Marrowgate
- story-driven
- Difficulty: intermediate
- About 1200 min
- solo
- Game Systems: Quest-Gated Recruitment (New), Ambient Audio (Live), Dynamic Portraits (Live), Party Members (Live)
- dark-romantasy
- court-mystery
- no-combat
- all-forge
Marrowgate is a small, old, rich, frightened city grown in rings around one ancient door. For centuries the Midnight Door has opened between dusk and dawn and at no other hour, and everything that wanted to cross the continent in a step instead of a season paid the toll here. Three years ago it began to fail — a crossing late, a night it did not open, and this past winter a whole month of sealed silence — and the toll-income that carries the city is bleeding out.
Plays in a web browser on a desktop or laptop computer.
The City the Door Grew
You came to Marrowgate the ordinary way, for your own reasons, with no standing here and no history. Nobody here owes you anything. The city stands in three rings around one ancient door, and everything it has hangs on that hinge. Within the first hour you cross the Threshold, the innermost ring.
The Hour It Opened
For three years the Door has been failing. Doors do not break, the road-people say; they forget — and this past winter it forgot for a whole month while the toll that carries this city bled out.
Then it opens. Once, cleanly, in daylight, with no toll paid and no name given. The lamp-rings lean inward ring by ring, the floor gives up its heat between one breath and the next, and the whole square turns to see who it opened for.
By Dark, Everyone Knows
The Door has never in charter memory opened for a person. The legends say it has happened before, long ago, and they do not say it kindly. By dark every house in Marrowgate is asking the same question about you, and each wants a different answer.
There is a knife inside that question. The charter-court keeps an oathed executioner, and her oath is sworn to the oldest and worst line in the charter: what the Door sends, the Latch may have to close. Nobody knows yet whether she will have to keep it. She does not know either.
Five, and One at a Time
Five powers hold this city, and every one needs the Door working. The vampire asks permission and means it. The werewolf says almost nothing. The fae names a price and keeps to it. The dragon decides what you are worth. The witch said it was dying first.
Any of them can be asked to walk beside you — one at a time. Everyone in Marrowgate wants the Door's chosen — and the Door's chosen gets to want somebody back.
The lamps are lit, the rail is open, and the whole city is waiting to see where you go first.
What Awaits
- A dying door, a rich frightened city, and one question everybody is asking about you
- Five powers worth wanting, each of whom needs the thing that chose you
- One companion at a time, so every yes is also four refusals
- A knife with an office, an oath, and no opinion about you yet.