Post/Author/DateTime	Post
The Stray 05-04-05, 03:54 AM	'allo, all. I'm trying to come up with a backstory for a unique nemesis i'm going to be introducing to my game...an insane child who has the ability to pull people into her warped and fractrured dream world. Essentially, she's an Alice that can pull the PCs with her into a dark and twisted Wonderland. What I need is some ideas on what sort of being this is, what made her the way she is, and how she could have developed the power to yank people into her own personal demi-plane/dream realm. Any suggestions?
Ashianyl 05-04-05, 04:53 AM	Sounds like an Epic Maze like spell? Or do you intend to make it a supernatural ability? :D Do you have any guidelines we have to adhere to or is everything open? Anyway, here's some ideas for ya on why she is what she is. Cutey Honey (your villainess) was a powerful wizard who sought once too many times to subvert the will of the cosmos to her whims. She skirted many times with Wish spells, always researching on exact wordings of a Wish to mess with prophecies (she loves chaos and abusing wish spells to alter prophecies is the ultimate form of chaos for her). Particularly offended was the God of Time, who was really irked by the fact that he had to rewrite many preordained things to come because of Cutey. But he stayed his hand because of the unwritten rule that the Gods should not interfere directly with the affairs of mortals and sending his followers after her would be a costly exercise (also, Cutey had the support of the God of Chaos, who is totally delighted with her applications of the Wish spells). And so the God of Time waited... and waited some more as Cutey used Wish spell after Wish spell (it became a monthly affair as Cutey optimized her library to aid her in researching proper wordings for each Wish - in effect, using structured lawful research to bring about chaos). Several years passed and the only thing that was constant was change, and the chaos that was created was threatening to destabilize the cosmos. Even the Gods of Chaos could no longer tolerate the constant chaos, because the result was brought about by Lawful means. ... (to be continued)
The Stray 05-04-05, 05:51 AM	Sounds like an Epic Maze like spell? Or do you intend to make it a supernatural ability? :D Do you have any guidelines we have to adhere to or is everything open? Epic Maze or (Su) ability sounds about right. I'm also thinking along the lines of a Ravenloft domain or reality wrinkle. hmmm...guidelines...i don't have many of those, so perhaps I should just be a bit more thorough with the concept... Little Alice (named so in part because of the Alice in Wonderland books) is a little humanoid child who wanders the world. For some reason, she is insane, and for some reason she has the ability to pull people into her mad world/maze spell/waking nightmare. What I'm trying to get ideas for is how this sort of thing might happen. Some guidelines I'm considering: Alice is a human child, not some sort of fiend in disguise. Alice is not aware that she's doing bad things to people. She thinks the people she meets in her dreamscape have alwas been there. What I'd really like is help coming up with ideas for what the dreamscape actually IS. Is it an Epic sort of maze spell? Latent psionic power gone horribly wrong? Divine curse of some sort? And how does it work? Is it actually dragging people inside it, like a plane shift spell, or is she changing the world around her like a phantasmal terrain? What could have caused a little girl to develop this sort of ability? I'm thinking it's some sort of curse (since I'm going to use this in a Ravenloft game) but I'd like some sources to draw on. This is what I'd consider my guidelines.
mybrainhurts 05-04-05, 07:28 AM	Firstly, consider your idea stolen :P It could be done as a wacky illusion type thing. Say it were to affect a town, the basic structure could be the same and people could still interact with each other and the surroundings, but everything appears screwed up, including other people (could be interesting if you apply this to how the PC's see each other as well, but I'd suggest you do it gradually) Along with creepy buildings and normal people who look (and maybe act, depending on how you decide it works) like monsters) anything else can be either a proper illusion and hence not directly harmful or can be a result of the shadow conjuration and similar spells, making it difficult to work out the difference between creepy stuff that freaks you out and creepy stuff that actually hurts. As to what caused the whole set of reality warping stuff, the girl could be latently talented either magically or psionically and also well and truly insane, and so this is all manifesting unconsciously (add the interference of an artifact/darklord/the dark powers if you need to further justify the power scale) Otherwise the girl could be the result of an experiment of some kind (I'll leave it up to you to decide the objective of the experiments and whether this is an aim or a side effect). Disclaimer: many of the suggestions above contain elements stolen from Silent Hill.
