Building a better monster, part 2
There’s more than one way to skin a loup garou.
That’s a demonic werewolf that literally sheds its skin to become human. In the last monster building installment, I talked about more or less natural monsters, specifically dragons. But, now, I’ll turn my attention to more elusive prey, the supernatural and demonic monster.
The first thing to keep in mind is that these monsters need to follow the Rules, too. But, they tend to have special rules just for them that may, or may not, follow any so-called natural laws. For demons, it may be a series of rituals that will summon and bind them. Or vampires not being able to come out during the day. Whatever the monster, there must be rules to how it lives and acts.
The most well known supernatural monster is probably the demon or devil. And most readers of modern fantasy literature are at least familiar with the story of Faust, even if they know it by another name. Selling one’s soul to the devil is quite common in popular literature. In fact, there have been quite a few movies done about it, but serious and comedic. But, those contracts follow rules. For one thing, they’re legally binding in a court much, much higher than the Supreme Court of the United States. This is big stuff here. Your soul is a pretty valuable commodity. And, it quite often will buy quite a lot.
Or, at least it will seem to buy a lot at first, but these deals never seem to work out quite they way they’re promised. That’s, in fact, one of the demonic rules. The person giving up their soul gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop. But, somehow, in almost all fiction, the hapless human somehow manages to get their soul back in once piece. That, too, seems to be one of the Rules these supernatural creatures follow.
So, even when we cheat, authors have to follow the rules!
