9. Chapter Six

Unio Mystica: A New Way of Thinking about Character

In the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire, the religion of Christianity spread outwards across central Europe, clamping down on the pre-existing pagan practices that had been common throughout the continent for thousands of years prior. Often, these ancient beliefs would disappear altogether but sometimes, as was the case with the more pivotal beliefs of medieval paganism, Christianity subsumed and incorporated these ideas into their own theological structure. One such belief to be incorporated, was the pagan concept for the human spirit, an important element of European shamanism. While much of the evidence for this concept has been erased or subsumed by Christianity, there is a strong suggestion, particularly in the Germanic traditions that it was a prevalent belief system throughout Europe and across many different cultures. The belief held was this: Every person had not one spirit, but two – sometimes even three. These spirits, known as astral doubles or alter egos were gifted with special powers and had the ability under certain situations to leave the human body and go out across the world to perform tasks.¹ To the Christian mindset, this was not only ridiculous, but blasphemous. Human beings had but one spirit… or soul… What the early Christians believed about this part of a person is unclear. The term spirit and soul were regularly used interchangeably, despite often meaning two different things, likely evidence of their adapting foreign beliefs into their own. In general, it was accepted that the human was a being of flesh, created by god and imbued with a spirit. No more, no less. The spirit was thought of as the eternal part of the human and could only leave the body while in a state of god-driven ecstasy or upon death when it would deliver itself unto heaven.

What we see here with the confusion around terms is essentially the result of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. This was an incredibly ancient pagan tradition being shoe-horned into a relatively modern credal religion. For those being converted to Christianity from their old ways, it was a struggle to let go of a belief so integral to their way of life. That belief defined a lot of their understandings about the world, and the way things worked. Through their astral doubles, they could maintain control over the unpredictable and chaotic nature of the world. While the old world would have deemed them shamans, magicians and priests, this new world forced them to find more appropriate, more ‘holy’ ways to convey their inner spiritual life to others. They became Ecstatics and Saints, and the journeys of their doubles became visions or sometimes dreams. And when those visions or dreams did not fit in with the religious dogma of the time, their stories were supressed, squashed out and ignored. But the concept of the Double was, and remains an important part of humanity’s cultural heritage. It acts as an intermediary between us and the realm of the spirit, the realm of the dead. The Double answers an authentic human need.

“It carries a message of hope: We are not alone. The gods are concerned with our destiny, and we can communicate with them. We remain in contact with our deceased ancestors, and thanks to them, we know that death is not an end but instead a temporary retreat. The transmigration of souls is a product of the same mental world.”²

It’s my belief, that this concept of the Double is powerful and something we can put to good use in the act of narrative game design. Making use of the Double provides greater meaning to a player’s agency and allows them to re-discover a base human belief consciously or subconsciously regarding our connection to both nature and one another.

WHAT IS THE ASTRAL DOUBLE?

Before we go any further, we need to ask the question – what exactly is the Astral Double believed in so fervently by our pagan ancestors? To answer that question, we are going to explore specifically the beliefs of ancient Germany. While much of Europe fell victim to the Christianization of their traditions, Germany and other northern countries were some of the most resistant to missionaries and conversion. These countries act as a kind of litmus test for us. When we look at Germany we are “flushing out from under cover a belief that, in all its forms, is common to all of Europe.”³

The ancient German idea of the soul would be seen as something very strange to us today. In their language, they had at least three terms for the soul. The fylgja, the hamr, and the hugr. Fylgja, which translates as “female follower” was considered to be a spiritual double of the person she occupied. Attached often to a family, she was thought to act as a protector and guide.

“A person can have several fylgjur, and in the Middle Ages it was believed that the more a person had, the stronger that person was. When the fylgja or fylgjur attack an enemy, they bring on an irrepressible yawning and sleepiness.”⁴

It was thought that if your fylgja wished to leave your body, you would be overcome with an irrepressible sleepiness. Upon falling into sleep, the double would exit your body to go about its business. The fylgja’s primary purpose was to protect the person it was assigned to, much like the “christian” concept of a guardian angel. A final interesting word on the fylgja before moving on is that, though being an independent guardian of a person, it would often manifest itself in their dreams as an animal.

In The Saga of Gisli Sursson (c. 1250-1260) the protagonist, Gisli is assailed by two women in his dreams, one good, the other bad. The good woman, representative of his fylgja, (the bad, a representation of his enemy’s) takes him on a gray horse to reveal to him the place where he will one day die. Although the horse is separate in his dreams from his fylgja, its colour and the fact that it leads to the place in which he dies (connecting him to the land of the dead by association), suggests that the animal is a psychopomp, or spirit guide and therefore an extension of the fylgja.

The Hamr was supposed to be a physical double of a person. Whereas the fylgja acted as a spiritual entity, the Hamr was a corporeal being able to be wounded during its travels. Such a wound, upon the hamr’s return to the human, would reveal itself in the person’s true physical body as well.

“Dufthak of Futhakshold was powerfully skilled in doubling himself, as was Storolf, son of Hoeng, who lived in Hvall. These two had a disagreement about their pasturing arrangement. One night, around sunset, a man who was gifted with second sight saw a fat bear leaving Hvall and a bull leaving Dufthaksholt. They met at Storolfsvellir and started a furious fire. Eventually the bear got the upper hand. The next morning, the earth of the little valley where the bull and bear had met each other looked as if it had been torn up. Today this spot is called Öldugröf. As for Dufthak and Storolf, they were wounded, both of them.”⁵

As you can see in that story, just like the fylgja the hamr does not need to take the form of a human but can (and often does) take on the form of an animal instead. The main difference here, is that the fylgja can only interact (as humanoid or animal) in dreams and, for lack of a better word, the “astral realm,” whereas the hamr would be able to manifest this way physically.

