Applewood

There’s a city called Noble. It’s a large Midwestern city, in the style of the great ones like Chicago or Minneapolis. Noble is slightly wider than it is tall—if you were looking at its map, that is—and it’s bisected at about two-thirds its width by the great Torrence River. You’ll often hear locals refer to Noble’s East Side, where its downtown and more affluent neighborhoods are, and its West Side, where the industrial sites, airport and lower-to-middle class sprawl are. But that’s neither here nor there.

Oh—and then there’s Applewood, a sleepy little neighborhood in Noble’s northwest. Applewood was one of the first neighborhoods that was settled when increasing rents started driving lower-income folks away from the city center. It’s got its own main drag, a minor little strip of industry; one NMTS (Noble Municipal Transit Service) subway stop and two bus lines; even a community college (James Carson CC). Applewood’s long-serving alderman (a sort of neighborhood mayor), Roy Baer, grew up here and says he loves it, but it could be so much more. He says it has the potential to be great, and he has big plans.

Applewood is also where the strangest thing happened about forty years ago. Yeah, it’s where the Tao arrived. The locals scrambled and fought, but eventually they accommodated them. (Noble is a sanctuary city.) The Taos’ homes and belongings had been lost, and they had nothing but the clothes on their backs. Neither had they their memories, those intangible ephemeral things that had stood for all their life’s collected knowledge.

But now you’re rediscovering them, scattered as they are across this place, one by one.

You weren’t around when it happened, or you were much younger, then. Growing up, you had asked your questions same as anyone would, but the answers would never come. So you came into your own and lived your lives. But some nights you find yourselves at Home, a large bamboo house raised on stilts and roofed with thatched palms, which is the only other thing that crossed over. It is the most peculiar thing in Applewood. It looks like it doesn’t belong.

Of course, you only know this about Home because it was told to you by the locals. Forty years ago, it popped into existence in an empty lot near Applewood’s main drag. Now, gentrification spreads inevitably in its direction, but still it stands proud.

The players might be able to guess from context that Home is a traditional structure, even dwelling, of the Tao. That’s easy. What’s crucial and buried is the fact that this dwelling belonged to the leader—datu—of the island, and that it resided at the island’s highest point. When the cataclysm struck, it forced the Tao to flee uphill, but not everyone was able to make it. Those who did survived; those who didn’t were lost to the torrents of seawater and spacetime. Can these descendants save Home from being razed before it and its memory are lost for good?