Battlezoo Ancestries: Year of Titans

What a Journey! The Titans Rise Again and We'll Watch Them Together!
2 months ago – Thu, Dec 12, 2024 at 09:05:55 PM

It's been a long journey across the land, searching for signs of the ancient god-beasts and their titan offspring. But together, our team is stronger than we are individually, and we've managed to discover everything there is to know. I want to thank each and every one of you for your support. Without you, there's no way we could continue creating these amazing books, and I couldn't be more grateful to have you in our community.

I hope you'll enjoy the "metastory" throughout Year of Titans, which is a little something new for us compared to Year of Monsters or Year of Legends. The Release the Kraken adventure from Linda Zayas-Palmer connected to that storyline should be a real treat, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you when you include it in your game!

Here is a little timeline of what to expect for the next few weeks/months:

• Kickstarter will change everyone who backed this campaign. This takes approximately 2 1/2 weeks to finalize.
• After Kickstarter finishes, the BackerKit for the campaign will open about a week later. You will automatically receive an email with your BackerKit login information, and we'll provide everyone with instructions on how to log into their BackerKit account manually.
• BackerKit is where you can add additional items to your order, where you enter your shipping address, and where you select if you want 5th Edition or Pathfinder products. BackerKit allows you to manage your pledge after the Kickstarter ends.
• BackerKit is also where you will receive your digital products, such as PDFs and Foundry Module keys.
• Each month starting in January (on January 1st assuming the Kickstarter finalizes and BackerKit is ready by then but otherwise as soon as BackerKit is ready, since the files are ready to go on our end), we will send out the pdfs and Foundry modules for both games, and the Pathbuilder files for the Pathfinder 2e version on the first of the month. You'll receive two ancestries in January for backing the Kickstarter, including the bonus titan ancestry. Everyone else will have to wait until December for titans.

As always, if you have any questions, please let us know, and we'll do our best to answer them. 

Talk to you again soon and thanks again for your continuing support!

~Mark Seifter, Roll for Combat Director of Game Design

We're in For a Fright! 110k with Just 90 Minutes Left
2 months ago – Thu, Dec 12, 2024 at 07:33:34 PM

We made it to 110k with just 90 minutes to go. Thanks to everyone for making it happen including our last minute reinforcements from reddit! So contaminated bogeys are a go! Bogeys are a really exciting ancestry because they play around with the idea of making creatures not just "frightened" as per the condition but "terrified" where the fear leaves a lasting impression for a time, giving the bogies additional benefits. One of my favorites is a feat where as long as someone somewhere is terrified of you, if you die, they have a nightmare with you in it and then they wake up in a cold sweat and you are right next to them (there's a cooldown so you'll want to lay low for a while).

With that, we've reached all our stretch goals for the project (unless Stephen suddenly appears with something for the last 90 minutes, so never say never I guess)! Thanks so much everyone, and I'll see you soon for the celebration party update at midnight. Until then, why not turn on your nightlight to protect you from the darkness and read Aitheria Nyx's essay on bogeys, included below.

~Mark Seifter, Roll for Combat Director of Game Design

From the Archives of Aitheria Nyx

The Only Thing We Have To Fear

Fear is ancient. Primordial. Essential to the survival of countless creatures, as it has guided them to avoid circumstances that would put their lives at risk. Yet among species who experience sapience and build cultures, fear is a more nuanced experience. Certainly, there are fears that correspond to clear and present dangers, but there are many more that represent perceived threats to social status, pessimistic projections into the unknown and unfamiliar, or echoes of past trauma. Fear among sapient creatures is a complex phenomenon. It protects us, instructs us, and encourages us to avoid mistakes that could bring us harm. But it also constrains us, and it can all too often serve as fuel for prejudice and inflexibility.

Fear itself came to life, in the distant past, in the form of bogeys. Bogeys are fey creatures born of the collective fears of millions, nightmares given mind and form. When the patterns of terror take hold, bogeys flourish, and some claim responsibility for incidents where mass panic led to transformative events.

Among the most world-shaking events for which some bogeys claim ancestral responsibility is the Titanomachy, the war between the god-beasts known as the First Ones and the new gods, represented by the dragon deity Talir, all the way down to the ending where the victorious Talir was locked away by their own parents. These bogeys claim that their ancestors were the puppet masters behind the entire event, that the terror they stoked among mortals fomented the war, and then afterward forced the Father and Mother to take the drastic step of sealing away the being the mortals feared the most, even though that being was their own child. 

