Chaosites are Everywhere!

This may seem an odd statement but bear with me.

Prior to the 'Rodian War' the population of the Courts of Chaos was well over 1 million. The Courts are very much a 'feudal' society, very akin to the city states of Itally in the 15C/16C, with the 'Houses' being at war with each other almost continually. Not only is this war 'Political', but Economic, and Military as well. Skirmishes happen all the time, as do assassination, and other shenanigans/machinations/manoeuvres.  The population is also highly stratified with the 'Elite', the Choas Lords/Logrus Masters, accounting for about 1% of the population. There are 'Other' stratifications within this imposed by the Logrus Master Suhey, who controls absolutely who gets to 'Attend' his schools and maybe eventually 'Assay' the Logrus. (If you don't know anything about this don't worry!!)

About 60% of the population falls into the general category of 'lower class' from where the bulk of the troops, militia, and household servants/labourers are drawn. It is from these that the about 60% of the Chaosite population throughout Shadow is derived.

The 'Ways' of the "Houses" of the Courts of Chaos are large multi-shadow spanning conglomerations built over thousands of years, by hacking holes in the fabric of Shadow with the Logrus, to link the Shadows together.

The Ways are full of 'holes', voids that the unwary fall into. By unwary I mean those not able to detect them, generally the 'unwashed' lower classes with little to no training, even if they may have some latent ability.

Whoa betide a high ranking family member falling into a hole, because the whole house becomes like an termites nest on fire, and every low ranking man, woman, and child, gets sent into the depths of the ways to look for them. These are the people that nobody notices when they fall through a crack in reality and end up somewhere in Shadow, but then only 10% of those that vanish in this manner actually survive.

So Choasites are everywhere, and this excludes the populations of those who fall under the 'Choasite' label even if the don't originate from the Courts themselves.

Precluding, wars, famine, industrial accidents, car crashes, assassination, the 'natural' life span of an average Choasite is between 450 and 650 years, but this poses problems in any society where the average life span is 70 years.

This means that every 70 years or so any Choasite needs to 'appear' to die, only to re-appear somewhere else in a new guise. This was relatively easy to do in a 'Medieval'/Pre-indstrial world, but as technology has progressed this has become much harder to accomplish, and requires considerably more planning to accomplish. This also means that theoretically a Chaosite of any reasonable age may have one or more generations of children, so could easily be a Grand parent, Great Grand Parent, or Great Great Grand Parent. It may also mean that they have to 'disappear' from the lives of their offspring of any generation for a number of years, before 'returning' in their new guise. In these circumstances it is usual for them to provide a means to verify who they are when they reappear.

Chaosites are biological entities and have children according to conventional biology. This means any character with Chosite heritage, i.e any that take Shapeshifting as their power, were 'concieved' and born in a conventional way, and have an Amberite father and a Choasite mother (unless you can come up with a ***really good*** reason why the reverse is the case). How much you know about either, or the manner of your conception is entirely down to you to define (at characcter creation!).

There are potentially some interesting angles around this, but if want to go with the character having no idea about their parentage then I don't have a problem with it.

The father's of all characters will be generated randomly from a list. Actually I did this the first time I ran the campaign, now I just allocate the fathers in the order I get the characters from my list. Sometimes I may select a later name if it fits better with your defined version of your conception.

One thing you need to bear in mind is that as a young baby/infant a Choasite child will adopt the form of it's parents (either 'demonic' or 'human' - note demonic here only denotes an appearance that to most humans would be considered demonic. Demons are completely different entities entirely and are *not* Choasites.)

Starting early in their 6th year and culminating by the time they are 7, they like most children will work out that there are biological differences between boys and girls, except that they will also realise, they are not like other boys and girls, either.

As this realisation dawns their ability to control their form becomes eratic to say the least. Any form of stress, emotional upset, or such like will cause them to assume their Chaosite form (demonic to human eyes).. This means between the ages of 6 and 7 they tend to miss alot of school, slightly less during pubety, when they run into similar problems but for other reasons.

Why does this add complication, imagine changing form during Johny's 7th birthday party, and the reaction from all those moms, let alone all those screaming children, and the havoc that then ensues, and then the media attention, and then ..... I'm sure you get the idea..

To avoid this Shapesifters generally have to be brought up by other shapeshifters..

Note Chaosites do not gain the ability to assume 'Primal form' until they reach about 11 years of age, which can cause further complications in its own right. Until this ability can be fully controlled any situation where a Chaosite believes/imagines their life is in danger, even if they could actually survive without resorting to Primal Form, will cause them to assume their primal form. Primal forms are either 'flight' - get away as fast as possible, or 'fight' stand and 'tank' it out and hope you survive, and are always demonic in nature!

In terms of "Normal" Chaosite Form, Chaosites with wings are relatively normal, and form part of two categories, Gargoyles (of which about 70% have wings) and Demonic (Note this just means they have forms which mimic some of the demon forms). Gargolyes and Demonic make up 2 of the 3 major divisions of Chaosites, and the bulk of the population of the Courts. Note for a 'flying form' your wing span is 5 times your height, but you still won't have 'true' flight. To take to the air you need to drop off a tall building, which then enables you to glide, and with a sufficiently strong thermal ride the thermal or equivalently strong air current. To have 'True' flight you need the 'Aquire Forms Ability' power.

