The Tragedy of Thing-tan

The following article is a /tg/ related story or fanfic. Should you continue, expect to find tl;dr and an occasional amount of awesome.

The Tragedy of Thing-tan is a story about a Thing-like rogue who survives by absorbing the flesh of sentients. The story was inspired by another anon mentioning a totally-not-The-Thing rogue in a "unexpected weird shit in your campaigns" thread, people started arguing about the morality of a creature that must consume sentient beings to survive, especially if she would rather not eat anyone at all, or if she came to care about the people whose faces she wore. The author initially wrote one short story, but then was inspired to write two more, and then two possible endings of the story of the Thing and the Paladin. The author described the endings as one good and one bad, leaving it to the reader to decide which was which.

Part 1

One of the things Danika taught me is how to navigate the backroads of this town. She learned the secret passages and hidden cul de sacs through bitter experience, running messages for the local gangs. It was her part time job, something to do after work for a bit of extra coin. A barmaid could escape the town watch's notice in ways that the more infamous gangers couldn't. It wasn't her full time job, but it was enough to earn the money for her mother's treatment: Pelor's faithful can cure disease with a touch - or with the contents of a bottle - but the Gods' favors didn't come cheap. For a peasant girl's family, sickness can kill, and the cure can seem as unattainable as a dragon's hoard.

I have the cure in my pouch now. I'm running through these backroads towards my - no, Danika's home. One last stop before I leave town. They've come for me again. The crew of adventurers; the Paladin and the Wizard, and the Druid that I thought I could have formed a real connection with. They killed my friends when they found out what I was. They called me an abomination. They said I murdered the last girl, the one whose name I wore like my own, but am already starting to forget. My name is Danika now. It has been since I consumed her to hide from them. When I embraced her flesh into my own I took her memories too; her love for the busboy that works late at the bar, her fear of spiders, her duty towards her sick mother that led her to flaunt the law. In the months that I wore her skin, I finished the work she began. I saved up the money for mother's cure. It's my kindness to honor the memory of the woman I've become.

I come to the end of the alleyway and there's my - Danika's - house. They're already there, waiting for me. The Paladin is consoling my mother, telling her that I - Danika - is dead. That I - the monster - consumed me and has been pretending to be me. Mother is crying. I stare in silence for a long time.

I hate them. I HATE them! They ruined everything again! I could have been happy here, and mother would never have known. I've gotten better at being the people I embrace into myself. The tics and mannerisms from the others stop bleeding through. I could have actually had a life - a real life. I could have been a person!

I feel my skin peeling away as my anger rises. My tendrils burst out from ripping flesh. My teeth sharpen. My eyes narrow into insectile slits. I want to do what I did last time - when I killed the Fighter from their damned party. I want to let the monster out and destroy everything. Maybe then they'll just leave me alone!

But Mother would be hurt if I did that. I can't let mother be hurt. So I pull the monster back and wrap myself in Danika again and do my best to grow calm. Instead I sneak up to my - her - doorstep - I'm very quiet, and nobody can see me if I don't want them to - and leave the cure and the note - the one apologizing and explaining that Danika lives on within me, that she isn't lonely, that she is surrounded by a legion of loving sisters - at the door. And then, using Danika's knowledge of the city's backroads, which she so graciously taught me, I leave.

The next town awaits a day's journey away. A new identity. A second chance. Maybe this time I'll get it right. I'm trying. I'm trying so hard to be good. Why won't they let me?

Part 2

One of the things Annabelle taught me is how to hide in plain sight. Before she joined Pelor’s clergy, she had lived the city’s slums, working the streets every night under the auspices of a cruel Dwarven slavemaster named Orik. Orik had a love of drink that went beyond even a Dwarf’s pathological affection, and a mean temper that liquor stoked to murderous. Annabelle saw many of her sisters lose an ear, nose, or worse to Orik’s temper – often over the most basic of slights, and sometimes over nothing at all. She couldn’t run, so she learned to make herself small. To be right in front of Orik, but to be overlooked in favor of a less fortunate target. When I found her, she had managed to escape the Dwarf, who was still looking for her, by joining the clergy. Her faith was insincere at first, but it grew honest with time. As the saying goes, she faked it until she made it.

