#lily's posts

The Idigam, the greatest horror that the Uratha can face. Ancient nightmares so powerful and so old that only Mother Luna and Father Wolves themselves were able to beat or kill them.

They should always be more than just a big monster to punch and bite. (though, ironically some people make a good point that when you look at him and remove the comedy, Aku from Samurai Jack is a good example of an Idigam.)

The Idigam must be a presence, an entity, a force of nature that is actively trying to kill nature. They are the spirits of things and concepts which have never existed or should not exist.

Idigam are nightmares for all but the bravest (or most foolish) of Uratha, and even a Mage would find them a threat. They are amorphous, ever changing, ever shifting, and as alien to us as can be. Reality itself is poisoned by their presence, like a spiritual fungus that grows and makes the world and the spirit sick.

 "We are each a nation, independent, free of all weakness. You cannot even grasp the nature of our existence. We have no beginning, we have no end, we are infinite."

Yet, they do have weaknesses. They are prideful beings, they can want worship and adoration, become obsessed with humanity the way any spirit can, and can only take a single form at a time, allowing them to be beaten, harmed, and even killed.

You just have to remember you aren't fighting just a monster, but an entity that is a landscape unto itself, a miniature god, who has yet to crystalize.

And never forget that even destroying them can sometimes have unintended consequences or effects. One wonders, might the Stryx have once been an Idigam themselves before they forced themselves to be more solid when they struck that ancient deal that connected them to the Kindred? It weakened them and broke them apart, hence they the Stryx only seems to get stronger when it Diablerizes the Stryx in another Kindred? The many pieces becoming one again, as the Beast puts itself back together?

But never lose hope. Because they are not as strong or as mighty as they claim to be. Idigam are without that spark of creativity and understanding they are left amorphous. It is a strength but they have no structure. When they become more solid it forces them to have a weakness (like the Fair Folk in Exalted) and it becomes a thing to follow and use against them. 

Which funnily enough also brings me to another major example I like to use when toying around with Idigam and the threat they pose.

The Dark Presence from Alan Wake works well as a more powerful Idigam which feeds off of creative rituals and energies, in order to create monsters and corrupt stories into something it can use for its own yet its own weakness is that it has 0 creativity in turn. It is the dark primordial thing before Creation, so it has never truly created anything of its own, it doesn't know how to do so and maybe existed before such a concept was even real.

"It cannot create on its own. It can only corrupt".

And the Anderson brothers (Tor and Odin) finding a way to put it back to sleep with song is not unlike how the ancient Uratha may have also put many Idigam and horrors to sleep in ancient pits. Reversing their powers and sealing them away in a manner fitting of their alien nature

End of AW1: "Its not a lake…its an ocean."

Now that the end of AW2: "Once more the ocean's a lake!"

(It is now my headcannon that the Old Gods of Asgard may have been Wolf-Blooded, and this added to how they were able to survive the Dark Place, and help perform a ritual to put the Darkness back to sleep.)

But what would happen if a mortal were to actually behold an Idigam in its ever-shifting madness? What words can describe these things which are the spirits of that which should not exist, which exist beyond our realms even the deepest horror of the Abyss. Even the false kings of the Exarchs from Mage are right to fear the Idigam, and leave such things to the wolves to deal with. For the only one of their ilk to venture down to 'eliminate' these horrors returned wrong. He spoke such beautiful blasphemies!

Encounters with the Idigam, should be terrifying and alien. But they should always call the wolves to action. The Wolf Must Hunt. It is in their nature, their destiny to battle these beings and to slay or seal them away. For only the inheritors of the mantle of Father Wolf were worthy to be the ones to slay him.

And for some extra music to help add to the scene, I always felt these worked well.