[Beast: The Primordial] The Insatiable

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition, Beast: The Primordial
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

THE INSATIABLE

The following is lore known by the Begotten and whispered about in hushed tones.  The monsters that even the true monsters fear.  The Insatiable are a special and rare breed of Beast, the result of a Larval Horror don’t take on the shape of human fears by joining with a Chamber, but instead Devour a host while still in their Primordial state. The Insatiable are avatars of the Hunger and danger of the Mother’s Land (Anima Mundi).  Rather than reflecting fears of predatory monsters (Beast Families) they represent indifferent environmental terrors called Moments.

Sources: Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes sourcebook for Beast: The Primordial

The Lamashtu. The Obscene Ones. The Nightmares of Beasts. No matter their true name, the Beasts know them by one name in particular that best describes who and what they are: the Insatiable. 

They are not just creatures whose Hunger cannot be sated, but entities that forcefully intrude into the world and disrupt the ebb and flow of the Primordial Dream with their actions. They are creatures made of concepts alien to how humanity thinks. They are the nightmare that is the Hunger left unchecked and given horrific form, and they feed not just upon the dreams of man but on the fears of the Beasts themselves. They are monsters whose hunger cannot be reined in, and it is from this lust to fill the emptiness inside of them that they gain their powers.

No one knows for certain what act inspires the Insatiable to be. Though they appear similar to Beasts, they do not go through the same birthing process. A Beast is born feeling that she is different from other people until the moment she is Devoured and her Horror defines her, but an Insatiable manifests suddenly and without prediction. An Insatiable may go through life feeling completely at ease with himself and looking forward to a bright future, then one night the hunger in his stomach drives him mad, and he finds that devouring his favorite food only makes him hungrier. As he struggles to reconcile the strange environments he sees in his mind, he eventually crosses a threshold and appears in the Moment that inspires his Insatiable. This alien concept then devours his spirit, replacing it with the Insatiable. He is his old self and something new, existing simultaneously and tumultuously. The newly-orphaned creature sees the world with new eyes for the first time, and the Hunger grows inside of him. The Hunger always grows. Soon, the Insatiable takes over his reasoning, and he feels compelled to do nothing else but find ways to feed — specifically, to find Beasts to prey on.

The Insatiable are particularly obsessed with the Lairs that Beasts build for themselves, as they are unable to construct their own, and see it as a birthright that the Dark Mother never bestowed upon them. They have developed a frightening ability to enter and corrupt a Lair, allowing them to manipulate it to their own liking and take up residence. They are jealous of the Lair, though this stems more from a jealousy of the Beasts’ relationship with the Dark Mother. To Beasts, it seems as though the Insatiable wish to emulate this connection, and even steal her affections.

Origins
Some Beasts believe that the Insatiable are failed creations of the Dark Mother, and were an early attempt to harness the Hunger that dwelled within her. Others believe the Insatiable are byproducts of another age, and are failed proto-Beasts from before the time of human fears, something the Primordial Dream has abandoned now that Horrors fill its depths. This may explain why, when an Insatiable devours its prey, the fears and dreams of her victims do not flow back into the Primordial Dream.

If they were flawed predators, the Primordial Dream would not permit their continued existence, but somehow the Insatiable have managed to survive. The Insatiable find Beasts fascinating and see them both as prey and fellow predators. They consider themselves kin to the Beasts — though they do not feel familial ties to these distant cousins — and their Hunger fuels their powers as it does for Beasts. Each Moment regards each other as kin but at the same time as potential competitors, and it is this nature that has kept the Insatiable from working together over the centuries. They occasionally gather in small Broods of their own, though the Insatiable soon finds her Schism at odds with the others, and prefers to hunt alone. Desperation and threats from Beasts may cause the Insatiable to join together for temporary protection, though these kind of alliances never last long.

At first glance, the Insatiable appear similar to other spawn of the Dark Mother, though they do not represent any creatures she may have created. In truth, they too see her in visions while in the Primordial Dream, but they do not feel any fealty to her — though some do seek out her love. The similarities between Insatiable and Beasts lend credence to the idea that they do come from the Dark Mother, though the Insatiable do not hold to this belief.

As Larval Horrors they leave the Primordial Dream by entering a human, and they can access Nightmares and Atavisms as a Beast can. In addition, they can reveal their monstrous shapes to the world in the same manner as the Beasts, though their forms do not mirror any earthly horrors. The Insatiable represent terrors from a time before man: forces so ancient that men never dreamed or feared them. Insatiable are horrors from a time of primordial struggle and hunger, and as such feel that to survive they must feed as often as possible.

Distant Relations
The Insatiable consider themselves kindred to Beasts who are older than the five Families. They claim kinship as elder cousins, and believe they come from a consort of the Dark Mother. They do not truly know their parentage, and the Primordial Dream does not offer any answers to this question, though they have a theory.

They claim that at the dawn of man there were many creatures like the Dark Mother who roamed the tumultuous waters that made up the Primordial Dream. Their progenitor was a primordial being of the world who fell in love with the Dark Mother and gave its own essence to her to help feed her own unrelenting hunger, and was every bit as worthy and powerful as her.

This great Primogenitor is the Father of the Insatiable and their bloodline is theoretically older than that of Beasts, which lends the Insatiable some feeling of authority. Beasts do not recognize this kinship. The Insatiable claim of a consort of the Dark Mother goes against what the Begotten know of their mother. They find the claim spitefully arrogant, and the Insatiable’s attempt at superiority by claiming to be not children of the Dark Mother, but a contemporary, is meaningless to them.

They know that the Insatiable possess strange powers and abilities that at times rival the Beasts’, and know that they are deceptive and have randomly impulsive natures. The Primogenitor is a mystery to the Beasts, and no matter how hard they try to get answers from the Dark Mother or the Primordial Dream, they only receive silence. Many believe it is nothing more than the ravings of mad creatures, but some wonder if perhaps the Primogenitor once existed.

Regardless, at times, the Primordial Dream shows images of great creatures and beasts of the land and sky, and just as the Beasts see images of the Dark Mother, the Insatiable claim to see images of the Primogenitor.

