Harlot Spotlight - Acarina (Patreon)

The Harlot Spotlight is a day late this week. Elden Ring might have happened... ahem...

Last week I spoke about Suka no-Hirudo and how she might end up being a member of a new faction to be added in future. Now it's time to talk about a member of a rival faction to that prospective future faction. Acarina is one of the vamps, and the vamps and leeches do not get on.

Acarina is one of the rewrite scenarios. These are harlot scenarios featuring characters from previous short stories where the Bad End scene is pretty much a rewritten version of their sex scene from the story. This was supposedly to save time, although this is not always the case. Acarina's scenario was fairly straightforward. Both Nicolette's and Sister Squeeze's ended up being more troublesome and didn't really save all that much time in the end.

Acarina's scenario is a fairly straightforward death choice. If the player picks paizuri, they die. There are some illusory choices after going down that path, but they mostly determine how horrific the ending is (with this being another example where having a max value in a stat isn't always a good thing). This is perfect for a Tier 1 harlot – they need to be fairly straightforward and the good path fairly short and quick to allow the player to rush through them on subsequent playthroughs.

As the vamp faction isn't currently implemented, she's another filler harlot that can show up instead of a preferred faction choice.

And now for the lore stuff, which will touch on ideas for a possible vamp faction in general.

Vampires are a popular horror monster and when they show up, they tend to be at the upper end of power levels. Within my universe, I wanted to subvert that slightly. It also reflects one of the problems I have writing vamps in general. Hot vampire seductresses are a staple sexy femme fatale. However, once you're in more explicit erotica territory, where graphic depictions of sex are allowed and even expected, I find vamps tend to be supplanted by succubi. They do the same things, but better, as they're more explicitly focused on needing sex to drain energy, whereas the vamps just needs to lure prey close enough to fang them in the neck.

This is reflected in the in-universe lore. Vampires are regarded as malformed lust daemons, because the conduit for energy/soul transfer is through the blood rather than semen. The leeches and vamps have a fierce rivalry. The vamps think the leeches are primitive. The leeches think the vamps are a failed offshoot. The succubi regard both as primitive lust daemons.

This isn't to say either can't have powerful members, and they do, or will have if I get around to adding them as additional factions.

This is reflected in Acarina's scenario. The new material written for her is a regular sex scene, and she's intentionally written to be a bit of a crap lay. This highlights the vamps' status as inferior to regular succs. Acarina also wants the sex to be a bit crap as she wants to entice the man into choosing to receive her 'special' titwank instead. During paizuri, her skin bonds with the penis and allows her to pump the blood directly out of the prey's veins. As with most of the lust daemon vamps, she likes to make the prey come as the semen adds a nice flavour.

Most of the vamps have a specialised part of the body to use to drain blood. It serves to distinguish them as lust daemon vampires rather than traditional vampires (while they look like traditional vampires, they are still a type of lust daemon, hence sex has to be incorporated within the feeding process).

I also got to sneak in a nasty little seemingly throwaway line should the player bring Acarina her favoured gift of a vial of blood. "Like cradling a newborn baby to my bosom" has a much more disturbing connotation after experiencing her Bad End. I did like writing that.

The art is fairly straightforward for this one – vampire seductress with big boobs. As with Suka, I had Marwmellow draw a potential future faction symbol for her, should that be added at a future date.

This script also has a bonus compared to other harlot spotlights. Acarina was one of the harlots I selected to give limited repeat visit functionality. In Acarina's case, she'll be really insistent the player tries out her special titwank if he comes back to see her again. This isn't yet implemented, but the script alterations have already been done, so consider this a nice little preview on top of showcasing her art!

I hope you like what you see. Let me know your thoughts below.