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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 366282" data-attributes="member: 4720">Subtlety is keyLordnightshade, I think subtlety is the key to this thing working the best.Decor: Let the outer portions of the place look (at first glance) like the ideal Love goddess' palace.  Tasteful, ornate, lots of flowers, etc.  But when someone picks up a rose, the center of it is rotten and has nasty little worms in it.  There might be a tapestry of two people making love, but when you look closer, the woman is tied down like Gulliver with hundreds of tiny, tiny cords, and in the man's hand, barely noticeable because of the position, is a whip or a knife.  Perhaps there's a faint sneer on his face.  You don't even notice it at first, but it's there.  The obviously perverse things aren't visible until you get deeper inside the palace.The succubi: Even more than your average succubus, they look like normal, albeit beautiful, women.  Little things give them away.  When one of them blinks, you notice that she has lizard-like eyes.  When one smiles, you can see her unusually sharp eye-teeth.  That one over there has little horns that barely poke out of her hair.  They seem incredibly sweet and nice, but a Sense Motive check or something allows you to detect a strange hunger in their eyes, or something.The temptations: The succubus tempters don't make any individual suggestion to a mortal in the crystals seem over the top.  Instead, they make little suggestions, each one leading to only a slight change in circumstances.  But the cumulative effect takes a normal situation, and makes it vile.  Perhaps you could let them find a succubus' "tempting journal," something along the lines of "The Screwtape Letters."  It could show a log of a succubus' success in transforming someone, over time, into a monster.  Just little suggestions each time.  The mortal might even have remorse periodically, but the succubus just backs off a little and helps the mortal rationalize until the remorse goes away.  Baby steps that take a virtuous person, and corrupt them absolutely.  That would be a LOT of preparation, but it will make it especially hard on the PCs when they encounter the mirrors.  They've already seen how little, subtle changes can effect a person.  It will make the images they see in the mirrors seem that much more possible, and therefore more disturbing.  "Am I so very close to becoming that?"Subtle mindgames are ultimately more effective.  Completely off-the-wall is easy to disbelieve and rationalize.  "I'm being controlled against my will."  etc.  Subtle makes it seem like the character came to the situation without outside interference.</blockquote>

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