THE PRIMOGENITOR: FATHER OF THE INSATIABLE
The Primogenitor is nothing, and it is everything. No one is sure, and this is not a glib explanation of what it is the Insatiable claim sired them. The Primogenitor is a creature that either does not want to be found in the Primordial Dream, or cannot be found because of something that happened to it.

Some Beasts believe that the Dark Mother tore out its throat and left it to die in some earlier epoch of existence, while others believe that the Primogenitor left our world to wander others. Many Beasts do not believe the Primogenitor ever existed at all, and that the Dark Mother gave birth to the Insatiable in a time before and does not need them anymore.

If this is true, then the Insatiable are failed creatures, abandoned by their mother and seeking a way to survive in the world. It could also be that the Dark Mother banished them from her sight, stripping their Family name from all records and lore kept on the matter for a crime either long forgotten or purpose-fully purged from the Primordial Dream.

Motivations
An Insatiable is not the subtle predator that the Beasts try to be and, worst of all, they do not release fears back into the Primordial Dream. When they devour their victims, they devour their fears completely, and starve the Primordial Dream of the stories that sustain it.
Born with a ravenous hunger that goes beyond the hunger pains that Beasts feel, the Insatiable are driven not just by satiating their appetites but the constant pursuit of them. They are gluttons starved of any ability to keep their own Hunger in check, and though they have not become mindless predators who seek to do nothing but feed, their Hunger is always on their mind. This hunger drives them to not only seek out humans for a meal, but also other Beasts and supernatural creatures.

The Insatiable see only the most powerful Beasts as rivals, and the rest as potential prey. They stalk them, take over their Lairs to serve as their new homes, and, at times, possess the Beasts themselves, driving them to commit horrid acts that draw attention to themselves and make them vulnerable to the world at large. They subvert the Hunger in Beasts and use that to leverage them to act out impulsively or worse, to take direct control of the Beast. This ability to strip away self-control is one of their most terrifying skills. This, coupled with their almost gleeful pursuit of Beasts, makes them formidable opponents. Insatiable are similar in some ways to Beasts, but, in others, they are completely alien. T damage the Primordial Dream when they feed, making them enemies of Beasts.

The Insatiable possess Atavisms, abilities of their own, and an affinity for not only the Lairs of Beasts, but for manipulating the Beasts’ appetites. The tie between Insatiable and Beast is unmistakable, though no one knows for sure why or what it is. The fact that the Insatiable cannot draw upon the Primordial Dream directly also lends credence to the theory that they are not siblings to the Families. The Insatiable appear to be echoes from different times in the world’s past, but are not aspects of stories told through the Dream.

They appear more at the locations and the places where the stories were told, and though the places are as important as the Beasts and Heroes that make up these stories, they are not the same. Many Insatiable claim that the Dark Mother and Beasts forgot them or pushed them aside, yet they have a more ancient claim to the fears and nightmares of humanity.

Some Insatiable are obsessed with inflicting suffering upon the Begotten, believing that cosmic circumstances have wronged them and not only do they have a right to exist on their own, but the right to dominance over Beast and man.

Modus Operandi: The Unsated Hungers

Whether the Dark Mother intended for the Insatiable to be the ones that keep the Beasts in check or they were an accident of cosmic circumstance, the Insatiable pursue and prey upon Beasts as a superior predator would.

They view the Beasts as a resource like any other. Beasts either feed their desires and their hungers, or are destroyed, and if the Insatiable inflicts pain and suffering on the world in the process, they do not care. They owe the world nothing, and the world deserves the pain generated from the Insatiable’s Moment.

The Insatiable absorbs Satiety from their victims in the same way a Beast feeds upon their prey, but the mortal never survives the process with an Insatiable. The Insatiable do not feed by devouring the dreams of human beings, though they do absorb these dreams and terrors as they feed. Instead, the Insatiable devours their victim brutally and carnally, often leaving behind gnawed bones and chunks of flesh scattered about. While this might not seem similar to how Beasts feed their Hunger, it has disastrous effects on the Primordial Dream, as the mortal’s fears do not flow back into the Dream, but are instead devoured by the Insatiable.

It is impossible for the Insatiable to have her Hunger fully sated (even when her Satiety track is full, she is hungry). She can control her impulses when sated, but the creature driving her hunger does not go into slumber. She may always access her Insatiable nature, even in public, and can learn Nightmares from Beasts. She can use Atavisms, though if she steals an Atavism from a Beast, she loses all access to and benefits of it if she ever returns it.

THE MOMENTS
The Insatiable do not have Families of their own, as the legends that haunt the Primordial Dream do not define them. They are living concepts drawn from primordial times when the environment was more deadly than the things that lived in it. As such, they represent different aspects and terrors drawn from moments in time.

Each Moment has their own view of the Primogenitor, and though they may claim to be beholden to a different one there are more similarities than differences between them. Each Moment is a place out of history and an era that defined the birth of the Primordial Dream. They are not as specific as the Whitechapel district in Victorian London, but are instead the violent conditions that brought about change on the planet. They are the places where life struggled to exist rather than where life managed to live. The Moments do not always manifest as primordial eras, and some are inspired by modern times.

Moment: Clashing Faults

The Clashing Faults are a world of towering mountains crumbling before the shaking earth. They are the caves that lure in those seeking shelter from the elements and then cave in on themselves, crushing those seeking a safe place to sleep under their stone grip. They are the lands that split apart into massive canyons and seas that drain in from the ocean, drowning all in their path. The Insatiable from this Moment lack compassion or empathy, and remember their founder as the one who cradled the Dark Mother as she slept and whose form held up the world. The Clashing Faults feed by brutalizing their prey as they devour them, often pulling their victims beneath the ground to suffocate them, feeling their screams as they struggle for one final breath. Their Dens are caves and valleys where they can store their food deep beneath the ground, and they show little emotion as they feed. They consider what they do to be a constant of the universe, and hold no remorse for potential prey.

Moment: Freezing Hell

The Freezing Hell are more than the stories of creatures that stalked the frozen plains when the planet was in the grip of an Ice Age. They are the animals that starved for warm blood and fresh food in an age when the world was barren and cold. They were born in a world where survival was brutal and short, and where man had to keep moving in order to seek places to live. No matter what form they take, they are constantly cold. Their hands are like ice, their blood like the coldest depths of the ocean, and food in their presence chills and freezes. They are patient, but as brutal as the winds of their birth. Insatiable of the Freezing Hell are more patient than their siblings, as they are familiar with waiting long periods for prey to fall into their inescapable traps. When they feed, they focus on eating the fat and drinking the blood of their victims as they constantly prepare for a neverending winter that may not come. They keep their Dens in cold, remote places or in walk-in freezers and ice boxes where they store their prey in ice until they need to feed. Their Horrible Form appears as snow drifts that flow like water but tear the flesh off their victims, or brutal vortexes of wind that instantly freeze their victims.

