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Description
In developing Nightspass, an idea that stemmed from original I heard years ago about Twilight Princess as 'a Gothic Zelda,' and discussion with a friend about the Ravenloft setting, I was struck by ways to revisit classic horror and fantasy fiction archetypes in the Zelda vein. One of the common threads you can see through old horror movies is the half-human, half-other-thing hybrid monster, which would typically start its life as an attempt to make special effects cost-effective, but would occasionally develop into something truly disquieting or interesting.

While considering this, I wanted to make sure the idea didn't feel out of place in Zelda. While Majora's Mask does have a lot of horrifying stuff in it, it's constrasted with a childishness that's heart of the horror. It's not really all that disturbing to tool around with masks that change your shape - but having a child do it makes it creepier.

If Nightspass was going to be a more adolescent, more gothic take on a Zelda setting, I therefore wanted to take horrific things and make them more appealing and give a clear cue that they were individuals, that they were characters, rather than the simplistic depiction of 'monsters' you get in many stories. Thus we arrived at Skri; he appears as a simple monster in a themed dungeon, the dreadful keeper of the Bloodforge, who tries to get the players to bugger off and leave. But he reads in the library, he has fantasies and longing, and he drives those who would meet him away for the safety of his sister, and is deliberately a remarkably sexy man. An odd kind of take on The Fly meets Frankenstein's Monster meets Saiyuki, if you will.

For a time there, I considered the scenario oriented around a Final-Fantasy style RPG made in RPG Maker, where the charm of Skri would be that he occupied a 2x2 square; since that game type hasn't cropped up, it's merely a superfluous idea.

Text by me, graphical work by ~foxlee .

Description
In developing Nightspass, an idea that stemmed from original I heard years ago about Twilight Princess as 'a Gothic Zelda,' and discussion with a friend about the Ravenloft setting, I was struck by ways to revisit classic horror and fantasy fiction archetypes in the Zelda vein. One of the common threads you can see through old horror movies is the half-human, half-other-thing hybrid monster, which would typically start its life as an attempt to make special effects cost-effective, but would occasionally develop into something truly disquieting or interesting.

While considering this, I wanted to make sure the idea didn't feel out of place in Zelda. While Majora's Mask does have a lot of horrifying stuff in it, it's constrasted with a childishness that's heart of the horror. It's not really all that disturbing to tool around with masks that change your shape - but having a child do it makes it creepier.

If Nightspass was going to be a more adolescent, more gothic take on a Zelda setting, I therefore wanted to take horrific things and make them more appealing and give a clear cue that they were individuals, that they were characters, rather than the simplistic depiction of 'monsters' you get in many stories. Thus we arrived at Skri; he appears as a simple monster in a themed dungeon, the dreadful keeper of the Bloodforge, who tries to get the players to bugger off and leave. But he reads in the library, he has fantasies and longing, and he drives those who would meet him away for the safety of his sister, and is deliberately a remarkably sexy man. An odd kind of take on The Fly meets Frankenstein's Monster meets Saiyuki, if you will.

For a time there, I considered the scenario oriented around a Final-Fantasy style RPG made in RPG Maker, where the charm of Skri would be that he occupied a 2x2 square; since that game type hasn't cropped up, it's merely a superfluous idea.

Text by me, graphical work by ~foxlee .