Beast: The Primordial

Every Beast has cravings.
Beasts’ bodies are human, they need food and water and so on just like any other living thing. But the Soul of a Beast is a primordial monster. Its needs stem from the nightmares that formed it. The Beast’s Soul – and therefore the Beast herself – require spiritual sustenance. If the Soul isn’t fed, it goes roaming through the Primordial Dream, inflicting nightmares on sleeping humans, taking what it needs without regard for the consequences.
It behooves the Children, then, to make sure they feast regularly. But what does a monster eat?
Beast details first primal Hungers. These determine how the Beast increases her Satiety, and inform her approach and personality. The Hungers are:
The Hunger for Power (Tyrants): Tyrants are Beasts who crave power, feeding off the act of besting someone and proving their own superiority. They bask in the fear, respect, and trembling worship of those beneath them, whether the Beast is standing at the top of the pyramid or controlling things from the shadows while their subjects tremble at the thought of their unseen king. A Beast is always more than merely human, and a Tyrant thrills in reminding those below him just how powerless tiny mortals really are against the stuff of nightmares. Should a Tyrant fail to find proper subjects during his waking hours, his Soul stalks through the dreamscape and bring them subjugation while they slumber. Concept: Ari drives a cab, and he goes to the parts of the city that the other cabbies won’t. He knows every bit of the city — the poor neighborhoods where everyone looks out for each other and the rich neighborhoods where everyone’s a stranger. When he feels his Hunger, he picks someone up and drops them in a place they’ve never seen before, a place where just walking down the street will get them arrested or jumped. He never lets anyone die, though. He just wants each little fish to know how far from its home pond it has strayed.
Hunger for the Hoard (Collectors): The image of the dragon perched upon her hoard of precious gems and gold has been written into stories for thousands of years. Kingdoms have fallen trying to appease such Beasts with an endless train of gifts, only to have her sights turn to their grand castles and priceless crown jewels once everything else is gone. Nothing is ever enough, and every Hero fallen to her claws only adds to her collection. Even hundreds of years after all survivors have fled her domain, the stories of legendary riches and their fearsome guardian spread far and wide on desperate, greedy whispers, keeping such a Collector well fed for centuries to come. Concept: Anya owns an orchard. She grows apples, and each trees has a ribbon tied around the top. Some of them are red, some are yellow, some are green, and most people who visit the orchard and buy her apples assume the ribbons correspond to the specific type of apple the tree bears. But that isn’t it. Anya goes out into the orchard at night and checks the ribbons, reminiscing about the day each tree was planted. The ribbons don’t match the apples. They remind Anya what she buried when she planted the tree. Red for something stained with blood, yellow for something stolen, green for something never touched or tasted. Anya only buries things that will nourish her trees, though.
Hunger for Prey (Predators): Humans think that they’re on top of the food chain, preying on animals that are bigger and stronger than they are. But some part of them remembers a time before they were the ultimate hunters, and knows more fearsome creatures see them nothing more than their next meal. Predators remind the world’s self-declared alpha predators that when you catch one of them alone at night, they’re nothing more than helpless, hairless monkeys. Some Predators are subtle, lurking and waiting in the shadows until their victims get close, while others prefer to chase their prey openly at a dead run until their victims collapse. Others still use their beauty and charm to lure victims away from the herd, all sweet songs and handsome smiles until it’s too late for their prey to escape. Concept: Vanessa likes blood. Her forearms cause deep gouges, as though they had serrated blades, and anyone caught in her embrace will bleed. Vanessa doesn’t necessarily drink the blood — she’s been known to, but just feeling it running down her body is enough. Her favorite “bleeders” are the disinterested, the people who are aloof and disdainful of their fellow humans. In her embrace, she knows they feel. Everyone wins.
Hunger for Punishment (Nemeses): Children understand this law instinctively, hiding under the blankets to keep themselves safe. Adults forget their instincts as they grow older, assuming they can get away with infractions so long as no one is watching, but one glimpse of the monsters in the dark soon makes them wish they had remembered to hide. Nemeses feed by punishing the guilty, or those they perceive to be guilty. They might tear someone to pieces right after the act, or they might wait for years before finally revealing what they know and making their victim pay. The Nemeses keep the guilty conscious of humankind on edge, and keep the transgressors looking over their shoulders even when they should know, rationally, that they’ll never get caught. Concept: Ogre got his nickname wrestling in high school. The funny thing is that he’s met real ogres since then, creatures who were forced to be brutes and workhorses in the far-off Faerie realms. He’s made friends with several such changelings — and he’s the one they call in when someone breaks an oath. Ogre can’t stand betrayal. If you want to fight, kill, maim, that’s fine, he thinks, but don’t say you have someone’s back and the stab it. And then Ogre cracks his knuckles and everyone steps back, because they know he’s about to hit something.
Hunger for Ruin (Ravagers): A Ravager must destroy to feed, and he must destroy something that others value. It’s not exactly the act of violence that he feeds from, it’s the change it causes in the humans that notice. When someone witnesses the destruction caused by a Ravager, or its results, they are suddenly aware of how fragile they are and start to wonder just exactly what will be destroyed next. That state of uncertainty and fear is what satiates a Ravager, leaving those in the wake of his rampage wondering what could have caused so much damage and when it might be back. Concept: Lester loves the sound of glass breaking. Human beings forget how flimsy windows are — they are enough to keep out the rain, yes, but not enough to keep out bricks, branches, or a determined intruder. Lester smashes the windows in the homes of the rich in the dead of night, and watches the security come running. Sometimes he writes his message on a wall or a mirror: YOU ARE NOT SAFE.

