Theories on Dark Mother

[ajf115]

I personally like to think of her as an original Gentry's cast off nightmares. An exiled piece of a fae as old as existence, whos casting off created the Primordial Dream and it's nightmare inhabitants.

While that's a cool idea, I don't really feel that it's human-centric enough. The Dark Mother, the Primordial Dream and the beings of them (Beasts, Horrors etc) are intensely human things. They are defined by their relationship with humanity. A Gentry's detritus doesn't really fit that. At least in my opinion.

[Demigod Beast]

While that's a cool idea, I don't really feel that it's human-centric enough. The Dark Mother, the Primordial Dream and the beings of them (Beasts, Horrors etc) are intensely human things. They are defined by their relationship with humanity. A Gentry's detritus doesn't really fit that. At least in my opinion.

They may not have begun that way, though. Consider the Insatiable, who are distinctly not of humanity’s collective dread.

[ajf115]

They may not have begun that way, though. Consider the Insatiable, who are distinctly not of humanity’s collective dread.

Honestly, I don't know a vast amount about the Insatiable. I haven't been able to get a hold of Conquering Heroes. All I know is that they kind of are to Beasts as Beasts are to mortals.

[Demigod Beast]

Honestly, I don't know a vast amount about the Insatiable. I haven't been able to get a hold of Conquering Heroes. All I know is that they kind of are to Beasts as Beasts are to mortals.

WEll, in a nutshell, instead of a Family, an Insatiable has a “Moment”—-a segment of the impossibly distant past it embodies, anything from the planet’s first Ice Age, the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, a star emitting a gamma ray burst, and so on. While nowhere near as cosmically powerful as this description may make them seem, they’re not necessarily more powerful than Beasts.

You see, Insatiable, though born in the Primordial Dream, are now completely physically severed from it, and feel a burning jealousy for Beasts. Insatiable have some nasty abilities explicitly designed for use on Beasts—-such as stealing a Beast’s entire Lair, then eating said Lair.

[ajf115]

WEll, in a nutshell, instead of a Family, an Insatiable has a “Moment”—-a segment of the impossibly distant past it embodies, anything from the planet’s first Ice Age, the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, a star emitting a gamma ray burst, and so on. While nowhere near as cosmically powerful as this description may make them seem, they’re not necessarily more powerful than Beasts.

You see, Insatiable, though born in the Primordial Dream, are now completely physically severed from it, and feel a burning jealousy for Beasts. Insatiable have some nasty abilities explicitly designed for use on Beasts—-such as stealing a Beast’s entire Lair, then eating said Lair.

Hmm. That is interesting. It would seem to indicate a distinct connection to the Anima Mundi over the Primordial Dream. Are they still Kin?

[Demigod Beast]

Hmm. That is interesting. It would seem to indicate a distinct connection to the Anima Mundi over the Primordial Dream. Are they still Kin?

I’m not entirely sure if they’re Kin. I’d say yes, though, as they have a godlike progenitor of their own—-the Primogenitor—-that seems linked, somehow, with the Dark Mother...

[SdeSpencer]

It’s explicitly stated they aren’t kin, and that that’s the primary reason that Beasts are so incredibly unnerved by them. (I’m not entirely sure how that works given that in the BPG it was mentioned that they were born from larval beasts deciding to not fuse with human fears and a lair)

[ajf115]

I’m not entirely sure if they’re Kin. I’d say yes, though, as they have a godlike progenitor of their own—-the Primogenitor—-that seems linked, somehow, with the Dark Mother...

If anything, from your description, I suspect that the Primogenitor is something uncoupled from humanity, more like what you suggested for the Mother, while the Mother is more connected to humanity - our monster, as opposed to the Primogenitor's universal, unfeeling monster. In this interpretation, the Insatiable are Horrors seduced and corrupted by this pointless, needless, empty fear, purposeless and unloved by their corruptor and reviled by their once-Mother. In that case, I do like the idea of them not being Kin, as they'd be the one who abandoned the family to for something 'better', betraying them in the process somehow, but who now wants back. It's not that they weren't Kin once, but they're outcasts now.

If anything it reminds me of the programmer in the anime film Summer Wars. It's a great film, by the way.

[ArcaneArts]

Given that the Dark Mother seems to the sum total of the nihilistic cosmic horror that comes from confronting nature mixed in with a human face, the "First Beast" Theory seems to have have bearing-or at the least a human did something to become a face for the world and, with that, started the chains of ecology that drive Horrors to nest and transmute in Chambers and then seek incarnation in the first place.

Either that, or the Dark Mother is the amalgamate result you get when humanity butts up against the world, and as such is less a deliberate active-and-actual being and more of such a complexly-constructed-through-accident being.

[Demigod Beast]

The Dark Mother could easily be Luna. This version of Luna seems a lot more horrific than the version we had in the oWoD or the version we have in Creation.

[ajf115]

The Dark Mother could easily be Luna. This version of Luna seems a lot more horrific than the version we had in the oWoD or the version we have in Creation.

Just because they're both primal figures with female attributes doesn't mean we should lump them together. I think it does a disservice to both the Warden Moon and the Mother to say they're simply the same thing. Allies against the outer darkness, perhaps (void-spirits and idigam in Luna's case and the influence of the Primogenitor in the Mother's), if they're aware of one another, but not one and the same.

[Demigod Beast]

Just because they're both primal figures with female attributes doesn't mean we should lump them together. I think it does a disservice to both the Warden Moon and the Mother to say they're simply the same thing. Allies against the outer darkness, perhaps (void-spirits and idigam in Luna's case and the influence of the Primogenitor in the Mother's), if they're aware of one another, but not one and the same.

‘Twas just an idea. I’ve already stated what she (the Dark Mother) is my games.

[ArcaneArts]

I feel like most theories about that dive too far into other games cosmology overcomplicate the matter and tend to miss out on how metaphysics interact.

[ajf115]

‘Twas just an idea. I’ve already stated what she (the Dark Mother) is my games.

Ah, sorry if I came over as overly-dismissive. Ideas are great, and it brought up an angle I hadn't really thought of. I do like Luna, I just don't think She's really close enough in theme to be the Mother - she's too distant, too disconnected to really fit my image of the Dark Mum.

[ajf115]

I'd just like to say that I love this thread, and that we can so seriously discuss the metaphysics of a fictional goddess (maybe) of fear. I can imagine a very similar thread in the World of Darkness doing much the same only, you know, more seriously still.