Moment: Molten earth

The Molten Earth are from when the world was more than just covered in fire, but was the fire. They remember waterfalls of molten lead, and land so hot to the touch that nothing could exist. They smell of burning sulfur and ash, and they are the ones most driven to destruction. They hunger to see the world cast down and made new. They do not see this as destruction without purpose, however; they see the world on the cusp of great change, and as a wildfire brings new growth to a forest, they see themselves as encouraging new life to grow in the smoldering ashes of the old. Insatiable of the Molten Earth are quick to anger and prone to destructive tendencies, seeing the world as subject to the changing embrace of fire. They prefer to cook their food as they devour it, inflicting horrifying amounts of pain on their victims as they burn them alive. Their Dens are often in burnt buildings and coal mines where they feel at home with burnable materials, and they store their food among pieces of wood and kindling to better cook it for them.

Moment: Primordial Seas

The Primordial Seas are Insatiable who are born of the frenzied birth of life. They are the leviathans and swirling maelstroms of the early seas, and are born from the hunger pains of life that struggles to survive its moment of creation. They are creatures driven to destruction by superior life forms, and take the forms of creatures that never existed but could have. The Primordial Seas believe their founder to be a great jellyfish that roamed these seas, snatching up life and devouring it. They are the fear of killing to live and sacrifice so others can live. They are an anxious lot, never truly resting, and always keeping an eye out for potential predators. This fear does not cow the Insatiable, but drives them to strike first — feeding as much as they can and showing their dominance. Insatiable of the Primordial Seas feel the effects of their Hunger greater than their siblings, and often give in to violent instincts when feeding. Their Dens are like animal nests, made together from local materials and with food stored deep within them. Their Horrible Forms are often composed of the body parts of animals in strange fusions of flesh and bone to create terrifying predators.

Moment: Void

The Void are strange, even among the other Insatiable. They do not represent the night’s sky, but the unknown darkness that makes up the space between the stars. They are the cold shadow that blankets the earth and gives cover to predators seeking to hunt in the dark. When the first fires cooled and the light of volcanos and meteor strikes did not light the sky, the world was held in a dark grip. More so than the bottomless depths of the ocean, the vast emptiness in space evokes a primal fear of the unknown. The idea that something could go on forever, in a way that man could never truly understand, is more terrifying than anything they could think up on their own. The Void represents the endless night and the unknowable distance, as yet unexplored. They are the methane oceans of Titan, the crushing grip of a black hole, and the fear of perilous creatures from beyond earth that may seek to destroy it. The Insatiable of the Void are the most bizarre of all the Insatiable in that they do not conform to each other. They are not as simple as aliens from science fiction shows on TV. They are the living threats that come from space, from the gamma bursts that could liquefy the entire world’s biosphere upon impact to the strange planets whose atmospheres function so differently from ours that they seem frightful and scary. Some find they must hunt down humans and devour their brains, while others feel they must kill their victims and assume their identities. Their Dens are equally as strange, as the Insatiable feel compelled to recreate alien landscapes and try to emulate the frighteningly beautiful places from across the universe, or they create beautiful yet terrifying homes of carved geodes, and representations of the planets that hide the remains of their victims.

Unknowable Fears

Each Moment has a basic elemental nature to it, though all Moments mirror all elements at once. While the Clashing Faults appears more in tune with earth and rock than the Molten Earth, they also contain the threat of super volcanoes exploding beneath the land and seas drying up as they erupt out of the ocean. It is the primordial fear of these Moments in time that bind them together.

Man is too young to remember the horrors of these times, though the Insatiable spread their fear of these Moments to those they feed upon. The Insatiable drive irrational, terrifying fears into their victims, and feed upon those fears. It is this presence of irrational fears that is the calling card of the Insatiable.

The Insatiable’s manner of feeding twists the environment around them. This destructive presence of fear does not concern the Insatiable, but it does concern Beasts. The Beasts feel they exist because they take on the aspects of the Primordial Dream and have a part to play in a greater story that defines the world. A Beast is the monster in the cave that devours those who wander too close, or a warning to others of leaving their homes at night and becoming lost in woods where monsters roam.

The Insatiable are a story without a moral, and a lesson without any real meaning. They exist to feed and care only to satiate the Hunger inside of them. This damages the Primordial Dream as it pushes out the fears of man and replaces them with irrationality. A child who burns her hand on a stove learns to not touch the hot stove again; a man who fears that poison fills the air he breathes does not learn a lesson at all. By tainting their feeding grounds and promoting lessons that are impossible to learn, they slowly chip away at the Primordial Dream and make it more chaotic and indiscernible. Even Beasts who have a strong connection to the Primordial Dream find their Atavisms failing when they need them, or find themselves losing their connections to their Lairs.

THE DENS

When an Insatiable does not possess a Lair to call its own, they create homes in the real world where they store food and lie in wait for unfortunate victims to cross their paths. Dens are not constructs of dreams or primordial fears, but are real nests built out of the bones of their victims. These Dens have no mystical defenses to protect them, and appear clearly to those who discover them — which does not aid Beasts in keeping low profiles.

An Insatiable uses its Den as a public statement to the world of its might and glory, as well as a place for it to seek refuge after it has fed. Often, a Den is full of pictures and other materials of prey the Insatiable is stalking. Insatiable are clever at keeping their Dens concealed by hiding them in places few would expect to look. Dens are disconcerting places to be, as the smell of rot in a Den makes even the strongest person want to leave. If anyone other than the Insatiable who created it enters her Den, he suffers from the Sick Tilt until he leaves the vicinity.

CAPABILITIES
Insatiable are not simply Beasts that are hungrier than their counterparts. They are ravenous monsters that strike out at the world and tear apart society with their horrific powers and the maddening effects of the Schism. The Insatiable represent living, irrational concepts of reality that have no rhyme or reason to exist. Where a Beast constantly struggles with her Hunger, an Insatiable is his Hunger, and exists only to feed it. 

