# Day 26: Tribe 8: Tribes in the Dark - Faust, Fallen Yagan Z'brist tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/tribe8 > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice I'll bet some of you out in the audience have been really wanting me to hit a game with an absolutely shedload of lore, backstory, and history. Well, you're going to get what you asked for today. But out of an abundance of sanity, I'm not going to actually go into explaining the lore and backstory of this game because there's just so much of it. Seriously. On the other hand, it's a new version of a game which, as originally published, had a longer, much more involved metaplot, which the new version does not. I consider this a total win. Others may have a different opinion. ![[Tribe 8 - Tribes in the Dark (cover).jpg|400]] ## Acts of Creation Today we pull out the backer preview of *[[Tribe 8|Tribe 8: Tribes in the Dark]]*, which is a mechanical reimagining of the original *Tribe 8* book, which came out from Dream Pod 9 with its Silhouette system. As the name may suggest, this new, recently backed version translates over to a [[Blades in the Dark|Forged in the Dark]] set of mechanics, and I actually think they are superior to the original. If you aren't familiar with *Tribe 8*, the short summary version is that at some point in the unspecified future, humanity makes a breakthrough, there is a rift in the spirit world, and spirits come through, teaching mankind new ways to approach reality while leveraging the River of Dreams. Unfortunately, some of those spirits are a greedy, hungry, and violent lot, and effectively manage to wipe out nearly all of mankind and round the rest up into slave/breeding camps within which mankind toils and suffers until they manage to effectively get in touch with more spirits who appear to be on their side, who unify the tribes and eventually free them, or at least some of them. Or as the opening paragraphs explain … > The world of *Tribes in the Dark* is called **Vimary**, located in the post-apocalyptic ruins of Montreal, Canada. Monstrous spirits called the **Z’bri** brought about a supernatural cataclysm, causing civilization to collapse. Billions died, and the remainder were enslaved or scattered into the wilderness. Centuries later, humanity won its freedom from the monsters with the aid of divine avatars known as **Fatimas**. > > Vimary brims with dream magic, inhuman monsters, spirits, and prophecies and visions, all set against the backdrop of a decaying universe where the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds is thin. It's not often that we have the pleasure of goofing around in post-apocalyptic Montreal, Canada, or Montreal, Canada at all, so this is kind of exciting. I could go into detail talking about the seven tribes, each of which have a Fatima that is notionally on their side, but sometimes have signs of some other agendas, but I won't. One of the Fatima was actually male and that one died in the final push to freedom; his followers are outcasts and known as the Eighth Tribe. They have their own factions. Plus, the Z'bri have four houses, each of which is pursuing their own interests in their own way and opposing one another. There are a lot of moving parts, and we're not going to touch on them, because I think if you are looking for a post-apocalyptic setting with a lot of detail and an unusual take in many ways, you're probably already aware of *Tribe 8*. If you aren't, [there are enough materials out there available to bring you up to speed on the setting shenanigans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_8_(role-playing_game)) that you're already starting your searches if you're curious. I wouldn't blame you if you did. I'm working off of the backers' copy, which is not complete. It's missing some art and a bit of editing, but there's definitely enough to do character generation. Let's go get stuck in. ### Playbook Like most of the *Forged in the Dark* games, *Tribe 8* has you pick your playbook right at the beginning. It's assumed that the players are of Joshua's tribe, but its composed of outcasts and criminals as judged by the others, so each playbook represents a different tribe from which they came. I've got a theme to go with here so we'll pull the **Fallen Yagite**, essentially the Fatima of death and the spirit world.[^1] That gives us a big ol' two-page spread playbook character sheet, but its basically a dashboard for all the options so we'll forgive it. ### Outlook Next up, we pick an outlook, which really is just telling the game what sort of interaction we want with the setting. What do we want our role in the story to be? There are four to choose from: Doomsayer, Herite, Jacker, and Lightbringer. I see this character as someone who is bent on vengeance, so Jacker, not necessarily a nice person. That means that we get certain outlook traits. - **Outlook:** Jacker - **XP Trigger:** When you protect someone or something you believe in, mark an XP - **Traits:** - **Driven:** +1d Resolve resist - **Vengeful:** **Potency** when you take **harm** There's a couple of other things associated with being a jacker, but the important one that's indirect is what is our XP trigger, which is we gain XP when we protect someone or something that we believe in. Along the way, in order to do that, we are driven, which allows us to resist things which would otherwise oppose our resolve or erode our motivation, and we are vengeful, meaning that if you actually do harm to us mechanically, we'll do more damage back to you as a result. This is pretty good. I like it. ### Eminances Effectively, eminences are your magical abilities, and everybody has a couple, one of which is from your outlook and the other is from your original tribe. Each of them give us two choices. From our tribe, we can get Fate or Death, and from Jacker, we can have Bravery or Vengeance. Well, this one isn't really hard for me either. - **Eminances** - **Tribe:** Death - **Outlook:** Vengeance ### Crime Now we get to pick the crime that got us kicked out of society and banished to Tribe 8. Then we write a short detail about it. Now, given that the tribes of the Fatimas have basically turned into an authoritarian nightmare masquerading as a free matriarchal society, figuring out a crime is not