Leap 05-04-05, 07:30 AM	Daughter of the Lady of Pain? :) On a different tack (or gybe depending... ;) ) there is an old adventure from the dim and distant days of AD&D 1st edition that WAS based in wonderland....I believe it was called dungeonland or something like that
Morka 05-04-05, 08:32 AM	Ok, I was thinking about a similar idea, but never finished the story. Here is my own idea: Alice is the daughter of baron Naman. She is somewhat absent-minded (a bit like an autist child). In fact, she often find shelter in her own dreams, where she is a princess. On day she was exploring the cellar, she found a strange sword, that she grabbed. The sword was an intelligent Chaotic Evil sword that tryed to take possession of her. By reflex, she retreat to her dream world, where she had all the powers. But the evil mind followed her, and realized it was also almost god-like in this dream-plane. Alice felt in coma, mumbling some incomprehensible words. In fact, those words are an indication on how to join her in her dream... The advantage of this idea is to attract adventurers into her dream, where everything is possible, even by D&D standards. Her dream world should have been a beautiful garden, now warped and corrupted by the evil sword. About the evil sword, I was thinking about a Fire Burst Sword with many abilities related to fire. In the dream, the sword could represent itself as a Red Dragon.
Ashianyl 05-04-05, 08:55 AM	Ah, then scrap whatever it was I typed in my previous post. :D How about this then? Alice is an Elan's first attempt at duplicating the process on a child... and found out first hand why the elders have always forbid the process to be done on a child. Alice's parents were great heroes that every baddie in town wanted dead. An attack was orchastrated by the baddies involving a mind flayer... and although the attack failed, Alice was the unfortunate target of a Mind Blast. Things was never the same again after that... :)
The Stray 05-04-05, 11:32 PM	Firstly, consider your idea stolen :P hey, once I've got everything developed, I'm planning on posting it on the boards anyway...feel free to steal what you like. It could be done as a wacky illusion type thing. Say it were to affect a town, the basic structure could be the same and people could still interact with each other and the surroundings, but everything appears screwed up, including other people (could be interesting if you apply this to how the PC's see each other as well, but I'd suggest you do it gradually) Along with creepy buildings and normal people who look (and maybe act, depending on how you decide it works) like monsters) anything else can be either a proper illusion and hence not directly harmful or can be a result of the shadow conjuration and similar spells, making it difficult to work out the difference between creepy stuff that freaks you out and creepy stuff that actually hurts. So what you're suggesting is a gradual sort of transition? And people begin to appear in the "roles" that Alice puts them in? Hmmm...I can see that... As to what caused the whole set of reality warping stuff, the girl could be latently talented either magically or psionically and also well and truly insane, and so this is all manifesting unconsciously (add the interference of an artifact/darklord/the dark powers if you need to further justify the power scale) Sure, but what would MAKE a child go crazy and start to retreat into a dream world? I'm thinking of using an artifact as a catalyst for the powers, but what about the insanity? Otherwise the girl could be the result of an experiment of some kind (I'll leave it up to you to decide the objective of the experiments and whether this is an aim or a side effect). Eh, I think I'll leave the experimentation bit out, unless I can find of a way to do it that doesn't come off as cliche'. Daughter of the Lady of Pain? Yeah. :rolleyes: Um, I don't think so. On a different tack (or gybe depending... ) there is an old adventure from the dim and distant days of AD&D 1st edition that WAS based in wonderland....I believe it was called dungeonland or something like that Doesn't help me much, I'm afraid...unless you have links or a download to it... Ok, I was thinking about a similar idea, but never finished the story. Here is my own idea: Alice is the daughter of baron Naman. She is somewhat absent-minded (a bit like an autist child). In fact, she often find