Environmental Storytelling In Practice (Part two - Narrative Stratigraphy 2)

Welcome back to our series on Environmental Storytelling. I wanted to begin by saying I've been super humbled by the responses I've been getting so far on these essays. Not to dig too deep into personal things, but it's been a tough year career-wise for me. There were several times that I questioned my validity as a narrative designer, and moments where I considered giving up altogether. The success of these essays has really bolstered my confidence, so to everyone who has read, liked, shared, commented, I want to say thank you.

Right, let's pick up where we left off. Last time, we'd begun to layer our stratas to the fictional world we built in part one. We explored how the deep lore (that which was most ancient) should be layered onto our fortress area, and how leaving these details intentionally vague allows for our players to theorize and fill in details on their own in their heads. We then started looking at the bulk of our lore (stratum 2) and layering it as well. We're going to continue structuring this now.

Stratum 2 (Continued)

A quick refresher on what we have so far in the Fortress, pertaining to Stratum 2:

• As the player arrives, they see the Fortress bears signs of collapse and fire.
• Visual Medias reveal a battlefield. Bodies of the losing side remain, bearing the Count's crest.
• Enemies here are undead villagers. They suffer still with the torture devices used on them in life.
• The entry doors to the Fortress hang open, broken down by a battering ram.
• Inside, Visual Media: decorations and oil paintings also reference the Count's crest.
• Enemies here are undead soldiers and undead servants of the Count. Servants wield as weapons the same torture devices the player saw outside.
• Items inside are torture related and well-used. Item descriptions (Textual Media) reveal lore introducing key characters.
• The Count's living quarters depict (Visual Media) a violent scene: here, the invading Lord captured the Count. Skeletal remains from both sides are sprawled throughout.
• The player finds the Count's body chained to a tower bordering the Fortress's inner courtyard.
• Textual Media describes the Count's bones as being picked clean by carrion birds.
• The Player fights a Boss which upon defeat drops the Count's heart. Textual Media reveals key details: The Count received a taste of his own medicine. His evil was made worse by dark forces lying beneath the ground.
• In the ancient ruins beneath the Fortress the player finds reference to the Count being there.

To Complete Stratum 2, we are going to move away from the Fortress for now and explore the Forests around it, bringing context to some of the things we've already described in the Main POI. As a reminder, here's our nifty little map of the area:

With that in mind, let's look at the Villages, the Forests and the Mini POI's and layer some stuff into them. And while we're at it, let's touch on some elements from Stratum 1 as well.

Village #1

This village, the first that the player is likely to enter is highly affluent. The locals are incredibly patriotic to the Great Nation. We see flags and statues referencing their allegiance all over the place. To the far south-east of the village, we find a neighbourhood of abandoned and ruined houses - many of which appear to have burned deliberately. Inside one of the burned houses, we find a small pagan altar dedicated to a deity depicted as a hairy man with antlers. A skeleton still lies in front of the altar with a sword sticking out of its back. It's as if this person was killed whilst praying...

Village #2

This village has an odd air to it. The locals tend to keep to themselves and aren't particularly friendly towards outsiders. Some however will speak to us as we explore. We learn that those here consider themselves to be the ancestors of the ancient Shepherd society that dwelled in these lands long before the Great Nation came and settled here. Many hold a bitter opinion of those in Village #1. They do their best to maintain the practices of their ancestors - altars can be found throughout the village dedicated to the same deity players might have discovered in the south-east of Village #1. This village also has a blacksmith who specializes in crafting weaponry from their ancestor's time period.

Village #3

This village, on the top right-hand side of our map has the clearest line of sight to Drakmar's Fortress. It's essentially a straight road there. Because of this, we can say that it was this village that Lord Angelo and his troops used as a base of operations whilst conducting their seige. In the time since the Lord's success, the village came to see their involvement as a source of pride. As we explore, we see remnants of these feelings. The village is home to a very well-maintained cemetery. Fresh flowers and other offerings are still regularly placed on graves bearing the Angelo Crest. The aim here is to indicate to us that the memory of Angelo's soldiers is still honoured here. We might also see memorial markers throughout honoring those abducted and killed by the Count.

Forests

If we move off the beaten path and explore the forest itself, we might notice that many of the trees grow in a uniform pattern. In the forest areas around Village #2 in particular, we might notice strange stick fetishes hanging from their branches.

