Spirit of the Unseen

One-Paragraph Summary

Ira is a teenage boy who, like many others in this world, willingly underwent a radical transformation that altered his appearance to a ghastly form which causes him tremendous physical and mental torment every day. He lived in the castle as one of the king’s many transformed “children”, whose parents he claims to have replaced and now treats like slaves. Ira escaped and found a group of outcasts who follow the guidance of an unseen spiritual being called the Pneuma. Despite once being the predominant belief in the land, this group shrunk and came to be hated by everyone, including Ira. However, Ira is desperate for help and they claim to know how he can be restored to his proper form. Ira begins a journey that eventually results in the Pneuma healing his transformation and granting him a new ability, the ability to see into the Unseen Realm where the Pneuma resides. However this also allows Ira to see the other residents of the Unseen Realm, including a group of beings who hate the Pneuma and are responsible for the transformations that so many people have undergone called the Fallen. Ira learns that the downfall of the kingdom and the cruelty of the king can be attributed almost completely to the Fallen’s corrupting influence, and begins another journey to defeat their leader, who is the one corrupting the king. Ira gathers many new Spirit Abilities that are bestowed by the Pneuma until he is able to confront the Fallen’s leader and defeat him, allowing the kingdom to gradually return to the prosperous state it was in prior to people unwittingly allowing the Fallen to corrupt it.

Backstory

The setting for the story is a high fantasy world within a fallen kingdom. Within this world, there are two realms. The seen realm is the one inhabited by humans and other physical creatures, and functions as the main setting for the game. The unseen realm exists as an overlay to the seen realm and is unknown to most. The unseen realm is the dwelling place of those that are invisible to most creatures, but are just as real and able to influence the world around them as anything else. Most notable of these inhabitants are a group of corrupted beings known as the Fallen and a single omnipresent being called the Pneuma.

For most of recorded history, people allowed the Pneuma to guide them and followed its instruction. During this period they were prosperous as its guidance led to plentiful crops each year, and the rulers who were selected and guided by the Pneuma were fair, just, and wise. Those who sought the Pneuma most fervently were granted the ability to perform supernatural feats by calling upon its power. These abilities could take many forms, including healing, increased strength, and prophecy. These abilities combined with the Pneuma’s guidance gave them massive military might, and thus they became the dominating power in their region, even when facing stronger and wealthier enemies.

In contrast, the Fallen were once servants of the Pneuma but a faction of them was corrupted by a lust for power. Unable to destroy the Pneuma directly, they broke away and attempted to counterfeit and destroy that which the Pneuma loved. The Fallen used their unseen nature to their advantage and whispered in the ears of people who did not follow the Pneuma, gradually spreading their influence until the majority of the kingdom was under their subtle control.

As the influence of the Fallen spread, they succeeded in making more and more people doubt the Pneuma’s existence. Furthermore, as people idolized that which the Pneuma detested, they demonized those who still detested those things as well. Those who followed the Pneuma were persecuted into hiding, which sent the kingdom into a rapid decline until it fell into ruin and all the values that once made it prosper were disregarded. It was only a short time before the last Pneuma-serving king was overthrown in a coup and a fallen king was inserted in his place. This king was furious to find that he could not live the luxurious life of royalty that he had anticipated—the dwindling resources of the kingdom would not afford it—so he sent his soldiers out as enforcers, collecting taxes in the form of the little food and money that families were able to acquire in an effort to achieve this lifestyle. 

Despite living conditions falling to an unprecedented low, leaving all but those who served the king directly living in abject poverty, the people refused to return to the Pneuma and remained the unwitting pawns of the Fallen, who only grew bolder in their corruption. The Pneuma would only guide those who sought its help willingly, so those who rejected were left to their own devices. Thus, the Fallen’s influence grew to the point of directly making physical alterations to those in the seen realm. Those most devoted to the ways of the Fallen discovered they were able to use special abilities as well, dark counterfeits of the abilities bestowed by the Pneuma. Among these abilities, one of the most sinister was a way of transforming people, giving them a grotesque appearance more similar to that of the Fallen. Despite the fact that human bodies were incompatible with this new form and suffered tremendously in it, the crafty persuasive power of the Fallen convinced people that those who underwent the transformation would be able to attain a higher form of being.

