Warning: extremely long post, you've been warned ;)
I played Three Fourths Home more than a decade ago, yet I think of it every time I am listening to a thunderstorm (we don't have tornadoes where I'm from).
Some fictional works are foundational to me, and this is one of them. It's not really a game, more an interactive narrative experience which is mostly text-based. As such, I'm sure the total number of people who have "played" it is quite low, yet it resonated strongly with me.
I'm not going to spoil things too much for you. If it sounds interesting, go play it. The story is about Kelly, who after college has come back home to her parents'. She is in a tough spot, things are not going well for her, and before coming back home, she had not been good about keeping in touch.
This is the first theme that resonates with me, this whole idea of leaving home for the first time as a young adult, spreading one's wings, and failing so bad that the only viable option is to go back home. It's not what happened to me, but I guess it was always something on my mind during the first few years on my own. I enjoy the "what if" aspect of these experiences.
Back to Kelly, at home things are complicated. Her parents have their own challenges, and her brother, who is clearly autistic, didn't take well to her leaving and not staying in touch.
At the beginning of the game (first 2 minutes), Kelly has driven to a place filled with old memories. She left in the early hours of the morning, not telling anyone she was gone, let alone where to. The weather is degrading fast and she gets a call from her mom on her cell phone who is worrying about her missing daughter. She starts driving back, and the game revolves around the conversation she's having with her folks on the drive back as the weather quickly worsens.
Maybe this is the second theme that resonates with me, I have always enjoyed thunderstorms and bad weather, be it at a moody beach, at home with the windows open, or when traveling (even if it makes driving dangerous). There's something very soothing to me, hearing heavy rain falling and thunder clapping when I am in a safe place to enjoy it.
But back to Kelly's brother, Ben. He has some things to express and it's clearly not easy for him. He's taken to writing fiction and he uses that as a way to communicate. While on the phone, he recites from memory his latest story to Kelly. There is a very striking quote in that story, which goes:
And the wind will lift away our rot.
I am not sure I can put into words what this sentence evokes in me. Disgust and hope, relief and worry, familiarity and strangeness, all at the same time.
I have not seen this story reproduced anywhere online. Even as I am typing this, I am hesitating to publish it. Indeed, it is not my work, it's the work of Three Fourths Home developers, "[bracket]games" and Zach Sanford (see https://threefourthshome.com/). But I am also someone who archives things that he loves for fear, often justified, that they will disappear from the public internet after some time. For now, the game is still readily available online, so it's not a problem. In the future, maybe this copy will be the last one left, but that would be really sad. Maybe publishing it here is not worst than the full playthroughs which exist on Youtube?
In any case, if you are interested in the game, I would recommend that you enjoy the story in its original context, it makes a big difference. If not, and you just want to read it here, maybe after reading it you will want to understand why Ben wrote this story and why he's telling it to Kelly. In that case, I hope you will make the effort to go play the game.
At any rate, here it goes:
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A village sat in a wide valley cut high in the mountains. It was a place of plenty; a gash of green in the otherwise cold slate rising above on all sides. Those living in the village called the place Vue, though those who lived higher in the mountains mining for precious glints of yellow and blue, called it The Trough. Those in the valley treated this name as an insult, for they thought it was a name unfit for their fair village. The people of Vue, or The Trough, had lived there for centuries. They were mostly farmers, for most of the year, save for the month when they would venture upward into the mining towns to sell the harvest's bounty at a premium. They would return home with bags filled with chips of yellow and blue tied to their fine leather belts, clinking brightly with the wealth. The next year, they would trade half of their shining flints to the farmers for a share of the harvest that they would, in turn, cart up to the mining villages yet again. Food flowed up and outward from the valley, and the yellow and blue would trickle down, gathering in the valley like a collection basin. This continued for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Dozens of generations of farmer fathers and merchant sons were born, grew wealthier, and were buried beneath the plush pasture of the valley.
Until The Beast descended.
The mining folk in the higher reaches of the mountains had passed tales of The Beast around for as long as their history stretched. At the highest peak of the northmost mountain, they said, lived The Beast. It watched in all directions through slit eyes, judging those below, biding its time until it would enact a righteous calamity. It was a nightmare of immense and terrible power, the miners would whisper. But it was also a patient creature. It would wait until it felt the world below had become irredeemable before unleashing such destruction that its judgment would be fulfilled. It was simply biding its time until an age of selfish sin before cascading down an era of sickness and madness, of fire and char and blood. And one day, after hundreds of generations of farmers and traders had lived and died in the valley, it appeared in Vue.
The Beast had risen in the Trough.
It appeared without warning, with neither sound nor fury. It was simply there. Curled atop four legs, steaming breath rising from a black maw, leathery wings folded in on its hulking shape, it towered over the center of the village, ominously silent. It did not move. It did not even seem to be living, save for the seeping steam billowing from its slime-slicked snout. The villages warriors were called to arms, the ceremonial horn echoing off of the walls of the valley, aching towards a pregnant silence. After a moment stretched thin, they rushed toward the beast, their spears angled at its massive form. The rest of the village watched from the safety of embroidered drapery as the spears splintered against The Beast's hide, the honed blades shattering like glass. The warriors fell to the earth, crying out as their arms, as splintered as their spears, hung lifeless by their sides.
The Beast did not stir.
