Topic Objective: Analysis and expansion of the idea of Night Creatures as a whole and how they would function in the post-worldgen environment, with particular interest in the possibilities of entity groups both inside and outside of civilizations.
Topic Assumptions: 1) That you care what I think. (Not something I'm willing to assume.)
2) That Night Creatures primarily operate in the dark.
3) That some Night Creatures might have some self-preservation instinct and might use non-violent but still "evil" (or at least not very nice) methods of achieving this.
4) That the list of Night Creatures as found
here is still current or at least can reliably be used to predict choices which may confront Toady during the course of the development cycle whenever he and his brother decide to continue working on Night Creatures.
5) That the
development page as it exists today retains a somewhat accurate portrayal of the expansion of Night Creatures.
6) That the player is not only interested in hunting night creatures with robust histories, but also interested in being one in a meaningful way from a game-play perspective.
Topic Procedure:While I would not be so presumptuous as to request that other posters force themselves to adhere to a structure of my own creation, I must structure my own posts in such a way as they are easy to refer to. This means that a person must be able to both skim and search my posts quickly and easily for information they desire. For this reason I will be directly addressing Night Creature groups using the list found in Topic Assumption 4.
Night Trolls are randomly generated monsters that murder, eat, hypnotize, mate with, or otherwise terrorize non-goblins. Whether this implies that a relationship with goblins and their demonic masters exists or that night creatures simply have no effect on them is not my place to say. Goblin Baby Snatchers serve similar purposes, after all. Maybe you can't brainwash someone twice? For the purposes of this grouping Monsters of the Sea will be included; as they appear to be described as sea-based equivalents.
Interestingly, the greatest power of a Night Troll may not be its size or its propensity for violence. Night Trolls are, at the end of the day, an individual creature that can potentially produce its own entity group. Large families of Night Creatures are very possible. Due to the imminent changes to the entity system this could be adapted as a sort of experimental form of randomly generated entities/civilizations or left as a simple violent tribe/bandit entity if that idea doesn't blow your skirt up.
As far as I see it, playing as a Night Troll has one major hurdle: Becoming a Night Troll. Methods that come to mind are taking control of pre-existing Night Trolls, generating entirely new ones, or being transformed into a Night Troll by an existing Night Troll, or cursed by a dying Night Troll. Due to the inclusion of non-lethal combat perhaps Night Creature hunters who find themselves overpowered by a Night Troll/Hag of the opposite sex could be converted to the Night Troll/Hag's spouse. This raises the question of whether a mechanic should be put into place to keep you from killing the Night Troll/Hag that turned you, but this might simply be an issue of individual role-play preference.
While some may take issue with lumping these three together, I do not see a spectacular difference. Bogeymen are creatures that appear at night to gleefully accost lone travelers, and dissipate when they kill their target or are struck down. This leads me to believe that Bogeymen are a form of apparition. While it is not terribly difficult to justify ghosts being under this classification, Stalkers do not even exist yet and that means I may be stepping on rather large toes. However, their description "Stalkers, undead that arose from brutal killings and executions, taking on aspects related to their death" leads me to believe they are not a risen corpse. Therefore, they appear to form for similar reasons that ghosts do. Whether they function similarly or not is not my place to say but one would assume that something named "Stalker" that arises from violent killings would be highly aggressive, potentially hunting their killer or assailing creatures with high amounts of historical kills.
The common trait here being that they appear for a reason, and have a task to perform. Bogeymen appear because someone is traveling alone and outdoors at night. Perhaps ghosts and stalkers could replace the function of Bogeymen altogether, creating a difficulty scale of sorts. A new character would not necessarily be viciously attacked at night. Perhaps bogeymen simply run up and hit you once, then disappear into the night to appear some time later. Maybe they even stay just inside of your viewing range to spook you. Stalkers, on the other hand, could actively attempt to kill you at night and will continue to appear until they do so. The more people you have killed the more potential Stalkers attack you at a time in a manner similar to how bogeymen operate as of now.
Obviously not everyone you kill should become a Stalker if this is the case. Perhaps no-one you have killed becomes a Stalker. But there may be Stalkers that are well-known, have names, histories, and are very strong. In fact, this might be an excellent time to bring up Soul Attributes (in this case with particular reference to Willpower) and how they interact with Night Creatures and the Undead. Willpower, Empathy, Patience, etc. could factor into the decision-making process that creates Ghosts and Stalkers.
Unfortunately from a gameplay perspective it is somewhat difficult to place Ghosts and Stalkers. I suppose choosing to become a Stalker when you die would be a fun way to keep a dead adventurer around. Being attacked by a Legendary Swordsman Stalker that wields jagged ethereal blades named after your old adventurer's name or title would be interesting. An option to attack and kill travelers (with particular reference to those who had a hand in the death of said character or close entity connections to their killers) would be interesting as well in my opinion. However, this leads me to ask the question "What is the objective of a Stalker and can you destroy them permanently?" To this I would point toward the dev logs, which mention that burying or burning of bodies would be significant in the disposal of Night Creatures.
These Undead Night Creatures exist currently and have one trait in common: Animation through individual magic power. While it is unclear what exactly causes a Mummy to be capable of what it does, one may assume that its nature is closely related to that of a Necromancer. Both are capable of animating the dead with a force similar to that of an evil reanimating biome. The basic difference is that Necromancers attain their power through knowledge of the secrets of Life and Death whereas Mummies have an unknown power source.
