Thoughts are Progressive

Title

Amene

Characters
(this doesn’t include everyone, just the people players will need to know about)

• Prof. Michelle Milligan (head archaeologist): 41 years old, has been working at digs since she was 19.
• Dr. Tommy Andrews (head historian): 36 years old, has a photographic memory which makes him such a brilliant historian.
• Nelson Crouch (assistant): 27 years old, is passionate about what he does (which is learning from Prof. Milligan) and has his head screwed on tight.

Plot

Prof. Milligan, Dr. Andrews and Nelson Crouch are part of a team of archaeologists who worked on excavating the lost civilisation of Amene. The ruins of Amene are on the border of Slovenia and Italy and it is similar to Pompeii in the fact that it destroyed the whole town, but not so well preserved.

The team of archaeologists discovered that the reason Amene was destroyed was not from some massive environmental disturbance or plague, but because they lived too individually. The people of Amene had been able to produce some crude method of capturing sound, similar to the music box device the Banū Mūsā brothers invented in the 9th century. Because of this invention, each person in the village had their own personal music player and so they stopped enjoying music communally.

This caused them to slowly block other human interaction out and they all became obsessed with just themselves. Soon, all communication between each other was completely destroyed and they were no longer a progressive town. No one was doing anything, not even cooking. So eventually, because of this all-consuming invention, the town of Amene ground to a halt and dwindled away. They died from music.

That being the recently discovered history of Amene, our friends Prof. Milligan and Dr. Andrews and Nelson Crouch have found connections that suggest that what happened to Amene could very well be happening right now all around the world. Which it is. With the modern invention of MP3 players, it has been taken to a whole new level. Already people have died from listening to them because they are so saturated in the music that they don’t notice things around them. Our archaeologists realise that they need to get this information out there before what happened to Amene happens to the entire planet!

They plan to release a documentary on Amene, but the authorities have decided that this knowledge would ruin the music/entertainment industry and ban our friends from publishing the DVD. The only way around it would be if our friends only vaguely mention the cause of destruction, or merely put it down to “unknown factors”.

Our friends don’t want to publish a false documentary, but they feel they have to do something. In the end they decide to comply with the authorities, but with some sneaky little secrets included. On the DVD itself are some ‘easter eggs’ and on the poster promoting the documentary there is a clue that leads to a blog.

The hidden easter eggs hold some of the extra information that they weren’t allowed to include, but done discretely and will also lead to the blog in case people didn’t see the poster. The blog will be the central hub where people will interact with, mainly, Nelson Crouch (but Michelle and Tommy will have some input). From here there will be links to relevant data and also where ‘tasks’ will be assigned. This is when the players take control on how the story ends. It’s up to them now to get the word out there.