"GreedFall" as an Otherworldly Adventure Tale
Viewing "GreedFall" through the Lens of a Celtic Saga Genre
Continuing September’s theme of GreedFall and combining it with further analysis of possible Celtic themes, this week’s post will go over how some cinematic and narrative elements of the game might indicate some inspiration from otherworldly adventures prevalent in Celtic language literature.
In last week’s post, I discussed the influences of Celtic pre-Christian religion that appears in GreedFall. If you want to give that a read to get some context for some of the concepts I’ll be laying out in this article you can follow the link below!
Celtic Religion in "GreedFall"
As with my previous posts, this will include spoilers for GreedFall, so consider playing the game on PC or console beforehand if you would rather experience the game for yourself.
There are two terms used for titling and categorizing otherworldly adventure tales in Irish sagas: echtra and im(m)ram. The first, echtra, means “An expedition, journey, [or] voyage”1 and is used in the titles of stories like Echtrae Nerai (“The Adventures of Nera”). The second term, immram, is a verbal noun meaning “the act of rowing, sea-voyaging”2 one of the most famous of the immrama is Immram Brain (“The Voyage of Bran”). When differentiating these terms, the most obvious difference that was pointed out to me was that immrama usually have religious (i.e., Christian) themes and are specifically sea-voyages that may or may not go to otherworldly islands west of Ireland. Furthermore, Carey summarizes the differences between the genre like so: “…echtrae (a tale of a hero’s journey to the Otherworld) and immram (a more loosely structured voyage-tale in which the protagonist visits a series of Otherworld islands…”3 Given that GreedFall is a traditional roleplaying game, it makes the most sense to compare it to an echtra since normally rpgs follow a “hero’s journey” model. However, it does also possess elements of the imram genre (namely the sea-voyage and otherworldly island motifs) and weaves them into the narrative to fit seamlessly with the vision Spiders had for this project.
One of the reasons why I ended up writing a paper on GreedFall for the medieval Welsh literature class I took in grad school was due to one story title resembling (in my head) the name of the island the game takes place on—Tí Fradí. Readers of Welsh literature may be familiar with the poem ascribed to Taliesin, Preiddeu Annwfn (“The Spoils of Annwn”). The narrative of this poem features King Arthur sailing to the Welsh otherworld of Annwn to acquire a magical cauldron, but his expedition ends in disaster with only seven men—including Arthur and Taliesin—returning. When I heard my professor say the title aloud (it’s pronounced pre-thee ah-noo-vuhn, by the way), I thought the first word “spoils” had some relation to the word fradí. It was due to this I came up with the clever title “The Land of Spoils” for my essay. When scraping together what information I could on GreedFall’s inspirations, the Spiders Facebook account referred me to Antoine Henri. When I began my correspondence with him, he clarified that the word preiddeu had no relation to fradí and that the latter word came from the Proto-Celtic *φrato- (“grace, virtue, good fortune”)4; the Yecht Fradí cognate has similar meaning. Despite this new development, I had already started noticing patterns of otherworldly expeditions in GreedFall.
When thinking about what the Celtic otherworld is, there is the theory that it may be a representation of the afterlife in pre-Christian religion. It may, however, be a completely separate place of existence from any sort of afterlife and just simply be a place where supernatural entities reside. In terms of locating the otherworld, there are several places it could appear. These include beneath the earth (usually within some kind of fairy mound in Irish tradition) or underwater, above the earth but outside of society, or across the sea. Folk tradition of the otherworld indicates that it exists parallel to our own existence and has numerous access points, which are normally in liminal spaces. By locating or stumbling into these spaces, characters from our own world can enter the otherworld. These access points can include natural, environmental, or conditional factors that are considered liminal. Otherworldly encounters or people accidently entering the otherworld at twilight or on misty days are a common occurrence in stories and folkloric tradition. Sleep and dreams may also be a way for the otherworld to interact with people from our own world, such as in the tale Aislinge Oengusso (“The Dream of Oengus”) where Oengus Óg dreams of an otherworldly maiden. The presence of birds can also indicate some otherworldly influence, with the birds themselves potentially serving as the otherworld guides. Sometimes these birds may have other indicators to signal their otherworldly origin, such as carrying items made of gold or silver. In the tale of Cú Chulainn’s conception, a pair of birds carrying a silver chain lead Conchobar and his host to Newgrange where they have an otherworldly encounter.
