King's Field Episode IV: A New Hope/bible

Disclaimers

READ FIRST

This document looks a lot like King's Field, but do not be deceived. It is an open source character bible for a Sword of Moonlight: King's Field Making Tool project called King's Field Episode IV: A New Hope.

No definitive King's Field resource based on the original Japanese games exists in English. Even armed with the complete texts of the games, there is no easy way to translate them, and no one qualified to do so has volunteered their services for the job. Even so the aim here is not to compile such a resource, but instead to cobble together a consensus take on the universe for the purpose of making new games that may or may not agree with the original trilogy of games.

Cosmology

Each of the four gods below correspond to a classical element that is the basis for magic in King's Field: earth, wind, water, and fire.

Silval 「シルヴァル」

Silval is what remains of the original godhead, or is now. God of the spirit, or soul, sexless and manifestation of the primordial dragons of fire, never seen — always feared.

Elfos & Elwin 「エルフォス・エルウィン」

Elfos is the twin goddess of the abyss, feminine and manifestation of the dragons of the water. Elwin here twin is the god of the currents, masculine and manifestation of the dragons of the winds.

Valad 「ヴォラド」

Valad is the child god of life and form, intersex and manifestation of the dragons of the earth. Magicians of the new world would come to know them, or more often him, by the name Abraxas.

Dragon Tree 「竜王草」

The Dragon Tree is the earthly body of Valad. More kudzu than tree its roots run deep underground and sprout up everywhere. When Valad divided themself into the twin dragons Seath and Guyra the Dragon Tree once the progenitor of all vegetation became barren, and from henceforth did produce only vegetation of a monstrous kind. Seath and Guyra knew all too well the seat of this madness; that Valad had split themself-or-so-they-thought verily cross the corpus callosum of the Dragon Tree's vast brain-like network.

Races

Most peoples and creatures of the world are of a mixed heritage even if they know better, but originally there were distinct races.

• A verbal note on Dragons and Demons: Magic draws its power from unseen Dragons. Their lesser known counterparts are Demons—True Demons, never minding the monstrous mechanisations of Guyra—the demonic engines of logic antithetical to all that is magic. There are men born half-dragon possessing inborn familiarity of the elementary magics of Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth, owing to their dragon blood. And there are men born half-demon, commanding the "anti-magic" of Light flowing through their demon blood; and sometimes still there are men born with a foot in both worlds of Dragons and Demons.

Dragon

Dragons are the oldest of races. Their existence itself is ephemeral as they existed prior to existence itself. They come in four varieties attributable to the four magical elements each commanded by the gods Silval, Elfos, Elwin, and Valad.

• Fire dragons are the oldest and most feared dragon, hence their relative popularity among storytelling school children. But were the world ever to witness a fire dragon its doom would almost assuredly be sealed. Some of mankind's elite fire magi have claimed communion with these beasts, but if their claims are to believed, then their audience with the dragons took place in another world between the spaces of worlds.

• Water dragons make their homes in the deep oceans. They are called leviathans, or sometimes mistakenly sea monsters. It is thought that none have dwelt in the world since Elfos deserted it eons ago. These dragons are flightless solitary creatures.

• Wind dragons are known as drakes. Sometimes mistaken as wyverns. They are smaller and fly through the skies, making their homes on mountain tops. Sometimes in flocks. It is thought that these too left the world with Elwin when he with Elfos deserted the world.

• Earth dragons are properly known as serpents. These sly dragons will often display majestic wings and ape other dragons. But do not be fooled by their trickery. They are flightless and independent, but known to make dubious alliances.

Elfkind

Elves are a primordial hominid race resembling taller paler and leaner men and women brought into being by Elfos and Elwin for the sole purpose of acting as perfectly benevolent stewards of the world ecosystem, flora and fauna.

Giants & Dwarves

Valad, the smallest of the gods, created giants to construct large earthworks, so that the world would not be flat from end to end. Giants came in all sizes but man size and hibernate underground to this day, occasionally rising from their slumber to supper and assist heroes along their way. Larger giants hibernate for longer periods of time. Many believe that earthquakes indicate a giant sleeps in the vicinity.