Many adults underwent the transformation, though not the ones who were performing them, and those who underwent it were praised by their communities as heroes and treated with a religious reverence. Though they were successful in deceiving some adults, the Fallen found that by far their easiest targets were children—children who had been born into a world of suffering and spent the entirety of their short lives recognizing an absence that they could not define. They were eager to attempt to fill this void, even if it meant undergoing an irreversible physical alteration. They were desperate for something that made them feel in control, and the Fallen promised them that this something was the transformation. As a result, many desperate children sought those who could help them undergo this transformation. 

The parents who had been sufficiently corrupted encouraged their children along this path to transformation and did everything in their power to make it happen, hoping that their children’s new social standing would also help them gain a more favorable status by association. The parents that discouraged these desires and tried to prevent their children from being transformed however, were arrested and imprisoned in dungeons. Their children were sent directly to King Caln to be transformed. Caln told these children that their parents had abandoned them and that he was their real father. They lived in the castle as his “children” and they called him their father. Despite the loving facade the king displayed, these children were nothing more than status symbols to Caln and a way to increase his power by gaining dozens of eager servants who believed he had saved their lives. They were so thoroughly devoted to King Caln that they were even grateful to be treated like slaves. Despite their miserable treatment, because the King helped them with their transformation and affirmed that they were indeed his own sons and daughters, the children maintained that they were much happier than they had been with their parents. All of the children that lived in the castle believed this—until one day one did not, which is where the story of Spirit of the Unseen begins…

Story

[The following is meant to be a detailed story summary, not a complete script. It is not to be taken as an exhaustive list of the events that happen throughout the game, nor does it take into account many of the optional side stories the player can encounter through side-quests, which will each include separate themes, lore, and events]

The story follows the protagonist Ira, a transformed teenager who had been living as one of the King’s “children”. He awakes on a mountaintop with no memory of how he arrived there. Upon reaching the ground, he comes face to face with the castle, and remembers that he fell unconscious during his attempt to escape his servitude to the King, which appears to have been successful. He flees and meets an elderly man named Anax, who asks what Ira is running from. Seeing no point in lying, Ira tells Anax about how he was transformed several years earlier and lived as one of the king’s false children. Eventually he recognized that he was miserable in his new form and was being treated like a slave. He knew he was stuck in his new form but wanted to gain as much of his life back as he could, so he fled from the castle with the intent to leave and take refuge in another kingdom.

Anax offers Ira his help, but doesn’t specify what that entails. Ira is too desperate to escape to turn him down, so he accepts and Anax leads him to the hidden village of those who still follow the Pneuma, of which he is one of the leaders. Ira immediately turns around, claiming that Anax tricked him and he will be just fine on his own. Anax convinces him to stay by claiming that he knows how to restore Ira to his original form. Ira does not believe him, but curiosity keeps him there in case Anax is telling the truth. Anax leads him further into the village and introduces him to a girl named Adina, who takes him to the lake where Anax had found her when she first came to the village.

Adina tells Ira the story of how she was once transformed like him. While Ira had been taken from his parents because they tried to stop him from transforming, Adina’s parents had told her from a young age that she was meant to be transformed. By the time she was six, she was fully convinced that it was what she wanted. They took her to be transformed the next day. For years she lived believing that it was truly the way she was meant to be. People had treated her far better after she transformed, and her parents appeared much happier with her. She was so convinced by all the praise she received that she believed it too, until it became too much. She could no longer ignore the physical and emotional anguish it caused her, so she ran away from home. She did not know where she was going, but she wound up at that lake, too exhausted to go any further, which is when Anax found her and brought her back to the village. Eventually, she was able to have her transformation reversed and her proper body restored. 

Ira does not believe Adina’s story, claiming that the transformation is permanent and nobody can have it reversed. Adina insists that her story is true and when Ira demands she prove it, she describes the horror of what it feels like to be transformed. She describes the never ending pain and the psychological torment of believing that she could never go back to normal. With this, Ira believes her as her description is too accurate to be secondhand. He asks how he can undo his transformation, but she does not say and takes him back to Anax. Ira asks again and Anax tells him that only the Pneuma has the power to heal a transformation. Ira grows irritated again, saying he knows the Pneuma is not real, and demands to know what really happened. Adina begins to protest again and claims it truly was the Pneuma, but Anax cuts her off and tells Ira that he can find the way to be healed by collecting nine special fruit located across three different locations. Ira sets off, believing that eating these fruits must be the way to heal his transformation, and begins his journey to track them down.

