Arkham Horror: Friendship Costs 2 Sanity

[bhu]

No thats plenty.

[bhu]

Just saw a massive list of supporting characters.  How would  you feel about more investigators 

[Braininthejar]

I'd rather get the minimum of pieces needed to get the game running and then add to it.

Also, I have just had an epiphany. You get some kind of trophy for sealing a portal, yes?
You need to seal 6 to save the world, and there are 6 Elements of Harmony. How about we have them be the tokens? This way, if the group recovers all six, they win the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu8RLNT_Kvg

(Discord got sucker-punched there bacause he had use personality-altering curses on the girls and thought the elements would not work for them)

[bhu]

There's 16 gate tokens though.  We'd want multiples of each one.

[bhu]

Spike and the Apple Family are next up.  Would you like any of the following as Allies )or Blights if they're bad guys):

Mulia Mild
Gustave La Grand
Matilda
Cranky Doodle Donkey
Thunderlane
Lotus Blossom and Aloe
Royal Guards
Nurse Redheart
Mrs. Peachbottom
Mrs. Harshwinny
Mayor Mare
Joe
Lightning Dust
Jet Set and Upper Crust
Filthy Rich
Flitter
Daring Do
CLoudchaser
Cheerilee
Spitfire
Soarin'
Hoity Toity
Photo Finish
Sapphire Shores
Fancy Pants
Mr. and Mrs. Cake
School age ponies
royalty

[Braininthejar]

Heh, I don't think Toby was ever named in the series - he was just the fruit bat leading the swarm.

Also, did you purposefully chose a picture of Philomela where she is one day away from reincarnating?

Do we have any actual aquatic environments?

Now, for the list, most of these guys are rather obscure.

* Mulia and Gustave are a pair of chefs - they take part in a cooking competition but are inconsequential to the plot otherwise.
* Matilda is a local donkey. Might be an ally if we need another one, but we don't really know anything about her.
* Cranky was a donkey that refused to befriend Pinky and suffered from her repeated efforts. Matilda turns out to be his lost love.
* Thunderlane is a pegasus - joined Dash in her efforts to join the Wonderbolts. He once went down with feather flu and managed to get half the weather team sick on the eve of an important event.
*Lotus and Aloe are the twins working at the spa
* Royal Guards - they are the kind of guards whose job is to stay motionless for long periods. They don't appear in town unless the princess does.
*Nurse Redheart is one of the hospital staff obviously
* Mrs Harshwhinny and Mrs Peachbottom never even apppear in Ponyvile (one arrives as an inspector to judge if the Crystal Empire is qualified to host the next Equestrian Games and the other is a random tourist who gets mistaken for her)
* Mayor Mare might be an ally. She handles the management of the town, but usually needs Twilight's OCD organisation skills for more complex tasks
* Joe doesn't live in Ponyvile - he has a donut shop in Canterlot
* Lightning Dust might be a blight. - she is like Dash, but with even bigger ego and less empathy - so when they both joined the Wonderbolts academy, she kept putting other cadets in danger with her stunts.
* Jet Set and Upper Crust are a pair of snobs from Canterlot. The only thing they do is look down on others (and rile Rarity up in the process)
* Filthy Rich is a local wealthy businessman, but actually an ok guy. It's his daughter that causes problems
* Flitter and Cloudchaser are background pegasi from the weather team
* Cheerlee is the school teacher. She is single, so last valentines equivalent the CMC tried to set her up with Big Macintosh, with hilarious results.
* Spitfire and Soarin are Wonderbolts, exactly the two you used for a picture
* Hoity Toity is a Karl Lagerfeld expy who visited Rarity's fashion show
* Photo Finish is a fashion photographer who roped Fluttershy into becoming a model
* Saphire Shores is a pop star as far as I remember. She made an order for a dress that exhausted Rarity's supply of gemstones.
* Mr and Mrs Cake are the owner of Sugarcube Corner - Pinkie works for them.
* Fancy Pants is a rich unicorn from Canterlot, possibly an ally. He is charming and friendly despite his position.
* Royalty consists of the three princesses, and I guess they are too powerful to be allies, even Cadence.
* Daring Do is a fictional character from adventure books Dash reads  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3gaaBCx9Dw

(my own suggestions for NPC will be in the next post. Wait a couple minutes.)

