The Book of Law

This story begets a long and windy explanation of a video game you may only know because of its memes, so get a drink or a snack while you read.

Runescape is one of those games that you grind your face against because it's fun to see number go big. There is no real fun in occasionally clicking on a pile of rocks every few seconds to creep your mining skill from 1311 xp all the way towards 12 million for 15 xp a pop, but when you're a kid and your parents aren't willing to shell out 15 bucks a month for WoW or you're still using dial-up in 2005 (it was actually both, in my case), you went to Runescape.

Now, Runescape had lore, but very little of it and there was more tongue in cheek humor (because it's a British game) than actual storytelling, but there was still some effort put in by the programmers who had to double up as game designers.

Runescape started in 2001. It's a pre-9/11 game going to this day. Eventually, Runescape evolved with the times and added in a loooooooooot more content complete with a new engine. This is what they call RS3 and they finally got some designers and writers in to do the creative jobs. Come the new advances and new personnel, they started fleshing out the old world including their pantheon of gods.

This here's Armadyl.

https://runescape.wiki/images/The_Bird_and_the_Beast_-_Armadyl_God_concept_art.jpg?73ca8 

 

Between a good god who's not really that good, bad god who's not really that bad, a cabbage god and the gorilla god of alcoholism (remember, this is British humor), Armadyl is the most interesting thing out of the Runescape pantheon because he's charmingly naive. Imagine that kid on the playground who's kinda poor, but all the kids like him because he tries to be friendly with everyone. That's Armadyl.

Unfortunately, he's trapped in a game that rolls out content at a dead snail's pace and Jagex doesn't understand the value of expanded universe content. His wiki page is tragically sparse and they mostly drag big birb there out during Pride Month so they can pretend to care about their product. Disgusting.

I don't really care very much about RS3; that time has passed me by, but I saw the potential in Armadyl and decided to write him a novella exploring his background, found here.

I deliberately wrote no actual conflict. The spiciest thing that happens is a lot of huffing and puffing. Rather, I went full talkie on the story, modeled the prose to best match the dialogue provided in the game as well as the limited narration given during cutscenes.

 I took the theme of naivete that was carved out for him by Jagex and ran with it. Peaceniks are usually uninspiring, non-respectable characters. To break that, I expanded on and developed tragedies in his life that tempered, but did not break the good will and well-wishing that the character is supposed to have. I like the idea that a lifetime of difficulty and hardship gives much more weight to someone being traditionally "good" and even if their principals are not practical, the character can still be likable if they are at least sympathetic.

All in all, I was satisfied with the outcome, but there was a lot more to work with and no real opportunity to do so. I don't think anyone at Jagex even read my original message. They are, unfortunately, one of those companies that only responds to popular reddit posts.

Also, I switched the language parser to English (U.K.) on Libre and spelled sooooo many words wrong as a result. Yes, color really needs to have a u in it. #BritishEnglishIsBadFrench

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