Torchwood in Golarion
Apr. 23rd, 2023 03:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethHave been thinking about Owen's story if he got True Resurrected in Pathfinder's setting Golarion.
As a former undead he would get some very judgemental people as soon as they knew. Wouldnt matter he hadnt done it on purpose, too many people are in too much danger from undead.
If the settlement where he got brought back only had one 9th level divine caster and she was a priestess of Pharasma, immediately you land in the issues. Pharasmins are fine with the dead but are tasked with stopping the undead. Summoning undead is actual anathema to Pharasmins. They have all the death themed powers but only Speak With Dead, not Animate etc. They would be very anti undead. But they'd be confident if Pharasma let him come back at all that was her will.
But. Pathfinder has a class of casters called Oracles. They're a bit like Sorcerers, spontaneous, but for divine magic. And they don't ask for their powers. ... their players do, obviously, but the characters just kind of wake up Chosen.
So say Owen comes back, a real living boy... with at least some of the powers he demonstrated in undeath. The audios have him speaking to the dead, and hearing them. The tv has him wrestling incorporeal undead. Say he comes back to life, but as a Haunted Oracle of Bones.
It isn't that he set out on a long elaborate journey to learn to break the rules of life and death... unless you count becoming a doctor. It's just that he's been through too much, and the magic stuck.
So now he has the power set of an u dead necromancer, and the mind set of... Owen Harper. Angry man listening to the angry dead, but, not one of them yet.
The church of Pharasma would not, could not, approve.
But the other churches would have other ideas.
And they'd set out to court him.
Lisa Hallett would have the exact same public opinion problem, since they wouldnt understand cyberman but could map it to grave knight. She died, got shoved into armour that animated her, died again, got brought back alive this time. Comprehensible story in Pathfinder terms.
But she knows what she did.
So say she discovers Sarenrae, goddess of healing, honesty and redemption.
Also killing things with fire if they're past all hope of redemption, at least according to the more militant Lawful Good wing of a Neutral Good religion. The paladins code is pretty clear on killing what cant be redeemed, and I kind of want to make her a paladin, because armour.
Owen walks into the Pathfinder Lodge, finds Lisa in full armour? That's going to be a conversation only after it's a fight.
Which is always fun.
Deity fights are what gets my attention in rpg worlds because you have all these competing and possibly incompatible versions of good running around. It's more fun when everyone's doing their best.
Owen's new Bones best would be... messy, but effective. If he watches people die and reaches out to them willing them to get up again and then realises what he's done... but they win the fight in the between times? Lovely mess. He'd hate doing to others what was done to him, but he'd keep hitting situations where another fighter would be really, really handy.
I'm going with Haunted because it's an evocative word, but there's also an oracle's curse of becoming ever closer to being undead yourself. So if the more he uses his power the closer he gets to going back to the state he hated, what would still be worth doing that?
I got sidetracked trying to find effective comms in Golarion. It's weird how thoroughly unimaginable it gets to have people cut off once they're out of sight. There's a tech version but recharging it is not simples and I dont have the tech rule book anyway. I do however feel strongly that Ianto would head for the crashed spaceship as soon as he heard about it. Crashed spaceships are his job, even very very old ones.
I think from magic items what I want is the Society Ring. Commsets and Communique rings bith do paired devices, which is some use but not quite the thing. Society Rings communicate with all other matching Society Rings within range. Problem being the range is 150 feet, where the Communique Rings go up to a mile.
https://www.aonprd.com/MagicRingsDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Communique%20Rings
https://www.aonprd.com/MagicRingsDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Society%20Ring
Magic items arent half pricey though. 8,000gp might be attainable but a scroll of true resurrection costs 28,825gp so you'd be figuring out if a short range phone is worth 1/3 of a person's life.
Tangent though.
Everyone would have a different list of the dead to want to bring back.
For the purposes of plot bunnies there's no chance of accidentally making them alive in their very distant grave, they just get brought into this new world.
