[Curseborne] The Primal #1

The Primal are elemental fury made flesh. They are the monsters, animals, and feral instincts of a bygone age poured into mortal vessels.

The Primal progenitor made a deal that was one part salvation, two parts curse. She forged a pact with the primal creature within her. It saved her family and provided them with the food they needed to last the winter. But the deal meant she was now Primal. It meant the creature would always be growling, whispering, roaring inside her and speaking through the animals she encountered. Under her fragile skin was a monster waiting to burst free and lay waste to all who crossed her and people like her.

Izzy, one of our signature characters for Curseborne, tells the story like this:

A mother, years and years ago was struggling to feed her children. She tried foraging. She tried hunting. But life was shit, she had no fire, and she had no tools. Her children were dying. But this story doesn’t get all Grave of the Fireflies. I love all that Ghibli stuff. You look more Disney princess. Let’s say I identify with Mononoke. Anyway, a man comes to her door and tells her she’s on his land and needs to leave if she can’t pay. He demands the payment there and then.

This woman, she has nothing. This man, he’s what’s called a “family head for the Hungry.” More on them later. He’s a special kind of asshole. She begs. Pleads. Offers up what she has, which isn’t much. He offers her a deal, but nobody knows what that deal was, because it’s the one thing she won’t do, Meatloaf style. He says her kids’ll starve if she won’t accept his deal, and he knows a little about starving. He gives her until the morning and walks off.

That night, the woman prays to everything. The trees, the river, the rocks, the wind, the beasts in the forest. She says “anything but him.” Only the wolf answers her. Was it an actual wolf named Lyka or the wolf raging inside her? Whatever, it doesn’t give her money or food, but it does give her the elemental strength to fight back. This thing… It makes a bond with her. It’s a Creature, but it finds its way into her heart and stays there. So when the man turns up the following morning with his muscle, she becomes a monster! And when he begs and pleads and offers up what he has, she realizes at that moment “I could stop this and there would be peace.” But instead of accepting peace, she listens to the fire inside, a fire fueled by years of being shit on by men like him. So she eats his heart clean out of his chest.

It doesn’t end there. The family still don’t have food and the kids are hungry, so the mother tells them to eat the man and his friends. Some of them, they eat alive, or so the story goes.
You’re wondering “what’s this got to do with me?” Well, that depends on who you ask. Maybe you’re that woman’s descendant. Or you’re the descendant of someone who did what she did when offered the power to be predator or prey. Or you, yourself, made a deal with raw nature without knowing it. A Primal deal. Maybe it happened in a dream. Maybe it was when those pricks from the football team wouldn’t leave you alone after the big game. Right? Right. You didn’t want to let them win. You chose to fight. That’s what being a Primal is. Letting your instincts take over. Sometimes not being able to help it, even when you should. Point is, just as that woman turned into a screaming, fierce, death machine, you can too.

So yes, the Primal Damnation may well have left the Lineage founder able to feed herself and her family, but it was on the raw hearts and flesh of their victims. Yes, it allowed these new Primals to fight back against their oppressors, but they didn’t stop when they could. And no, the Creature never goes away. For every Primal family there’s a different Creature, and they all crave something different.

Dominance.

Secrets.

Satisfaction.

Evolution.

Fear.

Legacy.

The Primal you play will undoubtedly be well-equipped for destruction, violence, and terrifying your enemies, but your family — your dear, devoted cousins, ancestors, brothers, and sisters — want you to put that fury of yours to the ends they desire.

What can the Primal do?

Every Primal can listen to their Creature closely and allow their wild form to transform their body, twisting it into something between animal, human, and primeval monster. Witnesses may describe the features of a wolf, an enormous cat, or some terrible cross between reptile and bird, but a Primal is more than a simple animal wearing a human form.

The wild form makes Primals immediately more competent in all physical actions including defense, but they suffer increased difficulty on all attempts at influencing people socially (unless attempting to intimidate). They also gain a primal sense of their surroundings and the people inhabiting it, and can ask the Storyguide a question such as “what is the greatest threat?” or “does anyone here have a strong bond to another person present?” allowing them to strategize and target the individual most in need of striking down.

The Primal’s Damnation, however, means the Creature stands a good chance of directing the Primal’s actions. Some Primals can only target the biggest, most dangerous threats (which may suit them from time to time, but can also complicate tactical subtlety), and few Primals handle humiliation or even simple embarrassment without having to act to resist their Creature compelling them to violence.

Beyond the basics of the Primal existence, every Primal has access to three Practices:

• The Practice of the Mutable Form offers spells that allow more refined shapeshifting, intimidating the base instincts of others, manipulating powerful elements with your movement and attacks, and becoming a beast of solid armor.
• The Practice of Depthless Fury enables a Primal to ignore injuries and any distractions, allows them to summon and command beasts, rouse and lead their companions on the battlefield, or exude a powerful aura of domination.
• The Practice of the Stranger plumbs the weird, primeval nature of this Lineage, as with it they can spontaneously trigger chaotic effects, lock victims in nightmare states, or weave illusions with a simple spell.

