Well… not saying that the lore in this story has -anything to do with it-, but in White Wolf’s World of Darkness roleplaying setting/book line, demons can indeed become insane. Because hell, in that case, is an existence of nothing but their own mind. To spend millenia trapped with nothing but your own thoughts; it’s not unreasonable for even an immortal being to go off the koo-koo-kachoo end of the bottomless kiddie pool. And I love that the lore provided there is quite in depth; so at least by one good debate, demons can go insane. (or -are- insane, considering they’re demons rather than angels, depending on PoV).
Yeah, I don’t know enough about World of Darkness demons to comment on their version. In a literal sense, these demons have nothing to do with Hell (and possibly never did, since we can’t take their word for where they came from, or if they’re even “demons” in the Biblical sense.) Metaphorically speaking, I tend to feel that Hell is other people.
Besides, a disembodied demon can still interact with people, albeit in limited ways.
I’m more familiar with vampires and werewolves in their system (I used to play some Masquerade as a teenager.) We’re using some of the same mythology, but otherwise are diverging pretty far.
Demons are not humans. They’re my demons; they have demon parent(s), thus they are definitively their own kind. I’ve mentioned that some spirits who call themselves demons are able to possess humans, but in that case the human is only a vessel.
What is a ‘demon’ to a Satanist? It depends on who you ask. Anton LaVey, er, borrowed a bunch of pagan gods, Hindu deities, trickster spirits, and put them all on a list of demons. Aleister Crowley (not a Satanist but later claimed by them) made use of earlier spirits described in demonologie tomes, mystic writings, and in some cases Qabbalistic writings. Other Satanists don’t believe in spiritual entities like gods or demons, or even Satan, in any literal way.
As for the Christian point of view, I’ve tried to be as respectful as possible; in short, it’s not part of my story, and I’m not trying to comment on it through my demon characters. I went to Catholic school as a tiny Sashira, so I’m familiar with Christian teachings on demons. (Not that any religion has a perfectly unified viewpoint on these things; it depends on church, sect, etc. as well as the individual.)
p.s.: I’m currently working on a glossary for each of the species in the game. The lore for the demon section will be interesting, to say the least. Perhaps put in a lot of question marks and a multiple-choice origin story or three?
@Sashira Yay, monster codex! I’m such a nerd that I’m totally going to read every scrap of information in it.
Also, because no one seems to have mentioned it…you mentioned Dragons in a previous post. Are those legit Dragons (giant winged lizard with horrendously horrible halitosis) or faux Dragons like in Grimm? Or are you teasing and there aren’t Dragons in this story?
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So a vampire’s finishing move should be to choke the other’s neck, no more air!
That reminds how durable are each monster like if something happened to the vampires neck would it regrow?
Dragons do exist in this world. They need lots of room and prey to survive, though, so their preserves are located far away from human-inhabited spaces. I imagine that there must be “Sponsor-A-Dragon” programs where people can buy them sheep in exchange for photos and cheerful updates. A team of rangers and researchers makes sure they have everything they need, and are too well-fed to want to terrorize the nearest village.
There are no dragons anywhere near New Haven, but I might give them a codex entry when they’re briefly mentioned.
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Are dragons sentient or just big animals?
No one really knows how intelligent they are; no one speaks Dragon. I might give you a chance post-University to become the wildlife biologist who first translates it. For the time being, they seem content enough to live in their generous preserves and eat sheep.
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Does that mean our characters will be able to write a book entitled Dragons in the Mist?
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So Dragons are public knowledge but Monsters aren’t?
Is there something about the Wendigo’s access to the rumor mill updated in yet?
The wildlife biologists who watch over the preserves are monsters. It’s another example of how word spreads among the monster community, while being hidden from the human world. I haven’t explicitly written in how the rumor chains work yet, but it’s on the list of things to add.
EDIT:
Updating this reply with more answers to random game-related questions. Having just come back to the thread after my contest hiatus, there will probably be more. I’ll add them here too.
