City of Mist

This game is based on The City of Mist tabletop roleplaying game, published by Modiphius.

WELCOME TO CITY OF MIST

Here’s the lowdown: City of Mist is a modern city where legends are real. It’s not as if knights and monsters walk down Main Street donning shining armor or breathing fire, but rather that knights and monsters are reborn inside ordinary people, regular Joes and Janes. Those people, known as Rifts, live out a modern version of their legends, called Mythoi, and sometimes can even make the shining armor real or breath actual fire – but they still have their ordinary lives. On the occasions when they tap into their Mythos, a mysterious and mystical force hides their miraculous powers from those who have not awakened to the legend inside them: the sleepwalking residents of the City. It makes armor look like a flak vest and fire breathing like a party trick or a gas leak explosion, so no-one ever knows about the Rifts except the Rifts. This mystical veil is the Mist. This is its City.

THE NATURE OF THE CITY

Every part of the City hides a story: not just dry historical facts but something alive, something that’s struggling to exist – a legend. It’s in the people but it’s also in everything they do and make: the buildings, the establishments, the trends.

It’s the old opera house on the waterfront that echoes faintly with organ music late at night, or the landmark corporate skyscraper that you always see on the skyline but whose actual entrance you can’t ever seem to find. It’s a new fad of dolls for little girls that seem to devilishly smile at you or a rock star who sends uncontrolled waves of ecstasy through her listeners. Or maybe it’s that crummy diner at the corner of the street, giving off such tantalizing smells of fresh coffee and pastries that even sworn enemies can be seen there, having breakfast together.

The parts of the City that were abandoned by the mainstream, however, are the ones that reek most of something eldritch. Go under a highway bridge and you might find a hovel where something big and roughly human once lived. Way up by the spires of a forsaken church, stone statues of angels occasionally disappear for a day or two, as if they were off to run errands somewhere else. And if you ever make it to the abandoned subway tunnels, you’ll see the occasional hooded teenager slinking furtively into a candle-lit cistern, perhaps a member of some unknown cult.

THE NATURE OF THE CHARACTERS

Your characters are ordinary, everyday people who find themselves embodying Legends. A given legend could be a mythological, literary, or historical figure, but it should be something that resonates in mankind's collective consciousness. Are you a femme fatale with Medusa dwelling inside you, with a poisonous bite and the ability to free men in their tracks? Are you a defense attorney who suddenly finds himself unable to tell a lie because George Washington has taken up residence in your soul? When someone tried to attack you on your morning jog, did the park plants rise up to rip him to shreds, as if commanded by Doctor Pamela Isley?

And yet, despite the power and weight the Legend gives you, you still have a life. You still have to pay your rent. You still need to care for your family. You still have obligations and no one seems to understand what you're going through, except for other legends.

Accidentally or intentionally, there will come a point when you reveal your special abilities to others and thereby inadvertently stumble upon the greatest hoax in the City. You will discover, much to your simultaneous relief and dismay, that no-one remembers anything regarding your powers. To say no one is slightly inaccurate, as you’ll eventually discover, but you will find that the vast majority of city dwellers simply ignore, excuse, or forget any legendary power that you manifest in their presence. Is it that they don’t want to remember or that they cannot remember? This is a philosophical question you may never answer.

An Urban Fantasy Mystery Setting