Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
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I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
would you believe me if i told you the story of this game put the possibility of death and dying and terminal illness in my head as a kid. i was 4. the dread i felt for this game cannot be replicated
i just barely remember what this game was about because i was 4 but basically you’re a dog and you live on an island and your dog family has a dog sister. or brother. i don’t remember. your dog sibling falls ill with a terminal illness or it is heavily implied that it will be fatal. there is a scene where the ill dog sibling tries to go to a party and they collapse and the audience is led to believe that they died. they do not die but are bedridden. your dog father tries to find a cure overseas but goes missing and is pretty much as close to “confirmed dead” as you can get in an e for everyone title. then you try to find a cure overseas and your boat gets separated and you get lost at sea. you do not die and end up on another island. a doctor is there. from that point i do not remember anything about the game other than giraffes try to attack you or something . i had to stop playing because this game made me So upset i was afraid to touch it. the game looks like this
If you’d kept playing you would’ve been so much more traumatized than you already were, it does not get less intense. Allow me to tell you about some of the other fucked up plot points/subplots:
You don’t just get separated from your boat, no, it’s MUCH more upsetting than that. There’s a storm, and the captain says you won’t be able to make it to the island. The idea of returning home without a cure is so unbearable to you that you jump overboard and try to swim there. You almost drown, but a bird you nursed back to health earlier in the game alerts a resident of the island, who saves your life.
The town’s water supply gets poisoned at one point and everyone gets sick but you. You have to find a healer in the woods because even the town doctor can’t help
A nurse dog on the island is afraid of the color red and is mercilessly bullied by a group of dogs in her town. You have to help her get over this fear. It originated from a traumatic event in her childhood where she thought she killed her best friend.
The doctor who helps your sick sibling also has a traumatic past. His fiancé got terminally ill and because he argued with another doctor on the best treatment, she died. He visits her grave often.
The miracle cure (a flower) you’re searching for to save your sibling? When you find it, it’s wilted. If you can’t find a way to restore it, you know your sibling will almost certainly die.
Also the literal apocalypse has been building up for the entire duration of the story, and you have to literally travel to an alternate dimension to consult the queen of a mythical race on how to save the world
To get a magic stone that will help you save the world, you have to fight a giant dinosaur skeleton referred to as the “Ancient Monster” and it is heavily implied that it fought your father at some point, and may have even killed him. Yes this is still the same game
Yeah but that game was really something. There are pirates. There are poisonous snakes. All of the enemies have the ability to kill you. The soundtrack is phenomenal. You have a magical sidekick named Petasi. One of the game’s central themes is the importance of kindness. I tried to play it on my own once and got killed by a gorilla while trying to find grapes.
2087
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