OK! So! I know I’ve been a little lax in Beast updates this week, and the reason for that is that another project I’m working on – not for Onyx Path, but for my own company, Growling Door Games – just went up for sale in PDF and I’ve been wrangling that. But I promise I’m not going to turn this into a commercial for Chill. We’re here to talk about Beast.

Atavisms

A Beast’s true self is a mythic monster armed with natural weapons and fearsome abilities, some of which bleed over into his human form as Atavisms. Atavisms are intrinsic. They are the Giant’s strength or the Raptor’s talons, and using them is as natural as breathing. Manifesting aspects of his Lair is just as instinctive. They are part of him, too, from the oppressive cold of a Makara’s underwater abode to the darkness of a Namtaru’s subterranean refuge. Unleashing them feels good. The Beast breaches the illusion of normalcy and exposes his true self to the world.

A Beast can pass for human because his Atavisms are typically subtle. They manifest in surreal ways reflecting the nightmarish nature of the Primordial Dream. The Beast can dig deep in times of need and force more of his Soul into the world, abnegating natural law with nightmarish consequences. The Raptor’s hands still look normal but he can dismember victims as if he were the legendary monster in the flesh.

Beings with supernatural senses, however, catch a glimpse of the Soul when the Beast activates an Atavism. This includes any supernatural creature (vampire, werewolf, changeling, Sin-Eater, etc.), normal human beings with the Unseen Sense Merit (no matter what it usually detects), Heroes, ephemeral beings and anyone else with sensitivity to otherworldly phenomena at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Glimpsing the Soul in this way doesn’t grant the witness any real understanding of what he is seeing. The witness sees the Eshmaki inhale deeply and then exhale a gout of blue fire, but if he is at all supernaturally aware, he always sees the mighty dragon superimposed over the Beast’s mortal form, unleashing its hellish breath. The Makara activates Monster From the Deep and everyone in the room feels the pressure of the tentacles around their necks, but only the Beast’s Promethean companion actually sees the kraken lurking below.

SYSTEMS

Atavisms are not magic spells. They are inherent abilities and require little to no conscious effort on the part of the Beast who possesses them. At the same time, their effects are straightforward, physical, and typically confined to the Beast herself (or her victims). A dragon can breathe fire, for example, but has no control whatsoever over existing flames.

A handful of Atavisms, such as Shadowed Soul or Storm-Lashed, draw down aspects of the Beast’s Lair and project them onto her environment. They create a temporary convergence between the mundane and the nightmarish landscape of the Primordial Dream, similar to imposing the Environmental Tilts of her Lair Traits, but with augmented or unusual effects and greater control over how those forces play out.

The one thing Atavisms cannot do is directly control someone’s mind. A Beast can leverage heart-stopping beauty (Alien Allure) or prey upon victims’ natural curiosity (Siren’s Treacherous Song), but she cannot control what they think. Hence, resistance rolls — including supernatural resistance — rarely apply. Direct emotional and mental influence is the realm of Nightmares, not Atavisms.

Many Atavisms resemble Merits in that they have persistent effects, which need not be activated, such as modifying other actions or dice pools, or they confer abilities that are available at no cost, such as a special attack form. Dice rolls are rarely required. When they are, they are usually reflexive and folded into another action such an attack. An Atavism’s dice pool always consists of an Attribute plus a Skill.

