Where something is stirring...
Characters
All the characters in Briarhollow form mortal-fae pairs. The natures of the bond between them differ, but all of them have their fates tied together. It is recommended to sign up together in pairs to make sure your main relationship is with someone you know you like to play with, but it is not required.Â
Where did I go wrong?
The Professor &
The Mirror-Tender
This pair centres on regret, abandoned possibilities and the difference between understanding one’s mistakes and actually changing. The Professor is haunted by the life he chose over love, family and magic, while the Mirror-Tender can show him the lives that might have followed different choices. Their bond is intimate but antagonistic: he shattered them while reaching for powers he did not understand, and they now alternate between tormenting him, guiding him and trying to discover whether either of them can still choose a new future.
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The Professor (Male)
A retired academic who spent his life pursuing recognition and left almost everything meaningful behind. Returning to Briarhollow brings him face to face with an old love, a family he failed and the magical inheritance he once rejected. This role offers regret, family drama, old romance, occult investigation and the difficult work of taking responsibility when apologies are no longer enough.
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The Mirror-Tender
A fae spirit of mirrors, regret and roads not taken. They reveal the lives people might have lived and refuse to let them hide behind the belief that there was never another choice. Shattered and bound to the person responsible, they must decide whether they want revenge, restoration or something neither of them has yet imagined. This is a reflective but active role built around visions, provocation and forcing others toward change.
How far will I go?
The Seamstress & The Uncut
This pair is about wounds, promises and the dangerous question of if old wounds should be repaired. The Seamstress has spent her life trying to hold her family together while concealing parts of herself she considers dangerous. The Uncut was born from something left unresolved and has a personal stake in ensuring that certain wounds never close. They need one another, but their ideas of healing are fundamentally opposed: one tries to mend, while the other insists that some injuries must remain open until the truth inside them has been faced.
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The Seamstress (Female)
A mother, craftswoman and protector who has sacrificed much of herself for her family. She is caught between an old love, a troubled partnership, a daughter in danger and a supernatural inheritance she has tried to deny. This role provides intense family drama, protective choices, buried anger, old romance and the question of whether care can become another form of control.
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The Uncut
A young fae spirit of unfinished things, open wounds and promises that have not yet reached their ending. Witty, sharp and deliberately provocative, they push conflicts toward the point where people can no longer pretend everything is fine. Yet their philosophy is not disinterested: their own survival may depend upon keeping an old obligation unresolved. This is an active social role suited to creating confrontations, negotiating bargains and testing whether a wound should be healed, severed or allowed to become something new.
Can there be forgiveness?
The Reverend &
The Thornchild
This pair presents the game’s most openly hostile bond. The Reverend believed that an unforgivable act could protect his family and town, but his actions have returned as something shaped by memory, pain and faerie. Their relationship moves between accusation, manipulation, desperate hope and the possibility that part of what was lost may still remain. Its themes include betrayal, religious guilt, revenge, identity and whether forgiveness would be healing, surrender or simply another injustice.
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The Reverend (Male)
A respected man of faith carrying a secret that contradicts everything he preaches. He loves his family, but has repeatedly allowed fear and certainty to justify controlling them—and once justified something far worse. This role offers guilt, faith, moral hypocrisy, family conflict and the atoning for unforgivable.
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The Thornchild
Somethign returned from faerie, carrying with them regret, pain and old wounds. They hate the Reverend for what he has done and take pleasure in offering him hope only to tear it away. Beneath the thorns lies a complicated hunger to be recognised, avenged or brought home. This is a confrontational role combining cruelty, wounded vulnerability, supernatural horror and questions about whether continuity of memory is enough to make up for a terrible loss.
What to do when love hurts?
The Stationmaster &
Rilken of the Iron Fork
This pair centres on choice, duty and the cruelty of being made responsible for an impossible decision. The Stationmaster has inherited a pact tied to the abandoned railway and the people taken by its impossible train. Rilken is both the executor of that pact and another prisoner of it: an ancient spirit transformed by iron, railway and obligation. Their relationship contains resentment, fascination and reluctant companionship. Together they must decide what Briarhollow is worth.
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The Stationmaster (Gender-neutral)
A young keeper of memories who once stood on a platform and failed to board an impossible train with someone they loved. Since then, they have lived with guilt, uncertainty and the knowledge that the train will come again. Now they are obsessed by their past, trying to fix what cannot be fixed while protecting those they love. This role offers mystery, mechanical and ritual investigation, difficult decisions and the opportunity to grow from paralysing indecision into someone capable of determining the town’s future.
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Rilken of the Iron Fork
Once a spirit of roads and wandering, Rilken was transformed when mortals drove a railway through their domain. Now they belong to iron, crossroads, duty and decisions, conducting the train that collects the price of Briarhollow’s forgotten pact. Proud, theatrical and profoundly lonely, they may be captor, guide, tempter or fellow victim. This is a socially active fae role with political ambitions, old grudges and a personal stake in the future of Briarhollow.
What is even real?
The Dreamer &
Moth of the Starry Sky
This pair explores love as both salvation and consumption. The Dreamer is slowly losing her memories, identity and hold upon the waking world, while Moth is a young spirit who has not existed for long. Both of them experience themselves and unfinished and not whole, but this shared pain that binds them is also destroying them. Their play revolves around intimacy, dependence, protection, jealousy and whether loving someone means remaining joined to them at any cost.
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The Dreamer (Female)
A young woman who has always wandered too easily into dreams and is now beginning to disappear from the world around her. She stands at the centre of tangled relationships involving her parents, her lover, forgotten childhood bonds and the strange being who claims to be connected to her soul. This is an emotionally central role with romance, family conflict, lost memories and a struggle to retain the right to define herself.
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Moth of the Starry Sky
A being born in the realm of dreams, initially more instinct than person. Moth found consciousness, identity and love through the Dreamer, but is still battling dissolution and non-existence. They can perceive dreams and hidden truths, but their fierce need to protect the Dreamer can easily become possessive. This role offers intense bond play, otherworldly perception and the tragedy of needing someone who may only survive by letting you go.
What is duty worth?
The Graveyard Keeper &
Sorrow-of-the-Bog
This pair explores inherited duty, grief and the tension between preserving the past and allowing life to change. The Graveyard Keeper belongs to a family sworn to care for Briarhollow’s dead, while Sorrow-of-the-Bog is the ancient spirit that guides each generation in fulfilling that obligation. Their bond allows the dead to speak, but it also binds a young man to responsibilities he never freely chose. They may work together as guardians and counsellors, even as they struggle over whether tradition still protects the town or merely prevents it from becoming something new.
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The Graveyard Keeper (Male)
A young man who inherited the graveyard, its voices and his family’s unfinished grief. He can help the living speak with those they have lost, but must decide which voices should be heard and what should remain buried. His own relationships are tangled with love, control, jealousy, family loss and fear of abandonment. This role combines unhealthy romance, emotional intensity, mediation with the dead and difficult decisions about responsibility.
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Sorrow-of-the-Bog
An ancient spirit of bog, graveyard and decay that remembers the duties mortals have forgotten. It listens to the dead, preserves old boundaries and believes that keeping everything in its proper place is the surest form of protection. Yet the world has changed, and preservation may now cause as much harm as it prevents. This is a solemn, authoritative role offering counsel, historical knowledge, supernatural mediation and a deep conflict between tradition and transformation.