In GreedFall, although Tír Fradí is not otherworldly in the sense of being in some other realm or dimension of existence, the game’s themes, story, and worldbuilding does parallel some of the tropes of these otherworldly adventure stories. As explained with one possible location of the otherworld, and simply considering the use of the word tír5 in the name of the island, Spiders was likely inspired by the tales featuring the otherworldly islands such as Mag Mell and Tír na nÓg. During an email exchange with Jehanne Rousseau, Spiders’ creative lead, she did mention, “[T]he story of Matheus, the fonder [sic] of the religion [of the Enlightened] that left his country on a boat to discover the Eden and found Teer Fradee is [inspired] by the story of Saint Brendan.”6 The “otherworldly journey” in GreedFall embarks following the prologue and tutorial section of the game, taking place in the plague-beset city of Serene on the continent of Gacane. The player character De Sardet, their cousin Constantin d’Orsay, and their bodyguard Kurt of the Coin Guard faction board a boat ship captained by Vasco of the Naut faction. The landing on Tír Fradí is preceded by a cinematic where the ship passes through a massive wall of fog, which in Irish literature and folktales could be a signifier of entrance to the otherworld. On top of that, a flock of seagulls assails the ship, which can be applied to the idea of birds being a otherworld indicator. There is nothing inherently supernatural or odd about them but in the context of the otherworld journey genre this can be seen as simple flavoring to enhance the symbolism.
Although the precise location of Annwn in Preiddeu Annwfn is not specified, the text uses King Arthur’s ship, Prydwen, to describe the number of men (i.e., “Three fullnesses of Prydwen we went into it.”)7 he takes with him into the otherworld. References to sailing are not present in this text, but the failed attempt to plunder the otherworld resembles, somewhat, in GreedFall the first attempt the Congregation of Merchants made to try and colonize Tír Fradí. This history is uncovered by following a quest line in the game that explains how the Naut faction discovered and sold the location of Tír Fradí to the Congregation a century before the events of the game. The colonization effort failed after the Natives drove out the invaders, newly invigorated with magic bestowed upon them by their god en on míl frichtimen. In Preiddeu Annwfn, the primary “spoil” Arthur wishes to claim is the cauldron neu peir pen annwfyn (“the cauldron of the chief of Annwn”), which,
From the breath of nine maidens
it was kindled…It does not boil the food of a coward;
it has not been destined.8
The closest thing to a cauldron I could see in GreedFall would be the volcano at the center of Tír Fradí which is inhabited by the island’s god en on míl frichtimen. The cauldron in Preiddeu Annwfn is a source of sustenance and other cauldrons in Welsh and Irish literature have similar functions such as the Dagda’s cauldron from which “No company ever went away unsatisfied,”9 or cauldrons that can bestow knowledge such as the cauldron featured in the poem Hanes Taliesin where the witch Ceridwen brews an elixir of wisdom in one. In very broad terms, the volcano can serve as a magical cauldron since the lifeforce of the island and its inhabitants is directly tied to en on míl frichtimen, and characters such as the druid-like doneigada and sin ol menawí derive wisdom and power from their deity dwelling in this metaphorical cauldron.
Stories involving otherworldly expeditions or characters emerging from the otherworld have some tropes that signify to the audience if there is an otherworldly presence in the narrative. A common device for bringing characters from our world to the otherworld is having an otherworldly character approach a protagonist requesting aid because there is some enemy in the otherworld that requires aid to defeat. If we stretch the boundaries of this trope, then in GreedFall this plot beat takes the form of the Native NPC companion Síora (an otherworldly inhabitant for the purposes of this article) requesting help from De Sardet in the colonial city of New Serene on Tír Fradí. What players might notice about New Serene is that it, aside from being mostly cleaner, this city is not terribly different from the original Serene on Gacane. Although the player character at this point has arrived in “the otherworld” they have yet to see the unspoiled areas of the island. Síora’s introductory mission to assist with a conflict her tribe is facing is one of the possible routes players may take to venture into Tír Fradí proper.
While Síora could be considered an otherworld guide of sorts for the purposes of navigating Tír Fradí, the Nauts can also be seen as guides to the otherworld as they quite literally know how to sail and reach the island, thus most of the other factions rely on them. At the beginning of the game, the Naut faction is shrouded in a bit of mystery, many outside their ranks believing they employ some form of magic to navigate the seas. There is a questline, called The Nauts’ Secrets, later in the game that reveals they actually use an advanced science to navigate the oceans rather than any sort of magic. I argue that this obscure knowledge they possess, combined with the facts that they hail from a secret island separate from Tír Fradí and spend most of their time in a liminal setting (i.e., on the sea and at the peripheries of land-bound society) makes the Nauts likely candidates for being considered otherworld guides.
