You originally came from a world very different from this one. Your life may not have been perfect, but at least you understood it; at a gut level, you knew that it was your place. And then the Vortex brought you here.
It was wrenching and strange. For a while, you were swept up in events that didn't seem completely under your control; the world was behaving less like you would normally expect it to be, and more like some sort of story. Everything was just a little too pat, a little too neatly locked together. Finally, it ended, and you found yourself in a place far different from anything you had ever imagined.
For some time, you were entirely on your own, confused and wretched. The people around you on this pitiless planet thought you mad, simply another deranged fool like the millions that teem on the streets here. And indeed, you found yourself on the street, ignored by most of the people, cursed by the few who paid you any attention at all. You began to question your own sanity. Finally, when you were at the end of your rope, Panis found you, and it all began to make sense again.
Panis is like you, a "stray" from another world. By luck and cleverness, he had managed to be in the right place at the right time, and came to understand how this world truly works. He explained how reality is more fragile than it appears, susceptible to "Vortices", where realities cross, and even the rules of probability bend to the conveniences of belief and a twisted sort of literary orderliness. This world is especially prone to Vortices, crossing over into other realities all the time. It happens so often that the inhabitants have become blase about strange occurances; most of them don't even realize anything truly remarkable is happening. Which is all to the good of the ILF.
The Interactive Literature Foundation, Panis learned, is a shadowy organization that has been manipulating the Vortices. Their intentions are good -- to minimize the effects of the Vortices, and try to reduce the number that happen. But they don't really much understand the forces they are playing with, and they have been careless about the side-effects. The ILF's method is straightforward: when they predict that a Vortex will be occurring, they send in their agents, to try and help it to "rectify" as quickly as possible, coming to a reasonable resolution. What they haven't noticed is that, by hastening the closures, they have a nasty habit of causing side-effects -- like you.
Panis adopted the cover identity of "Gordon Olmstead-Dean", and infiltrated the ILF, gradually working his way up to the top, with one clear goal in mind: to develop the technology required to get himself home. But he also has been collecting the others, those who had the bad luck to be on the wrong side of the walls of reality when they came down again, sealing them off from their homeworlds. Panis called this grouping the Toastbusters, for obscure reasons that aren't entirely clear to you. But that's neither here nor there -- he saved you from madness, and you're willing to tolerate his own little eccentricities. He has been teaching the lot of you about how this strange version of Earth works, and how to survive in it; some have even joined him in the ILF. But you all share a common goal: to return to your homeworlds. Finally, the first serious chance may be upon you.
Panis has been sneaking technology out of the ILF's laboratories in Washington, and sending it along to the higher-tech members of the Toastbusters to understand and enhance. They think they have at least the rudiments worked out for a sort of "belief-prism", a focus that strengthens the probability that a nascent Vortex will open upon a specific reality. Given that, if you can manage to be at the right place at the right time, just as a Vortex opens, and can concentrate hard enough -- you might be able to go home.
Not that it's a simple prospect. The device is still persnickety; the scientists believe that it will require several of them working in tandem to achieve the desired effect. It isn't especially partial to working for any specific people: the ambient beliefs of everyone in the vicinity will affect it, so it's important that the right people concentrate harder than anyone else present. And it will only work once for any given Vortex; only one person gets to go home at a time. But hey, it's a start. You can only pray that you are the one who gets to return this time.
The latest information from the ILF's Vortex Mechanics (courtesy Panis, of course) is that a massive Vortex is going to open late Saturday night, sometime around 1:30am, somewhere in this vicinity. If you can collectively control where that Vortex goes to, someone might be able to return. And if that works, you will all know that you have the right tack; the scientists can begin refining the technology.
Player note: You may (and should) adopt any character of your choice that you have played in any prior game. Note that, even if that character had special abilities in their home reality, those abilities don't translate to this cosmos' physics. Your own name and history are a carefully-constructed cover for that "real" identity. Feel free to pick as outrageous and inappropriate a character as you like, but remember that you have been working very hard to fit in.