Wiki Showcase: the Path of the Rebellious Beast

The first of the Paths I created for Dark Communion, this is the Path of Wrath, rage and raw power.  It serves as the basis for the Divine Mask "Domen Sonostrum," or the Cult of the Lord of Rage, and the Satemo (Space Knight) tradition of the Umbral Rim.  You can find it here.

When you walk the Path of Vengeance...

Most of the Dark Communion paths are meant to appeal to a primal "teenager" sense of "evil," and this is intentional.  First, if a teenager thinks its cool, the chances are greater that a gamer will too.  But second, what appeals to a teenager as "wicked cool" is very much something that appeals to our primal instincts, to our Id.  We want to hang out in nightclubs, drunk and surrounded by attractive members of the other sex (the Beautiful Fool), we want to impose our will on the world (the Mystical Tyrant) and we want to flip off authority and do whatever the heck we want, and woe betide anyone who gets in our way.  This last impulse is the core of the Path of the Rebellious Beast.

For imagery, I chose the Dragon as my basis because the Dragon perfectly exemplifies the sort of rage that can rapidly spin out of control. There is no archetype from "the Magic of Stories" this time, though there's a sidebar that mentions the Dread Beast, which is close enough.  They breath fire which destroys indiscriminately and leaves nothing but ashes behind.  They cannot be hurt, cannot be tamed, cannot be controlled.  The color red captures both the color of fire, the color of rage, and the color of revolution.

This last is the other major trope from which I drew a lot of imagery.  The Rebellious Beast is not just "the dragon that destroys," it's also the raised fist of the rioter, or the mob who's mad as hell and won't take it anymore.  From this, revolutions can be born, though it should be noted that the Rebellious Beast does not seek to impose a new order (That is the role of the Mystical Tyrant), but rather to destroy what already exists.  Where the Beautiful Fool corrodes moral order and the Mystical Tyrant natural order, the Rebellious Beast corrodes political order. It rips apart any system of oppression that seeks to chain or harm it and leaves nothing in its wake.  This can be good, but whether it's good or not doesn't concern the Rebellious Beast.

For the milestones of the Rebellious Beast, I drew on the stories of famous revolutionaries and rebels, but mostly with a focus on the destructive ones, and the imagery of the dragon or dread beast.  The Path of the Rebellious Beast is also a good illustration of the tendency of the Dark Communion paths to be eternal cycles of grievance and revenge, and to be fantastically destructive to others.  Where the Paths of True Communion and Broken Communion have an "endpoint<" a final destination after which the walker is either off the path or destroyed, the paths of Dark Communion, interested in self-preservation, seek to keep the Avatar alive, and thus eternally on the path.  This can create cycles that trap the Avatar if he's not careful, but it's also the nature of Dark Communion to trap people in cycles of selfishness.  The Paths of Dark Communion tend to force other people to pay the costs for the Avatar, emphasizing the selfish, "vampiric" nature of Communion.  The Path of the Rebellious Beast is especially true in this regard, as it tends to leave a lot of bodies behind.

I came up with the Path of the Rebellious Beast first because it's a prime path for player characters. Like the Path of the Righteous Crusader, it is a martial path with a natural emphasis on Action, and thus very suitable for an Action-oriented game.  Where the Righteous Crusader is the Paladin, the Rebellious Beast is a good contrast as the Barbarian.