[Chapter Idea] For Your Consideration: A Life for a Life, The Skinbound

FractalSponge · October 20

A life for a life, and then a great many more.

For three years France hunted a wolf. It was a woman.

Meet The Skinbound, an original killer I’ve been working on for a while and would like to humbly offer for your consideration before the forums close. She’s built from two old public domain stories: Beauty and the Beast (the 1740 and 1756 versions, not the movie) and the Beast of Gévaudan, the real “wolf” that killed people in the south of France from 1764 to 1767. Everything is below: lore, look, power, perks, add ons, a survivor, a map and a Mori.

The short version

Hood down: she crouches, goes undetectable, and silently downs a survivor who is alone and never looks her way.
Hood up: 32 m terror radius, a long lunge, and she can tear down standing pallets, which as far as I can find no killer does today.
The Account: stun her with a pallet and she is owed a pallet. A pallet for a pallet.
Her counter in one line: turn around, or never walk alone.
Survivor: Céleste Vidal, her childhood best friend, who wrote down every name.
Also in here: 3 perks, 20 add ons including two Visceral, a map, and a Mori where she writes your real name in a book.

Who she is

Her name is Isabelle Fauvel, but everyone calls her Belle. She’s a bookbinder’s daughter. The local count, the Comte de Sauveterre, has been slowly turning into a beast because of a scorched old book bound in what her dad realizes is human skin. Her dad lies and says the book can’t be fixed, so the Comte comes for his life, and Belle offers hers instead. He locks her up in his library.

When her dad finally comes to bring her home, the Comte kills him at the gate. That night Belle kills the Comte with her dad’s paring knife, the one tool he let her keep. His blood gets in her mouth and she swallows it. It makes her grow until she’s 6’5”, and it changes how pain feels to her. Pain still gets through. It just feels good now.

She skins him and wears him, and for three years the Beast of Gévaudan is actually her. Everyone is hunting a wolf, and nobody suspects the binder’s girl who supposedly ran away. A lot of what people reported about the real Beast fits her: it went for the throat, it got back up after being shot, it walked on two legs, and when people fought back it backed off about forty paces and then came back. Those are real reports from the time.

What she looks like

There’s no picture, so here’s how I see her:

Height and build: 6’5”, slim, about 20. A full head taller than most survivors.
The hide: from just under her breastbone all the way down to her ankles she’s wrapped in the Comte’s fur. It’s raven black: true black in the dark, with a low blue sheen where the light hits it, like a crow’s wing. It’s laced up her back with bookbinding thread, so her back literally looks like the spine of an old book. Below the hips it hangs loose like the skirt of a dress, so she can still walk normally.
The hole: on her right side, under the ribs, is the hole where she stabbed him. You can see her ivory silk dress through it. That’s the only place the dress shows.
Shawl and hood: his head, shoulders and front legs are all one piece. The legs run down her arms like sleeves and his paws sit over the backs of her hands, with the claws hanging past her fingers. Her palms are bare so she can still hold her knife. She sewed the wolf’s eyes shut and cut its lower jaw off.
Hair: long golden brown hair. The blood made it grow as fast as the rest of her, so she stopped pinning it up. It hangs loose from the top of her head and only turns into a braid around the middle of her back, below the hanging wolf head so it never snags.
Face: pale, with a dried blood stain on her lips and chin that never comes off, and a polite smile that never reaches her eyes. She never stops smiling.
Bare feet, and her dad’s paring knife as her weapon.

Hood down, she stands up straight, the wolf head hangs on her back facing out, and her hair falls over it. Hood up, the wolf head sits on top of hers with its upper fangs along her hairline, and her whole face still shows from the front, framed by the jaws. She hunches a little under the weight, and her hair gets swept down over her chest. So from far away you can tell which mode she’s in by her posture, the shape of her head, and whether the gold is on her back or her front.

When she lunges she drops her head, so the wolf’s face comes down over hers. For that half second, from the front, she’s all Beast. Then she straightens up and the smile is back.

She’s not a werewolf. She never transforms. The wolf is dead and she’s wearing it.

Her power: Mind and Mantle

Short version: hood down she’s a stealth killer who quietly takes out survivors who wander off alone, and hood up she’s a chase killer who can break loops.

Hood down (Beauty)

4.6 m/s, 16 m terror radius, and you can hear her giggling out to 24 m.
Secondary power crouches. Holding power for 1 second puts the hood up.