They’re living, physical creatures. In the same category of “alive” as werewolves, but with a much longer lifespan. They can be killed. They have blood, they have beating hearts, they breathe air, they have all of the functions of any other mammal except that wendigos are sterile (they don’t need to reproduce, since they are spontaneously created via human transformation. Unlike the werewolf, goblin and demon, who are born that way.)
They’re kinda like giant sea turtles. They do have lifespans, but they live so long, are so hard to observe, and so rare that it’s not exactly known. Somewhere upwards of 500 years.
In this case it’s because of your relationship with Taylor. If you decided you were friends with Taylor, you won’t be able to gaslight them (the real problem is if they’re believed, not disbelieved.) There’s another option that will do exactly the same thing, if you’re on friendlier terms.
Whew, lots of questions, but good ones! New Haven has the largest known population of monsters in North America, and quite a bit of monster diversity. If monsters can’t survive or don’t want to live in cities, they have smaller communities where they can stay hidden. Werewolves might have a pack of twenty in one forest, a single family in a cabin somewhere. Where they can best stay hidden, and where they prefer to live, depends on the monster’s personality and method of making a living.
Different species have their own ways of governing themselves. Somewhere in this thread are a few examples: goblins have a council (their rules are formed through a combination of tradition and philosophical/scientific debate), vampires have an oligarchy, and werewolves have their pack structure. They relate to each other sort of like a loose alliance of countries, or maybe like rival crime families. It’s easier to get along than to be at war, so they try to find a way to achieve their goals without interfering with something another species cares about. In extreme cases, like something that affects monsters as a whole, they might send messengers back and forth to community leaders to try to gain some cooperation from whatever monsters are best suited to address it.
There is no monster prison, unless some species privately makes arrangements to care for their own criminals. The usual consequence for causing conflict with other species, endangering monsterkind, or other dangerous behavior is death (whether delivered by their own kind or whoever they upset.) As a general rule, it’s better to tread lightly than to try to explain yourself later.
Pretty much. Even when there were more of them, wendigos were solitary hunters, each outcast from their former tribe. I think that if two wendigos met they would get along, since they could understand each other’s needs and experiences. Desperate cannibalism was always rare enough, though, that I doubt it’s happened before. In the modern age, what with the internet, it’s more possible than ever for isolated people to find each other. So you might get a chance to see how it works out.
Demons? They’re sort of Machiavellian. If you’re powerful, you make the rules. If you’re less powerful, you stay out of the way. Demons will quickly turn on each other if they’re after the same goal or territory, and will do whatever they can to destroy their rival. This is one reason your demon only has one parent: while two beings were probably involved in their creation, there is no foundation for a family unit or a stable couple in demon society.
@Shawn_Patrick_Reed
@Durxa got it right. Becoming a wendigo is brought on by wendigo psychosis, a culture-bound condition that requires both cannibalism and the proper sense of taboo to find it inhuman and unforgivable. Modern people tend to find cannibalism horrific but understandable, in cases where people were starving to death and someone was already dead or insisting on offering their flesh to someone else. In Native American cultures, especially the Algonquian tribes (the origin of the wendigo) there was never an excuse, tasting human flesh made you a monster regardless of circumstances.
Yes. A wendigo is always hungry, with a high enough metabolism that it is impossible to keep on weight. They were fairly average before the change, with no significant body issues. The dysmorphia and appearance issues are because they are now much thinner (on the verge of skeletal, way past endomorph-thin) and therefore “strange-looking” compared to mainstream standards of attractiveness.
The wendigo backstory is revealed by flashbacks and memories throughout the game. Sometimes you will have an option to think about the past, other times it will just happen. More information is coming in the rest of the week, yes.
Yes. They might be the same succubi and incubi that were described in Christian manuals about evil creatures, they might be some type of djinn, they might be sex spirits from an earlier time. But they have no connection to the Christian Hell (if they ever did, it has not been for a very long time.) They have no dealings with Satan. They’re just beings who feed off of lust and admiration, of largely unknown origin.
