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Wraeththu

...however, this should not be perceived as homosexuality

And we're on to the Introduction!

Introduction

Alright, so we're playing Hara, who are both male and female in one body, something which should "not be perceived as homosexuality," in case anyone ever thought this might be GAY or something. Sex is called "aruna," and is essential to staying alive. We're told we can "breeze over" the details, though, unless it's really important who we're fucking and where. However, this is just a ruse so the GM can ease us into the really creepy shit. Let me paste a roleplaying guide from deeper in the book...

Aruna and the Single Gamer posted:

Unfortunately, sex and sexuality are, for many people, a very embarrassing subject, and not one they really want to discuss while doing a hobby, especially when their mother may be in the next room. However, in a game of Wraeththu the subject must be broached somehow, after all the characters' lives quite literally may depend on it.

In Wraeththu you cannot ignore the whole aspect of character sexuality.

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Love triangles and dark passionate pasts are a staple of fiction, and can only improve your game.

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Most of our time in the real world is taken up with the pursuit of love and sex, so how can our characters be so ambivalent towards such issues? In most other role-playing games such issues are optional, but in Wraeththu they are essential.

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In fact, one of the things that may have drawn your players to Wraeththu is the unique opportunity for such a role-playing experience.

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As a storyteller you can assume the characters are taking Aruna with each other, simply as often as they have to. You still need to actually mention what is going on though, not ignore the act completely. Simply say "So once in the inn you all take Aruna and wake up the next morning."

(PURPLEXVI'S EXPLANATION: Aruna = Wraeththu boning, Wraeththu need to get their alien/mutant boners on or they die.)

With everyone aware that Aruna is going on, it becomes easier to take the next step.

When you are comfortable, you can move to the second level. Here you ask the characters to pick partners for Aruna. They still need only explain who and when rather than how and what they like. However, sex and relationships are now part of the game.

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All characters need to do at this stage is specify which character(s) they are taking Aruna with, and(perhaps more importantly) who they are not. This develops relationships in the game as well as sex.

The third level brings more role-play into the activities mentioned above. Now it isn't enough to say what is going on, now you must describe it as well. It is essential at this point for characters to take on Aruna as an essential part of playing their characters. At this point you can bring sex magic into the mix as well.

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By now the players should feel comfortable with theri characters taking Aruna and describing the way they like to do such things. Are they gentle or harsh? Do they prefer Soume or Ouana? (PURPLEXVI'S NOTE: This is basically "DOES YOUR SEA ANEMONE BECOME A PROUD SCHLONG OR A HORRIFYING PSEUDO-VAGINA?"). Is Aruna like an itch they like to scratch or a sacred spiritual union? Do they like it a lot, or not so much, and how do they treat their partners afterwards?

The last level allows you to be as graphic as you like. You can now bring in elements such as pelki(PURPLEXVI'S NOTE: Rape. When raping humans, Wraeththu sex sludge kills 'em) and all the darker sides of sex and Aruna. This need not be restricted to the NPCs either. Players should feel free to create quite nasty or sexually predatory characters, if they so desire. The storyteller is now able to bring in NPCs designed purely for sexual storylines and adventures. Such NPCs can act as sexual foils for characters, forming jealousies and love triangles in established relationships.

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Don't get fixated on sex, as it can easily dominate a game.

And then the game tries to sell us the original Wraeththu books. Nice try, but no cigar.

Now, I have to say, the first subsection "What is Roleplaying?" is actually pretty well-written. It's actually formulated in a way that gets the point across quite well to anyone who's never touched the hobby before. "How Do I Role-Play?" is also surprisingly well-written, emphasizing various social aspects like not constantly trying to hog the spotlight, and the fact that a character doesn't have to be perfect and infallible to be interesting. Even the section on how to be a good GM is actually kind of great! It advises against railroading aggressively, against being too easy or too harsh on the players, suggests what volume of preparation is handy...

RAILROADING BAD posted:

Another aspect to bear in mind is that only an incompetent Storyteller plans the plot "to a tee" and then religiously sticks to it, without giving the players a chance to explore other avenues. If you want your players to keep to the plot, then give them a good reason to and don't force them into it. If you insist, for example, that they go to Location X, then Location Y, without doing anything else, you will probably end up with rebellious players, whose characters just sit there doing nothing or perform anarchic or insane acts out of boredom.

