Shallow Graves: Full Introduction Text (Patreon)

The inspirational media list in the core was quite short, so I've expanded it both on Deviant stories familiar to me and those I've heard mentioned again and again by others.

Introduction

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves.

— Author Unknown

Looking at the odds, the Broken shouldn’t be alive at all. The circumstances required to generate sufficient pressure to trigger Divergence are often fatal in themselves, and the aftermath of transformation can be equally deadly. Those Remade who fail to quickly establish bonds of Loyalty and Conviction waste away — sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly and explosively — such that euthanizing a newborn Feral is widely considered an act of mercy, both for the Feral and for the world upon which their dangerously unstable power would be unleashed. Death in the service of a conspiracy — or in the act of escaping from it — is by no means a rare occurrence either.

Once free of their laboratories and prisons, Renegades face a harsh life. Not only might they perish in altercations with the conspiracy’s agents (some of which they themselves initiate), but simply finding food, clothing, and shelter can be a challenge, and most Remade require these just as surely as do Baselines. Death by deprivation is as unpleasant for the Broken as for anyone else. Or they suffer illness or injuries (related or unrelated to their Divergence) that require medical attention they cannot afford or are afraid to seek, knowing this could come to the attention of the conspiracy hunting them. A burst appendix, aggressive cancer (especially common among the Broken), or an untreated infection can kill a Deviant as easily as a bullet.

Renegades who have faced all that and remain free and alive have earned the right to call themselves survivors. They have proven tough, independent, and elusive. They know when to stand their ground and when to flee, when to strike and when to bide their time. Still, every day spent on the run from the conspiracy is a dance with death. One foot put wrong could end in the Renegade’s ignominious demise and hasty burial in a shallow grave.

Contents

Shallow Graves is a player’s guide for Deviant: The Renegades. It explores the experience of being a Renegade in both narrative and human terms, as well as offering new character options.

This Introduction offers a brief summary of this book’s contents and provides an extended list of inspirational material.

Chapter One: Broken, Remade, and Renegade offers roleplaying advice for Deviant players, shining lights on lost and gained traits like Origin, Clade, Integrity, Aspirations, Anchors, and Touchstones.

Chapter Two: Adaptations, Forms, and Merits offers 20 new Adaptations, five new Forms, and an assortment of new Merits.

Chapter Three: Variations provides advice for designing new Variations for your Deviant: The Renegades chronicles and offers dozens of new Variations.

Chapter Four: Scars gives players access to dozens of new Scars and Standard Deviations, as well as offering guidance for designing new ones.

Chapter Five: Building Blocks discusses different approaches to creating a Deviant character and offers roleplaying advice on portraying an ordinary person who has been granted extraordinary supernatural abilities along with the terrible price they exact in the form of Scars.

Chapter Six: Character Arcs explores the long narrative arc of a Renegade character in an ongoing chronicle, from the first chapter to the denouement. It also offers more guidance for roleplaying and living in Catharsis, and portraying the explosive finale of End Stage.

Chapter Seven: The Cohort provides advice for drawing diverse Renegades together into a cohort and portraying the complex interpersonal dramas that arise between its Broken members. To that end, it offers Cohort Static, an optional system for tracking and portraying those dynamics. Additionally, the chapter introduces Techniques, the tricks and tactics Deviants develop for their Variations.

Additional Inspirational Material

You have read, seen, or heard a Deviant story. Not all of them feature a conspiracy and powers with a terrible price and all the other elements that feature in Deviant: The Renegades. But once you start looking for those narrative components, you’ll find they appear seemingly everywhere. No full list of potential inspirational material is possible, but here is a long list of some of the books, shows, and games that remind us — and have reminded others — of Deviant:

Literature

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie shares much of its structure with The Count of Monte Cristo but lavishes more attention on the unintended consequences (and human casualties) of its protagonist’s quest for vengeance.

Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov: Replace “human” with “Loyalty Touchstone” in the first two Laws of Robotics and you get a pretty close match to the Deviant experience.

