spoilers: he never finished reviewing the book

Changing Breeds Part XV: Ha Ha Ha! Birdmen.

This is gonna be a big one, folks.

The opening fiction for the Wing-Folk section actually shows some promise and creepiness compared to the standard this book has set, with a mortally wounded soldier seeing an ethereal nurse at the foot of his bed who resembled a nurse on staff, except for the fact that her arms split into wings of hundreds of feathery arms and hands, which she uses to choke him to death in an embrace, the beating of wings the last thing he hears as she carries him to the afterlife.

The book talks about the roles birds and bats have taken in mythology, from psychopomps to heralds to omens to tricksters to embodiments of fate to embodiments of good or evil. The book raises an interesting point that man is still, on some level, averse to killing birds as rampantly or directly as other animals. Those we kill or consume on a regular basis are normally flightless or 'pests' and prey animals to other birds, and it's actually against the law to hunt, kill, or otherwise harm many predatory birds. The Wing-Folk take this to heart and come down with bloody vengeance on those who would try to break this taboo. They view themselves as rightful rulers of the Earth, for they are unfettered by the grip of gravity or terrestrial woes. They're also slightly more numerous than other breeds, and it's said that they could easily act on their desire for rulership if they could ever collectively agree on anything. They're unable to look past territorial squabbles and petty arguments long enough to band together unless all their lives are threatened.

The homes of the Wing-Folk tend to be open, spacious, and full of trinkets they find interesting. Most feral Wing-Folk are often kleptomaniacal and Kender-esque in what they define as theirs. They also flock to where their animal forms are viewed with the proper respect - Corvidae prefer the Tower of London, crane-folk prefer Japan, etcetera. They're all aloof and egomaniacal to a fault, believing their breed is the smartest, most cunning, and most worthy breed amongst the Wing-Folk, leading to most of their disputes. Despite their own boasts, they tend to be too smart for their own good, with very little practical wisdom to back them up once their intelligence and smart-ass mouths get them into trouble.

Wing-Folk are rather gluttonous and gourmands of the weird, liking food that most Westerners find strange, like candied ants wrapped in leaves or poached field mice. They sometimes cannibalize smaller Wing-Folk when enraged or half-mad, and don't have strong rivalries with many other shifters, too busy fighting themselves. They do, however, creep out fish and snake shifters, and shy away from cat and rodent shifters. They inspire extreme devotion in their animal kin, but bird-folk mostly view their feral cousins as disposable, unbothered by anything short of systematic purges of their populations. Bat-folk are much more protective of their relations.

Some breeds view themselves as representative of the spirits or gods (or God), and get into extremely violent arguments with other shifters (or creatures) who claim to be the true inheritors of divine wisdom. Some take their psychopomp role in mythology equally seriously, ranging from genuinely empathetic participants in assisted suicide to serial killers who justify what they do as easing suffering.

Bird-folk usually gather in small groups of mated pairs, which may be paired for life (leaving the survivor to remain celibate or commit suicide when their partner dies) or may be a pair of serial monogamists (always in a single relationship, but unafraid to move on to a more interesting mate). They have a high rate of twins or triplets and are frankly abusive to them most of the time, but God help whoever else who tries messing with a Wing-Folk's kids. Bat-folk are far more communal, and their low birth rate and even lower rate of children showing the Gift mean the community will lay down their lives to protect their young. Every Wing-Folk thinks itself the alpha of its own group in a fashion, the one with the most force of personality acting as the true leader until someone gets sick of their shit and overthrows them.

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: Man is a mere page in the vast tome of our people's history.
Mages: They could achieve more if they weren't afraid to get their hands messy. True magic requires sacrifice. (Hahaha, ahaha, ha.)
Vampires: No good for food, no use as servants. What use is something undead?
Werewolves: What have we to fear from creatures bound to the earth?

The first breed are the Gente Alada, the Bright Assassins, and these guys are rad as fuck. Their animals are the quetzal bird and the hummingbird. The book mentions a Guatemalan tale that the quetzal bird used to sing the most beautiful song in all the world, but when the Spanish conquered the Americas, its grief caused it to only sing with harsh screams from then on. Once its people are free from the oppression forced upon them, it will sing its song once more. Its shock of red feathers on its chest comes from when it dipped itself into the blood of a fallen Mayan warrior prince who fell in combat with the Spaniards. Huitzilopotchli, god of war and the sun (also known as that charming fellow who Aztecs chopped out hearts for), called souls of warriors who died in battle, women who died in childbirth, and people sacrificed in his name to be part of his retinue in the Sun for a time, then released the souls back to the Earth in the form of butterflies and hummingbirds.

The birds together form a sect, the vastly more populous hummingbirds believing themselves to be the returned warrior souls of the honored dead come to reverse the dominion of Man over nature. The rare but powerful quetzal shifters are the assassins and terrorists of the sect, preferring to kill single targets to consume their heart as tribute to Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopotchli and gain the victim's strength. Some few follow Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the dead, and just eat anybody who looks delicious, in order to send souls to their master. They're a bit unhinged.

The Gente Alada are, as you can imagine, mostly in Central America, with the quetzal-shifters having roots in Guatemala. They train all their children in the arts of war and the lore of their people, except the Mictlantecuhtli guys, who murder any human children they have because they hate humans that much. Their cousins look at this as depraved at best and sacrilegious at worst.

Quetzal shifters wear red shirts and vests to honor their animal selves, and their warform is a man with green wings, a crest of feathers, a trailing tail of feathers, and rows of feathers on their arms and legs. They traditionally paint their chests red with blood before battle. Hummingbird warriors are small and slight in warform, but their beaks are sharp enough to pierce and pluck out a man's heart. Those who follow Mictlantecuhtli wear bland clothing and paint themselves with ash before battle, preferring to be ghostlike instead of HERE I AM LOOK AT ME WHILE I MURDER YOU

Mechanically, all Gente Alada have three free specific specialties (Close Combat, Silent Killing, and Aztec History) given to them but their normal three specialties must be in Brawl, Weaponry, and Athletics. They get +2 to rolls to hide themselves due to their size as well. They are blisteringly fast and insanely dextrous in their alternate forms, but pretty frail compared to most everything.



Next up, the Corvians. The book talks at some length about the legends of Crow and Raven, especially those from Native American mythology. They're represented as creator gods, discoverers of man and land, thieves of the sun, the right-hand bird of Satan, comforters of Lilith, guides for the dead, and tricksters. The Corvians don't want to spoil a good joke, so they refuse to confirm or deny any of these. The children of Crow and Raven are walking paradoxes, unable to take life seriously while acknowledging its seriousness, liars who always tell the truth, black-hearted jesters, ignorant sages, they have a tendency to drive people around them crazy. They don't take mockery and deceit as well as they dish it out, though. They're obsessively curious, gathering trinkets and information with equal zeal, and are incredible informants if you can ever get one to actually share what it knows.

They're vain and preening in all forms, often wearing black clothing or dyeing their hair black in human form. Some go for a Gothic or punk look (some ironically, some not) while others prefer snappy dress suits. Irreverent and eerily smart from bith, most Corvian use mockery and cruel humor to cover up how incredibly frustrated they are at the world and how much they care about it. They're teachers who smash your illusions and call you an idiot for having them, then help you piece back together the truth of the matter.

Due to the myth that Raven never loses his temper, the Corvians do not have warforms, instead becoming bird-men that look like they crawled out of a Bosch painting, man-sized ravens, or giant swarms of crows and ravens. They are able to hide well, and are able to get the Bag of Tricks aspects like the Laughing Strangers are due to the history of crows and ravens being tricksters. Their animal forms are decidedly middlin' when it comes to power.

Next are the Chervaliers Rapace, the raptor-folk (not those raptors) and Ministers of War. They're the warrior-kings of old and the generals and old money of today, claiming to have created their order in the days of Charlemagne and constructing a vast and glorious history for themselves. Ruthless, power-hungry, and marrying brutality and chivalry, the group is more of an old boys' club than a close knit family. They crush anyone in their way, whether through legal means and suing people into oblivion, or by sending assassins (or assassin-birds) to deal with someone more directly. They have hideous tempers under their impassive looks, and have a bad habit of shooting messengers.

The Ministers arrange marriages between families to consolidate power, killing the children if they object, and otherwise stay out of each others' businesses, as interfering with someone else's territory is a massive breach of etiquette. Mechanically, they are hilariously fast and shockingly brutal in combat, as befits "eagle the size of a large child" or "eagle-man with talons the size of butcher knives."

Next are the Vagahuir, the bat-folk. Due to mankind demonizing bats and associating them with evil and sorcery, they tend to be extremely shy and stay far away from humanity, only venturing into civilization by accident or in desperate times. While some places are still accepting of bats and the bat-folk, such places are being encroached by Westernization, and thus most bat-folk remain nomadic and wary of humanity. They enjoy tattooing and embroidery, as well as leather crafting and dyeing. As mentioned earlier, they have very low birth rates, so the women tend to be polyandrous among both shifters and humans, and superstition says that remaining with a single mate may even render them infertile, so falling in love is discouraged. They have a rich oral history in songs they teach youth, hoping that the songs will coax the Gift out of them. This sensitivity to music and sound also means they find most sounds of human civilization painful.

