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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Ghsdkgb on November 09, 2011, 07:28:29 PM
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http://g.co/maps/tgc9u (http://g.co/maps/tgc9u)
No other streets in the town are circular like that. And the only thing on that block in the center is a big church.
There's GOTTA be something cool I can do with this. Ideas?
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Well, there are the obvious options:
1: it's the site at which some horrible demon / outsider / whatever has been imprisoned; the circle & church are all there to keep it in place.
2: its basement houses a wizard / cult / fae lord / dragon / whatever that uses the circle as the basis for major ritual workings; the church up above is just a distraction (and may or may not be aware of the existence of said basement).
3: It's actually an entirely mundane design... until some local faction realized that it could be used for rituals, and is now trying to take over the site.
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Aww, it would have been awesome if there was a labyrinth in the center.
Obviously it's containing something. I know this is my biases speaking, but the church seems a little... I don't know how to express what I'm trying to say without sounding very offensive. Reminds me of a lot of the baptist churches of my youth. A lot of people putting on a fanatic face. People suffering with a smile, not telling anyone for fear of being ostracized./bias
It could be really cool if someone built a church there to contain something, but now it's seeping out and contaminating the community.
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That's exactly where my first thought was, built to contain something.
I'd kind of like it to be a multi-purpose church, though. Keeps things out while it's keeping things in. And serves as a ritual base.
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Go the sort-of Demonreach route. It's a powerful fortress, with something dark beneath.
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I'm not sure why my mind immediately went sinister but two things came to mind for this idea for me.
1) To the public its purpose has been forgotten but it was built originally by an overly ambitious priest to summon and bind the Christian God. An incredible amount of residual power from the attempt still resides in the area causes unusual things to happen. While it's unlikely that the priest actually accomplished his goal the amount of power the leaks up into the surrounding area can't be coming from nothing.
2) It is a giant battery of sorts collecting emotional energy for some supernatural entity or purpose. Specifically it collects religious joy and fervor which is precisely the reason that, as you said, the congregants there seem embittered by they faith rather than uplifted.
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Hell Dimension Portal.
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i have no better or addtional ideas other than this.
Fake Red Herring.
keep the PC's thinking it is something really bad/good/powerful. Then at some point "prove" it isn't.
Then have it all be a ploy to cover up the bad/good. (Like as sson as the4 players decide to try to utilize the magical circle. ;D
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Just for reference.
http://www.cacoastalhome.com/blog/the-circles-santa-cruz-neighborhood.html
The RL history of the place.
Built in 1890, burnt down in 1935, rebuilt in 1959...
Maybe one can incorporate that in the game background.
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Well, there are two reasons to build a magic circle: To keep something out, or to keep something in.
People have jumped onto the keeping something in thing, so that's covered. What about keeping something out? What exactly is it that's horrible and powerful enough that you need a circle like that to keep it out?
Maybe the coins of a number of Fallen are kept hidden here, and that circle is made to keep other Fallen out. The coins may as well be on the moon.
Or perhaps the place is meant to be the ultimate sanctuary. It's like a nuclear bunker, but for the supernatural. Demons, vampires, ghosts, wizards in a bad mood, etc. Everything a circle can keep out stays out. So if shit ever really hits the fan, normal people can flee into the surprisingly well stocked shelter hidden in the basement.
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That is seriously cool road building
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Maybe the problem isnt the church, but what Surrounds the church. I'd say that all those houses around the church are people worshipping to the church or against the church
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What if years worth of road construction and repair has inadvertently disrupted or distorted the energies that those giant magic circles those roads create?
Also note that the running water in the water mains, sewage lines and storm drains beneath those circular streets might tend to keep supernatural creatures from crossing.
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What if the strength of the circle is based on street traffic around the road outside, and construction blocks that road off for a while?
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My eye is also drawn to Woodrow Ave, the large, straight street leading directly to the circle from the ocean, which nobody has mentioned yet. This says 'ley line' to me. It's interesting that it only going one way.
Here's one idea: if I trace the path of that street northward, it appears to land in the San Franscisco Bay. What if something EVIL was under the bay? Perhaps something recovering from wounds from an ancient fight with an archangel. And it *had* been feeding off of the energy of the ley line, but when this was discovered, the church/circle/Woodrow were built to stop the flow of energy and starve the beast out. But with nowhere to go, that energy is building to dangerous levels, and the church staff don't know what to do ... or perhaps are completely unaware of the growing problem.