She was – is – like me in that sense. When I embraced her flesh into mine, became her, I assumed her duties at the church. She worked as a nursemaid, and each time a sick patient gave praise to Pelor in thanks for her – for my – ministrations, I felt her emotions swell with a confused sort of joy. Part of it was the simple pleasure at doing her duty, at spreading the faith – the other part is a strange sort of guilt at this pleasure. She – I – still remember a time when the psalms I – she – read were insincere and so it feels wrong to have acquired a genuine joy at reading them now. Can a fake emotion really become real? Can a fake person?

For these past months in hiding, I struggled with that question; just as Annabelle’s faith was a fake thing turned real, so was my affection for the women I consumed – became. At first they were my victims – meat to sate my hunger, and I feigned empathy for them to better pass among them. And yet, over time…

The old me wouldn’t have cared about preserving Annabelle’s life after I consumed her. The old me certainly wouldn’t have tracked down Orik to sate Annabelle’s guilt at leaving so many of her friends behind when she fled his “service.” Instead, the new me used Annabelle’s skills to follow Orik back to his new base of operations one day after passing him in a marketplace. I didn’t even need to hide – I made myself small and he didn’t care to notice me.

After I devoured his biomass, I spat out his memories and essence like a bad applecore. I could use his flesh to keep Annabelle intact, but I didn’t want his evil thoughts fouling up my memories. The old me wouldn’t have cared. Nor would the old me have gone from there and freed those dirty frightened girls from his warehouse. And when the one-eared Elf girl, my – Annabelle’s - best friend, Celty embraced me gratefully, the old me would have simply devoured her and everyone else in the warehouse.

But I must have faked it long enough. I must have “made it” because when Celty hugged me tight and asked why I came back, I simply smiled with Annabelle’s lips and, with real warmth in my voice, replied “Just keeping the faith, sister.”

Part 3

Annabelle taught me to hide in plain sight. And, when They came for me again that skill paid off. One day, The Paladin strode into the Church and approached me with a grim, set jaw and eyes full of righteous purpose. He looked me right in the eye. For a moment I felt the monster lurch beneath my skin in anger and fear. I was sure that he could see right through Annabelle’s skin. I was sure that I would soon lose the life I had built yet again.

But he didn’t see me. I was small. Beneath his notice. He simply asked me politely to speak with the high priest of the church. That he had urgent business. I fetched my – Annabelle’s – superior in a daze. My confusion deepened when I listened in on their urgent conversation – I was so beneath notice that they did not even dismiss me. He and the high priest spoke in hushed, urgent tones. There was a monster in the city, The Paladin said, a monster wearing human skin. It could blend in almost perfectly with the populace, and, until it fed, would never betray a hint of its presence. It could even be in this very church and they would have no way to know. Already six girls had gone missing in the last month. Devoured by the creature.

There was just one problem: I hadn’t fed on any girls this past month. I slaked my need for biomass devouring the slavers and flesh-peddlers that Orik had been working for. The loss of these criminals – if it had even gone noticed at all, must have been seen as a boon for the city, because the Paladin didn’t even mention them. Instead he named each of the missing women, most of whom I had met only briefly as they came to the church for confession or services. There was one, however, who stood out; one whom I hadn’t seen in two weeks. The sound of her name among the list of victims stabbed through me as painfully as the Paladin’s sword had during our last battle: Celty.

I stumbled away and into a private room just in time. It took almost ten minutes to withdraw the monster back beneath Annabelle’s skin; to pull my barbed tendrils back beneath my flesh and to shrink my teeth back to normal. By the time I had composed myself enough to return to my duties, the Paladin was gone, leaving me with questions.

