Horror Witches Rising

I started writing this first new entry after the May hiatus without even looking to see if I had already written an entry for this date. I was last writing about role-playing games and magic systems. I may return to it, but first I wanted to inject some horror back in and make this an entry true to the Horror on Hump Day nickname. I came back to the topic of magic again recently when I started considering a project about witches. The type of project doesn't matter since it may never happen in that format, and if it does it will be low on the work priority scale below even my slow burning role-playing game work. Before I get to the witchy goodness I want to point out the great thing about RPG work is stories that don't work out, or I don't have time for, work well as scenarios in an RPG session(s) and the research for the games works just as well for stories.

Witches. I'm talking about nasty, vile-hearted, selfish, devil-worshipping witches, horror witches. The wart-nosed old hag comes to mind, but is actually of less use. Really, when supernatural events start happening and children are found ritually slaughtered everyone looks to the hag. Let's also ditch the broom unless this is a historical setting. Honestly, flying on a broom has become something done by cute girls in countless anime. Looking back at historical legend let's also ditch crazy things like houses with chicken's legs running around. Now, again, horror witches. They may sign a pact with the Devil, including giving up their first born, or they may be unaffiliated and truck with whatever forces they wish if any at all. Familiars are good, but they need some consideration regarding their apparent connection to the witch.

In a story a character, male or female--witchcraft isn't sexist--with an animal hanging around all of the time is a dead giveaway. To keep the witch's identity a secret distance events involving the familiar. The witch might be revealed when the beastly companion feeds, using the witch's teat of course. Somewhere on the witch is a superfluous nipple--aureole not included--or even a short tentacle upon which the familiar suckles blood and magical energy, part of the witch's soul, or some other intangible. Here's an odd bit of folklore I discovered when researching for "You Accused the Wrong Woman" for Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™. One method of detecting a witch involved making a cake using urine from a victim of the witch. The victim would see the witch after smelling the vapours from the hot cake, or if not then, after having eaten some of the witch cake.

Mood: enchanted.

Music: Witch Hunt by Stratovarius and Season of the Witch by Vanilla Fudge.

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A False Sense of Growth

Sometimes a role-playing game will use a set of mechanics, a.k.a. rules, to simulate a facet of the real world in a less than realistic manner. There are a number of reasons for doing this, the primary one being simplicity. The most prominent of these convenience simplifications is the level system. For those that don't know, the level system involves earning points that represent the growth of a character in the game. The points are experience points and many games refer to them as XP with the X standing for experience. XP rules can exist without a level system, but I'm not aware of any level systems without XP or a similar concept because the level system is co-dependent. A character reaches a new level after every so many XP earned. This is where the level system fails.

When characters reach a new level of experience--these are usually characters run by the players--they improve their skills and abilities. This is a vital part of the gaming process. The problem, the artificial quality, is that everything improves all at once. All of the character's skills are raised by a level, even if they haven't been used recently or at all. New powers or spells or psychic abilities, etc. suddenly appear to the character from out of the blue. Bonuses are applied to different combat rolls that didn't have such high bonuses before or maybe no bonuses at all. The changes all occur without training, instruction, or time spent mastering them. The new abilities and bonuses do not even have to have any tie to existing ones or reflect a previous desire for growth in the character.

Players and Game Masters take it upon themselves to fix this falseness to some degree by saying that characters practice their craft, self-teach themselves things, and plan ahead for the future that will be represented when that character gains a new level. Occasionally a game will suggest this as well. Spell casters are known to research books and at times, according to the setting's mood and details, settle down and meditate upon the world and their place in it, and from this they gain insight, which informs their new spells, or the idea to research specific spells. Most of the time though this is a stretch and as something glossed over it lacks a certain depth and feel. It does not deal with the improvement flood all at once either. Next time we'll look at a better way.

Mood: forward-thinking.

Music: The Iron Road by Widomaker and Fake by Motley Crue.

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13 Nights of Hallowe'en: Night #10 The St. Francisville Experiment

The selection of these thirteen movies has been
intentional and deliberate. This is not because they are all out there choices, or outré, or favourites, or even due to being special. They are films worth recommendation, and maybe to a degree a few of them are here because they get a bad rep. “The St. Francisville Experiment” requires some defending. It was saddled right away as a rip-off of “The Blair Witch Project” because of the ill-conceived title. “The St. Francisville Experiment” is about paranormal investigators like on “Ghost Hunters” or “Most Haunted”, which pay their dues back to “Sightings” in the early, early 90s. Even “Sightings” could owe back to “Poltergeist” with its engaging paranormal researchers for example. This is a movie about such researchers.

“The St. Francisville Experiment” is a non-comedic mockumentary, plain and simple. The documentary is an exploration of an infamously haunted mansion in St. Francisville, Louisiana. St. Francisville is, in all actuality, home of The Myrtles Plantation, one of America’s most haunted homes. Google it and see. There is some MST3K-worthy atrociously bad dialogue in this movie, but given some online conversations not necessarily unrealistically bad. The pace is a little slow for a movie, but it seems good for a documentary. Similar can be said about the minimal special effects and the plot. After all is said and done, when “The St. Francisville Experiment” gets rolling it is a pretty good horror pseudo-documentary. A little review reading even digs up people creeped out by it.

Mood: impressionable.
Music: Halloween by Aqua off of Aquarius.

Research

I do a lot of research, maybe an inordinate amount. I think it helps. I also think that while the results are helpful the act of doing it can be a serious inhibitor. It certainly impinges on my time. I find it very easy to get lost in the work of doing research, even though I do nearly if not all of it online. I also think I tend to bog myself down in minutiae. Though sometimes that can make for good results.

The hardest research has to be to find out the simplest things. This is because often they are just plain neglected, and no one bothers to think about them. A good example was when I went looking to find out the different widths for different rivers. There is all sort of data about how much water flows down some of these rivers, but practically nothing on how wide they are, or how deep. I would think it might be good to know how deep some body of water is if you expect to take a boat down it.

The research I do is for just about every project as soon as I reach the point where I have to say something that should be easy to say, but it isn't because it’s a knowledge gap, or I haven't seen anyone just stop to ask the right question. Sure there are some things you can fake, but the more likely the reader is going to know if you faked something badly the more you have to be on the ball about it.

Mood: mellow.
Music: Ghost of the Navigator by Iron Maiden and Me and the Boys by Twisted Sister.

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