I am into emotional storytelling as well, I think what gets you involved most are well drawn characters.
I would recommend planescape torment for an epic adventure full of stories, characters and heartbreak.
Really good stories/characters are few and far between in computer games but “The longest journey” comes to mind and even the first Witcher game.
Unavowed comes to mind as well as a rather affecting story.
And a couple of dozen books, but that’s not what you asked for…
Ditto.
There is no need fire up a dedicated machine to do this. Use your router/ap running openwrt and connect a hdd via usb. The machine needs at least 128 Mb RAM (256 mb would be better). Install the transmission package, set it up, add a gig of swap space on the hdd and you are good to go. The AP runs 24/7 anyways so there will be very few extra power consumption. Vpns often don’t allow port forwarding (mullvad has stopped support recently if I remember correctly). You can just be a passive node and not often ports, that should work good enough. Consider seeding parts of sci-hub. it’s a project worth supporting imho.
You can just download once of the parts below with less than 12 seeds and set it to host without ratio:
Maybe try the searxng matrix support chat, I think there might be a few developers around that could point you in right direction:
https://matrix.to/#/#searxng:matrix.org
They also have a Mirc support channel is that is more your cup of tea.
I would try to find something a bit newer. Core 2 Duos are really power hungry. Find one with an i5 processor and a T at the end of the number, like i5 3450T or something. This will be a little less performant but run at 30 watt max compared to the core 2 duos 150 watt. Fujitsu esprimo are also a good cheap option and both lenovo and Fujitsu offer rather tiny pcs that work excellent for severs.
I always loved the Song of Ice and Fire books by George Martin, be aware that the series is not finished, though. I am a big fan of Stephen King as well, he writes great characters. It, Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Tower… Thuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom is very emotional, I could not even finish it. Deadhouse Gates by Stephen Erikson. The Liveship Traders by Robin Hobb just to name a few…