In which LJ and Ed introduce ourselves and we start a game of The Ground Itself.
A duel between two knights-champion decides the fate of a river delta. The blades of the delta are many, and for each of its knives, a god.
The Ground Itself is a one-session storytelling game for 2-5 players, played with accessible materials, by Everest Pipkin. Focusing on place - one specific place, chosen by the group - The Ground Itself unfolds over radically disparate time periods that may range from 4 days to 18,000 years. By casting wildly into time, it considers how places both change and remember themselves. Fundamentally, The Ground Itself is about the echoes and traces we leave for others after we are gone. You can purchase The Ground Itself here, on itch.io or DriveThruRPG.
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck (also known as the Rider-Waite or Waite-Smith tarot deck) is a popular tarot deck. It was published by The Rider Company in 1909, based on the instructions of academic and mystic A. E. Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith.
This episode was recorded in 2021 and somehow it has taken us a staggeringly ridiculous amount of time to sit down and release it. We're planning twice-monthly releases of this first series exploring the history and locale of the Thousand Blades before we take a break for our second, as-yet-unrecorded series. If you have suggestions for systems you'd like to see us play in the future, please message us on our Twitter handle @LucidStrata while the blue bird's agonal death throes still resemble a functioning social media platform.
Cast:
Leverett Jaques (LJ), they/them. @low_cinnabar on Twitter.
Ed, he/him. Found wherever goblins carve ducks out of well-seasoned wood.
The theme music for this episode was "The Well-Spring of the Fates" and was written and recorded by Leverett Jaques.
Thank you to Lois Stone (@supitslois) for stepping in and producing, without whom this episode might never have been screamed into the abyss.