There is a world hidden within your world.
A world of magic that exists only for the blessed ones.
You do not rank amongst them. You never will.
Serve, and their ways will be revealed to you.
Keep the secret of the Pact.
Obey our will in all things.
Serve, and a new life will be allotted to you.
Then you shall walk beside the chosen in their halls of learning.
Not as their equal, but as their better.
INTRODUCTION
Pactbinder is a WiP dark fantasy interactive fiction university novel set in an alt-history England, where you play as a once-ordinary person who has struck a bargain with an eldritch force in order to gain the gift of magic and walk in the hidden world of mages.
Word count is currently ~292k, which covers the game's prologue and first three chapters.
My inspirations are too numerous to do them all real justice, but Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and R.F Kuang’s Babel often find themselves on my mind as I write, as do many of the stories about students attending magical schools that I read growing up.
Outside of literature, I hope that anybody who has enjoyed DMing for or roleplaying a Warlock in a darker Dungeons & Dragons campaign will find something to enjoy in Pactbinder.
Please see below for a more detailed synopsis, a list of features planned to be in the final game and details on the main cast.
SYNOPSIS
Aspiring mages flock to the halls of Hightower to pursue the best arcane education in England, perhaps the world. For those blessed with the Gift of magic, there is no nobler dream than to study beneath the university’s elegant arches and develop skills and connections that will serve one for a lifetime.
However, the Gift is a rare privilege that is almost solely the birthright of the nobly born. This is the way things have been for as long as anybody at Hightower can remember. This year will be different, for rumours abound of a new student born Gifted but raised ignorant of the existence of magic; an oddity anywhere in this world, but particularly scandalous at elitist Hightower.
You are not that student. You’re just the person who stole their life.
As the Pactbinder, a once-ordinary person whose path to Hightower was paved by a bargain struck with an enigmatic entity of unspeakable power, you must fight and scheme to carve out a new life for yourself during your first year at Hightower whilst working to master your stolen magic, serve your patron and discover the university’s secrets without compromising your own.
Ultimately, it will fall on you to answer one question: What price would you pay for the life of your dreams?
CORE CAST
Note that with the exception of the Pactbinder (the MC) and the Entity (their eldritch patron), the core cast are the game’s primary ROs. RO genders are fixed, though all of them can be romanced by male, female and non-binary characters.
The Pactbinder (MC).
Gender: M/F/NB
Appearance: Player determined.
Description: A mysterious individual who stole the gift of magic from an unwary victim who was set to be the first mage born outside of magical society to attend Hightower in decades. Now impersonating that victim to take their place as a student, the Pactbinder must master their stolen magic whilst serving their Patron. How they feel about all this and what they plan to do about it is up to you, as is everything that they do next.
The Entity
Gender: N/A
Appearance: An empty space in misty skies, its outline barely suggestive of a humanoid form. Though its appearance is ever-shifting, it is always crowned by a halo of six red stars.
Mastery: Wields unknowable power over reality far in excess of the works of mortal mages, if indeed it can be compared to them at all.
Description: An enigmatic being who struck a bargain with the Pactbinder in their dreams, granting them power and access to the hidden world of magic in exchange for a lifetime of service. Its nature, true goals and desires are as yet wholly unknowable to the Pactbinder.
Alice Mortimer / Adelais De Mortemer: The Witch
Gender: F
Appearance: Tall, slender and very pale, with aristocratic features, silver-grey eyes and long white hair.
Description: One of the Pactbinder’s collegemates. An inscrutable first-year student with a troubled background and a fearsome reputation, Alice’s customary apathy isn’t quite enough to mask her fiercely intelligent mind, nor the quiet intensity that lurks beneath her listless demeanour. Seemingly the only first year to have already awakened her Gift before joining the university, something considered dangerous and foolhardy by most mages.
Eleanor Whitworth: The Scholar
Gender: F
Appearance: Very short, with braided dirty-blonde hair, a heart-shaped face and warm brown eyes behind round spectacles.
Description: One of the Pactbinder’s collegemates. An academic young woman from a well-respected family of mages recently struck by misfortune, Eleanor seems fixated on restarting the long-banned Hightower Expedition Society, a group dedicated to exploring the ruins beneath the university town. A hard worker and fierce friend who can nevertheless come across a little bossy at times.
