The Path of the Devourer

The Path of the Devourer is a new Dark Communion path and the first of the new paths that I created. It focuses on the primal nature of the Id, creating a connection between the user and the wilderness, helping the Avatar become an apex predator.  It also fixates him on what he wants: he becomes a petty tyrant of his own domain who revels in wealth and food.




The Path of the Devourer was not only the first of the new paths, but created the impetus for new paths.  When someone complained about lacking a "druid" archetype, I realized I had no paths for the wilderness.  I also realized that I was missing a rather key element of Dark Communion: greed.

For "wilderness paths," I have a few solutions.  If you page through the revisions to Communion, you'll notice more references to beasts and wild places.  We already had some elements in place: the Other gives us our shapeshifters and the Exiled Master is a lord of desolate wastes.  But the Id is probably the best "place" for connection to animals, as one can argue that animals (or at least animalistic urges) are ruled by the Id, that Super-Ego is something one acquires from civilization rather than instinct, and Dark Communion was the only one that lacked any real path for that, so I wanted to explore a more explicitly primal, bestial path.

Second, the whole point of Dark Communion is to "get you what you want."  Want a cookie? Have a cookie.  A kid have a nicer toy than you do? Go take it.  That girl not returning your calls? Dark Communion can change that!  Dark Communion gets you what you want and nothing can be more primal a route to that than sheer greed.

What results is a bit of an odd-ball that left me wondering if it had room to fit.  It has some of the lechery and unrestrained appetites of the Beautiful Fool, but is possessive where she just wants to have fun.  It has the primal, feral savagery of the Rebellious Beast, but where that seeks to destroy, the Devourer focuses on territoriality.  Like the Mystical Tyrant, it seeks dominion, but at the end of the day, the Tyrant seeks dominion to enact his vision, while the Hungry Beast just wants to ensure that he has all the toys: the Tyrant wants all your money to pay for his grand projects, while the Devourer wants all your money so he can swim in a sea of gold and glare at you from atop the pile.

Furthermore, a master of business acumen and a beast might seem like an odd combination, but the more I played with it, the more I realized they were a natural fit.  We tend to depict successful business men in bestial terms: "fat cat" bankers "hog" all the money which they acquired through "predatory" practices.  We tend to think of wealthy people in selfish terms, and we tend to depict that selfishness as bestial.  I think that's because on some level, we're all fighting over the same bones and scraps, and they've mastered their territory, conquered it and enforced that power.  They are alphas, apex predators, kings of petty potentates.Where the Mystical Tyrant has imperial ambitions, the Devourer is happy to have enough territory to ensure that his needs are satiated: he just wants a table that never empties, access to fertile youths, and the safety that he knows he'll never be seriously threatened... and any threat to his stuff is a threat to him.

Personally, this is my favorite path.  I've always been fond of wolves (and you'll have to forgive the Greater Avatar being a straight-up werewolf; you're free to reskin it a bit, but it should feel familiar and like a common predator) and they remind me of crime bosses and gang-lords, which are some of my favorite bad guys.  Someone suggested that they're the "Path of the Slavers," and I must admit, the name "Devourer" first popped up as some dark being the Slavers could worship, and I think if they had any addition to the Divine Masks, it would be this one, but I think the appeal of such a dark god, the god who ensures that you have wealth and power, as long as you're willing to make a deal with it, would be a popular one across the Umbral Rim, especially since the collapse of the Mystical Tyranny.

I sometimes comment on the gender I choose to describe a role, and I chose the masculine here because describing such a path in feminine terms might feel unflattering to women, and we tend to see cut-throat, greedy businessmen in masculine terms.  That said, there's definitely room for the feminine here.  Many of your old fairy-tales that include greedy, hungry characters tend to have them as witches.  These witches tend to engage in cannibalism, which might suggest they belong more to the Path of the Other than the Path of the Devourer, but they tend to be deeply tied to wild places, and tend to bring success with wealth and make fairytale wagers, all of which fit the Devourer well.

Dark Communion has a few more paths, including the Prodigal Knight and the Slave, both of which I'll get to eventually; they're more strongly tied to the Mystical Tyrant as paths created by their reality-warping Transcendent Principles rather than "natural" Paths (though, some might argue, these paths were discovered by the Cult of the Mystical Tyrant). One path I considered and, if I'm honest, I consider still, is the Path of the Coward or the Path of the Sniveling Minion.  The last real "vice" I can imagine from Dark Communion is that of survival, enduring no matter what, and that often means bowing and scraping before others while keeping a furtive eye out for any opportunity that might come your way.  I can really see the niche such a path would carve out, and it definitely fits the motifs and themes of Psi-Wars, but the big problem with it is that I don't really see players taking up the Path.  I worked very carefully on the Path of the Slave to make it feel at least a little cool, but the path of "Bowing and scraping and begging for your life," while fitting for NPCs in the setting, is not something I can imagine most PCs wanting to do.  Nonetheless, I may explore it again sometime.