The Masquerade series by Seth Dickinson is included here because of Iscend Comprine, who first appears as an antagonist in the second book. As one of the Clarified (special agents classically conditioned to perfect loyalty and obedience), she is a pretty close to exact fit for one of the Devoted, but it gets even more interesting once she learns how to manipulate her own conditioning.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is the most famous example of a revenge story. A young man is framed and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, and seeks revenge against those responsible.

In Franz Kafka’s short story “The Metamorphosis”, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning and finds himself in the body of a giant cockroach. In addition to the personal angst this engenders, it drives a wedge between himself and his family, who share his home and for whom he was the primary breadwinner.

Stephen King has published several books that feature characters with psychic powers who find themselves on the run (Firestarter), engaged in behavior the Baseline legal system wouldn’t condone (The Dead Zone), or just end up going on a rampage against those who wronged them (Carrie).

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch appears here because of the intensity of its hero’s thirst for revenge against the ones who wronged him. Sometimes just killing the bastard isn’t enough; sometimes you have to thwart everything he hoped to accomplish, make it clear to him that his whole life has been wasted, and then kill the bastard.

George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (which was adapted into the Game of Thrones TV series) has a Conviction-focused character in Arya Stark, who has a list of people she intends to kill.

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein has given gifts to many of the games of The Chronicles of Darkness. To Deviant, it gives a pretty clear example of the pursuit and ultimate destruction of a Conviction Touchstone, reminding the clever but irresponsible Victor that death is not the worst fate that can be inflicted on one person.

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells is a Self-Made story about a fugitive Deviant whose experiments have rendered him invisible but also driven him mad.

Film and Television

The A-Team (1983-87): Four Vietnam vets, framed for a crime they didn’t commit, help the innocent while on the run from the military. A solid example of a way to structure a Deviant chronicle with protagonists who rove from city to city — give them someone to care about and someone to fight.

Black Widow (2021): A Genotypal Renegade confronts the conspiracy that created her with the help of her family, all of whom were once active members of the conspiracy.

Brigsby Bear (2017): The story of a young man rescued from a cult, who innocently spreads his cult’s teachings to a world audience. Although some stuff is played for laughs, it has an undercurrent of personal horror and tragedy and is a surprisingly good take on the experience of a Genotypal Renegade.

Carnivale (2003-05): Proxy war between heaven and hell aside, this series has a great example of a Scar, as its main character can heal anyone but at the price of draining the life-force of everything and everyone around him — even extending to bringing back the dead but at the cost of another person’s life.

Dark City (1998): A man awakens alone in a strange hotel to find that he has lost his memory and is wanted for a series of brutal and bizarre murders. He must find a way to stop those behind it before they take control of his mind and destroy him. Notable for the presence of a Self-Made Exomorph. Watch the director’s cut or skip the opening monologue, which is a spoiler for the whole movie.

Darkman (1990): A brilliant scientist left for dead returns to exact revenge on the people who burned him alive, using his ability to perfectly disguise himself.

District 9 (2009): A government agent transformed into a monster by his exposure to alien technology finds himself on the run from his employer and seeking sanctuary among the extraterrestrials he formerly abused.

Elfen Lied (2004): A girl with destructive supernatural powers and a violent alter ego escapes the facility meant to contain her and takes refuge with a couple of students.

Encanto (2021): Members of a family with superhuman abilities are put under intense pressure to use those abilities in the service of their community, putting their own needs aside in often unhealthy ways.

Gargoyles (1994-97): In addition to centering creatures who turn to stone by day, it includes a transition from one villainous organization to another that is straight out of the Web of Pain’s playbook.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (2023): Rocket’s backstory is a clear example of a Renegade story — specifically an Uplift, for troupes with access to The Clades Companion.

Heroes (2006-10): Although it lost focus later in its run, the first season of the series does a good job of exploring the way its characters respond to the emergence of their supernatural powers.

The Imperfects (2022): After an experimental gene therapy turns them into monsters, three twenty-somethings band together to hunt down the scientist responsible and force him to make them human again.

Kamen Rider (1971-73): Among the most-cited examples of a Deviant story, a cyborg fights the evil organization that made him.

Kill Bill (2003) and its sequel are a solid Conviction story.

