LeviathanTempest:ArchivedOrigins

Llenlleawch opens the issue

"Is there a First Change? One night you have a vision, a trance, you experience a Visitation (yeah, I've been reading Scion) where you fundamentally see/taste/experience the archetypal monster that is your ancestor, and when you wake up, you are knee-deep in murky water with scales all over your body?

Or is it the Wake at first? People starting to do you favors without knowing why, then turning up at odd hours and just looking at you until you let them in, more and more until finally one of them utters an eldritch word that for some reason, you understand?

Does it have to have a connection with water or other substances? This car accident you got into : when you came to you were covered in the other guy's blood, but somehow it spoke to you and got you your first hints of the difference that's in you?

Maybe when the Knowledge first got into your head, something else disappeared. You forgot you have a car. The entire layout of the city you've lived in for twelve years has disappeared from your mind. This girl keeps calling you, sobbing, insisting she's your fiancee, but you can't for the life of you remember her.

Oh, speaking of which: what makes you into a Leviathan? Does one of your parents have to be one? Is there a quirk of genetics that makes you into one spontaneously, although no one in your family has a hint?"

My response

"For play's sake, riffing off of Llenlleawch, I'm thinking that being "Tribe" has a pseudo-genetic origin but that those genetics are widespread. They were "seeded" in a time table that's frankly staggering. This is to make sure that your character's human family's ethnicity doesn't predetermine what sort of being you are (to avoid "All Dagonites are European")

It takes a combination of elements for the trait to "express" itself - environmental, psychological, mystic, etc. - so that only a vanishing few people will actually gain the template. Most expression should happen between 16-25, with some on either side. This moves away from uniting actual and thematic puberty, which might weaken some story elements, but it prevents this from being "the high school game" while still keeping the average Leviathan young and unsettled.

"First change" is a very attractive option, but maybe instead something gradual? Like, a mixture of dreams, and emotional and mystical outbursts, and small transformative instances, until you start looking for an answer?

The change is more prevalent in some families than others, but that might only mean that there are 2-3 Leviathan templates over the course of centuries of a family line. (The family line might still be weird, of course - but they'll be Beloved or modified with hybrid blood, not full members of the divine line.)

Players should probably be somewhat newcomers to their lineage - because much of the tension we've been discussing is adjustment periods. The Wake and unstable transformative powers makes living in the world very difficult (It's hard enough to ask someone out without the anxiety making you have shark skin), but they won't be secure enough financially or psychologically to actually retreat. Atolls also exist primarily in the "people world," making it almost impossible to find a place of solace even if you've got the ability to hide from the world."

Omegatron's Response

"I'd say that it is not as unified an experience as the First Change or Embrace, but not as diverse as Awakening or Escape (for lost). But also different from a Promethean's Animation.

As in there are several ways for it to happen, in several different orders, but anything other than that is very rare (but possible)-- BUT that it is not mandatory for each Splat to Spawn/Morph in the same way, though tendencies could help add flavor and tradition and cohesion to the splats (born or choice)...

• A Voyage- Willing or Not - to the Deep.
• Submersion Water (river, lake, sea, pond, canal, pool, ice, snow, mud) or Storm.
• Another Leviathan forces you to change. Through the stalking, violence, seduction, unclear occulted teachings, misdirection, etc. A "Hazing? Initiation?"
• A Long, Slow, Physical, Emotional, and Mental Transition - Evil Puberty, like we all agree should be a focus of the game.
• You may be a Lahmasu first, and part of a Cult's Ceremony. Your parents could just tell you.
• Your Atoll shows up and changes you, or you change from your interaction with them. You may or may not even know them, they may not know you or your/his natures, may not even be your actual Atoll but the Atoll of another!
• Weird, reptillian or fishy cravings? You break things (more Ichor!). Bask, Swim, Hiss, Shed Skin, Lose/Regrow Teeth, Sleep with Eyes Open, etc.
• A Scorpion Armiger Initiates you into the Secret History of the World as part of an ancient oath.
• You stumble upon an Antedilluvian Ruin, Blasphemous Artifacts, or Ultraterrestrial Lore - Classic Lovecraftian Crazy Train that ends in the Spawning/Morphing.
• You attract Cryptids, Marduk Operatives, Degenerated, and something happens.

But it should always take a while.

I like "Spawning" or (perhaps to differentiate it from procreation), "Morphing" for the name the prolonged Transition.

And it SHOULD be PROLONGED. That's an easy way to distance it from Werewolf's month of spirit shit and moonlit night of madness. This is body horror, discovery, revelation... Growing Up (and Out) into something terrbile. It shouldn't be quick or easy or the same for everyone.

Mechanically, the same minor-template subsytem we use for Lahmasu should be easily adapted for Morphing Leviathans, so players can literally grow into their powers. After they fully become part of the Tempest, they gain the full benefits and weaknesses of the Leviathan Template. But once that happens, the "evil puberty" isn't over. In fact most characters will just find that their troubles have begun, even if they only just then know what the problems are.

F'rex, Just because you find an anatomy book, doesn't mean you're going to stop growing hair and, er, or something."

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