On a planet that is not our own, in a timeline very different from ours, the last heirs of aristocracy cling to the shadows of a secluded mountain valley known as the Dramark. It’s only deep within the valley that a tiny, proud crust of civilization can be kept hidden from the Ruin (that’s what people call the light of the dying star that has been changing the countryside and its people for generations, turning them into monsters). Meanwhile, long-dead mechanical constructs called syllokinetics, automatons that were to be the people’s saviors, sit and wither on the horizon. Elsewhere, the Dramark’s lavish estates and their downstairs staff carry on as best they can.
This is the Edwardian-inspired setting for Our Brilliant Ruin, a grim yet gilded new world dreamed up by the small, talented team at Studio Hermitage. Starting Tuesday their vision begins to come to life, first as a tabletop role-playing game and, if its founders are lucky, hopefully as something more — like a comic book or even a video game. At its core is a desperate class struggle, one that could set this world apart from a vast sea of fantasy and science fiction competitors.
Image: Studio Hermitage
Studio Hermitage is a transmedia company founded just a few years ago by Paxton Galvanek, Justin Achilli, and Andy Foltz, all with backgrounds in making video games for companies like Funcom, Ubisoft, and Red Storm. But it’s Achilli’s name that will likely perk up the ears of tabletop fans, since he’s had a hand in the World of Darkness, home to games like Vampire: The Masquerade, for nearly 30 years. His enthusiasm for Our Brilliant Ruin is infectious, and the setting — originally pitched as a post-apocalyptic take on Downton Abbey — appears to be worthy of attention. Its inciting event is the arrival of the Ruin, a dead star with light that causes devastation wherever it touches.
“This light interacts very, very strangely with our planet,” Achilli said. “It’s corrosive. It’s poisonous in and of itself. So it’s eating away at the substance of the world, [and] it’s affecting people very strangely.”
When people pass away while illuminated by the Ruin, for instance, their last emotional state is captured as a kind of photostatic image. “That’s where ghosts come from,” Achilli said — and vampires, too. “Here’s this awful, awful new natural law that we can’t do anything about, but we have to live in its aftermath.”
It’s in that aftermath that Our Brilliant Ruin’s epic struggles will play out, not as battles between warring wizards or high-tech hackers but as violent struggles between starkly divided, nearly feudal classes just trying to survive. There are the Aristocrats, not unlike Lord and Lady Crawley in Downton Abbey, who own the land and enforce what few laws remain. Below them are the Truefolk, skilled laborers and artisans who make up what passes for the middle class.
“They are the downstairs in the upstairs-downstairs drama,” explains writer and designer Rachel J. Wilkinson. “They’re your shopkeepers, your couriers, your carriage drivers. They’re your investigators. […] They are sort of keeping the trains going on time, and what they have done is they have sacrificed a level of agency for comfort.”
Below them all are the Unbonded — Our Brilliant Ruin’s homesteaders and pioneers, some of whom may have even more powerful knowledge secreted away about the syllokinetics looming on the horizon.
Image: Studio Hermitage
“The idea is that the group [of players] will start out either with an estate or very quickly come to possess an estate,” Achilli explained. “Let’s say I’m an Aristocrat, and you’re a Truefolk, and Rachel’s Unbonded. The estate is mine, and I need someone to work on the estate. So your character concept can potentially fit in there. You might be a butler, or you might be any one of the other guilds of the Truefolk. […] Rachel, as the Unbounded, brings something as well. Maybe there is knowledge [about] syllokinetic plans that you’re bringing to the table.” Where things go from there is up to the players.
Studio Hermitage is hoping to spur on initial interest in Our Brilliant Ruin with a free set of rules for the fledgling tabletop game, which launches today alongside a Kickstarter campaign for a physical version. Next comes a series of comics to be produced in partnership with Dark Horse. After that comes a multi-part audio drama, to be written and produced by Wilkinson in the style of her previous effort, Vampire: The Masquerade – Port Saga. The team even plans to produce a video game.
They hope their transmedia company’s vision will appeal to new audiences, especially those who haven’t tried tabletop roleplaying before.
“I think this game is a beautiful blend of acknowledging the real world that we’re in, acknowledging the anxieties and acknowledging the trouble,” Wilkinson said, “but also feeling a hunger for escapism, a way to take myself out of where I am in the real world and to be anything that I want to be.”
The campaign runs now through March 28.