Their animal forms are giant-ass bats and bat-people who sadly do not look like Batman. Think more Man-Bat (an actual character.) They're beefier than most of their bird cousins, and still pretty damn fast. They also get a free specialty in Song if they have the Expression skill.



Next are the Strigoi, the owl-folk - specifically the screech owls. Emissaries of the dead and the form taken by hags and witches, including Lilith, Mother of Demons. Despite Athena's companions being owls, the mythological depictions of owls are overwhelmingly sinister in tone. Strigoi are necromancers, and have "a weary familiarity" with the dead. They do not treat the shades of the dead with much respect unless given it in return, and are unafraid to abuse or troll ghosts to amuse themselves. They're solitary in nature, and their homes are pretty much gooncaves. Speaking of goons, they also care little for their own appearance and live sedentary lives, often becoming somewhat obese and wearing the same clothes until threadbare and so horrifically nasty the smell practically has a life of its own. Mates are often paired due to wanting to make an unknown quantity living nearby something more comfortably familiar, rather than love or a sense of fidelity.

Their animal forms are large screech owls and the thing you see in the picture above. Statistically, they're pretty slow but stockier than most bird-folk, and have Aspects that let them fuck around with dead people and spirits.

Lastly we have the Brythians, swan-folk who make Kevorkian look like a slacker. They come from Valkyries of Norse myth, the Choosers of the Dead who honor great warriors with a quick, peaceful death. Comforting the living who do not need to die yet with medical treatment, company, or 'company,' Those who they deem as ready or needing to move on get a snap of the neck, an injection, and a comforting embrace as they pass on to whatever afterlives await them.

Mechanically, they have no breed bonus at all, which I'm pretty sure is an oversight, and have surprisingly fast and durable shapeshifted forms.

...wait, that's it? That's the whole chapter? There was nothing flagrantly stupid or terrible? What the hell is this, a decent book!? No, seriously, this was actually a good chapter and if the rest of the book had been up to this quality it'd be far less painful.

Next time: the catch-all breeds, and then the example characters, and then I'm free! Holy shit!

Even More Native American Stereotypes (also, deerdong)

Changing Breeds Part XIV: Deerhoof Antlerdude's Shameful Secret

I have been dreading this part since I started writing this.

Now, I'm just going to post the entirety of the opening fiction for you. See if you can spot what made me actually feel physical pain.

quote:

Who Can Tame the Wind?

"His leg is shattered beyond repair," Marcannon told the attending veterinarian. "I brought him home, but you need to put him down. He’s no good to himself or to me."

Dr. Steed looked down at the injured horse, its flanks heaving in pain, then at the stable owner. "I think I can save him," she said, her voice steady though her eyes misted over.

Marcannon shook his head. "It would cost more than he’s worth. Now do what I'm paying you for."

Epona Steed rose to her full height, facing a man whose judgment she had occasion to question more than once. "No," she said. Before the stable owner’s eyes, the slim animal doctor grew taller and bulkier, sprouting a second pair of legs along a lengthening backbone.

Marcannon's eyes widened in fear. A creature out of myth stood before him. "My friends are coming to take him off your hands," she said, using her physical bulk to back the cowering man into a corner of the stall. She reared up on her hind legs and tapped the man with a hoof, sending him down to the ground in a groaning heap. "I’ll bill you for the cost of his death," she said. "Now he belongs to me."

Dr. Steed. Dr. Epona Steed.



Can you believe that's not even the worst thing we're gonna be seeing today? Because I know what's coming and I still can't really believe it.

The Wind-Runners are the noble prey animals, who divided themselves up into "Prove ourselves useful" (Horses) "Catch me if you can, suckers" (Deer, antelope, etc) and "You pick, boss" (Zebras, who represent duality). They're all lightly but powerfully built, and have the aura of coiled, nervous energy waiting to explode into flight. They're quick-witted, but tend to jump on the first idea they have and run with it, whether or not it's a good idea. They form strong ties to kin, human and animal, and tend to be rather insular and soft-spoken (until alarmed, in which case they're insanely loud). They also spend a lot of time in animal form with wild herds of horses or whatever their breed is, protecting them and mangling anybody who tries to take more than what they need from the herd.

Wind-Runners are almost exclusively vegetarian or vegan, preferring their food to be bland and boring because they see it purely as fuel. They usually outrun or outfight natural predators, but do get killed and eaten a not-insignificant portion of the time, especially when the predator's another shapeshifter. They also lay traps for human hunters to kill them, especially ones who they view as 'cheating' by hunting in numbers with submachine guns. I must say though, I have no fucking idea who hunts with a goddamn submachine gun.

The rest of the information is basically reiterations of stuff we already know, aside from Alpha Horses who protect the family circle and Alpha Horse Women who make most of the decisions.

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: For better or worse, our fates are intertwined. Yet until they learn better respect than what they have shown, we rush toward an abyss.
Mages: Capable of greatness, yet often blinded by their own splendor.
Vampires: Their death-stink sticks like shit to ragged hooves.
Werewolves: Wolves are wolves. We may share a fated dance, but they don’t always have to lead it.

Fabio here is one of the Uchchaihshravi. Since that's a hell of a mouthful (and apparently pronounced Ush-SHY-shrah-VEE), I'll be calling them the Sharp-Eared Ones, or just Ushies. According to this, Hindu myth has Uchchaishravas as a winged horse that Indra gave to man after chopping his wings off in order to create horses. Close enough, except Ushie didn't have wings, he just had seven heads. Seriously, look it up, the pictures are hilarious.

Anyway, Ushies believe they got the original Ushie's wings and are its stewards, and are looking for ways to give them back to horses to give them their freedom to fly once more. They usually prefer to be their centaur Warform when among close associates and - wait a goddamn minute. Warform has murderous rage attached to it. Did you even think about that, author!? The first time Fabio decides to cut loose with a horse for legs he's probably gonna kill everybody he sees!

Anyway, the animal form for these guys is a larger-than-normal horse with that look equestrians know means this is one of those dick-ass horses who's all like "You try kicking my sides with those spurs on and I will thow you off and stomp your thighbones into Jello." I've actually met a horse like that, bastard was scary as all hell. Warform is, as you can see, a centaur, which means they get all the benefits of opposable thumbs and giant murder legs. They also apparently retain their human intelligence in this form as well, so they can use complex weapons and communicate. While this is kinda lame, the idea of centaur cavalry with M16s is pretty hilarious. Also, having your origin story be Indian myth and yet having your Warform be based on Greek myth is pretty weak, guys.

Mechanically, they're actually kinda crappy compared to everyone else, until you remember the opposable thumbs in warform thing. They're extremely fast, can knock down opponents, and larger than normal, but that's about it.



I'm going out of order here so I can save the best (worst) for last. This is a Takuskansa. They're shapeshifting Injun shamans. No, really, that's about all the characterization they get. They apparently can cross the Gauntlet into the Shadow (the world of spirits) by running really fast, which has no mechanical representation. They also are mandated to have at least three dots in Empathy. Aside from that, they're basically faster, more fragile Ushies.

A breed without a picture, Flidaisin are the deer-folk, seers and guardians of the hunted. They watch over their kin and protect them from "weekend warriors" (it's in quotes in the book too.) They usually come from "American mutts" or Native Americans in America, or the equivalents in other countries. Their animal forms are massive, tempting deer, with the stags as 14-point bucks and the does having prominent forehead bumps. A few are jet black or solid white, and these are usually the spirit-magicians. The Warform is a giant naked man or woman with a stag's head bristling with sharpened antlers. Many Flidaisin also pick up the Near-Man and Near-Beast forms, which are graceful, doe-eyed (Hurrrr) humans and giant murderous looking deer, respectively. Mechanically, they're fragile, fast, and have Striking Looks in human form.



And now, we reach the one, the only...



Deerhoof Antlerdude gets his writeup at last. Technically the real name for the breed are the Alces, Elken-Volk, or Horned Harbingers. Here's their backstory!

quote:

Long ago, it’s been said, the Horned God lay with the Great Earth Mother. Where his seed scattered, beasts sprang up with vast antlers like the Lord himself. Although their antlers could not span the sky as his did, they nevertheless challenged the trees to grow to ever-more luxuriant size. The hooves of these mighty beasts shook the grown, and where they struck, springs flowed and flowers grew. Such was the creative power of the Elken-volk that Man himself was both humbled and aroused. To capture some of that virility for himself, the bravest hunter stalked the largest elk. They fought until sunrise, shattering the forest as they fought, and when the Great Mother saw what had been done, she turned them both into a single beast and charged him to watch over Nature’s restoration.

Yep, think we hit the creepy quota there. While real life mythology is full of stuff like this - Izanagi wanking the Japanese islands into existence, Enki jizzing the Tigris and Euphrates, etc. etc. - it's still very, very uncomfortable to imagine Phil Brucato - who put his nickname "Satyrblade" in the credits for fuck's sake - editing this. Also, there's another reason, but we'll get to that at the end.

