The Perilous Plot

In the spring of two thousand and twenty six, I, Isidor Ottavio Baldassare Fosco, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, poured all the gold of my rich nature into this heroic task: to review a game in which I am the prime mover, but do not appear in my full splendor – rendered, by the pen of a grasping and jealous author, farcical, capering, an organ-grinder’s monkey gifted, admittedly, with my mesmeric gaze, but subordinated to the caprices of chance rather than elevated above it by virtue of supreme intellect. As one who originated the rôle of the sensation-novel villain, I recoil to see it performed today in so tawdry an imitation.

I note these personal reasons to deplore the present work, only to dismiss them. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments is for a man to judge with perfect impartiality even when his reputation is called to question. Immense privilege! I possess it – do you?

But to commence upon the matter. To create an interactive fiction drawn from the world of the sensation novel and its gothic-novel antecedent is only natural; and it is just as natural to align the player with the interests of the devilish antagonist, rather than the insipid protagonist. Lurking in a decaying manse, bent to the realization of a grand design, the villain starts at the intrusion of those who would foil my – that is, his – conspiracy:

"After years of meticulous manipulation, your plans are nearing completion. You are so close to your goal you can taste it. As you stare out the window of your only somewhat stolen manor you see a blot on the horizon that troubles you."

The author – surely a person of the lower classes – is not content to present a single elegantly-laid narrative, but has recourse to games of chance instead. The pair of heroes who burst onto the scene are chosen at random – perhaps a ghost, or a turncoat partner, or simply a nosy neighbor who has no business in interfering with matters as far beyond them as is Fosco from a gnat!

The throw of dice likewise governs the resolution of the repeated confrontations between these contending forces. The villain must choose where to set an ambuscade for his quarry, knowing that their strength waxes in some environs and wanes in others. And as a master of matters both chemical and metaphysical, I look with approval upon the influence of weather on the success of the villain’s endeavors: the black, baleful eye of the new moon will set some heroes’ sinews a-tremble, while endowing others with false courage, and it is much the same case with clouds, the lashing wind, &c. Still, is matching opportunity to action so mechanical a process as the game proposes? It is not. And does success turn on the mere fortuity of happenstance, rather than the perfection of premeditation? It does not – infuriating, insufferable insolence!

My own mental insight informs me that three inevitable questions will be asked here by persons of inquiring minds. They shall be stated—they shall be answered.

First question. How may a mere glance defat the heroes? The answer is, the villain is like myself a disciple of Mesmer, capable of reducing the most stalwart of meddlers to a senseless swoon with the precise application of their gaze (subject, I repeat, to the vagaries of the dice which so enamor the author). Should they faint ten times or more, their strength shall fail and, chastened, they shall slink back to the London drawing-rooms of their friends, in search of sympathy for their unmanly failures. One gloats at the prospect, though one also quails at the repetitiveness of besting such unworthy opponents so many times.

Second question. May the villain also complete his plot? Answer: perhaps, though even I – I! – have not managed it. The vulgarity of the present author extends to assessing the success of a design not according to its sublimity, its refusal to obey the limits inscribed at the borders of human imagination and human morality, but instead by a counter of Plot Points. These are increased by using an appropriate item against the heroes at an appropriate time, rather than relying on the gaze, but beyond the damnable abstraction, Fosco must raise an objection: why can poisoned lemonade be proffered profitably in a cloudy colonnade, but not a sunny lake? And having once sucked its sour venom, would any hero truly be dull-witted enough to sup again, and again, when given the chance? To exhaust the possibilities compassed by the author’s limited mind would exhaust me as well.

Third question. Is this as much fun as it sounds? I answer, to be Fosco is to feel, with Icarus, the tips of your wings brush against the firmament of heaven – but, besting the Greek, to rise once more, rather than to fall! The game gives the taste of such bliss, but only the meanest taste.

I enter into no sordid particulars, in discussing this part of the subject. My mind recoils from them. With a Roman austerity, I pass on in silence.

Well, perhaps you are owed one sordid particular:

"Ice hangs off the balcony, like the teeth of some impossible beast. The cold wind blows, and you are exposed, no longer protected by walls and warm tapestries. Snowflakes dust your shoulders, as bright as diamonds and three times as cold.

"You break icicles off the ledge and drop them off the roof, waiting to hear them shatter below. The only thing better would be if they actually hit someone.

"‘How fraile ice is. Just one tap and it shatters. How similar to human bones. You just need to know where to hit it.’ You snap an icicle and the heroes jump."

A captivating scene, truly. But the misspoken word, the recourse to mere brutishness, the sullying of one’s hands – these are the actions of a lackey, nothing else.

A word more, and the attention of the reader (concentrated breathlessly on myself) shall be released. Shall the Perilous Plot be indicted in the public dock? Can the verve of its conception survive against the accusation that it does not do justice to its theme? Can we set aside the ways it has insulted me, as the origin and archetype of its protagonist?

No. It cannot be permitted – the enormity cannot be forgiven. Youths! I invoke your sympathy. Maidens! I claim your tears.

I announced, on beginning it, that this narrative would be a remarkable document. It has entirely answered my expectations. At immense personal sacrifice, I followed the dictates of my own ingenuity, my own humanity, my own caution. Receive these fervid lines—they are worthy of the occasion, and worthy of

–FOSCO

(With apologies to Wilkie Collins)