Folklore

Where the three spirits come from

A fox, a magpie and a haetae. The three never lived in one story. They were taken from different Korean folktales and set down together in one night.

The question that stayed with us longest while making the game was "why these three?" As a puzzle it needed one who leaps, one who flies and one who is strong, but if that were the whole reason, a rabbit would do as well as a fox. We wanted each of them to have to be here because of a story they already carried.

The fox — the one with the orb

Stories of the nine-tailed fox, the gumiho, are told all over Korea, but the one the game borrows is the tale of the fox's orb. The fox carries a bead in her mouth, and if a person swallows it, that person comes to know the ways of heaven, earth and people. The fox, having lost the orb, can never become human.

The orb was not power but possibility. The one who swallowed it gained; the one it was taken from stayed where she was, forever.

The heart of that story is not how frightening the creature is but how much she wants. The gumiho is not a thing that harms; she is a thing that longs to become something. So in the game the fox leaps farther and higher than the other two, and cannot finish a single night alone. The gift of running ahead and the fate of never arriving by herself — both had to live in the same character.

Mongsil's earlier piece, The Fox's Orb, is a short story game about that very tale.

The magpie — the bird that makes a bridge

In Korea the magpie has long been the bird that brings good news; a magpie calling in the morning means a guest is coming. But the game borrows the larger story — the bridge of magpies on Chilseok, the seventh night of the seventh month.

Once a year, for the cowherd and the weaver girl kept apart by the Milky Way, the magpies and crows rise into the sky and lay their own bodies down as a bridge. Around Chilseok, people said, the bald patches on magpies' heads were the marks of the feet that had crossed.

The magpie is not the one who crosses. She is the one who lets others cross.

That one line is the whole design of the magpie in the game. She is the only one of the three who can fly, so she can go anywhere alone — and yet everything she does is for someone else. She pecks the high bell to open a door for others; she carries the orb to another's lock. The freest of the three moves most for the others. The heart of the magpie bridge, turned into a rule.

The haetae — the beast that eats fire

The haetae (獬豸) is an imagined beast that tells right from wrong. Because it was said to gore the unjust with its horn, it has long been a symbol of law and justice, embroidered on the robes of the officials who judged the court.

But in the old capital the haetae was given one more job: keeping fire away. By the reckoning of geomancy the fire-spirit of Gwanak mountain would burn the palace, so stone haetae were set before Gwanghwamun gate to hold that fire down. They sit there still.

The haetae does not defeat fire. It takes it in.

When the haetae in the game stands before a column of fire, the fire does not go out — it goes into him. And carrying it, he can set it burning again in a cold brazier. Holding fire back and carrying fire forward are the same act: that is the haetae's design, and our favourite rule in the game. That he cannot jump is intended too. What is steady is seldom light.

The moon gate, and the night

At the end of every night stands a round stone door. This moon gate, shaped like a full moon, belongs to no particular tale; its form is borrowed from the moon gates of Korean gardens and the arched gates of temples. If any one of the three places is empty, it does not open.

The night itself is there for the same reason. In old Korean stories the demons and the guardian beasts move at night, and people lose their way at night. The whole game is a dark ink-wash night partly for the mood — and partly so that the screen keeps saying, every moment, why the three have to be together.