Werelocust

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Izinhete: The Famine-bringers

Dawn
“Womb of Legions”': Born at the birth of a new day. Much like Srf'Srf birthing legions of warriors at the spur of the moment, those born uunder the Auspice of the Devourer of Thrones have a knack for creating swaming mobs bent on destruction. Any social roll to incite others to violence gains +2.

Noon
"Mother of deserts" Born when the sun is at full strength, they carry the heat of the desert with them. By spending a point of Esence the character can ignore dehydration for a day.

Dusk
"Bringer of Balance" Born when darkness threatens to overwhelm the light. Can make a wits+empathy roll against composure+[supernatural advantage] of someone once per scene. Dramatic Failure: Misleading information. Failure: Can’t get a read Success: grants a short vision of the last time the person indulged in their vice. Exceptional success: same as success.

Rage
Madness Rage, Schizophrenia: Hallucinations urge them to devour everything the guilty hold dear. Who counts as guilty depends on the character.

Inborn Aspects
Shapechanging

Regeneration: This Aspect only works while the Faminebringer is feeding.

Flight

Human:
Supernatural attempts to detect the Werelocust-condition are at -2 die. Faminebringers carry the dessert-sun with them wherever they go, their skin is hot and dry as if they had spent hours in the sun.

The Near-Man-Form:
The Faminebringers teeth strengthen, his jawmuscles swell and the whole jaw grows heavier, giving the face an elongate appereance. Two antennae-nubs form on the forehead. The skin looks taut, as if it was a size to small with a slight waxy sheen to it. The limbs elongate without gaining much width, and every trace of fat melts away, giving the werelocust a desiccated look. Traits: Str +1, Dex +1, Size +1, Perception +1

Hybbrid form:
The transition from Near-man to Hybrid would fit right in at a David Cronenberg movie: the skin has hardens into ochre chitin and the legs continue to elongate while they rotate in their sockets, forming the stereotypical hindlegs of a grasshopper sporting serrated spines. A pair of insect legs sprouts from the waist to assist the oversized hindlegs in moving the body, turning the Faminbringer into a centaur of kinds. The torso is still recognizably human above the waist, even if the hands have fused into three-fingered claws, while elongating into a insect thorax below. The translucent wings sprouting from the back, sport razor-sharp edges, used for clacking together in communication or as vicious saw-blades that rend flesh with ease. Strenght +2, Stamina +1, Size +2, Armor 2/2 Perception +2 Can fly short distances by rolling Str+Athletics every round

Swarm form:
The famine bringer turns into buzzing swarm of locust roughly equal to her mass. While the insects disperse somewhat to have enough room to move their wings they can’t travel very far from each other. Locust that stray too far from the centre of the swarm can do nothing else but try to rejoin it as fast as they can. Should the swarm be scattered by an explosion, strong gust of wind or similar events all surviving insects converge at the point with the most survivors. Bullets are mostly harmless to the locust, but because the swarm is unnaturally dense it can be harmed by attacks that pass through large swathes of it, which includes most melee weapons. A foil for example might be unable to pierce any vital organs, but it can be whipped through the swarm, swatting dozens of grasshoppers from the air. Important to note is how the transformation to this form and back again takes place. Flesh literally balls up and “rolls off” the character’s frame, with each lump of skin and blood becoming one locust. When damage is done to the swarm form during this time, those killed locust simply fail to rejoin the body, leaving behind vicious gashes and holes.) The swarm form has the added ability of travelling through places far too small for the human body. Provided an opening has a few inches of clearance, the player can make a Dexterity + Athletics roll for the character to squirm through that opening. The Traits for the animal form are: Dexterity +2, Size +1, Speed +1, Health +1, Perception +1, bulletproof.

The Rule of the Beast Kings
Sometimes evolution explodes without warning. Consider the Cambrian explosion: life went from soft-bodied jellies to a disgusting amount of diversity in almost no time at all. All manner of life hides in the lines between the fossil record; fossilization is so rare that we can't account for everything living during a specified time period. Especially things that didn’t have skeletons to fossilize might stay forever hidden. There are Times when the biodiversity declines sharply in a small amount of time The earth trembled under the paws of mighty creatures long before monkeys even thought of walking upright. Some of them were mighty beyond measure like Mokole M’be Who Bends Mountains Like Grass, others like the Srf’Srf The Mother of Deserts had countless hungry sons and daughters that left only bare rock behind wherever they went, caught their foes in complicated schemes like Anansi the Web-Weaver or were subtle as the Eyes-in-the-Shadow that no foe ever saw them coming. They were known as the Beast Lords. In an eternal struggle for dominance each sought to prove that he alone was worthy of being the King of Beasts. Some forged pacts with lesser Lords who hoped to benefit from such an alliance, others bullied weaker kings into following them. Most of the time the scales were balanced, the Great War nothing more than countless meaningless skirmishes between the Hordes of the Beast Kings. Five times the Kings themselves took to the field to claim the throne of the current Beast King, and each time the rivers ran red with blood as entire species died out, science remembers these wars as the five major extinction-level events. But every time new Beast-Kings arose to govern over the primordial world.

