Inventors Watch a Gate

Tonight we played a session of Gate Watch by Christopher Allen, a game about a group of people tasked with monitoring an inter-dimensional gate between worlds. We are three citizens of Edisity, a technological world full of corrupt humans driven by greed and our insatiable sense of need: Guy Videl, a garrulous youth kicked out of college for stealing other’s inventions, Syl Bagger, a discredited inventor whose research challenged the pieties of the Inventors Guild, and Blyth Dorke, a simple soul who just wants to help people and not disappoint her family. Although we don’t know it yet, across the veil of the gate lies a magical world, free of humanity’s impure touch.

Our story starts with Guy asking Blyth and Syl to assist him in stealing the plans of his invention from the vaults at his old school. When Guy goes to distract the security forces, Blyth and her spider monkey Dante break into the vault and steal all the plans registered to Guy Videl. Once the school realizes that secret information is missing, security across the city is heightened and we face more intense scrutiny. Later, Blyth interrogates Guy about his real motives for wanting the plans stolen; she suspects he was involved in the building of the gate. On another night spent patrolling around the gate, Syl finds themselves asking Blyth to forgive them for losing her mother’s brooch through the gate after having “borrowed” it. Blyth reveals that her family has always said the stones in the brooch came from the other side of the gate.

Guy next approaches Syl to reveal to them what he had found in the cache stolen from the university: designs for the gate with unpronounceable inscriptions on them registered in the name of Guy E. Videl more than 700 years in the past. This only sparks Blyth’s suspicions further, and she confronts Guy when next they share a shift guarding the gate, this time confronting him within earshot of their supervisor. He laughs at the idea that Guy could have anything to do with the gate or its origins; Guy barely even has to the deny it. Next the three of us use a translation program to read aloud the script on the gate plans while we’re standing at the gate. The space within the gate’s mouth shimmers and changes to show a seashore with blood red sand. The police arrive to arrest Guy in connection with the college heist, so we flee together through the doorway of the gate. Fade to black.