Anyway, all Alces are statuesque fertile sex god types who have an affinity for nature and spirits, but usually don't enter cities without a damn good reason. They take their time to decide on an action, but their word is bond once they do, unshakable and unstoppable. The animal form is a seven foot at the shoulder elk with a six-foot antler span, with does being slightly smaller with no horns. In Warform they grow to over eight feet of muscle, fur, nudity, and horns crackling with electricity. As for their society, they usually gather in groups of the same sex for company and protection, while mating is a "formal affair, wrapped in the rituals of age-old tribal custom." I only thank God they don't elaborate on that. Mechanically, they're insanely strong, tough, and fast, with their warform being one of the biggest in the book.

And now for the part I know a few of you have been dreading as much as I have. Deerhoof Antlerdude's Shameful Secret, as you can see from above, is that he does not have a penis. At least, in the published book he doesn't. The artist saw fit to fix that on her Deviantart account.

quote:

~xxsqueekbatxx Dec 6, 2008
Woohoo! awesome work. well shaded and well hung lol

~ShamanSoulStudios Dec 11, 2008
=) Thanks so much! The original to this didn't have the penis as it was for a book interior. After I read a comment that said, It looks like he has a tribble on his crotch, I knew I HAD to give him his manhood back. So far, everyone seems pleased with the results.

Behold, his dong the size of a coke can.

What makes this knowledge even worse?

She has a bunch of My Little Satanic Pony fan art. I'm not even fucking kidding you here.

So, in conclusion, I want to die.

Next time: The Wing-Folk, which stunningly has a few kinda cool ideas.

colbert's greatest fear

Well, I'm home for break, I got hammered for the first time for my birthday last night, and I woke up without a hangover at all while everybody I went with had splitting headaches. Perhaps this is because I am apparently a cheap drunk and erred on the side of "not blacking out" but still. I almost feel like I need to suffer a bit to balance out the scales.

But what could I possibly do to make myself suffer?



aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Changing Breeds Part XIII: Ursara - Alternatively, Why Do I Do These Things To Myself?

Welcome back. It's been about six months since I last touched this shitheap, and I doubt any of you can blame me. You may want to go back and reread the last parts of this review to catch up and refresh yourself. For those who are too lazy and need to be brought up to speed, Changing Breeds is the worst book ever made by White Wolf and I want to watch Phil Brucato get covered in steak sauce and thrown to rabid wolverines.

The opening story bit is about a werebear who traps a hunter in his own pitfall and proceeds to murder him after helping him out because HUNTERS IN MAH FOREST. Ursara are one of the oldest Changing Breeds and are associated with wisdom, power, guardianship, and bravery. Also with absolute, uncontrollable, holy rage when you get them mad enough.

Also, this passage has something that made me giggle more than it should have.

quote:

To be Ursara is to accept a mantle of great responsibility along with fantastic might. Guardians of the hearth, towering killers, deadly clowns, consummate hunters, seers at the gates of death — all accords find their greatest manifestations in the bear-kin.

I want one of you out there to draw me a giant grizzly bear in a tiny clown suit honking a horn at other bears looking at it disappointingly. One of you drew the Awww!!! Shark, so I know there's artists in here

Ursara are usually powerfully built, excellent survivalists and deeply love their homes, rarely going too far from them. They are slow to anger but will fuck you up six ways til Sunday if you push them past their limit. They have deep voices and move at their own pace, which others usually find insufferably plodding until they're motivated to quicker action. They usually don't mess with or even associate with other changing breeds unless one challenges them in their territory, in which they end most fights with a single backhand.

They drift from group to group of bears when associating with them, as they, like the bears, prefer to be solitary unless raising a child. They aren't afraid to use modern technology to keep in touch with mortal relations or other Ursara, which opens up the spot for a truly agonizing "smarter than the average bear" joke that the writers use with glee. Also, bears have alphas now, apparently. I really should be making that point in every Breed but it's even more ridiculous here, even with the handwaving of respecting elders and only doing it during crisis.

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: Long ago, Man looked to us as gatekeepers to the lands of Death. Perhaps he needs to be shown the way there more often.
Mages: Too much power in such a small vessel. Who picks up the pieces when it explodes?
Vampires: Only Man refuses to die. We can fix that.
Werewolves: The bond between us is as ancient as the hills. Their teeth are sharp, but I will not "forsake" them.

The first breed are the Yonah, who - wait a minute.



The first breed are the Yonah, who are the black bear breed and are mostly Native Americans. They are the most even-tempered and sociable of the breeds, to the point where they get a free Social specialty, and mostly focus on bringing Man and Nature back into balance with each other, preferring to do it harmoniously but going to violence if it's necessary. Stats-wise, they're swole as hell but also rather slow in their animal forms, compared to other shifters at least.



Next up are the Nanuq, whose name comes from the Inuit lord of polar bears and not Nanook of the North (hopefully.) They are, in almost all cases, Inuit or Yupik, and look at the extremely rare "white-white bears" as spiritual thieves or the harbingers of the end times. They are more than a little pissed about global warming, as you would expect. They're essentially a bunch of Inuit stereotypes, really, mixed in with ecoterrorism undertones. They'd fit right into Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Stats-wise, they're huge and buff, and bizarrely have Awww!!! listed as a common aspect.



Lastly, in Other Breeds are the Storm Bears, which are the primal dire-bear types, the sort of animals that inspired Norse berserkers and roamed the earth long ago. They are the incarnation of the wrath of Bear and of Nature, and the wild North winds. I guess this is as close as we get for stats for a grizzly breed, if you don't just take the Nanuq, but holy shit these statistics are insane. The Warform stands at 15 feet tall and has +6 Strength and +8 Health, among other stuff. They have no breed bonus because their stat bonuses from shapeshifting are so insane.

And that's it for the bear breeds. Next time are the Wind-Runners, featuring the infamous Deerhoof Antlerdude (whose magnificent junk hair is featured above), and his horrible, horrible secrets.

butchering of chinese words

Changing Breeds Part XII: The Spinner-Kin

Oh Christ why am I doing this again

The first sentence of the segment reminds me why I took so long to get back to updating this review.

quote:

Elegant yet chillingly dispassionate, the Spinner-Kin are the poetry of enigma.

God. Anyway, they apparently have the nickname (sorry, 'arcane title') of the Arnae, which is probably supposed to be a bastardization of Araneae. Howeever, googling Arnae gets a rather hysterical urbandictionary.com definition.

quote:

Having an unquenchable lust; not being able to stop screwing your partner; sex addicts.

Changing Breeds, everybody.

Anyway, the 'hat' of the Spinner-Kin is basically being short-lived, creepy, eternally ready to spring on opportunity, and always minding the future while working in the present. They're all very slim, the men rarely taller than five feet and the women able to reach six or more (I wish I could say that this was just due to gender dimorphism in spiders, but, uh...we'll get to it.) Animal form ranges from horrifying swarms of normal-sized spiders to cat-sized tarantulas that would probably make me shit out all my internal organs in terror.

Spinner-Kin live for about five years after their First Change, leading to an almost fanatical devotion to seizing the day. This usually expresses itself in being endlessly social, but some of them go all emo and skulk around. They also have little use for families, being rather universally shitty parents or spouses who give little guidance to their children. They rarely have friendships or spouses, seeing the connections as too fragile and meaningless, or that people worthy of such attention are competition.

Arnae live all over the globe, with several examples of pretty cool adaptations spiders have made (underwater air domes from silk, now nowhere is safe!), though it does imply they also live in Antarctica which I'm pretty damn sure they don't. Spider eating habits are also mentioned, and some are apparently chiefly cannibals like several spiders. I'd be less inclined to call this retarded if it weren't for how preposterously rare Changing Breeds are supposed to be. A spider shifter who could only survive by eating spider shifters would probably starve to death shortly after their First Change. They also mention Werewolves genociding them when they're discovered while ranting about Hosts, stating that this means they simply must strike first when discovered.

This is where they bring in the Azlu from nWerewolf, if only to distance themselves from them. For the unaware, there's a pair of very distinct spirit breeds (by default) in nWerewolf, called the Azlu and the Beshilu, who are referred to as Spirit Hosts. Beshilu start as tiny rats, and Azlu as tiny spiders. They operate by infesting the body of a human being (the heart with the Beshiu, and the brain/nervous system with the Azlu), and killing them while consuming their body and spiritual energy to reproduce. Soon, the corpse either pops into a tide of Azlu/Beshilu, or fuses with the spirit to create a horrible hybrid abomination that wants only to continue growing and serve the agenda of the Hosts.

The Beshilu want to rip down the barrier between Spirit and Flesh to reunite the two, not particularly caring that this would be horrendously catastrophic to both sides, as it would allow the Beshilu to recombine into the Plague King, an ancient, blind, disease-ridden rat spirit killed in prehistory. Meanwhile, the Azlu -who are also descended from a powerful spirit from prehistory - want to strengthen the boundary between Spirit and Flesh until both are strangled off, starving reality of definition and starving the Shadow of Essence, its lifeblood. To paraphrase from one of the books: "Do realize that this will happen? Yes. Will it be bad? Probably. Do they care? Not in the slightest." Some think they're insane, some think they arrogantly believe that they'll survive the catastrophe, but most just shrug their shoulders and say "Fucking spirits, man." They weave their webs because that's what they're supposed to do, God damn it, so stop interfering or they'll eat you.

I bring all this up to show what good setting background is like, by the way. The book does to just go "Spinner-Kin think they are vulgar abominations and give the good spider-people a bad rap" which is what spider-spirits do in the normal setting anyway.

