History of the Book
The Book can appear anywhere at any time on the face of the Earth. It doesn’t always have the cover, page count, or even title. It can be written in any language, including braille and exclusively images, but it is always a book. There are no known electronic, digital, recordings, or non-physical versions of any kind. There is no Author noted on or inside the book cover, nothing to indicate who wrote any part of it.
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The book simply exists, and it appears where and when it does for reasons we cannot fathom. But it always appears to one person at a time. A hundred people could pass by The Book on a shelf in a library, or in a pile of complementary reading at a coffee shop, yet only one person will actually see it. That person will feel compelled to pick it up and take a closer look.
Most readers will see some variation of the title: My Stories. These readers will read The Book, casually at first, but then growing in intensity as they come to realize that some of the stories within hold great insight into their own lives, offering guidance to navigate personal struggles and difficult life events.
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Others will see a different title: Your Stories. These few readers will find themselves drawn to a particular chapter or story within that once they begin to read, they will be unable to set the book down before finishing. These readers will devour the words voraciously and connect deeply with the story, once again finding great insight into the troubles that are impacting their lives. The Book will have a long term impact on their lives, and they will remember it fondly, yet the specifics of the story that impacted them so greatly will elude them. They won’t feel any pressing need to find The Book again and rarely ever do.
The last rare few see yet another variation of the title: Our Stories. These select few readers are those that find themselves pulled into The Book and start new lives as Ikons. Everyone has their own unique circumstances that led them to The Book. You may share similar situations with other Ikons or not. The Book appears to candidates for its own reasons and not all candidates will read The Book long enough to be pulled into this new life. You also found The Book, or it found you, who is to say, and you did read it.
Your Ikon
You open your eyes, blinking at the bright light as if you were being dragged up from within a deep well after being trapped in darkness for ages. You steady yourself on unfamiliar feet, grasping a tree branch with an unfamiliar hand, yet you don’t feel its bark. Your whole body feels heavy, hard to move at first.
As your disorientation slowly fades, you realize the heaviness comes from a long shirt of metal chain covering your body. Your hands are wearing thick leather gloves and a wool cloak pulls at your neck and shoulders. The tree you are leaning on is one of thousands surrounding you, a forest that stretches as far as your still-blurry eyes can make out. Your mind is clouded and buzzing with disjointed thoughts and emotions.
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Moving over to sit on a nearby stump, you try to shake away the fog and remember how you got here. Nothing comes at first, but as your eyes begin to see clearly, so do your thoughts crystallize as well.
Once you awaken as an Ikon, that is who you are. You are not your old self, trapped inside a new body, or sharing someone else’s life as copilot. It feels more as if your old self was a past life, an important one, and one you understand you can return to. However, it is difficult to speak of this life to others. The words come slowly and layered with loss and distance, as if your mind wants to focus on the here and now, the new life before you. You easily refer to yourself by your new name, and you are completely familiar with your body’s capabilities and limitations as if you have always been this person. Only on rare occasions will a random memory skip across your mind, one that hints you are not this person, that you read about them in a book. Sadly these moments are fleeting and any attempt to sharpen them in your thoughts causes them to dissolve and flow like quicksilver into faint imprints of images and emotions.
The Book brought you here with a purpose in mind. Saving the Realm from the Corruption. When you first arrive you will quickly learn that while you have been given great gifts, you are not ready to simply "save the world". Your skills need to be honed, your powers cultivated, and your understanding of The Book broadened. To do that, you must go out and explore the Realm, meet people, find other Ikons, and gain valuable knowledge and experience.
The Realm
The totality of lands and kingdoms found within The Book are collectively known as The Realm. The first thing to understand about The Realm is that it encompasses all of The Author's imagination and will. There are as many lands to be found within The Realm as there are tales to be told in The Book. The common thread that connects all lands is that they are all classical fairy tale realms of fantasy and whimsy. Some may be more advanced than others, but none have reached levels of advancement beyond the early Renaissance of history.
A Changing Landscape
The Realm has no border and its lands are impermanent. Two countries that border each other one day, may be impossibly far away on another occasion. The Realm isn't pure chaos however, things don't change constantly or within the context of an ongoing adventure. As the players' Ikons travel across The Realm they may notice that everything is connected by the stories and adventures they are experiencing. As long as a "story" demands it, all necessary people, places, and things will stay connected physically and narratively. After completing an adventure, should the Ikons return to place they travelled in the past, they may find that landmarks have changed, neighboring villages or kingdoms no longer exist or are further away.