While I’m certain that bogeys flourished in those frightening times, I take their grandiose claims of responsibility with a grain of salt. After all, mortal hearts are complicated, and it is much to the advantage of bogeys as a whole to exaggerate the magnitude of their powers and influence, the better to inspire terror in the modern day.

Efforts to understand the true nature and history of bogeys are complicated, because both bogeys themselves and frightened chroniclers from other ancestries are typically disinclined toward straightforward and unembellished accounts. I’ve begun to question if the search for a pure factual account unclouded by the distortions of fear is even an appropriate objective, or if such attempts would strip away a vital layer of the truth. 

I haven’t found it particularly easy to converse with bogeys on the subject. Bogeys tend to be disinclined toward speaking on private matters, which I suspect is in part a response to how rarely they find themselves welcome among people of other ancestries. Because acting as they must to survive causes emotions that most people experience as unpleasant, bogeys typically face hatred and scorn. People are prone to fearing and hating what they don’t understand, so the need for fear inspires many bogeys to avoid allowing others to understand them. The way a bogey perceives this rejection is a deeply personal experience, with some viewing it as a status symbol, while others have more conflicted feelings, including resentment and frustration.

But to those who would assume that bogeys should be rejected out of hand, I ask, why not push through the challenge of the terror they promote and try to reach a greater understanding? The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.

~Aitheria Nyx, Herald of the Space Element, Advocate of Monsters

$100k Achieved! Icesoul Unlocked, with Contaminated Bogey Up Next
3 months ago – Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 02:10:37 PM

Hi everyone!

Thanks to an amazing surge of support from new members of the Battlezoo community, we've made it over $100k together with just over two days to go. While it was a close call in the voting at first, snowsoul took the advantage and just snowballed from there, so icesoul won the vote, and, seeing the writing on the wall, I added icesoul to the ancestry today. I think it's going to be exciting for fans of a more armored character, and there are tradeoffs you can make with being frozen to increase your defenses further!

Contaminated bogeys had enough support to continue on as our next stretch goal, so if we can hit one more goal, we'll be able to add them too. Let's see how far we can take this together! I'll leave off with more from Aitheria Nyx about snowsouls. Let the storm rage on!

~Mark Seifter, Roll for Combat Director of Game Design

From the Archives of Aitheria Nyx

Let It Snow

The rare and reclusive snowsouls, humanoid-shaped primal fey formed from elemental ice and snow, are the subject of countless fairy tales. The monarch with a heart as cold as ice. The young lad or maiden luring the unwary into the heart of the blizzard. The bringer of the first frost and herald of winter. All of these are snowsouls. 

But where did it all begin? Snowsouls aren’t exactly forthcoming about their origin story, and the truth is lost in the chilled mists of the past. One origin that I find compelling, and which brought snowsouls to my interest given my current research on titans and the First Ones, brings us back to the Titanomachy, the war between the god-beasts known as the First Ones or Progenitors, and the new gods, specifically the dragon deity Talir. This ongoing war took Talir across the world, to all the hidden places where the First Ones slept and laired. One such place was a land of eternal winter, unseasonably so despite its latitude. Deep inside slept a being of ineffable cold who blanketed the land in snow year-long, causing it to be impossible to grow any crops. The shape and form of this mythical First One varies from story to story, as do the tales of Talir’s battle with it, but the end result was an explosion of wintry magic and the birth of one of the icy dragon heritages, as well as the clearing of the curse of eternal winter from the land. 

And depending on who tells the tale, one of the aftereffects of the battle gave birth to snowsouls as well. Were snowsouls the fragments of the shattered wintry domain? One account claims it, and that might make them close to titanborn, as I suspect krakens and trolls might be. Are they instead the result of the escaping magic of winter suffusing itself into the local humanoid population who made their home what used to be a safe distance away from the god-beast’s domain? That would make them less like titans, born from the god-beast’s spark, and more like ogres, directly changed by the god-beast’s magic. Were they fey from a wintry court of Faerie who existed all along and were lured to our world by this explosion of boreal magic? That would suggest they were older than the Titanomachy, and that while they weren’t directly involved, that they might have first-hand accounts of that aftermath among the writings of their elders. The only possibility in this branch of origins that wouldn’t help us learn more about the Titanomachy is the one that makes snowsouls out to be younger: in this version, the people of the lands near to the battle weren’t directly transformed by the event, but as a result they struggled to survive as the glacial magic spread to their lands and spoiled their harvests. Over time, a new god was born who took notice of their plight: Kasa the cold-hearted lord of winter. The mortals agreed to undertake a harsh trial Kasa offered, and in exchange, depending on the result, he would make sure they were protected from the spreading winter. Depending on your source, they either succeeded or failed at the trial, and as a result, Kasa transformed them all into the first snowsouls.   

