Apocodritch Lords

[SA]

Wanted!

Strange, unsettling and inspiring "archetypes" to serve as pseudo-character classes (playbooks) in my sorcerous hack of Apocalypse World. My stock thus far (all names are working titles):

Revenant – left for dead, or indeed long dead; raised again and sustained by unhuman passion.
Alienist – in communion with strange races above and below reality.
Zoanthrope – shape-shifter; summoner and breeder of beasts.
Geometer - builder and breaker and twister of spacetime.
Ghoul - consumer and defiler and controller of the dead.

There should be no "-mancer", divination-style archetypes. All playbooks will have their own version of divination, tied to their core concept.

[Lmns Crn]

I can't even express how excited I am to see this thread.

[SA]

Yes you can. Add to the list!

[Superfluous Crow]

Just ideas:
Keymaker - Eldritch traveller and master of doors that should never have been opened.
Golemworker - For him, clay and flesh is one, and life is malleable.
Iconoclast - nothing stands still forever, and when things move they are his to control.
Immerser - Matter and identity are fluid, and he submerges himself in their very nature. 

[Steerpike]

Some off-the-cuff thoughts:

Haemotheurge - blood flows where she wills; the blood only obeys women.
Blasphemer - who channels the forbidden, the debased, the taboo, the unclean.
Entropist - who embraces the power of decay and inevitability.

[Lmns Crn]

I am all in.

Celestiologue - writer-of-stars, who scribes new truths in the night sky, and in so doing, makes them real
Polyspiritus - learned in the discipline of spiritual partition, whose impossibilities are wrought with the diverse parts of his own soul
Unfettered One - who recognizes that the connection between body and self is tenuous and, ultimately, unnecessary, deriving power from the intervening separation

[sparkletwist]

Primalist - truth transcends language, to be at our most sublime we must be at our most base.
Avatar - a living incarnation of a dead god, thought to be forgotten and better off that way.
Omniphage - all matter is but raw materials for the taking... all of it.

[SA]

There's some interesting overlap between my archetypes and the ones heretofore suggested by you fine gentlemen. Because I think the differences between playbooks should be stark, I'm considering merging some of your suggestions into my own as moves (if you don't know what that means, read this awesome text). EXAMPLES:

Alienist
Steerpike's Blasphemer and Luminous' Celestiologue

Alchemist
Golem – can create and maintain a mobile, walking, talking weapon. When sent from the alchemist's sight to do their bidding, results are unpredictable.
Laboratory – a workspace for creating alchemical and technical wonders, plus five or six nameless and cretinous homunculi to give you the heebie jeebies.

Geometer
Crow's Keymaker and Luminous' Unfettered One. Not sure of much else.

Ghoul
Sepulchre -
The herd – a region with a stable population on which the ghoul preys.
Risen servant – when you revive a freshly dead cadaver, roll+Stern. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9 hold 1. When you send them out into the world, feigning mortality, spend your hold 1 for 1 to:
-send them into a fugue of murder and cannibalism.
-summon them, tireless and unerring and as swift as their bones can stand, to your presence.
-[something else?]
On a miss they awaken hungering, slavering, lustful and utterly insane.
A gruesome banquet – probably something like this: http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=2232.0

Revenant
Came Back Wrong – character is possessed by a no-shit DEMON or maybe an infant god.
I know who killed me – every time you exact revenge on one of your killers, you get +1 Strange (max +3).

Purchasing Revenant moves in play: if the group thinks it is appropriate, a character who died with one experience circle unfilled, or with all circles filled but without selecting a move, may select a Revenant move and thereby rise from the dead. Yes, this does mean that you can rise from the dead as many times as there are Revenant moves to select. If you select this move under any other circumstance, it means someone killed you at some point for some reason. Now tell us why.

