"As with all such stories, it began with a nightmare."
"Welcome to your innermost world...."
— The Impresario
Geist is an ongoing series of Dark/Urban Fantasy novels by Fallon O’Neill. Written as a Genre Deconstruction of Self-Insert Fic, the premise is basic enough: Victor Roland, a high-functioning autistic, gets thrust into his own dark, gothic world. From there, things take a turn for the weird. Fast.
The first novel, Geist: Prelude, was published in 2018. It kicks off with Victor's arrival in Holy Gothica, an industrial city under a totalitarian theocracy. Here, Ser Hector Thaddeus and his deputy, Walter Leng, investigate the latest in a string of grisly murders, only to be reassigned to arrest an "outsider" spotted near the crime scene. Meanwhile, in the slums, Victor learns of portals in televisions, where daemons lurk in the Inferno, tied to both his descent and the murders. When he discovers that his friends from "reality," Charles Garner and Beatrice Morrison, are trapped in the city as well, Victor resolves to find them, lest they wind up as the Dollmaker's next victims. He doesn't get very far. Following his interrogation, Victor forms a "fellowship" with Thaddeus and Leng, joining them in the hope of finding his friends, and perhaps even a way home.
Released in 2019, Geist: Intermezzo, continues the series with Victor's journey across the Gotland Wastes and his encounters with the Powder Kegs. Meanwhile, a shadow from Thaddeus's past makes a vindictive return. The third novel, Geist: Scherzo, concludes the Murder Mystery arc and was published in 2021. The fourth novel, Geist: Allegro, begins the War Arc and was published in 2023.
An essential part of Geist is Summon Magic. Taking the image of Silent Movie icons, "geists" are living facets of the human psyche born of self-actualization. Word of God confirms Geist draws heavily from works such as Final Fantasy VII, Persona 4, and Warhammer 40,000. However, it's also meant to criticize Wish-Fulfillment and the stereotypes of Hollywood Autism in equal measure. In fact, the series uses Dante Alighieri as a recurring symbol to highlight the hazy line between fan fiction and literature. Not to be confused with the video game, Geist.
This series provides examples of:
- Abandoned Laboratory: The Lazarlarger.
- Abandoned Playground: Victor comes across a particularly creepy one in Prelude.
- Action Girl: Beatrice always had shades of this. Come Intermezzo, she's a fully-fledged member of the Powder Kegs and wields a broadsword, like Cloud Strife with boobs.
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: Thaddeus is this compared to most of the Imperium.
- Apathetic Citizens: The people of Holy Gothica are somewhere between this and Conditioned to Accept Horror.
- Apocalyptic Log: In Intermezzo, the vox-logs scattered throughout the Lazarlager, Thaddeus and Ingrid's shared hellscape, document just how the Purgatorio Project went so horribly wrong.
- The Archmage: While it's ambiguous just how powerful the Impresario is, no one else in the setting comes remotely close to his level of influence over the Symphonia Mundi, except for the Director of Pestilence.
- Badass Preacher: Thaddeus is an imposing hulk of metal and wheels.
- Bad Moon Rising: Implied in Prelude. Played straight in Intermezzo.
- Big Good: The Impresario is Victor's first consultant and spurs him on his journey, while remaining backstage and supervising his progress from afar.
- Brown Note: The Cacophony, as seen with the Thirteenth Frequency and the Inferno.
- Bumbling Sidekick: Leng is this to Thaddeus.
- The Casino: Xanadu is basically the setting's Vegas.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: Downplayed. Scherzo takes inspiration from Citizen Kane and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with Edgar and Xanadu.
- Child Soldiers: Ingrid is a particularly tragic example.
- The Chosen One: Deconstructed with Victor, who is well aware of his own shortcomings and incompetence, despite Holy Gothica existing in his own Mental World.
- Church Militant: Most of the Imperium, but especially the Inquisition. Thaddeus is a noteworthy example, even by Imperial standards, but his ethics and methods are considered archaic at best.
- Circus of Fear: One of the many forms the Inferno takes. In Prelude, Charles's repressed emotions manifest as a psychedelic circus train, symbolizing his midlife crisis and self-loathing.
