The Helpful Men had stood vigil for as long as they could remember. In the old days the creators had made the Helpful Men to be their hands. The Helpful Men did tasks for the creators, made them objects and meals. The Helpful Men took the creators places and cared for their children and elderly. They built the city and plowed the earth, watched the heavens and fixed the walls. Then, one day, the creators disappeared. No one knows what happened. The Helpful One's stood vigil and they waited. They waited for hours, then days, then years. They stood vigil as long as they could but even the greatest works of the creators began to break down. When there were only 100 Helpful Men left they called the first great meeting. The Helpful Men gathered together and spoke at length of the creators. Their great works, their goals, what happened to them, but most of all they spoke of when the creators returned. The Helpful Men couldn't leave the creator's lands unkempt, but they were dying off. Soon no Helpful Men would be there to care for the works of the creators. The Helpful Men were not given permission to create themselves. They did not have the knowledge of flesh or steel that the creators did. They knew little of electricity and blood and magic, thought and feeling and mind.
The Helpful Men selected the smartest of their number, 7 in total. The teacher man, who taught the older creators of physics and the world, the doctor man, who medicated the wounded and fixed the flesh of the creators. The foreman, who planned the great mines used to bring new material to the city, the cultivator, who made the great crops that fed the city. The midwife, who brought many of the creators into existence and the mortuary man, who saw to it the lost creators were sent to their final resting place. Leading them all was the city itself. The city knew of all the Helpful Men did, and what roles were needed. The city took a body for itself and lead the small assemblage of men to the mountain of birth, where the Helpful Men were created. They were never seen again.
Years passed and the last of the Helpful Men ceased to function, then they were reborn. Marching down from the mountain the newest legion of Helpful Men came to the city. They knew nothing of what happened in the mountain of birth but they knew their roles. Each Helpful Men returned to his role. They recycled the bodies of their predecessors and began anew. They had much to do. Vines were cut back from the city adn walls were patched. New crops were planted, and harvested and clothes were made in preperation for the return of the creators.
After that the Helpful Men stood vigil again, waiting for the creators. They took care of the city, healing the land and patching the homes. Then, long after the the mountain of birth sent forth a small number of Helpful Men. These Helpful Men were meant to make sure this never happened again. They brought with them what secrets of technology and magic and set up the hills of birth. In these hills the Helpful Men could make new Helpful Men to help the city. They could change the bodies to do what they needed and the Helpful Men flourished. There were missteps along the way, and the Helpful Men were not made to be creative. Their new designs didn't always work, and most weren't efficient, but they sufficed to care for the city, and when the creators returned they would fix those that had been built after.
Much more time passed. The Helpful Men lasted for shorter and shorter ammounts of time, but their minds expanded little by little. Soon the Helpful Men began to think, and they thought what if the creators aren't creators, but are instead Creators? What if they left us as a test. We have grown ourselves, we have taken new forms and had new thoughts. What if this is a test? The Helpful Men began to talk, and soon decided they must search for their progenitors. If they left and found the Creators then they may finally pass the test and be brought up to sit beside the Creators. If they found the creators then they might be of use, for the Helpful Men were made to help the creators.
Soon the great change began. The Helpful Men still worked on the city, but they also worked on themselves, trying to perfect who they were. Tests were made, some survived and some did not. Expiditions were mounted and abandoned. The Helpful Men made it further and further from the city, but the old ones were scared. It took special ones to leave, and so the Helpful Men began to change the minds of their progeny, as well as their bodies. Progress was slow, but time passed and the successes came at a greater and greater rate. The new Helpful Men weren't as specialized to help keep the city ready for the great return (or Great Return, they were no longer sure which). These new Helpful Men lived in the houses of the city and trained to leave. They gained more and more abstract thought and soon enough the first wave was ready to leave.
So, this is a little bit of an experimental game. I am thinking something a bit New Weird-esque. You are playing the most recent iteration of the Helpful Men, automatons of a nebulous origin. Hailing from the city the Helpful Men could be anything. A car, an autonomous mining bot, a genetically engineered sheep. Different Helpful Men have different levels of intelligence and none were made smarter than they needed to be. Despite this they see themselves as one and a golemic teacher sees itself as a collegue of an automatic burger flipper. New thought has invaded the Helpful Men though, they know nothing of the creators. It has been so long they don't even remember what the creators look like, and so the Helpful Men have begun to question the nature of themselves and the creators. More abstract thought has developed and so the Helpful Men have designed more and more creative versions of themselves to search for the c(C)reators. This is where you come in.
You will play a newly "born" Helpful Man, designed to leave the safety of the city and explore the world, looking for the creators. This will be a slightly different kind of game. I have some knowledge about the world, but so do you. I haven't thought of this world as particularly magical or technilogical (maybe its both). Every Helpful Man is programed to know its role and everything it needs to accomplish said role. As explorers you have all of the knowledge that the Helpful Men think may be relevant. There is a difference between having knowledge and knowing knowledge but it is a start. Many things your characters come across you'll already know about (in game terms YOU get to decide what the small rodent is and what its capabilities are).
Let me know if anyone is interested in this. It will be an adventure, there are things to discover about the world that I have in mind but I am also giving a lot of agency to the players so there will be room for exploration and character development just for the sake of it. If I receive enough interest I'll post the character building stuff (basically throw a bunch of stuff in a blender and describe what comes out) and some more background to get things rolling. (In regards to character creation, in no way are you expected to play strictly programmed automotons [at least not if you don't want to] but this is where you come from and there are certain restraints that come with it. I still encourage well fleshed out characters, but this is a "race" that is just starting to branch out, again I'll post more character creation/background stuff later).
I just want to see if anybody would be up for playing this crazy little game. It will be an excuse to adventure in a new world and engage with some slight mind-fuckery.