Natives of the Realm
The Realm is home to all kinds of people and creatures, referred to in this book as Natives. The natives vary greatly from land to land across the realm, but most kingdoms and other civilizations are usually human or near human in nature. This is the greatest evidence we have that The Author was human, as most lands and the stories within them tend to be centered around human settlements or kingdoms. Nearly all of these civilizations are similar to human civilizations found on Earth between the Dark Ages and Early Renaissance periods.
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Humans are not the only inhabitants of The Realm however. These lands are filled with all sorts of magic and fantastical creatures and peoples. Trolls, werewolves, ghosts, dragons, and talking animals are just a small example of the fantastic creatures and beings Ikons will encounter in their adventures. While some of these will be described later in this book, Narrators are encouraged to populate their adventures with whatever amazing creatures they can think of. The following section give you an easy to use set of rules for applying game attributes to your creations.
The Corruption
It is not known what exactly causes the Corruption, or how it manages to spread throughout The Book. It could be related to the Author in some way, as it manifests itself as putrid, flowing, pulsating ink. Blobs, tendrils, seeping puddles of it. Oozing, moving, bubbling, and consuming.
The Corruption appears and begins to warp everything around it, turning it darker, washing out the colors, and smearing everything with fine layers of inky filth. Nothing healthy grows on corrupted land and Misprints can appear without warning in areas of heavy contagion.
Direct contact with Corruption inflicts 1d4 damage and saps 1 Spirit per round you touch it. Only Scrivening magic and Inkforged weapons can destroy the Corruption, cleansing objects and locations of its pollution. If left unchecked the Corruption will spread and grow until all of The Book is bleak, colorless, and choked with monsters.
Wells of Corruption
Most of the time Corruption appears in sparse patches or in the form of a Misprint. Occasionally though, you may encounter a greater concentration of corruption, focused on a single spot. These are known as Wells. They are highly dangerous, capable of spawning extremely dangerous misprints and spreading Corruption rapidly to their nearby lands.
Misprints
The Misprints are the true enemies of The Realm. While there are many magical and dangerous beasts, characters, and locations within The Book, none have the ability to destroy like Misprints. As their name implies, every Misprint was once something native to the realm. Somehow, through contact with the Corruption or manipulation by the Dark Editors, that very nature of what that thing was changed. This manifests itself in The Book in the real world as a misprinted word innocently found in the text. In the realm however, this change to its true name has warped its form and function, driving it wild and filling it with power. That power seeds more Corruption, growing in size and destructiveness and eventually creating more Misprints.
Author's Ink
Much like the mystical reality of The Book, all true magic in the world comes from a single source, the Author’s Ink. This strange and possibly divine substance permeates the entire world, but can only be accessed when it pools in hidden places and forms into Inkwells and Inkblots. Author’s Ink looks much like real world ink, except that it shifts color and plays with light much like oil floating on water. It is more energy than it is liquid. Making the Ink very impermanent, soaking into the ground, absorbing into nearby objects, or simply dissipating into the air. Special care must be taken to capture and preserve Author’s Ink. Equipment enchanted with spells or Inkforged in order to collect and hold the ink is needed, otherwise it will simply evaporate in moments.
Inkwells
Inkwells are manifestations of Author’s Ink in the Realm. They can appear anywhere, even sprouting in midair. They appear as wispy springs, pools, or fountains that ebb and flow erratically like the wind. Inkwells are highly sought after by Ikons and some natives. If you decide you want to try and tap the well to obtain Author’s Ink, realize that doing so will cause it to stop flowing permanently. If you have the necessary equipment to obtain the Ink, roll an Inkforging skill check. The total x10 is the number of grams of Author’s Ink you are able to extract.
Inkblots
When Author’s Ink manifests deep underground, it has nowhere to go and gets injected into the surrounding stone. The pressure of the stones causes the Ink to harden into veins of a crystalline material. The stone can be mined and processed to extract the raw Ink from the veins. This process is difficult, time consuming, and requires the use of magical forges fueled by spells to work. For every 1 kg of stone mined, 1g of Ink can be recovered after about 1 hour of work.
The Dark Editors
The leading belief among many Ikons is that the Dark Editors are the original source of the Corruption. They are Ikons that were brought into The Book and began to abuse their power, using Author’s Ink to try and rewrite the stories for their own benefit. They obtained great power and made many, potentially permanent, changes for their own selfish needs. This has caused The Story itself to become “sick” and that sickness is manifesting as the Corruption. Dark Editors are secretive and hard to track down, but they are known to have powers at their disposal that are beyond any shown by Natives or Ikons.
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Control of Misprints
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Ability to Summon Misprints
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Heal like Misprints
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Spells unknown to most Ikons