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brociopath) wrote2012-07-06 10:06 pm
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OKAY SO HERE IS MY WRITEUP. FINALLY . It’s obviously in KIND OF A DIFFERENT FORMAT than I usually do them because, since this was a heart 2.0, a lot of the changes were just slipped in by altering the basic ‘room text’ and stuff – basically as well as the things I specifically called out as changed, I put a few sneaky changes in there -- so I thought you guys might enjoy seeing them side by side.
This, along with being super busy the last two weeks, is why it has taken me forever to do this writeup.
Note: Some of the text doesn't match exactly to game, when I had to change or tweak poor phrasing on the fly but I'm not digging it all out from the post. Also apologies for weird formatting idk what happened some of these places but since I have MORE OR LESS made my tables work I, I don't want to mess with it. EDIT: THIS ENTIRE POST LOOKS SO MUCH BETTER IN STYLE LIGHT, TRY THAT: brociopath.dreamwidth.org/10531.html
Game post:
dramatispersonae.dreamwidth.org/304362.html
HIGH LEVEL GENERAL
| HEART GAME 1.0 | HEART GAME 2.0 |
PREMISE | premise: cold-clocking heart Cold = frozen, unmoving, unfeeling Clock = Time, progress/lack of progress, ability to relate (functioning in the same reality) Cold-clocking = To hit someone in the head without them knowing you're there. | (NO CHANGE) |
ROUGH LAYOUT | - Geass symbol cut with a pole through the 'point'. - 3 stories & Outdoors - Middle floor is supported by the bottom floor and covered by the top floor. - Vertical spire is connected by a long spiraling stair which impales/pierces all the way through the main room, connecting the three together.
FLOOR 0 = Rolo's "daily life" functionality. Dominated by Personal Presentation, Convenience, and Inconvenience. FLOOR 1 = Rolo's daily life is covered by Want. FLOOR -1 = Rolo's daily life is supported by Fear. OUTDOORS = parts of himself Rolo is incapable of comprehending at this stage of his growth. Covered by severe lack of effect and an absurd amount of effort to do anything. The True Heart is sealed in stasis out here. | Geass symbol cut with a pole through the 'point'. 3 stories & Outdoors - Vertical spire is connected by a long lift. The bottom floor is locked with a key card and can only be reached through Loss, as is the top floor, which is only reachable through Want. * Elevator (not stairs anymore) now moves between basement(Fear/Loss) and upper floor 1(Want). Higher/lower require passing through these areas and using key cards.
FLOOR 0 = Rolo's "daily life" functionality. Dominated by Personal Presentation, Convenience, and Inconvenience. FLOOR 1 = Rolo’s daily life is covered by Want, which has been taken over by Hope. FLOOR 2 = Rolo’s Want/Hope is overseen by Love. FLOOR -1 = Rolo’s daily life is supported by Fear and Loss. OUTDOORS = Parts of himself Rolo is incapable of comprehending at this stage of his growth. Covered by severe lack of effect and an absurd amount of effort to do anything. The True Heart is struggling to wake up out here. |
GAME FLOW | - Main room is locked. Upstairs/downstairs is immediately accessible. Key to outdoors is held by Deception. Deception needs two different winding keys to give up his own key. - Key to left wing is held by Fear, downstairs. One of Deception's winding keys is in the left wing, with Friction. - Key to right wing is held by Want, upstairs. One of Deception's winding keys is in the right wing, with Endurance. SO: - FIRST main room - THEN Downstairs OR upstairs - THEN left OR right wing - THEN whichever areas were NOT covered - THEN wind Deception (after completing both wings) - THEN outside | - Outdoors is locked. Upstairs/downstairs/left/right is immediately accessible. Key to outdoors is held by Illusion. Illusion is fully wound up and energetic. Illusion will not give up his own key until both Love and Death have given permission. - Ice pick ties are in penthouse (any attempt to tie it with anything else will result in a loose ice pick; using it on the ice will make it fly off and kill the user) - Ice pick head is in expanded basement (Loss) - Ice pick shaft is in sub-basement - FIRST main room - THEN outdoors |
COMMENTARY
Obviously the main changes to the basic high level game design are those of growth, change, and development.
1) Heart has grown/changed
* Clock Tower (Want) goes higher up into Love. Want is no longer the dominating motivation for Rolo; Love is.
* Elevator (not stairs anymore) now moves between sub-basement and top floor. This represents Rolo’s desire to make his heart accessible to Nunnally.
* Basement (Fear) spreads out into Loss. Fear previously had been a generalized concept, but now it specifically ties into loss. Obviously the first visit had everything to do with Loss; Want was about ‘loss’ as much as Fear was, but now it is acknowledged and treated as an equal force to Fear itself.
* Sub-basement (Death) exists, broad and wide. The previous Heart game occurred before Rolo knew he was an assassin; now, death and causing death is one of his most basic concepts. It supports the rest of the Heart, just as Love presses down on the rest of the Heart. Essentially where neither ‘existed’ before as its own force, they now make a Heart Sandwich.
2) Manifestations have changed or come into being
* Deception now calls himself Illusion. He is still Deception though – what he has become is a more refined form of self-deception, the ability to create your own reality by believing in it. He dresses ("dresses") like a magician. Essentially, Deception took Illusion for itself because of Rolo’s many conversations with Mukuro, and is the fruit of that. Because of that, Deception no longer needs to worry about being wound – there is no constant ‘maintainance’ of Rolo’s self-deception because it’s not self-deceptionany more, it’s a created reality.
* Hope has tied up Want and nailed it to the rafters of Want's room. Hope gets Want whatever it wants and watches over things here :) More on that later on, but essentially Hope has come to dominate Want’s area.
* Friction is renamed to Aggravation and its personality traits are stronger
* Pleasure remains Pleasure but is more interested in the world around it.
* Love is an active character. The room itself is turquoise colored, and Love is the first character who does not look like Rolo but as a mix of Nunnally and Lelouch.
* Fear has filled its room and without Want opposing it directly is stronger and more secure.
* Fear lives in both Fear and Loss. No specific "Loss" manifestation.
* Death is the assassin. He lives in the Sub-Basement but can go anywhere in the heart and will target those who aim to harm certain parts.
3) True Heart is closer to the surface but more guarded. Essentially, the potential has occurred for the True Heart to become accessible, and it’s easier to reach there, but nobody can free the True Heart on their own; they need to give Rolo the tools to do it himself.
THEMATIC NOTES
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
TEMPERATURE | Areas will have 3 different temperatures which relate to a status effect on the ability for the heart-divers to feel emotions:
Warm to hot - Players feel an increased sense of agitation, uncertainty, and general lack of security. All other feelings are normal. Moderate (normal/default) - No effect. Players feel their emotion as normal. Cool to cold - Players feel an overall decrease in emotional reaction.. Severe lack of affect is in the area.
Essentially in this way, players are forced to experience Rolo's heart somewhere in the same realm that Rolo does, as lack of affect and abnormal emotional expression is difficult to express from the 'outside' and impossible to avoid from the 'inside'. | SAME |
OPPOSING PULLS | The 'pull' of concepts in Rolo's heart should look something like this:
WANT | | Convenience ------- Inconvenience | | FEAR
This is the emotional and mental state Rolo functions on, generally speaking, his value system which takes the place of anything resembling a moral system. Both take the place of different types of "Good" and "Bad". | The 'pull' of concepts in Rolo's heart should look something like this:
LOVE | WANT | Comfort ------- Distress | FEAR | DEATH
While the areas in question are still ‘Convenience’ and ‘Inconvenience’, the concepts of Convenience has become more dominated by Pleasure and thus has become focussed less on what’s easy and more on what’s comfortable, and the concept of Distress has become dominated by Aggravation rather than friction, and thus has become focussed more on what’s distressing, rather than what’s inconvenient. His value system still doesn’t resemble a traditional sense of morality (there is no good/bad) but the pulling forces are much more intense than previously. |
MANIFESTATIONS | Manifestations in Rolo's heart will be automatons of himself. a. There will be no manifestations that look like anybody but Rolo because of Rolo's self-centred mindset and his current views of himself as completely separate and unable to relate to other people enough to act like they are genuinely representative of any part of himself. Every part of Rolo that has a voice and legs and form is Rolo. b. The manifestations will not be living beings but tools/robots that need maintanence, man-made things. Even in Aather at the moment he doesn't view himself as a real legitimate human being. | The manifestation in Rolo’s heart are still primarily automatons of himself, with the exception of Love. Rolo does not have an idea of himself as related to love; instead Love is embodied through Lelouch and Nunnally. However, this manifestation will still talk as if it’s Rolo (call Lelouch ‘Brother’ etc). Because it is. It just appears as a pair of others.
Even they are manmade things that need maintainance, though.
The only exception is the True Heart, which is the only element of Rolo which is not a tool. |
RECURRING IMAGES
| Spirals - Infinity, unending, winding, DNA Clocks - Infinity, time, stasis, beats, rhythm Keys - Winding, power and control, denial/permission to enter Cold - Frozen (still), Frozen (cold), Frozen (unemotional) Heat - Heat (passion), Heat (Anger), Heat (Friction-caused energy) | Clocks - Infinity, time, stasis, beats, rhythm Key Cards – Power, control, permission/denial, all ‘modern’ Cold - Frozen (still), Frozen (cold), Frozen (unemotional) Heat - Heat (passion), Heat (Anger), Heat (Friction-caused energy) Destruction – Change is created through destruction |
COMMENTARY
Not much commentary needed here as I put it all in the heart 2.0 writeup.
