Editing LeviathanTempest:ArchivedOrigins (section)

== 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."