The addition to a Moment instead of a Family, the Insatiable also possess Esurients, anywhere from two to four to seven Esuients based on the power and age of the Insatiable.

They also have Nightmares and but can only have Atavisms if they have subverted at least one Beast's Lair. The one exception is if they use the Esurient: Your Power is Mine to steal them. If they subvert a Lair an Insatiable gains all of the bonuses that a Beast with 10 dots in Lair could gain during the Merger except they do not gain the bonus to detecting ambushes.

Horrible Form

An Insatiable can manifest the form she holds in the Primordial Dream in the same way a Beast Rampant can manifest his Horror after the Merger, but with different results.

An Insatiable manifests as a completely alien creature that is more a feral, sentient concept than an amalgamation of pieces of folklore. An Insatiable may appear as a swarm of fanged spheres, constantly gnawing at everything in sight, or as a gaunt giant with no orifices or features save for a black hole located in their sternum.

Due to their impossible anatomy, as all Insatiable do not conform to rational concepts of biology, all powers that affect their body do not gain the benefits of an exceptional success when used against them. This is due to the fact that an Insatiable’s organs tend to be in different parts of the body, or her body is made from living bedrock or similar, and that makes it difficult to affect them as one can other creatures.

The human mind is unable to process the forms of the Insatiable because it has no previous memories or dreams to compare them to. When a mortal views an Insatiable in her Horrible Form, he feels the compulsion to flee from the sight of the creature, and immediately rationalizes it upon leaving.

Unseen Presence

An Insatiable also does not show up in the Primordial Dream and leaves no lasting residue of his appearance apart from the Schism. To Beasts, Insatiable appear as faint ripples in the Primordial Dream, but do not stand out among the other dreams and fears. A Beast or supernatural creature using a power to detect an Insatiable suffers a -2 penalty to any dice rolls associated with searching. Through an Insatiable who uses any of its powers becomes immediately noticeable as a foreign presence that feels wrong and damaging to the world.

Heroes cannot sense Insatiable the way they do Beasts due to this phenomenon, and even Schisms do not necessarily alert a Hero to an Insatiable’s presence, making them a threat only Beasts are equipped to deal with.

The Schism

A Beast knows that eventually either her Hunger will win out over her or she will fall to a Hero. Everything between those moments is what she makes of it, often a life of teaching lessons and survival. She seeks to balance her Hunger and her Horror with her own personal desires, and the only thing grounding her is her family. Though some might consider life tedious, the Beasts do not fear her own deaths. They know that they will either be reborn through the Primordial Dream or they will survive as they always have. That is not to say that Beasts have grown arrogant and prideful. They know that in order to survive they must maintain anonymity in the world, and that though they haunt the dreams of man they need to do their best to avoid discovery.

The Insatiable care little for the world of man and see it as nothing more than a fleeting moment in the history of the planet. They consider all that currently exists to be transitory, and that someday this world will end just as the Moments they identify with came to a close. Insatiable do not care if they kill one man or 20 men, as long as they can sate their Hunger.

The strange nature of the Insatiable causes them to interact with the Primordial Dream negatively, and these ripples affect the places in the real world where they have set up their Dens. As the Insatiable feeds in an area, ripples begin to slowly warp how mortal humans interact with each other. It starts slowly, and people often overlook the effects as just outbreaks of seemingly bizarre behavior. As the Insatiable’s effects fade, these incidents disappear from people’s minds as random acts not worth remembering.

As the Schism begins to grow, these strange behaviors start to heighten the emotions and paranoia of those who spend more than an hour in the area affected by the Insatiable’s presence. People begin to act more impulsively, and some begin to suffer from delusions. Many begin to suspect their neighbors of harboring violent thoughts against them, and others begin to abandon long-held ideals for beliefs that offer them some comfort.

Many Insatiable take advantage of the people’s paranoia and use it to form cults to help feed their Hunger. As the Schism reaches its peak, conflict overwhelms the area as the people begin to give in to violent thoughts and destructive impulses. Mob rule sets in and those perceived as threats to the community are driven out or destroyed, while the community itself falls under the sway of some grand delusion. The Insatiable whose Schism is affecting the area always plays some part in the delusion, and many find that her Moment bleeds through into the real world and begins to twist at the perceptions of others. 

If an Insatiable dies or leaves the area, her Schism slowly fades as the Primordial Dream repairs the divide between itself and reality. Slowly, people come to their senses and regain rational thought, and many wonder what drove them to such strange behavior. For most, they choose to believe simple explanations to their actions: tainted water sources, a polarizing news story, or having it simply described as a daily occurrence depending on the location of the incident, such as “Well, that’s Florida for you.”

The Insatiable can manipulate the effect her Schism has on an area by offering suggestions to people as to what is happening, thus fueling their fears. She is the stranger at the back of the crowd crying that Communists are manipulating things or that the government is trying to steal their children’s futures. She subtly suggests how the water they drink is contaminated with poison or the walls of their homes are lined with listening devices for the NSA. It only takes a few nudges, and then the Schism takes hold and people become willing to believe anything.

The power of the Schism increases each time the Insatiable feeds in an area. A Schism is rated 1 to 10 and after each month of constant feeding, the Schism rating increases by 1. All Social rolls made within the affected area suffer a penalty equal to the Schism’s rating, including those made by the Insatiable. A Beast is instantly able to determine the effects of a Schism, and with a successful Intelligence + Occult roll the player can determine how high the local Schism rating is. A Schism’s radius affects an area equal to one mile per point of Schism.

THE INSATIABLE AND THE EPHEMERAL
The Schism produced by the Insatiable’s touch upon an area makes the area more vulnerable to manifestations by Spirits. They are drawn to the sorrow and carnage of the area, as the ghosts of those who have been devoured attract other ghosts, and the strange creatures that lurk in the Shadow see the area as ripe for plundering. For each point of Schism an area has the Gauntlet rating is reduced by 1 to a minimum of 1. Each point of Schism applies as a bonus for Manifestation rolls for Shadow Spirits. Goetia and Ghosts do not benefit from this, they are too human.

