Test Case: The Anakim and the Victorious.

[ArcaneArts]

So back in 2019, I started writing a proto-bible for Beast, a sort of deep dive about how and what the game was about, how it played, the way it thought-the sort of 500,000 word ramblings that allow someone to concisely write an actual bible that can be used by developers and authors to keep Beast focused and on track, and decently point at what material could and probably should be written in future. I didn't get as far as I wanted with this, because shortly after I started that project, my life fell apart and I am only NOW getting to a point where I have enough pieces together to really go forward-ish. The first thing Cinder and I tackled, in relation to this project, was Heroes, and it was in that nascent day where I first got the notion of Heroes being being who were afraid of being afraid, that their Devouring or Devouring equivalent involves not just a abstract conception of the rejection of fear, but of their ability to be afraid at all, or that they could be made afraid by the central Nightmares of the Families at least.

With that in mind, I started writing dives into what all is going on with each of the fears in the Families, what it really says when we have those anxieties, and what it would consequently mean to basically say "No, I Can't Feel That Fear" and how this denial can twist in on itself and become toxic. I got.......4.5 of the Families done, and 3 of the Heroic contrasts before crap went down.

Anyways, a lot of the methodology and thought that went into those dives is a big part of where I got my current thoughts about Beast, and seeing as over in the Review thread, we're coming up on the Chapter that talks about the Families, I kind of wanted to run one of those dives by everyone and see if 2019 me had their head on straight. The Anakim and their counterparts in the Victorious strikes as the tightest of this, soooooo yeah, Let's see how y'all take to it.

---

The Anakim, Nightmares of Hopelessness

You can’t move a mountain. You can’t stop a meteorite. Sorry kid. You just can’t.

Hurts to hear, don’t it? But that’s what true hopelessness is-you just can’t do it. There are things that are legitimately just too much. The size of the Anakim take isn’t so much an actuality as the gravity of things. A meteorite is smaller than you’ll ever be post-womb, most of the time, and thank gods for that, but your ability to stop it is just as small. That’s hopelessness. See, hope is all about how thing’s work’ll out, how there’s some catch, some caveat, some superpower or loophole or whatever that means things work out-and by “work out” we mean “things go in a way you favor”. Maybe not as a deep win, maybe as a heavy compromise, but things, you know. Work. You “win”, by the skin of your teeth. Hope is concerned with a form of “winning”, of “getting a version of reality you want”. The fear of hopelessness is that it won’t. That things don’t work out.

Deeper than that, it’s not just that though. Hopelessness means there’s nothing about you that warrants things working out. Your efforts, your beliefs, your simple wishing, your earnest begging and pleading to the universe, to every god and star and birthday candle, just can’t even budge an atom’s worth of chance out of place. That’s the breaks, kid. You can’t move the universe. You are subject to fates laid out long before you could even dream to move them. At the heart of our fear of hopelessness is our inability, our weakness, to make things be okay in any way possible, our fear of being subject to a wide and uncaring world that is too much for us to handle.

And that’s all right.
We all deal with things that are too much for us to handle, and trying to just handle that straight on is impractical and unhealthy, in most cases. In most cases, the first thing we need to do is learn to let go and learn to move on. We can’t solve the problems of imperialism and capitalism, we can’t overcome the world of racism and sexism and bigotry and hatred. We can’t move a mountain. We are subject to forces beyond our control and it’s important to understand that we just have to deal with those things in as much as we are subject to them.

This is not to say that we do nothing, but that’s leads to the next important thing about dealing with hopelessness, which is dealing with things in a way you can. You can’t move a mountain, or even move the fifty-thousands of thousands of rocks that make up a mountain, but you can move that rock down the mountain, and you can move that other rock down, and so on and so forth. It’s important to take power and confidence in what we can do. It’s important to find the certainty in ourselves and our capabilities. The wisdom of the Anakim is breaking things down into doable portions, and doing them as fully and surely as we can, so those are incontestably executed. As we exercise ourselves and our abilities in this, we find that our capacity increases, that we can move two rocks this one trip, and then three. We can arrange the trucks and the people to move them down, create and maintain the vision that sees the mountain break down faster, move elsewhere quicker, keeps it going in our lifetime. Trying to stop you when you know what you can do is a hopeless endeavor-you know yourself and what you can do, and hell if anyone can stop you in the heart of such knowledge. You can’t move a mountain, but as you learn and grow, that mountain moves all the same.

