vintage story lore headcanony stuff below, you've been warned
so, while getting ready to go to sleep, i had a thought regarding an alternate start to the game instead of waking up in the middle of nowhere post character creation:
after creating your character (which, for this, the character creation menu would be given a solid black backdrop behind it). you wake up on a dirty, stone operating table in the tunnels of the game's distant past, surrounded by Falx and his disciples. you're told that, at this point, you're the last hope anyone has, before you're directed to go through a large, complex looking device resembling a portal. if you linger too long, rot monsters resembling people break down the doors and you are killed along with everyone else in the room
maybe the rot monster threat is only in singleplayer though. and maybe you can find a ruined version of that very room as a unique ruin that generates once per world, with human skeletons on the floor and broken machinery as all that remains of the very device that sent you here
