Casting Shadows

This week’s seed is for an adventure and exploration style game which to my mind means Leagues of Adventure or Hollow Earth Expedition. I am leaning toward Leagues of Adventure for this one as the added social complications of the Victorian period will heighten the tension.

My Saturday Seeds also reappear on Ancient Scroll on random Saturdays~

The seed

The seed is not so much a call to action as it is a situation which complicates such calls.

Planting the seed

The seed is appropriate for a group of characters who have returned from an extensive and harrowing trip far from home. It might be ideal if this is the first return from a major expedition with major stakes and major losses.

The Details

As the characters try to settle back to a sense of normalcy, not having to look over their shoulders for predators or pursuers, not needing to check each step for traps, vines, or venomous creatures, they are hit with a wave of things that have piled up in their absence.

Friends and/or relatives have passed away, leaving legal and emotional problems to deal with. Financial uncertainty has caused strain on the relationship with the characters’ accounts managers and standing in the community. People have begun to pass unsavory and salacious versions of the characters’ adventures with scant truth to them, and no identifiable sources. Memberships in clubs and leagues may be called into question based on some of these claims, as well as other more mundane matters, such as unpaid or late dues, and concerns over the quality or subjects of scholarship – or worse – the veracity of any discoveries or reports they may be intending to make.

These are different times and people of privilege in small circles of power make or break careers, and decide what will and not be true, for the good of the country. A triumphant and relieving return to civilization has strangely in the span of one day made the peril of the road look appealing, and the simple certainties of life and death combat a blessing.

Hit the characters hard with things like bills, employees giving notice, jury duty, unrefusable invitations to tea with curious old spinsters eager for gossip, and the real price of a life lived on the road: absence in times of family loss and grief.

Home is not what it once was, and perhaps home is now the road, with the warm lights of  campfires replacing hearth and family.

What is going on

Nothing, really…  unless one of these things is not like the others….? Perhaps death does lie behind every bush, at home, or away.

Enjoy~