As Ira searches he is able to see what life is like outside the castle for the first time since his transformation. Many of those he approaches for information are seemingly afraid of him and thus treat him with trembling reverence, which he comes to realize is because they are afraid of what would happen to them if they were caught being disrespectful to someone who had been transformed. He encounters more people and sees how they are being mistreated. Those who are bold enough—or are transformed themselves—call out to him for help, but Ira ignores them as he searches, focused only on curing himself so he can leave the kingdom for good. He begins to notice a strange phenomenon, however, as the people he ignores receive the help they were begging for from an unseen source. A man being beaten by the guards is mysteriously rescued when the guards are blown away by a wind so strong they cannot even be seen anymore, yet the man is unmoved. Another man begging for food finds that the wind has blown an entire bakery’s worth of bread right in front of him. Ira sees many more events like these as he continues his search and is puzzled. Upon exiting the village, he notices a similar wind right in front of him blowing in one continuous direction. He follows it and it stays in front of him no matter how close he approaches.

The wind leads him to a large, run-down temple that appears to have been abandoned for decades. Carved directly into the stone above its entrance are three trees with fruit hanging from their branches. Ira enters the temple and finds a labyrinth that appears to have been designed to protect the trees from thieves. As he delves further in, he encounters monsters that have made residence in the abandoned temple and is taunted by bodiless voices that try to convince him to turn around and give up. The further he progresses into the temple, the worse the torment becomes. This continues until he has almost located the fruit, at which point another strong breeze blows through the room despite it being indoors. It circles around him for a moment and suddenly, all the tormenting voices stop and a new, soft voice from the breeze whispers so faintly that Ira barely hears it when it says, “keep going”. He steps into the next room and finds an enclosed garden with the three trees sitting prominently at the back with branches full of fruit. 

However, standing in front of the trees is another transformed boy, who Ira addresses as “Achi”. Achi greets Ira by calling him his brother, a title Ira immediately rejects. Achi is caught off guard, but tells Ira that he has come to take him back to the castle by any means necessary. Ira refuses and Achi makes one final appeal, calling him “brother” once more. Ira once again rejects this label, stating that “brother” was just a lie they had been told by the King and by themselves, that they were never brothers. Achi loses his composure and shouts that even if they were not brothers, they had still been best friends, and that Ira just left him behind without a second thought to abandon everything they had believed in together. Ira starts to respond but Achi charges him, drawing his sword and engaging him in a fight. Ira manages to win the battle, causing Achi to leave after declaring that he is going to bring Ira back, but as a prisoner this time. Ira is shaken from having to fight his former friend, but he collects the three fruits and moves on.

Ira continues his search for the other six fruits. With no wind to guide him this time, he must reluctantly seek out the followers of the Pneuma to show him where the other temples are. As he searches he observes more inexplicable events that help those most in need and begins to wonder what this mysterious wind is and why it helped him find the first temple. As he finds the second and third temples, the wind shows up again at moments when he is near death, providing him with more help on his journey to find the fruits. 

After finding all nine fruits, Ira begins to head back to the hidden village, but encounters another stranger being harassed by soldiers collecting taxes. His initial intent is to continue walking and ignore it as usual, but is puzzled when the wind does not show up to help the stranger. In gratitude to the wind for its earlier support, Ira steps in and stops the soldiers himself. The stranger thanks Ira and explains that his child is sick, the money the soldiers were trying to take was all he had left to buy medicine. He asks Ira to accompany him to bring the medicine to his son in case more soldiers show up. Ira awkwardly agrees and goes back to the man’s house after buying the medicine. The medicine does nothing and the child begins to fade. The man cries out, pleading with nothing in particular to help his child. In that moment a strong wind appears once again, the strongest Ira has encountered yet, and the child is restored to full health instantly. Just before the wind fades, Ira notices a glimpse of light traveling along with the wind. He then leaves to allow the man to celebrate with his child.

