OVERVIEW
An immersive folk-horror satire, Return of the Corn King provides visitors with interactive art installations, dramatic/musical performances, and open-ended roleplay gaming in a pastiche and parody of Midwestern harvest festivals and folklore.
PREMISE
Visitors are invited into a rural enclave in the cornfields of Illinois, where a niche religious community celebrates the foretold return of a mysterious and powerful deity known as the Corn King.
LORE
Believers of the Corn King tell tales of famines and bountiful harvests, miraculous healings and apparitions, vengeful curses and divine blessings. All fate and fortune is cast by the hands of this supernatural agricultural deity. For over 200 years, an insular community of devoted worshippers have built an obscure culture and community around their idol.
Recently, a secretive group of elders known as the Council of the Corn King received visions of His Return. By opening the doors of their cloistered community and organizing a public festival, the Council hopes to convert new subjects from the outside. Many servants will be needed in order to help serve the Corn King in the coming era of Eternal Harvest.
Attendees will learn more of the community’s history and beliefs by interacting with historical objects and documents, taking part in long-held rituals and traditions, marvel at enchanted relics, and more. The Believers operating the event are eager to evangelize and share their experiences living in devotion to their King. By sharing in his miracles, they hope that outsiders will become convinced of His Truth and live forever in the King’s Fields.
Keen visitors, though, may begin to notice that there may be more to the story beneath the surface.
In reality, the festival, the community, its 200-year history, and the Corn King Himself are all elaborate inventions by AgriVora, an agricultural mega-corporation. Having developed a powerful corn-based hypnotic (C-27) AgriVora’s leadership has designs to monopolize the world’s food supply. The corporation has launched the project Eternal Harvest, an initiative to use the C-27 compound to create an army of “voluntary laborers” guided by widespread devotion the new idol, the Corn King.
Having successfully completed a trial experiement with low-level AgriVora employees, the corporation is now poised to expand their initiative to the broader public. The AgriVora Board, disguised as the secretive Council of the Corn King, has directed their Believers to assist in carrying out their first mass-conversion event, taking place at this very festival.
However, during AgriVora’s test experiment, one subject was able to resist the C-27 compound’s effects and escape. Now targeted by the corporation’s security forces, she has been forced into hiding.
Recently, this former employee has re-emerged as an eco-revolutionary known as the Crow Queen, determined to right their wrongs and restore biodiversity to the world. Having learned of their plans, the Crow Queen has infiltrated the Corn King festival and is working covertly to overthrow AgriVora’s mass-conversion event.
Scattered throughout the event’s exhibits, visitors may find secret documents and other artifacts left by the Crow Queen intended to break the illusion constructed by AgriVora and weaken their brainwashing power.
Tone
The event is darkly humorous in its approach, creating a world that contrasts with more family-friendly and “G-rated” harvest time festivals and carnivals. This event hints at a darker and cultish storyline involving the Corn King and His Believers, but maintains a tongue-in-cheek veneer.
While the event’s exhibitions suggest the broader lore of the Corn King and AgriVora, there is room left for mystery and intrigue for the visitor, as they piece together the full story.
Artistic Guidelines
Drawing upon traditions of folk arts and crafts, the event favors hand-made objects and practical effects as much as possible. However, traditional processes should be embellished with low-level electronic or digital components in order to heighten effects of certain illusions, encourage interactivity, and deepen the overall immersion of the experience.
In line with the lore described above, it would be appropriate for AgriVora to use artificial intelligence tools to fabricate certain pieces of “evidence” of the Corn King community’s fictional history and culture. However, the use of AI should always be combined with hand-made alterations or interpolations in order to lend the artifacts a veneer of authenticity. Elements of trickery should be evident, as this is all a construction of AgriVora.
Attractions & Performances
Visitors to the festival will be able to interact with a number art installations, participate in attractions, and take in dramatic and musical performances. These may include:
Special performances will include:
Ceremonial Blowing of the Corn Horn
The Corn King & You informational video
The Corn Maid Pageant
Shuck-Off Competition
Scarecrow Punishment Transformation
The Cornsmen folk trio reunion
Fireside summoning ceremony
…and, perhaps, an appearance by the Corn King himself
Choose A Path
Visitors can enjoy the event on at their own direction, but may also choose to engage with immersive live-action roleplaying storylines. Opportunities will arrise for attendees to either:
Answer the Crow Call
The Crow Queen has left a variety of clues around the festival grounds to recruit wary visitors to her side. Following these clues may lead the visitor to a rendezvous with the Crow Queen herself.
OR
Drink the Corn-Ade
Drinking a cup of Corn-Ade from the concessions area will reveal a special prompt hidden at the bottom that “brainwashes” participants into complete missions on behalf of the Corn King.
The Corn King is Coming!
The Council of the Corn King is seeking artists, performers, and other creatives who here the call. There is much toil before the King’s return, and we need as many disciples as we can find.
To learn more and get involved, please follow us on Instagram at: @cornking.council