STARTING AREA
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
POST BODY | Tick, tick, tick, tick.
You fall through space breathlessly, airlessly, your heart skipping a beat. When you land, everything is black for a moment before you rise and see who is with you and where you are... | NO CHANGE |
STARTING AREA: CLOCK SHOP - DESCRIPTION | You find yourself in a room that appears to be a clock shop. Which is to say, there are clocks everywhere. Wall clocks. Cuckoo clocks. Table clocks. Digital clocks. Windable clocks. Clocks of every size and shape. The grandfather clocks may be particularly interesting, for there are three total, set into three walls (left wall, right wall, and front wall). The grandfather clocks are slightly wide for their size, and their wood paneling is solid, and they have doorknobs with keyholes beneath them inset -- as if someone planted grandfather clocks into doorways instead of the standard doors. (A quick test of any of these three grandfather clock doors finds them locked.)
There is a desk which would be reception if anyone were here to greet you, but they aren't.
The noise in here would be deafening if the clocks were working, but all of them are silent and unmoving.
A winding stairwell against the back wall leads both up and down.
There is a window outside (by which is placed a sundial); however, a thick layer of ice on the outside of the glass both prevents the sundial from showing a shadow and prevents you from seeing out.
The temperature in this room is moderate and not particularly notable.
| You find yourself in a room that appears to be a clock shop. Which is to say, there are clocks everywhere. Wall clocks. Cuckoo clocks. Table clocks. Digital clocks. Windable clocks. Clocks of every size and shape. The grandfather clocks may be particularly interesting, for there are three total, set into three walls (left wall, right wall, and front wall). The grandfather clocks are slightly wide for their size, and their wood paneling is solid, and they have doorknobs with keyholes beneath them inset -- as if someone planted grandfather clocks into doorways instead of the standard doors. (A quick test of any of these three grandfather clock doors finds the two of them on the side walls unlocked, and the one on the back wall locked.)
The noise in here is significant, with all the clocks working at once, but none of them in rhythm with each other.
A set of elevator doors with an elevator panel sit on the back wall.
There is a window outside (by which is placed a sundial); however, a thick layer of ice on the outside of the glass both prevents the sundial from showing a shadow and prevents you from seeing out.
There is a desk in the center of the room, as if to serve reception for anyone entering this clock shop. Seated on it is an automaton. He is obviously not human, though human-shaped; for one thing, as he lacks clothes, you see that rather than normal human features on his body he has smooth plastic and metal everywhere, gears visible in his joints. There is a large brass plate on his back with two holes, as if for clockwork winding keys, but no winding keys are on his person. He has hair, wavy and short and very obviously Rolo's hairstyle, but his face is completely blank, only a white theatrical mask (or something very like it) in smooth plastic in its place. There is a glass plate in his chest; what looks like a door key can be seen inside. To those who have previously been into Rolo's heart, this is obviously the same automaton who was previously "Deception" -- but with some changes. He is wearing a magician's top hat, with cards inserted into the hatband, and he is shuffling a deck of cards.
There is a gear under his chin, and when he notices you, he lifts his jointed fingers to it and twists it. Gears shift behind his face, turning his mask's blank features into an enigmatic smile, though he just watches you do whatever you like in the room, doesn't start conversation himself.
The temperature in this room is moderate and not particularly notable. |
CLOCK SHOP GENERAL NOTES | THE CLOCKS The clocks can all have their hands moved or be wound/have their batteries changed (spares will be in the desk drawer, along with clock winding keys).
THE DESK: The desk is a reception desk without much in it. It has two unlocked drawers. The top drawer contains spare batteries and what looks like standard winding keys for clocks. The bottom drawer contains a large pile of broken pocketwatches, some paper, and writing utensils.
THE WINDOW: It is covered in a thick layer of ice. It is cold to the touch. It will not open.
NOTES: - The Clock Shop is both the Immediate Consciousness (surface-level thought) and the Outward Presentation. - The Outward Presentation essentially represents his ability to 'sell himself to others' or publically present himself. As his 'rhythm' goes, it's basically his ability to match his external rhythm to others and pass as 'normal'. | THE CLOCKS The clocks can be forced to have their rhythm adjusted
THE DESK: "The desk is a reception desk without much in it. It has two unlocked drawers. The top drawer contains spare batteries and what looks like standard winding keys for clocks. The bottom drawer contains a large pile of broken pocketwatches, some paper, and writing utensils. There are some stationary sets as well, in pinks, blues, and greens."
THE WINDOW: "It is covered in a thick layer of ice. It is cold to the touch. It will not open."
THE ELEVATOR: goes between B1, G, and 1. You are currently on G.
NOTES: Clocks everywhere. All of them are still. Can be wound. 3 grandfather clocks make doors to the two wings and outdoors. They are all locked. R wing can be got from upstairs. L wing can be got from upstairs. Outdoors key can only be got by taking it off Deception. * Temperature - Moderate * Illusion is here. Illusionis also a clockwork automaton. Has a dial at the base of his skull which changes his face. Illusion is wound up and energetic. Has a key in his chest (to outdoors). Will give it over if permission is given from Love and Death. Illusion will always try to put on the best face to get what he wants (which is permissions to continue). |
THE AUTOMATON (Deception 1.0, Illusion 2.0) | THE NEW ARRIVAL As you go for the stairs, you can hear slow footsteps on them. Someone soon appears coming from below. He is obviously not human, though human-shaped; for one thing, as he lacks clothes, you see that rather than normal human features on his body he has smooth plastic and metal everywhere, gears visible in his joints. There is a large brass plate on his back with two holes, as if for clockwork winding keys, but no winding keys are on his person. He has hair, wavy and short and very obviously Rolo's hairstyle, but his face is completely blank, only a white theatrical mask (or something very like it) in smooth plastic in its place. There is a glass plate in his chest; what looks like a door key can be seen inside.
There is a gear under his chin, and when he notices you, he lifts his jointed fingers to it and twists it. Gears shift behind his face, turning his mask's blank features into a smile.
"What's this, guests? Nobody ever enters here. What do you want?"
NOTES: This is DECEPTION. DECEPTION is basically the Heart's Guard. He contains the key OUTSIDE in his chest. Deception's basic personality is ingratiating and designed to try to move things along easily. Thinks about things in terms of convenience/inconvenience. Tends to repeat part of its answers in part of other answers. Closest to Rolo.
Information to reveal if asked: - His name is Deception - He protects the heart and maintains it in a functional state. - The outside is the "frozen part". He holds the key. - Mostly Deception goes upstairs and downstairs to soothe the people who live there and keep things functioning normally. Anyone can go upstairs or downstairs freely. - The people there are Want (upstairs) and Fear (downstairs). - The wing to the right is owned by Want. Only Want has the key. - The wing to the left is owned by Fear. Only Fear has the key. - If asked about his winding keys, "Want has taken one, and Fear has taken the other. They control me and direct me. They pick when I need winding, and wind me. So you'll have to get them from those two."
IF PLAYERS ATTACK DECEPTION TO TRY TO TAKE THE KEY - Suddenly, all the clocks are ticking in unison. You find yourself unable to move. The ticking gets louder and louder. The mannequin puts its hand to its chin and clicks the gear there. His face turns cold and malicious. A strange symbol - like a V with wings coming off the two upper points of the V - flashes violet in the air. Then ((Attacking player)) is gone, as is the mannequin. (Deception will return after players have exhausted upstairs-downstairs). ATTACKING PLAYER IS MOVED TO THE "VOID". | ILLUSION: Illusion once was Deception, and is basically the Heart's Guard. He contains the key OUTSIDE in his chest. Illusion's basic personality is ingratiating and smug, sly. Thinks about things in terms of what kind of reality he can create. Closest to Rolo. - The subbasement is reachable through the basement only. The keycard is held by Aggravation in the Left Wing. - The penthouse is reachable through the upper floor only. The keycard is held by Pleasure in the Right Wing. - Will allow people outside if they get permission from Love in the Penthouse and Death in the subbasement. But will not act without permission, because a reality he creates outside of those is far too dangerous.
IF PLAYERS ATTACK DECEPTION TO TRY TO TAKE THE KEY - Suddenly, all the clocks are ticking in unison. You find yourself unable to move. The ticking gets louder and louder. The mannequin puts its hand to its chin and clicks the gear there. His face turns cold and malicious. A strange symbol - like a V with wings coming off the two upper points of the V - flashes violet in the air. Then ((Attacking player)) is gone, as is the mannequin. (Deception will return after players have exhausted upstairs-downstairs).
ATTACKING PLAYER IS MOVED TO THE "VOID". The Void is Rolo's feelings on death
|
PLAYER CHANGES | - By adding things to the windows, Nunnally and Rabi increased Rolo's desire to fakesmile it up to get along with others. - By revving all the clocks up, people helped him get more 'drive' to try to pass as normal/sell himself better. - By setting them all to the same time, Kaworu will help him anticipate what others are wanting to hear to sell himself more effectively. - By winding Deception they increased his functionality to max right now. - By feeding Deception Allen helped him grow stronger | Dio wrote on notepaper: "Hello! My name is Clouds and I promise nobody will break anything here. Let's be friends~~ By the way, you're already good at jumping. So next time, try flying!" Unfortunately, this has little effect. It may make Rolo more likely to make surface promises to try to appear friendly.
