#this is part 1 of two of Discord Related Chatter Transcribing With Dan btw

[mantisgodiveblog]

Behold! Friend Art, drawn by @danspectorboy! We have successfully given them brain worms for this game through our evil liveblogging. And also brain worms for our liveblogging itself.

We are, of course, taking this opportunity to elaborate on some previously unestablished lore - or, rather, established lore not yet written on the blog, because we've been DEARLY enjoying tossing our sona mechanics at the wall while doing brainstorm-with-friends chatter. To host a god isn't a light thing, you see. Even if it's only partial. Anyways Discord screenshots, some minor chatter, and slightly more art below cut.

NECESSARY CONTEXT: The Mantis God may possess any mantis it pleases, provided that they are a mantis. This notion may be a bit "loose" - as hosts who are purely mantises, by the modern standard, may be less than ideal. The small must always struggle with being small. Ambush predators, well-developed claws and carnivorous diets, taur-like body schemes, the sorts of predators who can lay in wait for ages before striking, may be viable - being an insect will aid the chance of viability, but not ensure it. With sapient hosts, more abstract features may be key.

The Mantis God's possession will favor the cunning, the keen, the level-headed. Patience is a virtue, as well as ruthlessness - if a character can be reasonably anthromorphized as a mantis, they are likely to be viable for possession. In order to be possessable, a host must retain some resemblance of dignity, reservation, poise - though they need not keep this face at all times, "most of the time" is enough.

As such, Siffrin is not necessarily a viable host. They can be "piggybacked" on, certainly, but not fully controlled - they will remember everything that is done under possession, they may resist or refuse actions, they are fully present in their own body and simply dealing with a backseat driver rather than dealing with a "full" possession.

A partial possession, though not a full possession, does cause some physical effects - a gold tint, in the iris, or a line of gold around the edges of the pupil - but it does not cause full effects. The claws that generally indicate a host, rather than sprouting from the host's shoulderblades, will instead originate from somewhere behind them, sprouting from some unknown point outside of the field of view of the viewer. These will always end just "behind" the host, from the point of view of an observer, regardless of angle viewed, and may appear at multiple different angles with multiple observers - though whether they can be viewed at all largely depends on if an observer is the sort of person likely to be capable of viewing what's functionally just an abstraction of the possession process.