You’ve spent years undercover, disguised as a human, infiltrating the city’s magical law-enforcement organization. They stole your magic from you. Can you steal it back? An Imp and an Impostor is an interactive historical urban fantasy novel by Athar Fikry, author of The Dragon and the Djinn. I sat down with them to discuss their Egyptian background and how it informs their work.

An Imp and an Impostor releases Wednesday, November 26th; you can wishlist it on Steam today—it really helps, even if you don’t intend to purchase it on that platform.

We published your first game The Dragon and the Djinn in 2022 and now we are thrilled to have a second game from you coming out next month. Tell me all about the setting of An Imp and an Impostor.
Thank you so much! I’m likewise thrilled to be back. An Imp and an Impostor is set in the coastal city of Raqout – which is one of many Raqouts! Our PC is actually from an alternate dimension version of it and they aren’t the only one, as this dimension’s Raqout wound up being a nexus for all sorts of creatures and beings and was half-drowned by a big old (benevolent?) eldritch entity not too long ago as a result.

Understandably, the city’s gotten a bit magic-shy, and so ended up with a branch of magical law enforcement called Arkan, just to handle that whole mess. Arkan is, of course, very competent and not at all corrupt, which is why our titular imp PC manages to infiltrate it so easily.

Raqout is also loosely based on my hometown of Alexandria as it was in the early 1900s, and contains a lot of my strongest visual impressions of it, especially the view of the crashing Mediterranean and the busy markets and gorgeous old buildings and villas. I haven’t been there in over a decade now, and much of the PC’s yearning for a home that’s just to the left of the one they’re in is very much mine, because I know that if and when I go back, it’ll be very different than the place I grew up in. There are references aplenty for those who know it, because I couldn’t help myself, and for those who don’t, I hope you enjoy your drives across the Corniche! Alexandria in the winter is really something.

Naturally, we have an Egyptian theme from our favorite Egyptian author.
Haha, yes! I couldn’t resist. I’m pretty sure all of my pitches this time were Egypt-centric, so thank you, CoG, for letting me write one! It’s not the Egypt most readers will be expecting, I imagine, even aside from this being a fantasy analogue. There are absolutely zero pharaohs involved, for one, beyond passing mention in the backdrop. No shade on pharaohs, it’s just that (and maybe this is a function of having had to study them for so many years at school) I find that period of Egyptian history one of the least interesting to me, personally. I much prefer the time period I’ve played around with in this game, where Egypt was stuck in between overlapping occupations, in the odd limbo between modernisation and tradition in a world rapidly changing around and within it, and grappling with what modernisation would look like given it so often came with foreign influence, simultaneously the land of “exotic” legend and opulence and also just…you know, a regular place where people lived.

So, yeah, no pharaohs, no ancient curses. Just a rainy seaside city with regular people (including imps and necromancers, yes, shush) suffering under corruption and forces too strong to fathom and sort of muddling through their day-to-day.

Oh, and also, SO many descriptions of food. Just so many.

What inspirations did you take from for the sort of magic in this game?
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen or read Fullmetal Alchemist that I count it as one of my foundational media. Fullmetal Alchemist has that effect on people. I will freely admit that the image of the talsam, the chalking of precise geometric shapes in a magic system that’s more scientific in feel, owes its origin to Fullmetal Alchemist’s transmutation circles. This combines with my absolute adoration for Arabic calligraphy and the way it can be used to create shapes and images, and how real life protective talismans here (or, well, you know, depends on how much you believe in that sort of thing, but for those who do) will often consist of specific words folded into pieces of paper and kept on one’s person, and here we are! That’s where talsama came from.

The imp’s own form of magic is inspired by weaving imagery, the idea of plucking at the threads of fate, and the fact I cannot visualise very well and so often like to reach for other senses to ground a scene—the concept of magic corresponding to taste and scent was just a very fun one, so I ran with it.

I feel like I also need to shout out Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence for its particular flavour of bureaucratic magic, as well as the show Torchwood for inspiring the organisation of Arkan and…other things, but those would be spoilers.

What was your favorite part about returning to writing ChoiceScript?
In the small sense: The fact it’s SO EASY to code in such small variations into the text and be responsive to many small decisions. I played with Twine a bit in between games and oof, I really missed that ease and simplicity.

In the larger sense: having a game get away from me (again) (can you believe this was supposed to be a short one?) and yet still have all its disparate parts come together in the end, often in ways I didn’t expect going in. It always feels a little bit like having pulled off a magic trick, although I need to be clear in that it wouldn’t at all have been possible without the guidance and hard work of my editor, Rebecca, who is herself magic, I’m pretty sure.

How has your other work been going? I know you’ve been a contributor to a TTRPG.
I have, yes! Aside from the Emerald Templars TTRPG I mentioned last time, I’ve also made my own little things over on itch.io, including a solo-journaling game called SPITE about eating your stats to, well, spite your reflection. I really enjoy making bite-sized horror things and hope to make more. Everything on my itch is free to play, so please do check it out.

I also have a TTRPG setting book that had to be put on hold while I finished Imp and an Impostor, so if anyone here has been waiting for news on Marrowbreak, know that I’ll be going back to that soon!

As for non-TTRPG work, I have a few prose projects on the backburner that I look forward to returning to. I’m also an associate editor for Baffling Magazine and although I can’t talk about it yet, there’s some exciting stuff I’ll get to do with Baffling in the coming months!