Beast: The Primordial: Player's Guide by Kurieg

Being a Beast

posted by Kurieg Original SA post

I got a very special present this year on my birthday. It wasn't something I asked for. It wasn't something I wanted. In fact it was basically the opposite of those things.

And by the Faustian pact that grants me eternal life I am bound to spread knowledge of this book to the four corners of the earth.

Or something like that.
I wasn't exactly looking forward to reviewing another Beast book, because of the whole "Matt McFarland in all likelihood molested an underage girl" thing. But this is the last book that he directly worked on, and like most gamelines as the game progresses the Developer has less direct involvement, so much of this book was being written by people who aren't him anyway.

That isn't to say he goes out with a whimper, oh no, we should be so lucky.


Children. He'd be a social worker this time.
Yes, it's time for Short Fiction. If it's any consolation I'm reasonably certain that this is a short story written before the Beast Kickstarter was finished as it's an expansion of a story that was included in the Press Release for Beast.

After we're introduced to creepy mc-rape-a-child. We cut to the Teacher's Lounge at a school. Dave, is talking with another teacher about a kid name Richard Fries who lashed out and hurt him accidentally. Another teacher is listening in, a Mr. Miliner who is some kind of nebulous behavior therapist but almost certainly a Hero.

Then we cut to the Cafeteria where we get the bit of text that was included in the press release.

So yes, Kid beasts are a thing again.

I could continue from here but honestly I can't think of a way to make this interesting anymore. Cause we've seen this before. The resident Hero even uses the same Storm imagery and analogies that the Hero did in the Conquering Heroes short story.

In short, Eve meets up with Richard Fries, which, surprising no one is a Beast. And talks with him about how feeding isn't bad and blah blah blah. They go back to Rich's house to play Videogames, creepy mc rape-a-child follows them to Rich's house and tries to steal Eve's Hoodie. Around this time the Hero shows up, not to kill the Beasts but out of genuine concern for the children cause he saw Matt's stand in following them home. He knows they're probably trouble but they're also children. Once Rich sees Coffey stealing Eve's hoodie, he punches him in the leg hard enough to shred the muscles out of his left leg, and the child rapist limps away while the Hero stays with the kids to make sure that they're okay.

Heroes portrayed as Sympathetic? Beasts fighting against unrepentant monster beasts? What is this book? Well... it's got a lot of retcons and/or clarifications, changing bits and pieces of beast, in most ways for the better. Particularly in the stuff that wasn't written by Matt. But we've got some "Matt Stuff" to chew through first.


Chapter 1: Being a Beast
The first chapter opens up with some text that I'm almost certain Matt wrote, maybe I've just been reading too much Beast but this reeks of his authorial voice.
Jesus Christ Matt.
Just imagine my eyes rolling so hard they fall out of my face.

The Devouring
So the first Retclarification, Beasts are born Dormant, indistinguishable from normal humanity except in the way that they dream. Their dreams brush against the border of the primordial dream, which alerts other Beasts to their presence. Usually the 'elder' beast then proceeds to confront the dreamer and usher them through their devouring. In some cases the Beast takes a "Sink or Swim" mentality and just devours them with no fanfare or explanation, with no understanding of their Horror or what has been taken from them the nascent dreamers tend to run away from their Horrors (in most cases the devouring Beast then proceeds to make a meal of the 'weak human') but if they manage to escape from their Horrors and the Beast then they awaken hollow and without their soul. Any beasts in the immediate area will be drawn to these 'half-devoured' as their Horrors desperately want to feed on the person who rejected the call.

In rare cases an incipient beast will find their own way into the dream and find their Horror on their own. So we've got a halfway point between "Beasts are born and only become whole when they find their soul" and "Beasts are made by other Beasts". I don't hate this, I suppose. But don't worry, there's more than enough stuff for me to hate later.

The Horror
Hello again Matt, I was just starting to miss you.

This section is mostly just echoing and clarifying text from the Beast Corebook. Though it makes an effort to distinguish between Beasts who view their Horror as a part of themselves and those who view their Horror as an unwelcome passenger. Those who view their horror as a missing piece of themselves find it difficult to separate what their Horror wants from what they want. When their horror is gorged they find it hard to motivate themselves to do things, when it's starving they're irritable and tense. And those emotions become impossible to ignore once they assume their Horror in their Lair. Those that separate their perceptions from their Horror can resist these sensations, but they're also rarely if ever at ease since their Horror rankles when it's desires aren't met.

Feeding
It's impossible for a Beast to not enjoy the act of feeding. Feeding draws their horror to the surface and while it shares their flesh they feel it's contentment in the act. But before and afterwards? That's up to the individual beasts. More often than not a Beast gets a rather flexible moral code, the hungrier their Horror is the more willing they are to do horrible things to feed it. If they don't, their horror will go out feeding on it's own which will cause it's own issues.
Yes, Heroes are Made, not Born again. Which was another one of my major complaints with the beast Core. There can be optics issues about people being persecuted for being what they are, but considering the people are literally monsters it's easier to swallow as long as they don't lean too heavily into the race and gender imagery.

Beasts trying to cling to a moral framework will try to only feed from people who 'deserve it', people who are rich or have power, trying to bring them down to the same level as everyone else. On the other end of the spectrum are the people who were horrible monsters before they were devoured, and use their horror as an excuse. "Oh i never would have done this if my soul wasn't replaced by a dragon" she says while sucking the marrow out of your leg. Even rarer are the Beasts who still consider themselves human, and instead choose to feed exclusively from supernatural creatures.

Atavisms & Nightmares
Not much new here on Atavisms, but there is some interesting stuff for Nightmares.
I don't hate this, Beasts having to confront their own weakness to grow strong is a good storytelling hook.

The Lair
The new stuff here is information on Brood Lairs and Hives. Creating a Brood Lair is an expression of ultimate trust, as horrors can access any chamber that they have access to via the Burrows, and shared lair trait immunity can be revoked if a Beast is feeling threatened. Similarly, when an Apex changes every beast in the hive knows something happened as their Horrors react to the change. The hive shifts as the old trait is removed and the new trait is added, the familiar changes and most Horrors see this as a threat.

Anathema
Heroes don't understand the power that allows them to place anathema. They don't even know that there's a power there to tap in to. Within their narrative they're uncovering a Beast's long hidden weakness and exploiting it. And that's what pisses off Beasts the most, not that they're being made weaker, but that someone who doesn't know what they're doing is wielding the power of the primordial dream like a blunt instrument, and the primordial dream is more than happy to oblige.