Finlay Stuart: The Prince
Gender: M
Appearance: Very tall and thin, almost gangly. Freckled, with short reddish-brown hair and green eyes.
Description: One of the Pactbinder’s collegemates. The second son of the Queen of Scotland, a country which seems to be an entirely independent power in magical society. Finlay himself seems like an affable young man, if a little homesick and uncomfortable with the attention his presence inevitably attracts. However, the circumstances surrounding his arrival to Hightower, which is in England remain shrouded in mystery, particularly given the apparent longstanding enmity between the two countries.
Layla Farouk: The Traveler
Gender: F
Appearance: Average height, lean and fit. Olive skin, hazel eyes and long brown hair that’s often in a ponytail. Constantly on the move.
Description: One of the Pactbinder’s collegemates. The only international student in Hightower’s first-year class, Layla is indelibly marked as an outsider from her very first day. The enthusiastic young woman seems determined to meet this challenge with fierce pride and make her mark on Hightower all the same, whether the university likes it or not.
Marcus Elmgrove: The Rebel
Gender: M
Appearance: Tall, dark-skinned and broad-shouldered. Striking features marked by a scar on his lip. Dark hair and eyes.
Description: One of the Pactbinder’s collegemates. Brooding and cynical, Marcus is the mixed-race son of an influential noble father and a foreign-born mother. As such, he walks the uneasy line between barely-tolerated outsider and accepted member of high society. Though a fierce friend, Marcus struggles to manage the conflict between his resentment of magical society and his desire to fly under the radar.
FEATURES
Master your stolen power as you learn to call spirits, shape the elements, nurture life and / or meddle with minds.
Romance a secretive witch, a homesick prince, a timid would-be explorer, an excitable traveller, or a brooding rebel - or nobody at all - whilst navigating an increasingly complex social life burdened by a secret that you quite literally cannot share.
Embrace or rage against the university’s colonial legacy or work to turn it to your own ends.
Make a name for yourself in one of the university’s Societies, where you can demonstrate your prowess in activities including duelling, exploration and sky-sailing, or dedicate your free time to more secretive goals.
Begin your delve into the endless dungeons beneath the university in search of fortune, power and the answers to the mysteries that haunt you.
Fight, charm, scheme, steal and even kill as you strive to balance your obligations to your Patron with the demands of student life. Pray that the two never come into conflict.
my evil murderous gal kara for @pactbinder-if ! she's a social chameleon who's constantly masking her true intentions. the only time she appears to be genuinely having fun is exploring with eleanor or learning magic. she dresses in gyaru fashion and has beads and accessories that symbolize her patron's red star.
Thanks for the question! The Pactbinder universe has takes on both of these things, but neither of them are quite in line with all of our world's folklore, and neither are really believed to exist in the modern day.
Vampires are just folklore, really - stories of ancient mages like Vlad Tepes who used dark magic and human sacrifice to prolong their lives unnaturally. It's hard to verify such stories, though - doesn't seem really to map to any of the Masteries that modern mages understand, after all.
Werefolk are believed to have existed at some point in time, but it's sort of murky as to what they actually were; they were swept up in the Elseling Purges of the Middle Ages, and it's a matter of historic record that they were eradicated in them, so the baseline assumption is that they were shapeshifting Spirits who were adept at shifting between creature forms and mortal guises. There are a lot of competing theories, though-it's one of those popular debate topics amidst historians.
Sorry if you have already told it, but how does magic work in Pactbinder?
Hi - no worries. This is a very big question and there are many answers to it.
The short answer is that all magic in Pactbinder seems to derive from something called the Gift; a hereditary talent for magic that in England seems to be passed down in noble and aristocratic families. The Gift is powerful but demands specialization; in modern times, each Mage develops their Gift into a specific Mastery, a school of magic
(Life, Mind, Matter, Spirit).
It appears that at some point in the past, magic was even more narrowly available, and controlled by royal families alone - this was called the Kingsgift, and it seems to have been more powerful and worked differently (though this may also be a product of the fact that it was more 'primitive' in nature).
The Pactbinder / MC's magic might work differently too...
For more information - there's plenty of info in the story itself, so check out the demo, or check out the #pb magic hashtag for other posts where I've discussed magic here.
How would people react to a PB that isn't violent usually but they had a rough upbringing that taught them to always "finish" a fight by making sure that whoever they're fighting doesn't move.
