Random hooks thread

[Zettaijin]

Les tisserins

The price of being fashionable in the competitve world of Borca and Dementlieu's nobility isn't always merely monetary. New dyes bring vibrant colours, however these highly toxic concoctions also seep through the skin and cause a slow, often painful death.

At least they'll say you make a beautiful corpse.

Les tisserins is as innocuous a name as any for a small group of highly specialized assassins who kill through garment, using the nobility's constant desire for new and exciting fabrics and tints to ensure a very quiet death. Their cover as mere tailors and cobblers is almost flawless and only the most dilligent of investigations could possibly link them to any misdeed.

[Zettaijin]

Nobody's child

Lust is inevitable for most. At some point or another, even the most resilient may find themselves hopelessly pining for another's favours. In the case of the longer lived mortal darklords, long term relationships are often a slightly problematic affair and may find themselves more interested in temporary paramours.

However, things being as they are there is always a risk that one of these may lead to the birth of an unwanted child.

True, some Darklords are far too immersed in their little fixations to bother with certain physical needs, but others may feel a need to scratch certain itches from time to time hence the above concern over illegitimate children.

What if they somehow inherit some dark gifts? What if the Dark Powers use the child against the parent for purposes known only to them?

Harkon Lukas, for example, knows full well that parenthood as a Darklord isn't always what it's cracked up to be. His son and daughter both ended up estranged, after all.

And it is Akriel who has founded a loose band of half sons and illegitimate daughters born of the passions of powerful figures within the mists - Darklord or not.

She recruits orphans whom she suspects have some connection to powerful figures, convincing them that together they may claim what they have been denied. Some of these individuals are showing peculiar talents and abilities that the Meistersinger's daughter seeks to exploit for some as of yet undisclosed personal end (their "revenge" being of little actual concern to her).

Perhaps she once again feels a desire to clash with her own father?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

And it is Akriel who has founded a loose band of half sons and illegitimate daughters born of the passions of powerful figures within the mists - Darklord or not.

I like this! It's Ravenloft's version of the Teen Titans.

[Zettaijin]

And it is Akriel who has founded a loose band of half sons and illegitimate daughters born of the passions of powerful figures within the mists - Darklord or not.

I like this! It's Ravenloft's version of the Teen Titans.

Ya know, I didn't think of that when I wrote it, but you're absolutely correct! But who would make a proper Deathstroke-like foil?

And who would Akriel be? Raven?

[Zettaijin]

The Town on the Border

It doesn't exist on any map and one is never certain to find it again once they leave, however the town on the border is always there to welcome visitors when they most need it.

Well, when it deems that they do.

It's inhabitants are... well, rustic might be one way of describing them, others would prefer vulgar or low. They drink and eat loudly, fight, and engage in simple gambling games, but they do look after one another. As the local saying "Always someone's got yer back, for a dagger or a club".

The mention of "a dagger or a club" is possibly to be taken literally, but also refers to one of their favourite gambling activities wherein coins marked with a dagger on one side and a club on the other are launched high into the air and left to fall on the ground.

Visitors will quickly be asked to join in on the nightly festivities and especially the gambling. Groups are likely to find themselves split up and "handled" (for lack of a better term) by different bands of locals who are quite eager to treat them to local hospitality.

Things almost invariably take a turn for the worse as visitors often become a little too infatuated with the dagger and clubs coin game, lose everything, and forced to rely on "local hospitality". Breaking free from the crude, violent antics of the locals becomes almost impossible after a first night into town.

Visitors quickly develop an addiction to the lifestyle and risk becoming a perpetual resident of the town on the border.

One of the more notable residents is a doctor whose passions made him an outcast and found refuge in the town. He is a clever, manipulative man capable of engaging the other locals as an equal one moment and show surprising intellect and cultural awareness the next. He supplies visitors with various concoctions (medical or not) meant to alleviate their ills and aches following a night on the town.

His friends are all brutes gifted with far lesser intellectual gifts and a penchant for violent mischief.

While the good doctor enjoys a stimulating intellectual conversation, he'll quickly turn back to his other, less cerebral passions. Yet he never engages in violence himself, rather he follows the brutes and supplies them with drink (one of his various "passions") and encouragement.

Trying to break up the nightly routine of violence and alcohol is likely to result in the whole town turning against the visitors. Those who somehow find means to escape the town with their sanity intact can never fully shake the desire to return and quite a few will go to great lengths to find the town again, unable to escape the doctor's gregarious laugh after a night filled with mischief.

