Café de Nuit

I'm considering sending my son's new group into the Tome of Terror, but I'm not relishing having to write each story from scratch. Apparently most or all of the stories are about the bogeymen from DTDL, but we don't get a basic plot for any of them. We know that most end in tragedy, or at least in death, but a debauched nobleman apparently enjoyed reading them, so...how did he survive? I feel like Ivan would be my go-to for a debauched nobleman, but maybe it should be someone who comes back if killed? Someone so jaded that they might enjoy--or at least not mind--dying and coming back?

The Mistipedia is sorely lacking on bogeyman material, so I would love a little help with ideas.

To get the ball rolling and get some ideas on paper, I guess I could start with a basic outline. Each tale is trying to teach a lesson, in the most over-the-top traumatic way possible. The quintessential tale is that of the Scissorman, which is lifted whole cloth from real life: child is warned not to such his thumb, he promises but disobeys, the Scissorman comes and cuts his thumbs off.

So all these stories could have the structure:
Child is warned not to do X, or Y bogeyman will come
Child does X,
Y bogeyman comes,
Child dies horribly.

So, what would the lesson be for each of the other bogeymen? For Alligator Lenny, is it don't play near the sewers, or alone, or out of sight? The Croquemitaines are obviously "don't take candy from strangers" but then how does that differ from Mister Fox's gifts? Also, I think DTDL suggests that the Mister Fox story is about a girl who agreed to be his wife, so that's a little more complex. The Bad Thing would be "don't tell lies," or "don't be naughty," like in The Drum from "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark."

Also, since it's possible to survive the stories, each scenario must include enough resources to defeat the bogeymen, including their unique allergen, even if it's not obvious at first. So some where in the Mister Fox scenario, there must be foxglove growing, and somewhere in the Scissorman scenario the PC's must have access to some amount of water. The Croquemitaines are easy, because they provide their own weakness, and the Bad Thing is even easier, but I think it's important to keep track when building these scenarios.

As an aside, Horror's Harvest claims there are three "charming children's tales" in the setting called "101 Damnations," "Creeping Beauty," and "The Lady and the Vamp." Possible inspiration for ToT stories?

Okay, so I might as well outline the various stories here, using the above template to start.

Mister Fox

Lesson: Don't Sacrifice Morals for Greed
Details: Mister Fox is said to live at the House at the End of the White Road; when he is not hunting, that is where he dwells, and potential victims who try to find him can discover routes to his home in many dark forests. The White Road slowly vanishes as the moon sets and reappears elsewhere as the moon rises. Once the road is fully formed, Mister Fox is free to travel into whichever villages are near. In some stories, Mister Fox agrees to meet his innocent new wife at the House at the End of the White Road. In these tales, the girl enters a dark, dark forest, following a road that glitters like a ribbon of moonlight. To prevent her getting lost, Mister Fox marks the trail by slitting a sow’s throat and dragging it behind him. The woman must follow the gory trail until she reaches the House, where her own, equally terrible fate waits.

So, the basic outline of the story is that a poor girl is courted by Mister Fox, and is warned not to be seduced by his (apparent) kindness, good looks, charm and wealth. He says he needs a wife, and if she will agree to be his, she will get all her heart desires. She ignores the warnings, agrees to be his wife, follows the trail of blood to his home, and is murdered by him there.

To flesh it out a little more, we can add the basic fairy tale dressing of threes: she gets three warnings along the road, or in his house. Since his weakness is foxglove, that can also be growing by the roadside. We also need combat encounters, and there's a kind of supernatural railroading going on, so the more full outline might look like this:

Scene 1: Mister Fox comes to call at the home of a poor family, saying he is smitten by their daughter (the PC). If the girl agrees to be his bride, proceed. If not, the mother and father beat the girl for her insolence (combat).

Scene 2: The girl arrives at the meeting place, and finds the White Road, and the trail of blood. Foxgloves growing nearby whisper to her to flee and not follow the road. Survival/Nature challenges to navigate.

Scene 3: Regardless of whether she follows, she finds herself on the road anyway. Flies come to drink from the trail of blood, and grow into stirges (combat). As they die, they each screech "flee!"

Scene 4: Regardless of where she goes, she finds herself at the House at the End of the White Road, with the dead sow in the yard. The sow's corpse tells her to flee back the way she came. If she refuses, it animates and tries to chase her away (combat).

Scene 5: Mister Fox appears, and murders the girl with a knife (combat).

