These are briefs on the various peoples that populate the world of the Summit. All genera briefs have a basic summary, suggested look, how to effectively roleplay them, any benefits or weakness, needs, and magic affinity. Genera originating from Domus have two names. The name given to them by humans and the name they called themselves on Domus.
Humans
The Basics: Regular humans like you and me. Most carry around extensive amounts of protective talismans and any other item that will give them an edge.
Look: Come as you are.
Roleplay: Feel free to let anything you personally remember from 2004 and before influence your character. Depending on your character’s age, they will have had their entire life transformed, upended and destroyed. Whether they blame the refugees, magic, or the vying political powers of the world is up to you.
Benefit: Resistance to control. Not being suffused with magic any attempts to control a human (mental or physical) will be a great deal harder.
Weakness: None beyond the normal weaknesses to humans
Need: The world is a hostile place.
Magic Affinity: None
Roleplaying Effects: Resistance to Control: You feel sure of your emotions and ideals.
Warlocks
The Basics: Once humans of Earth, these are people whose exposure to magic has unlocked an unexplained affinity for it. For some reason, the way this rewired their brain has left them incredibly technophobic.
Appearance: There is no distinct difference between warlocks and humans. Warlocks tend to have more magical accoutrements.
Roleplay: Warlocks are drawn to magic like moths to a flame. They can always feel it around them like a sixth sense. Warlocks who were very young when they were exposed are often very comfortable with this, often becoming stressed if they are in magical black out areas or places with low magic. Older Warlocks who remember the time before more acutely often struggle with anxiety and paranoia, they can become easily overstimulated.
Benefit: Magical attunement, when performing magic Warlocks can banish all effects on their mind to focus on the spell.
Weakness: Technology just doesn’t work for you properly without great effort.
Need: Magical instability, the magical fallout of the various magic weapons has an environment that negatively affects their health.
Magic Affinity: Rituals; Warlocks are most easily able to reconstruct rituals they have read about or seen
Roleplaying Effects: Technophobic: You find interacting with mundane technology disorienting.
Magical Affinity: When practising magic, you feel calm and focused.
Fae (Wild Kith)
The Basics: On Domus, spirits existed within plants, waters and stones. These spirits could choose to sacrifice their truly natural life to take on a semi-mortal form. When the cataclysm hit, many made this choice in an attempt to escape it.
In these forms, Fae can feel pain and mental anguish as they never could in their natural bodies. But they also gain magics and the ability to shape the world around them. When a Fae dies (no matter what form they are in), their body withers away leaving behind a crystallised seed. If this seed is planted in the right sort of place, a child spirit shall form there.
When the Cataclysm hit, the most valuable cargo the Fae brought with them was the seeds of those who did not make it.
Appearance: All Fae are adorned by elements of their natural form, often brightly coloured. This can be flowers, gems, leaves, mushrooms, wood etc. Fae often have brightly coloured markings across their skin, especially around their eyes, that mark them out as different even if stripped of their natural adornments. All fae have pointed ears, they do not lose these even if transformed into a vampire or lycan.
Roleplay: Playing a Fae will differ depending on if they are a refugee or were born from a seed planted on Earth. Refugee Fae may long for the old wilderness, far larger and less tamed than on Earth, and they are often far more stringent about their own personal rule set. Nature has strict rules and so do they. An Earthborn Fae might long for a connection with their heritage or perhaps rebel against overbearing mentors.
Benefit: Affinity for nature. Creatures and plants of the natural world are more pliant to the Fae, more willing to listen and often just want to be near them. You feel an urge to tell the truth and complete promises.
Weakness: Cold Iron
Need: The ecocide caused by the war has poisoned a great deal of the natural world which has in turn poisoned the Fae. Furthermore, they have no way of replacing any lost seeds.
Magic Affinity: Binding
Roleplaying Effects: Contractual Honesty: You find the idea of lying or breaking a promise utterly disgusting.
Nature Affinity: You feel comfortable and at home in natural settings. Direct contact with things made of iron is painful for you.
Lycans (Beast Kith)
The Basics: The quote unquote ‘default people’ of the Old Word, Lycans are the most numerous of the refugees. It was due to their collective powers of foresight that they were able to see the Calamity coming. A power that has been all but lost with so many gone. As in tune with the Natural World as the Fae, these beings find themselves trapped between human and animal. It is thought perhaps that an ancient curse runs through their veins as this effect can be passed on to any creature that they bite. However unlike other infectious creatures, Lycans can also simply be born the way they are if one or more parents are the same. This is how most Lycans from Domus came to be.
While they originally preferred the wilderness, the cataclysm and the mass exodus have caused them to stick close to civilization. This has its own issues as for some reason the Earth moon sends them into a terrible animalistic frenzy when it is full. Most Lycans have a trusted individual who will lock them up in silver chains so that they do not hurt anyone.
Despite being called Lycanthropes or Werewolves by those on Earth, there is no one specific animal bound to a Lycan. The same animals do tend to recur in the same family but it is often hard to predict. Beast Kith can be connected to mammals, reptiles, birds or even fish
Appearance: All Lycans have some form of animalistic feature correlating to their animal influence. This may be claws, scales, fur, feathers, horns, antlers, tails or anything else.
