Knave Report 6, 7, 8

We're back, with three sessions combined into one post! 

Session 6

Dramatis Personae:

Alma Tumbler (level 5) Aspirant Ranger, purple feather mutation, Wielder of the Unknown Blade and the Lightning Bow, Chronicler and Sole Survivor of the first session

Olga Derippe (level 3) Body builder, Hammer Enthusiast, Haunted by a Revenant, Death Defier, Hoardmaster

Stratford Slee (level 3) Member of the Hunter's Pact, Arguably Australian, no longer stuck at 6 HP, ex-pirate

My notes for session 6 got considerably jumbled and lost, so this is all mostly from memory. 

After leaving the black iron door behind, the party wanders into rows of shelves that are occasionally interrupted by brains floating in jars. They wake some of them up but find most don't respond or speak in tongues they cannot understand. One jar does prove fruitful, however, and it turns out to be the brain of Torovax the Yellow. 

Torovax was a wizard of the Ranger's Guild, according to the records that the party had found on their last expedition, and the party eagerly asks after what Torovax knows of the curse on Honorwatch and what caused its fall. The news of the undead curse on the keep shocks Torovax, who entered the Stygian Library shortly before the fall to try and locate a spellbook lost in Starmoore. He has no ideas about who could have caused it, but he does offer to help the party in exchange for them removing him from the library. They agree and Torovax tells them of some hidden books that would help them deeper in the library. 

The next room is a simple tea room and contains the hidden books, a considerably large spellbook and a book that causes Olga to level up instantly. Time works strangely in the room and after fruitlessly trying to sleep the party slowly realizes time only moves forward when they move. Taking the knowledge they have in hand they realize the Greatest Joke in the world is nearby and decide to forego resting and press onwards. 

They find their quarry in another mess of pipes and clockwork, a computation engine greater than the last. A singular librarian is present when they enter and on seeing the party they scurry out of the room. Quickly, the party decides the librarian is going to call for help and finally they'll be attacked for all the damage they've done to the library so far. Fearing their souls being captured and catalogued by the white robed librarians, they quickly use the computation engine and print out the Greatest Joke. Stratford grabs it and carefully avoids reading the book, noting the way the letters swim on the cover and fearing it will sap his intelligence. 

Just then, the librarians enter the room in force and unleash a flurry of magic missiles at the party, who turn tail and run. They keep ahead of their pursuers and even manage to grab Torovax as they flee. Stratford downs his potion of Giant Size and tries to create some obstacles while the party crawls single-file through the tunnel out of the room with a black iron door- now also chased by a hungry and cackling neurovore they encounter in the tea room. 

Back upstairs, the chase continues until they reach the room with the cone that contains vials of what now are clearly recognized as souls. Alma starts grabbing the vials and smashing them, unleashing a vortex of agonized dead that swarm both the party and the librarians in pursuit, but causes enough of a distraction to allow the party to escape. The Scooby Doo chase continues all the way until the party escapes the library and returns to the sand dunes, where their running to the exit mirror attracts an enormous sand shark- which they barely avoid before closing the mirror portal and returning to the wizard's tower once more. 

Back in the wizard's tower, the party makes their way to the tavern at the base level and promptly fall asleep after checking to ensure their horse and donkey were well cared for by their man-at-arms. The next day they make the trek down the mountains and back to Yonwell, avoiding the attention of a drake that loitered in the skies. In Yonwell, they finally meet with the possessed Destrian once more and deliver him the Greatest Joke. Destrian Rumboldt reads the book, chuckles, and then promptly explodes with a wet pop as the entire dream-like apparatus around him collapses and the party finds themselves suddenly in the attic of the house across from the guild hall, Scrying Orb and cursed black sword in hand. This adventure ends as they confirm the town has returned to normal and people don't seem to recall anything amiss, but they ensure to safely lock up their questionably cursed objects and deliver the Scrying Orb into the hands of the Bell Priests (as well as pay a bribe to some town guards who were questioning why the guildhall was covered in bloody hand prints). 

Session 7

Dramatis Personae:

Alma Tumbler (level 5) Aspirant Ranger, purple feather mutation, Wielder of the Unknown Blade and the Lightning Bow, Chronicler and Sole Survivor of the first session

Olga Derippe (level 3) Body builder, Hammer Enthusiast, Haunted by a Revenant, Death Defier, Hoardmaster

Stratford Slee (level 3) Member of the Hunter's Pact, Arguably Australian, no longer stuck at 6 HP, ex-pirate

The events of the Destrian Arc now settled, the party takes stock of their priorities and status. Stratford and Alma want to visit Taubey in the Beastwarren- partly to meet with Cormac the Green and inquire about his story with the Ranger's Guild and Honorwatch and partly to allow Stratford to deliver his various trophies to the Hunter's Pact. Stratford, now, finds himself free of his curse of undeath but is still afflicted by a mysterious golden statue that he cannot seem to get rid of and that grows larger every day. Olga brings up the rumors of a dwarven smith set up in the hills near Honorwatch and Alma mentions that she'd like to visit them and get her two swords examined. 

Ultimately, the group decides to first go to find the dwarf, then return to Yonwell and make for Taubey, hoping to catch a ferry in Magda. Winter is encroaching and the party prepares accordingly in the market, taking the time to hire a new lantern boy and discover a new alchemy shop has opened up (run by a previous random encounter, a young witch named Parsley) and readily empties the party's coffers by selling healing potions as well as identifying their many mysterious potions. 

The journey north to the hills goes well enough for the first day, but on the second day the party stops to rest just south of the black-smeared walls of Honorwatch. Everyone recalls the many times they have been warned since their first adventuring days in these lands: "Do not sleep within sight of Honorwatch." Upon finishing their recollection the party notices a lone rider further along the road to the north, cloaked in black and unmoving. Weighing their options, everyone does what fortifying of their small camp that they can on these open plains and settle in for the night. 

Not long after darkness shrouds the lands, a red glare blooms out of the tallest tower of Honorwatch. Stratford Slee, on watch, wakes the others as he sees the gates of Honorwatch open, a stream of shadow pouring out and only dimly visible under the glare. Everyone wakes and prepares as the shadow streams down the road and meets the rider, still waiting. Once the shadow meets the rider, four other riders are revealed amongst the roiling mass and the cavalry charge sets forward to the party. 

Darkness shrouds the party and extinguishes their flames as the riders mercilessly charge again and again to devastating effect. Potions are chugged, "We should have listened"'s are said, but finally Stratford's wolfhead lantern is able to dispel a circle of the darkness and provides just enough room to allow the party to take out a handful of riders before the shadow dissipates. They rest for the night and quickly pack in the morning, heading off the road and into the misty plains to the northwest. 

The mist becomes thick quickly, the ground turns to a sludge of mud and unnaturally tall flax, the air carries a smell of rust and blood. Navigation becomes quickly impossible, but Stratford notices the wolfshead lantern's eyes moving. Deciding to follow the direction, the party discovers a low, muddy hill ringed by twelve stone pillars jutting from the mud. As they approach, a wretched howling begins and the party sees the muddied and bloodied wolf-men chained in agony to the center of the pillars. Their howls rise to a crescendo and an enormous hand wolf, seven feet tall and cruel, emerges from a divet in the muddy hill. 

Mud-zombies burst from the marsh and and trip the party up, trying to drag them into the marsh. Stratford beelines for the giant hand wolf and in short turn discovers himself alone and well over his head, nearly dying in two rounds. Olga and Alma are trapped below, slowly destroying the zombies and trying to keep the lantern boy alive, so Stratford spies the hole the wolf came from and jumps, sliding down a dark muddy hole and launching into the air atop an almost identical hill in a strange willowy swamp. Deciding to return, he slides back down into the mound and emerges from the other side, using the mud to slide down the hill and help Alma gut the giant hand wolf. Zombies and hand wolf slain, the party executes each of the chained monstrosities, causing the mound to rapidly inhale the surrounding mist and collapse into itself. Confused, beaten, muddy, the party makes their way north and manages to find the camp of Corin the Smith. 

Corin has hired a group of laborers and hunters, her goal to dig into the legendary forge beneath Honorwatch and set up shop. The party agrees to help clear out Honorwatch's surface in exchange for some smithing work. The smith examines the two blades Alma brought and relates what she knows of them. 

Eventide, the shortsword recovered from a cursed pond, said to have been wielded by Sir Dorcas, a knight of Honorwatch. 

Hierophant, the cruel longsword that formerly held a shade of Honorwatch and was wielded by Duke Konrad of Honorwatch's son. 

A legend goes of a sealed gate beneath Honorwatch, older than the hills and the rivers around it, and that three blades were tied to unlocking it- but as for the third blade Corin didn't know anything. 

Goal met, curiosities satisfied, and with many new questions the party returns to Yonwell uneventfully and prepares for their journey to Taubey.

