[Material from the old forums]
Same as the others, they have their own parallel-wolf mechanical build, but it wouldn't be difficult to transform them into standard WatP shapeshifters -- keep the relevant forms, give them shapeshifting and regeneration, and figure the Clan boons to be their third main power.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Few creatures in the British Isles have as fell a reputation as the water-horses. They have many, many names – the Kelpie or Pooka, the Each Uisge of Scotland, the Aughisky of Ireland, the Ceffyl Dwyr of Wales, the Nuggle of Orkney, the Glashytn or Cabbyl-Ushtey of the Isle of Man, the Bäckahäst of Scandinavia, the Nykur of Iceland or the Faroe Islands. They appear as beautiful men or women or as magnificent horses near bodies of water, and they lure curious or desirous travelers closer. And then they drag their prey to the bottom of the lake until they drown, and feed upon their entrails. They are uniformly murderous and uniformly malign, an entire species of beautiful serial killers.
And each was once a mortal man or woman.
The reality is actually a little more complex, though truthfully, the water-horses have far more than their share of sociopathic murderers. Each of the water-horses was once a living, breathing man who met his death by drowning beneath the sky – a river, a lake, a bog, on the broad ocean or beneath a waterfall. Not everyone who so dies becomes a water-horse, of course. There are other criterion that increase the likelihood of the event. If the drowning occurs beneath an overcast and rainy sky. If the mortal was an unpunished murderer. If they were born the middle of three siblings. If they died on a Saturday. If they were a suicide. If there are no other water-horses around. What this means is that the water-horses know how to make their own, though it is difficult – and that it does happen by accident, and more often than one might think.
What the mortal drowns in determines what manner of water-horse emerges from his corpse – and the water-horses leave behind corpses, for all that they look almost exactly as they did before when they drag themselves onto shore, only fairer.
Regardless of its type (which the water-horses call Clans), all of the water-horses have certain traits in common. They are all powerful shapeshifters, they are almost always attractive, and they are all bound to water of the same sort as cause their death (a river, a bog, a lake, or a stretch of shoreline). Spending more than a day without submerging in that type of water causes the water-horse physical pain, and it is entirely possible for them to waste away.
There is no requirement that all water-horses are evil murderers, but very few can be considered psychologically healthy. First, with extremely rare exceptions, every water-horse is either a suicide or an unpunished murderer, and quite often both. They drown, and they feel drowning, the pain and terror and agony. And then they crawl up on shore, and their own mortal bodies are lie there dead as well, though the water-horse looks and feels much the same. They hunger for raw meat and viscera, and humans smell delicious. They are bound to water, and cannot venture too far from it without pain. Many go for years before meeting another water-horse capable of explaining what happened. Even then, water-horse culture is chillingly blasé regarding massacre and slaughter. For every sane, reasonable, well-balanced water-horse are half a dozen violent cannibals convinced that they died and are now ghosts or demons.
Between their fragile sanity and limited mobility, water-horses are not among the more sociable of shapeshifters. They tend towards extreme territoriality, with one and only one water-horse staking out a given body of water – rarely, a prominent waterway will support a small clan of water-horses (Loch Ness is home to almost a dozen), but such cases are rather the exception to the rule. That said, water-horses do talk to one another, and they do travel – and some, the bards, travel constantly.
Basically a flat society, water-horses have no hierarchy or organization, but the closest thing they have to an authority are the bards. Storytellers and keepers of lore and tradition, bards are respected as the repositories of water-horse culture. They travel long circuits through the country, guesting at one water-horse's after another, rewarding their hosts with stories and legends. Bards are also the ones who induct newly-created water-horses into the broader network of their people. Whenever one of the water-horses finds a new member of their species, they contact the nearest bard, who will usually take several months, or as long as a year, out of their circuit to educate the new shapeshifter -- of necessity, most bards become very good at handling the many psychoses of their students. The process of becoming a bard involves years of training by elder bards, and the memorization of an enormous quantity of oral tradition, as well as training in the language of symbols and in applied psychology. Most also pick up a measure of occult knowledge over the course of their travels, and other, stranger skills, making them the chosen problem-solvers when something serious occurs.
Water-horse society is very formal, bound up in complex webs of mutual hospitality, and strongly artistic. A strong sense of etiquette helps defuse conflicts, and older Each Uisges and Kelpies tend to come of as old-fashioned gentlemen farmers, while even the younger ones are usually very polite. Elaborate arrangements of host and guest, both with responsibilities to the other that can last well beyond the time of the visit, also help forge the water-horses into something other than simply a congregation of psychopaths. Finally, water-horse society has more than its fair share of artists, perhaps because so many water-horses were suicides, and painting, craftsmanship, and especially storytelling are all highly respected.
