Moderator Info - How to mod a Kanthrop - version 1.0

[Brytan]

How to Mod a Kanthrop

This is a guide to be used as a how-to when encountering a Kanthrop player outside of their natural habitat. It should provide moderators with the required insight into the Kanthrop community, their specific racial traits and abilities and the requirements which make this race SRR. Hopefully, by reading this, you as a mod will find yourself capable enough to handle Kanthrops in a large variety of situations, and skilling their character sheets accordingly.

Training sessions
Kanthrops start at Ursa Etheria. At that point they are in the hands of the area coordinator and the resident moderator. It is there where they will go through a vast majority of the actual training required to utilise their Kanthrop abilities such as polymorphing and the skills that come with their animal form.

Never the less, it may happen that you find a Kanthrop in your area with the need to train further in his or her skills, without going back to his home ground for practice. There are several things to take into account when this should happen:

- Kanthrops will not be able to find trainers to help them build their polymorphing, animal combat or Inner Animal connection. This means that they will have to discover a lot of the skills themselves which, as we all know, takes a tremendous amount of time.
- Kanthrops are socially unstable and lack a basic understanding of how the rest of the world functions upon their release into the “real world”. This will make it difficult for them to interact on a level which they would need to train the more significant parts of their Kanthrop abilities. A conversation on animal handling they can muster, or a lecture on magical theory to boot. But the actual training of meditation skills to further their conciousness of their Inner Animal will be very hard for them to accomplish. This might however improve some as they get used more to the outside world, see point 1.

It is wise to discourage Kanthrop players from wanting to engage in lengthy training sessions. Training is boring and they should be made aware that the advancement of their character at the start of play is in no way indicative of the rate at which they will progress during the remainder of play.

Their Inner Animal
Kanthrop are brought to Ursa Etheria at a very young age, there to grow up among their kin, being taught the ways of the Earth Mother but also working towards their conscious awareness of their Inner Animal.

The Inner Animal isn’t just a skill, it is the core of what makes a Kanthrop a Kanthrop. During their childhood and adolescence, they are taught to meditate, commune. They are trained in the art of combat, to read signs given by nature. All of this works towards their final Awakening which releases the polymorphing abilities of the Kanthrop character.

Therefore, the primary training sessions which will take place at the start of a Kanthrop player’s game will be the culmination of years and years of training. This to avoid endless training sessions taking place in the past to get them to finish in time for the present. Through a series of trials a character will be tested, and in both waking and sleeping state will they be confronted with the beast that resides inside them, making the Aether a valid ground for these sessions aswell.

After they reach the Awakening stage, they are set loose to do as they please. At this point other mods will most likely take over as the Kanthrop enter their areas. Skilling the Inner Animal skill is something that should be done with great care, and only after thoroughly viewing a characters involvement in their Inner Animal through roleplaying, which I will describe in further detail below.

Roleplaying vs. Skilling
Skilling with a Kanthrop should happen as normal with all skills, save for the ones which are Kanthrop specific. Being:

Inner Animal
Polymorph (Kanthrop) - <chosen form>
Any Animal form related skill

Both the Inner Animal and the Polymorph skill should be skilled only with due consideration. These skills make up a great deal of a Kanthrop character and are in fact the lifeblood of a Kanthrop. These are also the two skills most prone to be used for powerplaying.

A Kanthrop character can improve on these skills only if they are roleplayed. Better yet, they can only improve them if they are roleplayed well. Just saying “My character morphs into a bear and charges” won’t cut it. In fact, it isn’t even that simple. Polymorphing requires the human soul of the Kanthrop to meld at a profound level with the Inner Animal which spirit has attached itself to their soul. Only by connecting with it, either through cooperation or force, will a Kanthrop be able to utilise it in order to shift forms. This should be well thought out by the player in advance, and roleplayed over the majority of at least a full post (3 paragraphs is a good indicator) to be taken into account for skilling. When in doubt, a quick communing with the Kanthrop coordinator should clear up questions if and when a star is due.

When in human form, Kanthrops can learn and train in any skill a regular humanoid can. Add to that a slight advantage of somewhat hightened senses (which can be trained aswell) and the disadvantage of being vulnerable to silver and awkward with metal, and skilling their human form should go at the same pace as any other character.

In animal form however, Kanthrops can not use most of their human skills. They can not speak, hold equipment, wear clothes even, let along use communication skills or any other kind of social ability. The same goes for combat skills and physical abilities. They all nullify upon the morph, and until they morph back. When a Kanthrop gains Inner Animal [Master], they may speak in their Animal form, only then retaining their communication skills, but with the disadvantage of being perceived as a talking animal.

Now, being able to polymorph into an animal might seem fine and dandy at first, but there’s one thing about changing into it, there’s another thing actually getting around, or even doing complex moves with it. On Ursa Etheria they can ofcourse safely train these abilities, and with some effort they should manage to be able to get around normally after a few hours of having been morphed. Kanthrops retain their sense of awareness, they can think like their human form, but being closer to their Inner Animal makes them far more prone to animal tendencies, especially at the Basic and Journeyman levels. What might be a situation to reason your way out of in human form (a diplomat might try to talk a thug out of robbing him), in animal form they would just go for the throat and worry about consequences…never.

Learning how to fight in animal form can ofcourse be done with time and skills in and for this form can be picked up as can any other, but then we get back to the points made above, since there will be no trainers outside of Ursa, any actions taken will have to be well described and written before points should be awarded.


Social Considerations
At the point of me writing this, Ursa Etheria has been cut off from the rest of Tazlure for quite some time, leaving its inhabitants out of the loop of the social goings on in the Seven Isles and WK. This has an impact on their knowledge of current events, they better not go on any game shows, aswell as enforcing their sense of mistrust towards other races.

Now, Kanthrops can interact with other races normally, in human form. But stories abound from myth and legend about monsters being able to shift between animal and human form, reigning terror on the poor and unfortunate. Their eyes betray them, and as their link to their Inner Animal increases, some other physical features might become apparent betraying their Kanthrop heritage. The outside world has hardly any knowledge of what Kanthrops really are, and vice versa. Mods should take this into account whenever it appears that their nature might be betrayed.

Characters which do not distinctly claim to hide their nature and/or their eyes, or dress appropriately, will betray their “strangeness” on a close encounter with any outsider. At that point it is upto the mod to determine how the NPC’s will react, as it will be upto the player to determine what his character will do.

As time progresses and Kanthrops become a more regularly seen visitor in at least Pan’s Isle, the general populace might adapt more easily to their kind, especially if not too many of them go on murdering rampages. Be aware that their reverence for the Earth Mother prohibits them from doing evil, as it will return to them threefold. They might do evil onto others, but evil will be visited upon them aswell. This should be enforced during gameplay to prohibit Kanthrop players from turning into savage killing machines. Also, the general community of Kanthrops are trained in combat, but they also believe in honor and even a sense of chivalry. Survival of the fittest meets Dancing with Wolves.

Reference point:
This is merely a mod reference to give you a general feel of how their community would look upon dishonourable death vs defending the tribe. Their community is very much like several of the native American tribes from the early days of settlement. The Sioux and the Apache tribes and their customs are similar to what the Kanthrop might incorporate into their existence.