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The Prince of Thorns
Career: Secret-Keeper
Hobbies: Watching movies, baseball
Favorite Foods: Those funny little ball bearings that you can eat.
Blood Type: A
Animal: Snake
Age: Such a mortal concept.
Step 1: Choose Your Name
Good evening, sir. So good to meet you in the flesh, as it were.
You’ve probably met a lot of people, in their dreams. It’s your nature, after all. You emerge from the darkest of nightmares to protect those things that folk were not meant to know, and when you are done, you return to wait in the darkness for the next affair to begin. Usually. Sometimes you stick around for a while, take in the sights. Catch a movie, maybe. After all, you can’t find a good romantic comedy in the Nightmare Lands, and while you occasionally will see a sports game, it always ends with someone standing on the field in their underwear while everyone laughs, and that gets tiring after a while.
What was your name again, sir? I seem to have forgotten. Are you…
- Simon Brambles, the Prince of Thorns?
- Liza Brambes, the Princess of Thorns?
- … someone else entirely?
For now, I will assume that my knowledge remains true. Simon Brambles it is. If I am wrong, I’m sure that you will… correct me.
Step 2: Choose Your Nature
You live in the depths of the nightmare world, and emerge periodically when summoned or particularly bored. You think it’s quite nice there, but to be honest, most people would probably disagree, because your home is an endless maze of thorny vines, dark, cloudy night skies, swampy ground, and the far-off cry of wolves. Within the hidden depths of the Nightmare Woods, there are terrible secrets burned into the trees that grow from between the briar patches, and the thorns lust for blood and reach out to caress unwelcome visitors. It is, in short, friendly.
That said, your nightmare realm could be something rather different. You are the Prince of Thorns, right?
- Yes, that is my name and my purpose. I enjoy my nightmare woods, and their nature has given me my Superior Thorny Vines.
- No, I am the Prince of Glass. My nightmare realm is an endless mirror maze, in which people see reflections of their darkest fears and hidden desires, and those reflections sometimes whisper secrets long lost to the world. Stepping through the right series of reflections can bring about wisdom, or damnation. It’s a nice place to go study, basically. Also, instead of those vines, I have Mirror Magic.
- Actually, I am the Prince of Thorns, but they’re sort of symbolic. My nightmare realm is a massive, rusted junkyard, filled with sharp-edged metal and towering piles of broken cars, washing machines, and trash. Take a wrong turn, and you’ll find your own corpse impaled on a barbed-wire fence, or see the trash spelling out a secret that should never be revealed. It’s basically somewhere to work on new things! Because of my technological origins, I have Deviant Science, not those messy vines.
- Seriously, this is just pathetic. I’m the Prince of Loss. My land is a realm of endless mists, where you can wander in any direction forever, constantly turned around and unable to see more than a few feet away from you. In the distance, always just out of sight, you can hear your loved ones calling your name; sometimes, they tell you the truths that you never wanted to hear, or share secrets from a long-ago time. It’s a nice, quiet place to rest. The mists imbue me, and I have the power of Superior Fog Control.
- … my realm is something else?
We’ll be assuming that you have Nightmare Woods, so just replace that knowledge with your Nightmare hall, Nightmare Yard, or Nightmare Mists if it’s appropriate.
Step 3: Choose Your Eternal Existence
Just what do you do, when you aren’t at work? If you aren’t stalking through the night, are you actually…?
- At the local drive-in theatre, catching a movie?
- Down by the docks, watching the waves on the lake?
- Quietly spending some time in your woods, waiting for someone to call?
- Ominously looming at a baseball game and trying not to distract the batter?
- Wandering through the streets, aimlessly seeing the sights?
- At the library, checking the books for forbidden knowledge?
- Stalking someone random, just to keep your hand in?
- Trying, and failing, to flirt with a mortal?
- Tinkering with some piece of mortal machinery?
- Buying a foodstuff that you’ve never tried before?
- Painting a scene (with more enthusiasm than skill)?
- Just kind of awkwardly standing around at the edge of a party?
Choose two or three of these scenes; when you aren’t quite sure how to introduce yourself to a situation, one of these will do the trick.
Step 4: Review Your Goals
You are a very busy figure, and your life is filled to the brim with things to experience, problems to be solved, and natural orders to restore. Because you have so many plates spinning at any given time, it’s useful to be able to go back and look over what you’re actually meant to be focusing on at any give time. So, to recap:
Quest 1: The mortal world is so fascinating. It may be its transitory nature, or simply the infinite creativity that mortal minds are capable of, but you have to admit to loving the strange and beautiful ideas that these beings come up with. (They take perfectly good juices, and then freeze them – and put them on a stick! It’s brilliant!) Spend time looking for things that other people are taking for granted, and explain why those things are actually so amazing.
Quest 2: You’ve been called into the world to remove a secret – something dark, and terrible. Your summoner has assured you that this secret holds the power to break the world, and summon one of the greatest Mysteries to ravage Town, so you’re just going to have to prevent that from happening. But this secret is elusive. You’re going to have to really work at hunting it down.