Esurients

An Insatiable has access to both Atavisms and Nightmares, though she also has access to several of her own powers. These powers come from forgotten aspects of the Primordial Dream and are fueled by the Insatiable’s Satiety, which is a heavy sacrifice, as the Insatiable must make herself even more ravenously hungry in order to use her abilities. The full mechanics can be found in Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes.

LAIR SUBVERSION

The Insatiable start with no Lair, and can only increase it by stealing access to a Beast’s Lair. This process is Subversion, where an Insatiable takes over the Beast’s Lair and steals its power for themselves. The Subversion lasts as long as the Insatiable can maintain control over the Beast or the Lair, and when control over the Lair is broken her Lair diminishes (at the cost of one point of Lair per day).

The Insatiable may steal Atavisms from a Beast after subverting her Lair, and retains access to the use of those Atavisms until the Lair degrades to nothing. The different types of Subversions and how an Insatiable accomplishes each one are listed below:

The act of subversion

The Insatiable cannot build their own Lairs. Like owls, they instead steal the nests built by others and make them their own. An Insatiable is a covetous creature, stealing Lairs away from its victims and then tossing them aside when it encounters an even greater Lair.

Like most things, it’s the thrill of the hunt and of devouring that appeals to the Insatiable, not the actual conquest. That does not mean they are looking only to borrow a nest. The Insatiable aim not only to take control of the Lair and the Hive it is be bonded to, but to gorge themselves upon the Beast and the things that make up his existence. An Insatiable, once it has targeted a Beast, will aim to devour everything about that Beast until there is nothing left. The Insatiable waits quietly, slowly taking in everything he can about his target.

He is able to sense when a Beast is near, though the Beast cannot sense that something horrific and unnatural is nearby. She may experience déjà vu, or strange tingles running down her spine, but the Insatiable does not emit an aura that is easily perceptible to her.  The Insatiable learns to understand his potential prey and how she hunts so that he may know how best to attack his target.

When an Insatiable chooses to begin Subversion, he has two equally sinister methods at his disposal. It is possible for an Insatiable to subvert the Beast’s lack of Hunger, and strike when she is most Satiated and unable to defend herself.  Their second method is to subvert the Beast’s Lair and steal it for himself. Like an owl who moves into another bird’s nest, he feeds off the nightmarish memories there and makes the Lair his own. These Insatiable prefer to strike when a Beast is at its most ravenous, as the flavor of the Lair as the Beast’s Hunger grows attracts their own appetites.

An Insatiable may spend points of Satiety to temporarily boost her Lair rating, and in this way is capable of drawing nightmare realms out of nothing. These Lairs are always temporary, and though some Insatiable find these places to be their true homes, these temporary Lairs only last one day per point of Satiety spent.

Some Insatiable become obsessed with the thought of upkeeping their Lairs, and begin to devour mortals at a frightening rate, using their fears to keep the Insatiable’s dream alive. A true Lair is an embodiment of the Primordial Dream, and even the Insatiable prefer to sleep in a true Lair than the cold, savage constructs that are Dens.

LAIR VS DEN: Insatiable only have points in Lair if they have subsumed a Beast’s Lair. This may be a plot point, or something that happens in play. The Lair they take retains most of its usual features, but gains a taint based on the Instatiable’s Moment. While it’s good practice to describe an Insatiable’s Den, there are no special mechanics associated with the location.

Note: Kind of a weird cross between the Strix and Idigam aren't they?  I've heard push back from players of Beast that the Insatiable are unnecessary, redundant and undermine how cool and paradigm shifting Beast: The Primordial is meant to be.  I agree with this sentiment and believe that they should be used EXTREMELY SPARINGLY and only to tell one particular type of story in your Beast Chronicle.  Don't let the Insatiable steal the monstrousness of the Beast.  In the current chronicle (The Dethroned Queen) we have a Primordial threat believed to be one of the Unsated.  But is it?

[Mage: The Awakening 2nd Ed] Goetics & Dream Entities

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition, Beast: The Primordial
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

DREAM ENTITIES

The following is lore known by the Begotten and those Awakened who tread the in-roads of the soul. The Primordial Nightmare, The Bright Dream, The Horizons and the Mother's Land are occupied by dream entities, avatars, actors, horrors and powerful Geotic beings.  Here lies a quick run-down of those beings and how they interact with Beasts and Mages.

Sources:
- Beast: The Primordial, corebook
- Beast Players Guide, sourcebook

- Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition, corebook

- Astral Realms, sourcebook for Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition

- Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition corebook

HERE BE MONSTERS

The Primordial Dream and its adjacent astral worlds aren’t empty. Horrors, Dreamborn, and Actors all move through the dream worlds as natives.  Beasts, Mages and other supernatural beings all have reasons for exploring, too.

Dream Actors

The majority of beings found in the heavily populated areas of the Bright Dream (Temenos) and Day aren’t full Dreamborn, but instead mobile parts of the scenery, which Beasts call Actors. They’re the background extras in the Bright Dream’s crowd scenes, the press of humanity in the astral streets. Actors ignore travelers or treat them as part of whatever story they’re playing out, and if killed reform quickly. They are unfortunately unsatisfying fare for a Horror, who need something with a little more psychic “meat.”

Systems: Actors have the three simplified Dream Form traits of Power, Finesse, and Resistance, plus a Dream Health rating. They have no further powers, and if killed reform at the end of the scene. They do not provide Satiety in any way, and aren’t fully sapient, ignoring anything that doesn’t fit into the theme of the dream realm that spawned them. Travelers attacking Actors add their Supernatural Tolerance Trait as a weapon rating, in addition to any weapons they’re using.

Goetics: The Dreamborn

Goetia are entities of pure thought and concept. Some dwell within the shared consciousness of humanity, birthed from ideas and beliefs of the people of the Fallen World. Others live within the mind of the individual itself — daemons and figments that make up the psyche. The home realm of Goetia is the Astral Realms. Rather than explicable titles and systems of Rank as for ghosts and spirits, Goetia come in a near-infinite range of powers and potential, based more on how central a concept they embody in the layer of the Astral that birthed them than on any true hierarchy. The daimon of a high-Gnosis mage is higher Rank than that of her apprentice, a popular television character may be higher Rank than a forgotten god, and a fearsome nightmare may pale next to a subtle but long-lasting trauma.  

