“Something’s missing.”
Stacy scrolls through decades of festival photographs.
Summer celebrations.
Flower crowns.
Bonfires.
Music.
Laughter.
Different countries.
Different centuries.
The same images.
The same memories.
The same face.
Beautiful.
Golden.
Perfect.
Caelwyn studies the photographs.
“Looks normal.”
“No.”
Stacy opens another archive.
Then another.
And another.
Beneath the festivals:
Famine records.
Mass graves.
Crop failures.
Disease outbreaks.
Forgotten sacrifices.
The same places.
The same celebrations.
A different face.
Silence.
Above ground:
Music.
Below ground:
Bones.
Above:
Abundance.
Below:
The cost of abundance.
Stacy stares at an ancient midsummer mask recovered from an old festival site.
One side covered in flowers.
Gold.
Sunlight.
The face everyone remembers.
The face people celebrate.
The other side:
Cracked.
Rotting.
Consumed by roots and worms.
Almost hidden.
Almost forgotten.
“Why make it like that?” Caelwyn asks.
Stacy studies the mask.
Then quietly answers:
“Because somebody understood.”
“Understood what?”
The archive grows silent.
Outside, children play beneath the June sun.
Music drifts through open windows.
The season of celebration continues.
And Stacy finally says:
“Summer has two faces.”
The words settle heavily between them.
The face people celebrate.
And the face that pays for it.
Caelwyn looks at the ancient mask.
The flowers.
The worms.
The crown.
The rot.
Then asks:
“Which face is the real one?”
A long pause.
Then:
“Both.”
Silence.
Because that is the secret hidden beneath every midsummer fire.
Every festival.
Every feast.
Every golden age.
The beautiful face is real.
The terrible face is real.
And the tragedy of summer
is that nobody wants to look at both at the same time.
🎲 PLAY EPIC. FEEL THE STORY.
Game: Pulp Cthulhu: By Gaslight
Campaign: Mythveil Chronicles
Theme: June · The Summer King · The Mask
If you remember what this felt like —
you already know what you’re missing.
Step back into it.
Or keep missing it.
👉 https://startplaying.games/gm/dunchan
Want to go deeper?
Then don’t stop at the surface.
The full stories.
The dossiers.
The forgotten face behind every celebration.
The old truths hidden beneath the flowers.
The things summer asks people not to see.
👉 https://www.patreon.com/c/mythveilchronicles_bydunchanhuntergames