Alora Fane

I've made some good progress towards finalising a story for... this Divine Dreams prologue thing, which I've got some title ideas for but still haven't decided on one yet. I've attempted to write a hopefully-interesting summary here, though it's tough because I don't want to spoil too much! How would you explain a story in a blurb without spoiling anything? What would you include to make it actually compelling? To what extent do stories even matter in games?

Last week, I worked on asset creation because I want to get to the point where I have a bunch of stuff I can start showing off to build interest in what I'm making. But I noticed while talking about it that it's not even really clear what I'm making! It doesn't even have a title! I also keep wondering when posting about it whether people even know what I'm working on.

I personally know what I'm doing, but it's tricky to communicate, especially without a title. Essentially it's a shorter, self-contained prologue game to the planned Divine Dreams trilogy (designed such that if it's well-received enough, I can make Divine Dreams, but if not, I don't have to and this won't feel incomplete without it), starring this character called Savitr, but that doesn't really tell you much about it.

I already have a 200-page document of story planning notes for Divine Dreams, mostly written at the start of the year, and I was able to come up with a rough, sketchy structure for this Savitr story in a few hours a couple of weeks ago, so I had some idea of what direction I was heading in. A lot of it was fuzzy and unclear, though, so I've spent this past week refining some details and coming up with interesting new ideas.

I've got to a point with this Savitr story where I feel it could be a really interesting story to experience, and I look forward to bringing it into being! It's a fascinating short story, an exploration of character psychology, rather than a world-saving epic.

But I'm unsure how much to actually talk about the story details. Stories have always felt to me like something sacred, something which should be kept as hidden as possible so as not to ruin the surprise. They're also something best experienced immersively, rather than just read about in a summary.

But how, then, do you even communicate the story of something enough to get people on board?

Some of you write your own stories, and I'm curious how you'd go about explaining those stories to other people if you wanted to get them interested. What would you mention, or not mention? Would you hint at specific events, or just a vague description of the setting? Would you describe any specific characters at all?

Twists are often the bits of stories that really make them stick in people's minds, but there's no way that you can explain those in a blurb! They only work if the person's already deeply committed.

I've been trying to think of how I ever found out about or took interest in story-driven games I've enjoyed. When I was younger, games had blurbs on their cases, though I don't remember ever reading them. I suppose most of the games I played were found via association (I liked Final Fantasy VII after initially playing it on a free demo disc, so I got FFVIII instantly, for example, or maybe another game had the SQUARE ENIX name on it so I assumed it'd be similar to what I'd played before). I remember going to Blockbuster back when that was still a thing and renting a new game every other weekend, though I can't recall at all what drove my decisions. The box art, primarily, maybe? I wonder. I probably read the blurbs, but did I look for game features mostly? "It has RPG mechanics? Sounds interesting!"

Steam has both brief and long descriptions of games, though I rarely buy new Steam games so I don't have a good idea of what they say, or what I want or expect to read in them. I had to think about what to write for them for both MARDEK and Sindrel Song, though I don't know if what I chose for either was representative of the experience at all.

I wonder to what extent a game's story is considered important by potential players who know nothing about the game, actually. Or even to players who do enjoy the games! I've poured countless hours into the Final Fantasy and Pokemon series, and their stories - especially in the earlier ones - are either shallow or confusing. When I was little, I likely didn't even know what was going on (I want to replay them as an adult to actually try to understand their stories, but I haven't had the time), and most of my enjoyment came from the overall feeling of the world I was exploring. The music, the visuals, the general style. Even if I didn't exactly understand the story, I still valued the immersion above all else.

I've wondered about the extreme success of things like the original Star Wars trilogy and Lord of the Rings over the years. It seems to me as someone who knows more than the average person about both franchises, but who doesn't consider myself a fan exactly (more like a curious observer), that they don't have especially deep or interesting stories or characters. But they obviously do to a whole lot of people, so obviously those people are seeing something in them that I don't. I suppose we all find different things compelling.

I wonder with things like those whether much of the appeal comes not from the specific characters as such, but just from the immersion in the world built for them ("I wish I could use the Force!"; "having a lightsaber would be so cool!").

I'm working towards establishing a world like that, with its own distinct rules that makes it compelling in itself; the kind of thing you'd want to spend time on a wiki reading about (I've spent a lot of time on Wookieepedia despite limited interest in the franchise just due to curiosity). I also want the games that are set in my world to have compelling characters, and I've been focusing on both with my plans this week.

