Help me refine my evil dudes! My players stay out!

[Asmor]

Once more for good measure, MY PLAYERS STAY OUT




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Ok, good. Anyways, I've actually been inspired by a recent Penny Arcade strip for a set of three evil entities... A triumvirate of evil, if you will. They will be Broodax, Born in Flesh; Terrax, Born in Earth; and Psychosis, Born in Mind.

Not sure what I'm going to do with Broodax and Terrax yet. I think Broodax will take the form of Kytons exploding from animals and, later, people. Terrax will probably just be evil treants and the like. But that's all down the road.

The first of them which will be encountered is Psychosis. Essentially, Psychosis is an ancient, malevolent entity which feeds on psionic emanations. The players first encounter with psychosis is going to be through a cult devoted to him... Basically just a street gang of homeless teens that goes around committing mischief and screaming "We are psychosis! We are legion!"

These are sort of a red herring, though, just to set the stage for a more disturbing encounter later. Some time later, like weeks after they likely bust up the gang, they encounter a young child in the woods, walking somewhere. The child always speaks calmly and with a monotone voice. If stopped, it says "Release us." and if questioned about who he is, he says "We are psychosis. We are legion."

There's a nearby town where children have been disappearing. Eventually the players will find a bunch of children out in the woods, doing... something. Not sure what. What exactly should psychosis be trying to do? More importantly, how do I implement psychosis in a way that the players can actually defeat it (they won't be especially powerful at this point, probably level 5-7), without making it a physical thing that they fight?

 

[RavenSinger]

What about Psychosis being an intangeble creature that takes over the minds of others. The children have become automatons under his/her control. The children act/attack as a mob/swarm (see Cityscape) with hivemind. The challenge is how to force Psychosis out of the brains of the children. One method would be to kill the children--not a good choice if the PC's want to be heroes. Another would be to find a way to attack the 'hivemind' which is Psychosis itself with mind-affecting magic/psionics. Once Psychosis is flushed from the minds of the children, it flees to fight another day in another incarnation.

Just an idea. . .
--RS

 

[megamania]

In 2nd edition there were fey creatures called Glitters. They fed from psychic impressions and strong emotional outbursts. To top it off , they were naturally psionic to influence emotions and actions.

I planted one into Darksun at the time of Tyr's freedom. It was getting people to fight over slavery vs freedom, government vs rulership and so on.

The pCs had to "battle" angry mobs that were caste onto them and in time found the evidence of mental tampering. They found the fey all bloated up and unable to move since it had been gorging itself on the hatred and fears of 10,000 people suddenly without a sorcerer-king to rule them.

The players had a good time.

I have not seen an official 3.5 Glitter however but there are other creatures that could work.

 

[Pbartender]

Psychosis is simply a self-replicating thought pattern, which consumes the victim's attention and concentration to the exclusion of all other higher thought... the victim is simply too busy uncontrollably thinking this thought to think anything else. Think of it as the mental version of a computer virus. It spreads by using certain spoken phrases (such as "Release us" and "We are Psychosis, we are legion.") to trigger this particular pattern of thought in another mind. The victims simply wander about aimlessly until they find another human being, at which point, they approach and begin repeating the trigger phrase.

The children in the forest have all been infected by Psychosis. They are simply milling about in a group, mumbling random gibberish at each other. These Psychoses are doing what any good parasitic life would do... Sharing "genetic" material, and trying to "evolve" a more efficient and more potent method of spreading, through trial and error.

Plugging one's ears is an effective way to protect oneself against the Psychosis thought pattern, but it effective makes the character deaf.

Psychosis cannot be "cured", per se, but it can be "purged" and the victim "recovered"... The most expedient means is to first induce complete and permanent amnesia, and then re-educate the indivudual from a blank slate. All previous memory and personality are lost, but the individual can once again lead a normal life.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Psychosis feeds upon psionic emanations, but is very weak without physical minds to inhabit. Because he is so weak to begin, he starts out taking over the minds of children who have few defenses against him. He needs to protect these host bodies, so the children are in the woods cleaning out some old ruins to make a home for themselves. As Psychosis gains more inhabited minds, his power grows and he can begin taking over other, more developed minds.

