The Ugallu and The Invincible

[ArcaneArts]

will beasts gain a fourth type of power? i like atavisms,nightmares and mother's magicqpobcasus aright a great deal,would love to see a fourth one

I'd honestly rather expand and otherwise make sexier Nightmares and Kinship than come up with another powerset.

[Nicolas Milioni]

will beasts gain a fourth type of power? i like atavisms,nightmares and mother's magicqpobcasus aright a great deal,would love to see a fourth one

[ArcaneArts]

How do the Arisen view the Begotten?

On the broad side of things, what do you do with a creature who so very clearly reminds everyone of the way the world is-the way you knew it-and at the same time seems to reject your societies answer? While they may lack the historical context of reality in the way, say, a vampire might, or the broader metaphysical insight that a mage might have, Beasts get that the world is a cruel place, that societies that grow out of it may be better but will still be cruel, and that does not invalidate it being better. If anyone modernly (for what that means or matters to the Arisen) get what Irem was and did, and more importantly stood for (without misunderstanding it as needing to stand for anything), it would be the Children of the Dark Mother-in fact, plenty of Beasts can see it as it's own sort of ideal, a civilization without the pretense of civility in it's truest, fullest form. Tyrants and Nemeses alike can appreciate the internal logic and structure of the Empire, Collectors and Whispers it's mechanics and formal enforcement, and Predators and Ravagers in it's ruthless efficiency and methodology. The Tempters might seem left outside, and certainly they are the least appreciative, but modern Beasts can appreciate it as it's own violation of the world as it is now. There is a way in which the Nameless Empire is the harmonious marriage of Primoridal Dream reality with Bright Dream innovation, and thus as scions of that Empire, Beasts find a lot to appreciate in the Arisen that the Arisen find gratifying to be appreciated.

And yet, The Begotten are unruly, ill-tempered, and annoyingly self-willed. For as much as they might grok the Empire, the Judges the Arisen serve cause pause-not because the morals they represent are bad, per se (in as much as Beasts care about morality), as much as their entire world exists on the idea that flinching from a sting is the nature of the thing. It's one thing for Beasts to understand moving in accordance to fear and hunger, and understanding that legend is born out of directing that motion and truth in recognizing why motion is had-but the Judges can (and often do) have the stink of Heroic control versus the Dark Mother's direction towards harmony. Irem may have been honest about what it grew from and what it was as a result, but it still has the smack of image containing being, of pretense being stifling rather than facilitating. Beasts, in fact, are often the quickest supernatural members of cults to point out that there's no actual appeasing of all 42 Judges for any but the impossibly "virtuous", and to voice the suspicion that something is off with the guidance of humanity in this way. Now whether they care about that is a whole 'nother matter, but the Begotten do question the teachings of the Shan'iatu, and with that rattle the bars of the Arisen's obeisance.

Most annoyingly-temptingly-The Begotten challenge complacency with the Arisen's sense of self in opposition to their obedience. Beasts, having actualized their way into their current state of being, feel like the Arisen need to know how they arrived where they are and if they ever actually made peace with the fears and hungers that brought them here versus simply being driven by them. Ownership of self, for better or for worse, is a matter that writhes in the heart of the Children of the Dark Mother, and the Arisen prick at them how much they don't get to do that. Even the most accepting of Beasts eventually scratch the edges of the dictates laid down by the Shadows of the Law. How well this goes over depends on how successful they are and how open the Arisen is to it.

TL;DR: Beasts get it, but they ask uncomfortable questions about the relationship any given Arisen has with both themselves and the judges.

And, for fun:

Ashem: You understand the void of always, so why do you act like it offers anything back?
Deshret: You understand history lies in action, but you writhe to mere hunger rather than loftier service.
Kheru: To want, to fear, to present, to be, so strongly, so vividly! Give us your heart and we'd give your legend to forever and always.
Nesrem: To learn what you know that I don't is to betray myself. To punish you for the same is to also betray myself. Leave before you make a traitor of me.
Usheb: You know the ten thousand nameless things that I know the ten thousand names for. What a delightful puzzle to solve.

[reaperfrost8]

Seeing as the law of suffering has been mentioned I am compelled to ask on how mummies view beasts cause it occurs to me that they have sort of the least interactions barring deviants. (The deviant part is obviously because deviant was released after beast.)

I can sort of predict the interaction between a werewolf or a mage but a Arisen a bit hard to tell in a sense on what a mummy would think of a beast.

[Nicolas Milioni]

I like my coffee black and my antithesis to confinement different in name.

Plus Dahzbog is a) already popular, b) pushing in on a sun god position that I think the Ehki better fill, and c) also doesn't fulfill my stealth satire purposes the way Stribog does.

I getcha. Stribog is new to me,gonna look him up

[ArcaneArts]

I think the god of the sun,Dahzbog sounds better.