Crouched

Undetectable, and she moves at 3.8 m/s.
If a survivor is within 16 m, can’t see her, and has no other survivor within 8 m of them, they slowly become Unsuspecting. It takes 8 seconds and drains if they break any of those conditions.
Survivors get warned. Inside 8 m they hear bare feet and breathing, at half they hear silk moving behind them, and at full they get a status icon.
Her attack becomes a Throat Grab (2.5 m). If the survivor is Unsuspecting and alone, they go straight into the dying state with no scream. Anyone else just takes a normal hit.
If you look at her (a third of her body near the middle of your screen, within 16 m, for half a second), your meter empties and you’re safe from it for 20 seconds.

Hood up (the Beast)

4.6 m/s, 32 m terror radius. She can’t put the hood down in the middle of a chase.
Rending Lunge (power): a long lunge of about 7 m with a windup you can see. A healthy survivor gets injured and Deep Wounded. 20 second cooldown, and she’s stuck for 3 seconds if she misses.
Ravage: she has 2 tokens that recharge 5 seconds each. She can spend both to tear down a pallet that is still standing, which takes 3 seconds plus 1.5 seconds of fatigue, and only six times a trial. As far as I can find, no killer’s power can destroy a standing pallet right now.
A torn down pallet leaves Splintered Ground for 60 seconds that everyone can see, and her lunge goes 25% further from it.
If her lunge hits a dropped pallet or breakable wall while she has a token, she rips straight through it.

The Account (a pallet for a pallet)

Pallet stuns still work on her for the full time, but every one leaves her owed a pallet: her next Ravage within 30 seconds costs no tokens. It still takes the full 3 seconds and the fatigue, only one can be owed at a time, and blinds owe her nothing. She just laughs.

How you beat her

Turn around. One look cures Unsuspecting. Spine Chill works on her too.
Stick together. She can never take someone who has another survivor within 8 m. That comes from a real event: in January 1765 a group of kids fought the Beast off by staying together.
Ravage costs her 4.5 seconds, which is about 18 m of distance for you, and the next standing pallet is safe for about 10 seconds, unless you stun her and she is owed one.
Watch for the lunge windup, and mend Deep Wound early (10 seconds alone, 6 with help).
Once the hood is up in a chase, she can’t go back to stealth until the chase ends.

The Pig is about speed and Ghost Face is about watching you. She’s about getting close while you never look back.

Perks

Sanguine Déjà Vu: the auras of the 3 generators closest to each other are always shown to you, and those generators regress 4/5/6% faster, and survivors repairing one of them are Oblivious. It’s basically the killer’s version of Déjà Vu.

Gunsmoke: whenever you put a survivor in the dying state, a cloud of black powder smoke 8 m across hangs over that spot for 20/25/30 seconds. Survivors inside it have their auras shown to you. Good for catching whoever comes back to help.

Forty Paces: whenever a survivor stuns or blinds you, you become undetectable for 8/10/12 seconds once you recover. 40 second cooldown. It’s named after those real reports of the Beast backing off forty paces and then coming back.

The survivor: Céleste Vidal

The apothecary’s daughter and Belle’s childhood best friend. She’s the one who washed the bodies and recognized the cuts as Belle’s knife work. Nobody believed her, so she wrote down every name in the back of her remedy book, with a date and a wound beside each. Belle keeps a ledger of what she’s owed; Céleste keeps one of what was lost. Her list is what finally got the soldiers to listen, and she led them up to the château without ever deciding whether she was going to bring Belle home or stop her. The fog took both of them.

Testimony: whenever the killer downs another survivor within 24/28/32 m of you, the killer’s aura is shown to everyone else for 5 seconds. 40 second cooldown.
Steady Hands: you mend 30/40/50% faster, and when you finish healing someone to full health they get Endurance for 4/5/6 seconds.
I Know Your Face: when you’re not in a chase, looking at an undetectable killer within 16 m for 1 second takes away their undetectable for 4/5/6 seconds. 60 second cooldown.

If Céleste sees Belle in a trial she stops and says “Belle? C’est moi. C’est Céleste.” If Belle is close enough, she answers “Céleste? Tu es venue.” (You came.) Céleste, much quieter: “Je ne sais pas encore pourquoi.” (I don’t know yet why.) On the hook she doesn’t scream. She says names from her list under her breath.

