WARNING: This game is the ancestor of the Clerical Error game written more recently by Kathleen De Smet. The newer game has undergone heavy revision. If you read this game you will both spoil some secrets and end up with some wrong information.
PC Characters
When we first brainstormed for characters we decided that we wanted to have seven characters who reflected the seven deadly sins. To explain their presence together in the afterlife, they should all be somehow linked to each other across time. That seemed like a rather tall order, and for a long time they were only the barest of caricatures. We knew we wanted to start back in late Victorian times and travel all the way to the triangle of misguided lovers in the 1980's.
We had the idea that all of the characters should have colors and corresponding things in their colors in the game, but we had only worked out some of the color correspondences. The characters got final names and colors when Kathleen made them name-tags. They are awesome name-tags. We ended up keeping all the names but one (which had to be changed due to the character's religion). Still we dragged our feet over actually developing the characters.
The initial set of character sketches came out of one Friday evening where Kathleen and I sat down over tasty Uno's pizza and brainstormed up all the basic stories, concepts, sins, and connections. Not everything stayed the same, but most of it did. We also picked items for each of the characters which personified their sins. We spent a lot of time tracking down the actual props for these items so the players would have them from the start of the game (and we could use them in the judgment puzzle).
Somewhere in here Kathleen and I also wrote up a timeline of all the major events in the character's lives. It was very helpful, since we had so much to balance between all the events. It also came in handy when we were filling in our character stories later.
We really wanted to breath life into the characters, so over the next year the four of us spent grueling hours slowly writing the full descriptions. Most of the descriptions were written in a group with one person typing and several others discussing ideas and wordings. A few of the characters were written entirely by Kathleen and only edited by the rest of us. She had a much better idea of both Rae and Lucia's voices than the rest of us.
On each of the PC character pages I've tried to give information about the development of the character, as well as pictures of the players who took on the roll.
NPC Characters
As we came up with more and more of our plot, it became clear that we were going to need quite a few non-player characters to take part in the story and the puzzles. We ended up with at least one character for each of the GMs and two characters that Quinn had to handle in different parts of the game. Quinn was a really good sport about all of this.
Unfortunately I only have pictures of some of the NPCs.
The Maitre D'
The Maitre D' had a small role in the beginning and end of the game. When the players first arrived at the hotel the Maitre D' greets them, gets them to sign the guest book, and directs them to the dining room. At the end of the game, when the weaving is repaired, the Maitre D' apologizes for the "mistake" and offers the "guests" a certificate for another stay. Our original concept for the Maitre D' included him/her secretly being the devil/lord of the underworld and being in on some of the mess that caused the character's to end up here. Over time he/she got revised a bit so that they were only a sort of introductory character to make the players more comfortable with the "hotel" paradigm.
Kathleen took the role of the Maitre D'. I don't have any good pictures of her in costume, but she basically wore a jacket over her black GM outfit.
The Waiter
The waiter served the PCs dinner in the dining room (Viv's living room). The waiter spoke quietly and infrequently and behaved in a calm, professional manner. When we first planned this character the idea was that they were Death and wanted to help the players, but was not really allowed to assist them directly. This lead to the inclusion of the recipe fragments in the menus that the Waiter delivers to the characters, but the rest of the idea was dropped.
Quinn took on the role of the Waiter. She did a great job of deflecting the player's questions and was very professional. As a consequence she got stuck estimating the pacing for the courses of the meal based on the player interactions. She did a great job of that too.
Eva as Clotho.Clotho
Clotho is the spinner and the youngest of the three sisters. She is alone after the disappearance of her middle sister Lachisis and the departure of her eldest sister Atropos. Clotho knows that Loki, the trickster, has something to do with all the strange things going on in the underworld, but she has been alone for so long that she has begun to lose her mind. Unlike the other NPCs, Clotho was around for the whole game. She appeared at dinner to taunt and confuse the PCs and later with clues or simply confusing advice. The PCs could also find 6 journal entries that Clotho wrote throughout the underworld environment. The journal entries explained a lot of what was going on, but they began to degrade as she descended into madness.
Clotho also carried the last of the crosses needed to open the chest. She refused to give it up if asked and after the PCs had finished the potion and approached her to convince her to drink it, she would flee down into the maze and lead them for a short chase before they could catch up with her and talk her into drinking the potion.
I got to take on the role of Clotho. It was more than a little stressful since I was putting on the nutzo crazy act all night. By the end of the game I was exhausted. The chase was especially exciting, since there wasn't much of a script for it. I spent some time hiding in the secret passage in the maze and some time ducking around the maze barely escaping my pursuers.
