Solo RPG - The Bird Oracle
Dec. 28th, 2025 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseMason bought me a solo RPG called The Bird Oracle for the holidays. I'm several days into it and just wanted to share a bit of my adventure. (Most of this will be under the cut, so those of you who would like to ignore it can.)
Here's a page from my journal:
Image: sample page of my The Bird Oracle journal, where I've glued in a printed color photo of the nest I built, per instructions.
The basic premise is that I've inherited the cottage of the previous Bird Oracle and the job that comes with it, which is providing divinations for the people who write to me.
Initially, however, Jane (the mentor who left me this cottage) has given me various assignments to ease me into my new role I'm meant to take on. She's teaching me her mystical arts by asking questions I'm answering in my journal (pictured above). Previously, they've been things like what you can see if you expand the picture above where I'm supposed to think about what "egg" might mean to me and respond to a question like, "When do you feel protected?" This is all prep to lead me to coming up with my own definitions for bird-related divination prompts. Sometimes Jane comes with little crafting projects, like above, where I was asked to build a nest for Twigs, the carrier pigeon who also comes with the cottage. (I also later decided there are chickens, but I'll get into that in a second.)
I am not playing as Lyda, however, because, for me, that isn't role-playing. So, I've been feeling around for a character as I've been answering these questions. I finally hit on something as I was writing up my entry for "feather," which turned into an actual story. The only other thing I'll say about this above the cut is that I love playing villains, but RPGs are largely cooperative when played around a table (not all of them, obviously, but player v player isn't much fun when what you're playing is "let's all kill this dragon" or other such things where, you know, it's best if people have the same agenda.) In a solo RPG, I can choose evil.
I'm not choosing to be actively evil in this excerpt, but you can sort of see how it vibes like a villain's origin story (if you choose to read it.)
FEATHER.
Ironically your instruction ends when guidance is most needed. How am I to be clever when there is no cliche to twist or simplistic question to mock?
It seems I'll have to do the hard work myself, then. I'll have to picture you on the porch of this very cottage, tea cup in hand, while Twigs circles your feet, pecking aimlessly. I will be in my usual spot at the far end of the wooden planks, my bare feet kicking at the soft tufts of overgrown grass, fern, and bracken.
You won't look at me before you speak. You never did much look directly at me, despite how persistently I returned to your cottage.
Perhaps your eyesight was already failing, but I figured you didn’t like the look of me. I was the wrong kind of student--unasked for, too old, and the wrong gender. But you’re hardly the first of my many teachers who implied through silence that men--especially a man like me--didn’t belong among women’s magicks.
But back to your lesson.
Maybe at this moment, Twigs would preen a feather from her wing. She might worry it out and it would fall at your feet. I imagine your gnarled and wrinkled hand picking it up and bringing it close to your face for inspection. “What is a feather?”
“Warmth,” I’d say without forethought, a habit you despised.”There’s some kind of oil, isn’t there, that makes them waterproof?”
“TOO PRACTICAL,” you’d chide.
“Oh, it’s symbolism you’re after,” I’d mutter, with a last kick at your ferns before turning to regard you seriously. “Feathers represent freedom, travel, and divine messages. Despite no mention of wings in the Bible, angels were always shown with wings because people believed the Heavenly Sphere was a physical realm above the Earth.”
“TOO ROTE!”
“But correct,” I’d argue, but quiet-like and with no real fire.
You would be at the edge of your patience, perhaps even letting out a long-suffering breath before asking: “What is a feather to you?”
“A nuisance,” I’d say. I’d be thinking of Twig’s roost or the chicken coop I’d cleaned for you that morning.
At this, you’d let out a squawk like a crow. You’d leap to your feet, sending your rocker and Twigs bursting into motion. Stalking into the cottage I was forbidden to enter, you’d leave me there with my arms wrapped tightly around my knees. I’d stay like that until you either shouted out from the kitchen window that the garden would hardly tend itself or you’d come back out with a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and a second try.
Let’s pretend that today is a good day and I’m given a second chance to disappoint you.
We eat in silence for a while. My senses fill with your other kind of magicks, the gooey goodness that melts any heart and lowers all defenses. At some point, you glance in my direction and say, “You’re hardly stupid, Aishling. What am I teaching you?”
I’d look up then, hoping to catch your gaze, but it would have already slipped away from me to stare out at your yard or the woods beyond.
But, as much as it galls me, you were always right. I’m obstinate, not stupid. Though I’m not yet thirty, I’ve been a student many times--too many in your estimation. So I would take a breath and try, “To me, a feather is childhood.”
This seems to please you, perhaps. You lift an eyebrow encouragingly, settling in again.
I weave for you now the tale you want to hear. Stories, all true, of how, as a child, I would go into the cemetery and hunt for goose feathers, molted in spring. I would tell you of the brilliantly-colored bluejay pinfeather that was a prized possession of mine that I carried until it fell apart in my hand. I would spin for you the story of how I would spend hours and hours in my small attic room carefully trying to carve a pen nib from the feathers I’d found in hopes of emulating the ancient poets of my imagination with their quill and ink..
You might even smile at some point and reach to ruffle my hair, only to remember that I’m a full half a foot taller than you expect.
