So, over the holidays the Sunday dinner and game is on hiatus. However, I’ve got another Afraid game coming in the New Year with Helen, (previous experience of Dogs and Afraid,) Ad, (previous experience of Dogs,) Chris, (previous experience of some indie games and an out-there play style,) and Paul, (who I’ve not GM’d for and comes from a background of just D&D, Serenity and Edgewalkers), all fairly mainstream. They’ll be up against a new monster. With my first Monster I wanted to start with as benign a habit as possible. With Nicholas Tsian I have deliberately chosen a habit that is darker and more controversial, although in some twisted way still well intentioned. (Looking at it now, there’s some common themes between Tsian and Piety that were not intentional. One day I’ll write a monster and the ghosts of tortured children and the spectre of abortion won’t feature. But not today.)

But I need help! I’ll give you what I’ve got and then outline the issue I’m stuck on at the bottom.

Name and habit: Nicholas Tsian is a pro-lifer. Specifically he is an anti-abortion campaigner.

Jaded and curious: He realises he can not stop these terminations taking place, but can the life that has been lost be saved or restored?
Baroque and ritualistic: He gathers, if he can, the ashes and clinical waste from abortion clinics. He sends the women who have undergone terminations photos, about one every few months, showing what he thinks the developing foetus and later child would have looked like if they were still here. He finds and threatens women who are contemplating/awaiting terminations.

Increasing human harm: Attacks and takes blood or whatever else he can steal from the women he is preying on. He phones them at night, stalking and harassing them. At this stage he is in and out of jail.

Threshold of ritualistic extremity: He interrupts an operation and causes it to bodge badly. The termination still takes place but the woman, Susan Myra, is hurt in the process. Tsian succeeds in acquiring the aborted foetus and begins his usual campaign of hurt against Susan.
Nightmarish resources: Starting with Susan but progressing to all his victims Tsian begins to haunt their dreams, and they develop narcoleptic time loss. He gains the capacity to conjure small items, like appropriate photographs, personal effects and biological matter, at will. He becomes persuasive, domineering and unnaturally vigorous, disappearing from society and evading the law.

Supernatural harm. He makes little ‘dolls’ with the matter he has acquired which give him the power to visit hauntings and injury upon his victims. He begins to pursue them more rapidly, the photos become daily, odd items like school reports for the child come into his possession, and he sends them as well. His actions erode and destroy the sanity of his victims. (At this point he bullies the proprietors of the clinic that he barged into (above) until they close it down, and he moves his equipment and dolls into the premises. This will be his ‘lair.’)

The Threshold of Life and Death: At the peak of his fury he breaks Susan’s mind entirely and she is overtaken by the personality of the fictitious child that Tsian has created. The child is effectively two years old, and suffers severe MS. This cements Tsian’s power and gives him the method to punish the women and restore life to the unborn children he seeks to avenge.

Name the horror his influence could make of the world: Slowly but surely women are going to be overtaken with Tsian’s bizarre madness. Ultimately time is no concern of Tsian’s, so if he comes across a child from the 19th century who wants a chance at life, he will find a person and destroy them even though the mother is now long dead. For now, though, Nicholas Tsian will focus on recent abortions in the reasonably local area.

Nicholas Tsian is a late 20’s man who suffered enormous upset when a girl he was going with at University fell pregnant to him and terminated the child against his wishes. Whether she will feature I have yet to determine. Tsian is well muscled, butch and rugged, with short hair.

Okay, so I haven’t done stats, traits or bonds but to be honest that’s easy and will take me twenty minutes. The slave I have in mind is a former Catholic priest who has started hearing the tortured voices of unbaptised children due to the closure of Limbo Infanta, (maybe he’s right, probably he’s nuts.) and is drawn to Tsian’s power as a protector of children.

Now here’s where I’m stuck. I’m going to try Piers’ idea outlined here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=22455.msg226591#msg226591

Which can be summarised as suggesting that the players make the first Victim and play the second victimisation as a conflict that will serve as an introduction to the game.

What I need help with is the pattern of victimisation, access and nightmarish symptoms that will make this conflict interesting, and hopefully allow for some escalation and other cool stuff that will allow the group to get a feel for the mechanics.

I’m thinking that at the final stage the Victim is fully possessed by the spirit Tsian has called into being, this destroys them. I’m thinking that the first stage access is something to so with Tsian stealing from the Victim, and that they will start getting letters and bits and pieces from their pseudo-child as the first stage nightmarish experience. I’m thinking that at the point of nightmarish changes in environment the house should start rearranging itself as if the pseudo-child had always lived there. I’m thinking that the nightmarish physical symptoms could take the form of wounds, blackouts and temporary possessions by the spirit.

But I’m struggling to put it all together, so I thought that instead of stewing on this I’d post here and see what the good folk on the Lumpley forum came up with.

All ideas welcome, even if it's that this whole Monster is bogus.

Still can't quite get it, and I've had a better idea for a Monster so I'm leaving Tsian on hold for the nexty game and I'll run with something else tonight.