The Harrowing
I love the Harrow Deck and all many things driven by fate or chance.
This game is a one-off module adventure of mini-quests for Level 9 characters exploring the Harrowed Realm, a slice of the Dimension of Dreams. After seeking out the Varisian scholar Meloigne Garracy at his last known whereabouts, the Umbra Carnival, you are brought into a strange world of stories come to "life."
Backstory is important to characterization, but it's not overly important to why you're at the carnival where you will enter a strange demiplane. After all, it's caused by an artifact of fate and fortune. You might be part of a group of adventurers who are searching out this scholar. You could be a member of the Umbra Carnival who enters the fortune-teller's tent at the wrong time. Or you might just be a Varisian, you might have the Harrowborn trait, or your character might otherwise be drawn to the Harrow deck (perhaps by archetype) whom fate attracts for fickle reasons of its own.
What's important is that you embody a Harrow Card in terms of story and either its personality or its opposing personality, as appropriate. Alternatively, you could represent the story and have the opposite personality, fighting Fate as it drags you, kicking and screaming, into its patterns. No two PCs will represent the same Harrow Card, but there are plenty to choose from.