The Anakim also learn to look outside of what they can do others around them, since they pretty rapidly learn they can’t do everything themselves. They learn to appreciate what people can really do, and in terms of getting them to help the Anakim in their work get them appreciate what they can do as well, getting them to appreciate their limits as well as how they can grow and develop, building confidence and certainty in their actions and capabilities while keeping them from biting off more than they can chew. By building their bonds with people, helping them break down their challenges into what they can handle, and helping them learn to reach where they can, the Anakim increases their own ability to handle things as they come along-after all, if for some reason they can’t successfully do something, someone they know will.

And finally, the confluence of points comes when you try to stop the meteor-because you can’t. At this point, the Anakim know themselves and the truth. At that point, the Anakim face loss with a certain practical viewpoint, which goes two ways. On the one hand, the Anakim know that there is no shame in accepting things as they are, that embracing what is is embracing the self, going all the world around.

On the other hand? Sometimes we stand for things not because they’re winnable, but because they are right to fight for. This is the punk edge of the Anakim, the hardest but most valuable truth they have-that sometimes we must exert ourselves to the blood and bone for something we believe for no other reason than we feel it is right for ourselves to do so. It’s no longer about whether or not the world can change in that moment-it’s about whether or not it should change, to our minds.

Do you believe it’s worthwhile, even if you’ll lose everytime, and die trying? Because if it is, then you are truly fighting for what you believe in, for no other reason than because you believe it is right.

The Forsworn of Hopelessness, the Victorious

Never say die. Fuckers says die. Fuckers give up. Fuckers stop. Fucker’s don’t hope.

That’s the attitude of the Heroes of Hope. Ain’t a point of doing anything if nothing can’t change, and the Forsworn can’t abide that. Call it what you will, but the real heart of it is that these Heroes can’t stand the thought of losing, of loss, of somethings somehow being static. More importantly, they can’t reconcile their inability to change something-They can’t cope with the fear that they somehow aren’t enough to confront things. Quitting, accepting, reconciling-It’s a weakness to them, not a healthy way of dealing with some things. They can’t-won’t-accept that there was nothing they could do.

The Victors go at everything full bore, the same way as Anakim, but where the Anakim take stock and apply themselves accordingly, the Victors go overboard. They burn every resource on the approach, applying overkill to every principle, because the alternative is not believing in something enough, in not doing everything they could do. Anything and everything is on the board so long as they can win, so long as things can turn out how they want them to, and for the Victors, they have to believe everything they apply themselves to can be won. They can’t lose.

Because of this attitude, the Victorious also tend to overstock the value of their own abilities and those of others, padding their estimates on what people are capable of, trading certainty for aspiration, knowledge and trust of others for trust in a dream. They’re prone to asking people to do more than they’re capable, not because they believe in their growth but because they believe that their vision has to come true and those working for it have to win somehow. They can’t possibly lose, what has to be will have to be in some way and how in accordance to the Victor’s actions and decisions, and the people who come into their orbit must be there to fulfill that vision, right?

When things go south and things don’t work out, then, it tends to be someone else’s fault that the hope was unattained. The Hero did what they could, and they believed with all their heart, so of course it has to be something or someone else that caused the vision to fail. Where it falls on the Hero’s shortcomings, it was the wrong moment, they weren’t in the groove, the stars were ill-fated against them. It takes a lot to make a Hopeful Hero confront that they just tried to do the impossible and it bit them in the ass, because so long as it’s someone or something else’s fault, then there’s always some way forward, always some kind of hope, so long as they change something about the way it’s done. When a Victor is well and truly cornered with the inability of anyone to do anything, it can be a deeply traumatic moment for them, and they might, for once, finally let go of their need to win and just accept that the world is unfair sometimes, and take the long road of healing and self-discovery that allows them to find peace-or they might be all the more hostile in taking the victory they can get.