Lastly, we have the hugr, an important key to the puzzle we are trying to solve here. The hugr is an interesting element to consider. While I stated earlier that there are potentially three spirits to a person, this is why I said potentially. The hugr, a kind of psyche of the person it belonged to was thought to be the entity or energy that occupies the physical “sheath” of the hamr. When the hamr leaves the human body to perform tasks, it does so, while possessed by the hugr.

“[I]t is more or less independent of individuals, but it can, on occasion, manifest itself directly or indirectly in man.” It can even manifest itself against people’s will. It is this entity that takes on a form and animates the Double/hamr in order to go far away, either on a mission for a third party, or to fulfil a particularly strong desire.”⁶

The hugr in fact, bears a striking resemblance to the player – both are psychic extensions of a protagonist, and both use an aspect of that protagonist as a sheath to do their bidding. But more on this soon. For now, let us look at another fascinating tradition around the concept of the spirit/soul and shamanism in general.

THE SOUL OF BONES

In his seminal work, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath, Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg makes note of a peculiar practice found throughout Italy, Ireland, Germany, Lapland (Finland), Siberia, China and even Africa, in which the bones of slaughtered animals are gathered together and used in a ritual designed to resurrect the creatures from the dead. A testimony of one such ritual is provided below:

“These beliefs, documented in the most diverse cultures (including continental Africa), inspire certain rituals performed by the hunting population which lives in the boundless arctic band between Lapland and the northern islands of the Japanese archipelago inhabited by the Ainu. The bones of the larger game (bears, elks, deer) are amassed in piles, gathered in baskets or placed on platforms; sometimes the skins are stuffed with straw and wood shavings. In the middle of the eighteenth century the Laplandic shaman (no’aidi), entrusted with the preparation of the victims for the ritual, explained to the Danish missionaries that the bones must be gathered and arranged with great care, because the god to whom the sacrifice was made would then restore life to the animals, making them even fatter than before. Testimonies of this kind are very numerous…”⁷

Another example, found in the Edda by Snorri Sturluson (c. 1179-1241) is as follows:

“[Thor is traveling with Loki on his cart, which is being pulled by some goats.] At nightfall, they arrived at a farmer’s house and obtained permission to spend the night there. That night, Thor took his goats and killed them both. Then they were skinned and placed in a cauldron… [Everyone is having a meal.] Thor put the goatskins between the fire and the door and told the farmer and his people to place the bones on the skins. But Thjalfi, the farmer’s son, kept one of the goat’s thigh bones and cracked it with his knife to get to the marrow… [In the morning, Thor takes his hammer Mjöllnir, brandishes it and recites] incantations on the goatskins. They were brought back to life, but one of them was limping, favoring his back foot.”⁸

What we see in these two example stories is firstly, a ritual designed to make certain wild game (which was crucial for feeding the people) never goes scarce and secondly, a belief that somehow, part of the animal’s soul remained within the marrow of its bones, and that the animal could be resurrected from it. This is what we call the soul of bones. The soul of bones was not limited to animals either:

“Among shamanistic peoples (Turko-Tartars and Siberians), the inferior soul is said to reside in the bones.”⁹

In fact, we can see this tradition as far back as Greek antiquity. In a haunted house story from this time, Pliny the Younger tells of the ghost of an old man that was haunting a house in Athens. Upon digging in the place where the ghost had disappeared, it was discovered his bones, bound in chains.¹⁰ Interestingly, we see this same concept played out often in our modern-day haunted house stories. Houses being plagued by such evil spirits are often built atop some kind of burial ground (E.g. Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror) and can only be freed from the haunting through laying the bones of the spirit to rest through a proper burial. We also see in the folklore surrounding vampires and other such ghouls, the need to decapitate them and burn their corpses to ash, as a way to kill them. Arguably, the concept of the soul of bones is why christian religions, believing in the eventual resurrection of the dead, are opposed to cremation, whereas pagan traditions, perhaps fearing the resurrection of the evil dead, frequently practiced cremation. What is interesting to us, in the practice of narrative design, is how the soul of bones might have an effect on death as a narrative mechanic in gaming.

THE SHADOW AND THE DOPPELGÄNGER

Lastly, we would be remis if we did not discuss two of the most well-known versions of the double today. The Shadow and the Doppelgänger. The Shadow, popularized as a literary archetype by Carl Jung and his psychological exploration of it. In Jung’s Psychology and Religion, he writes of the shadow as the supressed, animalistic nature of mankind. He states that:

“Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is… …if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected. It is, moreover, liable to burst forth in a moment of unawareness. At all events, it forms an unconscious snag, blocking the most well-meant attempts. We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only by a considerable effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we have invariably to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a case wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which man’s conscious personality and his shadow can live together.”¹¹

Jung is perhaps most famous for his concept of the collective unconsciousness and the human archetypes that exist there, the shadow, of which, is but one. He found that these archetypes existed through various cultures in the form of fairy tales, myths and legends – in other words, folklore.

However, it was the concept of the Shadow that was most readily picked up by writers of literature, such as Bram Stoker, Henry James, and Robert Louis Stevenson – among others. In literature, the Shadow took on the definition of being a “darker part…” of the character’s “…humanity that must be faced and dealt with.”¹² We still see the use of the Shadow in this way in literature today. The wildly successful USA Network series Mr Robot (which just finished up its final season in 2019), revolved heavily around this inner battle between the protagonist Elliot and his shadow – the aforementioned Mr Robot.

While the Shadow as it exists currently in literary theory is a fairly new concept – Jung having written about it in the 20th Century, we can see traces of the Shadow, as he suggested, in folklore.

