Hehehe, I can finally post the birthday art I did for @inkdemonapologist now that the chapter it's from has gone live!!
Some of the little Sammy details from that chapter destroyed me... also couldn't help thinking of this line from Sammy about how Prophet shouldn't have to be alone in relation to a lyric from a song (Shayfer James – Where We Belong) that's got Prophet associations in the Cthulhu playlist and contains the line, "We'll be alone...where we belong."
Also waaaaaahhh check out the incredible brushed up inked and colored version she made??? Link below the cut so I can update it if needed--
But for now it can be found at the bottom of the chapter!
It blows my mind how much she took what I was going for and just made it like 10x more?? I love it so much, and I love these disaster boys sharing a body and caring about each other more than either one is fully prepared to admit...
Peter always had a strange edge as an investigative reporter from the weird "hunches" he sometimes got about what other people were thinking, that sometimes even led to strange dreams of witnessing places and events that sometimes ended up being true… that advantage served him very well, right up until he tried to snoop into a certain shady research facility, and ran headlong into some significantly bigger fish.
Now he's trapped there too and... hey, isn’t that the guy from a cold case he’d looked into years ago when a Linda Stein was looking for her husband who had vanished after looking for help with strange predictive visions and confused memories..? Well...at least now he finally knows what happened to him. In fact he's going to get to find out first hand.
It’s true subject 111’s abilities upon acquisition were pretty minor when compared to some of the other subjects, but luckily the staff at Burning Stars Laboratory have LOTS of ideas on making some.... Improvements.
Now for the follow up question, what was the worst ending you had planned for Cthulu AU Season 2?
Hahaha, oh boy…! For a lot of these most of the ‘worst’ endings I’ve considered are the ones baked into the scenario, though occasionally the specifics of the group or additions I’ve made can add to them.
I've got some from the book and some specific to our playthrough under the cut!
For Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign, the big one (aside from just being killed by the various antagonists) is failing to stop Fowler’s full ascension as an Avatar of the Yellow King, and the dreams of everyone who has seen the sign being plagued with increasingly mind-rending visions of Carcosa for, as the scenario puts it in its final words, “as long as their sanity holds out. Soon they too will be faithful subjects of the Yellow King, devoted to spreading his Yellow Sign so that others may rejoice in his reign.” If Henry hadn’t tried to confront the sign head on and learned he could cleanse it, even with Joey miraculously never having seen the sign, this could have ended with all the other boys slowly going utterly insane... with Joey unable to stop it.
Another recurring bad-ending threat was various investigators getting kidnapped as Peter did and being lost forever in dread Carcosa. This could also happen if they interfered in the wrong way with the summoning ritual at the lake, or if things went sideways at the party. Once the threat of the party was over, anyone lost there would have been stranded in that maddening realm, just as Fowler was.
Speaking of bad things I had planned, I had strongly expected that once Peter was gone, there would be no chance to save him until the actual party, at which point he would have been much worse off sanity-wise and could have even been an obstacle, or a lure to tempt Jack into danger at the party. That would have been fun, but I have to say, I’m still delighted over the perfect storm of Mochi and Boo completely rewriting how all that went down!!
Okay, what other horrible fates had I considered… OH
A big one was that Prophet got scarily close to sacrificing someone!! When the group was all working together in the finale, everyone was mostly voicing how glad they were Prophet was cooperating to help them stop Fowler, and the plan was that Prophet who had been blessed with knowledge of the ritual would be the one to purify the stone. But if he had done it, that sure would have left Prophet with the freshly restored eldritch relic able to choose the next host of his Lord right there in his hand… if he’d cut someone with the restored stone, there weren’t any convenient time loops going on this time to bail them out, and if any of the players had contingency plans for this, I sure didn’t know about them, haha!
Joey ended up having an insanity lead to him trying to bind the stone to himself instead to remove the influence of the Yellow King, though this was at the cost of large chunks of his POW and CON. If Henry hadn’t had gold blood power left to soak some of the strain on Joey, it’s possible Joey could have completely crippled or even killed himself in the attempt. On the flip side, if Henry had tried to push into giving much more than he did, he could have given himself sufficient blood loss to have risked death as well.
BUT EVEN THEN, this left Joey and Henry badly drained by the time Prophet showed up. Prophet had a fairly difficult check to retrieve the stone from Joey-Lurker’s then-goopy form, but boy, what a time that would have been for Prophet to roll an extreme success! He would have had a few moments with the restored stone, and no one else there but Henry and Joey, prime sacrifices, helpless before him.