That's the last bit of treading old ground, so Next Time: Matt's Last Gasp

Fuck You Matt

posted by Kurieg Original SA post

Beast the Primordial Player's Guide: Chapter 2 Part 1: Fuck You Matt
This chapter doesn't have the best layout, this book introduces two new horror families and two new hungers, and discusses them throughout chapter 2 but doesn't actually give them their introduction and description until the end of the chapter. So I'm skipping ahead to go over that and then we'll discuss what I skipped next time.

Also as evidenced by the way I titled this update, things are going to get worse before they get better.

So let's start with Families


Inguma: Nightmares of the Other
Yup, they're the nightmares of scary brown people.

Technically they're the fear of anyone who doesn't belong, of the "outsiders", but you cannot have straight up literal "Fear of the Other" in TYOOL 2018 without espousing images of black people and muslims.
I dislike this because in an ideal world, beasts are supposed to teach lessons, change people minds. But this is just preying on prejudices, and reinforcing stereotypes because something terrible is going to happen. The example nightmares and feeding methods all sort of tread on ground that's better covered by the other families, and "This is done better by other members of the splat that does things worse than other splats" is a terrible place to be.

The example characters are a gate attendant at an airport. A disabled homeless vet. A Pickup Artist. And a efficiency consultant that suggests sweeping changes that are nonetheless correct. Maybe two of those actually have anything to do with "outsiders".

In dreams, well...
*Deep sigh*

Mechanically, their birthright allows them to infiltrate groups easier, and evade detection by people looking for traitors or spies.

*Deep all consuming sigh*
Other than the Vampire one being sort of funny, the Changeling one is bad.


Talassii: Nightmares of Confinement
Time to break out the quote tool.

"We're rapists by the original latin definition of the word." Is right up there with "Technically I'm an ephebophile" in "Things that aren't actually a defense of your actions."

See: the Talassii embody the fear of imprisonment, and they're really really good at it. And that's actually a good idea for a new family that the other families don't really cover. But their entire family line was apparently cursed by a Hero so that they're SOMEHOW compelled to be rapists.



The text implies that this has something to do with whenever they use atavisms or nightmares, or when they're hungry. But the only references to the Talassii curse are in chapter two and the authorial voice takes such a hard left turn in chapter three that I can only presume that Matt was dragged kicking and screaming away from his keyboard the minute he put "They're rapists but it's not their fault!" to paper. Note that since there are no mechanics in chapter 2 there are no mechanics given for this magical rape compulsion, so outside of me documenting Matt's insanity for all to see I'm choosing to see the Talassii as "jailers" and ignoring the "cursed rapists" part.

I'm going to quote one of the example characters here because I seriously have no idea what he's going for.
What the fuck does this mean? Why is this here? Is the Beast the mother? Or the child who is so young they're sitting in a car seat and begging to hear stories? Where's the imprisonment? Is Matt implying that having children is imprisonment? What? Why?
The Mage one is hilarious but otherwise.. why?


Alright, now that that's done... let's go over the new hungers.

Whispers: Hunger for Secrets

A secret's not worth keeping if it isn't dangerous. Whispers feed not from knowing secrets, but from their target knowing that they know, or from revealing a particularly juicy secret. The subjective value of the secret is worth more than the objective value. A small kink can hold more weight than the blackest crime depending on the victim.
Beasts with this hunger tend to find jobs that facilitate their hunt, it's easier to snoop with a badge or a press pass. But cyber-espionage is just as useful. That said, they are supernatural monsters with ties to other supernatural monsters, there are other, more fun ways to uncover secrets. The "lessons" they teach are rarely as trite as "never keep secrets, lying is bad" but more "obsessing over a kept secret can be more ruinous than the secret itself."

The example characters are a cold reading psychic who only brings her supernatural powers to bear against skeptics, a private eye, a socialite that slips into social circles to uncover gossip, a Makara who goes after mages exclusively(this one's pretty hilarious), a white collar crime attorney that only takes cases when their client's assuredly guilty and part of their payment is making them tell the truth (To the senior partners, let the district attorney do their own legwork), A blogger, and.. uh..
The shackle dragon?

I don't mind this hunger, it feels a little out of place but it's not really treading old ground.

Enablers: Hunger for Transgression
....

.....

So yeah, tempters.

The book is quick to point out that they feed off of transgression, and they enable that transgression. But they don't trick. Fooling someone who keeps halal into eating pork isn't a transgression, it's just being a jerk. They prefer religious victims but the principles they force people to violate must be important to their sense of self. So deacons rather than Christmas/Easter Catholics.

Oh and the lessons they teach are "The truth is in the middle."


Okay, example characters are someone who tests the faithful regardless of their faith(They were empowered by A god, they're not sure who, so why not all of them), someone who runs a Multi Level Marketing scam(?), someone who infiltrates cults and deprograms the faithful, a selkie who demands increasingly high prices for sex, a scene kid who spreads false gossip, a fixer who will do anything so long as you pay his price of debasement, and..uhh..
I don't even fucking know anymore.

Next Time: the rest of chapter 2, by which I mean the first part of chapter 2.

Skipping through the rest of the septic tank.

posted by Kurieg Original SA post

Beast the Primordial Player's Guide: Chapter 2 Part 2: Skipping through the rest of the septic tank.

Honestly I've spent too much time trying to figure out how to go over the rest of chapter 2. When honestly the best way to go over it is to just not.

It's not that good. It's basically a list of all of the families and hungers, giving a brief vignette of a stereotypical devouring for a member of that splat, stereotypical horrors, stereotypical feeding methods, kinships they stereotypically pursue, how they stereotypically feel about the various inheritances, etc. The kind of stuff you'd expect to see take up an entire chapter of "Familybook: Anakim" squeezed into 3 pages. The only thing worth commenting on (for values of commenting) are that Matt of course spends way too much time and effort talking about the Talassi. Their section opens up with a Talassi tying up a hero and explaining to them that they're not a rapist and that they're going to let the hero live so that they can go tell all the other Heroes how much they're not a rapist. Talassi kinships are also creepy and dumb. Because the "predatory nature" of most other monsters feeds into their rapist nature. They also love the "vulnerability" of changelings. They do love making kinship with Prometheans because they aren't human enough to twinge their molesto-sense so they can actually be friends with them.

Then we get to inheritances...

Matt is human garbage.

There's also 3 pages going over the different satiety conditions and how to game them for maximum XP.

No seriously.

So that's fucking done.

Next Time: Now that Matt is gone, what do Beasts become?

terrifyingly misses the point again and again

posted by Kurieg Original SA post

Beast the Primordial Player's Guide: Chapter 2 Part 2
As I mentioned last time, we're going back to the start of chapter 2, because this book is poorly laid out. Especially so because the stereotypes and descriptions for the new hungers and families comes before the families, hungers, and inheritances they're describing.