So when PB is assulted (they didn't start it) they have to be stopped from punching someone over and over, and when stopped they look at that person confused saying "but they're still moving?"
Eleanor would be horrified but take the PB's side in the moment, then try to talk them out of this habit when they next get a quiet moment together. She already sort of assumes the PB had a rough life - her job is to convince them that they don't need that kind of attitude here.
Finlay would actually be the roughest with the PB here, I think. Boy has a pretty robust moral compass, as soft as he is. I think he'd yank them off fast, try to redirect them (maybe yelling a bit), and then heal the person up a bit. Once he cooled down and got back to the PB, he'd think to have a quiet word with them like Eleanor.
Layla would get it up to a point; she'd be right there fighting alongside the PB unless it looked like the PB was actively torturing / causing pain for no reason, or alternatively the attack was starting to look life-threatening. If either of those things happened, she'd pivot and react like Finn (without the healing, of course).
Marcus would react similarly to Layla, except unlike the other three, his quiet talk afterwards wouldn't be so much 'this isn't good for you, and other students aren't dangerous in that way', more 'this is going to cause more trouble for you than good - here the real trouble starts after someone stops moving, not before.'
Adelais simply would not stop the PB in this situation. That's their business. At most she might point out if there's a staff member or a townsfolk witness nearby.
Not sure if it's been asked before but how common is a dislike for mind mastery? Either out of fear or for morality reasons?
Personally I can only agree with Finlay's take on it, but I'm curious how many do think like that as well. Maybe it makes one even an outlier?
It's very common for other mages (and even some Mind mages!) to dislike Mind magic, both on moral grounds and due to personal discomfort or fear.
I would say the most common perception of it is that it's a necessary evil; it's unpleasant, but so critical for some things, like maintaining magic's secrecy. And, in a world where technology keeps getting better and better, Mind scales so well.
For example, a combat-trained Matter mage is probably about as dangerous as a modern tank, give or take- an absolutely unfathomable power advantage in the 1700s, still pretty badass for a while after that. Not exactly going to move the dial in a modern war.
Mind, though? A murmured word to a President or Prime Minister that can't be denied, an emotional speech backed by mental pressure on a Parliament, a House, a Congress, a Senate? That can-and will-still shape the fate of nations.
It's also a self-justification for mages' sense of noblesse oblige - of course it's important that mages get important political roles, they argue! They have higher Mind resistance than mundane people! They can defend the nation against its own or enemy nation Mind mages!
Is Faucett weirdly progressive for the time period he was raised in? He seems to have no problems with transplants and I think you've mentioned that women did not recieve equal magical education until quite recently. Not commplaining, definitely like that he's so chill, but he seems to have adapted to things really fast for a guy from the 1600s
I wouldn't describe Fausett as progressive, per se, but his hang-ups are different to what we might expect.
He's not an old man, he's ancient in a way that none of us can fully relate to. Think about the world of the 1700s, versus the world of the 1800s, versus the world of the 1900s, all the way to today; he has seen civil wars, world wars, the rise and fall of empires, the industrial revolution, and all the social norms that have shifted and mutated over that time. Fausett was far from a young man when America declared independence. The Church wasn't even convinced about heliocentrism when he was growing up!
I'm sure that if you asked Fausett his opinion on a ton of stuff he'd prove very backwards in his beliefs, but his world has been destroyed and remade ten times over, so few of those beliefs and convictions are deeply held, and even where he disagrees or doesn't care about a topic, he is very chill about it; he has long since grown accustomed to the feeling of the world turning inexorably beneath his feet, on and on and on into the endlessly mutating future...
Read Fausetts recommendation for mastery and it’s interesting he says that Carcer’s teachings is dubious... does he not agree with Carcer’s high standards? If so why? And are there any other teachers who bear the same opinion towards him? If not which ones are the ones that agree with him and why?
Good observation!
I think it's safe for us to conclude that Fausett doesn't approve of Carcer's style.
Fausett is old school, though. If he was actively teaching a magic (probably Life, his true specialty), his style would be controversial too; he takes magic more seriously than most of Hightower. It's easy to imagine people getting seriously hurt in his classes in ways that most of the rich kids and their families are not down for, even if they get healed afterwards. But he has no time for Carcer's 'teach only the best' vibe. In his mind, it's every mage's privilege (and responsibility) to become the best at magic that they can be.