The water-horses have their own set of tales and legends, told by guests to their hosts and the subject of countless paintings and tapestries. They claim to be the chosen of Poseidon and Persephone, and most of all they are the favored of Demeter in her aspect as Aganippe, “The Mare Who Destroys Mercifully,” a black winged horse. They came to Great Britain with the Romans, and have stayed there ever since. Poseidon is the god of the sea and father of horses, who gives them their forms and affinity for water. Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, and the water-horses say that it is through her agency that they are pushed out of the Underworld, bound into the service of her mother. And Demeter Aganippe is their patron goddess, that along with Poseidon gives them the forms of horses and with her daughter binds them to the earth, and gives them their divine purpose. Spirits, in this context, become the myriad dryads and oreads and Furies and petty gods and goddesses of Greek myth, worthy of respect as divine cousins.
To the extent that water-horses rationalize their violent behavior, they see themselves as sacrificing to the Underworld. By drowning their victims, they open a symbolic (and after a while, actual) channel to the Rivers of the Underworld, the Styx, the Lethe, and so forth. The deaths calm the ever-hungry waters, but even more than that, they serve as a ransom to Hades, allowing Persephone to return to the world above and for spring and fertility to come each year. It’s a cruel job, the water-horses agree, but a necessary one, and most water-horses at least make an effort to sacrifice only the wicked and immoral Without these sacrifices, the water-horses contend, winter would never end, the crops would fail, and far more would die. And the earth around the home of a water-horse does tend to be very fertile. Many water-horses also sacrifice to the local spirits in exchange for more immediate rewards, though hecatombs are difficult to arrange in the modern day.
Being largely solitary, water-horses are not given to any sort of organized religion, but such as there is tends to focus on the worship of Demeter Aganippe as their patron and on their role as the ransom-payers of Persephone. Many water-horses maintain a shrine of some sort, and a few have started cults, modern versions of the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries. They promise their adherents preferential treatment in the afterlife in exchange for their help in returning Persephone to her mother in this life. Many water-horses leave things on the bodies of their victims as messages to the Underworld, or let their cultists do so. In the modern era, some water-horses have come to be uncertain about the truth of this origin myth -- they point out that there are water-horses in the Faroe Islands and in Scandinavia, places that never saw the hob-nailed sandal of the Romans, while France and Spain, which did, have a distinct absence of water-horses. But finding true evidence about the pre-Roman origins of the water-horses is an exceptionally difficult task, and tradition still holds a great deal of power.
Same as the others, they have their own parallel-wolf mechanical build, but it wouldn't be difficult to transform them into standard WatP shapeshifters -- keep the relevant forms, give them shapeshifting and regeneration, and figure the Clan boons to be their third main power.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Few creatures in the British Isles have as fell a reputation as the water-horses. They have many, many names – the Kelpie or Pooka, the Each Uisge of Scotland, the Aughisky of Ireland, the Ceffyl Dwyr of Wales, the Nuggle of Orkney, the Glashytn or Cabbyl-Ushtey of the Isle of Man, the Bäckahäst of Scandinavia, the Nykur of Iceland or the Faroe Islands. They appear as beautiful men or women or as magnificent horses near bodies of water, and they lure curious or desirous travelers closer. And then they drag their prey to the bottom of the lake until they drown, and feed upon their entrails. They are uniformly murderous and uniformly malign, an entire species of beautiful serial killers.
And each was once a mortal man or woman.
The reality is actually a little more complex, though truthfully, the water-horses have far more than their share of sociopathic murderers. Each of the water-horses was once a living, breathing man who met his death by drowning beneath the sky – a river, a lake, a bog, on the broad ocean or beneath a waterfall. Not everyone who so dies becomes a water-horse, of course. There are other criterion that increase the likelihood of the event. If the drowning occurs beneath an overcast and rainy sky. If the mortal was an unpunished murderer. If they were born the middle of three siblings. If they died on a Saturday. If they were a suicide. If there are no other water-horses around. What this means is that the water-horses know how to make their own, though it is difficult – and that it does happen by accident, and more often than one might think.
What the mortal drowns in determines what manner of water-horse emerges from his corpse – and the water-horses leave behind corpses, for all that they look almost exactly as they did before when they drag themselves onto shore, only fairer.
- If he drowns in a stream or river, a Pooka is born, the tricksters and master shapeshifters of the water-horses, though their tricks often have a cruel edge to thems.
- If the mortal drowns in a lake or a loch, he transforms into an Each Uisge, powerful and proud monsters with a berserker streak. In Ireland they are also called the Each Uisce or Aughisky.
- In the stagnant water of bog or swamp, the mortal becomes a Kelpie, famed for 'sticky' hides that let them drag victims to a watery grave.
- If the man drowns in the sea, then he may give rise to a venomous Nykur, also called the Nuggle, lesser cousin of the Nuckelavee.
- And if the mortal drowns in a waterfall or a mountain pool, then he may become one of the rare Ceffyl Dŵr, the winged water-horses of the Welsh.
Regardless of its type (which the water-horses call Clans), all of the water-horses have certain traits in common. They are all powerful shapeshifters, they are almost always attractive, and they are all bound to water of the same sort as cause their death (a river, a bog, a lake, or a stretch of shoreline). Spending more than a day without submerging in that type of water causes the water-horse physical pain, and it is entirely possible for them to waste away.
