Unique Totems

[ShadowcatX]

Reading through Geist the Sin Eaters while working on an NPC brought me around to a question which I asked in that forum which brought the possibility of someone using a Geist (not a Sin Eater, just the Geist spirit unbound from a Sin Eater) as a totem. I thought that was an interesting possibility.

I was curious what other kinds of unique or especially interesting totems have you all come up with?

[21C Hermit]

IIRC, one of the writers mentioned how he had a Purified (from the 1e supplement, Immortals) masquerading as a spirit serving as a totem in his Werewolf game. Always thought that was fascinating.

[GibberingEloquence]

I don't know Forsaken lore too well, but I'm pretty sure the Bale Hounds would have Totems in the form of Spirits corrupted by the Inferno. IIRC, those are called Immundi in the Inferno supplement for 1ed.

A Pack with a God-Machine Angel as a Totem could be interesting too, especially if the leader is an Iron Master who wants to engineer types of Resonances that hybridize the Shadow with Infrastructures.

What about a Pack with a Horror from the Primordial Dream or a fear-eating Hobgoblin from the darkest domains of the Hedge as a Totem? It would be especially fitting if the leader is a member of the Lodge Of The Hook Hand.

[Aeveth]

Well, beasts have a merit that lets the horror learn numina of any kind (spirit, ghost, dreamborn, etc.), and I think that Shunned by the Moon has a numen that allows a spirit to just steal the totem position or something like that, so I think that's an actual possibility

[Satchel]

Well, beasts have a merit that lets the horror learn numina of any kind (spirit, ghost, dreamborn, etc.)

That's not specified in the Legendary Horror Merit and is about as practical as the suggestion someone made back in Mage 1e of "use Shape Spirit to give your Goetic Familiar the Infernal Numen Hellform," which is apropos because Linggan Zhao is pretty directly implied to have gotten his power to steal totem bonds from a servant of the Maeljin. Legendary Horror is there to give the Horror Numina and Influences in the same fashion that normal Dreamborn have them, i.e. furthering their conceptual basis and demonstrating powers particular to their role in mortal narrative and the place of their fear and hunger in the world.

and I think that Shunned by the Moon has a numen that allows a spirit to just steal the totem position or something like that, so I think that's an actual possibility

Linggan Zhao's Usurp Numen requires the user to beat the totem in a Power + Finesse vs Finesse + Resistance roll to place them in the totem role for the pack for their Rank in days and Legendary Horrors don't gain a Rank until the Beast they're part of undergoes the Retreat (a process which the Merit makes harder and which separates the Horror from the character as they die). Permanently taking the totem slot requires the original totem to be discorporated during that zero-day window.

It would take a different Night Horrors-style mechanical oddity for a Beast or their Horror to mechanically (rather than socially) serve as the totem for a pack; Unfettered get Numina anyway, so the Legendary Horror Merit is irrelevant to the process.

[Aeveth]

Had to re read the whole thing again, and yeah, can't find that mention of it, must have read it wrong at the time or got my wired crossed and confused it with another thing, now I'm wondering where did idea got stuck on my head.

[Satchel]

Had to re read the whole thing again, and yeah, can't find that mention of it, must have read it wrong at the time or got my wired crossed and confused it with another thing, now I'm wondering where did idea got stuck on my head.

Possibly crossed wires with the bit in Beast Core where it says that the Unfettered can get Numina and Manifestations "mechanically identical to those available to spirits, angels, and ghosts," which is definitely not a sentence built under the assumption that an unusual quality of a spirit modeled as a Numen in a book of unusual antagonists, any more than their development of Manifestations allows them to offer the Bargain because Geist 2e models the Bargain as an extremely durable Manifestation.

An Unfettered Horror could almost certainly make its way into the Shadow become something weird yet capable of forming a totem bond — there's a sidebar to that general effect on the Unfettered going through weird transformations in other realms that even suggests one could become a geist in 1e's general framework of how geists are made — but the circumstances involved are unusual.

[Cauthon]

If you need an excuse to make it work, Mages can already facilitate Bargains and Contracts between Changelings and Non-Fae entities. A Spirit + [Relevant Arcana] spell using Masking the False Fae as a template should work fine. The Mage doesn't even have to be around anymore- just have the spell have been cast at Indefinite Duration. Not like it would be affected by Dissonance.

I think a Hob (or even a True Fae) would be interesting. Or even a Huntsman.