Carcer is not popular amongst the faculty, but some like him more than others; he gets on well with Chancellor Harrow. I think it might be fun for you guys to get a vibe for the staff dynamics yourself as you read on, though.
One thing I will say - he's really good for the university at large. Putting aside student experiences; all of the staff are world-class at their Mastery, but Carcer is a contender for best Mind mage alive (definitely top 5), and globally recognized for some of his work. That helps Hightower maintain its prestige and funding, and lets him get away with a lot.
What would the main cast choose as their secondary masteries, if they could have them?
I think I've said I would consider this a potential RAFO just in case a follow up PB story did happen and any of the main cast members did pursue a second Mastery, so I'm going to half answer it by saying a Mastery each RO thinks is cool and why, even if they might ultimately pursue something else if they actually had the choice.
Adelais: Life magic. Adelais' sickly Victorian ghost girl aesthetic isn't just for show; she gets ill now and then. Life magic seems like it might help with that.
Eleanor: Matter. Ellie feels so helpless when things fall to violence and she can't fight herself - I imagine she's fantasized about being able to shoot lightning and save the day like Julian.
Finlay: Spirit by default. We've seen him use Life and Matter, and he dislikes Mind.
Layla: Spirit, but only if the familiar was guaranteed to be cool and it didn't take so much math. Teaming up with your Spirit buddy to get stuff done seems cool!
Marcus: Matter, similar reasons to Ellie but not as strong in feeling about it.
Julian: Life. It would be nice to fix things every now and then rather than break them.
Can the mc take the throne? Once they're powerful enough
Not in the timeline of Pactbinder - it would be a pretty impressive move indeed for them to become monarch in their first year of university!
If Pactbinder ever became a truly long-running series (which I'm very much not committing to - my priority is making this book a good and satisfying standalone experience), given the broader setting's worldbuilding, I imagine themes of governance and the machinery of power would have to play a big part in some aspect.
Hey, just wanted to say that pactbinder is one of my favorite wips like ever. I love how choices feel meaningful, and things like ethnicity/race and gender conformity have an effect on how you're perceived! Your writing has been a treat to read, thanks so much for sharing it with the rest of us!
One question for you: what has been your favorite aspect/scene you've written so far?
Hope u have a great day :D
Thank you so much! I'm always so glad when people enjoy the reactivity to the MC's identity - I really wanted to do that stuff justice and react to it appropriately where I could, and where I thought it added to the story, given the setting of Pactbinder (plus I think it's a fun thing I wanted to see more of in IF anyway!). I'd really like to do more going forwards, where I can find the right spots for it.
In terms of scenes and aspects of PB I like; I really enjoy writing the Pactbinder. I like their occasional brooding tendencies, but I also really enjoy the way they can 'lock in' during a crisis; I try to write them so that every dialogue option feels 'natural' and consistent, so that players have the freedom to pick the option they consider most suitable every time rather than feeling like they always have to be Funny Pactbinder, or always have to be Quiet Pactbinder, or Angry Pactbinder, etc etc...
I also like writing Spirits and the Patron, as well as a spoilery character some people met at the end of C3, and another character everybody will meet in late C4...
The group banter scenes are often fun to write, though I sometimes feel like I should probably do less of them to speed up the story's pacing, haha.
So was there a point the Gift and the Kingsgift existed? Wasn't there a sign of population decline back then?
Yes! In Europe, the 'Great Transition' took place over the late 1500s through to the 1800s (albeit there were some stragglers into the 20th century, but only a couple of them, like Scotland, remain to the present day). The population decline is believed to be a newer phenomenon, associated with the 20th century-though some would argue that this was a delayed-onset consequence of the Transition.
Whilst it is generally held that a nation can only sustain a Gifted population or a Kingsgift-bearing monarchy (see: England vs Scotland), opinions are split as to whether this is a religious thing, a magical thing, or just a political reality (having super-OP magic people who claim being super-OP is proof of their divine right to rule is not great if you're just a normal OP magic person who thinks being normal OP is proof of your general social classes divine right to rule!).
Plus there's practical realities - if one nation has Gifted, and you get nobles immigrating out of that country into a royal-governed nation, boom - you have Gifted + the Kingsgift. That stuff sort of shook out over the years, but safe to say that the early Transition was a very interesting time in Europe (just as in real life!); a messy interplay of Kingsgift-bearing monarchs rising and falling, and the Gifted rising to replace them.
