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Deviant's Masquerade: Setting Lore Compendium
Q&A from Spacebattles (Page 8)

Q&A from Spacebattles (Page 8)

> rush99999, post: 79872628, member: 380992 Wrote:

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> Literally? What do you mean by that?

Game was another word for hunted animals, so the saying free game originally meant that an animal was free and legal to hunt. Which in this context and setting makes for a very dark joke.

> rush99999, post: 79881793, member: 380992 Wrote:

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> Would Slashers require less time to recover from non-lethal injuries than they would from lethal ones?

This is a weird context kind of thing for me, because injuries have different severity levels and those levels can change depending on the location of the injury, such as a broken finger vs a broken rib, leg, or skull with the same amount of break damage, you'd give each of those bones a different level of priority when compared to the rest.

Now playing off of that beyond a basic minimum healing factor, Malice Healing will prioritize whatever makes a person 'combat ready' but at the same time severity is an issue like I said, so every injury would heal at a different speed with injuries keeping someone down healing faster before tapering off as they become less crippling. Meaning that a bruise will heal slower than a crushed rib cage, but at the same time that rib cage will eventually become a massive bruise and slow down, at which point the first bruise will have finished healing before the rib cage bruises.

> Xevan, post: 79910146, member: 487791 Wrote:

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> Just realized something while searching for stories to read.

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> Would you or can you compare a Deviant with a xianxia/wuxia Cultivator?

Yeah, you could compare certain Deviancies with cultivation, with some cultivation styles actually being more physical Practitioner styles. But at the same time I feel like Cultivators outside of the DM setting wouldn't work well in it due to their obsessions with keeping sect secrets and their tendency to become arrogant, where as the cultivators of the DM setting -in the modern time and current world at least- are constantly comparing notes and pushing each other further, letting them make more progress faster. All of which is established thanks to the Arcane Association's foundation on pushing boundaries and open learning/education.

Honestly, if you took a Deviant/ DM Cultivator and threw them into a xianxia/wuxia setting their reaction would be pretty similar to Harold's opinion on everything in Dead Tired. Where everyone's arrogance and secrecy has made their whole system kind of inefficient and stupid, if with a few cool tricks here and there. (That the character in question totally isn't going to ste- ahem, 'borrow' the notes to the first chance they get.) From there it'd depend on the character's personality on whether they start publicly spreading 'sect secrets' or trying to return to a world with internet and people with bigger brains than biceps.

(... I may have gone on a tangent there.)

> rush99999, post: 80219377, member: 380992 Wrote:

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> Are any of the less well seen of these sub-Deviancies similar to the animatronics from Five Nights?

I'm not super familiar with the series lore, but going off of a quick plot search, I'd say the closest Deadman sub-type would be Possessors. Which are a more spectral Deadman whose primary power is possessing people or objects, and unlike other spectral Deadmen typically don't use too much Ectoplasm to exist as long as they're possessing someone or something, and additionally have the power to burn their Ectoplasm to enhance whatever their possessing.

(Note: Deadmen possessing people tend to be more sapient than those possessing objects, which are typically just their obsession and instinctively latch onto whoever uses them. But in both cases their lower Ectoplasm cost is derived from a longer-term sort of parasitism than just 'eating'.)

> Xevan, post: 80231638, member: 487791 Wrote:

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> Has anyone tried to imitate a power they saw on tv? Like a cartoon about superheroes or something?

More than one person has tried to develop their powers like something they've seen. In fact it's often a starting point for newly awakened Deviants to take inspiration from their media.

> Crazyone47, post: 80232427, member: 422818 Wrote:

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> How much was Asylum destroyed?

The organization itself is now illegal and disbanded by the government, but given how it was a nation wide organization a few bits and pieces slipped through the cracks.

> Crazyone47, post: 80232427, member: 422818 Wrote:

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> Any surviving agents for example and afterwards now that Deviants were acknowledged as people are there people demanding they be held accountable?

There were a number of surviving agents, and depending on their actions during Asylum's reign they were either imprisoned, blacklisted, or in the cases of the less openly awful/seen as innocent members were allowed to join Sanctuary. And there were riots with people demanding everyone be held accountable innocent or not, but that was roughly twenty years ago in setting so most people have calmed down now. Though being compared to Asylum is still seen as a massive insult by the more legit Sanctuary members, and the entirety of the Deviant community over the age of twenty hates Asylum on principal.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

> FunctionalityOfSystems, post: 80333925, member: 449427 Wrote:

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> Ooooh, this has lots of cool worldbuilding. Watched.

Glad you like it, have you checked out any of the other Deviant's Masquerade stories, or did you find this on its lonesome?

(Technically all my stories are in this setting even if only the anthology and lore threads really say it.)

> rush99999, post: 80395704, member: 380992 Wrote:

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> Are any of the other Deviancies available to animals?

All Deviancies are available to all species, though certain species are more likely to acquire certain Deviancy types, such as how Madness responds better to sapient and sentient creatures while Anima is more responsive to places with wild, lively, and long lived things.

