The GP Advent Calendar - Door 14

Dec 14, 2022 5:18 pm
Hey there, lovely GP community!

Throughout the next 24 days, we, the mods, want to highlight some fun, exciting, cool or otherwise interesting GP posts, just to give you all a glimpse of what might be going on on the site outside of your own games and to share some gaming enthusiasm around.

Since we can only be in a small number of games, compared to all the many going on at the same time, there will definitely be some amazing posts that none of the mod team are aware of. If you saw a great post in a game you're in or you have written something that you're particularly proud of, please share it with me in a private message and we will put it under consideration for a future advent calendar door. Unfortunately, an advent calendar only has 24 doors so it's possible we won't be able to share everything that gets submitted to us if we get a lot of messages, but I'd still love to read as many posts you find fascinating as possible so don't be shy about submitting one or more posts you think would get other people excited 😊
Today, we're actually looking at an in-game post again. And it's one I was partially involved in writing. This is a GM post from a game FlyingSucculent is running, spanning multiple generations of the Ravenwraith family, each generation played by new players.

Out of the blue, Bernard Ravenwraith received a letter from his estranged mother Alabaster, asking him to meet her by the mansion he had grown up in. He followed it only to find her missing when he arrives at the old family estate. Instead, he meets a brother he had never known and the two of them explore the mansion together, finding it haunted by a strange, unknown presence. Eventually, they make their way to their missing mother's bedroom and search it for any clues as to her disappearance

FlyingSucculent

bowlofspinach

Dec 14, 2022 5:18 pm
There is a lot to inspect on the table, but at first it provides more questions than answers. All of the documents seem to be related to completely different topics: there are schematics of the mansion, a torn page from a local newspaper describing a snowfall that happened last spring, crude pencil sketches of seemingly random objects, and even what looks like an instructional manual for a vintage radio model. Most of the documents are slightly rumpled or torn, covered in places with ink stains - the source of which is close by, an overturned inkwell; its contents long since dried. Curiously, its design looks nothing like the inkwell that Atterwall found in the museum.

And then, under a stack of some old cheques - probably Alabaster's gambling winnings, if Bernard had to guess, - Atterwall finds something of interest: a letter draft. It looks like it was forgotten here, discarded to never be sent, and it is filled with corrections and striked out parts which speak volumes about the writer's conflicted thoughts. He quickly looks it over to see if its important, and then reads it again, slowly.
[ +- ] Letter
The handwriting is unfamiliar to Atterwall, but Bernard would easily recognizes it as Alabaster's, even after all the years apart. But to his knowledge, Marinette never received any version of this letter: for something tells him that if she knew, she would want to go with him - or stop him. She always said that they will never return to the manor when Bernard asked her about it back in the day, and it's hard to believe Marinette wouldn't interfere if she knew about this.

The blackbird looks up at the letter with interest, tilting its head, but doesn't move from the man's shoulder. Back in the hallway, a few eyes appear again, peeking through the doorway.
FlyingSucculent
Dec 14, 2022 6:03 pm
So much story in there, and I love how FlyingSucculent portrays/shows Alabaster as an unreliable narrator.
Dec 14, 2022 6:37 pm
Yes agreed, she did a wonderful job with the character.
Dec 14, 2022 11:33 pm
Wow! Wonderful writing 😳
Dec 15, 2022 12:35 am
Dr_B says:
Wow! Wonderful writing 😳
Let's not sweep under the table that English isn't Succulent's first language. That makes quality posts like that all the more impressive!

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