I like my coffee black and my antithesis to confinement different in name.

Plus Dahzbog is a) already popular, b) pushing in on a sun god position that I think the Ehki better fill, and c) also doesn't fulfill my stealth satire purposes the way Stribog does.

[Nicolas Milioni]

The Stribog, The Libertine Heroes and Forsworn of Confinement?

I think the god of the sun,Dahzbog sounds better.

[ArcaneArts]

The Stribog, The Libertine Heroes and Forsworn of Confinement?

[SomethingFishy]

Oh, I totally agree. Each gameline is a conversation about something [some more thinly veiled than others], and it enriches the playspace to keep the conversation as wide as possible without losing focus. And while Beast's conversation is certainly accessible to queer people for a variety of reasons, it would absolutely be reductive to lean into that any more than any of the other games draws on queer experiences. I was mostly just popping in to be like, "this is good!" about your explanation. I could have been clearer.

But then again, maybe you knew that and just wanted to turn my comment into a teaching moment. Either way, glad something constructive came from it!

[ArcaneArts]

Kinda tangential to the rest of the discussion, but this is exactly the kind of gay shit that got me into Beast to begin with. The Ugallu have eyes to fly with and wings to see.

Shockingly, I would actually argue that while it's fine for it to be this gay out of the books, it's not something I would want to continue on as a trend. Accusations that Beast is basically an LBGT supers game are overblown, and the arguments that Beast's gay allusions makes the LBGT community look like monsters are rooted in people not understanding how metaphors work, buuuuut part of the reason those claims got made is that a lot of writers leaned really hard into the allusions, to the final presentation's detriment.

I've made the point before that Beast, and Chronicles games, aren't SJW games so much as horror games written by SJW's, and a big thing the text needs going forward is making it clear that the act of becoming and being is something more universal than the LBGT experience of it. Beast needs to be a cup in that way, rather than the drink, and while there are absolutely some cups you want to use for certain drinks more than others, at the end of the day, the cup just needs to be drinkable from, if that metaphor makes sense.

But, like, 1) it's super easy, and 2) letting myself be queer has been a rather dominant sub-plot to my life since 2018, so of course it comes up a lot.

I suppose what I'm saying is Beast is not a queer allegory (or at least, no more so than every other gameline is), and work must always be done to keep it from being just that, but it's definitely a textual ally.

[SomethingFishy]

Again, to be queer about it, my Makara experience was learning that the need for LBGT+ language was valid, and then working my from the umbrella terms to the specifics, and more importantly seeing how society is hostile towards LBGT+ individuals piece by piece. My Ugallu experience was suddenly realizing that, when I gave myself permission, I ended up thinking of myself in queer terms a lot and that came from somewhere-and once I knew where and why, I couldn't go back to just being a guy all the time.

A lot of the things about the Families are recurrent-the Ugallu's desert and the Namtaru's marsh and the Makara's ocean, and the Eshmaki's forest, and the Anakim's mountain all break down to the same some of pressures. The main difference is in how it's understood, the particular element that gets the rabbit heart running. In the same way that the difference between the Eshmaki and the Makara can be reduced to the difference between being blinded and being drowned, the particulars of the Makara and the Ugallu is the difference the timeframe and how available "choice" can seem. Being queer a third time, if a mermaid can't help but notice that siren call of the gay clubs, the phoenix can't ignore the burning of their heart.

Kinda tangential to the rest of the discussion, but this is exactly the kind of gay shit that got me into Beast to begin with. The Ugallu have eyes to fly with and wings to see.

[ArcaneArts]

One thing I would like some clarification on is how the Ugallu and Makara differ in your conception. "Exposure" and "Drowning" both involve a situation that is inherently not safe for you on an environmental level, not just from hostile beings. That sense of absent protection, whether its body or armor. I can think of a few differences, but I'm not sure which are the important ones. And I'm pretty sure that answering this question also involves looking into the differences between their Forsworn counterparts too.

There's an element of entropy that I couldn't really get into the text for the Ugallu that contrasts with the much more immediate hostility of the Makara.

The Makara, on a human level, embody an environment that if you try to just adapt to in one go is going to kill you, and on a conceptual level will probably just utterly bewilider, baffle, and overwhelm you. You need to pull up for air, reorient yourself, take some seconds to center, before breathing deep and diving back in. In the loose dream logic that Beast explores these principles on, you can do that enough time until you become the alien that can take to this hostile environment, but let's make it clear-it's IMMEDIATELY hostile.

The Ugallu tap into something a little bit longer and more inevitable, the way that the elements themselves will slowly chew away your housing, your fuels, your clothing, your food. If you sit comfortable in your protection and don't commit to their restoration, it need not even be a storm to eat you alive-but of course, sometimes exposure can be used to toughen you up, to refine and preserve other things. It's a matter of knowing what is what. On the conceptual level, there's the curse of knowledge as applies to self, other and world-once you know something about the way it works, it can't be unlearned, it can't, to borrow a queer phrase because Hi, go back in the closet. You can try, but inevitably circumstances are going to wear at any attempt to hide or otherwise protect that actuality of the scenario-reality will out itself, reality will be itself.