Quest 3: You also have your Nightmare Woods to take care. For one thing, other nightmares tend to wander in and wreck the place up, people leave their trash and bones just lying around, and it’s actually more work than you’d think to keep the trees growing in just the right blend of welcoming and devouring intruders. Even when you’re in the mortal world, you will spend time making plans, looking for things that would help your realm, and the like.
… or maybe your Nightmare Woods are, frankly speaking, fine. You could be trying to build some other place. If so, where? Are you building a safe haven in the mortal world, a quiet corner of Bluebell Park where you can rest? Or maybe you’re trying to open a new café of your own? This is not going to be easy, but it’s worth a try.
Step 5: Choose Your Connections
Connections are a rough yardstick of how well you understand, get along with, and deal with someone. It can also measure how well you are adapted to living in a place. You always have a couple of these Connections:
- The Glass-Maker (2): His nightmares are filled with beautiful secrets.
- The Wrongful King (1): He left a piece of himself within your world once.
You can discard these Connections later if they don’t seem to work. You can also talk with the other PCs; if it seems like you and another PC should be friends, you can both start with a Level 1 Connection to one another.
Step 6: Review Your Powers
You are a terrifying and imposing creature of the darkest nightmares. This grants you a wide array of nightmarish powers:
- Your Nightmare Woods help you to learn peoples’ secrets and fears, and restore you when you are harmed; however, when you suffer, you tend to flee from the world and hide within them.
- You have a superior or magical skill tied to your Nightmare Woods – usually your ability to create and control thorny vines, but sometimes something else you decided on back in Step 2.
- You can banish objects, secrets, or even people to the depths of your woods, until such time as a condition that you claim comes to pass. You do this occasionally, but rarely actually banish people for long periods of time, because frankly it is messy.
- You have additional Will and MP, which you use to protect secrets and terrify mortals.
- You can make yourself seen by looming in the shadows, appear before those you have chosen to punish or protect, and transfix people with your slow, terrifying approach.
- You have the resilience of nightmares – you can use your terror in place of food, sleep, or breath, and resist miraculous actions that would stop you.
- You can speak to snakes. Snakes are surprisingly tightly-tied to nightmares.
Step 7: Props
Before you start playing, you’re going to want to…
- Copy or print out a character sheet, to remind you of your powers and skills.
- Print up copies of your quests, so that you can track them.
You may also need:
- Eight Will tokens (I recommend white poker chips!)
- Three Miraculous Will tokens, of a similar but not identical colour to your Will tokens (Blue is nice.)
- Five (or more) MP tokens, of a different colour from your other tokens. (I generally use red.)
- To look around the table to identify the other PCs. Then practice play by:
- Nodding and putting your faith in the Glass-Maker.
- Saying ‘Aww’ and patting the Rat Detective on the shoulder.
- Shivering in terror at the actions of the Serpent of Memory.
- Sighing and rubbing your forehead over the Prodigal Sun.
- Shaking your fist at the machinations of the Humble Lie and shouting her name.
- Giving a big thumbs-up to the Swan Child for bearing up under strain.
- Just staring in shock and horror or disgust at the Wrongful King.
The Serpent of Memory
Career: Hunter
Hobbies: None
Favorite Foods: The memory of a warm, sunny day
Blood Type: O
Animal: Dragon
Age: Either a couple of months or thousands of years, depending on how you look at it.
Step 1: Who You Are
Greetings, O Magnificent One, and be welcome in our tale.
You do not, of course, need such welcomes. You are Typhon, the great serpent who stalks the night, renowned in Rat-Lore and hunter in the storms. Your exploits are legendary, and you have died and been reborn a thousand times, down through the generations. You have no need of friendship, or of love, only a need for fresh memories to quench the ever-burning hunger deep within your gullet. You are a fine and transcendent…
- Woman? Well, a snake, but a woman snake.
- No, you are a man. Well, a man snake.
- Gender is really a mortal concept. You are a Mystery. You don’t hold truck with it.
Regardless of your gender, you are always Typhon.
Step 2: The Rat-Lore of Typhon
You are an ancient Mystery, renowned for your power, immortal in thought and deed. The lore of your nature is written in the stars, and the rats recount it to their greatest hunters. The Lore of Typhon tells you that:
- Your prey may survive you by hiding from your sight, by meekness and obedience to your will, by compassion and empathy to those beneath you in their station. Those who praise and adore you, you will treat kindly.
- You must pursue those who refuse you, reject you, or show you disrespect, and those who are vulnerable in the aftermath of a disaster. You will never forgive those who flee from you.
Unless, of course, you are defined somewhat differently? One of the sides of your Lore must define what you love, and will not harm, and one defines what you hate, and will not forgive. Can your prey escape by…
- Showing strength, opposing you directly and acquitting themselves well, or hunting dangerous prey?
- Showing heroism, opposing you in order to protect another, and showing kindness towards strangers?
- Showing wisdom, posing riddles for you to answer and besting you in a riddle-game?
- … something else?
And do you always hunt those who…
- Stand firm against you or other enemies, enraging you with their steadfast bravery?
- Harm others in love, treating their emotions as toys?
