the plot

the game was always going to be heavy on the narrative side, i mean to create a lusory (sp?) attitude in a sorcery fantasy world you need the player to engage and be immersed with the protagonist.

i spent a while developing the plot, and it isn't quite done yet, and a final draft will have to be part of my submission. or perhaps i could work it into some of the artwork or make some storyboards for it?

anyway here is a plot synopsis for Thurmaturology (working title, but its not a bad one!)

A boy named Jackuan Grey lives outside of the sleepy middle american town (implied that it might be somewhere in luisiana,) in a swamp with his Gandma Issabelle Grey. his mother and father are dead, and his grandma works him hard. he finds himself in love wtih a young woman from the neerby town of Janville, her name is Michelle De'veoulle. (note: Jackuan is unaware of her last name, this is a sign of how out of touch he is with the village and how out of touch with her he is.) Michelle however is spoken for, and is dateing a local boy, Jamie Ian Belle, who appears at first glance to be a thug, he peddles drugs regularly, has a violent temperment and has a gang of youths as goons.

needless to say Jackuan thinks that he is better than Jamie, and sets out to impress her. it hardly goes well, as soon as Jamie sees that Jackuan is making a move on his girl a fight breaks out. Its a fight that Jackuan looses, and returns home to find his grandmother less than sympathetic. She tells him that he should leave Michelle alone, and implys that she has evedence that they are in love, after all how could she have known about Jamie, Jackuan told her nothing about him.

Jackuan thinking that his grandmother knows more than she is letting on, attempts to find her diary, instead finding the Thurmanonicon. a powerfull grimore writen by his grandmother. thinking it to be a joke, but hoping this knoweledge is real, he casts a spell to see his love Michelle. but is interupted by his granmother, who scorns him. later on that night she decides that Jackuan should be taught magic, because she fears that he will sneak into her room and steal the book and use it to great ill without her guideance.

and so jackuan learns divination, a seris of spells that deal with dicerning secets, and seeing the unseen. and discovers that there are a long string of grave injustices within the town of Janville, and should he choose he can use his powers to try and help rectify them. however the story is driven forward by his learning of the next school from his grandmother, illusion.

once illusion has been learnt, Jackuan will begin to discover three other schools of magic, but his grandmother will refuse to teach him, for these are most unnatural of magics. conjugation, evocation, and necromancy. eatch school draws its powers from a lesser devil-deity, and tho the first schools he learns may have limeted power and scope for their uses, the last three schools have devistateing concequences, on those around him and on his own health.

whenever the player makes Jackuan Grey use a spell from the schools of Necromancy, Evocation or Conjugation. he looses more of his soul to the devils, changeing and twisting his appearence, and harming those around him. further more when these spells go wrong they tend to have utterly devistateing concequences. a Necromancy spell gone awry might render a large portion of the town zombie infested and the zombies not under your controll.

if the player keeps Jackuan from using these devistateing powers and only using the first two "natural" magic schools then the ending isnt a nasty one. he discovers that Michelle and Jamie are realy meant for eatch other, and that it would be best if he forgot about his silly crush on her, and full of heartache he leaves town.

if Jamie peverts his form using dark magic he finds its influence harder and harder to resist, haveing lapses in controll over the dark forces, hearing voices in his head. and turning the town into a hell on earth, killing Jamie and wounding Michelle who realises what kind of monster you have become, and kills herself in dispair for the loss of her love Jamie. distraught and under the three devil's influences Jackuan kills his grandmother for ever letting him learn magic before breaking down and crying in the middle of a now desolate ghost town of Janville. and that is where the credits roll.