All who walk the road to Cenotaph dream, but this night more than any other on the journey do those dreams seem more vivid. More true. People, places, and monsters float by like wraiths in these dreams, each concerned with a different task or purpose known only to their dreamer. Yet within them all, a single feature stands out tall and vivid in the distance. A castle, dark and foreboding, looms on the peak of a mighty hill that overlooks the path the caravan travels. It is the nature of dreams to show things of phantasm and fantasy, but this place, this crumbling dark citadel is real, or at least had been long ago.
In the tallest peak of the tallest tower, a pinpoint of cold, pale light reflects out – Growing brighter and clearer as the season passess and the moonlight wanes. When the new moon finally rises, and the dark of night is at its strongest, Lurian’s eyes have opened and their light shines into the world of men. This light is caught by something that rests at the peak of this spire, and reflects as if from a mirror onto the weary travelers below. Where once the walls and wards of the tower’s sanctum chamber might have held and sheltered this reflected light, they now lay crumbling and broken so that its shining glare blazes out into the world.
Those who find themselves walking in this light rapidly see every memory of their history, and every accounting of their future stretching on and out before them. Were one to take the time to sit and reflect upon these visions, they could look out upon the days of their life pressed together like the chapters of a book, and take some insight or wisdom from its pages.
But where once this mirror was flawless and smooth, now cracks have splintered and warped its face. What should be light of the purest hue is now split into a multitude of dissonant shades; no longer a perfect reflection of what was, or what will be, can be seen. Now also what may have been, and what should never come to pass reflects out. Each traveler sees not only their life as they knew it, but their life as it might have been. What might their life have been were they only born to different circumstances? The poverty-stricken was born a wealthy magnate. A soldier fell where he should have risen victorious. What if one was born with the Charismata, or enthralled to the vampire lords, or to the triumvirate?
As each traveler in the caravan steps through these rays of cold and pale light, so too does their history and future stutter and change with every step. It soon becomes impossible to tell the difference between what was and might have been, with what will be and what will never come to pass. What might have once been an opportunity for self reflection is now overshadowed by the overwhelming sense of confusion that surrounds the infinite reaches of possibility.
When each member in the caravan wakes, their minds are clouded by these visions. While each sees only their own past, present, and future possibilities, all remember the tower and its light with clarity. The mind is not meant to hold the entirety of even a single life, so the details of these infinite visions are fleeting and hazy at best. Like most dreams, they quickly fade into obscurity and oblivion soon after waking.
While these memories and visions are as fleeting as whispers to those who wake, not all is as it was when everyone went to bed. Several of those among the Caravan have arisen….different. Apparently these dreams were more than simple visions, and some of the companies now embody in part or in whole a potential version of themselves. Some woke with memories of a longer, more experienced life that did not fade as other memories did. Others remember a different life entirely, and awake as almost entirely different people. Some woke with all of their previous memories and mind intact, but their body drastically different, now being more monstrous or powerful then they once were. Some simply did not awake at all, and no trace of them is to be found.
The caravan guides quickly consult their seers and the following conclusion is reached: Due to a recent celestial alignment with the echoes of an ancient powerful magics along a ley line, and the caravan crossing into an otherwise unknown….. phenomenon, people are experiencing the echoes of their future or alternate futures. As the moon returns stronger each night, the effects will slowly fade until everyone is as they were. The hill and fortress from everyone’s dream does not seem to actually be anywhere in the local geography, nor do any recognize it from lore or legend. They encourage everyone to have patience with each other, as some among their number are quite literally entirely different people now.
What this means on an OOG level is that players who receive Lottery XP or Glory concepts may choose to play an entirely new character, or their existing character with memories of a longer and more eventful life. Those who received a glory concept may choose to play a ‘What if’ version of their existing PC, with as many appropriate memories as they would like to make the concept playable and fun. After the event, characters will return to ‘normal’ keeping the memories of their time as their other selves, or allowing them to fade if they so choose.