Nunnally and Sakura set the clocks to match the one that leads outside. As before, this mostly helps him with his ability to ‘sync’ with what others are wanting to hear. By setting it to the one that leads outside, he’ll be temporarily more likely to try to make that presentation about who he “really is” but he also doesn’t know who that is, so he’ll still be at a bit of a loss. |
COMMENTARY
So, obviously, in both cases this room represents the same thing: Immediate Consciousness and Outward Presentation.
One of the main changes between the two descriptions is that the clocks are no longer wound down. Previously, the way they were wound down or stop represented his desire to pass as normal and sell himself as a normative human being. That they all work now doesn’t mean it’s working or that he has an active drive – rather, he no longer has a drive to pass as normal, so that’s no longer an element that’s suffering or feeling laggy. He feels ‘normal’ to himself, so his drive functions as it should for his psychology. He’ll present himself however he feels is convenient and has no desire to be perceived as a normal person beyond that.
The other main change is with the Heart’s Guard:as well as becoming Illusion instead of staying Deception, the location is key. (Location is extremely significant in the heart, which is why bringing parts into other parts were relevant last game). Illusion is already in here, while previously Deception had been out of the room and only showed up when players attempted to leave (or took too long to do so). Essentially, that’s because “Deception” as a coping mechanism – the act of lying to yourself – is a reactive trait, while “Illusion” as a coping mechanism – the act of creating your own constant reality – is a passive trait. One happens in reaction to something that disturbs how you want things to be, the other creates how you want things to be and does its best to prevent things from disturbing it. Rolo has had a marked shift towards “creating” his own reality and beliving in it (this ties into Hope, more on that later) and as a result he’s much less reactive to threat. Essentially, in Aather, his reality has been successfully created in a way that leaves him FEELING much less threatened, so he has less need to react and more need to maintain. This also represents his current level of security in his self-deception.
As Lelouch recognized in the heart, this is not necessarily healthy – but it’s still more healthy than he has been to date. You win some, you lose some. Rolo can’t survive without some form of creating what he wants around him, because he has very little ability to believe in things without forcing it.
As a result of all this, Deception (now Illusion) no longer needs to be wound, because it isn’t constantly being ground down. So Illusion’s personal desire is no longer to “be maintained” but instead to “act with the desires of the rest of the heart”. In 1.0, you had to get the keys to wind Delusion up to make him stronger or he wouldn’t let you into the Outside; in 2.0, all you need is permission from Love and Death, the two most dominant concepts in the heart. The first was ‘personal’; this is more honestly about maintaining the heart’s whole as a Heart’s Guard should.
Ah, as mentioned before, the change from stairs into elevator was entirely because Rolo really genuinely – even desperately – wants to make himself accessible to Nunnally. THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT COULD OCCUR BEFORE AATHER: THIS.
Final fiddly note, you may notice the clocks all went out of time again; Player Changes in this room are often superficial because it’s all surface level stuff and presentation, so given time and experience his presentation slid out of sync very easily.
UPSTAIRS: THE CLOCK TOWER
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
ROOM DESCRPTION(s) | You ascend the spiral stairs into the clock tower, via an unlocked trap door at the top of the stairs. It is a large square room with wooden floors. To your right, left, before you, and behind you are large clock faces. All four of them show different times (as much as you are able to determine from inside the room), despite being attached to a central device. Over the central device is a lantern, which probably illuminates the clock faces at night; it is burning hot, heating the room thoroughly and (perhaps) uncomfortably.
The floor of the room is fairly bare, though there are a few things around. In one corner, there is a small wooden table. You can tell that there are a jumble of objects on it, but you would have to approach more closely to see further details of the table's contents.
Overhead are gears and gears and gears, interwoven and vanishing up into the heights. You can see some movement up there.
The temperature is quite hot.
IF THE PLAYERS APPROACH THE TABLE OR CALL OUT TO THE MOVEMENT ABOVE -
WANT A new clockwork Rolo automaton drops down from the rafters and lands in a defensive crouch in front of the table. He is smooth and unclothed, but his joints move stiffly, as if they are all too tight. The mask he wears is sculpted into a smile, his cheeks and lips painted rosily, and the glass eyes behind the mask are bright and glistening. "What do you want?" he demands, brightly. "Please be careful with these things, they're mine!"
TABLE On the table are: 1. A pocketwatch, dangling precariously off the edge and caught by its chain on a loose nail. It is open and ticking. Pale green gems are inset into the lid. 2. An old clock set in the dead centre of the table. It is made of copper with a heavy patina giving it a green-blue hue. It is running meticulously. 3. A bowl of red strawberries. It sits towards the left -- not right on the edge, but near it. 4. A picture frame with the glass in it cracked. No picture is visible in it. The frame is white with pink flowers on it. It's half-off one edge of the table, barely balanced. 5. What looks like a key to one of those three Grandfather Clock Doors in the main room. | You take the elevator into the clock tower, via an unlocked trap door at the top of the stairs. It is a large square room with wooden floors. To your right, left, before you, and behind you are large clock faces. All four of them show different times (as much as you are able to determine from inside the room), despite being attached to a central device. Over the central device is a lantern, which probably illuminates the clock faces at night; it is burning hot, heating the room thoroughly and (perhaps) uncomfortably.
One corner of the room is inset slightly and contains a small lift. From what you saw immediately below, it does not go down, only up from here. A device is set into the wall that requires a keycard to be swiped.
There is an automaton seated in a comfortable chair next to the table. It appears to have been repaired from spare parts, cracks showing along its casing all over the place, its eye mismatched to the other, hands not quite the right size, and so on. t has flushed cheeks and a smile on its mask, permanently fixed into place. A makeshift crown, made out of cardboard, sits on its head. It looks quite comfortable, for all these issues. For those who were previously in Rolo's heart, this is obviously Hope.
The sound of large gears turning from overhead is loud, and with dust and what looks like small pieces of plaster floating down, you're obviously going to look up, so I'm putting the description in here to save you an extra comment. There is an automaton here, too -- stuck to one of the large gears. It is smooth and unclothed, likewise with a mask sculpted into a smile and with rosy cheeks, but unlike Hope it is perfectly well put together and looks solid -- except for its shattered hands and feet, which have nails hammered repeatedly through them to pin it to the gear, and its voice box, which hangs from its smashed throat on a long wire. To those who were here previously, this looks to be Want.
The temperature is quite hot.
Almost everything on the table is crowded into the center. On the table are: 1. A pocketwatch, in the center of the table. It is open and ticking. Pale green gems are inset into the lid. 2. An old clock set in the dead centre of the table. It is made of copper with a heavy patina giving it a green-blue hue. It is running meticulously. |
ROOM NOTES | - Clock tower: Need, Want of Security, Desires, anxiety about instability
- Want's personality is passionate and needy and desperate. It wants the things it wants! It wants to have them! It craves more and more and can be easily distracted or won over by players trying to provide anything to it. - If Lelouch, Breeze, or Nunnally are here it will immediately advance on and get demanding of them. - It WILL let the things on the table go but if it is not distracted at the time it needs to be cajoled or coerced into doing so.
CENTRAL DEVICE - Has four settings to reset the clocks on all four walls to any given time. - Contains the bright and hot lantern illuminating the room.
- Location indicates SECURITY of the want. Movement of the items affects his sense of security in the desire. Moving them to other areas of the heart would impact the security of that desire. - Only by destroying the 'desired object' will it stop being wanted and even then it might be transfered otherwise (ie eating strawberries = wanting more). - Pocketwatch is Lelouch, - clock is Turquoise, - picture is Nunnally, - strawberries are Mukuro. - Key goes to the Right wing.
| Changes: * Clock Tower (Want) goes higher up into Love through an exit locked by keycard. * Hope has tied up Want and nailed it to the rafters of Want's room. Hope gets Want whatever it wants and watches over things here :) - Keycard to penthouse is held by Pleasure in the Right Wing. WANT - Want's personality is passionate and needy and desperate. It wants the things it wants! It wants to have them! It craves more and more and can be easily distracted or won over by players trying to provide anything to it.
HOPE - Hope is insane. Cheery, repetitive, obsessed with believing in others and in itself. - Hope gets Want everything it asks for :)
CENTRAL DEVICE - Has four settings to reset the clocks on all four walls to any given time.
TABLE |
PLAYER CHANGES | - Nunnally increased the concept of 'Family' as desired with Want - By moving the pocketwatch, picture frame, and bowl closer to the centre, Rabi helped Rolo feel more secure in his desire for closeness with Lelouch, Nunnally, and Mukuro. - By giving Want an orange, Rabi became an object of interest* to Rolo; it also provides the potential to grow stronger. - By giving Want words of reassurance and declarations of his love for Turquoise, Rabi increased Rolo's desire to be closer to them. - By promising to try to stay by his side and be with him etc etc etc Rolo accepted Misato as one of his important people - By giving Want some seeds, Kaji became an object of interest* to Rolo; it also provides the potential to grow larger. - By promising to follow up etc Rolo accepted Kaji as important.
* not sexual interest, I just don't know how else to put this. | - Euphy aggravated Want and earned false promises from him (that he understood that by having hope he could gain more than he could imagine) - Nunnally made Want promise to try not to fight with Hope |
COMMENTARY
A lot to talk about here! I guess I will start with talking about what “Want” is.
