Original is a tricky concept for writers. Where does it even come from? The ether? The echoes of what's already been done? If I had to give a hopeful answer, I'd say: “all of the above.” It’s not some divine prophecy brought down from the mountain—our brains are, after all, essentially compost heaps of everything we’ve consumed.

Books, films, music, personal stories, and oh-so-many other things all stew together, mixing and mutating into something that, if you're lucky, feels new.

That delicious feeling of looking at an idea and thinking, “huh, I don’t think I’ve seen this before.” Or at least, not like this.

In the case of the Crows’ world, the spark came while reading a fascinating (and genuinely inspiring) book called Sin and Fear: The Emergence of the Western Guilt Culture, 13th-18th Centuries.

A particular theme grabbed me by the collar and shook me until it had my full attention: the parallels between the Bubonic Plague and the COVID era. The paranoia and upheaval caused by the disruption of such deeply human rituals—everyday social interaction, funerals, grief. Death, both banal and closer than ever. A cascade of paradoxes anyone who lived through the pandemic knows all too intimately.

Something in that already spoke to me, and then the mention of body collectors—or “crows”—sealed the deal. Let me quote the book for a taste:

Most of the vile acts were committed by those who, in Milan, were called monatti. This term referred to the men who removed corpses from homes, streets, and lazarettos; who transported them by cart to mass graves and buried them. […] In Marseille, in 1720, convicts were conscripted to serve as “crows.” A host of sinister rumors swirled around them: they stole from every house they entered to collect the dead; and rather than return twice to the same address, they would toss the dying onto the funeral cart alongside the corpses.

— Jean Delumeau (translated loosely by me from the Portuguese version)

What kind of life did these crows have? How did they see a dying world in which their job, already so dangerous, was met with suspicion and distance?

Feel like there’s something there? Then here’s another quote to stir the pot, from A Journal of the Plague Year, also featured in History of Fear:

It was a time when private salvation so fully occupied the spirit that no one had time to think of others’ misery […]. 
The instinct to preserve one’s own life truly seemed to be the first principle. 

— Daniel Defoe (again, freely translated by me)

By then, a mix was already bubbling in my head—one that, as I mentioned, was already obsessed with end-of-the-world-or-close-enough stories, especially the bleakly self-aware ones like Children of Men and my favorite author Cormac McCarthy’s The Road:

Crows: What I Mean by It

As the mix thickened and bits of the story sparked in my brain, the time came to ask: what exactly do I want to say with this?

“Pins in the Cold Earth”, my previous romance, is, as my collaborator Ray Fridlund beautifully put it, a microcosm of oppression unfolding within a “folk horror urban narrative.” Without getting too deep into it, Pins was, in the end, about “returning to the earth,” as an allegory for both the tension between city and nature, and people oppressing people.

That theme began bleeding organically (and, honestly, satisfyingly) into Crows. I made a deal with myself: I wanted to explore those same conflicts again, this time set within a broader context; a world slowly dying from a relentless disease. Dying, yes. But not yet dead.

The contrast between what was and what is, the aftermath of broken funerary and social rites became my compass. Here’s one final quote that inspired me deeply:

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow— and I shall be in them—eternity. 

  — Edvard Munch

And with that, my introduction and first contact with the dualities I wanted to explore was set. Next, you’ll find the passage that opens the original “Crow’s Gospel” book I wrote back then (yes, there’s a whole book, and I promise we’ll talk more about it), and the one I’ll end this first entry of what I hope becomes a series about how the game’s setting and narrative came to be.

Enjoy, and see you next time.

André ‘Sid’ Osna

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Crow’s Gospel: Introduction

The crow entered the apartment to find it perfectly clean and organized. He crossed the living room and the hallway, both pristine. If he didn't look through the windows, he could pretend the world still spun as before.

In the bedroom, a neatly made bed with crisply pressed white sheets. Upon it, the body of a dead man awaited. Despite the infection, empty medicine packs and relaxed limbs told the story of a peaceful passing. The crow wearily perched on the corner of the bed and sighed. He glanced at the red-bright numbers of the radio clock on the dresser and resisted the urge to rub a hand across his face; another human habit extinct in recent years.

He turned and examined the body for a moment, scanning the surface until landing on something shiny. He took the bronze-colored watch from the gray wrist and rubbed alcohol gel over its surface with fingers gloved in black rubber. Then, he closed it around his wrist; a bit loose, but it would do. The crow stood up and carefully wrapped the corpse in the white sheet, staining it here and there with the decay that had begun to set in. Freeing a hand, he adjusted the thick mask on his face and thanked it for filtering out the smell.

The crow returned to the living room, where the black canvas bag approved for collections awaited on the floor. He gently placed the body on the coarse material, took a deep breath, and noticed a bulging wallet on a nearby sideboard. He removed his own wallet from the backpack and switched the documents with those of the dead man, leaving his old, cheap leather accessory behind. There would be time to examine the spoils later.

He closed the solid, vertical zipper of the collection bag, having secured the body with velcro under the armpits and groin, and hoisted the large, dark volume with a grunt. His eyes closed for a moment. They opened, gazing at a dark cloud staining the gray sky. A quick bending of the legs balanced the body over his shoulder, and he exited the apartment.