Primogenitor and the Dark Mother

[Excess]

Hey everyone, I am back! I doubt anyone missed me so I will open with an observation that I feel must have been addressed somewhere but I am too lazy to find.

The Insatiable feel the existence of a universal parent called the Primogenitor while Beasts feel the the existence of a universal parent called the Dark Mother.

Contemplating the similarities an epiphany struck me: the process for the Devouring differs between the two by whether a heart chamber was claimed and the filter of Legend and Family was applied. Their origins are the same.

So is the Primogenitor just the Dark Mother viewed through the lenses of Family?

[Primordial newcomer]

Hey everyone, I am back! I doubt anyone missed me so I will open with an observation that I feel must have been addressed somewhere but I am too lazy to find.

The Insatiable feel the existence of a universal parent called the Primogenitor while Beasts feel the the existence of a universal parent called the Dark Mother.

Contemplating the similarities an epiphany struck me: the process for the Devouring differs between the two by whether a heart chamber was claimed and the filter of Legend and Family was applied. Their origins are the same.

So is the Primogenitor just the Dark Mother viewed through the lenses of Family?

It certainly is possible, and it is said that, much like the Begotten FEEL the dark mother, rather than see her, it's much the same for Insatiable.

If its assumed your theory is outright true, it could be that the Dark Mother is the primogenitor AFTER humanity put the subconscious "face" of fear into being. The insatiable, in their unfocused state, could therefore "feel" bits of the primogenitor, though much weaker since it has now become the Dark Mother.

[nofather]

There's a common thread in many of the Chronicles games where the world was more natural, if scarier and less easy for some to understand, in the past. Over time, people (as in, the presence of humanity) seemed to have put a dent into it, altering the supernatural landscape just as much as the natural one. Whether it's the Ocean Beyond Life draining away, Pangaea disappearing into the Gauntlet, or the original rulers of Arcadia being usurped by the true fae, the remnants of these worlds seem to have to work extra hard to cling to existence.

What's more, entities have come to take the places of the previous inhabitants, these 'newer' things mostly revolving around humanity, whether it's their attempts to control through lack of understanding, stories, or fear, these things do seem different than what was before.

I've struggled to be impressed with the idea of the Dark Mother, the appearance of a Primogenitor hasn't really done anything to win me over. But if pressed I'd probably go with one of the explanations I recall from the book, which I believe suggested they were different entities, with the Dark Mother representing a more humanity-facing 'god of fear' and the Primogenitor being nightmares of the world itself. But if I happened to be playing in a game that incorporated them I'd try to respect the Storyteller's decisions, whichever way they went. Either concept seemed pretty open.

[ArcaneArts]

Welp, since I've had a look a tthis, two things must be mentioned:

1) Keeping the universal parent focus with the Dark Mother sort misses out of the involvement of the Progenitor-Beasts-which is fair, since we only have allusions to them in the BPG. Still, there was a sense of that in all the text before hand that the Families weren't just the product of one Astral Entity, that the Families emerged from the Dark Mother's seven spouses. THis is a notable contrast to the idea that the Insatiable claim the Primogenitor as a universal parental figure in comparison and contrast to the Dark Mother, even though you would expect the same sort of thing that Beasts have with the Progenitor-Beasts emerging from Keb, Neuth, Shu, Tefnut, and the Sidereal Wastes.

2) It's not just the claiming of a Heart Chamber that leads to the difference of between the Insatiable and the Begotten

The Devouring is a long process of synthesis, a series of minor psychospiritual trade-offs of psycho spiritual cannibalism for revelation and the nurturing of wisdom, a case where two distinct beings becoming attuned to as parts of a new whole, soul as persona and Horror as shadow to the actualized Beast-to-Be. This takes time and molding/growth/scarification/etc.

The Consumption of the Insatiable is almost something else entirely. It's closest to Claiming for other entities, since the person that was is now basically a sock puppet for the Insatiable, but what we know of the Consumption is that it happens faster than Claiming can take (a thin vector of some kind of hunger that cascades into the Moment in what can be a matter of minutes, and then chomp, Insatiable's here), and that the results look a lot closer to the Devouring, except that there's a lot more direct physical manifestation of the Insatiable being there, again akin to claiming.

