Battlezoo Ancestries: Year of Titans

Vital Spark Titan Unlocked and Last Day For Free Adventure
3 months ago – Thu, Nov 14, 2024 at 08:25:07 AM

We quickly surpassed the second stretch goal and unlocked the vital spark titan, and the vote is ongoing for the third goal between the hypermutated ogre and the shelled kraken in the comment section of the previous update. It's close right now, with the ogre in the lead, but there's plenty of time for things to change as we build up toward that third goal.

We're also in the final 24 hours of the free adventure offer. You'll still be able to add the adventure, Release the Kraken, on at any time, but if you're on the fence, you might want to consider pledging now to lock it in for free.

Since I gave you Aitheria's notes for titans first in the update that unlocked living curse to set the stage, I'll end with the notes for living spells.

~Mark Seifter, Roll for Combat Director of Game Design

From the Archives of Aitheria Nyx

Sufficiently Advanced Magic

When the Titanomachy raged, the gods slung a dizzying onslaught of magic at each other. Out of the fray, a few of these exceptional spells developed minds of their own, and lived on far past any typical concept of duration. They were the first living spells to be recorded in myth.

Much as the gods’ magic is filled with nigh-limitless potential, living spells were not constrained by the boundaries of simple cause and effect that circumscribe more conventional spellcasting. Instead, they experienced lives full of boundless potential, growing and changing as surely as people with more conventional organic bodies. They mirrored their creators in both shape and size, with towering forms that reached up toward the heavens.

Do any of these original living spells still persist in the modern day? It’s not out of the question. After all, a living spell’s lifespan depends upon the stability of their physical and conceptual bodies, and some of the gods’ magical workings persist for millennia. However, given the scarcity of reports about such ancient spells, it’s reasonable to assume that most or all of these primordial wonders have succumbed to time’s inevitable course.

As far as I’ve been able to discern, all living spells born in recent centuries are mortal. In that way, they share more with organic creatures than beings like angels or demons, whose eternal bodies are woven of spiritual essence. Yet they retain some echoes of their ancestors’ nature, as the methodologies of their creation follows grooves in the metaphysical fabric of magic that the gods carved out long ago. 

The variation in the nature of these grooves allows for substantial diversity among living spells. Though the gods’ original role in generating the potential for the first living spells might suggest that they would all have an affinity for divine magic, such affinities are far from universal. After all, the First Ones’ magic called upon the most destructive forces of primal nature, while the draconic might of the ur-dragon Talir mustered mastery of the arcane. Some living spells even resonate with occult traditions, a phenomenon that lends some credence to my suspicion that the mysterious and otherworldly Enigmas were involved in the gods’ war. And the four classical spell traditions are not necessarily the unifying concept behind a living spell’s essence; some are affiliated with omni-traditional classifications of magic like curses, or even the laborious but flexible field of ritual magic.

Buried within the nature of living spells and the idiosyncrasies of what makes their creation possible in the modern day are countless fragmentary clues about the ancient past, as well as the evolution of magic itself. Fortunately, many living spells take interest in such questions, and their scholarship has proven a vital resource in my investigations. Can I find the fingerprints of the Enigmas within the building blocks of the right living spell? I won’t know until I try. But perhaps the furrows of occult magic themselves were able to form consciousnesses, souls, and identities, without any intervention from the Enigmas. After all, sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from an act of the immortal.

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

We Smashed Our Goal! Curses Rise and New Vote
3 months ago – Wed, Nov 13, 2024 at 07:57:35 AM

Fellow Seekers of the Titans!

Thank you so much for supporting the Kickstarter. We funded in 20 minutes and reached our first stretch goal already overnight. The resounding winner is living curse, though vital spark managed to pull enough interest to slot in as the second stretch goal. We should pass that goal soon, so I'll give you a sneak preview of the next vote, which you can vote for in the comments of this update. 

The vote for the third stretch goal will be between shelled kraken and hypermutated ogre!

Shelled Kraken: We will add a Shelled Kraken heritage inspired by a nautilus. 

Hypermutated Ogre: We will add a hypermutated ogre heritage that grants an additional mutation feat and more mutation feats.

In case you're wondering about mutation feats, in general, we're looking to include some support for the heritages that win the vote, such as feats using the shelled kraken's shell. But hypermutated ogre would be an ogre that engages more deeply with the base ancestry's special mechanic of mutating based on what they eat, so it makes sense to add a few new mutation feats as support. Both of these options are really interesting to me, so vote for your favorite in the comments below! 