Want isn’t just “things Rolo wants”, though it is that too. It’s the double-edged meaning of the word ‘Want’. To want something is both to ‘desire’ something and to ‘lack’ something. As a result, Want is inherently both a creature/state of desiring things but not actually having them. It’s Hunger, pure and simple. If it doesn’t have something, it wants it. If it has something, it believes it can lose it. Want has zero faith or hope on its own because his Want is to engrained. There’s nothing normative about this desire because his hunger isn’t simple hunger, it’s starvation. Rolo’s spent his whole life prior to Aather being starved for desires. This is why Want is so messed up, essentially, and also the reason in canon that Rolo becomes so obsessed with Lelouch. Being raised to have absolutely nothing of his own means that he has no scale, priority system, or understanding of his desires. He just has a great gaping hole of nothingness that tries to suck into it everything it desires out of a desire to fill itself, even though he doesn’t actually believe it’s possible. Essentially, in the big debate between Euphy and Gil, Gil was absolutely right. Gil, raised on the streets and cast into the abyss and all that, has a much clearer picture of how incapable the two are of being in unison.
So with that in mind, this was the force that dominated (obviously enough) Want’s room in 1.0. However, in 1.0 Nunnally brought Hope in here at the end of the heart. What that did was create the possibility for Rolo to believe in his Wants. However, Hope and Want aren’t designed to work together in Rolo. Since nothing happened to put them in a situation to actually work together, that, combined with events in Aather that supported it, caused some significant changes.
(I should note that ‘real life events’ will always overrule player changes in the heart. If, for example, Lelouch and Nunnally had rejected Rolo, they’d have come to this room to find that Want had torn Hope to shreds and was cannibalizing its parts. Bringing Hope to Want doesn’t mean that Hope will dominate Want, it just puts Want in context of Hope and vice versa, and the ‘real life’ events that Rolo deals with after that first heart game creates the imagery that the players encounter in 2.0).
So obviously the situation is that Hope was originally in Fear, particularly as something that Fear was trying to destroy. At the stage Rolo was at in 1.0, this was how his situation was. Nunnally brought Hope to the Want room, Rolo’s aather situation changed, and essentially the ‘background’ was that Want and Hope didn’t know how to cope with being together and both tried to dominate. Want would try to ‘shut up’ Hope for making Want too hungry, in essence. Hope described this as trying to cover its mouth and push its hands down and so on. However, because of how life is for Rolo in Aather right now, Hope won and needed to remove all of Want’s ability to stop it, so it nailed its hands, ripped its voice box out so it could only whisper, etc.
The chair is another key thing. Want in 1.0 was a ‘dropbear’ thing – it crawled around in the gears and dropped on people who approached. When Hope took over the Want area it created itself a throne, a center to rule from. It kept Want up in the rafters as before but made it incapable of dropping on (enveloping/taking by surprise) people who entered. When the group took Want down, Nunnally told Hope to nail Want into the chair. This enables the possibility that Want can rule Want again with Hope as a shadow ruler – it’s still bound, but it’s sitting in the command zone. She also told Hope to create his own new seat again, which raises the possibility of co-rulership.
Oh, also, the previous player changes: Very few of them are still relevant because of how Mukuro, Rabi, Misato, and Kaji have all left. Basically the only thing left is that Want desires the things it already wanted even more.
Items – Position on the table determines security (edges vs center). Lelouch (pocketwatch, because Rolo is trying to match his time to Lelouch’s) moved from outside edge to very near the center. Nunnally (prev. picture frame) was replaced by a perpetual motion machine, representing how part of what Rolo desires about her is that constant drive and movement in their discussions, and also moved toward the center. The knife is Rolo’s desire to kill. It is new since his childhood memory (which he got right after 1.0). He is not at all secure about that desire.
PENTHOUSE
| HEART 2.0 (did not exist in 1.0) |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | Once you swipe the keycard in Want's elevator, it opens up and lets you into a small lift. This rises quickly to the penthouse floor and lets you out.
The room you find yourself in is perfectly round and painted a brilliant turquoise. It is made out like a comfortable bedroom: A large, comfortable looking bed -- forget enough room for one, it has room for two or three. A dresser with four large drawers. A chair beside the bed, as if for someone to keep company with whoever sleeps there. There are no windows, but a shaded light on the ceiling fills the room with light regardless.
An automaton is here, seated on the end of the bed. Like the others, it lacks clothing, but its doll body is smooth and modelled softly, almost to real skin textures. Half of its head, including hair, looks exactly like Nunnally; the other half exactly like Lelouch. A leather string is tied in a loose bow around its neck; it doesn't look like it should be a necktie at all, mismatched to their image, and it looks like the sort of cord used to bind things together. Whatever it is supposed to bind isn't here, however. The Automaton smiles at you as you enter the room, and rises to greet you courteously. "Visitors? How surprising! Welcome, welcome."
The temperature continues as hot as it was in Want's room. |
ROOM NOTES | BED: represents attraction Drawer 2 (desires about love)- You find here a complicated three-dimensional puzzle box. It has already been put together and forms a cube. There is some glue nearby which could be applied to keep it in that shape, but has not been opened or applied. Drawer 3 (fears about love) - You find here a large pile of chunks of broken glass.
* Clock Tower (Want) goes higher up into Love (Ice pick ties) * Love is an active character. The room itself is turquoise colored, and Love is the first character who does not look like Rolo but as a mix of Nunnally and Lelouch. The ties for the ice pick are here. |
THE RIDDLE | IF PEOPLE ASK FOR PERMISSION, LOVE WILL OFFER TO GIVE IT IF ANYONE CAN ANSWER THIS RIDDLE. THEY MAY TRY AS MANY TIMES AS THEY LIKE.
If you want to capture me, you must go inside me. If you do not care for me, I'll become sick,
If they answer right: "None of you see the automaton move, but ((guesser))'s chest suddenly hurts over their heart, and you smell burning flesh. He says, 'There. That's your proof of my permission. Show it to Illusion.'" |
PLAYER CHANGES | - Lelouch answered the riddle |
COMMENTARY
Um, pretty obvious here, not too much to say. The room notes cover most of it. Oh, sitting in the chair places Gil in a position of comfort to Rolo, in relation to love and sexuality. So good for you, Gil. Answering the riddle increases love even more GJ LELOUCH iyaaaaan
The room is turquoise colored, because many of his concepts of “belonging in a place of love” relate to his team now, while the automaton I discussed above but is finally not just Rolo – he’s able to integrate others into his world view of reality as far as emotion is concerned, even more than one of them, making the strange Lelouch and Nunnally creature.
The bed is big enough for three because he’s really fucking got it for both Lelouch and Nunnally. This is also why their place was “seated” on the bed.
Nobody checked out the dresser.
Love became a new room over time as Rolo continued to deal with team and family. It became a legitimate concept he is starting to understand and feel deeply, not entirely selfishly, and so it gets its own “place” in his internal geography.
The scar the guesser of the riddle receives is a kiss mark over the heart.
The cord for the ice pick is here because Rolo’s autonomy must be bound together with Love to make it strong.
B1: BASEMENT
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | You descend the spiral stairs into the basement.
It appears to be a workshop down here -- maintenance for the clocks and clock tower. Large gears wind through the area, filling the air with a noisy grinding sound. There are two long workbenches with tools and gears and other things on them; you would have to examine more closely to see exactly what is on there, due to the clutter.
Against one wall is a pile of broken clockwork Rolo automatons. Even from here you can tell that their torn-apart pieces show devastating damage. The body parts are cracked and broken; the gears and clockwork are bent and scattered. Their blank eyes stare sightlessly; some of them do not have eyes in the socket anymore.
There is a scuffle going on at the other side of the room. One Rolo automaton, mask completely white but wrinkled oddly, eyes huge, brows creased, lips opened in a scream, is dragging a second Rolo automaton, attempting to pull it to the pile. This automaton he is dragging to the pile appears half-broken, cracks showing along its casing all over the place, one eye missing from a socket. It has flushed cheeks and a smile on its face, but that seems to be just how its mask is formed; it's struggling, trying to push the other Rolo off of itself, tugging at the solid grip on its wrist. Both automatons are ignoring your entry at the moment, caught up in their own struggle.
The temperature here is cold and unpleasant, numbing.
ITEMS ON THE 1ST BENCH: On the first bench are: 1. Assorted automaton parts including (but not limited to): a bunch of extra gears, sand and plaster, a variety of tools, a few extra glass eyeballs, and finger joints. 2. A rod with a red button at one end. 3. A door key. The door key looks like it will fit one of the grandfather clock doors in the main room.
ITEMS ON THE 2ND BENCH: On the 2nd bench are: 1. A pocketwatch with green gemstones in the casing. It is shoved off into the right corner. 2. A broken picture frame, the picture illegible. The frame is white with pink flowers on it. It is near the center right. 3. A small cake covered in blue-green icing. A knife is partially in it, as if someone started to cut a slice and then left it. It is near the center. 4. A pair of chattering teeth. It is near the left. 5. A china teacup. It is near the left. | You descend the elevator into the basement.
The far right wall was smashed, as if it had previously been the limit but the room has since expanded (which, to those who have been here before, is exactly the case). The room on the other side of the wall seems very similar; a creaky-looking narrow condemned lift also sits against the far back wall of the 'new' part of the room. A slot for a keycard is beside it.
