There’s been a fair few themes for “In Fate’s Hands” over the years. It began as an Indiana Jones-esque adventure game about an artefact called ‘The Feet of Fate’. At one point, it was a game about survival in the wilderness. Fairly recently, the game was themeless, with a scenario card (pictured above) dictating the theme secretly to the Mortals, because Fate doesn’t know or care about what the Mortals are actually doing).
Eventually, I settled on the evocative depiction of the Fates and Destiny that comes with Ancient Greek mythology, and the equally evocative (and importantly, quickly understood) adventures of The Odyssey. These sorts of short-hands are really important in board games, where the analogous fit of the components and rules with the fiction often dictates whether players understand the rules at all.