He can only attack a mind if part of him (a controlled person) is within a short distance of his target and the further his controlled person is from a cluster of others, the weaker his attack, so he begins to send out some of his thralls to other places to get control of more minds and establish new cluster in another location. These clusters again start out with children, moving on to stronger victims as they gain members.

Depending upon how you want to set it up, when the PCs encounter the children in the woods, Psychosis can be a weak opponent overall, just starting out, or he can be stronger, but this area is just starting, therefore it is still vey weak. If the PCs manage to take care of this cluster easily, they may be surprised when the travel to a different region and run into a more established cluster that is much stronger - this of course makes it much easier for you to scale the encounters to the party.

As for how to restore people under Psychosis' control short of killing them, I'm not sure at this point. One thing could be that each cluster has a single controlling mind, which is then controlled through the lead mind of another cluster. If you kill that one, the others controlled by it are released, and the power fed to the lead mind in another cluster is weakened (I'm thinking it could be like an Amway sales rep scheme except with psionic power instead of money). Some leaders may be ambitious and be obvious leaders - easy to target. Others might be more devious and hide behind another he controls who outwardly appears to be the leader.

 

[Mark CMG]

Perhaps they can each have an Achilles heel at this point that allows them to be driven off but not destroyed. That way you can bring them back later with that weakness removed but when the PCs are powerful enough to actually destroy them.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Bit of a tangent, but I had a somewhat similar idea for three worlds named Viscerotonia, Somatotonia, and Cerebrotonia, after Sheldon's body traits. They correspond to his division of body/personality types into endomorphs, mesomorphs and ectomorphs respectively.

The world of Viscerotonia is centred around physical pleasure and comfort, Somatotonia around physical excellence while Cerebrotonia is devoted to mental pursuits.

 

[wolff96]

It seems to me that we have a Psychic Vampire of sorts in the ideas listed here.

I really like the distributed network -- somewhere, there is/was a physical entity that gave rise to this psychic entity that is feeding power.

Of course, any psychic power is effectively an ordered pattern of mental energy, right? If you were looking for the party to overcome it, let them disrupt the pattern. Knocking someone out could temporarily solve the issue -- until they woke up -- but I would say that the way to free them is to completely disrupt the pattern.

Any spell with the [Mind-Effecting] descriptor forces a new pattern onto the target's brain. Let THAT disrupt the creature's control. The simplest way would probably be to allow any spell with the [Mind-Effecting] descriptor have it's normal effect on the target *and* deal xd6 damage (will save for half) to the psychic 'creature'. (Use the dice caps to figure out the x-value, IDHBIFOM.)

The fighter-types can be knocking people out to keep them out of trouble, while the cleric and wizard are able to purge the influence out of them. Not to mention the vicious DM fun when common-folk see a heavily armed party beating up and enchanting poor, innocent children...

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

The fighter-types can be knocking people out to keep them out of trouble, while the cleric and wizard are able to purge the influence out of them. Not to mention the vicious DM fun when common-folk see a heavily armed party beating up and enchanting poor, innocent children...

Or the fun of having parents dragging their kids to the adventurers telling them they need to work their magic upon their kids to remove the evil influence that is obviously upon them, making them hang out with their friends instead of cleaning out the barn, making their daughters chase after boys etc.

 

[Quartz]

Ok, good. Anyways, I've actually been inspired by a recent Penny Arcade strip for a set of three evil entities... A triumvirate of evil, if you will. They will be Broodax, Born in Flesh; Terrax, Born in Earth; and Psychosis, Born in Mind.

Not sure what I'm going to do with Broodax and Terrax yet. I think Broodax will take the form of Kytons exploding from animals and, later, people. Terrax will probably just be evil treants and the like. But that's all down the road.

How about intelligent golems? Broodax would be a flesh golem, Terrax a stone golem, and Psychosis a brain golem.