Issue 2: The Nightmare

[News] I’m writing a better prologue.

I’ve been working on a revision of the prologue that will better connect what happens between your character’s birth and them ending up living at The Stranger and hopping through portal gates for a living. Basically, I just had too many different plot threads in the overarching story and mythos that need to be tied together more clearly. I have a better outline for a prologue now, but I’m still in the midst of writing it.

And I’d like to say thanks to a couple of friends for their suggestions about this: Nathan and Steven. Talks with you two confirmed some of my feelings as well as gave me some good ideas on how a good rewrite could look.

[Changelog]

• Fixed and revised ghost plotline in Episode 2 (beta only)

• Fixed an incorrect direction description in Gloam Lake puzzle

• Fixed a main plot bug in Episode 2 (beta only)

• A handful of minor fixes and edits in various stories

[Writing Philosophy] Horror is an ingredient, not a meal.

I recently played a horror game the admittedly cringy title Tormented Souls. It has some truly creepy horror themes, alongside some great puzzles in a beautiful gothic mansion.

This obviously takes a lot of cues from the original Resident Evil. The fact these games take place in gorgeous mansions should not be overlooked. There are safe rooms with relaxing harp music. Puzzles that make you sit down and calmly think over the details. Sentimental and romantic motifs, like crackling fireplaces, grand pianos, flowers placed on gravestones. In short, there is something going on with these games that can’t be fully captured with the word “horror.”

But that was always true of gothic horror. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is actually quite romantic and heroic. What’s great is seeing how these qualities unite several men to take down a terrifying, bloodsucking serial killer.

I’ve noticed that whenever a horror movie has any kind of subtlety instead of buckets of gore, it is called a “psychological thriller.” Prey (the 2017 game) has many horror elements, but for some reason it gets labelled an “immersive sim”: a dumb term for games that remind people of Deus Ex and System Shock. Alien is absolutely a horror movie in addition to being a perfect movie in general, but you’ll rarely see it on horror movie lists, probably because the first half hour is cerebral science fiction.

I feel that when horror is actually good — that is, when it’s intelligent, restrained, or balanced with other elements — people no longer know what to call it. That seems like a tacit admission that “horror” is barely a real genre. Unlike action or romance or mystery, the word “horror” doesn’t imply a protagonist doing anything; horror is just an emotion evoked in the audience. Like comedy, we use horror as a genre label mostly for low-brow works devised with the sole job of evoking that one emotion as often as possible, at the expense of being taken seriously in any other way.

To me, horror is like a good hot sauce: on its own, it’s not exactly dinner, but it can often take a meal from good to great. Which brings me to my point: Veiled Age is cosmic horror. Well, I guess it’s more like a world of high fantasy adventure facing a creeping threat of a cosmic horror apocalypse.

I am a big H.P. Lovecraft fan. I think that will become more apparent in later episodes of Veiled Age. The Shadow Over Innsmouth is one of my favorite stories ever.

But it’s interesting that Lovecraft never produced a long masterpiece novel, despite producing an immense amount of brilliant text. His most well known piece, Call of Cthulhu, is a short story. Even his novels feel like short stories in terms of narrative scope. It’s funny just how many of his stories can be summed up with “I went exploring, had a nightmarish experience, then I ran away and hoped to never think about it again, the end.” If you ever have the misfortune of being a Lovecraft protagonist, all you can really do is escape, go insane, or die. In short, I think Lovecraft absolutely mastered the horror genre but never really transcended it.

I can’t help but wonder if this is because Lovecraft was an abysmally depressed fellow with a bleak outlook on life. I imagine it would be difficult for a cynic to write a conventionally satisfying and complete story — let’s call it a hero’s journey — with real conviction. I have my suspicions about GRR Martin’s ability to end Game of Thrones for similar reasons.

In that respect, I am more of a student of Tolkien than Lovecraft. If you were categorizing books, you would not put Lord of the Rings on the horror shelf. However, it tells us that orcs were once elves until they were tortured and mutilated. There’s undead waiting to drown people in lonely swamps, man-eating spiders hiding in the dark, demonic lairs piled with corpses. These are the threats facing a protagonist who’s physically weaker than a teen girl in a slasher movie. Horror is seeing just how evil and unstoppable the threat is, seeing the gruesome fate of those who failed where the hero must succeed.

Tolkien saw both world wars, and many of his friends died young. Horror, violence and despair come through in his work clearly. Yet, he remained a high-minded idealist and a catholic, and that comes through too. Horror is an essential part of the journey, but it doesn’t get the last word. You want to see what it looks like to transcend horror? You’ve already seen it:

I’m sure this old scene has been memed to death, but try to remember (or imagine) seeing this in the theater for the first time.

Frodo has been hoping for a long time to see Bilbo again, alive and well. But this is Frodo’s story, and he has yet to fully appreciate the threat. So from a writer’s point of view, something kind of needs to go wrong with this encounter. A lesser writer would have just shown us Bilbo’s murdered corpse on a pike.

Instead, we not only get one of the best jump scares of all time, but it comes with a lingering dread of its implications. We already understood the premise that the ring was evil. But now we’re actually disturbed by it on a gut level. Horror at its finest. But it’s not the conclusion, as it would be in a Bilbo-is-dead scenario. It’s the midpoint of a scene with incredible emotional range. Joy, horror, remorse, compassion — all in two minutes.

Obviously, I’m never going to approach the greatness of giants like Tolkien and Lovecraft. But the main story of Veiled Age is my attempt at the sort of plotline that might have emerged if Lovecraft made up a cosmic horror D&D campaign setting but Tolkien was the DM.

[Lore] What Is The Nightmare?

According to a scholar at Zenith Royal Academy

You asked what the Golden Veil is for. The simple answer: it is a miracle that separates us from what lies beyond it.

What lies beyond it? By appearances, only a black sky. But to imagine it as pure nothingness would be wishful thinking. I have heard my fellow scholars say it is an alternate form of existence with a predatory hostility toward our own. There are also those who, from their blasphemous pulpits in the lightless lands, say the outer darkness is the will of a higher being. Call me simple-minded, but I sometimes suspect the Daystar Church's teaching on the matter is absolutely correct: the veil delivers us from evil.

But as I am not a priest, let me describe it thus: It is something which consumes both the material and the immaterial, mixing and digesting them into more of itself. What remains is neither aether nor matter, living nor dead. It is only a hideous, writhing chaos beyond understanding.

Is it a natural phenomena? Is it a deity older than the Mother of Gods? Or is it simply another layer of reality -- a deeper, darker Dream? The latter theory has led scholars and peasants alike to its most persistent name: the Nightmare.