Session 8

Dramatis Personae:

Alma Tumbler (level 5) Aspirant Ranger, purple feather mutation, Wielder of Eventide, Hierophant, and the Lightning Bow, Chronicler and Sole Survivor of the first session

Olga Derippe (level 4) Body builder, Hammer Enthusiast, Haunted by a Revenant, Death Defier, Hoardmaster, Aspiring Gym Owner

Stratford Slee (level 3) Member of the Hunter's Pact, Arguably Australian, no longer stuck at 6 HP, ex-pirate

Piety Portendorfer (level 3) Gourmand, Survivor of a Death Curse, Notoriously not Pious, Aspiring Author

An old adventurer returns and joins the group once more. Piety had spent the last few months in Gnarledshore, looking for any records the Circle of Fire kept that could identify the strange crystal shards recovered from the mysterious cathedral the party had lucked into when investigating a cairn near Yonwell which functioned as a teleporter of sorts. Each of the statues in the cathedral gave a vision of a location and a similar cairn awaiting activation- and hinted that all of them activated at the same time would open the Cathedral's gates to the magnificent yet empty city visible from its warded windows. 

Piety discovered records of a monk at an old monastery in the Karst, north of Magda, who had come across similar crystals and had made a device that could, allegedly, locate these cairns. Knowledge in hand, she returned to the guild and joined with the rest of the party for their trip to Taubey, this time purchasing a cart for the donkey, Dunketello, as well as hiring an archer and their usual lantern boy.  

Winter has begun and snow has recently fallen, but the day looks clear as the party sets out. They stop in and chat with Alia at her shrine before they proceed north, once more examining the bloody clay pond where the old blood altar had been. This time, they spot tracks in the bloody clay, as of several large, clawed creatures emerging from it. Not wishing to make the same mistakes as previous guild members, the party studiously avoids interacting with the pond whatsoever and continue on. 

The second day finds the party traveling further north and again underneath the gaze of Honorwatch as night falls. They lighten their packs and force march through much of the night until reaching a copse of oaks outside the glare of Honorwatch. Approaching the trees and looking to shelter for the night, the party finds a dozen corpses swinging from ropes, freshly dead and bearing no marks of resistance. They spot a pit nearby and consider toughing it out despite the decorations, but despair once more when they discover the pit is deeper and darker than they had hoped. Lightening their loads and taking more exhaustion, they proceed north one more hex to shelter in the ruins of some old buildings along the road to Magda. 

Late in the night, four shuffling corpses follow along the road and attack the party. They recognize the corpses as ones that had hung from the trees earlier, nooses dragging in the snow behind them. Alma and the archer plug the first with arrows and watch it fall as an ominous buzzing emits from the corpses, and Stratford, Piety, and Olga charge forward with Piety protecting the others as Olga and Stratford pour and light lantern oil over the first corpse. Meanwhile, the other three corpses stop shambling and the buzzing gets louder and they open their mouths wide- the heads of giant locusts visible as they burst out and attack the party. Having fought locusts like these long before, the party makes quick work and cuts them all down and finally get some rest- just after Piety roasts one of the locusts and notes its strange pork flavor. Before settling in for the night Olga digs through the pockets of the now empty and dead shamblers, finding a heavy gold coin with a symbol of a man's gaping mouth on it. To her dismay, she finds that it bears the same properties as Stratford's statue and not only eats her gold but also finds that she cannot part with it.

Exhausted from the previous night's flight along the north road, the group finally reaches Magda in the early morning and get an inn and a hot bath while restocking their supplies. The town of Magda is not terribly large and notably surrounds a large hill near a river delta. The top of the hill has a chalk surrounding wall, the only access to the summit being a winding staircase from the central temple downhill. Mermaid motifs are engraved all over the town, and the party is on high alert after their initial investigations into the mermaid cult many months ago resulted in them being run out of town. With a mostly new cast, however, they once more decide to meet with the temple and see if they can learn anything new. Piety spends her time not shopping but instead fishing, and fishes a strange bass with several sets of eyes and small nodule legs. A nearby farmer warns her not to eat it as a beast in a cave upriver has been poisoning the rivers here and causing the strange mutations. After some brief discussions, the farmer gives Piety a small hand mirror and suggests she gifts it to the temple's priestesses. Excited, Piety goes and joins the rest of the group as they head into the temple. 

The priestesses outside don't speak but do bow and usher the party through the doors. In the main hall, lush pillows and a lavish table of exotic foods draw attention, but immediately on entering a thick and sweet incense begins to dull some of the party's wits. The priestesses add more of the incense to the large braziers flanking an extravagant oak throne at the end of the hall- each handful causing a small puff of green flame. An older priestess in heavy robes sits on the throne and gestures to the party to approach. 

Introducing herself as Sanesta and the leader of the Mermaid Cult, she invites the adventurers to share any tales they have and offers her own in exchange, specifically expressing an interest in any live creatures or samples that she could offer to the mermaids that dwell atop the hill in the Holy Pond. Stratford bargains as the rest of the party watches on, deciding to trade the fang he wrested from a giant snake beneath the Ranger's Guild in exchange for knowledge on how to remove the cursed statue and the cursed coin. He and Olga ascend the stairs to the pond and observe its strange milky waters and the chalk dome in the center as Sanesta calls forth a mermaid. Mist rolls into the pond and the top of an almost albino woman's face emerges from the water, reaching an arm out and examining the coin and statue before returning them and disappearing under the waters.   

Returning to the hall, Sanesta tells Stratford that the coin and statue were created by an artificer in Starmoore, specifically to sell to others who wished to curse their enemies and then ransom his curse breaking skills in exchange. Unfortunately, the means to break the curses exist only in his shop in the ruins of Starmoore- which is inaccessible still due to the Castle Demon that lairs within. Trading yet more knowledge of the region, Sanesta tells the party that they can likely find a way to avoid the Castle Demon's ire by consulting with the dogmen that roam the dunes around Starmoore and finding their secret that allows them to walk freely within. 

Piety rouses from devouring a lavish cheese board and gets her wits back, asking Sanesta if she knew anything about the strange teleporter cairn. Sanesta offers that she knows of three of them and Piety determines to return here and trade something for the knowledge of their locations later. Sanesta offers a variety of healing and even resurrection services as well in exchange for wealth or knowledge, hinting that if the party brings her whatever is tainting the river she'll gladly offer up more knowledge. The party notes down the location of the cave where the taint is said to be originating and then rests for the night and clears their exhaustion. 

In the morning, a light snowfall greets the party as they decide to set out for Taubey. Originally they had planned to wait for a river boat, but with the river icing over there won't be one for some time. Instead, they decide to follow the river east on foot and use it to guide them through the Beastwarren until they reach Taubey. Their first day of travel sees them entering the Beastwarren for the first time- its enormous trees stirring as much dread as the strange sky-scraping peaks with a hazy light behind them just visible to the far northeast. As night falls on the first day, the party sets to cooking their meal and immediately draw the attention of a colossal 40 foot tall walking tree, two hippogriffs roosting on its head. The tree stomps into the clearing and ruins their cookware and extinguishes to fire as the party scrambles to hide. With a great settling, the tree unroots again and crashes out of the camp, hippogriffs eyeing the party as they exit. Chastised, the party settles in for the night with cold rations. 

Late in the night, a shattering crack like a gunshot is heard to the north, followed by a bone chilling rattle. The sentry wakes the rest of the party just as a similar crack and rattle is heard to the south, followed by a third in response to the west. In the dark of the woods as snow falls, the party whirls to try and ready for whatever may come. After a quick argument of who will light a torch, Stratford hides himself and Olga lights a torch while the cracks continue to get closer. The light reveals the source of the sound to the north as it crosses the river to reach the party. A seven foot tall fiendish creature in the shape of a man wrapped in bone white carapace studded with spurs and spikes with a mishapen head that cocks to the side with a crack and settles with a rattle. Combat begins and Alma and Olga are immediately brought to 1HP by two of the creatures as their first of two attacks appears to horribly impair when struck. The battle continues poorly but the party manages to avoid any fatalities. Stratford leaps from the shadows and casts Body Swap on one of the creatures, prompting Piety to restrain his body for the rest of the combat. The hirelings fail their morale checks and panic, hiding in the tent for most of the fight before the archer steels her nerves and manages a lucky shot on one of the needle men. Alma's sword Eventide glows brightly and she skewers two of the needle men, leaving Stratford- in the body of the third needle man- to climb a tree and jump from a height before swapping back as the needle man cracks open on a large rock. From a previous encounter with smaller versions of these beasts, the party knows the value of the needles contained in their heads. When properly prepared, they can be sold for a high price, or used and inserted into a creature to charm them. The ethics of permanently force-charming people are briefly discussed as they set about removing the beasts heads and adding them to their packs before everyone settles to sleep again. 