Roleplay: With temperaments as changeable as their bodies, Lycans are known to be unpredictable. They are quick to love and to anger easily, this does not always make them volatile or aggressive, Beast Kith can just as easily show or shield their emotions as anyone else. But their emotions are much louder and much more rapid in their changes. Those who have been Beast Kith for some time or ones who were born to it are often better at dealing with these emotional changes than others. A Lycan’s behaviour is also to some extent flavoured by their animal spirit. A feline Lycan may be inquisitive, a canine protective, a reptile ponderous.
A great many things will influence a Lycan, even if they were born in the Old World, they may be too young to remember it. Do they have to deal with their parents and grandparents bemoaning the fate of a home they don’t know? If they were changed in the Domus, do they feel more attachment to their previous heritage or to this new one?
If they were changed on Earth, was it in an attack? A fight? Or perhaps even a sexual encounter that got too rough? Do they see the change as a curse or a blessing?
Benefit: Transformation; A Lycan’s body is always in a state of flux between what is and what could be. This can allow them to heal faster and to change between a human and more animalistic state. Some more powerful Lycan’s can even move the organs in their body to defend themselves from attacks.
Weakness: Pure Silver.
Need: The moon of Earth drives Beast Kith into a frenzy when it is full for unknown reasons.
Magic Affinity: Divination
Roleplaying Effects: Silver Allergy: You find contact with things made of silver frightening and physically painful.
The Moon: You become emotionally volatile under moonlight.
Dawn Vampires (Sun Singers)
The Basics: Once a mighty but insular empire in their own right, the Dawn Vampires (or Sun Singers as they call themselves) are creatures of the sun. They are empowered by its light, gaining almost all of their energy from it. But there is a reason that humans call them vampires. Once every month, Dawn Vampires must consume the blood of another living being to sustain themselves. Without it, they would wither and die.
New Sun Singers are created through a complex and dangerous alchemical process that is a closely guarded secret. It cannot be forced on an unwilling victim, most people who ask for the gift are desperate, often suffering from a terminal illness. Dawn Vampires are a very long lived race but not immortal and the transformation rids them of anything they believe to be ‘wrong’ with them. Any sapient creature can be transformed into a Dawn Vampire though it has been found to be markedly safer with humans.
Appearance: All Dawn Vampires are marked with gold from their transformation. This can be streaks of gold in their hair, gold on their skin, golden eyes or even sharp, metallic golden nails.
Roleplay: Do you remember your life before becoming a Dawn Vampire? What caused you to ask for this gift?
Old World Dawn Vampires would remember their old cities, paved in gold and filled with mirrors and crystals that banished every shadow and filled it all with radiant light. They would remember those cities falling, they would remember their loved ones dying. Perhaps they wish to forget or perhaps they see it as their duty to hold onto their dying culture.
If you are Earth Born, how has this changed your view of the world? Of yourself? Do you feel beholden to a legacy not your own?
Benefit: Stronger and more durable under sunlight
Weakness: Lack of sunlight
Need: Pollution in the air from the magical weapons has reduced the efficacy of sunlight as a food source.
Magic Affinity: Energy
Roleplaying Effects: Solar Power: In the sunlight, you feel energized and powerful. Likewise, when cut off from sunlight you feel exhausted.
Refined Diet: You find the idea of consuming food other than blood and sunlight distasteful.
Dusk Vampires (Night Walkers)
The Basics: Perhaps closer to what humans consider to be vampires, these creatures of the night are harmed terribly by the sun and gain power in darkness. There are stories that the Night Walkers were once Sun Singers but were banished from the sun’s light for some terrible crime. Without its power they are forced to feed on the blood of living creatures to survive and have evolved to match.
The process to becoming a Dusk Vampire requires a person to be fed the black blood of one three times. This transforms them in a horribly painful process that turns their blood black and turning teeth to fangs. Any creature can be transformed into a Dusk vampire.
Most Dusk Vampires prefer the wilderness and hunting wild animals. Some do prefer the taste of sapient blood but they often hide this preference.
Appearance: All Dusk Vampires bear distinctive black veins across their skin showing black blood beneath. Black tear stains also tend to decorate their faces, a mark of the transformation. Many have their fangs on display at all times but not all.
Roleplay: Playing a Dusk Vampire will largely depend on who your character was before the change, as well as the nature of the change. Were they changed against their will? Was it done to save them? Did they ask for this? How long have they been a Dusk Vampire? Were they from Domus or turned on Earth? All of these things will define them.
In general, Dusk Vampires have an innate melancholy from being deprived of the sun, some hide it, some wear it openly. They usually feel a sense of separation from all other creatures and needing to travel at night makes things difficult. With age, the knowledge that everyone around you technically counts as food can become hard to ignore. Night Walkers often find solace in others of their kind and form tight bonds of friendship.
Benefit: Natural Predator; all Night Walkers have fangs and heightened senses that easily allow them to track prey.
Weakness: Sunlight. NOTE: All Dusk Vampires who attend the summit will have travelled through the old sewer system.
Need: Dusk vampires have been suffering without large areas or forests to hunt in. They have been growing lethargic and depressed.
Magic Affinity: Blood
Roleplaying Effects: Predatory Instincts: You’re acutely aware of the weaknesses of those you consider prey, particularly when in the dark.
Sunlight Allergy: Exposure to direct sunlight causes you physical pain and makes you feel disoriented and frightened.