Monsterhearts 2 Skin - The Ghoul v0.5

Death changed you. It took away your contemplative joy, it dulled your senses, and it left you impossibly hungry. That hunger is always with you, like a hum in your ears that swells and crescendos until you can’t hear anything else. Unattended, it will come to dominate you - but feeding it may be just as bad.

There is a certain beauty to what you’ve become. Your gaunt body, its unnatural form - it draws people in. Your stark disinterest is beguiling. But underneath that disaffected presentation - the hunger, the hunger.

Identity

Your Backstory

Someone reminded you what love was, when you thought that death had stolen it away from you forever. Give them a String.

Darkest Self

Your dull hunger sharpens. You can’t focus on anything else but feeding. And in addition to your peculiar cravings, you recognize something else. That primordial hunger which connects all hungers. Flesh, blood, meat. You escape your Darkest Self once you’ve overindulged, or you’ve been locked out for long enough to regain composure.

Harm

Conditions

Stats

Choose one stat set
Hot -1 Cold 1 Volatile 2 Dark -1, OR
Hot -1 Cold 2 Volatile -1 Dark 1

Hot

Cold

Volatile

Dark

Ghoul Moves

You get The Hunger, and choose two more

The Hunger: You have a Hunger for (circle 1):

When you heedlessly pursue a Hunger, add 1 to rolls. When you ignore a promising feeding opportunity, roll to Keep Your Cool.

What the Right Hand Wants: Your body contains many histories, and it desires many things. Create another Hunger.

Satiety: When you satiate a Hunger, choose one:

heal 1 Harm;
mark Experience;
take 1 Forward.

Short Rest for the Wicked: When you die, wait it out. A few hours later, you wake up fully healed.

Watchful Golem: When you defend someone without them ever knowing about it, mark experience.

Ending: You remember every detail of your death. When you tell someone about it, give them the Condition morbid and roll to Turn Them On with Cold.

Esprit de Corpse: When you Gaze Into the Abyss, the abyss will share with you its Hunger. Treat that Hunger as one of your own until you satiate it, and mark experience when you do so.

Sex Move

Playing The Ghoul

Obsessive, dangerous, morbid, and quiet. The Ghoul is constantly contending with voracious Hunger, and the emotional distance brought on by death makes it easier to do bad things in pursuit of feeding. They might be a flesh-eating zombie, or something a little more subtle and strange.

The two stat choices for the Ghoul paint a portrait of the character as either cruel and erratic (Volatile 2 & Cold 1) or disaffected and portentous (Cold 2 & Dark 1). Since The Hunger forces you to Keep Your Cool to avoid a feeding opportunity, your Cold stat plays a pivotal role in maintaining self-control.

Watchful Golem and Esprit de Corpse both present the ability to steer the Ghoul in a couple different directions. Are you watching over others out of a deep-rooted but unexpressed sense of care? Or are you skulking around serving them because death took away your sense of independence?

Short Rest For the Wicked is a recipe for pandemonium. It’s also an invitation to the MC to frame you into a new, dramatic situation. A lot can happen in a few hours.

Your Sex Move prompts you to create a new Hunger. It can be anything you like, and it’s added to your character alongside their existing Hungers. If you have sex often, you’ll find your appetite growing wider and weirder all the time.