The 'old' section of the room appears to be a workshop -- maintenance for the clocks and clock tower. Large gears wind through the area, filling the air with a noisy grinding sound. There are two long workbenches with tools and gears and other most-likely useful things on them; you would have to examine more closely to see exactly what is on there, due to the clutter all around. In fact, almost every inch of this side of the room is filled with clutter: piles and piles of gears and clock pieces and other mechanical parts.
The 'new' section of the room slopes gently downward. It is dark -- not too dark to see, just dim and dismal, as well as dusty. Broken glass litters the ground. Filling the center of the 'new' section of the room is a pile of broken clockwork Rolo automatons. Even from here you can tell that their torn-apart pieces show devastating damage. The body parts are cracked and broken; the gears and clockwork are bent and scattered. Their blank eyes stare sightlessly; some of them do not have eyes in the socket anymore.
On the crumbled wall between the two sections sits a Rolo automaton, mask completely white but wrinkled oddly, eyes huge, brows creased, lips opened in a scream. He sits listlessly, almost slumped, but is obviously 'alive', face turning to follow your movements around the room, watching with a fixed gaze.
The temperature here is cold and unpleasant, numbing.
ITEMS ON THE 1ST BENCH: On the first bench are:
ITEMS ON THE 2ND BENCH: On the 2nd bench are: |
| - Workshop/trash - the building-blocks of Rolo's consciousness, all fear-based. Things get fixed or ruined completely here.
BENCH 1 - Automaton parts are scraps of the dead automatons. - The rod is the trigger for the Explosive Skill. If people press the button they hear an explosion elsewhere in the building and, when they get to the Unpleasant Memory room, that display table is a smoking ruin. People can take the trigger and explosive and use it elsewhere if they want, as long as they have both parts with them. - The door key goes to the Left Wing.
BENCH 2 - Items here are representative of people and things Rolo fears conceptually. Right side = Pleasant things that are frightening to deal with. Left side = Unpleasant things that are frightening to deal with. Center = complicated. - Pocketwatch is Lelouch again. - Pictureframe is Nunnally again. - Cake is Turquoise. - Teeth are Jacen. - Teacup is Sion.
PILE OF AUTOMATONS: - A pile of dead Rolo automatons. Broken. Winding etc will NOT help. Missing parts, just completely trashed. - These are guilt, shame, regret, grief, and morality. (5 total) | * Basement (Fear) spreads out into Loss (Ice pick head) * Fear has filled its room and without Want opposing it directly is stronger and more secure. * Fear lives in both Fear and Loss. No specific "Loss" manifestation.
BENCH 1 - Automaton parts are scraps of the dead automatons.
BENCH 2 - Items here are representative of people and things Rolo fears conceptually. Right side = Pleasant things that are frightening to deal with. Left side = Unpleasant things that are frightening to deal with. Center = complicated.
PILE OF AUTOMATONS: - A pile of dead Rolo automatons. Broken. Winding etc will NOT help. Missing parts, just completely trashed. |
THE AUTOMATON(s) | FEAR: - Fear is terrified and aggressive. Put him as Rolo at his genuinely upset stage. Why are you here, are you trying to take things away - Broken things need to be thrown away! Throw them away! - Things you repair will only break again! - But although he'll keep piping in he'll let people do anything in here.
HOPE - Hope is weird. Talks oddly, disjointedly, laughs a lot, asks if they like him, keeps parroting that he believes in (whatever) a lot. - Hope is in desperate need of winding and possibly repair parts from the bench. Players can hold Fear off/distract him and (partially) repair Hope if they want, but it isn't easy. - Even if you repair Hope, he's still crazy. Rolo's concepts of Hope are completely demented! Patching him up and making him functional will not make him a sane manifestation. | FEAR: - Fear is terrified and aggressive, but also deeply depressed. Fear has become pervasive, influential. No longer afraid of the players, but almost regal in his fear of everything. - Broken things need to be thrown away! Throw them away! - Things you repair will only break again! - But although he'll keep piping in he'll let people do anything in here. |
PLAYER CHANGES | - By breaking up the fight, Yayoi made it so Fear is less driven to try to destroy Hope. - By repairing Hope, Syaoran made it so Hope was functional in Rolo's heart again; since the Truth game it's been quashed so that Want has been filling in all the gaps that Hope should cover. Now Hope can take over and share the stage with Want again. - By taking Hope out of the basement, Syaoran made it so Hope is no longer undercut by Fear. - By taking the pocketwatch from the table, Kaworu has (for now) made Lelouch not a conceptual element of fear. By later giving it to Hope, he made it so Lelouch is even more than before, Rolo's view of a hope for a future (as he had been before the Truth game). We're shifting back into clingy and obsessive here! However, Hope is currently on the same floor and area as Deception so we'll see how long that lasts. - By feeding Fear Allen has allowed it to grow a bit stronger. - By the strength of his convictions and arguments, Allen has convinced Fear to loose his hold a little over Rolo's family and friends -- in other words he'll trust them a little more not to abandon him. - By Allen putting the apple in the cup ... Rolo's UNSURE!1 over Sion has the potential to grow stronger. - The knife was in the Turquoise cake because of Rolo's fears of being cut apart or separated from Turquoise. Because of Allen cutting it into seven pieces Rolo's fear of that matter will increase significantly. - By fixing up the picture frame Rolo's fears of getting close to Nunnally no longer include her (incorrectly presumed) death being a factor. That won't occur to him as something to cause him to hold himself back from her. | - Sakura moved the mirror near the center of the table. |
COMMENTARY
Again, the description in here covers most of it, especially since not much happened in this room.
The big change between 1.0 and 2.0 are tearing down the wall to make a new room. This has to do with removing Hope from Fear. Fear was attempting to destroy Hope so it wouldn’t fear Loss (this would also have given it the advantage over Want, who it was in stasis with). By Want getting taken out of the picture and Hope starting to become dominant, as well as Rolo’s very real fear of Loss becoming more understood, Fear’s area widened into a newly defined “Loss” manifestation, with Fear sitting between the two. Fear lacks the same panic and is more depressed and in control and composed.
Elements on the right of the bench are pleasant things that he has some element of fear about, elements on the left are ones that are unpleasant and he has some element of fear about, and elements in the middle are complicated between pleasant/unpleasant and he has some manner of fear about.
The pocketwatch/picture frame (Lelouch and Nunnally) as separate fears have been melded into one (Family) and are on the pleasant side. He loves his family but he’s afraid it’s a lie. The pink hair is Euphy; it’s in the center because he can’t decide if he views her as a threat or a potential gain. The cake is turquoise, on the right. The fear of Turquoise splitting is still as real as when the cake was cut in 1.0 so it’s still in slices. The skull and mirror are both on the left and both related. The skull is “loss of who he is”, becoming simply a tool again, and the mirror is “being only a reflection of someone else.” He has lost his fear of Jacen (long gone) and Sion (who he’s grown sort of just accepting of). Due to Sakura’s moving the mirror towards the center, Rolo will develop a slight longing toward being ‘just Nunnally’s reflection’ even as it scares him.
The ice pick head is here because the attacking/driving force of Rolo’s autonomy, right now, is made of Fear.
B2: Sub-Basement
| HEART 2.0 (Did not exist in 2.0) |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | You take the elevator down into the sub-basement and enter into an odd room.
"Hello," he says.
The temperature here is cold and unpleasant, numbing. |
ROOM NOTES | * Sub-basement (Death) exists, broad and wide. Ice pick shaft (for true heart) exists in here. |
THE RIDDLE | IF PEOPLE ASK FOR PERMISSION, DEATH WILL OFFER TO GIVE IT IF ANYONE CAN ANSWER THIS RIDDLE. THEY MAY ONLY TRY ONCE PER PERSON, AND THE COST OF FAILING IT IS DEATH FOR THAT PERSON.
Q. A family lived in a round house, built in the style popular for the middle class in 2002 atb. It had three stories. Living in the house were a father, a cook, a grandmother, a grandfather, and three children: two boys and a girl. The windows were open on the night of the incident. The neighbours heard the children scream. When the police got there, all three children were dead. Everyone had an alibi. The father said he was in his study, cleaning his gun collection. The cook was in the kitchen, sharpening his knives. The grandmother was in the corner, knitting. The grandfather was in the parlor, reading the newspaper. One of them is lying.
A: The grandma murdered the children. We know this because she said that she was in the corner, but there is no corner in a round house. Therefore she lied to make herself seem innocent.
|
PLAYER CHANGES | - Erika answered the riddle |
COMMENTARY
This room is new because it developed after Rolo regained his childhood memory, and formed into what it was after Rolo has repeatedly remembered killing people as a manner of convenience. (It’d be somewhat different if he’d received his ‘killing Shirley’ memory before this heart, but obviously he didn’t). As a result there’s not much to do here. It’s a huge empty soulless room that exists only in terms of holding Death and noting corpses. The bodies relate to the sort of people he remembers killing. This place is very cut and dried entirely because murder is a very cut and dried concept to Rolo.
Rolo’s eyes are missing because Death has nothing but Geass, the force that enables him to kill.
It would be very easy to make Death attack you in here, but most of the people who came here understood the rules to dealing with Rolo. (For example, Nunnally stopped Gil from taking the shaft without permission because she knows Rolo will easily kill people who touch his things without getting his permission). So nobody got to experience the Void AGAIN.
