[Beast]Lairs

 

 

Welcome back! Before we get into our next Beast reveal, I want to mention that if you happen to be attending GenCon in Indianapolis this summer, you can sign up to play Beast: The Primordial. Just plug the word “beast” into the “game system” slot when searching for events. I’m running the Thursday 8PM slot (“The Skull Beneath the Skin”).

And on we go!

rogue-crocodile-scene

 

Every dragon has her cave, every kraken his ocean. A Beast is both human being and an ancient, Primordial creature. Beast and Soul are permanently entwined — at any time, a Beast can concentrate and see through his Soul’s eyes, deep in the Primordial Dream. When the material, fleshy world is especially similar to his inner landscape, he can even step through physically, vanishing to fully inhabit his other self.

The monstrous form victims see in their dreams is only part of a Beast’s Soul, however, albeit an important one. The dream-landscape the Soul hunts in is as much a part of the nightmare as the monster at its heart, and equally vital to the Beast. That landscape grows as the Beast explores his Legend, incorporating places from his physical life as it expands. It’s his sanctuary within the Primordial Dream, his hunting grounds — his Lair.

Lair in Beast: The Primordial is an Advantage rated from 1 to 10 dots. It determines both the raw power of the Beast’s Soul and the size and traits of the Lair it resides in. As Beasts explore their Legends, their Lairs expand.

Chambers and Burrows

Only a very young Beast has his Soul confined to a single “location” in the Primordial Dream, and even one mere days from realizing his Primordial self has the potential for growth. As Beasts age and explore their Legends, their Lairs expand to incorporate additional Chambers based on locations they have encountered in the physical world. Within the Primordial Dream, the different Chambers of a Beast’s Lair act like rooms, connected by dream “passageways” called Burrows. Beasts have a much easier time accessing their Lair in locations resembling one of their Chambers, and can even open Primordial Pathways to allow others access, but the more Chambers a Beast has, the further her soul ranges when starving, and the more opportunities a Hero has to break into the Lair.

Expanding the Lair

The Primordial Dream is a deep, almost animalistic layer of the human soul. It exists beneath the veneer of sapience and civilization that comforts the World of Darkness’ population, and it’s in this unsettling layer that Beasts make their Lairs. To expand the Lair and add an additional Chamber, a Beast must find a location in the physical world that resonates with both her Legend and the Primordial Dream.

A location qualifies for inclusion in the Primordial Dream as long as it meets the following requirements;

  • The environment must contain at least one element matching a Lair Trait in the Beast’s Lair.

And either

  • The Beast must have achieved an exceptional success on a Nightmare activation roll within the scene

Or

  • Another character must have lost Integrity via a breaking point within the scene.

If the scene meets these requirements and the Beast has an available Chamber slot due to her Lair rating, the player simply pays one Satiety and the new Chamber forms with one Burrow of the Beast’s design connecting it to any already existing Chamber.

Even after the effort to trigger the Lair’s expansion, though, the process of adding to the Primordial Dream is taxing. A Beast can only add one additional Chamber to her Lair per story.

Lair Traits

Every Beast’s Lair is unique, an expression of her Primordial Self honed as hunting ground and sanctuary. By exploiting the Lair within herself, a Beast can cause the material world to take on some of its properties, with effects ranging from the subtle to the explosive.

Beast characters have a number of Lair Traits determined by their Lair rating. When the character gains Lair, the player can choose new Lair Traits as appropriate. These Traits are Environmental Tilts describing conditions within the Lair. For example, a kraken-form Makara might have the Lair Traits “Flooded” and “Freezing Cold.”

 

Imposing Traits

When a Beast finds himself in a situation outside the Lair where one or more of his Lair Trait Tilts is already in effect, the location is resonant with his Traits. While resonant, he may impose the effects of as many more of his Lair Trait Tilts as he wishes, up to the limit granted by his Lair rating within a single scene. At Lair 1, this limit is 1, so a starting Beast character may use the presence of either of her Tilts to cause the other.

Beasts may — and often do — create the initial Tilt through guile and manipulating the terrain, or capitalize on the powers of other supernatural beings. For example, a Makara with the Lair Trait of “downpour” may set off a sprinkler system to then use the resonance in order to impose her other Traits.

At the end of the scene, or when the Beast imposing them wishes to stop, the imposed Lair Traits vanish, though their aftereffects remain. For example, if a Namtaru whose Heart resembles the digestive tract of a gargantuan creature imposes the Corrosive and Flooded Traits to fill a room with acids, the damage to everything in the room remains when he stops imposing the Traits, without any trace of the corrosive liquid that caused it.