There is no requirement that all water-horses are evil murderers, but very few can be considered psychologically healthy. First, with extremely rare exceptions, every water-horse is either a suicide or an unpunished murderer, and quite often both. They drown, and they feel drowning, the pain and terror and agony. And then they crawl up on shore, and their own mortal bodies are lie there dead as well, though the water-horse looks and feels much the same. They hunger for raw meat and viscera, and humans smell delicious. They are bound to water, and cannot venture too far from it without pain. Many go for years before meeting another water-horse capable of explaining what happened. Even then, water-horse culture is chillingly blasé regarding massacre and slaughter. For every sane, reasonable, well-balanced water-horse are half a dozen violent cannibals convinced that they died and are now ghosts or demons.
Between their fragile sanity and limited mobility, water-horses are not among the more sociable of shapeshifters. They tend towards extreme territoriality, with one and only one water-horse staking out a given body of water – rarely, a prominent waterway will support a small clan of water-horses (Loch Ness is home to almost a dozen), but such cases are rather the exception to the rule. That said, water-horses do talk to one another, and they do travel – and some, the bards, travel constantly.
Basically a flat society, water-horses have no hierarchy or organization, but the closest thing they have to an authority are the bards. Storytellers and keepers of lore and tradition, bards are respected as the repositories of water-horse culture. They travel long circuits through the country, guesting at one water-horse's after another, rewarding their hosts with stories and legends. Bards are also the ones who induct newly-created water-horses into the broader network of their people. Whenever one of the water-horses finds a new member of their species, they contact the nearest bard, who will usually take several months, or as long as a year, out of their circuit to educate the new shapeshifter -- of necessity, most bards become very good at handling the many psychoses of their students. The process of becoming a bard involves years of training by elder bards, and the memorization of an enormous quantity of oral tradition, as well as training in the language of symbols and in applied psychology. Most also pick up a measure of occult knowledge over the course of their travels, and other, stranger skills, making them the chosen problem-solvers when something serious occurs.
Water-horse society is very formal, bound up in complex webs of mutual hospitality, and strongly artistic. A strong sense of etiquette helps defuse conflicts, and older Each Uisges and Kelpies tend to come of as old-fashioned gentlemen farmers, while even the younger ones are usually very polite. Elaborate arrangements of host and guest, both with responsibilities to the other that can last well beyond the time of the visit, also help forge the water-horses into something other than simply a congregation of psychopaths. Finally, water-horse society has more than its fair share of artists, perhaps because so many water-horses were suicides, and painting, craftsmanship, and especially storytelling are all highly respected.
The water-horses have their own set of tales and legends, told by guests to their hosts and the subject of countless paintings and tapestries. They claim to be the chosen of Poseidon and Persephone, and most of all they are the favored of Demeter in her aspect as Aganippe, “The Mare Who Destroys Mercifully,” a black winged horse. They came to Great Britain with the Romans, and have stayed there ever since. Poseidon is the god of the sea and father of horses, who gives them their forms and affinity for water. Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, and the water-horses say that it is through her agency that they are pushed out of the Underworld, bound into the service of her mother. And Demeter Aganippe is their patron goddess, that along with Poseidon gives them the forms of horses and with her daughter binds them to the earth, and gives them their divine purpose. Spirits, in this context, become the myriad dryads and oreads and Furies and petty gods and goddesses of Greek myth, worthy of respect as divine cousins.
To the extent that water-horses rationalize their violent behavior, they see themselves as sacrificing to the Underworld. By drowning their victims, they open a symbolic (and after a while, actual) channel to the Rivers of the Underworld, the Styx, the Lethe, and so forth. The deaths calm the ever-hungry waters, but even more than that, they serve as a ransom to Hades, allowing Persephone to return to the world above and for spring and fertility to come each year. It’s a cruel job, the water-horses agree, but a necessary one, and most water-horses at least make an effort to sacrifice only the wicked and immoral Without these sacrifices, the water-horses contend, winter would never end, the crops would fail, and far more would die. And the earth around the home of a water-horse does tend to be very fertile. Many water-horses also sacrifice to the local spirits in exchange for more immediate rewards, though hecatombs are difficult to arrange in the modern day.
Being largely solitary, water-horses are not given to any sort of organized religion, but such as there is tends to focus on the worship of Demeter Aganippe as their patron and on their role as the ransom-payers of Persephone. Many water-horses maintain a shrine of some sort, and a few have started cults, modern versions of the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries. They promise their adherents preferential treatment in the afterlife in exchange for their help in returning Persephone to her mother in this life. Many water-horses leave things on the bodies of their victims as messages to the Underworld, or let their cultists do so. In the modern era, some water-horses have come to be uncertain about the truth of this origin myth -- they point out that there are water-horses in the Faroe Islands and in Scandinavia, places that never saw the hob-nailed sandal of the Romans, while France and Spain, which did, have a distinct absence of water-horses. But finding true evidence about the pre-Roman origins of the water-horses is an exceptionally difficult task, and tradition still holds a great deal of power.
Comment