Assuming Toshiko is alive already, Owen would want back Katie Russell, Diane Holmes, Megan Tegg, maybe Suzie Costello even. Maybe Amira Hussein. But the further down the list you get, and the further into audios and books obvs, the more you're getting to people who have already been messed around in the whole life and death and after sense. People who were possessed, or copied, or used after their deaths somehow. He wouldn't want to do that to them.
Also Golarion has very different looking assumptions about what's on the other side of death. The things we hear in Torchwood's Cardiff are a lot darker. But Carsiff also had the Devourer on the other side of the Rift, named as Abaddon. If Cardiff is on the Abaddon related equivalent of a Hellmouth, they might not be getting the standard death experience. They might be getting stolen instead.
Like Katie and Amira had their lives stolen, Megan had her body and mind stolen even before she died. Suzie more or less did the stealing though.
So the question is why do these stories need continuing, aside from, the ending was really miserable?
Well it's not aside from. We dont want it to end there if it doesnt have to. Torchwood had a lot of injury but not a whole lot of healing.
Owen could, if he was lucky, if he got a kinder chance than Torchwood ever gave him, bring the healing.
Pharasma could be cool with giving him the chance. Weirdly with Pharasma being the goddess of birth as well as death Owen has some stories that would resonate with her clerics, even while being undead.
Pharasmins are judgey about undead because of what they are, not what they choose.
But in the Kingmaker game an undead chooses well enough Pharasma makes her alive again after the goddess of undeath destroys her, and Pharasma makes her one of her own Inquisitors , so it's possible there's extra layers there. Clerics choose to put undead to death, but Pharasma has more options, and while she's a goddess of Fate, she waits to judge until you've made the choices, because the choices matter.
So Owen arriving with no preconceptions about Pharasma could show off another side of the Golarion story as well. Even for people who got tangled with undeath.
There's a Ring of the Faithful Dead that makes it so you don't rise as undead even if killed in a way that would usually lead to that. It stops working as soon as someone removes the ring. But it's possible to get one, or get one tattooed even.
So would Owen do that?
Thing is, his character arc, his audios, they're all about accepting his undeath. Because it's better than death. Which is a good arc to have, due to the way it only maps to disability, and he's saying alive is better even if he lost all those sensual pleasures. But he also says undeath is better than killing others to feel alive. Strong story.
So if he wakes up somewhere where undeath is a routine hazard, would he ... reject it? Risk it? What?
Owen and Lisa had a similar choice, if Lisa was actual Lisa at the time. I know she said "we can upgrade together" but I've also felt that was wimping out on a darker story. If she just made a very human choice to grab hold of life while life was there for the grabbing, even at the cost of one whole other person...
... then obviously as a person capable of becoming a Paladin she would have done everything in her power to get that girl her life back. But to true res someone with no body available you need identifying information, like at least her true name. Lisa probably wouldn't have that.
Ianto would.
Huh. Reckon he'd have Tanizaki on his list as well.
And everyone at Torchwood One. Fic has a tendency to make Owen and Toshiko Torchwood family and not make up anyone else. Big Finish audios have a bunch of Torchwood One characters available. Probably not more than 26 yet so who knows, maybe they survived, but...
You can make story mileage of compare contrasting Owen and Lisa. But it depends what their 'deaths' were like for them. If the worst part for Lisa was a loss of autonomy and self control, then they overlap in different places, more like... actually all the women in Owen's list up there. For Owen being remote controlled was one really bad day, in Another Life. For Megan it was The End. Also she did worse gross stuff.
Really get any set of them together and it's a story about redemption, forgiveness, how to move on from the worst day of your life.
Torchwood doesnt have a lot of that. Like Sleeper Beth, they tend to end up dead instead. Except Jack.
I do want to take up some of the threads of this story but I'm not sure making an xover is really value added.
... also not so many people have read all the books and the audios.
... and not seen Miracle Day, but to be fair, neither has Dead!Ianto.
ANYway.
Bouncing plot bunnies around is fun because you pull up themes and hold compare contrasts up to each other, but the chances of me putting words in a row properly are... slim.
