Grey
Dialectical Hermeticist
ASH AND MOONLIGHT
Smoke drifts down, and wraps around my ankles,
As if calling me back to the streets I knew so well,
But no one at home would listen
To the music that rose from the shell.
So I said goodbye to home and hearth,
And the serpent that guarded the well.
Set out to find my fortune, or die
Or bring back a story to tell.
Because no one at home would listen
To the music that rose from the shell,
As it sang of ash and moonlight
And gods under ocean swell.
- Wanderer's Song, Traditional
Exploration and Discovery: The world is a strange place, even without leaving your home city. Night-time streets that twist on themselves and weeping wraiths are matter-of-fact, smoke that falls like water and voices on the wind. What greater oddities lie beyond the walls, to be found and perhaps harnessed?
Beauty and Horror: Inspired by works such as Dark Souls, Dishonored, Tim Lebbon's Fallen, Lovecraft's Dreamland Cycle, this game will involve a world of things terrible and wonderful
Loss and Melancholy: Taking tonal cues from things like Dear Esther, Ryu Murakami, and some of my own work, this game will never be anything more cheerful than bittersweet.
Willingness to work with me in filling out some setting details while making character backstories, and tolerance for never being absolutely sure where the end goal is or what must be done, and plenty of initiative are all vital.
Will use a limited, diceless system for violent encounters and attempts at magic.
Characters will be mostly average folks who, by ambition or inducement, are going on a voyage of discovery.
Will open in January sometime, depending on applications.
Ideally 4 to 5 players.
Your character, mechanically, uses 6 Tags for influencing a situation - one word or a short phrase to encapsulate what it is.
The Tag categories are:
Archetype - This is a combination of profession and demeanour, examples being things like Weird-worker, Rat-catcher, Stoic guardian, and so on.
Homeland - Local knowledge, customs, wildlife, and things one needs to know for living in a specific environment, with skills naturally transferable elsewhere, like swimming. Naming the homeland here is sufficient as a Tag.
Motivation - Why are they doing what they're doing? Profit, revenge, faith?
Gear - A specific item or set of items in your characters possession, such as grandfather's sword, assassin's tools, alchemist's satchel, witches scrimshaw
History - This one is a bit trickier. If you can think of a defining moment in their history, or common theme, such as betrayed, abandoned, or feared.
Failing - A particular weakness of your character. Are they a coward? Wrathful? Tactless?
A Tag can influence a situation negatively or positively, and sometimes it'll do a little of both.
There is one final 'Tag', Integrity. Every character begins with an Integrity of 'Mostly Sane'
Over-exposure to the Dream can change this, as can using forbidden magics, or emotional/physical trama. This influences how you see the world and how people react to you. A character whose Integrity has perhaps slipped to Paranoid will get the impression NPCs are plotting against them, while the rest of the party relatively unbiased descriptions.