Even in much better games, this is some advice I've rarely, if ever, seen pop up, yet something that a lot of GM's could stand to learn from.

Live Action posted:

Due to the nature of the game, we do not suggest any players attempt to act out aspects of Inception or aruna. The Wraeththu are an inhuman race, the players are human. These acts should be confined to the imagination.

In order to not get too praise-y, I want to point out that the miserably bad art still continues for this section.

Some of it is flamboyantly hilarious, other bits are just sorta-okay

But the good advice comes to an end soon enough and we start hitting stuff about the actual gameworld.

quote:

It is the end of the world as we know it. Much has changed in the past decade and continues to do so. The greater part of human society has disintegrated, and the up-and-coming Wraeththu have set up small, feudal governments in the areas they control. Some Wraeththu have tried to develop different forms of government, taking ideas from the human administrations of past centuries and using them to suit their political aims.

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Now imagine a world that has had enough of human depredation and, like any organism, desires only to rid itself of troublesome parasites. A few well-placed natural disasters have drastically changed the face of the planet. Weather systems have mutated and some major rivers now flow in new directions.

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Over the last ten years, the human population has dropped by a staggering 50 percent, and is still dropping, with no hope of reverse. Even so, because they are a resilient species, groups of humans still strive to survive. In their desperation, and with a growing awareness of how dire their situation really is, many have returned to a more harmonious existence with the earth. Unfortunately, this about-face has come far too late. Other humans, victims of despair, have given up hope for humanity and simply roam the lands like lawless bandits.

Then we get to the Wraeththu. Apparently they popped up as soon as humanity started declining, so far with no real explanation. Androgynous, as we know, slim and fragile-looking, as we know, deadly warriors, "mystics and seers of great power." They poison humans with their blood to turn them into similar creatures, and apparently only a few of them have so far figured out how their genitals can be used to reproduce sexually.

Apparently they mostly "Incept" people who already hate humanity, meaning that most Wraeththu use their new superpowers to get revenge on a species they feel has bullied them since birth. Predictably, most humans blame the Wraeththu for all the shit that's going down and hate them. I think I'd hate these assholes, too.

So what does the world look like aside from this? Apparently the "Great Western Continent" is now called Megalithica and is under the boot of a human military government. The Wraeththu, on the other hand, bailed on this place pretty fast, moving east to the "Island of Alba Sulh"(the UK, I think) and then "moved east to the continent." Apparently Europe got more fucked than the US by all that went down and we were easier prey for the Wraeththu.

Interestingly enough, the Wraeththu are described as kind of horrendous, their behavior is called "raping cities and towns for resources and souls." And it seems like they don't really have any clue of their origin, either. Oh and apparently the Wraeththu can travel to other dimensions, too, so there's that. Props to the book, though, for suggesting that it's possible to play humans fighting against the Wraeththu as well, which would actually be kind of interesting! You've got this inhuman plague of post-human creatures, kidnapping people, spreading their way through the bowels of cities, lurking on the outskirts of settlements. Individually they're stronger than people, but a well-coordinated pack of humans can still take them down.

The Wraeththu

"The origins of Wraeththu are unclear, in the same way that human evolution is unclear." I thought we had a pretty good idea of wherefrom humans evolved? At any rate, this chapter is about the Wraeththu(as if the title wasn't a big clue). Apparently they're a big enough leap that natural evolution is completely out of the question, and the book waffles a bit on the subject, saying they could be aaaaaaaliens or a genetic experiment gone wrong. No clue whether there is a FOR GM'S ONLY section later that tells us which it is.

The book then instantly blows all goodwill left over from the decent "how to GM"-section by launching into a description of Wraeththu genitals.

MONSTER DONGS posted:

Wraeththu are creatures with both Ouana and Soume sexual organs, these being their equivalents to female and male genitalia.

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Most creatures that use sexual reproduction to continue their species are unable to control impregnation naturally. Some believe that Wraeththu could be sterile, and therefore need no control. They maintain the species via the act of Inception, whereby Wraeththu blood is transfused into a human with a Naqi(PurpleXVI's Note: Fancy word for "a goddamn sharp knife.") and the recipient undergoes vast physical, mental and spiritual changes. These changes are then sealed by aruna, the harish term for sexual intercourse.

