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Monstertown is a place
Jun. 21st, 2011 09:04 pmYou know, in your typical DnD setting there's plenty of vampires and werewolfs and weird in-between things. There are a lot of different kinds of monsters to be sure - but when it comes down to it - there are really two specific categories of monsters despite the MM's numerous designations - there's things that are monsters and always were- Drow Elfs, Giant Slugs, Dragons - and there's things that used to be people. Vampires, Mummies, Werewolves - you get me right?
Well, for every gross misanthrope that wanted to be visited by the darkling prince and made into a vampire there's probably a half dozen people who were plenty content with their lives who're now reduced to the creepieness of unlife - they might end up ghouls or ghosts - there are were sharks and werebears and wereboars a plenty - and if you get bit by one? If you get bit by one the day you meet the person of your dreams and start to really think about what it is to be a person, a good person, the kind of person you want to be? Well you're still out of luck - well adjusted and happy as you might have been you can accidentally end up as some kind of half-rhino if you get bit by the wrong kind of rhino. Understand? A little? Well there's a little more to it. I'm talking about people who when they become immortal bloodsucking fiends of the night - they don't end up with lavish castles in the spooky parts of the map. They end up hiding out in barns and haylofts hoping nobody finds out what's become of them. They don't go to the deep mysterious forest because it's scary there - and they don't hang out in town because angry villagers get angry when the were-rat comes around. No - these are marginal, frightened people.
The trick is that there's a place where they go sometimes. If they can find out about it. It's a leper colony for the advanced lepers that you find in the obscure template sections of your various iterations of the monster-books. Maybe a few of them hope a friendly, high level cleric will come around and fix the whole town - but most are worried that her turn attempts will make them dust and drive their spirits straight to hell. It's hard being a monster - you never know if an adventurer is around the next corner just itching to take everything you've got over your dead, inanimate body. Banding together makes sense for these people. They can watch out for each other because their drastic weaknesses don't always coincide, their immortality and innate powers let them get along in the world - when they can find a place where they can stretch out and really learn the trade.
And most importantly. There are a lot of scary monsters - conscientious - frightened scary monsters - and when the Mummy who was just a guy who got lost in a bog on the way to the fair and had some bad luck with the corpse candle - when that guy - on his hundred and fifteenth birthday finally starts cackling the crazy laugh and it's clear he's gone from some version of neutral to some version of evil - the scary monsters can take care of their own - Shirley Jackson's Lottery style.
Now - this town - they don't name it anything. If it had a name it might appear on a map. If it appeared on a map it might draw attention. The people who live there? They don't call it anything - and when strangers come around they do what they can to keep them unaware and on their way. Strangers aren't welcome in the out of the way nameless town where the monsters live.
Monsters do okay there though. Just okay. It's nobody's first choice you understand.
So what do you do when you're a kid and your father goes to the woods to gather fuel and comes back missing half his hand. "A wolf, a terrible, giant wolf!" He's screaming and screaming- it's the scariest day of your life so far. Looking back on it you'll be amazed at how scared you were, and how many much more terrifying days lay ahead. Poor unaware little-kid self you think, and maybe you have some regrets. Well in a few days when your dad's hand grows back, and it's fine, and everyone starts noticing that he's only got the one eyebrow, and how weird is it that half his fingers are the same length, and where has he been on the nights of the full moon anyway? People start to pay attention, and people start to get angry. There are some torchlit nights for this young kid, terrible nights when his father turns into the worst kind of nightmare and howls, and screams and cries and cries and begs the people in the town to leave his family alone, though he does it through his dog-fangs and wolf muzzle and it doesn't sound like a sound anything should make - and no-one is moved, not even the man's family - who's scared of him now, but angry too - look at what he's done to them! Well - it's not long before the father packs up the family and starts heading away - from civilization, from farms, from anyone - they wander together down long roads that go nowhere and eventually they come to a place where only the barest track leads. It's a dusty sepulchral town - which is strange enough since it's got no graveyard, no castle, no walls - nothing that a town needs. No - it's got people, but barely. Sad eyed wretches brought to the edge of the world by mothers and fathers who've been chosen by fate to play the worst hands ever dealt.