In the morning, snow continues to fall and the party opts to leave the cart behind as it is nearly unusable in the wild and rough terrain of the Beastwarren. They continue following the river east and come upon a large leaning stone tower near midday. A white flash at the top of the tower draws their interest and the party decides to investigate. They climb to the entrance and find the inside to be gutted and open to the elements, a frozen layer of water at the bottom and a singular trap door at the top. Olga spots something beneath the ice and sets to cracking it open while Stratford and Piety cast spider climb and pop open the trap door. Piety enters carefully and finds the room to be covered in branches and large white feathers, smelling of horse. An opening to the outside reveals a small landing at the top of the tower but its previous occupant is nowhere to be found. Piety finds a chest hidden beneath the branches and hauls it down the tower where Olga and Stratford are still breaking the ice. 

Inside the chest, Piety finds an ornate flute with pegasi symbols. Making the obvious choice, she plays the flute and a pegasus lands outside the tower. After some careful approach, she mounts the pegasus and quickly realizes she doesn't know how to ride a pegasus and it has no saddle. The pegasus rockets into the air and by grace of Piety's spider climb spell being still active she keeps on its back long enough to get it to land again before it sets off once more. 

Beneath the ice, Olga finds a pristine shimmering silk cloak, untouched by the environment, wrapped around a fine mace with striata of a pearlescent metal running through it. After some experimentation, the party finds the silk cloak can change its color if you concentrate and Olga dons it eagerly. The mace remains a mystery but is determined to at least be a +1 weapon. 

Setting forth again the party quickly reaches their goal: Taubey. Near the river is a stadium sized two-tiered marble structure, the top sporting an enormous tree and pristine marble homes with griffons and wooden masked elves (the party has previously encountered them in the Greenspine) while the bottom looks to have been open air but is now fortified with heavy palisades. Devon, the Hunter's Pact member who first recruited Stratford, comes out with a scouting party and greets the group, ushering them inside and showing them around town. 

Taubey's central feature is an enormous longhouse where a feast is actively underway. It also sports a robust leatherworking, tanning, and smithing industry- but as most of the town appears to be feasting the party opts to join them. Inside the longhouse, the walls are covered in trophies of exotic beasts, many of which the party fails to identify. Hanging from the rafters is a forty foot long winged giant snake skeleton, shining with gold. The many tables are laden with drink and food and the party sets to feasting and mingling. 

Stratford begins his proper initiation to the Hunter's Pact by offering his trophies and telling tales of his exploits. A giant hand he carved from the giant handwolf wins a spot on the wall as well as one of the large needle man heads. The tales of the party are well received and not long into the night a ship captain picks up on a tale the party had been telling of when they had used the cairn to teleport to a strange floating stone island above a great bayside city plagued with wyverns. The ship captain shares that his crew were well familiar with it, being the western continent of Wyv, said to be filled with riches but extremely difficult to enter thanks to the winged terrors. He offers his ship's services if the party wishes to sail there and the party sets to discussing what possible treasures may resided within the floating island, now known to be rumored as the throne room of the last king of Wyv. 

The feast continues late into the night until the door bursts open and Cormac the Green and several hunter companions enter dramatically, hauling inside a freshly slain drake. To the surprise of the party, Cormac looks to be the same as his statue in the ranger's guild- from the top up. He and his companions, however, have the equine lower halves of what was thought to be mythological centaurs. Cormac cheers and the longhouse echoes as the feast continues with a fervor and the session closes out.

Tower, the Ghoul Titan

Jannis Mayr

The Nine Cities of the Tributary Houses of the Starklands are built on the graves of more glorious republics. Each sits upon a convergence of the Tireless Highway, whose immutable tiles were first laid in the forgotten past by the Empyreans who created the mega-constructs that still walk the world. All along icy coasts, boreal forests, and sulphur pits of the Starklands travelers can follow the Tireless Highway and unfailingly find their way to one of the Nine Cities. 

Before the Heritor came with their shining fleet and subjugated the Nine Cities, the Starklanders were known for their unique funerary customs. Young or old, man or woman, the dead were garbed in fine armor and equipped with blades and other weapons before being placed along the Tireless Highway for the coming of the Tower. 

As certain as the phases of the moons, with the coming of the first thaws of spring the Tower will descend along the ring road of the Tireless Highway and make his circuit, trudging past each of the cities before ascending once more to the Battle Peaks as Winter's grip sets in. With him comes his army of the dead, and his approach causes the dead to rise once more and join their ranks. Like a natural disaster for those not prepared, the undead swarms that attend the Tower flood over the lands as he passes by. At the core of the army, in rank and file at the feet of the Tower, dead kings and generals preside over the assemblage and shepherd the slavering ranks forward. 

Jonah Lobe

The Tower is a 300 foot tall Titan. His endless journey is heralded first by the approaching swarms of feral dead, and then by the stench and march of the army proper. When he begins the trek in Spring, his skin is pale and tinged blue, his figure gaunt and eyes black. As the year progresses, he steadily rots and chunks of skin and meat fall to the ground along the highway, attracting clouds of flies as well as adventurous adherents to the Tower or Exiled Sorcerers.

For the people of the Starklands, his legend is well known. The Tower was a great hero of the Empyreans and won many a battle against the enemies of civilization when the world was young and in its spring. When Winter first cursed the seasons, the Tower set forth with his armies into the Battle Peaks to break Winter and its curse. His battle was mighty and shook the foundations of the world, but in the end he broke Winter. However Winter's curse was laid, and as the seasons turn it grows in strength and inevitably overtakes Autumn. The Tower swore to defeat Winter, twining their fates and setting the Tower on his eternal path along the Tireless Highway to gather his armies once more and break Winter each year. Starklanders remember this legend and their heritage, and thus they set their honored dead along the roadside to join the Tower in eternal struggle to break Winter and rescue the land from its frozen grip each year. 

When the Heritor came and subjugated the Starklanders, his governors set the Tributary Houses to expunge this funerary tradition as an abomination and replace it with their standard of cremation, as the Heritor would not tolerate any encouragement of what were seen as necromantic practices. Some of the old folk still tell the tales, however, of how the Heritor's First Failure was when his legions tried to break the Tower. In the end, the Tower's path continued and the Heritor left the Starklands for his next conquests. 

Mika Koskensalmi

The seasons have turned and the curse of Winter has been broken dozens of times since the Heritor enforced cremation amongst the Nine Cities. Each year since then, the Tower has begun to slowly rot more quickly, and his disciplined army of the dead has grown thinner, their weapons broken and armor torn, replacing their numbers only with the slavering corpses of feral dead. Each year, the Tributary Houses hire Ghoulhunters to clean the lands of those that are left behind by this wild horde in the wake of the Tower, and each year the dead that wander the forests grow more numerous. 

Winter comes more quickly now, they say, and its icy tendrils remain longer and longer as the years go by. Cults of the Old Ways have sprung up throughout the Starklands, fueling a secretive worship of the Tower, whose countenance grows darker and more foul each year. The beer-halls grow more rowdy with disquiet and dread, as the elders whisper that the end times are coming. Brushfires of rebels have sprung up and have even blown the sole rail that connects the Starklands to the Heritor States. 

As the Tower finally breaks Winter once more and Spring is returned, the fires of rebellion are stoked around the Starklands.

Second Course, Doppelgangers

Finnian MacManus

INT. CRAB DUNGEON. SPECIMEN THEATER 1

Downward sloping metal plates dotted with warning lights and walkways occupied by figures wearing obscuring hazmat suits. At the edges of the room, industrial turrets keep aim at a glass specimen container in the center of the room. The container is currently empty. High up, along the outskirts of the room, an observation theater overlooks the scene. CRAB and LISETTE enter the observation theater and CRAB begins manipulating the various controls.

LISETTE: I'm still spinning from the last lesson. Those were a lot of names and I'm not sure what any of that will will do for me when fighting these monsters.

CRAB: Oh, really may not help. But also could- you know? Important thing to take away is that doppelgangers work off of fear, and that fear is created by cultivating a disruption to the expected order. 

LISETTE: Is that why they seemed to toy with me? And others?

CRAB: Ah, well your doppelgangers were a particular variety. We'll get to them at the end, but for now we're going to go through some samples I've collected of doppelgangers and study them a bit.

With a final button press, the specimen container is lifted via a great piston into the ceiling with a burst of steam. The grinding of gears and a clunk and whirring seal follow, before the piston descends back down again. Inside the observation theater, holoscreens light up with various camera angles of the specimen container as well as documentation detailing the specimen.

The specimen container is now occupied, a plain looking man in a suit stands inside, looking confused. He knocks on the glass.

CRAB: This is the first one, and the oldest specimen that we could find. 

GREYHAWKLEGANGER

OD&D Book IV, GREYHAWK

The first instance of a doppelganger shows up in the OD&D Greyhawk supplement. Spelled as a dopple* as opposed to the more commonly used nowadays doppel*, these creatures exhibit the traits that would become common to all that came after. They are not affected by sleep or charm spells, and are extremely magic resistant. Our only guidance for how they are used is that they can change shape into any person they observe and will then attack- or choose to attack later at surprise and for great advantage. 

Greyhawk has these creatures appearing in groups from 3-12, an attack of a whopping d12, with an armor class of 5, a move of 9 inches, and HD 4, with a 25% chance to be encountered in their lair. Most notably of these creatures, the doppelganger is of a Neutral alignment.

LISETTE: 3-12? How does one even cope with that many shapethieves? 

CRAB: Yeah, pretty hard to manage or run that. Imagine your group of adventurers running into twelve copies of themselves, kinda challenging to even conceptualize that. Of course, in those days you dragged a large amount of followers along with you, meaning that you could just have some followers suddenly attack you after they've been replaced. 

Hissing steam signals the piston moving and a new canister is swapped out. Inside, a tall, gaunt, humanoid with vaguely reptilian features and large, glowing eyes sits in repose. Its brain is clearly visible distending from its skull.

AD&DOPPLEGANGER

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual 1E

CRAB: Now this, this is the classic doppelganger. We can see that some significant improvements have been made over the Greyhawkleganger. While still having the same basic armor and attacks, we also see that the AD&Doppleganger (still spelling with *le as opposed to *el) surprises on a 1 in 4, with specific instructions that when a AD&Doppleganger surprises someone then it becomes indistinguishable from the person being copied, explicitly creating the infamous Spot the Imposter doppelganger situation. 

LISETTE: How is one supposed to discern the real one then?

CRAB: The first option would be to cast a sleep or charm spell. This isn't going to be 100% effective though, as normal folk can also resist the effects of these spells and thus become a "false positive". These creatures can also use ESP, something that becomes near universal in subsequent doppelgangers, however their ESP is only 90% accurate. If you know your friends and followers well enough, then you can interrogate both copies at length, however the AD&Doppleganger is very intelligent and would try to avoid such a situation.

LISETTE: What about that last note? They only form likenesses of materials, yes? Could a magical trinket be carried and used to discern real from fake? 

CRAB: A good eye, yes that could certainly work. Something small like a glowstone or any other trinket could not be replicated at will. However! In the event that you are trying to determine if someone you have just met is a doppelganger or not, this would not work, as they could have taken the trinket from their now deceased double. 

In Dragon #080 (1983) Fraser Sherman contributes some supplementary information on doppelgangers with his short fiction in "The psychology of the Doppleganger". At the end of the story, we get this appendix: 

"Since the doppleganger’s armor class and attack damage are partially derived from its ESP abilities, it will suffer against an ESP proof opponent, such as a monk, or a character with the psionic discipline of mind bar. Against such foes, its armor class will equal leather armor (AC 8), and it will do only 1- 6 points of damage per attack. A doppleganger’s ESP abilities are considerably different from the ESP spell or the psionic power of the same name. A doppleganger can continuously monitor the surface thoughts of any one character at a time, but can also probe more deeply into the character’s mind, becoming aware of deeply hidden facts about the character’s life, nature, and habits. This furthers the illusion that the doppleganger actually whoever it is imitating, and adds to its combat abilities.

Dopplegangers have never been known to sleep; they appear biologically incapable of it, though in their altered forms they will, course, pretend to be asleep when such of action is appropriate, and/or when it will prevent them from being discovered for what they are. Though dopplegangers can form their bodies into the appearance of clothing, equipment, weapons, etc., they generally avoid doing this because of the obvious problems they would have if asked to drop. something they appeared to be holding or wearing. Often they simply borrow materials from the body of whomever they are imitating and wear or carry those. Though listed as being neutral in alignment, dopplegangers might be more correctly viewed as neutral evil, or at least neutral with evil tendencies. They show little respect or concern for humanity and allied races, except when doing so benefits them. They are not prone to go out of their way to promote wickedness, however, and can act in a helpful manner . . . again, when it suits them."

LISETTE: I see, so then these beasts use their ability to read minds in order to both form their identity and to amplify their attacks. And these clothing and equipment imitations... they are part of the bodies of the doppelganger? 

CRAB: Yes, hence why they are keen to take up the equipment of those they slay. While often assumed to be solely magical, this reveals a more... biological take on the doppelganger. Take note as well the addition here of doppelgangers being able to fake sleep, effectively removing the sleep spell weakness.

The specimen container ascends back into the ceiling and swaps once more. A small group of grey humanoids squat inside. They bare fangs at the observation theater.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual

CRAB: As with all other monsters, the bloat continues as we get further along on the editions. The second edition monster manual details more about how doppelgangers work. Specifically, per 2e, doppelgangers work in groups and infiltrate other groups. All doppelgangers belong to a single tribe, and therefore are all allied with one another. The manual goes on to say that doppelgangers are all basically lazy and greedy, and therefore work to assume the roles of influential people with means and then survive off their accrued wealth. Here, the manual adds this new weakness to doppelgangers of the 2e variety: greed and cowardice. 

LISETTE: Is that grey pallor what they look like in their natural state? 

CRAB:Yes, these 2e dopplegangers and indeed the 1e dopplegangers have a "true form" either implied or explicitly stated. This can be most often seen when slaying a doppleganger, as they revert to their true form on death. Here, we see the doppelganger as a monster move away from being a trap-monster to instead being an entire race, entities with human-like thought patterns and motivations. These creatures are sapient, whereas the Greyhawkelganger could well be a biological automaton- depending on how it is used. 

3.5ELGANGER

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e Monster Manual [1]

Another specimen container swap, and a tall, gaunt, alien creature stands within. Bulging green eyes and taut skin- the creature had no visible mouth.

CRAB: Well, this one looks better but is pretty much just the same as the ones we saw before it, except that now we've upgraded to the more commonly accepted doppel spelling [2]. Honestly, Wizards of the Coast has such a way about codifying each and every detail of fantastical beasts, rendering them as bland as hard tack. Here, let's just skip this one to the 5e one. 

5TH EDOPPELGANGER

Dungeons & Dragons 5e Monster Manual

The knobbly grey flesh of the doppelganger in the new specimen container shimmers. It stalks the perimeter of the container, dragging a clawed finger against the glass.

LISETTE: This is the most cruel appearance yet. 

CRAB: Certainly, I'm most fond of this style- if we're adopting the idea of a true form at all, that is. The actual text of the monster's description here is more bare bones than the 2e text. With this newest revision, the doppelganger is described more in its role as a spy, an infiltrator, a plot device. No longer a beast that wanders the halls of dungeons, these are the latest evolution of the 2e tribal form, they are strong and cunning, still working in groups though and still lazy. 

Curiously, we get a link to the changeling added in with the 5th Edition. The fae changeling archetype being that of baby snatching, here the doppelganger is described as "assuming attractive male forms to seduce women, leaving them to raise their progeny. A doppelganger child appears to be a normal member of its mother's species until it reaches adolescence, at which point it discovers its true nature and is driven to seek out its kind and join them". So much is said and left hanging here. How do social dynamics of doppelgangers work in 5e? How do they find one another? What would Freud say about the doppelgangers impregnating women and leaving? This is left for us to examine. 

LISETTE: Most of these creatures read thoughts, but do not absorb memories- it seems. Could this be used to identify a doppelganger? 

CRAB: Ah, you're on to something here. For these doppelgangers, in order to truly infiltrate a role well they need to capture and interrogate someone to learn everything necessary to impersonate them. Watching from afar and scanning their thoughts for awhile can get you there too, either way it takes time. 

Now, for the case of when you have a Spot the Impostor moment and you capture both suspects, how do you tell who is who- knowing that one of them can read minds? This gets complicated, but to circumvent their ability to read thoughts- thus adopting the expected personality- you need to get a third party who does not know the suspected candidate. A traveler, or someone otherwise disconnected, can thus pose questions that can be confirmed with a separate third party. Again, however, this takes time, and is only really feasible if the doppelganger can be captured first. Enough of the Wizards and TSR though, let's look further afield. 

Generally speaking, there are two types of doppelgangers used in roleplaying media, though their distinctions can blend at times:

• Type One: The Person: As with 1e+ from TSR and WotC products, the Person is a doppelganger that possesses all of the qualifications for humanity plus the supernatural abilities of shapeshifting and sleep/charm resistance. They can be reasoned with, bargained with, and act more as a race of humanoid than monster.

• Type Two: The Monster: These are not people. This is a monster, a creature that has poorly understood, if they are even capable of being understood, or even animalistic instincts. A creature that has adopted shapeshifting as an evolutionary mechanism. It may act with the semblances of intelligence, but it is only a Chinese Room aping sentience. The Greyhawkleganger, as written, could be one of these. 

 Let's examine some works from around the sphere and see what everyone else is doing with doppelgangers.

GOBLINGANGER

Obligatory Oglaf

An Arnold K. classic, this is both a GLOG class and a brief on the race of doppelgangers. These Centerran doppelgangers have a silver weakness and lack the ability to read minds. Created by wizard experimentation that fuses 10 people into one, these are biologically immortal creatures.

Arnold's doppelgangers are distinctly Type Ones, they have distinct, individual personalities and are afraid of losing their identities. Doppelgangers can meld with other doppelgangers, or those affected by a drug made from their blood. During this melding process, the memories and XP of the participants of a meld are equally distributed, thus mixing up everyone in the meld. This is seen by many as horrifying, but the drug is intoxicating and so people take it. For the doppelgangers, some fear losing their memories and defined sense of self. Others embrace transitioning to a Type Two doppelganger, becoming "...an intelligent animal-- not a person-- filled with unrelated memories and no real intention... these doppelgangers are the most dangerous, because they are all mad."

