Runelord of Lust
Jul. 30th, 2022 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm reading the Shattered Star Pathfinder Adventure Path, Curse of the Lady's Light.
The Lady in question is the Runelord of Lust, and you keep finding statues of her, and paintings, and all kinds of artwork, and this being Pathfinder many of them try in some way to kill you.
Also theres characters who have decided they are in fact the Runelord of Lust. Even if they... very much do not look like the paintings. Dream big.
But the most interesting (and spoilery) possibility in the adventure so far happens when you find a sarcophagus containing her Clone under a Gentle Repose spell.
Wearing a lot of shiny shiny jewelery.
So of course someone is going to reach in and... trigger a very unique trap. Which kills you but, due to a quirk of ten thousand year old magic getting the spells wrapped together, makes you wake up in the Clone body.
So now you look like her! The Lady in all the statues! The lady in the really giant statue of liberty style statue you set out to explore!
And there's a whole side panel on how this is going to make your life *much* more complicated.
But I like the idea that later on, when people who look like that do evil things, there's a compare contrast around. Sure she's evil, but it has nothing to do with how she looks. Which ought to be obvious, but, *gestures vaguely at humans*.
But also, there's a chance that suddenly someone is trans.
And maybe this is a happy thing for them and they realise they always were!
And maybe this is an Unhappy thing for them and he goes around all stompy trying to get everyone to use he/him pronouns and acknowledge only the wrapping has changed
while wearing a body designed to inspire Lust.
... the Lust thing is about Enchantment magic and is creeptastic in a Warren and the trio in a basement with a champagne bottle way, there's a *lot* of mind control going on in this story, and traps designed to make clear no one can choose to try anything with the Runelord, they get chosen, and they don't get a chance to say no.
It's really heavy to trust to a table full of improv rpgers.
... it's really heavy to navigate a story through at all.
But throw a character into it looking like the Lady of the Light, and even if they don't change gender, they've changed in ways that highlight the themes of this section of the story, so there's Story in it.
I've got some characters that are twins but one is a Summoner and his eidolon looks exactly like him ie also a twin, so they're all about same/different. And who gets to decide how different.
This would be a way to be Very different.
So I kind of want to do this to them now.
Some of the stuff in the stories, I'm not sure how it would play, I'd want to know and trust a group before I tried it, but, there is definitely chewy Story in there.
Could be fun.
The Lady in question is the Runelord of Lust, and you keep finding statues of her, and paintings, and all kinds of artwork, and this being Pathfinder many of them try in some way to kill you.
Also theres characters who have decided they are in fact the Runelord of Lust. Even if they... very much do not look like the paintings. Dream big.
But the most interesting (and spoilery) possibility in the adventure so far happens when you find a sarcophagus containing her Clone under a Gentle Repose spell.
Wearing a lot of shiny shiny jewelery.
So of course someone is going to reach in and... trigger a very unique trap. Which kills you but, due to a quirk of ten thousand year old magic getting the spells wrapped together, makes you wake up in the Clone body.
So now you look like her! The Lady in all the statues! The lady in the really giant statue of liberty style statue you set out to explore!
And there's a whole side panel on how this is going to make your life *much* more complicated.
But I like the idea that later on, when people who look like that do evil things, there's a compare contrast around. Sure she's evil, but it has nothing to do with how she looks. Which ought to be obvious, but, *gestures vaguely at humans*.
But also, there's a chance that suddenly someone is trans.
And maybe this is a happy thing for them and they realise they always were!
And maybe this is an Unhappy thing for them and he goes around all stompy trying to get everyone to use he/him pronouns and acknowledge only the wrapping has changed
while wearing a body designed to inspire Lust.
... the Lust thing is about Enchantment magic and is creeptastic in a Warren and the trio in a basement with a champagne bottle way, there's a *lot* of mind control going on in this story, and traps designed to make clear no one can choose to try anything with the Runelord, they get chosen, and they don't get a chance to say no.
It's really heavy to trust to a table full of improv rpgers.
... it's really heavy to navigate a story through at all.
But throw a character into it looking like the Lady of the Light, and even if they don't change gender, they've changed in ways that highlight the themes of this section of the story, so there's Story in it.
I've got some characters that are twins but one is a Summoner and his eidolon looks exactly like him ie also a twin, so they're all about same/different. And who gets to decide how different.
This would be a way to be Very different.
So I kind of want to do this to them now.
Some of the stuff in the stories, I'm not sure how it would play, I'd want to know and trust a group before I tried it, but, there is definitely chewy Story in there.
Could be fun.