"Leviathan: the Tempest" - Cooperative Fan Project

[Omegatron]

Yo Open.

The talk of 'Swamp Monsters' as a possible (n)WoD game really kick-started my gears. I thought about archetypes. I thought about Lovecraft, and Cloverfield and the fossil record. Monsters, horror, and the impossibly long history of life on this planet. I thought about just how alien nature can be. Deep-see trenches. Poisonous bogs and inescapable bayous. The impossibly high peaks of the Himalayas and the plains of the antarctic. The deepest reaches of the Sahara and the eerie, lifeless, lunar landscapse found on some remote Canadian islands.

I thought about myths and legends. The bad kind. The world flooding, or setting ablaze, or beset with ice, or pummeled with iron from the sky. Beasts of no name who walk on two legs, or none at all. Giants. Demons. Dragons, and things given no name by English tongues. Annunaki. The Old Ones. Dagon. Tiamat. Baal. Jormangund. Damballa. Yaldabaoth. Cthulhu.

Monsters that predate nature itself and yet are anathema to it. Gods, Primordials and Titans bound in the deep places of the world. But these are no petty, anthropomorphic nobles on Mount Olympus High. These are savage intellects and life forms not found on any paleontologist's evolutionary cladograms. These are the ancient masters of reality. The slumbering, antedilluvian god-monsters of elder times.

Prehuman masters that once held us as the chattel we were bred to be. Some even bred us to be more. Some bred us to be like them. These were your ancestors, the heralds and priests and champions of the blasphemous lords of the earth. By their infernal urges did you lay low your human half-brothers, and ruled over sea and earth and the void of space.

But something happened then, that the Primordials did not intend in all of their draconic acumen. Your ancient mothers rose up, and after a war of cosmic terror and boundless destruction, bound the alien god monsters in the most savage of lands. For what purpose was executed this dread usurpation? For who's benefit? Not the land and not humanity, to be sure.

One hundred thousand years later, your blood calls to the sea and the darkest mountains. It hears the unholy songs of the Masters. They're calling to you.

A storm is coming

Welcome to the Tempest.

[Omegatron]

Here's some quotage that inspired this thread, and hopefully, this project.

Originally Posted by Omegatron

Cloverfield rumors got me thinking...

Maybe if "Swamp Monster" was expanded to include things like dark versions of Mermaids, deep ones, sea-serpents, giant squids, and lovecraftian stuff, I'd REALLY dig it.
Doubly so if it includes something akin to "reptoid aliens" that live underground. Annunaki?

NWoD "Rokea" could be an antagonist group.

It could be a game about the pre-human monstrousities and unspeakable horrors that spawned them?

You could call the game "Leviathan." dunno about at subtitle.

Leviathan: the Ancient? Leviathan: the Primordial?


There's plently of inspirational material. Mythic, Scriptural, Occult, and Fiction.

Originally Posted by JustinCognito

Hey, that might be an interesting idea...

Back in the day when the world was raw and unshaped, your ancestors served the Ancients. Formless, endless, they held all the world under their grasp.

Obviously, that didn't last. Your ancestors broke from the Ancients in the name of reason, binding them in chains and sinking them to the Depths. The world gained form, and shape, and order.

But they are still out there. They still call to their servants, in the dark places, the hidden corners. And you have heard the call. You have realized that there is something ancient and wrong swirling in your blood. Something that never should have existed on this earth. But out there exist horrors greater than you, things that must be kept at bay.

Will you stand for the world, or will you fall to your true legacy?

Leviathan: the Tempest

Understandably, it's a bit nWerewolf-y, and may need some work there. But hey, it'd be interesting to have the guy from The Shadow Over Innsmouth as a PC.

Originally Posted by Omegatron

Cool beans. Yeah, it'd take some tweaking to remove it from nMage and nWerewolf's myths, but I think it can be done.

Leviathan: the Tempest is a cool name.

And yeah, the main character of the Dagon movie could be a Leviathan character.

Originally Posted by shanoxilt

I have already found inspirational pictures.

• Oceanus
• Tiamat
• Leviathan
• Naunet

I had no idea that there were so many primordial, aquatic, chaos gods.

Originally Posted by The Tim

Fear and fascination with the ocean runs deep in mankind. As does the image of the sea as an endless place where the calm patches are exceptions and illusions. Hence, shit ton of freaky gods associated with it.

Also, Lovecraft.

As an aside, my desire for a Freak Legion-esque nWoD supplement could easily be rolled into this Leviathan: the Tempest thing. Well fairly easily. Regardless, Leviathan: the Tempest sounds pretty bad ass.

Originally Posted by shanoxilt

I demand that someone create Leviathan: the Tempest, as a fan supplement.

....Please?

Maybe, it could include swamp monsters.

[Omegatron]

"Leviathan: the Tempest" is to be a fan-made, cooperative project aimed to create a new World of Darkness Storytelling Game. Taking inspiration from lovecraft, UFO lore, and most importantly, the disturbing world-wide myths about the infinitely-powerful creatures who once held humanity in their scaled clutches, and may do so again.

A Leviathan is a person who, by little choice of their own, is bound to a tainted, if mighty, legacy. Foul, hybrid descendants of the alien behemoths and titans who once ruled reality and may yet again, they are unwillingly thrust into the Tempest- the endless struggles and maddening truths of the world.

