I'm working on a game (working title is Blade's Edge) which is a tactical RPG in the style of Shining Force, Fire Emblem, or FF Tactics. This is a mostly linear story, with just enough choice to keep the world from being stifling. By focusing on a linear story with 2D retro graphics, I'm hoping to actually be able to make this game once the writing is done. I would love comments on the game approach as well as the creation myth included below.
BLADE'S EDGE is a psychodrama about kinship and self-sufficiency against overwhelming odds and entrenched mentalities, particularly when there is no reason left to fight. The core story takes place in the mind of a boy who is found in a catatonic state by a hunting party. Village seers connect with his mind to learn what is coming towards the village. It is a race to learn the truth before the danger arrives.
The story begins in the middle. The past catches up to the present when the hero wakes up. Then the story unfolds in real time.
The hook is that the cute, retro, anime-like game sequences reveal the basics of the story, but the true meaning of these sequences is revealed in cutscenes afterward. For example, in the game scenes a character might stub his toe and spew exclamation points as he hops away. But later you will learn that he was maimed with his leg broken, barely crawling out with his life intact, screaming in vain for aid. This interplay of cartoonish symbolism against actual events will set up a constant dread/reveal cycle throughout the game.
The main threats in this game, aside from the people who reject changes to the status quo, are a trio of giants. Below is the creation myth. I'd like to know if you find it compelling or trite, well-written or cludgy... basically, does this creation myth have enough verisimilitude to base a world upon.
The Legend of the Three Mauraders
It is said that a fierce band of giants once roamed the face of Æronthrall, when the world was still one land surrounded by the sea. The giants were named Chalcedon, Rubis, and Lucuul.
Chalcedon was white as snow with eyes of quicksilver. His legs were mountains and his fists were hills. Chalcedon wielded a hammer. Its dark iron was matte but its faces gleamed like obsidian, polished through æons of shattering earth. Its dual heads were inscribed with primitive runes of strength and precision. Chalcedon was methodical; his mind was not easily swayed and his course could nay be wrested. Chalcedon's wit was consumed by stone, consequence, cold, and inevitability. His coming was foretold by crazed beasts fleeing the impending storm, tremors deep in the ground, and a wall of gray cloud that consumed the land in writhing, bitter winds. Those who spied him became mute and listless, eventually succumbing to apathy. Those who heard the fall of his hammer became deaf, and thereafter attuned only to the world beyond the veil.
Where Chalcedon was white, his brother Rubis was dark. His eyes burned red and he had no hair at all, merely flame and ember that writhed around his head. Rubis was mercurial, changing direction at a whim. Rubis' wit dwelled in lust, anger, laughter, and instigation. Although slow to start, his ire could quickly consume everything. In fact Rubis defined consumption; he burned through ideas, resources, and towns, discarding their smoldering shells in his wake. Rubis wielded a great gleaming sickle. Its edge never dulled. Aught in its path would cleave before its will. His coming was foretold by a red sky, the stench of slag and char, and an arid heat that turned everything within sight to mirage. Those who spied him became blind and spastic, thrashing about in throes of ecstasy. Those who heard him thereafter spake in tongues, crying out in frenzy.
When in full muster, Rubis could only be calmed by Chalcedon, just as Chalcedon could only be riled by Rubis. Yet those interactions were rare. More often, both of them spoke through their sister, Lucuul. In comparison to the shattering strength of Chalcedon and the destructive fury of Rubis, Lucuul was subtle. She saw without seeing and heard without hearing. Her wit consumed all. Lucuul wielded a sling, which she used to strike from afar. She used the sling also to draw the afar into her. Not only things, but ideas, and minds, and hearts. Nothing foretold her coming, and few spied or heard her.
Lucuul knew that deep in his heart, Chalcedon longed to quench Rubis. She perceived that Rubis would consume Chalcedon as the ultimate test of mettle. Ever logical, Lucuul tested these perceptions. Unbeknownst to Chalcedon, she allowed Rubis to come into her and she spawned his sons and daughters. Unbeknownst to Rubis she seduced Chalcedon, likewise bearing his scions. Lucuul observed as her brothers enacted their subsumed wrath on each other's children.
The time came when the descendants of their children's descendants tired of being besieged and sought retribution against Rubis and Chalcedon. These diminished creatures banded against the mighty giants and provoked their wrath. Rubis and Chalcedon united, and entreated their sister to band with them. The three mauraded across the face of Æronthrall. They toppled cities and razed great civilizations. They turned mountains to valleys and lakes to ash.
The people of Æronthrall had no hope to defeat the Three Marauders, which the giants knew well. In their certainty they failed to glean the true purpose of the people, which was not to defeat the mauraders, but to nullify them. The people baited Lucuul by creating an enormous jeweled egg and hiding inside it. When she became curious and ensnared it in her sling, the people swarmed out and wrested the sling from her grasp. They used the sling in turn to wrest the sickle from Rubis and the hammer from Chalcedon. These they flung into the heavens.
Bereft of the protective magics of their weapons, the three giants succumbed to reductive magic. The people of Æronthrall slung Chalcedon to one corner of the world, and Rubis to another. Lucuul they could not sling for fear of rejoining her with her weapon, so they bound her and hid the sling.
It is said that the force of the falling brothers begat the rending of the earth. It is said that the falling of the weapons warped the purity of magic. It is said that the wind is the whisper of Lucuul, ever in search of her sling. Never said is what became of the people who walked Æronthrall in those times. No one is left to speak for them. They are known now only as the elderkin. Their legacy is fallen towers, broken machines, cryptic artworks -- and silence.
