I’ve volunteered to run a Promethean game for my RPG group as our regular  storyteller got a little worn out after running game for a year.  That’s rough to do.  And the Storyteller System games is a tough rule set to keep in your head.  I’ve run games before and so I was happy to do it.  Actually, I’m certain that everyone else in the group has run, but I volunteered.

Promethean is a fun game and very different within the Chronicles of Darkness series.  It’s the only one that can have a happy ending.  The player characters are artificial life forms in the style of Frankenstein’s monster.  They’re created from dead, or never living, matter and, through “the divine fire”, made life.  From that point they’re on a quest to become mortal.

It allows for a really simple and immersive experience.  The characters, over the course of the chronicle, they need to learn what it is to be human.  It’s the simple things like making a friend or creating original art.  Things we take for granted.  It’s really wonderful, they’re a blank slate.

Part of that blank slate is that they usually come into the world in horrible ways.  For another story I had created a character that was a Promethean to wage war against the owners of the plantation he was created on; from pieces of deceased slaves.

As I run the game I’m slowly incorporating elements of the world so that the players and I don’t have to immediately understand the entirety of the world.  Since this is also a horror game, I decided to write up part of the biography for that old character, called his “ramble”, and presented it to the characters.  Enjoy.

I remember not just the beginning. But before the beginning.

I remember the man lashing my own kin to the tree and unfurling the whip. I remember thunder erupting from his hand. Over and over and over. My kin was strong from a life time of hunting in his homeland. And the rope was poorly tied. He might have broken free, but not for the creature. The creature held the rope tight as my kin suffered.

When next my kin was tied to the tree it was by the neck and the creature held his feet. The creature quieted the screams of my kin as they were ravaged. My kin were but babes, torn from the breast of their mothers. Skulls smashed against the stone.

I saw it all. And for all of it the creature was there.

Before my eyes, one became ten became a hundred became a thousand. They died screaming. For all of it the creature was there.

And then it became my turn. The thunder exploded around me. Through me. Again and again. And my eyes opened and I saw her. A tiny little woman, looking of my kin, with her hand raised. I couldn't breath and she saw me panic. She stayed her hand and two of my kin rushed over and cut me down.

And that was how I began.