There's no end to the surprises this season, it seems. First the gang gets tricked into doing a mischief against their dear Motherfather, then the consequences of that are widespread and utterly baffling. Every which way you turn, the light's either there or not to varying degrees, and the whole world's gone strange - it feels like
many worlds now, instead of just the one, and traveling from one to another leaves kin with anything from hazy memories and vague impressions of far-flung spaces, to whole new life stories as different animals that slowly fade away like a dream. Talk is widespread of different bodies, different names, strange magics, incomprehensible tools... Except they
can be comprehended, but only while one is there. Once they come back home, come back here, the knowledge is simply gone.
Usually, Winter Market is the highlight of Can You's year - she's a common sight most festivals, and seeing Can You is usually a sign that there's something fun afoot. However, the biggest surprise of
this year is how sullen and quiet she is, simply laying crossly in a stable patch of sunlight. She complains to anyone who'll listen, "Oh! I HAD a fun game planned for this year! But then
this happened," she says, waving a foreleg at the general surrounds, indicating the surreal patches of light and dark. "As soon as this popped up, all the supplies I've been stocking up got swallowed up by a tangle of,
whatever this is, and now I can't even
look for any of it without getting caught in some weird dream about being a damned squirrel or something! Everything is stuck in there, now!"
If you ask more about it - for example, offering to help her retrieve her supplies - she'll give you a bitter look. "You can
try heading in there, sure, but you're not gonna find any of my supplies. You're just gonna get caught in a dream, too. You might not even get to remember any of them for your trouble! So, have fun," she'll say with a sigh, then turn her head and continue to sulk.
In character, this is deeply confusing, troubling, fascinating, worrying... out of character, this is mostly
exciting. Like many others, I want to help my swamp fam capitalize on this novel meta experience! So what I've done is create a simple collection of plot elements that you can string together in order to create new stories with your kin exploring these strange new worlds. Each of the ideas on the lists is vague enough to give you plenty of wiggle room, but hopefully also enough to give you some specific direction to encourage some unique ideas! For example, if you roll or choose the Goal of 'find a specific object', that can interact with any of the settings and your kin's personality in whatever way makes sense to you, anything from finding a powerful enchanted item in a fantasy setting, to finding a medicinal herb to cure an ailing friend as a shaman of a different species, to simply finding your car keys in a humanoid slice of life RP!
And of course, you get a chance for a bit of a bonus on top of the fun RP, too. It's the winter market, after all! What the heck kind of booth would this be if I weren't offering prizes?
