GRAVEFIRE: The Opening Scene

This is a working draft of how GRAVEFIRE opens. It follows Crow, the Necromancer, from the moment he wakes in the forest to the moment he steps through the gates of the Carnival. The opening doubles as the tutorial, so most of the game's core mechanics are introduced here through story rather than menus.

A note on the truth: much of what the player is told in this sequence is misdirection, or outright false. The real story unfolds over the course of the game, and so does the real identity of the spirit guiding Crow. For now, everything spoken is there to set the tone.

Crow wakes in the forest that leads to the Carnival. The opening cinematic gives a bit of his origins and backstory, as established in the main design doc.

When he opens his eyes, he can hear the voices of the dead echoing in his ears and see lost souls drifting across the landscape as blue flames. The noise is overwhelming at first, until one spirit makes direct contact with him.

The spirit calls itself the Messenger, a presently nameless ghost, one of many wandering Ekothis. It explains a little about the grave fire and what has happened to the world. (Again: this is not the true story.) The talking points it raises are:

• Crow is different from the other undead the grave fire created. He kept remnants of his identity and memories instead of becoming a mindless corpse, so he has agency of his own.
• The spirit is likewise still conscious, with its own memories and personality, but it has no physical form. It is reliant on Crow, the only person who can see and hear it.
• The grave fire overwhelmed the world, tearing almost all life from its physical body. The cycle of life and death is broken, leaving the souls of the dead stranded in the mortal realm, lost and invisible to everyone but Crow.
• The Messenger offers to guide Crow through this mutilated world. In return, it asks him to run a few errands and retrieve a few things it can no longer reach itself.
• It clearly knows a great deal about what happened, but never explains how or where it learned any of it.

The spirit offers to guide Crow through the forest, promising more answers once he reaches the Carnival and sees its current state. This stretch serves as the tutorial for basic movement and combat.

Soon after, the pair meet their first monster: a lifeless Husk reanimated by the grave fire. The spirit explains why these creatures exist (which may or may not be the truth), and the fight teaches core combat. A few more practice battles follow as Crow moves through the woods.

Crow reaches the outer gates of the Carnival, guarded by the first true challenge in the game: a Gatekeeper too strong to fight alone. The spirit suggests turning back into the forest to find another route, and uses the moment to introduce the reanimation and recruitment mechanic: Crow can take control of weakened enemies as temporary party members.

The flavor behind it is that Crow acts as a beacon for the countless lost souls, commanding them as he explores and fights. His power is tied directly to the grave fire and his own resurrection. He is somehow immune to the fire's controlling effects and can instead turn the remnants of its power in his body toward the souls of the dead.

The way Crow uses necromancy is framed almost as a healing power. Rather than a dark force that forcibly enslaves the dead, he leads them to their eternal rest. (This is something that can be twisted later. Perhaps he has only been consuming them and adding to his own power without realizing it, manipulated by a spirit that wants to use him as a weapon for her own goals.)

The player is given a clear objective: reanimate two minions, then attempt the Gatekeeper again. Once the fight is won, Crow enters the Carnival, a once-familiar and joyful place, and sees how twisted and corrupted the world has become.

The spirit suggests exploring the Carnival for clues about its inhabitants and the nature of the grave fire. One idea is that the Eye of the Raven waits inside: a scrying tool from Crow's days as a fortune-teller, the very instrument he once used to read the futures of others. Now, like Crow himself, its power works differently.

When Crow enters his old den, the tool refuses to work. It is the spirit that guides him on how to make it function again, and what he does not know is that the spirit is cursing the tool to push her own agenda.

There may be a connection hiding in the names. "Crow," "the Eye of the Raven," and a Messenger that is half bird. It might even explain how Crow got his name, and hint at an old connection between Crow and Ziena from before he gave everything up to wander as a fortune-teller.

In its first iteration, the forest is a dungeon of three to four randomly generated floors before Crow reaches the gates of the Carnival. Some of the things that live in it:

• Roaming spirits. These are not monsters, just NPCs: the dead who never had a chance to pass on. Sometimes they mumble a few words as they drift by.
• Felling trees. A core traversal mechanic introduced here.
• The void islands puzzle. On the final floor, the forest floor has broken apart into islands. What lies between them is not water but void, a darkness that becomes a recurring theme and mechanic throughout the game. The goal is to leave the forest without falling in. There are trees Crow can chop down and push to bridge the gaps. Some are clearly identifiable as choppable; the real decision is which direction to push them. Push the wrong way and you can strand yourself, forcing a restart of the maze.

At the gates stands the ticket man: dressed in a black suit and bow tie, but with no face, something like a Slender Man. This is Lord Dragos.

He needs your ticket. You do not have one, but he is happy to sell you one. Money and gold mean nothing anymore, so he offers a different trade: an entry ticket for your scythe. Crow is not willing to make that trade.

Dragos is in no mood for negotiation, so he attacks. The fight is unwinnable at this stage. The goal is to dodge him, survive, and escape to find another way into the Carnival. Crow will face him again, with a real chance to win, down in the chasm. For now, he runs.

What was once a place of fun is now a sight of horror.

• Merry-Go-Rounds of Death. A handful of carousels float in the void. The player jumps from one platform to the next, crossing from ride to ride while avoiding the pits of nothingness below. Calling that pit "hell" would be an understatement. It is beyond death: an eternity of torment repeating forever.
• The food stalls. Food means little in the world of GRAVEFIRE, but the old stalls still stand, and they are a sight to behold (or something that makes your eyes bleed, if you still have eyes). Food items can be used to lure monsters, with varying effectiveness, or as ingredients in potions and bombs, tying into Morana's alchemy.
  • Eye candy. A live human eye on a stick. It works like a lure, distracting monsters so Crow can strike from behind. Monsters do not need to eat, but some crave certain things, the way Ryuk craves apples.
  • Elbow pasta. Not macaroni. Real elbows, served in a soup of warm blood. A regional delicacy.
  • Lizard tail noodles. Exactly what they sound like.
  • Burning ice cream. The irony only lands once you see it. The stall that once sold ice cream cones now sells cones of fire, a throwable weapon for dealing damage to monsters at a distance.

Starting in the forest does a lot of quiet work. It teaches movement, combat, reanimation, and the void mechanic without ever pausing to call them tutorials. It establishes the Messenger as Crow's guide and, eventually, as someone the player should not entirely trust. And it ends by walking the player out of a familiar, joyful place and into its rotted reflection.

By the time Crow is fleeing the faceless ticket man and stepping past the Merry-Go-Rounds of Death, the player already understands the rules of this world. What they do not understand yet is the truth, and that is exactly the point.