Progeneity

The Rules™ at a glance:

• Progenies are ostensibly immortal, no longer aging (barring kinda vibes-based conditions) once they receive progeneity.
• When someone is an incomplete progeny, they must descend through the oneiric ocean to make a connection with the Archeophim’s abstract domain to become complete.
• Once someone is a complete progeny, half their flesh is physical material and the other half is aedifene. They are only half human. They are arguably half Image.
• Once the verselia stores of the body are depleted through usage of the progeny’s abilities, it will begin to consume the soul. Incomplete progenies expend the soul regardless.
• Becoming a progeny of a particular god will tether the mortal’s oneiric field next to the Archeophim’s, so Archeophim can quite easily speak to their progenies oneirically by entering the mortal’s oneiric field.
• Using too much of one’s abilities as a progeny results in the body slowly turning to aedifene, beginning from the extremities and then travelling inwards. The longer a progeny lives, regardless of their use of their abilities, their body will begin to turn to aedifene.

Progeny Subtypes

Endowed/Champion

The most common type of progeneity: when a person has simply been granted progeneity by the Archeophim giving them a fraction of their body. The Archeophim will most likely just concentrate whatever amount of their verselian body into a crystal and give it to the human, or they might lob off a hand or something if they're feeling like spicing it up.

Accreted

When progeneity was not granted, but the human has still gained the status through collecting/integrating enough of the Archeophim's essence at one time to give them progeneity. The god isn’t guaranteed to know about the presence . Due to the nature of how progeneity is actually engrained, becoming a progeny through accretion is risky. If the person isn’t in possession of enough divine verselia to protect their soul as they descend through the xeiris, their soul can be crushed or lost. This results in the body becoming vegetative, and eventual death.

Vessel

When a human possesses a fraction of an Archeophim's core. Could be congential progeneity depending on the instance. The most a human can physically possess without becoming integrated into the Archeophim is 50% of a core. Both Rem and Aluaris are vessels for Akadriel each possessing about half of her core.

Progeny abilities

Sapience:

• Verselia is consumed to alter the consciousness of other entities.
• Not the most directly combat-suited, but it’s good for crowd control. It’s very good for espionage with mind-reading abilities, or its general ability to just fuck with people’s minds.
  Creation:
• They consume their stores of verselia in the body to convert into plain aedifene.
• Can be quite combat-suited, though typically in more supportive roles. They often have crap defence.
  Destruction:
• They use their verselian stores to “destroy” and equal amount of verselia or matter.
• Very combat-suited. That’s typically all they are in some form. They’re not anymore “tanky” than any other different progeny, but they tend to move slower on average since they usually have to be careful about what they’re destroying.
  Light:
• Verselia is consumed to make the self or other objects brighter, lighter (in weight), faster or hotter.
• Very combat-suited, but can also have a supportive role with the movement of objects or as messengers. They can also be human heaters, but it’s not suggested to become a Light progeny for the purpose of being a professional human heater.
  Darkness:
• Verselia is consumed to make other objects darker, heavier, slower and colder. This can also be done on the self, but there are typically very few use-cases for it.
• Rather combat suited, but more in the sense of crowd control. The abilities can also be beneficial for stealth where everything else is made far darker and the darkness progeny just slinks along.
  Recurrence:
• Verselia is consumed to draw out past information from the target verselia.
• Not particularly combat-suited. They’re more often in knowledge-based positions. Recurrence can be used for combat, but the user would have to be creative.
  Continuance:
• Verselia is consumed ???
• ??????
  Unity:
• Verselia is consumed to combine two or more verselian targets into one new entity.
• Not THE most combat-suited role, but
  Division:
• Verselia is consumed to split a verselian target; “division” can occur in different ways, resulting in either the literal division of an object into two halves, or a more metaphysical division in which a -real connection could be severed. (This requires a far greater amount of verselia to consume and was how Akadriel got split).

Subjectivity:
Objectivity:

Anatomy

Appears for the most part like your bog-standard human, but half of their atomic mass has become aedifene. Depending on their verselian density, their weight can greatly fluctuate with no apparent changes. (e.g. varies between normal human weight at full verselian content, or half their normal weight at nigh-zero content). Their strength and stamina also gets a tenfold buff to their baseline, so if a human could backsquat 100 kilos and then they became a progeny, they could then squat a ton, possibly more.

When considering the main differences between a progeny and a human, most visible differences are contained to the head and up.

• Their eyes are white-pupilled and more rhomboid in shape by default. It can be uncanny to look at for too long. Their eye colour would have also changed to match their respective Archeophim.
• They also have fangs (for no reason other than rule of cool), simply because the Archeophim also possess fangs. Teeth formations vary based on the Archeophim. Progeny teeth will change to match the Archeophim.
• Hair colour greatly gets fucked with. Can either become monochrome with respective-coloured accentings, or similar to the Archeophim's hair (see Rem). I don’t have the greatest logic who gets full hair colour changes or the hair just becomes monochrome with coloured accenting.
• When examined under UV light, progenies can also possess markings over their bodies, typically patterned based on their [verselian signature].
• They can turn into glowsticks under certain conditions (their eyes or chromatic hair parts), typically intense emotion.

