Out there in the more sensible regions of the world, there’s a coherence to how things work. Maybe it’s the world view of Catholicism, with angels, demons and getting things done in Latin. Maybe what works is folklore, and sacrificing people inside wicker men. In some places, what works is science, or mad science. Fantastical things tend to have their own rules.

In many ways, Hopeless, Maine is a chaos magic setting. Things work because people invest energy and belief in them. It’s not the system anyone uses that matters, it’s the will, faith and intention that get things done. Witchcraft works. Medicine would work if Doc Willoughby wasn’t such a heady mix of evil and incompetence. You really do need to be very good at belief to be cured of anything by him. Balthazar Lemon’s belief in the marvels of engineering enabled him to build a lighthouse out of the corpse of a massive sea monster. Durosimi’s belief in vampirism allowed him to become such a creature.

There’s no obvious system for working out what will happen when one set of ideas clashes with another. That is however also true in real life. This is also how we end up with people building complex devices and then shoving demons into them. It’s impressive that anyone believes this is a good idea, all things considered, but faith has never really been about reasoned positions.

Religion on the island tends to be less effective overall. This is because the place has its own presiding self-styled deity, and that ‘god’ is a jealous god, and would not tolerate anything or anyone else getting a serious hold on the place. Reverend Davies can hold up his symbols to ward off the vampires, but this is as far as his belief can take him. As for whose reverend he truly is, that would be a question for another day.

(Text Nimue Brown. Art Tom Brown with colouring by Nimue Brown.)