Flooded

Waist-high fluid or viscous material fills the Lair, making characters trying to move through struggle for every step. Whether it’s mud, gore, dead insects, effluent, or simply water, the Lair Trait affects all Physical dice pools. Waist-high floods impose a -2 penalty to actions by characters wading through it. Deeper floods force characters to swim or hold their breath to progress through completely submerged areas.

Corrosive

Whether it’s a pool of acid, a corrosive atmosphere, or more overtly supernatural environments such as metal flash-rusting or organic matter slowly petrifying or turning to salt, something in the Lair eats away at flesh and degrades matter. The Beast’s player defines what the corrosion affects based on the Lair’s description. Affected characters suffer one aggravated damage per turn of exposure, and objects lose one Durability per turn.


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34 responses to “[Beast]Lairs”

  1. YOLF Avatar
    YOLF

    Yesss, yeeeeessssss! My Hunger for more Beast posts is sated!

    Lairs sound /fantastic/. I especially like the part where you can force elements of that nightmarish landscape that is a part of your into the world itself.

  2. Perverseness Avatar
    Perverseness

    The KickStarter for this needs to happen SOON.

  3. Kebhab Avatar
    Kebhab

    Wow,this is a very cool and interesting concept. I love it!
    I haven’t been so excited about a NWod gameline since Promethean first edition.

  4. WuseMajor Avatar
    WuseMajor

    I really love this idea, especially since it looks like we’ll be getting some more Environmental Tilts out of it too.

  5. Ninjar Avatar
    Ninjar

    Very cool. I’m very curious about a Beast’s Soul and Legend. Are these the Vice/Virtue, Mask/Dirge of the game line?

    I’m also curious if using Lair will allow a Beast to manifest his ‘True’ form in the material world; or does it only bring forth Tilts into the world; which also is really cool and original.

    1. Matthew McFarland Avatar

      Nope. The Virtue/Vice analogue hasn’t been revealed yet, I don’t think.

  6. Afro Luigi Avatar
    Afro Luigi

    This does sound cool, but the way it’s described here makes it feel kinda claustrophobic to be. Can Ugallu get large wide open Chambers allowing them to soar? Or are they all limited to room-like chambers?

    1. Afro Luigi Avatar
      Afro Luigi

      That should be “to me” not “to be”

    2. Aiden Avatar
      Aiden

      To my understanding the word ‘chamber’ is not literal. It can be an outdoor environment as much as any other

  7. ale Avatar
    ale

    question time
    1)What that is means to explore a Legend?
    2)Can a Beast open a door to his Lair so that people enter with out realizing?
    3)In the fiction there was water starting to flood the cafeteria, what was the initial tilt there?

    1. Matthew McFarland Avatar
  8. Austin Loomis Avatar
    Austin Loomis

    As Beasts age and explore their Legends, their Lairs expand to incorporate additional Chambers based on locations they have encountered in the physical world. Within the Primordial Dream, the different Chambers of a Beast’s Lair act like rooms, connected by dream “passageways” called Burrows.

    I realize this would be the first time for the nWOD to parallel anything in Exalted, but Chambers and Burrows sound to me a lot like the waypoints and journeys of the Wyld.

    Also, I got my copy of Werewolf: The Forsaken Second Edition on Monday, and a certain passage on p.212 made me think of the Children and wonder if idigam can grant Kinship Nightmares:

    This story is true. The Earth-Bound took on the duty of serving as monsters for humanity to hunt and battle. […] Perhaps the idigam were just supposed to be a distraction for humanity from deeper horrors in the darkness, defeated puppets set to an undignified task.

    1. ale Avatar
      ale

      I think (it may have been about other thing) this was mentioned in a thread in rpg.net
      but any similarity is completely coincidence

  9. Noquestionitsaboutthedoe Avatar
    Noquestionitsaboutthedoe

    if beast impose lair traits on the mundane world,can the beast assume it’s true primordial self in the real word?

    1. Unsilent Majority Avatar
      Unsilent Majority

      Excellent question!

  10. Davin Wärter Avatar
    Davin Wärter

    What’s the effect of two Beast bringing out the Lairs in the same place?

  11. Metamurpho Avatar
    Metamurpho

    I assume a Beast is immune to the Traits imposed by their own Lair?

    1. Matthew McFarland Avatar

      Yes, I just didn’t include that bit in the sample, but they are. Wouldn’t do for a dragon to catch fire in her Burning Lair.

