Under the pretext of reviewing the IF game Silverwolf, Aaron A. Reed tells the tale of St. Bride's School, a peculiar Victorian-themed women's retreat active in Ireland in the 1980s. Its operators' many pseudonyms remain mysterious to this day, and its impenetrable blend of feminism, fetishism and reactionary conservatism may have been a discordian op all along. Oddest of all, perhaps, is how it found success cranking out text adventures in the genre's commercial twilight.
Be careful going too far down the St. Bride's rabbit hole: we did not even get to the Aristasian embassy in Second Life, the possible connection to Pinky & the Brain, or the still-active descendants of the Lux Madriana community: if you want to dig deeper, this piece by Owen Williams for GamesTM magazine is a good starting point. Some conclusions drawn in this piece may well be wrong and certain names have been omitted to preserve privacy: please dredge through old personal histories responsibly. Contemporary games journalism from CRASH, Sinclair User, and Your Computer was invaluable, and the source of most 1980s quotes from Scarlett and Langridge; also useful were scans of Artemis (thanks again to the Internet Archive) and the blog Madrian Deanic Resources for extensive investigations into the origins of the women of St. Bride's.
One of their games, Jack The Ripper, was the first game to receive a BBFC 18 rating as would usually be applied to violent and gory movies—the ridiculous outcome of adroid tabloid-baiting by the sisters and their publishers, CRL Group, who specialized in such things.
