Gameplay
The most important thing to understand about Haven lore is that it is a
pseudo scientific, logical take on the supernatural. That means that the
supernatural doesn't overtly contradict known science such as evolution or
the laws of physics. Issues like creation of energy are dealt with through
drawing it from another dimension etc.
It's a world that's largely built upon our own, the fae, gods and most big
demons all used to be humans, before fleshforming themselves into other
things, and retain their human core. The monsters and creatures were all
made by these beings, for some purpose.
We took this approach for two reasons, the first is simple credibility, the
second is to make it easier to access for a player. When encountering a
monster you can use your reason to think about who made this, and why and
from what to make intelligent guesses about it's characteristics, when
dealing with gods etc you can apply some of your understanding of human
psychology similarly. This allows players and characters to think about
challenges and discuss them intelligently, without needing huge amounts of
lore.
This system and the lore of fleshforming can allow for a huge variety of
stories, and give a lot of creative freedom to SRs, however it also can make
it challenging to copy stories directly from mythology or fantasy settings.
Since things need to make some sort of sense, and often issues of folklore
etc, do not.
Regarding death and religion, the game deliberately doesn't prove or
disprove the existence of higher gods, if humans have a soul there's no
proof of it, and it goes off to wherever it goes when someone dies. There
is however proof of psychic transference, which is to say minds or parts of
minds being copied or replicated into other things. Ghosts are one such
phenomena, where a part of someone's mind transfers into a psychic
non-physical medium when they die. It is never a perfect copy however,
memories will be missing, their behaviour may be odd or particularly
fixated, much like someone who has sustained some brain damage. Vampires
are another instance, a near perfect transference of their mind from their
brain to a psychic medium inside their blood.
Strictly speaking, resurrection is impossible, but beings capable of
fleshforming can remake individuals. Much like ghosts the mind of the new
individual is imperfect, often missing memories or having flaws or oddities
in their behaviour, they're remade more accurately the more information the
being has on them, such as their recent body, or memories of people who knew
them, or a ghost of them, but it's never ever a perfect remake.
People brought back may be brought back different from how they
originally were on purpose as well.
Lore Primer
The most important thing to understand about Haven lore is that it is a
pseudo scientific, logical take on the supernatural. That means that the
supernatural doesn't overtly contradict known science such as evolution or
the laws of physics. Issues like creation of energy are dealt with through
drawing it from another dimension etc.
It's a world that's largely built upon our own, the fae, gods and most big
demons all used to be humans, before fleshforming themselves into other
things, and retain their human core. The monsters and creatures were all
made by these beings, for some purpose.
We took this approach for two reasons, the first is simple credibility, the
second is to make it easier to access for a player. When encountering a
monster you can use your reason to think about who made this, and why and
from what to make intelligent guesses about it's characteristics, when
dealing with gods etc you can apply some of your understanding of human
psychology similarly. This allows players and characters to think about
challenges and discuss them intelligently, without needing huge amounts of
lore.
This system and the lore of fleshforming can allow for a huge variety of
stories, and give a lot of creative freedom to SRs, however it also can make
it challenging to copy stories directly from mythology or fantasy settings.
Since things need to make some sort of sense, and often issues of folklore
etc, do not.
Regarding death and religion, the game deliberately doesn't prove or
disprove the existence of higher gods, if humans have a soul there's no
proof of it, and it goes off to wherever it goes when someone dies. There
is however proof of psychic transference, which is to say minds or parts of
minds being copied or replicated into other things. Ghosts are one such
phenomena, where a part of someone's mind transfers into a psychic
non-physical medium when they die. It is never a perfect copy however,
memories will be missing, their behaviour may be odd or particularly
fixated, much like someone who has sustained some brain damage. Vampires
are another instance, a near perfect transference of their mind from their
brain to a psychic medium inside their blood.
Strictly speaking, resurrection is impossible, but beings capable of
fleshforming can remake individuals. Much like ghosts the mind of the new
individual is imperfect, often missing memories or having flaws or oddities
in their behaviour, they're remade more accurately the more information the
being has on them, such as their recent body, or memories of people who knew
them, or a ghost of them, but it's never ever a perfect remake.
People brought back may be brought back different from how they
originally were on purpose as well.