“In the Middle Ages a certain Gonzalo of Berceo rewrote the legend of Theophilus, the archetype of Doctor Faustus, and took the trouble to specify that, once the pact is signed with the devil, Theophilus loses his healthy color and even his shadow, though thanks to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, his shadow is returned to him. This refers to the merging of the shadow and the soul, which is the origin of the notion that the dead, sorcerers and witches do not have a shadow at all.”¹³

In fact, there has seemingly always been this tradition, this idea that the shadow is somehow the visible form of the soul or the hidden aspect of man.

“It is not simply the silhouette projected when the body intercepts rays of light, but another self who has all the physical and psychic qualities of the self, enjoys all the same pre-rogatives, and at the death of its possessor goes away into the other world so aptly named the Kingdom of Shadows.”¹⁴

While Jung and modern literature suggests that the shadow is the darker parts of mankind, in the lore, it is not that simple. The shadow is a manifestation of a person’s double, just like the fylgja and hamr are. In particular, the Shadow is thought to straddle the line between the world of the living and the world of the dead and is therefore an omen of ill fate in particular circumstances.

“Quite generally known in all of Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia is a test made on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve: whoever casts no shadow on the wall of the room by lamplight, or whose shadow is headless, must die inside of a year. There is a similar belief among the Jews that whoever walks by moonlight in the seventh night of Whitsuntide, and whose shadow is headless, will die the same year. There is a saying in the German provinces that stepping upon one’s own shadow is a sign of death. Contrasting with the belief that whoever casts no shadow must die is a German belief that whoever sees his shadow as a duple during the epiphany must die.”¹⁵

This last belief, that of one’s shadow being represented as a “duple” brings us to the final aspect of the astral double I’d like to discuss – the doppelgänger, which translates to “double goer” in German. The term doppelgänger is a relatively new one, being coined by the German Romantic author Jean Paul in the 1800s. However, the concept itself, comes back, of course to the pagan traditions we’ve been discussing, hidden within the ambiguity of the concept of the astral double we’ve been discussing.

The doppelgänger, called a fetch in Irish folklore or sometimes a changeling, was thought to be a perfect physical look-alike of a person, usually seen as an ill omen, bad luck, or in some cases an evil twin. This enduring tradition, like the Shadow made its way into literature such as Titan (Jean Paul), The Double (Fyodor Dostoevsky), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson) and William Wilson (Edgar Allen Poe). In most of these examples, the doppelgänger is a villainous counterpart to the hero, however a doppelgänger does not always need to be represented in this way.

The doppelgänger is also present in the archetype of the foil found in literature. The foil is thought by some to be named after Shakespeare’s penchant to use the crossing of swords in his plays to create excitement for the audience. Alternatively, it could derive from the practice of using foil as a backdrop to a precious gem so that it shines more brightly. Whichever the case, the foil in the context of our study is a kind of doppelgänger. It describes a physical counterpart character to the protagonist – the foil can be their equal, their match or their opponent. The foil as a character exists to contrast against the protagonist as a means of highlighting the qualities of the character.

Often in fiction, the foil is expressed as the converse, that is, the polar opposite of the character, however I would argue that this is the weakest way to express this archetype. A far more interesting representation is in what is called the inverted foil. Rather than representing the opposite of what a protagonist is, the inverted foil’s personality or nature is such that it reveals and highlights to the protagonist their shadow as a corruption of their own soul. The inverted foil causes the protagonist to look inside herself and forces her to confront what she sees.

An excellent example of this play between the inverted foil and the shadow can be found in the classic film Casablanca (1942). In Casablanca, the protagonist, Rick (portrayed by Humphrey Bogart) is a morally destitute café owner in Morocco during world war 2. Once a brave freedom fighter, Rick has supressed his better self after being deeply wounded by Illsa Lund the woman he once loved. Now, Rick only cares about himself. He’s selfish and hardened, unwilling to stick his neck out for anyone. This is his new status quo. Then one night, who should walk into his café, but Illsa herself, along with her new husband, Victor Laszlo, a Czech resistance leader (and Rick’s inverted foil). Illsa and Victor are looking for Rick’s help in procuring letters of transit out of the neutral zone of Casablanca to America, where Victor can continue his fight against the Nazis. Rick is placed in a conundrum. He has the power to seduce Illsa, who as it turns out, still loves him, but doing so will destroy Victor and have a serious effect on the fight against the Nazis. In this set up, Victor is not the villain, and neither is Rick. Instead, they are inversions of each other. The true villain of Casablanca is not even the Nazi general trying to capture Victor. The true villain is Rick’s shadow – that desire deep within him to seduce Illsa for himself. If Rick indulges his shadow, he’ll get what he wants. Illsa will come back to him, and they’ll live happily ever after. Rick will be okay if he does this, as he thrives in chaos. However, his exposure to her, exposes him to the plight of her husband, and in the end, he knows, that if he takes her, he will lose his soul. He will fall to his shadow, his shadow, which would rather let the Nazi’s rule the earth if it meant he could be with Illsa again. Without Illsa, Victor simply will not make it. She is his muse, his inspiration, his reason to keep fighting. With her gone, he will be crushed. In the end, Rick decides to sacrifice himself by helping both Illsa and Victor escape, thus defeating his shadow. He sacrifices himself – his love, his happiness, his desires because he recognizes that he has to be better than what he has been. He helps the two get on a plane, risking his life and security in the process. This is a far more interesting story than it would be if he were fighting Victor for Illsa’s affections, or even if he were fighting the Nazi’s themselves!

We can see this same sort of set up in Santa Monica Studio’s 2018 Masterpiece God of War – particularly if we consider it in the context of previous iterations in the series. In God of War, we follow Kratos, an aging spartan warrior who, seeking to escape the demons of his past has fled Greece and relocated to Scandinavia, where he marries and has a young son named Atreus. In this soft reboot of the original series, Kratos’ shadow is really, the violent, angry, hateful memory of who he was in his past. A persona which threatens to return after his wife passes away. In this story, Kratos’ inverted foil is his son, Atreus. Whereas Kratos is jaded and bitter, his son is bright-eyed and adoring. Atreus wants nothing more than to be like his Dad. In this story, Kratos’ shadow not only threatens to consume him, but his son as well. To save his Atreus from this fate, Kratos must do what he fears the most – make himself vulnerable to Atreus and let him in, like he once did for the boys’ mother. Like Rick from Casablanca, Kratos will be mostly fine if he remains stoic and staunch – he can take on whatever comes at him, but also like Rick, giving in to this, giving into his shadow, will mean not only the ruin of his inverted foil, but the destruction of his own soul. At first, Kratos tries to hide the truth of his past and their shared godhood from Atreus, but as events grow darker and things worsen, Atreus descends rapidly down a similar path to his dad. All this builds over the course of the game until we reach a tear-jerking moment of catharsis between father and son.

After saving the goddess Freya from being strangled by her own child, Baldur, Kratos sees finally the end destination of their journey if he allows his shadow to win:

“You are just an animal!” snaps Freya, leaning over the cooling body of her son.

“Passing on your cruelty and rage. You will never change!” she cries, tears running down her cheeks.

Kratos listens sombrely, before responding: “Then you do not know me.” He says.

Venom in her eyes, Freya retorts: “I know enough,” then, glancing over at the shaken face of Atreus, she asks: “Does he?”

Kratos pauses, the time has come. He’s a at a crossroads. He can continue along the same path of violence or take the plunge. He can let his child, his last link to his beloved wife, truly know him.

“Boy.” He addresses Atreus, “Listen close.”

The music darkens to signify his digging up of old and hated memories: “I am from a land called Sparta.” He tells his son.

We see Atreus behind Kratos’ back, already shaken by the fight, becoming increasingly unsure as his father steers them towards unfamiliar territory.

“I made a deal with a god that cost me my soul.” Kratos continues.

“I killed many that were deserving…” he almost winces, “…and many that were not.”

The battle-scarred warrior takes a deep breath before revealing: “I killed my father.”

Stunned, Atreus stutters: “That was your father in Hel!” and then… “Is this what it is to be a god? Is this how it always ends? Sons killing their mothers,” he motions at Baldur’s body, now in Freya’s arms, “…their fathers?”

His voice is strong, Kratos has taught him not to express his emotions, but in his face, we can see it – a desperation, a pleading to be told that this is wrong, that the dark heritage of gods will not prevail with them. Kratos turns and kneels before Atreus, looking him in the eyes.

“No.” he tells him, placing his hands around the child’s solemn face.

“We will be the gods we choose to be. Not those who have been.”

He puts his arms around his son, gripping the boys’ shoulders tight.

“Who I was is not who you will be… We must be better.”

It’s in this moment that Kratos sacrifices a version of himself. He kills his shadow. The safe haven he spent years hiding within. Vulnerability, which he once viewed as a weakness, he now realizes, is strength. He sees for perhaps the first time in his life, that intimacy is the way forward for him and his boy. He lets Atreus in, breaking for the first time the cycle of violence that has ruled their family in every previous entry of the series. Kratos now sees the inversion of himself in his boy. An inversion that has forced him into a confrontation with the true villain of the series – the darkness of his own heart.¹⁶

THE PLAYER IN UNIO MYSTICA

Video games are a unique medium in that they place the player directly in the body of a character, rather than having us observe one. This means a couple of things. First, unlike other storytelling mediums we are not in the sympathy or empathy business. While those emotions may be elicited by the player towards NPCs in a game, we are not asking the player to empathize with the protagonist. Rather, we are in the intimacy business. We ask players to EMBODY the protagonist, to wear them like a glove, to be closer to them than their own skin. Yes, a well-designed game narrative should make the player feel for the Player Character, but this is different to sympathy or empathy. By its very definition, you cannot have sympathy or empathy for yourself. Rather, you are intimately aware of the emotions you are feeling, even if you cannot articulate them at first. We’ll call this intimate awareness of the PC’s emotional life union. The player is in union with our protagonist, whoever they might be. As narrative designers, we should aim to foster intimacy, so that this union can be achieved.

THE PLAYER AS THE HUGR

Consider the pre-Christian concept of the soul and those accompanying elements of the Shadow and the Doppelgänger as narrative motifs. If we explore them as cogs and gears to be put to work in the creation of a playable protagonist, then something interesting begins to happen. The fylgja, hugr, hamr, shadow and doppelgänger all represent certain concepts - core aspects of humanity.

In this conceptualization, union begins with the hugr, which is the energy or essence that animates both the protagonist and the hamr. The hugr is a recognition of the intimacy given to us through folklore and suggests a player’s ability to involve themselves with, and control multiple aspects of, the story world. Tangherlini speaks of folklore as ‘transmission taking place interactively.’¹⁷ This is the transmission of beliefs, themes, morals, concepts, discussion, and commentary. Folklore is porous and narrative is a two-way street. The content we pass out to the player is able to be explored in this model, played with, and reshaped, before being sent back to the authors as well as other players. Like the exchange between shamanistic storytellers and audiences of the past, we are dealing with highly interactive elements here.

