[Beast: The Primordial] Beasts and the Astral Realms

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

Beasts and the Astral Realms



The following is lore known by the Begotten and to a very select few Awakened. The Horrors that devour the souls of Beasts live in a liminal place within Astral Space between the Temenos and the Anima Mundi called the Primordial Dream. Beasts can also travel the Astral Realms from this ancient Nightmare realm.

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

The Two Horizons

The Primordial Dream is only one part of a much greater astral landscape, one the Begotten are   uniquely equipped to explore. Other supernatural beings must go through arduous meditation to wander the inner realms if they can enter at all, while they’re just a step out of the Lair for a Beast. 

The Primordial describes the astral worlds using the terms Awakened mages use for them, and as mages greatly outnumber the Begotten many Beasts find it simpler to use words like “Temenos” and “Oneiros.” Beasts are not mages, however, and experience the dream realms differently than their sorcerous cousins. Where mages experience the astral as a set of clearly defined layers that take effort to cross, Beasts experience the Temenos, Anima Mundi, and Oneiros as extensions to the dreamscape surrounding their Lairs.

The Primordial Dream sits at the boundary between human thought and the Primordial soul of the world. Accordingly, when wandering the dreamscape, a Beast has two options for further travel: outward or inward. Toward humanity, or away from it. The “edge” of the dreamscape begins to reflect the realms a traveler is heading toward, the Primordial blurring into the Temenos or Anima Mundi. Beasts call these phenomena the two Horizons: the Day and the Mists.

The Day

Entrance to the Bright Dream, the Day, is immediately obvious to a traveler. To reach it, a Beast must wander the dreamscape and seek civilization or community, places where humanity should concentrate in greater numbers relative to wherever they are now. To reach the Day in the countryside, walk toward a city. To find it in a city, seek out train stations, airports, sports fields, anywhere more people should be.

The first sign of the Day is simple. As the traveler moves through the dreamscape, the sun comes up. In daylight, the terrain and contents of the dreamscape seem especially fragile and gossamer. As the traveler continues, the dreamscape becomes inhabited. At this stage, the “animals” and “people” are gray and featureless, and no more solid than any other part of the dreamscape, but the feeling of being observed that permeates the Primordial Dream gives way to one of being surrounded. As the traveler continues her journey, the world around her becomes louder and louder, and the surroundings lose all relation to the material world as the traveler passes into the Bright Dream.

The Day - Systems: 

While “populated,” the human and animal forms found in the Day are strictly Actors rather than full Dreamborn or Horrors. Although no Chambers form here through action in the waking world, a Beast using a Nightmare within the Day or another astral traveler suffering a breaking point can cause a Chamber’s creation. Such Chambers may be incorporated into Begotten Lairs just like those in the  Primordial Dream, allowing Beasts to populate their Lairs with Actors. A Chamber in the Day fades at the same rate as one in the dreamscape, but does so twice — first, it fades into the regular dreamscape, and then after another interval of the same time, it fades into the Mists.

The Mists

Deeper into the soul than the dreamscape, though still part of the Primordial Dream as Beasts reckon it, the Mists is the place (or, more properly, the no-place) that surrounds Chambers faded from the dreamscape, Chambers based on locations outside material reality, and Hearts. Being housed in the Mists doesn’t affect a Chamber compared to one in the dreamscape, but anyone leaving without using a Burrow quickly realizes the difference. Instead of the dreamscape’s thin facsimile of the waking world, travelers into the Mists find themselves in a thick fog that will not yield or shift to any supernatural power, with only bare stone underfoot. Travelers in the dreamscape may also reach the Mists by deliberately seeking out quiet, untouched places, anywhere with less impact by humanity, relative to their current surroundings.

Wandering the Mists is an exercise in frustration. Some travelers walk for subjective days without finding anything, while others stumble through into a Chamber almost immediately. The lack of any navigable signposts makes it a dangerous proposition for anyone except the Begotten, who all have their innate sense of how to reach their own Lair. Worse than the risk of simply finding nothing, however, is the risk of intruding on another Beast’s Lair at random, or entering what will one day be a Heart and being attacked by a Horror that has not yet claimed its human half. For some Beasts, the Mists are worth the risk. Any Chamber that has faded, or been lost in the collapse of a dead Beast’s Lair, lies waiting to be rediscovered in the fog.

Begotten seeking to interfere with or help with a Devouring search for unclaimed Chambers in the Mists, as these are where Horrors are born by primal fears crawling out of the Mother’s Land. Finally, entering another Beasts’ Lair through the Mists is possible even when Primordial Pathway, brood Lair, or walking across the dreamscape fail. Travelers attempting to find a specific location must focus their mind on it while wandering; not just the appearance of the place, but its emotional resonance too.