Atavisms have three levels of effect depending on the Beast’s Satiety:

Normal Effect: This is the Atavism’s default effect and is available whenever the Beast’s Satiety is 4 dots or higher. Normal effects never cost Willpower or other resources to use. Such an effect may be overtly supernatural, like superhuman speed or blasts of wind, but the Beast still looks human while doing so.

Low Satiety Effect: The Atavism has a modified effect when the Beast’s Satiety drops to 3 dots or less. This is often an enhanced version of the normal effect, such as extra damage or an increased bonus, and gives the Beast an edge when her back is up against the wall. However, it may come with risks as Hunger increasingly sways her behavior.

Satiety Expenditure: The Beast unleashes a powerful effect by spending a dot of Satiety. Doing so is a reflexive action unless otherwise specified. These effects are often dramatic and obviously supernatural as the Primordial Dream overrides the material world, threatening panic.

Different levels of effect are cumulative as long as the Beast meets the requirements for each. The Beast could combine the normal and Satiety expenditure effects, for example, or the low Satiety and Satiety expenditure effects if spending the dot of Satiety would reduce his current rating to 3 or less. This is particularly true when the Satiety expenditure effect is an enhanced version of the normal effect and not a separate ability. Each Atavism’s description states whether effects can be combined this way.

INFESTATION [NAMTARU]

No Beast is ever truly alone, not even in his own head. The Soul constantly pushes him to fulfill its Hunger, and a Beast with this Atavism has it worse than most. Instead of one Soul, he has many, perhaps hundreds of insect voices. He hears them buzzing and chewing and crawling over each other at all hours of the day. He can — and must — surrender to them on occasion, dissolving his body into a cloud of angry red wasps or a carpet of writhing maggots. He is them and only them and their only united thought is to feed.

Dice Pool: N/A
Action: Reflexive

Normal Effect: The Beast need not surrender completely. He can squeeze through narrow gaps just by loosening himself a little, turning his body into a gestalt assemblage of insects that still — barely — looks human. His skin ripples and bulges as they move underneath, and individual insects occasionally crawl from his mouth and other openings. They are quickly swallowed or burrow under his skin again, but the effect is…unpleasant to say the least.

The Beast can safely squirm through any opening at least one foot in diameter, including many air conditioning ducts and major water pipes. He can hold his breath indefinitely while doing so, effectively being many insects instead of a single bony mammal. However, his Speed is halved and he is unable to apply his Defense against attackers in a confined space, not that anyone is likely to attack him while he is in a pipe.

Low Satiety: The Beast’s appearance as a unified whole is just an illusion, and a fragile one at that. Being less constrained by his bulky human form, though, he can go faster while squirming, moving up this normal Speed.

Push the Beast too hard, though, and he nearly falls apart. Pieces of him get dislodged and turn into a mass of chewing insects before reforming seconds later. The Beast takes bashing, not lethal, damage from firearms and piercing weapons. Since he can activate this Atavism reflexively, the Beast can use it to avoid damage from an attack in combat, assuming he isn’t surprised. Ordinary fists and bludgeoning weapons do full normal damage, however, crushing multiple insects at a time. The Beast can brace himself for an attack, however, and turn the tables in horrible fashion. By giving up his Defense for a turn, the Beast can automatically inflict lethal damage equal to his Lair rating on any opponent foolish enough to strike him. The Beast’s skin ruptures and thousands of tiny bugs or creatures sting the attacker.

Satiety Expenditure: By spending a dot of Satiety, the Beast surrenders to the hive within, and his entire body disintegrates into a mass of insects or spiders, leaving his clothing and worldly possessions behind. In so doing, he becomes a swarm with a radius of two yards per dot of Lair. The area is reduced proportionate to the amount of damage inflicted on him. In other words, the swarm is reduced to half size once half of his Health boxes are filled with damage. The Beast can also condense to attack a single target, inflicting lethal damage each turn equal to his Lair dots.

In swarm form, the Beast can move at double his normal Speed. That includes through any opening, no matter how small, and in three dimensions, since the swarm can crawl or fly over virtually any surface. Furthermore, he can use other Atavisms, Nightmares, or supernatural abilities that do not require human faculties such as speech. Witnessing the swarm in action may be a breaking point for someone with a phobia of insects.