Traditionally, the hugr is disembodied, but it’s also what gives the body life. In the lore we’ve discussed, it could influence others over great distances, with no time passing at all. It also had the unique ability to superpose itself across the ‘astral’ realm. You can see this kind of projection or doubling in the stories of the benandanti, where the soul travels to Venusberg or the Fields of Josephat to do battle with witches; or in the Norse traditions, where there is a passing into the realm of the dead. For the Zoroastrians of Persia, it is the crossing of the Chinvat Bridge; for the ancient Greeks – the mysterious Hypoborea; and in Arthurian myth, it is Avalon, the land of the Fey.

The hugr (or player’s) first port of call when entering the game is the protagonist and understanding the player as a separate entity to that protagonist - one with narrative agency – radically redefines how we should design them. Because the player is the hamr, the protagonist’s character can almost be considered as a kind of sentient “sleeve” or outfit that the player dons to explore the world of your game. While complete immersion into a character is the aim, it is necessary for there to be a slight degree of separation between the player and the protagonist so as to avoid that dreaded ludo-narrative dissonance. Treating player characters as individual beings that are being occupied by the player (or hugr) ensures that the will of the character is not superseded complete by the will of the player. Allowing a complete takeover results in possession, rather than cohabitation, and possession allows for the player to simply use the protagonist as a tool, rather than viewing them as a ‘real’ multi-faceted being. Respecting this separation encourages the player to work alongside the protagonist in that union we are trying to achieve. The player’s actions then become coloured by the personality of the character they’re occupying. Through this, we can also view the protagonist partly, as a collection of traits that need to be ‘fed’ by the player, resulting in a desire to engage positively with the narrative themes, instead of fighting against them.

THE PLAYER IN THE HAMR

The hugr leaves the body of a man, sheathing itself within the hamr – a physical double with the ability to travel far and wide, to the otherworld and back, engaging as it goes, with gods and demons, the living, and the dead. Likewise, the player leaves the game world, superpositioning themselves through the hamr, projecting themselves into a post-digital world of pervasive communication. We can think of the hamr as an avatar constructed by the player to best reach those that exist on transmediated platforms outside the game. With internet platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, as well as fanfiction and blogging websites, audiences have more power than ever before. They can nourish and grow stories they like or cut back and destroy those that they don’t. This is comparable to audiences of folklore in the past choosing either to share and edit their own folklore or instead, letting those stories fall into insignificance. Audiences can now push their likes, dislikes, thoughts, suggestions and demands across multiple platforms at once, to potentially thousands of people at the same time. This is the true power of the hugr when it occupies the hamr – it passes from one world and into the other, and once there, it receives influence and power. The same is true for our players and their interactions with the other world of social media.

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENT AND REGENERATIVE LISTENING

Across the entire history of storytelling, non-interactive, author-driven pieces have only existed for a fraction. For our ancestors, mimetic circulation was a slow, evolutionary process, taking many years for stories to disperse across oceans and mutate as they were adapted by various cultures. Today, mimetic circulation is instantaneous – social media has allowed audiences to talk back. It’s time to face facts: You, the author are no longer in control. Stories that begin as small anecdotes or discussions on noticeboards and comment sections now have the power to balloon at a rapid speed and change the world around them.

From these stories self-organized spontaneous movements have risen up – The Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street. These movements appear with a stunning speed and can create sweeping change. They often have no need of a single leader, and if there is one, that leader tends to be directed by the collective rather than being the one who defines the agenda of many. On the darker side of things, this power that has been given to story by non-linear, digital communication can also create dangerous movements. Look to the Alt-Right, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and of course, Donald Trump’s America for examples of this.

The Player and the Pentacle seeks to embrace this reversal of power and use it for good through the act of regenerative listening or recognizing our audience’s ability to influence story and use it to affect our reality. The player’s ability to occupy their hamr and project themselves out into the world, also opens up new avenues of narrative design within the ‘on-boarding’ and ‘off-boarding’ of a game (or any piece of interactive storytelling for that matter). When the player tweets out a review or pauses the game to take a break, they are no longer fully leaving that fantastical world. Instead, if we cultivate things right, they will be able to find opportunities to explore new and exciting avenues of immersion. Accounting for the player’s ability to co-author a story in this way, is what I like to call empathetic design, and really, all this really requires is a paradigm shift in creators when we do all that creating. Knowing that our audiences are eager and willing to get into the wet sand with us and start shaping castles means we can deliberately leave parts of the story-world vague so that they can fill in the blanks instead. These intentional plot-holes, when enacted in combination with an active community presence and a willingness on our end to learn from our audiences, creates a more robust fanbase overall.

Transmedia producer and legendary Narrative Designer, Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner Entertainment) knows the truth of this first-hand. Jeff, who is a great friend and mentor has frequently discussed how, back in the day, when he was the Narrative Lead behind Magic: The Gathering and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, he decided to give out his personal email to fans so he could hear their thoughts. He was immediately scolded by those around him for making a dumb move – some fans aren’t always the nicest of people, and even back then, the risk of being overwhelmed with nasty worded emails and threats was very real – yet, in spite of what everyone thought would happen, the response was overwhelmingly positive. And listening to fans thoughts, Jeff began to reincorporate some of their ideas into the lore of the worlds he was designing - to critical acclaim. This is empathetic design and regenerative listening in action, happening all the way back in the 1990s – Imagine what we can do with today’s technology to further develop this beautiful exchange!

