Setting and story

So after a bit of thought, I was thinking that I could resurrect the setting for a fantasy novel that I started writing once, but never got very far in: The City of Light and Fire. The second part of that story opened as follows:

The basin had been a mold, shaping me to look roughly like a human. But I was still far from perfect.

The figures that carried me put me down on a long stone bench, and then left. There were other shapes on both sides of me, other early-stage embryos. I did not yet understand anything.

Time passed, and the lava I was made of grew more solid. My innermost parts were still hot and liquid, but I had a firm outer crust. When I had become hard enough to be worked on, the mason had me brought to him. He studied me for a long time, examining me from every direction and seeking out any imperfections. Whenever he found one, he reached for his hammer. Gradually, he shaped me into a man.

After the mason was done with me, I was taken to the clay maker. The beings carrying me were cautious, for the mason had opened holes from which my innards might spill. I don't know whether they spilled any, but when I reached the clay maker, I was still viable.

He studied my shape, and then molded a layer of lifeclay around me. It was much softer than lava was, and more sensitive to heat. The clay maker filled the pair of holes the mason had made, fashioning there eyes. Below them he made a mouth, and on their sides a pair of ears. The clay was as good in shaping heat as the walls of the towers were, if not better. It collected warmth and funnelled it deep into my core. My eyes had been made with particular care, and it now that I slowly began to see.

From the clay maker, I was carried to the edge of a great hall. They placed me next to the other infants, on a belt of heatstone close to the wall. The stone burned hot, keeping us sated. I rested there, together with the others. We watched and listened to the things happening in the hall, enjoyed the ever-shifting flows of warmth inside the stone. For a long time, we remained still.

As in the original story, the main character in the game would be a creature who had just recently been brought into existence for an unknown purpose. He (she?) comes to existence with some basic skills, such as knowing how to talk and walk, but knows little besides that. His creators clearly have a purpose in mind for him, but don't care to tell him very much about it. Other creatures that have been created in a similar fashion might have clues of just what exactly is going on, as do others who he meets on missions that he is sent on... but he has to figure out what exactly it is that can be reliably inferred from the various claims that the different creatures make.

Advantages: This would instantly set up a mystery (just what is this place? why was he created? what's going on?) to make the player curious, and gathering various clues about his origin, as well as completing different missions that the character was sent on, could serve as short-term goals for the player to pursue. An added benefit of making the main character non-human is that the whole belief network could be diegetic - perhaps connecting the different pieces of evidence would concretely build up a physical belief network inside his body, and by closing his eyes he could somehow see and manipulate that. Such a setting would also allow us to question the beliefs and attitudes that were commonly believed and taken for granted within the setting, without getting into the politics-is-the-mindkiller territory that having a game about questioning commonly-accepted real life beliefs would involve.

Here's an old description of the setting:

I earlier described that as "a New Weird-ish story about a corporation whose different departments are in semi-open war with each other. The main character is a gargoyle created by Product Development to infiltrate Marketing and kidnap some of their harpies, to be pressed into slave labor to boost Product Development's morale." Though actually sirens are a closer match to what I had in mind than harpies - I mixed up the two.

Anyway, it's this weird dark fantasy setting with a huge, black stone monolith in the middle of a city. The Corporation exists within the various halls and caverns of the monolith, and its workers produce and sell various goods to the people in the city. There are also other cities and in them other corporations, which have a bit of an influence in this city as well, but mostly they remain in the background.

I don't actually have very many details worked out yet, mostly just concepts and images. Here are some of them:

In the city around the monolith, there are sentient stone towers. They are filled with hot lava, and they communicate with each other by selectively making their outer shells more or less transparent, shining light around them. They can choose to voluntarily let out a small amount of their lava and let it cool, creating a new being separate from themselves that serves them. Or somebody might break their shell and take some lava by force to create a new being, which is how the story's main character was created. The towers have their own interests, and they often do not look kindly upon the Corporation.

The ultimate leaders of the Corporation are the Owners, who never intervene directly. The Owners are what seem to be clouds of ever-burning gas above the monolith, who communicate their desires through patterns in the fire.

On the roof of the monolith are the Prophets, monsterously shaped philosophers who sit on top of large stone pillars and watch the sky, interpreting the messages of the Owners. They keep making a constant humming sound, which communicates their interpretation of what the Owners want. This is in turn interpreted by the Scribes, who sit at the feet of the pillars and write down what they hear. A constant stream of messengers takes what the Scribes have written down and relays it to the various departments.

When the department heads receive their orders from the Scribes, they too apply their own interpretation, seeking to follow the instructions in the way that best benefits them personally. The original orders being distorted after going through several steps in the chain, the department heads are free to do almost anything they want. It is because of this personal benefit-seeking that the various departments of the Corporation are in a constant conflict with each other.

Information only seems to pass down from the Owners to the Corporation. If information does pass up to the Owners, nobody knows how.

Even the department heads do need to follow some rules, however. In the middle of the monolith there is the Timetable, a wall which shows the past and a possible future. In particular, it shows various things which the Corporation might be able to achieve in the future. If those things are indeed achieved, all is well.

If they are not, cracks begin to appear in the Timetable. This is a bad thing, for the Timetable has been built to seal a rupture to another reality, in which terrible beings live. If the Timetable ever breaks, the beings will burst out and destroy the monolith and everyone who lives in it. Because of this, the department heads cannot let their infighting get so serious that the Timetable won't hold. It is said that the Timetable, and the rupture behind it, were created by the Owners for this very purpose.

The titular Fundamental Question could then also refer to the task of figuring out just what it is that the Owners really want (which could also be the real reason that the character was created).

A disadvantage of this setting pitch is that there might be a risk of the setting becoming too weird and different to effectively relate to, or for people to very naturally transfer the lessons of that setting into real life. But that could avoided by focusing more on the surrounding city, which could be more normal, or something. Thoughts?