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The Thaumaturge is a magical mix of history and mystery
M
Meghan Sullivan
Set in the restless streets of 1905 Warsaw, The Thaumaturge (“miracle worker” in Greek) follows the story of Wiktor, a magic-user who is on the hunt for spectral beings known as Salutors. Plucked from a variety of ancient folklore, Salutors are dangerous creatures that attach themselves to humans with deep flaws, but grant extraordinary power when bound to a thaumaturge.
Wiktor’s own flaw (pride) compels him to bind as many Salutors to himself as he can, but things get messy after he gets caught up in a revolutionary vortex made up of Polish citizens attempting to free themselves from the imperial shackles of tsarist Russia. Now Wiktor must navigate both a changing world and the dangers of using multiple Salutors.
The spirit of revolution
1905 was a compelling time for Poland. Back then, the country experienced a tectonic shift as the Old World lurched towards modernity, and people demanded freedom and opportunities long denied them.
“At the beginning of the 20th century, almost all countries… felt the slight breeze of change,” explains the game’s design director Karolina Kuzia-Rokosz over email. “The people of Poland also dreamt of such changes. 1905 marked the 110th year of the occupation and partitions of Polish territories between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The revolution of 1905 started in Polish territories as soon as in February of the same year. Seeing how the Tsar lost the [Japanese-Russo War], Polish people decided to fight. Fights or protests took place across partitions and lasted till the end of the fall of the same year.”
It’s not yet clear how Wiktor’s actions will help shape the course of history, but what is clear is that the thaumaturge is caught in the eye of a massive political storm. “When Wiktor arrives in Warsaw, the defiant spirit [of the times] is…alive and dangerous,” writes Kuzia-Rokosz. “The first thing he encounters while leaving the [train] station is the Tsar's public speech to the people that eventually goes terribly wrong. Arrests are pending, and Wiktor is caught in the very middle of the commotion. And this is just the beginning.”
Being in the center of this storm allows Wiktor to interact with some of history's biggest names, including Tsar Nicolas II and the Russian mystic Rasputin. The latter would later gain notoriety for his considerable influence over the tsar, but here in 1905, he’s merely a wandering hermit.
“Rasputin is one of the most important figures in the game, but it is up to players to decide what to think of him,” writes the design director. “We chose him because the timeline of the game matches his own timeline.”
Making history
Few games pay much attention to such extraordinary flash points in history; Fool’s Theory not only understands the importance of these events, but has found a unique way for players to experience them for themselves.
“It was an intense time of social and political unrest, of changing tides in people's destinies,” explains Kuzia-Rokosz. “All of this creates a perfectly exciting environment for a thaumaturge, who sees, feels, touches, and reads people's thoughts, desires, and fears left there on the surface of everyday items, and can use them either to help someone, help themselves, or to better understand the surrounding world. It's also a great opportunity to peek into times and places that are forever gone, to witness the lives of those who are no longer there.”
How Wiktor uses thaumaturgy to navigate this uncertain world is up to the player, though Kuzia-Rokosz concedes that The Thaumaturge is not a fantasy game.
“In The Thaumaturge, we do show the difficulties, problems, or ugliness of the old world. Through [different] characters in the game, we depict the imperfection of human character, poverty, and injustice, but we always leave room for the player to decide how they would like to proceed or what they think of the world.”
That may seem bleak, but the design director is quick to point out that not everything is doom and gloom. “We also provide a ray of hope: compassion, kindness, a sense of justice existing among people who might be at first so different, but all they want is to make their lives better, and better themselves too.”
Flawless
Wiktor’s ability to read the hearts and minds of people is directly tied to the Flaw/Salutor mechanic, where players sniff out Salutors by gathering information on anyone who may have attracted one due to a powerful flaw within themselves. As Kuzia-Rokosz explains: “A flaw is an imperfection that most of us carry within ourselves, a flaw of a character, of the psyche.”
Wiktor’s own flaw is pride, but as a thaumaturge he can control the pride demon inside of him. The downside is that his pride causes him to try and extract the flaws of other people in order to attract more Salutors, which, the design director points out, can be risky.
“Having [multiple] Salutors is taboo, and taking someone else’s flaw will change [a thaumaturge] forever. So there are risks. Having too many Salutors will easily drive a thaumaturge insane.”
Taking on other people's demons may not be the best idea, but the good news is that by extracting salutors from their human hosts, Wiktor gains access to a wide variety of magical abilities, each tied to four dimensions: Heart, Deed, Mind, and Word. These mystical elements may mirror typical RPG systems, but Kuzia-Rokosz stresses that dimensions are meant to be more mysterious, more subtle.
Traditional magics like earth, air, wind and fire, she says, “do not really match our setting or the vibe. So, we changed them into something less defined, but [still categorized]. In other words…every remnant of desire, strong emotion, feeling, love, and hatred would belong to the Heart. All thoughts, ideas, or dreams would belong to Mind. All grasps, hits, gestures would be Deed, and all that is spoken or whispered would belong to Word. These four dimensions are, on one hand, easy to comprehend and, on the other, spacious.”
Spellbinding
Wiktor will need every dimensional spell and skill he can get his hands on, too, because as Kuzia-Rokosz makes clear, 1905 Warsaw is not an easy time or place to navigate. “The Tsar was slowly losing his influence and power; his own nobility was looking for a change in political and economic approaches to matters that influenced their existence. At that time, France and the general ‘Western’ world were looked up to as new standards. People wanted more freedom, education, innovations, and, finally, a seizure of power bestowed upon a singular person, rather than upon the people of the nations.”
In other words, Wiktor's world is changing, and something has to give.
The Thaumaturge releases on Epic Games Store on February 20th.