[Braininthejar]

* Granny Smith - I guess she could add some lore, though I can't imagine someone dragging her to fight monsters.
* Big Macintosh - being the strongest stallion in town ( a serious problem whenever he gets mind controlled) and very level-headed, he could probably make a good ally.
* Shining Armour - Twilight's big brother, the captain of the royal guard. His special talent is barrier spells.
* Lyra and Bon Bon - a pair of regular background ponies. There is a running gag with Lyra sitting in the background in human-like poses, which causes many fanfics to depict her as a conspiracy theorist believing that humans exist. (there are none in this version of MLP)
* Carrot Top - a fellow farmpony
* Sepia Toc - a background pony who doesn't amount to much... but he just happens to have an hourglass cutie mark and look a bit like one of the incarnations of Dr Who. A lot of fanfics depict him as the latest incarnation of the doctor, saving Equestria with Derpy as his companion (there have even been some shoutouts to it in the official comic - for this reason most fans refer to him as Dr Hooves)


Possible blights
* Diamond Tiara a schoolfilly - she is Filthy's Rich' daughter and horribly spoiled. She is usually accompanied by her friend Silver Spoon and the two are a nemesis of the CMC, bullies of the psychological kind.
* Flim and Flam - a duo of unicorn artificers who arrive during the cider season and try to run the Apple family out of business with their technomagic industrial juicer.
* Gilda - a griffon, Dash' old pal from flight school. Sadly, a jerk to others, especially non-fliers
* Pound and Pumpkin Cake - the toddler kids of Mr and Mrs Cake. Not villains as such, but between the flight of one and magical surges of the other, they are a real handful to babysit.
* Derpy - the pegasus mascot of the fans - very friendly but not very bright and destructively clumsy.
* Snips and Snails - two unicorn kids, not evil but prone to causing problems through stupidity
* Trixie - a stage magician with an overblown ego ( its 4 AM, I will give her more description tomorow)

[bhu]

If we don't have an aquatic locale I'll change Gummy

yuppers on philomena, peek at her abilities

Edit: I've got enough room for 3 more allies, I'm thinking Granny, Big Mcintosh and shining armor.  Others will be optional as PC's or Blights.

[Braininthejar]

Later on, some of them could become investigators, but I think we have enough unused ponies to fill the gap in that case.

What do you need next? (also, there is a typo in Zecora's description)

[Braininthejar]

Continuing the description of Trixie - she appeared twice, first as a stage magician who showed off by using magic to humiliate ponies and described herself as a powerful wizard - until Snips and Snails lured an actual monster to town for her to fight.

The second time, she returned to challenge Twilight to a wizard duel for "humilitating her". She had somehow managed to get her hooves on a powerful amulet, which made her very powerful at the cost of making her evil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SQDab2P77g

At least this time she apologised and thanked them when they finally lifted the curse.


Which brings me to another point: parasprites



Should they be a monster? a blight? an event card?

Parasprites are a swarm of small, voracious creatures, which multiply rapidly when well fed. They are herbivorous and harmless by themselves When in Everfree, they are kept in check by local predators, and so aren't a problem at all. But once out, they start multiplying at an exponential rate, devastating all plant life in their wake (and in the episode, they switched to eating inanimate objects when Twilight tried to magically compell them against eating all the food) . Their weakness is music - they are compelled to follow and this can be used to gather them up and send them back to the forest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVt7ERxkG6k

[bhu]

herald maybe?

[bhu]

Changed my mind a little.  This will make sense eventually, has faiths in kitteh.  Blights coming up next.

[Braininthejar]

Granny Smith has professor roce description in her card. What picture should we use for a retainer card?

[bhu]

Retainers are a game piece, they come with Arkham.

[Braininthejar]

But they have a very unpony picture.

Perhaps something like this:

[bhu]

How powerful are Garble, Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra?

[radmelon]

Garble is an adolescent dragon who's bit of a jock, really not a massive threat.

Queen Chrysalis is most dangerous for her trickery, though she (when supercharged with love) defeats Celestia in single combat. She also has a large army of shapeshifting mooks at her command.