A young boy who grew up there, he'd have a lot of frights. It'd take a long time to make even one friend, it'd take forever. Lying awake at night listening to the neighbors shriek or howl or cackle - whatever banshees and ghosts and vampires and wolfmen do all night. And then by day the weed grown streets are all abandoned - the frightened children of monster parents gathering not to play games, or tell stories but to watch out to see who's going to be a problem - who's going to be the next one who can't come out in the daylight anymore, who's transparent or worse, some opaque shadow. It's a tough life there - but not without its certain rewards.
Ghosts - they're dead, but when it comes down to it - immortal souls are a tricky thing. Life is short, if you're not an elf or something like it- and even then - the span of your life isn't the least part of your soul's existence. A ghost, a decent, wise, benevolent ghost - he might have got that way over the course of a few thousand years of ghosting it up. He's a ghost now - his work is unfinished - and once in confidence he mentions that his important work had been to save his civilization - which was destroyed before the civilizations of the moment had even started having their own languages. Poor guy - doomed. And lucky too - since he's seen it all go by, the whole history of everything. He's learned a lot, and living in Monstertown he knows a lot about monsters - especially how to help children learn how to protect themselves from them.
Abjuration is a school of magic easy to overlook - but the fact of the matter is - if you lived in a world with demons and ghouls and every kind of lovecraft demon - you'd want to know a lot more about how to keep them from coming around than you would about how to shoot fire out of your hands. Sure! Shooting fire out of your hands is a neat trick - but Circles of Protection are altogether much more useful. Well, the ghost - the oldest ghost - he did what he could to teach the children, did what he could to help them to live a happy life in the town where monsters hide. And then, when they'd got big and brave from what he could teach them - he sent them off, asked the parents and everything - "let them go" Because he knew that one day, one day maybe, one of them might learn a way to solve the problems of the monsters of monstertown - might learn some cures, some secret spells, some handy tricks - and that person would come back and fix everything.
Submitted for your approval -
I really like my abjuration wizard - who's braver than most and reckless in fights, who knows when to run and hide and sticks it out till the end anyway. I propose that this is his story.
Well, for every gross misanthrope that wanted to be visited by the darkling prince and made into a vampire there's probably a half dozen people who were plenty content with their lives who're now reduced to the creepieness of unlife - they might end up ghouls or ghosts - there are were sharks and werebears and wereboars a plenty - and if you get bit by one? If you get bit by one the day you meet the person of your dreams and start to really think about what it is to be a person, a good person, the kind of person you want to be? Well you're still out of luck - well adjusted and happy as you might have been you can accidentally end up as some kind of half-rhino if you get bit by the wrong kind of rhino. Understand? A little? Well there's a little more to it. I'm talking about people who when they become immortal bloodsucking fiends of the night - they don't end up with lavish castles in the spooky parts of the map. They end up hiding out in barns and haylofts hoping nobody finds out what's become of them. They don't go to the deep mysterious forest because it's scary there - and they don't hang out in town because angry villagers get angry when the were-rat comes around. No - these are marginal, frightened people.
The trick is that there's a place where they go sometimes. If they can find out about it. It's a leper colony for the advanced lepers that you find in the obscure template sections of your various iterations of the monster-books. Maybe a few of them hope a friendly, high level cleric will come around and fix the whole town - but most are worried that her turn attempts will make them dust and drive their spirits straight to hell. It's hard being a monster - you never know if an adventurer is around the next corner just itching to take everything you've got over your dead, inanimate body. Banding together makes sense for these people. They can watch out for each other because their drastic weaknesses don't always coincide, their immortality and innate powers let them get along in the world - when they can find a place where they can stretch out and really learn the trade.
And most importantly. There are a lot of scary monsters - conscientious - frightened scary monsters - and when the Mummy who was just a guy who got lost in a bog on the way to the fair and had some bad luck with the corpse candle - when that guy - on his hundred and fifteenth birthday finally starts cackling the crazy laugh and it's clear he's gone from some version of neutral to some version of evil - the scary monsters can take care of their own - Shirley Jackson's Lottery style.
