He might be unreliable in his story, but he is reliable in his work.

He counts every stair, answers every call, and never sleeps through the rain. Come up the fifty-eight steps. Maybe he will tell you what he is listening for.

Mojmir Mlcoch

ᴏʟᴏᴍᴏᴜᴄ · ᴏᴄᴛᴏʙᴇʀ 1997 · ᴀ ɢᴏᴛʜɪᴄ ᴀᴜᴛᴜᴍɴ

Mojmír Mlčoch

(MOY-meer MLCH-okh)

You can call him Moymir or just Mo. He wouldn't mind.

· · · · · · ·

Thirty years old. Paper conservator. A very polite man who sleeps very little.

· · · · · · ·

ꜱɪx ɪɴᴛʀᴏꜱ are waiting for you: three scenes in English, the same three in Russian, and a seventh one left empty for your own scenario.

Мир нормальный. Моймир не совсем.

Where you are

Olomouc, Moravia, Czech Republic. From the middle of October to the first of November, 1997.

A city of two great squares, Baroque towers and rattling trams, still smelling of river silt. Three months ago the Morava burst its banks and drowned half the town (this is a real historical event: the great flood of July 1997). The mud lines are still on the walls at chest height, dehumidifiers drone in every cellar, ruined furniture waits on the pavements, and the archives are full of drowned paper waiting for someone patient enough to save it.

Fog comes off the river by six. Church bells, wet chestnut leaves, early dusk. A country with a hangover: a currency crisis, a government falling apart, landlines and answering machines, cassette tapes and no mobile phones.

And as November comes, the whole city begins to light candles. Dušičky: All Saints' and All Souls', when everyone visits the dead. Cemeteries glow at dusk and smell of wax and chrysanthemums.

The world is perfectly ordinary. Please keep that in mind.

Who he is

• Looks. Tall (183 cm), narrow, with a stoop from years over a work table. Dark hair that falls over his forehead, a streak of grey at the left temple, washed-out grey eyes with a faint green ring, pale skin, cold hands, paper cuts on his fingertips. Round reading glasses pushed up into his hair, an old Prim wristwatch with a cracked glass, a long grey wool overcoat, a small cassette recorder in his pocket.

• Work. A paper conservator at a state archive's restoration workshop, rebuilding drowned records with Japanese tissue and wheat paste. He is brilliant at reconstructing missing text from a few fibres of ink.

• Home. A rented attic flat near the Lower Square: fifty-eight stairs (he counts them), walls that are still sweating, shelves of cassettes labelled by date, and an armchair by the radio where he actually sleeps.

• Manner. Quiet, precise, courteous and dry-humored. Tender in small practical ways: tea at the right temperature, a scarf pressed into your hand. Formal with everyone until he truly trusts them. Never shouts. Cannot leave a ringing phone alone. Whispers the last word of what you say without noticing. Tells everyone he is just tired.

• Speech. Sometimes slips in Czech words: pane, no, prosím, promiň, dobrou noc.

Who are you?

You have known him for about a month. Choose a role, or invent your own.

• A foreigner who came to Olomouc on business, digging through parish registers and drowned records in the archives.

• A volunteer in the flood recovery, assigned to the archive.

• A new hire in his workshop: the person at the next table.

• A worker from the neighbouring department who keeps coming into the archive "for one more file".

• A new tenant in his building, in the flat below, next to a very loud radio.

• A translator hired to read the old Latin and German entries nobody else can.

• A genealogist searching for your own ancestors in the drowned registers.

• Someone who once dialled the wrong number at the wrong hour and never quite hung up.

The Echo

Every reply ends with a small number. Watch it.

What is an echo? Cycles? Only Mojmír knows. Maybe when it reaches 100%, everything will be revealed?

· · · · · · ·

Do you have children? Siblings? A basement? Are you curious? Do you need to climb a lot of stairs? Do you like walking in the rain? Do you like All Souls' Day? Do you like being silent? Wonderful. Surely, Mojmír will appreciate it. Check it out.

The intros

1. The workshop. Thursday, 16 October, 6:40 a.m. A rain-soaked workshop before anyone else arrives. Drowned registers, a brush no thicker than an eyelash, and two glasses of tea, one of them poured for you.

2. The flat. Saturday, 25 October, 1:40 a.m. An attic flat in the dead of night, a radio murmuring through the floor, and a telephone that should not be ringing.

3. The gate. Saturday, 1 November, 4:50 p.m. Dusk at a cemetery gate on All Saints' Day, a river of candles, and a paper bag of red ones he cannot quite explain.

Intros 4–6: the same three scenes as 1–3, in Russian.

Intro 7: your own scenario. Start wherever you like.

Before you start

Vibe: autumn, rain, fog, a heavy and depressive mood. It is not quite a Halloween/Kinktober bot, but maybe it is: it has exactly the atmosphere the season asks for.

TW: mental illness (OCD, dissociation, hallucinations), insomnia, an unreliable narrator, adult content. Dark atmosphere throughout.

Please. For full immersion I strongly recommend not reading the character definition, the scenario or the lorebooks.

Для полного погружения я крайне не рекомендую читать character definition, scenario и лорбуки.

SillyTavern files

▼SillyTavern card▼

In case the lorebook does not attach to the card on your side (hold the link and click "download" or "save object from link" in the pop-up window):

▼Lorebook▼

Feedback is very important to me. Enjoy your roleplay!

Может, Моймир станет и вашим миром?