Games for the Mind

I have had this nagging need to name the angels, to give them a name that deepens and extends the overall ‘poetic’ nature of the game.  And I have it–Crows.  Crows, because they are of the dark, because they are drawn to the shiny things (the river, the fragments), crows because they are of the garbled message (Noah and the crow).

Also, because it suggests that a parellel game could be written for their counterparts, the doves, who carry revelation, ungarbled, directly to the humans.  If 3am is the game of truth through a glass darkly, this other game would be the game inspiration.  A game that could not and should not be treated as a supplement or crippleware–an entirely different game, the counter-game of 3am.  No angels meeting angels, only the two ranks, carrying out their vocation without ever meeting.  If I ever get to that, I ought to call it 3pm.

Ok, to the business at hand.  I want to layout the rudiments of the setting and then move on to discuss the mechanics in another post.  To that end, here is the sketch I worked up for myself:

In the throes of deepest night, the dreaming soul becomes one with this no-place and makes of it a someplace where the fragments of their days are cast about wildly.  This someplace is called the Well of Dreams, a glimmering explosion of images.The Well is a beacon in the darkness of no-place and draws to itself the darkness’ angels, the angels of the night. 

They come still dripping oblivion from their pitch black bodies, gather together, and form a great wall around the Well, a seal to keep the fragments from drifting into the no-place.  The angels call this the Cauldron.  The fragments whirl wildly within the Cauldron, but soon take on a primordial order.  The angels enter into the Cauldron, take on the personas offered by the dreams, and begin to sift through the fragments of the dreamer’s life.  They read in the fragments the signs of a hidden order and set about to fashion it within the Cauldron.  When the order is realized, the Cauldron explodes and hurls the angels into the no-place.  But in that moment, an echo of the sacred order finds its way to the dreamer and grants them a glimpse of Truth.