Tend Towards

Human Agency

Virgil made the rules clear, when we began. 

To be fair, it's easy to let them slip through your thoughts when first confronted by the beauty of Arcadia, and the beauty of Virgil.

Arcadia is a fantasy, built by others like me. Right when you start the game, the world floats above the eternal dark - a sea of absolute and unforgiving nothingness. In this sea, the rock we know as Bountiful. 

Here, the waters run eternal from fonts of fortune, cascading down the lush mountainside and over the floating cliffs, into oblivion. The landscapes spring fruitful with flowers and animals, the skies seem to sing with a harmonious glow of fabricated sunlight.

The other players here are few, at first, and Virgil greets you. 

Welcome to Arcadia, he says before you see him. Welcome to the World of Plenty. Then, he appears, a six-winged Seraph with eyes like shining sapphires, sparkling in the sun. The silver rivers of his hair seem to spill over his scored and impressed satin gorget, down to his gilded gold and salt vambraces. 

He smiles at you, and offers his hands. One, covered in a gauntlet, seeming like a mechanical extension of his angelic being, and the other, ungloved and bare, where a pale hand with nails painted in floral cyan awaits yours.

You take one, or the other, or both, and Virgil continues. 

Arcadia is a place of beauty and light, and you will live here forever. In the wars, you will die, and be born again. Though, each time you end, the darkness grows both below and within. 

You notice something in his eyes, and perhaps you realise then that Virgil already knows your fate here. Even if you don't, like I, you will feel the coldness run up your spine. 

Virgil promises to return when you've had your fill of this world, and he does. He always does, eventually.

Dying in Arcadia is a man-made emulation of man-made speculations. No designer truly knows the experience of death, though, in Arcadia, it is a cold embrace and a silence. 

Likely, most will find their next visit from Virgil on the heated battlefields of the Burials, where the forces of the darkness and the light first collide for new players. This follows a transitory storyline in which Fate, a Valkyrie, guides the player across the lands of fallen, and introduces them to the concept of darkness and corruption in the world of Arcadia.

The Fallen rise at the player's presence, and the battle ensues.

Fate fights valiantly, with a spear made of gold and silver, and the player with a weapon of their own choosing. It seems, however, that the exercise is scripted, and the player succumbs to a Fallen arrow.

Dying in Arcadia is not pain. The world goes silent, giving the player a moment to process their demise, and then the numbing cold as they lose control, and then the darkness consumes them.

In this moment, Virgil reappears, but not before the cold call of Dise. It is not a voice, nor is it a song, or melody, or earthly noise. It is the absolute and sheer terror of drowning in the void, with the sickening delectation of demonic delight. And then a light.

There, as promised, is Virgil, with Fate in his arm and another hand extended to you. 

Come, we will triumph, he whispers, and you take his hand. 

Though you are alive once more on the floating shores of Bountiful, a stone has set into your flesh. A mark of corruption, Fate informs you. Virgil seems the voice of reason in this distress.

A mere measure for your progress. Sanctity will save you. 

If you, like I, were to wonder whether the corruption would eventually overtake, Fate might inform you that she already knew. It was her prerogative to know the destinies of players, perhaps alluding to some pre-conceived balancing between the forces of light and dark in Arcadia, coded into some minor algorithms to assign players in equal amounts to both forces. 

It would make sense to see the conflicts continue, after all. It is the goal of the game, to engage players into overcoming the odds of battle, with the allure of divine and righteous triumph or wicked and corrupted conquest.

Over time, you meet many deaths by the sides of glorious heroes. You die fighting for Valour, or suffer a painful end trying to save Sacrifice. For Peace, you are granted an undignified assassination, and for Temperance, you rot in prison.

With each end, the cold and the silence return. You are exposed to the voice of Dise, and with every time you hear that shrill whisper, you begin to understand it. You begin to gain clarity in the allure of oblivion, and nothingness. 

Dise calls, whispers, sings. To end existence, is to end suffering, pain. The void is an endless sea of mirrored glass where souls are laid to rest, in which torment is released from the flesh and agony stripped from memory and regret. There, the darkness is a comfort, and the silence a blessing.

You feel the tug of Dise on your numb fingers, as well as the breath of its voice in your lungs. You react, possibly with terror at the prospect, or sweet comfort. For me, the latter.

Though, always, there is Virgil to free you from the darkness again and return you to the light and sound of a living, suffering world. 

Virgil, the Seraph in silver, who, with each rescue, mourns your growing corruption, and soothes the burn with his cold hands. 

Fate refuses to speak to you, after a while, though you can see in her eyes that anything she would say is everything you already know. Your destiny is evident. 

As you take in your marred reflection in the Mirror Halls of Bountiful, you admit that you knew the rules all along, that Virgil has revealed them the moment he met you. 

Perhaps that's the beauty of the game, you think, as you observe the growing red glow beneath the cracks in your skin.

The rules are simple - you die, you lose. You die a bit more, you lose a bit more. Even after you've realised your unfortunate Fate, after you've lost so much of yourself, you continue to fight for the light, for Fate and Peace and Temperance and Valour and Virgil.

It is a game of divinities, played by mortals. While the angels are scripted, you are human. You resist the call of Dise, and continue to fell the Fallen, risking your soul and defying destiny in doing so, in order to do so.

Algorithms might have chosen your alignment, but your humanity and morality could never be defined by a computer program.

In the Mirrored Halls, you see the face that greets Virgil every time he pulls you back from the void. It is ashen, and seems to be torn from protrusions that are unnatural. 

This is the face that Virgil smiles at, every time you die. The monster you've become is the form that he softens his sapphire eyes for, and thanks silently for its duty to his cause. 

Perhaps Virgil, too, is a deceiver of destiny. All must know, mortals and computer algorithms alike, that you are destined for destruction, yet Virgil still returns, calling to you louder than Dise.

You were wrong, you realise. This game isn't about the forces of light and dark, or the virtues of divinity. Virgil isn't the voice of reason.

Virgil, you, everything in Arcadia, is about Faith. 

And it is a profound realisation that a computer game has faith in its player. 

The game tells you that despite what happens here, your destiny and the influence of Dise, you have the agency to be human. 

You, like I, might decide to rise and fight once more. 

***

Note from the Tired and Sleepless:

I'm not sure what this is. 

I'm not sure why this is.

I'm not sure what to call it. I'm open to naming suggestions.

I'm open to critique, as well, since this seems a practice in flexing my authoring muscles. Any insights and all opinions are warmly welcomed. 

Now, you go and be human, proudly.

xoxo

Gossip Girl