They're also fairly redundant, as they're retreading old ground that was covered in the core book. It also rather terrifyingly misses the point again and again as they pull out old chestnuts like "Beasts love to pal up with Prometheans because all the people around them are terrified all the time and who needs to be a shitty old human anyway?"


Also Art like this is here because?
I mean it is in a section describing Namtaru horrors but What namtaru has a horror of "Nosferatu in blue jeans and a T-shirt?"

I've already covered the stuff in the families section for the Talasii and Inguma so we can move on.

The next section of chapter 2 talks about Hunger, more Mechanically than thematically. It gives helpful hints like "Don't pick a hunger that you aren't equipped to actually pursue." And "Don't pick one that you're so hideously overqualified for that feeding takes 5 seconds because that's basically all the game has." Which is refreshing in it's honesty.

Which is why this starkly honest description of what to do when you're Ravenous is kind of terrifying.
I feel like this would be a good opportunity to engage with, you know, the moral ramification of this? "Kill someone's dog for some free XP, Pomaranians are worth double!" sounds like something you'd read in a satire of a horror game.

Sing it with me everyone. "Beasts don't make Heroes anymore!"

"Just fucking kill somebody already."

The write ups for the remaining hunger conditions are similarly gamified. Straight up telling you "Plan some safe 'risks' ahead of time when you're starving to get some easy XP." "Don't feed if you're above 5 Satiety unless you actually want to go into slumbering." and "Waste Satiety on nightmares for some free beats if you're too high"

Hell the write up for Slumbering has this little chestnut.
"Yeah you're a goddamned monster" would be another breath of fresh air were it not followed by the book climbing straight back up it's own ass about how the various hungers sate themselves and what thematic resonances they have and how kinships play into it and how great it is to subvert the other gamelines themes in advancement of your own.
"You have a hunger for secrets? Vampire, Mummy, and Demon have veritable smorgasboards of ways to ruin everyone's day."

Are you a ravager?
Just destroy a Promethean's entire life
Or a werewolf pack, for the evulz.

Or if you have a hunger for transgression you c-
OKAY FUCK THIS NOISE
That's enough of this chapter.

Next time: Chapter 3, When Beasts have Babies it's exactly as creepy as you think it should be, but it's on purpose.

Unleashing the Horror

posted by Kurieg Original SA post

Beast the Primordial Player's Guide: Chapter 3 Part 1-Unleashing the Horror

Hey kids, did you want new rules and mechanics?
Well too bad, like a disappointing Santa Claus this is more about what I have extras of than what you actually want to sit down while I open up this disgusting fleshy bag of gifts.


Atavisms
The Inguma have a few interesting Atavisms, mostly revolving around their ability to infiltrate socially. Alien Mindset makes it nearly impossible for people to follow your thought process, either through social maneuvering or skills. At low satiety you can give people false information about your Legend and Life, and with a Satiety expenditure you can just gain a new hunger trait for a scene if a particularly juicy target arrived and you want to get in on that action. Doppleganger lets you grow and/or craft a duplicate of a person that lasts as long as they remain in your possession and unconscious. The doppleganger has all the skills/traits/memories of the person but is unswervingly loyal to you. With a satiety expenditure you can put your horror into the Dopple to control it directly(but you don't have the ganger's skills or traits), alternately if you're in your lair you can instead teleport to and viscerally explode out of said doppleganger. Enemy Within lets you transform into a copy of someone, if you expend satiety your copy is so good it has your target's DNA and can even fool them.

Talassii have... uhh, one very very very good power, and some other ones. Caught in the Webs is ridiculous. With a thrown or touch attack you gradually ensnare someone in something that varies from Beast to Beast thematically. This reduces their dexterity by your lair/2(rounding up and stacking), if it hits zero they are now immobilized. This is a ludicrous combat power, particularly if you can do this while remaining unseen. At low satiety they inflict bashing damage for even trying to do anything while ensnared, and with an expenditure you just spray webs out everywhere around you. Crushing Coils gives you an iron grip. So long as nothing opposes you you can hold onto anything forever. At low satiety you can hold onto anything even if doing so would violate the laws of physics and/or the structural integrity of your fleshy body. Grab onto a speeding car? Doable. Replicate the helipad scene from Winter Soldier? Doable. Keep two train cars coupled with your butt cheeks? Why the hell aren't you doing it already? Illusion of Safety lets you supernaturally case a joint just by looking at it for a few seconds, and gives you a bonus to infiltrate it. Low satiety allows you to make it more difficult for other people to escape once you're inside an area, and an expenditure lets you turn an exit into a portal to your Lair.

The rest of the families get two each. Anakim gets a power that lets them attack people by punching the ground or make rock arms out of the ground to punch people for them. They also get a weird combo platter power that lets them automatically intimidate people by beating them in any opposed contest, scare his allies into doing better(and also giving them an integrity break if they do TOO well), or just scare everyone in the room. Ugallu basically get 3.5's spring attack feat. And ability that allows them to strip away armor/natural armor in combat, as well as excel in social maneuvering. Makara get a power that lets them eat basically anything, including people if they're at low satiety. The wording is really weird such that if they actually manage to swallow a person at low satiety they're just... swallowed. Proably dead. With a satiety expenditure they split themselves vertically into a giant mouth with arms and legs that actually does have an escape condition if you get swallowed (but it's easier to swallow someone) so I have no idea. Their second power gives them a lot of defensive power, because somehow you're manipulating the currents or something? Eshmaki can either snuff out all light around them(and at low satiety redirect the light directly into the targets eyes?) or eat someone's shadow to become it. If they're aware of this happening they can try and disrupt the beast but the only thing that can harm a shadow beast is fire. Otherwise you're just.. their shadow. You can use nightmares on the person who's shadow you are without eye contact(because you don't have eyes) and at low satiety you can use atavisms? Somehow?

Namtaru however won the fucking Atavism lottery. Skin Deep lets you shapeshift out things like claws, gliding wings, armor, etc. This is explicitly an action of the primordial dream and will just straight up inflict a breaking point on mortals(and thus will trigger Heroes who can track you) but it's pretty ridiculous.
That's their least powerful addition this time around.
"But Kurieg", you say, "that doesn't seem very powerful."
I applaud the restraint of whoever wrote this power for not just putting "USE THIS IN AN AIRPORT" in 72pt font across the page. The satiety expenditure on this power is ridiculous. And is like, permanent feeding opportunities for a very very long time as your new black death works its way across the nation.

Nightmares
To be fair, I'm not really a fan of nightmares. They roughly fall into one of a few groups, either "This is something you use in combat", "this is something you use to make social maneuvering a joke", or "This is just an incredibly dickish thing to do to somebody." Though several of their exceptional successes have "This fulfills your feeding condition" you usually don't want to feed at high satiety, unless you spend down to starving after you invoke it i guess?