In my mind not much can be said outside of perhaps a working entity system that registers your corpses as entity members and using them to conquer cities, aggressively negotiate with other entities, or things like that. Destroying every living thing on the continent might be a doable goal but there's not a lot of motivation to do it since once everyone is dead there's nothing to do but Undead/Necromancer Civil Wars. Then again, that might be interesting. Alternatively, you could instruct a sizable force of undead...let's call them "retainers" to kill or capture certain figures or creatures in much the same way as you might instruct an army to do something similar when the time comes for that.
These two classifications have little to define them but seem to be inherently similar or at least passingly associated. However, Cursed of the Sea might simply be any kind of hostile undead creature that appear on ghostly boats or in sunken ruins. Cursed of the Sea may range from zombies, to ghosts, to undead sea monsters or necromancy-practicing sirens.
The implication being that Intelligent Undead are Undead creatures that can learn and function similarly to civilized creatures and entity members. The methods leading to the creation of Intelligent Undead could be any number of things. A particularly intelligent and/or willful individual with a legendary focus attribute might be reanimated as Intelligent Undead, or perhaps they could be created intentionally by Necromancers. Maybe an artifact, when worn, binds the soul to it and if removed will de-animate whatever body it is occupying and possesses any body that wears it. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and taste for cruelty toward historical figures.
Intelligent Undead beings would obviously be much more rare than your average Animated Dead or even more rare than Necromancers. Something relatively unique and special to the world produced by its on-going history would be fitting and would leave the methods with which to obtain such a state somewhat obfuscated to the player, along with the advantages/disadvantages of such a state making the player somewhat hesitant to go off and trigger something that turns them into one of these things. Then again, I suppose the same could be said for most of the other Night Creatures as well.
Returning to Cursed of the Sea, these would also likely benefit from such a generation process especially. If I would be so bold I would compare it to the generation of Night Trolls. A crew of undead sailors would be a rather common manifestation in most worlds, especially if these types of Undead were generated as the world proceeded. Whether ghosts, zombies, sea monsters, or sirens, Cursed of the Sea still have to operate as an abstract entity along with being able to interact with the player in a meaningful way. Leading a crew of these folks on a murder streak across the coast of your world is a possibility and would be the same process as the player leading a living crew to do the same. Getting to be one of these creatures might be as simple as being overtaken in combat by them. Getting to be the leader of the crew might take some work, however, depending on whether or not you need to appease an individual or stage a mutiny. These are just a few examples, though. Hopefully the idea becomes much more expansive as it is discussed.
At the end of the day Undead Armies/Groups probably won't function significantly different from Living Armies/Groups since in both cases they have an off-screen decision-making process that is relatively interchangeable with the basic difference being that none of your followers will get mouthy if you lead them to an unavoidable death that they didn't really sign up for.
These entities have an origin in common: Angering the Gods. This is a direct curse by the divine for intolerable behavior. For the purposes of this topic I will assume that this will not change, however that is by no means certain. The act of defiling the temple of a deity causes said deity to curse an individual. Contrast this with the impersonation of a deity which does not seem to incur much of a penalty at all. Upon further thought, Vampirism might be a suitable curses to lay on individuals who impersonate deities. While rendering them immortal, it makes their job as an impersonator that much more difficult or easy depending on how said individual uses their curse. At the end of the day these creatures are defiled defilers. Their blood is cursed, their bite is cursed, the people they come into contact with are cursed if not killed.
Vampire Cults presently exist, and one would assume that the new entity system allows for Vampire Cults to become robust entities that can change and shift as time goes on. It is mentioned in the devlogs that some victims of Night Creatures may become thralls or servants. Vampires with cultists and thralls already make for rather interesting gameplay decisions, but the weaknesses of vampires must be realized. Sunlight may not kill all vampires, but weakening them to subhuman levels would be interesting. A Vampire is a hunter at night and a victim during the day, this is where a vampiric cult or a vampire's thralls become important. It may be possible to meet a vampire that travels with companions (who may or may not be their slaves) or other vampires for protection. The Inn Arc devnotes come to mind. In fact, having various Night Creatures traveling from place to place in disguise to spy, assassinate, or collect information on potential victims would make sense. Inn Arc, Thief Role, etc.
Werecreatures, as far as I know, are solitary creatures as of now. This seems rather uncharacteristic given their reluctance to murder members of the same werespecies while in wereform. It might make sense for werecreatures to live like nomads or bandits, banding together in their common curse for protection against their victims. This could create an interesting social structure and would certainly be a precarious position for the original werecreature, given that the new werecreatures would probably like nothing more than to split him or her from top to bottom once they wake up. It would certainly be a humbling experience for the individual who was cursed for profaning a temple.
The common feature of these entities is that they are animated by forces and presumably do not have the ability to learn or speak as they are differentiated from Ghosts, Intelligent Undead, and Disturbed Dead. These are the most simple of Night Creatures and appear to simply be functions of other Night Creatures or entities than themselves. It is implied that something animated the dead, furniture, or constructed creature. Therefore, I must group these together and write them off as tools to be used to expand on story-telling methods or abilities to be used by players or NPCs. Any input is welcome.
As far as Evil Beasts are concerned, I am at a loss. The only in-game equivalent I can think of are Foul Blendecs but they're simply a different kind of creature as of now.