The riddle is one I looked up online, but I adjusted it to contextualize it into Rolo’s life and his own violence (for example, the father was with the cook and just watching him prepare food in the version I looked up). 2002 atb is about the year Rolo would have been born, making the round house in the riddle slightly symbolic of Rolo’s life. The father is Charles (who is the head of the “Britannia” household which started the Geass order), the cook was Bartley (who ran a large part of the order’s science), the grandmother and grandfather were VV and CC (note that genders are reversed here; VV was Rolo’s ‘creator’ as far as Geass was occurred, and CC was the more distant power figure), and the three children were Lelouch, Rolo, and Nunnally. The grandmother was, of course, guilty.
The pickaxe shaft was here because murder is the only autonomy Rolo remembers claiming in his own life to date.
LEFT WING - ROOM 1 (Dislike)
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | This appears to be a display room of some kind. It is poorly-kept and dark and dusty in here. On every wall is clock after clock, all ticking out different times loudly. They are rather bizarre-looking.
As well as the clocks, there are three tables with displays on them. One has a bottle of what appears to be alcohol on it. Another has a folded knife. A third has a square electronic box on it.
There are two exits: The door you came in, and another door at the end of this long, hall-like room.
The temperature in here is warm, though not hot. | This appears to be a storage room of some kind, for the clock shop below. It is poorly-kept and dark and dusty in here. On every wall is clock after clock, maybe around twenty of them, all ticking out different times loudly. They are rather bizarre-looking.
There are two exits: The door you came in, and another door at the end of this long, hall-like room.
The temperature in here is warm, though not hot.
|
ROOM NOTES | THE CLOCKS: UNPLEASANT MEMORIES - All of the clocks are unpleasant memories. - None of them were looked at so I'm not listing the available options here!
THE DISPLAY TABLES (skills) - alcohol bottle is actually poison. Drinking it will kill whoever does and send them to the Void. - The folded knife is a ...knife... Players can take and use it if they want. - The electronic box is an explosive. Needs the trigger (in the Basement) to function but players can take and use if they want.
Note - there's no real effect to taking the items (like, Kaworu taking the knife didn't affect anything). Skills are meant to be used, after all. However, using them ON something or someone would have had effects. | THE CLOCKS: MEMORIES |
PLAYER CHANGES | None | None |
COMMENTARY
Only one real change here, which is that there are no longer “pleasant and unpleasant” memories and skills spread across both wings. All of the memories go in the unpleasant room and all the skills go in the pleasant room. Rolo has come to hate his memories, although he’s JUST getting to the state where he’s okay with the idea of taking them again. He didn’t want to claim any of that and have it impinge on his life now.
LEFT WING: ROOM 2 (Inconvenience)
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | You enter the other room and find yourself in a new room. This is as far as you can go here -- there is no other visible door to this room, only the one you just took.
This room is dusty and cluttered. Large clock gears fill large parts of it, leaving only narrow paths to proceed through it. The planks are uneven and uncomfortable to walk on, forcing your ankles to twist uncomfortably, and they are also loose, wobbling unsteadily under your feet.
At the other side of the room you can see a Rolo automaton sitting in a chair.
The automaton looks again like a Rolo variant with joints and clockwork and a mask. Its mask is tightened in features of tight displeasure. Its skin has apparently not been sanded, rough-looking. It is simply sitting there idle, watching you move around the room.
There is something metal hanging on the wall beside him.
The temperature remains warm, with no change from the previous room. | You enter the other room and find yourself in a new room. This is as far as you can go here -- there is no other visible door to this room, only the one you just took.
This room is dusty and cluttered. Large clock gears fill large parts of it, leaving only narrow paths to proceed through it. The planks are uneven and uncomfortable to walk on, forcing your ankles to twist uncomfortably, and they are also loose, wobbling unsteadily under your feet. For those who have been here before, they may notice that it's worse than before: Move carefully here -- occasionally a large gear crashes through a hole in the path.
At the other side of the room you can see a Rolo automaton sitting in a chair.
The automaton looks again like a Rolo variant with joints and clockwork and a mask. Its mask is tightened in features of tight displeasure. Its skin has apparently not been sanded, rough-looking. It is simply sitting there idle, watching you move around the room.
There is a keycard on a lanyard on the wall beside him.
The temperature remains warm, with no change from the previous room. |
THE AUTOMATON | THE AUTOMATON (Friction) - Friction is irritable and waspish - Refers to most things as inconvenient or annoying or troublesome. Use words like that a lot. - Will let the players take the winding key because if Deception's asking for it, it's too troublesome to have to take it himself. | THE AUTOMATON (Aggravation) - Aggravation is irritable and waspish - Refers to most things as inconvenient or annoying or troublesome. Use words like that a lot. - Will let the players take the key card if they convince him it's easier, but will be defensive of it. |
ROOM NOTES | THE METAL OBJECT - It is a clockwork-winding key, sized appropriately for use in (Deception/the automaton in the main room)'s back! | * Friction is renamed to Aggravation and its personality traits are stronger - Keycard to subbasement is held by Aggravation in the Left Wing. |
PLAYER CHANGES | - By getting and using the winding key, Syaoran helped Deception return to full strength. - By feeding Friction, Allen gave it the potential to grow stronger. | Tiny girlpile aggravated aggravation and cut in half the keycard to downstairs. They later repaired it. |
COMMENTARY
So in 1.0, the automaton here had been Friction. I mentioned in player changes that Friction had the possibility to grow stronger... well, because Rolo is someone who gets irritated very easily anwyay, yes this totally occurred, and Friction evolved into Aggravation. The main difference here is that Friction is a very passive form of irritation – it implies more a state of inherent roughness, while Aggravation implies a direct reaction. So Aggravation represents that Rolo is more reactively irritable, and that irritability itself is more defined. The room itself also represents this by being rougher and more damaged/dangerous.
Fighting over the keycard wasn’t a big change; Aggravation threw the card down because it was pissed at having to deal with them. Deaths would have occurred if they stayed too long after he started warning them to get out (Rolo does not take well to being irritated) but they didn’t. Cutting the keycard would have limited the ability to access the “Death” self of Rolo, but since it was repaired that was annulled.
RIGHT WING - ROOM 1 (Enjoyment)
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | This appears to be a display room of some kind. This room is fairly clear, large and empty, with windows all over, lighting the room brightly.
A clock is embedded into each of the windows, casting strange shadows throughout the bright room. Each window clock is set to a different time.
There is a single gutted clock on a cushion in the centre of the room. It is just the casing. The rest of the clock is completely empty. It is about the size of a standard red brick.
There are two exits: The door you came in, and another door at the end of this long, hall-like corridor.
The temperature in here is cool, a bit chilly. | This appears to be a display room of some kind. This room is fairly clear, large and empty, with windows all over, lighting the room brightly.
A clock is embedded into each of the windows, casting strange shadows throughout the bright room. They seem otherwise unremarkable.
There are also a variety of displays, mostly small tables with something featured on a cushion. They have:
There are two exits: The door you came in, and another door at the end of this long, hall-like corridor.
The temperature in here is cool, a bit chilly. |
ROOM NOTES | THE CLOCKS: Pleasant Memories - All of the clocks are pleasant memories.
THE DISPLAY TABLES: Skills - The gutted clock is Geass. Only having this on your person when you go to the Void can get you out of it.
| THE DISPLAY TABLES: SKILLS - The gun is. A gun. You can take it and use it. - The gutted clock is Geass. Only having this on your person when you go to the Void can get you out of it. - alcohol bottle is actually poison. Drinking it will kill whoever does and send them to the Void. - The folded knife is a ...knife... Players can take and use it if they want. - The electronic box is an explosive. Needs the trigger (in the Basement) to function but players can take and use if they want. |
PLAYER CHANGES | None | None |
COMMENTARY
Right, again, not many changes here except now this is all skills, no memories. Rolo likes skills! He’s big on being a useful tool. Memories have also lost their ‘pleasant’ edge for him.
The most interesting thing about this room (hurr hurr in my opinion) is that all the skills can be taken and used. Obviously some, like gardening, aren’t super useful unless you really think outside the box, but everything can be used. The Geass is the most useful (it’s the only way to get yourself out of Death before your time runs out) but if you needed to fight or kill any other heart divers or automatons, all the weapons can be used, and the explosives can be used, for example, outside. With unpredictable results, admittedly, but I planned for the potential of people blowing up floors, walls, cliffs, etc.
RIGHT WING - ROOM 2 (Convenience)
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | You enter the other room and find youself in a new room; this is as far as you can go here -- there is no other visible exit to this room than the one you just took.
This room is large, with big clock gears hanging throughout, but leaving a good amount of space to traverse it. The floor is lightly carpeted, muffling your footfalls.
At the other side of the room you can see a Rolo automaton sitting in a chair. The automaton again is made of metal, plastic, clockwork and a mask. Its mask is relaxed-looking but otherwise featureless. It has a faint coat of varnish all over its skin, giving it a sleek, smooth appearance. It has a small cake with turquoise icing on a plate in its lap, and is eating it slowly and with apparent pleasure with a small silver fork. Where does the cake go when it vanishes into the blackness of its mouth?
There is something metal hanging on the wall beside him.
The temperature remains cool, with no change from the previous room. | ou enter the other room and find yourself in a new room; this is as far as you can go here -- there is no other visible exit to this room than the one you just took.