It’s high time that I ask as many snowsouls as I can what they think happened. And if I can find the truth, I might learn more about the Titanomachy. This outcome, with the spreading cold mentioned in several versions of the tale, didn’t seem to be the new gods’ intent when they released Talir to clear out the First Ones; they sought to protect mortals from the god-beasts instead. So whose was it? Is it perhaps the influence of the Enigmas, and if so, why was this a part of their plans? If I seek to unravel the truth, I must travel to the icy realm that snowsouls call home. In which case, let it snow!

–Aitheria Nyx, Herald of the Space Element, Advocate of Monsters

Preview Video for Titans 5e, Shelled Krakens, and New Vote!
3 months ago – Fri, Dec 06, 2024 at 08:01:18 AM

Hi everyone,

There's just under a week left on the Kickstarter! Check out the video from Dungeon Dad above for an in-depth sneak peek at the titan ancestry for 5e. 

Additionally, we hit the stretch goal for shelled krakens! That means it's time for what will likely be one last vote (some of you with the many eyed bogey heritage might have spotted this already when Stephen put it up early on the front page). For our final vote, would you like to see an icesoul heritage for snowsoul, with frozen armor made of magical ice, or a contaminated bogey heritage for bogey, formed from mortals' collective fear of disease? Vote for your favorite in the comments of this update (or in the main comments if you prefer; there's already some votes there and we'll tally up both). 

I'm excited to see where we go from here! I'll leave you with more on the kraken ancestry from Aitheria Nyx, in honor hitting of the shelled kraken stretch goal!

~Mark Seifter, Roll for Combat Director of Game Design

From the Archives of Aitheria Nyx

They Might Be Titans

Krakens are famous as rulers of the boundless sea, colossal beings that guard the deepest trenches and sink ships that intrude upon their territory. These legendary krakens are the precursors to the amphibious krakens that now roam the land and sea alike. 

Amphibious krakens are smaller than their sea-dwelling cousins, and most are less powerful upon reaching adulthood. To what can these differences be attributed? I’ve read several fascinating essays that posit an ancient magical bargain, pact, or ritual. This mystical trade might share common roots with the dragon’s lux aeterna ritual, in which an immediate sacrifice of power is required in exchange for the ability to flexibly choose one’s own destiny and grow in accordance with bravery, skill, and fortune.

Another compelling theory holds that all krakens are descended from one of the god-beasts known as First Ones, and that amphibious krakens are metaphysically weakened by the separation between their own ways and the ways of their Progenitor. This theory is a common belief in some amphibious kraken circles, who worship this god-beast, the “Ur-Kraken,” so to speak, and gain blessings from their devotion. If krakens are indeed descended from a First One, as titans are, they could technically be classified as a type of titan, or perhaps at least titanborn. But unlike typical titans, born from a god-beast’s spark, landwalking krakens share commonalities in their morphology, with children of kraken parents invariably being krakens themselves.  To what can this increased heritability be attributed? It might be a consequence of the Ur-Kraken’s relatively greater metaphysical presence in the modern day. 

The nature of this presence remains a mystery. Could the Ur-Kraken still be around? A survivor of the ancient Titanomachy where the dragon deity Talir devoured the other god-beasts? In truth, they might still dwell deep in an ocean trench somewhere, at depths that would crush most mortal life. Or they might be an intangible spiritual entity, or an ascended form of god-beast that swims across the seas of the Planes Beyond. It’s also unclear what objectives they might seek to achieve. Aquatic krakens often concern themselves with warding against other forces that dwell in the depths—could this be a reflection of the Ur-Kraken’s ancient conflict against other forces that rose from the frigid abyss? And if so, would the forces that lurked at the boundaries of existence, in the most secluded of places, have any connection to the machinations of the Enigmas?

