Harlot Spotlight - Nicolette (Patreon)

There is a slight change of plan with the harlot spotlights. While I pretty much have all the art for the artificial beings faction, I'm going to switch and take a look at some of the independents. The reason for this is I'm making good progress with testing all the ported Tier 1 harlots and I want to get a proper demo out soon(ish). This means I'm going to prioritise showing off the Tier 1 harlots which will have art in that demo.

First up, I'll cover one of the recent ones: Nicolette.

I'll also switch things around and cover her game mechanics and inspiration first.

Nicolette is basically a straight copy of Nicole from my short stories. A while back I thought it would be cool to add existing characters from my stories into HoHH as harlots. I also thought it might help reduce the writing workload if I added some harlots that were pretty much rewrites of existing sex scenes (aha, more on that in a mo).

I wanted Nicole for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I thought her waterbed massage scene from "Locked in with a Succubus" would be a perfect scene to add to the game. It's very sensual and sexy and I thought players would enjoy reading about a 'nice' succubus doing that to them.

The other was from a game mechanics perspective. Under the hood, HoHH is a little boardgame-y. The game loop has the player pick a one harlot from a choice of three and try to figure out how to avoid being killed by them. While most of the harlots belong to a faction, I also wanted some independents that provided a bonus (or negative) effect. While a visit to Nicolette isn't good in terms of the ration of semen lost to payout from The Portly Gentleman, it can have a very useful beneficial effect that can save the player coins elsewhere.

The main problem is that there are lore reasons why Nicole can't be in the House. I could ignore that, but I'd like the House to exist within the canon of my other settings. The fix for this was to create Nicolette, and then also drop some hints that she is the way she is because she met Nicole in the past and the other succubus made such a strong impression on her she's dedicated her life to being just like her. And who knows, maybe Nicolette will also get a short story of her own at some point.

There's also a nice tweak with the art. I forgot to specify Nicolette's hairstyle as more of the classic Cleopatra bob (which is Nicole's hair style), so she got a slightly different 'starlet' hairstyle instead. That gives her a little bit of an identity of her own.

Now for the bit that didn't quite work. About that idea of rewriting old existing scenes to save time... yeah, that didn't work out too well with this one. What I forgot about the original scene is that there is a multi-layered roleplay going on. Nicole, being highly empathic and adept at identifying secret sexual fantasies, is playing up being a predatory vamp to satisfy George's hidden fantasies. That gives that story most of its 'will she or won't she' suspense. That doesn't really fit for the HoHH scenario, so I had to rewrite and change a lot of things, which probably ended up being just as time consuming as if I'd written it from scratch.

It's a nice scene, though, so I was glad to bring it to the House.

Now for some of the lore stuff.

Nicolette is a special type of succubus that has traded their own ability to feel pleasure to be able to experience the pleasure of others. That type of succubus is one of the more powerful lust daemons, although Nicolette herself is one of the weaker examples of that group.

Another succubus made a big impression on Nicolette. Enough that she models her current appearance and ideals off her. She sees humans as more than food and refuses to kill them. In that respect she is a kind of "vegan" succubus and totally safe to visit.

To satisfy her cryptic game, The Madam insists all of her gals must kill or spare some of the visitors to their rooms. Usually, it's getting her gals to spare some humans that's the problem, but there are some on the other side that really don't like killing men and need to be cajoled into doing so.

Nicolette has a special dispensation exempting her from this. This is because The Madam, despite her dotty way of behaving, has enough political savvy to know when and when not to push it. Nicolette isn't the strongest of her type of succubus, but powerful enough to be a headache should The Madam try to push her too hard. The Madam also has Morticia in her House, who she cannot control at all, and so sees Nicolette as a way to balance her out in her "game".

As a side note, Calliophi also believes she has this same special dispensation. The Madam is happy to indulge her with this because she knows the girl's appearance and inability to control her instincts should a man react poorly to it will result in enough "accidents" to satisfy The Madam's requirements for her game.

And that's the spotlight for Nicolette. Art is again by Marwmellow. You can find more of it here. I think he did a great job (again). Let me know what you think below.