forgotten names in remembered places.
concept
"Motes" are boulders, etched with strange symbols, that randomly appear and disappear throughout the world. They sometimes blink into existence for less than a second -- sometimes they sit in the same spot for years. They always leave behind something curious: a space with no gravity, a boat that has sprouted bug-legs, a candle that has morphed into a great drippy creature, a strange remembered story, a door that leads the way you came. No one knows where the motes come from, what they are, or where they go.
It's well-known fact (just as folk-magic and superstition are well-known fact) that a sliver of mote-stone holds incredible power. No one has definitively proven what, exactly, a sliver of mote-stone actually does, but the tales and stories are threaded with hauntings and madness and dark paths from which there is no return.
Your characters have discovered the location of a mote and have arrived to take a piece of it, or to study it, or to gawk at it, or to ask it questions it has been rumored to sometimes answer. Your characters are all touching its cool, gently humming surface when it blinks out of existence -- taking the characters with it.
This is the journey of getting home again -- or of finding out what's truly going on, or of saving or destroying the world as we know it, depending on the characters' decisions.
world
The particular world of our story is all gray and shadow, fog and stones. There are little kingdoms and small towns built of wood or rock, and kites and clocks, and dogs and horses, and all the things you might expect to see in a place somewhat similar to our own late-middle-ages to renaissance era. Superstition, folklore, witchcraft, folk-magic and deep beliefs in fairies and trolls and dragons abound.
character
Characters shall be human and shall have grown up in the world in which our story begins. This is not the world as we know it -- subtle weirdness and quiet mysteries are encouraged.
gameplay
I'd like to propose that each player, with a CS, also pitch a potential small sub-plot that would be meaningful to their particular character. With approval, that player would essentially be co-GM for the duration of that adventure. When we move on to the next location, the next player will take the reins. The world and the generally mysterious and secretive and folklorey mood should remain the same -- that'll be my job to maintain, as well as to keep things moving and to deeply integrate each character into every plot.
artwork
this, this, this, this, this, and this
music
this, this, this, this and this