The old me would have been thrilled at the Paladin’s news: there was another like me in this city. Another lonely creature without a name of its own. The old me would have wanted to meet it. Befriend it. Warn it of the men hunting it.

But the new me, Annabelle, felt only anger. There was a monster loose in my city, hurting my friends. I had to do something about it.

Annabelle taught me to hide in plain sight. And, as I followed Them in their hunt for my Cousin, that skill proved invaluable. As they consoled the victims’ relatives, questioned witnesses, and, eventually, discovered the grisly evidence of my Cousin’s feeding, they never cared to notice the plainly-dressed girl always lurking about in the background.

They found my Cousin’s last meal in an abandoned warehouse by the docks. The warehouse, used to store fishing supplies, was painted the grisly red of a charnel house, half-devoured bodies laid open from stem to sternum, insides hollowed out of the precious biomass, the rest of their flesh left to rot in the heat. I was among the crowd of horrified onlookers as The Paladin forced the door to the warehouse open. Like the rest, I recoiled at the sudden stench and haze of flies that billowed out from the open door. Unlike the others, I did not shield my eyes from the sight. I was too busy fighting to keep the monster down. Fighting to hide my rage. Celty was among these bodies – I could see her lying atop the grisly pile. What was left of her face was twisted in a look of horror and agony. She had been alive when My Cousin fed on her.

Annabelle’s anger was different from the monster’s anger. The former, my human side, was driven to rage at the sight of her friend in such a state. The latter, my “true” side, was appalled at the cruelty – the sloppiness – My Cousin displayed. When I embraced Annabelle, Danika, and all of the others, they never felt pain. They never even noticed the transition. I simply held them in a loving embrace and then they were gone – a part of me and my legion of sisters. Even my earliest victims – and those first few were, to my shame, victims – did not suffer. It was always over quickly. Always done with the urgency of necessity. My Cousin, on the other hand, had taken its time – it had enjoyed every bite of its meals.

My Cousin’s sloppiness extended beyond the way it fed. It concealed its presence like a child playing hide-and-seek. The skin it had chosen to wear was that of a fisherman’s daughter. The daughter of the very fisherman who owned the warehouse. I followed Them, part of the torch-bearing mob that bore down on my cousin’s hiding place. But when The Paladin told the crowd to disperse, I did not. Annabelle taught me how to hide in plain sight, but my years playing at being the “Rogue” in a party of adventurers taught me to hide in the shadows.

From these shadows, I watched Them confront My Cousin, thinking it was me. I watched my Cousin explode out of the pretty, unassuming skin it had wrapped itself in into a writhing mass of tendrils, spikes, and teeth. I watched it battle Them viciously, tearing apart homes, trees, and any civilians unfortunate enough to be within a block’s radius of the battle.

I watched them lose the battle against my Cousin. I could easily have slipped away. I could easily have gone back to the church and resumed my life as Annabelle. I could have tended to the wounded from this battle, administered last rites to the fallen, mourned my dead friends, and then, after burying The Paladin and his crew, been free –finally free – to live my life.

The old me would have done just that. Instead, I leapt from the safety of my hiding place just in time to seize a writhing mass of thorny tendrils my Cousin had whipped towards the injured Paladin. I felt Annabelle’s skin rip away from the effort as the monster burst forth. I felt myself changing into my “true” self as I spun my Cousin through the air and hurled it into a burning building. I was able to pull some of Annabelle back over myself as I turned to face the Paladin, but not enough to hide. My full glory was on display for all to see. The Paladin struggled to stand, staring at my dumbfounded. When I spoke, my voice was half Annabelle’s, half the monster’s. “Evacuate the neighborhood before it gets back up,” I said. “This will be messy.”

