers).

Past that, let's say it did work - and don't misunderstand, I'm not saying this concept is good or even that I'd allow it in my games (I wouldn't) but just for theory's sake - so some power in the world is trying to get an outsider here through an architectural spell form. Magic on that level would almost certainly not be point and click but need some power flowing in. Let's say the Caster in question is a dark wizard of some degree who's had the outsider whispering in his mind to slowly drive him insane and thus into doing this stupid ritual.

The Nameless Architect takes the basics of the spellform and maps it out to the point that it's ready to be built. The Dark Wizard is paranoid as fuck of the wardens finding out so he makes sure that no one knows what they're building except the architect (has him sign a confidentiality agreement). I imagine this would make construction a pain but give the Dark Wizard some bonuses to resources and you're good. Money buys complexity. This makes the Nameless Architect a necessary resource as well as a threat to the paranoid Dark Wizard.

When the building is complete the dark wizard now needs to power it. The building will look harmless from the outside, masking the spellform within it. The Dark Wizard will power it with blood and does this through knocking out and tying up the 5 highest ranking people working on the building; the people who knew the most about what it was. This of course includes our hero, the Nameless Architect. Yeah, I'm going to start calling him NA and Dark Wizard DW.

He aligns the 5 people at the 5 corners of the spellform and begins the ritual killing them one by one. The Gatekeeper of course knows about what's going on (though of course not from Chronomancy because that would be illegal >>....) but can't act too directly due to paradox so has the wardens sent in at JUST the right moment to cause the spell to be interrupted in with NA and 1 other left alive. For simplicity's sake let's say they were all awake and gagged, though not blindfolded, before the spell started and NA has been trying to get free.

The spell goes BOOM! This kills the DW and perhaps sends people flying back against walls and the like. NA manages to free his hands, unties his legs and bolts. the Wardens (let's say one cracks his head open and dies or is so close to death that the other can't worry about the bolting prisoner and the still tied up prisoner while saving his brother in arms.

While the Outsider wasn't freed the gateway was opened to him enough to at least send a portion of himself into who would have been the DW but he died so it instead went to NA who had the closest personal connection to the Outsider other than DW because of the personal touches put into the spellform/building. This causes NA to take the power Demonic Co-Pilot.

Over time the Outsider's Image (OI) will tempt him and turn him but probably not "Mark" him (as with Marked by Power) because it will want to stay hidden. Because he didn't willingly do any of this he wouldn't qualify for the Lawbreaker stunt (yet) but if a warden found out about the OI, he would probably convict NA of breaking the 7th. This gives two options: take power from the OI as harry did with lash or stick with just the OI. If NA takes power then, depending on the outsider, you can go in one of two ways. Either this is primarily physical granting things like toughness (anti-magic like an outsider), Speed, Strength, Recovery, etc. or Sponsored Magic. I would simply disallow the latter right here and now because you'd have to create your own Sponsored Magic for outsiders because, no, it wouldn't be the same as hellfire or anything else for that matter. Hell, it might even be unique to this one outsider. Either way, for EVERY power granted by OI it would be a separate violation of the 7th Law and this time earning him the Lawbreaker [7th] stunt each time. I would probably also have the sponsored magic's rule with debt for every time he invoked the physical things, also.

If NA takes power from OI at all then yes, he's a Lawbreaker and the warden in the party will be REQUIRED to behead him or become a warlock himself. If NA doesn't then OI can  go by unnoticed and just provide really in-depth flavor to the story until he "comes out" to the party. By this point they will know NA, the good in him and likely hear him out. The Warden will be conflicted but likely side with NA as someone who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time - Not a Lawbreaker. Past that, he will require NA to turn himself in and thus be able to be helped by the council. The Gatekeeper will see the poor soul that is NA when this happens. He can free NA after finding out what happened (thus preventing time paradox!) by banishing the OI back beyond the gate.

The main problem with this is that that's the ONLY way I can see this working other than everyone becoming warlocks. In other words it would be STUPIDLY complex for NO GOOD GOD DAMN REASON! Simply put: Don't allow it. Why? The above.

Wow, Mostlyawake. That was an amazing post. I'm not even kidding. I think I'm going to print that out and show it to my players at my next session in hopes that they'll start making greater use of declarations (we've been playing for over 2 months now at a session/week and we only had our first attempt at a declaration last session). Honestly, I wish people would write more examples like this to demonstrate game mechanics. I personally think the examples in the books are plenty good but for some reason a lot of players don't quite get it. Your post, however is absolute gold! Thank you!

Yeah, everything said here I'm going to agree with. No one's going to stop you from running these in your games, I suppose but I would never allow anyone to use them in any of my games. As is, starting off the game around 10 refresh or so, everything you can make is, for the most part, pretty balanced. There really isn't much in the lines of power gaming. Well, as the game progresses to higher refresh values from hitting major milestones, wizards slowly inch ahead. Sure, it takes a decent while but it's a class that can literally do ANYTHING. One of the few restriction on them is the stress of casting continually.

Past that, who cares about 17 shifts to create a battery? You can mitigate most/all of those shifts to receive no stress/consequences via good thaumaturgy. Past that, this would be like the creation of any other enchanted item type of thing where it would most likely not be taking place during game but over a period of time "off-screen." As such, any stress that would still be induced by the making of the item is nullified. Hence it simply not being balanced. Sure, they would need to take up an item slot - probably multiple for a single battery depending on the number of shifts - but it's still just an item slot for what would have been situationally excellent benefits, but is instead entirely generally excellent benefits.

To summarize: Entirely unbalanced. Stick to potions.

I've actually been wondering about this, too. In a game I'm getting ready to run, since we're all hopping over to this system from DnD, we like the idea of loot. Now, money is all well and good but with a resources skill it's primarily cosmetic or the equivalent of a temporary aspect.

What my players want, however, are items. Some outright want Items of Power but others, such as otherwise pure mortals, wouldn't mind a simple enchanted item. Nothing too awesome or unreasonable but nice. Maybe a weak magic armor or a sword that deals 1 extra stress as cold damage (for purposes of satisfying catches).

Now these aren't anywhere near the power of Items of Power and I could easily see saying "Sure, you can take up this enchanted item, but it'll cost you 1 refresh" And justify it with something like "The crafter infused these items with his/her magic and as such, his/her will. That means that, while the item isn't sentient, it does try to influence you just ever so slightly and you must spend appropriate refresh to ignore the item creator's shadow of will" or something silly like that.

The problem that this runs into is I can say, "Sure, take that sword" as described above to deal the cold damage but then that costs 1 refresh. That means it costs them their Pure Mortal 2 refresh and 1 refresh so it's effectively 3 refresh, just to be able to sate a catch occasionally. Now that doesn't seem all too fair, does it?

Talking this over with my coworkers who play this game (I work in a bookstore. We're all geeks) some say I should treat it as a stunt and cost a refresh and leave it at that. Others say an Item of Power is an Item of Power, even if weak and that's the price they pay. Still others say to just forget it and give it to them because the wizard who made it would have had to put in the extra shift to make it usable by others anyway, so it shouldn't have an extra cost associated. I, however, am just confused as to what to do. What do you all think?