What's fate without death?
Maidens roam the aisles, carrying heavy pots of liquor on their shoulders. And soon the bell will ring: new guests to fetch.
Warnings: This piece contains distressing elements, including depictions or mentions of: blood, body parts, burning, conflict, death, decapitation, fighting, idolatry, illnesses, isolation, liquor, murder, nudity, otherness, stabbing, scars, violence, war, weapons.
Svipul is a secret project released with the Sacred Veins collective for their Righteous jam. You play as Valkyrie summoned to fetch worthy fallen warriors while a battle is ongoing. Always dancing with death, your fate brings you to a crossroad.
This is probably my darkest writing to date, depicting pretty violent scenes, both psychological and physical. I wanted to explore someone's struggles with the concept of righteousness, particularly not meeting its criteria and being shunned for this. Quite a bit of my own frustrations with ideals and inadequacy, as well as recent loss and grief, seeped into the writing.
The setting was inspired specifically by what I'd been watching at the time: Twilight of the Gods (Snyder, Oliva, Carrasco, 2024). The depictions of the Valkyries in the show made such an impression on me, that the pieces fell in to place, and I knew exactly what angle I was going to take. Revered by all, in all their glory and beauty... what if one was its opposite? Still bound by duty, unable to escape its fate.
Rather than using my beloved SugarCube format, I rolled back to a very early format, all the way from Twine 1: the popular SugarCane. In essence, SugarCube is the continuation of SugarCane, so it made getting used to it quite easy. Still it was interesting to play with SugarCane and see what it could do and how far it could be customised, in a short amount of time.
Even if pretty dark, I think it's one of my favourite pieces I've made in 2024.