Giants are the most peaceful of the races, but their clumsy scale often lends itself to unfortunate accidents. Giants believe that their sleep is best for everyone and love to dream more than anything in the world.

• When Elfos and Elwin abandoned the world, in his lonesomeness Valad created the dwarf race. Elves would have nothing to do with him, so Valad in his questionable wisdom created dwarves to be the opposite of the elves. Boisterous and competitive but not warlike.

Do not be fooled by the name of Valad's late race. They are dwarfish, but only if you were to ask a giant. In short, Valad was unhappy with his giants. For they provided him little entertainment nor company during his stint as the lone god of the world. Even the smallest of their kind would nap for centuries. This simply would not do.

Mankind

Men are reckoned by many to be no more than an offshoot of one of the many more dominant mixed races. But their features and behavior is curious indeed. And their wars seemingly endless. In the earlier times children would be born with a curious affinity to Fire magic. Within educated circles it is generally agreed that the original men must surely have been the immaculate work of Silval.

Although those who think so do try not to dwell upon the implications of such an apocalyptic god as Silval having his hand in any race. There have been many tries to rid the races of mankind for the good of the world. Alas the gambling men swear: better odds the sun don't rise.

Monsters & Demons

Monsters are an unfortunate side effect of Valad's attempt to remedy the mankind situation. In desperation Valad separated himself into the Earth dragons Seath and Guyra so that he would no longer be so lonely and so that the races would be able to rally around the dragons.

Because the magical half of Valad went to Seath and the logical half to Guyra, the disharmony that remained bent and twisted the fertile body of Valad. Where vegetation once had its origins in the Dragon Tree instead of a bed of monstrosities took its place.

Whether or not monsters deserve the respect of the other races is very seldom disputed. To call it racism would be incorrect. But monsters do possess personalities of their own, and some among the religious orders would even argue souls.

• Demons are the product of Guyra's experimentation with monsters in order to create hybrids with properties of anti-magic sometimes called light, or law, considered holy by the men of more recent eras.

Guyra understood well his weakness to magic, and so created an army of his demons to serve as his protectors. The most successful experiments resulted in demons without weakness that would remain forever loyal to Guyra.

Magic

Magic is believed to draw its power from the existence of Dragons. Its opposite is logic. But no man comprehends such things. When magic meets logic the two are annihilated in an exquisite show of light and power that is said to mark the death of dragons. A mere guess on the half of men. Or a hypothesis, as modern men of science will say. Men of the cloth have their own name for this phenomenon: Holy, most treasured, but little do they understand that in truth; it is the safety of logic (from magic) that brings them peace of mind, their true object of reverence.

Light & Shadow

Light (some places called Holy) is relatively new form of magic known to men.

It owes its existence in the world to the Earth Dragon Guyra; he himself being a creature of pure logic, aimed to temper magic with his logic at great cost to his own kind. Earth dragons are known to be solitary and untrusting in nature. But even among earth dragons Guyra is singularly despised for his unapologetic treachery.

Light magic is incompatible with the elementary magics; Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth. It floods the dark with light just as well as is it hews shadows from blinding light. If carefully focused light is able to wreak destruction unrivaled even by the elementary magic of fire.

The most feared magi of light do not shudder to command slumbering demons from the depths of The Void.

The Void

When magic is annihilated completely by logic, what remains is only void. Within this void what logic survives (if any) will continue to exist. Although outwardly void appears to be the stuff of nothingness. Needless to say, for anything of magic the void is a hostile place. Even dragons must be commanded to venture near.

Prominent Swords

Frostbite & Firebrand

These swords are each halves of the Dragon Sword Excalibur forged of finest steel and bequeathed by the gods to the Black Dragon Arthur, king of the Four Dragon Kings.

When Elfos and Elwin fled the world in the shadow of ruinous infighting among the kingdoms, they separated Excalibur into Frostbite and Firebrand, leaving Frostbite in two pieces with the secluded pure blooded elves of Melanat to be let loose no sooner than the worlds faintest hour.