(Blatantly copied from the awesome Wake in Fright which features a devilish Donald Pleasence)

[Zettaijin]

The Lonely Lady

Somewhere in the outskirts of Invidia is a nearly deserted village which received an impromptu visit from hungry wolfweres one night. While the creatures quickly understood that they were outnumbered, they did fell a good number of residents and scared most of the others before departing into the mists.

Few families stayed, of those that did many of them were poor or lacked nearby relatives with whom they could stay.

it goes without saying that every few years the population seems to drop ever so slowly. Some feel the town will never recover now that those who left have spread the tale of that bloody night. Who indeed would want to reside in a place that may at any time be attacked by these rampaging creatures of the mists?

One lady still holds out. No matter how few families remain, she refuses to leave.

Partly out of loneliness and possibly boredom with the quietness of her town, the woman has taken it upon herself to replace the missing families with strawmen and strawwomen, and even strawchildren.

While the locals were a little puzzled at first they have come to enjoy the company of the straw families and even help the lady maintain them. Some offer clothes or tools to give them a greater semblance of life.

In truth, the scarecrows are constructs born out of passion but remain will dormant until the town is under danger again. The lady has a few tricks up her sleeve due to her ancestral blood. Mild mannered as she may appear, she isn't without some knowledge of the arcane and has made it her goal to defend the village forever more.

In the dangerous land of mists, the village is a rare place of peace, sanctuary from the horrors that surround it.

(Based loosely on a Japanese village wherein a local lady has been making scarecrow residents out of boredom and thus receives visits from curious tourists every now and then. Reports say she acted out of loneliness, but my friend visited her and she claimed it was out of boredom.)

[Zettaijin]

The Cabin and the Crone

The Crone is what they call her. An old woman living alone in the woods, left to her own devices under suspicions of witchcraft. The locals leave her be as she never truly bothers them and they secretly fear her true powers were she angered.

However, locals also know that she may grant certain boons to those in need... that is if they meet her price.

It's an old tale told a thousand times by peasants and travellers alike. The Old Crone has kin in every realm and every dark forest must house one of her spiritual sisters, so are the rules of these tales.

So what in what way is this Old Crone different from others of her kind?

In few if any ways.

Her blandness is a curse to her. Truth is, she is reluctant to deal with the locals out of shame!

Long ago she was but a normal peasant woman who acted as midwife and healer, as so many other women. She yearned to be more, to be the linchpin of her community, a central, trusted figure.

Yet she lacked any particular skill or ability. She was far too ordinary to be such a person.

So she invented stories, long elaborate ones so far fetched that her community had no choice but to accept them as truth. Why else would she bother concocting such stories?

Alas, her ruse was discovered and her supposed prowess failed her one to many times so she left for the woods to forever be alone in her shame. Now, obviously the Dark Powers would not let such a prime target for amusement go without some more misery. It so happened that a hag residing in the woods was forcefully evicted from her home by wandering folks bent on righting wrongs and dispensing justice and the like. Little did they know that the hag was serving the home rather than the reverse and lacking a faithful servant, the home desperately called out to whatever power such a thing would worship to once again be served by a devoted soul.

The cabin is rather ordinary and its "mind" rarely makes its presence felt overtly. It prefers to infiltrate the mind of its domesticated servant and progressively "train" said servant in the numerous mundane tasks they must accomplish in order to keep the cabin from growing weak.

In time, the cabin and the servant become one. The Old Crone is part of her home now and has no real interest in granting boons anymore... well... most of the time. Parts of her still yearns for a sense of community, however serving the Cabin isn't without leaving her with some sense of worth.

While she wouldn't mind helping those who seek her aid, informed as one would expect by old wives' tales and stories of ole women in the woods and their mysterious powers, the Cabin has little interest and time.

If they insist, the Cabin may relent, allowing the Crone to offer some manner of boon in exchange for some service. Given the current servant's slight meekness when compared to the former one, the Cabin oftn has little choice but to rely on the gullible and desperate to assist.

The house specialty is babies. Near the house is a cabbage patch. A quite ordinary one by all appearances but the soil has a magical property to it that allows the cabbage to split open and reveal an infant.

The infant is perfectly healthy but rather odd. It doesn't laugh or cry, nor seems moody or interested in anything. It passively grows into a bland, boring individual of no particular notice if not for their slightly bloated facial features and seemingly swollen digits and limbs. Their slightly vacant, blank stare may lead some to presume the child to be somehow mentally lacking. The cabbage patch responds to the servant and to an extent mimics said servants' traits for purposes of creating infants. The last servant's violent, hungry nature produced dangerous near-feral children who would often turn on their parents, devouring them in a bloody feast.

The price varies by individual and according to whatever the Cabin needs. Food, wood, tools, and other basic necessities are more often than not part of the Cabin's needs.

A fair trade, really, but over time the new parents may grow rather annoyed that their child shows little love and merely obeys without fault like some automaton. Some feel slighted and refuse to continue with their payments to the Cabin and the Crone. At this point, the Cabin reveals the true nature of the plant child whose appearance may alarm parents quite severely.

The plant child will not cause any direct harm, merely leaving the household for the cabbage patch.

Were parents to confront the Cabin's servant, they will surely be rebuffed and told that the bargain was fulfilled. If they press on, the Cabin may grow angry and set loose a small group of cabbage children.

This said, even in human form the children are quite inflammable and may inadvertently cause fires to erupt.

[Zettaijin]

The Brotherhood of the Equine Ladies

Stories of Nidala's fantastical creatures are considered mostly false, the product of creative bards trying to get a few more coins in their purse from jaded audiences.

However a group of young men have found inspiration on these tales, especially the ones about supposed magical horses whose intelligence far surpasses that of their normal brethren. While they have never once met such a beast, they base their worship on the tales and myths found in tomes as well as paintings and songs.

It was by chance that these men met and discovered their shared passion and they are in no way shy about it. They openly display their elaborate heraldry featuring highly decorated horses (all females), each one given a name and personality which they feel fosters a spiritual link with the creature despite their remote location. Some even feel a deeper, almost erotic link to the said mares.

Some have attempted to reach the shores of Nidala but none have succeeded.

Recently however, one of theirs unwittingly summoned a terrible creature, a nightmare which now roams the local woods causing much mayhem. After being burned by the creature's hellish breath, the member has grown obsessed with the beast and seeks to use it for his own purposes.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

OK, this one needs serious fleshing out, but: I was listening to the radio with my kids and on Kid's Place Live, we heard this song:
http://secretagent23skidoo.com/wp-conte ... ersion.wav

Warning: it's catchy.

But the point is the lyric: "My imaginary friend says I'm the imaginary friend, which means I'm imaginary then. If he's right, and I'm really not sure that he's wrong, so I might be made up like the words of this song."

ok... think about it for a minute.... creepy, no? Gotta be something Ravenlofty that can be done there. A kid with an imaginary friend starts to slip into an alternate world where he's the imaginary one, and his friend is real. (Is the friend some Far Realms-type monstrosity, maybe?)

Well, that's all I've got... but maybe someone will find it useful.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

The Brotherhood of the Equine Ladies

[Zettaijin]

Admit it, you never thought anyone would attempt to do what I just did...

Oh and let's see if anyone catches the reference in the Cabin and the Crone... I admit, it's not something the younger folks will get.

[Dark Angel]

I may be wrong (but I have a hell of track record with your thread seemingly), but I thought it was obviously Cabbage Patch Kids. I thought it was a bit vague at first, but it seemed more obvious in the last third so I didn't feel the need to point it out.

[Manofevil]

Admit it, you never thought anyone would attempt to do what I just did...

Oh and let's see if anyone catches the reference in the Cabin and the Crone... I admit, it's not something the younger folks will get.

Actually if I weren't in the middle of coursework right now, I'd've done this two weeks ago. I still plan to. Mine will be different than yours but I still intend to do it.

[Zettaijin]

I may be wrong (but I have a hell of track record with your thread seemingly), but I thought it was obviously Cabbage Patch Kids. I thought it was a bit vague at first, but it seemed more obvious in the last third so I didn't feel the need to point it out.

Bingo, also, I had to work in the reference to the dolls' reputation for catching fire easily which floated around my home province for a while in the 80's (and seemingly nowhere else).

[Dark Angel]

I may be wrong (but I have a hell of track record with your thread seemingly), but I thought it was obviously Cabbage Patch Kids. I thought it was a bit vague at first, but it seemed more obvious in the last third so I didn't feel the need to point it out.

Bingo, also, I had to work in the reference to the dolls' reputation for catching fire easily which floated around my home province for a while in the 80's (and seemingly nowhere else).

But what about the fact that they have no souls? There has to be a workable angle there!