- City in a Bottle: Downplayed. Holy Gothica and the Gotland Wastes are the only parts of the setting explored in Geist so far, but other nations are mentioned and explicitly named by Intermezzo.
- City Noir: Between the sunless ghettos, corrupt law enforcement, and no shortage of dive bars, Holy Gothica has more than a few trappings of Detective Fiction.
- Create Your Own Villain: While its unclear how Ingrid knows Thaddeus, she holds him personally responsible for her own misery and tragic past. Turns out, her reasons are quite sympathetic, if not valid.
- Creepy Good: The Impresario comes off as the lovechild of Gehrman, Ramon Salazar, and Igor, but is nonetheless one of Victor's greatest and most reliable allies.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Holy Gothica is a totalitarian theocracy a la Warhammer 40,000. Besides the confessionals, martyrs and saints, we don't see much of the church-state's practices. That said, religious propaganda is omnipresent in daily life. From the Holy Pontiff and Empress and the Apostolic Palace, to the Ecclesiarchs of the Imperial Senate, and the Inquisition, the climate of terror is reminiscent of 20th century dictatorships, such as The Franco Regime, while keeping a distinctly faux-Catholic flavor.
- Cyborg: Thaddeus, complete with Artificial Limbs and Vader Breath.
- Dark Fantasy
- Defective Detective: Leng is many things. Classy is not among them.
- Determinator: Victor.
- Diesel Punk: Geist may take place in one city in a wasteland, but Holy Gothica's technology is on par with most industrialized nations of the mid-20th century.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Deconstructed. The Dollmaker Murders are Played for Drama and nearly all of the victims are sex workers from Yoshiwara, including Yuko.
- Doom Troops: The Stromtrooper Corps serve as the Inquisition's grunts and front-line muscle. Although known for their anonymity, uniform, and violent tactics, they're pretty expendable compared to other Imperial agents.
- Down the Rabbit Hole: The Inferno can only be entered through television screens during the Devil's Hour, when the fabric of reality is thinner and daemons creep into the city.
- Dystopia Is Hard: Holy Gothica has been in decline for a while now.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Directors of Pestilence and Famine.
- Eldritch Location: The Inferno does not obey the laws of physics. Mirroring the collective unconsciousness of humanity, it's less of a "hell" per se, and more of the Black Bug Room of Holy Gothica. The Dollmaker uses it as his modus operandi. The Opera House is much more benevolent example, being the sanctuary of the Impresario and the geists themselves.
- The Emperor: Empress Johanna d'Gothica.
- The Empire: The Third Gothic Imperium.
- Enemy Without: An inner daemon is someone's own suppressed thoughts given form, a la Persona 4. They lurk in within one's circle of hell, an extension of their emotions, warped by the Inferno's influence. If a person denies their own daemon, it will transform into a psychotic monster and go for the kill. However, should a person accept their own daemon, it will calm and ascend, awakening as a geist.
- Erudite Stoner: Charles is described as such word for word.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Averted. Holy Gothica may be a feudalistic church-state, but it uses technology ranging from steam engines to wireless communication, including firearms straight out of World War I.
- Fascist, but Inefficient: The totalitarian government of Holy Gothica is as oppressive as it is incompetent. Due to political corruption, broken bureaucracy, and dysfunctional infrastructure and power grids, heresy and crime are endemic, but the sheer inefficiency of the state is equally destructive.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Victor and Thaddeus gradually grow on each other.
- Gas Mask Mooks: Justified. The Stormtrooper Corps wear World War I-style gas masks and police the Leper Quarter, a quarantine zone for the leprosy outbreaks.
- Genre Deconstruction: Of Self-Insert Fic and Wish-Fulfillment. Geist explores just how traumatizing being dragged into a fantasy world would actually be.
- Guardian Entity: Geists are of the Fighting Spirit variety. Themed on silent film characters, a geist reflects an individual's psyche, as a form of Enlightenment Superpower.
- Hate Plague: In Geist, leprosy has additional symptoms such as aggression, paranoia, and psychosis.
- Haunted Technology: The daemons are able to manipulate the radio waves of Holy Gothica, inducing the Thirteenth Frequency, and creep into the city through electronics.
- The Heartless: Daemons are born of negative and repressed emotions.
