Welcome to the Dream, Songbird.
Come with me on a little journey to create your very own songbird!
You awake in a forest. In your hand, a blunt, stone dagger, carved with intricate runes. Around you, trees lean in, watching you rise. The bark feels as familiar as the cool, flourishes of wind. A haunting nostalgia escapes from you–the half-life of a dream bleeds from the edges of your brain. Everything is at once fog and solid, shifting and contorting with your gaze. You remember living. You remember a life. But no details. The only thing you know is that this forest is large. But not only large; infinite.
Welcome to the Dream, songbird. Follow the loose, cobbled path. Follow the brooks and streams. Follow deer trails that twist their way to your destination. Above you, where a sun should sit, is the curled shape of a fox god, her eyes open, mouth pulled into a sinister smile. She watches you, her prey. You were stalked, hunted, and plucked from your death. You were chosen.
The paths all lead to a squat ruin of cathedral bricks and splintered stained glass. Gravestones of unique stone making and personal carving fan out from the entrance. All at once you know your gravestone is the freshest, closest to the door. What does it look like? What name is carved upon it? You know it’s your name and you know you died, but that life is foggy in your head, like a dream after waking.
Inside, beyond the heavy, dark-wood doors, a soft voice hums a tune. A deep, motherly voice. It communicates to you, reaching into your heart to be translated into words, or, in this case, a word: “home.” When you’re ready, you enter the mausoleum and meet her. A giant of a woman, lounging lazily upon old, moth-eaten pillows, propped up on her elbow.
“Hello, my love.” Her mouth doesn’t move but the words reach you, along with an outside feeling of hope. You realize she is speaking to you through the language of dreams. Through emotions. She will answer most questions with honesty. She knows that this is the Dream, she knows the forest is infinite, she knows that you are in the Songbird Mausoleum. “Where all chosen birds get their wings <3.”
She knows a way to help you remember your life and to prepare you for what you’ve been chosen to do. It’s called her “fortune.” She removes a slim deck of black cards from her robes, shuffled slowly, then lays out several from the top of the deck. “Listen to your heart and pick a card. Let’s find out how your life began…”
This is the opening of an introductory adventure I’m writing for Songbirds, the game I’m kickstarting right now. It picks up at the moment a person becomes a songbird–when they die. And the first thing is a life-path character generator based on tarot cards. Today I wanna help you create your first songbird (or just a songbird).
If you click here, you’ll be taken to a tarot card generator. Draw five cards for me and write them in a comment below. I’ll write your fortune, present your character options, and reply to you with it. Only when that is done, we can continue in your songbird adventure by carving your nom de guerre upon your grave, and venturing deeper into the mausoleum, deep beneath the Dream to find the way back to your world.
Be safe, Songbird.
The gravestone is a marble sculpture atop a plinth, no more than a meter high all told. It's a sacred mass of wings and eyes wreath'd in spectral flame, the work of no mere stone carver, but an artist. It's curves are cold, and soft as satin.
Written upon the plinth is a name, I'm sure, but its letters shift and meld—dream script, illegible, meaningless. I leave it behind and enter the Mausoleum.
From the lady's deck, I draw:
•Judgement
•Temperance
•The Devil
•Justice
•The Lovers
The stone is crooked, rough, the name carved out with inexperienced hands, nearly obfuscating the meaning from where the stone unexpectedly cracked in its creation.
21 - The World
12 - The Hanged One
6 - The Lovers
18 - The Moon
17 - The Star