My Cotar Fomas began play as a Vaylen, so his lifepaths are all Vaylen stock. This means his Circles are limited to fellow Vaylen, right? (Rather than human approximations of the LPs I chose, like Theocracy.)
Just trying to be clear.
With my 3D reputation for Vibbuuten lineage, I shouldn’t have too much trouble dredging up more of my kind, but if I want to find, say, a human cotar, or the heiress FoN’s young human sister, I have to be more creative than Circles, correct? I mean, I guess I can just “say yes” for the most part, but I mean for Relationship or other characters where a conflict might be involved.
You have a few options here. First, there’s the GM Circles Reserve Pool which lets you flat out buy relationships on the fly with color scenes. Secondly, a Take Action or other color-appropriate Infection maneuver would let you later on circle up hulled individuals with your 3D Vibbuuten Reputation. Or yeah, as the GM you could Say Yes but that gets old after a while. Generally speaking though the GM Reserve is the go-to place for countering the players.
Also, remember that Circles are attached to bodies (Page 197) so feel free to hull one of your Sodalis-Brothers and keep him around as your casual suit when you need to snoop around.
…the best way to introduce NPCs in BE… enmity clause. Just wait for the players to make (and fail) a circles test and boom… you have free reign to swat at them with your relationship…
The limitation of Circles creates a nice firewall for the Vaylen. It incentivizes you to have a straight up human GMFON so you can manipulate her to your own ends. And it incentivizes you hulling humans in play.
As noted above, there are work-arounds for the limitation, though.
The Ksatriya Clan Leader trait is is probably the one you’re thinking of. Forged Lord for Vaylen with the fairly badass Ksatriyen lifepaths as functionaries. The other trait could be the Usurper trait that the Vaylen Commander and Captains get. Counts as Hammer or Anvil Lord and all your men are unwitting dupes until the invasion phase at which point they are auto-hulled.
Luke - yes. I don’t remember what we did in previous games, but I this is the first time I remember groking the implied firewall. I prefer hulling in-game, but we started in Usurpation and wanted one of the FoNs to already have a worm in his head. Maybe I’m weird, but I appreciate the firewall. It feels more fair, and I like having to to get creative to get what I want. And as Colin and Jonathan have already suggested, there’s more than one interesting way around the obstacle.
Anthony - yeah, I have Usurper. I feel a little bit guilty about how powerful my Vaylen FoN is, I gotta admit. But only a little. My players are hoping to take him out of action before the next phase, so they’re in for a fight.