THE PROTAGONIST AND THEIR SHADOW

The Shadow is the true threat to success in a Player and Pentacle narrative. The Shadow represents the untamed, violent, masculine, and dark energy of the protagonist. It is what threatens to consume them if they do not overcome it. Unlike a traditional villain (which you can still have), the shadow is a complex psychological product of the overarching system that your protagonist finds themselves living under. They have developed this shadow through a lifetime of existing within a system founded on individualism and violence. While the protagonist (and player) might be pitted against the evil Doctor Robotnik (or whoever, really), the true threat to their survival is internal. Ultimately, the Shadow is a Jungian representation of the very mindsets that are causing our real-world to currently fall apart. In a character-driven, personal story, the Shadow is the curse of individualism, convincing us to selfishly attend to our own desires at the cost of the needs of others. In a larger, more expansive story that deals with many characters and multiple factions, the Shadow is the curse of tribalism – of asserting one’s rightness over another’s and demanding that their worldview be one of narrow black and white conservatism, instead of colourful and bright diversity.

Tribalism, I believe is the result off a poverty mindset – we fear those outside of our tribe because their views, which contradict our own, may result in them making us wrong, in taking from us, that which we have all at one point in time used to survive – subjective truth. When a primitive civilization grows beyond scattered isolation, it inevitably comes into conflict with itself. The same is true with the mimetic spread of narrative. While the objective truth remains that we are all one people, and that we are stronger together than apart, our subjective interpretations of that truth can differ wildly across locations and cultures, resulting in conflict between those of us who, in reality should be working together, to face the ultimate threats of our age – hatred, greed, sickness, fascism, environmental collapse – the list goes on…

THE INVERTED DOUBLE

And this brings us back to the doppelgänger – our inverted double. Existing somewhere in the story world there should be another character or process that inverts the traits of the protagonist and forces them to confront the dark side of who they are. At this point, the protagonist must overcome and defeat their shadow (or be completely consumed by it) before the story is truly over.

THE FYLGJA AS AN ANTI-SHADOW AND SOUL OF BONES

In the fylgja, we see a tutelary genie, a being of light, a representation of the feminine, of destiny, of protection, mentorship, and love. The Celtic equivalent of the fylgja, after all, is the fairy, and in Christian lore, it’s the Guardian angel. In a Player and Pentacle narrative, we view the fylgja as an external opposition to the shadow and the soul of bones as the thing which keeps us motivated to persist in the story world. The fylgja always points to an identity that the character can become or aspire towards. They’re who the protagonist could be if they overcome their shadow. The fylgja’s job is to act as a distant call to the protagonist, reminding them of their true self, encouraging them to pass through the dominion of the shadow, so as to join her and grow as a character.

The Soul of Bones on the other hand, represents how the mortality of a character anchors them to the task at hand. Think about it this way – what’s stopping your character from tapping out, giving up and falling off the map? This is the element in your story that forces the protagonist and player duo to keep moving forward, one step at a time. Just like the hugr is connected to the soul of bones in the lore, the player should find themselves invested in the bones of a character’s purpose. We too, cannot tap out. We are driven with the character to keep playing, to keep seeking, to find out more.

Whereas the fylgja exists primarily for a narrative purpose, the Soul of Bones is represented through gameplay. Sometimes, these two components will exist as the same thing, other times, they might be entirely separate. A protagonist’s fylgja could be represented through a character, or characters, or an event, or several events, within the plot that repeatedly drive home the narrative moral or theme of your story, such as: Strength is found in empathy and compassion rather than in endless cycles of violence. The soul of bones can optionally also reflect that narrative moral through a mechanical feature or features, or the soul of bones could relate to something else entirely, keeping the protagonist on their path, such as saving a loved one, or hunting down a powerful relic – the important thing is that the soul of bones is explored via narratively driven gameplay.

From Software’s Dark Souls series provides us with an excellent example of how the fylgja and the soul of bones can work together to strengthen a singular narrative theme. In the highly acclaimed dark fantasy series, death is used as a mechanic to strengthen the impetus keeping you and your character bound to the world. The entirety of the Dark Souls series is focused on these ideas of death and rebirth, sacrifice, and hope. You persist in a world that is slowly fading into darkness, where everything around you seems to have no desire other than to kill you. The goal of the protagonist (as the chosen undead) is to restore fire (or light and life) to the world by replacing the previous Lord of Cinder, sacrificing themselves to delay the age of darkness from enveloping the world. As the player, we are pulled through the world of Dark Souls by collecting souls (the game’s currency) and strengthening our character so that they can complete their task. Upon being killed by one of the game’s many enemies, we lose any of the souls we are carrying, sacrificing them so that we might be reborn and try again. When returning to the world, we can choose to take part in the activity of corpse-running – returning to where we last died and retrieving what we lost from a blood stain on the floor, or by killing the enemy that last killed us. Instead of being a brick wall or fail state, death becomes a doorway, through which your character can grow.

Bonfires also exist throughout the world, where the player can rest and replenish their health, save their progress, or teleport to another area to spend their souls. However, there is a trade-off for using one of these bonfires - just like death, resting at a bonfire will also restore all enemies in the game, making your next run just as difficult as the last. And yet, we keep at it, bound to the world by the soul of bones and called through it by our fylgja – a cycle of death and rebirth, sacrifice and hope. With every boss we beat, every NPC we talk to, every time we level up, we truly believe that if we are to simply persist against this darkness, then eventually, we’ll see a brighter day. This belief can even be found in an optimistic analysis of Dark Souls online community’s catch phrase, uttered at newbies struggling with the game’s intense difficulty: GIT GUD! They shout time and time again when first timers complain about dying hundreds of times. Many have seen this line as being a little mocking, a little rude, perhaps even arrogant, but for me, it’s simply another fylgja, designed to pull you forward to the game’s climactic end.

BRINGING TOGETHER THE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

The Player and the Pentacle model is a unique and new way to consider your narrative design processes when creating a truly immersive world. It combines traditional practices of interactive storytelling with cutting edge research on narrative design being explored by myself and others, before implementing them both into the framework of the folkloresque. The components of this model are, like the effect they attempt to bring about, non-linear by their very nature. They are a collection of living, breathing processes, and as a result can at times overlap or appear in unusual orders. The narrative designer should also feel free to use or not use whichever aspects they want in the creation of their worlds. These are guidelines, not hard rules.