I should play a Primal if I want to…

… seriously fuck up anyone who messes with me and mine.
… allow my attitudes and instincts to take over while I enjoy the ride.
… balance the dichotomy between feral power and territorial protection.
… experience life as an Accursed swiftly developing my own mythos as a rumored monstrosity.
… take command over frightening situations with a beast’s cunning and fortitude.
… sniff out and exploit secrets of an ancient nature.
… delve into mutations, transformations, disguises, and illusions.
… settle vendettas the way the Lineage founder intended: through bloodshed and broken bones.
… find out what a human heart tastes like.

Izzy Plummer

Izzy is one of our signature characters for Curseborne, and specifically, the Lykan who narrates much of the Primal chapter in the book. She’s a late teen, still in high school (though she doesn’t spend much time attending class), and whether her attitude and aggression came before or after her curse manifested is a matter of some debate.

Izzy is rage and resentment made manifest. She’s thorny and angry, and it’s natural for her to spot passive aggression in every sentence she reads wrongly or insults in the simplest of rebukes. A part of her wants to get that seething suspicion and instinct to lash out under control, but a greater part enjoys smashing down the kinds of people who have attempted to victimize her. She sounds like someone nobody would come to like, but as with many outsiders, once you chip through her grizzled shell, she’s about the most loyal and devoted friend an Accursed could hope to have.

Izzy isn’t ready to tell the story of how she came to leave her parents’ household and why she hasn’t been in touch with them for months. She’s been staying with more distant relatives, couchsurfing over at friends’ houses, and sometimes just sleeping in the woods or in abandoned buildings. She alludes to all kinds of bad reactions when other Primals reveal their Accursed nature to their nearest and dearest, and it seems likely at least one of them applies to her.

Before you, I knew a Primal I’ll call Naomi. Her introduction to this life came early. She lived with her grandpa. It was nice until pops forced her to sleep in the basement and wouldn’t let her come out. He’d feed her through a hatch. He’d become an Ahab, but she hadn’t even shifted for the first time, so she had no clue what was going on. When she finally got free — three years after living under the fucking stairs — she was a full-bodied Ocho, like a giant spider. She escaped through a drain. Still, she went to the cops when she was back to normal, explained what pop-pop had done to her.

They went to visit him, the cops. On some level he must have known what he’d done was fucked up, because he blew his brains out as they arrived at his door.

There are other stories like that. “My sister grabbed my ankles and tried to drown me in the bathtub;” “my teacher drove me out to the countryside in silence, stopped in the middle of nowhere and told me to dig my own grave;” “the good reverend tried to exorcise this curse outta me with branding irons…”

Izzy has carved out a part of the city as her territory, as all Primal do. She shifted young, therefore she claimed her high school and surrounding neighborhood as her hunting ground. When she’s not running with other Accursed, she causes mayhem in other ways, typically involving heavy metal (though her tastes aren’t exclusive), blood-soaked action movies, indulging in recreational pot and booze, and putting school bullies and abusive teachers in their place.

The Get of Lyka

Izzy Plummer is a werewolf from the Get of Lyka. She shortens their name to “Lykans.” Their family head was supposedly named “Lyka,” but that seems a little cute. Particularly old Lykans drop the Get epithet entirely and name themselves “Bisclavret,” but they’re a story for another time.

The Lykans are your archetypal werewolves. They’re hurricanes of fur and fangs, they excel at biting the faces off their enemies, and they are driven by fury and a desire for dominance. Perhaps more than any other Primal family, the Lykans prize the bonds of family. They’re more than a pack, but they understand that unity, communication, and forceful, combined action is more effective than going lone wolf.

As with all Primals, the Lykans associate with an element. Theirs is lightning, or perhaps more accurately, thunder. The thunder fills them, roiling around, waiting to unleash and forespell the burst of destructive energy they possess.

Not all Lykans develop wolf features when they transform. There are others that appear as Pinscher dogs, foxes, jackals, or coyotes. The Creature has a say in this, but it’s also down to the personality of the Primal in question. A Primal more prone to stalking from the shadows is going to manifest very differently to one who likes to charge face-first into danger.

Those Primals who identify most strongly with their family gain an Inheritance for so doing. In the case of the Get of Lyka, their punch and claw attacks are truly devastating, gaining the Brutal and Wounding tags. Don’t expect to see many Lykans armed with blades or guns when their paws alone are capable of demolishing their enemies.

Play a Lykan if you want to…

… hunt down the deserving to protect your territory.
… form a family to defend the weakest among you.
… make significant changes to the world around you, albeit with unpredictable consequences.