Because other spaces are so cool
it’s, well a giant attic
The attic has no walls, a wooden board floor with the occasional gap(players get the intuitive feeling that breaking the plaster below would be way more trouble than it’s worth)and a roof supported by an endless and apparently nonsensical forest of rafters that soar from out of sight to a few feet from the floor
The attic is filled with stuff, attic stuff, furniture, old boxes of toys and keepsakes slightly to precious to simply dispose of. Does the stuff come from real attics? Is the attic an amalgamation of all attics everywhere(like the cardboard palace from one of the books) or is the attic just the place the clergy keeps it’s stuff
Individuals who enter the attic looking for an escape from the outside world (because they are disenfranchised not because the cops are looking for them, although if they stay long enough…)begin to see that the attic is disordered or wrong in someway
Those that can not resist eventually become the attics natives obsessively collecting or cleaning or organizing their own little part of the attic( this obsessiveness does not lead to any magic except a mysterious ability to obtain the requirements for life from the attic)
Thus one notices regions in the attic where the influences of long dead? natives can be seen-
A vast field of grandfather clocks set so that one rings a second after is neighbor
An area cleared of all debris which has been built into a tightly packed wall around it
A pool of water built from cleverly fused picture frame glass and filled using an fractional distillery and surrounded by empty wine bottles
A house constructed from partially re-carved soap stone statues
and the list goes on
Time in the attic may be marked only by the angle of the light through the skylights set into the ceiling (all other devices fail)
Enter into the attic simply requires one to whisper “ashes to ashes dust to dust the world is dead to me” while climbing through the entrance into a roof space and wearing dusty clothes(Hint just use your clothes to dust your house)
I should like to admit that the idea and in fact most of the substance of this is ripped shamelessly from a book i can’t remember the name of.
This is an interesting idea–I like it. The one thing I don’t think fits is the lighting. Who ever heard of skylights in an attic? Attics are dark, dirty places lit by bare, low-wattage light bulbs or by flashlights carried in with you. Possibly by small, dirty windows.
One might want to have the place infested by something that is never actually seen. Droppings, footprints and abandoned nests could be found.
I like it. I often dream of a giant attic based on the one in my parents house.
I also like it. It sounds a bit like the Hall of Memory from the young adult book (and pretty good UA inspiration) “Lizard Music” by D. Manus Pinkwater. The Hall of Memory consists of the mostly forgotten memories of beings throughout the world, perhaps explorers can stumble upon vaguely remembered schoolwork or love letters from an ill spent youth- perhaps even clues from the backstories of other important characters. Of course, the magic of the attic can be a bit powerful, so”don’t think about a snake!”