| cmastah |
I was reading through a manga (Junji Ito, you ROCK!) and it gave me ideas for creative uses of a few different creatures (and found inspiration elsewhere as well). I'd also like to see ideas from other people to help the creative juices flow.
1. People in a small town engage in asking passersby for their opinion on what do regarding different issues: Love life, friends and such. Recently, there have been a few deaths related to this practice. What's ACTUALLY happening, is that on occasion a revenant/poltergeist is passing by in the guise of a beautiful person, giving them a negative answer, and then killing them later after that person shared information of what happened.
2. An underground room, where people who stay there seem to mysteriously disappear overnight. What's ACTUALLY happening, is that a gelatinous ooze crawls through the cracks and spaces in the room to envelope it entirely, munching on anything living there, only to slip away after eating. Any scrying or viewing into the room makes it quite difficult to see the gelatinous ooze, seeing instead only that a person suddenly dissolved into nothingness in a matter of moments.
3. Rumors abound of the ability to see a deceased loved one if you are willing to sacrifice his still fresh body to the blood mist deep within the foggy forest. What's ACTUALLY happening is that a particularly smart vampiric mist is taking advantage of mourners by feeding on the bodies of their loved ones to show them a glimpse of their standing corpse perhaps waving or smiling. The mist lives in a small network of rabbit burrows, waiting for people to bring their dead to it (which happens frequently).
4. In a small town, there is a gauntlet that any man/woman hoping to rightfully rule over the town must pass. The crown, a weak magical helm residing at the end of the gauntlet, signifies a pact with the gods that this man/woman has passed the test and has earned the right to rule. The crown also acts as a font of knowledge to learn from all rulers who came before the one attempting to rule. What's ACTUALLY happening, is that the gauntlet is a gift from a good deity who chose to reward a selfless and pious man (who died a long time ago) by granting his wish to protect his town permanently (by having a gauntlet that grants right to rule to those (who are also good) willing to attempt it). The crown itself is actually a cassisian who can bestow knowledge of all previous wearers to the current man attempting the gauntlet. As part of the pact, the current ruler MUST brave the gauntlet a second time before death to replace the crown, if he fails or refuses to do so, the cassisian returns of its own free will and erases all knowledge of that ruler other than to say that he failed his task and was unfitting to rule. A little addition to this can be that a lawful/chaotic good deity would send a cassisian with a level of cleric to ALSO cast detect law/chaos to further decide if the fellow is worthy. To protect the secret and sanctity of the gauntlet and its trials, all those who manage to brave it are granted a permanent +4 against intimidation checks meant to reveal ANY secret of the gauntlet.
5. There's a group of sorcerers offering their services to a town. These sorcerers trade their services freely for any magical weapons that the town might offer. Recently however, the town has been seeing massive spider webs in town at the same time finding that most small animals are going missing or finding skeletal fragments on those webs (obviously the large spider/spider-creature behind the webs is eating them). One of the sorcerers mentioned earlier has been spotted in town (they don't live in town, but somewhere nearby) and some witness accounts claim they've seen him transforming into a horrific spider. What's ACTUALLY happening is that the sorcerers are Aranea who are helping the town, but one of their members is having an identity crisis and is having a Jekyll/Hyde situation, except without the homicide.
6. A park/playground in the area is a recipient of strange sounds. Usually laughter and singing that doesn't seem to originate from the children in the area. Any prodding into the history of the park reveals that it was constructed only recently and that previously there was a house there that was host to a very nasty and alcoholic man/woman. Further prodding reveals that the ex-spouse of the deceased (opposite gender, you'll find out why) had had the house torn down and a playground erected instead. As of a few days ago, the playground has been suffering from the sound of nearly incessant crying. What's ACTUALLY happening, is that the previous owner was mother/father of a child that they neglected and left to die in the house. When the parent eventually died (natural causes), the ex-spouse discovered that their child had died and had become an attic whisperer. The spouse tore down the house and built a play-ground so that the dead child would always have playmates (and with such large children consistently coming, there was no reason to harm them into staying forcefully). The spouse had recently died of old age and since they never came to visit the dead child again, the attic whisperer started crying, wanting to see its dead parent that built the playground for it.