A tabletop monster hunting rpg where you evolve your character by consuming the creatures you kill.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Lore Look Videos!
almost 5 years ago
– Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 03:32:58 AM
Hey lore-hungry hunters!
We get asked a lot about lore and setting fluff for the Warrens. A lot of that writing is still being polished, so I thought it would be fun to a short series of videos!
Each one takes a brief look at some overarching topic about the Warrens. We'll likely add to these as we go, as they're fun to do and can explore various topics. If you join us on Deep Dive streams you can also ask us questions!
And last time on our gameplay stream our hunters tracked down the blind predator Sahidarah...
See you for the final week! We're preparing for frequent (if not daily) updates as the campaign finishes!
FINAL WEEK! And a peek of the Nozoma
almost 5 years ago
– Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 03:32:08 AM
Hey hunters! We're getting close! Let's push hard this final week!
To mark the occasion, I'd like to dive into one of our late-game creatures: the Nozoma.
When your hunters first set out into the Warrens, they will be told of a great corrupted beast that lies on top of the Hollow Mountain. Its existence has been known for quite some time, but no hunter has been able to both scale the mountain and survive contact with the creature.
So, nothing too surprising so far. Really big, really difficult beast, gotchya.
Hunting a Storm God
But here's the thing. Hunting creatures with no consequences is just a fantasy perpetuated by the hunter's society. By the time your hunters will be powerful enough to climb the Hollow Mountain, they will have seen many ways in which hunting beasts can make the world worse for others. And the Nozoma is beyond that, the Nozoma is a god.
Scaling the Hollow Mountain
As you climb the Hollow Mountain, trying to not freeze from the chilled breath belched from the mountain's peak, you will find remnants of a lost society. Destroyed buildings and the occasional mummified corpse are strewn throughout the mountain pathways, curiously modern in design and practice.
Eventually, after struggling with illusory phantoms and the superheated veins of the mountain, you will come across an odd sight: a herd of a domestic breed of Maalu.
Maalu are used by humans as livestock, work animals, and even pets. But most importantly, domesticated Maalu are almost completely unable to live in the wilds. They are one of the most sure-fire signs of human society. People live up here? Is there a safe haven from the cold? Why are they-
The Onex
Almost immediately after your initial discovery, the Maalu behave erratic and aggressive, and start charging down the mountain towards your hunters. And with a keen eye, you can find why.
The Maalu each have chitinous parasites attached within their fur, digging barbed tails deep into the Maalu's skulls. The Onex parasites may be too difficult to handle for your weary party, especially as their children begin bursting from fallen Maalu.
Old Acanthus
Whether you escape from the Onex or defeat them, your hunters will soon reach the city at the peak of the Hollow Mountain... A city known as Old Acanthus, the precursor to the Acanthus you currently originate from at the base of the Hollow Mountain.
Remnants of a failed experiment litter the grounds here, with twisted bird bone and rotted feathers both spread haphazardly across the landscape and integrated cleanly into the city's architecture. The protective Ward your Acanthus benefits from was first attempted here, but was not successful. Instead the city killed its god, its avenues for survival dwindling.
The people of Old Acanthus are often masked, resembling the designs seen from forest horrors (pictures above) your hunters may have found earlier
The only thing keeping this society together is its new god, the child of the old one. Given the name Nozoma, it flies over the mountain's peak and protects its people.
The Corruption
Unfortunately, this society's fate may have already been decided. The corruption has spread here, and although its people were able to purge their own, the Nozoma had become infected. Now even the ticks within its feathers have developed into a powerful enemy: The Onex.
Hunting the thunderbird will remove the society's only defense, but it will also prevent the spread of the Corruption. Your hunters must decide how they want to handle the situation, how much effort they can expend, and how selfish they want to be. And of course the largest question, can they even kill a god?
If you want to hear more about the potential battle with the Nozoma, tune in to tonight Deep Dive Stream at 6 PM pacific! Thanks for sticking around and let's make these final days great!
We're funded!!! Stretch gooooaaaaals
almost 5 years ago
– Thu, Jul 04, 2019 at 03:30:28 AM
Oh man, what a ride! We are funded hunters! Everyone says how grateful they are with every successful kickstarter campaign, but I don't care! Thank you all so so much for giving us a chance to bring our ideas to life!
Another Interview
Before I dive into the real meat of this update, we did another interview yesterday with Dan Davenport and the #Randomworlds chat! We go into some real deep lore and mechanical bits, so be sure to check it out:
So our first stretch goal we're going to make super easy to get, as both a thank you and because its our programmer's favorite corrupted strain: the Harlequin
With a focus on deceiving people, the Harlequin strain of corruption allows your character to create an identical clone of themselves. Now there are two of you, but only one is real! Which could it possibly be?