After the battle, I pulled the tatters of Annabelle around me. There was barely enough left of her to conceal the monster. My Cousin was worse, writhing in mewling pain beneath my boot. Around us, the city burned, homes reduced to rubble, the streets slicked with blood and biomass from us, and from my Cousin’s victims. My Cousin’s features writhed, shifting haphazardly between the faces of those it had devoured and, by some cruel joke of Pelor, settled on Celty’s face when it finally managed to speak.

“Cousin,” it croaked, “Why?”

“Because you hurt them,” I said, grinding my boot into its chest to the sound of a wet crack and a squeal of agony. I bent down and seized my Cousin by the throat, lifting the writhing mass of tendrils and flesh into the air. “I love them. And I am going to take them back from you.”

I devoured My Cousin whole, bringing its victims into me, pulling the souls of Celty and the rest from its cold, thorny flesh, into the warm embrace of my sisterhood. I could feel Celty's joy at being reunited with Annabelle fill me, her relief at becoming part of something vast and great. At never having to be alone again. My wounds stitched closed, and the monster withdrew beneath my new skin, that of an Elf that looked not unlike a child of Annabelle and Celty might. I felt stronger than before, even after I spat out my Cousin's essence like a bad applecore.

The Paladin and his party had returned at some point during our battle. They surrounded me, swords drawn, eyes filled with disgust and fear. I was restored, resplendent, and they were injured badly. It would have been a moment's effort to finish them off and be free of their pursuit. The old me would have killed them all without a thought.

Instead I looked the Paladin in the eye. For the first time, I think, he truly saw me. "Do you really want to do this?" I asked plainly. He stood in silence, struggling to keep his sword arm aloft despite the blood loss.

"No," he said finally, sheathing his sword. "Not today." And he stepped aside. "But another day."

I could have killed him then and been free. Instead I walked past him, out of the city that I had saved. The next town was a day's journey away. A new life. Another second chance. Maybe this one would finally be different. I think it just might be. I had learned something from Annabelle that I had not learned before; something more than hiding in plain sight. I had learned to have faith; to have mercy. I had learned how to be good.

End 1

The Paladin finally catches up to me twenty years after our last encounter. He finds me because I let him find me. Ever since I devoured my cousin, I had gotten better at being my victims. I would choose carefully, devouring a new life once every few years, eating the biomass, but not the souls, of criminals to sustain myself in the interim. I always chose those I felt could teach me something. I would live their lives for as long as I could before something went wrong. Once, I spent so much time as one person – a maiden of a minor noble house named Alina – that I almost forgot who I truly was. I had almost convinced myself that this time I could be her for good. That this time nothing would go wrong.

Something always, always went wrong.

Alina’s house is a crumbling, deserted wreck. The farmlands around it have been vacated. The locals believe them to be cursed now. They burned the entire village nearly to the ground, salted the earth, and left the shell of the manor to rot. I’m waiting in my – Alina’s – bedchamber when the Paladin quietly enters. I’m holding a tattered portrait of Alina – of me – and of her new husband. A bright-eyed squire of a minor noble house. A young man whose honor was eclipsed only by his tenderness. A man who dreamed of being a Paladin not unlike the man who has been my shadow for the past two decades. A man whom Alina had loved, and who I in turn loved after I became her.

“He wanted a child,” I say, half to the portrait and half to the Paladin. “I could do everything else I needed to do: I could make myself seem to age. I could feed so infrequently that nobody even noticed when I went on my ‘sojourns’. I could even keep all of the others…all of those countless voices screaming in my head…happy enough to not interfere.”

“But you couldn’t create life,” The Paladin says, almost tenderly.

“No,” I say. “I can do anything else with life. I can shape it. I can devour it. I can preserve it forever. But I can’t create it.”

“He had the means to have barrenness cured,” The Paladin says.

“And when those spells failed, the means to test why,” I say. I feel like I want to cry, but my eyes don’t produce tears unless I tell them to. “The means to find out what was really going on.”

“He confronted you,” The Paladin says. I begin to understand what is going on now. This is my confession. Despite all that we’ve been through, he knows me well enough to see that my faith is real. That I need absolution in the eyes of Pelor.