 

THE THING

Inspired by John Carpenter and a dislike for how often doppelgangers have been used as the crux of poorly formed social mysteries, The Thing comes to us from Great Job at boxfullofboxes. This is a Type 2 doppelganger which works by absorbing creatures, gaining the ability to perfectly mimic, mentally and physically, any creature that it assimilates.These Things can then split apart and create new, independent things that can communicate with one another but do not act as a hive mind. 

 

Type 2's are generally like this, acting as parasites that can grow exponentially in human environments and can present a dire threat to society if not handled. In the case of these doppelgangers, I'd say they could best be used in a Mothership adventure with a good group of NPCs in an isolated environment, with the crux being identifying who the Thing is sooner as opposed to later. 

 

DUNGEON MESHI PLUG

Dungeon Meshi (go read it)

Coming to us from a post at riseupcomus, these are a variant of doppelganger creature as experienced by the adventurers in the wonderful Dungeon Meshi. These doppelgangers are Type 2, but not the horrible world ending hateful variety. A doppelfungoid can be any sort of slime or mold in a dungeon. The fungus creates an approximation of an adventurer based upon the perceptions of their companions. As in the manga, this leads to a blooming number of imperfect copies of the adventurer, with each doppelfungoid being a representation of how the others view their companions. 

A neat idea, and there some added bits about running these beasts and how they operate, ultimately the doppeloids are hallucinogenic fungal colonies. These aren't the social gaming assassin kings of some worlds, but instead an interesting challenge to encounter in a dungeon.

 

GRADIENT DESCENT

Androids from Gradient Descent

An honorable mention here! These androids are indistinguishable from humans, and you can only tell that they are infiltrating society after killing them and scanning their bodies. Otherwise, totally indistinguishable. Infiltrator androids feature throughout the wonderful scifi megadungeon and are used as ways to challenge whether or not the players have already been replaced by means of the Bends mechanic, which builds up over time and can result in a player character being revealed to have been an infiltrator android the whole time. 

These are not-quite-doppelgangers, lacking a shapeshift ability, but fit in the same broad categorization of "creatures that assume the shape of others and infiltrate society". 

GOODMAN GAMES DOPPELGANGER

The Complete Guide to Doppelgangers

A product made for 3.5e, this supplement changes up the formula of the WotC doppelganger significantly. These doppelgangers are part of a greater gestalt, their telepathy creating an almost hivemind-like functionality which allows perfect communication, destroying the identity of self inside of individual doppelgangers and instead creating a community of moving creatures. 

 

These doppelgangers have a lifecycle, being born as nascent doppelgangers they can eventually become mimics, and the mimics can be fused into doppelstadt. These doppelstadt are the central nervous system of a doppel colony, they birth new doppelgangers, maintain memory wells of all past experiences that the colony can draw upon, and can communicate over great distances telepathically. Doppelstadte of the same geneline come together to form gestalts, and these gestalts are all in competition to consume the planet.

Junji Ito- Hellstar Remina

On an individual level, these are Type 2s, but the supplement applies so much personification to the doppelgangers here that they function, as a whole, as a Type 1. Gestalts have personalities and idiosyncrasies that are shown off in all members of the gestalt, and they have wants- as well as myths. All doppelganger gestalts have the myth of the Zeitgeist. They believe that the world is alive, and all life is part of the communal spirit of the world. Through overtaking the whole planet, a gestalt becomes the spirit of the current age and will ascend to a new plane of existence. Humans and others are insignificant and nothing, their communication imperfect in the face of the perfect and total communication of the telepathic gestalts. To them, the races of men do not qualify for sentience, and they are pitiable for that. 

This supplement is filled with some really great ideas that I haven't seen picked up elsewhere. Urban doppelstadte can be buildings, filled with mimics and doppelgangers, whole cities replaced. Dungeon doppelstadte are orphans from their gestalts and are often deranged, living dungeons that can make pacts with monsters to live within and attract fresh nutrition (adventurers). Then there's the rustic and elf friendly doppelstadte, groves of trees with doppelgangers unable to read human thoughts but instead communing with animals. 

Going even further there's the ideas of urban doppel gestalts following the individual lives of people in the city as one would watch a TV show- this is fertile ground for usage. There are avatars, great doppelgangers who can take on the full class level and abilities of identities long gone- recurring villains as emanations of the same doppelstadt. These doppelgangers are not parasites or leeches, they are apex predators that pit societies against one another to make them more ripe for replacement.

THE CHANGELING

David Romero

Yet another new specimen container settles into place. This one contains an exact duplicate of LISETTE. It smiles and waves at the observation theater.

CRAB: And finally, we have your doppelgangers. In your world, they would be known as changelings, but what's in a name? 

 

LISETTE: The others revealed their true forms in your cages, what of this one? 

 

CRAB: Well, your beasts are special. You see, we're dealing with another Type 2 doppelganger here. An unnatural monster which eats distress and distrust. They feed off of causing pain, and act in whatever way can create the most distress and suffering. What's worse, these creatures don't read minds. They don't need to, they assume the form of their victim and in doing so duplicate their exact personality, memories, everything. They can do this change in an instant, to. As I'm sure you recall, they can change so quickly that the brain can't keep up, and you have no way of recalling which was the original. 

LISETTE: Surely there must be a weakness?

CRAB: These ones are nasty. Unlike our other specimens though, they're evil to the bone. A Detect Evil spell will catch them, easily. They're also immune to sleep and hold type magic, and like others they can't replicate magical gear, nor can they cast spells. The final kick is they have a single distinguishing feature- a small jewel in their hearts that doesn't transform when they do.

LISETTE: Perfect memory duplication? How in the world then do we determine which is a doppelganger without the use of magic? 

CRAB: I'm afraid that's really it, unless you want to resort to some long-drawn out torture sessions, but even that may not be successful. No, your particularly challenging doppelgangers can only be found out by magic, or death. 

A slight vibration fills the room. Octarine mist pours in through the theater doors. 

CRAB: That sounds like Athena is here to take you back- LISETTE, take this and use it well! We don't have time to finish any more training, take what you've learned here and finish the job!

Producing a wrapped brown paper package, CRAB shoves it into LISETTE's hands as the mist spirals around her.

 

LISETTE: But what's my job-

 

A blinding flash of Octarine fills the room, and on clearing- CRAB stands alone.

END TITLES 

"Maximum Love - Sometimes" begins to play.

 

DEREK enters the observation theater and looks around.

CRAB: Too late, she's gone. Athena grabbed her before we could teach her anything else.

DEREK: Coo.

CRAB: Well, I gave her the goggles, so that should help her a bit. She should do fine with your training after all. Hey, what's this? 

As the mist disperses, a small statuette of a silver owl remains where LISETTE once stood. 

DEREK: Coo.

CRAB: My thoughts exactly. I'm not done with beating the doppelganger horse to death, there's still at least one more course to go. Come on, let's take this up to the Scryatorium.

As CRAB and DEREK leave, the shot pans slowly across the industrial examination hall and back to the specimen container. Inside, the changeling is laughing.

FADE OUT

Notes and Rants

[1] Whenever I look at a stat block from 3.5e+ products my eyes glaze over and all I hear is rising static and a tinnitic crescendo. Is that just me?

[2] Not harping on the point here, just documenting the linguistic trends. Even scholarship from the 70s to the early 2000s was spotty on how to spell doppelganger.

Third Course, Doppelgangers

First Course, Doppelgangers

Evan Yao

Appetizer, Doppelgangers

INT. CRAB DUNGEON. GYMNASIUM 11 

The gymnasium has gothic styled vaulted ceiling and is the size of a cathedral. Where one would expect windows, there are instead large motivational posters and charts explaining nutrition and health. Throughout Gymnasium 11 are floor mats and scattered obstacle courses. Several pairs of hodgepodge humanoid creatures are sparring. In one corner, DEREK observes a vicious match between a lithe and scarred elf and LISETTE. 

Both figures are stalking in a circle around one another, striking and parrying as opportunity arises. The elf's rapier bites and stabs as LISETTE parries with her dagger and ducks, swinging into openings and leaping over rebuttals. With a flurry of action, LISETTE steps to the left of a rapier aimed for her heart and presses her dagger against the elf's neck. 

DEREK: Coo.

Elf and human draw back and sheathe their weapons before bowing to one another. CRAB suddenly appears behind DEREK, clapping for LISETTE. 

LISETTE: Master CRAB, a surprise to see you down here. How was my performance? 

DEREK: Coo. 

CRAB: Yeah, gotta say you've been getting better. It's only been a few weeks and you're slashing and stabbing with the best of them. 

LISETTE: It is all thanks to Sir DEREK's tutelage and your kindness in providing these facilities.

LISETTE glances around the room suddenly. 

LISETTE: Has something... changed? 

CRAB: Oh, yeah, narrative format just shifted left a bit, trying something new. Don't worry about it. 

LISETTE: Once more, I am afraid that I am at a loss to the ways of wizards. With how my training is proceeding, when do you think I will be strong enough to return and defeat the face-stealing monsters? 

CRAB: Doppelgangers. Well, your fighting skills are much improved and you've rested long enough. It's high time we start teaching you about just what it is that you're up against. You two finish up and meet me in Lecture Hall 4. 

INT. CRAB DUNGEON. LECTURE HALL 4

Two hundred empty chairs and desks are arranged in rows, sloping down on a slight incline and facing a long wooden stage with a podium to one side and a projector screen set in the middle. LISETTE enters the room and finds a seat in the middle rows. 

Just as she sits down, CRAB enters the room, followed by a parade of skeletons who file in to empty chairs across the hall. 

CRAB: Don't mind them. I work better with an audience and they could use the exercise. So, let's get to it. There may be some things you don't understand just now, but one day you may come to uncover their meaning. Now, on to the show.

The projector hums to life. 

FIRST DISH: ORIGINS

Mark Wojhan

Ere Babylon was dust,

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, 

Met his own image walking in the garden. 

That apparition, sole of men, he saw. 

For know there are two worlds of life and death: 

One that which thou beholdest; but the other 

Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit 

The shadows of all forms that think and live 

Till death unite them and they part no more

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, lines 191–199

CRAB: So, what is a doppelganger?

LISETTE: Those monsters that attacked me. They are face stealers. Horrible, frightful creatures that mimic people's behaviors and likenesses.

CRAB: Well, that's certainly a sort of doppelganger. You see, throughout history the doppelganger has had a most curious evolution, and eventually when D&D came about, the doppelganger saw its first implementation in tabletop play with the Greyhawk supplement in 1975 and has been pretty consistently included just about everywhere.

LISETTE: ... what is an RPG? Did this Gary create these monsters? What does a gray hawk have to do with this?

CRAB: Oh, right, fourth wall. Maybe we should go a bit further back in time and start at the beginning.

LISETTE: Will that tell me how to defeat them?

CRAB: All in good time. First, we need to establish a common contextual basis to work our discussions from. O Wraith of Research, Mad and Rabid, I unshackle you now that you may present us your findings!

The projector howls in torment and sputters as violent and oily black smoke pours out and the presentation begins.

We'll use the more common spelling present in RPG media of doppelganger as opposed to the German doppelgänger, which would be broadly more accurate as the term originates from the German Romanticist period as a central trope in gothic literature. The author Jean Paul coined the term in the 1796 novel Siebenkäs, wherein an unhappy marriage is ended when the husband fakes his own death (Fonseca). In the footnotes we have the beginning of the literary term doppelganger which Jean Paul initially defines as:

so heissen sie Leute die sie [sich] selbst sehen

"so people who see themselves are called"

The word itself can be translated as "double goer" and doppelgangers or the habit of seeing oneself appears to have become more common in the Enlightenment era. E.T.A. Hoffmann continues the budding tradition with his story "Die Doppeltgänger" in 1821 and then, more famously, with Die Elixiere des Teufels (The Devil's Elixir) and "The Sand-Man" in his collection Nachtstücken. Truly, the list of 1800s doppelganger stories goes on and on, with Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Double (1846), Hans Christian Andersen's The Shadow (1847) and, most in line with the modern concept of the doppelganger, in Edgar Allen Poe's "William Wilson" (1839). 

These Enlightenment era incarnations of the doppelganger are certainly not the earliest conception of the idea of a double. There are a variety of claims to the mythological origin of doppelgangers and doubles[1], as Otto Rank attests in "Der Doppelgaenger" (1914) that ancient traditions and folklore held the double as the first conception of the soul, related to beliefs that the shadow was a second self. In the last two hundred years there have been continuing folk tales surrounding Catherine the Great who is alleged to have seen her double and had her soldiers shoot at it until it disappeared (Sherman), Abraham Lincoln who saw his doppelganger in a mirror (Borchard), and of course Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley's account gives us a most thorough examination of the doppelganger, and one that will ring familiar to modern audiences. Let's have a read of his famous encounter as recorded by Mary Shelley:

"...Williams went to Shelley, who had been wakened by my getting out of bed—he said that he had not been asleep, and that it was a vision that he saw that had frightened him. 

But as he declared that he had not screamed, it was certainly a dream, and no waking vision. What had frightened him was this. He dreamt that, lying as he did in bed, Edward and Jane came in to him; they were in the most horrible condition; their bodies lacerated, their bones starting through their skin, their faces pale yet stained with blood; they could hardly walk, but Edward was the weakest, and Jane was supporting him. Edward said, “Get up, Shelley, the sea is flooding the house, and it is all coming down.” Shelley got up, he thought, and went to his window that looked on the terrace and the sea, and thought he saw the sea rushing in. Suddenly his vision changed, and he saw the figure of himself strangling me; that had made him rush into my room, yet, fearful of frightening me, he dared not approach the bed, when my jumping out awoke him, or, as he phrased it, caused his vision to vanish. 

All this was frightful enough, and talking it over the next morning, he told me that he had had many visions lately; he had seen the figure of himself, which met him as he walked on the terrace and said to him, “How long do you mean to be content?” no very terrific words, and certainly not prophetic of what has occurred. But Shelley had often seen these figures when ill; but the strangest thing is that Mrs. Williams saw him. Now Jane, though a woman of sensibility, has not much imagination, and is not in the slightest degree nervous, neither in dreams nor otherwise. She was standing one day, the day before I was taken ill, at a window that looked on the terrace, with Trelawny. It was day. She saw, as she thought, Shelley pass by the window, as he often was then, without a coat or jacket; he passed again. Now, as he passed both times the same way, and as from the side towards which he went each time there was no way to get back except past the window again (except over a wall 20 feet from the ground), she was struck at her seeing him pass twice thus, and looked out and seeing him no more, she cried, “Good God, can Shelley have leapt from the wall? Where can he be gone?” “Shelley,” said Trelawny, “no Shelley has passed. What do you mean?” Trelawny says that she trembled exceedingly when she heard this, and it proved, indeed, that Shelley had never been on the terrace, and was far off at the time she saw him. Well, we thought no more of these things, and I slowly got better."

- The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Aleksandra Waliszewska

From these letters, we can see Percy Bysshe Shelley's doppelganger encounters were of the nefarious nature, as he encounters visions of his doppelganger strangling Mary Shelley as well as his doppelganger asking, which I can only read with the thickest layers of Victorian sarcasm and disgust at the subject, "When will you be content?". It is this version of the doppelganger, cruel and exhibiting behaviors contrary to the primary subject's asserted ego, which would continue to set the world of gothic literature alight.

We also have the "identical person" tales appearing around the same era. Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859) sees no occult or anomalous means, rather just two people who look the same. These sorts of stories have the doppelganger function not as a beast, but instead a contrivance to allow a plot twist in one way or another, a common plot in our time will have the people who look the same commit a crime in the name of the other and get away with it. On the lighter side, there is the "separated from birth" trope which we can see in media from Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors (1594) all the way to The Parent Trap (1998). These cases, again, are not the monstrous identity stealing doppelgangers, but instead alter egos or just look a likes. For our purposes, these do not count as doppelgangers as they are rarely used to do something key to the role of the monster- challenge a sense of personal identity.

Back to this early on the idea of a doppelganger as being distinct from a double or shadow, this begins taking route in culture as the gothic writers continue to take hold. So, what is this creature that haunts these varied Victorian era writers? "It is necessary to be clear about the nature of the true double, or Doppelganger. The Doppelganger is a second self, or alter ego, which appears as a distinct and separate being apprehensible by the physical senses (or at least, by some of them), but exists in a dependent relation to the original ... often the double comes to dominate, control, and usurp the functions of the subject’’ (Vardoulakis) and to this we add on some sprinkling of Ralph Tymms thoughts that the doppelganger has an emphasis placed on "the magical, occult, psychical, or psychological qualities" of the double (Tymms). 

Taken together, we get the rough diagram of what the early conception of the doppelganger was. A second self or alter ego that is separate from the self (but does not exist without the self), and desires to usurp or control the self. This second self is magical, occult, or otherwise anomalously linked to the self. 

Fonesca, T

Our definition fits many a literary doppelganger, a classic case being that of Dostoevsky's The Double, wherein a low level bureaucrat encounters his doppelganger one day and eventually goes mad as his doppelganger tries to take control of his life. He does everything better, is better liked, and this slowly drives the main character insane. The implication from Dostoevsky's take though is not a monstrous creature infecting the life of a poor man, but of the man going mad, losing his identity and going mad- seeing others as himself [2]. This projected doppelganger, i.e. the double is not really you, continues throughout history and can be seen again, in another form, in David Fincher's 1999 film version of Chuck Palahnuk's Fight Club (1996). For our purposes, we can throw the Fincher classic into the "alter ego" trope bin, but the threads connecting these works are quite clear.

