Soulthieves: species and month change.

[joshksingh]

This is fairly trivial, but it's done, so I need to mentally rehearse it

Comments

[joshksingh]

Yes, I found the beliefs about coyotes and jackals have some common ground. I considered the trickster aspect, and I'm realizing now it can even sort of fit since Martes deals in necromancy, reanimation and all that, which abstractly seems in a similar vein. In-universe coyotes will be more associated with scavenging, opportunism and pack mentality like jackals would've been - abstractly symbolic of disease and strife - which readily fits the necromancer's exploitative mindset. Martes's clerics aim to master death and the dead, gaining power by making contact with what they perceive to be the fundamental nature of reality, specifically the immutable triumph of mortality and the futile nature of life; in fact, necromancers often dream of becoming liches themselves so they can most closely embrace death while retaining all their power over magic and over undead minions. It's this simultaneous selfishness and commitment to a greater reality that I want to capture in the totem. As far as in-game entities go, coyotes definitely come close

[joshksingh]

Definitely good ideas. Tribesfolk could easily come into conflict with any of those people as well. Food is definitely always a jumping-off point for tensions.

[joshksingh]

As far as Island lore goes, Pivona's totem, the Lemur, is sort of a trickster. But the emphasis there is on the animal's deftness and wits, its association with lying and theft being a logical consequence as much as its association with artisanship. None of the totems strongly express the trickster ethos, I guess

[joshksingh]

The snail shell is something that hadn't even occurred to me. Seems like it could become an easy armour item like a helmet, depending on how giant they actually are. If I wanted to be really goofy, I could even suppose that giant snails produce and carry a stock of darts that'll drop when you defeat them, so you could pick them up and use them yourself. Haha. Cool ideas. Of course, neither the shell nor darts would always drop since you might destroy them in the fight, so that provides a little balance. I don't imagine them being super-amazing items anyway, but I could see them being helpful in the early game. Thanks for pointing out the shell. It could be treated like the pangolin scale armour item I already have, which is essentially the whole hide of a big pangolin that you can wear as is. The drop rate on that would have to be considerably lower, though, since it's one of the better armours.