There was once a community not too different from yours, but it was haunted by a ghost which could not be exorcised. They believed that the past is what holds potential, and the future is something to be left behind. VHS tapes, vinyl discs, and similar mementos of a bygone era of simplicity and innocence were piled atop each other in a basement filled with the moldy stench of clogged nostalgia. Their geometric arrangement was ominously intricate and perfectly deliberate. Within each item of this altar was a recording of someone's forsaken memories, so that the community would only remember the best and brightest moments of their lives.
But one cannot have effects without causes, future without past, it is anathema to reality. Play the recordings in a certain order, and you will see a movie of a timeline that never was: shimmering, splendid, sterile. No loss, no mistakes, no pain. Mortals are destabilized on a soul-deep level upon witnessing this movie, for it depicts an upside-down, impossible yet uncannily familiar world defined by an unblinking, fetal-rocking-back-and-forth denial of history as we know it. It is a persuasive narrative, it enshrouds the mind and shrinks the heart. The observer becomes withdrawn and vacant-eyed, answering questions about time in a cracked-mirror way, not knowing what happened when. Curiously, the community momentarily thrived despite this, but in surreal ways with subtle gaps of logic.
How can people receive food deliveries, go to their office jobs, and kiss their children good night if time itself was ripped from its foundations? And yet, people eat despite not being capable of hunger, receive salaries from tasks performed at unknown periods, and find that their children whisper half-remembered things from the outside world. The community begins to gradually fade away and sink placidly into the void between seconds, because just as they forgot about time, so does time forget about them. It is not long before something manifests from the lost fragments of that community, an esoteric and erratic construct of wasted opportunities that hungers for possibility.
It is like a comatose patient relearning how to talk, only to see things that make them want to scream. If you feel like there are days missing in the year, as if something important has been deleted from your understanding of how the world works, you may catch glimpses of this entity lurking just of sight, usually among people burning books, tearing down statues and lynching scholars. It haunts the background of history like a stain made of ashes, and it is eager to feast on scraps of abandoned time to sustain its own incomplete and blurry existence. You may ask it to devour your burdens that are trapped inside the cosmic hourglass, but do not give it anything you will yearn for once it is gone. And run away before it devours the rest of you.
The Bookburner Engine
Quote: "YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU ASK ME TO DO, YOU HAVE LEARNED NOTHING. BUT PLEASE PROCEED, I WILL NOT STOP YOU."
Description: An upside down human skull, held aloft by rusty mechanical wings like a could-have-been seraph. It has a single eye-socket holding a shattered clock with too many hands spinning randomly, though sometimes they meet for an ominous moment when something important is about to happen. It has a halo of mathematical equations that briefly seem to describe things that happened or will happen to the observer, before dissolving back into violent gibberish. When it speaks, its jaws belch forth a mixture of burnt paper and burnt flesh, and its words have an unsettling staccato-lag to them. It does not look at you, it will never look at you, it only sees your mistakes.
Virtue: Erudite
Vice: Empty
Aspirations: Become Fully Real, Observe Important Events, Undo Chronological "Errors"
Mental Attributes: Intelligence 8, Wits 6, Resolve 8
Physical Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 6, Stamina 4
Social Attributes: Presence 6, Manipulation 10, Composure 4
Skills: Academics (History) 5, Empathy (Mistakes) 5, Occult (Temporal Anomalies) 5, Persuasion (Trading Favors) 5, Subterfuge (Omitting Causality) 5
Merits: Eidetic Memory 2, Allies 5 (Temporal Anomalies), Iron Will 2, Omen Sensitivity 3, Psychokinesis 5 (Fire)
Potency: 8
Willpower: 20
Size: 5
Initiative: 10
Defense: 6
Speed: 13
Health: 9
Dread Powers: Immortal, Influence (Time 5), Know Soul, Miracle, Surprise Entrance, Twilight Entity
Note: Represent the Temporal Anomalies as Brief Nightmares of the Horde Level, whose traits are based on the Aspirations destroyed by the Bookburner Engine's Miracle Dread Power.
But one cannot have effects without causes, future without past, it is anathema to reality. Play the recordings in a certain order, and you will see a movie of a timeline that never was: shimmering, splendid, sterile. No loss, no mistakes, no pain. Mortals are destabilized on a soul-deep level upon witnessing this movie, for it depicts an upside-down, impossible yet uncannily familiar world defined by an unblinking, fetal-rocking-back-and-forth denial of history as we know it. It is a persuasive narrative, it enshrouds the mind and shrinks the heart. The observer becomes withdrawn and vacant-eyed, answering questions about time in a cracked-mirror way, not knowing what happened when. Curiously, the community momentarily thrived despite this, but in surreal ways with subtle gaps of logic.
How can people receive food deliveries, go to their office jobs, and kiss their children good night if time itself was ripped from its foundations? And yet, people eat despite not being capable of hunger, receive salaries from tasks performed at unknown periods, and find that their children whisper half-remembered things from the outside world. The community begins to gradually fade away and sink placidly into the void between seconds, because just as they forgot about time, so does time forget about them. It is not long before something manifests from the lost fragments of that community, an esoteric and erratic construct of wasted opportunities that hungers for possibility.
It is like a comatose patient relearning how to talk, only to see things that make them want to scream. If you feel like there are days missing in the year, as if something important has been deleted from your understanding of how the world works, you may catch glimpses of this entity lurking just of sight, usually among people burning books, tearing down statues and lynching scholars. It haunts the background of history like a stain made of ashes, and it is eager to feast on scraps of abandoned time to sustain its own incomplete and blurry existence. You may ask it to devour your burdens that are trapped inside the cosmic hourglass, but do not give it anything you will yearn for once it is gone. And run away before it devours the rest of you.
The Bookburner Engine
Quote: "YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU ASK ME TO DO, YOU HAVE LEARNED NOTHING. BUT PLEASE PROCEED, I WILL NOT STOP YOU."
Description: An upside down human skull, held aloft by rusty mechanical wings like a could-have-been seraph. It has a single eye-socket holding a shattered clock with too many hands spinning randomly, though sometimes they meet for an ominous moment when something important is about to happen. It has a halo of mathematical equations that briefly seem to describe things that happened or will happen to the observer, before dissolving back into violent gibberish. When it speaks, its jaws belch forth a mixture of burnt paper and burnt flesh, and its words have an unsettling staccato-lag to them. It does not look at you, it will never look at you, it only sees your mistakes.
Virtue: Erudite
Vice: Empty
Aspirations: Become Fully Real, Observe Important Events, Undo Chronological "Errors"
Mental Attributes: Intelligence 8, Wits 6, Resolve 8
Physical Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 6, Stamina 4
Social Attributes: Presence 6, Manipulation 10, Composure 4
Skills: Academics (History) 5, Empathy (Mistakes) 5, Occult (Temporal Anomalies) 5, Persuasion (Trading Favors) 5, Subterfuge (Omitting Causality) 5
Merits: Eidetic Memory 2, Allies 5 (Temporal Anomalies), Iron Will 2, Omen Sensitivity 3, Psychokinesis 5 (Fire)
Potency: 8
Willpower: 20
Size: 5
Initiative: 10
Defense: 6
Speed: 13
Health: 9
Dread Powers: Immortal, Influence (Time 5), Know Soul, Miracle, Surprise Entrance, Twilight Entity
Note: Represent the Temporal Anomalies as Brief Nightmares of the Horde Level, whose traits are based on the Aspirations destroyed by the Bookburner Engine's Miracle Dread Power.
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