As far as film doppelganger go, there's a long history of their use. Aside from the notables already discussed, I would like to highlight some more recent examples. Notably, It Follows. In this 2014 horror film directed by David Mitchell, the doppelganger is definitively more in the supernatural/occult sphere. A curse afflicts people in this film, and it can be transferred to someone else through sex. We'll set aside the thematic implications of this for others to discuss and instead focus on the doppelganger itself. It can only be seen by those with the curse or who have had it before. The doppelganger moves forward, towards the person afflicted with the curse, until it reaches them- then kills them brutally. Normally, the doppelganger takes on the form of a stranger [3], appearing as a random person in a crowd determinedly walking towards the afflicted person. There are notable cases though where the entity displays some degree of, if not sentience then at least a desire to cause emotional distress, such as when the creature takes on the form of the main character's deceased, nude father- or when it takes on the form of another character's mother before killing him. Again, the themes of the film are worth analysis- but not here. 

A commonality amongst doppelgangers is to use the appearance of loved ones to cause distress, usually through assuming the form of a loved one or the subject themself, creating an abjection of identity. This crisis creates a sense of the uncanny, that you are not who you think you are, disrupting the presumed order of the world.

LISETTE: Who are all of these people? 

CRAB: Just wait, I think the Wraith is going to start in on the good stuff now.

LISETTE: Is this going to help me defeat these doppelgangers?

CRAB: That's the idea. I find learning the histories and inner workings of something can better prepare you for it.  

CRAB, ASIDE: Or, for some nebulous amount of you out there, provide ideas on how best to use and apply monsters like this.

LISETTE: This Wraith of Research sounds a good deal like you.

Yes. Now let's discuss the Freud of it all.

SECOND DISH: A HELPING OF THE UNCANNY

So, just why are doppelgangers so common in horror media? As we have seen, the idea existed before Gygax first introduced it with the Grayhawk supplement, but why? What's the reason that the doppelganger is so unsettling- so frightening? Let's take a diversion and talk about the things that spook us and why they do it. Let's start with an example to work with; here's something that you could pull off of any nosleep subreddit post or backrooms forum:

I only know a few people that have seen them. When I first heard an old hiker buddy of mine grumbling about "parking lots in the woods" I thought he meant those turn off lots near national parks where hikers leave their cars before hitting trails. But he just shook his head. "No, not the ones outside of the woods, the ones inside. You find them sometimes, out in the deep woods." 

He stopped talking about them after that and let me be. It wasn't until a year or so later that I was on a solo-hike in the Adirondacks, just backpacking and checking out some of the peaks. Just after checking out Pyramid I was making my way to the Gothics to camp out for the night. The sun was already setting and I was considering just calling it quits and setting up down in the valley when I saw something that reminded me of what my buddy said. 

It was a parking lot. Keep in mind here I'm a couple hours away from the nearest building, a couple of old hikers inns up north aways, and then at least six hours from I87. There's no good reason for there to be a parking lot in the middle of the forest out here, much less one with a working streetlight, so I went to go check it out. 

As I got closer, I saw it was maybe a hundred feet at the widest, just a big, flat square of broken asphalt. One end of it had this big streetlight all lit up, but otherwise there was nothing in that lot. No cars, no animals, nothing. I hiked around the outside of it and couldn't find even a hint of a road leading to the place, it was just totally disconnected and in the middle of the woods. 

Now, I was spooked a bit but still curious. The asphalt looked like it was only a couple years old, but there were huge cracks in it running through the lot with big, gnarly looking roots poking up. I went up and checked out the streetlight, but couldn't find any markings on it. Really, I had hoped to find the number for at least a utility company or something that I could call up and ask about the lot, but there wasn't as much as a mark on that pole. It just sat there, buzzing. At that point, the sun was pretty well set, and I noticed that I couldn't hear any birds or bugs, just that buzzing bulb on the streetlight. 

This part is a bit hazy, maybe I was tired, I don't know. But I swear there was someone else on that lot. Just when I turned around from the lamp post, I saw someone hiker on the other side of the lot, walking away. I tried calling out, but they didn't turn around, so I went and followed them out of the lot to see if maybe they knew what this place's deal was. 

By the time I gave up following them, the last light of the sun was gone and I decided to just make camp where I was. It must have only been a couple hundred feet from the parking lot, but I couldn't see that light anymore. At least I could hear the bugs going again. 

I swear, it was just a couple hundred feet from that parking lot. When I woke up in the morning and packed up the camp, the Gothics were gone, Pyramid was gone, Sawtooth was gone, and that lot was gone too. There was nothing familiar on the horizon, just more hardwood forest and unfamiliar mountains as far as the eye could see. 

Rangers picked me up a couple days after that, my beacon worked and they found me hungry and wandering the woods. I didn't understand how I could have gotten lost for days out there, so the first thing I asked them was where I was. Maine. I was in Maine. Somehow, I'd gotten over a half dozen state routes and highways and two hundred miles to the northeast of the Gothics. 

These days, I warn people to just walk away if they see a parking lot in the woods. I've heard some more stories from other hikers about them now. Some are like mine, and they show up far away from where they thought they were. Others, they tell stories of friends who went to go check out a parking lot and never came back. 

This sort of thing shows up all the time and once you recognize the beats it gets to be pretty obvious. So, what's at play here? 

• Woods setting established, comes with expectations for nature
• Parking lot is in the woods, disrupts expectations of a forest setting
• No marking in the lot and the lights are working, continued disruption
• Person in the parking lot, something even more disrupting
• Finally, the main character is transported far away, a final break in the order
  

Boil it all away and it's a series of increasing points that put something where it should not be, creating a feeling of the uncanny. So what is uncanniness and what causes it?

Aleksandra Waliszewska

The German word unheimlich is obviously the opposite
of heimlich, heimisch, meaning “familiar,” “native,” “belonging
to the home”; and we are tempted to conclude that
what is “uncanny” is frightening precisely because it is not
known and familiar. Naturally not everything which is new
and unfamiliar is frightening, however; the relation cannot
be inverted. We can only say that what is novel can easily
become frightening and uncanny; some new things are
frightening but not by any means all. Something has to be
added to what is novel and unfamiliar to make it uncanny.

-Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (1919)

"Unheimlich, in other words, is not simply that which is not homely: it is that which is familiar, of the self and known to the self, yet supposed to remain hidden from the self, but has become apparent, has become visible to the self" (Rahimi). Freud keeps going for quite a bit after this, examining the works of the person whose works the essay The Uncanny is about, Jentsch. In his article On the psychology of the uncanny (1906), Jentsch proposes that what makes something uncanny, something common in various contexts, is "the ambivalence and duality of the states of objects and the modes of being of subjects", and that an esssential element of this is a state of undecidability, making it so that the observer "doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not in fact be animate" (Jentsch). In fact, let's take this whole passage from Rahimi discussing Jentsch and Freud:

Somehow, however, Freud appears to have missed or ignored an important detail in Jentsch’s account, namely the reason why that specific uncer-tainty would have the effect in question. In what may well be the most essential claim of his theory of the uncanny, Jentsch explains the impact of uncertainty as ‘‘the feeling of being threatened by something unknown and incomprehensible that is just as enigmatic to the individual as his own psych usually is as well’’ (1995[1906], p. 14, emphasis added). The significance of this passage lies, almost camouflaged, in the rather casual reference made here to the comparison between the threatening incomprehensibilities of the unfamiliar object and the familiar self, one’s ‘‘own psyche.’’ To be sure, however, the casual subtlety does not denote Jentsch’s lack of awareness of the significance of the idea, which coincides directly with Lacan’s later notion of extimit and his formulation of the self as alien to itself (see below for details). In many ways the rest of Jentsch’s article consists of an elaboration of that very same idea. In another of his examples, which Freud again hastily mentions and dismisses, Jentsch speaks of the uncanny effect that can be produced by observing an epileptic fit by a person unfamiliar with that phenomenon. Jentsch, says Freud, uses the examples of epileptic seizure and psychosis to argue that these can produce uncanny experiences in spectators by producing, ‘‘the impression of automatic, mechanical processes at work behind the ordinary appearance of mental activity’’ (1919, p. 226).

Jentsch’s actual argument, however, is more sophisticated than suggested by Freud. The epileptic seizure or psychotic behavior, says Jentsch, reveal upon the spectator, ‘‘the dark knowledge’’ that s ⁄ he has been wrong in attributing familiarity to what ‘‘he was previously used to regarding as a unified psyche’’ (1995[1906], p. 14). The epileptic attack, he writes, ‘‘reveals the human body to the viewer’’ (ibid.). But what exactly is that ‘‘dark knowledge’’ which is ‘‘revealed’’ to the spectator of madness or epilepsy to cause an uncanny fear? The viewer, according to Jentsch, becomes aware of the erroneous nature of his or her familiar understanding of ‘‘the body that under normal conditions is so meaningful, expedient, and unitary’’ (ibid., emphasis mine). That dark uncanny knowledge, in other words, consists of the realization that the ‘familiar’ body on which we so ‘naturally’ project the qualities of meaning, expediency and unity, which we were ‘‘previously used to regarding as a unified psyche,’’ can so easily become an alien ‘unfamiliar’ object devoid of understandable meaning and lacking unitary cohesion. It would appear then, that Freud’s reading of Jentsch’s claim as ‘‘the impression of automatic, mechanical processes at work behind the ordinary appearance of mental activity’’ (1919, p. 226) may have missed an important note here.