Beyond the Primordial Dream  - Past the Day and the Mists, a Beast is outside the comfort of the Primordial Dream. She walks either through the realms of conscious thought or the deeper, alien worlds beyond humanity’s soul.

The Mists - Systems: Begotten seeking a specific Chamber in the Mists that isn’t available through a Burrow usually use a Primordial Pathway, but if they have no shared Lair Trait with their destination they must walk the Mists and try to focus on it.

Dice Pool: Resolve + Empathy

Action: Instant

Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The traveler becomes hopelessly lost and enters a Chamber she did not intend, attracting the attention of its Horror if one exists.

Failure: The traveler encounters no Chambers. She may try again with a –2 penalty with another scene of traveling the Mists. The penalty is cumulative with successive failures.

Success: The traveler finds her way to the Chamber she seeks if it is disconnected, or to a Chamber connected to it if it is part of a Lair.

Exceptional Success: The traveler finds the Chamber she seeks even if it is part of a Lair, and is aware of its Lair Trait upon reaching the boundary, giving her the option to turn back if unprepared.

Suggested Modifiers

- Character knows the Hunger of the target Chamber’s Horror +2

- Character starts into the Mists from a dreamscape location the target Chamber faded from +1

- Character shares the same Hunger or Family as the target Chamber’s Horror +1

- Beast seeking the Cave 0+Lair

- Character knows what event triggered the Chamber’s creation +1

- Character only suspects (but does not know) that the target Chamber exists –2

- Target Chamber has been claimed by another Beast –3

- Target Chamber is an unDevoured Heart –2

The Bright Dream (The Temenos)

The myriad realms of human thought, story, and emotion as reflected into the soul, the Bright Dream seems like sensory overload to a Beast used to the comforting, forboding quiet of the Primordial dreamscape. Even when a scene seems quiet, travelers have a constant feeling of being surrounded and pulled at, which can set a Beast not used to it on edge. The worlds of the Bright Dream range in size from single rooms to landscapes as large as the Primordial Dream itself, although they often bear no relation to any locations found in the waking world. Every concept shared by more than one person has its own realm, ranging from grand, powerful realms like Death or Cities to smaller, quieter ones like a particular family, a work of fiction, or even the shared human concept of a famous individual. Navigation through the Bright Dream works by association; a traveler’s means of egress from one realm determines where they might end up. For example, leaving the realm of Death by hiking out into the desert surrounding it might lead a wanderer to Deserts, a particular Desert, or even Loneliness.

Successfully navigating this web of theme-association toward “fear” leads back to the Primordial Dream, while at the “far” end of the shared realms, travelers who follow routes to a particular person can enter that individuals’ personal soul, comprising realms of their memories, thoughts, virtues, vices, desires, individual fears, and dreams. If the press of the shared realms is claustrophobic, these individual realms are downright oppressive to a Beast — travelers feel like they are under constant, deep scrutiny. Actors and Dreamborn attack them as intruders if they draw attention to themselves or randomly address them as though they were the person whose soul they are in. The realms of a person’s soul shift and warp constantly with their waking or sleeping thoughts, posing real risk to travelers even if they avoid the soul’s guardians. The rewards for journeying this far are great, however; by opening a Primordial Pathway back to their Lair in a soul realm, a Beast can deliberately target an individual for their Horror to feed from.

Disconnected Dreams (Isolated Temenic Realms)

What happens to a story when no one remembers it? Some mages have successfully used magic to enter Bright realms with no connections to any other, leading Beasts aware of the feat to believe that the Bright Dream must have its own form of the Mists, housing realms of concepts lost to history… Or perhaps yet to be discovered. If one of these realms shared a theme with a Chamber, a Beast could open a Primordial Pathway to it.

Systems: Where Chambers have Lair and Apex Traits, realms in the Bright Dream have Themes, the concepts they are based on and that form their appearance. Begotten have an advantage as natives of the human soul, and always know the Theme of a Bright realm once they set foot in it. In this way, opening Primordial Pathways back to the Lair is as easy as finding a realm whose Theme matches a Lair Trait.  Deliberate navigation in the Bright Dream requires correctly determining the nature of a connection between realms, based on the similarity of concept between the realm sought and the realm being left.

Dice Pool: Wits + Investigation

Action: Instant, although the process takes half an hour per –1 penalty.

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The traveler becomes trapped in the current realm, and attracts the attention of hostile Dreamborn.
Failure: The traveler fails to find her desired route, and enters a realm she did not intend.

Success: The traveler successfully crosses into the realm she sought after hours equal to the penalty on this roll.

Exceptional Success: The traveler crosses into the realm she sought after 15 minutes per –1 on this roll.

