Out Of My Mind

This is a continuation of the Mystery theme. This time it deals a bit more into specifics, so I will make cross references to the appropriate adventure in question when possible.

The central mystery in the Savage Earth is of course that of it’s genesis. Who were the Demon Kings? The Prometheans? What was the nature of their conflict? How was it resolved? Why does the world work the way it does now?
Of course, I’m not going to answer any of these mysteries here. That would destroy their usefulness. Instead I’m going to talk about why they exist, and specific tools I have used to reveal information without actually providing final answers.

The Demon Kings were created to provide a definitive break from the past. In a post apocalypse game, you have to decide how much of the before times you want to survive. In may case, since I wanted a sword and sorcery feel, I elected to have the past very remote and unknown. At the same time, I wanted to have ruins to explore and artifacts to find. To solve this equation would require very different time scales. So I elected to have civilization wiped out intentionally. These beings did their best to eradicate records, cultures and traditions of the people they had conquered. Thus I could have a knowledge gap concerning what came before, while keeping the time scale down to several centuries instead of millennia. Realistically, I have let quite a bit survive even in that time frame, but I have treated these instances on a case by case basis. The magical devotions practiced by the adepts of the Great Lakes region all deal with aspects of time, so it was reasonable to assume the preservation of key buildings or artifacts.
OK, now I’ve destroyed everything man has built in terms of culture and knowledge. I needed to bring it back up quickly enough to have civilizations with traditions and history, again without increasing the time scale. Thus the Prometheans came into the picture. Their primary campaign purpose is the Creator to the Demon Kings’ role of Destroyer. They provided a blueprint for civilization that allowed a rapid rise of isolated cities.

Now, I know I promised that this would be about maintaining mystery and I didn’t lie. I just needed to provide some background. You will notice that though the overall purpose of these beings (The Demon Kings and the Prometheans) has been laid out in game design terms, they were initially presented without that explicit language. Instead it was couched in metaphysics, religion and legend. Which brings me to my first tool.

1. Presentation.
When you wish to keep an aspect of your game world mysterious, remember that the information will not be presented to the characters in an easy digest form, nor do records necessarily need to be written from a point of view that is helpful to deciphering them. Remember, it took the work of armies of archaeologists working for generations to build up our view of prehistory, and much of that knowledge is spotty and presumed. They didn’t do their work by going to the library and looking up the answers. Your characters should not be able to either.
For instance, I created the Book of Standing Stones as a record of the Prometheans, their ideals, their great social plan, their tools of magical technology and so forth. In there, there is not one word of historical fact. No dates are given. No one is called by a name that might give a clue as to their origin. No cities are named. Thus, there is nothing that says, “The Demon Kings came from Mars and nuked New York City on June 5th, 2012, but were overthrown by a man named Fidel Rodriguez from the slave pens of Guadalajara, on September 4th, 2111.” Please note that none of these events are true; they are just for demonstration. Or are they? See how this works?
The character Tira Wolfsdaughter is deeply interested in searching out this mystery, specifically trying to find out more about how the Prometheans set up their social plan and moreover, why. She has had access to many different records, created for many different purposes. She has seen Books of Standing Stones from several widely differing cultures, read their Stones firsthand, travelled to many of these places, and talked to ancient beings. Though she has learned many facts, none of them add up to a coherent whole that could lead to something like the sentence above. Which brings me to my second tool.

2) Conflicting authorities.
Characters trying to seek out a mystery will seek out repositories of information in the form of books, artifacts, records, interviews, and educated guesswork. In the specific case of the history of the Savage Earth, I have gone to great pains to make sure that every authority they seek out has some part of the picture, but filtered through their own interests. The Bishop of Tallon will filter his knowledge through the divine revelation of the Church. Things outside of that doctrine will have little interest for him. The Archon of Tallon is genuinely interested in the differences between cultures and devotions, but looks upon them as a means toward an end of improving his own society. The General/Warlord is interested in them for tactical purposes. Each Book of Standing Stones is designed to produce a slightly different society. There are constants, such as the social hierarchy, but the tools to achieve that aim are different the world over. The resurrected spirit of Alexander Finn has extensive knowledge of the world before the apocalypse, but no clue as to when or why it happened. The Circlet of Gitche Manito (a time-viewing artifact) gives tantalizing visions of past events, but the presentation has clearly been shown to be colored by the perceptions of those from whom the visions were extracted. The Time Lords of Saginaw have all sorts of records of past events, but with annoying gaps and they are unlikely to volunteer information to outsiders.

The last tool for mystery management was specific to the campaign and deserves his own entry in the next installment: Arthur