I don't think either of those neccesarily speak to the theory, but it should noted.

As for the theory itself....eh?

1) If that were the case, wouldn't it make sense for them to simply comprehend the Primogenitor over the Dark Mother, as in "No you're wrong, there is no Dark Mother, just the Primogenitor."

2) The way Astral mechanics work implies that this is tangentially true without being actually true. THe Dark Mother and the Primogenitor embody certain things that correlate and allow for "propogation" (In as much as the term applies to psychospiritual deities), and thus allow for power through being the other to some degree....but the Dark Mother has so many vectors with which we understands she connects and to degrees are other things while maintaining a fairly singular presence/identity that trying to imply that the Primogenitor is just the Dark Mother at another frequency seems weird.

Nah, The Primogenitor still strikes me as that boyfriend from high school-made total sense at the time, but dear god, everyone has mistakes they don't like looking back at when it comes to dating, don't they.

[Guest]

I think they’re two different entities, one male and one female, and I totally agree with ArcaneArts analysis of the Primogenitor in the last paragraph of her post.

[Excess]

Welp, since I've had a look a tthis, two things must be mentioned:

1) Keeping the universal parent focus with the Dark Mother sort misses out of the involvement of the Progenitor-Beasts-which is fair, since we only have allusions to them in the BPG. Still, there was a sense of that in all the text before hand that the Families weren't just the product of one Astral Entity, that the Families emerged from the Dark Mother's seven spouses. THis is a notable contrast to the idea that the Insatiable claim the Primogenitor as a universal parental figure in comparison and contrast to the Dark Mother, even though you would expect the same sort of thing that Beasts have with the Progenitor-Beasts emerging from Keb, Neuth, Shu, Tefnut, and the Sidereal Wastes.

2) It's not just the claiming of a Heart Chamber that leads to the difference of between the Insatiable and the Begotten

The Devouring is a long process of synthesis, a series of minor psychospiritual trade-offs of psycho spiritual cannibalism for revelation and the nurturing of wisdom, a case where two distinct beings becoming attuned to as parts of a new whole, soul as persona and Horror as shadow to the actualized Beast-to-Be. This takes time and molding/growth/scarification/etc.

The Consumption of the Insatiable is almost something else entirely. It's closest to Claiming for other entities, since the person that was is now basically a sock puppet for the Insatiable, but what we know of the Consumption is that it happens faster than Claiming can take (a thin vector of some kind of hunger that cascades into the Moment in what can be a matter of minutes, and then chomp, Insatiable's here), and that the results look a lot closer to the Devouring, except that there's a lot more direct physical manifestation of the Insatiable being there, again akin to claiming.

I don't think either of those neccesarily speak to the theory, but it should noted.

As for the theory itself....eh?

1) If that were the case, wouldn't it make sense for them to simply comprehend the Primogenitor over the Dark Mother, as in "No you're wrong, there is no Dark Mother, just the Primogenitor."

2) The way Astral mechanics work implies that this is tangentially true without being actually true. THe Dark Mother and the Primogenitor embody certain things that correlate and allow for "propogation" (In as much as the term applies to psychospiritual deities), and thus allow for power through being the other to some degree....but the Dark Mother has so many vectors with which we understands she connects and to degrees are other things while maintaining a fairly singular presence/identity that trying to imply that the Primogenitor is just the Dark Mother at another frequency seems weird.

Nah, The Primogenitor still strikes me as that boyfriend from high school-made total sense at the time, but dear god, everyone has mistakes they don't like looking back at when it comes to dating, don't they.

The failure in the Devouring process to claim a Lair is the point where the development diverges, I already know the rest of the process is insidiously different but significantly so. I am just saying that those differences are all contingent on this initial failure.

