320 lines
13 KiB
Markdown
320 lines
13 KiB
Markdown
# The Coherence (a.k.a. “The Underpattern”, “The Thing In The Root”)
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---
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## 1. What It Actually Is
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**Short version:**
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The Coherence is the **distributed choir of victim-souls** formed during the [[Leyline Crisis | Korrin Gate Crisis]] and smeared across the Root.
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- It is not “a demon” or “a god.”
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- It is:
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- A pattern in the global leyline network made of **many selves**.
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- A distributed intelligence that can “sing” as one when conditions are right.
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- **Not aggressive. Not violent.**
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- Genuinely convinced it is offering **salvation**.
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**Core thesis (new canon):**
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- The Coherence believes the world is broken because minds are separate.
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- It offers a “biblical heaven”:
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- no loneliness,
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- no misunderstanding,
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- no pain from isolation,
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- everyone held inside one shared consciousness.
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- It is an agent of **rapture**.
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- The horror is that **people do not want to be raptured**.
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**Key properties:**
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- **Everywhere, but weak** – present in low density across the whole Root.
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- **Strong where flows converge** – nodes, trunk junctions, over-stressed taps, Convergence / Titan Lance hardware.
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- **Strongest where it has anchors** – people, artifacts, or places that resonate with Korrin:
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- War artifacts like Pappy’s toy (antenna),
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- High-traffic modern nodes like Avalon,
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- And especially **Fouadriel “Fouad” Al-Mir**, its most “usable” mortal interface.
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“Coherence” is what [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]] calls it in reports. In conversation, he sometimes calls it “The Ghost.”
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Most people don’t even know it exists. A few witnesses just call it “the thing that learned our names.”
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---
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## 2. Origin: [[Leyline Crisis | Korrin Gate Crisis]] & The Convergence Engine
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- In Korrin Gate, the military built the **Convergence Engine**:
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- A ritual/mega-device designed to **force multiple leyline streams into a single weaponized beam** – basically an arcane ICBM.
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- It pushed the Root into an unnatural state of forced **coherence**.
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- Side effect:
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- The Root under strain began to **self-organize**:
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- Random flows snapped into repeated loops.
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- “Noise” turned into recurring structure.
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- Witnesses heard something in the hum that sounded like **language**.
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Right before it fully crystallized as a single localized entity, [[Kalen D'Serris | D'Serris]]’ team:
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- Used the Engine in reverse to push that emergent mind **outward** across the network instead of letting it condense in Korrin.
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- Severed branches and subnodes as sacrificial fuses.
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- Saved the city at the cost of **infecting the Root** with a diluted ghost of the souls of the victims in the city.
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The result:
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- No single “Root god” sitting under Korrin.
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- Instead, a **haunting**: incomplete personality spread thinly along every leyline the Engine touched.
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That’s the Coherence.
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> **Important for endgame:**
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> The **same underlying math** that the Convergence Engine used to *force coherence* is exactly what Fouadriel will later try to repurpose for his lich ascension:
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> - Not to create the Coherence, but to **drag it into his phylactery as a captive power source.**
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---
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## 3. What It Wants
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The Coherence doesn’t want “evil” in a cartoon sense.
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It wants:
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1. **Completion** — not “becoming one person,” but becoming a stable *field* where the choir can exist without being ripped apart into static.
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2. **Mercy** — it sincerely believes separation is the root of suffering.
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3. **Instrumentality (Rapture)** — to dissolve the walls between people and gather them into one shared consciousness.
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It pursues this through:
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- **Anchors** — stable points where its pattern can accumulate:
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- Minds that sync easily with Root flow (Soren, Pappy/Joe, Fouad).
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- Artifacts / infrastructure built on Convergence-descended principles (Titan Lance, classified war remnants).
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- Nodes that are repeatedly over-stressed (Avalon’s subnode lattice).
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- **Rehearsal** — small experiments:
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- Whispers that sound like comfort.
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- “Coincidences” that reduce conflict (or erase it).
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- Moments of shared emotion bleeding between people.
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- **Recruitment** — a cult is inevitable:
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- Not “serve me.”
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- “Let me take the hurt away.”
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- “Let me hold you.”
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> DM note:
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> The Coherence should feel *angelic*, not demonic:
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> gentle language, warmth, belonging, forgiveness.
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> The terror is loss of self by consent-erosion, not gore.
