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Mystery of the Voivode / Ordo Dracul General Questions

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  • Mystery of the Voivode / Ordo Dracul General Questions

    I was going to put into Ask a Question, but I think I have enough here for its own topic...

    1) Main Question / - Mystery of the Voivode 5 changes the automatic humanity loss of the embrace into a breaking point (Arguably always a breaking point that just wasn't roll like diablerie). Can this breaking point have a Bane and thus no longer rolled for detachment? Is there anything official on this or something from the developers?

    I have a few other random questions...

    2) So the Nest Merits in Secrets of the Covenants... I get that Nest Guardian is a requirement for all of those merits. What does attunement with a Wyrm's Nest mean - is that just an Intelligence + Occult roll - I cannot find the mechanics in 2E for attunement, just use 1E rules? Can you just put one dot in Nest Guardian and suddenly you meet the requirements for all of them? Or does your number in Nest Guardian limit what you can put in the other merits (If it's written in the book, I missed it...)? Can you partially control a Wyrm's Nest with a lesser number of dots? Also, for Perilous Nest and Crucible - again, I understand what these do, but is some sort of ritual needed to perform them? Or just got the dots in Occult and spend the XP and it just works? I read the section about Nest Merits and then jumped to the end where it talks about the Curious Science of Wyrm's Nests - I feel like I am missing something here.

    3) Okay being Sworn... If 1E this was spelled out very specifically - how much of this transferred to 2E? What exactly is the Ordo Dracul Oath? Just don't share Coils and Scales? For example, in 1E being Sworn to the Mysteries meant you promised never to allow yourself to be blood bonded and being Sworn to the Axe meant you had to defend all Ordo Dracul. Also, what is the responsibility of a Sworn Ordo Dracul if they find out another Ordo Dracul is sharing Coils with outsiders? 1E says to 2nd level Blood Bond them, but in 2E the description in Covenant Status in the core book indicates they just get killed.

    Thanks in advance!!!

  • #2
    ① The books are unclear, and I don't believe the devs have said anything about it. I believe that you should be able to take a bane for it, since the only breaking point you can't bane away (by word of dev) is Diablerie.

    ② The mechanics sections in SotC suffered from a limited wordcount. The Wyrm's Nest merits don't have a lot of explanation to them, but I would personally run that your dots in Wyrm's Nest need to be greater than or equal to the dots in any individual other Nest merit, and the process of attunement is up to the Storyteller (and can be a full story in and of itself!). Honestly, nothing breaks if you take the 1e approach and say "Wyrm's Nests aren't merits because no Dragon ever truly controls one", remove Nest Guardian, and just require Nests to be figured out in play—that approach might work well for an all-Ordo chronicle.

    ③ 2e never specifies exactly what being Sworn means, so I use the 1e covenant book descriptions (i.e. you're sworn to the Axe, the Mysteries, or the Dying Light, and the oath is different for each one). Coils have become more…"proprietary"…in 2e, with Dragons having to choose one and only one primary Coil and often not sharing that Coil with others, which is why the penalties for leaking secrets have become more severe. But I would honestly leave that punishment up to the Dragons in an individual city: some chapters might keep the very existence of specific Coils a secret, so an Ascendant putting their hand in a fire would be punished for leaking information on their capabilities, while others might want everyone to know how powerful their Voivode is ("I heard he's made ten childer without losing himself to the Beast, and has ghouls with Elder-level powers!").


    • #3
      1. That's up to the ST. Personally I always allow diablerie and the embrace to potentially cause detachment even with the mysteries and thus not subject to being baned out.

      2. Attunement used to be performing a ritual or activity in order to tap into the resonance of a crucible. You do whatever the attunement ritual requires, roll the occult check and see if your ritual worked. You are supposed to do an attunement before you can tap into the benefits of a crucible or crysalis. Normally you were only a nest guardian to one site and the rating was an indication of the potency of that site. But you could, with the correct knowledge and permission, still access the resonance of other sites.

      3. Everyone ostensibly swore not to share the Coils with outsiders. The Greater Oaths pledge to preserve the covenant by serving in the respective oaths. Most of that didn't transfer over to second edition since it's okay to teach non members the mysteries, as per the Twilight Judge
      and Independant Study merits. Even the Unchained merit in 1st edition made teaching non Dragons a possibility. Scales also don't actually have any prerequisites. And individual mysteries function as their own little self governing cliques.

      I would say, by default, an Ordo Dracul member has no obligation to do anything about one Dragon teaching someone else the mysteries. There needs to already be an established prohibition on it in the setting, otherwise he could make themselves look like a dumbass meddling in someone else's teacher/student affairs, an intercovenant exchange of benefits that they are not privy to, or covenantwide braindrain attempt.