History Characters / PrometheanTheCreated

[[folder: Faceless]]

** On top of everything else that goes with the Promethean condition, as Extempores, the Hollow are intimately tied up with the conditions of the Dust Bowl. Once the drought finally ends in the winter of 1939, their generative ritual ''stops working'' -- and thanks to having had a hard lesson in their former agricultural foolishness, America will never make the mistakes that lead to the Dust Bowl's creation again. [[HopeSpot While this also means that year supercharges their chances of Redemption]], any Hollow who haven't created progeny before the rains are ''trapped as Prometheans'', '''forever'''. Assuming they just don't die from the suddenly toxic (to them) Midwest. Those few who survive ultimately leave America entirely, hoping that they can still perform the generative rite in other drought & famine-afflicted countries, with their ultimate fate being unknown. Second edition gives these survivors some hope of completing their Pilgrimages, however, as ''multiplicato'' is no longer limited to creating progeny alone.

* TheSpock: They tend to focus on being "morally flexible", in that they try to always pick the most pragmatic and practical options. This doesn't mean they neglect the importance of morality, however-- after all, a Promethean who become a mindless killer would be unable to control his Pyros, and thus has a harder time hiding, while killing people is hard to cover up. But their primary focus is on making Pyros something that can be analyzed and quantified.

A few scientists or demiurge-wannabes, colletively known as Rathbens for a particularly infamous one, out there have figured out ways to create clones using Azoth. Said clones are imperfect, usually requiring regular treatment to survive, but they typically have little personnality and lack free will, making them still useful as potential soldiers, sex-dolls or workers. Unfortunately, creating them usually requires to kill the Promethean whose Azoth is collected from. For these reasons and many others, their creators will sometimes send them to find and capture Prometheans.

* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The technology used to create them requires to capture a living Promethean and harvest his Azoth, causing the unfortunate Created to be painfully liquefied.

Occasionally known by their remorseful makers as "the Unborn". [[TheUsualAdversaries The eternal dogs nipping at the heels of the Created]], Pandorans are what happens when the generative act of creating a new Promethean [[GoneHorriblyWrong fails]] -- the Pyros so used, rather than coalescing into Azoth, is contaminated and overwhelmed by [[TheCorruption Flux]]. The polluted corpse or artificial shell so used thrashes violently before one to several body parts [[BodyHorror grow limbs and eyes before tearing themselves off]], either seeking their unfortunate parent's flesh for their first meal of Pyros or fleeing to the second stage of their "life" cycle ahead of time. Either way, should the larval Pandorans survive this, they [[{{Metamorphosis}} cocoon]] themselves in an inorganic shell as Flux twists their bodies further into [[PowerUpgradingDeformation unique, monstrous mutations]]. Soon, the shell cracks, and a full-grown predator specifically adapted to hunting Prometheans for their Azoth comes out. While most are fundamentally mindless, there's a difference between "intelligent" and "cunning" -- Pandorans have enough going on upstairs to develop hunting strategies, and the [[SuperPersistentPredator focus]] to do so, as Promethean flesh is the only thing that keeps them active. If they run out of the Pyros they digest from Promethan flesh, they are forced back into the cocoon of [[SealedEvilInACan Dormancy]]... but even this is an adaptation in their favor, as the Azothic radiance released by Created carries just enough Pyros to enable them awareness, allowing them to remain in the harmless-seeming cocoon until a Promethean comes close enough to strike.

* CloningBlues: Averted in 1E. Most of them are created with little free will to even care about the fact they are clones. Played more straight in 2E, where clones have more of a mind and are fully aware of their limited lifespan.

* SuperSoldier: Averted. In the first edition, the very first Zeka was created to be a super-''worker''; mindlessly obedient, passive, and docile, but with nuclear-fueled durability and strength that would allow it to conduct heavy labor, especially the mining of radioactive elements for the Soviet nuclear programs. Naturally, it didn't work out as intended.

* ElementNumberFive: Zigzagged. Unlike Ulgans, the Zeky have no unique defining Humour to control themselves, and technically their elemental affinity is based on one of the other Lineages, reflected by their variable Bestowments. However, they do have a strong enough affinity to a specific element to create unique Wastelands and have their own unique Torment, and Radiation colors in their Humour; choler is sick and depraved, sanguine leads to extreme appetites, phlegmatic leads to morbid fascinations, melancholy to depressed self-loathing, ectoplasm to insane and erratic leaps of logic.