- Hellhole Prison: From what little we've seen, the Palace of Justice is not a nice place.
- Heroic Neutral: Victor's moral compass in a nutshell.
- The Hidden Hour: The Devil's Hour is caused by the Thirteenth Frequency, a Brown Note which high-jacks the city's radio broadcasts every midnight.
- Hollywood Autism: Averted. Victor's personality is largely independent from his neurological differences. Though easily distracted, obsessive, and inept at non-verbal communication, he sees the world in ways others cannot, and is the first character to awaken to a geist.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Yuko is a kind yet troubled Sex Bot who works at the Sunset Pagoda. Victor takes a liking to her, and ends up losing his virginity to her. Free of charge.
- Industrial Ghetto: Nearly all of the Serfdoms are composed of these.
- Inspector Javert: Thaddeus starts off as this. A mid-ranking inquisitor suffering from Black-and-White Insanity, he arrests and interrogates Victor when the latter is Mistaken for Murderer. Thaddeus is a Cowboy Cop, but gradually warms up to Victor after witnessing his courage. By the end of Prelude, they've developed an Odd Friendship. However, it doesn't earn him the forgiveness of the people whose lives he's ruined.
- Invisible to Normals: Most people are unaware of the Devil's Hour, due to freezing in place as gargoyle-like statues. Time resumes when the hour ends.
- Just Following Orders: Holy Gothica has many good people in it, but the city's downward spiral can be attributed to a lethal dose of this and Apathetic Citizens.
- La Résistance: The Powder Kegs, or Lepers Liberation Front, are a militant insurgency of ex-cons, wasteland raiders, and heretics united by hope and hatred. Members range from Knights in Sour Armor with skin conditions to Ax-Crazy war criminals. According to Goro Ludwig, they started off as a human rights organization but were forced into radicalism as the Imperium's tyranny worsened.
- Layered Metropolis: Holy Gothica is starkly divided by the Iron Sky into the City Above and the Serfdoms. The plates beneath the Apostolic Palace bolt out nearly all sunlight from the derelict slums, supported by an infrastructural nightmare of ductworks, railways, power lines, and the Absurdly Spacious Sewer.
- The Lifestream: The Symphonia Mundi is a metaphysical plane existing parallel to Holy Gothica, mirroring the collective unconsciousness of humanity, and functions as the setting's afterlife.
- Light Is Not Good: Holy Gothica is a city of cathedrals. Its also a nightmarish police state.
- Magic Music: The Symphonia Mundi is the Sentient Cosmic Force of Order. By extension, nearly all supernatural elements of Geist are tied to this trope.
- Mental Monster: The inner daemons, especially after they go One-Winged Angel.
- Mental World: It's ambiguous as to what degree, but Holy Gothica is bound to Victor's imagination to some extent. The chances of it being an Alternate Dimension are the same as it being All Just a Dream, with the latter having some pretty horrifying implications.
- The Messiah: Played with. Despite Victor's title being, the Far Messiah, he doesn't exactly act the part. His list of deeds has a lot more weight. Victor has gathered a party of True Companions from various walks of life, ranging from reformed Witch Hunters to a Hooker with a Heart of Gold, many of whom he Rescued from the Underworld, helping them confront their own repressed emotions (ie. sins) in the process. Victor also tends to befriend vagrants and undesirables, and outright lives in Yoshiwara by the end of Intermezzo. His first true miracle would be defeating the Director of Pestilence, which heralded the end of the leprosy epidemic.
- Mistaken for Murderer: How Victor gets arrested and meets Thaddeus and Leng.
- Monster Clown: The Ringmaster, Charles's inner daemon, has this vibe.
- Morality Pet: Victor is this to Thaddeus.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Thaddeus has a few of these. Most notably, when he recovers his repressed memories, relearning that he partook in a series of crimes against humanity that caused the Devil's Hour, kick-starting the entire plot.
- New-Age Retro Hippie: Charles.
- Noodle Incident: Justified and Played for Drama. The Purgatorio Project is one of the Imperium's darkest secrets and expunged from every record in the Central Sevitorium. Even Thaddeus, who served as a security enforcer, cannot remember that his own naivete contributed to its catastrophic failure, binding the Inferno to Holy Gothica's power grid, while rendering Ingrid a traumatized husk of child with psychic powers.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Central Servitorium is run by these, particularly Brendel.
