kyriakosmods | GAME MECHANICS

A SHORT SUMMARY

Kyriakos is a team-based amnesia game, with some heavy dark setting information but lighter in practice.

Your character’s world has been destroyed, shattered into oblivion, and your character’s soul along with it. However, a fragment of that shattered soul was retrieved and brought to the plane of Kyriakos to help it to recover. Here in Kyriakos, you compete with each other to draw the pieces of your soul back to yourself and restore your home.

INTRODUCING A CHARACTER

All characters first wake up in front of their mirrors in their team dorm! Their mirror will have exactly one shard in it—their starter memory or skill. (Should they remove this shard, they will mysteriously vanish until some kind soul puts it back in for them!) They will also wake up with a single personal item (assuming it's small enough to be held on them - otherwise, it will be found in the town square). Any clothes they had on them will now match their team colors, and their patron and teammates should be handy to give them uniforms and help explain their situation.

SETTING & DAILY LIFE

Daily life in Kyriakos doesn’t just revolve around the games! There’s plenty going on for your character to get involved with. We have a huge setting to be explored, mysteries to solve, mini-events and quests to take part in, and there's a colorful cast of characters to meet.

Every team has their own unique uniform and dorm, uniforms in shades of their team's respective color, and dorms, while not entirely in a team's color, accented with it in various ways (think pillows, decor, etc). For descriptions of these, head to the team information page. Dorms are where your characters will be living with their team, where their mirrors are located, as well as where any shards won from games will appear. While there would be no negative effect from a character moving in with another team or never being in their dorm, their mirrors cannot be physically moved, and teams will always play together in a game even in a theoretical event of a character disowning them and deciding they like another team more. Alterations and additions to dorms can be made, though complete changes are not suggested, and any extra rooms or the like would require a rather large quest from the team's patron Echo.

Player characters, Cats included, are also able to explore the setting! Go wild; all that we ask is that you adhere to the rules and world mechanics. If you’d like to poke your nose into uncharted territories or potentially explore something plotty, get in touch with one of the moderators and they will be happy to set something up for you. Of course, exploration isn’t the only thing you can do. Player characters may also attempt to affect change to their surroundings, for better or for worse, and there is always room for a personal plotline or two, or five, or ten.

Echoes can do mini-events, such as themed mingles that force people into odd situations, or mini-games for item prizes! Cats can similarly run small events or quests for people. Team patrons will often supply their teams with food—as long as the team wins enough—many choose to supplement their diets with fruit, vegetables, and meats found within the setting. Similarly, part of a character’s day to day life could involve learning new skills, such as crafting or first aid!

When games happen, bells will ring out through the realm, and with the sound will come an urge to head for the Echo Chamber. Sometimes characters just won’t hear the bells, or they can resist the call (if the player can’t or doesn’t wish to attend), and sometimes the urge will be just strong enough to encourage the reluctant to follow along...

Because there is no specific way to tell who is running the game when the call goes out, a character will never know what they're walking into ICly until it happens.

PATRONS

More in-depth information can be found on the Echo & patron information page. The easiest and most general thing to know, though, is that patrons are Echoes that are associated with a team. They have some power over their team - they can provide things like uniforms and decor, food and water, and handle dorm safety in place of things like keys or passwords. Most importantly, they can heal injuries from the setting and from games via questing.

MIRRORS & SHARDS

Seven mirror frames reside in each team’s dorm, in a circle around a small pedestal. These mirrors are representations of your character’s soul.

After winning competitions, your team will come home to find mirror shards on the pedestal. These shards can be placed in the mirror frame, and upon doing so, someone will see the memory or obtain the skill that is contained in that shard. Unfortunately, there’s not really any way to know what the shard has - or even who it belongs to - until you stick it in a mirror and see it for yourself.

Memories are experienced from a first person point of view, as though your character is there living it themselves. While no injuries can be obtained from memories featuring such, feelings and thoughts experienced in a memory are clear.

Memories can be shared by simply placing the shard in someone else’s mirror, and this is likely to happen among teams rather frequently as they try to puzzle out whose memory is whose. A memory that does not belong to your character will have a distinct feeling of not being their own. Meanwhile, skills can also be shared, but they can only be used by the person who has the shard in their mirror right then. You can let your friend use your fireball skill, but you can’t use it while that’s happening. Skills belonging to another character similarly feel like it doesn't belong to your own, despite being able to use the skill.

Skill shards cannot be broken or deteriorate. Additionally, shards can be removed from its owners mirror and left out with no side effects. They will still recall the memory that it holds.

HEALING, DEATH & REVIVALS

HEALING OUT OF GAMES: Healing is highly accelerated in Kyriakos: injuries that should take weeks to heal might only take days in the game. However, there are still risks associated with injury—an unset bone can still heal wrong, open wounds can still invite infection, and a removed limb is gone. To heal really bad stuff, characters will need to quest from their team's patron Echo, but this won’t come cheap! The general rule, though, is that injuries last for as long as you want to play with them (just don't take too long and go overboard with it!).

DEATH AND HEALING DURING THE GAMES: Death occurs more frequently during the games themselves than in daily life. With rare exceptions (see below for details), any deaths will be revived once the game is over. How thorough the revival depends heavily upon the Echo in charge. Healing after that can be done by the Echo who ran the game or your team's patron.

Any healing that occurs at the end of a game can only heal injuries that game inflicted. A character who walks into a game missing an arm, and then loses their second arm in the game, can only have the second arm restored by the Echo at the end of the game. Anything further will require a healing quest!

DEATH OUTSIDE OF THE GAMES: Death outside of the games, no matter how it occurs, is not so easily fixed. This includes instances of Echoes refusing to revive characters after a trauma game!

Those undertaking the quest will need the dead character’s body (or whatever is left of it), and the quest to revive them must involve multiple people! At least a whole team, if not more, depending upon the damage done and how many corpses there are, will be required. The quest must also be significant and impactful. It could involve very large blood or energy donations, or the components could even be tailored to each individual undertaking the quest! The team patron Echo of the character(s) who require this will come up with their own ideas for quests.

Healing quests and revival quests cannot, under any circumstances, be handwaved.