“He said I stole her from him. That I stole the life that he and his wife could have had. The child they would have given birth to,” I’m whimpering now. I want him – I want them, the people inside of me, to understand. “I wanted to make him understand. I wanted to show him that I didn’t steal anything. That I was…that I AM Alina. And Danika. And Annabelle. And…and…and all of them.”

“You devoured him,” The Paladin says.

“I had never done that before,” I say. “I had never consumed someone who knew one of my…my victims. I had never experienced the pain of losing a loved one to me firsthand. Or the horror of realizing that the woman you loved isn’t…isn’t really her. Not until I consumed him.”

“You’ve been starving yourself,” he says.

“I can’t do it anymore,” I whisper. “I love your kind. I love all of you so, so much. I can’t put anybody else through that kind of pain. It’s killing me.” I look at him. His eyes are sad. His hair has turned gray and he is so much smaller than the towering giant I was once afraid of. I could snap his brittle, old bones into pieces with a flick of my wrist, but I don’t want to. I only want one thing from him now.

“Am I a monster?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “A monster wouldn’t have saved my life twenty years ago. A monster wouldn’t have fought that dragon, or closed that demonic portal, or destroyed those slavers. You’ve paid for each of your sins in full. No, you’re no monster. You’re just…”

“Lonely,” I say. “I’m so lonely.”

His sword makes barely a whisper as it leaves the sheathe. “You don’t need to be lonely anymore, my lady,” he says. “Are you ready?” I nod and bow my head. I recite Pelor’s prayer of absolution and, inside of me, I feel a thousand voices join in. I close my eyes and see them all looking back at me. My victims. My family.

Soon we’ll all be at peace. Soon we won’t need to run anymore.

I just wanted to be good.

End 2

The Paladin catches up to me twenty years after our last encounter. He finds me because I let him find me. Ever since I devoured my cousin, I had gotten better at being my victims. I would choose carefully, devouring a new life once every few years, eating the biomass, but not the souls, of criminals to sustain myself in the interim. I would choose my new lives from those who needed me; the destitute, the hopeless, the lonely. I chose them because they needed to be loved in the way that only I can love. I chose them because they needed saving. Once they became a part of me, I would live their lives for many years, setting their affairs in order, building them a legacy, and then, when the new voice inside of me felt satisfied, I would move on.

Over the decades my family grew, and The Paladin, he never stopped hunting me. But he didn’t find me; I had become so good at hiding that tracking me down became impossible.

And then, one day, I didn’t need to hide anymore. One day, my newest sister came to me. She was a scholar of the arcane and divine both, a faithful of Pelor, like myself, and a mind brilliant enough to find the truth about me when nobody else in the world could.

But she came to me broken; she had lost her daughter to my cousin. The girl had been among the first devoured in that awful incident so many years ago, and her life had been a hollow shell ever since. She blamed herself; she and her daughter, they hadn’t even been from that city. She was there for a conference at the arcane college and she had left her child alone to play while she was buried in her research. By the time she heard what was happening, the battle had already been hours over, my cousin long since devoured, her child embraced into my growing sisterhood. Like the Paladin, she’d spent the decades since then tracking me down. Unlike him, it was not to destroy me, but to be consumed by me; to join her lost child after so many years of loneliness.

I’m wearing her skin and sitting patiently in my temple as the Paladin enters. His armor is ragged and his hair is grey. His muscles have grown lean and wirey and his eyes have a hollow, haunted look about them. He no longer wears his holy symbol. His sword is drawn.

“I found you,” he snarls, “Devourer, abomination, I finally found you.”

“You did,” I say gently. “And what has brought you here?”

“You know why I’m here!” he barks, taking a heavy step towards me. “You may have fooled the others, but not me! I know what you really are!”

