The voice of us

Project Description

The Voice of us is a game narrative script that I started as an academic project but has now developed into a personal passion project. Here you will find the last documents I wrote while piecing the story together before starting on the official script.

Project Inspiration

The Voice of us tells the story of a fantasy re-imagination of the South American colonization period. I follow 3 main characters Axé (Spirit), Caeté (Tupi), and Lhomme (Chosen) each with their own culture based on real life.

Cultural Influence

There are 4 different cultures over two continents, and they are based on a real religion/culture. The way they interact, however, is an analogy to how they behaved during the colonization of South America. So each of them has names/words that are based on the main language of that culture/religion.

Promisse:

- The Chosen (Catholics, Latin)

- The Égúnians (Yoruba, Yoruba) [African religion/region]

Ibicaraí:

- The Tupis (Multiple South American Indigenous culture, Tupi-Guarani [Language that tries to collect together every Brazilian indigenous vocabulary)

-The Spirits (Candomblé, Yoruba) ["Candomblé" is the brazilian version of Yoruba (Santeria in the US) that was developed during the slave trading years in brazil and created with the influence of both the Yoruba people that were imported to work as well as the enslaved Tupis. Also, there’s "Umbanda" a sanitized version of Candomblé that uses catholic saints so the slaves would still be able to practice their religion while hidden.

Level-Ups

World State

The Promisse, is an island where civilization has evolved at great speed due to their scientific knowledge and vast exploration of their lands. There you can find two different civilizations that live under one banner. The Chosen are the dominating civilization. They are the ones that united Promisse, using firearms to reign over the Égún (Spirits in Yoruba) who used to be a peaceful population focused on developing their physical skills and living with the land.

The other continent is named Ibicaraí (Holy Land in Tupi-guarani) by the natives and Is actually 4 times the size of Promisse. Ibicaraí was colonized over a century ago, but due to its dense jungle, even the Promicians were unable to explore it, leading the land’s mysteries unknown to all but the native tribes that reside in it. However, this situation has changed over the last decade. After developing brutal deforestation methods, in only 7 years, over 10% of Ibicaraí’s native flora has been destroyed.

When Ibicaraí was discovered, The chosen decided to send many “Égún” to it to perform the manual labor necessary to colonize the land. As they arrived there and started to mingle with the captured natives (Tupis), who were also oppressed into labor, a new community started to arise, “The Spirits” as they call themselves. Axé was born a spirit with mixed blood.

Many years have passed since the days of early colonization, and the spirits as well as the “Égún”, after much fighting, have conquered some rights and respect from the Chosen. This deal is very flimsy though. The Chosen don’t actually respect them but rather “keep them at bay” due to fearing their numbers and fighting skills, as well as due to those within their ranks who oppose their violent actions. This means that mutual respect is flimsy and doesn’t mean much. The chosen’s new strategy is to “pick their battles” as they will still easily disregard and sacrifice any other people, carefully containing information and guaranteeing that tales of their activities don’t spread.

Due to the new potential for exploration and the lack of land at Promisse, the Chosen have started to migrate to Ibicaraí. This was also fueled by heavy propaganda from the chosen governments on the need to “expand and take control”. However, since they see themselves as “the owner” of the land, they will raise a whole community if a noble wish to build their mansion there. As if that was not enough, they will also dictate which cultural event is allowed to happen, as the law states “Any ritual can be performed away from the Chosen eyes and ears. Any violation may lead the event to be disrupted and the land to be seized.”