- Show greed by accepting gifts from you, stealing goods left out, or risking their safety for treasure and power?
Obviously, the acts that cause you to spare someone should not be the same as the acts that cause you to hunt them. They typically, but not always, stand in opposition to one another.
Step 3: Choose Your Favorite Scenes
So… what do you do, from night to night? You’re a giant snake, so you might find it a little bit tricky, at first, to just hang out with your friends, which you don’t actually have anyway. Not that you’re lonely. You would never have such weak emotions. Openly.
Anyway. Are you generally…
- Slithering across the rooftops in a storm?
- Stalking someone down the streets, sniffing out their most pleasant memories?
- Scaring the heck out of someone in order to eat those memories of terror?
- Lurking in the shadows on the edge of a crowd, where you can be unseen?
- Talking to people who can’t immediately tell what you are, just to see how they’ll react?
- Hanging out quietly and digesting recently-gained memories?
- Stalking an important PC because their scent confuses you?
- Slithering into the Nightmare World in search of food?
- Trying to figure out how humanity (or ratdom) works?
- Trying to read a good book, which is kind of tricky on account of the lack of hands?
Pick two or three of the above, or choose your own. When you can’t figure out what a massive golden snake is doing in a scene, probably you’re doing that!
Step 4: Review Your Goals
You may be a constantly-reincarnating numinous god-monster, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have day-to-day concerns. In fact, you have quite a few such concerns, and they are kind of a big deal. A bigger deal than the other mortals that you’re dealing with.
Quest 1: For one thing, you are always hungry, and you need to eat. Sometimes this means a big hunt, but sometimes it just means snagging a minor thought out of someone’s head. Whenever you can declare, either arrogantly or defensively, that you need a memory more – go ahead and take it!
Quest 2: So, remember when we said that you were eternal? Well. Something is changing, and you’re a little concerned that it might be you. You shouldn’t be able to have fears about your role in life; that sort of thing is supposed to be what mortals do. But no, you’re starting to wonder if maybe there’s more to eternal life than just eating memories and making a nest out of them. Maybe you’ve been going about all this wrong. Maybe… you need to develop something more than hunger.
Quest 3: You’re practicing your shapechanging, studying the ways of mortals, their emotions and their movements. Perhaps this is so that you can better hunt them, or because you want to try something new, or maybe you just kind of want to read a book. But you’re definitely studying how to fake being human.
… unless you’re planning to fake being something else? A rat, maybe? They are your prey, after all. A vampire? They’re pretty arrogant and imperious, just like you. An ogre? You understand their hunger. A dog? Dogs are kind of nice.
Step 5: Consider Your Connections
Connections are a rough yardstick of how well you understand, get along with, and deal with someone. It can also measure how well you are adapted to living in a place. You… do not have very many of these. But you do have Connections to:
- The Fortitude Rats (2): They are your proper prey.
- The Swan Child (1): Her entire existence is a beautiful memory waiting to happen.
In theory, you could choose to share another Connection with any other PC, but you probably don’t want to do this with more than one other PC. You are meant to stand apart, after all.
Step 6: Review Your Powers
As a Mystery, you have a number of immensely powerful abilities, which allow you to hunt your prey and devour their memories. Your miraculous abilities are:
- You are exceptional at hiding in the shadows, disguising your voice, and stalking your prey, especially prey that you have tasted of in the past. You can also find ways to travel through impossible pathways and into impossible places.
- You can eat memories, storing them within you, and transform them into powerful abilities by learning their secrets, or know things that someone else experienced.
- Your venom can dissolve miracles that would oppose you, imbue objects with memories that you’ve eaten to bring them to life, and transform your victims into hungry monsters.
- You are bound to the Lore of Typhon, which compels you to spare those who serve or flatter you, and to hunt those who oppose or flee from you.
- You can control the weather, intensifying or dimming the storms in which you hunt, and casting your senses out across an entire storm front to narrow in on whatever you are hunting.
Step 7: Props
Before you start playing, you’re going to want to…
- Copy or print out a character sheet, to remind you of your powers and skills.
- Print up copies of your quests, so that you can track them.
You may also need:
- Eight Will tokens (I recommend white poker chips!)
- Three Miraculous Will tokens, of a similar but not identical colour to your Will tokens (Blue is nice.)
- Five (or more) MP tokens, of a different colour from your other tokens. (I generally use red.)
- To look around the table to identify the other PCs. Then practice play by:
- Nodding and putting your faith in the Glass-Maker.
- Saying ‘Aww’ and patting the Rat Detective on the shoulder.
- Snapping your fingers to beckon over the Prince of Thorns to serve you.
- Sighing and rubbing your forehead over the Prodigal Sun.
- Shaking your fist at the machinations of the Humble Lie and shouting her name.
- Giving a big thumbs-up to the Swan Child for bearing up under strain.
- Just staring in shock and horror or disgust at the Wrongful King.
(Obviously, these actions refer to you as a player. You as a snake can’t really pat people, snap fingers, give thumbs-ups, rub your forehead, or shake your fist at people. These gestures are mostly humanocentric, aren’t they?)