devblog // Garrison

There is something undeniably magical about nature.

I’m fortunate in that I’ve always been close to it, so much so that when I’m without it – for example not being able to glance out a window and see something green or, at the very least, growing – I feel uneasy.

Building a world from the ground up means considering everything – not just scary monsters and fantastical landmarks. It’s both a challenge and a privilege because I’m having to decide not only how a society has evolved but also what it is that they value.

As a storyteller, you can’t help drawing parallels between the world you’re inventing and the world we’re in at the present moment. I’ve noticed that, as I’ve gone deeper into the process, I’m commenting on a lot of different things – not just how the world is but also how I think it could, and sometimes should, be.

Boiling this down into an underpinning theme, I’m approaching nature (in all its forms) as something people are reliant on and yet also take for granted. Sounds familiar, eh?

How nature and wormholes inspired Aether

It’s at this point I can finally start talking about Aether – which is another word for magic that I’ve always preferred.

Although a lot of items exist that allow people to harness Aether, very few understand what it is and where it comes from.

One thing that was important to me is making this accessible. You don’t need some innate affinity with Aether in order to use it – it’s a skill that can be learned by anyone.

Some very smart people long ago figured out that, by combining certain runes and matching them with intent (more on that later), it’s possible to do some very impressive and equally dangerous things.

First off, let’s take a look at the different runes and then we can dig deeper into what they represent:

Let me preface this next section by saying I came up with these runes when I was about 15 or 16 so I don’t remember every specific detail. That being said, I was desperate for the runes to look natural. Obviously.

I do remember spending a lot of time doodling on a notepad, experimenting with shapes before settling on one that looked like a stick-figure tree. I was really into Stargate: SG1 at the time so I set to work inventing a further 9 runes.

It was tricky because I wanted real tree behaviours to inform at least some of the designs – with sacrifice, for example, trees actually do shed branches in order to protect themselves so, visually and functionally, it fits the brief!

Aether runes in more detail

Here’s a quick list of each rune, what they’re supposed to look like and which ‘element’ they represent:

This is about where I picked things up again a few years ago. I had the building blocks for our magic system but hadn’t really put much time into the actual nuts and bolts of it all.

After a lot of trial and error, I ended up settling on the idea of intent.

Brief overview of Aethereal intent

You’ll have to forgive me as I’m intentionally skipping over quite a few steps in how the magic system got to this point. I’d require a deep detour into the history of this world and ultimately doesn’t change the end result, so – here we go!

Items within the game can be found with a series runes carved into them. To give a visual example, here’s a simple sword and a closer look at the hilt:

As you can see, it’s got some runes. Cool. What do they do?

This is where intent enters the equation. When those runes were being merged with the hilt, the person carving them in had a specific intent in mind. 

Let’s say their intent for this particular sword was to deal more damage against heavily-armoured opponents. In order for someone to activate that intent, they have to a) know what the intent was and b) channel that intent (which is essentially thinking about it) as they are using the sword.

Most people, then, would just pick up that sword and it’d simply be a sword. If someone figured out the intent, or learned of it by other means, they could theoretically share that knowledge with others. Provided they knew how to channel intent, anyone could use this sword and receive the armour-piercing bonus.

The steps I’ve left out of this process, such as knowing which runes to use and the art of merging intent with items, are known by very few people. That’s a narrative thread which is explored in Garrison so I’m not going to start unpacking it here!

Community Q & A

It seemed only right to hand this month’s question over to the man who inspired my love for the natural world; my father. Or Pops as he is to me.

We had a good old chat about this game over Christmas and, as I was telling him about all the rare flora and fauna I’d been cooking up, he asked me this:

What are you going to do about the endangered species we already have?

This wasn’t meant literally, of course – he was simply asking if I was going to put real-world animals and plants into the game (which I am). I did take it literally, though, which connected a few dots in my mind that’ve lay dormant for a few years.

Once upon a time, a younger version of me set out on a mission to buy a large piece of land so that I could turn it into a rewilding nature reserve. My plan was to sell jars of jam and honey to fund it. 

I got quite far into said plan before realising I’d have to sell about 50 quadrillion jars to fund a project of that scale. I put that dream to bed, life goes on, etc.

All of a sudden, creeping out from the rusty depths of my consciousness, comes a lingering “what if?”. 

What if we allocated a large portion of our profits into doing something positive for the planet? 

We’d have to build a successful studio first, making sure all of the people who worked here were properly looked after… but it’s definitely possible. 

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Cheers, Andrew