By The Intrepid in Folktales — 14 May 2025

A Playable Folktale: The Polling Core’s Silence

A Playable Folktale for drifters, hyperpigs, and a core that lost its vote.

This is not a system to save or a core to conquer. It is a mirror for what voted, what silenced, and what hums in the Glitter Band’s cracks.

What You Need

2–6 participants
A shared space (virtual or physical)
A token per player (e.g., a shard, a vine, a written vote) to represent a regret or question
Optional: cards, dice, or objects to evoke omens or shifts
Consult the Lexicon of Resonance for terms like Signal, Shimmer, or Rift

Premise

In the Glitter Band, Habitat 771—Lament’s Cradle—went dark, its polling core silent. Once, its bioluminescent gardens and neural poets sang with votes. Now, you—a makeshift crew of hyperpigs, drifters, and ex-prefects—seek the core’s final data, not to restore it but to hear what broke its voice. Panoply watches, but the Band’s cracks hum louder.

The core carries a Hum—a fractured note, a vote uncast. Let it thread through your ritual.

Overture

Set the Vibe as noir and fractured, like a vote lost in static.

In the Glitter Band, votes were stars, flickering in every skull. Habitat 771, Lament’s Cradle, went dark last cycle. Its polling core stopped singing. No one knows why. You’re not here to fix it. You’re here to listen to its last words—poems, screams, or static.

Pause. Each player shares a fragment—a word, image, or glitch—that resonates with the Cradle. Let silence linger.

Descent

Step into the folktale’s silence.

Describe Lament’s Cradle: its glowing vines, silent cores, hyperpig squatters. Each player adds a detail: What resists decay? Name a Signal—a vine’s pulse, a core’s flicker, a pig’s grunt.

Choose an Archetype:

Hyperpig Scavenger: A thief from Chasm City. Tool: Hacked neural implant. Flaw: Betrayed a sibling. Question: Am I more than my code?
Polling Clerk: Obsessed with votes. Tool: Decrypted vote-log. Flaw: Rigged a poll for love. Question: Do votes make us free?
Ex-Ultra: A grounded starship nomad. Tool: Conjoiner-tech shard. Flaw: Abandoned their crew. Question: Can I ever go home?
Ghost Voter: A digital echo of a dead citizen. Tool: Glitchy abstraction link. Flaw: Voted for a tyrant. Question: Am I still human?

Players may co-play archetypes or speak as “The Core hums through you.” Ask: “What flaw shapes your voice here? What do you hear in the core’s silence?”

Reckoning

The fulcrum moment. Something breaks or hums true.

Recover a data fragment—a vote, a poem, a scream. One player speaks it, another doubts it, another seeks its truth. Debate: Is it Signal or noise? Each player shares a regret tied to the data. Place a token to mark a shift (e.g., “I leave my shard where the vines dim”).

As a Chorus, vote silently: Preserve the regret, erase it, or ritualize it (e.g., hum it into the core)? Decide: What silenced the core—a lie, a loss, or defiance?

If a Rift emerges (e.g., clashing truths), name it: “What static leaked through?” When a fragment feels true, pause for its Shimmer. Between fragments, time drifts. Draw a card or token:

What memory surfaced?
Who did you lose?
What did the core change in you?

Echo

What hums when no one is left to vote?

When the core’s truth is named—or it defies naming—compose a final Echo. As a Chorus, craft a message from Lament’s Cradle to the Band. Decide:

Does it warn, mourn, or defy?
Will anyone hear it?
Does it matter?

Preserve a final image (e.g., “A vine curls around a silent core”). Create a session artifact—a sentence, sketch, or named object (e.g., a shard etched with a vote)—to hold the folktale’s residue.

Tone Guidance

Play slow, like a noir detective’s cigarette burn.
Let silence speak—votes don’t always mean truth.
Honor the hyperpigs’ grit, the Band’s glitter, the core’s loss.
If the Vibe shifts, name it: “This feels heavier now. Let’s Drift with it.”

Licensing

The Polling Core’s Silence is built on the Playable Folktale SRD v1.0 by The Grey Ledger Society. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. Adapt, share, or remix with attribution to the SRD.