As difficult as it is to gather solid information about the Ur-Kraken in the present, determining their past is no more straightforward. Contemporary records from the Titanomachy are fragmentary at best, and they rarely name the god-beasts that they describe. Somewhat later scholarship gave titles to these majestic beings, but it’s exceedingly difficult to discern which descriptions and titles refer to the same creature, or even when the same description or title might refer to multiple different creatures. Was the Ur-Kraken the Eternal Whirlpool, or the Eightfold Ruler of Endless Deep? Both? Neither? Were they the “tsunami that writhed as an endless boil of thrashing snakes”?

Those of us who ponder these secrets can only hope they will prove less unfathomable than the oceans themselves.

~Aitheria Nyx, Herald of the Space Element, Advocate of Monsters

Next Goal Reached: Ogre Mutations Are Running Rampant!
3 months ago – Mon, Nov 18, 2024 at 08:05:06 AM

Thank you so much everyone! Together we crossed the next stretch goal threshold, and the vote continued to be close. In fact, there was a single moment when shelled krakens pulled ahead, ironically from a voter who wanted both options to make it and so chose shelled kraken expecting it to lose. But then after that, hypermutated ogre took the majority of the remaining votes and grabbed back the lead! That means we're greenlighting it, along with some extra mutation feats, for the ogre ancestry. I've let Linda, the author for ogre, know we hit the stretch goal, and she has some great ideas for what mutations to add. I think you'll really enjoy them!

The next stretch goal will be shelled krakens, since it was so close in votes. If and when we reach the goal for shelled kraken, or at least when we're closer to it, I'll return to let you know about the next vote. For now, let me know what character ideas you have for a hyper mutated ogre (or a living curse or vital spark titan from our previous stretch goals) in the comments below!

And in honor of hypermutated ogre's win, take a look at the never-before-seen Aitheria Nyx essay for ogres!

~Mark Seifter, Roll for Combat Director of Game Design

From the Archives of Aitheria Nyx

You Are What You Eat

Ogres are a multitalented ancestry, with the rare ability to profoundly adapt the shape and capability of their bodies by absorbing the fundamental essence of whatever they eat. Most  ancestries can only achieve a gradual change to body composition from their diets and activity. Ogres, on the other hand, can adjust their height, replace their skin with scales, or even sprout new limbs. 

The most popular theory for the origins of this transformative ability maintains that ogres’ distant ancestors ate something of such profound power that it fused with their bodies, granting them additional might while allowing them to continue to absorb strength from their food. This theory immediately raises a question, though–what could they have eaten that would have such a profound effect on themselves and all of their descendants?  

I’ve found claims that tie the origins of ogres’ remarkable ability to the most ancient of conflicts. Specifically, claims that ogres are descended from people who ate pieces of the fallen god-beasts known as First Ones, in the aftermath of the Titanomachy. Most of the bodies of the god-beasts are said to have been devoured by the dragon deity Talir, who then went on to distill their might and use it to produce the first dragons. While the proto-ogres might have gained the power of god-beasts directly, it’s also possible that they consumed the remains of some of these first dragons, acquiring the power of the god-beasts secondhand.

If the origins of ogres’ power can be traced to eating god-beasts or other mighty primordial beings, we must also consider the question of why they chose to eat what they did. Would you eat a suspicious hunk of god-beast, overflowing with potentially deadly primal energies? Perhaps they partook for the typical reasons that all creatures eat, and were unaware of the way in which they would transform. The god-beasts or other beings might have been sufficiently similar to other sources of food to be appetizing, such as a god-beast that took the form of a giant boar would be to a culture already accustomed to eating swine. Or even if the creatures didn’t look like typical food, they might have seemed edible enough to suffice in a time of conflict or economic or ecological hardship. 

On the other hand, at least some proto-ogres might have been broadly aware of what they could gain, and thus consumed the bodies of god-beasts ritually in order to absorb their might. If they had such knowledge, where did it come from? Was it something they were able to deduce through observation or study, or were they encouraged by an outside force? And if there was an outside force involved, who were they, and what could they have hoped to gain from all this? Did they want to manipulate ogres for their own ends, or perhaps they wanted to vest potential in ogres to prevent it from being used for other purposes? Here too, as in all mysteries from ancient times, we must consider the possibility of the hands of the Enigmas. The presence of isolated pockets of Enigma-worship among modern ogres might suggest the fell deities’ ever-elusive hands at work.

~Aitheria Nyx, Herald of the Space Element, Advocate of Monsters