Suggested Modifiers

Relation/Penalty

- The two realms are almost identical +0

- The two realms are closely related –1

- The two realms are associated –3

- The two realms are distantly related –5

Singular Realms (Oneiroi)

While the shared realms are relatively stable, the realms of a singular person’s soul shift and warp with their thoughts, only reaching something like stability when that person undergoes deep meditation. This is mostly cosmetic, except in the realm corresponding to their active thoughts (or dreams, if they’re asleep at the time). Anyone staying in this realm longer than a scene becomes subject to the Dreamquake Tilt, which has a strength of the person’s Integrity.

Influencing HumanityAs the reflection of humanity’s thoughts through their collective soul, cunning travelers in the Bright Dream sometimes attempt to alter opinions and beliefs in the physical world by manipulating the realms corresponding to those ideas. This is both easier and more difficult than many newly Devoured Begotten might imagine. No special powers are required (beyond being within the Bright Dream), but the monosphere of humanity is surprisingly elastic and resistant, large-scale changes returning to “normal” quickly if they take at all. No one has ever destroyed a major religion by rampaging through its Bright Dream realm, or caused the population of a city to abandon it by ruining its part of the realm of Cities. Beasts who choose their subject with more focus, however, can get results; making the population of a small town dislike their mayor, for example, or implanting the suggestion in a small group of witnesses to a feeding that they must never speak of it.

Systems: Affecting beliefs or opinions by affecting the Bright Dream is handled by an extended action with a target number of successes depending on how many people hold the belief and a penalty to the dice pool depending on how important that belief is to the average member of that population.

Population - Target Number- 99 or fewer: 5 Successes

- 100 to 999: 10 Successes

- 1000 to 9,999: 15 Successes

- 10,000 to 99,999: 20 Successes

- 100,000 to 1 million: 25 Successes

Degree of Belief - Dice Penalty- Casual: no investment on the part of the belief’s holder. +0 Bonus

- Mild: opinions held that a person could be swayed from easily. –1 Penalty

- Moderate: firm opinions that could be swayed over time.  –2 Penalty

- Significant: deeply invested beliefs.  –3 Penalty

- Intense: the core parts of a person’s belief system.  –5 Penalty

When multiple people hold different levels of belief on a subject, use the average, but anyone holding a stronger opinion than that is unaffected by the changes to the Bright Dream. In addition,  manipulating the Bright Dream only works on human beings that possess their own souls at the time of the changes; supernatural beings and humans who have had their souls stolen are unaffected.

The actual dice pool used depends entirely on what the traveler is doing in the Bright Dream to affect the desired change; a Beast might turn a local election around by removing posters for the opposition (Wits + Streetwise,) spreading rumors in the Dream (Manipulation + Subterfuge) or just plain killing the opposition candidate’s Actor. The actions she takes, however, have bearing on the outcome, and what actually happens in the material world reflects the Beast’s choices. The rumormonger may find that the lies she told spread like wildfire, while killing the representation of a person might make people “blank” him, ignoring him unless forced, until that representation reforms.

Human belief is an ever-shifting thing, and no Beast can hold back its tides. An opinion changed in the Bright Dream may change again in response to events, and unless a Beast backs her psychic strategies up with physical action, the same things that caused people to hold their former beliefs will naturally reassert them over time. Guiding people to vote for a crooked candidate won’t prevent them from realizing his perfidy and not voting for him again.

The Cave & The Mother's Land (The Anima Mundi)

The Primordial Dream is deep in the collective soul, but it lies this side of the gulf between humanity and the wider astral world. Animals, rocks, planets, even the stars themselves may not have souls Horrors can feed from, but perhaps it’s like seeing a forest for the trees. Supernatural beings in the waking world can’t discern the soul of the Earth because it surrounds them, and only humanity is broken enough to have a separate Dream of its own. Mages talk about an Anima Mundi lying beyond a Boundary Stone (The Omphalos), but to Beasts the astral world beyond humanity is simply the Mother’s Land, to the Primordial Dream as their own Lairs are to the waking world. To reach it, Begotten must find the most fundamental part of the human psyche, deep within the Mists. Begotten with extensive Lairs stand the most chance, as the Primordial forces in their Horrors call to their source.

While wandering the Mists, travelers sometimes hear snatches of conversation, song, and poetry, muffled so they can’t make out the exact words. Following these deeper and deeper into the Mists leads to the Cave. The stony ground of the Mists rears up into a cliff, and set into this infinitely high edifice is a ragged cave mouth. Within sight of the Cave, two things immediately become apparent. Anyone breathing the Mists in or around it becomes able to understand any language ever known to a human being, living or dead. Beasts feel a transition as though passing into a Chamber, but much stronger — the sign of the Mother. Within the Cave, every surface is coated in writing, from modern graffiti to older and older examples until the markings give way to cave paintings and fresh, bloody handprints.

