So, I've off-and-on been trying to come up with a ruleset for werejaguars that mirror the Uratha. Jaguar-myths are my bread and butter, and I wanted to try and come up with my own version. The idea is that, similar to the Uratha, there are a group of half-human, half-spirit werejaguars, descended from Mother Jaguar, a Pangean contemporary of Father Wolf, and a trickster god of darkness they call the Night Father. The Aztec skinchangers scenario in Dark Eras was great, but it isn't really what I was looking for with this project. This is more of a scenario from 1e's War Against the Pure, modified a great deal.
The basic gist is that we have a species of werejaguars who are half-spirit and half-flesh, have five forms, have Primal Urge, Essence and Harmony (though not all of the same benefits/triggers/hindrances those stats offer), earn Renown, and use Shadow Gifts. While the Uratha have a weakness to silver thanks to the curse of Luna, the Yawatha are equally vulnerable to obsidian, to represent their dangerous relationship to the Night.
Linguistic Aside: Now, jaguars obviously don't have a Sumerian word for them, any analogous languages for the first pre-Columbian city-states have been lost to antiquity. The best analogue among Amerindian languages is probably the Mayan word balam, but this has been used a lot in WW/OP gamelines about jaguar-shapeshifters (Werewolf the Apocalypse, Changing Breeds, the Balam-Colop from Blasphemies). I could potentially use the words for leopards, panthers, or similar creatures, but that feels inauthentic to me. Thus, I've chosen to use yawa, which is a phonetic rendering of jagua, a Guarani word from which we derive the English word jaguar ("jagua" technically means dog, or in general any predatory animal. The Guarani word for jaguar is "jaguarete", or "true predator"). Thus, Mother Jaguar is Amahan Yawa, and the werejaguars are the Yawatha.
There are several sorts of themes I feel could be explored by a group of Uratha-esque shapeshifters...
The basic gist is that we have a species of werejaguars who are half-spirit and half-flesh, have five forms, have Primal Urge, Essence and Harmony (though not all of the same benefits/triggers/hindrances those stats offer), earn Renown, and use Shadow Gifts. While the Uratha have a weakness to silver thanks to the curse of Luna, the Yawatha are equally vulnerable to obsidian, to represent their dangerous relationship to the Night.
Linguistic Aside: Now, jaguars obviously don't have a Sumerian word for them, any analogous languages for the first pre-Columbian city-states have been lost to antiquity. The best analogue among Amerindian languages is probably the Mayan word balam, but this has been used a lot in WW/OP gamelines about jaguar-shapeshifters (Werewolf the Apocalypse, Changing Breeds, the Balam-Colop from Blasphemies). I could potentially use the words for leopards, panthers, or similar creatures, but that feels inauthentic to me. Thus, I've chosen to use yawa, which is a phonetic rendering of jagua, a Guarani word from which we derive the English word jaguar ("jagua" technically means dog, or in general any predatory animal. The Guarani word for jaguar is "jaguarete", or "true predator"). Thus, Mother Jaguar is Amahan Yawa, and the werejaguars are the Yawatha.
There are several sorts of themes I feel could be explored by a group of Uratha-esque shapeshifters...
- Social Anxiety: While werewolves balance themselves between their human and wolf sides, at least these two sides are both aggressively social pack animals. Jaguars, on the other hand, are completely asocial solitary animals that only group together when mating or while a mother is raising her cubs. As such, the flesh side of the Yawatha crave human contact while the spirit side abhors it. If you're a group playing as werejaguars, striking a balance between these two halves would be a part of play, getting harder to reconcile as you grow in power.
- Facing Extinction: Jaguars, the wild lands they inhabit, and the peoples who revered them are all teetering on the edge of oblivion. When playing as Yawatha, this would be a feature, with human forces, deadly spirits, Hosts, Claimed, idigam, and hostile werewolves all vying to wipe you off the map.
- Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: Yawatha would also serve as excellent antagonists to werewolves. Jaguars are loners, while wolves hunt in packs. Packs of wolves and dogs have been known to tree jaguars. However, one-for-one, a jaguar is stronger than a wolf. Similarly, werejaguars are usually stronger than individual werewolves, but can't take on a whole pack. So you're trying to stick together against an opponent who's trying to divide you and conquer. And Luna help you if a Yawatha manages to get a group together...
- A Monument to Your Sins: As antagonists in a Werewolf game, the Yawatha can make a decent foil. See, the Yawatha creation myth also involves them killing their ancestor, but they tell it as a mercy-killing after Pangea was sundered and Mother Jaguar was wounded. Mother Jaguar was also an apex predator, and if Father Wolf was getting weaker, she could have served in his stead, but the Forsaken chose to kill their father, sever the worlds, and in doing so mortally wound their mother. The Forsaken then decided to take up their father's cause, and most Yawatha will find their efforts to be lackluster at best and harmful at worst. Furthermore, while indigenous Uratha were at least able to coexist with the Yawatha, after Europeans arrived in the Americas, men and Uratha from beyond the seas (Not to mention tagalong spirits and boatloads of Beshilu) ravaged their numbers. So, when werewolves confront a jaguar, they're confronting all of that history as well.
- Necessary Sacrifices? Whether as antagonists or players, werejaguars can be brutal. Taking a page from Aztec mythology, the Yawatha have access to powers and methods that can do amazing things at horrendously high costs. A question that anyone dealing with the jaguars has to ask is, do you stop these horrible actions, or risk the ruin that may come in their absence?
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