Welcome to My Nightmare [Beast: The Primordial]

Beast: The Primordial, Open Development

Eve loosened the hoodie. She had pulled it tight around her face, trying to screen out the world, for all the good it had done. The cafeteria was too loud, and the sounds too diverse. Boys thumping on tables, high-pitched laughter from girls, the hum of the microphone that the lunch lady used, in vain, to get them to shut up. Eve stared down into her juice, and thought of water, the silent, cool, Boundless Deeps. She felt the cold on her skin, and she was home, if only in her mind.

Something slammed into her back and pitched her forward. One of the boys — Antonio — was playing catch using a wadded up piece of paper and had slipped. Eve stood up, wiping juice and the remnants of her lunch from her hoodie. She turned to face him.

“My bad,” said Antonio. Eve said nothing. Antonio didn’t wait for acknowledgement, he just turned and went back to his game.

Eve reached out and grabbed him by the hair. She pulled, using only a fraction of her true strength, and yanked him backwards into her arms. If we were in the ocean, she thought, I could crush him. I could eat his skin and liquefy his flesh in my mouth, and drink him slowly. The thought appealed, and started to call her home.

Seawater trickled into the room from the corners. No one noticed. The students chanted “Fight! Fight!” Someone ran to get the principal.

Eve let him go. Antonio turned, and curled his hands into a fist. And then he glanced at his forearm, and stopped.

A row of angry, circular wounds had appeared across his arms. Eve hadn’t touched him there. He looked at her in horror, and she pulled the hoodie strings tight again. “Don’t touch me,” she said.

Antonio could only nod.

In Beast: The Primordial, you play one of the Children, a human being with the Soul of one of the great monsters of legend: dragons, gryphons, giants, kraken, and worse. All your life you’ve had the same nightmare, one of the classics so common to human nature. Hunted by a relentless predator. Dragged into the murky depths. Dropped from great heights. Held under the thumb of something huge and powerful. Or simply the knowledge that some nameless, shapeless thing out there in the dark was stalking you. Nothing human beings haven’t suffered since the dawn of civilization, except you weren’t content to remain the victim, and so one night you didn’t run.

You embraced the nightmare, and became the monster. And in doing so, you realized: the Beast is what you have always been.

Discovering one’s true Family can be traumatic, but for many of the Begotten, it’s a profound relief, because they finally understand the reason for the Hunger that’s been driving them for their whole lives. A drive so strong they would do most anything to satisfy it, even if it costs friends, family, fame, or fortune in the process. That insatiable need to dominate, to possess, to devour, to punish, to destroy. It all makes sense now.

A Beast’s existence is not defined simply by her Hunger. Young Beasts often gather in broods of their own kind, forming communal Lairs to fight off threats and competition alike. In the absence of other Beasts (or other compatible Beasts), it’s not uncommon for one of the Children to fall in with other supernatural beings, drawing on their common ancestry to join their culture and run with them like one of their own.

Regardless of the company they keep, Beasts must work to keep their Souls sated, which means spreading nightmares and ensuring that they indulge their Hunger as needed. At the same time, Beasts must tread carefully — feeding too much or too little encourages the rise of Heroes, mortals driven to destroy the Beast at all costs. Not to mention the toll that sowing nightmares can take what remains of a Beast’s human side.

This is the life of the Children: Preying on humanity while living within it, walking the mortal world and the worlds beyond as they fulfill the needs of their Soul, tending their Lair as they guard their territory, moving freely between mortal society and supernatural cultures as legends in both. Humans might think they know how a monster’s story ends, but Beasts refuse to accept the role they’re given. They write their own stories, and let no human — or Hero — dictate how it ends.

Stay tuned for more about Beast: The Primordial.