Yes. After the game is finished, I’ll be working on a sixth playable species, then as many more as there are demand for. Each of these new species would also be available as an NPC/possible love interest, once unlocked.
The week in which the game takes place revolves around events at the school. All of the species have their own goals and problems that will affect them after school, though. Hint: Wilderness lore is not useless. At some point later in the game, it will be very helpful to know how to get by outside of the school and the settled parts of the town.
I’m not positive what you mean by that? There’s some mad science around, though, so chances are good that you’ll see more of that.
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How alive are wendigoes.
Do their hearts beat?
Do they need to use the bathroom and such?
Etc.
“It would definitely make for an interesting story, but you’d better leave out the part about me being a monster. People will think you’re crazy.”
Why is this blocked for Wendigos? Or is it my personality?
I had that option so I think its just your personality.
So a wendigo can die of old age?
Whats their max life span?
Or are they like clams or whatever(they live until you kill them)
Idea about how monsters know about each other:
MonsterNet.
There’s a privately hosted network that monsters can access, if they have the password. All it takes is one monster to recognize what they are and give them the password, and then they can anonymously post, or create profiles on the network. If someone publicly posts or has a profile on the network, they’re a monster, but not being on MonsterNet doesn’t mean they aren’t a monster.
Does this sound plausible?
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Are there any cities for monsters only hidden in caves or forests? If so, how do communities get along? (Ex: Do they have a legal system? A constitution? Racial tensions? Political intrigues? Are they a democratic or communist or a monarchy? How is their economy? Do they have a class system? Do they have an established form of currency? How does their law enforcement operate? Etc etc etc)
It’s tricky, since they’d have to use the same web as everyone else. There’s no way they could build the infrastructure necessary for their own private internet without being noticed. However, the dark web is a real thing. Technically, humans would be able to find these monster sites, but only if they knew to specifically look for them.
If you’re curious about how it works… Dark web services rely on software like Tor. Tor is a free software that’s specifically designed for anonymous networking. Tor hides the information of people using it. Additionally, these dark web sites specifically require Tor (or something similar).
Naturally its frequently used by drug dealers and other criminals.
Most browsers will work on most sites. Whether you use explorer or Mozilla, everybody can probably access this forum for example. However, these dark net sites can only be accessed with a very specific browser.
For your monsters, they might make a special browser that’s needed to access ‘their’ web. Technically anybody could visit monster web pages, but they wouldn’t be able to load anything. And, ideally, only monsters would know to go download this special browser.
This ‘special browser’ system might also be safer than what you’re suggesting because of hackers. There are a TON of automated programs that visit sites automatically and seek out weaknesses in them. The monsterNet would have human hackers stumbling across what these creatures actually are constantly.
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Of course, on the flip side of monster-related internets, there are plenty of ‘monsters are real’ and ‘ufos are real’ websites now. Someone stumbling onto MonsterNet might just assume it’s yet another site populated by people with a penchant for monsters, rather than actual monsters themselves. If it’s a locked, hidden network, the hackers would probably also assume that it’s populated by paranoid monster-lovers, but that’s also not outside the pale of human possibility.
That said, my tech-loving goblin character would find this discussion of MonsterNet fascinating. Oh, the possibilities. : D
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Yeah, I can see what you mean. Even if a hacker got full access and just saw conversation after conversation of people talking about being a vampire/werewolf/whatever their first instinct is probably going to be less, “OMG monster are REAL??!??!?!!?!?!?!?” and more, “Why are these weirdos pretending to be monsters? Is this a role playing forum? Can I join?”
And then he does. And he meets these people. and he ‘role plays’ being a monster while never ever breaking character (because he thinks that’s the rules of the site). And then he meets some monsters for a real life larp meetup having no idea what he’s getting into.
That would make an amazing story. ‘Monster High 2: A LARP Gone Wrong?’.
Get to work on it Sashira! ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
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