Who: Caroline, Adrienne, Greg, and Andrew
What: Stock setting Polaris
When: Thursday September 1, 2011

Furud (played by Andrew, antagonist: Caroline) was a knight and scientist seeking to bring the mistaken back from the abyss. He struggled with reconciling his obligation to defeat and destroy the mistaken and his belief that all blights can be healed. After sneaking some infected mistaken into a town to prevent their extermination, the blighted people spread throughout the lands. Furud decides to take to the front lines of the assault, but is haunted by the humanity in his victim's faces. He realizes he could not raise a hand to harm anyone who was a former family member or friend and struggles to see the mistaken as anything less than human. Along his campaign he meets and befriends the young Mufrid, who he begins to see as a son. Mufrid dies in Furud's arms as an experiment to test whether Furud's vaccine against the 'mistake' will work. Rather than saving his life by turning his body over to the mistaken, Furud allows Mufrid to die, though his final 'thank you' haunts his dreams forever as he vanishes into the permafrost. Furud then succeeds in creating detector that will allow the knights to ascertain whether one is mistaken or not. When they are found out they are killed, but must be done so individually. Furud chillingly hears Mufrid's voice saying 'thank you' each time a person is found clean of the illness.

Nekkar (played by Greg, antagonist: Adrienne) is a shepard in the utmost north herding beautiful caribou through the wastes. When he finds his friend Botein and Boutin's herd dead at the hand of a terrible bird of paradise, he captures the thing in order to find if it is 'beast or blight.' Bringing the bird to his friend Qu, the bird reveals itself to be a demon. Qu is smitten with it though and refuses to have it killed. The bird is then brought to the nearest town to stand trial for the murder of Botein and his flock. Nekkar cares after Boutein's widow, Caelum, as they try to convince the town of the bird's evil. The bird, however, has turned itself into a beautiful woman, and the town is unable to harm her. During the trial, however, Nekkar manages to slay the bird. Unfortunately, anywhere the woman walked has melted the permafrost, leading to the tragic collapse of the town as she dies. The story of the bird becomes a religion, spreading the message that to look upon beauty is wondrous, but to strike it down will cause ruin. Meanwhile the utmost north becomes desolate and the herds thin. People must abandon their former lives to move south, where reports from the outcast Qu point to a beautiful abundance--dangerously beautiful. The people may choose between subsistence in the South, or soul-devouring beauty in the deep-South. We never know which they choose. We do see Nekkar, however, enter Qu's old cabin with the widow Caelum to find a beautiful egg that he must watch after.

Thank you all for a lovely game and please feel free to add details here as to what happened and what you thought of the game mechanics/setting/etc! I think we told some seriously excellent tragedies and I enjoyed gaming with everyone very much. :) Yay Polaris!

This was great! Both stories were suitably tragic; though it would have been nice to have Nekkar in a position to either turn or die at the end.

Mechanics and setting were both very cool. We got some pretty devastating 'And furthermore' cascades; so I'm happy their use is limited. I think I'll need a few more games to get the hang of dictating emotions as well as actions, so I'm looking forward to trying this again. ('Song of Ice and Fire' Polaris?)

Thanks everyone for making this such a fun, I mean dire, game!