Pharos Fidelis

My wife had never been part of an Internet community before last year, when she got into the Bridgerton fandom in a big way: like, she reads the fan-fiction, sure, but also had some of her takes go semi-viral on social media, gotten banned from a subreddit due to inter-board feuding, and even co-hosts a podcast. It’s been an eye-opening experience in a variety of ways – IF drama has nothing on what they get into over there, let me tell you – but has also given me a much finer-grained view of the standard tropes of romance fiction than I had heretofore possessed. Beyond the intrinsic interest, it’s also expanded my critical vocabulary, which was helpful as I turned over my reactions to Pharos Fidelis: it’s a game that I really enjoyed, but whose central relationship I didn’t find as engaging as its other elements. And I now I think I know that that’s mostly just due to a difference of tastes than anything lacking in the game: I’m just more of a Friends to Lovers guy than a Forbidden Love one, and Wound-Tending strikes me as nice but not especially hot. À chacun son goût, no big deal, especially when the game offers so much to dig into (so much, in fact, that I feel greedy for wanting even more in some places).

The game’s setup combines pieces of a bunch of different premises, but manages to feel completely seamless and its own thing: in a world riven by a magical war, a young prodigy named Finnit is studying demon-summoning at a prestigious magical academy; he’s fascinated by these otherworldly entities and their world, but his crappy advisor sees them only as weapons that must be dominated. As part of a final exam slash hazing attempt, the advisor teleports Finnit to the ruins of a remote magical lighthouse, telling him he has only a few weeks to unravel its mysteries and reignite it. Knowing he can’t do this alone, Finnit summons a demon he’d previously seen his advisor abusing; working together, the two learn about each other’s worlds and ways, and discover some shocking secrets about the lighthouse’s history, too.

That relationship is the heart of the game, with revelations about the lighthouse always tied to breakthroughs in the characters’ bond (or vice versa). But Pharos Fidelis is confident enough to delay the two meeting for quite a while, long enough to make sure Finnit and his predicament register, as well as to establish the rules of this world. Demon-summoning is subject to laws, in both senses of the term: some are akin to thermodynamic principles, but others are more like moral injunctions, and the game intersperses its narrative sections with bits of textbooks and other in-world documents fleshing things out. They’re well-written in of themselves, and also feed into the character development – seeing the three iron laws of summoning elucidated by your advisor in stentorian terms, and then having the click-to-proceed link read “ignore his wisdom” helps puncture the pretension and communicate where Finnit is coming from.

The prose is a major highlight throughout, in fact, dense with wordplay and memorable images while still remaining propulsively readable. Here’s a description of the aforementioned advisor:

"Raekard was there, tall and spidery, with the indistinct age of a man whose years had intertwined too closely with the power he commanded."

And a vignette that’s part of Finnit’s tragic backstory:

"Wizened boughs set coral pink leaves adrift. They clung, in soggy piles, to gaps between paving slabs. Young Finnit faced a chore deferred, tender fingers gripping a broom too unwieldy to shoo the litter off the patio at any reliable pace."

There’s alliteration, well-judged details, even small jokes – “wizened” sure seems like a nod to what Finnit’s job winds up being, and there’s a later description of the lighthouse’s focusing-crystal, a survivor of many thunderstorms, which notes “the memories of lightning that had long since bolted.” Come to think of it, “Finnit” is itself a sort of pun, highlighting the bounded, finite nature of his being compared to his immortal lover. There are a few flies in the ointment: the game definitely has fantasy-name disease (I’m awkwardly writing around the demon’s name because I can’t remember it off the top of my head – it definitely starts with a V?), there are places where the dialogue struck me as too informal for the high-fantasy vibe, and it takes some big swings, so of course some of them miss.

But these are tiny niggles; 98% of the time the prose is a delight, which is impressive indeed for a work of this length. In fact, even though it pretty much took me the full Comp-standard two hours to reach an ending, part of me was eager for more – I wouldn’t have minded if the process of understanding and trying to fix the lighthouse had had a couple more scenes to play out in, and there are a few glimpses of hell that likewise could have been expanded. Part of me also wishes the central relationship had been more of a slow-burn, but again, I think that’s just down to preference: in some ways it’s more romantic to have the near-immediate spark of attraction quickly having the two of them thinking sexy thoughts about each other, even if personally I think it would have been fun if they’d started more platonic, until Finnit’s flash of insight in a late-night magical engineering session suddenly made the demon want to jump his bones…

Speaking of the demon, I didn’t find him as cleanly-drawn a character as Finnit, but I think that’s actually a strength of the work. Demons are meant to be more protean and amenable to change, and as he’s recovering from trauma, he could reshape himself in different ways. In fact, cleverly and thematically, while Finnit is the viewpoint character, all the choices are on the demonic side of the ledger. There are only a handful of decision points, a few of which are seemingly low-key, but as far as I was able to experiment, they can have pretty significant impacts on where the plot ultimately goes (the chapter select function also makes it easy to experiment).

To be honest, though, while it’s there and effective, I didn’t need the interactivity, or, as mentioned, to get too hot and bothered by the romance plot, to find Pharos Fidelis engaging – the character work and magical investigation are top-notch, delivered in lovely, luminous prose, with several surprises I didn’t see coming (I haven’t mentioned the way the game plays with the second-personal narrator as it nears its conclusion). A highlight of the Comp for sure, and I’d gladly play any prequels or sequels the author cares to write.