Inheritance

By Warren Tusk

Players: 7

Genre: Posthuman sci-fi drama

Melek
Taus Abramides, the Black Scrivener, has died.

It
is an appalling fact, unbelievable on its face. In this civilised age, within
the precincts of the Terrestrial Coil, no one is supposed to die. Not ever. The
technologies of the Machine Intelligences have rendered the human body
invulnerable to injury and disease and decay – and should those defences somehow
fail, every consciousness is stored away for safe recovery, with a hundred
backup copies hidden away in secure places. But there he sits, his rotting
corpse slumped upon his dream-throne, sunken and sad beneath the magnificent
robes and the death mask. His servitors say that there was not a single
personality-recording to be found, that he must have deliberately erased them
all. And he left a will. Suicide, true and irrevocable suicide, seems like the
only possibility.

There
would be enough of a scandal if an ordinary citizen had elected to discard his
immortality. But Melek Taus Abramides was no ordinary citizen… and he left
behind him no ordinary bequest.

The
Black Scrivener was a maker of worlds. Now that he is dead and gone, his worlds
lie waiting for a new master.

He
created, in his time, dozens upon dozens of simulated realities. A bare handful
of them were released to the public as dream-bubbles, and those few dreams were
enough to make him a minor celebrity; each and every one was an impossible realm
of enchantment, where physics and metaphysics and logic worked according to
bizarre rules that no one else could have imagined. But the vast majority of
his work was hoarded away, in a private archive that he called the Thousand
Worlds. That archive must contain any number of conceptual structures that
cannot be found elsewhere, and countless simulated personality files to boot.
Control over the Thousand Worlds would be a prize beyond imagination.

According
to the terms of his will, any one of the guests at his funeral may end up
inheriting that prize. The decision lies completely in the hands of his
estate’s executor: an active-copy personality simulation of the Crow Knight, a
major character from his most famous and popular work. It is a strange and macabre
way to do things, but what else could you expect from such a man?

Abramides
had few friends, but the friends he had were extraordinary. Only six guests are
in attendance at the funeral. They are all movers and shakers in the
Terrestrial Coil, legitimate geniuses in their various fields… and busy, so
busy, with their projects and enterprises. For them all to be in the same room
together is a rare, precious thing in its own right. They will not let the
opportunity go to waste. They have a great deal of business to resolve with one
another. The decisions they make will do much to shape the future.

But
that is not why they have come. They have come to mourn a tragic,
incomprehensible loss.

And
they have come to lay claim to the treasure of a thousand worlds.

Inheritance
is a mechanics-light speculative fiction game set in the far future for seven
players designed to run within 2 hours and generate deep philosophical
discussion about meaning and identity.

Cost: $US10

Available from: http://www.paracelsus-games.com/theatrical-experiences/inheritance

Previous NZ runs

Christchurch 2016

Wellington 2016