      1. Chris Handforth Avatar
        Chris Handforth

        Does that apply to positive traits too? Say that one trait brought out the best of other’s traits, giving bonus to friend and foe alike? Everyone else gets the bonus, but the beast doesn’t.

  12. Full Time GM Avatar
    Full Time GM

    This is gonna be some interesting game play. Hmm, I’m gonna really need to pick and choose the players I want in a Beast game.

  13. Aiden Avatar
    Aiden

    This may be my favorite part of Beast thus far.

    Now I am curious, Matt: is Flooded intended to be the Trait that, say, a Makara would go to if they wanted to have your example of an underwater oceanic Lair, or is there a specific Underwater Tilt that they would take for that? I am not sure if I am asking this coherently.

    1. ale Avatar
      ale

      Flooding is what would happen if you were trying to bring underwater to the surface, so a second tilt wouldnt make sense

  14. Michael Stein Avatar
    Michael Stein

    Ah, didn’t expect it to be the power trait, continuing a trend of bold, experimental new power traits in these latter splats.

    Now we also get a better picture of where Beasts fit cosmologically, in some liminal pace between the Teminos and the Anima Mundi just like the changeling Skein stretches between Oneroi. Will there be more mental Lair Traits like an atavistic sense of growing dread or paranoia that seems to come standard package for eldritch locals such as these?

    Chiming in on the resemblance to Wyld waypoints, I’ll never look at the maps of Darkest Dungeon the same way again. Which raises another question; can Beasts change the connections between Chambers and Burrows, subjecting pesky Heroes to the mother of all rogue-likes?

    1. Roads Avatar
      Roads

      I think the fiction we got a few weeks ago actually shows a mental Lair Trait, there was some kind of catalyst for when the water started seeping in at least. I’ll have to reread to figure out the prevailing mood before I guess the particulars thou.

  15. Hemata Avatar
    Hemata

    This only makes me even more excited for Beast! This will be the most perfect of fits for me game-wise. Please tell us more of everything Matthew! I’m sad I won’t be there for Gencon, especially since I’m in Ft. Wayne right now not but two hours away from Indianapolis.

  16. Brian Goubeaux Avatar
    Brian Goubeaux

    I’m somewhat confused. What ARE Lairs in the physical sense? Are they like the Hedge or Verges where people can literally step into them? From what I read, my first impression was me thinking, “So this is what happened to the Dreaming in classic World Changeling.”

  17. Nuwisha Nutjob Avatar
    Nuwisha Nutjob

    This game sounds like all kinds of awesomeness.

    I noticed something too. The Primordial Dream seems to be a re-imagining of the Supernal Primal Wilds (a.k.a. the abode of BEASTS!). Not saying that there is any connection to Mage, especially since the Supernal is now symbolic, but I can see a potential pattern here, with the realms of Arcadia and the Primordial Dream being two of five Realms Invisible that are connected to or can cross into the Fallen World, perhaps through the soul or through human dreams and nightmares.

  18. Mangle Avatar
    Mangle

    Corrosive

    Whether it’s a pool of acid, a corrosive atmosphere, or more overtly supernatural environments such as metal flash-rusting or organic matter slowly petrifying or turning to salt, something in the Lair eats away at flesh and degrades matter. The Beast’s player defines what the corrosion affects based on the Lair’s description. Affected characters suffer one aggravated damage per turn of exposure, and objects lose one Durability per turn.

    I’m picturing Alecia’s rampage scene from Silent Hill: Revelation. In general, the transitions into the nightmare world seem like great visuals for a Lair opening up.

    Also, that town on top of a still-burning coalmine from the intro/fiction of Promethean; was that based on a real place, or inspired by Silent Hill?

    1. Austin Loomis Avatar
      Austin Loomis

      Also, that town on top of a still-burning coalmine from the intro/fiction of Promethean; was that based on a real place, or inspired by Silent Hill?

      Appletown was based on a real place — Centralia, PA — which also happens to be the inspiration, at least on an aesthetic level, for Silent Hill. Now you know, and knowing is half the Mandatory Educational Content Segment™.

  19. The Cowardly Scion Avatar
    The Cowardly Scion

    Did you run out of Avenged Sevenfold references for this blog title?

    1. Matthew McFarland Avatar

      If I’ve been making Avenged Sevenfold references, it’s been utterly unintentional. My listening preferences lately lean more toward Angel Haze, whatever that says.

  20. Aiden Avatar
    Aiden

    So how close are we to the Kickstarter at this point?

    1. Matthew McFarland Avatar

      I sent Rich a recorded voiceover for the video last night.

      1. Aiden Avatar
        Aiden

        I can’t wait to listen to it!