Anyway, moving on. Females always take the natural leadership role and focus mostly on Physical attributes while men focus on Mental and Social. In case you weren't already catching the drift from this chapter, one of the example character concepts is dominatrix. At least they didn't say anything about using webs for that.

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: Bulbous and deaf are these. They could not hear the sound of the Web singing from their actions if it was as loud as the Bells of Saint Michael's. However, they are fun to watch.
Mages: Invest your days toward the Fates, or do not. Dabbling in the sticky oil of the Universe is a game only for children and suicidal flies. (They forget that Fate is actually a very, very, very powerful Arcana for Mages, methinks.)
Vampires: For all that they have a delicious sense of style [sic], they completely lack the manners to know when they should leave the party.
Werewolves: Does doggie want to play in the big sticky net? Good boy! (I'll admit this one made me smirk.)

Now to the breeds. It's a weird mix of good and bad this time.

First, we have the Nanekisu, or the Eight Knives. I really haven't made up my mind on how I feel about these guys. The breed originated in the Mediterranean, though they eventually spread across the globe. Their expertise is two-fold: information brokering, and murder. They hunt for the Truth at all times, preserving it while cutting away any falsehoods. Some set themselves up as syndicate crime overlords, some as assassins or spies, and some are simple archivists in libraries. They endeavor to be experts in whatever field they specialize in.

All Nanekisu have a silver-white scar vaguely resembling a hand on their undercarriage in animal form (which was apparently cut, if you keep reading) and Warform, which is a huge teeming mass of spiders in the shape of a colossal spider.

To get information from the Nanekisu, you have to pay a price in blood by fighting one in combat. The more valuable or secret the information is, the stronger the warrior you must face is.

Now we get to the part that I'm still undecided about : this breed is apparently joinable. A spider-shifter can, if they defeat a Nanekisu in combat, ask to become one. They are then given a challenge: if they allow themselves to be poisoned to death, and the ritualist will revive them as a Nanekisu. Simply accepting is passing: all supplicants are accepted if they submit.

Here's the really weird part: the breed is apparently a collective hive-mind. The text says they still have their own souls and bodies, but one mind apparently drives the Nanekisu in all their manifestations. You could read this as something from them all being 'themselves' with a sort of mental construct co-operating with them all, to a vast and alien hive-mind formed of the minds of all who have submitted to it using the shells of supplicants as puppets to enact its will, or some mix between the two.

The latter is really fucking cool, but it also steps pretty hard on the toes of the Azlu and doesn't entirely mesh with the whole spider thing. Ants, sure, I'd buy this in a heartbeat, but spiders? I see where they're going with the information gathering/web of influence thing, but it still doesn't quite click with me.

Anyway, mechanically, the Nanekisu are actually pretty Goddamn frightening, being lightning fast and having Nine Lives. I actually can't get mad at this implementation, though, because the fluff behind it is excellent (albeit stolen directly from the Azlu); the component spiders of the body break up, book it, and try to reform elsewhere.

So I guess the moral of the story is that if you find something cool in Changing Breeds they probably stole it from another line.

Next up are the Carapaché, the Recluses and tarantulas. They have a lame creation story about Fate and Light and Darkness and Who Is The True Monster and yadda yadda. People who transform into Carapaché are almost exclusively South American, and often undergo their First Change when stuck in colossal jungle spider webs. They are exclusively of the Wind Dancer Accord, and are a bunch of shamans and autistics who are cripplingly shy and afraid of human contact. No, seriously. They all but use the word autism. Anyway, they tug on the threads of the web of Light and Darkness to...uh, I have no idea, bring it into balance? Make sure one wins? Basically they're the "insufferable cryptic old wizard doing random bullshit for a butterfly effect" archetype.

They are all painfully skinny and of Latin descent, who hate clothes because it makes them think of the webs they were caught in during their First Change. Their Warform is a giant fucking tarantula that spins webs, which they acknowledge isn't the case, but most people don't discuss biology when being eaten by a tarantula the size of a Volkswagen.

Mechanically, they're very, very fast, venomous, and sneaky.

In Other Species, we have two more, the first being as -meets-White-Wolf as you can get.

quote:

In the grand towers above Hong Kong and the vaults below Singapore, a fatal game of Go has been waging for nearly 1,300 years. Open the wrong door in Beijing or turn your head in San Francisco just a moment too soon, and you may see one of the 10,000 secrets of old Qin. Neither Communists nor emperors nor Western oafs could untangle the web of the C'hi Hsu, a venerable breed whose alchemies stop the tread of time. In the centers of those webs sit vampiric spider-witches whose arts stave off the frailty of their kind.

So yeah, Chinese vampire lich spider people, because why the fuck not. C'hi Hsu might be intended to mean Mystic Webs, but whatever. Arnea must pass 1,000 tests presented by a master of Five-Web Magic to learn the secrets of immortality, who usually sit around ordering people to do something while mandating that all their visitors must fast for three days and have precisely seven different smoke perfumes on them at all times while in their presence. This is not a joke, this is a thing.

To save the rest of the writeup: think "oVampire political circlejerk" and that is what the C'hi Hsu do all the time.

Mechanically, they're boring as hell, too, aside from being preposterously fast.

Lastly are the Sicarius, toxin-crafting dominatrices that have pretty much the same stats as C'hi Hsu.

You think I'm joking, don't you?

quote:

Legends claim that Poison was once the concubine of Sleep. Dressed richly in the fever dreams and delusions of early Man, she wooed Him into a false peace. She brought wakeful dreamers into states that mimicked dreaming and death. Sleep had more territory with which to travel due to her ministrations. He fell for Poison's affections. Unfortunately, this is a legend for spiders. Poison acted as a female should. Sleep has never forgiven Her. He sent dreams from beyond the Web to his children to bind her in the hatred and death of Man. Forever in the darkness, She has grown mad. The Sicarius are Her voice. How organized madness can be if hate leads the way.

Sicarius have worked for centuries to prefect the magic of toxins. From herbalists to pharmaceutical chemists to the lethal red back spiders, these Spinners hone painlessness into pain. Understanding the power of sex as well, they are hauntingly alluring. In their bravest shape, these "spider queens" arch a full eight feet in their slender yet formidable arachnid forms. To see a Sicarius in her full glory is to finally understand hopelessness in love.

Until the turn of the 19th century, no males were born under the venom of Sicarius. Now still rare, males who are so blessed must constantly prove themselves useful and keep a watchful eye on the affairs of their betters. Some Sicarians believe that the breed's toxins had grown too weak to pass on without the male counterpart. Many others still resent that implication....

Misandry, misogyny, bad mythological writing, callbacks to the everpresent lolmadness in oWoD, cringe-worthy sexuality, and the implication of the spider form invoking some emotion of love/sexuality.

CHANGING BREEDS, EVERYBODY.

Next time: Ursara. I pray that we get through this without a gay joke.

a brief introduction to mage, a much better book

Changing Breeds Part XI 1/2: Mages Are Broken

Disclaimer: None of this works quite the way I say it does if you assume that Magic > Physics, which the system does in order to prevent maniacs like me from doing what I'm about to do. I'm going to be showing what happens if people forget that rule (and, from a questioning of my friends who play WoD, most of us HAD), or deliberately ignore it.

Hello, and welcome back to The Battle of the Century, Round 2. After having the title of Manliest Thing In The World wrested from him, The Man Your Man Could Kill Like went back to the drawing board.



He puts on his robe and wizard hat and casts Level 3 Eroticism and becomes The Mage Your Mage Could Cast Like.

Mage in nWoD claims to be cross-splat compatible, but this is a damned dirty lie. Mage is only cross-splat in that the mechanics are the same as the other systems. When it comes to relative levels of power, a munchkined Mage at character creation could easily mop the floor with just about any other character at creation barring humongous amounts of munchkinry and more planning than Batman. Mages thrive on being paranoid and always prepared, and also having about a dozen or so pre-made powers (and potentially infinite powers if you're creative enough) per dot of their supernatural power as opposed to only one. Also, they have ten different Arcana to choose from (Death, Matter, Life, Spirit, Time, Fate, Mind, Space, Forces, and Prime).

Half the reason I'm doing this is to remind you that no matter how broken Changing Breeds gets, it can always be worse. The other half is because this example horrifies me.

So, our hero still has 5 in every Attribute and Skill, and now we'll give him Gnosis 5 and the maximum amount in each Arcana he can. He can't have five dots in all Arcana, because Gnosis sets hard limits for each Arcana you learn after the first. For example, at Gnosis 1, your first four Arcana are limited to three dots maximum, the next three are two dots, and the last three are one dot. A mage with Gnosis 1 who has learned all the Arcana before increasing his raw power would be exceptionally weird, however.

We're staying at Gnosis 5 because Gnosis 6 and above is really powerful and unlocks Arcana above 5 dots, which is considered to be the domain of Archmastery, and Archmages are synonymous with "ST Fiat."

There's about eleven thousand ways to kill, maim, humiliate, destroy, trick, enslave, annoy, or benefit somebody with each Arcana, with certain arcana (hello, Mind, Space, and Fate) being exceptionally good at what they do. However, a few Arcana seem innocuous enough until you apply advanced learning to them, at which point they suddenly become some of the most hideously powerful stuff available to ANYTHING in the whole system.

