Worked Examples: Alchemy of Creation

18 May, 2026

An unedited creativity exercise, borrowed from Throne of Salt.

Enjoy!

Comprehension and Deconstruction

Going Postal

• Moist von Lipwig
  • Con artist
  • Strangely trustworthy
  • Hard to recognize
  • Occupation: Postmaster
  • History of white-collar crime
  • Connection: Adorabelle
  • Connection: Lord Vetinari
  • Connection: Mr. Pump
  • The Post Office building
• Adorabelle Dearheart
  • Connection: Mr. Pump
  • Connection: The Golem Trust
  • Connection: Moist von Lipwig
  • Severe
  • Chain smoker
• Mr. Pump
  • Golem
  • Connection: Lord Vetinari
  • Connection: Moist von Lipwig
  • Parole officer
  • TALKS LIKE THIS
• Ankh-Morpork
  • Spans a river
  • Unruly
  • Dangerous to the uneducated
  • City Watch
• Lord Vetinari
  • Calculating
  • Guild-trained as an assassin
  • Tyrant
  • Respected and feared in equal measure
• Reacher Gilt
  • Banking fraudster
  • Grand legend of his past
  • Darkly dramatic
  • Connection: Moist von Lipwig
• The Grand Trunk Company
  • The clacks
  • Theft by corporation
  • Innovation

Elden Ring

• General Radahn
  • Connection: his poor horse
  • Corrupted by scarlet rot
  • Frenzied
  • Gravity magic
  • Grand legacy
• The Erdtree
  • Monumentally massive
  • Lights the entire world
  • Alien invader
  • Worshipped by fundamentalists
• Marika / Radagon
  • Two-faced god
  • Queen of demigods
  • Shattered the Elden Ring
  • Absent from the world
  • Trapped in the Erdtree in a different form
• Godfrey the Grafted
  • Craven
  • Lots of extra arms (Growth much?)
  • Stormveil Castle
  • Dragon-arm
• Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon
  • Sorceress
  • Headmistress
  • Diminished dramatically
  • Ranni the Witch
  • Lunar sorcery vs. glintstone sorcery
  • Caria Manor
  • The Academy of Raya Lucaria

Cartersfield

• The Cartersfield Herald
  • Funded by wealthy conservatives
  • Fair-minded
  • Disappoints everyone
  • Widely read locally
• Triangle Agency
  • Corporate power
  • The Vault
  • Resonants
  • Sean Cooper
• Cartersfield U
  • Faculty
  • Staff
  • Students
  • Protests
  • President Applebaum
  • Dr. Illescas
  • Van Morrison
• The Urgency
  • Lea Gudibanda
  • Rebellion against corporations
  • Hercules Guzman
  • Yvonne Islington

Reconstruction

Cross-Pollination

• Gannery Golden, Postmaster of Cartersfield and secret confidante of President Applebaum. Beloved universally. Former white-collar criminal, restored people's faith in the post office.
• Lunar binary, a new encoding method that involves storing moonlight in specialized containers made of mirrors, is being studied in the Agency for potential de-Anomalous release.
• Martina Carter, moon worshipper and fail-daughter editor of the Cartersfield Herald. Crippled with grief after a terrible divorce at age 28 (now 32). Lets them go about their business more or less.

Association

• Protests outside the Agency over water, land, and power usage. Strange spikes have been detected and are stressing the grid due to unusual demands on the Vault.
• Daniela Friedman-Banks moves to Cartersfield and starts a "scrappy" online newspaper (funded by crypto money) as a way to unseat the Herald and "make people's voices heard." Has a beef with the Carters - old vs. new money.
• The Agency sponsors a lot of research at Cartersfield U, but maintains conditional approval over release of manuscripts. Students complain to an uncaring administration, who cite contractual obligations.
• The Strange Cartersfield Meetup group, a student organization that is red-stringing things together. Inconvenient watchers of Agency activity.
• A strange ghost wanders the streets of Cartersfield of an old man on a horse that can barely support his enormous, corpulent weight. Legends say that this is a general from Illinois who defected to the Confederacy.
• John Doe, your friendly neighbor. Always present at the community potluck, winning smile, forgettable face. Trustworthy to all who meet him, but has no apparent roots. Lives on his own, moved here suddenly without fanfare. He is in witness protection after pissing off a shady branch of the Trump family; former white-collar criminal.
• The town's planning board has proven to be remarkably successful in pissing off everyone in town. The Agency demands more land for a large warehouse and a greater draw on the grid for "computational activities." Activists want all chain businesses out of there. The college wants to modernize the infrastructure to meet their climate goals (but does not consult the populace).
• A second sun appears in the sky, bringing with it a total absence of shadow. Birds are confused, animals are frenzied, and everyone is aware of it. Religious folks feel drawn to worship it even as they simultaneously feel like they're blasphemizing. Thousands of Loose Ends if not handled.

Exegesis

• Yvonne Islington has an unusual name, and must come from somewhere. Perhaps she is English (due to the last name I chose). She has powers of illusion and fantasy (perfectly calibrated to Olle) and was a street-artist there, concerned particularly with the surveillance state in which London finds itself.
• Sean Cooper's family has long since believed him to be missing. However, his younger brother (13 when he disappeared, now 43) recently saw a photo on r/Transformers of him walking away from the set of a Michael Bay film. His family can't believe it.
• Dr. Illescas has tenure at Cartersfield University and that grants her a certain manner of protection from Agency interference. She has survived false accusations, plagiarism investigations, and terrible student evaluations. People around her are always surprised by this; she knows that something deeper is going on.

Execution / Refocusing

• Double-layer game where you play college kids playing Monsterhearts at Cartersfield U. Your characters are the college kids, with their own assorted drama. Their Monsterhearts game incorporates legends and events from your table's Triangle U game.
• Fear and Panic sessions are great for exploring the human side of Agency activity - exploring the Agency from a normal-person horror game perspective is delicious.

Deviating from the Path

• There is no path to follow here, so any path is a deviation.

Be well.

#rpgs #worked_examples