Archetypes
Archetype represents the basic concept of your character and is the most important factor in determining who they are and what sorts of powers and abilities they have. It also determines if your character is considered human, or supernatural. When combined with your modifier it determines your overall power tier, higher tier characters cost more karma to create and are also more monstrous. The possible archetypes are:
Humans
Vampires
Werewolves
Demigods
Faeborn
Angelborn
Demonborn
Gifted Humans
Wights
- Tier Two costs 25, 000 Karma.
- Tier Three costs 50, 000 Karma.
- Tier Four costs 100, 000 Karma.
- Tier Five costs 150, 000 Karma.
Monstrosity
In the world of Haven almost all types of power come with a cost to your humanity, this is generally referred to as monstrosity. More powerful entities are generally either physically and mentally less human, or have had to sacrifice their morality or aspects of their humanity in order to obtain that power. Supernatural society is inherently parasitic, with more powerful entities preying on and feeding off lower power ones. One of the clearest examples of this is psychic feeding. All supernaturals naturally feed from the psychic energy of sentient beings weaker than they are, the stronger the being the more powerful the effect. This can lead to humans who spend a lot of time around supernaturals ending up particularly weak or frail. Psychic feeding is a coded part of the game world.
At Tier Two, a supernatural character can use the feed command to enhance their ability to feed from the psychic energies of others in their surroundings. They will then slowly siphon off the lifeforce of anyone nearby and less powerful than they are who's feeling afraid, such as captives and transfer it to themselves. While the process is fairly slow, over a prolonged period it can have a significant impact.
At Tier Three, supernatural characters will feed on fear whether they are trying to or not, it is now just part of their nature. Additionally when they use the feed command to enhance this ability they will also be able to feed on anger and lust. This means they will feed on the life force of those engaged in combat or sex among other things. Although sparring combat does generate a fair bit less anger. Sleeping with a supernatural feeding on lust can cause a significant transfer of life force.
At Tier Four, supernatural characters will feed on fear, anger and lust no matter if they are trying to or not. It is for instance impossible for anyone to have sex with such a character without giving up some of their life force to do so. They can also use the feed command to enhance their ability and feed of every character weaker than they are who is in proximity to them.
At Tier Five all types of feeding has become automatic. It is now impossible to have any personal dealings with an entity this powerful without slowly being drained of your life force unless you are equally powerful.
Modifiers
Modifiers change the base tier of your archetype, either reducing it by one or raising it by one. This means a character with a tier two archetype can be played even if someone doesn't yet have the karma for it, or a character with a tier three archetype could be elevated to be as powerful as a tier four and so on. Most modifiers can be changed when in the game allowing characters to grow in power tier but you can never have more than one of them. The possible modifiers are: