Use and ignore what you wish. I like the idea of running it with quite a fairytale tone; lots of making light of dark situations and adding in fairytale tropes such as "be careful what you wish for".
The Original Tale
Cat-skin is a variation of the fairytale formula "Princess about to be forced to marry a King. The King is their Father/Uncle. The decision was made through the seriously questionable interpretation of a promise made to the King's dying wife. The Princess requests ridiculous outfits and one animal skin to put off the wedding. The Princess wears the dirty animal skin and somehow no one seems to notice she's the princess. She runs off to work in a neighbouring castle as a cook. The Prince likes her cooking. She goes to a ball. They fall in love. He marries her. They live happily ever after.". There are a few tales with a similar theme such as Donkey-Skin, The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter and Tattercoats, which is more about neglect than incest. Another story which the below scenario has taken some influence from, involves changing the princess into an animal , called The She-Bear.
At the end of the tale The Princess marries a handsome prince and lives happily ever after. But, "Happily Ever After" is not fun for us, so lets make this tale more meaty, and let the Game Masters who enjoy it really sink their teeth in and run with it.
The New Backstory
The Princess, Fauve, was locked away in a tower after she spurned her father. He insisted on marrying her after he promised his dying wife he would only marry a woman as beautiful as she was. His daughter was the only one he felt matched his wife's beauty. The King has long been insane and has become adept at dark forms of twisted magic. Fauve attempted to stop him by claiming she would only marry him if he brought her three dresses made of ridiculous materials and a cloak crafted from the furs of one thousand animals.
Unfortunately, he managed to create the dresses and the fur cloak through black magic and the slaughter of many, many innocent creatures (many of them the local towns cats) with Fauve's childhood pet cat as the hood. He gave her the dresses and the Cat-Skin cloak, and demanded he marry her the next day.
With the aide of the a young servant girl, a maternal cook and her old nurse, Fauve donned the Cat-Skin and escaped into the surrounding wilderness that night. Due to the nature of how the Cat-Skin was created, and fueled by Fauve's despair and anger, the Cat-Skin suddenly took on a life of its own with Fauve as its willing host.
Fauve roams the wilderness; an ever changing amalgamation of human girl and furious beast, with her heart set on ridding the land of any and all of her mad Father's servants. She can smell guilt and malicious intent from miles away and when she begins a hunt, she always finishes it.
Meanwhile, in the belly of the castle the mad King is tormented by the Cat-Skin that hounds his men and his castle, unaware it is his own escaped daughter. Consumed by black magic, he used the same spell that created the Cat-Skin to craft himself a coat of human flesh that bestows on him great powers from each flayed victim.
Possible Adventure Avenues
- Your adventurers may respond to the call a corrupt local constable, whose men have been torn to pieces by a strange number of beasts. Your adventurers must locate Cat-Skin in the wilderness, and put an end to her vengeful pursuit of the Kingsmen.
- Your adventurers might be wandering the wood and come upon Cat-Skin, who enlists the aide of the adventurers to enact her revenge upon her Father. You take up arms against The King. She will reward you with the gift of the Cat-Skin; after you have defeated her father. You can get into the palace when The King throws an elaborate ball.
- A village lies empty as if a great monster has torn its way through. Upon the hill is a castle, and the trail leads to the door. Here, you traverse the castle and your adventurers learn the story of Cat-Skin; learning about how the village and the castle became empty. Perhaps they find Cat-Skin and her father mid-battle, perhaps they find one or the other alive, or they must escape from both.
- The King asks the players to retrieve his daughter so that she may marry (being vague about it). The players can either do his bidding for a great reward or find and help Cat-Skin.
- One of your players characters is a beautiful women who looks similar to Fauve. The other players are her family members or competing suitors for her hand. The King has invited you all to a ball so he can decide if the player's character and her family are worth wedding. During the ball, Cat-Skin sabotages The King and it is up to the players to discover The Kings dark secrets and who Cat-Skin really is.
The NPC's and their Clothes
Fauve
Fauve (also known as Cat-Skin) was a young girl who watched her mother die slowly from The Sickness, a plague brought on by her fathers terrible interest in dark magic. Fauve suffered at her father's side whilst his obsessions and madness grew at each dally into blood magic. After her mother died, her father's twisted insistence that she marry him was the straw that broke the camels back. She rejected him, cursing his name, and refused to be a part of his corruption. She spent several years locked away in a tower until she was finally freed by three maids who cared for her throughout her life.
Fauve is intelligent and cunning. She is wild, vengeful but she is not driven by fury. She is cold and she knows how to move silently among the trees. She knows she is host to the Cat-Skin. Without the Cat-Skin she is a mid-level spell caster. She is the heir to the throne and capable, after The King is dead, of rewarding the players with vast riches and land.
Cat-Skin
The Cat-Skin is a massive cloak of hundreds of furs piled one on top of the other, stitched together. There is a mane of fur and the hood crafted from cat skins. The hood is made of a large albino cat, whose head pokes out and observes the world from the top of the wearers head; it is a bright white creature with huge emerald eyes and it was Fauve's prized pet. The cats eyes move, as do all of the eyes left on the cloak, and they never seem to decay.
The Cat-Skin allows the wearer to cast "Polymorph Self" twice, once during the night and once during the day. However, the adventurer has a 1 in 6 chance of becoming trapped in the body of the animal they transform into. If the adventurer is trapped as an animal, the Cat-Skin falls from their body and one of the many skins disappears. The adventurer retains human intelligence and it is up to you if they can talk. The Polymorph can only be animals stitched into the cloak and must be native to the area of play. For example, it would be really odd if the setting was 1600s England and the player tried to reason they should polymorph into a dragon. However, if this was a fantasy setting near a mountain where a dragon lived, then why the hell not?