Add ons

Common: Beeswax Cake (tokens recharge 10% faster), Bone Folder (pallets and walls break 10% faster, Ravage included), Scrap of Endpaper (hood goes up and down 10% faster), Pot of Hide Glue (10% less fatigue after Ravage)

Uncommon: Waxed Linen Thread (mending takes 1.5 seconds longer), Torn Almanac Page (crouching and standing 25% faster), Tanner’s Salt (Splintered Ground lasts 15 seconds longer), Pressed Violet (Unsuspecting builds 10% faster), Candle Stub (giggle range 25% shorter)

Rare: Wolf Bounty Notice (lunge hits show auras for 5 seconds), Poacher’s Powder Horn (lunge cooldown 3 seconds shorter), Tuft of Black Fur (crouch speed 4.0 m/s), The Comte’s Signet Ring (hood 25% faster), Cut Lock of Hair (if someone spots you while you’re crouched, they scream and become oblivious for 30 seconds)

Very Rare: The Musket Ball (every stun or blind refills both tokens and resets her lunge, on top of normal recharge), Shard of the Spire Window (survivors on Splintered Ground show their auras), The Comte’s Fang (3 Ravage tokens), Scorched Page (survivors building Unsuspecting can’t hear you)

Visceral:

Her Father’s Last Binding: her Throat Grab kills. A lone, Unsuspecting survivor who’s on death hook (2 hook stages) dies in her hands with its own mori, and everyone else hears a book close. Unsuspecting builds 25% slower.
The Comte’s Lower Jaw: Splintered Ground kills. A lunge started on Splintered Ground puts even a healthy survivor straight into the dying state, so every pallet she tears turns the ground around it into a killing floor you can see. In exchange, Splintered Ground only lasts 30 seconds and she can only have one at a time.

The map: Château Sauveterre

A ruined château up in the hills: a two story library full of tight loops, a tower that looks down on the gate where her dad died, a tannery yard full of drying racks, a walled garden with long sightlines for crouching, empty kennels, and a bog by the woods. Lots of pallets in the library and the tannery, not many in the garden.

Mori

She steps on the survivor’s shoulder with her bare foot, bends down like she’s picking up a glove, and makes one cut under the ribs, the same cut she gave the Comte. Then a small scorched book appears in her hand. She dips one claw in the wound and uses it like a quill to write the survivor’s actual name in the back, under all the others. She blows on the page, closes the book and says “Voilà. C’est fini.” It’s from the survivor’s view, so the last thing you see is your own name, upside down, drying on the page.

Stuff I expect people to bring up

Isn’t this just Ghost Face? No. Ghost Face marks you from 40 m away, and then any hit downs you for 60 seconds. She has to stay within 16 m of someone who’s alone and never looks at her, and only her crouched grab downs.
Silent downs from stealth sound unfun. It takes 8 seconds, you have to be alone and out of a chase, and you get warned at half and at full. Your team still sees you go down on their HUD.
Breaking standing pallets will kill looping. It costs her both tokens and 4.5 seconds, she can only do it in her loud mode, six times a trial, and the next standing pallet is safe for about 10 seconds. You just loop somewhere else for a bit.
Doesn’t a stun just give her a free pallet? It’s a trade, a pallet for a pallet. She still pays the 3 seconds and the fatigue, only one can be owed, it runs out after 30 seconds, and it counts toward the six.
Isn’t Belle from Disney? La Belle is what the girl is called in the 1756 story, and the library is in that story too. No rose, no yellow dress, no talking furniture.
A Visceral add on that kills? Only on death hook, which is the same rule The Shape, The Lich, The First and The Slasher use for their kills.

What I’d most like to know

Would you play against her? Does the silent down feel fair, or does it feel like Ghost Face with extra steps?
Is six standing pallets per trial the right ceiling for Ravage?
Does a pallet for a pallet feel like a fair trade, or a punishment for stunning her?
Which add on would you run first?

The full dossier is attached below as a PDF: rulings for edge cases, all the numbers in one place, a map layout, a trailer script and the real history. I would be grateful for any thoughts, especially on the numbers.

The Skinbound Killer Dossier (PDF)

Offered for your consideration, by no one in particular, in the last weeks of these forums. I do not need a name on it. The design is entirely theirs to take or leave, at their discretion, and I only ask that if any of it is used, it is really used and not borrowed in pieces. A Life for a Life.