Premise

## IT STARTS WITH A FEELING.

A feeling that you aren’t where you belong. You’re walking familiar terrain, perhaps surrounded by familiar faces. Maybe you’re floating in some void or abyss, the flame of your life having already been extinguished. But you just know -- you’re meant to be somewhere else, some**when** else, some**one** else.

And then there’s a ripple. Not a gust, not a chill, but a ripple. Like some higher power that wove the universe itself just reached out through time and space, grabbed some intangible, invisible cloth, and gave it a gentle shake. You can feel it, though you can’t describe it.

Not that you would have the time to find the words, really. When the ripple stops, everything around you begins to slow. It’s subtle at first. The wind that was blowing through the grass a few moments ago still feels as strong, but the tendrils of green seem increasingly unmoved by the forces of nature.

...And then it grows.

That conversation you were having is going by in slow motion, mouths moving painfully slowly, and you want to ask them why they’re blinking so slowly, urge them to hurry up. The hands on their watch are barely moving. They don’t seem to notice. Time that once flowed endlessly in that space between living and the world beyond seems to stop. You don’t know how you feel it, how you feel *anything*. But you do.

And just before time freezes entirely, you see the lights. Soft, warm glowing lights, seemingly suspended in midair, fading into existence one by one. You may try to reach out to touch one, but no matter how close they look, they always seem to be just out of reach. They don’t move.

Just like everything else around you.

When you blink, that’s when it feels like a tablecloth has been ripped out from under your feet. It takes you a moment to regain your bearings enough to realize that everything has changed.

It’s dark, with only a faint glow from the lights illuminating the area around you. Walls and pillars of what appear to be stone are all around you. In the center is some sort of statue with the same glow as the floating lights around its base -- and somehow, it looks ancient, pristine, and oddly advanced. You can’t be sure, but it seems like you ended up in some sort of temple to a deity you’ve never heard of.

Slowly but surely, the darkness begins to fade, the details of the temple fading into view and becoming clearer. More real. And so you begin to walk. Towards what, you don’t know. But there has to be something here worth finding.

Each sound you make echoes warmly against the walls, and as unfamiliar as your surroundings are, you don’t feel any sense of imminent danger. In fact, it almost feels like you’re floating, wind and space rippling around you as you walk down a path and out into the light.

A priestess is busying herself with some temple upkeep, and her face goes pale when she sees you. She mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like *not another*… as she scrambles to gather her skirts in one hand and a basket in the other, a clearly forced grin on her lips. She offers a greeting in the name of her deity and a polite -- if shaky -- curtsy.

Welcome to Epoche.

Her explanation is a little harried -- it looks like the gods are bringing in newcomers, and though she says it like it’s a blessing, there’s still some alarm in her tone that suggest this is not the norm… and *definitely* not something she knows the explanation for.  From the basket, she pulls out a strange gear-like device — a Cog, some kind of currency, sounds like — and something that looks like a pocket watch. A button at the top clicks it open to show two screens, and latches it shut again. On the lid is some swirling design that looks like… an animal? The same faintly colored glow that had rippled from the base of the statue comes from the design. She calls it a Tempo, and explains it’s yours during your stay here. There’s a long list of features it has that she rattles off, but it’s so hurried and frantic that you’re not sure if you catch all of them. You get the gist -- it’s a communication device.

Another shaky curtsy and an apology, and the priestess begins to back away. She has to tell the others that there’s another newcomer, after all. When she turns over her shoulder and shuffles off in the other direction, you see, in the moment before her face turns away, right as she is wishing you the best during your stay here…...

**a flash of panic.**

And when you turn your eyes to the sky above, the warm beauty of eternal sunset is split in half by the silhouette of a clock tower at the center of it all.

...The hands do not move.

But you do.

Where do you go?