* ResurrectiveImmortality: Osirans possess the Bestowment of Revivification, which allows them to come back from the dead more than once.
** And in 2E, it no longer costs Experience, so they can come back as many times as they want unless someone figures out a very specific way of killing them. [[ContinuingIsPainful Of course, they have to leave a tribute for Osiris]] for every time they want to return from the River of Death...

->Disfigurements: Conglomeration. When their true self is shown to the world, the "cobbled-together" nature of a Frankenstein is made prominent, with both disparate body-parts and whatever is used to hold them together being shown in all their glory.

As one might expect, the Frankenstein Lineage requires at least two bodies for the generative act. These bodies are cut apart and then the creator binds the optimal parts together to form the desired body, infusing it with choler before exposing it to lightning. In the modern era, power stations and electrical junctions can replace the traditional lightning storm.

* DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: The choler in them makes Frankensteins HotBlooded [[{{Determinator}} Determinators]], but their very nature means they have nothing to channel all that passion ''into''. Whereas the other progenitors were created for a ''reason'' -- to be the perfect servant, the perfect lover, etc. -- Victor only created his monster to prove that he ''could''. As a consequence, many Frankensteins look for or latch onto causes they can dedicate themselves to.
* {{Foil}}: Sharing the Choleric humour means they naturally have some things in common with the Amirani, the extinct lineage that preceded them, but in many ways they couldn't be more different:

** Both have a strong sense of personal justice, and are driven to an UnstoppableRage when it's violated, but with Frankensteins this is usually triggered by personal rejection or harm against people they care for, while Amirani are spited when the world (or themselves) fails to measure up to their view of perfection.
** The original Frankenstein, and many of his descendants, was created from the best parts of many bodies to create one "perfect" whole; Amirani are created from a single body, but it's always been ruined in some way and must be re-inforced with metal.
** Both have a symbolic fire as their element in place of the real thing, since Prometheans are [[KillItWithFire vulnerable to fire]]; with Frankensteins it's electricity, with Amirani it's forged metal.

->Nicknames: Muses, Dolls, Statues, Mannequins, Paphoi (older term for males), Galataea (older term for females)

Galateids do not need more than one body to create a new member of their lineage, but they do require the body be young, physically perfect and as beautiful as possible. As a result, they sometimes resort to carefully harvesting parts from different bodies in order to assemble the most beautiful corpse they can, and are the Lineage most likely to resort to murder in order to acquire the body they need. Once they have the corpse, they soak it in a bath of wine vinegar mixed with aromatic herbs, dissolved pearls and lime sand. Once it's properly preserved, they pull it out and awaken it to the Pilgrimage with a kiss laden with Azoth-laced breath.

* CharmPerson: 2E gives them this as one of their two Endowments, allowing them to play Muse to a human-and so manipulate them into a work beneficial to the Galateid.

* FairestOfThemAll: How their Disquiet affects mortals. Galateid are beautiful, but it always eventually causes people to feel either jealousy toward them or shame for lusting after them, which eventually degenerates into hatred.

* {{Yandere}}: In Torment, a Galateid becomes completely focused on ''having'' someone who makes them happy, leading to them kidnapping said people, or displaying tendencies such as IfICantHaveYou and MurderTheHypotenuse.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Tammuz have a natural inclination to help people out. The problem is, their Disquiet manifests as people growing increasingly prone to abuse that helpfulness, until eventually the Tammuz realises that they're being manipulated into slavery. Which triggers their BerserkButton.
* {{Golem}}: All Prometheans technically are golems, of the TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons "flesh golem" style, but the Tammuz have the strongest connotations with the traditional form.

* WarriorPoet: They're distinctly linked with language in 2E, and many of them quickly come to love the nuances and metaphors. Given how one of their Bestowments still makes them extremely tough and ideal fighters, this means many of them are this.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: In Torment, their psyches revert to that of a particular spirit's, who have this naturally.
* DontThinkFeel: The ectoplasmic humour that drives Ulgans makes them favor intuition and instinct over learning.
* ElementNumberFive: The form this to the core quintet; the other Lineages have associations to classical Western elementalism and the four humors... and then you have Ulgans, who are tied to the Spirit element and the "humour" of Ectoplasm.
* EyeColourChange: Many Ulgans have their eyes change color after they animate for the first time. The most common colors are a creepy pale blue, green or jet black.

