W:tA Mokole Turtle Theory

[gom jabbarwocky]

I was just reading about the Mokole, the were-dinosaurs from Werewolf: the Apocalypse's veritable zoo of shapeshifting 'breeds'. So, the Mokole are supposed to be fera that can change into reptiles, right? And all kinds of reptiles - lizards, alligators, crocodiles, stuff like that (not snakes, they've got their own thing, apparently). At one point they make passing mention that there used to be a line of Mokole who could turn into turtles, but they were wiped out eons ago. This seemed kind of arbitrary to me - if you can have lizard Mokole and crocodile Mokole, why not turtle Mokole? Turtles are reptiles, too!

But then I realized that if you could play as a turtle Mokole, some people would use this as an opportunity to play a teenage half-man/half turtle ninja, and it would be hilarious.

Could it be true, that White Wolf gave turtle Mokole the axe just because they didn't want Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to be running around their World of Darkness with their painfully hip vampires and their grunge-tastic werewolves, cramping their style? This seems odd considering they were okay with throwing a bunch of other ridiculous stuff in there (vampires that turn into sharks! rock monsters from space! most of the stuff from Orpheus!), so I don't know, I wasn't there when they decided this. But this is so funny I almost want it to be true.

[hiryuu]

They're in the new edition.

And turtles being reptiles is a contentious matter, largely because that have anapsid skulls, and if they're true anapsids, they're technically not members of reptilia >_>

Not like that matters, mokole hybrid forms can be made of just about anything as long as it's extinct. You won't really get a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle since the Archid form is basically an enormous pile of angry chimera parts.

[SaurOps]

They're in the new edition.

And turtles being reptiles is a contentious matter, largely because that have anapsid skulls, and if they're true anapsids, they're technically not members of reptilia >_>

Not that it matters, because Reptilia as a Class is an artifact of taxonomy being set up by a herpetophobe with little interest in reptiles - which doesn't even have nearly a tight designation anymore, with much debate over just where the line should be drawn. Personally, I just go with the PhyloCode suggestion for the time being and assume that when people are talking about reptiles, they are actually talking about sauropsids.

(Also, the most recent efforts to find just where chelonian critters go classifies turtles as being anapsidoform diapsids, more related to archosaurs like crocs and birds than lepidosaurs like tuataras and lizards)



Not like that matters, mokole hybrid forms can be made of just about anything as long as it's extinct. You won't really get a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle since the Archid form is basically an enormous pile of angry chimera parts.

Extinction isn't the marker. You can assemble your Archid form from parts all borrowed from extant reptiles (sauropsids), but they do have to be reptiles (sauropsids), extant or otherwise. If you get a back sail, it's from Spinosaurus, not Dimetrodon, as Dimetrodon was a synapsid, and thus a precursor of mammals that fell nowhere on the immediate "reptilian" phylogenic tree.

Also, You can get larger than any living thing was, without limit. Four purchases of Tall means that you're about the height of 1954 Godzilla. One more purchase pushes it up to 2014 Godzilla. You'd need to take a trip into Pangaea to be as heavy as Godzilla, though (spend ten points of Gnosis, get ten iterations of Behemoth for the duration of your stay in the Near Realm, have an Archid that weighs tens of thousands of tons). I'd like to think that Dream Semblance, if it ever shows up again, will allow that kind of thing to happen outside of Pangaea, and more than once per lifetime per Mokole at that.

[hiryuu]

Not that it matters, because Reptilia as a Class is an artifact of taxonomy being set up by a herpetophobe with little interest in reptiles - which doesn't even have nearly a tight designation anymore, with much debate over just where the line should be drawn. Personally, I just go with the PhyloCode suggestion for the time being and assume that when people are talking about reptiles, they are actually talking about sauropsids.

(Also, the most recent efforts to find just where chelonian critters go classifies turtles as being anapsidoform diapsids, more related to archosaurs like crocs and birds than lepidosaurs like tuataras and lizards)

I have seen fistfights. Sauropsida has no technical definition and hasn't had one since the 1860s at least, and Reptilia isn't even a clade T_T


Extinction isn't the marker. You can assemble your Archid form from parts all borrowed from extant reptiles (sauropsids), but they do have to be reptiles (sauropsids), extant or otherwise. If you get a back sail, it's from Spinosaurus, not Dimetrodon, as Dimetrodon was a synapsid, and thus a precursor of mammals that fell nowhere on the immediate "reptilian" phylogenic tree.

