Primeval

Primevals or Primeval Beasts are ancient animals, so ancient that even spirits and gods have failed to understand them.<ref name="PD">Primeval Beasts (WIP) - Pact Dice</ref> Powerful (comparable to gods), dealing with them directly is very dangerous.<ref name="PD" /><ref>You can bind a god, which is technically on a lower tier than an Angel/Demon. You can bind a Primeval, again, on a lesser tier. But gods and primevals, even if bound, are little more than really big, really dangerous batteries to draw on, and they're a danger every time they're tapped. Usually you're just binding them to get them to be good and to restrain their impact on the world.

Making one a familiar (or hosting them, or forming any direct connection to them) is like having sex with a bear. You're not in a position of power and you're liable to get mauled. They don't understand your behavior and you really, really need to understand every last detail of theirs. When it comes to primevals there's just no reality where it's doable. They're a big fucking bear/wolf/bird/bramble, and they're always mad. - comment by Wildbow on Reddit</ref> It might be helpful to think of them as gods from before humans came.<ref>Ray: All hands on deck. Let’s do this right. That means bringing Durocher and her pre-human divinities. Talk to Alexander while you’re at it. The school is a resource we maintain for just this reason. We’ll use it. - Out on a Limb bonus - SunnyDay Logs</ref><ref>[Durocher] taps into primeval spirits, things so old they predate human language, or even the pre-human conception of animals having categories. Beasts arguably older and more raw than any gods. No form or boundaries. - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.4</ref><ref>Divine Others
A loose category, encompassing those Others who come from a higher power, which may or may not be a god. In this category, they may be Karmic Others, related to great spirits, or even be primevals.
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Familiars of Higher Orders
In chapter two we discussed Others who may prey on the connection formed by the Familiar relationship. Others of great power are similar. Should they have a significant enough power source, the differential between Other and practitioner may be the equivalent of a small room underground and below a sizeable lake, with the smallest hole drilled between them. Pressure and the natural movement of water, our analogy for power, ensures that the spray will be violent and inevitable.

At the highest order are those Others who have few peers. God, Great Spirit, Primeval, the heads of Fae courts, and the Architects or Devourers of Creation require great power and the firmest of hands to manage, and one mistake, even a scratch on the skin, may be the opening that collapses the Self under their effective weight - excerpt from Famulus, quoted in Bonus Material: Famulus Text</ref>

They are large, shape-shifting creatures who hibernate for long periods. Difficult to kill, they are tied to the concept that they are the last survivors and grow more powerful on the rare occasions another like them dies, as well as having mystic weight to their environment and habits due to their extreme age. They are generally hostile to humanity and Practitioners for having overrun the primordial world they knew.<ref name="PD" />

They exist on the fringes and/or bound within large areas as cryptids, or in the lost realms dealt with by Finder/Chaos Practitioners.<ref name="PD" /> Judges are known to step in to deal with those that threaten civilizations.<ref name=JJ/>

Durocher a noted authority on Primevals, once classified them by mass or "E"s, E for elephant.<ref name-"7xII e2">The seven-E was a shorthand, initially joking, that Durocher had started to take seriously. Elephants. Each E was about six and a half tons of mass. At seven E, a little over forty five tons.

A sliver of primeval with the mass of a bull could kill a lot of groups of practitioner. Primevals sat comfortably at a tier where gods, angels, demons, and the highest spirits dwelt. Things that could be contained, but never truly defeated. - Excerpt from Interlude 7.x II</ref> Even a fraction of an E is a dangerous threat.

Known examples

Anura Nox, forcibly hosted by George Cull<ref>Sacrifices must be made. Something primeval dwelled within the lake, and it claimed the life of an innocent after a seven year wait, then a five year wait, then three, then one. One week after the last claim, it would bring flood and disease to the area, bringing disaster and claiming hundreds of lives. It continued as a cycle, until a visiting practitioner decided he had to intervene. George Cull took the primeval Anura Nox into him, then bound it tight. Every day is a battle, and in recent months the battles are becoming literal as he is being pursued by a famine-type Dog Tag and her soldiers, who feel a natural affinity for the disease-bringing Primeval. When he has to, he takes on features and uses the Primeval’s weapons to fight them off, with a warty, primeval hide to absorb bullets and a bilious vomit to drive the unkillable soldiers away. Seven years ago, he was able to avert the cycle, weakening the primeval. Now the next deadline is coming up - on that day, if an innocent dies because of him, the primeval will gain ground, and he’ll have five years, not seven, before the next deadline. - Hosts</ref>
Arctic dweller <ref>The Alabaster is often slaughtered, her hide or furs taken to establish a large protected area, like the practitioner school in Montreal, or further securing one dangerous primeval that was bound in the arctic North. - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.8</ref>
Sinful Creature, A Lord of Montréal<ref name=ME>The Sinful Creature has been here for longer than humans. A primeval beast. It ate enough corrupted, twisted reflections of humanity that it can get by. Talk, understand. If you told it of the current situation, it would be eager to clean up the mess. Devour the five [...]Devour you. Me. It knows, I think, but the councils are supposed to manage their areas. It will give you a chance to do it. - Pact Dice: Mile End</ref>
Nemesis of Ted Havens' from Prince Edwards Isle<ref name=JJ>“Like another group of Judges stopping a great primeval attacking the East coast of Canada?” Avery asked, thinking of Ted Havens, the man who’d gone from birth to age thirty a lot of times.

“That is something we do now, that we wouldn’t have done in the more distant past, yes. That was handled by other Judges in another area because it would have caused untold harm and almost certainly made thousands or tens of thousands Aware.” - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.8</ref>

Ms Durocher's many conquests
- A minor example in Norway that ate a goddess<ref name-"7xII e1">“Her. We sank figurines into the muck around the portal. Figures for each of the seven ages of mankind. Others are doing more. But yes, I can call on her. She’s not very big, only a seven-E, but I think she’s very pretty.”
  
  “It’s hard to imagine, the way the others have looked.”
  
  “Oh, it’s not so different from that. No solid form, just everything you’d hope to see in a carrion-eating animal, and then some, twisting through itself in a way that’s never the same from moment to moment. But it’s got an elegance you wouldn’t expect to see in something that devours the dead.”
  
  “It’s that goddess, I bet.” - Excerpt from Interlude 7.x II</ref>

References