I'll try to explain a bit of the story and setting that I have, though keep in mind that this is just the tip of an iceberg that I've already planned but don't want to spoil everything by revealing straight away (I say this because on past posts, it seemed as if people were assuming I had nothing more planned than what I'd explicitly mentioned).

(EDIT: Since this apparently wasn't clear: despite the unusual formatting, the following text is only meant to explain the concept to people reading this blog; I wouldn't use this for promotion or include it in-game or anything!)

The Aolmna are a hive-minded alien race who - due to the fact they hear each other's thoughts and feel each other's feelings - have never known conflict, only cooperation. They've seen other races grow, only to succumb to self-annihilation before they could establish a place on the stellar stage. This saddens them.

The Aolmna discovered that the root of reality is consciousness, and learned to manipulate this consciousness to 'dream up' artificial worlds. They decided to collect genetic information from dead worlds, and built some of these artificial worlds in which to plant and regrow these seeds of life. These worlds are known as fanes.

Alora Fane is one of these fanes. It's made up of six sub-worlds, 'petals', surrounding (in a non-Euclidean way) a central 'Nexus'. These self-contained petals are each home to a single sentient race - collectively known as the barbari - and they're fashioned after their lost homeworld.

The Aolmna - which the growing barbari consider to be gods - at first interact directly with the inhabitants, teaching them a philosophy called Unisis, which encourages cooperation and empathy for others. Each individual grows in their home petal, and once they've reached a certain level of spiritual enlightenment, the gods grant them access to the Nexus, where they can intermingle with enlightened barbari from other races. When they reach the next stage of enlightenment, they can leave the fane and spread Unisis out into the wider universe, like spores from a flower; the Aolmna hope this will help ease the suffering and death in the universe.

Alora Fane is different, however. An event in its history - the Cataclysm - caused the destruction of one of its petals and the extinction of that race, and severed the world's connection to the Aolmna. The world was left godless, decaying.

The Divine Dreams story takes place 666 years after the Cataclysm, and this prologue is ten years before that. During these centuries, myths have formed around this event that cast the world from the light age into the current dark age.

They speak of a figure called Blight the Betrayer - much like we might speak of Hitler - and how he led a dark army in a siege on the Spirit Temple, seat of Evetar, the first-created eternal Bold from whom all other Bold are descended. She was the most direct connection to the divine, and by kidnapping her, Blight the Betrayer killed the gods.

Two groups also formed around the time of the Cataclysm, with clashing philosophies:

The Seraphim are devout, and seek to maintain order and peace in the absence of the gods through careful and compassionate control. They're kind of like an order of fantastical police, or holy paladins; the psychological superego.

The Blight Wolves, by contrast, believe that the gods were jailers, that Blight was right to kill them, and that now that they're gone, the barbari are free. They embrace freedom of expression, and live rough lives in nature, embracing their bestial side; the psychological id. Over the years they've degenerated into tribes of bandits, who prey on the vulnerable to get by.

Savitr is a member of the Seraphim; he's built a reputation as the greatest Seraph there ever was. However, he feels profound guilt about some past 'sins' that he committed when he 'wasn't in his right mind', and much of what he does is an attempt to make up for those.

Collie spent her childhood among the Blight Wolves, but was rescued from this violent life by Savitr when she was just entering puberty. She's seen him as her hero since then - tinted with fangirlish lust due to pubescent urges - especially since his reputation continued to grow, and she's aspired to be a Seraph like him. Like Savitr, she feels some desire to atone for the crimes of the Blight Wolves, due to her prior association with them.

The story would start with Savitr arriving on a small island, where there's a monastery of an order called the Purple Monks. These monks have devoted themselves to lives of meditation and reflection about what lies on the other side of death.

The Cataclysm left the world with a few 'scars', through which the swirling sea of consciousness potential from which the world was dreamed up - the drealm - can be glimpsed. The monastery of the Purple Monks is said to be built over one of these drealmscars.

One of Savitr's old friends, a scholar with a deep interest in the drealm, travelled to the monastery to see this drealmscar for himself. He's been gone a while, though, so Savitr's on this mostly-self-appointed 'mission' to find him, possibly save him if something's happened to him. He brings along Collie - a new Cherub recruit - as he feels it'll be good, low-danger training for her.

