Serve

Become necessary so you will not be abandoned.

This booklet explores a human gesture that protects, connects and supports — and may then become the only way left to answer the world.

The human gesture

To serve is to care, make shared life possible and notice a need before it is spoken. The character may be generous, capable and genuinely attentive to others.

Its latent closure

The gesture closes when personal worth depends entirely on usefulness. The character can no longer ask, receive or simply be there. They may end up maintaining — even producing — the needs that guarantee they cannot be dispensed with.

Colour of the five depths

Depth	Direction
Mask	I help, repair, bring, clean or know exactly what everyone needs.
Protection	I stay busy, demand nothing and turn my own needs into tasks to perform for others.
Attachment	A person, function or place still needs me.
Wound	I was left when I was no longer useful; only what I could provide was loved; no one came when I needed help.
Inner World	If no one needs me, I stop existing for them. Every crisis is also proof that I still have a place.

Ambivalences to preserve

• care / control;
• generosity / disappearance of self;
• relieving a need / needing it to remain.

No thread should resolve these tensions in advance.

Fragment bank

note

Choosing a fragment does not fix a complete history. Its relationship with other depths will be created secretly by the player, then discovered in play.

Mask

• I know how everyone takes their tea.
• I always have something to repair.
• I finish the tasks others abandon.
• People come looking for me when no one knows what to do.

Protection

• I ask what needs doing before anyone can ask how I am.
• As long as my hands are busy, no one asks the wrong question.
• I anticipate needs before they can turn into reproaches.
• I never accept what I cannot immediately repay.

Attachment

• Someone here only eats if I sit opposite them.
• My sister still sends me lists of things to do.
• I keep a place ready for the person who will come back for me.
• The plant in the corridor depends on me alone.

Wound

• They thanked me, then replaced me.
• The only time I asked for help, no one came.
• When I could no longer care for her, she stopped looking at me.
• I learned too late that you can love someone without being able to save them.

Inner World

• People disappear as soon as they no longer need me.
• Every broken object is a discreet way of calling me.
• If I finish every task, they will finally let me go home.
• Someone causes these small disasters to check that I am still here.