players: Heather, Joe, Alex, Ben

"I want monsters"
"I want kids in a school"
"Awesome! Let's do both"

Welcome to Tarakis Academy, a secret school for kids with special gifts, teaching them to summon and control "companions" (*cough* monsters). It's a private boarding school somewhere in the realish world, tucked away in the countryside of upstate New York or some such place. It's a little Harry Potter, a little Pokemon.

But here's an important thing: we didn't make the Kingdom the school. We made the Kingdom the students of one grade (basically 12-13 year olds). That turned out to be an incredibly important decision. Instead of deciding what the school should do, we were deciding how these kids were reacting to this sometimes ominous institution that was controlling their lives. And since we only had a shadowy understanding of what was going on -- why we were being taught to summon monsters in the first place -- we were basically acting in ignorance, just guessing what was going on. Which for kids is a perfect, perfect fit.

We were scared of the never-seen headmaster, but was he an evil sorcerer or just an intimidating authority figure? Was something nefarious afoot or were we just skittish kids? Was our last Crossroad "will we rebel against the headmaster?" Oh yes it was.

Spoiler: we thought our class was special because we were the "chosen ones" who would fight the Twilight, some foretold alignment of the stars / armageddon. Surprise! We're the problem. We are the Twilight.

So much fun! I don't think I've played a game where I had so much fun with dueling Touchstones. Heather and I had very different viewpoints but they blended together in super-interesting ways.

Alex as Ivana, catty bully turned rebel leader: "I'm going into the woods after the Shadow. I'm bringing the deal-with-it kids." Was Joe's character really the cause of the entire Shadow problem? Of course he was!

We had so much fun we lost track of time and didn't realize it was already after 11, so we ended on kind of a cliffhanger. Would we rebel? I don't think anyone at the table thought we wouldn't, despite protests. Would the headmaster crush us like bugs? Hmm…

Awesome Game!