Everyone Remembers It Wrong

Right, this is my favourite thing in the entire system and I need you to understand how it works, because once you see it you cannot unsee it.

Memory here is not a recording. It is a version.

Two people, one moment, two files

When something happens in front of two characters, the system does not write down what happened. It writes down what each of them heard — separately, in their own file, coloured by what they already believed about each other.

So you get two records of one conversation. And they disagree. And both of them are correct, because a memory file is not a claim about reality, it is a claim about what somebody walked away with.

Three sessions later, one of them brings it up. They quote you. And the quote is slightly off — not because anything glitched, but because that is what they heard.

What gets stored

The system keeps what was actually said, word for word, so it can be thrown back at you later. It keeps who else was in the room, because that is how a thing spreads. And it flags whether what you said was a promise — because a promise is a debt with a memory attached, and it is exactly the kind of thing somebody raises unprompted at the worst possible moment.

Rumours are memories that learned to walk

A thing that happened becomes a thing people say. It moves through the world by getting told, and every retelling drops something and sharpens something else.

By the time it reaches you, four hops from the event, it barely resembles what occurred — and the person telling you believes it completely.

You can be the one who knows better. That is a genuinely great feeling and it is available to you constantly, because you were there and they were not.

The part people miss

An NPC who "forgot" something usually was never told. Check before you assume the system dropped it — nine times out of ten it did not, and the tenth time it is the Lexicon being thin rather than memory failing.