I was just reading my old Tribe 8 books and fell in love wit

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The game takes place in a region known as Vimary, which lies on the ruins of modern day Montreal. At some point in the future, humanity at large has become so far removed from spirituality that the material and spirit worlds go out of wack and the spirits decide to reach out and reestablish the link between the two realms. These spirits are known as the Nomads.

What follows is a world-wide spiritual awakening where humans learn from spirits and spirits learn from humans... until the spirits start getting drunk off the physical sensations: warmth of another body, beautiful sights, sounds, and smells, feeling of a full stomach, adrenaline rush you get while fighting, and sexual lust (among other things) because spirits usually can't experience that stuff. They start crazy and forcibly hijacking people and forming cults with the end goal of giving themselves more emotions and sensations to feed off of.

Some of the spirits who didn't fall prey to this madness come to the conclusion that the only way to stem the tide is to cut off the material and spiritual worlds from one another. They sacrifice themselves to make "the Fold" which separates the two realms.

The remaining insane spirits, who by now are calling themselves the Z'bri, really don't like being totally cut off from the spirit world. They go even crazier with their debauched ways and start herding people into camps where they raise them like cattle and do all kinds of horrible stuff to them for their own amusement.

Humans in Vimary eventually make contact with 8 totally new spirits: the Fatimas. These spirits claim to have been sent by a goddess who found a way through the barrier between the worlds and have come to set things right. To make sure they don't go crazy like the other spirits, they choose to inhabit bodies made of junk and debris. They are...

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Baba Yaga the Crone- obsessed with death and secrets. Her centipede-like body body is made of a bunch of bones and corpse parts.

Eva the Mother- Chiefly concerned with life and healing. She's a giant Venus of Willendorf with leathery wings.

Magdalen the Lover- Fatima of passions, sensuality, and conflict. She wears a zipper hood and cloak covering a mechanical body covered in barbed wire.

Tera Sheba the Judge- Obsessed with law, order, and the truth. She has 3 heads (one blind, one deaf, one gagged) and a giant axe.

Joan the Warrior- All about bravery, devotion, and valor. Your standard battle angel/valkyrie made of junk parts and wielding a sword.

Dhalia the Trickster- Fatima of travel, motion, deception, etc. She's just a bunch of masks and limbs.

Mary the Forgiver- Fatima of purity, forgiveness, and all the warm fuzzy things. She looked like a big robed woman.

Joshua the Ravager- the only male Fatima and twin of Joan. Where she was about honor and valor, he preferred fury and righteous anger.

So the 8 Fatimas gathered some human followers and started waging a war to destroy the Z'bri and free everyone from the camps. While they worked together, each Fatima had their own little army and personal attendants.

They fought and fought and were still losing up until finally Joshua faced off against the most powerful Z'bri in the land (Lord Tibor) and the two actually managed to destroy one another. The remaining Z'bri said "fuck it, we're out" and retreated to the north. The Fatimas- having just lost one of their own for this hardest of hard won victories- decided not to push their luck and did not pursue.

And then Mary got so depressed about what happened that she got a bunch of her followers together and ritually killed herself so she could be reborn as... Agnes, the Child. Agnes is a giant teddy bear made of trash who acts and thinks like a spoiled little girl, but with the powers of a minor deity.

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The Fatimas and their followers then started the arduous process of building a new society. They eventually formed 8 tribe/castes not too much unlike the Tribes of Israel.

Yagans (followers of Baba Yaga) became well known as mystics, gave people their last rites, and recorded histories.

Evans (followers of Eva) ended up being the largest tribe. They became farmers, midwifes, and healers.

Magdalites became diplomats between the tribes, as well as consorts, entertainers, and spies.

Shebans became the lorekeeper and judges of all the tribes. They worked very closely with the Joanites, who produced hunters and warriors vs outside threats, as well as the watch to protect against intenral threats.

Dhalians became travelling merchants and entertainers with a penchant for larceny and deception.

Mary's followers dissolved. Those who participated in her death ritual and survived the process were reviled by the Fatimas and their followers for killing one of their own.