Also, You can get larger than any living thing was, without limit. Four purchases of Tall means that you're about the height of 1954 Godzilla. One more purchase pushes it up to 2014 Godzilla. You'd need to take a trip into Pangaea to be as heavy as Godzilla, though (spend ten points of Gnosis, get ten iterations of Behemoth for the duration of your stay in the Near Realm, have an Archid that weighs tens of thousands of tons). I'd like to think that Dream Semblance, if it ever shows up again, will allow that kind of thing to happen outside of Pangaea, and more than once per lifetime per Mokole at that.

I'm aware of the huge size thing.

Also.

Multiple limbs.

You can also have parts from things that literally never existed.

In addition, remember that the very idea of cladistics and evolutionary grades is a complete and utter lie foisted upon humanity. Fossils aren't even real, they were cooked up as a cover by the Technocracy because First Age stuff started cropping up in rock layers.

[SaurOps]

I'm aware of the huge size thing.

Also.

Multiple limbs.

You can also have parts from things that literally never existed.

In addition, remember that the very idea of cladistics and evolutionary grades is a complete and utter lie foisted upon humanity. Fossils aren't even real, they were cooked up as a cover by the Technocracy because First Age stuff started cropping up in rock layers.

SPEAKING OF FISTFIGHTS! The Technocracy does not exist outside of Mage, nor does Consensus. All of the classic WoD games have contradictory parts that make it unlikely that they share a true single continuity, but Werewolf and Mage are basically matter and anti-matter; you cannot combine the two as they are and hope to have a coherent setting, since Werewolf assumes that fossils are real, the Earth is billions of years old, the universe billions of years older still, and that modern technology is not, in fact, the same thing as belief and magic, only going in a different direction. Mage says that humans are the most important thing in the universe; Werewolf posits that the universe is more important than humans.

[Rater202]

Mage also has the fabric of reality being written by the collective will of the populace, and each order has a mutually exclusive view of how the world works-all of this stuff being simultaneously existing and contradictory is not very breaking for suspension of disbelief. especially once you get into the semi-aborted but maybe going to alt-shard canon connections between CWoD and Exalted.

In other words, nothing contradicts Fossils being planted by the technocracy.

[SaurOps]

Mage also has the fabric of reality being written by the collective will of the populace, and each order has a mutually exclusive view of how the world works-all of this stuff being simultaneously existing and contradictory is not very breaking for suspension of disbelief. especially once you get into the semi-aborted but maybe going to alt-shard canon connections between CWoD and Exalted.

In other words, nothing contradicts Fossils being planted by the technocracy.

Practically speaking, the integrity of Werewolf's setting and developer statements contradict it. No better way to ruin the fun than to assume that all of the non-Mage games have to abide by Mage. That was most of second edition, and it was absolutely terrible.

[Rater202]

Practically speaking, the integrity of Werewolf's setting and developer statements contradict it. No better way to ruin the fun than to assume that all of the non-Mage games have to abide by Mage. That was most of second edition, and it was absolutely terrible.

You're misreading my statement: Mage's own cosmology contradicts itself eight times over becuase of subjective reality.

Yet it all exists becuase of that same subjective reality.

No reason that same subjective reality can't mean that The Mokole can't be ancient creature with the genetic memory of ancient extinct beings and have those ancient extinct beings are lies spread by the Technocracy.

Subjective reality means they both happen but only to people who care one way or the other.

[JeenLeen]

You're misreading my statement: Mage's own cosmology contradicts itself eight times over becuase of subjective reality.

Yet it all exists becuase of that same subjective reality.

No reason that same subjective reality can't mean that The Mokole can't be ancient creature with the genetic memory of ancient extinct beings and have those ancient extinct beings are lies spread by the Technocracy.

