Cloudex

The Slow Mimic

I started thinking about mimics while finishing a side-quest in Final Fantasy XIV last night.1 The quest deals with a shapeshifter whose magic is tied to the legend of a butterfly that would change shapes to flummox people. Like a lot of FFXIV, the lore or backstory was ultimately more interesting than the questline itself, and I found myself thinking about a monster that can spin a cocoon and, upon emerging, looking like someone or something else. A Slow Mimic - a doppelganger that takes time to become someone else.

Visually, I think there's something here. You are a thief, so desperate or so emboldened that you have headed into the dungeon. The first trip goes well, as you find a nice stash of ancient dishes that you can flip. But there was that one room, the one full of something - sheets of webs, pools of still soft clay - that you poked through. An oddity, but not one to put you off return trips.

Except... the next trip you meet yourself. Perhaps curious, you try and engage with yourself. Perhaps terrified, you attack. The encounter is over, but you're unscathed and you made-off with yet more relics to trade for enough coin to pay rent and buy new supplies for another trip.

But the third visit... you find yourself again. Three times over. And each additional trip, there's more of you. Moving about the dungeon. Never initiating the encounter, but always smiling. Smiling. Never stopping with the smile, even as they trigger a trap and are squished. Squished like clay.

Mechanically? I am kind of at a loss. A slow mimic doesn't have the immediate suspense of a traditional shapeshifter. They won't ambush a hireling and replace them, waiting for the right moment to strike at the party and make-off with their treasure. They can't flit from room-to-room in a castle, changing disguises as they try to throw-off the knights in pursuit of them.

Right now, I'm playing with the idea that they're the maintainers. Another mechanism for a dungeon to maintain and expand itself. Clay doubles (triples, quadruples, etc.) of the players who patch walls and dig new tunnels. Honestly, patching walls works great, because that leads to another weird image - a player character watches as their mimic walks into a wall, shoring it up, with the smiling face the last thing they see.

I still need a motive, or maybe to make the slow mimics something a faction can turn to creative ends, but this is a move in the right direction.

  1. Specifically, the role quests for melee dps jobs in Dawntrail.

#mimic #ttrpg