The Fall of the King of Sota: Chapter Eleven

 

You know, I finally had a lesson coalesce with this particular chapter session: if people want fantasy, they want a magic sword, the big fights with the monsters, the passionate romances, all that. That's how it is, that's what they want. For a very long I fought doing those kinds of moments in fantasy RPGs, and after this particular session I know why.

You see, supranatural good and evil only really as a breakthrough of the glass ceiling or floor. You must have a sense of the mundane of that world. You must learn what feels normal, boring, happy, sad, desperate. There’s a reason Tolkien writes about trees so much: so when you don’t have them, it hurts. And when you get them back, you’re relieved. 

And when Elendil’s light comes out of the vial, you feel that you are witnessing something unique, something you can hold as holy.

Crescendo sticks you in your character’s head, gets you in his darkness. His foibles. So that you yearn for goodness. For absolution.

For mercy.

That way, when it happens, you feel it. Because you have felt the continuum of wretchedness, and the mercy hits all these cracks that you felt, and there's one answer to so many questions, all at once.

Chapter Eleven: September 13th

This one moment, right at the end, when Seren pulls the Sword of Uriel out of the ground and destroys Eoc with it in one stroke, cannot be replicated in any other media. Everyone had been in this downward spiral. They'd lost their home, New Sota City, compromised themselves over and over, in some cases doing outright evil, and they couldn't stop. This wasn't a passive thing: it was active participation in rapid degeneration.

And then someone got a sword from an angel, and reminded us all, after all that pain and awfulness, that life really can be that simple.

And that, when goodness acts, there isn't even a body for evil left on the earth.

Notice it's the dude playing the monster who cheers louder than anyone else.

That exact feeling going through everyone's frame was why Crescendo was made. It is why the game exists.

I'm still in awe that it works.