ennis rook

@rookthebird.bsky.social

209 Followers 611 Following

poet working at the intersection of narrative design, representation, and mental health. Game maker, AP performer, disability sensitivity reader, LMSW. professional inquiries only: ennis rook bashe at gmail dot com ennisrookbashe.com

painting of saint sebastian, martyred with arrows, looking like some kind of gay twink pinup
Beloved Deathcaller, You have few emotional ties to your world of origin. Everyone you love here is dead, and the mansion that once housed them is largely a place where you can take an extravagant bath and ponder corpses. Too bad your gifts as a necromancer have always preceded you. Over the generations, people have told themselves stories about you. Children think you’re a haunting or a cryptid. Adults occasionally suspect you’re a Worldwalker, but most think you’re more like a local deity or unpredictable spirit. When you arrive in the courtyard of your mansion, the gates look like a shrine. Guttering seven day candles. Letters smudged with tears. Fading roses. Polished bones. Any animals that might have died recently. What little jewelry the village women have to spare. Add something to your travel bag if you want. Perhaps an entire cow skeleton or the perfectly preserved corpse of a wolf. The letters reveal that a gang of teenagers who dared each other to investigate your home is now missing. In halting script, the villagers beg for the return of their youth, or at least their non-animated bodies. Look. This world, as they put it on Nexus, might not be your circus. But by all the gods you no longer believe in, these people are your monkeys. Searching for something to fortify the defenses of Fairweather House will have to wait. Change into an outfit appropriate for trekking through the swamp and roll with the stat of your choice, within reason. On a 10 or higher, all four of the teenagers (Edwin, Horatio, Cornelius, and Beatrice) are still alive. On a 7-9, one of them is on the verge of death when you arrive. On a miss, one has succumbed to the swamp, one was torn apart by marauding ghouls, and the remaining two suspect you’re a phantom sent to lead them astray. Either way, whoever is still alive will need your help to make it back to the village. Not your circus. But as usual, guess who’s the ringleader?
There are many great safety tools, such as Lines and Veils, the X-Card, Script Change Toolkit, Stars and Wishes, and the Palette. Safety tools help people express their boundaries and convey respect for the boundaries of others. However, none of them are a replacement for caring about the people you’re playing with and caring about yourself. Care about the people you’re playing with. If someone requests to change things or shares a trigger, it means they respect you enough to trust you with that information. Care about the people you’re playing with. If they’re interested in exploring topics that are outside your comfort zone, you can say “No thank you” or “I’m not okay with that” instead of calling them gross. Being shamed for being into body horror can feel just as bad as encountering an unexpected extra eyeball. Care about yourself. If something that happens at the table makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, experiment with saying “I don’t like this” instead of suffering in silence and making a passive-aggressive vaguepost a few days later. Care about yourself. If you’re not having a good time, or even if you just want to take a bio break and get a juice box, it’s always okay to leave the game. This is a game about collaborative storytelling, not PVP. The way to win in a tabletop game isn’t by being the one who pushes through the most discomfort or handles the most hardcore themes. You win when everyone tells a story together and has fun. You win by having a good time with your friends. And sometimes, just like winning over evil, winning in a tabletop game means learning how to build trust with your team.
Tone- Another universe’s blockbuster movie as interpreted by the AO3 authors who were writing fanfiction on their phones in the back row: fantastical powers, tragic backstories lurking just offscreen, and downtime team drama. The dragon who’s forcing mere worldbound mortals to worship him knows what you feel most ashamed about and whispers it in your dreams. Your teammates who live right above you in shared housing dated and broke up and never officially got back together. But they’re still arguing at three in the morning – at least, you think they’re arguing - and you should maybe talk to them about it one-on-one. Your favorite street food place is under attack by eldritch monstrosities from beyond the stars. If the horrors don’t fry your brain between now and the weekend, you’re thinking of getting a sourdough starter. And, yeah, you might just have time for a one-liner before the cult of serial killers inhabiting the sentient hell dimension slice off your tongue.