And since this is the hardest setup to make Jack/Ianto, despite me thinking about Jack/Ianto pretty much all the time, it's probably not the most fun place to start.
ah well. onwards...
As a former undead he would get some very judgemental people as soon as they knew. Wouldnt matter he hadnt done it on purpose, too many people are in too much danger from undead.
If the settlement where he got brought back only had one 9th level divine caster and she was a priestess of Pharasma, immediately you land in the issues. Pharasmins are fine with the dead but are tasked with stopping the undead. Summoning undead is actual anathema to Pharasmins. They have all the death themed powers but only Speak With Dead, not Animate etc. They would be very anti undead. But they'd be confident if Pharasma let him come back at all that was her will.
But. Pathfinder has a class of casters called Oracles. They're a bit like Sorcerers, spontaneous, but for divine magic. And they don't ask for their powers. ... their players do, obviously, but the characters just kind of wake up Chosen.
So say Owen comes back, a real living boy... with at least some of the powers he demonstrated in undeath. The audios have him speaking to the dead, and hearing them. The tv has him wrestling incorporeal undead. Say he comes back to life, but as a Haunted Oracle of Bones.
It isn't that he set out on a long elaborate journey to learn to break the rules of life and death... unless you count becoming a doctor. It's just that he's been through too much, and the magic stuck.
So now he has the power set of an u dead necromancer, and the mind set of... Owen Harper. Angry man listening to the angry dead, but, not one of them yet.
The church of Pharasma would not, could not, approve.
But the other churches would have other ideas.
And they'd set out to court him.
Lisa Hallett would have the exact same public opinion problem, since they wouldnt understand cyberman but could map it to grave knight. She died, got shoved into armour that animated her, died again, got brought back alive this time. Comprehensible story in Pathfinder terms.
But she knows what she did.
So say she discovers Sarenrae, goddess of healing, honesty and redemption.
Also killing things with fire if they're past all hope of redemption, at least according to the more militant Lawful Good wing of a Neutral Good religion. The paladins code is pretty clear on killing what cant be redeemed, and I kind of want to make her a paladin, because armour.
Owen walks into the Pathfinder Lodge, finds Lisa in full armour? That's going to be a conversation only after it's a fight.
Which is always fun.
Deity fights are what gets my attention in rpg worlds because you have all these competing and possibly incompatible versions of good running around. It's more fun when everyone's doing their best.
Owen's new Bones best would be... messy, but effective. If he watches people die and reaches out to them willing them to get up again and then realises what he's done... but they win the fight in the between times? Lovely mess. He'd hate doing to others what was done to him, but he'd keep hitting situations where another fighter would be really, really handy.
I'm going with Haunted because it's an evocative word, but there's also an oracle's curse of becoming ever closer to being undead yourself. So if the more he uses his power the closer he gets to going back to the state he hated, what would still be worth doing that?
I got sidetracked trying to find effective comms in Golarion. It's weird how thoroughly unimaginable it gets to have people cut off once they're out of sight. There's a tech version but recharging it is not simples and I dont have the tech rule book anyway. I do however feel strongly that Ianto would head for the crashed spaceship as soon as he heard about it. Crashed spaceships are his job, even very very old ones.
I think from magic items what I want is the Society Ring. Commsets and Communique rings bith do paired devices, which is some use but not quite the thing. Society Rings communicate with all other matching Society Rings within range. Problem being the range is 150 feet, where the Communique Rings go up to a mile.
https://www.aonprd.com/MagicRingsDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Communique%20Rings
https://www.aonprd.com/MagicRingsDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Society%20Ring
Magic items arent half pricey though. 8,000gp might be attainable but a scroll of true resurrection costs 28,825gp so you'd be figuring out if a short range phone is worth 1/3 of a person's life.
Tangent though.
Everyone would have a different list of the dead to want to bring back.
For the purposes of plot bunnies there's no chance of accidentally making them alive in their very distant grave, they just get brought into this new world.
Assuming Toshiko is alive already, Owen would want back Katie Russell, Diane Holmes, Megan Tegg, maybe Suzie Costello even. Maybe Amira Hussein. But the further down the list you get, and the further into audios and books obvs, the more you're getting to people who have already been messed around in the whole life and death and after sense. People who were possessed, or copied, or used after their deaths somehow. He wouldn't want to do that to them.
