Heh. Basically everything about being an Abhuman interacts with the Wards. The Wards’ rejection of “flesh Changed by Theurgy” is aimed squarely (though not exclusively) at them. Lifespan extension is not the problem when a single experiment with auto-Plektosis will permanently bar you from the Hegemony.
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Half-and-halfs don’t work?
No, ideas that are silly don’t work. How do you think two hooves are going to handle anything? What animal do you know that walks exclusively on two hooves? They’re not meant for channeling heavy weight - they’re effectively toes.
Centuars have two pairs of ribs. They’re so badly weighted they couldn’t even lean down to graze even if they did eat grass. They’d topple over at a slight breeze.
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Hmmmm
Guess a pair of bear legs and horns is pretty close to the same aesthetic
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Things like sphinxes would be safe, so you could be a bear body, with a human face, and also horns, which sounds absolutely horrific but would work in practice.
Or a human face on the end of a horse neck, which is… just as horrific. Or yeah, a satyr-like person that takes its lower half from a plantigrade animal.
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So many possibilities! I think I’m starting to see the appeal of this philosophy
Oh, my, I never thought about that before. I guess keeping your back okay from all that riding with your horse body would also hurt. Now that I think about it, if centaurs have a full horse body that just happens to have a person from the waist up, does that mean that they have four lungs and two hearts? And two livers, now that I consider it.
By the way, @Havenstone, is this thread going to be the new fanworks thread, now that the other one is closed?
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@Havenstone I’m curious, it’s mentioned that the Hegemony have roasted lands in rebellion (lacconiers), how significant a step is that from the perspective of hegemony leadership? What level of authorization is necessary to torch a province?
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The high priest/pope?
Presumably only the Thaumatarch can order the scorching of valuable land, but I’m not Havenstone so that might not be true.
I suppose so. Or we could make part of the Wiki for fanworks, and just post links here when a new one goes up – that might make them easier to keep track of.
It’s a big deal, definitely above Archon pay grade. You don’t know whether one of the Nine could authorize it or if it would need to go all the way to the top.
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Living in the nightmarish world of harrowings and kryptasts might not be so bad if I could just escape the Hegemony and slowly transform myself into a birb… hmm…
Can I just give up this whole rebellion thing? I just want to be a human-quetzal hybrid, please.
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That’s raised another point. Are the members of the nine just a general council, or are they specialized like the US cabinet? What happens if one countermands the order of another? Is there a hierarchy, or does every dispute have to be taken to the thaumatarch if the parties can’t come to an agreement?
Also, one thing, will the nature of our actions be taken into account or just the reputation and chaos stats. I ask with Kilcullen’s accidental guerrilla model in mind, a high chaos playthrough based on provocation (the harrower sabotage seems the best example to me) would force brutal responses by the Hegemony that would rapidly drive dissatisfied local elements to rebellion, and these elements will be drawn into cooperation. This is opposed to just random raiding out of necessity, which would likely push them toward the existing security forces (the Hegemony has a framework, we don’t). I also ask because I want to know if I’ll be punished for leaving the Hegemony alone, raiding the shit out of the helots and yeomen for mules, then buying them off with the money I earned from selling their stolen mules.
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Is there a social taboo against performing non-animal oriented auto-Plektosis or animal like auto-Plektosis? For example giving yourself claws or bones of steel something more like the Karagond’s hounds or super-soldiers.
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This is one of the things that (a) your character would have no idea about and (b) I don’t intend to go into at this point, to avoid spoiling things later.
By and large, I try to make the direction of the reputation and chaos stat bumps reflect the nature of your actions. Pushing the Hegemony to excessive retaliation increases your rep with the dissatisfied local elements, and also increases anarchy. Raiding the shit out of yeomen and helots does very little to increase anarchy, reflecting the fact that it’s driving people to tolerate Hegemonic control rather than challenging it.
That said, I expect in Game 2 Ch 2 there will be some actions you can goad the Hegemony into that will be specifically remembered.
The Seracca hate the Karagond version of Plektosis. That’s primarily because it’s wicked: involuntary, needlessly traumatic, and based on other people’s blood. But they also despise it as deeply inelegant, going against the grain of nature by incorporating all sorts of design elements based on the rule of scary–even though that then requires all sorts of continuing kludges, like production of Theurgically enhanced food to meet the daily energy needs of the overgrown steel-boned nightmare tanks.
There are plenty of features drawn from actual animals that are easier to adopt and no less badass. And the Seracca don’t entirely confine themselves to land mammals when they’re adding tweaks like this. But the more your vision for Plektosis heads in the direction of “bones of steel” rather than, say, “bones of rhino,” the more Abhuman side-eye you can expect to get.
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Actually, that kinda raises a question, is there a reason the Karagond mainly focus on dogs for their version of Plektosis. Because barring the possible issue with training (And communicating) with their Plektosis enhanced beasts of war, wouldn’t other animal groups like invertebrates make for cheaper (And potentially more lethal) instruments of war.
Like imagine the nightmares that would be spawned by swarms of Plektosis (With the dragonflies 35 Miles per hour speed, the toxins of a tarantula hawk wasp, a modified and reinforced stinger.) Wasp. Trained to attack something covered in a particular chemical (Or not to attack something with a particular chemical on it.). Like there would be literally no way to combat such a threat beyond the use of Mages (Can’t spell the other word).
I mean there would be problems with the above, how to keep it contained, how to control it, the cost involved with something that will only live for so long, and potentially the lack of mammalian knowledge. But even if we were to narrow it down to animals that were easier to train, with more knowledge on them, ect, wouldn’t Hawks (Owls, magpies, ect) be a better choice? Like could you imagine super fast, super persistent predator in the sky. There would be no hiding.
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You have to understand the animal to work with them. Also even mind-addled, abused dogs are domesticated to take orders (see: police dogs), whereas trying to control the fourth plague is much harder. Insects just don’t have the brain capacity.
Science, I don’t think, has gotten this far yet. It’s almost medieval.
It’s hard to get a bird to come back to you when it’s normal size in real life. If that bird could very easily overpower you, eat your eyes, and fly away, it becomes a lot harder.
Now, Abhuman birds, now THAT I understand…
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Hmm kinda has me thinking 💁. I wouldn’t mind being a fox/monkey hybrid. But the tails 
how would I choose!
Don’t think about the tails, man, think about the legs! The claws! The larger head and pointed snout that would make it harder to navigate trees!
Hmm…Birds are a bit outside my wheelhouse but would a human sized Abhuman bird even be able to generate enough lift to fly? Humans are heavy compared to birds. Would we need to reduce mass? Especially bone density?
And would it be the existing arms that are turned into wings matching the body plan of actual birds? Or would we be creating an additional set of limbs for the wings in order to keep the full utility of human arms in addition to the wings? Or would it depend on the abhuman’s choice?