“I could snap your brittle old bones in half with a flick of my wrist,” I tell him matter-of-factly. He tenses and I smile. “I won’t, but you know I could. If you are here to kill me, I will not resist…I don’t hurt good men…but before you strike I insist that you sit across from me and tell me why you are still so intent on it after all of these years.”

He snarls, but obeys. He sits across from me, just out of arm’s reach, clutching his sword to his lap. Behind me is a mural bearing an exaggerated depiction of my image…a gentle, motherly figure in a white shawl with hundreds of arms and a dozen gentle faces. He glowers at the icon in contempt. “That’s why,” he says. “That old thing? Well, it’s a bit grandiose, but in my defense I didn’t paint it,” I say.

“Don’t mock me!” he yells. “You know what I mean!”

“You mean my church,” I say quietly.

“Your CHURCH,” he spits the word. “Your CULT, you mean. My superiors may recognize your ludicrous title of ‘All-Mother’, they may call this blasphemous charnel house a legitimate offshoot of the Church, but I know better! You’ve done nothing but dupe people into being your meals. Herding desperate folk into your gaping maw!”

“It wasn’t my idea,” I remind him, “It was hers,” I gesture to the body of the woman who gave me the idea to found this church, the woman I am now wearing. “And I do not advertise. Nor do I coerce. People come to me of their own free well. The broken. The lonely. I give them solace. I give them a way to lend their lives to further a just cause.”

“And besides,” I gently add before he can speak, “The Church of Pelor…you are no longer affiliated with them, are you?”

He chokes back a curse but shakes his head.

“Tell me what happened,” I say gently, “And then you may strike.”

“Are you trying to give me Confession!?”

“I wouldn’t presume,” I say. “I only want to understand the man who has been such a crucial part of my life. I only want to know what drives you to hate me so much.”

“…I was sure that you had devoured that little girl,” he manages, his words a broken whimper.

“I was so certain that you were wearing her skin as your disguise. I couldn’t…I couldn’t risk you escaping a third time!”

“But I wasn’t ‘wearing her’ was I?”

“No,” he says.

“She was innocent, wasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“And you killed her,” I say reaching out to touch him. He recoils.

“I thought it was you. It was supposed to be you!”

“I’m sorry,” I say. It hurts to see such a noble man reduced to this. I once hated him. I once would have relished seeing him broken and desperate as I once was. But that was the old me. That was the person I have not been for decades. “I’m sorry you fell. I’m sorry the church did what they did. If I had known I would have come forward to defend you.”

He’s silent for a long time, gripping his sword tightly. I’m not sure if he intends to strike or not, but if he does I won’t stop him. Perhaps that will give him some comfort.

“I know you would have,” he says finally, letting the sword fall. “I was so sure that you were a monster…”

“I was,” I say. “But people can change. They just need the chance to learn. They just need someone who loves them enough to teach them.”

He says nothing.

“What did you really come here for?” I ask.

“It’s been five years since I killed that poor girl,” he says. “Five years, and nobody has given me shelter or succor. Five years and my brothers still spit on me. Five years and I am still beyond forgiveness.”

“It must have been lonely,” I say. This time he lets me touch his cheek. Each line etched into his face shows the weight of time and loneliness. I am beyond both of those things.

And I know why he has come to me now. “Is this what you really want, old friend?” I ask tenderly.

“Yes,” he whispers. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

I wrap my arms around him and embrace him into my family. His memories wash over me with such force that I am almost knocked flat. Decades of pain, isolation, obsession, guilt. Loneliness of such totality that it almost blackens the bright core of virtue at the heart of this man. Almost. As my brothers and sisters welcome him into the fold with open arms, I feel the loneliness dissolve, leaving only his faith, which burns throughout my being with the heat of the morning sun. I feel myself grow stronger than I had ever imagined possible. Together, he and I can do anything. Together we will accomplish miracles.

Together, we are both finally free.

External Links

• The (archived) original thread. The actual Thing-tan stories start at posts 24630117, 24648104, 24648500, and 24659752.