Also Golarion has very different looking assumptions about what's on the other side of death. The things we hear in Torchwood's Cardiff are a lot darker. But Carsiff also had the Devourer on the other side of the Rift, named as Abaddon. If Cardiff is on the Abaddon related equivalent of a Hellmouth, they might not be getting the standard death experience. They might be getting stolen instead.
Like Katie and Amira had their lives stolen, Megan had her body and mind stolen even before she died. Suzie more or less did the stealing though.
So the question is why do these stories need continuing, aside from, the ending was really miserable?
Well it's not aside from. We dont want it to end there if it doesnt have to. Torchwood had a lot of injury but not a whole lot of healing.
Owen could, if he was lucky, if he got a kinder chance than Torchwood ever gave him, bring the healing.
Pharasma could be cool with giving him the chance. Weirdly with Pharasma being the goddess of birth as well as death Owen has some stories that would resonate with her clerics, even while being undead.
Pharasmins are judgey about undead because of what they are, not what they choose.
But in the Kingmaker game an undead chooses well enough Pharasma makes her alive again after the goddess of undeath destroys her, and Pharasma makes her one of her own Inquisitors , so it's possible there's extra layers there. Clerics choose to put undead to death, but Pharasma has more options, and while she's a goddess of Fate, she waits to judge until you've made the choices, because the choices matter.
So Owen arriving with no preconceptions about Pharasma could show off another side of the Golarion story as well. Even for people who got tangled with undeath.
There's a Ring of the Faithful Dead that makes it so you don't rise as undead even if killed in a way that would usually lead to that. It stops working as soon as someone removes the ring. But it's possible to get one, or get one tattooed even.
So would Owen do that?
Thing is, his character arc, his audios, they're all about accepting his undeath. Because it's better than death. Which is a good arc to have, due to the way it only maps to disability, and he's saying alive is better even if he lost all those sensual pleasures. But he also says undeath is better than killing others to feel alive. Strong story.
So if he wakes up somewhere where undeath is a routine hazard, would he ... reject it? Risk it? What?
Owen and Lisa had a similar choice, if Lisa was actual Lisa at the time. I know she said "we can upgrade together" but I've also felt that was wimping out on a darker story. If she just made a very human choice to grab hold of life while life was there for the grabbing, even at the cost of one whole other person...
... then obviously as a person capable of becoming a Paladin she would have done everything in her power to get that girl her life back. But to true res someone with no body available you need identifying information, like at least her true name. Lisa probably wouldn't have that.
Ianto would.
Huh. Reckon he'd have Tanizaki on his list as well.
And everyone at Torchwood One. Fic has a tendency to make Owen and Toshiko Torchwood family and not make up anyone else. Big Finish audios have a bunch of Torchwood One characters available. Probably not more than 26 yet so who knows, maybe they survived, but...
You can make story mileage of compare contrasting Owen and Lisa. But it depends what their 'deaths' were like for them. If the worst part for Lisa was a loss of autonomy and self control, then they overlap in different places, more like... actually all the women in Owen's list up there. For Owen being remote controlled was one really bad day, in Another Life. For Megan it was The End. Also she did worse gross stuff.
Really get any set of them together and it's a story about redemption, forgiveness, how to move on from the worst day of your life.
Torchwood doesnt have a lot of that. Like Sleeper Beth, they tend to end up dead instead. Except Jack.
I do want to take up some of the threads of this story but I'm not sure making an xover is really value added.
... also not so many people have read all the books and the audios.
... and not seen Miracle Day, but to be fair, neither has Dead!Ianto.
ANYway.
Bouncing plot bunnies around is fun because you pull up themes and hold compare contrasts up to each other, but the chances of me putting words in a row properly are... slim.
And since this is the hardest setup to make Jack/Ianto, despite me thinking about Jack/Ianto pretty much all the time, it's probably not the most fun place to start.
ah well. onwards...