The Wall of Yearning

At the edge of the world, the Wall awaits.
It is great and tall, for it was built out of desire.
Raised by hands full of regrets.
Climb it, ye sinners, in this forgotten land
and find your salvation.

This is not quite the continuation of The Painted Dream, but it is its successor in many ways - although it is also other things, built out of things that I wished to do, but which never quite materialised. Pieces of the past may resurface again, but rest safe in knowledge that this will not retread the paths already walked.

Concept

The stories untold, the songs unsung, the paintings never made. At the end of time, there is nothing left but yearning – yearning which will not, can not, be sated. Even when moving forwards without regrets, there still remains a wish for more.

Yet, it is only a wish.

At the end of the worlds, the final place, there stands a great wall, raised by the hands of those with hollow hearts and hollow dreams. A monument to craving, to raw, desperate desire, raised piece by piece to the heavens, without beginning and without end.

Here, as the creation frays at the edges, the rules set out by gods growing blurred and indistinct, ash falls from the sky, and strange lights dance in the skies. A sea of pillars rises before it, ancient and great, their true meaning long lost to the passage of time.

Gone are the ones who raised the continents, who gave people life and had them step on the land for the first time, freed from the abyss of the primordial black oceans and the eternal, timeless non-existence watching the still waters from their pillars. Gone are the ones who have ignited the spark of love and war, of fire and cold, of day and night, of life and death.

The gods have long since left this world, leaving behind great wonders that would one day be plundered and forgotten, victims to the same desire that they once ignited within the hearts of men. The City of White Pillars became nothing but a memory. A yearning.

There is nothing left to pray to, no explanation to understand, no judgement to bow before or to resent. There is just a hollowness growing within the hearts of the children of the pillars, an emptiness that not the most beautiful of prayers or the greatest of cathedrals can fill.

Ever so slowly, the world slides back into the black abyss, as the people struggle to go on, space and time fraying at the edges, long-abandoned paths being walked by those never meant to.

And yet, in the fading times, where the living and the dead alike desperately, blindly, seek for something to hold on to, the Wall stands.

Those filled with desires and regrets alike are attracted to it, like moths towards the flame, from someplace, somewhen; travellers from strange lands walking together towards the great barrier, standing high at the end of things even as the world slowly winds down. Pilgrims of yearning, burdened with wishes, their hearts desperate to be filled.

The stories passed down say that the Wall is not yet dead, and that the last of the divine still lingers within, at the very top, the boundary between the past and the future, the reality and the possibility. The Lady of Sin, the mistress of regrets and desires, even her name long forgotten, remains and watches over the world. And to those who have the strength of will to reach her, she offers repose, absolution, and a gift to fill the void within their hearts. To feed the starving, to offer drink to the thirsty, to shed past mistakes. A wish, made at the precipice of possibility, where it may yet become reality.

For what reason, nobody can say.

And so, the travellers climb the Wall on their pilgrimage, each carrying their own burdens, their own regrets and desires, their own past mistakes, unfulfilled dreams, stories that were never told and perhaps will never be. Perhaps some of them will find what they were looking for here – a peaceful ending, a reignited fire, a way beyond what they have known. Who can truly tell, after all? Perhaps the stories themselves are nothing but the fruit of a desire for a chance to alter fate.

You are some of them. For what do you struggle? And what are you prepared to do in order to fulfil your yearning?

What is desire, if not the wish to attain something? And what is sin, if not the wish to attain something that should not be?

What is then the wish to attain something that could not be?

Character Creation

There are four stats to track:

• Physical
• Mental
• Social
• Integrity

Perception is handled via physical or mental rolls, depending on the situation. Integrity is used, among other things, to resist magical attacks and other related effects.

You have 21 dice overall to assign to your stats. You also have a single speciality, which lowers the difficulty to succeed at tasks and adds one dice to the relevant stat. (success number for related tasks being 5 instead of 6) This speciality can be anything; from something that the character is an expert in, to a magical sword that can cut through solid steel.

Magic exists, Mental or Social being the relevant stats, depending on what kind of it you pick. The carefully codified, almost mathematical sorcery would use Mental as the stat of choice, while a song that could alter the world would use Social, for example. Everyone can be assumed to know at least some magic, as while the gods have departed this world, neither magic nor their miracles have quite faded away yet, and the pilgrims tend to be well-prepared for the trials ahead.

One thing of note for the chargen is that the character also needs a wish - their motivation for climbing the Wall, a yearning that they need filled, a past mistake to erase, to make a plea before the Lady of Sin, if she truly lingers at the top. These should be sent to me by PM, however, not posted visible for everyone on the character sheet.