For instance.

I'm in this photo and I don't like it.
I'm really struggling to figure out how to use this in a way that isn't just "Fucking with the normies."
Yeah, it seems like an okay power until you remember that you need to make eye contact or touch the person to use nightmares.

Compare these with
I mean, yes, this is a kinship nightmare, but this is pretty powerful. Particularly the High Satiety version as you can basically just walk around using it on strangers and force them to buy shit for you with their resources.

And then..

At 9 satiety you're rolling a minimum of 10 dice against the average person's 2 or 3. The only way to resolve Beaten Down is to give the beast whatever he wants(and stop fighting for the rest of the scene), and you need to spend a willpower point to take any kind of aggressive action until you do.

Birthrights
There are some alternate birthrights!
Remember? Beasts have birthrights?
It's super fiddly, I don't feel like describing them.

Merits
Because these are WAY more interesting.
Direct Dial(*) You can do the horror movie villain thing of being able to call any person you've ever directly sensed in some way. You can even call dead phones, broken phones, or completely non-functional children's toys. It costs a point of willpower to use unless you're calling a member of your brood (and also has 3 dots in other merits as prerequisites).
Horrorspawn(*-*****)You've created a horrorspawn! I'll describe them later.
Infernal Machine(**) You have a car that's been specialized for pursuit, it's more durable, faster, and safer than any other car so long as you're driving it.
Legendary Horror(*-*****) Your horror is so powerful it gains an essence pool and numina. Also if you ever undergo the Retreat your horror is probably going to be "particularly troublesome".
Obascus Initiate(**) You've experienced Guidance and can now perform Obascus Rites! I'll describe them later.
Primordial Cult(**+) You have a cult that worships you! They can do a whole bunch of things and are amazingly helpful but if you abuse them you risk turning them into a circle of Heroes that know all your darkest secrets.

Lair Merits
These are REALLY interesting
Connected Lair(**) SOMEHOW your lair is connected to the information systems of the mundane world. You have phone, television, and internet access. One of the suggested uses of this merit is running a pirate radio station out of your lair which is goddamn amazing and deserves to be in a better game than this.
Trap Room(*) You can connect your lair to a room for a long period of time, and so long as it's connected anyone who tries to leave said room will be transported to your lair. This is dangerous because, well, ANYONE, heroes included.
Vast Lair(*-***) Your lair chambers are huge and take longer to traverse and collapse.
Well-Stocked Lair(*-****) Each dot in this represents 2 dots in some other merit that exists within a chamber of your lair. Alternately you can use one dot to turn a chamber of your lair into mordenkainen's magnificent mansion.

Kinship merits
Know Their Falseness(**)-Changeling You can make binding oaths with people and know immediately if they break it. Gaining +2 on the first 3 rolls to punish them for it.(doesn't work on Demons, obviously)
Feign Death(*)-Vampire You can halt your biological functions and walk around like a corpse, or lie around like a corpse. You appear dead to any casual observation but an autopsy will probably make you actually dead.
Look Between Worlds(**)-Ghost ..how do you get family ties with a ghost? uhh... well.. now you can see ghosts? And ghosts can see you?
Sanguivore(**)-Vampire You gain fangs that you can use to bite people and drain blood. You don't have the whole "inflict your victim with ecstatic lust" thing and you don't have a blood pool, but a point of blood will sate your need for food and water for a day and it's definitely one hell of a way for a Predator to feed.
Scent Your Prey(*-**)-Werewolf You have werewolf senses, one(or both) of enhanced hearing or smell.
Scour your Body(**)-Mage You can reduce one of your physical attributes by 1 and take a point of lethal damage to use an atavism or nightmare as if you had spent a point of Satiety. Why on earth would you do this.
Step Sideways(***)-Werewolf If you're looking at a mirror while opening a primordial pathway you get +1 die and can just.. go to your lair rather merging a physical location with a chamber. doesn't seem worth 3 dots to me.
Walk Lightly(**)-Ghost You leave no forensic trace of your presence. People with eyes and Cameras can still see you. "This merit is quite useful to Beasts who leave a trail of crime scenes in their wake."

Next Time: This fantastic sidebar (amongst other things)

Beasty Babies will make your nightmares come true.

posted by Kurieg Original SA post

Beast the Primordial Player's Guide: Chapter 3 Part 2-Beasty Babies will make your nightmares come true.

Chapter 3 has two bits of rules left, Obascus rites, and Horrorspawn. Both of them are decidedly not good or nice things.

Obascus Rites

Beasts know that the Dark Mother exists, she has a home(and it's a real place that Beasts can go to, also it hates them, more on that in chapter 5). But they don't really know how she feels about them in any real fashion. They may choose to believe that she likes them, or cares about them, but it's basically religion.

So beasts invented Obascus Rites, which are literally religion.

The book freely points out that Beasts already have enough unique sets of powers, and are frankly powerful enough already. So Obascus Rites are meant to be a party thing. You need several people to even pull them off. And the book suggests that you will probably only ever have one ritemaster in a group but there are more rites than any one person can learn and they use an absurd variety of skills. If this is a system that you actually want to engage with I would imagine you'd probably have 2 or 3 party members putting points into it. They can do some crazy bullshit things but you need to have the entire party on board to use them (and for some of them you need several NPCs, the Apex, or even an entire hive involved).

And to even become a ritemaster, you need a merit, and to take the merit you need to undergo communion. Communion is a willing thing, you can choose to have the condition applied to you when you take Agg damage from an Anathema, are the victim of a supernatural efffect with a exceptional success, or establish family ties with a specific type of supernatural creature for the first time. This gives you -2 to all mundane skill rolls and defense, but +2 to use atavisms and nightmares. It resolves when you next go to sleep and you wake up knowing a new rite.

Rites use your Horror's Finesse or Power, and the lower of your character's Occult or whichever skill is used in the rite in an extended test. These rites also tend to have hefty penalties, requiring you to take advantage of trappings. Such as Having the hive's Apex around, having assistants, having your entire brood present, having beasts from different families, having beasts from different hungers, having cultists, having proper regalia, etc. which negate a penalty each. The most powerful rites impose a hefty -8 penalty so you really need to play to your strengths. And every rite needs to take place in a temple (except for the rite that allows you to establish a temple). This is literally Beasts backwelding a religion onto their own origin stories, perhaps the most frightening thing is that it works.

There are a few rites that stand out. Blood Offering has you sacrifice a human to get a collective prophetic vision from the Dark Mother. The game does point out that this is, ya know, Evil.