And then paragraph upon paragraph of how the Hara/Wraeththu are far superior to humans. They're faster, stronger, have better health, more efficient immune and digestive systems, heal faster, have more stable minds, no sexual anxieties or worries, and they're smarter, too. Their only real downside is that if they don't get their monster boners on for long enough, they start becoming mentally unstable and irritable. Oh and they also have telekinesis, pyrokinesis and telepathy. "We could speculate that the harish state of androgyny has contributed greatly to their enhanced mental condition." Then it caps the section by saying that it's KINDA POSSIBLE that humans could get psychic powers, too.

Let me just interrupt here, though, and say, that as much as I respect that FANTASY SHIT BE ALL WEIRD YO, this offends my understanding of psychology. I imagine that if you just had an unwanted, forced sex change operation performed on you, you would probably be a mental wreck for a while, even taking into account the superpowers you got in the bargain. Oh and let's not forget that everyone you ever liked or cared about will probably consider you a monster now, and that even if you "Incepted" them so they could join you, there's every chance it'd just kill them(in the prologue section, I think it was something like 2 out of 20 that survived the process).

On the subject of pronouns, we learn that apparently the Wraeththu themselves use "Har" as a pronoun, to the point of jamming it into other words. "Everyhar," "anyhar," "somehar" are just examples(everyone, anyone, someone). The same section also says that the psyche and memories are essentially unchanged after being Incepted, further bringing into focus the point that WHO THE FUCK WOULD NOT BE A PANICKY WRECK AFTER THAT EXPERIENCE? The section is also written in first-person by a Wraeththu who, hilariously enough, comments that he thinks the weird new pronouns are bullshit and "abominations of language."

I'm also not inlining it, but there's STILL more of the art, but it's just the same goddamn shit. Pale, ugly, badly-drawn androgynes looking confused or determined about things.

Inception

So, the Wraeththu are total cockbaskets, because as soon as someone's been Incepted, they usually force him or her to say that they totally let it happen of their own free will, despite the fact that kidnappings and such were involved in 99% of all cases. Then we get some stupid words! Forale: The fast before Inception! Harhune: The infection with Bishie Herpes! Althaia: The part where your cock falls off, i.e. the actual mutation process!

Also the Wraeththu have stupid names. Just on this page alone: Swithe Tresillian, Calambus Mint, Zackary Raven Black, Swooner har Sulh, Malakess har Sulh.

This subsection is mostly just fluff about how each Wraeththu group goes about infecting people(because OF COURSE they have wacky themed clans). The Uigenne are a tribe who cut people up for inception, the Varr are SCIENCE about it, the Colurastes choose children for Inception and happily fuck them afterwards, and presumably there are other weird-ass methods that aren't elaborated on just yet.

Wraeththu Physiology

More on how Wraeththu are totally better than humans! None of them are shorter than 5'8", they've got no body or facial hair, they lose all facial asymmetry, being Incepted counters baldness, your teeth become perfect, sometimes your skin colour becomes purple or gold, and sometimes your hair becomes anime-coloured. And supposedly one tribe even grows tails.

Agility: Far more. Muscles: Far better. Joints: Even more better.

You can't become fat, drugs never have any hangovers or side-effects related to them, poisons can't hurt you in 99% of all cases. You have magical healing and... even though earlier sections said Wraeththu were far more mentally stable than humans, apparently NOW it decides to state that yes, people can actually get mentally fucked up by the whole transformation misery. But luckily, Magical Wraeththu Healing can cure mental illnesses, too!

All senses are better, and you have super-awesome sixth and seventh senses and shit! But gasp, unlike other things, it's actually possible for Wraeththu to have flawed senses, oh my GOD. Aging causes no damage, and Wraeththu live a baseline of around 150 years or so.

DNA-wise, apparently Wraeththu have an extra base pair, K and L in addition to GATC. But apparently they have LESS genetic information because all the redundant parts of the genome have been flushed out? Also the "ribosome" has become more complex, but none of this has been elaborated on, possibly because the authors didn't know jack shit about science.

Are you impressed by how impossibly awesome these bishies are yet? I hope not, because the entire book is about that! Next time, even more bishies and the world they live in!

~PurpleXVI

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