shelter in her own dreams, where she is a princess. On day she was exploring the cellar, she found a strange sword, that she grabbed. The sword was an intelligent Chaotic Evil sword that tryed to take possession of her. By reflex, she retreat to her dream world, where she had all the powers. But the evil mind followed her, and realized it was also almost god-like in this dream-plane. Alice felt in coma, mumbling some incomprehensible words. In fact, those words are an indication on how to join her in her dream... autism...hmmm...I'll look that up, that could open up some interesting options. But I'd rather have an event in her past that triggers the autism, and the power to pull people inside her dream garden appearing afterwards. And I think I'll ditch the coma angle...I picture her walking around not seeing the "real world" at all, but instead translating everything she sees through the lens of her madness... Her dream world should have been a beautiful garden, now warped and corrupted by the evil sword. Oh, I agree completely...I was thinking along those lines anyway, as a matter of fact. Alice is an Elan's first attempt at duplicating the process on a child... and found out first hand why the elders have always forbid the process to be done on a child. um, I'm not familier with the Elan...i keep thinking of the Order of the Stick charater, and I'm pretty sure that's NOT what you were going for... Alice's parents were great heroes that every baddie in town wanted dead. An attack was orchastrated by the baddies involving a mind flayer... and although the attack failed, Alice was the unfortunate target of a Mind Blast. Things was never the same again after that... hmmm...something along those lines might work as something that triggers the madness...though IIRC, the Mind Flayer's Mind Blast just stuns people, not triggers catatonic autism...
Ashianyl 05-05-05, 03:01 AM	Elans are from the Expanded Psionics Handbook. They are humans who have undergone a process to change their being, thus gaining the stats below (fr SRD). The process is never performed on a child (although why that is so is not explained - up to DM to flesh out). ELANS *-2 Charisma *Aberration: Elans are not subject to spells or effects that affect humanoids only, such as charm person or dominate person. *Medium: As Medium creatures, elans have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size. *Elan base land speed is 30 feet. *Elans (unlike most aberrations) do not have darkvision. *Naturally Psionic: Elans gain 2 bonus power points at 1st level. This benefit does not grant them the ability to manifest powers unless they gain that ability through another source, such as levels in a psionic class. *Resistance (Su): Elans can use psionic energy to increase their resistance to various forms of attack. As an immediate action, an elan can spend 1 power point to gain a +4 racial bonus on saving throws until the beginning of her next action. *Resilience (Su): When an elan takes damage, she can spend power points to reduce its severity. As an immediate action, she can reduce the damage she is about to take by 2 hit points for every 1 power point she spends. *Repletion (Su): An elan can sustain her body without need of food or water. If she spends 1 power point, an elan does not need to eat or drink for 24 hours. *Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Languages: Any (other than secret languages, such as Druidic). Elans’ past lives expose them to wide ranges of language. *Favored Class: Psion. *Level Adjustment: +0. If you aren't comfortable with a simple Mind Blast... there's always the Voidmind Template from MM3 to draw inspiration from. It's a creature that has its brains mostly sucked out, then replenished with liquid and acts as a thrall for the Mind Flayers. Perhaps the process was not completed? That the Mind Flayers only sucked out a tiny part of the brain that unlocked the true power of all humanity before someone came to the rescue. (The Mind Flayers don't know how to recreate the process since it was all an accident) :D
Dynneroth 05-05-05, 06:19 PM	Some things that can cause children to retreat into a make-believe world are death of loved ones, pressure to succeed from parents, being abused or molested, or being very different from peers and ostracized. The last one could have a biological cause, either contracted or hereditary disease or mental illness.