So...not bad. It's basically a Bluebeard variation. It sticks to the supernatural railroad, but in each scene there's options for problem solving beyond just combat. For example, the girl might avoid the beating in scene 1 if she gets the parents talking to other villagers about his "gifts," which leads to scene 2 being about finding answers rather than agreeing to be his bride. Then she talks back to the foxglove, and it asks for her to pick it. Scene 3 she stomps on the flies before they can become stirges, scene 4 she avoids the sow and searches the yard and finds gardening tools that can serve as weapons, and scene 5 she uses the foxglove and weapons to confront and kill Mister Fox, possibly getting him to end the curse on the village children.

It's a start.

Hmm... Carrionetes come to mind as possible parts of the Tome. Or the "Bloody Cobbler" of Sithicus (I forget the novel). The Bloody Cobbler, from the top of my mind was visiting those that were on the wrong path. First time, he left a warning in the form of the soles of the previous guy. Second time you disappeared.
A naughty child or lazy child would be considered to not be on the right path and perhaps his cat ate the bloodied soles or the whatever, and the child didn't change its ways. Then the cobbler came a few weeks later to claim the kid, throwing him in a big bad place to die.

Now, those barebones ideas aside that are not along your template, I will have to say... use AI generators. Yes, I know it is controversial but with the right prompt and that template, it would give you something to work with.

Lesson: Be grateful for the good things you have and the people who love you; don't envy others their good fortune.
Boogeymen: The Lady Fair and the Barrow-Man.

The story is about a little girl, the second daughter in a family of four. While the family isn't rich, they are comfortable, and they have a reasonable hope of a good future.

This is not enough for the little girl. She wants to eat expensive candies and wear expensive dresses. She wants to live in a fancy house and have all the newest toys. When she doesn't get any of these things, she throws a tantrum. When that doesn't work either, she tries to steal pretty things. She is caught, and her dismayed parents send her to her room without her supper. She throws another tantrum and screams that she hates her family.

If that had been all -- one bad day and one bad night -- that would be that. But it doesn't end there. The little girl wants and she wants to the point that she covets all the good things in the world. Why shouldn't they be hers?

In the same town, there is a family of three: a mother, a father, and a little girl. They are very wealthy and live in the big house on the hill, but they need a lot of their money for medical treatments for their little girl; she is terribly sick all the time. Even if she wears pretty dresses and has fancy toys, she can't go outside to play.

The first little girl -- the bad one -- wishes she were the daughter of the rich family. She doesn't care that she has always been raised with loving care. She doesn't care that she's healthy, that she can play and fish and run. She wants pretty dresses and toys like the rich girl.
She says so to her mother's face, making her cry. She says so to her sister's face, making her cry. She says so to the darkness, after her father has sent her to her room.

The darkness listens.

The odd couple comes into town the next day. A dirty old tinker with ragged clothes, pulling a barrow full of tools and pots -- and a beautiful lady with hair like sun-kissed wheat and clothes like a princess perched on top.
While the Barrow-Man hawks his wares and services in a voice like a creaking door, the lady just lazes about, winking and smiling at people... until she spots the bad girl, eyeing her dress with envy.
Then she gets off the cart.

She has a honeyed voice, the Lady Fair in her golden silks, stitched with pearls. She tells the little girl that she's a magician who grants special wishes. And she has heard the bad girl's wish.

"You can have all that you wanted," she whispers into the child's ear. "Dresses, toys, fine foods, a room in the big house. And all I want in return is the things you won't need anymore: mummy, daddy, big sis, the room in your hovel... your old, throw-away life. How about it? Would you like us to grant your wish?"

Of course she agrees, for she is that greedy, that bad.
And the Lady Fair smiles, and winds a single thread of her golden hair around the girl's wrist, then kisses her on the forehead.

The next morning, the bad girl wakes up in the rich girl's bed, in the rich girl's room, in the rich girl's silk dress ... in the rich girl's disease-wracked body. She is too weak to stand, too weak to speak, too weak to feed herself.
Helpless like a baby, she has to rely completely on servants to tend to her every need, and on medicines to dull the pain hollowing her out from the inside.
Inside her mind, she screams for her parents and big sister to save her, she says she wants to go home... but they can't hear her. She screams in her mind for her servants to see the golden-furred spider with a woman's face -- the Lady Fair's face -- who has spun a web on the ceiling... but they can't hear her.
Every night, the Lady Fair descends on a thread of gold and kisses the child's wrist or her neck with poison-filled fangs. Every morning the child awakens a little weaker, a little more in pain. She fears she must go mad. Perhaps she already has.

Then she hears the grinding of old, dirt-caked wheels, and the Barrow-Man comes walking through the walls, dragging his cart behind him, piled high with his tools and the fruits of his trade. The golden spider, the Lady Fair, descends on top of the gleaming metal.
And the Barrow-Man speaks to the suffering child in his creaking caw of a voice: "I don't do fancy. I don't do tricks. But I'll do you a deal. Say yes, and I end all your suffering in one go -- like a craftsman. Or we can go and leave you to it. The wife's gotten fat enough off you already."