I'm referring to Matter and Forces in the hands of somebody with a degree in either Chemistry or Physics.

That's right, is the deadliest thing in the World of Darkness.

Imagine the open battlefield that our hero and the Elephant Man were on last time. Let's make our hero's three five-dot Arcana Forces, Matter, and Space. Space 5 means that, given a sympathetic connection (like a hair clipping, some blood, or a photo), he can be on the other side of the planet from Elephant Man and still cast a spell on him (albeit not one that's full-out offensive). Or, in this case, just open a Scrying window and cast through that. The Mage Your Mage Could Cast Like is definitely going to want to be at least one county away for this one.

With his fifteen dice roll for the rote, our hero casts the Matter 4 spell, Lesser Transmogrification. With his average of five successes, he is able to affect an "olympic swimming pool"'s worth of one kind of matter and transform it into one kind of liquid, and vice versa. The only real limitation is that you can't make impossible things, like liquid wood.

Our hero busts out his chemistry textbook, and settles on turning a 29x29x29 meter chunk of the ground below Elephant Man into liquid chlorine triflouride. (If you count this as an exotic substance, this technically requires Archmastery to do sympathetically.)

This stuff oxidizes more than oxygen itself does, meaning it can burn things you probably think are impossible to burn, like ashes, sand, water, solid asbestos, concrete, bricks, and probably the human soul. As mentioned in the article, a one ton spill of this - which translates to about 512 liters if my math is right - burned through a foot of concrete and at least a meter of sand and gravel before guttering out, while burning off hydroflouric acid fumes, an acid that gives you a fucking heart attack as it burns your skin off.

That was 512 liters. An olympic swimming pool has 2,500,000 liters.

That, my friends, is a whole lot of burning.

Also, if the ambient temperature where the spell is cast is about 13 Celsius or 55 Fahrenheit, the liquid will immediately turn into a gaseous state, probably explosively, sending Satan's own hot sauce soaring through the air. If the area is even remotely wooded, or otherwise full of things that burn well to begin with, I would honestly expect to be able to see the fire from space.

Suffice to say, I don't think you even need to figure out how many dice are rolled to burn up Elephant Man before saying "Fuck it, he's dead. And so is a good portion of the county."

Other possible japes with Forces and Matter include:

- Warping gravity with enough force in a wide enough area to make a significant portion of the planet's crust implode

- Turning bullets into solid Caesium slugs mid-flight

- Being able to remotely access any information being transmitted wirelessly, WITH YOUR BRAIN

- Doing the chlorine triflouride trick with liquid nitrogen, flash-freezing the poor idiot before the liquid nitrogen turns into gaseous nitrogen at insane rates

- Make your Storytellers go crosseyed when you ask how it's unfair to be able to turn water into napalm when the only mechanical restrictions between Matter dots are mostly based on the metaphysical value of matter so you can't turn dirt to gold until 5 dots

And much more. This is only a small fraction of what you can do with two of the Arcana, as well. There's commanding legions of zombies, spiritual hordes, giving people aneurysms with a thought, becoming The Incredible Hulk, and scores of other ways to break the game.

So, what's stopping some lunatic Mage from blowing up the planet shortly after Awakening? Three things, really.

1: Archmages. Basically, if you survive long enough to become an Archmage, you know that the balance of power in the world is hilariously fragile, and all the Archmages - Pentacle or Seer (looooong story, but they're two opposing groups) - observe Pax Arcana. This generally means "Don't do stupid obvious bullshit with Archmastery or magic in general that would reveal Mages or ruin the planet/reality, or we'll fucking kill you." And they will, because they're essentially demigods by the time they're slinging Archmastery around.

2: Paradox. The Abyss - a horrible, sucking un-reality defined by its lack of definition or form or logic, created by a huge magical catastrophe in the past - notices when spells are cast that flagrantly go against how reality should work. It proceeds to latch on to these spells and devour that delicious Supernal energy with all it has, screwing with how the spell is cast. At best, this is you getting a nasty headache from internalizing the damage. At worst, the Abyss spills into reality where the spell is cast, and all sorts of horrible abominations come out hungry for a meal of Dumbass Mage. Casting a spell like this doesn't mechanically guarantee the Abyss noticing it, but any Storyteller worth a fuck would immediately have the Abyss explode in from how vulgar the spell is. Really, it's arguable whether or not the incursion is better or worse than the actual spell. At this point, Archmages would probably be interfering as well.

3: Despite how broken Mage can get, it requires you to actually sit down and think about how to break it. At first glance, it just seems moderately powerful, but as soon as someone with a devious mind, a command of how the Storyteller system works, and a good amount of practical knowledge sets themselves to breaking the game, the game breaks in a spectacular fashion.

There's also the argument that the actual tone of the game setting itself could mean any phenomenal cosmic power you wield is utterly meaningless in the face of a horrible nega-universe devouring everything and false gods who hate you on a personal level sitting in the thrones of heaven controlling everything, but that doesn't negate the fact that Crazy Steve just blew up Cleveland.

In summation, Mage Storytellers should pray they don't play with douchebag munchkins, and if they do, they'd better be ready to flat out say "No, fuck you, you don't get to do that."

Next time: I actually go on with what this review is supposed to be about.

we added monkey to your monkey for double monkey

Changing Breeds Part XI: The Royal Apes

And now we hit the primates.

The opening fiction actually succeeds at being somewhat creepy, though that's probably because they used aye-ayes and those things give me the heebie-jeebies to begin with. The short version: scientist is with a group of local hunters, scientist sees curious aye-aye, superstitious locals shoot the aye-aye, a huge, spindly dark form destroys the scientist's lab and takes the body back in the night, giant flaming yellow eyes looking out from the dark filled with hate and grief.

The writing in this section is actually so not-shit compared to the usual I have to question what the fuck it's doing in here. Yes, there's some parts that stumble, but overall there's actually a nice collection of story fodder in here, to the point where (I thought I would never actually say this about this book) I might actually use some of it.

In fact, while reading this, I went to the index to see who wrote this, and discovered that the author also wrote the Wing-Folk breeds. I skimmed them, and all I have to say before we reach them is that she somehow managed to make were-hummingbirds fucking badasses.

Alexa Duncan, you're off the hook for now.

Back to the Royal Apes, though. The general tone is that looking at a primate is like looking in a skewed mirror for humanity, and judging by the twisted shit that humanity does to primates a lot of the time, the implications aren't pretty. For better and for worse, primates are a lot like humanity, whether it's gorillas chilling out in the forest or chimpanzees waging war on each other and devouring the babies of the losers.

Royal Apes have very few physical tells compared to other shifters, since they're so close to being humans in comparison. It's mostly minor stuff like orangutan-men with violently orange-red hair, or gorilla-men built like twelve quarterbacks. Most of their tells are behavorial, like smiles that seem like more of a threat, or preferring to be barefoot. In a touch I find kind of interesting, some shifters feel almost bald in human form due to how much hair they have in their animal form, and obsessively style and tend to "what little they have." Also, shifters with vibrantly colored animal forms like to wear loud, garish clothing.

Royal Apes can show up anywhere due to how tied they are to humanity, but have a slight preference for their natural ranges. They're omnivorous, preferring a vegetable diet except the occasions when they get an insane craving for very, very raw meat. This can either be sated by going to an all-you-can-eat buffet, or hunting down and eating somebody. This is stated with far creepier language than I'm using, basically being one of the only screwups in the chapter.

Royal Apes keep very close ties to their kin, whether animal, human, or shifter, and subject any newcomers to intense scrutiny. If you make the grade, you're kin, but if you fail, you're kept at arm's length. If you try to start shit with the shifter or their kin, praying for a quick death would be wise, because you're probably not going to get so lucky. Also, Alphas are shoehorned in once again (I've avoided mentioning this every single time because it gets really old), with one of the only other screwups in the chapter coming from the baboon habit of keeping (and abusing the females within) harems being mentioned, and said to be an example for some shifters.

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: Poor cousin! He fancies himself the ruler of the world, yet all the while the ground crumbles beneath his feet.
Mages: Parlor tricks bore me. Our own witches are far more fearsome. (This is so searingly, hilariously, flagrantly wrong that I'm tempted to make a mini-update showing how apocalyptically deadly a Mage who wants you dead can be, if there's interest.)
Vampires: What the undead do is their business, as long as they keep out of my house.
Werewolves: Any fight between us would leave each side too bloody to be worthwhile.

The first breed proper is The Hanumani Brahman. The first two breeds in this chapter are more loose social or regional ties than actual groupings of species. The Hanumani Brahman are a confederation of families from India and parts of the former British Empire that have a huge rate of turning out Royal Apes. They believe they're descended from Hanuman, a Hindu monkey-god. They put so much faith in their Royal Apes that as soon as one comes of age they instantly become the head of the household, unless one already is. The families are all insanely rich, but are slowly losing influence due to them refusing to admit any new families to the caste.

Most of the Royal Apes in the Hanumani Brahman are macaques or gibbons, or other primates native to the Indian subcontinent. Their Warforms are basically giant versions of their normal forms, and...well, there's actually a part in here that made me crack a smile.

quote:

In their wiry and ferocious War-Beast forms, they prefer to go naked or wear silk lungis or kurtas. After several spectacularly failed experiments with a Kevlar-silk hybrid armor, the elder Hanumani declared modern body armor "an unnatural contrivance." Many families still keep traditional quilted silk and leather armor, but this is mostly for show these days, much as a European noble family might keep a dusty suit of plate armor in the library.

