Siren: The Drowning
Siren: The Drowning (originally called Siren: The Surfacing) is a fanmade game set in the New World of Darkness about mermaids.
Sometime in the far future, an apocalyptic disaster called the Deluge will wipe humanity out. But luckily, a primordial sea goddess took pity on them and sent the Song back through time to help. Now, people who fall into despair but manage to pull themselves back out again sometimes experience the Drowning, where they are shown a vision of the Deluge and gain a Diluvian (mermaid) form, along with the duty to prevent the Deluge. Unluckily, none of them know exactly what the Deluge even is, to say nothing of how it'll come about and who or what will be responsible. At least the werewolves actually know what they're fighting...
The Celestial Ocean[edit]
The Celestial Ocean is a reflection of the future in which the Deluge has occured, with multiple separate oceans showing various ways the Deluge might occur. Sirens can return to the Celestial Ocean through any body of water, and it can serve as a home base and source of resources, if a somewhat dangerous one. Which Water a Siren sees during their first Surfacing determines their racial splat.
Discordia[edit]
Discordia represents the possibility that war and human conflict will eventually destroy the world. It's a bloody and brutal place, and the Sirens who Surface there tend to be grouchy bastards who like to solve problems with their fists and have survived some sort of conflict themselves.
Freshwater[edit]
Go look up 'Part Of Your World' from The Little Mermaid and you'll have a good idea of how this Water works. Freshwater Sirens are optimists even in the face of the apocalypse, and the closest to humanity of all. Their Celestial Ocean represents the possibility that technology gone wrong will end the world and is full of the ruins of human civilization.
Gardenia[edit]
This Ocean represents the possibility that a natural disaster will end the world and is a viciously wild place that suffers from earthquakes. Sirens from this Water tend to be much more comfortable with nature than human civilization.
Polaria[edit]
Polaria represents the possibility that Earth will freeze over. Naturally, it's really damn cold. Polarian Sirens, also known as Selkies, tend to look like marine mammals and are a grim lot who tend to do the dirty work for their fellows.
Tropicana[edit]
The all-too-real possibility that global warming is going to get out of hand. Tropicana sirens burn with passion, figuratively and literally, much like their Ocean.
Vaporia[edit]
All the other oceans represent problems that we can see and know exist. But because of that, we can stop them. It's just as likely that the apocalypse will come in some way nobody thought of, destroying humanity by the dint of catching us by surprise. That is the possibility of the Deluge that Vaporia represents, and it appears as a world stripped of its atmosphere. Vaporian Sirens tend to be drifters, showing up, solving problems, and leaving, just as mysterious as their home Water.
Currents[edit]
The Social splats. All Sirens know they've gotta prevent the apocalypse, but how? Not an easy question to answer, especially since Sirens don't even know what they're facing beyond trying to solve climate change and end war. The Currents are groups of like-minded Sirens who work together to fix the world in their own way, and really really hope they're not making it worse in the process.
Buoyancy[edit]
The Sirens who think that doing bad things to stop worse things is better than doing nothing and get their hands dirty to save the planet. Of course, their ruthlessness might cause just as much damage as it fixes...
Conflict[edit]
The fighting current. These Sirens like to knock heads together to solve problems, which works until violence isn't the answer.
Harmony[edit]
The Noblebright current, who focus on diplomacy and saving the world with peace and cooperation. When this works, it works great, but the reasonable approach in the World of Darkness tends to be hit and miss at best.
Healing[edit]
The current of fixing things. These Sirens may not be the best at solving large-scale problems, but they're the absolute best at finding something that's hurt and treating it.
Wisdom[edit]
One of the major problems Sirens face is that they know pretty much jack squat about their nature and mission. The Current of Wisdom aims to fix that by learning what's going on and using that knowledge to prevent the Deluge, while occasionally accidentally poking the things that should not be poked.
The Abyssal Currents[edit]
Not all Sirens are all that enthused with their mission of preventing an apocalyptic disaster while fending off sea monsters, people who want to eat their immortality-granting flesh, and mundane assholes making the planet a worse place. So they just fuck off and do their own thing. They're not always evil, per se, but they are selfish and tend to make the jobs of their fellow sirens much harder.
Acheron[edit]
The problem with recruiting people who've fallen to despair, even just the ones who find the will to not kill themselves, is that you get some very dark and unstable minds on your side. And sometimes, these people turn out to be a little too omnicidal for people who are supposed to be saving the world. Sirens of the Acheron current despaired just like all the others, but instead of Surfacing because they found something in the world worth living for, they decided to live on in the hopes of being able to destroy the world that caused their sorrow. Acherons thus attempt to bring about the Deluge, instead of preventing it. They don't know how it's going to happen any more than the others, but they generally figure that if they cause enough problems, eventually something will stick.
This of course, does not make them popular, and they're killed on sight even by the other Abyssal Currents. The bad news is that even this doesn't stop them; no matter how many the others kill and no matter how sure they are that this time they've wiped the bastards out completely, the Current of Acheron always pops up again to cause more trouble. And even doing that isn't easy, since unlike the Pure and the Sabbat, Acheron doesn't work out in the open. They have no desire to dominate or terrorize others, so they hide and let others do their work for them. Their usual modus operandi is to show up to a situation teetering on the brink of descending into total chaos and working to make it worse, hoping to prevent any resolution long enough for the powderkeg to ignite.
Cocytus[edit]
Remember how the Current of Wisdom's main problem is that it pokes the things that shouldn't be poked and occasionally unleashes even worse problems? That's Cocytus in a nutshell. The Current of Dark Secrets seeks out hidden knowledge but remains generally uncaring of the reason said knowledge might have been hidden away. Still, since they're usually content to do their own thing and it's mostly their own necks on the line if they try to steal some artifact from a Vampire Elder, the other Currents generally tolerate them.
Lethe[edit]
The current of Humanity, Fuck Yeah! in its most toxic form. Lethe sirens actively encourage people to despoil the environment, because in their view, we've earned the right.
Oceanus[edit]
Somewhere in the Celestial Oceans, there lives a sea monster named Echidna, who survived the Deluge. She sees the Deluge as inevitable and instead wants to transform humanity into something that might survive it... which tends to mean mindless fish monsters, which is why this is an Abyssal current. Still, some desperate sirens choose her side in the desperate hope that they can preserve something of their loved ones.
Phlegethon[edit]
Several Abyssal currents believe the Deluge is inevitable. The Current of Acheron welcomes it, and the current of Oceanus works to survive it. The Current of Phlegethon, on the other hand, is composed of Sirens who've given up trying to fight the Deluge at all and instead decided to party their remaining days away and have as much fun as possible before the end.
Styx[edit]
The opposite of the current of Lethe, Styx represents nature at its worst and most vicious. They believe that the world would be a better place if humanity just disappeared and it returned to a merciless kill-or-be-killed state... with themselves as apex predators of course, because nobody would want to create such a dystopia if they didn't think they'd be at the top.