Lore - AlexisBliesener/Bewitched GitHub Wiki
Overview
The best way to hopefully introduce our narrative would be through scrolls and other interactable objects scattered throughout the map for the player to read. These will hold different bits and pieces of a narrative and information about the area they are currently in.
The Prison - The prison is maintained by the surface kingdom of Jatte, and is used to house any criminals or deemed “heretics” against the state. The prison complex itself is maintained by a group known as the Violet, supposedly under command of the crown, however they act of their own interests within the prison and its inmates, seeking to use the prisoners to mine for crystals that would be used for live experimentation on other prisoners.
The prison itself is housed underground, under layers of old earth that once housed ancient buildings and towns. For the structure of the prison, it was an old ruin refurbished to hold the kingdom’s imprisoned, the ruin being an old castle of an age long past, now long crumbling and rotting, discarded. The castle contains old remnants of royal life, statues of long gone figures, old paintings blackened with age, furniture long rotted and broken. The Violet do little to actually maintain the prisoners held within the crumbling halls, they are thrown into the complex and held there by guards at various posts, but they are not given any sort of accommodation, and are only taken if they are needed for the mining operations or experimentation.
The Mines and the Caverns - The Violet maintain a large network of tunnels dug by the various prisoners in their possession, the operations used to mine for various metals and particularly a certain type of purple crystal found around these ruins. The crystals have certain potent properties of magical augmentation and almost can act as a connected network, almost a hivemind, when given the correct flow of power from a powerful individual. The Violet seek to use these crystals to take people under their thrall so that absolute subjugation can occur, doing so by imbedding crystals into individuals, as is seen with some ogres they have done experiments on.
The mineshafts are tunnels and chambers dug by prisoners by order of the Violet, carving deep into the earth to find things the Violet deems necessary for their operations. Through this strip mining, old caverns have been found, containing ruins of an archaic civilization. This civilization sought guidance from the roots and trees, seeking the comfort of nature, and had great shrines and temples. Eventually, however, this ancient civilization deemed that they needed to become one with the roots to achieve salvation, and in doing so went mad, having roots and vine sprout out of their bodies, and making the civilization fall, only remaining as ruins, and still living dryads trying to turn others to the glory of their roots.
Eleth and the Coven - Eleth (the player witch) was once a part of a small coven that hid itself in the woods. The members of the coven practiced soul magic, for the purpose of communing with spirits and seeking guidance from the dead. The existence of the coven was eventually found out by the Kingdom of Jatte, and deeming their practice of soul magic as heretical, they were hunted down and captured, to be taken by the Violet to be thrown into their prison complex. The coven languished under the oppressive environment so deep underground, and nearly the entire collective was wiped out from their starvation and exhaustion, death from other prisoners, or experimentation. The only one who remained alive was Eleth, who hearing the pleas of her last remaining coven members to escape, vowed to break out and tear this complex to the ground even if she needed to damn herself doing so. At the edge of sanity and seeking vengeance, Eleth chose to utilize the forbidden practices of soul that her coven had refused to use, that of soul possession and manipulation.