This being said, when we bring each element together as a cohesive whole, we get the following road map of the player’s journey through our game:

1. The player, acting as a kind of hugr, steps into cohabitation with the protagonist by entering a magic circle, and engaging with our story world.

2. They centre themselves within the five-pointed pentacle of narrative design. Now separate from the real world, they are consecrated and set apart. Within that circle, the player is free to engage with the story in a non-linear way.

3. Whether through exploring lore, deep lore, or plot, they encounter narrative delivery systems through the process of play.

4. Eventually, they cross paths with their double or inverted foil, who pushes them to confront the shadow that haunts their story.

5. Meanwhile, the fylgja, an anti-shadow and representation of who they might become, calls out across the world as an echo, drawing them forwards through conflicts both external and internal.

6. By following the fylgja that they are taught the importance of collective movement and the sacrifice of self. They overthrow the shadow (itself, a representation of individualism), and thus reaching transformation.

7. Meanwhile, through a process of empathetic design, the story world actively accounts for the player’s ability to sheath themselves within the hamr - an avatar or narrative process based OUTSIDE the circle of play – the otherworld of non-linear digital communication. This accounting allows for regenerative listening on behalf of developers and for co-authorship of the story IP.

8. This co-authoring can then go on to inspire communities and set into motion the folkloresque processes of mimetic circulation and reintegration into the cultural canon.

To further help with the construction of such a protagonist, I’ve provided below a template from which you can explore and develop your player character. After which, I’ve provided a filled-out example (one of my own personal projects) to show you how I might go about building such a character myself. Please feel free to take this template and add or edit it in whichever way seems fit for your purposes.

THE PLAYER AND THE PENTACLE PROTAGONIST CREATION TEMPLATE:

Character Name: [Enter the full name of your protagonist + any epithets they are known as. i.e. “Geralt of Rivia – The White Wolf, The Butcher of Blaviken”]

Character Brief: [Enter a brief overview of your protagonist. How would you explain them to someone in just a few short sentences?]

Character Backstory: [Enter the full backstory of your character. Explore their childhood, how they grew up, what traumas they’ve experienced along the way, what their passions are, what drives them, how they became who they are today, etc.]

Character’s Shadow: [Enter information on the Shadow of the character – What is that darkness inside them? How did it come to be there? What horrors is your protagonist capable of if they succumb to that darkness? What do they need to do to be able to defeat that darkness? i.e. For Rick, in Casablanca, his “shadow” is the self-centredness he has adopted after having his heart broken, it is the part of him that would give the world over to Hitler himself, if it meant he could be with the woman he loves, if he could undo the heartbreak visited upon him. To defeat his Shadow, Rick must come to terms with that heartbreak and let it go, he must sacrifice his own desires for the sake of another’s vision – Viktor’s passion to defeat the Nazis once and for all.]

Character’s Inverted Double: [Enter information on the protagonist’s inverted double. This is not their opposite/nemesis, rather it is a character, who’s traits cause the protagonist to (painfully) recognize their own weaknesses, faults and/or selfish behaviour. i.e. In God of War, Atreus is the inverted double of Kratos – his desire to be like his father, as well as to be close to his father, coupled with his outbursts of anger and rage, act as a mirror to Kratos, reflecting the mistakes and problematic aspects of Kratos’ personality and of his dark past, provoking Kratos to finally let his son in, and teach him that they both need to be better than the violent, angry god Kratos was in his youth.]

Fylgja & The Soul of Bones: [Enter information here on the Fylgja and/or soul of bones of the Protagonist. Sometimes these are two separate elements, other times, they are one in the same. The Fylgja is a guiding voice, calling out to the protagonist, hinting and suggesting to them who they might become if they were to defeat their Shadow. The Soul of Bones is that which keeps the protagonist on their path, it is what stops them from tapping out when the going gets tough. Whereas the Fylgja serves a narrative purpose only, the Soul of Bones can also serve a gameplay purpose as well as a narrative one. i.e. In Dark Souls, the cycle of death, rebirth and strengthening acts as the Soul of Bones keeping the protagonist in the story, whereas the sense of hope that by persisting, eventually light will succeed, is the Fylgja.]

FILLED OUT TEMPLATE EXAMPLE:

Game Title: The Hand of God

Narrative Pitch: The Hand of God follows Nasim ibn ghul, a legendary assassin of the hashīshīn (origin of the term assassin, lit. “Users of hashish”) as he completes kill missions for a mystical entity – “The Cloud of Unknowing,” who passes down the names of those the hashīshīn are destined to kill. But when a routine job goes wrong, Nasim is left out in the cold, excommunicated from his Order, hunted by both his associates and the horrifying creatures created to protect The Cloud, Nasim must uncover the true purpose of his Order and find redemption in a world hostile to his very nature.

Character Name: Nasim ibn ghul (Nasim, son of the Ghoul)

Character Brief: Star member of the hashīshīn, a modern-day continuation of the ancient Islamic sect of Assassins. Cold and calculated – at least on the surface. Nasim is a rogue who believes he is only in things for himself, yet, given the opportunity, he will always ascertain to do the ‘right’ thing. This information escapes him however – he sees himself as a worthless human being – good for nothing more than killing others.