In the otherworld, the beings and society inhabiting it largely resemble the world from which the stories are from (in this case Medieval Ireland), but with some marked differences. For one, the landscape and culture of the otherworld sometimes resembles a “golden age” authors of these tales imagined Ireland to have been like. Although the wilderness, culture, and people of Tír Fradí are sometimes regarded with disrespect, the Natives (who are unquestionably human) and island have some idyllic qualities in terms of achieving balance with nature and avoiding industrialization—a stark contrast to the situation on the continent of Gacane. The wildlife of the island also resembles prehistoric megafauna in some cases, which may be to indicate that Tír Fradí is meant to be on the extreme end of the primeval versus industrial spectrum. Some folk stories, especially those concerning the fíanna and Fionn mac Cumhaill, reference a time when people and animals were larger. These may be folk memories handed down through generations when megafauna were still alive in Europe, the British Isles, and Ireland.10 When considering later artistic movements like the Celtic Twilight and the entire romantic era of literature where creators romanticized pre-industrial time periods and cultures, Spiders might have taken some inspiration from these pieces to inform the natural aesthetics of Tír Fradí.
Otherworld inhabitants also might not age as quickly as people from our world. The Natives of Tír Fradí age and die like normal humans, but those who are bonded with the land may also have the opportunity to gain a new sort of life by transforming into the monstrous guardians (nádaigeis in Yecht Fradí). This is not considered a form of youth or immortality, but bonded individuals are given increased constitution and strength as a result of their connection with en on míl frichtimen.
Belongings and other items made of unusual materials are also commonplace in the otherworld. Sometimes, human otherworld guides may be adorned with gold and silver jewelry or carry weapons made of the stuff. There may also be plant life or structures that are made of gold or silver, such as the silver branch in Immram Brain or the golden tree and silver cauldron in the tale Baile in Scáil (“The Phantom’s Frenzy”). In GreedFall, the first obvious sort of “weird material” (in the realm of gold and silver) players might notice is the gold-colored shoulder plate on Vasco’s default armor set. Seeing as he is technically De Sardet’s first otherworld guide, this choice of graith would indicate (to a medieval Irish audience at least) his function as one. In the “otherworld” itself (Tír Fradí), a common material the Natives use for the construction of their weapons and armor is obsidian. While obsidian has been used by pre-industrial cultures in our own world’s history, this material is exotic enough in GreedFall to signal the disparity between the technology of Gacane and Tír Fradí.
In my original correspondence with Spiders and the creative leads on GreedFall, I went in with the intention of pulling out specific references to Welsh literature and Preiddeu Annwfn specifically (see my earlier confusion about the etymology of Tír Fradí). My discussions with Rousseau and Henri clarified that Spiders pulled in a multitude of resources in order to create a “universal” story. While the otherworldly adventure tales of Celtic literature were not named specifically, I believe that there is enough evidence in the final version of GreedFall to show that they might have at least been considered when creating the world and narrative of the distant island of Tír Fradí.
Thanks for reading this week’s post! What otherworldly stories did GreedFall remind you the most of, from Celtic culture or otherwise? Leave them in the comments!
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eDIL s.v. echtra.
eDIL s.v. imram.
John Carey. “The location of the otherworld in Irish tradition” in The Otherworld voyage in early Irish literature ed. J. Wooding (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000): 113.
From email correspondence with Antoine Henri, 2022.
Tír is Irish for “land”, the same definition for this word is used in Yecht Fradí.
Jehanne Rousseau, 2022.
Preiddeu Annwn (“The Spoils of Annwn”). Translated by Sarah Higley, 2007. Section 9. Original Welsh: Tri lloneit prytwen yd aetham ni idi. https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/preiddeu-annwn
Preiddeu Annwn. Higley (trans). Sections 14 and 17.
Cath Maige Tuiread (“The Second Battle of Moytura”). Translated by Elizabeth A. Grey. https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T300010/
In my discussions with the developers of GreedFall, however, mention of the Fenian Cycle as inspiration did not come up.
Greedfall completely passed me by so it's been interesting to get this analytical look at it, learning about Celtic mythology and a game at the same time. The mention of height as an otherworldly trait is interesting.
Also I've conditioned myself to immediately associate any mention of obsidian with Aztec culture and Tezcatlipoca. Obsidian mirrors were a tool of divination and part of the iconography of Tezcatlipoca (essentially the most important deity), an Aztec obsidian mirror was also appropriated by John Dee as a tool for communicating with spirits, so it has a part in western occultism as well. I think that can tie into the otherworld themes as well.