[FrankTrollman]

So basically what you're saying is that when Tiamat ruled the ocean in the before time, she had children beyond counting and those children were the inhabitants of the sea. But foremost of her followers were the Leviathan, which were divided into "schools" which partook of a different portion of Tiamat's multi-headed spirit.

And when Marduk killed Tiamat it poisoned the water and cut the Levithan off from her divine source. And they were no longer able to live alone in the sea, but were subjugated by humanity and forced to mingle their blood with man's. And now there is an awakening of the ancient blood of the sea as the last of the corners of the world are poisoned.

So it being a nWoD product, there are five different heritage calls your ancient linneage can hearken to (as well as a sixth one that is for NPCs because it is more gratuitouslly evil, and a seventh one which is supposedly wiped out and all legendary with no rules). These correspond to the "school" your character is a member of. So the beginning of the game is the part which you see the Shadow Over Innsmouth and realize that you are the descendent of fish people of one sort or another, and you develope a distinctive fish trait which you have to hide from the majority of humanity and you start getting your cool powers. There's also an ancient legend that if someone can collect enough of the ancient blood together by um... eating other Leviathan that they can turn into the reawakened Tiamat and again rule the seas, so you are also being hunted by cannibals of your own kind.

So your basic groups are:

• Naga - based on the aqueous serpent people who live in Patala and will destroy the world in Hindu mythology. You get special powers related to poison. You follow Vasuki.
• Deep Ones - based on the stories of racial hatred and world destroying horror of H.P.Lovecraft. You get special powers related to madness. You follow Mother Hydra.
• Sirens - based on the ship destroying Oceanids of the Med. You get compulsion based powers. You follow Dagon.
• Kappa - based on the water goblins of East Asian lore, you get powers to spazz out and kill things with claws and stuff, you follow Akkorokamui.
• Unktehi - based on Creature of the Black Lagoon. Tou get weather powers. You follow Tlaloc.

And then there are senselessly wicked Leviathan from the poles called Silap, who have strange powers and are antagonists.

And you need some political groups that the players can be members of that will give them tricks and treats but not actually have them stab each other so that the game can continue.

---

nWoD setups are sufficiently formulaic that you can generate the outline off the top of your head if you know a fair amount of world mythology.

If you'd like, I could throw up the Witch: the Transformed thing I did (original title: Senshi: the Sailing), as several of the factions are straight up playable at this point.

-Frank

[Smartmonkey]

Idea for the Power Stat, a'la Blood Potency: Ancestry.

Ancestry represents not the power of your forbear, but rather your knowledge of the secret of the world before and your "divine" heritage. At 0, your character is indistinguishable from a normal mortal, with additional fragments of knowledge (with increasing accuracy as you go higher - at 1, thinking your family is descended from a line of Poseidons Priests, at 10, knowing that you are indeed Cthulus great-grand nephew) allowing him to steadily grow in power - until he goes batshit crazy, anyways.

[Jack M]

This idea is so yoinked for my mortals game.

GOGO TTRO!

Edit: Also, what about Loch Ness?

[Kevin]

Malcolm Sheppard's Opening the Dark might be a useful resource for this project.

[Pelorus]

So its a bit like Scion but for Mature Readers?

[EarthScorpion]

So it being a nWoD product, there are five different heritage calls your ancient linneage can hearken to (as well as a sixth one that is for NPCs because it is more gratuitouslly evil, and a seventh one which is supposedly wiped out and all legendary with no rules). These correspond to the "school" your character is a member of. So the beginning of the game is the part which you see the Shadow Over Innsmouth and realize that you are the descendent of fish people of one sort or another, and you develope a distinctive fish trait which you have to hide from the majority of humanity and you start getting your cool powers. There's also an ancient legend that if someone can collect enough of the ancient blood together by um... eating other Leviathan that they can turn into the reawakened Tiamat and again rule the seas, so you are also being hunted by cannibals of your own kind.

So your basic groups are:

* Naga - based on the aqueous serpent people who live in Patala and will destroy the world in Hindu mythology. You get special powers related to poison. You follow Vasuki.
* Deep Ones - based on the stories of racial hatred and world destroying horror of H.P.Lovecraft. You get special powers related to madness. You follow Mother Hydra.
* Sirens - based on the ship destroying Oceanids of the Med. You get compulsion based powers. You follow Dagon.
* Kappa - based on the water goblins of East Asian lore, you get powers to spazz out and kill things with claws and stuff, you follow Akkorokamui.
* Unktehi - based on Creature of the Black Lagoon. Tou get weather powers. You follow Tlaloc.

Perhaps not "follow". I feel it might be better have have it as the ultimate "type" of daemony thing you are descended from, rather than just one. You can refuse your ancestry, after all (***antagonist alarm for the fanatical refusers***), and perhaps the manifold spawn of the First, rather than being individual named creatures, followed certain patterns depending on where they were hiding.

In addition, I'd look at the mythology of the Fishmen from the back of War Against the Pure.

[CasperLions]

Of course you aren't all aquatic, but anything sufficiently old enough on Earth can trace it's origins to the sea...


Hmm...do we get to fight other cryptids? I'm looking at you, bigfoot and mothman!