We decided early on that the three sisters would wear white, gray, and black. So I altered a long white t-gown that Kathleen had given to me the previous year. It really didn't work out as well as I was hoping (and I look terrible in white).
The Witch
The Witch takes part in one of the puzzles in the underworld. Clotho believes the Witch is Loki, but she may really be just some agent he has placed there. The Witch spends most of her time cackling maniacally or taunting the PCs about their inability to solve her sudoku-like puzzle board.
Viv took on the role of the Witch. She did a really good job of taunting the players and her insane laughter was second to none. She got stuck in front of her puzzle board for rather a longer time than we expected on all three nights. I guess it's easier to mess up doing logic puzzles in dim light while being taunted about your lack of intelligence.
Kathleen as Merope.Merope - The Impossible Task
Merope is a sinner who is trapped in the underworld trying to finish an impossible task. She tells the players that she is being punished for her jealousy and she begs them to help her complete her task: to separate out the green seeds of jealousy from her bowl of copper beads. She also hints why the players might want the seeds. Her fingers are stained green and she laments that the seeds stain all they touch. Merope is perennially sorting, weeping, and begging all and sundry for help.
Kathleen took on the role of Merope. She wore a chiton that she had in her closet. She did a great job of the inconsolate weeping and she managed to provoke the players in various ways. I think my favorite was on Friday night when she taunted Ray a bit viciously about the fact that he wouldn't help her. He waited for about ten minutes until no one was around and then I heard a scream followed by wailing sobs from downstairs. When I got down there I discovered that Ray had kicked over Merope's bowls and she was sobbing wildly as he stalked off with an vengefully satisfied look on his face. It was great.
The Judge
The Judge's task was to weigh the hearts of the sinners against a feather. Only if they weighed the same would they be allowed to pass by to the fireplace. Quinn very kindly took on the role of the judge and spent most of the night hanging around patiently repeating instructions and waiting for the players to be willing to give up their treasured posessions to balance the scales.
The Sphinx curtain.The Sphinx
The Sphinx guards the entrance to the maze. Once the players know the incantation to approach her she will give them each riddles and only allow them into the maze once one of them has given her the right answer. We didn't want to make someone stand around in costume guarding the doorway and we definitely couldn't afford to make some sort of statue we could later move out of the way, so we went with a curtain. Kathleen found the line art we based the curtain on. She traced it on the curtain fabric and Kathleen, her adorable cousins (Hanna and Isabel), and I colored it in with fabric markers. I think we killed one or two colors in the process. Katie took the fabric and made it into a roman shade, which we hung over the basement door. When I drafted the maze I built in a secret passage for the voice of the Sphinx to hide in. The curtain pull was routed over one of the support beams and into the secret passage so the curtain could be drawn up.
Katie took on the role of the voice of the Sphinx. When the players were about to get the incantation to approach the Sphinx, she had to sneak down into the secret passage in the maze to be able to answer them. She also had to recognize each of the players' voices so that she could give them the right riddles. Katie was great about all of this, especially since we were making her stand in the dark with only a tiny flash light and read riddles off a paper taped to the wall as well as pulling up and tying off the curtain in the dark (since she couldn't hold the flashlight while dealing with the curtain string).
The Dragon in his tree.The Dragon
The Dragon guards the tree with the golden apples in the corner of the maze. He demands payment in the form of a ruby ring if the players want to take an apple (which they need for the potion). We used a stuffed dragon that we borrowed from Katie. He was wound around a fake tree that we borrowed from Viv. We had to have one of the GM's be the dragon's voice and insure that the player's didn't just take the apple, so Katie had to go through the secret passage to the dragon's grove as soon as she was done speaking for the sphinx. She was a very good sport about this, even though she got stuck sitting in a pitch black room on the first night. After that we put in some christmas lights so the grove wouldn't be quite so dark.
Katie as Lachisis.Lachisis
The middle of the three sisters, Lachisis is the weaver. When Loki tricked and imprisoned her he started the chain of events that lead to the current state of confusion and disaster. Lachisis was an unspoken character for most of the game. She was mentioned in Clotho's journals but did not actually appear until the very end of the game.
Katie took on the role of Lachisis. She had the unenviable task of hiding in a trunk for 10 to 30 minutes before the players freed her. She wore a gray t-tunic that I made for her and was wrapped in an abundance of gray yarn.
