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.
Plot Summary
The over all plot was relatively simple. There has been a terrible mix-up in the underworld. The lives of seven undeserving souls are abruptly cut off and they are drawn down to the afterlife before their time. Each of the seven is somehow linked to the lives and misfortunes of the others. It's up to them to work together to discover their shared threads and straighten out the mess that brought them together.
The beginning of the story really starts long before the PCs ever arrive. The three sisters: Clotho the spinner, Lachisis the weaver, and Atropos the cutter were all living peacefully in the underworld doing their work to keep history running. The trickster, Loki, decided it will be amusing to cause chaos and disaster, so he hatched a plan to separate the three sisters.
Loki found Lachisis' thread so he used it to set a trap for her. He knew that when she found the thread she would try to find it's end, but since she is an imortal being there wouldn't be an end. As he expected she followed the thread right into his trap and he locked her up in a huge chest. Loki hid all seven of the keys to the chest around the underworld.
Not knowning what happened to their sister, Clotho and Atropos try to carry on with their work, only to find that without their sister they are hopeless to complete the weaving properly. Clotho tried to handle the weaving, but only snarled the threads. Atropos tried to fix the snarl by cutting it but only made everything worse, and cut off our PCs. In her frustration Atropos went off in search of Lachisis, leaving Clotho alone to deal with Loki's further tricks.
Not one to wase time, Loki begain slowly changing the landscape of the underworld, winding it up in puzzles and adding strange and colorful characters. By the time the PCs arrive, all thinking they are arriving at a different hotel in a different time, the underworld is a thourough mess. The gate keeper (the Maiter D') and Death (the Waiter) tryed to ease the new arrivals into understanding their situation with a quiet meal, but Clotho's growing instability was not helping. Death, trying to aid the lost mortals, gives them a fractured recepie for a potion which might help to calm Clotho's mind. Eventually Clotho loses it altogether and opened up the full pathway into the underworld.
The PCs are faced with a loud and cluttered environment with several NPCs and a multitude of puzzles. Eventually the PCs must solve all the puzzles, traverse the maze, and collect the ingredients for the potion. Along the way they have to face their connections and come to terms with their sins. They should be able to find the key holes on the chest during this time and all but one of the keys. The last is in Clotho's posession and she refuses to give it up. The players should also find all of Clotho's journal entries, which will give them some clues about what is going on.
When the PCs finally finish the potion and approch Clotho about drinking it she runs off, claiming not to trust them. All three nights they did as we expected and gave chase, following her down into the maze for a bit of a run around. After a few minutes of chase scene, they corner Clotho and have to talk her into trusting them. She will eventually be willing to and they can feed her the potion.
A bit more on the coherent side, Clotho explains a little of what happened and gives the players the last cross-key. Using all seven keys the players are able to open the chest and release Lachisis. She explains how she was trapped and helps the players to fix their broken threads so they can go home.
Finally the players are back in the entry way and Maiter D approches them to appoligize for the mix-up and offer them gift certificates good for another stay. Unsurprisingly, none of them are eager to redeam them.
Thoughts About the Development
When we first started creating the plot of Clerical Error we knew that we wanted something dark with a hotel from hell sort of theme. Our original idea of the story was far more hellish and well more dramatic. It also wasn't terribly realistic. Since we only had one weekend to run the game, we had a strong limitation on the budget and what we'd be able to tear down in a few hours.
Eventually we settled on the idea of a "normal" dinner with all the guests so they could have some time to roleplay and interact followed by the opening of the underworld which would allow us to bring out our major environment stuff and some cool puzzles. Once the players had solved and explored everything they would somehow free Lachisis and she would help them repair the weaving so they could go home.
For a long time we had some puzzles in mind but were missing most of the ending. After some time and brainstorming we came up with the idea of a potion to clear Clotho's mind. We started rephrasing all our puzzles so they would lead up to the creation of the potion. At this point we had already figured out that some sort of trickster spirit was responsable for Lachisis' disappearance. We didn't really have a place in the story for Atropos, so she went off to find Lachisis and left Clotho alone to go crazy. Meanwhile the trickster was making more and more of a mess of everything and Clotho had no idea how to stop him.
We were a little worried that the players might not really figure out much of the backplot of the game, since most of it didn't really matter to their success. So we decided to include scattered journal entries written by Clotho which would give the players an idea about what was going on.