I'm looking for a Mind-Draining/Lobotomizing Daemon/Creature/Cursed Item... any suggestions?
I'm wanting to flesh out Curse of Strahd - Vallaki with a Prison/Re-education/Reformation Centre much along the lines of the excellent Redit - MandyMod - Fleshing Out Curse of Strahd. Where the undesirables of Vallaki are reformed to good citizens of Vallaki, a malleable almost zombified/soulless state of subservience... for this purpose I was hoping to find some creature/Daemon/Cursed Item that the centre is using to carry out this Lobotomizing of it's troublesome citizenry... in MandyMod's - Fleshing Out Curse of Stradh they have magic users carry this out... I'd preferer a cursed/possessed item or some how contained creature maybe and hoping someone has a good suggestion of a daemon or something that is associated with somehow draining peoples minds leaving them subservient.
Thanks for any replies thoughts
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“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Immediate thoughts for this jump to intellect devourer. They usually go hand in hand with mind flayers but in the shadow realm cut off from a hive mind perhaps the burgomaster finds a way to breed them in isolation and the devourers see him as their leader?
I did immediately think of an intellect devourer, but I don't think that mind flayers really work with curse of strahd. Since the idea of Vallaki is that the Baron wants everyone to be happy, happy, all the time, you could tie in something related to the sorrowsworn of the shadowfell. Some sort of process to actually pull the negative emotions out of a person, basically leaving them a perpetually happy husk. An incomplete person, since without sadness happiness loses all its lustre. Those emotions might then coalesce into sorrowsworn like The Wretched. If you were interested in a more challenging boss fight you could have all of their negative emotion coalesced into a larger sorrowsworn such as The Lost?
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"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Maybe something that throws around a watered-down feeblemind? Like if you touch it, or see it, or something in between, depending on how hard you want it to be for the PCs to be effected.
The Intellect Devourer definitely a good fit though I'm thinking Vallaki hench persons would totally fail in containing it... The Sorrowsworn of the shadowfell super thematic both The Lonely and The Lost
Think that will give me a great outline for monster abilities Feeblemind to homebrew some sort of Sorrowsworn intellect leech or Tick...
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
This suggetion might be a little late to the party, but my initial idea was to use something along the lines of Zuggtmoy's sporeservants from the Out of the Abyss adventure manual. For those not familiar with the concept, the Demon Queen of Fungi (i.e., Zuggtmoy) uses special fungal spores to infest creatures and overtake their minds and bodies. Ultimately creates a zombie-like creature that has fungus for brains.
I could see the burgomeister using some sort of "magic mushroom" found in the nearby woods or maybe received as sort of gift from a passing traveler (which could be a plothook for introducing something else later). The mushrooms are given to citizens who cannot find happiness in the festivities. The mushrooms consume the consumer from the inside over a few days until they're mostly a husk filled with the animating fungus. The reformed citizens walk around in a daze doing little more than smiling widely and staring off into the distance. All will be well...
Until somebody attacks one of these spore servant variants, which reveals the fungus inside that is controlling the individual. A potential option to introduce a bit of body horror with the normal blood and guts being mostly replaced by something alien and sinister.
Since the idea of Vallaki is that the Baron wants everyone to be happy, happy, all the time, you could tie in something related to the sorrowsworn of the shadowfell. Some sort of process to actually pull the negative emotions out of a person, basically leaving them a perpetually happy husk. An incomplete person, since without sadness happiness loses all its lustre. Those emotions might then coalesce into sorrowsworn like The Wretched.
While I like the idea of an intellect devourer as well, the sorrowsworn concepts are an interesting approach. I really like the idea of having the negative emotions being drained to make (i.e., force) everybody to be happy, but those drained negative emotions creating something new and unpleasant. Sure, everybody seems to be so much happy, but the town is now being plagued by strange creatures (i.e, the Wretched).
If I run Curse of Strahd again, then this idea might make it into my next version.
not to late for this party Javier_Phenergan will be quite some time yet before I have to present this aspect of Vallaki to my players...
