Terra Primate Corebook

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T e r r a P r i m a t e
TM
Produced by
M. ALEXANDER JURKAT
• GEORGE VASILAKOS
Directed by
GEORGE VASILAKOS
Written by
PATRICK SWEENEY
Unisystem Game Design by
CJ CARELLA
Additional Writing by
DAVID F. CHAPMAN
• AL BRUNO III
Editing and Development by
DAVID F. CHAPMAN
• M. ALEXANDER JURKAT
Proofing by
DAVID CARROLL
• DAVID C. CHAPMAN • JEREMY HUNT
Director of Photography and Graphic Design by
GEORGE VASILAKOS
Cover Art by
JEFF REITZ
Visual Effects by
STORN COOK • THOMAS DENMARK
• TALON DUNNING • DW GROSS
• JON HODGSON • JASON MILLET
J AMES POWERS • GREGORY PRICE
GEORGE VASILAKOS
Playtesting by OTTO CARGILL • DAVID CARROLL
• PETER ENGEBOS • OLS GUNNEHED
• DEBBIE HOCKEY • DANIEL HOLMES
• THOM MARRION • TODD MORTON
• FABIO MILITO PAGLIARA • RICH SPAINHOUR
• DEREK A. STOELTING • MIKE WALLACE
Based on the Original Concept by
GEORGE VASILAKOS • ROSS ISAACS
W W W . E D E N S T U D I O S . N E T / P R I M A T E
Eden Studios
6 Dogwood Lane, Loudonville, NY 12211
Terra Primate
™
,
icons and personalities are © 2002 Eden Studios
The Unisystem™ Game System © 1999-2002 CJ Carella. The Unisystem™ is used under exclusive license.
All art © 2002 Eden Studios. All rights reserved.
Produced and published by Eden Studios, Inc.
No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except for review purposes.
Any similarity to characters, situations, institutions, corporations, etc. (without satirical intent) is strictly fictional or coincidental.
This book uses settings, characters and themes of a supernatural nature.
All elements, mystical and supernatural, are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only.
Reader discretion is advised.
Comments and questions can be directed via the Internet at www.edenstudios.net/primate,
via e-mail at edenprod@aol.com or via letter with a self-addressed stamped envelope.
First Printing, October 2002
Stock EDN8100 ISBN 1-891153-76-5
Printed in the U.S.
T A B L E
CHAPTER ONE: MY GOD! THEY’RE APES! • 6
CHAPTER TWO: OF APES AND HUMANS • 16
ARCHETYPES • 74
CHAPTER THREE: OPPOSABLE THUMBS • 82
C HAPTER FOUR: TOOLUSERS • 118
C HAPTER FIVE: ANTHROPOLOGY • 140
CHAPTER SIX: GOING APE • 156
CHAPTER SEVEN: IT’S A PLANET OF APES! • 172
APPENDIX • 231
INDEX • 244
of
Contents
FOREW0RD
Welcome to the Monkey House
By Ian Edginton
Why are we so fascinated with apes? The simple
answer is that they are us and we are them, perhaps more
than we’d care to admit. A walk through any major city
center late on a Saturday night would prove that!
Whenever we watch a wildlife documentary about
apes, the great apes in particular—gorillas, orangutans
and chimpanzees especially, we marvel at the
similarities between them and us. Not just a physical
resemblance, but their behavior patterns and social
structures. No matter how we may dress ourselves in
the trappings of civilization, scratch the surface and
there’s the beast in all of us just waiting to emerge. Try
running your tongue along your pointy canine teeth—
they’re there for a purpose!
It’s like looking into a mirror and seeing a hairy face
reflected back. Is it any wonder that in the classic story
of
Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde
, Hyde is a brutish almost-
simian throwback dressed in a dinner suit? Even farther
back, the bestial Caliban in Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
is
little more than a shambling animal with the ability to
speak. Perhaps more intriguingly, he lacks moral
judgment and is incapable of learning good. We often
consider the ape to be the darker side of ourselves, a poor
relation left behind in evolution’s wake but still we feel
compelled to see where we came from. After all, all that
separates us from our tree-swinging cousins are a couple
of protein strands on a DNA chain.
It makes sense therefore that this fascination with our
primal forebears should spill over into the media. During
the Victorian era, at the height of the great age of
exploration into Africa and the Congo, the monstrous ape—
the gorilla especially—was the staple menace in scores of
Boy’s Own
adventure stories and tales of daring-do.
It was only when the medium reached the cinema
screen that it really hit it’s stride. Apes were everywhere
in one form or another; from the peerless
King Kong
through to
Tarzan
,
Mighty Joe Young
and numerous low-
budget ape monsters/robots/creatures-on-the loose style
films right up to
2001: A Space Odyssey
,
The Final
Program
,
Trading Places
and
Buddy
. However, in 1968
came the yardstick against which all other ape-related
movies would be measured . . .
Planet of the Apes
.
The story was simple enough—three human astronauts
crash-land on a planet ruled by intelligent apes, where
humans are mute savages. Our protagonist, George
Taylor, survives his experiences in this nightmarish world
only to discover that he’s been home all along. The
planet of the apes is in fact Earth in the far-flung future,
devastated by a long-forgotten human war. As mankind
regressed so apes evolved to fill the niche left behind. A
truth compounded by the now classic shot of Taylor
pounding his fists into the sand, howling to the sky about
man’s folly as the tide breaks over the half buried hulk of
the Statue of Liberty.
Thirty-five years on, the film and that scene in
particular have become the stuff of movie legend. It has
been parodied several times in
The Simpsons
and more
recently in
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
, a firm
indicator of the warmth and affection the film holds in the
hearts of pop culture fiends like myself. But this first in
the apes movie canon is more than a novelty act.
At the time Pierre Boulle’s novel
La planete des singes
(on which the film is based) proved to be virtually
unfilmable. Set on a near-future planet Earth, populated
by a highly urban and sophisticated society of be-suited
and bespectacled apes, the budget for sets, make-up and
special effects alone would have been astronomical.
However, Boulle wasn’t striving for spectacle. He often
employed the trappings of science fiction as a
philosophical vehicle with which to create moral fables
Foreword
4
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