cosmology question

[saint ash]

has anyone thought of assigning the misc. monsters of closet land to kings? in my games vampires are linked to gluttony, ( they drink human blood) and werewolves to wrath, ect... not all of these monsters are directly controlled by these kings, the king just had a hand in their creation. i have had some trouble coming up with a monster to link to sloth though.  does anyone have anythought or suggestions? anyone else link up monsters and king or have come up with there own king sepcific
monsters?

[Comte]

Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.  The way I worked it out is that the kings are more or less like the ulitmate gods that the players would ever come up against.  I consider them something that the players would only meet in the most horrible of circumstances.  Under that I have general vampires and warewolves, they are linked to creaters who are under the kings.  For example I linked all vampires to lillith who lords over them.   Then I have lillith ruled over by the Defilier who more or less ignores her because he is off doing his own thing.  This way I can have powerful beings in the universe that aren't the kings for the players to interact with.  It is an interesting tool because I can spend 15 minuts describeing the atrocities of lillith then say the defiler is worse and let the players use thier own imaginations.  This is just one example I try to stay away from the defiler because some of my players certainly would have personal issues with him.

Another example would be what I did with warewolves..  I can't remebered who I liked them to, I think it was Maladoror.  If I didn't they are now.  Ahem yes so I linked all warewolves to a charfecter called Maladoror, I beleive I set it up so that they are his offspring that came as a result of some of his less adventurouse sexual excusions.  Also any other mutant creatures I feel like makeing such as a dragon or sea monster.  For more information of him search for him on amazon and buy the book.  It is a great, though horrifying read.  Maladoror I have linked to wrath much like you do.

If you want something for sloth I would suggest zombies.  You could chalk it up as to something like being too lazy to die.  And they move so slow that it could work.  What am I thinking zombies would also be perfect for gluttonly, silly me.

For Envey and Greed you can easly use ghosts for both of them.  It is these two primal needs that keep them on this earth alive and on the earth.  They could be ruled over by Cain and that dude who betrayed christe but who's name I forgot.  Hmmm that's the third biblical refference I made...ah well the bible has good stuff.  

Anyway I have been pulling most of this out of my arse and I can't think of anymore but I suppose I could dig up some stuff useing african folklore.  Mabey tomarrow.

[saint ash]

Hey thankyou for the thoughts. i was leaning a little to heavily on white wolf mythology and you have provide some very good thoughts. i like your idea of "monster lords" such as lilith under the kings. this makes it less likely to deal with the king imedately, and that imo is how it should be.
now...  um what happened to arcadia? was the null caused by clost land expantion? ( in my game right now it was, but that can change...) i would love to hear thought on both cosmology questions. i love cosmology period.

p.s. thename you were looking for was judus, the 13th apostal.

[Comte]

I'm pretty sure I wrote out arcadia when I changed the background to Titania.  http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1821

The way I re wrote it there Arcadia didn't even excist.  If I had to have it in my cosmology I would of just had it be absorbed into closet land.  It would be the black and twisted place that is now Titnia's lair.

[peteramthor]

I kept the Arcadia background in my game.  Of course there are a few other things I did with it.

1- Part of Arcadia survived by going into the dreamworld that is created as a collective by the children of the world.  There they are sustained by the continous flow of innocence that is flowing through the realm.  The surviving section looks like a giant tree with a huge root system, each root continues to intersect off until a strand links to every child in the dreamworld.  They will fight to the death to protect this last surviving piece of their world, that includes protecting the children that sustain it.

2- Parts of Arcadia were subsumed into closetland creating a section of ruins.  Structures that were once beautiful and exquisite now being twisted and broken by the forces of closetland.  

3- The palace of Arcadia is Titania lives.  Of course its also been quite twisted to the realm as well.  Also not very kept up considering the amount of goblins roaming around in there.  

Just a few thoughts and such.

[saint ash]

ooooh. i like having a part of arcadia go into a dream world that is still innocent. can children enter it? what are the creatures that live there like? i like to explore themes of innocence and why it may be worth fighting for, beyond just saving your self. this sounds like one way to do it. i kike it :)
also what have people done with the host? i am trying to figure out what to do with these.

[peteramthor]

I ran a short series of game set in the dreamworlds of the characters.  The children were able to enter them, in my particular games I had them do it via a hand-me-down from a one childs grandparent.

It focused on Closetlands attempt at invading into this last bastion of innocence in an attempt to gain more power.  However the Fairy Folk living there aren't to friendly to the likes of intruders so they fight feircely to help perserve the place from taint since it is all that keeps them alive.

Also things that run in several childs minds also form into more tangible places here.  The fairy tale worlds are here, from multiple ethnic groups, so you have 'other' version of baba yaga from russian lore.  All the good and bad guys from them etc.  Disney movies and other mass media children promotions appear but only for a faint moment since few live beyond a few scant years of popularity.  

At one time I was trying to put a online 'sourcebook' together for this setting to go on my site but I have sort of fallen away from it when I stopped running the game so much.  But now its starting to tick away inside my head again.

[Comte]

Interesting concept.  I think I like that one better than my own.  I never really went the dream world rout, I always liked to beleive that what goes on in my head is mine and no one else gets to share.  I don't like the collective consiouse theorys.  What I did do by the way of dreams is creat a group of creatures called dream deamons.  These little fellows would snatch your sleeping self and bring you into closet land for a limited time.  This way innocents is still at stake but without the whole trauma of a missing child.  It also gives you something else to do on a sleep over adventure.  I used to have a more detailed write up on the dream deamons but at one point I got frustrated with my self and it's gone now.  If anyone cares I'll do my best to recreate it.

[saint ash]

I would love to see the dream demons. i think that it may work a little better than me having random nightmares come alive for the dream relm.
all in all i like this little area of closet land alot. are there any good creature left there do you think?

[Comte]

Hey sorry it took so long but school decided that it was high time to kick my ass around for awhile and I just haven't had the time to sit and type a page worth of stuff when I had so many papers due.  Anyway the dream daemons are up in the new monsters section for your veiwing enjoyment.  I hope they don't cause you pain.  If they do we can discuss it here and I'll most likely edit the lil buggers.