You don’t suffer nightmares.
你不再为噩梦所苦。
You cause them.
你诞下噩梦。
You were normal, once. At least more than you are now. You got up and went about your daily routine like anyone else — work, school, family, friends — with the same petty complaints and ambitions as anyone else you knew, except that you never quite fit in. People might have called you a troublemaker, a tattletale, a great judge of character, or an empath. You might know the truth, though: you dream deep.
你曾一度平凡。至少要比现在的你更加平凡。你起床，像其他所有人那样踏上日常的行程——工作、学校、家庭、朋友——期间的小小烦闷与野心与其他任何人的都没有什么不同，只是你从未真正习惯它。有人会说你是个麻烦精，长舌妇，相人师，读心者。尽管你也可能知道真相：你梦的深沉。
Your dreams pull you down into horrific, dark places with unholy monsters. Maybe they swoop down upon you from above, leaving you feeling exposed and vulnerable when you wake. Perhaps you dream of drowning, of tentacles yanking you into blackened deeps, or maybe your nightmares see you wandering in a dark wood with only an occasional growl to warn you of the creature seeking your heart’s blood.
Whatever the nature of your nightmares, though, when you wake, things make sense. You sweat and your heart pounds, but you find wisdom in fear. Many people draw strength and perspective from their dreams, but yours give you purpose. In some ways, then, it was no surprise when you came face to face with a real monster. It might have been something you recognized from your dreams, or maybe not; either way, suddenly it all made sense.
The dreams are real. The monsters are out there, in the real world, walking among us. Some people — like you — visit the Primordial Dream without their help, but most do not. Most need help to learn the lessons of fear. That is why monsters are there to teach them. Answers do not come easily. Wisdom has a price. The Children of the Dark Mother exact that price from those in need of the truth and use it to feed the Horror within.
The monsters, whoever they were, offered you a chance to become one of them and guide humanity to hard-fought wisdom. You accepted; that night, you were Devoured. When you awoke the next morning, you were no longer human…but oh, the lessons you now have to teach.
Overview
In Beast: The Primordial, you play one of the Children, a human being whose soul has been replaced by one of the great monsters of legend: dragons, gryphons, giants, kraken, and worse. You became one of the Children when another Beast entered your dreams and Devoured your soul. In that moment of oblivion, your soul became the monster. Beasts are not born, but reborn, Begotten in a moment of terror by one of the Children of the Dark Mother. This is the life of the Children: preying on humanity enough to feed the Horror within, teaching people to listen to their nightmares and take wisdom from loss and fear, tending their Lairs as they guard their territory, and moving freely between mortal society and supernatural cultures as legends in both.
Even before the Devouring, you had a connection to the Primordial Dream. All your life you’ve had nightmares, the classic dreams so common to human nature. Maybe the dreams were varied, maybe it was one recurring nightmare with different details. Hunted by a relentless predator. Dragged into the murky depths. Dropped from great heights. Held under the thumb of something huge and powerful. Or simply the inescapable dread that comes from knowing that some nameless, shapeless thing out there in the dark was stalking you. It was nothing human beings haven’t suffered since the dawn of civilization, but you listened to the dreams. You woke up following these visions knowing how they related to you and your life. The lesson wasn’t always pleasant; often it was painful and carried loss with it. You almost always knew, though, how to incorporate the dream into your life.
At first you didn’t know how they found you or why they chose you, but you soon learned the truth. The world has grown too crowded; human settlements have grown too large. People’s minds are overloaded, and they can’t hear the lessons the Primordial Dream teaches. Other creatures of darkness can teach these lessons, but it isn’t in their nature to do so; most of them don’t know how. The Dark Mother, therefore, reaches into the minds of those who listen; these people are the ones marked for Devouring.
As one of these people, you were offered a choice: lose your soul, but gain a higher purpose and feast deeply on the fears of humanity…or remain a dreamer. You chose to be a Beast. After it was done, you were welcome into a brood.
Discovering one’s true Family can be traumatic, but for many of the Children, it’s a profound relief. They finally understand the reason for the dreams that have been driving them for their whole lives. They have the chance to grant others a lesson from pain and fear, to give people a moment of catharsis. And, of course, that moment of catharsis feeds the Horror inside the Beast. Everyone wins. Not every Beast is a good teacher, however. Some succumb to bitterness, or revel in the power the Horror provides, and descend into sadism and brutality. Some of them listen too closely to their Horrors; a bad idea when all a Horror wants is to feed.
Every Beast feeds on fear: the greater and more widespread the fear, the greater the meal. The Begotten regard themselves as teachers, but the truth is that they must choose the lessons they impart wisely. A Beast who teaches nothing and instills fear just for the sake of the feast reflects badly on all Children, bringing the wrong kind of attention to them. Some Beasts associate with other supernatural beings, learning how they interact with humanity and helping them to teach their own lessons, if they are willing. Such Children must be careful, though; these creatures have their own societies, mores, and agendas. It is all too easy for a Beast to become enamored of their cousins’ ways of life and forget their own role in the World of Darkness.
