Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 23:30:11 +0100 To: gm-l@netcom.com From: Ian Stuart Subject: LOST AND FOUNDERED-A Shard Realm for MAGE Lost and Founderd-A Shard Realm for MAGE Inspired by EERIE, INDIANA, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, ROCKO'S MODERN LIFE and the Pentagon Storehouse in THE X-FILES Overview Everyone loses things. A sock in the wash, a pen, a bag, sometimes something important, sometimes something trivial. But everyone loses things, everyone . It's the great unwritten cosmic law that things will go missing for stupid and inexplicable reasons. And when they go missing, they land in Lost and Foundered, and they stay there. Most of the time. Purpose Lost and Foundered exists because of one inailable law. There's too much stuff in the universe, and it keeps expanding. If nothing is removed, then the universe will burst under the combined weight. The problem is, a lot of the stuff is vitally important and, more importantly, visible. Sleeper or no Sleeper, if you saw the Empire State Building vanish you'd begin to reevaluate your worldview. As a result, Lost and Foundered conducts guerrilla raids on reality, opening miniature rifts in reality to steal pens, socks, books and tapes. The minutiae of creation, and their silent sacrifice, is what keeps creation afloat. Entering Lost and Foundered There are several, fairly easy ways to do this. Most Post Offices contain portals, as do Left Luggage and Lost Property departments at Railway stations. The most simple method however, is to write a letter. Addressing it to LOST AND FOUNDERED and detailing the lost item will open a portal at the sender's location, as soon as the letter is finished. If the letter is particularly well-phrased or clever, a Clerk will even come in person to escort the sender into the Realm. The Backdoor Principle(Correspondence 4, Matter 4) This is a Rote which opens small holes in the unnoticed parts of creation. The backs of fridges, the gaps in sofas, a pocket or the backs of washing machines during a wash are common formation points for these holes, through which a Clerk will grab the item in question, closing the hole behind him as he goes. The Clerk Spirit This is a spirit type unique to the realm, all of which look the same. Every Clerk spirit is tall, balding with pince nes spectacles on the end of it's(They look like men but are technically sexless)nose, dressed in a frock coat, long shoes and pinstriped trousers. The Clerks have a very simple job, to keep removing objects from creation and to catalogue them. Or rather, this job was simple a few centuries ago but is now horrific ally complicated. As a result, Clerks tend to be irritable and slightly sarcastic but will usually help their client, simply because that's what they do. Clerks can be divided into two clear types, although there is no real difference between them. Those in orange overalls are known as the "Grabbers", the Clerks responsible for stealing the objects from creation, whilst those dressed in the apparel described above are The Desk staff, who deal with customers. Just recently, they have started wearing badges reading: HELLO, MY NAME IS CLERK. HOW MAY I HELP YOU? Clerk spirits usually stay in Spirit form, incurring all the usual advantages and penalties for doing so, but from time to time, for big jobs(Such as the famed Atlantis Removal and for those Clerks staffing the Bermuda Triangle Backdoor) corporeal forms are often a necessity. In this form, the Clerk Spirit can still enter the Umbra but cannot use gifts(They rarely see the point of them in their line of work anyway, so most Clerks don't consider it a big loss). Oddly, all Body Form Clerk Spirits look different apart from one feature. All are in their late fifties and all of them, exclusively, are called Mr Mercer. Realm Description Everyone who's ever been in an old building knows what Lost and Foundered smells like. That clinging, granular smell, the one that makes you walk a little more carefully, orders your thoughts a little more. It's the smell of classrooms, libraries, cathedrals and old barns. The smell of time hanging heavy on a place. If the smell wasn't bad enough, the look of the place tends to inspire awe in people. Lost and Foundered has no ceiling, it's huge Victorian pillars vanishing up into a cloudy sky, it's marble floors echoing with the sound of searchers and staff you never quite see. The floor itself is so immense curvature is clearly discernible at each end. Sections The Desk The Desk is the first thing that anyone entering Lost and Foundered sees. It stretches for as far as the eye can see, a beautifully polished mahogany barrier with gates every few yards. However, whilst the desk is, effectively, infinite, it is not infinitely variable. The pattern is repeated over and over again, every 1.5 metres along it's length. A grubby coffee mug filled with pens, an ancient rickety typewriter, a name plaque reading: CLERK and a small, slightly mournful desk calendar(Showing no months or days)with YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS! written on each card. Records Beyond The Desk is Records, the second largest section of the Realm. Records is, in essence, a wood panelled library, filled with the vast and labyrinthine index of what Lost and Foundered contains. Immense ladders stretch up into the clouds and Clerks often equip themselves with mountaineering equipment and even oxygen(Of course that's just for show)to examine the higher shelves. The Clerks like to mention, in loud voices, the story of Alisandus Sanguinus, a Mage who visited the Realm in the 13th Century, found what he was looking for and was promptly killed by an index volume which, best indexes say, fell from about 80,000 feet up. Similarly, they hang their heads in sadness when they tell of the Great Expedition to A-AC, a group of brave clerks who attempted to reach the topmost shelf and were last seen trapped in a dust storm over forty years ago. The Shop Floor The Shop Floor dwarfs both Records and The Desk. A vast warehouse, stacked full of shelves and crates up into the clouds and beyond, it stretches so far in every direction that curvature is clearly visible. Clerks drive their clients to the appropriate box or shelf in carriages or small rickshaws. Dust, and even snow cover a lot of the crates and shelves, and Clerks will often hire guides, Clerks with an intimate knowledge of one particular area to guide them there safely. Alasdair Stuart 10.55pm, August 3rd