Gathin

[Agemegos]

G'day

Gathins are monsters (or perhaps a race or pseudo-species) that I devised for an adventure in my fantasy setting Gehennum, and that turned out to be a bit of a success with players. In a later campaign, two players wanted to play a couple of gathins who were identical twins, which I allowed. And I have just been wondering: what ought it to look like on a Fantasy Hero character sheet?

A gathin is born as a baby girl to a non-gathin mother. They tend to have somewhat tomboyish inclinations and a somewhat 'coltish' physique, but they grow up to all appearances normal females of their mother's kind.

When a gathin in female form has 'proper' sex her body stores the semen in a special seminal vesicle and subjects it to a subtle magical transformation. The gathin transforms into male form in about an hour of R-rated morphing.

When a gathin in male form has 'proper' sex he ejaculates the transformed semen and then morphs back into female form. If his partner conceives the child will be a gathin, but as regards hereditary traits will otherwise resemble not the gathin but the gathin's previous [male] partner. (eg. if a human-type gathin were to couple with a mountain-god and then with a leshy woman, the child (if any) would be a leshy demigod with earthy elemental connections, and a gathin. If a gathin were to couple with a diver man and then with a normal human woman, the child if any would be a half-diver with a family resemblance to the gathin's diver partner.)

A gathin in male form is to all appearances a normal male and in female form a normal female, if slightly androgynous in each case. The morphing from form to form produces sexual organs and secondary sexual characteristics, including slight increase of height, widening of the shoulders and narrowing of the hips in the morph to male form and vice-versa in the morph to female form. The face and throat change slightly, but there is nevertheless a striking resemblance of face and voice between the forms, and the differences might be overlooked in some circumstances. A gathin in male form is slightly stronger than in female, but the difference is not as great as that between an average man and an average woman.

So: what is it worth to be a gathin, in a society that is vaguely aware of shapeshifters but not aware of the exact properties of gathins?

[UltraRob]

Interesting idea, but I do have to ask two questions...

Why should I want to play one?
Why would Gathin's ever have sex if they know it's gonna be followed by an hour or so of pain?

Rob

[Agemegos]

Interesting idea, but I do have to ask two questions...

Why should I want to play one?

I don't know, but two of my regular players have wanted to do so, one of them on two occasions. And they weren't doing it to pick up the points for disads, either.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that in Gehennum (the setting for which I devised them) there are social conventions that restrict the places that a character can go and the things a character can do on the bsis of his or her sex [and age, but that's another issue].

On the other hand, perhaps it had something to do with the possibilities for interesting romantic, comic, and tragic situations that being a gathin in a human society opens up. Sometimes it can be the difficulties that a character gets into (rther than, say, his or her cool powers) that make him or her fun to play. I don't guess that there is a lot of reason to play a gathin in a campaign of pure action adventure, but in a campaign with substantial dramatic, tragic, romantic, or comedy elements the case is different.


Why would Gathin's ever have sex if they know it's gonna be followed by an hour or so of pain?

Actually, I hadn't supposed that the transformation would be painful.

[Outsider]

How long can a Gathin stay in male form, if it avoids transferring its magically modified cargo?

What happens if a male form Gathin transfers cargo to a female form one? Can the cargo be passed around indefinitely until it finds a warehouse, or does it eventually spoil?

Are male form Gathin capable of dumping their cargo manually, or are they constrained by their magical nature to only unloading it in port?

Do Gathin have a society of their own, living in consious parasitism on another society (they keep track of where they plant, and come steal the harvest in the fall) or are they socialized into the society they are raised in?

What happens if a Gathin is exposed to the change trigger at too tender an age? Do they have puberty, after which point the change may take place, or are they vulnerable at any time? If they have puberty, do they have menopause?

[Agemegos]

How long can a Gathin stay in male form, if it avoids transferring its magically modified cargo?

Indefinitely.


What happens if a male form Gathin transfers cargo to a female form one?

They both change sex.


Can the cargo be passed around indefinitely until it finds a warehouse, or does it eventually spoil?