-> (1e) Cancerous or Irradiated. First edition Zeky disfigurements usually revolve around radiation damaging their skin and flesh; translucent, missing, tumorous, radiation-burned, light-consuming, or worse.
-> (2e) Nuclear Nasty. Second edition Zeky disfigurements expand their range from the above to incorporate the imagery of atomic power through a body horror lens; one has an experimental hazmat suit as her skin, with toxic gas bloating her body, another has parts from bombs and missiles integrated into his flesh, and another constantly radiates neon blue light from every orifice that can get hot enough to sear flesh or melt steel when he gets scared or angry.

Children of the Atomic Age, the Zeky are the youngest Lineage to truly proliferate in the World of Darkness. As humanity began to split the atom, the Divine Fire began to resonate, inspiring assorted souls to find ways to tap into radiation to give life rather than take it. Though a handful were born with the bombs and early nuclear testing, the true root of the Lineage is traced back to Russia in 1958, when a deranged Soviet scientist overseeing the nuclear gulag of Novaya Zemlya used a copy of the notes of Dr. Victor Frankenstein to create a "super-zeka" from the corpses of the prisoners. Implied to be inherently attuned to Flux instead of Azoth, in contrast to their kindred, the Zeky are still a rarity in the World of Darkness, but slowly grow in numbers as they spread between countries with access to nuclear energy, having made their way out of Russia and into the lands beyond.

In second edition, the Zeky have no known central origin; their history dates at least as far back as the 1920s and the popularization of radium.

* BadPowersBadPeople: Zeky tend to be monsters even by the standards of other Prometheans, and this is highlighted by the fact that their natural affinity isn't for Stannum (Refinement of Vengeance), but for Centimanus (Refinement of Flux), which most Prometheans see as, effectively, the path of pure evil. It's not, technically, but no Centimanus picks it up with any intention of becoming human, so Zeka are, by nature, misanthropes.
* BlessedWithSuck: Even by Promethean standards, these guys have it bad. They suffer constant pain from the radiation in their systems, their true forms are hideous to look at even to their own kind, their Wasteland is dangerous even to other Prometheans, and did we mention that any Zeka strong enough to make the New Dawn will probably be ''killed instantly by their own lingering radiation'' after transforming? Second edition makes things both better and worse for them; on the upside, they're not going to be left irradiated after achieving the New Dawn, but on the downside their Disquiet now irradiates those who fall prey to it (fortunately, the radiation goes away when the Disquiet does, being Azothic in nature).
* BodyHorror: Not only are Zeky amongst the most hideous-looking Prometheans when their true forms are revealed, even their mask of humanity can't totally conceal their deformities, and they always sport some notable physical defect. This can range from anything like a covering of melanomas or skin grafts to body-obscuring scars to complete hairlessness or sunburn. In second edition, their mask does completely conceal their disfigurements, but in return said disfigurements get potentially even more Cronenbergian, incorporating the trappings of atomic power.
* ElementNumberFive: Zigzagged. Unlike Ulgans, the Zeky have no unique defining Humour to control themselves, and technically their elemental affinity is based on one of the other Lineages, reflected by their variable Bestowments. However, they do have a strong enough affinity to a specific element to create unique Wastelands and have their own unique Torment, and Radiation colors their Humour; choler is sick and depraved, sanguine leads to extreme appetites, phlegmatic leads to morbid fascinations, melancholy to depressed self-loathing, ectoplasm to insane and erratic leaps of logic.
** In second edition, their defining Humour is Radiation, associated with destructive potential and extreme behavior.
* {{Foil}}: To the Frankenstein Lineage. On the surface, a Zeka and a Frankenstein have a lot in common, but the similarities are twisted when you get a closer look. Indeed, the very first Zeka to be considered "Zeka" in first edition was created by Dr. Mikhail Alessandrovich Elizrov using a copy of Frankenstein's journal.
* LovecraftianSuperpower: The powers unique to the Zeky all stem from the twisted, mutagenic powers of the radiation running through their bodies; creating zombies and becoming a living blast shadow are their Bestowments, whilst they have unparalleled affinity for the Irradiation Transmutation, which gives them powers like creating blasts of radiation, generating mind-controlling brain tumors, summoning swarms of flesh-eating cockroaches and turning bugs into irradiated giants that serve their needs. In second edition, they don't have Irradiation, instead warping and mutating the standard Transmutations.

