The Museum of the Soul's Skein is one of the mysterious locations of the Hedge, overseen by a telepath known as the Curator.
Overview[]
It’s part of the Hedge, this place. It is not enclosed — characters merely need to find the spiraling ramp that leads them toward the top of the Hedge walls and verdant trees. At the top of the ramp is a museum, open air, and on display for the characters to see. The museum features pieces of art such as paintings, sculptures, even a multimedia display flickering on an old television set bound up in the brambles. The museum is also home to artifacts: simple items that have come before (eyeglasses, pens, a computer mouse, a love letter, a Polaroid photo) now contained in glass cases.
It doesn’t take long for the characters to realize: the elements on display are elements from their own lives. At first, it’s all known pieces: a painting of a mother’s abuse, a sculpture of the character winning a race when he was in his late teens, a faux-music video portraying the character’s escape from Faerie (a desperate and miserable action juxtaposed with pop music like Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran”).
As the characters move on to later displays, they find that the materials grow more personal. More secret. What’s on display is stuff only the character knows, and soon, may even show things that the changelings wasn’t aware of in the first place (images of secret betrayals, snapshots taken from forgotten dreams, a sculpt that identifies the person that’s been sending her those anonymous love letters). Secrets both sweet and dark are exposed — as well as secrets each changeling may have been keeping from her motley mates.
At the end of the display wait images from a potential future — a few glimpses of what may happen (or, as some interpret it, what will happen). Except, these images are lies. Whether they show a positive future (becoming lord of the Summer Court) or a horrible one (being dragged back to Arcadia in chains), they’re all false. Made up. Invented by the museum, or more specifically, by the Curator.
Characters may believe they see the nearly-intangible threads of Fate and time bound up here like a skein of yarn, and it seems certain that if the museum knows so much about them that these final images of the future must be real. But they’re not. And yet, those who glimpse their “future” so often go on to unconsciously try to create that future for themselves, often stirring an Oedipal level tragedy (Oedipus, of course, tried to avoid his supposed Fate and in the attempt ran headlong into his dark future).
Rules[]
With the Museum of the Soul’s Skein, the following rules are in play:
• The images on display become intensely personal. Characters with derangements find them harder to resist here: the Resolve + Composure roll to resist suffers –3 dice.
• For a number of nights equal to the character’s Wyrd score, the changeling’s dreams are vulnerable. The dreams themselves are bigger, more obvious, more bombastic in their imagery, but this seems to send a signal for those who might exploit such things.
• Revisiting a character’s mistakes, successes and secrets can be enlightening. Those characters who seem to genuinely reflect and gain some deeper understanding are in for an experience point boost at the end of that chapter (game session): between one and three additional experience points depending on the depth of personal revelation and realization. A character who simply identifies a past error for course correction may gain one experience point. The character who breaks down sobbing and is overwhelmed by a series of gut-punching revelations as to how her life got so wildly off-track is ripe for three experience points.
References[]
- CTL: Dancers in the Dusk, p. 94-96