>>94410Let's do another one,
Iron's First Nightmare. The idea of Iron being raped by a large diamond dog was not supposed to be a serious proposition, but rather just a threat to stop doing whatever it was that was pissing me off at the time. But then it was taken seriously, so I figured I would have to either go with it, or explicitly back out, so I went with it. I had a very clear idea of what was going on in the scene. Black Cauldron was still very pissed off at Iron disrespecting her, so she followed him to the orphanage, brought along a large, burly Diamond Dog who was described as present in the bar scene earlier, used her knowledge of potions and plants to place a paralyzing potion on Iron, then Iron is raped by the Diamond Dog as Cauldron stands and watches in the corner of the room and Iron is conscious, but paralyzed and dizzy. Of course, this would have the unfortunate side effect of making Cauldron definitively hostile to Iron from that point forward, which I didn't really want. So I thought of two other possibilities, then rolled the dice to see which I would go with. The first was a classical Incubus demon appearing at night and raping Iron. After all, it's a fantasy setting, so why not introduce a demon in the nunnery? (Although the role of "Incubus" feels kind of redundant with Changelings around). The third option, and the one that won the die roll was Sleep Paralysis. That worked
really well because it's about as horrifying an experience as you can imagine while sleeping, but something so entirely mundane that it actually happens to about 50% of people at some point in their lives. You see an intruder or two enter the room. Then you feel something above you, crushing you. In a large portion of instances, you feel sexually violated (Which I think is a product of the fact that sexual stimulation is a natural part of the REM sleep cycle). You can hear talking, droning, or humming. But though you are aware and can see, you cannot move. All of it worked to produce pretty much the same scene as if Iron were being attacked in the night by a pissed off rogue or an incubus demon. I was intending to make the nature of teh experience a mystery, and maybe Iron would wake up the next morning and ask the nuns what happened to him, and they would all give basically these three answers above, and he would have to try to solve it. But then someone complained about the scene, and I had to spoil it, which just ripped out the mystery.
I really like how in a fantasy setting like this, many experiences could be either magical or mundane. Is it sleep paralysis or a demon? Who know.
>>94411It was kind of disheartening to see the drastic villian decay of teh changelings after the introduction of the two non-hostile drone characters. They had gone from being so incredibly threatening that you were afraid to have your character go to sleep
during daylight hours to "I'm pretty sure Blue is feeding off of my character right now" and then cuddling up with the two drones later in the night, after just a few sessions. They went from being terrifying villains to basically domesticated animals or even living Dakimakura. Makes me wonder