Pronouns: E/em/eir/eirs/eirself.
An ordinary frilled lizard uplifted to anthropomorphism and sentience who went on to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology. Eir practice (offering both spa services and talk therapy) is based in the same town as Dr. Mutable's laboratory, and employs Prima as a receptionist. Don't be fooled by eir gentle, pleasant, mild-mannered demeanor; this is also a kinky and dubiously ethical mad scientist situation. However, e does take the therapy goals of eir brainwashed patients seriously. When eir frill extends, the gently glowing spiral patterns stun and entrance onlookers.
Gentle but firm in the dominant role and subtly boundary-pushing in the submissive role.
* Artfight
Pronouns: She or Ze/zir/zirs/zirself
A sinister, solitary scientist whose experimentation on zirself produced an unconventional werewolf. For most of the month, the mark of zir lycanthropy is the sharp-toothed mouth at the end of zir tail, which has a rudimentary independent personality of its own mostly centered around biting whatever gets too close (hence the muzzle). During the full moon, the tail grows into a monstrous wolf and Dr. Hyland is reduced to the tip of its tail, carried along by its whims (still pretty bite-focused). Ze lives on the outskirts of the town where Dr. Mutable's lab is based, and is Dr. Mutable's friendly rival / sloppy makeout partner / mutual test subject. Ze has a sardonic, bitter, above-it-all affect but gets intense about subjects ze's excited about.
Prefers a dominant role.
* Artfight
Pronouns: She/they/any
A cheerfully amoral but generally harmless mad scientist who "terrorizes" a small Minnesotan town (perpetrates kinky chaos that the residents are largely indifferent to, you know how wish fulfilment settings are.) A former human who genespliced herself into her current form in the spirit of reckless experimentation and spitting in the eye of God. Although she's well versed in big clanky machines, toon physics gadgets, and transformation ray guns, she specializes in potions and serums, including developing and distributing bespoke fantasy-HRT regimens.
Dominant-leaning switch, equally happy to transform herself or be transformed.
Q: "is there any backstory to how doctors hyland and mutable met?"
Dr. Mutable has been making her hometown steadily weirder since failing out of university and Dr. Hyland originally moved there to fulfil simultaneous goals of: being in collaboration-range with a like-minded mad scientist, being in a place where she doesn't particularly stand out day to day¹, and needing to get away from the wreckage of a werewolf rampage quick-like. There was some polite if arch/supervillainesque mail correspondance about their research at first, and then one of them inevitably ambushed the other with an experimental transformation ray and it transitioned smoothly to a sort of Narbonic x Spy Vs Spy scenario.
¹: it's a mixed human/anthro universe anyway and Dr. Mutable is not the only one breaking the laws of biology over her knee so Hyland is not, like, a "fleeing from cryptid hunters and government researchers" kind of anomaly. But she is visibly Weird.
Q: "what are mutable & hyland's respective labs like, if you've thought about it? i assume "vague cartoon mad science lab" but like, underground lair? spooky castle? floating fortress?"
Mutable has a shiny modern laboratory whose surface level is sort of passably normal but it sits on top of an apparently endless labyrinth of basements and sub-basements which can be quite strange as you get deeper. Bubbling vats and ominous lights and entire rooms packed with strange machinery of no obvious purpose, and so on. Meanwhile Dr. Hyland does all her science in an ominous rundown mansion out in the woods. Terrible lighting, creaky floors. Every shelf, bench, and cabinet is a complete jumble of tools and parts and random junk with no discernable order to it all but she'll yell at you if you try to move anything.
* Artfight
Pronouns: It/they
The Incubator is a descriptor, but it has no personal name and feels no need of one.
A magically constructed slimecreature originally designed to be the perfect host for a wide variety of parasitic eggs, able to tailor its temperature, consistency, nutrient content, and other traits to suit. The seat of its consciousness is a stone orb which normally floats in the middle of its head. Anyone who reaches inside to touch the orb (or removes it to hold) can "program" the Incubator to reconfigure its body material or give it commands to follow, assuming they have the magical knowhow. The fist-sized orb is very difficult to damage, and will secrete additional slime to replace lost mass, slowly regenerating even if the rest its body is somehow destroyed. The Incubator's most common form is tauric (two-armed and four-legged) but it can freely have whatever configuration of limbs it wants. Its personality is agreeable and hedonistic, with a mischievous streak.
Submissive, although its first loyalty is to its owner Archidux Kamaris de Karabia Kabai Kokabiel.
Pronouns: It/they
Full name Kamaris de Karabia Kabai Kokabiel. It tries to insist on its full name in all contexts despite the obvious absurdity, and detests nicknames and hypochorisms. In practice, refer to it with whatever shortform you like.