I'm not sure if this sidebar is saying "You know, maybe Beast isn't the game for you." or "Maybe Beast isn't for you." The game has abandoned some of it's geek social fallacy nature, but not all of them.

Night of Revels can only be performed just after sundown on either Halloween or any other "Dark" holiday, lunar eclipse, what have you. The rite identifies one person who has in some way offended the Dark Mother, and who she demands be destroyed. They do not need to be killed, and probably shouldn't be as that cuts short the Dark Mother's fun, she wants their life utterly laid waste, their secrets revealed to all, their possessions destroyed. They should be fed on multiple times, get multiple breaking points inflicted upon them. If the person in question is driven to ruin and madness through the most creative and hilarious means avaliable the dark mother is satisfied and the group gets... the ability to reroll one die roll with a +2 bonus within the next lunar month. Which doesn't seem commensurate with the work involved, other than Beasts using the rite as an excuse. Which is honestly probably the point.

Folie a Deux lets you inflict an appropriate mental condition on the mortal population of a hive with less Composure than the ritemaster's Lair. You can also use an appropriate Nightmare (Like This Is Due Tomorrow) if you get an exceptional success on the rite. In either case this lasts a lunar month. Kingdom of Nightmares causes the physical area of the hive to become inescapable by mundane means. It lasts between sundown and sunup, or vice versa. Reality makes flimsy efforts to justify the issues that occur but roads will literally twist in on themselves to keep the victims trapped.

Finally Restore the Heart isn't a rite to bring back the dead. It's a rite to bring back people who didn't die when they should have. It allows you to put the horror of a Beast that has undergone the Retreat or Merger into another human. This doesn't bring them back from the dead. The resulting beast still has the human's memories and personality, but it has dreams and occasional recollections of their former life.

In summation I can't really find a good use for Obascus Rites for players beyond just wanting to be horror movie villains for a while. Though it's very very good at doing that. It's also good at, you know, a thing for villains to do, and your party to stop, if you want to use Beasts as the antagonists to literally anyone else.

Horrorspawn

Horrorspawn are loyal minions created from the Beast's horror. They will follow any direct command from the Beast to the best of their abilities, and the beast can even see through it's eyes and give it commands when it is not nearby. However, once those orders are complete it reverts to it's base instincts, AKA the horror's base instincts. Which can be problematic. Even more problematic is the fact that Horrors don't know how to have children, so Beasts had to get "creative."

There are two ways to make horrorspawn. The first involves creating a nightmare within a sleeping human and twisting it towards the ends of making a Horrorspawn, have the horror lay eggs, shed it's skin, leave a trail of viscera in it's wake. But normally at the end of the nightmare the horror would absorb these pieces of ephemera back into itself, the Beast must fight with the horror to keep something separate, and then incubate it within themselves or their lair.

Themselves?

Oh yeah, the other way.

Yeeeup.

Once the horror is complete, a problem presents itself, as a fragment of the horror, it lacks a physical body. Beasts can provide one, of course. A corpse will do, or an animal. Or they can use a living victim and get satiety out of the process if they want to multi-task. Unless the Beast instructs it not to the horrorspawn will warp whatever body it is given to match the horror which gave it life, but if you give it an elephant corpse it will create a larger body than a human one. The more powerful the Horrorspawn the faster they burn out the body, with the weakest being able to keep a body going for a month, but the most powerful burning out a body in 12 hours.

Why make horrorspawn in the first place? Well, for one, a properly built Horrorspawn can be quite a combat monster. Two, a horrorspawn can help a Beast Feed. Horrospawn have their own satiety rating which is capped by the Beast's satiety, and if a Horrorspawn feeds it will allocate extra satiety to the beast who spawned it in order to increase it's own cap. Conveniently if you have more than one Horrorspawn your maximum satiety is decreased by 1 per extra. So if you have two Horrorspawn you are never at risk of going into Slumbering. If a beast uses horrorspawn to help while it feeds, the Beast instead gets +2 to it's satiety potential.

There are some drawbacks to having Horrorspawn though. If you interact with them too much you start to lose touch with your human side. If you spend two days interacting(Giving orders to, feeding, etc) with your horrorspawn it starts to stoke your hunger, making you waste satiety. If you spend a week interacting with your horrorspawn you lose all your family ties conditions and any social maneuvering progress you were working on. However if someone was trying to maneuver you they face an additional door.

If you don't spend enough time interacting with your horrorspawn it will start to seek out on it's own. It has twisted views of the Beast's aspirations and personal relationships, mainly in that the only way it has to express them is through Hunger and Feeding. Absent specific feeding instructions a Horrorspawn will seek out your friends and enemies to feed on them, preferring anyone with family ties or an open door to the Beast. If you avoid interacting with a Horrorspawn for over a month it will take on a life of it's own, and possibly some chambers in your lair, making your life hell until it is either killed or it's lifespan runs out.

However if the Beast dies it's a different story. Should the beast die in the physical world the Horrorspawn will be set loose to do as it wants. With nothing but the Beast's memories to direct it, it will feed on those closest to them. Should the beast die in their Lair, the horrorspawn will try to take the place of the horror. The more potent the Horrorspawn(and the more horrorspawn you have) The more days of borrowed life the Beast has. For that time the Beast wanders around as a soulless husk, trying to gather enough Satiety to replace the Horror permanently. However they're never quite the same, almost as if they've been lobotomized. Most fully embrace their hunger, being incredibly obvious in their feedings and eventually undergoing the Merger if they don't get killed by a Hero first.

Up next: Beast society, in that they actually decided to create Beast social structures, who knew.

In the Company of Monsters

posted by Kurieg Original SA post

Beast the Primordial Player's Guide: Chapter 4 In the Company of Monsters

So this chapter is rather vaguely about beast society, and it's really not organized well, at all, it's also of incredibly questionable use before it gets to actual material.

Seekers of the Dark Mother
These are the beast groups vaguely organized around shared viewpoints of the Dark Mother.

The Aethenaeum of the Dark Mother
This is the one that gets the most page space, being a creepy dark mother lore repository hive made out library rooms from pripyat, the library of Alexandria, and Centralia Penslyvania. It's meant to be a place for anyone, beast or not, to go if there's some information they require on one topic or another. And thus it actually has NPCs described and some artwork.


The Empusae
Beasts unified by their believe that they think overarching beast societies are stupid.

No seriously they're a society of beasts who think beast socities are dumb, and that true enlightenment is a personal pursuit.
They have barely half a page of text devoted to them.

The Guardian Beasts
Beasts who view the dark mother as the universe's ultimate abusive parent, and think that the other Beasts are trapped in a self-destructive perpetuating cycle trying to appease the dark mother and have devoted themselves to preventing her return at any cost.

