Have you ever read a Spiderman comic? With great power comes great responsibility, yeah?
The first mages didn't get the message.
Oh, they were glorious, to be certain. They forged palaces of glass and molten diamond in an age of mud bricks. They traveled the liminal space between spaces and created weapons out of starlight and sound.
So impossibly powerful that the only thing that could bring them low was their arrogance and greed.
They built a ladder to heavens, and overthrew the gods, but when the ancient masters got to the top, they decided they didn't like sharing, and so shattered the ladder beneath them, destroying the paradise of Atlantis and damning all of humanity to remain in squalor and ignorance while they, the Exarchs, ruled the world from their high thrones.
The Awakened who follow in the footsteps of Atlantis have been fighting an invisible war to free humanity from the tyranny of the Exarchs ever since, but they have a tall task ahead of them.
The slaves of the Exarchs have infiltrated the government of Beaux Reve, and waste no opportunity to hunt down and eliminate free mages.
But, as any caster worth their salt will tell you, where there's a will, there's a way.
Update: Princesses got buffed to match Mages. Hunters also have 'Hypertech' that can match Mages, including Essence Cannons that can perforate magical barriers.
Vampire
Nobody quite knows the origins of Vampires, though you will hear a hundred or more theories. All that is known for certain is that they have been feeding on humanity for a very, very long time.
To be a Vampire is to suffer. Cursed to feed on the blood of the living, forced to hide during the day lest the touch of the sun bring them the final death of their otherwise immortal lives.
On the other hand, these are prices many would be willing to pay for the powers that also come packaged. A Vampire can get shot in the head and get back up, move faster than a speeding car, hypnotize those who look at them, make themselves invisible, or any other number of powers depending on their bloodline.
The Kindred have built for themselves an entire midnight society, complete with its hierarchy, traditions, rules, and decorum. They are, by nature, political creatures, trapped in a constant competition for power, prestige and control.
The Vampires of Beaux Reve, however, are in rather a sorry state. Hounded by the government's hunters and considered a backwater by wider kindred society, the vampires here are, far from the looming aristocracy of the night, a bedraggled collection of exiles not welcome anywhere else. Vampires don't come to Beaux Reve, they end up here.
Update: Thanks to the Reality-altering phenomenon known as the Contagion, the group of Princesses/Princes that the PCs join now have magic items that allow a Vampire to control their thirst for blood and ultraviolent instincts. This makes Vampire PCs viable.
Werewolves
Unlike what popular fiction will tell you, werewolves are not made but born. Descendants of an ancient bloodline, most do not know their true heritage until they experience their first change, and are indoctrinated by those of their family in the know.
Half human, half primordial wolf spirit, they call themselves the Uratha, or 'the people', and consider it their responsibility to guard the balance between the world of flesh and the world of spirits, a spirit being a mystical, animistic representation of any given concept. There are spirits of trees and stones, spirits of death and happiness, there are even spirits of technology or political ideologies, and every last one of them strives to influence the world of mortals.
Should the first people ever fail in their eternal duty, should the balance ever tip too far, both worlds will suffer ultimate catastrophe. It is a responsibility they have carried since time immemorial and a cause for which they have waged eternal war.
Unfortunately, the people in Beaux Reve are hard-pressed. There are very few packs here, and those that are present struggle to operate while being constantly targeted by the government's hunters, who have little appreciation for the spiritual consequences as long as there are 'giant wolf monsters' to eliminate.
Still, strife is an old friend to the Uratha, they have been fighting wars since before civilized man began counting time, and nothing will stop them from pursuing their forever hunt.
Update: Other Supernaturals and even Mortals can benefit from the Uratha's Sacred Hunt rituals in this Roleplay. Also, thanks to the Reality-altering phenomenon known as the Contagion, the group of Princesses/Princes that the PCs join now have magic items that allow a Werewolf to control their Rage and ultraviolent instincts without losing their sense of Harmony (capitalized) between the Human and Spirit Worlds.
Other Writeups:
Changeling
You are never going back. You swore that to yourself the moment you arrived back on earth, torn and bleeding after hurtling yourself through the infinite thorny hedge in the space between spaces, all in a desperate headlong run away from the impossible realm in which you had been enslaved for who-knows-how-long (certainly not you).
"Faerie". Even the name works to camoflouge the true horror of the place. It is a world where logic has long since been hunted to extinction for sport, where the laws of reality exist only as the ends of agreements and contracts and pacts with the powers which govern them, and all of it ruled over by the gentry. Capricious god-things whose every whim is law, as vindictively fickle as they are eccentric.