Both deal with ideas of adaptation (well, actually, all of them do) and the process of being more of yourself (again, all of them do), but the Makara hews towards the external intimidation, learning to navigate and harmonize with the new environment, learning to swim in these unchartered waters and breath in the environment. The Ugallu hew towards the internal pain and strife of clarity, turning that initial sense of pain into expanded sensitivity into new ways to see and experience stimuli.

Again, to be queer about it, my Makara experience was learning that the need for LBGT+ language was valid, and then working my from the umbrella terms to the specifics, and more importantly seeing how society is hostile towards LBGT+ individuals piece by piece. My Ugallu experience was suddenly realizing that, when I gave myself permission, I ended up thinking of myself in queer terms a lot and that came from somewhere-and once I knew where and why, I couldn't go back to just being a guy all the time.

A lot of the things about the Families are recurrent-the Ugallu's desert and the Namtaru's marsh and the Makara's ocean, and the Eshmaki's forest, and the Anakim's mountain all break down to the same some of pressures. The main difference is in how it's understood, the particular element that gets the rabbit heart running. In the same way that the difference between the Eshmaki and the Makara can be reduced to the difference between being blinded and being drowned, the particulars of the Makara and the Ugallu is the difference the timeframe and how available "choice" can seem. Being queer a third time, if a mermaid can't help but notice that siren call of the gay clubs, the phoenix can't ignore the burning of their heart.

Hopefully that clarifies it a bit.

So Daphna = Greek, Amiran(i) = Georgia, Balaram = Hindu, Ningizzida = Sumero-Akkadian, Ishum = Sumerian.

Something we don't really have yet is Slavic. "Alkonost" or "Raróg" could be nice for the Libertine: both reflect the notion of ambiguity (human and avian, dangerous yet potentially beneficial to humanity) and kinship (they're all related with other supernatural winged creatures, like the Sirin, which to me would be the Begotten stand-in). Also, it involves flying as the dangerous and intoxicating freedom at the risk of fall, which differs from the Ugallu and links to the Talassii in the right way, IMO.

As for the priests, that would be where I'd go Latin and pick Penates, or maybe Egeria (or the even less known and intriguing Vegoia). But Sumer/Akkad is also very tempting, with the Apkallu and Uanna/Adapa.

Ultimately I know you'll pick something great based on your own written take, just musing aloud, so to speak.

The internet cannot agree on Daphna, though it always bugged me that it didn't sound Hebrew. I should probably bug Heavy Arms for ideas-though having sat on Daphna for a day, I do like the sound of it.

I do like the idea of something Slavic, and heaven forbid the Roman base of the name only works in the context of the Anathema applied. That said, probably gonna poke through their gods and heroes.

The Inguma derive their name from the Basque deity of nightmares and dreams, so keeping it in the family, I figured the Basque god of the Sun is a better contrast, hence the Ehki.

Defintiely got some stuff to chew on, thanks.

[Master Aquatosic]

One thing I would like some clarification on is how the Ugallu and Makara differ in your conception. "Exposure" and "Drowning" both involve a situation that is inherently not safe for you on an environmental level, not just from hostile beings. That sense of absent protection, whether its body or armor. I can think of a few differences, but I'm not sure which are the important ones. And I'm pretty sure that answering this question also involves looking into the differences between their Forsworn counterparts too.

[Primordial newcomer]

Going way back to old presentations, Heroes are a serious case of "Fuck Gaston." Gaston's not stronger than the Beast in any sense of the word. What does Gaston have going for him?

"Can you not feel the world, turning in my direction already?"

And worse, Gaston is the perfect example of had he won, he really would be seen as the hero of the story. Of completely averting a story of tragedy and redemption into a Hero's tale of saving a damsel in distress.

Really one of the biggest reasons I want the effects on the Astral focused on. It's incredibly unique that Brast: the Primordial uses the mundane world the most in order to effect their metaphysical otherworld, bur I do wish the game explored those consequences more and the stories the Astral makes

[ArcaneArts]

Which in terms of adapting the story of Heroes and monsters, sounds better. The Heroes are of myth, after all, are usually set up as the brave underdogs looking to overthrow the monster (and therefore, it's enforced role) while also showing that humanity doesn't need em anymore. Much better than simply being some badass who just beats you up without attracting a crowd

Going way back to old presentations, Heroes are a serious case of "Fuck Gaston." Gaston's not stronger than the Beast in any sense of the word. What does Gaston have going for him?

"Can you not feel the world, turning in my direction already?"