Or perhaps the site is siphoning energy from the ley line to contain the creature, which fell below the site, rather than further north (as others have suggested).
I also noted that in the other direction, Woodrow appear to point directly at a small spur of land just south of the bay. Perhaps it was intended to direct energy to something there, instead?
By the way, you might have use of this page I found: http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/29/ (http://www.santacruzpl.org/history/articles/29/), which talks about the history of the site, which dates back to 1890. Apparently it was named after the then-recently assassinated president James Garfield, who was also a preacher in the Disciples of Christ, who founded the church. I imagine that something could be made of that, too: perhaps Garfield was assassinated in an attempt to prevent him from accomplishing something major in the struggle between Light and Dark?
I think you have something really interesting to build on here. Enjoy!
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Two interesting ideas relating to churches are in the movies Prince of Darkness, which takes place in a church in California which had been shutdown. The second movie the The Church, which I had thought was located in Germany, but on watching the movie again it appears that the church could be anywhere in Europe.
In Prince of Darkness there is an ancient artifact discovered in the basement with mysterious origins.
In The Church, the church was actually built on top of something to act as a containment vessel.
By the same token though, the church within the circular roadway is also ripe for being a giant (literally) red herring where the players are convinced it has some significance when it's just a coincidence...
-Cheers
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Im tinkering with a tweek on the dark hallow idea
An old priest one of the exorcising order get fed up that the denizens of the lower worlds keep getting called to his world. so twenty years later he is the proud papa of a new ritual. since nothing is ever truly created or destroyed his ritual summons binds and the changes or converts the demons essence both on this side and the other into a usable energy(not truly demonic anymore). I could see him using that circle to summon an ancient demon and some of the others he's banished before maybe drawing their essence through the church(the build up of faith being essential).
it worked on the small scale but by taking in more and more powerful demons his sanity's shot and he gets a power boost of considerable proportions, the church becomes deconsecrated releasing the (insert critter here) and the cast of players notice to fireworks
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What if the strength of the circle is based on street traffic around the road outside, and construction blocks that road off for a while?
There's something from the Exalted setting that has a really close relation with this idea: The Order Confirming Trade Pattern.
Without getting too much into the background (and thus way off topic), it's a pattern of trade networks designed to keep back the chaos that eats at the edge of the Creation. That chaos is filled with monsters and all sorts of nasties that want to rip the world apart, you see.
The many, many people that walk the roads of the Order Confirming Trade Pattern each grant a tiny amount of themselves to it. Although this doesn't take anything remotely measurable from the individuals, multiplied by all the people that travel the roadways it builds tons of power. All that power is concentrated into using the Pattern to hold back the tides of chaos.
This could be something really similar.
So each person traveling on one of the circle roads gives up a tiny bit of their life force. When I say tiny, I mean they need like 5 seconds of extra sleep to make it up, or something equally harmless. But with all the people that drive one of the roads every day, it builds a rather large charge.
The way that the area is constructed, each of the outer concentric rings channels the power it collects through one of the spokes and into the inner ring. Since there are several spokes, it doesn't really matter if one is blocked, because the excess power will just flow down another spoke.
But what indeed happens if the whole area is shut down? It's true that a magical battery that big could have built up a really epic charge. However, it's not infinite. It can be used up. And when it's gone, that's when it can be broken into/ out of.
That's actually a really interesting idea to run as sort of background noise. Come up with some innocuous Theme related to traffic and the roads, then mention during several stories the increasing amounts of construction. Play it up as flavour, and occasionally make it interfere with getting somewhere on time.
Then spring a major story involving whatever it is being kept in/out of the church. As soon as they understand the nature of the protection circle, the players will suddenly realize that you've been building up toward this for several stories.
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That's actually a really interesting idea to run as sort of background noise. Come up with some innocuous Theme related to traffic and the roads, then mention during several stories the increasing amounts of construction. Play it up as flavour, and occasionally make it interfere with getting somewhere on time.
Then spring a major story involving whatever it is being kept in/out of the church. As soon as they understand the nature of the protection circle, the players will suddenly realize that you've been building up toward this for several stories.
That's AWESOME!!
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That's AWESOME!!
Thank you. I'm pretty pleased with the idea myself. (: