BEASTS AND MONSTERS
The protagonists of Fabula Ultima are positive, heroic figures, who fight against the twisted ideologies and egotistic machination of the Villains. This premise is strictly linked to the idea that the antagonists are aware and in control of their actions, even when they don’t fully understand the consequences.
What happens when the antagonists are little more than animals or monstrous creatures that, acting on instinct or according to their life cycle, threaten the region or the protagonists’ community? In such a case, it’s legitimate to question how “heroic” it is to fight creatures who are just following their instincts or needs.
The works that inspired this Atlas approach this subject in a number of ways:
-
Survival. This is the easiest approach, albeit a bit superficial and questionable, and it simply reassures the Players that their actions are justified: in these settings, humans are far less numerous than beasts and monsters, hence it’s sometimes necessary to fight and kill them.
-
Conservation. In this approach, slightly more complex and thoughtful, it is legitimate to eliminate specific creatures that can cause massive damage to the entire ecosystem, making those specific creatures play the role of Villains.
-
Exorcism. This approach is based upon the idea of fighting only creatures that are corrupted or infected by a magical influence or parasite, to purify them once they are weakened (in Fabula Ultima one can choose the fate of an enemy reduced to 0 Hit Points – death is not the rule). The source of such corruption is often an environmental antagonist (see page 174).
-
Revenge. In this variant of the previous approaches, the heroes discover, often through the ability to communicate with beasts, that the terrible fury or corrupting influence was spawned from human atrocities, creating an age-old grudge that might take the shape of a major (or even supreme) Villain… and to make matters worse, our protagonists’ early actions might have contributed to such a disaster.
This Atlas cannot tell you which approach, or what relationship between humanity and nature, you should adopt. This is something your group should decide together. Nevertheless, remember that the nature of the struggle between humans and the world is a precise thematic choice that should never be trivialized.