The Sixth War
While the world was recovering from the fifth war, the Monkey-Lord Bandar-log was looking for a new friend to protect him. Monkeys have always been clever and charming and this one was no exception. He saw that the Wolf-King was widely feared, and that his daughter Nagirlu-Ur suffered, because her loyalty and courage did not make up for her lack of wits. Whenever Nagirlu-Ur skulked off to escape the jibes of his brothers and sisters, the Monkey-Lord happened to cross her path and fled to the safety of the tree-tops before she could devour him. Each time he told her a witty insult or devised clever prank she might use to get back at her siblings, in exchange for his life. Nagirlu-Ur’s siblings thought her astonishing ideas were because she thought very slowly but also very thoroughly whenever she went of alone, and the young Wolf liked the change in her reputation. Soon she valued the monkey’s advise more than a quick meal, and called upon Bandar-log more and more often. And the clever monkey told her how gratefull he was for the brief times of security when she was there to protect him during their conversations. When he asked her to convince the stones to help him and his children so the monkeys could live in peace, she thought it a clever idea. The rocks wouldn’t refuse a descendant of the mighty Wolf-King and despite their might they were no part of this war, just like Bandar-log wished to be. And other Beast-Kings had made pacts with the Elements before, convinced the wind to carry them or asked the sea to shelter them; surely there could come no harm from asking the rock to shelter her friend. But as soon as he was alone, Bandar-log slipped away into a deep cavern. The cave was so deep in fact that it reached all the way to the ever-hungry flames, who are waiting for their turn to devour the world. Only blank earth was left whenever fire managed to escape from its prison. But even when the rock did it’s best to protect him, the flames started to devour Bandar-logs silky fur, while he cajoled and bargained with them. When the flames finally agreed to help the Monkey-Lord they had eaten all of his fur aside from a tiny patch atop of his head. When the other Beast-Kings saw Bandar-Log emerge from the cave, carrying fire in his hand they grew fearful and tried to devour him, but the rocks gave the Monkey-Lord blades of sharp flint and the flames devoured those who escaped his knife. The rest, as they say, is history. When the Wolf-King learned of the role his daughter had played in the rise of man, his wrath was terrible. Fearing for her life she fled to Bandar-Log and he honoured their past alliance, up to this day her descendants are man’s best friend. Man didn’t become undefeated ruler of the world overnight of course. For a long time, fire and tools merely kept the other Beast-Kings at bay. But ever so slowly civilisation spread and heroes slew the Hydra, the Basilisk and the Roc. One by one the great Beasts fell.

The Beasts among Men
Only a few among the Great Beasts didn’t fear fire, the Wolf-King, The Dragon-Lord who ruled before him and Phoenix. The Dragon-Lord and his children were too proud to try anything approaching subtlety and Phoenix was too caught up in her romance with the sun. Since open attacks had failed, the Wolf-King bid his mercurial lover to teach the greatest of his children how to assume the shape of men and women and spy on Bandar-Logs offspring. Children of other Beast Kings, learned to walk among humans for their own reasons, without the help of Luna most had to resort to cruder methods than changing their form. The Mother of Deserts didn’t fear mankind, even the Wolf-king wouldn’t challenge her in the wasteland she called home. Surely Man would perish before he had crossed even a fraction of her home. But she couldn’t forgive Bandar-logs betrayal, and she would have her revenge by helping his children to bring each other low. She sent her children into the world, to offer men the power to bring ruin upon his neighbour, weakening Mankind and spreading Srf’Srfs protective home at the same time.

The First Change
Eating a sizable portion of the Faminebringer or crops fertilized by his body, taints the blood of a mortal with the Mark of the Mother of Deserts. Mortals touched by her, will gain no weight no matter how much they eat, while mostly a blessing in modern society the lack of body-reserves means they are more susceptible to starvation. Most of the locust-blooded find crowds very calming, they aren’t necessary extroverted but they love being around other people. If a locust-blooded drinks from a bowl made from clay mixed with the sweat and blood of a human and hardened in the sun, his heritage awakens. Once darkness falls the werelocust developes a high fever and is plagued by visions of exploitation, oppression and plundering and takes a level of unsoakable lethal damage. As soon as the first rays of sunlight touch his skin he makes a Resolve-roll: Failure: The Izinhete takes two unsoakable lethal damage while his body devours itself. The charcter my try again at noon or dusk, whatever comes next. Success: The fever-dreams change to stolen lands withering away, blood-gold crumbling to yellow dust, food rotting in the mouth of tyrants and similar scenes of their dreams decaying in the hands of the unjust. The werelocust awakens soon after, when his skin splits open and the Izinhete assumes the swarmform for the first time.

The time he finally manages to struggle free from the feverdreams determines his Auspice.