[ArcaneArts]

Also, for context, the preamble, in a spoiler, because it's a lot.

The Families and the Forsworn

Let’s talk about fear for a second, because fear? It gets a bad rap.

On a personal level, fear lets you know that things are about to get serious, that we’re in a realm of danger for ourselves, something unknown, or at least untested. And that’s about it. Fear doesn’t tell us not to do something, it warns us that what we’re about to do is dangerous. It makes us alert, aware of opportunities, aware of other ways, it makes us pay attention to the world and all the possibilities it has to offer. It makes us aware of what we can do, what we can’t do, and how we can apply those things. Few other emotions make us as aware of ourselves and the wholeness of that self as fear does. Fear gets you questioning that thing you take for granted and gets at the heart of yourself-what do you know about yourself, and what is just lies and assumptions? What is the flaw that lies fundamental in our hearts, what is it that we lack, that we have trouble dealing with it? And none of that is judgmental, it’s just where and who we are-we all have our sticking points. Fear also powers us when the line gets down to the blood, when our life is on the table. We’re stronger, faster, more aware, more in touch with the primordial powers of our flesh when fear brings us in touch with our lizard brain, and every bit closer to the edge brings more and more of our A-game out. Sure, confidence sells a meeting, but you are going to play every card in your hand when you’re scared something is gonna go southside. Fear opens all our doors, and we play whatever we can grab in the face of those open doors. Our fear is a threshold into the household ourselves, where our power and realization exists, where we find that core being at the center of our existence, where we know who we are.

On a broader, more social level, fear is a key point of interaction. When you’re afraid, and other people see it, lives get saved, even in the most shallow of circumstances. One person being afraid means the tribe is at risk, and allowing that fear to shine is difference between jaguar food and a week of mourning. If only that, fears keeps us watching out not only for ourselves, but for others, it makes us know others are at risk. But of course, it goes deeper. Feeling and expressing fear invites others to come and take care of us, and invites the attempts of empathy. When we see other people be afraid, we try to place ourselves in their feet inherently just because we want to see where the threat is, or where it might be, or where we missed it before. We try to understand them, and in so doing, even if we don’t understand ultimately where the problem is, we are a little more in tune with where those in our tribe are, and we walk away from the situation all the more aware of what it is to be beyond our own perspective. Furthermore, until the source of the fear is identified and dealt with, and because the surrogate is the source of our stress in the meantime, seeing and dealing with the fear of others, providing comfort and security to those in duress, is not merely good communal spirit but self-serving and beneficial, because if we can make the individual feel safe, that makes us all feel safe. Fear brings us together and proves that the safety of the individual relies, honestly, more on the community than the individual, otherwise we would not be expressive creatures.

In this way, it’s important to understand that Beasts don’t fear fear in the same way Sin-Eaters don’t fear death. To feel fear is both a superpower and a call to home, that people may arrange themselves around one another and pulls from the depths of themselves all the power that may be arraigned against the world, both from self and others. Fear brings out the best in everyone while also laying the stakes of reality clear on the board. It makes us question ourselves and surroundings, finding the best answers in the moment and failings that we need to work on in future if we get past it, while giving us a whole new reserve of strength and energy to take on the world. Beasts don’t flee from fear even as they incarnate as that fear because it is in the dancing heart of fear that truth and power and found, that worlds are unfolded unto themselves and beyond, that where and how the self may flower unto the world begins to spread.

