[Beast]Ready-Made Characters

Beast: The Primordial, Open Development

Heya, folks. Matt here (briefly). The Beast Ready-Made Characters are now in art direction, and the author of said characters, Hayley Margules, was kind enough to take some questions about her writing process over on the OPP forums. Here are the answers. Enjoy!

Hi, everyone! Hayley here. Some of you may know me as the Dark Eras writer who wrote the comfort object and imaginary friend mechanics for A Grimm Dark Era. I am an historian by trade, and I’ve written for a small collection of other projects for Onyx Path Publishing that will soon be released. Today, I’m here to talk about my work on the Beast: The Primordial Ready-Made Characters. I’m so excited for you to see these, and it looks like you will very soon. I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about my process in creating them, and answer some specific questions that y’all have asked me. I’m going to tease specifics — if you asked a very specific question or if you asked a question after I closed the Ask the Writer thread, I’m sorry. Feel free to ask anything else in the comments. More than happy to answer more questions there, and once the manuscript is released.

I was excited when Matt offered this job to me, mostly because y’all voted that the sixth character would be a changeling.

I’m joking.

Kind of.

Q: Which of the characters were your favorite? Alternatively, what was your inspiration? What is the Families/Hunger spread? What relationships do they have with other supernaturals? What are their jobs?

A: The real first thing that came to mind when I offered this job was, “how can I best incorporate a child character into this group without 2e rules for children and without the player who pulls the card thinking they’ve been cheated?” My answer to that was our changeling character, Annika White.

I’ll be the first to say that, given the chance, I would have made all six of these characters children. Child characters are my favorite to write for and my favorite to play. But I didn’t even ask Matt if that were possible, because I didn’t think it would work as well for a brood of Beasts and a changeling as it might have for, say, a mage cabal or a changeling motley. I don’t know what Matt would have said. But suffice it to say that while Annika White, our changeling character, is a child, she is not an extremely young child, so you don’t need Innocents to use her or anything.

Annika’s Family Ties Connection is with the brood’s Makara, a beast named Maia. I won’t tell you much about her, or about any of the other characters, but I was asked which character is my favorite. The answer is that I have two favorites — Annika and Maia.

Our Anakim is Annika’s school principal. Our Namtaru is an opthalmologist. Our Eshmaki is an artist, and our Ugallu is a political tracker, a campaign staffer who follows opponents around, recording everything in case they say something problematic. Mitt Romney’s 47% comment? Recorded by a political tracker. The job felt perfect for a character built around scrutinizing others to claustrophobia. It came to mind from a story told to me by a college friend who worked as a tracker on a campaign in Texas. I won’t give any more details there.

I chose to have each Family and each Hunger represented once to give an appropriate cross-section for players who may or may not know Beast and are trying to examine the possibility space prior to creating characters for themselves. I draw inspiration from everything around me. Annika’s character is based on a much younger changeling I created years ago for my own use. Maia is one of my favorite names, and the name of my favorite character from my favorite television show, The 4400. And you should watch it, right now. It’s on Netflix, go watch it right now.

Q: Are any of them dating other supernaturals or Beasts? Are any of them LGBTQIA? Are they religious? Where do they live? Are they members of different nationalities? What relationships do they have with the other Beasts in town? Do they share a lair?

A: Two of these characters are LGBTQIA, and in a relationship with each other. Some of them share an apartment, and all of them live in the same apartment building in a coastal, unspecified city. None of them is particularly religious, though our Namtaru, who is Tlingit, cares about her Alaskan Native heritage and returns for important ceremonies. I do not cover other Beasts in town — five felt like a lot to me. The primary antagonists I cover in Story Hooks or in background are fae, heroes, mages, and vampires.

Q: How much supernatural knowledge do they have?

A: Every character has something in Occult (obviously, since Beasts get a free dot). The highest anyone has is two with a specialty, and that’s Maia.

Q: What are their long-term aspirations? Are there descriptions of favorite feeding methods?

A: Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about their long-term aspirations at this time, I’m sorry to the poster who asked. You’ll know soon. But there are descriptions of favorite feeding methods for some of them. Unfortunately, I can’t elaborate on that either at this time.

Q: Team Cap or Team Iron Man? Honey or Jam?

A: An OPP colleague asked Team Cap or Team Iron Man. The answer to that is: “Yes.” However, the same colleague’s question — “honey or jam?” — would give away too much if I answered right now. I don’t know what he was thinking.

Q: Is there a theme from regional mythology linking the characters together? What genre would a film or television show with these characters be?

A: Two lingering questions–No, there is no theme from regional mythology linking the characters together. And a film or television show with these characters would be a political and interpersonal drama, with a distinctly disorienting horror focus and other niches depending on which characters you chose to focus on and what storylines you chose to pursue. Sort of Black Mirror mixed with the tone from Damages, if I were running the Brood. I’m sure that for some of you, that helps the gears turn more than any of the vague specifics I provided about characters above.

Like I said, please feel free to ask any more questions in the comments. I won’t promise I’ll answer everything, but I’ll also be around to answer questions after release. I know one of you asked me for the character’s perspectives on Wisdom through Fear and Heroes, but I can’t really answer that yet. I will after release, if the question remains.

I poured myself into these characters, and I hope you love them as much as I do. If I get another chance at a Ready-Made Characters job, I’ll ask my dev for permission to make them all child characters.

I’m joking.

Kind of.