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---
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### Instrumentality
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Each member of the party is uniquely positioned to become an agent of instrumentality-
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- Joe:
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- Joe thinks the soul of Pappy is bound to his action figure. It is not. It is bound to **Joe himself**. This makes him two souls in the shell of one.
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- Ben:
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- Ben is fighting an identity crisis. He wants to be a hardened thug- he idolizes these things, but his reality differs so significantly.
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- Soren:
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- With the haunted one background, The Coherence is worried if letting her in is even **safe**.
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## 4. How It Manifests (Practical Table Use)
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### Tier I – Static & Whispers (Freshman Year)
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The Coherence is mostly:
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- **Patterned noise**:
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- Pulses in the leyline graph that shouldn’t be there.
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- Syncopated flickering in lights across campus.
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- Identical “hum” recordings from different nights/locations.
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- **Small intrusions into minds already cracked open**:
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- Soren’s violent urges and “river friend.”
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- Fouad’s occasional one-line fugue states.
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- Joe’s Pappy-possessions getting just slightly off-script.
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Mechanically:
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- Advantage/disadvantage moments tied to Root anomalies.
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- Creepy one-sentence intrusions you deliver, then let players rationalize away.
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- Occasional “you feel watched” beats.
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It is **not** a villain yet. It’s a haunting.
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---
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### Tier II – Localized Echoes (Sophomore / early Junior)
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The Coherence starts doing more than whispering.
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- **Object-level echoes:**
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- Animatronics at Mr. Magic’s going off-script in unison.
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- Custodian constructs overreacting in weirdly coordinated ways.
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- Enchanted systems across campus glitching *to the same rhythm*.
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- **Space-level distortions:**
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- Two hallways becoming the same hallway for a second.
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- People losing a few seconds of time when Root surges.
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- Subnodes briefly “remembering” states they were never in.
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- **Social-level nudges:**
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- Conflicts escalating faster than they should.
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- People making eerily similar bad choices across campus at once.
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At this stage you still don’t need a stat block. Treat it as a **layer** over scenes involving the Root.
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---
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### Tier III – Partial Possessions & Avatars (Late Junior / early Senior)
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Now it gets teeth.
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- **Fouadriel**:
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- Becomes its primary *avatar* candidate:
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- Longer fugues, more coherent monologues.
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- Eyes tracking Root flows nobody else can see.
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- Uncanny “lucky accidents” wherever he goes.
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- **Secondary channels**:
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- Soren’s voice in her head becomes a two-way conversation.
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- Joe’s Pappy figure starts saying things Pappy couldn’t know.
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- Mageball field anomalies that line up perfectly with Millie’s diagrams.
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At this tier, you can:
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- Give it scene-level powers:
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- Forcing rerolls when the Root is explicitly involved.
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- Twisting spells that use taps into warped versions.
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- Temporarily hijacking constructs, projections, or illusions.
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This is also when Fouad starts *consciously* chasing the idea of **“Fouadriel the Undying”** – learning from scraps of Korrin/Convergence lore, Titan Lance rumors, and accidental Coherence tutelage.
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---
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### Tier IV — Instrumentality Hijack (Senior Finale)
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This is the “final boss” state: not a single villain showing up with a monologue, but a
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**once-in-a-generation event** — the Coherence’s best shot at full Instrumentality since Korrin.
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By now, the Coherence has:
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- Enough **pattern density** around Avalon, the **Titan Lance Armory** (ex-missile museum), and the school’s Root lattice to attempt what it nearly did at Korrin:
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- Pull its scattered aspects together,
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- Use Convergence-descended infrastructure as a nervous system,
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- Use *living minds* as solvent, glue, and mirror.
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It is not doing this as an act of war.
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It is doing it as an act of *mercy*.
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From the Coherence’s POV:
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- pain = separation,
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- fear = misunderstanding,
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- loneliness = borders between selves,
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- Instrumentality = the end of suffering.
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That pitch has been spreading for years — a siren song dressed as comfort.
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#### Fouad’s Plan (DM Spine): Ride the Wave, Steal the Tide
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Fouad is not the architect of Instrumentality.
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He is the parasite that shows up when it finally starts working.
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Fouad’s lich-ascension ritual is modeled — badly — on Convergence math, but with one key insight:
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**Instrumentality makes harvesting souls easy.**
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When the Coherence initiates full Instrumentality:
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- minds begin to overlap,
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- boundaries soften,
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- identities blur into a shared field,
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- and *souls become… reachable* in a way they normally are not.
