Different cultures have different ideas of beauty. You simply can't say "They don't THINK they're beautiful, they *are*." It makes no sense. If they think they're beautiful, in Viscanti culture, they are. There is no difference between the two. There is no worldwide objective standard of beauty. Thinking they are beautiful, would raise their charisma, because it is based very much on your self perception.

Where is the hell is the file that states 'all the ugly Viscanti work in the mines'?

OFFICIAL LUSTERNIA ART: Viscanti
Estarra Posted on: Apr 12 2005, 04:50 AM


Found it for ya.

Ah, but that's only among the major Great Houses, and it is not exactly a rule that all the ugly Viscanti get cast out; just the really terrible ones. There are -plenty- of non-house Viscanti, and ones who may not be terrifying but are still quite unappealing to look at.

The viscanti you find milling about in the Minor Great House buildings are ugly as sin. It even says in their description about how their "horribly tainted flesh" is contrasted by the grandeur of the outfits they wear.

Ayup. They try to hide their deformity with clothing, masks, and perhaps cosmetics. I imagine it's just the ones that make no effort to appear presentable and flawless that are looked down upon severely.

Well that confimed my ideals about Viscanti. A race built upon a blending of other races will have a range of looks from absolute beauty to being beaten with the Ugly Stick.

Perhaps we can represent that with the Specifications.

Leave normal Viscanti at 10 (not ugly as sin but humans look better to most people: and there's always the 'eww, tainted, go away' issue).

Give Master Viscanti +4 cha instead of +2 (representing the 'Nobles' who flaunt their looks. The spec already gets that Cha boost, just make the cream of the crop actualy look better than the average Human).

Either drop Brood Viscanti by -2 cha or leave them at -1 cha (representing the folks who can't cut out and need to hide themselves. As another said, full armor is a good way to hide your looks)

Thus you have your range of looks, from the nobles who look better than normal Merians but can't stop Elfens and Faelings, to Broods who just bearly look about as good as an Orclach.

Just because a large group of bums get together and set up their own standards of beauty and declare some of their group to be gorgous, doesn't mean the rest of the world will agree.

They didn't set their own standards. Sheesh.

I do fail to see how Guido et al have any leg to stand on as they continue to argue that Viscanti are hideously ugly monsters when Estarra has stated the opposite is true.

Think of Hollywood-style vampires (not the true mythology) for a comparison. On the surface they are attractive, alluring, sexy, and seductive. The Viscanti look like models or movie stars who sit around and work out all day and have thousands of dollars of plastic surgery. They are beautiful, and regardless of varying culture standards, very few people will not recognize them as very beautiful and attractive. The fact that they are cruel and heartless by our objective OOC standards does not affect that they are strikingly beautiful and likely very charming as well.

This beauty is matched by their corrupted souls and ethics. They are vain, greedy, selfish, and prideful. They are not attractive on the inside, and the saying that beauty is only skin deep applies doubly so to the Viscanti.

Which would be why they are not very charismatic.

Which is what's being objected to. Their low charisma doesn't seem to fit the design spec that Estarra has posted about.

Let me try and explain what I meant.

First, let's not go overboard on one comment here. They were originally going to prize surface looks, that doesn't mean they were actually strikingly beautiful themselves. I would think of it more as in the courts of Europe where they wore elaborate clothes and rather heavy makeup to cover any natural blemishes or what we would consider 'natural' beauty.

That doesn't mean many of the heros of the race are not quite attractive themselves, in fact almost all of the races depicted are attractive on some level. So there's nothing wrong with playing a strikingly handsome viscanti. However, we must also keep in mind the fact that as a race mutation and twisted form is what defines them.



Now, I quite like this quoted paragraph, because it might explain why they have the charisma they do. Although they try to make themselves pretty to look at, and treasure shallow characteristics like appearance, they do not necessarily have the attractiveness of spirit, charm and force of personality to impress most other races. Beauty != charisma. Some of the weakest personalities I have come across are the most good looking, and vain.

I hate this entire masquerade idea. I hate any idea that allows the substitution of one stat for another. As I said in another thread, Nihilist Viscanti can get up to 23 charisma with the right buffs. If you factor out Astrology, you can get up to 20. That's damn good.

That quote from Estarra says nothing about them being actually good looking. Yeah, they prize it, but that doesn't make them pretty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say, and it looks to me like Estarra said that Viscanti set their own beauty standards, and lived by them to the extreme.

Yeah... I agree with Acrune. They may consider each other beautiful, in the eyes of someone who is skin deep, but between not everybody having to agree with what is beautiful, and the fact that they are tainted (which is unattractive to more races than it is attractive to, I'm sure) leads to the charisma that they have.

Oh, you silly Viscanti nobleman! Why don't you look like Nok thinks you should!

Estarra has not stated that Viscanti are hot, sexy demon studs, although I'm sure a rare handful are. They just think they are, or wish they were. They wear expensive clothes, cover themselves up as much as possible, and smear their features with cosmetics in a vain and desperate attempt to keep from looking like monsters. I imagine a lot of them sport the Michael Jackson look.

Also, on another vein of thought, I imagine most of the houses are rather inbred, and after a lot of inbreeding people tend to get pretty nasty. The upper houses must be loathe to marry anyone below their position, and there's only so many times the same six or seven groups of people can marry before the lines begin to blur... just look at european nobility a couple hundred years ago.

I imagine it's because Estarra did not build Magnagora, which I believe she has noted before. The design concept was somewhat lost along the way and not carried out to the extent it was supposed to. I don't imagine all the builders have/had copies of the design document. That does not make it wrong to try and shift the race back towards the design where it has gotten away from it.

I never interpreted Estarra's comments to mean that the Viscanti look like Michael Jackson, or have some twisted sense of beauty that the rest of the world does not hold. She simply stated that they are beautiful. They do value surface beauty.

It is a correct belief that some races do not hold physical beauty to such a high standard of importance as the Viscanti would. That does not mean those races are incapable of admitting the Viscanti are beautiful, or see them as abhorrent because they are Tainted. Take a look at Luciphage for an example of what a Viscanti should probably look like.

With that in mind, a skill like Masquerade would make sense because it allows the Viscanti to obscure some of their non-superficial traits in favor of a more superficial appearance. It would also lend some interesting RP to Magnagora in general and the Viscanti in particular because it could set the cultural standard that one should walk about masqueraded in public, and only drop such a masquerade of beauty if in a situation that required it, such as combat. Those who do not use it in social situations, such as sitting about at the Megalith or strolling about in Magnagora would face shunning from other Viscanti who have not "let themselves go".

How would you masquerade anything other than superficial appearance?

I agree that the cultural implications of a skill like this would be fun and interesting, but I do have to concede that it really shouldn't have too much of an effect on charisma. Like Narsrim and others have said, it is not fair to trade statistics at will for a single race - unless you can come up with severe penalties for it. Maybe +2 charisma in exchange for halving of ego?

It's as you and Acrune stated. The Viscanti feel as if they're beautiful, although to the rest of the other races, they're a group of hideous, tainted freaks. Subconciously, they might realize that they are indeed deformed, but are prideful still.

I don't like the masquerade idea. Magnagora influences well enough. Everyone has their advantages in certain areas over others.