In keeping with their snooty nobility, the Hanumani Brahman are all trained in archery from birth, and prefer to have other shifters or mercenaries get their hands dirty for them. They dress in preposterously expensive and classy clothing at all times, whether it's Italian-tailored suits or flowing silk saris. Many families directly run a shrine to Hanuman, and those that don't make frequent pilgrimages. Their upbringing makes them extremely pious and rather conservative, viewing alliances with non-Hanumani distasteful. However, younger Hanumani Brahman are starting to shake things up and go "slumming."

Mechanically, the Hanumani Brahman all have Magnificence for free. Their mechanical bonuses and penalties for their forms are interesting (albeit a bit powerful), except for a Health bonus to the Warform that is almost certainly a typo (it should be +2, but it's written as +7 ). The real power comes when you remember the animal form has opposable thumbs.


+3 Dexterity in animal form makes this frighteningly viable.



(That totally looks like a gorilla riding another one as a cavalry unit)

Next up is The Order of the Luminous Way of Sun Wukong. Christ that's a mouthful. Anyway, the writeup starts with a quick explanation of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, Great Sage Equal To Heaven, and Greatest Troll Of All Time. For those of you who haven't read Journey to the West, first off, smack yourself in the face, and second off, go read it. If you're too lazy, the extreme short version of what's relevant is that Sun Wukong is a hilariously arrogant jackass of a monkey who tries to get into the Heavens, and tears shit up when they treat him like an idiot (because he sort of is one.) Eventually, the Buddha himself comes and lays a philosophical (and somewhat literal) smackdown on Sun Wukong, dropping a mountain on top of him for 500 years as punishment for wrecking the Heavenly Kingdoms. He was released to be the bodyguard, guide, and traveling companion of Xuanzang, a Buddhist monk traveling to India to bring back the Buddhist sutras there.

The Order uses Sun Wukong's role as liason between Beast and Man as inspiration, and serve to protect beast from man, and man from beast. They murder poachers going after apes, but they also kill man-eating baboons or displace especially troublesome monkeys. Initiates to the Order must be simian shifters, and accept a life of ascetic Buddhism in the style that Sun Wukong did when freed. Interestingly, the tenets of Buddhism turn out to be great ways to stave off Harmony loss. However, if their Harmony goes too low, they end up like Sun Wukong himself before his imprisonment, violent and destructive tornadoes of chaos and dickery.

The members of the Order have rather normal human and animal forms, but their Warform is actually pretty damn awesome. In Journey to the West, Sun Wukong had a suit of golden armor, his eyes burned with gold, and he had a magic gold staff that could be any size between pin and pillar. The Order views an actual suit of golden armor as being incredibly impractical, preferring to think of their confidence and inner peace as metaphorical golden armor. Despite that, their Warforms have gold flecks in their fur, shining golden eyes, and their auras turn into searingly intense golden light to those who can see it.

Members of the Royal Apes that learn of the Order travel from all over the world to the few monasteries left that accept newcomers, and while some leave early, those that emerge at the end of their training come out as wise monks and incredibly disciplined warriors. Yes, the monasteries teach a modified form of Shaolin kung-fu to the students so they can defend themselves in the world, and the training is so ingrained, the Order's breed bonus is they are able to use Fighting Style: Kung-Fu in all their forms. Yes, this means there's the distinct possibility that fighting one of these guys means you're fighting a giant gorilla in Buddhist robes that knows kung-fu.

Like I said, I might actually USE some of this.

However, their form bonuses are slightly disappointing as it's literally a copy-paste of the Hanumani Brahman.



Next is the Abathakathi, the witch-mandrills of Africa. Superstition in remote villages of Africa means that many Changing Breeds are horribly murdered or driven out, and abathakathi (the term, not the breed) are children, usually female, who are saddled with blame for all sorts of blights and diseases due to purported sorcery. The ordinary children saddled with this title are usually killed, while those who actually are shapeshifters usually have their first change while being threatened with death. The fear, hate, and bitterness at being driven out causes the Abathakathi to actually learn the talents they were said to have, and seek revenge on Mankind, 'adopting' rape victims seeking abortions, jealous husbands and wives seeking poisons to kill their spouses' lovers, and others consumed by hate and fear. They essentially become avatars of the vicious cycle, perpetuating the same hateful myths and acts that led to them becoming what they are.

The Abathakathi breed bonus is pretty lame: "You can buy Beast Magic! But not at a discount or anything. Please disregard the other breeds earlier that get free Beast Magic."

As far as stat bonuses go, they're basically ever-so-slightly faster and tougher than other primate shifters.

In the Other Breeds, we have two (technically three) more left.

First are the Tothians and the Babi-Ahsh, baboon-shifters with innate magic. Apparently, the first baboon mated with a falling star and had two kids, whose descendants are these two groups. Tothians follow Thoth, the Egyptian god, and approach their magical nature with a scholarly, regal bent. Babi-Ahsh, meanwhile, are much more visceral and spiritual, reading entrails for hints at the future, running naked screaming at the stars, and the like. While the stat spread continues to be , the breed gives the choice between innate Beast Magic (Tothians, Mage spells) or Spirit Gifts (Babi-Ahsh, Werewolf Gifts).

Lastly are the Hugranjah, the shadow-men, the were-bigfoots. Yes, were-bigfoots. The book's unclear about whether sasquatches are their own animals with their allotted shapeshifters, or if it's just a bizarre quasi-breed. The oddly human camps with huge footprints that monster hunters find could be explained by shifters like this. They're intentionally incredibly mysterious, hanging between myth and reality, shadow and sight, here and there. Their breed bonus is an extra two successes to any successful roll based on stealth or avoiding detection (sasquatch hackers, anyone?), and the stat spreads in their forms are actually the best in the chapter for depicting large primates like gorillas or orangutans. Also, even their 'animal' form (Bigfoot; the Warform is a giant smelly Bigfoot) triggers the Delusion.

Next time: The Spinner-Kin. Or the Mage thing, if people would like.

that's not even how wolves work

Changing Breeds Part X: The Pack

The opening fiction to the Pack's section is the story of a guy who's about to throw a half-dead dog that lost him a bet in a dog fight into a dumpster, then getting ambushed by Batman Bull Mastiff Man.

The intro writeup apparently writes the dog breeds as having "To Serve and Protect" etched in their veins at the same time that they threaten to castrate people for neutering and spaying dogs, and calling legislation to ban breeding of dogs for dogfighting "draconian."

wait a minute what

Moving on. Hyenas are also lumped into the Pack despite being a distinct evolutionary line closer to cats than dogs, due to morphological similarities laziness and mysticism. They're written as, surprise, the creepy scavengers.

The book also addresses the mildly interesting question of why ancient shapeshifters can sometimes turn into dog breeds codified less than a hundred years ago. Naturally for the WoD, it says "Fucked if we know, make up the reason yourself." Normally I enjoy this, because I love making my own cosmology, but in this book it's pretty damn lazy about it. It brings up the question in a sidebar solely to say "Do it yourself."

The Pack are all intensely social and crave a distinct hierarchy in their lives. They also surround themselves with animal and human kin to act as Omegas to them. There's also the problem of them dealing with prey-animal shifters and the possibility/probability that they'll try to hunt and eat them, even if they're friends. Also, they hate the Bastet because hurr cats and dogs. It's not like I have three cats and a dog and they're all bros or anything.

The book also mentions that some Pack may end up as breeders for dog fighting, despite the opening fiction, a discussion of Pack Heart-Rippers in a few paragraphs, and entire tone of the book being violently and diametrically opposed to this. The paragraph that mentions this does not paint them in a negative light for doing so. This fucking book.

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: Loyalty should bind both ways.
Mages: Big dogs looking for bigger bones, digging up everyone else's yard.
Vampires: Just as Alphas without a pack, they suck the life out of everything they touch.
Werewolves: Truly a breed apart, for all the best and worst that this implies.

The Maerans are the first of the three types of Pack, the domesticated breeds. Yes, all of them. Yes, that means that this



and this



have the exact same statistical representation. The book explains this by having tinier dog breeds explode to preposterous size in Primal form, most shifters are from old, large breeds, and saying that there's no Chihuahua shifters (and that it's probably for the best.)

Maerans are basically stereotypes of dogs writ large: loyal, protective, hate being alone, don't do well with cats, go berserk around intruders, etc et-

quote:

That canine blood manifests through a "pedigree" — as the breed of dog a person becomes. This pedigree reveals a deep connection between the shapechanging human and the dog-shape he attains. While Maerans don’t usually arise from bestial couplings between humans and dogs (though there are rumors to that effect...), this connection does appear to follow family lines.

CAN WE GO ONE FUCKING UPDATE WITHOUT ALLUDING TO, OR OUTRIGHT MENTIONING, BESTIALITY!?

Ahem.

Mechanically, the Maerans are Werewolf Lite, with approximately the same spread with the numbers lowered.

