The Inheritance Engine

A short story written by B. Earl with PlotWeaver: Cards of Creation, a storytelling game made by Mod Hob Cooperative.

This story uses a Parallel Plot Pattern, written in 10-minute timed acts with all story cards drawn at random. For more information, visit www.plotweavergame.com

Act 1: Introduction of Distinct Plotlines

Story Element Cards: The Explorer, The Young, The Creator, Bistro, Subway Station, Space Station, and Crime/Noir

We open with a young girl running. Police are chasing her. It’s a futuristic environment. She bursts into a bistro and bumps into this guy (very Indiana Jones, Dick Tracy type) who’s just trying to get some food. She collides with him. He can tell she’s running from something. She begs him to help her out.

He decides, you know what, I’m in a good mood today. He pretends she’s his daughter. In the process, he notices she has a tattoo or marking on her. Now, he’s an explorer who has been searching for this lost tribe, which is supposedly wiped out. A mystical, magical people who vanished. He realizes this girl might actually belong to them.

He convinces her to tell him more, buys her a hot meal, and she takes him to a subway station. They go in. The tunnels wind deeper and deeper, far below the city. It turns out these people are living beneath everyone else, beneath the subway system itself.

They meet a tribal elder, a mystic techno-wizard type, who says, “This is timely. The prophecy is at hand. The sacrifice must be made.”

The Explorer says, “Wait, what?”

They strap both him and the girl to tables and perform a ritual, transferring her soul into his body. Now he becomes her. She becomes him. The plan: use his body to infiltrate a space station where one of their ancient totems, a mystical creator-generator device used to terraform the planet, is being held.

We end Act One with him, though really her, boarding a ship headed off-world to the space station. It feels like a Foundation-type departure moment. But the twist is clear: the little girl is now inside the explorer’s body, infiltrating the space station.