Promethean: The Created: Difference between revisions

''Not even other monsters.'' }}

 

 

The name of ''Promethean'' refers to its central characters, reanimated corpses fueled by "the Divine Fire", "Azoth" in alchemic terms. (The Divine Fire is often affiliated with the fire Prometheus stole from the gods, thus the use of the name.) These creatures are cursed to suffer the unending hatred of the human race, and must struggle for survival against both mankind's rejection and the rejection of the earth itself. What's worse, Prometheans are also hunted - Pandorans, creatures born from Promethean creation rites gone wrong, desire to devour the Created.

* [[Black and Gray Morality]]: A lighter shade of gray than usual. The black is a lot worse.

* [[Blank Slate]]: Prometheans start with nothing. Hopefully.

** Just to be clear on this: You're [[Nigh Invulnerability|nearly indestructible, ]][[Extreme Omnivore|can eat just about anything,]] only have to sleep once every two days, can heal with electricity, and get at least one [[Back From the Dead|free resurrection]] - but ''[[The Chew Toy|the universe hates you,]]'' [[Walking Wasteland|and ]][[Evil-Detecting Dog|not ]][[Torches and Pitchforks|figuratively, ]][[Hate Plague|either.]]

** But Great Grandfather Crow has it even worse than everyone else. He was a crow who died and was then resurrected by some halfwit of a Promethean. Now he's a dead crow with the mind of a proto-human who just wants to become a regular crow again. The rulebook suggests that the New Dawn is actually impossible for him, because the Divine Fire can only turn one human, but he doesn't want that. That said, one test game run by the designers ended with the crow finding Redemption as a bird.

* [[Cosmic Horror]]: Certain qashmallim are closer to this than angelic.

** [[Older Than They Think|Just like classical angels, in other words.]]

** More so for the [[I Love Nuclear Power|Zeka]]; they're in constant pain, they're [[Walking Wasteland|radioactive,]] and not a single one has reached their [[Become a Real Boy|New Dawn.]] And the [[The Dark Side|Refinement of Flux]] is easier for them to access than any other Promethean - in game terms, if the player says "My Zeka changes to Centimani", it ''happens'' (normally it takes in-game months)... and it takes them twice as long to climb back out.

* [[Creepy Doll]]: When a Galateid's disfigurements are revealed, their appearance is ''too'' perfect, seeming artificial and doll-like. One might appear to be made of marble with black glass eyes, another like a store mannequin.

* [[Critical Existence Failure]]: Prometheans are literally running on magic, so they can keep going until that burns out.

* [[Cult]]/[[Religion of Evil|Religion Of Arguably a Neccessary Evil Or Unneccessary Knight Templars]]: The Botherud are a group of Prometheans that believe that Azoth is a limited resource that must be conserved and that Promethean reproduction is a Sin against the Divine Fire. Considering that it is a requirement to make another Promethean as a step towards becoming human, this puts them at odds with the rest of their kind and bars them from attaining humanity, unless they reproduced prior to joining, in which case the would have to kill their progeny as per their creed. Bonus points for them also slaughtering any Prometheans they find and using an old Soviet nuclear device close to Boston on the player's Throng in the sample adventure they first appeared in...

* [[Dark Is Not Evil]]: The books explicitly mention that some Centimani are not evil, just selfish and tired of [[Hate Plague|Disquiet]]. Pandora's Book features a couple-an [[Mummy|Osiran]] who thinks that understanding Flux is key to understanding humans, and a [[Golem|Tammuz]] who simply has it as the first Refinement he learned. It even admits the Osiran has a point; the problem is his detachment from his work.

* [[Karma Houdini]]: Inverted and Subverted; trying to pull this is just making an already hard game unnecessarily harder. Played Straight if the person in question is a [[Complete Monster]] with a passive-aggressive [[Omnicidal Maniac]] streak.

* [[Karma Meter]]: Humanity: You. Do. Not. Want. It. To. Fall.

* [[Light Is Not Good]]: Elpidos qashmallim are not by any means ''nicer'' than lilithim; they just tend to have slightly more positive missions. Ruby and Mr. Gold, for example, are out to stop monsters. If said monster is, say, a body-jumping demon, they have no qualms at all about locking the doors and slaughtering everyone in the room to drive it away due to lack of hosts.

* [[Lovecraftian Superpower]]: Pandoran Transmutations.

** Also, as a possibly ''literal'' [[Mythology Gag]], missing at least one part. The more mythologically aware get a nice large cleaver and take it to their intended offspring's crotch prior to resurrecting them. The sample characters miss various parts; out of one sample adventure, we have Osirans missing an earlobe, a toe, and... ''those'' bits. It's said that the ones who get the "classic" deformity don't really mind, except when they're asked which parts were taken.

** One Osiran character's Demiurge deliberately avoided the ''Classic Choice'' when creating him for obvious reasons; {{spoiler|She was his wife and a one-time Osiran herself.}}

* [[Nigh Invulnerable]]: Prometheans are all very tough and difficult to kill... [[The Chew Toy|and they need to be]].

** To give an example, one of the sample adventures in the sourcebooks punishes the party with a nuclear explosion if they screw up; if the players still have their free resurrection they can just wake up and move on. If a player power-builds a Tammuz to absorb damage, they have a (very slim) chance of being able to survive the explosion.

* [[Phlebotinum Overload]]: Firestorms, pseudo-hurricanes caused by an excess of Azoth. Even mortals can perceive the side-effects of them, usually because they tend to manifest as massive hurricanes that build-up really quickly and are more damaging then they should be.

* [[Pinocchio Syndrome]]: The entire point of the Pilgrimage.

* [[The Power of Friendship]]: Prometheans gain advantages for sticking together. Primarily by helping to reduce the effects on the environment around them and to provide some form of companionship in such a bleak existence.

* [[Prestige Class]]: Athanors, which also include a watered-down part of their power surviving the change into a human.

* [[Secret Project Refugee Family]]: Your typical "throng" of Prometheans. A "branded" throng allows its members to share powers and perform other nifty tricks, but there are drawbacks as well.

* [[Shock and Awe]]: The Electrification Transmutations.

* [[The Soulless]]: All Prometheans lack a soul; more accurately, they have Azoth that fulfills many of a soul's functions (sentience, emotion, creativity, etc.). It doesn't make them evil per force, but it does complicate becoming human.

* [[Speech Impediment]]: Frankenstein's monster stutters, and his "descendents" sometimes have trouble with speech.