World rules
Dracula · Bram StokerThe guest is well fed. He still cannot leave.
Turn hospitality into confinement by showing which everyday choices the host controls and which exits the visitor actually tests.
The cheaper the miracle, the harder it is to pass on
Keep a powerful solution from removing suspense: each successful transfer should leave its next owner fewer ways to escape the cost.
Read the scene & sources · Plot spoilers
The Bottle Imp · Robert Louis Stevenson
The bottle's rules, Keawe's return purchase, illness and cure, and the Tahiti currency plan. The final ownership and ending are not disclosed in this card.
The situation
Keawe buys a bottle said to grant wishes but condemn anyone who dies owning it. Its seller explains that it must be resold for coined money at a lower price; otherwise it returns. Keawe tests parts of this account, gains his desired house and passes the bottle to his friend Lopaka. Later, after falling in love with Kokua, he develops an illness the story identifies as leprosy and searches for the bottle again to seek a cure.
What the source describes
Leaving the bottle in the street does not free Keawe: it reappears in his coat. Selling it for sixty dollars after paying fifty also fails; he finds it back in his chest. When he later tracks it through successive owners, the current owner has paid only two cents. Keawe buys it for one cent, believing that he will be unable to sell it again, and the marks of his illness disappear. Kokua later points out smaller foreign coins and proposes travelling to Tahiti, where sales at four, three, two and one centime would offer further steps. In Tahiti, however, explaining the danger makes prospective buyers withdraw, while others dismiss the offer as unbelievable.
How the choices connect
- Abandonment and a sale at a profit fail in observable ways, so the owner has reason to take the transfer conditions seriously.
- Earlier owners gain benefits and sell on; by the time Keawe needs the bottle again, its price has fallen to nearly nothing.
- He chooses a cure and a possible marriage despite believing one cent leaves no further sale.
- Kokua's knowledge of smaller coins creates a route to try, requiring travel and preparation.
- Potential buyers must still believe the offer and accept its risk; a remaining price step is not a guaranteed escape.
Watch for…
If each impasse produces another unprepared exception, the limit stops generating tension. Define what each workaround costs and how much room it actually adds. In the source, the characters take damnation seriously, but the story does not show an owner's afterlife. The initial seller's claims about famous historical owners are not verified history, and the currency reasoning belongs to the tale rather than a modern financial model.
Read the source passages
Island Nights' Entertainments, The Bottle Imp: the San Francisco seller's conditions and Keawe's tests; the Beritania Street purchase; Kokua's explanation of centimes; attempts to sell in Papeete. ↗
Complete English story checked; this card uses only the rule tests, renewed purchase and failed public offers before the final private transfers. Claimed damnation is distinguished from observed returns and cure.
How this moves the story
The falling price measures remaining exits, not the bottle's usefulness. A cheap purchase solves the immediate problem while leaving less room to persuade the next buyer. Keawe's renewed need makes him accept a position he once feared. Kokua expands their options by applying knowledge of another currency, but a technically valid price still needs a willing person. This gives the rule two kinds of resistance: a narrowing numerical margin and the next person's judgment.
Try it in your story
Take a benefit already present in your story and write its handoff rule in one sentence. Track what remains after three transfers and what each recipient needs badly enough to accept it. Stage a negotiation near the last available step. Give the prospective recipient a reason to refuse even when the price is affordable. If someone discovers a workaround, make it draw on established knowledge and leave a practical or relational obstacle to solve.
Use in my story