Agnes kind of has a tribe. She's always surrounded by a bunch of kids who the ither tribes kind of watch over, but she most just lets them play around all day until they turn 16 or 17, at which point their job is to take care of younger kids (or get busy making new kids) until they get to be about 30, at which point they either leave the tribe or get ritually sacrificed in some way.

After Joshua's death, his tribe also kind floundered about and ended up becoming the "untouchables" of the new Tribal society. They also tend to adopt people banished from the other tribes. The Fatimas have a lot of rules (Magdalen hates prudes, Tera Sheba hates liars, Agnes hates adults, etc) and society is pretty strict so people who defy the order tend to get banished and go live as one of the 8th Tribe, or the "Fallen" as they're called.

As you can probably tell, this motley crew of outcasts, lowlifes, and underdogs from all corners of Tribal society is where your PCs are expected to come from.

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So you're one of the 8th Tribe/Fallen. Maybe your parents were fallen. Maybe you used to be a Yagan until one day you refused to perform a mercy killing and got banished. Or you were a Sheban that tried to hide the truth to keep their friend from being convicted of a crime they didn't really commit and got disowned. Or maybe you're the product of a forbidden tryst and left to die before being rescued by a kindly adoptive parent. Whatever. You're not a member of one of the 7 main tribes, which makes you an outcast.

The Fallen have formed their own society of sorts. They're understandably disillusioned with Tribal society in general. The "Doomsayers" are mystics still obsessed with the Fatimas. The "Herites" hate the Fatimas and everything to do with them. The "Jackers" think the real enemies are "out there" (the Z'bri and other threats). The "Lightbringers" think they can unite the Fallen into some kind of cohesive and respectable group.

You also have people that are totally outside the Tribal system. People whose ancestors never lived in the camps.

The Keepers are descended from preppers who saw shit going downhill and decided to head for their bunkers. They emerged to find a world completely different. These days, Keepers are the only people who have anything approaching knowledge of the woeld before the Z'bri. They have guns and carts and wear your standard post-Apocolyptic coats and gas masks. But they revere everything from the world before with almost religious significance.

Then there are people the Tribes call "Squats" these are basically people who went neo-primitive. They wear furs and hides, hunt with stone-age weapons, still revere lesser spirits, and are considered dirty savages.

The people of the 7 Tribes basically consider anyone who isn't in their society to be not a human. They basically have no soul because they don't know the glory and graces of the Fatimas. Especially because they can't wield Synthesis...

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Synthesis is magic of Tribe 8. Between the Physical and Spirit realms is the River of Dream- an ever flowing and ephemeral collective unconscious region where the two interact with one another. In short, the spiritual becomes material and the material becomes spiritual. Synthesis is the ability to essentially lucid dream while awake and make the dream overwrite some aspects of reality.

Wielding Synthesis is difficult to do effectively and depends greatly on one's emotional state and outlook.

Tribals wield a sort of Synthesis based on their associated Fatima. Shebans get control over death and fate, allowing them to curse people with death or see their future. Agnites over wonder and capriciousness so they can play tricks and enthrall an adult with a shiny object. Joanites over Fury and Devotion, so they can ignore wounds, leap to someone's rescue, save you with the power of friendship, on and so forth.

According to the 7 Tribes' doctrine, people shouldn't be able to wield Synthesis without the blessings of the Fatimas. As such, it makes them very upset/suspicious that many Fallen (including those outright banished by Fatimas) still retain their abilities to wield such dream magic.

In order to use Synthesis, one has to enter a trance-like state. Most Tribals do it on a subtle level, but more capable ones can induce it at will. Drugs, rhythmic music, repetitive actions, etc can help. This lasts a couple rounds to several minutes, depending on how much effort you want to put into it. Trying to enter a short trance makes Synthesis harder than going out for an hour. Most of the effects are temporary as well, in keeping with their dream-like nature.