Chaosites usually also have one or 2 'animal' forms. These are 'real' animals that they have studied 'in-depth' both anatomically and physically. When choosing an animal form the law of conseration of 'mass' applies, so typical forms, are big cats, big dogs, horses, large deer, bears, etc. Those who live in or near a marine environment may also opt for Porpoises, Dolphins, small whales, or Walrus/Sea lion. Note any real form is possible as long as mass is conserved so a damned big otter is possible, but would stick out like a sore thumb, and the same goes for most birds (ostritch/rhea would be the exception).

With reference to 'Primal Form', Chaosites can learn to control this themselves, it just takes a lifetime (circa 90 years). How do you learn to control something where you have no memory of what happened or how you got where you ended up? So this ability (Automatic Shapeshift/Primal Form) generally has to be taught, initially by learning to control your fear of dying so as not to assume primal form when you don't need to, and then secondly to learn to volountarily invoke it when you want to (actually the harder thing to do).

It should also be noted that Chaosites prefer the use of Magic over Technology, and the area around the Courts is generally considered highly supportive of magic. However within a 'Way' the rules of magic are almost always modified to give that 'House' and any allies an advantage, when on 'Home' turf.

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What does all this mean for a starting character?

The generic effect of this is that any Shapeshifter/Chaosite must have in some form or another, another Choasite who brought them up/acted as guardian/overseer, if for no other reason than to have 'managed/dealt with' any/all consequences from the 2 turbulanet periods in the characters early life.

Beyond this how involved with/knowledgable the character is about their Guardian/Overseer determines what else they may know both in terms of skills/background knowledge and other abilities.

At the most 'basic' level, if the character has no idea that they have another Choasite as a 'Guardian/Overseer' then they cannot have the 'Automatic Shapeshift/Primal Form' ability - they can the other 'basic' ability 'Shift features/Body Parts' as this can be self-learnt.

If they know their Guardian/Overseer is a Choasite then this restriction is removed and then other things come into play, based on who the Guardian/Overseer is, and how long they have been on a Shadow Earth. ***There are no Logrus Masters/Chaos Lords/Ruling Class Choasites on any near Shadow Earth.*** Any Chaosite Guardian has either been on the particular Shadow Earth for a mimimum of 40 years, or they were born here, to a parent that either came here earlier or was also born here. I have background histories for a couple of cases, one for a "Grand Father" that arrived in Persia, in the 1950s, then fled to America during the 'Cultural Revolution', and another for a Choasite born to a mother who's descended from a Chosite who arrived in the late 1690's. Generating other cases depends on having the right inspiration (I may have a 3rd case.. I can't remember).

The first of these elements is that they will know a little about Shadow, that it's real, that they're on a Shadow and that Shadow is vast, possibly infinite, and with the right abilities you can travel through it. Note that they will also know that a world or universe may be part of a shadow, but that a shadow is neither necessarilly a world nor a universe, may or may not support some form of life, or may be something else entirely.

That a place called the 'Courts of Chaos' exists, a vast city sprawling across shadow, populated by waring families (as above basically).A place called Amber exists ruled by a Family that the Courts have been at War with for Milennia. That time flows faster in the Courts than it does in Amber. (*Note:without either Logrus or Pattern imprint, Chaosites/Amberites do not have absolute Time Sense so cannot determine the releative time rate of a Shadow.*).

Most of this historical information is invariably wrong as is the estimated time ratio which is usually estimated at 3 to 5 times Amber (in reality the ratio is 1:10 Amber:Courts with the True Earth being 1.5 (for the purposes all Shadow Earths will be very close to this value). Anything else they may know depends on how far removed, in terms of generations/years, they are from the pregenator Chaosite for their Guardian/Overseer chain.

The character will most likely also have basic training in Psychic Warfare. They will be aware that their minds are 'stronger' than those of humans and that they can therefore psychically manipulate humans, for example to make them 'forget' events that they've witnessed or to kill them.

They will also be aware that this can be done to them, if the other party has sufficient force of will, which they won't know until they 'engage' by which point it may be too late. The two means of initiating psychic comabt are a)by looking into another persons eyes (at this can be accomplish at a limited distance), or b) by making pyhsical contact with the other party, and this has to be sustained such as by grabbing hold of them. Note also that psychic combat is in theory much faster than physical combat, so it could all be over in a couple of seconds, assuming that one party has sufficient psychic strength to gain immediate control.

Additionally they will have been taught the basic precepts of shielding their minds so as not to reveal their surface thoughts. Note also that 'Telepathy' and psychic combat are 2 entirely different things. Neither Chaostites nor Amberites have 'telepathy', at least by default. Empathy, the reading of emotional state is something else, as is being able to control your emotions, which again requires specific training to do.