Yes, it can! In fact, that's what we've most often seen it used to do in our games; while flipping your friends' Virtues to encourage them to be ridiculous has many situational uses, flipping a Titanspawn creature's Virtues so that it suddenly fundamentally opposes its dark masters is almost always hella useful. When you successfully use Heart of Darkness on a Titanspawn enemy or other entity with Dark Virtues, you suddenly instill new and militant virtues where none existed before:
| Dark Virtue | Reversed Virtue |
| Ambition | Apathy |
| Malice | Compassion |
| Rapacity | Asceticism |
| Zealotry | Rejection of the Titans |
If you don't think that's amazing, check out the most famous time it was used that way in our games: Vivian and her band were in a Terra Incognita connected to the Drowned Road and were confronted with a daughter of Mami Wata, a powerful Titanspawn enchantress with an eye for conquest. When it became obvious that combat against her hordes of faithful minions was not possible, Vivian marched in front of her and made an impassioned speech about the principles of the Loa and the wrongness of her crusade to pollute the World's waters. She then used Heart of Darkness to turn the Titanspawn's Zealotry into visceral horror and rejection of Mami Wata and the rest of the Titanrealm, and she immediately defected with Vivian to join the Loa and aid their cause. The Loa, who were not about to pass up an opportunity that came knocking with such watery determination, held a pantheon-wide ritual to officially induct her into their ranks and sever her connection from her home Titanrealm.
Of course, everything was not smooth sailing and this event led to some distressing Titan-related problems down the road, especially once Heart of Darkness wore off and they were left with a very confused and conflicted young goddess with some remaining Dark Virtues and some new god-oriented ones that didn't get along. But no large-scale religious conversion is ever easy, after all.
Of course, the boon can also be used on the normal Virtues of Scions, gods and lesser immortals, turning Endurance to Sloth or Vengeance to Forgiveness, which is not only a hilarious party trick but also very useful when someone's berserk Virtues are ruining your life. It's a crapshoot whether it'll come back and bite you in the ass later... but really, that describes Virtues in general anyway.
Not the question asker, but I have an additional question to tag on here. Heart of Darkness can permanently give mortals a random Dark Virtue, or multiple thereof. If Heart of Darkness was used on a mortal who had already gained a Dark Virtue ( let's say they have now all the Dark Virtues ) from a previous use, what happens? Does the mortal gain these opposite Virtues permanently? Do they only temporarily switch to these opposite Virtues? Does it have no effect? What if they didn't already have all the Dark Virtues, would it first give them the remaining ones before doing any of this?
ReplyDeleteHmm, interesting question. We'd say that the boon works differently on mortals than Legendary beings, so you won't be able to flip the Virtue once they have it; subsequent uses of Heart of Darkness will just give the mortal more permanent dots of Dark Virtues. If for some insane reason you do it more than twenty times to the same mortal, it'll stop having any effect since he'll be full up on Virtues.
DeleteThank you for your answer! I have another related and strange question. Okay, two of them. Could you, theoretically, use Blessing of Bravery on enemy forces? Such as if you have fooled them into thinking that you are on their side, and then using it to give them, say, Courage? Could you then use Heart of Darkness and turn their newly gained Courage into Cowardice, and let your real allies come charging in?
DeleteYes and yes, although itd involve a lot of manipulation to pull off the fooling, then charisma to get the blessing good enough, and then excellent manip to get the boon itself off on the target....plus how many legend are you spending to get all the "enemy forces" with the boon? Seems like a risky, expensive plan that could work perfectly and be awesome, but might be very dangerous if it went poorly. You know, I guess like most plans.
DeleteWhat would Scion be without incredibly difficult plans like this to pull off, though?
DeleteThis sounds like a fantastic way to mess with the Titans.
ReplyDeleteOh hey, this could be used on Titan Avatars, couldn't it?
...I wonder what Nemesis would be like after being hit with this.
Titan Avatars tend to have pretty ballsy resistance rolls. But theoretically, yes.
DeleteNemesis would probably be surprisingly forgiving, followed by insanely vengeful when it wore off.
Then you just need to keep using this effect again!
DeleteI can see no possible way this could ever go wrong, in any way.
Titan avatars resists are usually(read:always) insanely high.
Delete