This foreboding is fa...
How would you ever last long enough to discover how the attacking thing works?
edited 6th May '11 10:02:03 AM by deathjavu
Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.
Exactly. Lets say that there is a whole group of people. They are exposed to something. One by one, whenever they don't think of it, they are killed.
All the others become so obsessed with it that it doesn't kill them. Slowly, they settle down, and it attacks again. Whenever you don't have even a small part of your mind focused on that thing, it attacks.
Instant insanity.
Profit!
You'd probably need to have something that activates to make you susceptible, and only then would you need to think constantly about it to be safe.
Could be a very sadistic supernatural murder technique, if someone deliberately makes another person susceptible to this.
If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.
Does this mean the victim wouldn't be able to sleep unless they dreamed of the thing?
@mellon: Exactly. They would have to stay up, day in, day out, thinking of only that one thing.
Wouldn’t that count as a Fate Worse than Death ?
Exactly. 
This foreboding is fa...
Yeah, this is what I meant. Otherwise the thing would instantly kill every sentient being the instant it came into existence. Not much of a story.
But it sounds like you've already got that part worked out.
Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.
Well, you die after a certain amount of time with no sleep.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
So when it attacks, it attacks individually? If it doesn't, then does having just one member in a group thinking about it spares the rest?
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
@dRoy: I was thinking of it attacking people individually, but one guy having to think about it instead of everyone thinking about it, that seems like it would make for a great twist.
The "thing" would only attack people who had first heard if it, then stopped thinking of it.
See ALL the stars!
In other words, the Anthropomorphic Personification of The Game?
edited 7th May '11 5:06:35 AM by Yej
Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.
I guess you could call it that.
Am I evil for putting some characters through this?
Can it be in more than one place at once? Like what if you make an international broadcast about it and then everybody shrugs it off and forgets about it?
No, it has to go from one place to another. Gives everyone just a few seconds to try to remember.
But how can people know it works? You can't know what that guy was thinking seconds before he died, since the only way to know if someone is thinking about the monster or not is to talk to them about it, and therefore remind them.
Its mostly a theory some of the characters come up with. Also, in a story, you can get into characters heads if the author writes it that way.
(I was talking about in-universe people, actually.)
It would be supported by notes of the first victims who died long ago.
Of course, since it was made so long ago, no one knows it credibility.
I know that might not answer what you asked, but I haven't gotten all the kinks out of my story yet.
You know those stories where as soon as you think of something, it comes to attack you?
What if the "thing" attacked you when you weren't thinking of it?
Discuss possible results, please. Your ideas feed me.