Any moment we might be having would be ruined. Your peripheral vision would remind you of who and what I am and you’d grumble, “Not half-bad for a witch boy.”
Here's a page from my journal:
Image: sample page of my The Bird Oracle journal, where I've glued in a printed color photo of the nest I built, per instructions.
The basic premise is that I've inherited the cottage of the previous Bird Oracle and the job that comes with it, which is providing divinations for the people who write to me.
Initially, however, Jane (the mentor who left me this cottage) has given me various assignments to ease me into my new role I'm meant to take on. She's teaching me her mystical arts by asking questions I'm answering in my journal (pictured above). Previously, they've been things like what you can see if you expand the picture above where I'm supposed to think about what "egg" might mean to me and respond to a question like, "When do you feel protected?" This is all prep to lead me to coming up with my own definitions for bird-related divination prompts. Sometimes Jane comes with little crafting projects, like above, where I was asked to build a nest for Twigs, the carrier pigeon who also comes with the cottage. (I also later decided there are chickens, but I'll get into that in a second.)
I am not playing as Lyda, however, because, for me, that isn't role-playing. So, I've been feeling around for a character as I've been answering these questions. I finally hit on something as I was writing up my entry for "feather," which turned into an actual story. The only other thing I'll say about this above the cut is that I love playing villains, but RPGs are largely cooperative when played around a table (not all of them, obviously, but player v player isn't much fun when what you're playing is "let's all kill this dragon" or other such things where, you know, it's best if people have the same agenda.) In a solo RPG, I can choose evil.
I'm not choosing to be actively evil in this excerpt, but you can sort of see how it vibes like a villain's origin story (if you choose to read it.)
FEATHER.
Ironically your instruction ends when guidance is most needed. How am I to be clever when there is no cliche to twist or simplistic question to mock?
It seems I'll have to do the hard work myself, then. I'll have to picture you on the porch of this very cottage, tea cup in hand, while Twigs circles your feet, pecking aimlessly. I will be in my usual spot at the far end of the wooden planks, my bare feet kicking at the soft tufts of overgrown grass, fern, and bracken.
You won't look at me before you speak. You never did much look directly at me, despite how persistently I returned to your cottage.
Perhaps your eyesight was already failing, but I figured you didn’t like the look of me. I was the wrong kind of student--unasked for, too old, and the wrong gender. But you’re hardly the first of my many teachers who implied through silence that men--especially a man like me--didn’t belong among women’s magicks.
But back to your lesson.
Maybe at this moment, Twigs would preen a feather from her wing. She might worry it out and it would fall at your feet. I imagine your gnarled and wrinkled hand picking it up and bringing it close to your face for inspection. “What is a feather?”
“Warmth,” I’d say without forethought, a habit you despised.”There’s some kind of oil, isn’t there, that makes them waterproof?”
“TOO PRACTICAL,” you’d chide.
“Oh, it’s symbolism you’re after,” I’d mutter, with a last kick at your ferns before turning to regard you seriously. “Feathers represent freedom, travel, and divine messages. Despite no mention of wings in the Bible, angels were always shown with wings because people believed the Heavenly Sphere was a physical realm above the Earth.”
“TOO ROTE!”
“But correct,” I’d argue, but quiet-like and with no real fire.
You would be at the edge of your patience, perhaps even letting out a long-suffering breath before asking: “What is a feather to you?”
“A nuisance,” I’d say. I’d be thinking of Twig’s roost or the chicken coop I’d cleaned for you that morning.
At this, you’d let out a squawk like a crow. You’d leap to your feet, sending your rocker and Twigs bursting into motion. Stalking into the cottage I was forbidden to enter, you’d leave me there with my arms wrapped tightly around my knees. I’d stay like that until you either shouted out from the kitchen window that the garden would hardly tend itself or you’d come back out with a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and a second try.
Let’s pretend that today is a good day and I’m given a second chance to disappoint you.
We eat in silence for a while. My senses fill with your other kind of magicks, the gooey goodness that melts any heart and lowers all defenses. At some point, you glance in my direction and say, “You’re hardly stupid, Aishling. What am I teaching you?”
I’d look up then, hoping to catch your gaze, but it would have already slipped away from me to stare out at your yard or the woods beyond.
But, as much as it galls me, you were always right. I’m obstinate, not stupid. Though I’m not yet thirty, I’ve been a student many times--too many in your estimation. So I would take a breath and try, “To me, a feather is childhood.”
This seems to please you, perhaps. You lift an eyebrow encouragingly, settling in again.
I weave for you now the tale you want to hear. Stories, all true, of how, as a child, I would go into the cemetery and hunt for goose feathers, molted in spring. I would tell you of the brilliantly-colored bluejay pinfeather that was a prized possession of mine that I carried until it fell apart in my hand. I would spin for you the story of how I would spend hours and hours in my small attic room carefully trying to carve a pen nib from the feathers I’d found in hopes of emulating the ancient poets of my imagination with their quill and ink..
You might even smile at some point and reach to ruffle my hair, only to remember that I’m a full half a foot taller than you expect.
Any moment we might be having would be ruined. Your peripheral vision would remind you of who and what I am and you’d grumble, “Not half-bad for a witch boy.”