The central tenant of Familes is in the phrase “and that’s all right.” The most important thing for Beasts, for themselves and for others, is that it’s okay to be afraid. Beasts literally come home to it [TECHNICAL NOTE TO RETURN TO WHEN DISCUSSING MECHANICS: when writing about Families, stipulate a mechanic where in if a Beasts gets the Spooked or other such conditions concerning their central Fear, they regain a Willpower.], but just as importantly is that they get when other people are afraid in return and are there to offer both the consolation and power that is there in that fear. They know that fear and they get it. They even know the power that comes from avoiding that fear, so long as it is done in acknowledgement of it, and they know what it is to come around to it the long way round, to deal with it such that when a person confronts their fear, it is as much an old friend as it is a dreaded enemy, that there is a frightful dance, and that it is frightful, but it is also a dance. Fear is a part of everyone court, and to have a place in our homes for it is to allow ourselves to be a home to come to and be in, to find a peace with ourselves.

It’s also important to realize how a healthy approach to fear makes us more than masters of those fears, but how we incarnate ourselves as those fears in the process. Families are always circular in pattern, in how we always arrive at where we begin more powerful and fuller than we were when we began, but also that we have become that which we seek to deal with. Anakim know and will always fear hopelessness, but they will have become a form of hopelessness in and of themselves-by which I mean opposing them is a hopeless endeavour. The Talassii fear confinement and so, in learning to come to terms with that, know upon the completion of their Devouring how to isolate and chain their challenges, and so confine most of their sources of fear in kind. Beasts don’t conquer their fears, they become them and understand them and the people who experience them, and thus know how to apply them to bring out the best in others and futher them along a path of growth-or use them to break down the undeserving.

In this way, we must also talk about the Forsworn, the Heroes, who reject feeling fear. Where they arrive is superficially similar to Beasts, and in fact both may be found alongside the same pursuits easily and often-it’s how they often come into conflict. And while that conflict can range from personal to cosmic, from a different comprehension of the Dark Mother and her ambitions and the world as we know it down to what Becky really needs in her life right now, at it’s core, even if Heroes arrive at the same place as Beasts, they do so in a path of rejection, and as we’ll explore, that rejection costs them a comprehension of people as people and the world as a wonderful place in equal proportion to it’s terror. Both the Anakim and the Victorious fight against the large, impossible things of the world, but one will do it by cleverly breaking it down into something their community can manage, and one will sacrifice everything they have to bring it down. Both the Namtaru and the Immortal will play against death, but one is concerned with the dignity of others and the other merely the vanity of their own selves. The Forsworn’s rejections is a shortcut, and with it comes the failure of maturity that makes them worth being. So, that in mind.

[Nicolas Milioni]

That's a great take on Beast

[HelmsDerp]

This is fantastic, very much what I would want to see out of a revamped Beast.

[Leliel]

*applause*

And yeah, this does make Anakim Big Friendly Giants when they want to be. I love it - and the implication that Victorious are, ultimately, driven by fear of failure (that's a nice contrast - Beasts are their fears because they understand them, but Heroes fight said fears because, on some level, they've succumbed to them).

[ArcaneArts]

*applause*

And yeah, this does make Anakim Big Friendly Giants when they want to be. I love it - and the implication that Victorious are, ultimately, driven by fear of failure (that's a nice contrast - Beasts are their fears because they understand them, but Heroes fight said fears because, on some level, they've succumbed to them).

Cinder and I spent for fucking ever trying to come up with a justifiable answer of...not why Heroes were the bad guys, but was wrong with Heroes**. It involved shifting the goal posts and playing field a lot (which led to a LOT of deeper understanding about this game), but eventually hit on the fact that is a horror game, and at that moment, one of us asked (i forget who) "What if they just refuse to recognize they're in a horror game?" at which one of us circled around with how shallow was that way but then all of sudden it clicked.

Beasts arrive at their Devouring by embracing fear.
Heroes arrive at their Conquering by rejecting fear.

This isn't a moral or ethical argument*-it's an emotional one, a personal one, an issue with how you're supposed to look at yourself and the world and how you're supposed to deal with it-and they both have really viable points, but one answer sort of inherently rejects the other, even when you try to balance them.