A traveler’s Oneiros creates the people, places, and things she needs to act out the scene at hand. Most of these are weak Goetia, but a mage’s daimon, or embodied “higher self,” is stronger and more insightful. Sorcerers raise personal Goetia here, or examine the Imagos of their Rotes.  In the Temenos, stronger concepts also possess guardians. These Goetia don’t depend on an ideal being popular, though this helps. Goetia also play the parts of gods, celebrities, and other personified ideas.  Figments are the Oneiros version of Dream Actors and they are even less substantial to their Temenos-dwelling relatives.

Inhabitants of the Bright Dream and Mother’s Land, Dreamborn (also called Goetia) are the true natives of the astral. They vary wildly in power depending on their importance to the collective soul and the individual realm they’re in, from Dreamborn corresponding to an obscure literary character or named characters in populated areas, barely more than Actors, to the mighty astral reflections of gods and fundamental concepts.

For mages, the manipulation, creation, summoning and use of Goetic entities is the core of their Goetic Sorcery, a sub-specialization of the Mind Arcanum.

Systems: Dreamborn use the rules for spirits found with a few exceptions:

1. No matter where they are in the astral worlds, Dreamborn regain their Rank in Essence per day.  Also, within the Astral Realms, Goetic entities do not require Manifestations.

2. If they somehow escape into the material world (perhaps through a Primordial Pathway) Dreamborn have a unique state of Twilight separate from those of spirits, ghosts, or angels. They may be sustained by the presence of suitable resonance in the manner of a spirit, and bleed one point of Essence per hour if not.

3. Dreamborn speak human languages, not spirit tongue; those originating in the individual soul speak whatever their host speaks, those from the communal Temenos (Bright Dream) speak anything appropriate to their concept, and those from the Anima Mundi (Mother’s Land) speak any language ever known by a sapient being.

4. Unlike spirits, ghosts, or angels, Dreamborn do not have Manifestations other than Twilight Form, and although they do have Numina they may not reduce their Influences to buy extra Numina above those provided by Rank. 

5. Goetia do not have an Integrity trait, Virtue, or Vice. They regain one point of spent Willpower per three points of Essence they consume.  

Daimons (Goetic Subtype)

Of all the Goetic natives in a mage's Oneiros, the daimon is most infamous. Why it exists is a mystery: does the daimon have some urge to better the one who dreams it, or does it derive a sadistic joy from pointing out personal flaws? Or is ascribing the daimon intent and self-motivation an error? Isn’t the daimon nothing more than an aspect of the dreamer’s unconscious? And then, can that unconscious have desires separate from its dreamer? The questions go on.

Daimons appear to be a cross between a person's Id and Superego, this is, of course, a Freudian oversimplification.  It is an idealized self that is unshackled by a person's inhibitions.  They also can be very much an evil twin or shadow doppelganger to the morals and conscious desires.  They also are very much a representation of the totality of the unconscious self. They are here to teach us lessons about ourselves and frequently act as a spirit guides, revealing truths that the mage seemingly has no reason for knowing. But they must have gotten it from somewhere, right?  They can be moralistic manipulators and beneficent guides at the same time.

Daimons take on any appearance necessary to do their work when their dreamers come to visit. A daimon acting openly as a dream guide is identical to the dreamer, touched up to bring the dreamer’s attention to his flaws. A person who feels quiet guilt at not being charitable meets her daimon with a look of angelic kindness on its face. The daimon of a man once a bully appears just larger, with the tension of restrained violence and a smear of blood on its knuckles. Daimons, in their role as  interrogator, are non-persons to scenes that they occupy while guiding their dreamers; this lets daimons pose pointed questions to the dreamer and foment introspection. Daimons may replace dream actors, usually the most important in any given scene, to better influence the astral traveler.

A daimon has the same general abilities as its dreamer, plus the ability to manipulate this dream space in pursuit of the daimon’ goal: improving the dreamer. Mages’ daimons have power over the same Arcana as the mages themselves, though only within Astral Space. The daimon’s place is dream space, where the daimon can expose its dreamer to allegories in full force; not a few express discontent at being constrained to the dream space when making a point to their dreamers, but none truly regret it.

All daimons have influence over their native Oneiros (starting with Influence: Oneiros 3 regardless of lower Rank, Rank is based on Gnosis). This Influence is limited to their native Oneiroi, meaningless unless a daimon somehow accesses a foreign Oneiros. With this Influence, a daimon navigates the Oneiros, directs its dreamer into dream sequences intended to  highlight certain flaws or failures and tweaks scenes to better influence the dreamer.

Daimons have innate senses of their dreamers’ emotions, desires, weaknesses, fears and such. The higher self is an aspect of the person that stands apart from the person itself and judges without condemnation or emotion, then acts to strengthen the person — it’s something like a consultant hired to examine employees and business practices and improve the company so it doesn’t fold. This innate sense informs the daimon on how best to aid the dreamer, which the daimon implements in a manner appropriate to an aspect of the dreamer: a lazy dreamer has a lazy daimon, or one as fantastically busy as the dreamer wishes she were; the daimon of a dreamer suffering ennui knows exactly what rouses the dreamer’s interested, or trumps his ennui so strongly it spurs the dreamer to action out of pure annoyance. These are only extremes; daimons take on any of a dreamer’s many natures. What a daimon does with this sense varies. A person who represses a need to improve herself develops a busybody daimon, one that sticks its nose into the dreamer’s business whenever the daimon can. Other daimons stick more to the role of dream guide, leading an astral traveler through her Oneiros and serving as foil to her questions and denials. A mage who develops a healthy and friendly relationship with her daimon reflects that in real space: she looks at her virtues and flaws without obscuring emotions and is freer of denial and self-doubt.

No daimon acts as a dream space immune system, though a very few break this rule at the side of their present dreamers. The daimon is too important to the person’s complete psyche to put itself in danger like that. The daimon is much more likely to hide (something its Influence over the Oneiros lets the daimon do well) and direct goetic demons and nightmare creatures toward the threat until the daimon must save its Essence for its own defense.