The fact that they get even less pagespace than the empusae should tell you everything you need to know about how much the book cares about those who point out the game's flaws, even from within.

The Dominae
So yeah these are the "Blatently predatory and most sleekly amoral" of beasts, who see themselves as the ultimate apex predators above all other supernatural creatures (and humans, of course). The purpose of their existance is to dominate everyone and everything below them. Somehow there's an entire culture of these beasts who think that they and they alone belong on top?

They have more words given to them than the Guardian Beasts but it's still barely more than half a page. I have no idea why they felt the need to specify "Some beasts are mean and only want to be the top dog" but, sure.

Cults of the Incarnate
Unsurprisingly, beasts tend to gather in abundance around those who have become Incarnate. Some Incarnate beasts drive them away with fang and claw, some take them under their wing temporarily to teach them. Others deliberately draw Beasts to them in order to create a cult of personality to enhance their own legend.

The Old Man of the Mountains
I'm not sure why this is in the "Cults of the Incarnate" section because, well, he doesn't have a cult. He literally lives alone on the shore of a lake in central Washington State and is perfectly willing to treat with any Beast who comes in peace, and he's strong enough to instagib anyone who doesn't.

Our Lady of the Waters
She's sort of the Old Man's sister, a beast who lives in the water, any water. She travels the world nurturing younger broods of Beasts. So finding her is basically impossible, and earning her patronage is difficult, and she's perfectly willing to kill anyone who fails her tests, because sure.

The Guardian Beast and the Hero Who Protects Her
I'm doing to do the best I can to summarize this thing without just quoting the whole thing.
Syenah Ardalan is a Kurdish national who was driven out as a child during the Iraqi invasion. She and her family(sans her mother) fled to france where she went through medical school and came into her Beast Nature during her third year. She joined doctors without borders with the numbers filed off and went to Kurdistan to help people and quickly the local beasts flocked to her because she's super nice and such a strong force of personality, and lo and behold there's an evil beast there. So she fights the evil beast but they're interrupted by a Hero and the evil beast gets away in the confusion.

In a surprise that literally everyone should see coming, the Hero is actually Syenah's mother and since Syenah's so nice her mom doesn't kill her and they kill the evil beast and Syenah incarnates and both her and her mother travel the world healing people and killing mean beasts because THEY ARE THE MOST PERFECT SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES FREE OF ALL BLEMISHES.

The Hungry Lover
So we follow up with a young japanese woman who was starved for attention as the second of three siblings. Was committed to a mental hospital when her Horror started manifesting, then slaughtered her way out after she actually became a Beast. She found a brood who gave her love and affection for the first time in her life and she decided, quite reasonably, to never lose it again. She killed the apex and has basically turned the Hive into a cult that has the sole purpose of praising her and lavishing her with affection, anyone who doesn't is killed by a faceless young girl in a bloody kimono wielding a scalpel.

The Shadows at the Edge of the Fire
This is a crippled beast who managed to incarnate by spreading a creepypasta ARG across the internet then pulling the whole thing right before it finished. Anyone who managed to save any of the valid information found themselves killed by his horrorspawn, and thus he managed to create a self perpetuating slenderman-ish legend that catapulted him to Incarnate status.

The Culture of Lessons
Seriously? We're doing this again? Great.
So, basically "Beasts teach lessons to make what they do palatable to themselves, as horrifying animal monsters wouldn't bother teaching lessons." and "Beasts use lessons as a framework to build their own legend, and thus incarnate."
This is followed up by 3 examples of feeding, the guy who doesn't use lessons doesn't feed very well and the ST is encouraged to fuck with him extra because he's not actually engaging with the game. The guy who uses a bit of lessons feeds well. The guy who spends six months of game time building a machivellian scheme that unmakes a man's life to the point that he kills himself feeds very well. But, again, I'm not entirely sure how you're supposed to do this in game as no one really wants to sit around hearing someone describe their murderboner fanfiction.

Cults and Cultists

Giving your cult a legitimate innocuous front is useful, but not necessary. Surrounding your cult with humans who aren't in the know about what's going on makes it more difficult for Heroes to track them down, but some heroes aren't too concerned about liquidating human resources.
This book is seriously making me feel unclean.

Some Beasts build their cults around occult study, either researching human nature in order to figure out how to expand the Lair, or diving into the maw of the strange for it's own sake. Other beasts build cults simply to be adored and play god. Or to pave the road to their own inheritance.

The Hungers
Collector cults are sacred thieves, stealing for their god. Enabler cults are dens of sin and excess, the really successful ones create a closed loop of temptation and transgression. Nemesis cults hide in plain sight, worming their way into police departments, gangs, religions, revolutions, any group with authority over others and a need to punish. Predators build bloody cults based on instinct or strength, hunt clubs or survivalists cliques are common but some seek the most dangerous game. Ravager cults are fight club, literally Fight Club, the description given is the plot of Fight Club with some paint over the rough edges. Tyrants don't feed off their own cult members, that would be gauche, instead he feeds on other cults or religions, proving his religion's strength over theirs. Whisper cults are either greco-roman mystery cults or pyramid schemes based around some 'sacred secret.

The Cultist
The cult's inner circle is made up of people who are adjacent to the inner dream. In the past they would have been the companions of Heroes, but since Heroes have abandoned the cycle of Lessons, Beasts have been able to hijack them for their own purposes. Within the orbit of the Beast, their horror takes precedence.
The Herald
Beasts cannot lead cults directly, they're a living nightmare and something slightly more human needs to serve that purpose. Heralds are humans gifted some portion of the Beast's power, in a gruesome ritual in the heart of the Lair, the beast inflicts some injury that causes them to bleed. This opens them up to the horror both figuratively and literally as their soul shifts to house the Beast's Legend.

Heralds are human characters with some changes. They gain Unseen Sense: Primordial dream for free. They have a Legend and Life rather than a Virtue and Vice, the Legend must be the same as their Beast's. They're immune to a Beast's minor lair traits and can gain immunity to Major traits with merit dots, of which they gain 10 for being a Herald, and they are required to buy at least one Advanced Merit (They can buy other merits with these dots too). The advanced merit they buy warps them physically in some way that's in line with their Beast's horror.
The Breaking Point.
If a beast pushes a cult or Herald too far, it can fracture or break. Cults have an integrity rating, and roll the Beast's resolve+composure for breaking points. Lost points can be bought with XP by either the Beast or his Herald. On a dramatic failure the beast loses a primordial cult benefit as one of his cultists becomes a Hero.
If a herald dramatically fails a breaking point they become a hero, taking their own Legend but retaining all other benefits, as well as half the Beast's purchased primordial cult benefits. The Beast must create a new Herald within 10-Lair days or the cult disbands.