The Stray 05-06-05, 01:00 AM	Some things that can cause children to retreat into a make-believe world are death of loved ones, pressure to succeed from parents, being abused or molested, or being very different from peers and ostracized. The last one could have a biological cause, either contracted or hereditary disease or mental illness. hmmm...what if, in the real world, she can't speak? Mutes certainly would have problems in a medieval society, and many would be considered mentally inferior, even if they aren't. And one of the symptoms of autism is difficulty developing communication skills...Hmmm... :thinks: What if it was a combination of some of these causes? Say that little Alice's mother died in childbirth, and thanks to a viral infection when she was an infant (which she barely survived), she developed autism. So her father, a well-to-do merchant, had problems rasing her from the start, since he had to raise his developmentally challenged daughter alone in a society that is not really very open minded when it comes to such things, AND still keep his business (he's a dealer in rare antiquities) going. So he hires his brother, who's fallen on hard times (or so he claims; in reality, he's a lazy SOB who'd rather rely on handouts than do anything productive with his life) to watch his darling Alice while he's away. But the brother is a pervert, watching little Alice while she's dressing and bathing, and eventually he turns into a pedophile. One day, while the brother is busy doing his nasty thing with Alice, the father returns home from a deal and catches him in the act. They get into a fight, and the brother overpowers and murders the father. BAM! According to the law of the land, the brother (who makes the father's death look like an accident) gains custody of Alice, since he's the next of kin until Alice comes of age. So Alice has no where to turn to except her dreams... How does this grab people?
Need_A_Life 05-06-05, 09:57 AM	better be sure to have mature players (not just physically, there are some people twice as old as me who'd act like babies in this case). I would like the Elan idea better, though. That really needs explaining... no Elan children, I wonder why... :P Actually an Elan child would probably just lose its ability score modifiers (losing those two points of Cha upon reaching puberty)
The Stray 05-07-05, 03:02 AM	better be sure to have mature players (not just physically, there are some people twice as old as me who'd act like babies in this case). I would like the Elan idea better, though. That really needs explaining... no Elan children, I wonder why... :P Actually an Elan child would probably just lose its ability score modifiers (losing those two points of Cha upon reaching puberty) Well, I'm not worried about the maturity level of my gaming group (I've sprung similar things on them before without them "acting like babies", as you put it), and I'm really leery of doing anything involving supplements that I don't own (in this case, the XPH), so unless you can tell me in greater detail why the Elan thing would be a better way to go, I'm going to probably stick with the above background.
Ashianyl 05-07-05, 03:23 AM	Elans are adult humans turned abberations (their type changes, but the form is exactly human) through a process that a secret conclave of elder Elans do on one who is deemed worthy. The process wipes out much of their abilities and memories (although they retain bits and pieces of it), hence they start again as Level 1 characters. They come in all colors, shapes and temperaments, since they are like humans. The process is never performed on a child (no reason given why) and all new Elans are adults. They are also strictly formerly human (again, no reason given beyond the fact that it is so). There is not much more than this that you would find in the XPH anyway, so it really is up to you if you want to go this route. The total info on an Elan is probably about one page long (maybe less). You can pretty much make an Elan into whatever you want them to be even if you don't use psionics in your campaign. :)
The Stray 05-07-05, 04:17 PM	Elans are adult humans turned abberations (their type changes, but the form is exactly human) through a process that a secret conclave of elder Elans do on one who is deemed worthy. The process wipes out much of their abilities and memories (although they retain bits and pieces of it), hence they start again as Level 1 characters. They come in all colors, shapes and temperaments, since they are like humans. The process is never performed on a child (no reason given why) and all new Elans are adults. They are also strictly formerly human (again, no reason given beyond the fact that it is so). There is not much more than this that you would find in the XPH anyway, so it really is up to you if you want to go this route. The total info on an Elan is probably about one page long (maybe less). You can pretty much make an Elan into whatever you want them to be even if you don't use psionics in your campaign. :) Hmmm...That's a little more helpful, thanks...This does give me some ideas, since I have a group IMC that worships a god of nightmares... Now I'm torn. I can develop this idea or go with the one I've come up with...
HiQKid 05-08-05, 07:22 PM	Hmm... A strange idea... What if she exudes some sort of magical pheramone like drugs that cause anybody nearby to become a part of her "Dreamworld-illusion". This wouldn't affect the real world at all, but for the people affected it is entirelly real, affecting them even in the real world in most ways. And, a side note, it seems right to me that everyone and everything manifested in the dreamworld is a cartoonish/clownlike/ridiculous/unproportioned/exageratted/etc... version of their normal forms.