The Cat-Skin is seeking vengeance. It was created from black magic and now the souls of all of the animals used to create it cry out for release and punishment of the one who hunted them. The Cat-Skin allows the wearer to identify those that have committed a crime, in what way is down to you, however it does not say what the crime is or the motive. The Cat-Skin is unforgiving and cares not for explanations or excuses, only for justice.
It requires a host to function and wearing the Cat-Skin creates a euphoric feeling in the wearer. They become addicted to the poly-morph effect. If the owner of the Cat-Skin dies or gifts it to someone else, it moves on to the next host.
The Cat-Skin can only be destroyed by the King who created it, his blood or bloodlines blood (acting as a poison) or someone wearing the Meat-Coat.
The King
The King is a twisted individual with a thirst for power and a desperate need to torment others under the justification that they "deserved it". When his beautiful wife began to die as a result of his dabbling in black magic, he was driven mad with the desire to cure her. With no success, he turned to demons for help. Unfortunately, this only caused his wife to suffer a prolonged death. Aware that some other poor woman would end up marrying him she pretended to curse him, making him swear he would not marry anyone unless she was more beautiful than her which she thought, in her vanity, would be impossible. The King reasoned that his daughter was the only woman more beautiful than the Queen and set about attempting to force her to marry him.
The King has punished the three maid who released Fauve by forcing them to wear the dresses that he crafted on Cat-Skin's request before they helped her flee. Each dress has a distinct power and causes the wearer to do the King's dark bidding.
The King rules through fear and power. He pays off witch hunters, sends dark entities after his rivals and has lost all interest in caring for the masses. He wants Fauve retrieved for marriage and the dreaded Cat-Skin destroyed. He is not aware they are the same person; instead, convinced the Cat-Skin came alive of its own accord.
Once Fauve left, whatever may have held The King back from true butchery was gone and he crafted The Meat-Coat to protect him from Cat-Skin. Without the Meat-Coat, he is a low-level magic user. With the Meat-Coat, he is a high-level magic user.
Meat-Coat
The unfortunate sibling of the Cat-Skin, The Meat-Coat is a response to Fauve's escape with her symbiotic animal furs. The Meat-Coat contains a majority of The King's power and is composed of many human faces stitched into a coat. Their eyes still move, wide with agony. Their mouths form words but they make no sound.
Ones per day the Meat-Coat allows the user to Polymorph Self into any human whose face has been sewn onto the coat. The Polymoph will allow the use of one spell or skill boost (e.g. Specialist with 3 points in stealth) of that person. The player has a 1 in 6 chance of being possessed by one of the souls trapped in the Meat-Coat when this is used.
The Meat-Coat gives a benefit in favour of the wearer for Save vs. Magic or to any roll required to cast a spell. The Meat-Skin was crafted through darker magic and there may even be one or two demonic faces stitched in. The voices and demands of the victims of the Meat-Coat fill the mind of the wearer and compel them to commit further acts of mutilation and terror, all in an effort to drive the wearer into dedicating their soul to the dark forces that crafted it.
Like the Cat-Skin, the Meat-Coat is a symbiotic creature. The Meat-Coat can only be destroyed by the King who created it, his blood or bloodlines blood (acting as a poison) or someone wearing the Cat-Skin.
The Three Dresses
The Three Maids were all captured by the King. Displeased by their assistance in the escape of Fauve and the Cat-Skin from the tower, the King forced all three into the twisted dresses that he crafted for Fauve. Each dress enslaves their bodies to the will of the King, their voices and mouths are their own; however each dress causes a compulsion in the women to obey even to the point of murder. They will try their best to assist the players as best they can, should they not be used as weapons or instructed not to by the King.
Fauve will want to free them, but the removal of the dresses may result in death. The Cat-Skin will want the players to keep the women in the dresses and instruct them to help it carry out vengeance on those that have wronged them; not realising that this is an evil act. The Meat-Coat will want the players to add the women's faces to its arsenal and use the dresses on new victims or themselves.
These dresses are bound to The King and anyone wearing it must follow his, the wearer of the Meat Coat or the Cat-Skin's orders or they will suffer crippling pain and terrible visions (Make this a Save vs. Magic roll for taking damage). Taking the dress off requires a Save vs. Magic, if they fail the wearer dies. A Save vs. Magic is then required when putting the dress on to see if the wearer can survive joining with the dress.
The Dress of Stars allows the wearer to cast summoning based spells, The Dress of Feathers allows the caster to cast any bird or flying related spell, and the Dress of Gold allows the wearer to cast any spells that involve physical buffs or additions to combat rolls. Only one spell can be picked and cast per day, but this could be at any level.
It may be best to compose a table of spells for each dress and have the player wearing the dress roll to see what they end up with to stop players using a level fifteen spell by default each day.
Other Nods to the Fairy-Tale
- You may have the cook as a villain or a helpful NPC during the adventure who would know that Cat-Skin is Fauve and Vice Versa. The soup could be a trap.
- You may have the bodies of those who attended the "rescuing" princes ball in one of the rooms in the palace, with the prince himself having been murdered and displayed.
- You may include a letter or confession by The Queen who died
- You may include a ball that the players need to attend in order to gain information or assist their chosen quest giver, this may be the way the players gain entry into the well guarded palace
Have Fun!
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