Zuggtmoy a super reference concept to work in right now I'm toying with the idea of a sort of Dr.Ferryman character some sort of twisted medicus who's running the reformation centre for the burgomeister and carrying out a whole host of different experimental procedures on the undesirables of Vallaki, demonic psychotropic funguses sounds like a perfect fit
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
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I'm looking for a Mind-Draining/Lobotomizing Daemon/Creature/Cursed Item... any suggestions?
I'm wanting to flesh out Curse of Strahd - Vallaki with a Prison/Re-education/Reformation Centre much along the lines of the excellent Redit - MandyMod - Fleshing Out Curse of Strahd.
Where the undesirables of Vallaki are reformed to good citizens of Vallaki, a malleable almost zombified/soulless state of subservience... for this purpose I was hoping to find some creature/Daemon/Cursed Item that the centre is using to carry out this Lobotomizing of it's troublesome citizenry... in MandyMod's - Fleshing Out Curse of Stradh they have magic users carry this out... I'd preferer a cursed/possessed item or some how contained creature maybe and hoping someone has a good suggestion of a daemon or something that is associated with somehow draining peoples minds leaving them subservient.
Thanks for any replies thoughts
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Immediate thoughts for this jump to intellect devourer. They usually go hand in hand with mind flayers but in the shadow realm cut off from a hive mind perhaps the burgomaster finds a way to breed them in isolation and the devourers see him as their leader?
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/17163-intellect-devourer
I did immediately think of an intellect devourer, but I don't think that mind flayers really work with curse of strahd. Since the idea of Vallaki is that the Baron wants everyone to be happy, happy, all the time, you could tie in something related to the sorrowsworn of the shadowfell. Some sort of process to actually pull the negative emotions out of a person, basically leaving them a perpetually happy husk. An incomplete person, since without sadness happiness loses all its lustre. Those emotions might then coalesce into sorrowsworn like The Wretched. If you were interested in a more challenging boss fight you could have all of their negative emotion coalesced into a larger sorrowsworn such as The Lost?
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Maybe something that throws around a watered-down feeblemind? Like if you touch it, or see it, or something in between, depending on how hard you want it to be for the PCs to be effected.
Thanks for all the responses and ideas, M3theston, TheHumbug and Xalthu
The Intellect Devourer definitely a good fit though I'm thinking Vallaki hench persons would totally fail in containing it... The Sorrowsworn of the shadowfell super thematic both The Lonely and The Lost
Think that will give me a great outline for monster abilities Feeblemind to homebrew some sort of Sorrowsworn intellect leech or Tick...
Again Thanks a lot
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
This suggetion might be a little late to the party, but my initial idea was to use something along the lines of Zuggtmoy's spore servants from the Out of the Abyss adventure manual. For those not familiar with the concept, the Demon Queen of Fungi (i.e., Zuggtmoy) uses special fungal spores to infest creatures and overtake their minds and bodies. Ultimately creates a zombie-like creature that has fungus for brains.
I could see the burgomeister using some sort of "magic mushroom" found in the nearby woods or maybe received as sort of gift from a passing traveler (which could be a plothook for introducing something else later). The mushrooms are given to citizens who cannot find happiness in the festivities. The mushrooms consume the consumer from the inside over a few days until they're mostly a husk filled with the animating fungus. The reformed citizens walk around in a daze doing little more than smiling widely and staring off into the distance. All will be well...
Until somebody attacks one of these spore servant variants, which reveals the fungus inside that is controlling the individual. A potential option to introduce a bit of body horror with the normal blood and guts being mostly replaced by something alien and sinister.
While I like the idea of an intellect devourer as well, the sorrowsworn concepts are an interesting approach. I really like the idea of having the negative emotions being drained to make (i.e., force) everybody to be happy, but those drained negative emotions creating something new and unpleasant. Sure, everybody seems to be so much happy, but the town is now being plagued by strange creatures (i.e, the Wretched).
If I run Curse of Strahd again, then this idea might make it into my next version.
not to late for this party Javier_Phenergan will be quite some time yet before I have to present this aspect of Vallaki to my players...
Zuggtmoy a super reference concept to work in
right now I'm toying with the idea of a sort of Dr.Ferryman character some sort of twisted medicus who's running the reformation centre for the burgomeister and carrying out a whole host of different experimental procedures on the undesirables of Vallaki, demonic psychotropic funguses sounds like a perfect fit
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again