Dec 9, 2023 10:38 am
By RossExpresso, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Deed license, found on DeviantArt.
Your ka-tet of gunslingers have been travelling together for years now. Travelling together on your shared quest for The Tower.
And lighting your way on that path has been your pursuit of Dancing Jack. The Man in Black. Who flees before you across the desert. Sometimes that light is the glimmer of a far-distant campfire - or maybe not, maybe that's just your eyes playing tricks on you. Sometimes the light is a rogue misbehaving star in the heavens above you. And sometimes it's the all-consuming blaze of a town or a city or a homestead - a blaze caused by the mischief and evil of Dancing Jack.
Following Dancing Jack - sometimes, very rarely, you do actually catch up with him, and these are always doom-laden dark encounters. He always manages to slip away from you, out of your grasp.
More often you almost almost catch him, but he delays you with some evil, some trick, some obstacle that he leaves in your path, something in which you have no choice but to intervene and delay yourselves.
Sometimes his trail seems dead. But somehow, whenever that happens, you always find a sign, a sign of The Tower, that leads you back to the path of death and mayhem left behind him.
It's more than a month since you last spoke to anyone other than your ka-tet. You have been following Dancing Jack across the desert, occasionally seeing the light of what you assume is his campfire off in the far distance, sometimes coming across the dark marks left by these fires, marks left in the shape of some awful joke or spell or insult.
You are resting for the night, the sun has gone, around a campfire of your own, the moon huge and high and looming in the sky. Despite the compulsion you all experience to your oaths, to your quest - these times are also ones of fellowship, of connection, of reassurance. Your travel together is a Good Thing. You are together with The Right People in your ka-tet.
And so you ruminate together over some of your past experiences. Tell again some of the stories and narratives that have brought you together. Gathered, as you are, around the light and warmth of this campfire, pulling you together as it does against the bitter cold of the desert night.
OOC:
Colouring below is just to help highlight where one prompt/question begins and ends.We'll wait here at this campfire, sharing stories, until everyone has had a chance to respond to their prompt, building some lore together.
You've been traveling together, as the World Moves On, united in your oath, in your quest for The Tower.
You each started questing, your journey to the tower, alone. You met, together, several years ago - united by fate, by other powers, by the great Doom of your shared purpose.
Was it a common enemy, a common goal, or sheer survival that brought you together? And which of those three caused you to STAY together?
2. @DragonDweller62/Rose
After you met, you realized that each was following the Man in Black, that he had fled before each of you, across the desert, across your desert. That you had each known him by a different name, that he had wronged each of you differently, had abused your trust, thrown his sorcery, at each of you differently.
Together, you followed the Man in Black for more than a year. Perhaps? Maybe many years? Time moves strangely in these worlds. Sometimes in the distance? You were close enough to see the glow of his campfire? For sure, however, you were often waylaid by some nefarious mischief he conjured into your path. But then, eventually, you finally caught up with him, the sorcerer, finally found a name, a new name, to call him by, that he claimed as his true name - Dancing Jack.
What happened when you finally met Dancing Jack all together? What trap did he lay for you? Who did you have to kill to be able to move on, to continue your pursuit?
3. @SenorDeebs/Henry
Your pursuit of Dancing Jack brought you to a saloon where you found a doorway to another world - for there are other worlds than these. How was that world different from your own? What filled you with wonder? What filled you with fear?
4. @microtheMacroBear/Oscar
Your journey to The Tower follows a Spoke, and that Spoke supports, stabilizes The Tower, and that Spoke is the Spoke of Thinosho the Armadillo. But Thinosho - along with the guardians of the other 7 Spokes - has become feral, uncontrolled, has abandoned their task of protecting, of holding up, their Spoke. Despite their feral flailing, Thinosho still embodies their virtues of perseverance (sheyi) and simplicity (shute).
How have you encountered Thinosho's influence during your quest? Tell us about some of the signs you have experienced of their presence.
5. @Aegis/Maxim
You are all on a quest for The Tower. Sometimes you talk about The Tower together, often in whispers, as you huddle together in the wastes, as you dig deep for that inner strength that has carried you already so far in your quest. As you talk, you learn that each has had visions of The Tower, that these visions, while different in some ways, speak to some shared powerful sameness and truth.
You all see a Tower. Surrounded by a vast spread of roses.
What else do you see, together, in your Tower? What is its form? How does it feel? What has happened before its gates, within it?