Another fun one was when Prophet told Fowler he served a higher power…and it was then Fowler understood exactly why Prophet had been resisting the sign, and tried to forcefully realign the ink in Prophet to the Yellow King. If Prophet hadn’t made his rolls to resist, he would have spent the rest of his ink dose as Fowler’s loyal aide, full of maddening music to share as the Prophet of the Yellow King. If Fowler had found the opportunity to grant his new minion a suitably powerful Yellow Sign of his own, he might even have stayed that way indefinitely…a fate Sammy and Prophet might both have considered worse than death.
Just lots of fun options in good ol' Call of Cthulhu!!
Minecraft Susie ended up with some ghast traits, and is an appreciator of a little good old fashioned mad science, especially potions! She's made the most of her Player advantages, venturing into dangerous places like the nether to gather rare ingredients needed for her potion crafting, which she uses to trade for other things she needs. She's mostly a solo operation lately, though back when she was getting established, she might have called on other players, especially those with an affinity for knowledge and secrets to help plan her first excursions.
Her specialty is health regeneration potions, as they're both generally in high demand, and extra useful for a lady who likes to take a risk herself now and then. And as one of the main ingredients for those is ghast tears, perhaps it's not surprising the strange affliction grafting mob traits onto players ended this way for Susie.
Susie doesn't let it get her down, though… especially as she now often floats a bit above the ground..! And having a few extra limbs is a big help when crafting, it turns out. Yes, part of her face may have gone rather ghast-y... but who's going to critique your looks when you're brewing the potions that will keep them alive and also incidentally can spit fireballs? Besides, she finds the streak of white it put in her hair rather striking. And if her preferences have shifted to favor the stifling heat of the nether, well, that just means she can make her whole home a greenhouse to grow more warm-weather potion ingredients like melons and netherwart!
How does the lurker feel about being in bendy form? Does he ever wish he had a unique body, one that he can truly call his?
It might be a bit of an odd perspective, but I don't think the Lurker sees the Bendy form coming from a character Henry and Joey made and it being "his" as mutually exclusive? Just as many people can look alike, or many people can have the same job title, he considers himself "a" Bendy more than stealing the form of the one and only true Bendy.
He WAS however initially worried that the JDS crew might expect him to be some version of the Bendy from the cartoons, just as the Masked Messenger before them had expected him to take on forms to bring to life the nightmares of other Hosts, distorting their expectations. But the boys made it clear to him early on they didn't expect him to be that. From his perspective, they gave him a form even though it was precious to them, and told him he could be whatever he wanted with it. He was expected to be neither the cartoon Bendy nor some specific distortion of it... Just his.
Initially I also don't think he'd even considered the concept of an identity he made completely and entirely for himself. The idea of being given one as a starting point and then being allowed to shape it or change it if he wanted was about as wonderous as he could imagine. As time went on it's possible he might have come to yearn for such a thing... if he had felt pressured into a specific Bendylike roll. But he never was. I think he feels he's been able to invent everything about himself that matters to him.
In fact in some ways, I think he's even more attached to the form because it was given to him so freely despite it resembling something that came from them. After all, that makes it just the sort of form he would have wanted for himself anyway; one that reflects him being part of their family.
Some NPC talk came up for BatIM Cthulhu group's Minecraft AU, including Peter! Peter is actually not a player in this AU, he’s just a normal villager! Well, maybe not quite normal anymore…
Peter got jostled out of the routine of his village, and realized there was a whole world out there. Now he's a cartographer, exploring unknown areas, making maps of them, and sharing that knowledge with others. He’s an old acquaintance of Jack’s, who frequently travels for his trading and can put a reliable map to good use. Peter and Jack have even explored together on occasion, and when Peter found a stray cat hanging around the village, he ended up giving her to Jack to protect him from creepers.
No longer being quite a normal villager also means that Peter doesn't always react predictably when things like pillager raids happen. He might have gotten more in the thick of things than he should have, and drew the attention of a raiding evoker despite the best efforts of Henry, the village's self-proclaimed(?) protector. Peter suffered a strange magical mishap, but ended up with latent vex traits, the sometimes-intangible creatures envokers summon to attack intruders.
When the vex traits are active, Peter can sometimes walk through solid blocks and even manifest a ghostly sword should the occasion call for it. This is, however, at the cost of taking damage over time like a summoned vex, so it’s a trick best reserved for emergencies. Once he is able to activate them on purpose, he might actually be able to help Henry when the village, or their friends, are in danger.
(His outfit is based on an in-game villager Shazz found! Nice and warm for living in a chilly high altitude village, and it even has a hat! I am very invested in interpreting this as one of those warm ones with the ear flappies you can pin up.)
