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====== Totem Creatures of the Far Realm: The Aberrant Souls ======

{{ :aberrant_soul.jpg|}}

Throughout the world, there are those who find themselves 
touched by the Far Realm. Perhaps they possess
an innate sensitivity to the Outside’s emanations, or
they might have sought a link for their own purposes.
Regardless, the subtle and horrible influence of the
Far Realm lingers, and these unfortunates must find a
way to deal with their connection to the place beyond.
Most try to reject that taint, hoping it will fade with
time. The aberrant soul instead strengthens the tie to
create a link with a Far Realm denizen. By choosing a
particular aberrant creature as their totem, aberrant
souls gain some of that creature’s power… and more
importantly, a razor’s edge of control over the corruption
that threatens to overwhelm sanity.

===== Finding a Calling =====

Aberrant souls are few in number. It is no small thing
to forge the unnatural link that gives them power.
Few even believe that such a thing is possible. Each
aberrant soul discovers the way alone, learning the
rites from scratch and guesswork. But what leads
them to walk such a difficult path?


Some have always been able to sense the Far
Realm. A young druid lurches awake every night,
sweating from his nightmares of contorting masses of
flesh and bone. He may seek the bond to understand
why he is plagued each night, and to gain control over
his dreaming. A shaman initiate summons her first
spirit, and calls a mass of writhing tentacles and eyestalks.
Perhaps she has no choice in the matter, her
primal summons inexorably twisted by the Outside.
Or perhaps she decides to embrace the strangeness as
a gift that no other shaman could replicate. For these
individuals, forming a bond with a totem creature
allows them to shape their innate connection to the
Far Realm into something they are able to influence.


But there are some whose ambitions drive them
to terrible lengths. They witness the power of the
Far Realm and desire it for themselves. A monk
believes that to defeat a threat, she must first know
the threat. She alters her mind and body, changing so
that she may truly understand these alien creatures.
A barbarian of the wolf tribe barely survives a battle
with a gibbering mouther. He decides that his totem
animal is too weak, and takes the creature that nearly
defeated him as his new exemplar. These aberrant
souls seek the power of the maddening place beyond,
though they will find it comes at great cost.

===== Leaving Society Behind =====

As people who have experienced the ineffable touch
of the Far Realm, aberrant souls are viewed with a
certain amount of suspicion. It can be difficult to hide
the mental and physical changes an aberrant totem
creature can bestow.


Tribal societies have a variety of reactions to the
primal character that becomes an aberrant soul.
Some are treated as pariahs—the elders claiming
that such activities create a bridge between the Far
Realm and the natural world. Other tribes may be
awed by the terrible power that an aberrant soul
possesses, and name the character as the tribe’s
champion. Reactions vary, but one thing is certain;
once discovered, an aberrant soul is set apart from
the rest of the tribe.


Hardly surprising, therefore, that many aberrant
souls live as hired mercenaries or adventurers. It is
easier to hide one’s true nature among people who
have never experienced the touch of the Far Realm
and who don’t recognize its influence. Some don’t
even bother to hide their strangeness from their new
allies, taking advantage of the pragmatic attitude that
many adventurers possess.

===== The Morphic Web =====

Becoming an aberrant soul changes the way one perceives
the world. All aberrant souls are aware of the
danger of the Outside’s soundless whispers, and know
they cannot rely on their own senses to keep madness
at bay. They yearn for someone with whom they can be
honest about their fears of straying too far from sanity.
This need has driven some aberrant souls to seek one
another. Who could understand their condition better
than another who has been touched by the Far Realm?
Over time, these occasional contacts have coalesced
into an informal network known as the Morphic Web.

