Harlot Spotlight - Suka no-Hirudo (Patreon)

Another week, another Harlot Spotlight. I think people have been waiting for this one for a while, so I hope the art delivers. So, without further ado, let's talk about Suka no-Hirudo.

Suka no-Hirudo is one of the earliest harlots. I think she might be the second or third scenario I wrote. Which only goes to show that initial idea of no more than 1-1.5K words per harlot went out of the window very quickly!

Her scenario is fairly straightforward. She doesn't really do any hidden stat checks or anything like that. She has one bad choice that's instant Game Over, but aside from that the player is only at risk if he stays long enough for Suka to try and suck out more semen than he actually has. That makes her perfect for an early round harlot.

She's also quite a popular harlot. I think only Boobella beat her in a big popularity poll I did a while back. I think it's a mix of her being quite vulnerable despite playing a dominatrix, her mechanics being about the player dooming themselves, and being able to give a good hard suck!

Back when I wrote Suka I think the initial plan was for seven factions, each loosely based around a sin. That changed when the smother faction started to emerge as a nicely defined fetish faction. I later dropped the planned number of factions from 7 to 5 when I realised how much larger the project was. I did have plans for a leech faction, but that was beaten to the spot by the artificial beings faction, which left Suka without a home.

She's currently one of the 'filler' independents. There are two types of independent harlots. The true independents are the harlots like Morticia and Succuba, which fulfil a gameplay purpose in the House. The second type are harlots I wrote before I'd bedded the faction system into place and don't fit any of the five factions. They are all assigned to a faction, but only mechanically. Unlike the true faction harlots, they don't contribute to the hidden score which determines the ending. The way the selection algorithm works, once a player has shown a preference to a particular faction, they will always get a pick from that faction as one of their three choices. However, as the filler harlots are mechanically assigned to a faction, they might show up in that slot instead. It's to add a little more randomness to the runs so the player doesn't find themselves going through the same sequence of harlots every time.

As for the leeches, there is a good chance they will be added as a full faction later on. They were only narrowly beaten to the spot by the artificial beings. I have a lot of ideas for various leech girls, probably enough to fill a faction. I even had Marwmellow design a faction symbol (it's on Suka's neck) to make it easier to move her into that new faction when I write more of her sisters.

And now for the in-universe lore stuff.

The leech girls are slightly more primitive succubi/lust daemons. They are very good at sucking the semen and other fluids out of men, but lack the subtly, finesse and charm magic of 'true' succubi. That doesn't mean they're weak. Some leech girls, especially the Queen, are very powerful.

There is an animosity between them and another group of primitive lust daemons – the vampires. The vamps are a strange offshoot of lust daemon, likely corrupted from originating from one of the border regions of hell. They have more finesse and similar mesmeric abilities to 'true' succubi, but access the soul and energy of their prey through the blood rather than semen.

The leeches and vamps hate each other. The 'true' succubi think both are primitive and inferior, and therefore beneath them.

(From this you can see that I really want to add both factions at some point!)

Despite the leech girls having some leech-like elements, they drink semen, not blood, and will likely fly into a rage if you bring them blood as a gift.

Suka has an interesting personality. From looking into human desires, she's decided playing a more dominant role naturally suits her. However she has some of the self-control issues common to her type of lust daemon and is very self-conscious about them. This leads to her revealing moments of vulnerability when she fails to control her feeding instincts.

As she's one of the more popular harlots, I thought I'd have her pin-up be a little more risqué and show off more than the others. Although what she's showing off is a reminder she's most definitely not human!

Art is again by Marwmellow. I think he did a good job of depicting her, and I hope you think the same.

Let me know your thoughts below.