The Cave is a tunnel, a passageway (perhaps, some Beasts say, a Burrow?) and leads out of another cave mouth into the Mother’s Land, the soul of the Earth itself. The Mother’s Land is a wild, untamed landscape, devoid of humanity or the impact it has had on the world. Where the Primordial dreamscape is thin and fragile, everything in the Mother’s Land seems large, solid, and somehow more real than waking reality. Forests long since logged as farmland stretch for miles, animals watch travelers with too-intelligent eyes, and rivers flow free of any dams. The Mother’s Land isn’t just a nature lover’s paradise, it is the birthplace of Horrors. In dark corners, deep forests, and high mountains, Dreamborn formed out of basic animal terrors dwell, protean monsters that stalk, threaten, repulse, trap, or expose the animal Dreamborn wandering the Land.

These monsters are unborn, larval Horrors. Sometimes, a Beast entering the Land catches sight of one moving the other way, driven by some unknowable instinct to move through the Cave. As they travel into the Primordial Dream, the fear-Dreamborn take shape, absorbing human legend as they enter the Mists and eventually find an unclaimed Chamber to settle in, turning it into a nascent Heart. A handful of legends speak of great Progenitor-Beasts Laired somewhere within the Mother’s Land, the originating Horrors of each Family.

The Begotten are Primordial, but still creatures of human fears, and in the Mother’s Land are out of their habitat. Their Horrors were born of its energies, formed into shape by the pressure of the human soul, and without that pressure they escape like air released into a vacuum. Travelers in the Mother’s Land feel themselves being consumed by it, their individual sapient existence blurring and breaking down until they vanish from the Land, waking wherever they first took on Dream Form, suffering as though a Horror had consumed them, and (for Beasts so consumed) starving. A few Beasts believe this is the Dark Mother herself feeding on intruders into her Land and repeatedly offer themselves up as a sign of devotion.  To mages, this effect of absorption is called the Ecstatic Wind.

Systems: No shortcuts, Burrows, or travel along thematic lines work in the Mother’s Land, and the only Primordial Pathways a Beast can open lead back to more comfortable planes of existence. The Land imposes itself on travelers To get anywhere, a Beast must walk. Most travelers within the Mother’s Land risk being consumed by the Primordial forces at work in such a deep layer of the soul, and unfortunately for Beasts the more connection a wanderer has to the Dark Mother the worse the effect. Every hour a character spends in the Land, roll Lair + 2 and apply

THE MOTHER’S HEART

If the Mother’s Land is the Lair of the Dark Mother, some Beasts ask, then where is her Heart, or her Horror? What form might the avatar of fear itself  take? Some stories about the Progenitor-Beasts place them on the shores of a great black ocean, which matches descriptions mages have of the very limit of the astral worlds. Some of the beings the Awakened encounter out there might be the Mother, or might be to mages as the Progenitor-Beasts are to their Families. Other possible sightings of the Mother in her Land turn out to be powerful Unfettered, protected somehow from being consumed like other travelers. If anyone has met the Dark Mother and survived, they haven’t said anything.

KIN AND THE MOTHER’S LAND

Exploring the worlds beyond the Cave with a mixed group of companions is unpredictable. Human beings and supernatural creatures who have human-like spiritualties suffer similar effects to Beasts through exposure to the Mother’s Land. Substitute their Supernatural Tolerance trait for Lair (or just roll two dice for characters without one.) This includes mages, mummies, vampires, changelings, Bound, skin changers, and immortals.

- Mages “killed” by the Land suffer a Paradox Condition. 

- Changelings lose any current oaths.

- Arisen mummies immediately die and enter a new death cycle.

- Vampires awaken in frenzy.

- Beings with spiritual links to the world as a whole — especially those who relate to animals — are entirely immune to the Land’s effects. This includes werewolves. Some werewolves experience prophetic “dreams” that actually take place in the Primordial wilderness of the Land.

- Some beings were never human and don’t belong in the outer Astral at all. The Land strips away their pretenses. Demons and Prometheans use Cover and Pilgrimage instead of Supernatural Tolerance, and lose a dot of the trait instead of Willpower if “killed” by the Land.

The +2 modifier to the Supernatural Tolerance Trait roll and the hourly interval for that roll can both vary depending on what the being is and where they are in the Mother’s Land. Some beings find relatively safe areas in the far reaches of the astral worlds — for Beasts, the spawning Lairs of larval Horrors might only prompt the roll once a day, if a character found them.

Finally, some supernatural entities have means of protecting themselves from the Land. Mages can summon a protective shield (called the Amnion) of their own will that grants an armor rating against the Land’s effects. Demons in their demnic form do not suffer injury from the Land.

Characters “killed” by the Land through these forces wake with the Soul Shocked Condition and lose one Willpower dot, which may be regained for one Experience. Beasts also lose one Chamber from their Lair and any Burrows connected to it, although they do not lose the capacity granted by Lair and may incorporate a new Chamber in its place in the usual ways.