This was the amoral battleground we could stake beastdom and heroism on. This was where our main characters could perch on the Dark Gray Line and glare at each other.

It is, to this day, one of the two key elements I consider to understanding how to make Heroes click, and pointed the way forward on how to really start getting Beast to gel with itself.

*I mean, it is, but that's not the point at this moment.

**I mean in game, not from the Doylist point of view- a lack of characterstic focus and questions about how they're supposed to be mechanically oomphy were obvious.

[21C Hermit]

The idea of Beasts as those who embraced fear, and Heroes as those who rejected it, is a fascinating spin on the subject. I guess importing the 'modern' Persona series as Beast stuff is going to make more sense now...

Speaking of which, what is this Forsworn stuff? They seem like the sobriquet for Heroes, like "Begotten." The Victorious? The Immortals? Are they like Families?

[ArcaneArts]

The idea of Beasts as those who embraced fear, and Heroes as those who rejected it, is a fascinating spin on the subject. I guess importing the 'modern' Persona series as Beast stuff is going to make more sense now...

Speaking of which, what is this Forsworn stuff? They seem like the sobriquet for Heroes, like "Begotten." The Victorious? The Immortals? Are they like Families?

Yeah, that does need explanation doesn't it?

Well, not the time to be all coy about it-The Forsworn is a sobriquet for Heroes that stems for a powerset conception I have for Heroes that stems from Anathema and dives into Beast's themes, and also in subrelation to the way I think about Heroes now that I think has a lot of power-

Which is that Heroes are people who were nascent Beasts and instead Conquered their Horrors instead of self-Devouring their Horrors. I call them Forsworn less because they are Forsworn by their Families, and more because they Forsweared their Families, but Forsworn sounds cooler than Forsweared or Forswearing. The entire idea is that these are a form of Beast who have rejected their whole families at the Devouring. They still have a chance, unlike the Erased and Inverted-but what they did is basically the same thing the Inverted did to become who and what they are now, just with the kindness of understanding versus facing realization.

And it's lined up to the Families, too. I'm not settled on the sobriquets, and DEFINITELY don't even actually have titles, but, as it goes:

The Anakim=The Victorious
The Eshmaki=The Bright/The Enlightened
The Makara=The Plain
The Namtaru=The Immortal/The Undying
The Ugallu=The Armored
The Inguma=The Priest
The Talasii=The Libertine

[21C Hermit]

The sobriquets are evocative and I like them. They seem to represent the archetypical Protagonists of fiction pretty well: the shonen-style guy who never gives up, the smartass science guy, the normal guy, that guy who never fricking dies, the religious/celibate/conservative guy, the fuck-you-I'm-getting-my-way guy.

EDIT; Oops, missed the Armored. Uh… the brooding “I have a lot of secrets and a trouble past” protagonist?

EDIT: The setup also reminds me of Promethean Lineages and Pandoran Mockeries from 1E… though what that could mean for Beast’s context is unclear.

[DreadQueen]

I feel like with the original Heroes it was impossible to empathize with most of the Heroes provided in the books because they were awful people, but it was possible to empathize with Heroism itself, the book even mentions that "good Heroes exist, they will just not come up in a story".

With your take on Heroes it feels like it is possible to empathize with the Heroes as individuals, they are just severely misguided people, but it's impossible to defend Heroism itself, because they are actual examples of what happens when you reject fear. Nothing better to hammer down why lessons are good than seeing what happens when you don't learn them.

That's really smart, not depending on the Heroes being bad individuals to make Heroes a problematic thing to be.

[Leliel]

Yeah, that does need explanation doesn't it?

Well, not the time to be all coy about it-The Forsworn is a sobriquet for Heroes that stems for a powerset conception I have for Heroes that stems from Anathema and dives into Beast's themes, and also in subrelation to the way I think about Heroes now that I think has a lot of power-

Which is that Heroes are people who were nascent Beasts and instead Conquered their Horrors instead of self-Devouring their Horrors. I call them Forsworn less because they are Forsworn by their Families, and more because they Forsweared their Families, but Forsworn sounds cooler than Forsweared or Forswearing. The entire idea is that these are a form of Beast who have rejected their whole families at the Devouring. They still have a chance, unlike the Erased and Inverted-but what they did is basically the same thing the Inverted did to become who and what they are now, just with the kindness of understanding versus facing realization.