Mini POI #1

In our first Mini POI, we want to start conveying the man-made nature of the pine forest. Stepping into this clearing, the player discovers a recently abandoned Caretaker's Hut out front of a small Tree Nursery. An item here can use Textual Media to describe the life of its owner. Something like: "The forest caretaker was a proud man. His father had tended to the woods before him. And before that, his father's father. He'd planned to pass the mantle on to his own son one day, but the hard times meant sending his family away. Eventually, begrudgingly, the old man followed." We're also going to place a decomposing body somewhere along the road out of this Mini POI. This body lies sprawled in a ritualistic fashion, strange candles glowing with supernatural flames encircle him. When the player puts out these flames, the body resurrects as a mini-boss, wielding the caretaker's tools. Upon his death, we find two items on him - the first is a letter from his wife and son, expressing excitement about him joining them in the Great Nation's capital, exclaiming that the palace parties are a sight to behold. The second is a weapon - an ornate dagger, the item description states it was used to kill the caretaker as if he were the victim of a pagan sacrificial ceremony. The description ends by telllng us that the dagger is made from cheap materials an likely a modern forgery of something far older...

Mini POI #2

We've touched on this one before, but let's outline it properly. In this small clearing within the woods, the player stumbles upon a clearing where the trees around it blossom, birds chirp pleasantly, and sunlight breaks through the canopy, dappling the area with gold. Only one structure stands here at the centre: A stone statue of a young woman. The statue depicts her in a saint-like pose. Wild flowers bloom around it. The statue bears an epitah, that states "My beloved sister, may your spirit be ever watchful of this glade." The Angelo family crest is built into the statue's design.

Mini POI #3

As we enter Mini POI #3, we are confronted with the presence of graves or cairns within a large clearing indicating buried fallen soldiers. Undead soldiers bearing the crest of the Count patrol the area, as if searching it. If we make it through these enemies, we find a tunnel leading into a mossy mound of dirt nearby. Following the tunnel down underground, we find a small cave containing rotting, empty crates. Seemingly, there is nothing else here...

Narrative Sub-Routines

Okay, so, Narrative Sub-Routines are a technique that I often like to use in combination with environmental storytelling.

Now, before we get started: credit, where credit is due - I would not have been able to use this technique, let alone know anything about it, without my cherished correspondence with Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment. Jeff is a great friend, seemingly infinately wise in the theory of storytelling, and one of the first that I know of to pioneer Narrative Design as we know it today with his work on IP's like Turok and Magic: The Gathering.

Narrative Sub-Routines (as I understand them) can essentially be defined as this: Within your story world, there are a series of small, hard-to-find clues. These clues typically don't make much sense on their own, but once discovered, can completely (and dramatically) recontextualize the player's understanding of the story being presented to them. Narrative Sub-Routines are designed for the dedicated lore-hunters, and can create surprising and complex layers to immersive interactive stories.

With all that being said, let's create one for this region. Unlike the other examples of Narrative Stratigraphy, I'm going to show you this in the way a player might discover it, rather than giving away the twist up front. So, let's begin...

Returning to Mini POI #3, eagle eyed players searching the strangely empty cave might discover a well-hidden second tunnel behind a boulder and patch of glowing fungi. Following it deeper into the earth, the player enters another cave. This cave has a wooden table set up in it's centre, and an altar to the antlered deity at the back. Placed on the altar is an old, tattered child's teddy bear. The item description for this reveals that the bear is surprisingly well-preserved, and that these toys were common amongst children of nobility. The table is covered with old leather-bound research journals detailing a study on the pagan beliefs of the Shepherds.

Returning to Mini POI #2 if we pay attention to the details carved into the statue of Miriam, we might notice a string necklace around her neck, a tiny key hangs from it. We might also notice that the statue is performing a gesture with one of her hands - the horned gesture that we, in modern day, might recognize from heavy metal concerts, but that also appears throughout history and folklore as a folkloric gesture usually believed to ward off evil. In this context, it might remind us of the horned deity of the Shepherds...

Returning to the Count's Living Quarters in the Fortress, we find hidden behind a turned over bookshelf, a gold locket. The item description of the locket reveals that it opens with a tiny key. Thankfully, the locket is broken, allowing it to be accessed now. Inside we find a small painted portrait of Count Drakmar and a young boy dressed in fine silks. The young boy has a passing resemblance to Miriam and appears sullen, though not uncomfortable in the Count's presence.

Returning to the ruins of the stone circle beneath the Fortress, we might notice a breakable wall in the foundations of the Fortress above. Smashing that wall reveals to us the twisted mummified remains of a woman dressed in clothing that should remind us of the statue of Miriam at POI #2. Her jaw is open in a scream, her hands hold a ceremonial dagger that has been plunged into her chest. It seems like she was trying to pull it out when she died. On her wrist is a silver bangle with a strange symbol carved into it. The bangle's item description describes it as being a traditional piece used by the Great Nation to mark nobles convicted of "unnamed indescretions." Curled into a ball near her is the skeleton of a child.