* SuperSoldier: Averted. In first edition, the very first Zeka was created to be a super-''worker''; mindlessly obedient, passive, and docile, but with nuclear-fueled durability and strength that would allow it to conduct heavy labor, especially the mining of radioactive elements for the Soviet nuclear programs. Naturally, it didn't work out as intended.
** One sample Zeka in second edition was created to be a super-soldier, but escaped.

* WalkingWasteland: This may seem redundant, given it's universal to Prometheans, but Zeka deserve special attention; their Wasteland is so inhospitable that even other Prometheans can't survive in it; only the Zeky and the mutated insects that it spawns can live in such a place.

In first edition, the Unfleshed are not so much a Lineage as a collection of different Lineages sharing a common base route. Born of scientific advancements, the Unfleshed build upon the nature of Constructs -- Prometheans born from inanimate matter rather than corpse-flesh -- by being creatures of living metal, technological imitations of the human form that seek to attain the New Dawn. It doesn't matter if they are clockwork imitations of human forms, intelligent robots or sapient clouds of nanobots; to other Prometheans, they are all the Unfleshed.

They get upgraded to a full Lineage in second edition, absorbing much of the Constructs' concept-space to cover most Prometheans created from inanimate matter that was ''never'' meant to be human -- unlike the Constructs of other Lineages, Unfleshed were meant to be tools. This shows in both their cold, stoic personalities and tendency to be baffled by growing out of the roles their original creators made them for.

* FusionDance: Occasionally, well-fed Pandorans will become imbalanced from Flux, and end up having to temporarily devour their kindred to re-center themselves. This has absolutely no long-term difficulties for the devoured Pandorans (they de-fuse a short time later) and while they're sharing a body, the original Pandoran adds all its components' mass and power to itself, becoming an extremely powerful ''Praecipitatus''. Worse, sometimes the mind-sharing ''lasts'', especially if the ''Praecipitatus'' was already powerful-occasionally, having that much Pyros in their body plus extra brains ia all the Pandoran needs to have the sudden self-awareness that turns them into a Sublimatus.

2E antagonists-humans who have tapped into the secrets of alchemy, but due to hatred of their own weaknesses, greed, or simple misanthropy, have grown so estranged from their own humanity that they willingly imbue themselves with hazardous, destructive tinctures of the Divine Fire that [[PsychoSerum ravage their minds and bodies]] in exchange for great power. The active ingredient in many of these potions, sadly, is Vitriol -- ie, the very substance that embodies the progress Prometheans have made towards mortality and the removal of which sets them back by a significant amount. Needless to say, the Created don't like them very much.

->Associated Humour: Oil (productive, submissive, goal-oriented)

* ElementNumberFive: Zigzagged in first edition. Unlike Ulgans, the Unfleshed have no unique defining Humour to control themselves, and technically their elemental affinity is based on one of the other Lineages, reflected by their variable Bestowments, Disquiets and Torments, although they reshape their Disquiets and Torments to more closely align with the Unfleshed's "unique niche". However, they do have a strong enough affinity to a specific element to create unique Wastelands, in the form of reducing a land to an inorganic wasteland rich with electrical energy.
** In second edition, their defining Humour is oil.

Pyros is a living thing, found within everything in the world. As a result, when great disasters strike, sometimes, it results in a spontaneous outburst of Pyros, creating enough pure Azoth to spontaneously kindle a disaster victim's corpse to life. Other times, something alien got into a generative ritual of a full Lineage, or a supernatural being tried to mimic a demiurge of an existing Lineage despite their fundamental difference from humanity-but the rest was done well enough that the Azoth took as a Promethean rather than Pandorans anyway, just not in any recognizable form. These unique Prometheans are collectively known as the Extempore.

** It's even worse in 2E; Extempores don't have access to Azothic memories, a sort of GeneticMemory of how to complete the Great Work that all other Prometheans have. Each is a Lineage of exactly one, and nobody, not even other Extempores, can help them figure out what their damn Milestones are-and it may not be possible for an individual Extempore either.