And it's lined up to the Families, too. I'm not settled on the sobriquets, and DEFINITELY don't even actually have titles, but, as it goes:

The Anakim=The Victorious
The Eshmaki=The Bright/The Enlightened
The Makara=The Plain
The Namtaru=The Immortal/The Undying
The Ugallu=The Armored
The Inguma=The Priest
The Talasii=The Libertine

Small comment: I'd name Forsworn Inguma "the Holy", because that encompasses more of the opposite of the Other (aka, the Unholy).

Otherwise great.

[Heavy Arms]

The Talasii also stand out a bit in a similar regard, but I haven't come up with a good alternative.

And... trying to come up with something insightful or meaningful to add but..

What can we, as the fans of the game that really want it to reach its potential, do exactly to make this actually happen in an official book? Seriously.

[ArcaneArts]

The sobriquets are evocative and I like them. They seem to represent the archetypical Protagonists of fiction pretty well: the shonen-style guy who never gives up, the smartass science guy, the normal guy, that guy who never fricking dies, the religious/celibate/conservative guy, the fuck-you-I'm-getting-my-way guy.

EDIT; Oops, missed the Armored. Uh… the brooding “I have a lot of secrets and a trouble past” protagonist?

EDIT: The setup also reminds me of Promethean Lineages and Pandoran Mockeries from 1E… though what that could mean for Beast’s context is unclear.

One of the goals was to marry the psychospiritual examination with a DnD style class grounding. So we're doing something right.

I feel like with the original Heroes it was impossible to empathize with most of the Heroes provided in the books because they were awful people, but it was possible to empathize with Heroism itself, the book even mentions that "good Heroes exist, they will just not come up in a story".

With your take on Heroes it feels like it is possible to empathize with the Heroes as individuals, they are just severely misguided people, but it's impossible to defend Heroism itself, because they are actual examples of what happens when you reject fear. Nothing better to hammer down why lessons are good than seeing what happens when you don't learn them.

That's really smart, not depending on the Heroes being bad individuals to make Heroes a problematic thing to be.

Critical of the actions, not the person, i believe is one of those things that parents learn, or are supposed to.

I still reckon there will always be asshole Heroes("There should always be Sleeping Beauties, but there will always be Thaddeus Petersons, and fuck those guys." as i once put it), and it's important to note that Heroes are just as accountable for their actions as Beasts are-but this angle of approach makes it clear why you're supposed to root against Heroes, even when they are sympathetic.

Small comment: I'd name Forsworn Inguma "the Holy", because that encompasses more of the opposite of the Other (aka, the Unholy).

Otherwise great.

I'm not settled on the Armored, the Priest, and the Libertine. I minorly favor Priest over Holy because it has that DnD Chracter Class sort of feel to it, but then again, the Armored and the Immortal don't neatly have that feel either.

The Talasii also stand out a bit in a similar regard, but I haven't come up with a good alternative.

And... trying to come up with something insightful or meaningful to add but..

What can we, as the fans of the game that really want it to reach its potential, do exactly to make this actually happen in an official book? Seriously.

Uh. Bug me and Cinder to finish up our pitches to Paradox for Beast products, and otherwise help generate interest in Beast?

[SomethingFishy]

I remember being skeptical of how this [or something like it, I don't really remember, I mostly remember being skeptical] was framed last time you talked about Heroes, but all of that is gone. This is just awesome, actually.

[ArcaneArts]

I remember being skeptical of how this [or something like it, I don't really remember, I mostly remember being skeptical] was framed last time you talked about Heroes, but all of that is gone. This is just awesome, actually.

Glad I could turn you around.