I do not get your first complaint against my theory. I did not say there was no Dark Mother, I do not know who "they" are, and my idea was that neither side would be any wiser that the Primogenitor and Dark Mother is the same. They, both Insatiable and Beasts, seem like the sort to dismiss the idea and never say it aloud until a knowledgeable outsider connects the dots.

[Excess]

I don't find the "refutations" on this thread compelling. It seems the real reason is that nearly no one cares. This is surprising to me. I was thinking that this was one of those plot twists that belongs in a source book like "Imperial Mysteries", yet no one gives a crap. Weird. Oh well.

[Neos01]

I think that when you talk about entities over rank 6+ concepts like gender, identities and purviews becames blurred at most.
The primogenitor and dark mother surely overlap on some things, but to define individual edges is a hard task.
Personally i don t even know if such entity possess something like a free will.
Surely they resemble the two Aeons of Matter and Death described in imperial mysteries, but those are more incarnation of the arcana, and probably they overlap too on some of the aspects of the Primogenitor and dark mother.
Of all the realms, Astral is the more complicated, and more open to speculations

[Excess]

There's a common thread in many of the Chronicles games where the world was more natural, if scarier and less easy for some to understand, in the past. Over time, people (as in, the presence of humanity) seemed to have put a dent into it, altering the supernatural landscape just as much as the natural one. Whether it's the Ocean Beyond Life draining away, Pangaea disappearing into the Gauntlet, or the original rulers of Arcadia being usurped by the true fae, the remnants of these worlds seem to have to work extra hard to cling to existence.

What's more, entities have come to take the places of the previous inhabitants, these 'newer' things mostly revolving around humanity, whether it's their attempts to control through lack of understanding, stories, or fear, these things do seem different than what was before.

I've struggled to be impressed with the idea of the Dark Mother, the appearance of a Primogenitor hasn't really done anything to win me over. But if pressed I'd probably go with one of the explanations I recall from the book, which I believe suggested they were different entities, with the Dark Mother representing a more humanity-facing 'god of fear' and the Primogenitor being nightmares of the world itself. But if I happened to be playing in a game that incorporated them I'd try to respect the Storyteller's decisions, whichever way they went. Either concept seemed pretty open.

You just made a lot of references that I don't fully understand, yet I find them more intriguing than the community finds my idea. Perhaps there should be a thread that explores supernatural "climate change" such as it were. I think you should lead it and tell me more about this "Ocean Beyond Life".

[LostLight]

I think you should lead it and tell me more about this "Ocean Beyond Life".

In Dark Eras- Sundered World it is satted that the Underworld was far, far different than it is today- there were no Rivers or Lower Mysteries or Dominions, only the Ocean. The Ocean of Fragments is the only remains of that past existence, and this is why the Chthonians have some marine features- for they are the original inhabitants of the Underworld, from the time that the Ocean Beyond Life was the end of everything. During the Neolithics, the waters started to recess- no one really knows why, but it may very well be the first successful attempt at Katabasis.

And like Nofather has mentioned, it wasn't the first instance of such "older, darker, more primal world" in the CofD universe. The Chthonians are the original natives of the Underworlds, and the ghosts are onoly "recent" newcomers. The Huntsmen, among other fey creatures, ruled Arcadia before the Gentry came. The Geryo were the first children of Father Wolf, and considering that the idigam do not lose Essence in the Shadow (unlike other spirits) may mean that they were the original natives of the spirit realm (which is just a theory). The Insatiable, being presented as the "terrors of the world" and calamities incarnated into the flesh of the Earth before humans started to dream their own fears and stories, also fall nicely into that alley of "older, darker, more primal world". There may be other references, and you could fit other monsters into that paradigm (for example, in my headcanon and fanmade Dark Era exapnsion, slashers are related to the memory of "none homo sapiens humans" being awakened within people when they crack), but at any case, yeah it would indeed make sense to tie the Insatable into some primordial entity which predated humanity, later being slain by mankind's own nightmares incarnated as the Dark Mother.

[Excess]

So I should read Dark Eras. Got it.