Væ Victis has no music files. Its score is played live by code (src/audio-music.js, src/audio-intro.js, src/audio-gardens.js), the way its pictures are drawn by code. The album is that score rendered offline, 60 seconds of each loop, through the game’s own mixer, and measured. Nothing on it was re-encoded from an original, because there is none: the original is the code.
The whole album is on the soundtrack page: The Score of Væ Victis. Each track below also links to its own audio file. Play them in a dark room with headphones, which is how the game’s own box tells you to.
The album, in play order
The tracks run in the order the game meets them: the title, the intro, the haven, the churchyard, the court, the gutter, the orphanage, the causeway, the Tower, the Downs, then the King’s gardens. Each title is the in-world name the album gives the piece.
| # | Track | Where it plays | What you hear | Length | Listen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Woe to the Conquered | The title screen, the counsel and the credits | The title theme, in D minor. Wick’s motif (D, F, E flat, D: “vae vic-tis”) on the cello under the organ, choir and strings, with a timpani | 1:00 | play |
| 2 | Purchase, Investiture, Burial | The intro (AWAKEN) | The score of the intro film, cued to its shots: the funeral bell, the false gilded fanfare, the knocks on the door, the kill | 2:32 | play |
| 3 | The Cathedral Under the Cathedral | The haven | Organ, choir and strings in the haven where Wick wakes | 1:00 | play |
| 4 | Candles at the Lychgate | The churchyard | Strings and choir over the churchyard | 1:00 | play |
| 5 | The Bat Lord’s Court | The graveyard court | Organ, strings and choir for the graveyard court and the Marquis Andrevel | 1:00 | play |
| 6 | Low Water, High Street | The gutter quarter | Strings over a drone: the gutter quarter and its market cross | 1:00 | play |
| 7 | The Music Box Ward | The orphanage | Choir and strings with a music box | 1:00 | play |
| 8 | The Causeway | The causeway | Strings on the long approach to the Tower | 1:00 | play |
| 9 | The Soldier’s Feast | The Tower | Strings, a reed and timpani for the house of the Tower (its feast is the Soldier’s) | 1:00 | play |
| 10 | The Gallows Downs | The Gallows Downs | Strings over a deep drone: the wastes beyond the city | 1:00 | play |
| 11 | The King’s Labyrinth | The King’s Labyrinth Gardens | The garden maze’s ostinato | 1:00 | play |
| 12 | The Crow Run | The gardens, the crow run | The gardens’ second theme, for the run with the crows | 1:00 | play |
| 13 | The Height | The Height | An organ for the stair up to the caged saint | 1:00 | play |
| 14 | The Pleasance Minuet | The Pleasance | A minuet for the pleasure garden and its grotto | 1:00 | play |
Reading the score
- Wick has a motif. Four notes, D, F, E flat, D, set to the words of the title: vae vic-tis. The title theme gives it to the cello, under the organ and choir.
- The places keep their instruments. Organ, choir and strings in the haven and the court; strings over a drone in the gutter and on the Downs; a music box in the orphanage; a reed and timpani for the Tower; a minuet for the Pleasance.
- The gardens have three voices. The maze’s ostinato, the second theme for the crow run, and the organ for the Height: three pieces of one place (see The Labyrinth Gardens and The Forms).
The track titles, the places and the instrument notes are the album’s own, written in keepsakes/COPY.md from the game’s score files. The measurements are in keepsakes/soundtrack/tracklist.md. This chapter adds nothing to them.