- Ominous Fog: A recurring motif in the series.
- Our Demons Are Different: Daemons are manifestations of humanity's emotions. They're not friendly.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: Daemons range from slithering puddles of ichor to mannequin-like fiends, running on Surreal Horror and a Creepy Doll motif. Of course, geists aren't any less strange.
- Phlebotinum-Induced Steampunk: The Industrial Revolution seems to have arrived early in Geist and was accelerated by the discovery of azoth, the mineral residue of the Symphonia Mundi.
- Pipe Maze: Justified. Holy Gothica runs on Phlebotinum-Induced Diesel Punk through the use of azoth reactors, which work a lot like nuclear power plants. The city-wide ductworks function as a waste-disposal system, dumping the hazardous material in the Gotland Wastes.
- Polluted Wasteland: The Gotland Wastes are ravaged by radiation, used as a landfill by Holy Gothica. Only stone quarries, oil rigs, a few hamlets, such as Gastown, and the hidden fortress of Haizara are found here.
- Powers That Be: Whatever the Impresario is, he's almost certainly one of these.
- Psychic Powers: Ingrid's ESP-like abilities are this, as opposed to Victor's power of geist.
- Psychological Torment Zone: The Inferno runs on this.
- Punch-Clock Villains: While they cope in very different ways, Thaddeus and Leng are this at their core.
- Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: The Leper Quarter is the long-term result of this protocol. It contains the Hate Plague in a fairly controlled ghetto, but the people inside are condemned to death by disease. In Intermezzo, we learn it doubles as a convenient way to dispose of political dissidents.
- Redemption Equals Death: Deconstructed. Thaddeus is remembered as a war criminal by everyone, except for Victor and possibly Leng. While sympathetic to his mentor, Victor knows that Thaddeus's penitence and death won't repair the damage that's been done. Even Thaddeus himself recognizes this, and pleads for Victor to "be better than him". The weight of Thaddeus's death also leads into Ingrid's descent into madness.
- Red Light District: Yoshiwara zig-zags between all three variants.
- Rescued from the Underworld: Victor performs a series of rescue missions into the Inferno, saving people who've been thrown in by the Dollmaker. Bonus points for Victor's geist being Dante.
- Sad Clown: Charles's "stoner humor" is a coping mechanism.
- Sentient Cosmic Force: The Symphonia Mundi underpins the world of Geist and is the source of the setting's supernatural elements. It even as a dark side in the form of the Cacophony.
- Serial Killer: The Dollmaker, who drives the majority of the plot.
- Spirit Advisor: The Impresario. Victor interacts with him exclusively while asleep.
- State Sec: The Inquisition is a paramilitary organization of the Imperium. It exists to purge any sign of dissent, often delegating more petty investigations to lower-ranking agents, such as Thaddeus and Leng.
- Summon Magic: How calling a geist works.
- Technically-Living Zombie: Lepers often degenerate into these due to daemons gnawing at their sanity from months to years on end.
- To Be Lawful or Good: A huge part of Thaddeus's Character Development.
- Tough Leader Façade: Deconstructed. Empress Johanna keeps a stoic facade to maintain order, but her policies are utterly totalitarian. So much, in fact, that she excommunicates Thaddeus and Leng, and tries to have them assassinated via firing squad.
- Trapped in Another World: Forms the Myth Arc.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Victor, Charles, and Beatrice fit this dynamic.
- Unobtainium: Azoth, the mineral residue of the Symphonia Mundi, is roughly analogous to Mako.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: Labori are criminals and heretics who were lobotomized and grafted for various purposes. They range from Elite Mooks to Robot Maids, but were all human at one point.
- Urban Fantasy
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Thaddeus and Ingrid both start off as this, though they're on opposite sides of the battle and handle things very differently.
- The Wonka: Edgar Muncheasuen.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: A major theme of Intermezzo.
- Zeerust: Done intentionally. Technology in Geist is anachronistic, making the setting seem both futuristic and retro, with many Shout-Outs to history and pop culture.