Though daimons’ (and other dream creatures’) statistics are those of a spirit’s, they do not naturally fall under the Spirit Arcanum. Daimons are affected by whatever Arcanum appears to best apply. A daimon that transforms itself into a vampire to play a part in its dreamer’s recurring nightmares is subject to Death rather than Life until the daimon changes again. That daimons have supplies of Essence is a source of mystery to mages, as this Essence represents energy drawn from the astral connection within a mage’s soul or unconscious.

One can destroy one’s daimon, but the consequences are painful. Observe the analogy of killing a railway engineer: doing so makes it easier to get the train off the tracks; on the other hand, you know what happens when the train hops the tracks. A mage who destroys his daimon lacks a sense of uncertainty and never second-guesses. The small voice in the back of our head, the doubt before making decisions, seems to be gone.  He has eliminated his interrogator and doesn’t question his impulses or reexamine his plans. 

Systems:

1. Killing your daimon manifests as a persistent Mental Condition (or derangement). Daimons within the Oneiros after a number of days equal to the character’s Resolve + Composure. Permanently destroying one requires the daimon to be bereft of Essence when its Corpus hits zero. Destroying one’s daimon (on a temporary or permanent basis) is an act of hubris (at current level) that mages of Wisdom 4 or less ignore; the same is true of destroying another’s daimon.

2. Daimons all share the same Ban: a daimon may not physically harm its dreamer (harm which, in Astral Space, manifests as Willpower loss, Mana loss or Wisdom loss); one that inadvertently harms its dreamer drops to Rank one for a real-space duration of one month.

Goetic Demons: (Goetic Subtype)

Introspective mages don’t need to call across vast dimensions to summon infernal allies. More dangerous “inner demons” torture willworkers from within, lurking within a mage’s psyche. "Goetic Mages" gain insights into horror by contemplating the dark corners of their own identities. They become more powerful by overcoming their own weaknesses, gaining insights into evil by contemplating the flaws within themselves (or strengths, from another point of view). Some human students of magic have found variations on this practice, but none quite resemble those of a goetic sorcerer.

Mages lacking formal training in this occult art can still remember incidents from their own past in which baser instincts were revealed — moments that elicited feelings of shame, helplessness or misery. By meditating on the failures of his past, the goetic mage hopes to gain power over forces within that led to breakdowns or incidents of outright abuse. This introspection is not an easy or pleasant practice, and is not without risks. When a goetic mage fails to conquer his own weakness, he may unleash his inner demons on the world. His darkest dreams become empowered by his magical acumen, carrying out the impulses he has repressed for so long.

Experts in the occult sciences insist that inner demons exist either in the Temenos (the collective unconscious) or in a mage’s Oneiros (his personal dream space). They represent aspects of the occultist’s own identity, not just sin, but failings or denied emotions. In the case of the Temenos, they may represent collective aspects of identity or the identity of the being they were created by.  The simplest ones to understand represent the self-destructive or vainglorious side of a mage’s personality, a doppelganger to his civilized self. An inner demon can be empowered by the depression that seizes a mage in the middle of the night, by the jealousy that consumes him when he doubts those who love him, or by the shame that surfaces after he fulfills his desires. Before inner demons are given form and power, they are merely repressed thoughts and emotions. When they escape, they resemble the likeness of the mage, twisted by his self-loathing and hatred.

There is a goetic demon for every little thing the mage hates about himself. Most are petty demons, formed from petty hates: they are Rank 1 and unsubtle, born of guilt at ignoring the beggar on the street or that stupid urge to punch the annoying guy at the office. Petty demons imitate their betters by trying to seduce astral visitors (primarily their dreamers, but the demons will latch onto anyone). They react to failure as they’d like their victims to act. A minor impulse of assault lays into the traveler, while the urge to lie for no reason starts misleading the traveler.

Greater goetic demons arise from a person’s darker urges, the ones that don’t just go away. One is always his Vice, which often spawns others, more specific and sometimes petty; some are unrelated. Someone with the Vice of Gluttony has several along that vein: his brand of Gluttony personified, a face for the recurring urge to steal from a friend’s stash and one for the lure of sneaking some out of those incredible busts his cop friend’s always making; there’re also demons for that constant wish that he could abandon his invalid mother and for the need to break into his upstairs neighbor’s apartment and burn the model trains that she runs all hours of the night, even though neither is related to his Vice.

Greater demons are cleverer, stronger and all-round more influential. They want nothing more than to drag the dreamer down to their level, to make him like them, make him be them. Some mages believe that falling prey to a goetic demon’s urging allows the demon to express control over the mage’s body, giving the demon access to a real world full of opportunity for indulgence, but no demon admits knowing of or desiring such a thing, even under harshest interrogation. They only want people (especially the dreamer) to give in to the desires they have but deny. Goetic demons look as the dreamer would under that demon’s influence. The quiet urge to punch someone in the teeth  appears as the mage but with a slight sheen of sweat, a glint of madness in the eyes and bruises and teeth impressions on the knuckles. A demon of murder or Wrath has blood on the hands, the mage’s favored weapon (looking well used) and an immense look of satisfaction on its face. The demon of abandoning one’s ward looks free and happy, has extra cash (that wasn’t spent on the dependent) and nicer clothes; the train-arsonist has soot on its hands and arms, smells of kerosene and looks as if it’s gotten a damn good night’s sleep.

Systems: Of goetic demons, the one founded in a dreamer’s Vice is the strongest. The demons have Influences based on the most appropriate Vice: petty demons have Influence 1, greater demons have Influence 2 and the demon of Vice has Influence 3 and their ranks track to the Influence levels. A person with a specific obsession separate from his Vice may have a goetic demon that rivals or even exceeds the demon of his Vice in power. Destroying one’s inner demons subdues those urges for a time, but they never truly go away. Even one reduced zero Essence and then killed re-forms once the dreamer begins harboring those urges in his conscious mind again.

Goetic Sorcery: 

By summoning or calling forth demons into consciousness through magic, a mage learns how to subdue dark aspects of his psyche, whether they be Vices, character Flaws or derangements. If he succeeds, he asserts his own identity and becomes more powerful, gaining Willpower. By confronting the dark corners of his soul, he gains strength.

