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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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
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 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 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 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.
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?
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