More to the point, I plan on being the main antagonists being the Nightmare Court. Changelings are natural dreamweavers too, and I plan to make the Nightmare Man a changeling himself. Thing is, I want them to have more of a motive than eating. In fact, I noticed that their dominant motive is Lawful Evil.
So, instead, I made them stand-ins for the Outer Church, from the Invisibles. Their ultimate desire as a group is to terrify all sentient life into abandoning free thought and individual desires. They're also a "court" in the sense of being a judiciary-a surreal kangaroo court where it is assumed that accusation is proof of guilt and the ultimate goal is to provide examples rather than pursue justice.
Since I thought this idea was cool and doesn't fit the current Quoth the Raven theme, I thought I could post my revised versions here too.
To start off, let's overview the Ghost Dancer! Also my pean to my irritation with "pretty lady = nicest member"; I made her to be the most petty and self-centered on purpose, as well as into the theme of irony and self-blindness.
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Leonia Gerhard, the Ghost Dancer
Quote: <twirls silently, as all onlookers see flashes of all those they have hurt in her movements>
Description: The Nightmare Courtier of Guilt, and more formally the Presiding Clamiant of the Oneiric Collegium, the Ghost Dancer is the undead personification of the reason recusal exists as a concept. Anything she feeds upon is, in Leonia's view of things, directly linked to the circumstances behind her own death, and thus while she is often considered the most "merciful" of her peers, in truth she is probably the cruelest; it just so happens there are one-in-a-million cases where she is convinced the dream seed she is focusing on is truly contrite, and thus she moves on-however, the Ghost Dancer's definition of "contrite" usually involves her victims being so broken down that suicide often seems like too kind a fate to subject themselves to. She is just as mean-spirited and misanthropic as all the other co-darklords, it's just that people see the beautiful ballerina and assume that her heart matches her face. In fact, it's probably better for her social ambitions her death robbed her of the ability to speak-otherwise it would be not be particularly difficult for others to pick up that she is, to not put too fine a point on is, a vain primadonna who thinks the world owes her all the favors she desires.
Leonia Gerhard's story begins in Dementlieu. The daughter of Darkonian emigrants (or more accurately, a Darknonian mother and a Borcan father whose memories had promptly returned to him but remained mum to prevent the irate eye of the Kargat falling on him), Leonia was always a figure of attention for her pale skin and platinum blonde hair. Combined with a natural sense of poise that led itself well to her later profession of one of the Academe de Ledgermain's bards, with a unique grasp of their magic-even before she lost her voice, she was no singer, but she learned how to substitute the vocal component of song for her natural reflexes as a ballerina. Of course, even as a child, the character flaw that would later come to define her life, her inferiority complex, was ever-present. Leonia always had a sense of never being quite good enough for anyone-as a child, it was her distinct paleness and status as first-generation immigrant's daughter, as an adolescent her peers being more interested in "manly" pursuits of arcana and mathematics, as an adult student of the Academe her inability to sing her spells "properly" and being disrespected for her gender. Unfortunately for the world, Leonia learned that the best way to get around her insecurities was to manipulate others; she became a master of playing to emotion and chauvinism, using her meek appearance and demeanor to master the art of the fake cry and how to best inspire pity she could manipulate and direct. Part of the reason this worked so well is that Leonia honestly believed a great deal of her "woe is me" act; to her, she was simply asking for help in a way that sold herself as the unlucky creature she was...which would not be so bad, if she didn't regard all others seeking sympathy as rivals who didn't know how good they had it. More than one person never got the help they needed simply because Leonia was hogging all the attention, and deliberately so to deny her imagined enemies "underserved" compassion.
That was not the act that imprisoned her beyond the Veil of Sleep, though. That involved, as with too many things in the advanced Core, a relationship. While she never could get her own act, she was made partner, rather than assistant, to the great magician (and natural sorcerer) Roch Vandame. Having been inspired by her own frustrations of being a woman, and linking them to being treated as a dirty secret his whole life due to his arcane abilities, Roch saw a kindred spirit in the mystic dancer, and furthermore could see in her a unique gimmick that would propel both of them out of the rest of the Academe's shadow. While initially just intending to use him as a springboard for her own career, in time Leonie came to care for him as a person, and gradually this care for the kind man who was always patient with her rants turned to attraction.
There was a problem though-Roch already had several passionate letters with someone else, a Sascha Ahlstrom. From the content of their long and involved letters, Leonia realized the two were deeply in love, but something about Sascha made it impossible to pursue a relationship. Never a dumb woman, Leonia realized her rival was a native Patterna speaker, in other words a Vistana who regularly visited Port-a-Lucine. Realizing that a magician being in love and probably having taken the virginity of a Vistana would be a scandal Sascha would not want to put on Roch if their love was genuine, or would be so heartless that Roch would see that being involved with one of the wandering folk was a mistake.
Eventually the day came, with Leonia hiding nearby with a specialized "image catcher" she had on loan from the Academe on hand, that the ship-bound caravan came into Port-a-Lucine, with an obviously nervous Roch on the dock. The colorful ship docked, at from there emerged a stunning Vistana beauty...who winked at Roch before distracting the dockhands while Roch snuck aboard. Curious, an invisible Leonia followed to spot her partner in a chaste but loving embrace with the ship's male quartermaster.
The revelation that Roch not only was in love with someone else, but that the very nature of his affections meant he was incapable of returning her own (as far as she was concerned) finally caused Leonia's jealousy to boil over. All of her life, she had suffered, and now she was in love with a man who could never even notice how much she struggled for him? This would not stand. Slowly, a plan to destroy the man who had "led her on" and to catapult her own career in the musk of scandal presented itself to her. Snagging a few compromising positions of her partner and his lover, Leonia snuck off into the night-and to her magician's cabinet, where she kept a complex device meant to deliberately induce temporary scars for part of her "fake death" act. Quietly pressing a pair of "handmarks" into her neck, and dressing herself up as a victim of assault, she "fled" to the front door of the Academe' local coordinator with a new sob story about how "those brutes" had treated the poor, innocent ballerina who threatened to expose their decadence and shame.
While Roch pleaded his innocence, the tides of two types of bigotry sealed his fate before it even came to trial, and he was beheaded in record time. In the wake of the scandal the Council of Brilliance proceeded to justify a "decency" measure against the Vistani that had "corrupted" its son, all with Leonia's urgings. The ship itself was burned and the crew hunted down in a frenzy of prejudiced violence, all while Leonie watched from her theater's roof with dark satisfaction.
Suddenly, she saw a figure sneak into the theater, one in distinct Vistani garb. Furious at the intrusion into her sanctum, she descended to turn the invader in for the bounty, only to encounter Sascha, eyes red from crying and narrowed in rage, sitting in the front row-along with the corpses of his crewmates, all poised as if to watch her perform.
"Why are you so surprised?" he said in Patterna, which Leonia suddenly realized she understood. "You desired a solo act, did you not?"
Suddenly, the fake wounds that the ballerina magician had used to frame her partner appeared on her body-but they were very real now. Struggling to breathe, she fell to the floor.
"And a solo act you shall have. You shall even have an eternal audience, entertaining those trapped between worlds as they await their rewards. And you shall entertain them forever, until the day you understand, in truth, what you hung on us falsely."
From behind him a familiar corpse rose, walking over to her. Leonia could not even scream as Roch strangled her in truth.
Storytelling Hints: Anyone who gives the Ghost Dancer a voice, via telepathy or temporary unclenching of her vocal chords, will quickly learn to regret it; Leonia is one of the world's great whiners, an endless tide of maudlin complaints and bemoaning of her past that would not be half as irritating if she ever acknowledged the pain of others. But no-to Leonia Gerhard, the only person who has troubles that matters is Leonia Gerhard, and absolutely none of them are her fault, just ask her. She even rephrases her need to pray on dreams as her being an innocent victim in all of this; she needs some way to rest despite the fact that Sascha's curse means she can never stop dancing, she just needs to park herself in a normal dreaming mind to catch her ghostly breath and focus enough to even stand up. Naturally, she never brings up the fact that she could just hypothetically surf good dreams instead of inflict endless repeating scenes of guilt, but if bought up she has an excuse there too-she needs to understand guilt and shame to free herself (which is technically true, but of course she would have to feel those emotions herself to stop her endless dance, something she can never seem to quite manage-her self-pity gets in the way).
As with all the Nightmare Court, Leonia believes the Nightmare Man is correct that free will must be severely curtailed and monitored for the good of the world. Unlike the others, her motive has nothing to do with her past, not directly. Rather, she has convinced herself that all guilt and shame is deserved, as it is the only way for victims of circumstance like her to get ahead in the world; best for everyone to stay within the rules of good behavior and success, and then people like her don't need to fear any sort of oppression. Really, it's a way for her to avoid admitting the truth that Sascha had a point to herself; if everyone feels guilty for good reasons, then by shaming them she is not really manufacturing anything for her own benefit.
Quote: <twirls silently, as all onlookers see flashes of all those they have hurt in her movements>
Description: The Nightmare Courtier of Guilt, and more formally the Presiding Clamiant of the Oneiric Collegium, the Ghost Dancer is the undead personification of the reason recusal exists as a concept. Anything she feeds upon is, in Leonia's view of things, directly linked to the circumstances behind her own death, and thus while she is often considered the most "merciful" of her peers, in truth she is probably the cruelest; it just so happens there are one-in-a-million cases where she is convinced the dream seed she is focusing on is truly contrite, and thus she moves on-however, the Ghost Dancer's definition of "contrite" usually involves her victims being so broken down that suicide often seems like too kind a fate to subject themselves to. She is just as mean-spirited and misanthropic as all the other co-darklords, it's just that people see the beautiful ballerina and assume that her heart matches her face. In fact, it's probably better for her social ambitions her death robbed her of the ability to speak-otherwise it would be not be particularly difficult for others to pick up that she is, to not put too fine a point on is, a vain primadonna who thinks the world owes her all the favors she desires.
Leonia Gerhard's story begins in Dementlieu. The daughter of Darkonian emigrants (or more accurately, a Darknonian mother and a Borcan father whose memories had promptly returned to him but remained mum to prevent the irate eye of the Kargat falling on him), Leonia was always a figure of attention for her pale skin and platinum blonde hair. Combined with a natural sense of poise that led itself well to her later profession of one of the Academe de Ledgermain's bards, with a unique grasp of their magic-even before she lost her voice, she was no singer, but she learned how to substitute the vocal component of song for her natural reflexes as a ballerina. Of course, even as a child, the character flaw that would later come to define her life, her inferiority complex, was ever-present. Leonia always had a sense of never being quite good enough for anyone-as a child, it was her distinct paleness and status as first-generation immigrant's daughter, as an adolescent her peers being more interested in "manly" pursuits of arcana and mathematics, as an adult student of the Academe her inability to sing her spells "properly" and being disrespected for her gender. Unfortunately for the world, Leonia learned that the best way to get around her insecurities was to manipulate others; she became a master of playing to emotion and chauvinism, using her meek appearance and demeanor to master the art of the fake cry and how to best inspire pity she could manipulate and direct. Part of the reason this worked so well is that Leonia honestly believed a great deal of her "woe is me" act; to her, she was simply asking for help in a way that sold herself as the unlucky creature she was...which would not be so bad, if she didn't regard all others seeking sympathy as rivals who didn't know how good they had it. More than one person never got the help they needed simply because Leonia was hogging all the attention, and deliberately so to deny her imagined enemies "underserved" compassion.
That was not the act that imprisoned her beyond the Veil of Sleep, though. That involved, as with too many things in the advanced Core, a relationship. While she never could get her own act, she was made partner, rather than assistant, to the great magician (and natural sorcerer) Roch Vandame. Having been inspired by her own frustrations of being a woman, and linking them to being treated as a dirty secret his whole life due to his arcane abilities, Roch saw a kindred spirit in the mystic dancer, and furthermore could see in her a unique gimmick that would propel both of them out of the rest of the Academe's shadow. While initially just intending to use him as a springboard for her own career, in time Leonie came to care for him as a person, and gradually this care for the kind man who was always patient with her rants turned to attraction.
There was a problem though-Roch already had several passionate letters with someone else, a Sascha Ahlstrom. From the content of their long and involved letters, Leonia realized the two were deeply in love, but something about Sascha made it impossible to pursue a relationship. Never a dumb woman, Leonia realized her rival was a native Patterna speaker, in other words a Vistana who regularly visited Port-a-Lucine. Realizing that a magician being in love and probably having taken the virginity of a Vistana would be a scandal Sascha would not want to put on Roch if their love was genuine, or would be so heartless that Roch would see that being involved with one of the wandering folk was a mistake.