Ira then returns to the hidden village and finds Anax again to show him the fruit. Ira asks if there is a special way they need to be prepared before he eats them, and Anax questions why he is planning to eat them. Anax explains that he never said the key to healing came from eating the fruits, he just instructed Ira to gather them. Confused, Ira asks why he has not returned to normal then if all that was needed to gather the fruits. To which Anax responds that his journey has not yet been completed. Ira must take them to the mountaintop on which he awoke, there he will see what to do next.

He returns to the peak, expecting to find something there immediately reacting to the fruit, but nothing happens. He waits in the still air until dusk and then cries out in frustration as the sun finally disappears, wondering aloud what he is supposed to do there. As soon as he finishes yelling, a gentle breeze appears for just a moment and then ceases again. Ira notices it and speaks to it, describing all the things he’s seen it do throughout the course of his journey. He says that each time he saw someone in trouble and ignored them, the wind was there. When he was lost and unable to find his way, the wind guided him forward. When he was tormented by bodiless voices and ready to give up, the wind silenced them and restored his strength. When he saw the child on death’s door, the wind restored health as though it was nothing. The wind performed seemingly impossible feats and seemed to be everywhere at once. Ira had never believed in its existence and even ridiculed those who did, but the wind had performed miracles that could have no other explanation. The true identity of the mysterious wind was the Pneuma. He cries out to it for healing, admitting he was wrong to deny it before and promising to follow it in the future, whether it heals him or not.

As soon as Ira finishes speaking, a swirling wind far more powerful than the one that healed the child forms a vortex around him. This time, the particles of light intermixed with the wind are clearly visible. The intensity increases until a flash of light obscures everything on the mountaintop. Ira sees a vision of his escape attempt from the castle. He is caught by the castle guards and knocked unconscious. As they begin to drag him away they are blown away by the Pneuma’s wind and a figure formed out of sparkling light approaches Ira. Everything turns black and the scene reappears with the same figure setting Ira at the top of the mountain where awoke.

The vision disappears, and the light fades, revealing Ira back in the present, his grotesque form has vanished and his body has been restored. The brown rags he was wearing previously are gone, replaced by the elegantly functional attire of a hero on a journey. When he opens his eyes, they are growing a brilliant yellow, and Ira is able to see a glimpse of that same figure of light standing in the last remaining gust of wind before it fades away. The light in his eyes fades and he examines himself and celebrates his healing, shouting his gratitude to the Pneuma.

On his way back to the hidden village, Ira passes through another town and witnesses many of the same scenes he saw before. Impoverished people living on the streets and soldiers taking away the little those people have by force. This time however, he chooses not to ignore them and his eyes begin to glow again. He is shocked as he is suddenly able to see shadowy figures looming over each of the people in town whispering in their ears. Some of them are whispering taunts, some are persuading people to do things like steal in order to eat or eliminate those who are costing them money, and some are egging the soldiers on, encouraging them to be more violent and aggressive. Then, he notices a transformed boy walk by with no shadowy figure near him. Ira looks closer and sees that a shadowy substance is emanating out of the boy himself. Terrified of what he is seeing, Ira flees back to the hidden village to find answers.

Anax and Adina are waiting for Ira at the village entrance to welcome him back and celebrate his restoration with everyone else. Ira is too shaken up to celebrate, and immediately asks Anax about the shadowy figures. Anax tells Ira about the Fallen and their role in the kingdom’s decline, including how the transformations are done by their power. Adina then asks why Ira was able to see them if no one else can and Anax begins to teach Ira about the Spirit Abilities granted by the Pneuma, sharing that his own ability is prophecy, which is how he knew that Ira would be able to have his transformation undone. He then describes an extremely rare ability, only known to have been possessed once before, an ability to peer into the Unseen Realm and interact with those that inhabit it, an ability known as the “Eyes of the Spirit”.

After his explanation and once Ira has calmed down, Anax congratulates him for having been restored by the Pneuma. Ira thanks him for all his help and asks why he needed to gather the fruit at all in the first place. Anax explains that it was not about the fruit itself, but what the journey to gather them taught Ira so he would witness the Pneuma’s power and believe. Ira then asks why the Pneuma granted him the Eyes of the Spirit after he was so far gone before, and Anax tells him about the strongest member of the Fallen who leads all the rest. In order to rid the kingdom of the Fallen’s influence, the leader must be defeated. He then says that he received a prophecy from the Pneuma shortly before they first met and that Ira has been chosen by the Pneuma as the one to confront the leader of the Fallen, who is currently controlling King Caln.