Next are the Riantes, the hyenas. Riantes are scavengers who prefer to live alone with their enclaves of fellow hyenas, kin, and Riantes. They're all sorts of crawling in my skin about being outcasts, "[hiding] their bitterness in caustic laughter and [burying] their tears in scorn and disdain for what they cannot have." Most Riantes are poor or barely making ends meet, which might have something to do with the fact they only show up in the more strife-filled areas of Africa and the Middle East. Hyenas also are deeply tied with witchcraft and the rumor of a hyena-man can get lynch mobs a-frenzying. The book also mentions the misconception/myth that hyenas can change sexes, though thankfully shooting it down and not expounding on why that exists.

Warning: disturbing biology lesson ahoy!

It's because female spotted hyenas have a seven inch clitoris that looks like the male penis, and they give birth through it, often creating fatal tearing or leading to a suffocated newborn. This is due to the female hyena being stuffed with male hormones to pass onto her male children so they have as many babies as possible to pass on her genes, which kinda backfires sometimes as the babies are so aggressive they attack each other from the moment they pop out of their mom's dong. Evolution is a hilariously cruel thing. Oh yeah, and the hyena greeting ritual involves sniffing and licking their wangs/pseudowangs. Both genders get erections on command to show submission and greet another hyena higher on the social ladder.

Once you've stopped trying to scrub that image out of your brain, you can be as thankful as I am that the writers stopped short of giving a mechanical way to make furries with dickginas playable.

Anyway, the backgrounds say that African Riantes tend to treat both genders equally while the Indian breeds have females be dominant, which is flat-out wrong, as spotted hyenas (rather apparently now) are overwhelmingly matriarchal.

Mechanically, the Riantes are actually kind of an interesting alternative to Werewolves: slightly smaller but equally as tough, with the animal form being far tougher and slightly slower.

The Vargr are the discount bin werewolves. Their writeup: . No, seriously, that's pretty much the whole thing. They have no idea why they exist or why other werewolves exist and why Father Wolf doesn't favor them. They have no warform at all, just a huge-ass Dire Wolf form that has its stats only barely differentiated from the Werewolf version. They're also mostly (uuuuuuuugh) lone wolves.

The final breed, from Other Species, is the Warrigal. They're Australian aborigine stereotypes who turn into dingo-men. That's about it.

You may have noticed that there wasn't any art this time. This is because both art pieces in this chapter were .

http://i.imgur.com/ORBUA.png
http://i.imgur.com/d1ekV.png

I would bet a large amount of money that the artist drew those penises with meticulous detail and then smudged them in Photoshop so it would be publishable. Judging from a later piece in the book, I'm probably not wrong.

Next time: the Royal Apes. Oh Jesus.

SIDE NOTE:

As a note, there's actually an interesting belief in some areas of Ethiopia involving hyenas being the guardians of King Solomon's gold mines...and also that these hyenas will assault your village, tear it apart and eat your fucking children unless someone keeps them fed. Sometimes, these people who keep the hyenas fed (who are socially discriminated against; this is a dirty but necessary job) are believed to be able to turn into hyenas as well.

They say you can tell the royal hyenas by the gold earrings they wear.

Naturally, this belief is far more interesting than anything this book puts forward. This is pretty common. (Also: if you think only dogs and wolves have alphas? No. Wererabbits have alphas, too. Everyone has fucking alphas, even though that's not even how wolves work.) 

they made rabbits creepy, i'm impressed

Changing Breeds Part IX: The Laughing Strangers

The Laughing Strangers opens up with this masterpiece of bad "folksy" writing.

quote:

Dancing at the Crossroads
Well, good morning, Mr. Congressman! By my ears, I am bettin' you got just a ceiling full of thoughts right now, all tied up like you are. I swear you look like a denim full of concern! It is almost memorizing how sweat and worry just seem to just fall out of you like penny candy stolen from the five and dime. I bet you hadn’t even felt the dangers coming on, since you were sleepin' all deep. It was like they had walked up a dusty road from a long way away and now are tracking fret across your bedroom floor. Of course, I can understand wakin' up knowin' you tried to cheat me might be a bit of a jangle on the nerves. Ain’t that just the thing about makin' deals ya got no intention of keepin', though?

When you up and forget to pay the piper, the piper ain't gonna ever forget about you.

As for the fluff...they're Kender. They're fucking good-ol-boy rodent Kender. Tricksters, folksy down-home wisdom, spinning tales, going on retarded adventures, being douchebags that dance just out of reach, all of that. Also they're psychopathic sadists when in Warform. There's a lot of words to the writeup but I just saved you the effort of reading it.

Here's their stereotype block:

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: Have you ever noticed that they all taste like chicken?
Mages: You have to admire the kumquat-shaped balls of those crackpots. You would think they don't realize that the Universe is keeping score.
Vampires: Two words: road kill.
Werewolves: Hard to respect a critter whose big claim to fame is getting down with his mangy transgendered self in Granny’s old flannel pajamas... (Wow, intolerance and retardation, way to combo!)

Anyway, now for the breeds themselves. Apparently, the person they got to make art for this section watched a whole bunch of Rock and Rule while huffing a whole lot more glue. Let's play a game, shall we? I'll post all the images, and you guess what breed they are, which will be in a spoiler below each. See how many you can guess!


---Rat---


Hare. Seriously.


Either raccoon or --fox--, it's between the two entries and it's really fucking hard to tell!


Coyote

If you got any of those I call you a liar and a cheat of the foulest kind.

See, if this artist was going for the Uncanny Valley, then he hit a fucking home run. However, I think he missed the memo that this was for shape-shifting animal people. These all look like Near-Human forms to be extremely generous, and only one of the breeds in the chapter starts with that by default. So, either he's drawing very lame depictions of PCs that may not even exist, or these are the most pathetically ineffectual Warforms I've ever seen.

Anyway, the writeups proper.

The Minjur are the rat-people, who are apparently all Indians used to being treated like royalty who look down on all the rest of the Laughing Strangers for being common rodents, due to Indians believing rats and rat-people to be the reincarnations of dead children. Right, let's just roll with that. Continuing in the fluff-without-mechanics, Minjur can never get lost and carry diseases in their warform without actually having backup for either of those. Minjur also set the stage for four of the six breeds in the chapter by having the breed bonus be "Nine Aspect dots, can pick from the Bag of Tricks aspects, and gets +2 to Stealth rolls to hide from creatures of Size 5 or above." The other two are only minor modifications of this.

As the justification for the increased Aspect dots says, the Warforms for most of the Laughing Strangers are utterly pathetic wastes of mechanics that nobody's gonna use. The animal forms are all tiny, fragile, and ridiculously fast.

The Baitu are hare-people, who apparently have zero characterization or relation to hares beyond "insatiable lover" and "ridiculously lucky" for some reason. They can make the impossible happen for other people, so long as they get their end of the bargain fulfilled, and wreak hell if not satisfied.

Apparently, many legends of Satan and Loki have to do with fucking rabbit people being douchebags. Just making this its own paragraph so it's noticed.

They're all either albino or blacker than Norwegian death metal, and their Warform is more charitably described as "I'm cosplaying an elf" form," which actually means my theory about all the warforms being hilariously ineffectual looking was right and that picture really is what they look like. Welp.

And then there's THIS bullshit.

quote:

Background: Baitu often manifest their Gift as early as five years old. Most
offspring are the children of parents who cut a deal with some mysterious patron and paid off that debt in bed. Considering how fertile hares can be, the Gift runs surprisingly light in the family. Many births fall squarely in the animal or human camp, with no sign at all of the Gift. If a true Baitu is born, however, the attentions of the Laughing Stranger who sired the Baitu is immediately drawn. Often
pointedly aware of the paternity situation, the human guardian parents are usually too skittish to harm the child, for fear of retribution. Oftentimes, this leads to the young Luck ruling the household. When the Baitu who sired the youngling believes the offspring is ready, he takes it from the guardians' care. Superior mentors, Baitu make time throughout their lives to stay in touch with their children.

So, let's break this down:

- Baitu require payment in sex more often than not.
- A married woman gets saddled with the kid. Apparently, no Baitu woman ever gets knocked up, or if they do, they stick them with the father and his wife because fuck you that's why.
- A normal woman could possibly give birth to a motherfucking rabbit (which is actually addressed earlier in the book, generally stating 'It's rare, it's horrifying, the mother usually doesn't live, and if she does, she's probably left insane').
- There's a disturbing implication that these people may broker luck deals to, and fuck, normal rabbits.
- Despite being transient drifters with no real attachment to people, they're perfect parents who fucking KNOW when their kids are born and if they are so much as disciplined once they'll kill you.
-I hate this book and I want everybody involved in making it to be slow roasted over a grease fire.

Baitu have the same breed bonus as their ratty relatives, and the same speed bonus as Rat forms (despite their fluff boasting that their hare forms could run at 45 MPH, and no, I'm not doing that math again). However, they get Nine Lives, a five dot Favor, for free as a breed favor. Y'know, the one that brings you back from the dead as long as you have a spare dot of Feral Heart and your body is relatively intact. Yknow, the one that's based off cats in its fluff, and yet no Bastet breed starts with it, and only one has it as a discounted Favor at all.

I'd like to reiterate that grease fire thing. Just saying.