Character Backstory: The story of Nasim begins strangely enough, in 1489 A.D. – two years before the end of the Granada War in which Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon waged war against the Nasrid dynasty’s Emirate of Granada, an Islamic realm of Southern Iberia. In the aftermath of a deadly battle, the hashīshīn, an order of elite assassins, came across the quiet mewls of a new-born child half-birthed from the womb of his murdered mother. Taking the child under their wings, they named him Nasim ibn ghul, after the grisly circumstances of his birth. As soon as he was old enough to hold a sword, Nasim began his training. Through the entirety of his childhood, he was fed propaganda from the cult, and taught to believe that he was nothing more than a tool for killing – this was his divine purpose, gifted to him by the mysterious entity at the head of the hashīshīn – a being he was yet to encounter - The Cloud of Unknowing. At the age of twelve, Nasim was gifted his first mission – a test, to see if he was worthy of continuing on. He was to steal into the house of the Iberian Lord theorized to have killed his mother and put an end to him. The mission did not go according to plan. In the chaos of it, Nasim ended the life of the Lord’s entire family, including a child no older than himself. This weighed heavily on Nasim, but for the hashīshīn, the mission was deemed a triumph, and precipitated Nasim’s first encounter with The Cloud of Unknowing, deep within their ancient Temple. Literally, a cloud of thunder and lightning contained within the building, this deity stretched out an elongated, inhumanly sized arm, and blessed him with the mark of the hashīshīn, before sending the boy off on his next mission. Years passed in this way, and Nasim, blessed with immortality by the strange being, rose to the top of the Order, killing countless people indiscriminately over the years. The more he killed, the more he was able to smother the guilt of his first assassinations, and in this way, he managed to avoid the fear that was rapidly devouring his soul. Until now…

Character’s Shadow: Nasim’s shadow is the voice of fear inside him that originated from his horrifying upbringing and years of trying to hide from that hurt. He believes himself to be nothing more than a tool for killing, and knows from experience, that the more he shuts himself off to his emotions, the more he kills mindlessly, the more he can hide from the broken child deep inside him. If Nasim continues on this path, something horrible will happen – to him, and probably to others as well. The more he kills, the more he loses his soul, and should he never confront the horrors of his past, he will eventually lose his mind to chaos. To defeat his shadow, Nasim needs to make himself vulnerable to others. He needs to allow himself to love and to be loved, so that he can begin to see himself in a new light and accept that what was done to him in the past was neither normal nor right. If he can gain even a fraction of insight into this, then he will have set himself on a path towards redemption, a path that will eventuate in being free from his shadow.

Character’s Inverted Double: Where things begin to change for Nasim, is on his latest mission. He is instructed to locate a nearby farmhouse and kill everyone inside. However, upon arriving there, he discovers the house is occupied by a young woman and her eight-year-old son, Mateo. Mateo is Nasim’s inverted double. Mateo’s personality has many similarities to Nasim as a child. Nasim has second thoughts about his mission, but unluckily for those involved, The Cloud suspected this might happen and has sent others to complete the mission, should Nasim fail. Iris is killed and Nasim suddenly finds himself the protector of this young boy. As the two flee from the hashīshīn and the supernatural monsters conjured by The Cloud, they uncover a massive conspiracy as to the Order’s true purpose and begin to bond along the way. Mateo, still young and traumatized, begins to mistake Nasim as his father, forcing Nasim to confront his Shadow, and discover the answers as to why he is incapable of expressing intimacy and love to others.

Fylgja & The Soul of Bones: Nasim’s fylgja is a representation of the truth that intimacy is a strength and not a weakness. It is only through opening ourselves up to love and to being loved by others, that we can overcome trauma and create systemic change in the world around us. His fylgja calls out to him through the exchanges he has with Mateo and others, as well as dreams he periodically has in which he is haunted by the spectre of his own lost childhood. The Soul of Bones that encourages player engagement with the narrative moral his fylgja represents, is found in the trust mechanic of the game. Throughout the game, players must cultivate their relationship with Mateo via on-screen prompts (these can be as simple as placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder or responding kindly to something Mateo says or does, or alternatively, the player can choose to scold Mateo when he makes a mistake, etc.) If the player cultivates a strong relationship with Mateo, then the boy will help them in combat and in puzzle solving. If the player drives a wedge between Nasim and Mateo, then the boy might hide instead of helping in combat, running away at night when they’ve made camp, or even deliberately mislead the player in puzzle sections, etc.) To create further complexity to this mechanic, the player’s ability to respond positively to Mateo might be dependent on other more subtle choices made throughout the game relating to Nasim’s willingness to open up emotionally to others.

Footnotes

1. Lecouteux, Claude. Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages (Rochester, Inner Traditions Bear & Co, 1992)

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Þórðarson, Sturla. Landnámabók Sturlubók. Circa 1201-1301 CE

6. Lecouteux, Claude. Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages (Rochester, Inner Traditions Bear & Co, 1992)

7. Ginzburg, Carlo. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991.

8. Sturluson, Snorri. The Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

9. Lecouteux, Claude. Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages (Rochester, Inner Traditions Bear & Co, 1992)

10. Ibid.

11. Jung, Carl G. Psychology and Religion, 93. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960.

12. Thurmond, Dana B. "The Influence of Carl Jung’s Archetype of the Sahdow on Early 20th Century Literature." Master's thesis, Rollins College, 2012. https://scholarship.rollins.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=mls.

13. Ibid.

14. Lecouteux, Claude. Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages (Rochester, Inner Traditions Bear & Co, 1992)

15. Rank, Otto. "The Double in Anthropology." In The Double: A Psychoanalytic Study, translated by Harry Tucker, 50. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971.

16. God of War. Developed by Santa Monica Studio. 2018. Released Worldwide: Sony Interactive Entertainment, Video Game.

17. Tangherlini, Timothy. "It happened Not Too Far From Here…”: A Survey of Legend Theory and Characterization." Western Folklore 49, no. 4 (October 1990), 371-390.