Was Napoleon a mage in PB timeline? He *was* minor nobility historically iirc
Good question! Napoleon was not Gifted, but he was a part of the upper-class stratum that knows about the Gift; for pragmatic reasons there has always been a layer of society that the Gifted are OK marrying into and 'uplifting'.
Some say that he took especial pleasure in crushing Gifted commanders on the battlefield, as proof of his general excellence, and it is believed by Gifted historians that a factor in his divorce of Empress Josephine and marriage to the daughter of a Holy Roman Emperor was his desperation to get not just the Gift, but the Kingsgift, into the family bloodline.
The truth is ambiguous, of course - it's the sort of thing Napoleon might well have done in this timeline, given his broader vision for France, but unlike those historians, we know he did similarly in our world too, so very likely the Kingsgift's importance to him was more symbolic than a specific desire to have magical kids...
Hope that you’re well! Time for the latest fortnightly Chapter 4 progress update.
Very pleased to say that my pace has picked back up significantly over the last fortnight; Chapter 4 is now at 65.7k words, which means that despite my mid-June slowdown, I’ve returned to my usual target 10k/week target for the last two weeks - if not surpassed it, as the weekend isn’t over yet!
In terms of chapter progress - I’m closer to the end than the beginning. I’m in the middle of one big set of branches (romance scenes!), then after that I will be moving into the chapter’s home stretch (though said home stretch is a big chunk of content, so may still be a bit of work to go).
Ironically, I actually thought that 65-70k was going to be my wordcount for the entire chapter, so the fact that I’ve already reached that threshold means that once again I’ve gone past my chapter length estimates…
In terms of timings - rather than think about wordcount, I’m going to challenge myself to finish my first draft of the chapter by the time I report back to you in another fortnight, so I can move on to editing in the latter half of the month.
As such, I might actually meet my late-July target release after all (though it will be tight) - and even if I do slip into August, at this point I’m fairly confident that it will be early August.
A couple of fun milestones to point out - my copy of the game is now about ~357k words long - it’s cool to have gotten past the 350k word count (though I can’t help but laugh at my initial word count estimate - funny to think that I thought this thing would be 500k to 600k words all-in…!).
Pactbinder has also now been out for a little over six months, which is very strange to think about…Thanks to all of you for keeping up with and discussing the story, and very grateful for feedback and thoughts as ever!
Quick update. For reasons not quite clear to me, this has been a very productive ten days. Chapter 4’s first draft is now finished and, err, ~110k words long (though it may get edited down some).
Not sure how that happened...
Planning to take a couple of days off, then start the debugging and editing process, which given the length of the chapter and some mechanical complexity, I do expect to take a bit of time.
Do cosmic events and positions of heavenly bodies affect magic? Eg. Solar/Lunar Eclipses and Summer/Winter Solstices?
Thanks for the question! Mostly not; most magic in the Pactbinder universe follows its own version of scientific principles, so there's not much 'stars in alignment' stuff, though some sophisticated Matter and Spirit stuff might need to take into account the physical consequences of some events (e.g. tides).
That said, there might be specific very powerful Spirits who enjoy that kind of thing; e.g. an Archspirit who likes eclipses and is more amenable to manifesting/brokering deals/doing favours at such times.
Modern mages understand all this, but that's mainly a 'modern' phenomenon of the last couple of centuries, tied to the formalization of the Masteries.
Before then there would have been a ton of old lore around, say, powerful winter solstice ice magic rituals that froze a town entire, which in practise probably just happened because a few dudes struck a cheap bargain with Jack Frost on his favourite night of the year.
I just wanted to say that I love the option to immediately begin researching immortality. Like I’m a warlock bound to a mysterious entity that stole someone’s life, of course the next step is to try to become immortal lol.
Thank you! I have to admit this was me being self-indulgent; whenever I'm reading a book with magic in and the MC finds out there's a character who has lived forever, or that there's a way to extend one's life or become immortal, they're almost always so disinterested in it, and I hate it!
It's such a classic 'villainous magical prodigy' thing (and even outside of evil mage stuff, the pursuit of eternity is of course such a core fantasy thing, all the way back to Gilgamesh!) that I felt obliged to give the PB ways to pursue that interest, were they so inclined.