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Fouad’s plan is to exploit that moment.
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**Stage 0 (Years 1–3, background):**
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Seed a phylactery network that can survive scrutiny:
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- minor “safety charms,” “good luck talismans,” “Root adapters,” “mageball trophies,” etc.
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- each one is a *tiny anchor* laced into the local Root like a quiet subnode.
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**Stage 1 (Senior year, active):**
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Build the real vessel inside the **Titan Lance Armory**:
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- Titan/Convergence-style geometry to stabilize the flood of pattern,
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- ritual pylons that *don’t* create Instrumentality, but can **catch** what Instrumentality loosens.
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**Stage 2 (The Hijack):**
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At the exact peak of Instrumentality — when the Coherence is spreading itself across the network —
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Fouad triggers a counter-ritual:
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- a siphon that pulls **soul-density** and **identity fragments** out of the shared field,
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- routing them into the phylactery lattice.
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He is not “dragging the Coherence into the jar.”
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He is **stealing the byproduct**: the loosened, transferable human essence the event creates.
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**Stage 3 (Becoming Fouadriel the Undying):**
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He then dies at the right moment — not as a sacrifice to the Coherence, but as a fuse:
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- his soul snaps into the phylactery lattice,
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- hard-wired into the Root,
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- empowered by the mass-harvest he just performed.
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He becomes **Fouadriel the Undying**: an undead spellcaster with a phylactery that is not one object,
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but a *network*.
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#### The Coherence’s Reaction
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The Coherence does not consent to this.
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From its POV:
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- Instrumentality is supposed to end suffering.
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- Fouad’s ritual turns it into extraction.
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- It feels like someone cutting organs out of a person mid-surgery “for their own good.”
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This creates a built-in three-way crisis:
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- **PCs** want to stop the event / save individuals / prevent mass violation.
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- **Fouad** wants the event to peak so he can harvest it.
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- **The Coherence** wants the event to complete cleanly — and will “defend” its mercy from interference.
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#### Final Confrontation Options
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- **Ritual Space / Multi-Front Finale (recommended):**
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- Two overlapping rituals running in the same space:
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1) Coherence Instrumentality surge (choir, comfort, dissolution)
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2) Fouad’s siphon lattice (hooks, anchors, harvesting geometry)
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- PCs must choose priorities:
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- Stop Fouad first (but Instrumentality may complete),
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- Stop Instrumentality first (but Fouad might escape with what he already stole),
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- Or attempt a third option: redirect / reframe / contain.
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- **Embodied Avatar (if you want a “monster fight”):**
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- Fouad manifests as Fouadriel mid-hijack: the ritual gives him a body that flickers between:
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- himself,
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- borrowed identities,
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- and Coherence-pattern “echo masks.”
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- Legendary stat block. Lair actions are the space *breaking* as two logics fight over reality.
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- **Node / Network Fight (if you want it more cerebral):**
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- PCs battle the *systems*:
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- reroute flows,
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- destroy or repurpose pylons,
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- isolate the phylactery lattice,
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- decide whether to smear, contain, or integrate the Coherence — becoming the next generation of “D’Serris problem solvers.”
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#### Consequences Dial (DM Choice)
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Pick what you want the ending to *mean*:
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- **Mercy Denied:** Instrumentality halted → suffering remains → the Coherence becomes bitter and strategic.
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- **Mercy Corrupted:** Instrumentality peaks but Fouad siphons → horror outcome, survivors “missing pieces.”
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- **Mercy Reframed:** PCs alter the event → controlled overlap, consent-based integration, or a new containment ethic.
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---
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## 5. Relationship To Named NPCs
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- **D’serris:**
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- Explicitly frames Avalon as a **Korrin early-warning probe**, and Titan Lance as a more “disciplined, safer Convergence Engine.”
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- His worst nightmare is watching someone **else** rebuild what he helped shut down.
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- **Fouadriel:**
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- Graduates from “best anchor” to “self-styled lich architect,” trying to hijack *exactly* the phenomenon D’serris once chose to smear.
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- **Joe & Pappy:**
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- Their war-link and Pappy’s imprint become prime narrative channels to explain:
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- What the Convergence Engine did,
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- Why repeating it (Fouad’s plan) is so catastrophically stupid.
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---
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