This room is large, with big clock gears hanging throughout, but leaving a good amount of space to traverse it. The floor is lightly carpeted, muffling your footfalls.
For those who have been here before, you may recall no particular decorations on the wall -- this has changed, lavish pictures and gilded decorations covering every wall now.
At the other side of the room you can see a Rolo automaton sitting in a chair. The automaton again is made of metal, plastic, clockwork and a mask. Its mask is relaxed-looking but otherwise featureless. It has a faint coat of varnish all over its skin, giving it a sleek, smooth appearance. It is braiding several strands of colored cloth together into a rope.
There is a keycard on a lanyard hanging on the wall beside him.
The temperature remains cool, with no change from the previous room. |
THE AUTOMATON (Pleasure) | THE AUTOMATON (Pleasure) - Pleasure can't be bothered with troubling himself with inconvenient things and simply takes enjoyment with what's in front of him. - Will not really answer anything phrased aggressively or unpleasantly; doesn't acknowledge its existence. - Enjoys anything nice the players do, in really overt ways. - Will use phrasing like "I don't mind it" or "It's not bad" to refer to how he likes things - Will let the players take the winding key because if it's more enjoyable to have Deception functioning properly than not functioning. | THE AUTOMATON (Pleasure) - Pleasure is more interested in seeking out pleasure, rather than just having it come to it. - Will not really answer anything phrased aggressively or unpleasantly; doesn't acknowledge its existence. - Enjoys anything nice the players do, in really overt ways. - Will use phrasing like "I like it" or "It's good" to refer to how he likes things - Will let the players take the keycard if asked pleasantly or promised nice things.
* Pleasure remains Pleasure but is more interested in the world around it. |
ROOM NOTES | THE METAL OBJECT - It is a clockwork-winding key, sized appropriately for use in (Deception/the automaton in the main room)'s back! | DECORATIONS The newly added decorations represents the complexity of pleasure that Rolo is slowly getting. Before it was very simply that some things are unpleasant and some are pleasant, but he’s having enough experience with pleasant things now to start to identify traits, how they relate to each other, etc. |
PLAYER CHANGES | - By getting and using the winding key, Ikki helped Deception return to full strength. | - People rushed getting things from Pleasure (though Yayoi apologized). - Encouraged him to make the rope stronger. |
COMMENTARY
The side rooms are a little boring, aren’t they? Or at least, they lack the same level of complexity and symbolism.
Not many changes here. Mostly, Pleasure is a little stronger, the room of Convenience has a greater level of decoration and ‘prettiness’ because Rolo has a better understanding of the things he finds pleasant and why (and pleasure + convenience = Comfort, which is what this room as a whole represents.).
Previously, Pleasure had been eating Turq Cake; it isn’t now, mostly because gorging itself on Turq Cake is now taken for granted. Right now it is braiding together a family rope to make something strong and useful out of their relations to each other. If anything, it represents his desire for his role in the family to genuinely work together to make a better whole for the entire family, not just Rolo.
Pleasure had slight displeasure at people being rude to him; had they continued, he’d have tossed them out because he doesn’t want unpleasant things in his vicinity.
OUTDOORS: PATH
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | You exit through the main door. Immediately, an ice cold wind wraps around you, robbing you of your body heat. The wind is roaring. Fortunately, there is little snow falling, because with what little there is, and with the wind catching up snow from the ground and blowing it around, visibility is already poor. Behind you, the clock tower starts chiming as if to call out the hour. The sound echoes forlornly.
There is no visible path, but to the left and right sheer mountain faces rise. Unless you feel like going mountain-climbing in poor visibility, the only ways to go are back to the clock shop or forward into the wind.
The temperature here is icy. One way or another you should probably get moving before you freeze to death...
How do you hope to proceed? | You exit through the main door. Immediately, a cold wind wraps around you, robbing you of your body heat. The wind is roaring. That said, for anyone who has been here before, it doesn't seem quite as cold as it did before, and the snow on the ground has the feel of wet snow. Behind you, the clock tower starts chiming as if to call out the hour. The sound echoes forlornly.
There is no visible path, but to the left and right sheer mountain faces rise. Unless you feel like going mountain-climbing in poor visibility, the only ways to go are back to the clock shop or forward into the wind.
The temperature here is very cold. One way or another you should probably get moving before you freeze to death...
How do you hope to proceed? |
LEAP OF FAITH | As you pick your way forward you, you nearly fall into the crevasse by the time you see it, disguised by the rolling snow. It is a huge jagged gap in the landscape, long but fairly thin (around five feet wide at its narrowest point). When you look into it, it seems to go a long, long way down. On the other side of the crevasse, a tall wall of rock and snow greets you, blocking any further progress forward; it appears you've found where the mountains on either side meet.
The crevasse is nearly a sheer descent, but there appear to be some jagged outcroppings. It is probably possible to climb down but it is extremely treacherous and a single misstep will almost certainly be fatal. Moreover, unless you can fly or have actual mountaineering skills, to some extent traversing it may be a matter of luck, as it is not easy to pick out what paths may be safe immediately, let alone what paths may become untraversable beyond where you can see. You could avoid the risk of sliding against the icy spikes of the rough walls by just throwing yourself in, but given that you can't see the bottom... well, it's up to you.
Do you attempt to enter the crevasse, risking your life at the whims of chance, or retreat for the safety of the clock tower? You can still hear the bells in the distance, helping you find your way back if you choose to go that way.
NOTES: - Players who cannot fly, float, or otherwise force their way around, who choose to enter the crevasse by climbing down must roll a d100, 3 separate times. (if roll is 1-10, they fall to their death. if roll is 90-100, they fall but are caught by a warm wind and carried to the bottom. Anything else they pick a slow way down. http://www.godsmonsters.com/Game/Dice/?dice=1&die=100 ) - Players who leap will invariably land safely. With that in mind, I will reply to them last. - Players who float/fly/force their way through will land safely but will be given half points because they may find the True Heart but they do not take the Leap of Faith. | Those who have been here before may remember a sudden crevasse straight down … this is gone. Instead, a steady and relatively steep slope starts sooner. The ice cracks in the middle of the path and water rushes down it in a creek; you can make your way down next to it on the icy path (or, I suppose, jump in and see where the water takes you). |
ROOM NOTES | - the subconscious/ true heart. Frozen. Much of this was damaged far beyond repair long before Rolo is able to remember, and in fact long before he'd remember without amnesia. The damage here that causes the constant freezing is damage done in his earliest formative years. - This is the 'core' of the lack of affect. Everything 'indoors' is taken care of and functional; the stuff out here is really not functional anymore. Even the broken automatons indoors are acknowledged as something utterly destroyed; the stuff out here is unknown because it has been dysfunctional for so long that it is no longer a part of him Rolo can really deal with at all any more. It's 'non-existent' but numbs the rest of his being. | - The subconscious/True Heart. There’s no getting rid of the cold – as said in 1.0, it’s the damage done in his formative years. However, it’s a little less terrible, because Rolo as a whole is becoming a little more emotionally competent. He’ll never be normal – that’s just a fact. The damage is so old and had been so thoroughly developed that he’s literally pathologically antisocial, has literally developed a disorder as a response. But it’s a little better. |
PLAYER CHANGES | None | None |
COMMENTARY
So obviously some huge changes out here! I had to ellipse it a little in both versions because people were tired but obviously the key in 1.0 is the Leap of Faith, while 2.0 didn’t actually have one mandatory.
The Leap of Faith had represented the fact that you can’t get to Rolo’s true self, even when it was in stasis, without taking a risk. The way it had been designed in 1.0 was that if you tried to ‘cheat’ to get into his true heart, you could get there (representing that you can get close to Rolo by lying to him) but would not get the full points from working your way through it ‘properly’. Leaping would land you in there – Rolo is pretty weak to people who take the risk of loving him without hesitation. Climbing down means you can reach it but it takes work, and there’s equal chance of dying in the process and of landing with Rolo’s protection. In 2.0, this leap of faith is gone. There is a river that can get you there quickly if you jump in, but either way, you can get there in a slow, steady incline. Rolo’s true self is much more accessible.
Other than that, I talked in the room notes about how this place is basically the overall setting, temperature control, etc for the heart – it’s the damage done to him a long, long time ago, and nothing can fix that fully, though it can improve (and has improved).
OUTDOORS: TRUE HEART
| HEART 1.0 | HEART 2.0 |
ROOM DESCRIPTION | FOR THOSE WHO REACH THE BOTTOM (climb / jump): When you reach the bottom, you find an underground cave. It's completely sheltered, though still cold enough for everything here to be frozen. It may have once been an underground lake; there is a frozen waterfall arched through the air and forming a bridge of ice; it came from a small hole in the mountain face at the back of the frozen lake. You can see something in the ice in the middle of the frozen pool.
IF THEY CHECK IT OUT: Now that you are out on the ice, you can see what was frozen in the lake: Naturally, it is Rolo. Unlike the other manifestations, this doesn't look like a mannequin or automaton but a normal human being. He could be Rolo from Aather proper, transported here and sleeping. Curled in a foetal position and naked, you can tell he's alive only because there are some bubbles around his mouth under the ice, as though the warmth of his breath has melted a tiny pocket around his lips. He looks to be sleeping peacefully. | THOSE WHO REACH THE BOTTOM:
IF THEY CHECK IT OUT Now that you are out on the ice, you can see what was frozen in the lake: Naturally, it is Rolo. Unlike the other manifestations, this doesn't look like a mannequin or automaton but a normal human being. He could be Rolo from Aather proper, transported here and sleeping. He's stretched out with his legs pointed down and his head pointed up; his eyes are closed and there are bubbles around his mouth, but one arm sticks straight up over his head, sticking out through the ice to his elbow, hand open and relaxed.