Eventually the day came, with Leonia hiding nearby with a specialized "image catcher" she had on loan from the Academe on hand, that the ship-bound caravan came into Port-a-Lucine, with an obviously nervous Roch on the dock. The colorful ship docked, at from there emerged a stunning Vistana beauty...who winked at Roch before distracting the dockhands while Roch snuck aboard. Curious, an invisible Leonia followed to spot her partner in a chaste but loving embrace with the ship's male quartermaster.
The revelation that Roch not only was in love with someone else, but that the very nature of his affections meant he was incapable of returning her own (as far as she was concerned) finally caused Leonia's jealousy to boil over. All of her life, she had suffered, and now she was in love with a man who could never even notice how much she struggled for him? This would not stand. Slowly, a plan to destroy the man who had "led her on" and to catapult her own career in the musk of scandal presented itself to her. Snagging a few compromising positions of her partner and his lover, Leonia snuck off into the night-and to her magician's cabinet, where she kept a complex device meant to deliberately induce temporary scars for part of her "fake death" act. Quietly pressing a pair of "handmarks" into her neck, and dressing herself up as a victim of assault, she "fled" to the front door of the Academe' local coordinator with a new sob story about how "those brutes" had treated the poor, innocent ballerina who threatened to expose their decadence and shame.
While Roch pleaded his innocence, the tides of two types of bigotry sealed his fate before it even came to trial, and he was beheaded in record time. In the wake of the scandal the Council of Brilliance proceeded to justify a "decency" measure against the Vistani that had "corrupted" its son, all with Leonia's urgings. The ship itself was burned and the crew hunted down in a frenzy of prejudiced violence, all while Leonie watched from her theater's roof with dark satisfaction.
Suddenly, she saw a figure sneak into the theater, one in distinct Vistani garb. Furious at the intrusion into her sanctum, she descended to turn the invader in for the bounty, only to encounter Sascha, eyes red from crying and narrowed in rage, sitting in the front row-along with the corpses of his crewmates, all poised as if to watch her perform.
"Why are you so surprised?" he said in Patterna, which Leonia suddenly realized she understood. "You desired a solo act, did you not?"
Suddenly, the fake wounds that the ballerina magician had used to frame her partner appeared on her body-but they were very real now. Struggling to breathe, she fell to the floor.
"And a solo act you shall have. You shall even have an eternal audience, entertaining those trapped between worlds as they await their rewards. And you shall entertain them forever, until the day you understand, in truth, what you hung on us falsely."
From behind him a familiar corpse rose, walking over to her. Leonia could not even scream as Roch strangled her in truth.
Storytelling Hints: Anyone who gives the Ghost Dancer a voice, via telepathy or temporary unclenching of her vocal chords, will quickly learn to regret it; Leonia is one of the world's great whiners, an endless tide of maudlin complaints and bemoaning of her past that would not be half as irritating if she ever acknowledged the pain of others. But no-to Leonia Gerhard, the only person who has troubles that matters is Leonia Gerhard, and absolutely none of them are her fault, just ask her. She even rephrases her need to pray on dreams as her being an innocent victim in all of this; she needs some way to rest despite the fact that Sascha's curse means she can never stop dancing, she just needs to park herself in a normal dreaming mind to catch her ghostly breath and focus enough to even stand up. Naturally, she never brings up the fact that she could just hypothetically surf good dreams instead of inflict endless repeating scenes of guilt, but if bought up she has an excuse there too-she needs to understand guilt and shame to free herself (which is technically true, but of course she would have to feel those emotions herself to stop her endless dance, something she can never seem to quite manage-her self-pity gets in the way).
As with all the Nightmare Court, Leonia believes the Nightmare Man is correct that free will must be severely curtailed and monitored for the good of the world. Unlike the others, her motive has nothing to do with her past, not directly. Rather, she has convinced herself that all guilt and shame is deserved, as it is the only way for victims of circumstance like her to get ahead in the world; best for everyone to stay within the rules of good behavior and success, and then people like her don't need to fear any sort of oppression. Really, it's a way for her to avoid admitting the truth that Sascha had a point to herself; if everyone feels guilty for good reasons, then by shaming them she is not really manufacturing anything for her own benefit.