Tools for the Storyteller

13.1 Tone, Boundaries, and Responsibility

This setting is not horror for horror's sake. It is about memory, grief, survival, and silence breaking open.

Pain is not plot. It is context.

Grief is not a currency. It is a weather pattern.

History is not backstory. It is the terrain.

Storytellers must understand the emotional weight this setting carries. It's not just about ghosts and spirits—it's about wounds that remember.

Tools for Player Safety

• Use the X-card, Lines and Veils, or Script Change tools.
• Check in regularly, especially during memory-based or trauma-adjacent scenes.
• Collaborate: build the narrative around what players want to explore—not what they're willing to endure.

You are not just the Storyteller. You are the ritual facilitator of the table's shared memory.

13.2 Red Dirt Pressure

This optional mechanic simulates the land's spiritual strain—the consequence of forgetting, silence, and complicity.

Red Dirt Pressure (RDP): 1-10 scale

• Every chronicle begins at Pressure 1.
• Events and choices raise or lower the Pressure.

Increase RDP when characters:

• Deny or erase a spiritual truth.
• Use supernatural powers to obscure history.
• Violate sanctuary laws.
• Betray a covenant with silence.

Decrease RDP when characters:

• Speak a truth no one else would.
• Complete a memory rite.
• Restore a spirit's name.
• Offer reverence instead of violence.

Pressure Effects

• 5+: Spirits become erratic. Dreams distort. Echoes begin appearing spontaneously.
• 8+: Memory rites backfire. Weather becomes symbolic. NPCs forget or misremember key events.
• 10: The Red Dirt manifests. Every Echo in the region becomes active. The land demands something be remembered—or something be taken.

13.3 Echo Interactions

Echoes are not just backdrops. They are narrative machinery—fragments of unfinished story made spiritually active.

How to Engage an Echo

• Each Echo has a Resonance Trigger—a name spoken, a memory reached, a location crossed.
• Once triggered, Echoes will either demand attention or insert themselves.

Resolving Echoes

• Echoes are not defeated. They are witnessed, fulfilled, or accepted.
• Failing to resolve an Echo may:
  • Cause temporary memory loss
  • Disrupt local rituals
  • Spread spiritual instability

Players can build Echo Journals to track which Echoes they've seen and which ones changed them.

13.4 Mask Formation

Masks are the spiritual roles characters may fall into when they embody a truth too heavy to carry alone.

Mask Mechanic (Optional)

Each PC has a Mask Threshold, usually 3.

Gain a Mask Point when:

• You are the last one who remembers a name or story.
• You repeat a specific ritual tied to loss or protection.
• You carry an Echo within your own mind for more than three sessions.

At Threshold:

• Spirits call you by a different name.
• You gain a unique Mask Trait (Storyteller's discretion): a ritual, a resonance effect, or a prophetic flaw.
• Your Social rolls are reduced by 1 with any being not tied to your Mask's theme.

Mask examples:

• The Silent Witness: May rewatch any moment they were present for in dreams—but cannot change it.
• The Name-Bearer: Can compel spirits to reveal names—but forgets one mortal name per session.
• The Ashen Tongue: Can speak to burned things—but their voice disturbs electronics and recordings.

Becoming a Mask is not a reward. It's the land calling you back into story.

13.5 Chronicle Frames

The Land Never Forgot

Time fractures in a rural county. Evictions, suicides, and birth records repeat in loops. A hidden Echo holds the story of a land grab turned massacre—and the PCs must decide what justice looks like 150 years too late.

Sanctuary Is a Verb

The Sanctuary of the Ashen Heart is bleeding. The Wards are missing. Something wrong is growing under the soil. The players must perform rituals of stillness in a place that has forgotten peace.

Rust Choir

The Red Dirt is humming through steel, code, and screens. Spirit-broadcast corruption is spreading to cities through haunted data centers. Players must stop the ritual before the song reaches the ocean.

13.6 What Stories Are Welcome Here?

This setting does not belong to horror alone. It belongs to those who remember, those who resist forgetting, and those who turn silence into song.

Will you speak aloud what others have buried?

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