Taltos in WoD

[Urpriest]

So I would assume that at least some WoD fans are also Anne Rice fans (given that her concept of Vampires is probably the biggest influence on how they work in WoD). As such, some people on this forum may be aware of one of Anne Rice's other races of supernatural beings, the Taltos.

For those who aren't, Taltos are long-lived prehistoric hominids. It's been awhile since I've read the books they're in, so I might get some of the following wrong: They possess superhuman beauty, strength, flexibility, resilience, recuperative abilities, and height. They learn very rapidly, absorbing information like a child their whole life long. They emit quite powerful hormones of various sorts. They also possess a gestation period of a matter of minutes/hours, reaching sexual maturity in less than a day. Given the combined effect of this and their nigh-immortality, they could overrun the world if they were able to reproduce unrestrictedly. This, combined with the naive, utopian nature of their former society, is what led to them being all but wiped out, with their genes spread out and dormant in humans. Most modern humans cannot mate successfully with a Taltos, and a human male who has sex with a Taltos female will usually just result in a quick and painful miscarriage. Sufficiently powerful mages can reproduce with Taltos, and while the gestation period becomes slightly longer in this case it is still very short (less than a week if I recall correctly). Insufficiently powerful mages impregnated by Taltos instead suffer a fatal miscarriage soon after sex. A race of warped and shrunken humanoids also exists that retains some Taltos powers and is capable of reproducing with Taltos to full effect, though their own reproduction is the normal human speed. Taltos also really enjoy milk products, in particular ice cream, finding it enthralling.

My question is, are there WoD splats (either nWod or oWoD) that could represent Taltos, or at least make a decent match? Whether official (I could see this being some sort of monster in Mage), or unofficial (Pathogen: The Infected has similar themes). And if you were to homebrew it, how would you go about doing so?

[battleburn]

I haven't played all the OWoD and none of the NWoD games, but there is enough in what I played to create this yourself.

Give them extra dots specifically in physical attributes and an extra dot in Appearance. For height use the appropriate Merit, which also gives you some bonuses I believe. They don't seem to have one special supernatural ability that can be compared with all the other supernaturals in WoD. Giving them only good things except for their mating disadvantages. Werewolves also have some mating restrictions. They are not allowed to mate with each other. Mating with humans and wolves is possible, but there is no guarantee that the result is a werewolf. The genes can lie dormant for generations and all of a sudden resurface into a new werewolf.

Recuperative abilities; Take your pick. Vampires expend blood. Werewolves heal automatically (except for agg). Mages heal like humans except many have life magic to heal wounds quicker.

I would suggest trying to make a similar system. Add a resource that has to be expended to be able to heal rapidly, to retain their superhuman advantages. And a weakness; Like the beast for vamps, or mages that run out of quintessence, there should always be something that will keep the Taltos from always be so strong and powerful.

I hope my suggestions are somewhat helpful.

-Battleburn

[Pyrophilios]

It would be quite easy to construct them with the rules for new shifters in War Against the Pure.

You just create Were-Men who constantly stay in a Near Human form. Give them animal magnetism, regeneration and eidetic memory and cut them of from the Hisil.

[Caliphbubba]

I can think of a couple ways to emulate the things you talked about, bearing in mind I know nothing about the Taltos other than what you said.

The first way I think I would go about building them would be to use the Freak Legion rules for building Formori combined with a few merits. You'd have to discard the the fluff for most of the Formori stuff but the actual powers would probably work pretty well.

The second would be to just build them as Mages, with the caveat that they can only do specific rotes pertaining to what they're racial make-up requires, and that the rotes have auto successes, are inherent and don't cause pattern bleed. You might even be able to accomplish this with Hedge Magic, but it's been a very long time since I looked at the Hedge Magic rules.

You could probably do something similar to what the other poster suggested for nWoD with the Pure, with a lupine base that was trapped in Glabro with the Fair Glabro merit, and a laundry list of other merits.