The drealm makes the mental manifest; this is how the Aolmna dreamed up the world in the first place, and the lingering residue - miasma - also transforms feelings into monsters and magic. Savitr, joined by a pair of additional allies who represent the viewpoints of the Seraphim and the Cherubim, will face the Blight the Betrayer myth which has defined their lives in a much more visceral way than they ever have before.

HMM. Compelling or confusing? Like I said, it's hard to know what to say and what not to say! Obviously all that's way too long for a blurb, and much of it is establishing the setting, with little about the actual characters' personal stories. Hopefully I've at least hinted at some things which would be interesting to see explored in more detail.

Much of the Alora Fane stuff had been established previously; it's already on ∞ the Lore page ∞ that this site apparently has... though I just noticed it's been blocked since the site issues months ago, which just goes to show how many people ever look at it! It's full of inaccuracies, anyway; I haven't looked at it myself in ages.

Some of the stuff is new, though; I came up with it this week. I'd previously been imagining the Seraphim as fairly new, established by a now-elderly man in his youth, but it makes more sense for them to be centuries old like this. The Blight Wolves are a new addition that came from noticing that I had a bunch of different characters with canine themes, and it works wonderfully to make them all members of an established group like this!

I've planned the formation of the Seraphim and Blight Wolves in some detail, and it's tied to a lot of characters and events I'd already planned for Divine Dreams. So much of what I've been doing is drawing connections between existing ideas rather than coming up with new ones. It works so well it makes me feel giddy, and I wish I could gush about all the details, but annoyingly I can't without spoiling everything!

I do wonder how many people would ever notice or care, though; maybe what I'm making would be as popular as Sindrel Song was (144 sales currently). That's why I need to start marketing properly and sooner this time, though, and that's why I want to sort out this stuff so then I can get to that point.

(I suspect this will do better because it's an RPG, but we'll see.)

I've not decided on a title yet, though I do have some ideas:

Atonal - Savitr's driven by a desire to atone for past dark deeds; that's why he's a Seraph. Atonal is also a musical term, meaning without - or outside - a defined key; 'lost', in a sense, or 'other', 'outside'. And it's six letters, one word, and I don't see a game on Steam with this title! Also sounds like 'eternal', as in the hereafter.

Variants:
Atonal Dreams
Atonal Seraph
Seraph Atonal

Every day that I spend on planning, I come up with new ideas, so I feel that something just right might still come to me in time.

I'm using a general theme/motif of life-death-afterlife/rebirth; the story has three acts with those general themes, and each of the four main characters has arcs which I've planned with those three stages too (though this is hardly original; most stories could be described as having a rise, fall, renewal trajectory). It'd be nice to have a title which encapsulates that somehow.

Also, I've been tying all of what I've been planning into what I've already got for Divine Dreams. I don't know for certain whether or not I'll actually make Divine Dreams - I want to, but I'll be releasing this to gauge whether I'll make enough money from it before committing myself to something years-spanning - but if I do, then people who play all the entries in the series (and care about lore stuff) will have a lot of nice connections to notice! I'll be trying to make them as standalone chapters which don't require playing others in the series, but someone who did would find a lot of links to appreciate.

Of the four main characters in this, all of them go on to have major roles in Divine Dreams, though (mostly) not as basic recruitable allies. It's kind of like a Pokemon prequel game where you played as a team of Professor Oak, Giovanni, and Agatha, or something. Kind of.

(Hmm, after rereading this, I quite like Atonal Dreams... Or Dreams Atonal, maybe. The afterlife could be described as 'eternal dreams' or 'dreams eternal', and it ties it to Divine Dreams more nicely than "Divine Dreams: Atonal" or something. Clashing philosophies could also be described using loose synonyms as 'dissonant ideas', or 'atonal dreams'. Maybe??)

I've got to the point now where I feel I've almost worked out the plot that I want, though there are still a few uncertainties and rough bits to refine. I'll spend the next week working on these, and hopefully by the end of the week I'll have a solid story outline I can work with both for this and any future Divine Dreams games if people like this enough to warrant them. Hopefully I'll have a title decided too so I'll be able to refer to it properly!

Going back to the other questions though, how would you explain a story of your own? Or a story you're very familiar with, for that matter? Which bits would you include, or not? How much should I be sharing about the story in these blog posts? How much do stories even matter for games, do you think?

Oh, and I haven't posted on my Patreon or Twitter in a while, because it's hard to know what to say or show with story planning stuff. I don't really have any images to show; this post doesn't have any, and I wonder if that'll put people off reading it!

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