What is Incense & Iron?

EDIT: Alan Bahr from Gallant Knight games has made an awesome logo for anyone wanting to make an Incense & Iron RPG! See it below.

Since the announcement and release of my latest game, Sacrifice - An Incense & Iron RPG, lots of people have been asking me about the “Incense & Iron” tagline. I figured it would be easier to point them towards this post from now on, instead of individually explaining to each one of them what I mean with this.

So what does “Incense & Iron” mean? I’ve had the idea of creating a game with a strong Catholic Church-like presence for a long time, to tell the sort of stories you would find in Spain in the 15th century. Countries riled up by religious fervor, with an all-powerful Inquisition committing unspeakable acts of violence in the name of their god. You know, fun stuff. Although I consider myself a spiritual person, I always found the lengths some people would go to defend their religion and spirituality quite frightening. Having grown up in a Catholic milieu, with my grandmother being a hardcore Opus Dei supporter, and going to a Catholic school certainly didn’t help me see the best of Christianity or religion in general.

The idea of playing in a dark fantasy medieval world with a strong religious presence has always been really cool to me. The Church as a monolithic, powerful and clearly evil institution creates a very unique background for any setting, and it opens lots of interesting possibilities. Fighting against such a powerful institution, but always making sure you don’t do it openly because otherwise you’d be labeled a heretic is a very fun thing to do, kind of what it is to play as the rebellion in Star Wars. This is not an original idea at all though, but the same way the term “Sword & Sorcery” didn’t appear until the 1960s, despite having been established as a genre for quite a while before that, I think that there are already plenty of stories out there that would fit the “Incense & Iron” setting. These come to mind:

• Berserk, by Kentaro Miura. The main source of inspiration behind Sacrifice, the presence of the church as an evil, threatening and corrupt institution is a key part of this fantastic manga.

• Warhammer Fantasy. The church of Sigmar is clearly modeled after the medieval Catholic church, inquisitors and all.

• The videogame Blasphemous, which embodies the darkest aspects of Catholicism and its quasi-apocalyptic aesthetics.

• The Safehold book series, by David Weber. Although this is theoretically a science fiction book series, the fact is that the setting is (at least during the first few books) a medieval one, with a strong church controlling the world, one that has no problems dealing with any heretical thoughts via immediate violence.

• Films like Black Death, Solomon Kane, The Pit & The Pendulum, The Inquisitor, and so many others really capture the feeling I refer to when I speak of “Incense & Iron” as a genre.

Now that we’ve discussed where the idea of this “new” genre comes from and what its main influences are,  these are the core aspects of “Incense & Iron”, as I understand it:

• The world is a dark, unforgiving place

• Violence is often the answer to all problems, at least for the powerful

• The uneducated, peasant masses are kept under control through an oppressive church, with little to no hope to improve their lot in life

• Feudal society, with the extreme inequality that it creates

• A strong dose of social and religious commentary

• Menacing, demonic supernatural forces that only push the peasantry deeper into the church’s control

• Low fantasy. Most characters can only rely on their blade and wits to fight the darkness and an unjust world

So here you have it, my attempt at establishing yet another fantasy sub-genre. Is it necessary? Probably not. But as all the other genres and subgenres in existence, it helps to have a common terminology when speaking about things, and after years of seeing these sorts of stories and not being able to really define what they all have in common, I think I’m happy with my solution. Of course, I’d love it if the term “Incense & Iron” catched on and others started using it, either to refer to theirs or other’s work. So you know what to do now, spread the holy word!