Thursday, 10 October 2019

Yekinary Spirits

This post revolves around a new monster based mainly on Siberian pregnancy/birth folklore. The creature is used as the base material for painting with (very) broad brushstrokes a rough setting with taiga and steppe elements. A couple of tables are thrown in, along with three unusual items (a table with magical coins connected to one of the possible spirit habitations is bound to appear in the immediate future).


As far as the raw materials are concerned, they are the following four beliefs of indigenous Siberian people, all extracted from Aboriginal Siberia:

-A woman wishing to become pregnant should eat spiders. (Kamchadal people)
-A child born in storm must be killed (Kamchadal people)
-Two pregnant women should not be allowed to inhabit the same house, in case the two unborn children communicate and decide which mother should die. (Yukaghir people)
-Souls destined to be newborn children are hanging from the crossbeams of a god’s house. (Koryak people)

as well as the Arachne and Paris’ judgment myths of ancient Greece.


3 comments:

  1. Awesome mythological synthesis for very gameable material

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  2. Hey I took the time to read this. It is very cool, has a lot of flavor, unusual, weird and a bit scary. That's gold.
    BUT
    from a how-do-I-use-this-in-an-actual-gaming-situation this is way to wordy, layed out in too much pages. The content is awesome, but unless I learn it by heart before I go, how am I suppose to use that as reference in the middle of a game? It would also help with getting people to read the stuff when you want to share.
    This is a really good material you've got there, but it's a long way to go to make it actual game material.
    Compress idea, reduce words, get rid of the non-enssential, emphasize what is ensential, lay out this in ways you can access information quickly.
    Think of this article : http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2018/03/rpg-books-as-fiction.html

    But yeah once again, awesome stuff, very evocative, definitly gonna print some memories into players. Cheers.

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    Replies
    1. Hey, thanks for taking the time to read it all, it definitely is lengthy! As for the remarks, I will mostly agree with you, the sheer length was something I had in mind while finalising the post. I see it more as a collection of ideas about a mini-setting, that will inspire the GM to build and develop upon, rather than something to be playable out of the box (obviously). I tried to cut things (imagine), but still I recognize that it is a lot to rummage through. More bullet points and fat trimming may do the trick. Thanks again for the comment and for the link!

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