So what does all of this mean?

Well, there are at least two interpretations that could be drawn from these narrative sub-routines. Both are sinister, and both recontextualize the story we know so far. Remember, our subroutines are:

• A hidden cave containing a child's teddy bear, research on the pagan shepherds and an altar.
• Miriam's statue with the tiny key and the horn gesture.
• A locket in the count's room with an image of him and a young boy.
• The skeletal remains of a woman and a child hidden in the stone circle ruins.
• The silver bangle.

Theory #1 - The Fleeing Boy King

Remember in the world-building essay, I wrote: "After the assassination of their High King and the disappearance of his only son, the Great Nation was thrown into turmoil." Now, if the player has encountered fragments of this lore elsewhere in the game world, they might take the narrative sub-routines to relate to this. The hidden story could therefore be:

Miriam wasn't wandering this region without purpose. Instead, it is possible that as a noble woman, she was charged with caring for the High King's young son and only heir. When he was assassinated, Miriam fled the capital with the king's son. They attempted to pass through the region but became caught up in the Count's wicked agenda and the supernatural darkness of the land. Perhaps they were kept captive in his Fortress for some time, with the Count coming to desire the king's son as an heir of his own. At some point their welcome became worn out, and the Count murdered them both beneath the Fortress. Perhaps afterwards, the Count experienced regret, and sought to resurrect the king's son at least - the altar with the teddy bear in the secret cave being his attempt to do so.

Theory #2 - The Secret Life of Miriam

Theory 2 is a little darker, turning the allegiance of Miriam on its head for the player. It goes:

Starting off with the bangle and Miriam's indescretion: perhaps this, in combination with the similar look between Miriam and the young boy in the portrait, suggests that she was the boy's biological mother. If this boy is the son of the High King, then that would explain her "unnamed indescretion."

At some point in her life, Miriam and the Count met. Perhaps at a royal party prior to the start of the war. Both shared an interest in the pagan history of the Count's land. Perhaps they believed they were both descendents of the Shepherds themselves (an interpretation drawn from Miriam's horn gesture and the Count's clear fascination with the pagan's ruins). Together, they conspired to resurrect the horned god through a complex ritual. One that required a sacrifice of Shepherd royalty. When the war began and the High King was assassinated (perhaps at the hand of Miriam and the Count,) Miriam took advantage of the chaos and stole her estranged son away, taking him to the Count's Fortress, believing he might fit the bill as a sacrifice. What happened next is unclear, but what is clear, is that both Miriam and the boy ended up dead and hidden in the Fortress's foundations. If the ritual took place, it did not appear to work as only in the present day have strange things (like the undead rising) begun to occur. Did Miriam die protecting her son, having a change of heart at the last minute? Or did she sacrifice the boy, and only after when the ritual didn't work, did she try resurrect him in the hidden forest cave? If that's the case, then why did the Count kill her in the end?

You'll see with both of these theories, that there are questions, a lot of ambiguity and leaps in logic. This is purposeful - another example of creating those intentional plotholes we've discussed prior. Narrative Sub-Routines are designed to be very open for player interpretation. But there is one last question we can begin to answer before we finish up, and that is: Why are the undead rising in the present day?

For that, we look back at the corpse of the forest caretaker, found in that strange candle-lit circle. The dagger that killed him, if you recall, was a modern forgery of an ancient original - one that is remarkably similar to what we find in Miriam's chest. We know that Village #2 consider themselves Shepherds, and that a blacksmith there crafts modern versions of the Shepherds ancient weapons. Did the blacksmith murder the caretaker in this weird ritual? Did that ritual somehow complete what Drakmar had set in motion years prior? It's possible that the Caretaker is of both Shepherd and royal blood himself - the letter from his family references palace parties, suggesting perhaps their family descends from the same bloodline as the Angelo family...

Anyway, that's enough speculation for now. I don't want to overload us with questions. That's a fate for our players to suffer ;)

Finishing Up

Yes, yes, I know I said that this would be the last essay in the series, and I only half-lied when I said that. We are now done with the heavy lifting. But we still need to compile all of this information into a narrative brief for the rest of our team. So, next week, I'll do just that. Keep an eye out for it, and please feel free to comment or ask questions on the above. I'm happy to chat!