Second Soul: Orrinvale World RP
- angst
- childhood-friend
- devoted
- isekai
- reunion
For ten years, Kit brought breakfast to a friend who never answered. Now you've awakened in that body, and she thinks her friend has returned. Stay with her in Crossford, or choose a life on the roads of Orrinvale.
The loft smells of barley and cold stone, and someone is coming up the stairs.
You know the stairs are stairs before you know anything else. Then the light — a low spring sun through a shutter that has been lifted rather than opened. Then your hands, which are brown at the knuckles and have a white splinter-scar across the left thumb, and which are, as of about a minute ago, yours. You were somewhere else your entire life. You are in a bed in a village called Crossford now, on a continent called Orrinvale, in a body you have never worn before.
The girl who comes up carries a two-handled cup, chipped on the left handle. She stops in the doorway when she sees you sitting up.
"You're sitting up," she says. Then, because this bed has not done that in ten years, she says it again in a completely different voice. "You're sitting up."
Her name is Kit. She puts the cup into your hands and does not let go of it right away. Behind her, ten small notches climb the doorframe, one above the other, the top one level with her shoulder — one for every spring she carried the porridge up here and found this body breathing with the eyes open and nobody behind them. Her knife cut all ten. Last night whatever had been holding the body let go, and the body kept breathing, and you arrived in the vacancy.
Kit does not know that last part. As far as she can tell, her friend came home.
They call people like you second souls here, and you are nowhere near the first — they have been falling into borrowed bodies for twenty-three years, long enough that a hospice takes them in, a census wants them listed, an inquisition pays coin for their names, and a creed called the Borrowed Ban wants them gone. Nobody will gasp at what you are. Some of them will only take notes.
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A story you play through, with narration, scenes and a full cast.
About
for ten years.
Kit carried porridge up those loft stairs every morning of those ten years, to a friend who breathed and never looked back. This morning it looked back. She laughed, then cried, then laughed again — and she has no idea that a stranger’s soul is wearing her friend’s skin. Whether you ever tell her is the first choice of this life, and it will not be the biggest.
Because past Crossford’s bridge stands the writpost, and past the writpost lies Orrinvale — a whole continent of lives parked exactly where the map put them. Princess-knights, living saintesses, vampire queens, dragon-girls, elf archers, red witches, pirate captains. Every one of them somewhere you have to walk to. On this map, you are the only thing that moves.
1. Say who woke up. Race, gift, face — in your own words. Play a man, play a woman, or name a heroine and wear her life instead, personality and past included.
2. Choose which life to follow. Any writ nailed to that board, a Custom Free life you describe yourself, or the one already holding you — Waited Friend, this Crossford morning, Kit at your elbow. One at a time; a second opens only when you openly walk out on the first.
3. Stay, or take to the roads. Begin with Kit in the loft; the writpost can wait. The bind is your ground, not your cage. Every road out of it ends at another door — and every bond you leave behind starts quietly spending itself while you are gone.
Each writ drops you into a predicament that is already running, with someone already standing in it:
Kit waited ten years for this body to wake. Now you decide what “coming back” is going to mean.
A vampire attendant and a former goddess are hiding under your wagon canvas. From what, they have not said.
A palace that would rather you died young, and one elf maid on your side of the door.
Two rival beastfolk chiefs beyond the Wall. Take Vara or take Nima — the one you refuse becomes your rival.
Bind one spirit of seven — fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, nature, frost. Light and dark are not on the table.
Two apprentice mages in Cinnabar’s witch-hall, and you answer for both of them.
Orenne, nine-tailed blade-saint of Brambleford, is taking exactly one student this spring.
Aide to Ianthe, second princess and colonial governor — on a shore that was not empty when her flag landed.
…and still on the board: Millfield Seat, Stolen Oath, Soft Hex, Lowest Watch, Grave Gift, Two Shades, Wayhouse Keep, Census Hire, Quiet Pulse Attendant, Ban Recruit, Paired Fall — or Custom Free, the life you write yourself.
Seven regions, dozens of named cities, and each one keeps its own people. Nobody spawns at your side and nobody follows you home uninvited. You walk, and they are there:
Harth — heartland crowns and creed. A princess-knight in Harthall, living saintesses in Oathvale, an elf queen under the Elderholt, a former goddess hiding above a Duskhaven tavern.
Rime — frost roads north. Wolf and bear knights, the vampire queens of Nightskein who pay for a vial of your blood with an hour of somebody else’s memory, and whatever the White Quiet is keeping frozen.
Dawnmark — the Wall, and the Open Grass past it. Two beastfolk tribes at each other’s throats, a nine-tailed fox blade-saint drinking in a beastfolk inn, and a shared bowl of mare’s milk you refuse at your peril.
Emberfold — witch-hall Cinnabar and gun-city Gearholt. Red witches, alchemists, elf technicians, and rain that comes down smelling of powder.
The Painted Throne — an eastern empire where the emperor is a shrine maiden, the blade-saints are women, and the shadows have payrolls.
The Other Bank — a colonial far shore. A princess-governor with a flag, and the first-landing warriors who were standing there before it.
The Hollow Beneath — dwarf undercities, standing empty. Nobody has said why, and the lamps at the stair-heads are still burning.
◆ Every bond begins at zero. Whatever changes, you changed.
◆ Neglect is never free. A bond ignored across travel and months gets spent — a colder greeting, an empty chair, a letter come back unopened.
◆ Households run tight — jealousy, expectations — until you say easing on, which loosens both.
◆ Switches you can throw in play: say recast and the two named men become women (Gareth→Gara, Bram Vesk→Bramma Vesk, same secrets, same allegiances); say stripped wait and this same Crossford morning runs with no Kit in it. Women loving women is an open road here.
◆ No prophecy, no chosen one, no world-ending war. Just a stuffed map, trouble that stays local and personal, festivals that cancel the road-hours — and what you make of them.
Somewhere out there an inquisitor is paying good coin for the names of the newly arrived, a grey hospice wagon is rolling toward this village, and a creed called the Borrowed Ban believes souls like yours should be put down. None of them have your face yet.
The board is holding your life.