If, for whatever reasons, you muck things up, you lose equilibrium, and can potentially get swept away in the River of Dream, which can leave you confused about what's real and what's fake for a minute or two (at best) or send your soul adrift (at worst).

The most basic form of Synthesis is done on an instinctive level by Tribals. They just want something bad enough and it slightly overwrites reality, resulting in a slight bonus.

More obvious effects (Synthesis is rarely flashy) requires min-trances.

There are also Aspects, which are secretive and closely guarded techniques that more or less allow you to dream a specific type of dream in order to gain a specific type of effect. They're both more reliable and also more restrictive than the more freeform type of Synthesis. They're not widely known and the closest the setting comes to spells.

Ritual Synthesis involves multiple people getting together and going into a trance together with the same general goal. It allows you to do more than one person ever could while also giving everyone involved another anchor to reality so no individual is really at risk of getting their soul swept away in the River of Dream. As one would expect, rituals take lots of time and effort.

While Tribal use of Synthesis has gone a long way in explaining their success, they're not the only people who wield dream magic. Keepers and Squats do too, albeit in a more limited form.

Keepers call their magic Technosmithing, and it's more of an unconscious thing that works kind of like 40k. A Keeper can learn a trick that allows them to start a car that's out of gas for a few extra minutes or scrabble together a working firearm out of a rusty old pipe, ductape, and a rock ala McGuyver. The key is that they just have to start from a semi-believable place.

Squats rely mostly on ritual magic. Many groups have totem spirits with whom they traffic and petition to do stuff on their behalf.

And speaking of those pesky spirits...

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So after many of the spirits ended up going mad and herding people into camps, they divided themselves along 4 general lines depending on their preferred form of debauchery.

Yes, they're based on the 4 humors.

Flemis Z'bri hate feeling alone. They want to feel connected to people to the point where they merge with them into croenenberg monstrosities while also mindraping them so they have no individuality. Just being around them makes you want to give up.

Koleris Z'bri live for the moments just before death. If it were up to them, they'd kill themselves and others all day. Since they'd run out of stuff to kill pretty soon, they instead edge themselves by fighting, torturing, and occasionally killing people all day. Being near one makes you want to kill.

Sangis Z'bri- while basically Slannesh/Wraeththu/hentai badguys- are also big fans of courtly intrigue and theatrics. Their presence makes you give in to your basest perversions.

Melanis seek the euphoria of being enlightened by their own intelligence. Learning new stuff, especially if it causes intense emotional/physical reactions from them or their subject is their goal. They're big fans of vivisection and turning people into living furniture/tools/weapons just to see what works and what doesn't. They also like stealing memories and being around them drains your thoughts/memories and gives it to them.

Z'bri also wield a sort of reverse Synthesis called Sundering, where they manipulate peoples' bodies minds and souls. The more they're engaging in their favored act, the stronger they get. Their presence also weakens Synthesis.

They still live in the North and still have some followers who revere them out of a combination of awe, insanity, and pants shitting hopeless fear of some horrible fate.

Bump while I read...

I really like a lot of the ideas in this, though I have to admit that setting it concretely in our world detracts from my sense of escapism. (I'm not sure how far in the future it's supposed to be set, but a decent time-gap could somewhat diminish this detraction.) But the Fatimas and all that surround them seem very colorful and interesting.

Are you by any chance familiar with Mechanical Dream? It seems like something you might be interested in if Tribe 8 really appeals to you.

>>51359177

The time is intentionally left vague so it can be as close to or far away from our time as you want.

It'd kind of moot though as the coming of the Zbri and the way the world changed really makes it so the past I'd unrecognizable. Nobody knows what all those old things really are enough to even get the nomenclature right. There's absolutely no impetus to try and rebuild/restore the past or mimic past civilations.

Was there ever a collected set of the splats released? I know 2e core explained the setting more, but I'd rather not have to flip through SilCore AND another book. I'm a snowflake like that.

>>51353020

I can't seem to get into your folder to download the individual files.

>>51353020
Agreed, Silhouette is awesome. I have an Heavy Gear book somewhere...