IN> Dreameaters and Flutterbies

[Perrin Rynning]

> > Handlingers? Not sure Fleurity would be any happier with uncontrolled
> > dreameater venom than other Superiors... making Essence useless is...
> > nasty stuff.
> 
> When I read your post I was sure that you'd been reading Perdido Street
> Station by China Mieville.
> 
> Having reread your post and your replies to other people, I'm not so sure.
>  Which is, if you think that this might be part of the collective
> imagination-scape going around, a bit worrying.


Oh, I don't know. I think that after thirty-odd years of the RPG hobby spreading around the world, most players are pretty tired of the old standards. I mean, yeah, we can always reach deep, deep, deeeeeeppp into ancient history ("Oh, no! It's a herd of afanc!"
"What?"
"Okay, okay. They're giant BEAVERS! With RED and WHITE EARS!"
"What?!?"
"'The Celts weren't really up to scratch when it came to inventing cool monsters, one must admit'. Kenneth Hite, footnote #5 to Shades of Black: Alternate Black Ops, from Suppressed Transmission, Second Broadcast")
... there's still a lot to be said for building modern monsters out of the day to day fears. I, for one, would rather face a fire-breathing dragon than, say, an IRS Auditor. *shudder*

But in a slightly more mythic level, consider what kinds of things modern folk are genuinely afraid of. In the One-And-Twenty, it's all but impossible to live legally in any urban environment without a credit history and all kinds of electronic traces of not only your financial transactions but your Internet comings and goings. Start with the textbook example of "Identity Theft", in which someone else not only spends your hard-earned savings and checking accounts, but signs up for dozens of credit cards and maxes them out, leaving you holding the bag.
Scared?
No?
So turn it up to eleven. How about coming back from a three week vacation to discover that no one realized that you were gone. Someone who looked and sounded exactly like you had been living your life for three solid weeks, and no one noticed.

Yes, a lot of Native American tribes had variations of skinwalkers, and the Germans gave us the concept of a doppelganger, but the terror that the words used to invoke has faded. The challenge in making such a creature terrifying lies in making it as personal as a forged diary that the real owner isn't completely certain he or she didn't write, with the added horror of making the victim question their very self. "Am I who I think I am? And if I am, then who is this person who seems to be a better me than me?"

Careful around your mirror,

 - Perrin

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