all that hard. - **Crime:** *Traitor*. Our character had secret contact with the Z'bri camps in order to learn more about the spirit nature of both the Fatimas and the Z'bri. Since any contact was completely forbidden, exile and banishment was the inevitable next step. See, I told you that crime was easy. ### Diversion All of the *Forged in the Dark* games have a vice, which is something that you indulge in to burn off your accumulated stress. It's also a good way to tempt your character in the midst of other things and provides an interesting narrative tension. Here, they are called diversions. - **Diversion:** *Weird*. You experiment with strange substances, consort with rogue spirits, observe bizarre rituals, etc. We spend immense amount of time trying to dip ever further into the river of dreams using whatever methods are either at hand or might be acquired. Strange drugs, weird rituals, flagellation, anything that might push deeper. Frankly, this was a bit of a challenge. I couldn't decide which this might actually fall into. It could have easily been described as intemperance, pleasure, or reflection, but in the end I just decided to go with weird. ### Tribal Background Our tribal background actually speaks to what we did in the Yagan tribe before we were exiled. There are some interesting choices. - **Tribal Background:** *Mordred*. Keepers of hidden secrets, potent curses, and rituals. Mordreds are known as “witch-kin” to the other Tribes. +1 **Study**, +2 **Survey**. **Synthesis**. We were a ritualist among the Yagans, unusual for being male and often excluded from advancement within the tribe because of it. Thus the search for ever more esoteric understanding. ### Assign Action Dots We start with a couple of actions already filled in. In this case, +1 **Craft**, and +2 **Dream**. Now you'll notice that our tribal background actually has three dots within it, but we don't have any clarity on whether that means those are the ones that we **should** assign based on our background or whether they're just **suggestions**. My best reading is that they are suggestions, so we'll treat them as such. This is one of those rough spots. | Action | Dots | | ------- | ---: | | Craft | * | | Dream | ** | | Study | * | | Trick | ** | | Finesse | * | Obviously, study is one of those things that we've spent a lot of time doing, with a certain advantage in the field of dream, thanks to being Yagan. I decided to bump up trick to two dots because I think manipulation is going to be our favored method rather than direct intervention. Along the way, I thought a little finesse wouldn't hurt. ### Special Ability There are a number of special abilities which are associated with each of the tribes, and we get some of the great ones. However, only one of them is a real choice for this concept, and that is **synthesis**, meaning that we can use dream magic of a magnitude equal to our resolve plus our cell's vision focus. Roll the synthesis rating and take stress and/or equilibrium loss based on the result. That is, we can do magic. - **Special Ability:** Synthesis Looking at the list, I can already see which one I want to take as the second one when we get around to it. That's **Unafraid**, so that we don't feel fear when facing spirits or supernatural entities. I guess we're just going to have to work a little bit for that one. ### Ally and Rival You've seen this mechanic show up in games that we've touched on this month, where we pick an ally and a rival from our playbook, and odds are good that someone else at the table also has one of those in a relationship. If you were looking for a way to accidentally or deliberately generate interesting conflicts between characters at the table, this does it pretty tightly. - **Allies and Rivals** - **Ally** - **Havark**, an escaped Z'bri serf - **Rival** - **Veruka the Wraith**, a frail Doomsayer leader Given our concept, it's not a shock that I would take the escaped serf as a contact and an ally. We need some way to get into the camps, and there's no better way than to talk to somebody who used to be in one. Our rival is one of the most powerful exiled Yagans in the Eighth Tribe, which could be a problem, but it's likely that we consider her in part responsible for our exile in the first place. ### Name and Appearance That brings us to pretty much everything we need. There's a scattering of bits here and there with items, but that's not a big deal. This is really the last step that we're concerned with here. - **Name:** Faust[^2] - **Appearance:** A tall, thin, middle-aged man who appears to have somewhat avoided the general tribal inclination toward tattoos and body modifications. Instead, he seems to favor elaboration on his clothes—heavy robes of dark cloth with bits of metal worked into the surface, tracing rough runes in strange lines. His nod to Yagan appearance is a series of messy scars traced out along the side of his face from the corners of his eyes. ## Exunt That's it. That's the character. ![[26 - Tribe 8-Tribes in the Dark - Faust, Fallen Yagan Z'brist.webp]] ![[26 - Tribe 8-Tribes in the Dark - Faust, Fallen Yagan Z'brist (illo).webp]] Now those experienced with various *Forged in the Dark* games are probably wondering if I'm going to go ahead and do the equivalent of The Crew, which in *Tribe 8* is The Cell. The answer is no. That is a lot more fun to do with the other people that you're likely to be playing with, and *Tribe 8* does not have the facility of running solo, though obviously one certainly could with enough creative fiddling. Am I likely to play *Tribe 8*? Probably not. Not because I don't actually like the game—I really do—but it's a very specific game, and you have to really want to play in that narrative space. Doing so would require a lot of work for whoever gets stuck GMing because there are a lot of narrative moving parts, and not all of them deal directly with the players. This makes things a bit messy. I would certainly consider playing if someone invited me to join their game, however. Looking ahead, tomorrow is going to be pretty straightforward, which is exactly the way I like it. Strap in, hold on, and I'll see you on the other side. [^1]: Yeah, we're going there again. [^2]: Look, it's on the actual name list in the book for a Yagan, so I had to take it.