"Her horror grows to anger. Her anger grows to rage. Her rage grows to berserker fury. She is not Petra now. She is not even Mayanna. She is..." (from Section 3 Chapter 3 of the prose serial)
Blurb: (adapted from the intro from Section 3 Chapter 3 of the serial) "Modern English schoolgirl Petra Stone is a reincarnation of the matriarchal warrior princess Mayanna. The Princess and the schoolgirl exist as two independent personalities. She has been taken back into ancient matriarchal Britain by an Amazon group: Rahiyana, the leader; Thunder, a seven-foot powerhouse; Whirlwind, the teen tornado and a shape-shifting imp named Uisce. But the evil patriarchal Lord Fear is determined to kill Petra and has sent a powerful and mysterious band known only as the Swarm..."
Why is it worth your time?: This is a heck of a ride: a mostly-lost sword-and-sorcery prose serial and computer game about a lesbian matriarchy whose chosen one is a multiple. The serial is pulpy.
The game is a throwback, even by 1992's standards, but it's spoken of with fondness and respect by text-only game fans, and while we took a while to get our sea legs, we found it enjoyable with its dreamy, whimsical tone. It's the first computer game I know of with any multi themes at all. Unusually for its time, it involves multiple female party members, all of which you can play by typing the command BECOME WHIRLWIND (or Rahiyana, and so on), so there's a strange element to the player becoming multiple people and questing to bring a different multiple to power. I have never seen a project like this, and it is an odd duck that I'm glad has been salvaged, even piecemeal. If you're into sword and sorcery, or just the oldest multi computer game I've found, give it a shot!
Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, the dead, nonhumans [goddess, dog], spiritual, switching, possession
Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments
Access Notes: The prose serial is the most overtly multi part of this story, and it gives valuable context for the no-intro-given game, so read it first. Sadly, it seems to be mostly lost media; only
Section 3: Berserker Chapter 3: Berserker and
Section 4: Histories Chapter 1: Trial by Conscience have been scanned, though at least they've been posted online as both PDF and screenreadable plaintext. The
special collections at UC Davis may have more?
Both halves of the game can be played thanks to emulator on archive.org, but despite being text-only, it is probably not screenreadable, and only
Silverwolf Part 2: the Sacred Mountain has Petra/Mayanna/Silverwolf in it, and in a fairly passive role. (The two halves can be played in any order. We found Part 2 more enjoyable, but if you're dying for completionism, here's the link for
Part 1: Quest for the Sword.) There is also
a walk-through, which I found invaluable.
There was a comic meant to be released with the game, but far as I know, it never came to be.
Misc Notes: Okay, I fell down a rabbit hole with this one,because it is an odd, odd duck. I am restraining myself from infobricking about the kinky matriarchal Irish women who dressed in Victorian fashion and also became a well-reputed text-only gaming house. What a wild ride.
Also, I'm leaving the authors' names as "various" in the header bar because here are the names associated with this project:
- Michele Dennis (illustrator of prose)
- Laeretta Krenne-Genovene (writer of prose)
- St. Bride's (credited as the game creator, also the name of the group that the creators were part of)
- Priscilla Langridge or Marianne Scarlett, who were credited as St. Bride's Game Mistresses in this 1986 article from Crash Magazine.
- Zenobi Software (the company that picked up the Silverwolf game after St. Bride's went bust and actually got the damned thing released)
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