King Sombra is a high-to-epic level spellcaster specialized in dark magic, Evil with a capital E. Slain millenia ago, his shade survived sealed in the frozen north. When his empire returned from its temporal lock, the shade wasted no time in corrupting it and the landscape into a crystalline realm of hatred and fear. Definitely BBEG material.

[bhu]

So 2 Ancient Ones and a Blight??

[Braininthejar]

Will make a villain list as soon as I'm back from office

For now: Garble is a jerk towards Spike, who is a dragon. For ponies, he is a physical threat, so I would make teenage dragons monsters.

What we do with Sombra, depends on how we treat the Crystal Empire - he might end up being a separate threat, like the Dunwich Horror.

[Braininthejar]

Ok, so

1 Power levels in Equestria are very inconsistent, because they are dependant on energy available rather than actual level - especially strong emotions. Both Chrysalis and Sombra started as "evil wizard BBEG" and boosted themselves to epic by absorbing extra energy (impersonating the soon-to-be- wed princess to feed on the groom's true love and deliberately traumatizing his subjects to feed on their fear and despair respectively)

The same rule usually allows the heroes to beat them, drawing upon emotional energy at crucial moments.

2 The sun and mun of this world are apparently smaller than ours and can (or even have to) be moved with magic. In ancient times the unicorns did it through group effort (circle magic?)

Nowadays the task is handled by the two alicorn Princesses, Celestia and Luna.

Most Old One candidates that appear in the story are their old enemies or otherwise related.

So, with that introduction out of the way, the big bads of the series:

Nightmare Moon: she is princess Luna turned evil - 1000 years ago she had an emotional breakdown over being ignored by her subjects when her sister was adored (a natural consequence of Luna handling the night sky and as such, being nocturnal)  Celestia used the Elements of Harmony to beat her, but they aren't meant to be used by a single pony, so the best she could do was seal her in the moon for a 1000 years. The first episode of the series revolves around Nightmare Moon returning and the girls setting out to find the Elements and purify her. (After getting restored to her old self, Luna resumes her duties as princess of the night)

Powers - illusion, teleportation shadowcraft-based shapeshifting. Luna can enter dreams (she uses the ability to defend her subjects from nightmares ) so it is logical that Nightmare Moon could too.

Discord: a spirit of chaos that used to rule Equestria before the royal sisters defeated him and turned him to stone. He is a jerk with reality warping powers, prone to polymorph or brainwash others for his amusement. Possibly the most powerful creature in the series so far, the only reason he was defeated was because he kept treating it like a game.

Powers - shapeshifting powerful enough to render him practically immune to damage, enough magic to move the sun with a snap of his fingers, mind control (usually of the personality-altering variety) and general chaos spreading for miles around him. The princesses could ward some objects against him and Twilight believed she could use some mind control to forcibly reform him, but on the whole, the elements of harmony are the only weapon that can defeat him consistently.

Chrysalis: the queen of changelings, a swarm of insectoid pony dopplegangers that feed on emotions. She attempted to conquer Equestria to feed her swarm by draining the ponies of their love. Power varies wildly depending on how much she can feed

Powers: magic, mostly illusion, charm/domination, and shapeshifting. Plus the whole swarm at her call.

Sombra: An evil unicorn wizard who conquered the Crystal Empire - a magical city in the far north with a unique quality of focusing emotions - which allowed him to grow very powerful at the cost of his slaves. Killed by the royal sisters, he became a cloud of sentient darkness, which was subsequently sealed. (also, before being defeated, he managed to cast an epic spell that made the city pop out of existence).

Recently the Crystal Empire returned to the world - but at the same time Sombra has broken out of the glacier, and though his snarling makes his sanity questionable at best, he does not lack raw power.

Powers: growing sharp, black crystals with his magic. Back in his days he was an expert in illusions and negative emotions manipulation.

Windigos: A herd of evil horse-spirits feeding on negative emotions and generating cold - according to ancient legends, they fed on the conflict between the three pony tribes and brought in an unnatural winter that almost wiped them out - until the ponies could forget their differences and fight them together, an alliance that resulted in founding of Equestria.

Powers: large area weather manipulation. As their power grows, living creature get put into stasis by freezing solid - starting with those that produce most hate. On the other hand, 'warm' emotions are windigoes' big weakness, melting their ice and even burning them alive if channeled through a sufficiently powerful wizard.