Now - this town - they don't name it anything. If it had a name it might appear on a map. If it appeared on a map it might draw attention. The people who live there? They don't call it anything - and when strangers come around they do what they can to keep them unaware and on their way. Strangers aren't welcome in the out of the way nameless town where the monsters live.
Monsters do okay there though. Just okay. It's nobody's first choice you understand.
So what do you do when you're a kid and your father goes to the woods to gather fuel and comes back missing half his hand. "A wolf, a terrible, giant wolf!" He's screaming and screaming- it's the scariest day of your life so far. Looking back on it you'll be amazed at how scared you were, and how many much more terrifying days lay ahead. Poor unaware little-kid self you think, and maybe you have some regrets. Well in a few days when your dad's hand grows back, and it's fine, and everyone starts noticing that he's only got the one eyebrow, and how weird is it that half his fingers are the same length, and where has he been on the nights of the full moon anyway? People start to pay attention, and people start to get angry. There are some torchlit nights for this young kid, terrible nights when his father turns into the worst kind of nightmare and howls, and screams and cries and cries and begs the people in the town to leave his family alone, though he does it through his dog-fangs and wolf muzzle and it doesn't sound like a sound anything should make - and no-one is moved, not even the man's family - who's scared of him now, but angry too - look at what he's done to them! Well - it's not long before the father packs up the family and starts heading away - from civilization, from farms, from anyone - they wander together down long roads that go nowhere and eventually they come to a place where only the barest track leads. It's a dusty sepulchral town - which is strange enough since it's got no graveyard, no castle, no walls - nothing that a town needs. No - it's got people, but barely. Sad eyed wretches brought to the edge of the world by mothers and fathers who've been chosen by fate to play the worst hands ever dealt.
A young boy who grew up there, he'd have a lot of frights. It'd take a long time to make even one friend, it'd take forever. Lying awake at night listening to the neighbors shriek or howl or cackle - whatever banshees and ghosts and vampires and wolfmen do all night. And then by day the weed grown streets are all abandoned - the frightened children of monster parents gathering not to play games, or tell stories but to watch out to see who's going to be a problem - who's going to be the next one who can't come out in the daylight anymore, who's transparent or worse, some opaque shadow. It's a tough life there - but not without its certain rewards.
Ghosts - they're dead, but when it comes down to it - immortal souls are a tricky thing. Life is short, if you're not an elf or something like it- and even then - the span of your life isn't the least part of your soul's existence. A ghost, a decent, wise, benevolent ghost - he might have got that way over the course of a few thousand years of ghosting it up. He's a ghost now - his work is unfinished - and once in confidence he mentions that his important work had been to save his civilization - which was destroyed before the civilizations of the moment had even started having their own languages. Poor guy - doomed. And lucky too - since he's seen it all go by, the whole history of everything. He's learned a lot, and living in Monstertown he knows a lot about monsters - especially how to help children learn how to protect themselves from them.
Abjuration is a school of magic easy to overlook - but the fact of the matter is - if you lived in a world with demons and ghouls and every kind of lovecraft demon - you'd want to know a lot more about how to keep them from coming around than you would about how to shoot fire out of your hands. Sure! Shooting fire out of your hands is a neat trick - but Circles of Protection are altogether much more useful. Well, the ghost - the oldest ghost - he did what he could to teach the children, did what he could to help them to live a happy life in the town where monsters hide. And then, when they'd got big and brave from what he could teach them - he sent them off, asked the parents and everything - "let them go" Because he knew that one day, one day maybe, one of them might learn a way to solve the problems of the monsters of monstertown - might learn some cures, some secret spells, some handy tricks - and that person would come back and fix everything.
Submitted for your approval -
I really like my abjuration wizard - who's braver than most and reckless in fights, who knows when to run and hide and sticks it out till the end anyway. I propose that this is his story.