Valad misplaced the remaining half. He is sure that he left it somewhere he knows not. Excalibur itself was a double edged blade. As two halves each of the blades are single edged sabres nearly oriental in design.

Sites of Elegria 「エレギリア」

Elegria is a continent of Valecia. Its primary arrangement is traditionally expressed in the form of a simple mnemonic device long taught to Elegrian children on the first days of school:

Once upon a time there was a frozen kingdom up north, so icy o they were they cared only for warm hearths[...]and after there came along a longing kingdom of the west, whose lust for life did all but wait for winter's end[...]and aft those there arose a most dour kingdom in the east, oh-so or so it goes they'd only dance to summer rains[...]and last of these there did appear a restless kingdom to the south, so busy-busy they were they only dreamt of night harvest. —of unknown origin, "Four Corners of Elegria"

Meta (SPOILERS)

The universe of King's Field and its epilogue X is called Xanadu. It is named for the interplanetary corpus used to construct it, which was in turn named in honor of Ted Nelson's project Xanadu, which was itself named for Samuel Coleridge's unfinished poem Kubla Khan. It exists within the "mind" of a supercomputer which exists within a fictional universe not unlike our own.

Xanadu is not a living world as such, it is a work of pure artifice, which has been created and recreated N^X many times with each iteration and version feeding back upon themself. It exists for one reason, and one reason alone, as a stomping ground for the adventurous and wounded at heart. In a word, it's therapeutic.

The men who created and still create the corpus and supercomputers take turns inhabiting Xanadu by use of a technology that appears to be Virtual Reality, but is in fact far closer to dreaming in kind. Once inside they will live out an adventure perfectly adapted to their own psyche and psychological development.

It is not impossible for two or, in very rare occasions, more to take this journey together, however that requires a strict battery of tests determining the compatibility of everyone involved. This is all to ensure that no one's mind is shattered in the process.

The True Cross & Vampires

The supernoumenal origins of the world famous Moonlight Sword and Dark Slayer are found in the most popular literature of their day, as are the origins of the modern day vampire. The original supercomputer creator of Xanadu determined that the literary legends of Christianity, and its most popular monsters, Vampires, would serve as the blueprint for its creation. For it, it was easy to see that these two themes loomed larger than all others, and were so intimately linked as to be inseparable.

The first division of Xanadu is said to separate the unknowable noumenal from the phenomenal world. With each turn of the great wheel once more the great dragon is booted out of heaven by the archangel Michael. This development is known among the noumenal as the great reboot: one third of the hosts of heaven hearts made heavy by their hunger for violence are cast out or sent right back from whence they came, once again or perhaps for the first time separated from the noumenal.

From the ashes of this great calamity arises reality as we know it, and with it, there beside the rotting carcass of our world, are the two, the two more! The Holy spear and grail that gorged on that fitful dragon to the very end, better known as the Moonlight Sword and Dark Slayer: the sacred legacy of Jesus Christ and all powerful weaponry of Saint Michael the dragon slayer, and True cross.

• On the day magic ended, the two swords met in mortal combat. The vision of the power unleashed became forever etched upon the primordial memory of those present. The immortals there that day are with us still, and just as mankind instinctively shudders at the thought of the sleeping dragons without knowing why, the immortal vampires are reduced to shambles by the very subject of crosses.

To make matters worse for the vampires who brought magic with them into the new world, the gods all cursed them. Valad bound them to the earth, and in his childlike way humiliated them with garlic. Elfos hunts them down with running water and lays trap for them wherever water pools, and yet even while permitting them in her loving way to move freely by the purified light of the moon. In response to this, Elwin in his jealousy made the light of day not just oppressive, but deadly to the vampires and their kin. And last but not least, him who the other gods did not believe nor want to believe to be present that day, Silval, extracted the greatest concession of them all, he the oldest and cruelest of the gods, and most given to the pure violence of the great dragon, but spread thin after aeons of giving of himself, cursed them, cursed them all to partake in perpetual bloodletting so long as they trespass upon his domain.

And while not a curse per se, the matter of the old world carried into the new forever betrays their kind. For it casts no shadow, and can never know its own reflection.