Tales of the Transmuter
Scope
The motivation behind building Tales of the Transmuter
Tales of the Transmuter is designed to be an accessible setting for people to engage with the BCGR tabletop roleplaying system.
The goal of the project
I wanted to make something light-hearted and approachable as a foil to my more serious works - especially Manifold Sky or The Sealed Kingdoms. The writing of Tales of the Transmuter is meant to encourage readers and players to consider what the world would look like through the eyes of someone who, while fully grown and with the full faculties of a human, is completely new to it, with only vague notions of where (or what) one might have come from. As a certified pun enthusiast myself, I also wanted to make a world where puns and other 'dad-tier' jokes might actually have a grain of reality to them.
Tales of the Transmuter's Unique Selling point
Almost all of the main characters are themed after common medieval- or rennaisance-era household objects, from the humble candlestick to the burly beer cask. As such, they are entirely new to the world and must come to grips with their unique position in life. The real threat is the fear of sliding away from the structure of society, and, as Eustace would quip, "the real adventure is the friends we 'made' along the way."
Theme
Genre
Tales of the Transmuter is a bright early rennaisance fantasy with elements of clockpunk and magitech.
Reader Tone
Tales of the Transmuter is a 'bright' setting' in the sense that there is much more good in the world than evil. The townsfolk know the transmuted characters and, therefore, are interested in helping them find their dad-wizard and learn about the world they have awoken to rather than trying to exploit their naievete or use them to their own ends.
Character Agency
Tales of the Transmuter is a 'noble' setting in the sense that individuals are capable of changing the world if they put their minds to it.
Drama
Order vs. Chaos - Within the tower, the wizard gives his 'children' a sense of structure and belonging. When he disappears, some of the anthropomorphized objects begin to lose their connection with humanity and social order, becoming threats to the others in their mission to recover their Dad-Wizard. After all, objects in the world of Farforth have no kinship ties to natural-born humans other than Eustace. These rogue elements must sometimes be dealt with to complete the mission - sometimes even through combat - though the consequences of failure for such a creature aren't fatal in the traditional sense of the term.
The Unknown - The object-people are sent out into a new and unfamiliar world at the behest of Butler Bucket, hoping to complete his 'list' of missing people so that the tower can be restored to its former liveliness and levity. Beyond the edges of the village lies a vast wilderness and people who lack the townsfolk's familiarity with bizzarre meta-human entities such as the main characters, requiring that the characters make their way by charisma, craft, or even force.
The Pursuit of Knowledge - Eustace kept notes on his experiments with anthropomorphizing objects, detailing how each object class affected the physiology and psychology of the person which sprang therefrom. For example, a bard-like person might have come from a romance novel (though he lacks knowledge of his 'original contents'), while a candle might have been turned into a flame-wielding magician. By gathering scraps of this journal in their explorations, the main characters may even learn to repeat these experiments, making themselves allies and becoming a new race of humanoids in their own right.