Aeon of Sands

Setrani: Misgivings. Roleplaying the Hero


In my dreams, I flee.

Since I was a kid, I run during the night, so much that is it any wonder that I don’t want to do anything during the day?

One time, it’s a creature half man, half bull, running on the walls with an axe; a few times it’s the guards, or the force of gravity, then it’s spies, a tiny spider, chinchillas…

Last night it was epic: a lost civilization, moving labyrinths, dark abyss, yellow train stations in the summer sun in the ’70s, and Lovecraftian cultists, who glue on my teeth a sticky slime to have a magical second sight.

Anyway, the recurring element of these dreams is that sooner or later during the flight, I step through a non-existant forest along the railroad in my backyards, each time feeling the thrill of the as-fast-as-possible getaway from home, and my pleasure at my escape route of choice, which I’m sure my pursuers will fathom just too late. And so I run along the railroad trail, from my town to the next, and then I wonder where to go, like I’m not knowing any place after that, or I’m struggling too hard to imagine things, I’m at a loss.

In short, it doesn’t matter: it only matters that I know these woods at night, that they don’t exist but that I love them, and that I run, and how magnificent is that thrill!
How beautiful that flight, crazy, terrified, forgetful of all ties, traitor of all pacts, mindful only of my salvation.

In my dreams, I embrace my secret call to cowardice.

The above, in a nutshell is Setrani: his motivations, what he cares for, his character.
Law abiding to a fault during the day, he looks with hostility on the hostile environment outside his shell, a self-content bother-me-not city clerk, forced, as the game starts, out in the desert, to face a challenge from which he cannot escape.

While the above is about Setrani’s character, Setrani’s behaviour, instead, is something about you, the game player: will he stick to his basic impulse to self-preservation at all costs, or will he weigh in the greater good into his decisions? Will he not take sides except his own, or not even that, or, rather, try to look past sides entirely? That’s your call!

The general story will happen or not, regardless of Setrani’s choices and behaviour: he is only a character in a larger play.
However, the choices available to him (that is, you) will affect the point of view on that story, the experience of that play, as well as how some events will turn out.

Marco Pedrana, the daydreamer, good for nothing half of Two Bits Kid, artist, liar, cowardly backstabber, I don’t have red hair.

  

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *