Cataclysm-DDA
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[Xedra Evolved] Add playable Lilin with appropriate scenario
Summary
Mods "[Xedra Evolved] Add playable Lilin with appropriate scenario"
Purpose of change
You might be familiar with Lilith as a name used for a hot demon lady villain in fantasy works, or maybe as the first wife of Adam. Those are later stories.
Originally, the lilin (possibility cognate with the Akkadian lilu or lilitu) were night-spirits who brought disease and death. Tractate Shabbat in the Talmud mentions that you should never sleep alone in a house because you will be "seized by Lilith." The first known mention is in Isaiah 34:14, which reads:
And the wild-cats shall meet with the jackals, And the [sa'ir] shall cry to his fellow; Yea, the [lilit] shall repose there, And shall find her a place of rest.
sa'ir means "goat," but it's also a kind of wilderness demon. Lilit is sometimes translated as "screech owl" but also as "vampire" or "night monster," but the Hebrew is "lilit."
Anyway, the upshot of all this is I had the idea for a kind of psychic vampire that doesn't need to drink blood and isn't undead, for a similar-but-different playstyle to blood vampires, and thought I'd lean into my own people's mythology. With the connection to owls, the night, and the moon, I think I can make things different from blood vampires.
Describe the solution
Add the "Owl's Abode" scenario, allowing you to play a Lilit. You can and must drain ruach (Hebrew: "breath, spirit") from living targets to survive. Animals give you barely any, humans (and demihumans) give you more, aliens give you a random amount, and Nether creatures either have a surfeit of it or suck it out of you when you try to drain them. Running out will not directly kill you, but the wasting sickness that gets worse the longer you go without ruach probably will lead to your death if you don't feed again.
Theoretically you could kill them with it, but you'd need to have them tied up somewhere to do it because they'll almost certainly run away first. This PR does not include feeding from NPC followers but that will go in.
Lilin powers:
- [X] Feeding by touch and later at range
- [X] Strength, Dexterity/Dodge, and Perception buffs
- [X] Night vision
- [X] Speed boost power
- [X] Summoning fog
- [X] Transformation into a owl (sadly with inappropriate sprite because there are no owls in the game)
- [X] Preternatural beauty
- [X] Passive ~~stat~~limb score buffs at night
- [X] Immunity to disease
That might be enough for one PR since I have to put in a system for gaining these powers. Future powers include inflicting disease on enemies (including zombies, these are supernatural diseases), an owl-human hybrid "war form", beguiling humans briefly, eternal youth, self-healing, Invisibility at night during the half-, quarter-, and new moon, blinding people under the moonlight, and more stuff.
Also, vampires are more chill with Lilin than with ordinary humans. Homullus are much less chill with them. Lilin are immune to vampirism.
I also fixed a bug with damage-type-causing EoCs, used because Lilin ruach draining does biological damage.
Describe alternatives you've considered
Testing
Ruach gaining works, various powers work, advancement under the moonlight works, running out of ruach applies ra'ab, ra'ab goes up the longer you remain out of ruach.
Out of scope for this PR, but I did find a problem with NPCs. Here's the starting shelter NPC:
My idea was that repeated draining lowers trust and raises fear, and that part works. The problem is that NPCs apparently do not care--despite viewing me as the walking embodiment of the Cataclysm itself, the shelter NPC was happy to ask me to do a quest for them and perfectly willing to talk to me.
I tried to set up "flee" or "insult_combat" at particular thresholds but neither of them worked. They may require actual dialogue, not just EoCs.
In contrast, monsters do have lowered morale when repeatedly drained of ruach and will eventually run away.
Additional context
Do you know how long I had to look to find an actual anti-Lilit amulet to put on my daughter's crib that wasn't just a picture of Lilith as a hot demon lady?
A long time.