I'll leave you off today with a little introductory essay by Aitheria Nyx, introducing the Year of Titans. If you're on our mailing list, you might have spotted this earlier.

~Mark Seifter, Roll for Combat Director of Game Design

From the Archives of Aitheria Nyx

Remember the Titans

My friend, thank you for joining me over the years in my studies and analyses into the many varied ancestries who share this world with us. It’s because of your support, and those of like-minded others, that I’ve been able to continue searching for answers, but today, I’m writing to you about something different. Yes, there’s another mysterious ancestry involved along the way, and as always, we should think before we demonize them. My philosophy hasn’t changed. In truth, my work serves multiple purposes, and it’s time I revealed one of the others to you. While as an advocate of monsters, I speak for those people who society doesn’t give a voice or a chance, as a herald of the space element, I’ve been investigating certain actions of the mysterious god beings known as Enigmas across the world as I travel. 

Usually I’m looking at recent incursions or schemes. But this investigation goes back to ancient days. You might have heard of an ancient Titanomachy? A war between enormous god-beasts sometimes called the “First Ones” or the “Progenitors” and the new gods, invaders at the time. History tells us it was a war, but in most religious accounts, the victors have portrayed it as mainly a one-sided slaughter. The new gods birthed a child, a mighty world dragon, who devoured the god-beasts and used their divine essence to lay eggs that would then become the various heritages of dragon. The mortals were saved from the First Ones’ rampages and lavished praise on the new gods, but they feared the dragon who did most of the fighting, causing an estrangement that led to the great dragon being imprisoned in the moon.

These religious and historical accounts seem internally consistent, and they’ve been confirmed by deities who keep track of records of the past. But I sometimes wonder if those records might have been tampered with, or if some of the information is being kept from mortalkind intentionally. Is that true? And if so, then why? I believe it has something to do with a subtle manipulation by the Enigmas that had major consequences. Some of the story doesn’t quite make sense. I’m not sure what they did, but I think they wanted the dragon deity trapped and angry, ready to use in some future scheme. 

But like I said, the religious and historical accounts from followers of the new gods were consistent. You might think I said that as a compliment, but I meant it as a complaint… and as an observation. History, especially ancient history, is usually messy. The consistency is unusual, and it’s incredibly unhelpful to what I’m trying to study. Almost suspiciously so. And that’s why I realized I needed to talk to people versed deeply in other religions.

I started by asking a long-lived adherent of the Eld, the ancient elemental religion that predated even the Titanomachy. This follower was a herald of the time element and seemed a likely candidate for a competing account. But they explained to me that the Eld stayed out of that conflict entirely. The embodiment of the world’s elements is ever neutral, so that’s not really a surprise, but I suppose I expected that even the ever implacable and unflappable elemental life force of the planet would have taken note of something as unmistakable as the Titanomachy.  

I was disappointed, but this avenue wasn’t a dead end. The herald of the time element shared a secret with me that few alive yet know. And it’s one I’ve chosen you, out of those who share my correspondences, to read first. I trust you to keep this confidential for a time, though I can assure you I have verified it before informing you: Not all the god-beasts are dead. A few survived, especially those who either were no threat to mortalkind in the first place or lived in a secluded location where they didn’t run into mortals at the time, such as a lonely volcano or the bottom of the sea. And even the ones that died left behind descendants. Whether through the kind of reproduction similar to mortals or perhaps even the fracturing of their divine essence upon their death—in much the same way the great dragon birthed the dragon ancestry by devouring some of that essence. They are beings of incredible potential. Scions of the First Ones. Children of the Titanomachy. Titans.

I realized that titans, or the last few surviving god-beasts among the Progenitors, might have the answers hidden from the historical record. And that’s where it gets interesting—when I met my first titan, I learned that there are other ancestries, such as bogeys, living spells, and ogres, with different connections to the Titanomachy, and others, such as krakens and even the amphibious salamander people known as xotlxotl, that might genealogically be an especially exceptional sort of titan that happen to exist in large numbers and share a distinct set of features due to their specific origin and the shifts of the intervening generations.

This wasn’t just the case of a tiny window cracking open when a door closed—I had been given the key to an entire treasure vault of secrets that might expose secrets lost to myth. The gods aren’t talking about it, but why? Are they ashamed? Grieved? Or something more? Whatever the case, I will seek the truth. And when I’m done gathering all I can, the world will once again remember the titans.

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