A throwaway scene in a book I read gave me the idea for a story. I'm not entirely sure which way to take the story, so I figured I'd share the idea and get some input while maybe giving someone else a cool story pitch.
The genesis of this was a three-faced porcelaine doll of Little Red Riding Hood / Grandma / Wolf; twist the head to switch the face.
The idea is that the doll is used to control a werewolf (most likely a young woman, to fit LRRR). The werewolf does not know her condition, instead experienceing fugue states. She contacts the players after waking up from her latest (or latest few) blackouts with large amounts of blood. She needs help finding out what happens to her! The blackouts does not follow any set pattern - various times of day, time of month, different moods, places etc.
I have two directions I'm thinking of taking the story.
Option A) The straight-forward version - a sorcerer has for some reason cursed her, probably by binding some kind of wolf-spirit to her, and uses the doll as a trigger to let the spirit take control of her.
or
Option B) She's actually a Lycanthrope, but the wolf-spirit within her was bound into the doll at an early age by a parent/caretaker, seeking to ease her burden. Now someone else has gotten hold of the doll, and when the spirit is temporarily released it has enough unspent rage and energy to actually force a shapechange on her.
In either option the person who controls the doll is using her as a Manchurian Candidate-like "assassin", engineering situation where the werewolf and the target will run into each other, and then from a safe distance trigger her change and trust the following carnage to kill or maim the target.
Now, things I haven't decided yet:
The three faces - of course LRRR is "default", regular human; and the Wolf is shapechanged (basically a Hexenwulf, but just as uncontrolled as the Loup-garou), but what should Grandma do? I'm currently thinking "fall asleep" to assist in placing/removing her, or making sure she doesn't connect her blackouts with specific times, but it feels a bit... weak...
And second: I need a rationale for option B to even have the switch to release the spirit. I like the possibility that the doll is actually a help rather than a curse, but it seems to me that building in a switch that can undo it all (and actually worse than before) is a stupid risk to take if you're going to bind a spirit, so what could have made it necessary?
I hope you enjoy the story idea, and appreciate any input - most of all about the two things above!