Perhaps its viability declines after a long time, but essentially it can be stored indefinitely as far a a change of sex is concerned.


Are male form Gathin capable of dumping their cargo manually, or are they constrained by their magical nature to only unloading it in port?

The latter: no jettison on the high seas.


Do Gathin have a society of their own, living in consious parasitism on another society (they keep track of where they plant, and come steal the harvest in the fall) or are they socialized into the society they are raised in?

They are socialised in the society they are raised in at least until they first have sex. And in most places they are too rare and usually secretive to meet and recognise one another, but I suppose there could be exceptions in some places.


What happens if a Gathin is exposed to the change trigger at too tender an age?

I guess they change, but it is in general a subject I am squeamish about.


Do they have puberty, after which point the change may take place, or are they vulnerable at any time?

They definitely undergo puberty, and it makes sense that they might be capable of a change only after it, but that isn't something I had thought about before.


If they have puberty, do they have menopause?

It doesn't make any biological sense for them to have a menopause, but this is fantasy and not SF. I guess that they probably inherit and express the genes regulating menopause despite the fact that those genes are not advantageous to the gathin line.

[Outsider]

OK. Here is something else you might need to think about :)

Gathin, despite being female in appearance (initially) are effectively male from a breeding perspective, in as much as they cannot get pregnant themselves, but can get other people pregnant. And Gathin always breeds a Gathin.


Suppose a stable population, where each woman has 2 children (half male, half female), then toss in a Gathin.

Generation 1)
100 Female, 100 Male, 1 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 1/101)

Generation 2)
99 Female, 99 Male, 2 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 2/101)

Generation 3)
97 Female, 97 Male, 4 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 4/101)

Generation 4)
93 Female, 93 Male, 8 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 8/101)

Generation 5)
86 Female, 86 Male, 14 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 14/100)

Generation 6)
74 Female, 74 Male, 24 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 24/98)

Generation 7)
56 Female, 56 Male, 36 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 36/92)

Generation 8)
34 Female, 34 Male, 44 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 44/78)

Generation 9)
15 Female, 15 Male, 38 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 38/53)

Generation 10)
4 Female, 4 Male, 22 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 22/26)

Generation 11)
1 Female, 1 Male, 6 Gathin. (Chance of Gathin mating : 6/7)

Generation 12)
2 Gathin. (No further breeding)


Adding a Gathin to a larger pool of non-Gathin doesnt change the outcome, it just changes the number of generations required for the extinction of the society. This is, of course, making the assumption that Gathin are just as likely to sire children as non-Gathin. If you want them to remain a vanishingly rare minority, they need to have a significantly lower fecundity rate than the host society.

1) If they socialize as "female", many may want to stay "female", and thus those ones will avoid sex like the plague. Some, however, may -not- avoid sex, but will 'pass on' their cargo at the first opportunity, perhaps by force... they do change back to female after the fact, and so will be hard to identify as the rapist. Hopefully the latter sort will be much, much rarer than the former sort, and thus the overall rate of Gathin siring will be low.

2) They may be hunted effectively enough to lower their fecundity. That army that stormed your village and raped all the women (then watched them for an hour) was just looking for shapechangers, honest.

3) They could be very new on the scene, being a recently created/arrived magical race. The future may follow the extinction timeline above, but thats dozens of generations away, and nobody has thought of it/noticed it happening yet.

4) They could be a very old race indeed, but their physiology (or creator, if their origin is in magic) may have forseen the generation problem, and thus tweaked their 'gift' such that, in an environment containing more than a certain density of Gathin, they :
___A) Become sterile women, neither changing to male, nor becoming pregnant.
___B) Still change, but their male form is sterile. Reversion to female form as normal.
___C) Change, are not sterile, but do not pass on Gathinism

[Geryon]

As far as the generational problem goes, I would solve that by saying that they are "hunted" in any society that believes in them and that many Gathin find and mate with other gathin when possible (ending their breeding cycle, effectively, since neither can get pregnant). The hunted thing makes a lot of sense to me, you could even throw in an old "myth" of a society/race/clan (depends on the scale you want the gathing known and hunted) that was wiped out by Gathin interbreeding.

Here is another thing to think about: Do Gathin remain the same race? Or, say I am a female human gathin, and I have sex with a male elf, do I become a male elf gathin? Could make for a more interesting racial package deal if they mimic the race as well as the sex.

Probably a small VPP with pretty heavy limiters on it (like the mimic example in fred). I don't recall how much FREd lists for "Only powers from the race I most recently had sex with" (I think Steve is saving it for the upcoming "Porn Hero" I have heard so much about) but I would say give it the +1/2 no skill roll required (though you could go with seduction skill or something), -3/4 requires sex (i'm basing this off a HTH attack giving -1/2, so i figure sex has got to be harder than a HTH attack), -1/2 for limited class of powers, and -1/2 may only be as powerful as target's powers

This way, if you wanted to do a 30 point VPP (Racial-abilites-of-the-last-person-you-banged) It would cost you 38 points. Most racial packages can be done fairly well for 30 points or less, unless your gathin player is out there having sex with trolls or star vampires or something.

[Agemegos]

Adding a Gathin to a larger pool of non-Gathin doesnt change the outcome, it just changes the number of generations required for the extinction of the society. This is, of course, making the assumption that Gathin are just as likely to sire children as non-Gathin. If you want them to remain a vanishingly rare minority, they need to have a significantly lower fecundity rate than the host society.

Excellent point. Gathins work like a 'driving Y' selection distorter.

I had imagined that (in Gehennese society at least) Gathins would have a pretty tough time reproducing. They will find it difficult to marry and support a family, and without a marriage they will not have a lot of access to potential mothers (prostitutes in Gehennum use moderately effective contraceptives, and most women are chaperoned.


1) If they socialize as "female", many may want to stay "female", and thus those ones will avoid sex like the plague.

That is exactly why I felt it necessary to establish an intrinsic tomboyish tendency in Gathins. They would have to have an adaptable sexuality, too, but that is not unusual in Gehennum.


2) They may be hunted effectively enough to lower their fecundity.

Even if the hunting is not systematic. The most common way for a gathin to discover that it is not human is to wake up on the first morning of its honeymoon to discover itself to be a youth rather than a young woman (having ceased to be a maiden in both senses by the same act--which is the thought that triggered the invention). I can hardly imagine that the husband will be pleased, and a number of tragic possibilities suggest themselves.


3) They could be very new on the scene, being a recently created/arrived magical race. The future may follow the extinction timeline above, but thats dozens of generations away, and nobody has thought of it/noticed it happening yet.

Indeed. Most shapeshifters in Gehennum are blow-ins from outside, specifically from an underworld named the Shee, which they flee (those few that can) as refugees from an invasion by a magically unchanging race of immortals named the leshy.


4) They could be a very old race indeed, but their physiology (or creator, if their origin is in magic) may have forseen the generation problem, and thus tweaked their 'gift' such that, in an environment containing more than a certain density of Gathin, they :
___A) Become sterile women, neither changing to male, nor becoming pregnant.
___B) Still change, but their male form is sterile. Reversion to female form as normal.
___C) Change, are not sterile, but do not pass on Gathinism

Or if they could jettison cargo at sea (with 'one off the wrist') that would lower their fecundity,perhaps by enough.

[Agemegos]

Here is another thing to think about: Do Gathin remain the same race?

Yes they do. Each gathin has a fixed male form and a fixed female form (with a striking resemblance between them: they are essentially the same except for sexual characteristics) and alternates between them.

I did once run an adventure about a different sort of shape-shifter that after having sex morphs into the exact likeness of its partner. But that is not a gathin.

[Agemegos]

This way, if you wanted to do a 30 point VPP (Racial-abilites-of-the-last-person-you-banged) It would cost you 38 points.

And you could pay for quite a lot of that with 'accidental change' and some sort of social lim, I guess.