At higher levels of power, the goetic mage can manifest these inner demons into ephemeral form in the material world. They are not spirits, as such. The mage can be a gateway to allow the escaped demon to gain access to the Twilight Form Manifestation. Other Goetic spells can give physical shape and form to aspects of his psyche. Once given form outside the dreamscape, the demon can bend others to the mage’s will, preying on the same weaknesses the goetic mage has mastered. The goetic mage can inflame others to act on their darkest impulses (indulging in the Vice or weakness they both share). By this art, goetic mages gain power, influence the weak, and control the soulless. Like many paths to power, this practice involves sacrifice… and considerable risk.

When manifested, an inner demon only vaguely represents the mage who summons it, perhaps in a form that the mage would assume if he abandoned all morality. The demon might look like a mockery of a loved one — a lover or friend as seen through a mirror darkly — or simply appear as someone the mage would envy or lust after. Imagine a lustful sorcerer summoning a supernaturally beautiful succubus (or incubus) to enact his dark desires. In its ephemeral form, the inner demon is ready to perform the bidding of the mage who summoned it. in Twilight, it can actively escape the notice of ordinary people, clouding their minds and judgment with the dark emotions the summoner has conquered. When it chooses to reveal itself, it is an avatar of sin made flesh.

A master of inner demons bends Sleepers to his will by manipulating them with the same dark emotions he knows intimately. A person possessed by a goetic mage’s demon often displays the Vice and derangements of the mage who controls the entity. Scientific mages claim that modern techniques of psychotherapy can permanently cure a person who is possessed by a mage’s inner demons. Religious ones rely on old-fashioned exorcisms. Physically gifted mages swiftly subdue and restrain the goetic mage’s manifested minions. Since goetic magic is an ancient practice, some mages have also discovered Atlantean seals that bind and contain inner demons. Once a goetic’s creations have been destroyed or bound, his rivals must find a way to prevent any further summoning from taking place. Only an insightful cabal can trace the inner demon back to the goetic mage who conjured it.

When mages finally hunt down a corrupt goetic mage, they should be careful to make sure his creations are destroyed as well. Killing a goetic mage while his inner demon is at large releases that evil into the world. If the mage who controls the puppet is destroyed, the inner demon only needs to answer to its own desires. It roams freely, looking to corrupt whomever it encounters. Mages who have researched the goetic mage who created it have a greater chance in finding it, especially if they can sympathize with its hideous desires (for example, they share its emblematic Vice). Mages can then use their magic to sense the inner demon’s failings, faults, emotions and motivations.

That is the form of goetia a mage practices from without, calling up the worst of himself from deep within and either conquering or freeing it. Such magic lacks precision; it latches onto the mage’s very worst impulses but cannot summon his lesser evils. Within dream space, all the mage’s foul urges have form in the goetic parts of the soul.

Goetic Nightmares (Goetic Subtype)

This is the catchall category for goetic things that aren’t dark urges, higher selves or harmless roles in dream sequences. Generally, nightmare creatures are things born of the dreamer’s fears given life and strength in her subconscious. When the picnic-perfect sky clouds over and the astral traveler follows her cues to discover the corpse in the culvert, and the corpse reaches for her, that is a nightmare creature whereas everything before had been a dream actor.  Nightmare creatures vary in strength according to the depth of the fear in the dreamer. 

Small fears are little more than annoyances. They stem from fears such as being late for work or getting caught with pot and having it confiscated. They are equivalent to Rank 1 spirits at best. When they show up in dream space, they look like the park ranger who doesn’t care about the drugs but has to take it or the guy in front of you driving too slowly.

Rank 2 fears have greater consequences, greater reality or a deeper founding in the character’s psyche. These include the corpse the character discovered as a youth, half-rotted by sewer water and swarming with insects, the anxiety that the character is a single woman in a first-floor apartment and there was a break-in down the street last week, that terrifying daydream of being jostled just before the subway train arrives and falling into its path. They manifest as strong nightmare creatures: a decaying thing with a strong grip that wants others to drown as it did, a shadowy male figure with a shining knife and loud, rasping breath or a pair of hands and elbows bumping astral travelers into coincidental dangers.

Horrors

Deep in the Mists, the larval spawn of the Primordial Mother find nests in Chambers faded from the dreamscape after their migration through the Cave. Once bonded with a Chamber, the Dreamborn transforms into a nascent Horror and gestates, slowly building the power needed to open a Primordial Pathway to a suitable host and perform the Devouring. Unless its Beast becomes Unfettered, a Horror is unable to leave its Lair after it sheds its formless larval nature, but by superimposing that Lair on other realms (even material reality) through Primordial Pathways, the Horror feeds.

Left to their own devices, Horrors instinctively seek out the most potent source of food for their particular Hunger — the individual soul of a human being who is dreaming of a suitable narrative or experiencing one in the waking world. To dreamers fed from in this way, the process feels like a particularly vivid night terror, and unlike a normal dream the memory of it doesn’t fade after waking. To those fed on from within while awake, the situation that provoked a Horror’s attention seems all-important and terror-inducing. It looks, to onlookers in the waking world, like the victim is suffering a panic attack.


Horrors usually die when their Beasts do, leaving the former Chambers of their Lair vacant and fading back into the Mists, where they may become Hearts to new larval Horrors entering the Primordial Dream. Some Begotten believe themselves heirs to ancient Horrors, or find evidence in their Lairs of prior occupation. Beasts argue about whether a new Horror entering a Chamber that was once in a Lair naturally takes the shape of the former occupant, or if Horrors can somehow survive the death of their Beast and Devour a new one.

Some larval horrors don’t take on the shape of human fears by joining with a Chamber, but instead Devour a host while still in their Primordial state. Beasts call the resulting monsters “the Insatiable,” avatars of the Hunger and danger of the Mother’s Land without the focus of a Family.  They are also known as the Unsated and rather than reflecting fears of predatory monsters they represent cold environmental terrors called Moments that plagued mankind when they lived in caves.  These Moments  run the spectrum from frozen hells to clashing faults.  

Systems: 

1. Larval Horrors still in the (Anima Mundi) Mother’s Land or in the Mists before finding a Heart are Rank 2 Dreamborn with Influence over their associated Beast Family’s type of fear. 

2. After they find a Heart, they develop into true Horrors, losing their Influence, Numina, Essence, and other Dreamborn traits but gaining Nightmares, Atavisms, Satiety, a Hunger, Lair and so forth.

3. For rules on the Insatiable (as they are no longer isolated astral entities) can be found in Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes