New Idigam

[Leetsepeak]

Acro, I'd love to hear your thoughts on ideas for how an individual Idigam might interact with Vampires. What if it Coalesced in the presence of some big, vampire-like thing? What if it had powers for messing around with them?

I'm working on some stuff for a vampire chronicle in New York and fiddling around with an idea that the description in Damnation City which suggests that Kindred randomly disappear and to avoid the sewers, is actually because of an Idigam or some other weirdness down there. Any thoughts?

Bonus points if any of your ideas might involve the Neglatu, considering they also have something to do with the sewers of New York apparently.

[Leetsepeak]

I would love to get some help with a First Tongue name if anyone is willing. In the new chronicle my friend is going to run, I'm helping her design an Idigam that is so far called The Filth That Taints, and it's coalesced in the presence of physical pollution in a lake that got tied conceptually to corruption, spreading and control. I'd love to have a cool First Tongue name to call it by, but I'm having a hard time making sense of how to write them. Any help?

[nofather]

Usually we ask in the First Tongue translations thread and Sikla Alkis offers a translation based loosely on proto-Indo-European language.

[Deionscribe]

Posting another homebrew idigam here as a spoiler for a Requiem for Rome-style collection of settings titled Requiem for Azar (though it will probably be akin to Splintered City: Seattle as well, seeing as there's some material that's been worked out for other splats, with more concepts well on the way).

This idigam's stats primarily uses a combination of the 2E Ephemeral Beings system, the Spirit Slayers system, and homebrew mechanics worked out by Arcanist and GottaGoFeast, and it also is a Rank 6 being. Critique is appreciated, especially with regards to figuring out a Ban and Bane for this monster. Oh well, as LostLight said, "stating gods isn't easy".


Credit for the flavor text goes to LostLight. The stats were done by myself and Arcanist (who also went the extra mile by adding the description and Storytelling hints).

[Deionscribe]

Apep, The Chaos Serpent

This story is true.

There is no light without shadow, but there is darkness without light. In the deepest Abyss and blackest night, no star shines in the heavens, no flame burns to guide you in your path. You are all alone, lost, forsaken by the world. There is a reminder of that every time you blink, in each pause between heartbeats, in every time you go to sleep, that life and light are not the natural state of being. That they are only temporary, a disturbance in the natural state. That the perfect world is a world of eternal darkness, cold and silence.

No one knows what was Apep's original name. No one knows how Apep came to be. Some say he was the first shadow to be cast by the Sun, leaving him to forever curse the end of the eternal night. Others claim he is the lost brother of Helios, who is forever jealous of his sibling. Apep himself doesn't tell his story. It takes too much effort. He doesn't care enough for what monkeys and wolves thins about him (he also doesn't care enough to to understand the difference between the two), and it is also no longer relevant. All he could think about was to return to his endless sleep and destroy the damned Sun which shone too brightly, hurting his eyes. He dreams about the time the Sun would finally set, and another - him - would rise instead: a black sun who would spit darkness upon the earth like the current one shines with light, giving all life his blessing of chaos and darkness.

While his eternal nemesis shined in the heavens, he never had a chance to deal with him - he had too many problems on earth. Recognizing him as a threat to her brother, the Moon called for her lover - Father Wolf. Chased by the Great Predator, Apep was constantly on the run, which was a torment for a creature as lazy as Apep. Each time he would find a new hideout, Father Wolf would sniff him out, howl like a mad dog, and bite his tremendous body with sharp teeth. He dove to the depths of the oceans, slithered in the darkest tunnels, and coiled in the blackest shadows. But Father Wolf never gave up. Sometimes, he thought that maybe he should just give up, that maybe on the dark side of the Moon, away from the Sun's burning fury, he could finally get some sleep. Then, he looked at the sky, saw the burning light of his eternal enemy, spat a cloud of poison and kept moving (destroying a small community on the way).

Apep didn't notice when Father Wolf died. He was sleeping, the best sleep he had for centuries, coiling in the depths of earth, and even the death scream of his tormentor wasn't loud enough to wake him up. He didn't even notice when the Gauntlet fell down and trapped him on the World of Flesh. The fall of Irem, however, did wake him up.

After all, it was built right over his head...

It wasn't just the screams of thousands of souls falling into Duat which awoke him from his sleep. It was a resonance, between him and something else. Something ancient and hungry which shared Apep's desire for a silent world. That resonance touched his Essence, mutating his ever changing flesh, and forcing him awake. And he would discover that not only was he tired, but he was hungry too.

Deciding to investigate the source of all the noise, Apep coalesced into form and started to slither back to the world of light. It took him a decade or two to reach the surface (after all, what are few years to something as big and lazy as he?) and when he eventually breached through the ground, he was surprised to see how far the world has changed- no longer spirits lived beside the flesh, no longer the dead walked beside the living. New boundaries were formed, new laws were established.

He hated it more than anything else, but the Sun.

Burning with anger, the Chaos Serpent stormed upon the small community of what would become Kemet. The desert storms started to blow, the darkness covered the skies. His venom fell like rain, killing dozens in seconds. The monkeys screamed with fear, and to his touch, their ghosts rose from their own bodies and turned upon the living. For the first time in years, he was finally delighted. And maybe this time, he'll even manage to devour the Sun!

Until they came.

Nine women, each holding a clay image of his new form. Looking at them, the serpent started to laugh. What could these monkeys - no, mice - do against him? He was ready to devour them when the first daughter came forward and called "I name you Apep, Chaos Serpent, Eater of the Sun!" and with this, his Essence twisted again, forcing her name to become true.

The second daughter came and called "With this, I spit upon Apep!" and as she spat, his Essence changed again, burning him with shame.

The third daughter came and called "With this, I trample upon Apep!" and she crushed his figure with her left foot, his body filled with pain.

The fourth daughter came and called "With this, I smite Apep with the spear!" and as she sliced his figure, cuts were formed at his flesh.

The fifth daughter came and called "With this, I bind Apep!" and as she tied the figure, chains of darkness bound his massive body to the ground.

The sixth daughter came and called "With this, I smite Apep with the knife!" and as she cut the figure's head, his skin burst, spilling blood and venom.

The seventh daughter came and called "With this, I set fire to Apep!" and as the figure burned, so did his flesh.

The eighth daughter came and called "With this, Apep, you are shamed and trampled, bound, and burned, cut and broken. A form to the formless, and name to the nameless. You are to be banished, bound to sleep, where you will forever lay in your hunger. You are Apep, enemy of the Sun, and now I have annihilated you!"

With this, his pain and anger turned into terror, for she was right. And when the ninth daughter came, she said nothing. She simple kissed him, and with that terrible agony he fell to his sleep.

Since then, Apep has been asleep. He was, more or less, aware for the outside world, however. For the binding grew thinner in time, and the Nine (or maybe their children. Apep didn't care enough) returned to bind him over and over again. The knowledge that he was bound not by the might of the Sun or the claws of the Wolf, but by the deeds of naked monkeys, drove him mad with anger. Each year, he swore upon the dark stars and the black sun that if the Nine Daughters won't come, he would break through his jail and devour the whole world, right after taking his revenge upon those who damned him. Yet every year they come, and every year he curse again.

However, things may be changing. The current king of the monkeys doesn't seem to hold much respect to the old traditions. He doesn't allow the foreign priests to enter his lands. He doesn't listen to them when they claim that the world may be in danger. And he puts them in jail when they try to sneak in.

Everyone but them has forgotten the name they granted him, and as such they can't perform the ceremony to bind him back to sleep. Maybe, this time, he would awaken.

And this time, he will eat the Sun.

[Deionscribe]

Apep, The Chaos Serpent
Type: Idigam (Earthbound)
Rank: 6 (Dihar)
Attributes: Power 15, Finesse 15, Resistance 15
Willpower: 10
Essence: 240
Initiative: 18
Defense: 18
Speed: 26
Size: 30
Corpus: 51
Armour: 15
Manifestations: Twilight Form, Shadow Gateway, Avernian Gateway, Reaching, Royal Avatar
Influences: Chaos 3, Darkness 6, Death 2, Hunger 2
Numina: Awful Presence*, Drain, Emotional Aura (R), Entropic Decay (R), Implant Mission (R), Rapture (R), Regenerate**
Dread Powers: Burrow, Call Void Spirit, Colossus, Devourer***, Elemental Fury (Drought), Home Ground (Chaos in the Dark), Furious Madness, Madness and Terror****, Nightmare Plague, Soul Furnace, Soul Slave, Toxic Bite (oo), Venomous Ichor
Essence Shaping: Essence Venom, Ghost Manipulation, Locus Manipulation, One Million Eyes, Spirit Manipulation, Shadow Warp, Forge Fastness*****, Forge Servant (Claimed, Herald, Spawn)
Ban: Apep is drawn to bloodshed and chaos, and will quickly gravitate to the largest battle raging within a mile of his location.
Bane: The weapons and armor of the Shan'iatu.

Description: Apep is called a serpent, but there is little beyond his general shape that is truly reptilian. His rubbery flesh is covered in a mixture of inky blackness, fleshy tendrils, chitinous scales, and bone spurs. He moves less like a snake, and more like a thorny tentacle writhing in agony. He is eyeless, with a cavernous maw of livid purple and fangs like blackened iron jutting out at all possible angles. His appearance can drive men to madness, sending them to their knees, souls shattered by his terrible visage. His brush with Ammut when he was first woken by the fall of Irem has marked him, and lurid hieroglyphs in gleaming oily ichor are left where he bleeds. When translated, they are all revealed to be blasphemies before the Judges, the last curses of the Shan'iatu as they realized what a massive mistake they had made.

Storytelling Hints: Apep is, ultimately, a lazy creature. He wants to be fed, he wants to rest, and in spite of his rage towards Helios and (to an extent) the Nameless Lion allied with the Creater Celestine, he simply doesn't have the drive to do battle himself. Fortunately, he is quite adept at forging servants with a lot more motivation than he himself feels. The place of his binding has long been a dark and twisted locus of chaos and despair from his presence, an immensely powerful one that would affect many people if it wasn't in the middle of nowhere, and the Earthbound Idigam has grown strong off of its Essence in spite of his binding. However, despite that laziness, Apep has been awake and fuming for a very long time. He cannot enter a deep hibernation as he is wont to do, not with those damned sorcerers arriving yearly to reassert his bindings. He hasn't properly slept for a very long time, and the fact that mere mortals laid him low when even Father Wolf had difficulty in keeping him trapped has him seething with rage. The first thing he'll do upon his release is twist the Hisil around him into a nightmarish playground all his own, and then send an army of twisted spirits to inflict terrible punishment upon the bloodlines of those who have imprisoned him.

But beneath the laziness and rage lies something deeper set, something that has held true since he Coalesced. He desires to feel the exquisite taste of the terror of an entire city as it is destroyed, he wants to feast upon the souls of the dead and the dying, he wants to scour the earth until that settlement has not a memory of it left on the face of Geb. He remembers the fall of the City of Pillars, and he wants to feast on the complex flavour of Essence such an event will provide.

===

New Manifestation

Royal Avatar: (Rank 6+ Ephemeral Beings only- Requires the Infrastructure, Resonant, Avernian Gateway, or Lock Condition)
The Ephemeral Being spends 50 Essence to produce a Rank 5 puppet of itself. Use the parent being’s stats as a base, and reduce them to the limitations of a Rank 5 being. Numina and dots of Influence in excess of the limits are sacrificed to grant additional Manifestations to interact with the mortal world. The parent being may end the Manifestation whenever they choose.

New Numina

Awful Presence:
Most common among Helions, God-Machine Angels, Qashmallim, and other similarly ‘glorious’ beings. This Numen does not require a roll or cost Essence. Instead, anyone who can directly perceive the Ephemeral Being with less Willpower dots than twice the Being’s Rank suffers the effect of a Personal Tilt for the rest of the scene, unless they succeed a Resolve + Composure roll with a penalty equal to the Being's Rank.

Apep's very existence exudes crushing fear to all onlookers, inflicting the Insensate Tilt. When a victim of this Numen is attacked by someone, he must succeed on a Resolve + Composure roll, penalized by the spirit's Rank, in order to end the Tilt. Supernatural powers used to counter the Tilt, meanwhile, trigger a Clash of Wills, with Apep rolling Resistance + Rank.

New Dread Power

Madness and Terror:
Upon confronting Apep for the first time, witnesses must roll Resolve + Composure penalized by his Rank. If they fail the contested roll, they gain the Insane Tilt for a scene. If Apep spends a point of Essence, he may also inflict the Guilty, Shaken, or Spooked Condition on all those afflicted. If he spends 3 Essence, he can instead inflict the Madness, Fugue, or Broken Conditions.


Notes:
* - Awful Presence is a Homebrew Numen by amechra.
** - Apep's version of Regenerate uses the mechanics of the Flesh Intruder's Regneration from Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss. He can spend a point of Essence to heal two points of bashing damage or one point of lethal or aggravated damage.
*** - Apep's version of Devourer lets him do to the Arisen what the Shuankhsen and the Greater Amkhata can do, that is, drain Sekhem. Each dot of Sekhem that Apep absorbs can be treated like a Soul under the rules of Soul Furnace, but can also be fed to an Amkhat or one of the Shuankhsen. He may also consume a Soul as per Soul Furnace and convert it into a dot of Sekhem. This means that when Apep is released (and he will be released at some point) that he will make an invaluable ally to the Lifeless. A fearsome lieutenant of Ammut whether he knows it or not.
**** - From CofD Core, Horror Creation Rules
***** - This Dread Power uses the same mechanics as that possessed by the High Cromlech.

[amechra]

Awful Presence: Most common amongst Helions, God-Machine Angels, Qashmallim, and other similarly ‘glorious’ beings. This Numen does not require a roll or cost Essence. Instead, anyone who can directly perceive the Ephemeral Being with less Willpower dots than twice the Being’s Rank suffers the effect of a Personal Tilt for the rest of the scene, unless they succeed a Resolve + Composure roll with a penalty equal to the Being's Rank. The Tilt is applicable to all parts of the anatomy (Blinded in both eyes, Leg Wrack to both legs). This is extremely powerful, so it should be used sparingly, but it is thematically appropriate. The appearance of a spirit of the sun blinds, an envoy of the God-Machine can literally force you to your knees, and a qashmal can make combat all but impossible (Beaten Down) so you must listen to what it has to say.

If you are going to modify something I wrote, could you please give credit where credit is due?

[Arcanist]

Sorry- that one's my bad. I thought I had all the requisite homebrew referenced when I sent the stats in, and obviously I missed one. I had no intention of not giving credit where it is due.

[Deionscribe]

If you are going to modify something I wrote, could you please give credit where credit is due?

Sorry- that one's my bad. I thought I had all the requisite homebrew referenced when I sent the stats in, and obviously I missed one. I had no intention of not giving credit where it is due.

Correcting that, now. Thank you for pointing it out.

[amechra]

Thanks - I apologize for being snippy.

Apep looks good.

EDIT: Oh, by the way, what Tilt does Awful Presence cause?

[Arcanist]

The way I edited it was meant to just inflict 'a' Tilt , up to Storyteller discretion and the themes of the Ephemeral Being in question.

[Deionscribe]

Oh, by the way, what Tilt does Awful Presence cause?

The way I edited it was meant to just inflict 'a' Tilt , up to Storyteller discretion and the themes of the Ephemeral Being in question.

If I had to settle on a fixed effect, though, I'd say either Beaten Down or Insensate. With the latter possibly requiring a roll to end early (Clash of Wills? Penalty? Target Number of Successes?)

[Deionscribe]

Oh, by the way, what Tilt does Awful Presence cause?

Made a revision of Apep's version of Awful Presence. I believe Insensate is the best fit for him, seeing as his very presence is terrifying to behold.

[Deionscribe]

Acro, I'd love to hear your thoughts on ideas for how an individual Idigam might interact with Vampires. What if it Coalesced in the presence of some big, vampire-like thing? What if it had powers for messing around with them?

If you're thinking of creating an Idigam that has strong associations with the vampires, perhaps you can consider adapting the Thief of Gifts Dread Power for use on Kindred Disciplines and Devotions?

[YeOfLittleFaith]

I like Apep. It has personality, and a dang awesome backstory and relation to Irem, and it's a scary mofo. Good job.