How do lightning barriers work in your Duskwall? As I reckon it you’ve got three basic options
1. A literal wall of crackling lightning energy. Spirits can’t pass through because of their electroplasmic nature, people can’t pass through for the same reason you don’t golf in a thunderstorm. It’s simple and straightforward but creates other implications, like how it automatically builds an additional control on the living people of Duskwall if access to the city is restricted to safe “gates”. From the discussion I’ve seen this is the version most people go with (and maybe even an example in the book), with scenes of rogues setting up contraptions to create their own temporary gates in the barrier. I think a greater complication in this model is what it means for the harbour. Especially for the gargantuan Leviathan-hunter ships, you’d need truly massive gates at the mouth of the harbour, or shutting off the barrier across that section entirely when ships come or go. What other solutions have people come up with?
2. It only affects spirits, which keeps ghosts out but allows living people to come and go with perhaps only a mild tingling sensation. This gets rid of most of the logistical problems (unless the thing you’re trying to take into the city is a spirit) but makes Duskwall a place you can leave (relatively) freely. Whether Vampires or Hulls are still restricted is a more finely detailed question. Are they anchored to their body enough to pass through safely, or will they get ganked out when they hit the barrier?
3. It literally affects only spirits, and ALL spirits. As in anything with a spirit, living or dead. For the most part this is functionally identical to the first option. Living people can’t pass through because the barrier hits their spirit. The fun twist that makes this one different, however, is that Hollows are described as “a living body without a spirit”.
It hasn’t really come up yet in our game, but I’d go with Option 1, personally.
I’ve had it as the first option as it gives reason for Tinkering skill when they have to get into a mansion which has its own personal lightning barrier.
Also there is a certain dramatic grandeur of having to open a huge gate when a ship or train comes in. I imagine that every docking or train arrival/departure is a dangerous task as spirits often swarm around such gates into the city. Duskvol likely has huge mounted lightning guns around the gate ready to take on the spirits when the gates open but still some get through.
I ran a few games of Ghostlines and in that the big more advanced train engines had spirit catchers at the front — heavy duty lightning web generators that acted like cow catchers but for spirits. They’d fire these off when departing and arriving at any station where the spirits were swarming.
I do like option 2 or 3 as possibility an alternative rare and advanced type of lightning barrier. Though I think most would be the option 1 variety.
I thought the point of lightning barriers were to keep spirits out/in. I had assumed they worked like big walls of lightning that fry ghosts and people alike. Although maybe not killing a human outright something like running into an electric fence but stronger.
I see it as not a problem at all for the trains, as I see them sheathed in their own lightning cages. As the train passes through the lightning fence, the electroplasm just sort of temporarily merges. Everything inside the train is protected.
As for the ships, yes it’s a more complicated affair, but the fact that the ghosts tend to avoid the water helps somewhat.
Ben Morgan if trains have their own lightning cages why do they need Rail Jacks to protect them? Also if they had lightning cages how would rail jacks manage to survive on the outside of the train cars?
The lightning cages need to be maintained.
I like option 2 the best for the general-case — the electroplasm blocks spirits but doesn’t interact much with people, just causing their hair to stand on end. But it’s trivially easy to create a high-powered barrier that also fries people (option 1). A more difficult hack is a lighting barrier that looks like option 2 but functions like option 1. >:)
Until I read this, I’d have gone with #1… But now I’m feeling #3!
So far we’ve gone with 1, but if 3 were true there would be serious implications for our game. Currently Charhollow has been quarantined behind lightning barriers because a creature named Hollow Heart has taken over the district. Hollow heart removes the hearts of his victims and binds them to his will as hollows, and he currently has an army. If that army could pass through the walls to do his bidding, that would be very bad indeed. Bad for the PCs, good for me.