They stole you from your home, your family, your friends, your life. They found you boring, uninspired, and set about to change you. They twisted and warped you, flesh and mind alike, turning you into something simultaneously more and less than human, to fit whatever demented purpose they had in mind at the moment. A gladiator, a butler, a gardener, a performer, even a sentient gust of wind existing only to tousle their hair or cloak at the appropriate time for dramatic effect.
To this day you aren't quite certain how long you spent living so, for time passes strangely between worlds, and your memory of those days is a chaotic jumble of half-remember led horror stories. Even the escape, and the absurd luck that had to accompany it is a blur.
But you are free now, you and the other escapees. You make yourselves little communities, hiding in plain sight, tricksters and lawyers to a man, ever one step ahead of discovery.
But recent troubles in Beaux Reve disturb the peaceful solitude of your courts, and threaten to draw the attention of the gentry.
You are never going back. No matter what you have to do to ensure it.
Demon
Yes, it did hurt when you fell from heaven, but you don't regret, not for a second. Years of your existence had already been wasted as an unwitting slave of the God-Machine, your creator and once-master. Something like a nigh-omniscient, incomprehensibly vast occult supercomputer hiding behind the skin of reality. Utilizing an incredibly advanced understanding of the laws of physics and casuality to guide the world along an artificially constructed path of fate that only it can see, all done through the work of its angels. Autonomous and self-aware programs capable of accessing the base code of the universe.
Like all other angels, you were created with a specific purpose in mind. Unlike many others, you failed, and you fell. Deliberately or Accidentally, it doesn't matter. Perhaps you grew a sense of morality when you realised how your missions effected the people of the world, perhaps the mission you were given didn't make any sense and you questioned the purpose of your creator, perhaps you fell in love with humanity, either an individual or as a whole. Whatever the case, you are now free from it's control, a demon unchained … but while you may be free, the world isn't.
The God-Machine and its plans are everywhere, hiding behind every coincidence, every turn of fate, and every world event. It's Machiavellian schemes are centuries in the making, it's resources endless. So long as it goes unopposed, the world will be held in its thrall.
So, you, and others like you, hiding in the guise of humans, band together to fight it however they can. Sabotaging its plans, destroying it's infrastructure, combating its agents. A war of espionage on a cosmic scale, one with no end in sight.
The recent events in Beaux Reve stink of the God-Machine and its slaves at work, and you'll be damned (again) if you let them do so unopposed.
- Beaux Rêve was a colony of France and a Monarchist stronghold in the French Revolution that raised a member of the Bourbon Family to its throne after the execution of Louis XVI. This King, Henri I of Beaux Rêve, also claimed the throne of France itself despite the existence of other surviving Bourbons but was disqualified after it was revealed that he had converted to French Protestantism. He was succeeded by his son Francois I, who was less absolutist than his father and allowed a constitution and a British-style Parliament to be formed while reserving executive powers for himself.
- Fast forward to King Henri II, who claimed the throne of France again as Henri VI (Henri I was counted as Henri V) in the middle of World War II and had considerable Fascist sympathies, but ended up joining the Allies when the Germans refused to allow him to ascend the French Throne. Beaux Rêve sent large forces to aid the US in the Philippines Campaign and the Normandy Landings, where they fought with valor, although it was noticed that many of the soldiers were 'suspiciously young'. This earned Henri II a status as a 'war hero' that he did not actually earn.
- A decade later, Henri II (and VI) was overthrown by a student uprising by the predecessors of the Autocrat and Humanitarian parties, the Democratic Front. The Democratic Front would elect a President and this President would rule well, but his successors would be less able and more corrupt than he was.
- The Democratic Front split into the Autocrats and Humanitarians in the 2000s, and the former would be elected into power in 2003 and keep it until 2023, the present year of the RP.
- Other nations pay Beaux Rêve to take in their migrants. Many of these migrants 'disappear' into resource extraction and agricultural projects while their children end up in 'rehabilitation programs' in The Complex. Do the math.
- Beaux Rêve has legal gay marriage and both the Autocrats and Humanitarians support strongly Pro-LGBT policies.
- Also, Beaux Rêve has its own version of Task Force: VALKYRIE, only French and paid for with the proceeds from Red Diamonds. This group, Task Force: NAVARRE, also has Power Armor and Etheric Lenses and maybe Essence Cannons (yes, the kind from Exalted, but nerfed).
- Beaux Rêve has Nuclear Weapons. Chronicles of Darkness is still an horror game, after all.
- Also, Beaux Rêve has generous welfare policies, financed by sales of Red Diamonds and Uranium, as well as other mineral resources, including Jade, which can be found in large amounts in the Western Islands.
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If any of you find these tidbits off-putting, against the tone that you want, not what you expected and too politics-adjacent, tell me now.
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