Re: A quick thought on Scorpion Men

I'd like to chip in with my opinion on Scorpion Men. The best article on them is (IMO) in Drastic Chaos.

They must lay eggs - they are a feature of Snake Pipe Hollow and are part of an Alchemical recipe. I personally do not favour the 'alien' or 'insectoid' versions of the Folk. The real horrror of Bagog is the fact that you might get devoured and turned into a chaotic monster. What could be worse than that? The fact that you retain some memories of your former life is pretty gruesome and terrifying to me. Or perhaps your wife, or your children, or your relations being carted off by raiders. Driven by vengeance you come face to face with you scorpion-queen-mother-in-law.

The compromise position between my preference for human vs others for the alien/insect idea is that the uneaten generations (i.e. born to scorpion people rather than re-born from eaten people) get more and more dumb. The drive to keep the colony intelligent is therefore what makes the Folk tragic - the intelligent ones want to keep themselves (and their offspring) clever, but can only do it by destroying others.

One thing that I have not quite assimilated in my world view is how the Scorpion Man counter in NG works. It doesn't quite fit with the later cult of Bagog IMO and which possibly needs a tweak to get it to make sense.

One other thing - I always thought that the various kill-em-and-take-their-place/magic/job hierarchies in Chaotic cults would make entertaining Card or Board games. Thanatari head hunting/magic stealing to become High Priest of Dark Truths, Scorpion folk duels and eating of your superiors, Thed's assassination challenges etc all struck me as fun things that would never get played through in a normal RPG game environment.

Keith

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]             Received on Sat 23 Jun 2007 - 17:17:51 EEST