Friday, September 22, 2017

GAMING STRANGE TALES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO 5: TALKING PUPILS

I have been making NPCs, monsters and scenarios inspired by Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. For each entry I take two or more stories from the Penguin Edition translated by John Minford and make gameable material.

Today I am doing Talking Pupils (#5). This is an amusing story about a man who gawks at a highborn lady, to have one her servants throw sand in his eyes. Over the next several days, he develops a thick film over his pupil and goes blind. He then seeks comfort in meditation and approaches serenity. One day he hears voices in his head and two tiny figures emerge from nostril. They seem to have grown from the grains of sand and eventually remove the plaque from one of his eyes, enabling him to see. 

KARMIC SAND
This looks like ordinary sand but when thrown at a person it afflicts them with a Flaw in keeping to their most egregious wrong committed in the last year. A person who was lying goes mute, a person who ran off with someone else's property may lose the use of their legs, a person who deceives another may grow incredibly dim-witted. This can only be removed when the wrong has been corrected ten times over. 

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