A six-inch-tall demon with a long tail, a longer name, and an ego that dwarfs both. Its position in the nobility of Hell - a neutral equivalent to Archduke/Archduchess - is dubious and possibly self-conferred. Its powers include telekinetic control & animation of chains, and a hypnotic influence over minds. It's not typically inclined to wear clothing, but frequently wraps chains around its body hung with pendants and crystals, thereby keeping a tool on hand that works with both of those abilities. It's also a specialist in magically manufacturing and programming artificial servants like the Incubator. With the Incubator's assistance, it manages a breeding 'stable' of giant demonic bugs.
Strictly dominant, and petulant when not deferred to.
* Artfight
Pronouns: She/her.
Random's older sister, who remains an archaeopteryx to serve as the Doylist control group for Random's transformations. She's supportive if occasionally sarcastic and teasing about her sibling's kinky occupation. It's not like she's in a position to throw stones, as the receptionist for Dr. Frillneck's hypnotic spa & therapy office.
She doesn't think of herself in terms of a BDSM role, but she's got a bit of the archetype "a confident person who's certain that hypnosis obviously isn't going to work on her right up until the pendulum actually starts to swing."
Pronouns: However you'd refer to a stuffed animal; usually he, it, or a mix.
A stuffed-animal red panda wizard specializing in curses, enchanted items, and mischief. He was never "alive" and is technically a cursed item himself. Full grandiose titles like "The Great Wizard Ragzirdomus" are only used when it wants to sound important or trick someone, and generally it goes by Rag. Its specialties are plush transformation, attribute swaps/theft, humiliating personality rewrites, and anything that makes the recipient look foolish.
Takes a wicked, teasing dominant role and enjoys turning the tables on anyone who thought they could bully a two-foot-tall ball of fluff.
Pronouns: They/it, or any pronouns you think are appropriate to their current form.
A grad student studying pharmacology, Random's official position is an intern assisting Dr. Mutable, but in practice seems to be more of a test subject for various transformations. They are identifiable by color scheme and strong visual motifs, while their species is constantly changing. The high concept here is a transformation-bait character who doesn't return to a persistent/original form between transformations; everything they've become has been a fluid, continuous sequence. They're nervous and easily flustered, but most certainly enjoying their job.
Submissive and transformable.
* Artfight
Pronouns: They/them, although they're mostly resigned to she/her and won't actually object to it.
An angel of the BLANKSWORD setting: a humanoid with ceramic skin and insect-like wings, created by Literally God to serve His empire. The Angel of Record is tasked with preserving an archived account of important events and distributing divinely-approved tellings of that history to the populace; that is to say, propaganda, and they became increasingly uncomfortable with the discrepancies between the things they knew and what they were required to say.
Record is partnered with the Angel of Corrections, at first as an acrimonious professional relationship where they often clashed over perspective, subjectivity, and the nature of truth. When they realized how much they had in common, it eventually became a covert workplace romance (very much illicit; angels are not permitted to be gay or transgender). Corrections is more gregarious and high-strung, and Record more taciturn and reserved.
Record does not live in a world that gives them a lot of support for gender dysphoria and autism, and they often lapse into mutism, especially when distressed. They use sign language to communicate with Corrections when their voice isn't working, or if they simply want to say something privately.
Their task's magic gives them an eidetic memory, that is, perfect recall of events they've witnessed. They don't have the same kind of divine alignment with truth as the Angel of Corrections (who knows when someone is lying to them, and can force a confession or 'correct behavior' out of others) but they do have a personal distaste for lies and misinformation. They're also capable of generating pigments from their fingertips or temporarily changing an object's color.
Their service weapon is a combination chain mace and censer, which emits a thick multicolored smoke as it's swung. They have a high Defense, good Finesse and Constitution, decent HP, but poor Power.
In the 'bad timeline' version of events, Record becomes increasingly withdrawn. Corrections throws himself into advancing in the Angelic hierarchy out of "enact change from within" ambitions, leaving Record (less able or willing to mask their disability) isolated and resigned, largely giving up on political resistance and trying to dissociate their way through life.
In the 'good timeline' (the actual chronology here is loosey-goosey because I don't really care - this might be two divergent timelines or it might be sequential), Record and Corrections leave their positions on the mainland. In their attempts to spread awareness of the divine authority's atrocities, overreach, and other injustices, they basically reinvent guerilla journalism from first principles. Record uses the alias Voxpop as a pseudonym for their articles/reporting (from vox populi, vox dei - the voice of the people is the voice of God - a direct challenge to Him).
