Campren Recap

     Once upon a time, there was a man named Campren McMillin. He had a beautiful home, a beautiful wife, and a psychiatrist who happily accepted large sums of money to listen to him ramble about his traumatic past.

     It came to pass that Campren’s wife absentmindedly left her tote bag at home when she left for dance lessons. Being a good husband (and having nothing better to do at that moment), Campren drove to the Fabulous Ferdinand’s Dance Studio to save his wife a trip back to their house. But instead of finding a room full of aspiring dancers practicing their moves, he found only his wife and Ferdinand, who were practicing moves of a very different sort.

     Utterly heartbroken, he ran back to his car and proceeded to blubber loudly. He started to drive away, but brought his car to screeching halt when he noticed a bright flash of light in one of the windows. Something had caught fire, and with every second the inferno grew larger. He gripped the steering wheel so hard that this hands went white. He knew that his wife was still in the building, but he couldn’t bring himself to go inside and help her, or warn her, or even to call the fire department. Whether it was because of his anger over her infidelity or his own crippling cowardice, he would never be able to say for certain.

     Within a few short minutes, every window and door of the building was spewing pillars of flame. He stared at the blaze in a trancelike state until the distant sound of sirens snapped him back into reality. Tearing his eyes from the charred studio, he started his car and prepared to drive away. As he left, he happened to catch sight of a single wren perched on a nearby tree branch, staring at him accusingly. Yes, accusingly, he was sure of it. 

     He didn’t drive to his house or any other place that was familiar to him; he just drove and drove, barely caring where he went. Part of him too grief-stricken to return to the home he’d shared with his beloved wife; part of him was afraid that the police would accuse him of starting the fire; and a third part of him, the biggest part of all, simply didn’t want to be Campren McMillin anymore.

     After a time, he ended up back in his home state of South Carolina. He started calling himself Charley Campbell. Having completely discarded his previous identity, he roamed the streets, hungry and jobless, picking pockets and shoplifting to keep himself fed and clothed. Every now and then he would see a small, fat wren sitting in a tree or on a lamppost, leering at him in silent judgment. He came to dread seeing the feathery apparition, and soon the mere sight of any sort of bird would send him into a raving panic.

      But even a coward has his limits, and there eventually came a day when Campren decided to confront the wren. Although his whole being shook with an  apprehension, he approached it, and proceeded to call it a, quote-unquote, “dirty, rotten, evil little monster.” He continued to scream and rebuke the portly bird, before he came to his sense and realized that he was, well, screaming and rebuking a portly bird. Finally aware of his madness, he crumpled to the ground in a fetal position, his mind and spirit almost completely shattered.

     And then Mudd showed up.

     He hadn’t been looking for Campren. No, the man he was after went by the name of Sir Gardevier of Vendersia. However, Gardevier was nowhere to be found, so Campren would have to do. After a brief and confusing conversation, Mudd gave his new recruit's jacket the function of ‘protection’ and sent him on his way to the Book of Stories.

     As if finding himself in a strange, new land wasn’t bad enough, Campren was dismayed to realize that the wren had followed him to the ne world. What’s more, it had gained the ability to speak. Somehow the bird managed to earn his trust, but then promptly broke it by guiding him into an ambush. Thus began Campren’s adventures in the Book.

     During his journeys, he would meet and befriend Geoffrey pierce, an ageless man whose mind overflowed with creativity; Daniel, a skilled warrior who looked young for his age; Knives, a mercenary with knack for dimensional magic and a history that he would never get learn about; and a host of other strange (and sometimes terrifying) individuals. But out of all the people he met, one stood out as the strangest and most terrifying of all: Protagonist, the being that had inhabited the body of the fat little wren.

     Protagonist was ‘born’ during Campren’s early childhood, when the book’s unwriting fractured his personality and severed his protagonistic essence. Though this essence became a separate entity and grew a mind of its own, it still considered Campren to be its ‘proper self.’ The spirit was enraged by the fact that this 'self' was not living the life expected of the main character of a story. Protagonist would go on to manipulate him, orchestrate terrible events, and commit unspeakable atrocities, all for the sake of trying to help his 'master' become the character that he was always meant to be.

     Protagonist would ultimately fail in this endeavor. Still, Campren managed to help finish the story of Tel Mache, and nearly finished the story of Blackchapel before he was forced to run from an assault by the unwriting.

     His escape would take him back to Darnell, Texas, the place where he had lived with his wife in the years before her death. And, to Campren’s extreme delight, his wife welcomed him back, her face full of love and decidedly unburnt. The fire had supposedly happened in August, but Campren found himself in March of the same year. Tossing aside his vivid memories of being homeless and journeying through the Book, he convinced himself that he had imagined the whole thing, and that his wife had never been in a relationship with another man, and therefore had never perished in a fire. He was finally back in reality, he said, and all of those terrible events were nothing more than a bad dream.

     He would be proven wrong when the zombies started showing up. With help of two medieval men named Bech and Dahn, he saved his wife from the undead and fled to the Darnell Public Library, where Geoffrey, Daniel, and Knives were waiting for him. They explained that Book was expanding and merging with realities that had previously been beyond its reach, turning them into stories within its pages. The story of Darnell was merging with a horror novel, and unless they left soon, they would all be killed and zombified.

     Knives used a book to open a portal into a new story, but Caroline was unable to pass through it. The Book had had cast her into the role of a Lover archetype, meaning she could not leave her story of origin. Campren bravely decided to stay behind defend her, and Bech and Dahn volunteered to do the same. Together, they defeated the hoard of zombies by burning down the library. 

     At first, Campren wanted to stay with his wife in their fractured story, but he quickly realized that the woman who called herself Caroline wasn’t actually his wife. She looked the same, and may have been the same person at one point, but her personality was exaggerated, and the words she spoke were merely the empty dialogue of a two-dimensional character. The only way to return his wife to normal was to fix the book, and he was determined to do just that. After tearing his protective jacket into four fragments and leaving three with Bech, Dahn, and Caroline, he met back up with Protagonist and left to save the book.

     Unfortunately, instead of entering a new story to fix, Campren wound up in a place called Your Worst Nightmare, Inc., a company ruled by the eccentric (and insane) agent of the Book known as Conflict. He tortured Campren with images of Caroline, Ferdinand, and droves of loved ones who had passed away. Campren overcame the illusions and fled Your Worst Nightmare, along with Protagonist and two elementals, Nair and Pura.

     After their departure, Campren once again found himself in a new environment: this time a world full of plain white buildings, each from a different time and culture. The group of heroes split up to find the survivors from Conflict’s fortress. Campren succeeded. He met many people during this adventure, including Mr. Smiles, a surgeon who eerily lived up to his name; the Captain, a man whom Campren felt unprovoked hatred toward; and the silver hart, a mechanical stag.

     Campren tried to reunite with his friends, but he only succeeded in discovering the mangled body of a minor character. To his immense surprise, he found that he was easily able to figure out how the person had been killed. When a similar murder happened later on, he able able to figure out the killer's methods once again. But unlike the first time, Campren's words were not heeded, and he was implicated as the culprit. Fearing a mob lynching, he hopped on the hart and tried to flee. He was almost caught by the townspeople during his escape, but the Captain inexplicably lent a hand.

     Campren and the stag hid in an abandoned temple. Despite their best efforts to stay out of the public eye, Mr. Smiles found them. In the doctor's attempts to kill Campren, he ended up destroying the hart instead. Campren was able to escape the doctor's clutches, but was devastated by the loss of his newfound friend. His pursuit of the town’s killer grew into an obsession, and he spent the entire day scouring the city streets as black, inky rain poured down from the sky.

     The following morning, he happened to catch sight of a shadowy figure in the distance. Following his newly discovered instincts, he realized that he had finally found the killer, and immediately gave chase. After a brief pursuit, he cornered his target. Because the murderer was covered in ink-rain, it took Campren a moment to realize the person he’d cornered was a duplicate of himself.

     At that moment, a silver woman appeared on the scene, calling herself Jaya. She explained that she was actually the stag. Apparently, after her human body had been absorbed by the book, her brother tried to write her back into existence, and as a result she was merged with another one of his creations: the silver hart. She proceeded to tell Campren that the Book was casting him as a Warrior, much like his wife had been cast as a Lover. After a brief argument with Jaya, he agreed to listen to his double’s side of the story.

     The doppelganger, who would only refer to himself as Charley, revealed that he came from an alternate timeline where he abandoned Geoffrey and went on a separate series of adventures. The experiences he went through slowly turned him into a villain, paralleling Campren’s own journey into the role of a hero.

     Jaya mentioned that she found Nair and Pura attempting to ensnare another victim for Charley. Campren deduced that both versions of Protagonist must have teamed up to possessed the elementals, and his anger builds. He started to kill Charley, but before delivering the last blow, he asked his twin what Caroline would have thought about the murders. To Campren’s shock, Charley was unable to remember who Caroline was or why she was so important. Jaya pointed out that those who are cast will perform actions based entirely on archetype and forget anything that might have added depth to their motivations.

     With this knowledge, Campren finally agreed to break his casting. By letting Charley go without attempting to punish him in any way, he acted completely oppositely to the nature of the Warrior, undoing the casting and returning him to normal. He and Jaya decided to return to the school where the other people are, hoping to explain the situation.

     Sadly, when they arrived at the school, they found the entire block heavily damaged, as though ravaged by a terrible storm. The rain of ink grew harder and the streets began to flood. Just as they were about to seek higher ground, a strange shark man approached them and cheerfully declared that he had a rescue boat. Having few other options, Campren and Jaya followed him.

     Once aboard, the landshark introduced himself as Ricco. He told his two companions that Bobu, the book’s quintessence, was split into several different personalities, and the only way to save the Book is to bring them back together. The flood of ink, he explained, is actually debris from the millions of stories that had been destroyed. When Campren inquired about the other inhabitants of the city, Ricco said that they had been rescued on similar boats, and were already waiting for them at a place called the Index.