Ira questions how he is actually supposed to accomplish this, to which Anax responds that he must grow much stronger and acquire more Spirit Abilities before he can face the leader. He instructs Ira to travel to three more temples that were built as places where people could go to be close to the Pneuma. These temples have been overrun by the Fallen and by defeating them Ira will gain the strength necessary to use more Spirit Abilities and face the King.

Ira sets out to find the temples, encountering more and more people along the way who are being influenced by the Fallen. He encounters people in circumstances even worse than he experienced before, but as he acquires more Spirit Abilities he becomes better equipped to help them by eliminating the roots of their problems. Before he reaches the second temple however, Ira is confronted again by Achi, who is shocked and angered to see that Ira has been restored to his proper form. Achi demonstrates that he too has acquired new abilities, dark counterfeits of Spirit Abilities that are granted by the Fallen. The two fight once more, with Achi’s abilities proving to be powerful but not at the same level as Ira’s Spirit Abilities. Ira just barely manages to win again, and Achi flees to acquire more power.

After clearing the Fallen from each of the three temples, Ira recovers pieces of a sword made entirely of Spirit Energy, called the Pneuma Blade. When he finally obtains the third and final piece, he assembles the sword, which is the only means the Pneuma granted humans to completely vanquish the Fallen. With the sword completed, Ira heads towards the castle to confront his “father” once and for all. In the castle entrance, Ira is confronted once more by Achi, who has received more power from the Fallen and grown much stronger, but at the cost of growing more haggard and grotesque each time he accepted it. Instead of fighting Ira, Achi only warns him that progressing further into the castle will be the last mistake he makes.

Ira pushes ahead anyways, clearing his way through the soldiers and monsters with the help of the Pneuma Blade, and arrives at a grand hall before the throne room. Here, Achi is awaiting one final showdown with Ira. They each fight at full power, and once again Ira proves that the Fallen are no match for the Pneuma by defeating Achi. Achi screams at Ira for abandoning him again. Ira tells Achi that it is not too late for him to change too, but Achi is too far gone and the Fallen that provided him his power appears. It chastises Achi for his weakness, and pulls him into a dark vortex while he screams for help. Ira rushes forward to rescue his former friend, but does not make it in time and both Achi and the Fallen disappear. Ira laments for Achi, but stands up more determined than ever to defeat King Caln and the Fallen’s leader.

Ira proceeds forward and enters into the throne room. Inside he finds the king relaxing leisurely on his throne. King Caln greets Ira by saying, “Welcome home, son”. Instead of responding angrily the way he did to Achi, Ira calmly describes what a father is to the king. He says that a father protects his children from harm and doesn’t lead them into it. A father corrects his children when they are making a mistake and provides them with wisdom and guidance to make better decisions in the future. A father does not encourage his child to make life-altering decisions and then treat him like a slave. He tells the king, “I have come to take you and your twisted ways down once and for all.” Then, activating the Eyes of the Spirit and revealing a Fallen far larger than any of the rest he adds, “both of you!” The king responds calmly, and rises from his throne while the leader of the Fallen grows even larger, and the final showdown begins.

[At this point, the story branches and has three possible outcomes. The player defeats the king and Fallen leader, but if the player has completed less than half of the side quests and only has a few of the Spirit Abilities, the Fallen leader is only weakened and flees, leaving the king for dead in the process. 

If the player has completed more than half of the side quests and has most of the Spirit Abilities but not all of them, The Fallen leader is completely destroyed, but the king still perishes in the process. 

If the player has completed all of the side quests and has all of the Spirit Abilities, Ira is able to separate the Fallen leader from the king before defeating it, leaving the king alive and newly uncorrupted]

After defeating the king the credits roll and the kingdom is shown to be in recovery. Ira returns to the hidden village and they work together to defeat or chase away the remaining Fallen. As the corrupting influence lessens and people see the work of the Pneuma right in front of them, the kingdom is able to prosper once more and the barren fields and empty market stalls begin to fill once more. The transformed children living in the castle are brought back to the no longer hidden village, and many of them are eventually restored to their proper forms. The final scene ends with Ira reuniting with his parents after they and all the other parents are freed from prison, the screen fades away as the three of them embrace.