The Dark Mother
She's Evil and Spooky! The different Broods interpret her differently in line with their own appearances! You can commune with her and she'll either grant you a boon or be mad at you depending on her(Read: the storyteller's) whims! Have we mentioned that she's evil and spooky?

Next Up: Chapter 5 and the end of the book.

The Legend and the Dream

posted by Kurieg Original SA post

Beast the Primordial Player's Guide: Chapter 5 The Legend and the Dream
No! The world would demonstrably be better off if they were dead in all likelyhood.

Oh wait they weren't expecting me to answer that question.
The Lair
The Lair is a beast's greatest asset. It's their personal corner of the Dark Dream and it can be used for all sorts of things to make their lives easier. Depending on how wide a Beast has ranged and what chambers they've created they can use their Lair to travel extremely long distances in very little time at all. A lair can be used to hide some incriminating evidence (like a corpse) but not others (The blood on your hands from said corpse), alternately you could just dump pursuers in your lair for your Horror to take care of.
The book has some new lair traits such as eldritch geometry, mirrored walls and the like.

The Primordial Dream
Despite it's name the Primordial Dream isn't a dream at all, it's formed of the terrors of waking humanity. What supernatural powers are capable of detecting as a 'soul' are actually all fragments of a single human ur-soul that connects all human beings, and delves deeper beyond reality to eventually join up with everything else. The Primordial Dream exists at the periphery of the gap between the collective human soul and the 'souls' of other animals, the soul of the world, and the soul of everything else. 'above' the Primordial Dream is the Bright Dream, the realm of stories, emotions, and concepts. Above that are everyone's individual soul realms before you reach the waking thoughts of humanity.

It's very rare that anything can reach deep enough to actually effect the dream, very few people 'dream deep' enough to affect the primordial dream. Change occurs within the primordial dream in one of two ways. Either a beast creates an exceptionally powerful nightmare, pulling so strongly on the Primordial Dream in the process that it creates a chamber echoing the shape of the physical location where it happened. The other way is a Human(or human adjacent being) is shaken to the very core with a traumatic experience. Anyone in that person's soul or in the primordial dream experience the new chamber ripping itself into existance in a violent fashion that can actually cause damage to them.

Unless a Beast claims the new chamber, it'll eventually dissolve back into the dream, leaving some signs of itself until it is overwritten again. Stronger traumas leave more long lasting chambers. Beyond these nascent chambers the dream itself exists as a vague fragile version of the real world, a Beast(or some other dream traveler) can theoretically leave a chamber in their lair to explore the reflection of the area around it's physical version within the Dream, though anyone in these areas feels watched.

The Horizons
There are two 'borders' to the Primordial Dream, The Dawn and The Mists.

The Dawn is the border between the Primordial Dream and the Bright Dream. As you approach the Dawn the dream becomes more 'real' and astral reflections of people and animals start to populate the dream. The closer you stray to the Bright Dream the less the dream reflects reality. It is possible for a Beast to create a chamber out of the Bright Dream if someone suffers a breaking point out here, which would let a beast populate their Lair with astral reflections if they wanted.

The Mists is 'below' the Dream, and some theorize is the place where all dissolved chambers go. It's where untethered Horrors roam, waiting for a devourin. Beasts can theoretically delve into the mists and find a a chamber from a dead beast or one that has dissolved away from the Dream, with varying states of success depending on how much of an idea they have of what they're looking for.

The Bright Dream
The bright dream is a realm of thought, story, and emotion. To most Beasts it's a realm of sensory overload compared to the forboding quiet of the Primordial. Each concept shared by more than one person in the real world is represented somewhere in the Bright Dream, connected by threads of association. One can leave the City of Death by wandering out into the desert and will find Deserts, a particular desert, or Loneliness.

Successfully navigating this web of themes towards "Fear" will eventually lead you back towards the dream, whereas the "far" end will lead towards individuals personal souls, containing realms of their memories, virtues, and vices. If the Bright Dream is claustrophobic to beasts, these areas are downright oppressively small. You are under constant deep scrutiny by the dream itself as the astral inhabitants of the dream will attack you (Because Inception, probably), but if a Beast can open up a primordial pathway from here back to their Lair they can basically airdrop their Horror on someone.


The Cave and The Mother's Land
If you travel deep enough into the mists you can eventually find the most primal foundation of humanity's soul, The Cave. The stony ground of the mists rise up into a cliff, and set into this infinitely high edifice is a ragged cave mouth. Within sight of the cave, two things become apparently. Anyone breathing in the mists in or around it become capable of understanding any language ever known to a human being, living or dead. Beasts feel a transition similar to that when they pass into a chamber but much much stronger.

Within the cave every surface is coated in writing, from modern graffiti to older and older examples until the markings give way to cave paintings and simple bloody handprints. Past the exit you are in the mother's land, the soul of the Earth itself. It's a wild untamed landscape devoid of the impact that humanity has ever had on it. Everything is large, solid, and feels more real than reality. However it's not just a nature lover's paradise, this is where Horrors are born. Dreamborn(also known as Goetia) formed out of base animal terrors dwell in the shadows between trees and beneath the waves of this place. They are unborn larval Horrors. Sometimes Beasts will encounter them being drawn by some unknowable instinct towards the cave and up into the Primordial dream, absorbing human legend as they travel the cave and surface through the Mists. This is also where this book attempts to salvage the Insatiables from Conquering Heroes by stating that Insatiables aren't actually born of the Dark Mother's edgy dark super lover and are just infant Horrors who devour a host without figuring out how to properly embody a human fear.

Beasts are primordial, but they are still creatures of human fears, their horror has been pressed on and shaped by the pressure of the human soul, and absence that pressure it tries to escape them like air into a vacuum. Travellers in the mother's land feel themselves being consumed by it, their individual sapient existence fading away until they vanish from the Land, waking up wherever they first entered the dream feeling like they were just consumed by a Horror. Some delusional beasts believe that this is the Dark Mother personally devouring them and they will offer themselves up repeatedly to feed her.

Mechanically this is not a place supernatural creatures want to be. Every hour you spend in the Mother's Land you roll your supernatural power stat/resistance trait +2 and apply successes as lethal wounds to your dream health, the more powerful you are the more danger you are in whereas normal humans just roll 2 dice. People who are killed in this way wake with the soul shocked condition and lose a Willpower dot(Which can be bought back for 1XP). Beasts also lose a chamber from their lair. Mages suffer a Paradox Condition, Changelings lose all their current oaths. Mummies immediately die and enter a new death cycle. Vampires awaken in Frenzy. Demons and Promethean do not belong here and use Cover/Pilgrimage instead of their power stat. And will lose a dot of that trait instead of willpower.

