In RINGS, you play a Hand, semi-immortal adventurer trying to save the shattered remains of reality. Your powers (and immortality) are granted through contracts made with magical artifacts called Rings. Together with your Interdimensional Response Team, you travel between worlds, providing aid wherever you can.
How did you get here?
One day, you found a Ring. Or perhaps a Ring found you. They can turn up anywhere anytime, but have an uncanny knack to find someone who can use them.
They don’t look like much at first, do they? These bits of metal, tarnished and misshapen. Hidden in a corner of your bag, in your food, tangled in the pistils of a flower. They only reveal themselves when they want to. It speaks to you through your mind, though psychics say it doesn’t feel like telepathy.
It wants to make a deal.
Remember your World? it asks, remember the ruin and calamity? Remember how powerless you felt? What if you could change that? What if you had the chance to save everyone?
What’s the deal? Immortality and magic are yours if you bond with it forever. The power it offers is not a lie. Everything it tells you is the truth.
You don’t have to take the deal. Some people aren’t ready or will never be ready even if they have the potential. You can set the Ring down and go on with your life. No one will judge you harshly for it – the life of a Hand isn’t for everyone.
It’s easy to say that’s all it takes to become a Hand: one who wears a Ring, but it’s really just the beginning. You can cross the ice on your own and summon reality-shattering powers…and your power makes you a target for the forces trying to destroy reality. That’s where CORSAIR comes in.
CORSAIR
CORSAIR is the organization that oversees Interdimensional Response Teams, supporting them and making sure help gets where it’s needed.
Communications is always keeping an eye out for new Hands; they can detect you just like any ANOMALY. A new Hand is in danger, a lone Hand is all but dead. Anomalies are attracted to a Hand that doesn’t know how to use their powers so whenever a new bond is formed, CORSAIR tries to get there as quickly as they can. Typically someone from Administration will get you set up, but if you’re in a remote area, any Hand can initiate you.
After the initial interview and you’ve been evaluated on what you can do, you’ll be escorted to Hope. No, that’s not hyperbole.
HOPE
“Do you remember your first glimpse of Hope? I do. A vast stony plain, mountains crowding the purple sky, caps kissed with perpetual lightning. Crystals grew in my wake, sending out tiny peals of thunder. Streams were there when I needed water; plants offered themselves for me to eat. I slept under stones that shifted to cover me – no mattress felt as good as the ground. It was wild and thrilling and everything I’d ever wanted.
It’s different for everyone – a landscape just for you! Hope is vast and I know those mountains are still there, waiting for me.“
Hope is the dimension at the center of the Cluster and while much of it is unexplored, it’s already one of the most fascinating worlds you can ever go to. Hope responds to the wishes of Hands – making sure you’re comfortable, that the environment suits your needs. Every Team is allotted a parcel of Hope called their SAFEGUARD to look after and develop, growing as you grow in power. Your SAFEGUARD is an amalgam of your Team’s wishes and can change radically over time.
Central is the capital of Hope, but only in name. That’s where CORSAIR offices are. We try to keep the rest of Hope pristine.
– – – – – – – – – –
OOUH7.789: Question for you both and whoever else is in here: what did it feel like to make your first deal with a Ring?
BHUH6.1450: You go first.
OOUH7.789: Sure, but why?
BHUH6.1450: Just go first.
OOUH7.789: Well for me it felt like…not being alone inside my head anymore. I’m not a collective so maybe it’s like that all the time for them, but it felt good? Warm. Not like a Ring can betray you.
C-SUH6.1334: As a collective, no, it did not feel like that at all. It felt like living inside your house for years and then realizing someone’s written all over everything and you can only understand half of it.
OOUH7.789: Brother Hammer?
BHUH6.1450: It doesn’t feel like anything.
OOUH7.789: They’re people-
BHUH6.1450: They’re echoes of the dead.
– – – – – – – – – –