In the morning, the maids will scream and the guards will be called, and no one, no one will understand what happened. No one will understand how a killer got into the fancy bedroom, killed the little girl so quickly, so neatly, that she didn't give a peep... then gutted and carved up her body like she was a calf or a suckling pig, and carried off the best cuts.

No one but the two bogeymen, roasting those cuts for their dinner in the Deep Dark Woods, where the sun never shines and shadows cluster like brambles.

New bogeymen: the Barrow-Man and the Lady Fair.

A pair of bogeymen who - like Monsieur and Madame le Croquemitaine - present as a married couple.
Origin: possibly pre-Grand Conjunction Dorvinia's vor Zeyden Woods, although the stories claim they come from the 'Deep Dark Woods, where the sun never shines and shadows cluster like brambles'.

The Barrow-Man and Lady Fair are somewhat unusual in that they do not hunt of their own accord; they must be called forth by a child's misdeeds and displays of ingratitude.
Only when they hear the call does the Lady Fair scuttle onto the cart and does the Barrow-Man drag it out of the woods and into the world.

It is the Lady Fair (CE) who disguises herself and approaches the child. It is she who sets the trap by offering a wish. And it is she who twists that wish into a nightmare, then adds to its horror by poisoning and feasting on the child, gradually hollowing it out with her sweet venom.

But it is the Barrow-Man (LE) who ends the game, once he judges the balance of the child's torment against its ingratitude has reached equilibrium. It is he who offers an end to pain, and -- with a craftsman's pride and attention to detail -- brings a painless death. Then again, he also does the butchering afterwards, then carries the Lady Fair and the meat home.
If a child rejects death at his hands, the Barrow-Man accepts this with a shrug and takes his cart and his wife home anyway, leaving the victim to its own devices.

It is said the two bogeymen feast on child-flesh or sleep between hunts.

The Lady Fair can appear as a beautiful human woman, a golden drider or a golden spider. She can't walk long distances, for her legs are weak and twisted. While she has the greater power of the two, she needs the Barrow-Man to get around.

The Barrow-Man looks like a worn, middle-aged working man, or possibly a vagrant. He is villainously unshaven and scowls more than he smiles, his voice raw and hoarse. In spite of this, he is a skilled tinker and does not lack for customers wherever he goes. He can travel great distances in the dark, freely passes through solid matter, and can deliver a death attack like the finest assassins.

https://stephenking.com/works/anthology ... touch.html

Some of the tales from this book might be converted to the Tome of Terror style fairy tales you are looking for.

Brothers Grimm stories are already creepy but they can be changed to fit in the setting. For instance Little Red Riding Hood can be a story about wolfweres like in The Company of Wolves (1984)

Wolfweres? Why? Honestly, werewolves work better IMO. The wolf doesn't have to BE a wolf. A human turning to a man-eating creature is worse IMO than a wolf turning to a human to trick people.

Well it doesn't matter so much, anyway its a book.I thought of writing it as a wolfwere because they are not used so much outside Kartakass.

Other stories may be

A) A dark, horrifying version of Alice in Wonderland, with menacing playing card golem soldiers, talking with the Mad Hatter can drive someone mad, the headless cat is a ghost similar to the midnight cat etc.

B) The original Sleeping Beauty is already filled with violence (as discussed in another thread in this forum) in this version the faery godmothers could be evil Shadow Fey.

C) Rumpelstiltskin is another Brothers Grimm story, I actually was inspired a bit by this to create a Gnome NPC in one of my new QtR articles.

alhoon wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2024 2:09 am Hmm... Carrionetes come to mind as possible parts of the Tome. Or the "Bloody Cobbler" of Sithicus

I would say no for the Bloody Gobbler since he is specifically tied to Lord Soth but the Carrionete idea is not bad. Odiare could be a pocket domain inside the Tome of Terror and the adventure The Created could be set inside the book.

Mephisto of the FoS wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2024 7:32 am
C) Rumpelstiltskin is another Brothers Grimm story, I actually was inspired a bit by this to create a Gnome NPC in one of my new QtR articles.

Rumplestiltskin always creeped me out when I was a kid, and, to a degree, still does today. As an adult, I can understand some of the tropes of the story (he's a classic trickster character, and it's a basic "deal with the devil" setup), but there are so many unanswered questions. Where did Rumplestiltsken come from? Are there more creatures like him? What exactly did he plan to do with the child? Does he make similar deals with other people? Basically, he seems tailor-made to be a bogeyman in Ravenloft.