The village's warriors were buried the next morning, having perished during the night. Those who tended their wounds would later claim their eyes turned black, as if their light was leeched from within. The people of Vue, or the Trough, gathered to discuss what was to be done. The Beast slumbered, but for how long? Why did it sleep? And perhaps more worryingly of all, how had it arrived in their valley? Not a soul had seen its arrival. It was almost as if the thing had simply materialized in the center of the village. Or, some proposed, it had emerged from the earth itself. But if that were the case, how had the soil, their valuable, rich, rare earth, the source of their plenty and their affluence, birthed such a terrible creature? Some were quick to suggest leaving the valley. "We could ascend into the alcoves in the mountains." the merchants said. "With no one to tend the fields, how would we eat?" The farmers countered. The villagers decided to stay in their valley. The creature slept, and the creature breathed. With each breath, its skin rolled, animating the thorny black scales into a roiling obsidian briar. But it did not move. It did not rain terror from the skies, nor did it consume children by the score.
It slept.
The people of Vue sent an envoy to appeal to the miners in the mountain for help. The mountain folk scoffed at the villager in her plush furs and gold adornments. "Why should we help you?" They asked. "The Beast has come to enact a reckoning. But perhaps we can be convinced." The envoy returned to the village with the miner's demands. They would continue their trade, and perhaps one day, the miners would come to their aid. The farmers continued to tend to their land. The merchants made their yearly trek up the treacherous trails to collect what little chips of wealth the miners had collected in exchange for the farmers' yield. Year after year, however, there seemed to be a little less. A little less harvest. A little less yellow and blue passed around in the snowy alcoves carved from unforgiving rock. A little less green in the valley, a little less light.
This continued for twenty years, until the day it began to rain.
The people of Vue, or Through, watched the clouds roll in not from the South, whence the clouds usually arrived laden with water from a faraway sea, but from the North, where there was but ice and stone and mountain. The rain draped the valley in a dampness that did not relent, but instead crept into every corner. The mountains themselves seemed to sweat and pour water into the valley. The water carried with it a quiet rot. The firs harvest after the rains began produced a meager crop, and what little could be gathered was black with mold before the merchants had a chance to trade for their yellow and blue. Their livestock fared not better; the animals began developing weeping sores that became infected and killed with a quick fever. That winter, the people of The Trough, or Vue, watched one another waste away as they began to starve. The envoy was sent back into the mountains to beg for help once again, but found the mines deserted.
The people of Vue were truly on their own.
The next harvest was worse; every last crop had turned mealy and infested before midsummer. By the end of the season, the last of their livestock were dead. The people of The Trough watched one another descend into a state of hungry madness, devouring the rotting wood sloughing from their homes in slimy heaps and their fine leather belts that once held yellow and blue, now sprouting spores of black mold.
The village and its residents were rotting away.
A group of villagers approached the beast after the last of their livelihood had perished, slogging through the swamp of waist-high mud to make a plea to The Beast. "We are sorry if we have offended you, mighty creature. We offer ourselves to you, in hopes that our sacrifice will satisfy your hunger." In unison, the villagers submerged into the tarry mud, suffocating in the muck.
The Beast slept.
As the rains from the north continued into their third year, the few remaining people in The Trough began to prophesize about The Beast. It had come and brought with it great devastation, they could agree. It had brought the rains from the north and it had brought a rot to the village that would not relent. Squatting in what little remained of their crumbling homes, they dreamt of the day that The Beast would be satisfied by their penance, when it would wake and leave their valley and allow them to farm the land. They dreamt of the day that the miners would return, bringing with them their precious bits of wealth. "The time will come" they said, "when The Beast will wake from its slumber and spread its wings, reaching from one end of the valley to the other. And with a beat of those mighty wings, it will ascend aloft a squall. And the wind will lift away our rot." The villagers waited for that day to come. A generation came and went, born into the rain and long rotten in the moldy dirt. The few survivors had long abandoned hope that The Beast would return to its mountain perch. It was perpetual, a manifestation of their sin.
The Beast slept. Until it did not.
The day The Beast awoke, the villagers celebrated. They watched it stretch its long, horrible form into shape, hide shuddering as it shook the decades of rain from the thorny scales. They sang to The Beast as it stood uncertainly and reared on its haunches, unfolding the scarred leather wings from one end of the valley to the other. The time of The Beast's departure had finally arrived. The time had come for the cleansing wind. The Beast beats its wings, emitting a tired and ugly groan as it lifted from the sodden earth. With a final sigh, it shot high into the air, sending a great gust of wind through the valley that toppled what dismal dwellings remained haphazardly standing.
The valley was wiped clean.
The villagers were knocked from their feet by the rush of wind. As they struggled upright, they felt the sun on their skin for the first time. They rejoiced, their pale forms dancing in a pitiful display of frailty. They could return to the ways of their ancestors. They could know plenty. They planted their first crop before the grass had even greened, with a newfound acuity for the hunger that plagued them constantly.
But the grass did not wax green.
The decades of rains from the north had left the earth poisoned. There was no going back. They wept, convinced that they were doomed by their ancestor's actions, that The Beast had punished them for some forgotten guilt. Their rot had been lifted, in its place, sterility. The sun shone, but it was upon a new land. A land turned to jagged, unforgiving slate, where perhaps bits of yellow and blue could be scavenged if one dug deeply enough to find a petrified leather belt.
Today is the day I wish I had the artistic talent of my sister.
I just drew a really crappy version of 1650 Puritan clothing as a representation for the book The Scarlet Letter. If my sister would have been me, it would be lovely and drawn on the computer rather than a crude sketch on sketchbook paper.
