Recently some of the thematics in Sorcerer came into alignment with a situation in my life...not a new situation, but one I only just began to see in this light...


I have a friend who sufers from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (see this link or google for more technical info: http://www.emedicine.com/NEURO/topic365.htm).

She is haunted by this thing. When she went through a long unmedicated period, she was possessed, driven with this frantic maniacle energy. You could see her getting thinner and more frantic daily, almost as if she were being consumed from within. But in her frenzy, she was inspired. Over the course of about a year she wrote two complete novels, coutless short stories, plays (some of which have sice been produced locally), she composed songs for insturments I had neevr heard of- which she learned to play in a week. She learned three languages. Her work was genuinly inspired too, some of it down right brilliant, but she was miserable, erratic, and driven beyond any sane limit. I believed that if it struck her, she could have done anything. Her limits were gone... all the safety mechanicms which keep a person in check (and sane) were torn away. it was terrifying to be around her. She was suicidal, crazed, dangerous.

She halucinated almost constantly- and to her the demons were real, and they were coming down to get her. They drove her, scourged her. I don't think she ever slept, but then her waking was so like dreaming I don't think it mattered.

When she felt a bout of seizure coming on, she described the aura effect as a looming dread that something was coming for her, something horrible was descending.

Thankfuly she recieved treatment, and now controls the worst of her seizure activity with medication and the help of a great neurologist...but that burning creative fire is banked back... she is still remarkably talented, but in a normal way.

And what scares me the most is how clear it is sometimes that she misses the energy that drove her- those demons and their barbed whips.


Don't let anyone tell you that this stuff isn't in a very literal sense real.

-Benjamin

Hi Benjamin,

Yeah, I'm big on the notion that the "demons" of Sorcerer are metaphors, but they are metaphors for real stuff.

There's a reason that the first thing people said to me, when I was telling them that I was designing the game, was, "Um, but can't you call them something besides 'demons'?" I'd tell them that the very reason that they asked that question was why I could do no such thing.

Best,
Ron