Examples of non-human Deviants in setting are how Wolf and Pix can both use Anima, as well as the various non-human traveler races/species.

(You know -in reality and in setting- humanity has the bad habit of thinking its the only special one in the animal kingdom when so many other species prove they're special in their own right.)

> Xevan, post: 80396193, member: 487791 Wrote:

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> What happens if a Slasher kills a Deadman?

This is a weird one due to power interaction.

In both cases the other will count as feeding their power, (in fact they feed each other a lot from a certain standpoint) but the boost they offer each other is empty in the sense that it spikes their max capacity but greatly drops their actual energy and stability. Causing both to have a short lived mental breakdown as their powers readjust to the overabundance of Necro in their system, which manifests in Deadmen as a near feral spike in hunger and Slashers as hallucinations and voices in their heads, until their systems rebalance.

At this point the two Deviancies have developed a slight instinct to avoid targeting each other because of the harmful effects, though they can ignore it if they're determined enough. (Then again rules are very important to the psyche of both, so that may not be enough.)

I should also point out that the greater the power difference between 'feeder' and the 'fed on' will result in greater or lesser breakdowns, depending on which is stronger, with at a certain point being able to ignore any side effects as a standard hunger bout or a bad malice high for the strongest of each Deviancy.

> Xevan, post: 80404797, member: 487791 Wrote:

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> Okay, hope this won't sound weird, but what happens if Deviants have children?

Do you mean different Deviants having kids together, or are you asking if Deviancies are inheritable?

Either way, if Deviants have kids then there is a fair chance for their children to inherit any Deviant genes, with their children possibly awakening younger than the average. That said this isn't a guarantee as there are a number of factors that can prevent someone from awakening, for instance one of the reasons magic dies out so frequently is the fact that people possess a stigma towards it so people pick up this stigma as kids and subconsciously suppress their powers. (Which actually happens with a fair few deviancies.) And then some Deviancies die out if they have too many generations of the same Deviancy without any changes (the Madness trifecta is bad about this given Madness's love of change).

Now if two Deviants of different Deviancies (or even the same Deviancy) have a child then their child will still likely awaken early, but it's about a 75% chance of their children inheriting one of the parents powers with a 5% chance of diverging into one of the other Deviancies based on what energies made up their parent's powers. (The exception being pure Anima and pure Madness users, who again have that chance of going dormant for a generation.) This divergence is part of the reason why Slashers and Malcontent have a lower fertility rate with other Malice users because of the higher chance of diverging into a Necro child.

From there the only part we haven't really covered are Deadmen, who can't have children with non-Deadmen, but can make a child (Asexually) by expending a large (and I mean large) amount of Ectoplasm, though multiple people can contribute creating a child based on the physical/spiritual imprints of all Deadmen involved. The actual life cycles of these Neverborn children can vary, with some spending days in childhood to decades, and even some flipping and flopping between the two. (The Immortal Child of the Phantom Court is one of these Neverborn children and appears and acts like an eight year old despite being closer to her thirties.)

> rush99999, post: 80422614, member: 380992 Wrote:

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> Do all Deviancies have different names when animals get them or are Deadbeasts alone in that regard?

If the species is sentient/sapient no the names of all deviancies are the same, with maybe some localized slang names for the specific deviancies.

For non sentient/sapient creatures it's usually some variant of the Deviancy/energy type with Beast tacked on, (I.E. Deadbeast, Spell Beast, Psi-Beast, Mad Beast, and Mal Beast.) Though again the locals of different regions may refer to them as something different if they're common enough in that region.

> rush99999, post: 80468070, member: 380992 Wrote:

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> [USER=401659]Arthicern[/USER]

>

> What do Flufflepuffs look like?

Balls of fluffy fur -size varying from baseball to (very rarely) car- with four short stubby legs ending in paws that have these not quite thumb nubs that they use to grab things, and are frequently found wearing little hats and accessories that are bestowed upon them by the Arcane Nexus and denote Flufflepuff rank. They're fur is usually white, but they can have small patterns in other colors that are usually an indicator of what Affinities were most prominent in whatever magical environment they grew up in. Lastly despite living off of magic they have omnivorous teeth with a love for bacon and sweets.

> rush99999, post: 80472261, member: 380992 Wrote:

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> What would you say is their fluff to flesh ratio?

20-25% of their radius is fluff.

> rush99999, post: 80472261, member: 380992 Wrote:

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> Frequently? As in not always? Also, which hats and accessories denote which Flufflepuff rank?

They're not born with hats and typically they don't earn them until they're either contracted or do something the systems deems as a 'feat' of legend. (By Flufflepuff standards.) Additionally they don't represent an actual rank but Flufflepuffs want them, so the ones without hats/accessories follow the ones with them in hopes of getting their own. From there they choose their leader based on which hat/accessory they like the most at a given moment, and will usually switch allegiances two or three times an hour if there are enough leaders nearby. (Maintaining focus for five minutes is a Flufflepuff feat.)