This document serves as a lore primer and an illustrative example of an Incarnation’s Thread within a Tapestry. It details the potential narrative arc of “The Mythic Figure,” a scenario designed to explore the dichotomy of lived experience versus perceived legacy, and how the Eidos of a “rotten” life can be paradoxically valuable.

The Incarnation: Zane, the Scoundrel

Initial State: You awaken as Zane, a charismatic drifter aboard the generation ship Venture. The Tapestry is a closed, decaying society, rife with boredom and simmering discontent. Your Subjective Interface is uncluttered by duty; it highlights opportunities, vulnerabilities, and escape routes. You are driven by a single, self-serving piece of Eidos:

Fiction: “Everyone is playing a game for their own benefit. The only sin is to lose.”

Act I: The Parasite’s Dance

Your life aboard the Venture is a “rotten thread” woven from a series of calculated, selfish acts. You are not a violent criminal, but a social predator.

Gameplay Highlight: Weaving a Thread of Deceit

Your gameplay is a series of social stealth challenges and manipulative conversations.

1. Exploit Trust: You seduce the chief engineer’s son, gaining access to sensitive schematics. You convince a lonely navigator to invest his life savings in a “shore leave” venture you have no intention of starting. Each successful con generates potent Eidos of persuasion, deception, and emotional manipulation.
2. Gather Facts as Leverage: Your schemes are not random; they are how you gather information. From the engineer’s son, you learn of a critical design flaw. From the navigator, you acquire passcodes to restricted cargo bays. These are not tools for the common good; they are assets for your eventual escape. The Facts you gather are tainted by the methods used to acquire them.

Act II: The Unraveling & The Opportunity

The Venture’s systems begin to fail catastrophically. The design flaw you learned of cascades, threatening the main reactor. Panic ensues. The ship’s noble captain, Eva, tries to rally the crew, her actions governed by a Faith in duty and sacrifice.

Gameplay Highlight: The Scoundrel’s Gambit

You see the crisis not as a tragedy, but as the perfect diversion. Your goal is not to save the ship, but to loot the vault of its original, corrupt architect—a man you once conned. You know a crucial Fact: the vault is located adjacent to the reactor’s manual override controls, protected by a complex code you memorized as blackmail material.

• The Choice: While Captain Eva’s followers try to implement failing evacuation protocols, you slip away. You are not running toward the solution; you are running toward the prize. Your Thread diverges from the community’s, a selfish path cut through the chaos.

Act III: The Accidental Martyr

You reach the reactor chamber as alarms reach a fever pitch. The core is moments from breaching. You bypass the security, your ill-gotten code working perfectly, and access the vault, securing a fortune in data credits.

Gameplay Highlight: The Selfish Sacrifice

As you turn to leave, the ship’s AI announces, “Containment failure in ten seconds.” You are trapped. Your escape route is cut off. There is only one choice that saves your own skin for a few more precious moments: stabilizing the reactor.

• The Unraveling: You input the override sequence. The reactor stabilizes, but the containment field feedback floods the chamber with hard radiation. Your Subjective Interface doesn’t show you the faces of grateful colonists. It shows the successful data transfer from the vault, a final, triumphant flicker of greed. You die a hero’s death for the most selfish reason imaginable.
• The Aftermath: The Venture is saved. The crew, led by Captain Eva, piece together what happened. They find your body at the override console. They don’t find the stolen data. The only story they can tell is one of a rogue who, in the final moment, chose to sacrifice everything for them.

Your last act was not one of redemption, but of self-preservation. The universe, however, is a poor mind-reader.

The Thread of Zane has ended. His life was a scar on the Tapestry, but his death mended it.

The Harvest & The Ironic Rebirth

You are now an Eidolon, observing the ripple effects of your life. The experience was rich, if morally bankrupt. It generated a wealth of potent, complex Eidos.

Eidos Gained from this Thread:

• Fact: The master override sequence for a class-IV reactor. A piece of highly specific, powerful technical knowledge.
• Fiction: The Legend of Zane, the Rogue with a Heart of Gold who gave his life to save the Venture. This becomes the dominant narrative, a powerful, romantic story.
• Faith: Even the most broken soul can find redemption. This powerful, optimistic belief becomes the new guiding principle for the survivors and their descendants.
• Thread: You have woven the “Accidental Hero”—a narrative where noble ends are achieved through selfish means.

As the Eidolon, you look upon this Tapestry and the Eidos you’ve gathered. You have no attachment to the people of the Venture. You are an artist, and your life was raw material.

• The Reward: The Eidos from your life—the cons, the seductions, the manipulations—was far more interesting and complex than that of a simple, honest life. You use this rich, dark material to weave your next Incarnation: a new Zane, but with even greater natural talent for being a trickster and a seducer.
• The Consequence: You choose Anamnesis and dive back into the same Tapestry centuries later. But the world you find is one fundamentally reshaped by the Fiction and Faith of your death. The “Legend of Zane” has become a founding myth. The society is now built on the ideals of self-sacrifice, honesty, and redemption. It is a world that is deeply suspicious of tricksters, and has no tolerance for selfish seducers.

Your new, masterfully-crafted scoundrel self is born into a world that your own accidental heroism made hostile to everything you are. The “facts” of your life have been erased by the grand story of your death, and you are now forced to live in the shadow of a myth you despise.