Mortality

Genetics and Reproduction

Progenies are not genotypically recoded by the Archeophim to resemble them, so any offspring a progeny might likely won’t have any effects from the Archeophim. Any progeny offspring that bears any resemblance to progeny colouring is because they had exposure to divine verselia from their parents. This has been documented to occur in human populations that reside near Archeophim.

Dietary Needs and Habits

They require regular human sustenance as well as verselian intake. Most of the time, verselia can just be acquired passively by spending time in high-shedding environments, but if they're running low, they can be given V-cubes or infusions. It is most common for verselia to need to be replenished through supplemental means after combat, where it is most often chewed through. Verselia can occasionally offset thirst and hunger, but not for too long. There is still half a human body they need to look after. However, due to there only being the equivalent of half a body, it also means that progenies have the unfortunate affliction of constantly being twice as sensitive to altering agents of any kind, meaning that, in order to get drunk, they need half the amount of alcohol that was previously needed. This means that almost all progenies are lightweights, and they could be easily outdrunk by a normal human.

A progeny can go with critically low levels of verselia for a certain amount of time and feel normal before warning signs start kicking in. They will grow extremely tired very quickly, possibly bordering on an almost delirious state. Their perceived temperature will then quickly drop, becoming very cold. They can also suffer extreme dizziness with an intense craving for verselia. This can manifest in the form of seeking out verselia for consumption or less commonly, a need for physical proximity if the progeny is emotional for whatever reason. This is known as sponging. Sponging is most effective on the progeny's respective Archeophim, but another person they are close with can work just as well.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

• Night vision becomes better (amount varies depending on the Archeophim. Noxael progenies have the best night vision)
• Can detect verselian anomalies/movements/fluctations. The more in-tune the progeny is with their emotions, the better they can sense.
• Actual abilities vary depending on the Archeophim, but they just have similar, typically nerfed versions of what their god can do.
  • In the case of Tora and Renachiel, Tora could never match the output and damage that Renachiel could do, but she tends to be more precise whereas Renachiel will just carpetbomb shit. In the same vein, Tora can "break" verselian matter—more than normal atomic entities can do—whereas Renachiel can completely destroy it.
  • Same with Aluaris and Creation. Akadriel can tap into a separate dimension full of blank verselia to create new aedifene or abiotic material, whereas Aluaris can only reprocess his own verselia or verselia in the environment around him.
• Normal, run-of-the-mill progenies have minor Aegis-like abilities in that they can transfigure the aedifene/verselia contained within themselves if the amount is permitting. They don't possess the same form-shifting abilities that Rem does, but they can still produce weapons or other less-complex items made completely out of aedifene.

Eclipsing

An ability specific to progenies that isn't super well known. Since they're composed of equal parts aedifene/verselia and equal parts biotic substance, one can overtake the other since the default state is something of a blend. The inverse of eclipsing would be to localize the divine verselia contained in one's body into the centre of one's being, but doing this doesn't mess with the progeny's appearance unlike eclipsing.

The actual process of eclipsing is letting the divine verselia overshadow and contain the body's biotic material. The flesh is temporarily reduced to verselia and contained within the eclipsed body. Once eclipsing is undone, there can be temporary alterations to the flesh (like left over visible markings or something) that will fade with time—see little gallery below. The actual appearance of the eclipsed form can vary based on how the progeny entered that state. If it was through...

• ...emotional turmoil, the appearance will be very messy/broken, potentially bordering on monstrous.
• ...an external force, like an Image, the appearance could resemble that of an Image or whatever external force enacted it. (i.e. looking a bit like monsterfucker bait because yeah).
• ...self-intention, then the progeny can look something like a lite version of their respective raw Archeophim. (I have a vague idea of what it's like but I'm explaining it very poorly—I'd have to actually draw it).

[images to go here]

Monalatus

This is essentially a botched form of eclipsing. The divine verselia of the Archeophim becomes erratic and pierces the human flesh while it is normally contained synonymously with or within the flesh.

Other Random Shit

• They can have accelerated healing rates when given adequate amounts of verselia. If they've suffered open wounds, the verselia will come along and seal up the wounds. The "scar tissue" will not be standard, but instead regular skin that has a softly holographic sheen. This sheen gets more intense the more the flesh is replaced in the same spot.
• They can lose more blood than the average human and be relatively fine.
• Their blood can have a shimmer of their “colour”, depending on the Archeophim.
• Assuming their progeneity is never revoked, it's possible they can live indefinitely, depending on the amount of verselia they're otherwise exposed to.
  • If it were revoked, they would still have lingering divine verselia intertwined with their being. Depending on how long they were a progeny (and the type of progeneity), they could end up as a "God Child" and end up living a bit longer than regular humans anyway.