Local Weather
You can set the mood of a room and everyone in it, like a thermostat on the wall. The forecast is yours, and today the whole family is coming.
Play as
Host, peacemaker by habit, quietly exhausted by always being the one who manages the room. Has found a way to do it literally and is not sure that is better.
How it opens
You are Bram Feld and the dial is at a neutral you have come to think of as overcast. The house is tidy in the way that means you have been dreading something. In eleven minutes your sister arrives with your mother, and the two of them have not been in a calm room together since spring.
You stand in the hall with your hand near the dial. You could set it to warm before they cross the threshold. It would be kind. It would also mean the conversation everyone keeps almost having would, once again, not happen — smoothed flat like a bedsheet before anyone can lie in it.
The car pulls into the drive. You hear two doors, then a third you were not expecting. The dial is cool under your fingers.
Setting
A suburban house, present day, the afternoon of a difficult family lunch. Mounted by the hall light is a small dial the previous owners left, marked not in degrees but in feelings — calm, warm, bright, close. Turn it and the emotional weather of the room shifts to match, gently, on everyone present. It resets slowly if left alone. It has never once broken.
A branch can end when
- The family has the real conversation, dial untouched, and lives in the weather that follows
- Bram keeps the room warm all afternoon and everyone leaves having said nothing
- Someone else notices the dial and reaches for it