Behemoths

[Flagg]

I'm thinking about setting elements that I haven't used prominently in the past (hence the Wyld Hunt thread), so that I can bring something new to future games.


If you've used Behemoths in your game, how? What/where were they, and how did they figure into things? What was the result?


-S

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Well, I had used the reborn Behemoth Juggernaut scenario in the Book of Bone & Ebony. I used the Winter mimics to terrifying effects. They ripped into my party and that was just one of them and I was nixing their dice pools! It wasn't a random encounter either. They had offended the Deathlord and slighted one of his Deathknights and the creatures need essence from essence 4 creatures I believe. So...a small cadre of Exalts is tromping off to the east across the plains. They got jumped in the night and one solar was down in the first round, exactly incapacitated. Only a Lookshy engineer cum Solar's quick thinking took it down. It was quite frightening for my players. I plan on using a behemoth to great effect in my new campaign but I'm unsure of what I want its weakness to be nor its shape. But there's my two cents

 

[Persell]

I haven't myself. Although I remember from the "making of Exalted" book that was bundled with the limitede edition one that there was several concept sketchs of Dragons.


Has anyone used any Dragons in their games?

 

[memesis]

My PCs destroyed a "hidden glen"-type city of glamour that the Fair Folk had erected in Creation, once the site of a Solar temple, and they used the fantastic orichalcum tree 'growing' there to maintain themselves.  In retaliation, the Fair Folk awoke a sleeping Behemoth, whose instinct was to plow west to the Inner Sea and drown itself, and took command of it.  The PCs first learned of this when Lookshy came by with a detachment of Warstriders and said "you remember that deal you made with us, about your secret Royal Warstrider?  yeah, we're calling that in".


The PCs managed to blow it away (and stun the Lookshy boys into silence) with a Solar Charm Combo, something the DBs had never seen in their lives, much less via Warstrider.  Turned out it was still alive, pining for the sea, and out of compassion they airlifted what was left to the sea so it could finally drown and rest in peace.  Players thought it was a fitting end.

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Impressive  

 

[DarkProphet]

I haven't used a behmoth per se, well.. I did and I didn't.  (lame reply, no?)  I'll stop picking nits and continue.


An Abyssal campaign I ran a few years ago had the players come across a Hekontire very early in the campaign.  Their Deathlord ordered them to investigate something that was running amok in an area too close to her tower.  Needless to say, as beginning characters, they didn't stand a chance against it and were incredibly lucky that it didn't, at that time, decide it should kill them.  It had a nasty ability to become damn near invisible, similar to a chamleon ability, as well as having an attack that disrupted the ability to use essence.  It wasn't a powerhouse physically, but when you find yourself unable to use essence as efficiently as before, things get hard.


Unfortunately the campaign ended as people graduated and they never came across it again... although it was definitely going to come up again.  


I might still have some of the write ups on it.  I'll look around.

 

[Jakk Bey]

In the Long Second Age, I've got an Island of the Great Beasts--essentially the proto-types of each major critter, hang out there, and try to keep the Realm from invading their refuge. Nothing too crazy there.


But, I've got another island in the works. A quiet little place, off the beaten path so to speak. There is the home of Spiru ah-Tek, a holy man to the neighboring islands. They drop off gifts, sacrifice a few virgins a year, and bug the hell out. In return, Spiru ah-Tek doesn't call his Master, the Sleeping ah-Tak.


Thing is, Spiru is the only ah-Tek. It was a first draft of a shape-changer. It does the usual shape shifting to various forms, but it also can take on mass, and has over the years. Lots of mass. It not only can take on mass to become larger, it spawns off semi-autonomous versions of itself, all linked by a Spiru, or better put, all of the pieces are Spiru, just mobile eyes and ears.  It's shape changing abilities aren't limited to just living things, but it can craft itself to just about any shape, large or small, so long as it has the mass to do so. And by now, Spiru essentially IS a portion of the Southern Ocean. All of it, from water, to plankton, to fish, barnacles, and even the seaweed and Sargasso.


It essentially breathed out microscopic spores to infect other creatures, each spore held a kernal of its meta-consciousness, and it absorbs not only the mass, but the memories and souls of the creatures it infects. It long ago had ambitions to spread itself across the Creation, essentially becoming the whole of the Creation, uniting all the disparate peoples with the land, all the creatures that walked and swam to the land. It devoured entire lands, whole oceans in the earliest of days.


It was only with some difficulty that the Primordials were able to convince Spiru that it might be better to see what they had in store for the Creation. So Spiru struck a deal, that it would not devour the Creation, as it could easily do, and it would wait to see if the Primordials plans for Creation were more better than its own.  


So it sits in the Southern Ocean, spread out amongst the seas, the birds, the land of its island, watching. It spreads tiny portions of itself to spy on the Creation to watch the Great Houses, to watch the drama of the Creation, and thus far, it has been pleased just to watch, to take the sacrifices given to it by the islanders, to add the souls of the virgins to itself, subsuming them into its massively old intellect, preserving their experiences, their memories as its own, and even letting some of these kernals of ego even come forth from time to time, to live and walk again--sometimes joined with others as strange giants, odd monsters, or even ride the winds in the bodies of birds, or to explore the seas as fish and whales.  These kernals are then absorbed back into the mass that resides on the island, delivering their goods of experiences.


So Spiru watches the Creation. Waiting. It has long since come to terms with its purpose, and realizes that a Creation of nothing but it, and the souls of those it has absorbed would eventually be boring beyond even its immortal imagination to concieve of, but it still hungers for new experience, new lives, and so it slowly spreads, only taking a few souls a year, mostly those who are delivered to it.


But occasionally, it will encounter someone that sparks its interest. It will follow, in one form or another, to watch and observe. And on occasion, it will even hunger to know that being better. Be it a songbird it has never seen, a beauty with a shining voice and clear eyes, or a brave warrior whose nobility plucks at its ancient and hidden heart, and it will, in one form or another, breathe upon that being, and slowly infect it, slowly become it, and there are times when even the creature that has been infected doesn't even know that it has been taken, because Spiru wants to see how the drama will unfold.


Thus far, it hasn't discovered a way to steal into an Exalt perfectly. The Shard flees the body as if it had died, but that doesn't prevent Spiru from mimicking its abilities and powers, or even devising its own. It can even fool that piece of itself, carefully shielding the new piece of itself from the truth, yet always it sits behind the eyes, a voyuer into the lives of Mortals and Exalts alike, dreaming their stolen dreams. Living their stolen lives...

 

[Master of Malfeasance]

Dreaming their stolen dreams?  Living their stolen lives?


I want you to know that I am going to shamelessly use that in my game.  The ultimate dark fate...


Land on an island full of pretty women... have a vision from the US of everything not being right.... oops... vision interrupted!


But charms function as normal, everything is cool, right?


Fast forward a few game years...


Not all things that would react to a Solar react to this infected Solar


All of this is fine and dandy until the character meets his own shard again.


Oh shit!

 

[Obsidian Soul]

I have used Sapient Behemoths to great effect.  In one campaign, I had one as a employer, who used the characters to set into effect millenia long plans.  Behemoths are great immortals.  They are unique, more a concept than a living creature, and can be anything.