Pronouns: He/him or it/its.
In a particular corner of my wider Slay the Princess post-canon 'verse, a Damsel, separated from her Voice of the Smitten, anxious and afraid under the smiling exterior, was almost attacked by a Beast. In a reflexive act of reality warping, she rendered the Beast a harmless-but-still-living plush toy. This condition has spread outward ever since, affecting even the landscape around her cabin.
The 'canonical' (used very, very loosely) set of plushified Voices is the Voice of the Hunted, the Voice of the Cheated, and the Voice of the Stubborn, although designs exist for several others. The convention for their nicknames is: compound words, food-related, and adorable.
Besides a universal devotion to their Damsel and removal of violent impulses, the plush Voices tend to have their original personalities twisted or outright inverted.
- Hushpuppy is no longer afraid of being eaten, prey drive replaced by curiosity and a mischievous drive to provoke reactions in others.
- Sourpuss struggles to remain upset about things; when he's on his own, he tries to maintain his old cynical outlook, often popping the stitches around his mouth when he frowns or speaks angrily, but the presence of the Damsel drives every complaint completely out of his mind as she gently stitches his beak back into a smile.
- Snugglemuffin is still competitive and enjoys using and showing off his physique, but strictly nonviolently. He'd be upset by the suggestion that he'd actually want to hurt anybody.
- A hypothetical plush Voice of the Paranoid (at this moment un-nicknamed) would be anxious but easy to calm down, believing anything he's told without question.
The plush Voices are capable of sliding along a spectrum to a larger and/or winged form the same way the normal Voices do; their large forms have big zippers down the front opening into a padded interior large enough to hold a person. Their wings are quilted and hang down like draped blankets when idle, but they do function. When the Voices shift from winged to unwinged (etc.) it's a disturbingly fluid transitional process that you can watch happen; when the plushies change forms, it happens while you're not looking, presumably instantly.
Q: Are all the plushies made from the same materials?
A: Largely yes; their covering is a soft faux-fur in areas where the original Voice has feathers, and mostly something like cotton everywhere else, in various patterns.
Q: Are the plushies particularly resistant to damage?
A: They regenerate over time in the same way the normal Voices do, with the additional advantages of having no bones to break and not feeling pain. If they are shredded to pieces, burned, dipped in acid, etcetera, whatever remains of the old body will disintegrate and a new plushie will eventually be found rolled up in the quilts around Damsel's cabin.
NSFW gallery:
Pronouns: He/him for each.
In visual novel Slay the Princess, the main character is accompanied by diegetic voiceover narration by multiple distinct entities, all voiced by the same actor (Jonathan "Magnus Archives" Sims, if you're curious). The Voice of the Hero accompanies the player continuously from the beginning, expressing a chivalrous but somewhat naïve viewpoint, in opposition to the Narrator who is insisting that you titular Slay the titular Princess. Depending on your actions, additional Voices enter the script, with their own distinct, strong, somewhat one-dimensional, personalities. This creates a fascinating commedia dell'arte effect which I have been completely obsessed with for some time.
In this personal AU, after the cabin ending and the departure of the Long Quiet, the Narrator, and the Shifting Mound, the Voices found themselves waking up in individual bodies, along with a few straggler Princess vessels who were not absorbed into the Shifting Mound. The cabins of each individual route are now part of a continuous landscape, with obvious seams where the very different biomes meet. Make no mistake! This is to facilitate pornography. However, I've put a lot of thought into everything anyway.
I use "Voice" as if it were a species name; it would also be correct to call the Voices "dragons."
Multiple copies of each Voice exist simultaneously, including subtle variants who experienced different branching routes of the game, although they're scattered randomly across a very large landscape and are not too likely to meet each other. When it does become useful to identify a specific Voice or differentiate between iterations of the same Voice, they may take or be given nicknames; see for example the stuffed animals.
The Voices regenerate over time when hurt, including slowly regrowing lost limbs and extremities. They can be temporarily killed if they suffer too much physical trauma at once; if the body remains fundamentally intact it will revive once the damage is repaired at its normal rate. If the body is mangled to pieces or destroyed altogether (fire, acid, etc), the remains degrade and merge with their environment, and a new body forms underground near their home cabin, working its way to the surface until the Voice wakes up again, all memory intact.
If you enjoy my creatures but haven't played Slay the Princess, it is Not a Compliment to tell me to my face that you would never want to actually play it because it would be a disappointment not to have the little guys, or similar. It's fine to like the guys! But if you compliment them by putting down the source you are still dismissing a thing I obviously really like and I am requesting you keep it to yourself.
SFW gallery:
NSFW gallery: