I was wondering about Ghost Keys, and how people have used them in their games.
Do you have to Attune to a ghost key before you can use it? Does it open lots of doors in the ghost field, or just one? How does it open those doors?
I have this idea for a campaign I’m hoping to start: ghost keys are just ordinary keys, but very old ones - so old that the doors they once unlocked have perished from the real world, but may still exist in the ghost field. So that each key can only open one particular door. Attuning to the key can help you to track down which door it opens: maybe the key pulls you towards the door, or glows brighter as you get closer.
Somewhere in Charterhall, is a shop. The front part is dedicated to all manner of “antiques” - or at least second-hand furniture scavenged from wherever the owner can find it. But if you know the password, you can access the back room, where keys of all shapes, sizes and materials can be found - velvet lined drawers full of them. A few are sold with directions to the locations of the doors they unlock. Many others are just sold as is - maybe you’ll find a useful one, and if not, the proprietor will often buy back a key if you’ve found what it opens. Some say that there is another room in the shop, where keys are sold that open doors in the most secret of locations.
You can attempt to acquire an asset here, with the roll determining how useful a doorway you can use - a broom cupboard in a target location would be a low Tier item, good for hiding in for a few moments but not much more. The front door might be higher Tier, giving you a secret way to access the scene from outside, and a very high Tier result could be the key to a study or a safe. Or maybe you could get a set of skeleton keys (pun not intended!) that open every door in the house.
The shopkeeper counts as a vice purveyor for the Weird. Indulging your vice here can involve spending a few hours Attuning to keys to try to track down their locations in the ghost field. Overindulging could mean that you get stuck somewhere in the ghost field, or you attract the attention of something there. Or perhaps that key lets you into a place where you really shouldn’t have gone… and the powerful owner is going to be very upset if they find out about it.
It feels as though there are a lot of potential story hooks there - what do you think?