Lady Snowblood (1973): A woman is trained from birth to be an instrument of her family’s revenge.

Logan (2017): Wolverine has always been a great touchstone for Deviant, from his capture and enhancement as part of the Weapon X project, to his tendency towards both Loyalty (to Jean) and Conviction (to Sabretooth), to his propensity for violence. Logan gives us Wolverine as a Guardian, trying to live a quiet life caring for an aging Professor Xavier, whose Alzheimer’s makes him lose control over his terrifyingly powerful telepathic abilities.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): The War Boys perfectly convey a Deviant’s unhesitating willingness to engage in self-sacrifice. Witness me!

Noir (2001): Two assassins travel the world accepting assignments, but their employer keeps setting deadly traps for them. The explanation lies in their mysterious upbringing by a shadowy organization hoping to create the perfect killer. Also, if you want to know what Hyper-Competence in Firearms looks like, this is your show.

Parasyte (2014-15): A 17-year-old boy’s hand is possessed by a parasite that usually infects human brains and turns the hosts into brutal killers. He learns to coexist with it, and it helps him hunt other parasites.

The Pretender (1996-2000): A specially gifted man with the ability to instantly master any skill escapes from a secret testing facility and travels the country taking on different jobs and helping strangers while hiding from his kidnappers.

Push (2009): A group of young expatriates with telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities are hiding from a clandestine U.S. government agency. They must utilize their different talents and band together for a final job enabling them to escape the agency forever.

RoboCop (1987): In a dystopian future, a corporation tapped to privatize the city’s police transforms a dying police officer into a cyborg. But when he learns of the company’s nefarious plans, he turns against them.

Rogue One (2016): Does an “everybody dies” end to a chronicle seem like it couldn’t possibly be satisfying? Allow us to furnish a counterargument.

Scanners (1981): Another Cronenberg film, this one focuses on a battle between two factions of powerful psychics — one that wants to take over the world, and the other that seeks to exterminate all the members of the first faction before it achieves its objective.

The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994-98): A lighter take with many of the elements of Deviant. A freak accident at a chemical plant gives a young girl remarkable abilities that she must keep hidden from the company that caused it.

Sense8 (2015-18): Eight characters across the world find their lives entangled by the strange bond they share and the conspiracy that hunts them.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in their various television, movie, and comic book incarnations are a classic source of Deviant-like creatures, with no shortage of shadowy organizations doing bad things in the shadows.

Trigun (1998): Although the first half of the series is light-hearted, the second half is much more serious and thoughtful. For Vash’s nemesis, merely destroying him is not enough. Rather, he engages in an elaborate plan to prove that his enemy is wrong about everything he believes, using innocent people and targeting Vash’s friends to force him to abandon his personal code.

V for Vendetta (2005): Both the graphic novel and movie explore the revenge tragedy, and the way V attempts to remake Evie into someone like himself is right out of the more toxic side of the Loyalty playbook.

The X-Men, in their various television, movie, and comic book incarnations frequently explore the social consequences of having remarkable, poorly understood powers.

Yellowjackets (2021): A high school girls’ soccer team crashes in the Canadian wilderness, and those who survive the next year and a half in the wild are haunted by the things they experienced and did to stay alive. The 20-years-later versions of the survivors bear signs of trauma that echo the Scars and other effects of Divergence that are at once horrifying and pitiable.

Games

Galerians (1999): A boy awakens with psychic powers and no memories. He escapes the hospital where he finds himself and uses his telepathic abilities to seek the truth about the plot to supplant the human race with Galerians.

The [PROTOTYPE] series plays into a lot of the same tropes as Deviant and is a popular topic for the “how do I make X?” question a lot of players new to the game ask when exploring Variations.

The Resident Evil series’s Umbrella Corporation is one take on a conspiracy, complete with Devoted. The aesthetic of its antagonists is evocative of Mutants.

Miscellaneous

The TV Tropes website includes a Deviant: The Renegades page that does a decent job of pointing out tropes common to the game. Looking at other examples of those tropes opens up opportunities to find more media examples than we could list here; “Phlebotinum Rebel” is the most prominent of these tropes.