The truth is, they're both real, and both fake. Your opponent's cannot win this stacked shell game against them. As soon as one of the "yous" is struck, it disappears, leaving the other to jeer at your opponent's mistake.
Each of the yous gets their own actions during combat, allowing you to perform an endless series of taunts and tricks while you dance around the battlefield. However, as soon as one performs a physical action (besides movement) the other you disappears, as the real you has now been revealed.
As the Harlequin progresses it learns new tricks and illusions, before becoming advancing to a Hellion. Going beyond mere tricks, theHellions really mess with opponent's heads as now attacking with a you does not make the other disappear! The clones were always real, now they're beginning to manifest.
And finally, the base ability of the next tier, the Enigma, allows you to have three yous at once! What manner of deviousness will develop with three of you running amok!
$22,500 Stretch Goal: The Barrow Mire Expansion
The Barrow Mire is a cavern of mud and bone, composed entirely of the carrion of an ancient culture that failed to protect itself from its own creations. This is the result of a ward collapse, where the protective barrier that even your hunter's home city uses is unable to maintain itself. Normally, the space inside wards is expanded, to provide room for a thriving culture in the Warrens. But if the ward ever breaks, that space collapses inward, condensing those and the objects within into a space tens of times less than what it was originally.
Now it is a breeding ground for sickly, pale life, feeding from the carrion mud and the leftover bits of compressed society.
Barrow Mire Hunt - The Babblefish
At the bottom of the muck lies the Babblefish, so called not because of the noises it makes, but rather the spluttering sounds of its victims as the Babblefish injects its tongue into their brain.
The creature has mutated a highly developed tongue, writhing with tentacles that insert and wrap around the victim's muscles, allowing them to be wielded like a puppet. However, if the special spinal tap tentacle ever pierces the skull, the victim dies as the Babblefish now has full control over their brain. The creature uses these victims as a lure, even speaking with the languages and memories they once knew.
The Babblefish is possibly one of the few truly evil beings in the wilds. Unlike many creatures of the Warrens, the Babblefish does not lure people out of necessity. Its physical strength is considerable, and its amphibious nature allows it to even crawl on land. Incredibly intelligent, it actually relishes the horrified looks on people's faces, and enjoys watching them struggle. Taming the Babblefish is not impossible, but is also a terrible, horrible idea.
After a lure has lost its usefulness, the Babblefish releases the victim with the detached tentacles still inside. The tongue tentacles are actually modified larvae, that, once separated, begin feasting and developing on their own. Some of these bodies are still able to be controlled, shambling along as the larvae inside them direct the bodies to food.
When the Babblefish itself feeds, it swallows its victims whole. An iron cage surrounds its vulnerable stomach, but as it greedily consumes more, its stomach expands and stretches out the iron segments to reveal the vulnerable sac within.
Hunters capable of killing the Babblefish will be rewarded considerably, and the most experimental might even gain use of its horrifying tongue.
Thank You
Thank you all so much! We were really hoping this day would come. We'll be doing another Q&A stream tonight at 6 pm pacific at https://www.twitch.tv/childrenofthebeast
Though honestly it might be just a sort of celebration stream, haha.
Hope you all have a wonderful week, and let's unlock more monsters!
Quick Update: Interviews & Streaming!
almost 5 years ago
– Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 05:26:02 AM
Hey everyone!
Just got back from conventioning and am busy uploading old twitch streams up on youtube. Turns out uploading hours and hours of stream footage takes forever, who knew?
In the meantime, we've been interviews by a couple cool people, go and check those out!
Tonight at 6 pm pacific we're going to be streaming that quick character creation video we promised! Was hoping to record it as a pre-recorded youtube video while travelling, but unfortunately didn't get the chance. Hope to see you there!
Uploading to Youtube / Gone to Conventions
almost 5 years ago
– Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 07:42:23 PM
Hey everybody! I (Nick Kitts) am off to a couple conventions in the pacific and mountain areas of the US, and hotel internet is spotty at best. So there won't be any live Deep Dives today or Sunday, but I'm going to be working on making some prerecorded videos and uploading them to youtube. Like a brief character creation video. The in-depth one was a little long *cough*, so having one be 15-30 minutes would be nice to have on the front page.
Also, we're going to be moving a lot of our stream recordings over to youtube so twitch doesn't destroy them all. When all that is said and done, I'll let you guys know.
