Recovery of a lost one

This is the Situation 35th of Polti. Elements

• a Seeker
• the One Found

Plot: The Seeker finds the One Found.
A Recovery can be both a good story or a conflicted one. It can be the solution for an abduction story but that doesn’t pose a new story. What if the One Found behaves strangely and the Seeker suspects foul play? What if the One Found have legal rights over the Seeker’s possessions? Then there is a conflict between the happiness of the finding and whatever conflicted feelings appearing because of it.
The lost one maybe because of abduction, madness, curse, magic, apparent death... whatever. Even if it is an argument between brothers that gets solved in the deathbed of one of them.

Seeker

The Seeker at least was looking for the One Found and may had still been doing that. Maybe it gave up and some time - days, months, years - after, the One Found appears and there’s the remorse of the Seeker, who now knows it could have done better; and maybe the disappointment of the One Found, who thought the Seeker shouldn’t have given up.

PCs as Seeker

For the Recovery to have meaning it should be a long and difficult investigation, probably extended so long that it started to seem more like a background than a story, like Mulder being “the FBI agent looking for her disappeared sister”.

The One Found

The One Found is usually what brings about new conflicts on those who find it. Mulder’s sister only brought more questions with her; the last member of a supposedly disappeared bloodline may bring about inheritance or succession issues; an abducted friend who appears to have lost all its memories may be a clue to mind-erasing aliens…
The finding may be the end of the investigation, but it can be the start of the new one.

PCs as the One Found

It could be difficult to put PCs in this role, but they could be involuntarily or unknowingly. Imagine that the wardrobe to Narnia changed the passage of time so that, when the children come back, they have been considered disappeared or dead, and their adoptive family have been detained as suspects of murdering them. Imagine that the time was stopped when they went away, so they actually grew up away and are not recognized when they come back. This last case is in several fey stories, in which the main character stays with the fey and when it comes back he is told not to do something and, when it does, it realizes that centuries have passed and becomes dust, as dead as it should have been.
In several settings PCs are lost to their families and actually avoiding being discovered. In the game Vampire it would be actually dangerous for their families to find again their now vampiric kin, because they can be killed just to avoid word getting around or be targeted by the PCs’ enemies. It is more or less the same with Werewolf or Mage, for that case.

Development

A lot of things may be result of the apparition of someone.

The finding of a person with legal rights over lands or throne may be the start of Ambition, reignite a Rivalry, bring about the discovery of terrible things the lost one did (Discovery of Dishonor in a Loved One), opposition to a relationship established or otherwise (Obstacles to Love)

The Recovery by itself may be result of solving a Enigma, gathering help and support (Supplication), planning a Daring Enterprise or executing a Deliverance...