Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Qephilim Descriptor (The Strange)

Immortal Ancestry: You are descended from a race created to tirelessly and eternally serve mystical and mundane functions. You gain +1 to one Edge and reduces damage dealt to this pool by 1 point per time the character suffers damage.

Lost Glory:  At first tier, you have 2 points, not 6, to divide among your stat Pools.

Mythlight: You have a glow of light, no brighter than a candle, that either hovers nearby or glows like a nimbus around you. You can choose where this light is placed and the color at character creation. As an action you can switch between extinguishing this light or allowing it to glow.

Emptiness of the Lost: If, you have no purpose set before you (guarding something, crafting an item, researching lost lore, scouting an area, or fighting for a higher goal) or the reason behind that purpose is called into question, particularly as being amoral though sometimes (especially for kindred of Law) as illegal, you begin to feel morose and lethargic. The difficulty of any task that doesn’t move you toward finding a new or more worthy purpose is increased by one step.
If you are subject to this state for more than a week or are in it frequently (more than twice in a month or three times in a year) the deep longing and rage of the qephilim race begins to take hold more strongly in your mind. At any time during a long or repeated bout and experience stress or surprise the GM can use an intrusion that directs your next action without awarding XP. You can still pay 1 XP to refuse the intrusion. The GM’s influence is the manifestation of a racial despondency, and is thought to be an expression of the subconscious impulses of the imprisoned Lotan. Thus, it is always something you would not likely do otherwise. Generally, it is not directly, obviously harmful to you unless there are extenuating circumstances, though it may be harmful to those around you.


~~*~~



In Numenera several visitants and non-human races are handled as backgrounds with optional Foci to build on those. While The Strange pushes such considerations into the background, assuming that such shifts in race will be handled via Foci, a game focusing in Ardeyn or translating the race into Numenera could get heavy use from the descriptor. While the Alternate Origins book addressed some of these, a few of the more setting specific backgrounds which had already been created as foci weren't included.
A Qephilim Spinner who Shepherds the Dead would make an excellent would-be Umber Judge, while Bearing a Halo of Fire might be an interesting alternate expression of exploring the power of their Mythlight for a Qephilim Glave in Numinera. Of course, the descriptor also needed to be able to benefit from Embracing Qephilim Ancestry without being redundant. Meanwhile, characters can still be qephilim by taking the Focus without the Descriptor, each piece feeding part of a larger sense of the character and race in different ways.

No comments:

Post a Comment