Zoanthrope
Menagerie – the sorcerer's own animal horde. Functions as a gang.
Et al -

Elemental (NOT Elementalist)
Crow's Immerser

[Superfluous Crow]

My iconoclast was meant to be a sort of kineticist if it wasn't clear, but I was in a hurry so he ended up with the somewhat misleading name.
My Immerser, Sparkle's Primalist and LC's Unfettered One all have similarities, depending on interpretation.
Iconoclast and Entropist could also be combined.
Avatar and infant-god revenant perhaps?

[Lmns Crn]

You're totally right, S_A; a lot of these ideas could be boiled down to one or two moves from a larger playbook. I guess we're sort of shooting in the dark at this time?

If you want to lay down some basic planks of color/tone (who are the PCs, what is the world, what are we doing?) and mechanics (what are our stats and basic moves, what do you want playbooks to end up looking like?), I'd be glad to try my hand at some sketches of playbook elements.

[SA]

A good reference is and you, ARRUNTULLA. In fact, the more I think about it the more Apocodritch looks like that setting, sans the ancient worldship and the invading alien bug spores.

The World Is
Young
Embattled
Forever on the Precipice of War
Pressed between a black and burning underworld (where the gods are) and a cold bright alien otherworld

Sorcerers Are
Rarer than kings
Transgressors
Unbound by moral law
Of mortal flesh
Strange of mind
Hated

Their Enemies Are
Monarchs
Scorned charnel gods
Spurned lovers
Their own failed creations, split, frothing and mewling
The natural order which fears and loathes their manipulations and is larger than even they can dream
Human beings; even beggars
Sorcerers

They Desire
Retribution
Resurrection
A crown
A child
An orgasm
A life to replace the one forgotten
An honest smile
A sea of tears and blood intermingled
A ship to carry them across the Endless Ocean
The ascendance of HELL
A celestial consort, pale and cold

Remember: when we say Zoanthrope we don't mean a zoanthrope. We mean The Zoanthrope. Maybe one or two other people on the planet can speak with animals or transform into birds or breed with beasts to sire half-human progeny. Probably there aren't any others at all. Sorcerers express that fascinating combination of measureless ambition, a prodigal mind and nonexistent ethical boundaries. They are therefore (and thankfully) a vanishingly small community.

IMPORTANT: Moves must be distinct in both mechanics and flavour. Two moves that get you from one place to another without crossing the intervening distance shouldn't exist.

[Lmns Crn]

Hell yes.

Here is a link to and you, ARRUNTULLA, for the convenience of all.

Once this gets hammered out a bit, I think I would like to run it.

[SA]

I think I would like you to run it also.

[LordVreeg]

It is interesting how this feeds many parts of the psyche.  Very elemental and dynamic, and Much how I few many of the earlist phases of my setting, not that tha was a purpose, but it is interesting how much meat is really there to feed the imagination and to make solid the primal.

Two that might jog something...

The Stranger-None remember him after meeting him, only the most powerful remember anything from his passing.
The Grey Balance-She finds space and power in the unseen line between opposite concepts.

[Lmns Crn]

Here's a thing I came across while reading some months back about a totally different game. Maybe you can strip-mine it for something useful.

[spoiler=The Six Powers]Eternal credit to Matthew Gingell for this great universe, which I was fortunate enough to be a player in. Essentially, this was a far-future universe in which six people had truly incredible powers. The telekinetic was able to tear atmospheres off planets or change the course of a solar system. The mind-controller could convert billions to his slavery. The teleporter could not only go anywhere in the universe, he could see it all, all the time. The shapeshifter could take any imaginable form, including the forms of the other powers, and get their powers (at a lesser degree). The 'active body' (with the ability to shapeshift others) could create beings that could live in the cold of space and transform worlds. Finally, the 'passive mind' could read anyone's mind, and nullify the powers of any one of the other players, at the cost of his own abilities until such time as he broke off the attack.

It was novel, it was fun, it was one night of schemeing. A good time was had by all, and the winners were the two who managed to ally themselves without backstabbing, on faith and trust alone. There's probably a lesson in there. [/spoiler]