When a member of the Web meets someone who
might be a fellow aberrant soul, the pair begin a
complicated verbal dance, for only a fool would admit
the secrets of an aberrant soul to a stranger. They use
euphemism and metaphor to convey their similarity,
identifying themselves through innocent if puzzling
phrases like “I awoke one morning to see that the
stars were alive” or “Have you ever trained threeeyed
frogs to speak?” This interchange always ends
with a key phrase: “Tell me, do you know any other
like-minded friends?” If the stranger answers with
the names of other Web members, then the questioner
has found a member of the Web. If the stranger
does not, but does reveal a Far Realm connection, the
Web member reveals the existence of the organization
and its purpose.

Each member of the Web knows five or six contacts,
meeting with one or two each year to discuss
the status of their mutual friends, share stories of
their recent adventures, and pass along any information
they have gathered on the Outside. Though
these conversations seem innocuous to outsiders,
they serve a hidden purpose. Each aberrant soul
analyzes the discussion to determine if the other still
holds the upper hand over madness. In cases where
one is slipping, the other will attempt to reestablish
a sense of reality. Warning someone that “tentacles
grasp strongly and can pull you under” is a key phrase
within the Web that is often enough to shock the
hearer into swift action. If this attempt fails, members
of the Web have a final duty—when an aberrant soul
falls into madness, he or she must be neutralized
before becoming a danger to the world.

This watchful patience is normally the extent of
the collaboration and organization of the Morphic
Web. However, some twenty years ago, a call went
out warning of a threat that required all members
to work together. A shaman named Kalandas had
become known as a prominent Balancer. The Balancers
are a faction of the Web that believes that their
conduit to the Far Realm works both ways, allowing
them to influence their totem creature toward
more benign behavior, even as they themselves are
influenced by the Outside’s attitudes. Most Balancers
believe this will be the process of generations or of
centuries, but Kalandas believed that he could speed
up the process. He found many followers amongst
the tribes of his people, offering power beyond
imagining. By turning these followers into aberrant
souls, he could more rapidly alter the nature of his
totem creature. Instead, he brought the maddening
touch of the Far Realm to those who were not strong
enough to resist it. As Kalandas imbued his followers
with the power of malignant aberrants, he became
overwhelmed by the powerful urges of his totem creature.
The Morphic Web learned of his blasphemous
teachings and took action. In what is now known
as the Gibbering Massacre, the entire Web banded
together to kill Kalandas and his crazed and gibbering
followers. The orphans from this battle were
taken to nearby tribes and schools to be raised, away
from the touch of the Far Realm. Each orphan is still
watched by at least one member of the Web, to see if
as they grow, they show signs of corruption, or if they
might follow the path of the aberrant soul.

===== Corruption of the Far Realm =====

How does the connection to the aberrant totem
creature manifest itself? When an aberrant soul
uses psionic powers, those nearby
might hear faint incomprehensible whispers in their
minds. When calling upon primal evocations, the
spirits summoned are subtly twisted, with echoes of
creatures from the Far Realm. The aberrant soul’s
form alters, subtly at first and becoming more apparent
over time. Even so, these changes can usually be
explained as the result of some other magic, or concealed
without too much difficulty.

The mental changes are far more insidious. To
touch the Far Realm is to risk madness, but also to
gain unparalleled insight. Aberrant souls experience
visions from the perspective of their totem creatures
during their dreams and trances. The feeling of
malevolent pleasure as a mind flayer consumes its
victim or as a gibbering mouther rips apart its prey
can lead the weak to madness, but the strong can gain
understanding. Stories tell of a druid who traveled a
hundred miles to cure a child of the touch of a chaos
beast. When asked how she knew the boy had been
attacked, and how to cure him, she said only that she
had seen it in a dream. In the Underdark, spymasters
tell tales of a drow who stopped a major illithid
incursion. When a scout’s brain was devoured by a
mind flayer, the drow used his totemic connection to
siphon off the knowledge gained by the mind flayer,
and thus learn the scout’s findings.  

It is possible to try to control these flashes of
insight, and some aberrant souls who are more experienced
with ritual magic have created a ritual to aid
with this control.
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