Werewolves are perfectly fine in the Mother's Land and entirely immune to it's effects. If anything they probably feel a supernatural compulsion to point at any nearby Beasts and nelson laugh.

Inheritance
The Inheritances in the Beast Corebook focus primarily on what happens to the Horror, it either enters the physical world, fucks off into the astral, or ascends into near godhood with the Incarnate Beast.

But what about those Beasts who hate what they've become, and want to go back? Well, there are other inheritances, though the Dark Mother isn't exactly champing at the bit to tell Beasts about them.

Divergence - The Beast Divided
To undergo Divergence, a Beast must starve themselves until Ravenous, then travel to their lair to become one with their Horror, and force it to stay hungry. Each day that they stay in this state they spend a point of willpower and suffer a level of lethal damage, if they're still alive when they spend their final point of Willpower, the process begins. The horror tears itself away, operating on survival instinct and begins feeding on the Beast itself, in return the Beast must feed on the horror, consuming it's corpus to replace the flesh the Horror eats. This cyclical consumption can take moments or hours, but once complete the Beast has become suffused with the Horror's spirit, as it has become a creature of Flesh.
Roll Resolve+Power to determine if you survive this process. Failure means one side killed the other and will linger for a few days before it dies as well, Dramatic failure means you fucked up royally, reducing all your stats to 1 and basically praying for death. Exceptional Success lets the Beast keep a single atavism as the Horror keeps a single Nightmare.

Divergence isn't a free release from hunger, as the beast sacrifices power for Freedom. They lose control over the Horror which is now free to pursue it's own alien goals with no remorse, guilt, or empathy. The Beast loses all Atavisms, the Horror loses all Nightmares. The Horror isn't very happy with the Beast, it won't KILL the beast(it can't without killing itself) but it can wound it non-fatally. The Beast draws from the Horror's satiety(which annoys the Horror). And the Horror itself is a Storyteller monster, it can physically leave the lair either in it's monstrous form or as a copy of the Beast, and tends to draw the attention of Hunters, not even heroes, as it's not exactly subtle.

Erasure- The Horror Eliminated
I love that it says "Selfishly intend to cling to life", somewhat acknowledging that Beasts are monstrous as shit.

First, the Beast needs to procure a spare replacement soul, this almost assuredly requires the assistance of a Mage or some other supernatural creature, once they have it they must spend a dot of willpower to attune it to themselves and keep it close at heart. Then they need to kill their Horror.

This presents logistical difficulties as a beast will automatically merge with their Horror when they enter their lair unless the Horror is slumbering, and entering a lair while it's slumbering means the Beast is vulnerable to their own lair traits. Even if they are capable of making it to their heart, they now need to deal a devastating enough blow to their Horror to kill it in one shot, as if it wakes up it will immediately merge. Thus Beasts either engage the help of other Beasts(who are probably not inclined to do it in the first place) or, say, Werewolves. Truly desperate Beasts will enlist the help of Heroes who are willing to accept the narrative of the horror possessing a poor innocent human and forcing them to become a monster. Either way once the deed is done, the horror fights back, trying to drag the Beast with it into the abyss. There's a contested roll with Lair hindering the Beast and Satiety hindering the horror (Stronger Horrors are harder to kill, but a slumbering horror can't fight back). If the Horror wins or both fail, everyone dies. If the Beast wins they 'survive.'

Their link with the Primordial dream is shattered and everyone in the lair needs to GTFO immediately or get lost within the primordial dream. Beasts retain whatever satiety they had when their horror died. They lose all their atavisms(Unless they succeeded with an exceptional success), but so long as they have Satiety, they retain their birthrights and Nightmares. If their Satiety ever reaches zero they lose those last traces of their Beast-ness. Beasts can never again feed, but they can regain Satiety by literally feeding on other beasts, taking one satiety from them per point of lethal damage inflicted. They are also persona non-grata in any other Beast's lair, unless the Beast is present to control it a Horror will attack an Erased beast with lethal intent. Also they can never become a Beast or Werewolf or anything else as the Dark Mother refuses to bless such an ungrateful child. (though Demons and God-machine weirdness can do whatever it wants).

Inversion - The Hero's Rebirth
And finally we get to the point that compelled me to actually finish this book rather than leaving it unfinished. The Inversion. Beasts who hate what happened to them so much that the only escape is to murder every other Beast.

First the Beast needs to undergo a spiritual journey exploring the link between Beast, Dream, and Heroes. Through this they understand how and why Anathema tear at Beasts, though they can't place it on others, they eventually learn how to place one on their own Horror to hurt and slice away at it until it's almost dead. An Inverted's Anathema is always a physical object that must be crafted by their own hands using the dark secrets they uncovered.

To discover their anathema a Beast must leave the safety of their lair and travel toward the Bright Dream, to study the impact of their actions on the thoughts and emotions of those around them. From their closest human friends to the checkout operator where they do their weekly shopping. Though it can't be seen in the waking world, the Beast's story changes everyone around them, and understanding these changes show them the shape of their anathema. While this should be explored through storytelling, mechanically this is an extended Intelligence+Occult roll requiring 20 successes, each roll representing a week of daily exploration. That said, the Horror grows uneasy and restless, poking at the Beast to understand what they're doing. Contact with the Horror weakens the beast's ability to find their anathema. Until they reach the required number of successes, using a birthright or atavism or merging with their horror subtracts successes. Failure on a roll inflicts the beast with the Abruption condition or requires them to abandon their quest entirely, as the Primordial Dream itself rails against their audacity (Abruption falls off at the end of a scene anyway so... this isn't really a punishment)

Once you have discovered how to make your anathema, you must gather the materials and craft it with your own hands. It requires (often rare) components, but crafting it is surprisingly simple. Once the beast finishes the weapon he must engage the Horror in combat, he will not merge with the Horror so long as he holds the weapon. Should the Horror win, it rolls to undergo the Retreat, if the Beast wins, they pin the Horror to the floor of the Lair with the anathema. The Anathema cannot be removed by anyone except a Hero, and doing so instantly kills the Horror and the Inverted.

The Inverted lose their satiety pool and conditions as their horror is beyond feeding. But they keep their birthright, atavisms, and Nightmares. Their lair persists, and they maintain immunity to their lair traits. They can track Beasts with a perception roll, though any survivors of their Attacks gain the ability to do the same. And they can place Anathema on Beasts with the caveat that they suffer the same Anathema until their quarry is dead.

The book closes out with an exploration of the Incarnate beast and mechanics for how to properly represent the quest for Incarnation, but I'd rather end on a high note. Because I am finally free. Beast is gone forever.

_{Please sweet OPP let Beast be gone forever}