The Archunem are the raccoon-people and are curious, snarky, romantic bad boys that apparently look enough like bears in war-form that "most reports of bears near cities" are actually Archunem schooling people. They also have Nine Lives for free, with pretty much no justification. Their animal form is also better than their bear-esque warform in every way except health.

There's so much wrong here that I want to strangle this book. I want to find this book's neck, wrap my hands around it, and choke it until it stops being alive. Then I'm going to peel off its skin and make a funny hat.

The Reynardi are the (oh God this is going to hurt already) fox-people. They reference the kitsune by saying that the Reynardi have a sense of honor compared to them: tricks must be done with style, attacking the weak is poor sport, etc. They're the classic Robin Hood and trickster with a lesson in the laughter kind of people, only made insufferable by this book's writing. Warform is apparently rare and Near-Human is favored more, which (fucking duh) is not mechanically represented. They always have vertically slit eyes in all forms, and also have Nine Lives for free because why not.

If you notice that as each of these posts reaches the end, I stop trying, it's because fatigue and horror sink in over the course of the whole thing and I'm unable to keep up the meticulous levels of nitpicking.

The Mistai are the coyote-folk, and the writeup is basically "Coyote is a douchebag, coyotes are adapting well to mankind's dominance." They literally hunt and eat children for no real reason except "because I can" or "because my soul is that of a coyote AND one of the Native Americans killed by Whitey." They're generally loners (what) and have, by mechanics this time holy shit, a Near-Human form instead of an animal one. However, compare this description to the picture posted above:

quote:

Just as other trickster breeds, Coyote's brood have no War-Beast form beneath their skins. Instead, Mistai favor their human aspect, but with lean and beastly features. Softly furred with silvergray and dry-grass brown fuzz, Mistai wear their coyote heads proudly. Seen so often in shadow, these faces look like masks from a Western fever dream. Tall — seven feet from soil to hat — Coyote's children remain slim. They are never idle chatterers; their silences let other tell too much.

Doesn't really match, does it?

Also, the Mistai are heavily implied to seduce and/or rape their way across the country to keep their numbers up. DRAKENGA-wait, wrong universe.

Last in the chapter, in the Other Breeds, are the Wapathemwa, the possum-folk. They're essentially hillbilly Nosferatu without the sun allergy or the mandate to look like they fought with a grain thresher and lost. They keep large info networks between themselves and stick together (despite the book saying that very rarely happens), and prefer living in the mountains. They, yet again, have Nine Lives free, only in this case I buy it because of possums playing dead.

Next time: The Pack. I sure hope you like shitty knockoff werewolves and half-erased cocks-and-balls, because I sure don't.

feat. elephants, racism

Changing Breeds Part VIII: Land Titans

I just got back from a lovely weekend at my cousin's wedding, and now I'm sitting down to write this. Sometimes, I think I have issues.

First off today, we have the writeup of the Land Titans, the elephant-men and rhino-men. Why they're in the same group, fucked if I know. Rhinos are closer to horses and tapirs than elephants, and an elephant is closer to an aardvark than a rhino. I know that the book bullshits this by saying mystical and thematic connections are more important, but aside from "really big African animals" I'm not buying it.

It starts by saying GOD DAMN WHITE MAN KILLED OFF ALL THE ELEPHANTS/RHINOS AND THEY'S PISSED NOW, NATURE IS MAKING AN ARMY OF GOD-MEN. Personality-wise, they're gentle giants who will snap you like a Slim Jim if you get them angry, and they're also quite sociable. They're generous and kind, but also hold grudges for years (and yes, they make a "an elephant never forgets" joke.)

They tend to stay in the regions where their elephant and rhino brethren are found, and rarely move due to how endangered they are. The book actually makes an interesting scenario by saying that they sometimes get captured by conservationists or zoos in animal form, but that shapeshifting usually allows them to make a break for it. Or not, because apparently anybody who tries capturing them - even people with good intentions - gets horrifically murdered for their insult.

They apparently have an affinity with ghosts, because why the fuck not?

Female Land Titans love being among large amounts of their fellow animal type in animal form, integrating themselves into their social webs. Males stay on their own and murder anything that looks at them funny until they get older.

One cool thing is that, through semi-formal bonds of integration via gift giving and honor systems, clans of shifters, herds of elephants, and locals often become bound in a large web of mutual aid and defense, with elephants ruining the shit of anybody messing with a small village and the villagers shooting up any poachers that try messing with the elephants.

The stereotype block is as follows:

quote:

Stereotypes
Man: I have to ask myself why I should bear any goodwill at all toward those who've driven our kin to the edge of the Long Sleep. Then I walk among our palaces and towns and recall that not all men are mad.
Mages: Look darkly on the would-be king whose throne rests on ancient secrets...
Vampires: When a corpse will not stop moving, step on it until it does.
Werewolves: Majestic dogs, in their way. I honor their nobility from a very safe distance.

For once, all those quotes are actually kinda cool (and as fuck in the case of the Vampire one.)

Anyway, it's time for our first breed, the Azubuike, the Burnt-Horn People, the rhino-men.



Close, but not quite that kind of rhino-man.



Colder.



Very funny.



Once proud and numerous, the strongest shifter breed on land doesn't do so well against high-caliber rounds and explosives - despite my friend and I running tests that show the exact opposite when you hit the actual mechanics. Fun fact, even with a massively overhauled and hilariously deadly gun system, elephant-men (and rhino-men to a lesser extent) can take two anti-tank bullets to the skull before keeling over.

Anyway, the Azubuike are all antisocial dicks with poor eyesight (with no mechanical reflection) and a fear of fire that, again, has no mechanical reflection. All two dozen of them in the entire world. The writeup of their animal form says they can run up to 35 mph on a charge, and, (un)luckily for them, I can check their math because they give a sort of speed-to-MPH ratio in the core book's listing for vehicles! Since Speed 103 is apparently 70 miles an hour, it stands that Azubuike must be able to go at Speed 51-52 in animal form to live up to the claim. An ordinary person who turns into a rhino and runs at full tilt goes at Speed 34. While that's still pretty terrifying to most people who can sprint at Speed 18 on average, that's not as fast as real rhinos can (apparently) go. However, if Big McLargeHuge, The Man Your Man Could Kill Like, turned into a rhino, he'd be able to sprint at Speed 46, which is nearly enough to keep pace with cars on most of the roads near me. A rhino bigger than a truck slowly catching up to me on a 30 MPH road is kind of terrifying to think about.

Anyway, that ridiculously derail aside, we get to talk about the mechanics. They start with natural 3/2 (thankfully not bulletproof) armor, a 3L horn, and some flat-out frightening stat bonuses to their forms. While the elephant Warform is kind of the chump's choice, it's actually viable here with only slightly lessened bonuses that are negated when you remember, oh yeah, this form can actually carry giant fucking swords or something.

The Jhaa are the Asian Elephant breed, and the book implies they fought in Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, and other nearby countries as "ghostly elephant-men who crushed entire platoons in wild mountain fights." Oookay then. Basically, the Jhaa are Gloriously Superior Asians that all are muscular and beautiful with a taste for high living that's being taken away by the White Devil and secular corruption. Also, they explicitly wear "shockingly immodest garb unless formality demands otherwise."

Yeah, I'm just going to move on. Mechanically, they're broken as hell, but not as broken as...

The Mhole-Rho are the African Elephants, the Walking Mountains, and subject of a long post earlier. Thus, I'll just touch on the fluff. They're colossal, larger than life, empathetic, and bringers of prosperity, something that's sort of fallen apart in modern Africa. They've either tried to struggle through it, or gone a little crazy with bitterness and started murdering soldiers with giant elephant warbands. Most are black people who favor traditional clothing such as dashiki, because they're African, duh, this is how it works. They also often reach seven (or more) feet tall and weigh over 300 pounds. Their elephant form can weigh up to three tons (I know, I'll get to this) and stand from ten to fourteen feet tall, which is kinda colossal when the largest elephant ever officially recorded (Barnum and Bailey's bullshitting aside) was about thirteen feet tall. Hilariously, a three ton elephant is about 6,000 pounds no matter what system of ton you're using, and a fourteen-foot, 6,000 pound elephant would be thinner than a motherfucking string bean. The average elephant weight is about five tons (11,000 pounds), with the aforementioned largest elephant ever recorded being about twelve tons (24,000 pounds). To put it this way, a 6,000 pound elephant's skeleton could be almost a third of its total body weight.

Also, the Warform can be up to fifteen feet tall and only gains about a ton. However, back of the envelope calculations using the Square Cube Law indicate this is more or less in the right neighborhood, from what I can tell.

In the Other Breeds section is only a single entry, the Iravati, South Asian elephant-men who appear to have a common secret, are all very quiet and stubborn, work hard, but also have a shared greedy streak. They, hilariously, get their weight/size proportions right while mentioning how the Mhole-Rho are still bigger. They are literally Mhole-Rho's stats, with the Primal form one dot smaller, a small Dexterity boost to Warform, and a slightly worsened Manipulation penalty. Way to , book.

Christ, this is a lot more than I was expecting to write for these guys. I don't think I can get to the Laughing Strangers without making this post huge.

...

I'm going to have to do a separate entry for every single breed category, aren't I?



Next time: the Laughing Strangers, seriously this time. Featuring: every single art piece in the section being terrifying/bad!