Subjective reality means they both happen but only to people who care one way or the other.

I think, in Demon: the Fallen, it states (or a demon narrator states) that, before reality was so static, multiple realities could co-exist. According to it, there's no contradiction between Adam and Eve being the first created humans, and living in a garden until the Fall, AND 'Adam and Eve' being a metaphor for humanity evolving into a sentient species. I think this can be , until things got so mucked up in the past few millennia, differing histories weren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
I heard that part of the Demon cosmology was an attempt to reconcile the other contradictory cosmologies offered by different books.

Besides, I always figured dinosaurs existed to the Mage mind as well. It was just they were probably 'monsters' that lived alongside mankind around 3000 BC, until they were driven off to Horizon realms as static reality started to kill them off on earth.

Edit: a bit back to on-topic, when I read the opening post, I wondered if perhaps the turtles were set as extinct to prevent any possible lawsuits between TMNT's owners and White Wolf.

[gom jabbarwocky]

They're in the new edition.

Whaaaat. That just blew my mind. Also; turtles not being reptiles? I guess I really need to bone up on my taxonomy knowledge.


Practically speaking, the integrity of Werewolf's setting and developer statements contradict it. No better way to ruin the fun than to assume that all of the non-Mage games have to abide by Mage. That was most of second edition, and it was absolutely terrible.

Um, I'm actually a total old Mage fanboy, so I am completely fine with this. *shrug*


You're misreading my statement: Mage's own cosmology contradicts itself eight times over becuase of subjective reality.

Yet it all exists becuase of that same subjective reality.

No reason that same subjective reality can't mean that The Mokole can't be ancient creature with the genetic memory of ancient extinct beings and have those ancient extinct beings are lies spread by the Technocracy.

Subjective reality means they both happen but only to people who care one way or the other.

Yes! Everything is true! Everything is permitted!

But seriously, doesn't the cosmology of the oWoD explicitly allow for multiple intersecting universes? Well, until the modern era came along and everything became static and boring.


Besides, I always figured dinosaurs existed to the Mage mind as well. It was just they were probably 'monsters' that lived alongside mankind around 3000 BC, until they were driven off to Horizon realms as static reality started to kill them off on earth.

Although I think you're forgetting the pre-human civilizations of intelligent dinosaur-people from the Mezozoic era. They sometimes existed, too. Or maybe they didn't. I guess sometimes even Gaia misremembers stuff. Also, humans and dinosaurs never co-existed, except in the Hollow Earth and/or Lost World.

Forgive me for going a little bit back more on-topic, but I know as a Mokole you can always build your Archid form to look like a man-turtle, but at least in from what I've seen you couldn't play as an actual turtle as well. A gila monster that turns into a half-man half-turtle seems, I don't know, kind of half-assed.

Now I wonder that if one were to introduce a team of four turtle-like Mokole characters in a game who live in a sewer and are lead by a Ratkin sensei who teaches them ninjitsu, would this be grounds for having a rulebook hurled at your head? I guess it depends on how seriously everyone is taking the game. How ridiculous becomes too ridiculous for your World of Darkness?

[comicshorse]

Now I wonder that if one were to introduce a team of four turtle-like Mokole characters in a game who live in a sewer and are lead by a Ratkin sensei who teaches them ninjitsu, would this be grounds for having a rulebook hurled at your head? I guess it depends on how seriously everyone is taking the game. How ridiculous becomes too ridiculous for your World of Darkness?

I think the above just crossed that line :smallsmile:

[TheCountAlucard]

The Technocracy exists in Changeling. :smallamused:

[Grytorm]

I don't know that much about OWoD but I want to find a way to make Mages cosmology subservient to Werewolf cosmology. The boots on the other foot now. Take that mages.

My stupid reverse standard cosmological trample.


The nature of subjective reality is a relatively new phenomena brought on by the Weaver's attempt to grow in power. The ordering of existence to the whims of humanity is not absolute but is still significant. However it is limited in how far it can truly reach and it could go away at some later time. Some of what the Technocracy has created it did create but other things it is only deluding itself into thinking that it invented it instead of glomping onto the understanding of mortals.