GIVING IT TO ROLO: His fingers close around the shaft of the ice pick in a sudden convulsive grasp and his arm moves. Ice sprays suddenly, violently, and --
You don't see what happens; it's as if time has stopped. When you blink, the ice chips are settling and Rolo is freed to his knees, holding the ice pick in one hand and breathing hard, shivering in the cold. |
ROOM NOTES | - "Ice Bridge" is actually a frozen water clock. - No way to really communicate with the True Heart. The True Heart is the "ideal" Rolo, Rolo at his most enlightened, actualized, realized, and with autonomy. So, as of now, he can't exist in a way that is supported by Rolo's 'being'. He is there as a potential, not as anything that can currently be realized. - Players can try to chip their way down, heat up the area, etc, but it will take longer than they are able to spend unless they come up with something completely brilliant. | - Players can free the True Heart by giving him the repaired ice pick. Trying to use it themselves will result in first a warning shot (the icepick rebounds, digging deep in your shoulder. Try again?). If they try again, have it hit them in the heart and send them to the Void. |
PLAYER CHANGES | - Allen, and to a lesser extent, Syaoran, chipped away a little. No immediately apparent change but may have come into effect in the future pending further developments. | - Gil gave Rolo the ice pick - Gil and Nunnally left Rolo their jackets to help keep him warm. |
COMMENTARY
So I’ll start with the surface changes: The ice bridge changed into a waterfall; this represents Rolo’s personal ‘time’ starting moving again – essentially it’s the movement from feeling just like a tool who others use to identifing himself as a human being. As well, previously he’d been curled deep under the ice in foetal position, now he’s stretched up towards the surface, his arm sticking out to the elbow. This shows his struggle to realize his autonomy and become, again, ‘human’ – a real person, his true self.
Previously people were literally unable to reach the True Heart. That was because Rolo’s True Self, at the time of the 1.0 Heart Game, was not something that he in Aather had the potential of reaching. It was too locked away; he hadn’t developed enough as a person at the time. Their struggles to reach him meant that as he developed in Aather, it was more possible for the possibility to become real (if that makes sense). Obviously this occurred; he began to struggle towards self-actualization, but he lacked the tools to achieve it.
The Ice Pick is “autonomy” – if you had used it wrong (tried to use it ON Rolo) it would have rebounded, first in a warning shot, then second killing the user. Gil gave it to him; this drastically increases Rolo seeing Gil as a source of personal strength. However, by handing it to a Rolo who is reaching for self-actualization, he is able to partially free himself. I had expected it to stay there, but...
Lelouch and Nunnally having a breakdown made him react! When normally he would have stayed there, seeing them sobbing made him want to hold them, and they weren’t coming to him. So instead, he relied on Gil and Yayoi’s support to pull himself out while he chipped away at his prison until he was able to go to them. I hadn’t anticipated this at all, but I think it’s great that his first act of wielding his own autonomy was to free himself fully in order to say FUCK IT I WANT TO GIVE YOU A HUG. This still couldn’t be done without support, but he had support.
Gil and Nunnally loaned the True Heart their clothing for warmth; as a result, he views Gil and Nunnally both as supports to who he really is.
The True Heart isn’t ready to return to the “main area” of the heart, but he is preparing himself to make the trek.
VOID
I’ve gone back and forth on putting the Void in this doc; I left it out the first Heartgame writeup, because I knew I was going to do another. However, I doubt I’ll do a 3.0, so I might as well put it in here.
If a player does something which would get them killed, send them to the Void. The void is identical for every player BUT would be run for each separately. If they have geass, note the gutted clock is suddenly heavy. If they check it, it appears to have innards now and just needs to be wound by the clock key suddenly in its back. Only by winding this will they be kicked back to where they started. If they don’t, they will die at the end of 10 comments.
If you don’t have Geass, or don’t use Geass, then no matter what you reply to the previous comment, the next one occurs. Your replies just cause the next comment in the countdown to come.
COMMENT 1 Subject: Ten | You find yourself in a room. There are people all around you, frozen in the act of having fun. There is a couch. There is a table. There are pictures on the wall. There is a window. Nobody is moving. They look like posed dolls. You can feel that your heart has stopped beating. |
COMMENT 2 Subject: Nine | You are in a room. There are people all around you, frozen in the act of having fun. There is a couch. There is a table. There are pictures on the wall. There is a window. Nobody is moving. They look like posed dolls. Your heart still isn't beating. |
COMMENT 3 Subject: Eight | You are in a room. There are people all around you, frozen in the act of having fun. There is a couch. There is a table. There are pictures on the wall. There is a window. It is getting a little dark. Nobody is moving. They look like posed dolls. Your heart still isn't beating. Your chest is starting to ache. |
COMMENT 4 Subject: Seven | You are in a room. There are people all around you, frozen in the act of having fun. There is a couch. There is a table. There are pictures on the wall. There is a window. It is getting somewhat darker. Nobody is moving. They look like posed dolls. Your heart still isn't beating. Your chest is aching. Your head is growing a little light. |
COMMENT 5 Subject: Six | You are in a room. There are people all around you, frozen in the act of having fun. There is a couch. There is a table. There are pictures on the wall. There is a window. It is getting somewhat darker. Nobody is moving. They look like posed dolls. Your heart still isn't beating. Your chest is aching. Your head is growing a little light. You can't seem to draw enough air when you breathe. |
COMMENT 6 Subject: Five | You are in a room. There are people all around you, frozen in the act of having fun. There is a couch. There is a table. There are pictures on the wall. There is a window. It is getting somewhat darker. Nobody is moving. They look like posed dolls. Your heart still isn't beating. Your chest is aching badly. Your head is light. You can hear yourself gasping for air. |
COMMENT 7 Subject: Four | You are in a room. There are people all around you, frozen in the act of having fun. There is a couch. There is a table. There are pictures on the wall. There is a window. It is getting significantly dark. Nobody is moving. They look like posed dolls. Your heart still isn't beating. Your chest is hurting terribly. Your head is light and throbbing. You have a bad case of vertigo. Every breath is a struggle. You're choking on air. |
COMMENT 8 Subject: Three | It is dark. Your heart is not beating. Your chest feels like it's on fire. Your head throbbing badly. Vertigo makes it difficult to think. You can't draw breath. |
COMMENT 9 Subject: Two | It is dark. You are dying. |
COMMENT 10 Subject: One | [endgame link]Everything ends.[/link] |
COMMENTARY
So I’m not sure how familiar with Code Geass anyone is, but Rolo’s Geass is known as the Ward of Absolute Suspension and it has the ability to freeze anyone’s perceptions of time passing. To them, it appears Rolo teleports; to Rolo, those people simply stop moving, giving him time to disarm them, stab them, avoid them, whatever. However, Rolo is deemed a “failure” as a subject, albeit one whose Geass is good for assassination: His Geass comes with a literally-fatal weakness; whenever he uses it, his heart stops beating. It starts again when he stops using Geass, so he keeps it under a 5 second limit, because he knows if it reaches 10 seconds he’ll die. However, his heart not beating means he’s literally in the act of dying whenever he uses his Geass.
On top of that, Geass itself has a trait where when a certain requirement (unknown) is met, it activates permanently (then moves to the next stage, which is to permanently activate in both eyes). Rolo’s hasn’t yet – obviously. Because when it does, he’ll die. To everyone else around him, they won’t even see him in the staggering process of dying; they’ll be frozen, then come out from it when Rolo is dead on the ground. To Rolo, dying is a complete inevitability. He will die. He can die at any time and will never see it coming, because he has Geass.
But on top of that, he’s an assassin. His Geass is his one skill that allows him to survive in this job. Assassins die. Assassins die the moment they screw up. If he doesn’t use Geass in his day to day life, he will die, because he’d be in the midst of trying to kill a politician and he’d get gunned down. All his killing skills have been primed to work with his Geass; he moves measuredly (to not strain his heart), disarms them, uses their own weapons on them. Or slits their throats while they’re very still. Etc. Etc. WITHOUT Geass, living the life he’s been raised to live, he’ll also die.
So, if you ‘die’ in the game, you come to the void. This is 10 comments of an inevitable death – which mimics the physical experiences of what it feels like to “be dying” which Rolo knows completely intimately from having Geass and starting the process of dying every time he uses it – that can only be escaped if you have Geass, EVEN THOUGH it feels like what it’s like to die with the Geass activated. If you don’t have the Geass skill with you, it’s completely inevitable. Otherwise, it’s avoidable. The point of the 10 comments where the traits in it change but the setting is frozen (and only you are moving) is to build that sense of inevitability so no matter what you reply, death proceeds relentlessly.
Essentially, the Void isn’t just how you die in the game, it’s how you go through Rolo’s experience of how he relates Death to himself (while death is the concept of himself as killer instead).
Obviously nobody’s gone here, though.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
OKAY SO THAT IS IT !!! Please feel free to ask me further questions in the comments because I don't think I covered everything and probably lots of little exchanges happened that I didn't cover here. _O_