read the odyssesy for class. sirens!
No one has ever sailed
his black ship past here
Without listening to the honeyed
sound from our lips.
He journeys on delighted
and knows more than before.
For we know everything
that the Greeks and Trojans
Suffered in wide Troy
by the will of the gods.
We know all that happens
on the teeming earth.
-the odyssey, stanley lombardo tl.
and who loves knowledge more than our players?
1. THE APPROACH
the sirens--always two or three--are perched in a Hard to Reach Spot. a small rocky island in the middle of the sea. a narrow outcropping on an unforgiving cliff. at the bottom of a deep pit with smooth walls. hard to reach, but close enough that anyone who passes by can hear the singing. they are surrounded by bodies, mostly untouched, rotting.¹ the heads are cracked open, emptied of brain-matter. anyone charmed takes the most direct path to them, no matter the harm they'll suffer in doing so. the players will have to find another way.
they are easy to avoid, with the proper precautions. as circe warned odyssesus of the trials ahead of him, the players have been forewarned of the sirens' presence. it is tradition. there's no save to resist their singing. if a player hears it, they're charmed. they were warned.
the choice lies with the players. do they ignore the sirens? or is the risk worth the potential reward?
2. THE PUZZLE
the players will need to capture a siren. they are never alone. they are hard to reach. they cannot be starved. they can fly.
then comes the hard part.
- sirens cannot read or write.
- they will need to ask their question.
- they will need to hear the answer.
- if a player can hear the siren it will immediately attempt to charm them.
if the siren is tortured it begins to cry. if the siren is kept trapped for too long, it begins to cry. the players must ask their questions, then kill it, or let it go.
the cry of a siren is the opposite of its singing. it is a repulsive, unearthly, wretched sound. imagine the cries of a newborn child and the death screams of a horse and a gurgling, hissing, howling, and a hundred times worse than these. have the players save vs. fear. hirelings and minions fail automatically. the sound carries, much farther than its singing.
the cry of a siren attracts more sirens, as well as any monsters horrible enough to find the sound pleasant.²
 |
| artist is me. |
who could blame the players for ignoring the siren? it is a difficult thing, obtaining its knowledge.
3. THE REWARD
what could be worth this trouble?
sirens know everything.
everything.
they are born with the totality of knowledge in their heads. what they don't have are the experiences to contextualize it, the associations born from gaining knowledge the normal way. the siren knows what socks you wore three and a half months ago in the same way a kitten knows how to unsheath its claws, in the same way man knows what food is rotted by smell and taste. everything is known--nothing is understood.
they eat brains to harvest this understanding, this context. the more brains a siren as eaten, the more effectively it can charm a listener.
the players find this out through research--it is well known, but not widely known. or the sirens tell them, in their song: "we can tell you anything you wanna know, just come here real quick we won't eat your brain promise."
they can ask who the local baron's secret masters are, or where the great hoard of the dreadpirate lies--anything that could be known about the world! just not stuff about the future.
sirens!!!
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1. in the Odyssey, it's noted that the bodies around them are "shriveled and moldering," suggesting they don't acutally eat the bodies. sirens are mythological creatures (see this post), perils rather than actual organisms. if you want something you can fit in an ecology, use harpies for birdiness and mermaids for charminess.
2. a friend on a discord server helped me figure this one out. wanted to discourage torture cuz i strongly dislike torture in rpgs. change it if you want, but you have to limit the players ability to question the siren in some way or the game trivializes. @GoldRasputin on twitter. thanks a million dude!
