Smith thereafter ceased to believe he had written the film at all, but was tapping into a real, hidden world. Several of the actors, being Method, became absorbed in Smith’s delusion, enabled it, and followed it like a religion.
Patricia encouraged everyone not Method, including most of the crew, to become so, and to "believe in the Realm." She told them that Smith had said if everyone believed it was real, the movie would have unprecedented integrity and believability for a fantasy film. It is unknown if Smith himself actually said this, however, because by then he had ceased to speak with the cast or crew directly as opposed to through Patricia. Several minor crew members never returned from Peru; these are still classified as “missing persons” who simply never came back or casualties of ziggurat debris, I have my doubts. Cults often punish with severity those who threaten their…immersion, if you will. I heard at least one rumor that if you did not respond properly to “believe in the Realm,” you were excommunicated from set as it were. Could this have escalated to violence? Certainly. Could excommunication of an isolated American with no knowledge of the region or language mid-shoot, with no resources to return home, be a sort of de facto execution? Definitely.
The crew that did “believe” was instructed to dress in full costume as Orion extras whether they were on camera or not. This had two effects: it increased the unhealthy level of immersion in the subject matter and it reduced outside influence, further insulating and isolating the cast and crew from intervention or voices of reason.
Eventually, the entire cast and crew took on the trappings and behavior not of a group of filmmakers, but a 60s Southern California cult, growing their own food and half waking up at dawn to greet “the Inviolate King.” Outsiders were shunned, cast and crew cut all communication with their family, friends, and the outside world, announcing their intent to "remove the distractions of life outside of Hearth" so that the film could be finished sooner and with fewer budgetary issues. Quickly, the opposite became apparent. Filming went five more months past its deadline, and no one could be reached for any information as to why. Instead, apropos of nothing, a letter was received containing only the phrase, "Believe in the Realm."
One lower producer, Geoffrey Sampson, did a set visit to check on progress but never returned or reported back to the studio. He was later found in Montana, having started a new life and changed his name. He said he didn’t want the “King to find him.”
In response to a request for a receipt of expenses, Smith wrote a rambling, almost incoherent letter to the producers. Keeping with an apparent theme of the production, only snippets survive, such as:
Many powers are even out of your two divine hands. Some things are beyond controlling. Never-the-less [sic] you Centurions Of Light have broken into Valhalla, for you have betrayed me, your Inquisitor, and all the Kings of the Empyrean, questioning a [sic] unruly, yet devoted brother of the round table. The blessings are to [sic] many to count. The blessings.
The studio, terrified for their investment, hired a B-team to shoot alternate footage in Arizona with a cheap cast. This footage was lost when a wild brush fire broke out on set, destroying the film and thousands of dollars in equipment. Due to the extravagant cost already sunk, the studio was forced to pray that Smith would eventually deliver a masterpiece. He of course, would not. The film’s “masterpiece” status notwithstanding—the film was never delivered. Not in any traditional sense.
Shortly following the letter, the "City of Snakes" scene, a three-minute sequence somewhere after the midpoint of the story, went into its fifth day of shooting. A scene that originally was a Hawk-people’s City of Gold had been converted to a reptilian stronghold with much the same sentiment in the Alan draft. In Smith’s hands, the scene continued after its former conclusion. The bounty hunter has captured Ash and the alleged villain of the piece, Imperator Ur orders him to take him to their capital. Instead of the scene ending there, through the rolling of a die, Ur realizes the city is the original birthplace of the Orion Empire. He follows one of the locals, to the ghost of a small child. He follows the spirit to the original temple of the dragon Hiss, and discovers something about his own side written on the walls. It’s hard to say exactly what that was, but it seems to be something akin to realizing much of what had been shown in the film prior had been an illusion.
Smith had decided that all of their trials were connected to the imagery of the story: they had conceded and changed the script, betraying the original concept, and in return the behavior of the cast and crew, his own wife, and himself had become increasingly unstable. Intent on rectifying this, Smith wrote in a twist so as to “restore the original, asymmetrical dichotomy.” In one of the behind-the-scenes diaries, with the lights off, he mused to the camera:
“Last night, I freed the spirits in my dreams. In terrific guilt and dread of retribution, I still managed to halt my crimes. To the surprise of my violent Anglo-Saxon mind, there was no retribution. Rather, the creatures nodded as if to say, 'we would have given freely,' and 'now you know.' When I awoke, I saw our production anew. The whole of it, not just today or this scene or my career. At every turn, since the original image was in the Post, and the reactions from the church and the rabbis and the United Temples of the Light of…Whoever, it's been a quiet, on-set assumption that our hands were being guided by God, or Fate, the Universe. That whenever tragedy struck and we changed course, we were rewarded with a good day. Concept after concept, I changed to suit this idea despite I myself being agnostic, or at least thinking of myself as such before all this. Most of the crew, a few weeks ago, I would have sworn to you were at least secular. Yet superstition cannot be helped, it seems, when confronted by such obvious and directed turmoil. Then yesterday, I was staring at one of the trumpet flowers growing from a moss-covered statue of a serpent. I was struck—for a moment, it was as though I'd been drunk, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through me. I suddenly thought, or truly, felt: what if it was not God's hand guiding us, but some sinister force attempting to remain hidden from the world, one revealed by Orenda before she passed1, that script that could make a Hollywood producer weep in front of his staff, but that I, in my artistic hubris, never bothered to read? A Force beneath all reality, all the powers of mankind, shaping it toward slavery and halting it at every turn, as we had been, that we had capitulated to, again and again? If ‘God’ needed the same story repeated, there were many messengers, and many already published works, to choose from. One tale told in subtle opposition surely should not threaten the omnipotent. Certainly, a god that chooses abstention in the face of a dying child’s plea should not intervene in a film shoot, unless he was neither benevolent nor omnipotent, and threatened not by lies, violence, demons, or sorcery, but by a simple unmasking.”
For some reason, Smith seems to be under the impression that Jenna Orenda is dead in this letter, though she wouldn’t go missing for years. No one ever asked him about this bit, though it keeps me up at night sometimes.