LISETTE: What in the world does any of that mean?

CRAB: Freud was hasty and dismissive, Jentsch probably hit the nail on the head. To sum it all up, the uncanny happens when the familiar is unfamiliar, or in an undecidable state. For Freud, "things of terror" are made uncanny after the formation of the ego. 

The ego appears, after all, at (and as) the end of a magnificent and frightening phantasmagoric procession that comes forth from the real and ends in the symbolic. Paradoxically, it is this ‘procession’ that creates both the ‘real’ and the ‘symbolic’. Before the ego, there is no real and no place within the symbolic from which to conceive of the real. There is no integrated self and therefore no fear of its disintegration, no ego and no world. It is only after the ego comes to exist that the notion of annihilation, and the ‘horror’ of such annihilation can be experienced in a symbolic sense, and it is the very process of creation of the ego that is inseparably associated with that horror. The very process that creates the specter of annihilation, in other words, is the process that overcomes it through denial which is signification, the death of the object. On the more personal side as well, paradox reigns supreme insofar as the production of the ego is simultaneously a denial and a recognition of a difference and of a sameness. On the one hand, the recognition of the ‘I’ is a denial of the difference that exists between the image and the viewer who self-identifies with it. This is the source of alienation that is always already the lot of the human subject...

CRAB: See, this all is tangential with Rahimi's idea that Lacan's Stade du Miroir or mirror stage is what forms the ego. Freud has this whole theory that, of course, revolves around threats of castration as being what transitions a person from childhood primal narcissim to having an ego that recognizes self and reality, but Lacan's Stade du Miroir posits that the ego is formed in the mirror stage, when the primal narcissist begins to form their identity- through observation of the self.

The ego, in this way, is reliant on your eyes, the specular. They create the associations "that unite the I with the statue onto which man projects himself, the phantoms that dominate him, and the automaton with which the world of his own making tends to achieve fruition in an ambiguous relation" (Lacan). As a consequence, it is those things that disturb this logic, that challenge the nature of the ego's self identity which binds the gestalt of identity to inner experiences that "would become terrifying in the uncanny sense of terror, because it threatens to unveil the original ‘lie’ that we have told ourselves regarding the ‘sameness’ of that image and the I" (Rahimi). [4]

LISETTE: So, these doppelgangers, they are terrible and frightful because they make people challenge their own identity? Their own understanding of the world? 

CRAB: Precisely. And really, that sort of challenge may well be the underpinning for all things that we find frightful.

Blood People, Shapeshifter

Would you like to feel like a doppelganger? Taste the slavering hunger to be someone else? Maybe even anyone else? Immerse in a new identity- reseat your ego and assume a new personhood? A final passage for this meal:

Roleplaying is a form of self-conscious ego alteration in which the performers no longer change identities subtly, as they must do in the mundane world. Gamers become hyperaware of their own personality manifestations, adopting alternate vocal patterns, attitudes, and histories for their characters. Roleplayers experience something akin to a “double consciousness”; in-game decisions are made by the character, but the player is cognizant during the whole process and realizes the discrepancies and similarities between the behavior of the two selves. Immersion into character becomes even more intense when players physically “act out” their characters actions and don costuming in Live Action roleplaying games and at conventions.

-Sarah Lynne Bowman, The Psychological Power of the Roleplaying Experience

END TITLES

"Blood People- Shapeshifter" begins to play.

The belching smoke of the projector takes on the form of a concert of players as music pours out and CRAB hands LISETTE a bag of popcorn.

CRAB: Doppelganger as roleplay enthusiast, there's something.

LISETTE: Honestly it feels a bit insensitive in light of my previous experiences. 

CRAB: Yeah, alright, fair. With all the theory and research leading up to it, next up it's time we visit the zoo and talk about types of doppelganger. 

LISETTE: There's more than one?

CRAB: Broadly, yes. The taxonomy of doppelgangers is, frankly, uninteresting, but the variety in types and how they operate should prove of use to you. 

LISETTE: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

CRAB: ... just who has been teaching you Sun Tzu? 

LISETTE: Sir DEREK, he has quite a lot to say about strategy. He also leant me a collection of moving pictures that depict great battles to watch, it has been exhilirating. Your talking fireplace has been very helpful explaining the parts I am unfamiliar with.

CRAB: CARMINE? Yeah, poor little fire elemental. All they want to do is read, I'm still working out how to make that work with his whole, you know, being a fireplace thing. Keep quiet about moving pictures and the like if Athena asks, she might get testy about teaching you more than you need to know.

LISETTE: Can we learn about whatever that bat creature is next?

CRAB: What bat creature?

CRAB: Oh. Yeah, ask DEREK about album covers later. Pretty sure his jazz album got popular. Anyways, see you all for the second course.

FADE OUT

Notes and Rants

[1] I found no less than fifteen articles from a variety of websites and four published books that used this exact phrasing in reference to mythological doppelgangers: "In Ancient Egyptian mythology, a ka was a tangible "spirit double" having the same memories and feelings as the person to whom the counterpart belongs." This line, as close as I can ascertain, originates from the doppelganger Wikipedia article, specifically an edit and summation made by contributor 83d40m in February of 2013. Further research revealed the addition of this specific claim of Egyptian beliefs being an early form of doppelganger was made in August of 2010 by anonymous contributor 71.111.229.3 whose sole contribution to the website was to add that line. Another line that kept appearing in research was a bit about Norse mythology being linked to doppelgangers, and the source for this appears to be an edit from Wikipedia contributor Xanthoxyl in January of 2007, again with no citation but this time with some tenuous links to actual folklore that I could find. 

I do not envy the task of maintaining Wikipedia articles. At the very least, this instance provides a hard reminder to check your sources. If anyone knows an egyptologist or a similarly rabid pedant, I am curious to know the truth of this matter.

[2] The 2013 comedy version of The Double with Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska was very well shot, props to Richard Ayoade. 

[3] Stranger, is not actually fully true here. Take a look at this post for some analysis on the forms that the doppelganger takes. The ground is fertile for interpretations on the doppelganger entity's forms- are they projected by the person seeing them? If that's the case, then why is its first form when seen walking to Jay an apparent version of Hugh/Jeff's mother? The Freud is strong with this film.

[4] The ego, the ocular, and the uncanny: Why are metaphors of vision central in accounts of the uncanny? by Rahimi goes on to discuss that as mirrors became more commonly available to people, reports of doubles and doppelgangers increased. He continues to discuss Lacan at length and the mirror theory, really a worthy read. It reminded me that there's some curious links to be found between VR, mirrors, and identity. I can't speak for the veracity of the claims, not using VR myself, but these videos propose some ideas that Lacan may well agree with, that mirrors can not only form the ego but reshape it.

References

Borchard, G. A., & Bulla, D. W. (2015). Lincoln mediated: The president and the press through nineteenth-century media. Transaction Publishers. 

Bowman, S. L. (2007). The Psychological Power of the Roleplaying Experience. Journal of Interactive Drama, 2(1), 1–14.

Fonseca, T. (2006). The Doppelgänger. Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares, 1, 187-214.

Freud S. (1919). The uncanny. 

Jentsch E (1995[1906]). On the psychology of the uncanny. Angelaki

Lacan J (1949). The mirror stage as formative of the I function. In: E´crit: The first complete translation in English, Fink B, translator, 75–81. New York, NY : Norton, 2006.

Marshall, Florence A., (2011) The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Volume II, Project Gutenberg, 13-14.

Rahimi, S. (2013). The ego, the ocular, and the uncanny: Why are metaphors of vision central in accounts of the uncanny? The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 94(3), 453–476. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-8315.2012.00660.x

Sherman, J. (2015). Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Mythology and Folklore. Routledge.

Tymms, Ralph.(1949) Doubles in Literary Psychology. Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes.

Vardoulakis, Dimitris., (August 2004) ‘‘The Critique of Loneliness.’’ Angelaki 9 : 81–101.

 

PAYING THE JOESKY TAX

The Cleft-Blade of the Thief King

A dagger made from a pale glassy and transparent metal. Attacks are treated as magical, but otherwise deal a d6 in damage. On a successful hit, the dagger steals an ability from whatever is struck. The blade of the dagger changes shape to represent the ability stolen. Once an ability has been stolen, the creature it was stolen from cannot use this ability without passing a save vs. magic. The bearer of the blade may use this ability once, but upon use the creature the ability was stolen from can use the ability again as normal.

Be up front about what it can do now with your players. For example, if they use it on a Bandersnatch which can grab something with a +10 to the roll, tell the player that they can do that with the dagger now.

Second Course, Doppelgangers