Paul Hopebringer 05-09-05, 11:22 AM	The Rod of Togues is a really creepy artifact in the Book of Vile Darkness. If Alice gets her powers from an artifact... that is the one to use (assuming you want a premade one...) Perhaps the PC's should face someone using the Rod, you can incourage them to destroy it in some (impropper) way, and then the raging spirit of the rod could posses this sweet little girl. The spirit is really... sick... so she would naturally be a little touched after being possesed for any great deal of time. After a time, you could say that the Rods power manifests in the little girl more powerfully because of something to do with the girls origin... or you could just let it happen and bask in the warm glow of your players saying "holy freaking crap!" when they see that they didn't properly deal with the artifact.
karmhundredfists 05-09-05, 07:24 PM	Perhaps she was a powerful and well intentioned enchantress who developed a technique for creating not only new planar gates but new demi-planes. On these planes she was essentially a godess and unmatched in power, which she used for good. Once she opened a gate to create a new plane, but miscalculated and opened a gate to the home of a powerful evil spirit. She was able to send the spirit back to its home plane and seal the gate, but the battle drained her of her years and memories but not her abilities. So lets say she's basically a level 25 sorceress trapped in a 9 year old kid's body. The sheer overload of trying to force all of these years of magical training and ability drove the child insane and caused her to often use spells at random (powerful and weak alike). Due to the sheer intensity of level 9+ spells her neural pathways are warped and disjointed. As she grows older she becomes more and more able to master this randomness, but she will not actually be able to fully control herself until she reaches the age of 35 (or 40 or what ever). Something to think about.
The Stray 05-10-05, 02:29 AM	The Rod of Togues is a really creepy artifact in the Book of Vile Darkness. If Alice gets her powers from an artifact... that is the one to use (assuming you want a premade one...) Actually, the artifact I want to use is known as the Trickster's Mask, or the Mask of Dreams Fulfilled, which essentially grants "Monkey's paw"-style wishes, the kind of wishes that you end up wishing you hadn't made. The Mask grants wishes drawn from a person's greatest desires (not necessarily their concious desires, either) while simultaniously saddling them with a curse drawn from their worst fears (it works like this because nightmares are dreams, too). In this case, assuming I go with the "abused childhood" route I outlined above, Alice's desire was to live in her dream world forever and never have to be in the real world again. But her worst fear is that her "secret garden" will have Bad People in it, too...and so people get drawn into her paradise, twisting it into a mockery of the beautiful world it used to be...
drunkenewok 05-10-05, 01:27 PM	Another option to take is that her powers and abilities are what makes her insane. She could be born "special" for whatever reason (there are millions of ways to make this work, depending on your setting), and it's the powers themselves that drive her crazy. She's born with some form of ASD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism) (autism spectrum disorder) but also has an ability to to enforce her vision of the world (via psionics, magic, or what-have-you) on those around her. She doesn't realize she's hurting people, because to her, she's in the real world, and she doesn't know "the real world" exists. This could allow you to make some really crazy things happen, since who knows what her world would be like? Something really surreal like an acid trip, or something dark and horrible like a nightmare, or something innocent and childlike but also unintentionally deadly. The Elan idea can also be extrapolated to some scary ideas. Since they are immortal and unaging, if a little girl is created she could eventually be thousands of years old, but still look like a little girl. Think Claudia from Interview with a Vampire, always wanting to grow up, but unable to do so? That would be an easy path to insanity. Maybe her dream world is a way of escaping the reality of immortality? This could also work well with the Monkey's Paw wishes, as she is constantly trying to grant other people's wishes, to make them happy, but her underlying insanity always twists them just enough to make them nightmarish. Another potential source for madness would be psychopathy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy), which could more easily be a result of environmental causes than autism. She still sees the world through a very different moral lens, and would be unable to empathize with the people trapped in her world, thus leading her to be cavalier with their lives. Psychopaths in general tend to be less sympathetic as villains (with the notable twisted exception of Hannibal Lecter), so the autism route and birth defects may be preferable.