Our Wars Have Ended - casting
We're Jon and Muna, the creators of weird-fiction / horror audiodramas The Silt Verses and I Am In Eskew.​ (You can find out more about us here. )
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We're currently casting for our next audio production, Our Wars Have Ended. It's going to be a wildly ambitious cross-genre epic, incorporating elements of swashbuckling adventure, grisly existential and body horror, weird fantasy, furious social satire, and intense family tragedy. We're looking for a lovely cast of talented voice actors to help us make that happen.
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Our Wars Have Ended is set in a Regency-era world that has undergone an invasion of the risen dead - but far from causing an apocalypse, the ancient aristocracy and royalty of the empire have resettled upon their thrones, rolling back laws and customs to suit their own yearning for the past, while mass undead labour and revivification techniques have radically stimulated the progress of industrialism, medicine, and society as a whole - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
In its first season - we’ll hope to make more! - we’ll follow two parallel storylines, one set in the nation’s capital as a daring plot against the dead lords and ladies takes shape, one depicting a convoy of mercenaries marching through the frontier wilderness towards said capital.
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Who are we looking for?
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Our Wars Have Ended is a fantasy show, but we’re definitely not looking for broad performances - we want our acting to feel grounded and naturalistic. Play it real and keep it human is our main request.
We are playing in a setting that’s riffing off 18th-century Europe, but we don't intend to be prescriptive about accents, either (we're a big cast, so a range of international and regional accents to help distinguish the characters is a plus). If you're worried that you sound inescapably like a 21st-century NYC citizen who knows what an iPhone is, we’d still much rather hear you being yourself than straining uncomfortably to do a Bridgerton or Samwise Gamgee impression!
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As ever, we particularly encourage and welcome auditions from actors of colour, actors with a visible or invisible disability, and actors who are trans, non-binary and gender-non-conforming. Where gender isn't an essential part of a role, we've indicated that it's open to anyone at this stage.
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How will this work?
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We work remotely with voice actors across the world, so there's no requirement to get to a studio. ​(We would ask that you have a good-quality USB mic or other recording setup!)​ We pay £30 p/h, rounding up to the nearest half-hour.
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We'll close auditions on 14th July 2025 and aim to begin reaching out to actors by 14th August 2025. The season is likely to be 15-18 episodes long and will hopefully release around the end of 2025.
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What are the roles?
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Character audition lines and descriptions can be found below, or here in bulk. (We've also included an early draft of the pilot for anyone who's curious or wants to read more to try and get a sense of the show.)
We've tried to include a juicy monologue or substantial piece of dialogue for each character, but if you don't have time to complete the lines it's totally OK to send us a shorter segment!
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Audition lines should be sent to auditions@thesiltverses.com (MP3 or wav), along with any showreel materials you'd like us to hear. If you can sing, we'd also be very excited to hear about it. You are very welcome to audition for several parts at once.
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We'll have a substantial number of other roles available throughout the course of the season, so if we love your audition but you're not quite right for a particular part, we'll very possibly be in touch to offer something else.
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A few quick warnings
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The show will deal with a colonial-era power’s descent into chaotic fascism and social regression while also undergoing a rapid technological surge; as such, we will be actively exploring a lot of heavy and very timely themes and topics, prejudices and cruelties. We will also (as usual per our shows) feature heavy doses of violence, body horror and body transformation, as well as non-permanent acts of suicide.
We’ll always aim to work closely and conscientiously with our actors as we tackle this material in depth, but some of the audition lines will naturally contain descriptions of strong violence, body horror, and mentions of prejudice.
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Also, a spoiler warning - if you've come here out of curiosity because you're interested in listening to the show, there will be a lot of them below! Bail out now.
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Sore Morel​
Pronouns: He/him or she/her (role is cis)
Age: 45+
Core cast member
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You're a wounded boar, a soldier who lost their final war, now the struggling commander of a mercenary company. You’ve never been able to shake off your immense anger and raging grief at your defeat; over time, your resentment at those who’ve been able to adapt to the new regime has only grown.
In the three decades since the war ended, you’ve gathered surrogate children to you, you’ve raised them to adulthood and - in a difficult and often exceedingly harsh way - you’ve done your genuine best to care for them. One by one, your children given up on you - which has only calcified you more and more into an unhappy, volatile, erratic mess.
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For all these years, you've been waiting for an opportunity to get your revenge on your persecutors. You're about to get it. Things will go horribly wrong.
You’re not a curmudgeon with a hidden heart of gold or a heroic revolutionary with some rough edges: you’re a raging, untameable beast who may just drag everyone who cares about you down into the abyss.
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What we’re looking for
An older, weathered, rough-around-the-edges voice which naturally carries authority and experience (if you’re a younger actor, please don’t try and forcibly age up your voice to the role!).
At times, Morel will enter a rage. Then we want to hear you absolutely fucking King Lear it, we want you to howl at the stars and curse the gods. We want to pity you and fear you in the same moment.
Timmer Morel
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Pronouns: They/them
Age: 18-30
Core cast member
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You're a whipsmart young doctor, growing up in an era of extraordinary medical advancement - but you’re missing out on every opportunity to be a part of that progress. Instead you’re on the road, working for your increasingly erratic and hostile foster father (Sore Morel) and his mercenary company of thieves, liars, and killers.
You’re curious, intelligent, and conscientious - but the longer you stick around on this path, the more these qualities are being tested. You’ve come to hate your father, and the weight and shame of his dislike for you is making you hate yourself in turn.
Over the course of the show, you’ll fall in love with a walking corpse, take control of the company you hate, and accidentally facilitate the rise of a brutal authoritarian.
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What we’re looking for
A sympathetic, slightly cloistered voice with an audible spark of excitement and a hunger for knowledge. A young doctor with tarnished decency and care for their patients, empathy that’s always in danger of being eroded by the harsh realities of the world.
You’re going to be talking enthusiastically and passionately about a lot of macabre body-horror things and we need the audience to feel drawn in by your passion, not alienated by it. You're going to be fucking up a lot under pressure and we need the audience to empathise with your, not scorn you.
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Caul Serrikane
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Pronouns: Any
Age: 18-35
Core cast member
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You were born in poverty with an exposed ribcage and associated heart and lung conditions, and no expectation of a future. You've grown up tough, independent, and street-smart; you're self-possessed and calm enough under pressure that nobody ever comes close to realising just how physically vulnerable you are. You're also a far better person than you realise.
Your work is called dead-diving; it’s illegal, experimental, and highly dangerous, You routinely and temporarily kill yourself for a living, descending into the netherworld to retrieve secrets from the newly dead, before returning to life.
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You'll be caught in the act and executed shortly after the start of your story. It won't slow you down for long.
Over the course of the show, you’ll uncover a political conspiracy, and you'll be forced to flee through life and death, skipping between bodies to escape your pursuers.
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What we're looking for
A young voice that sounds like it's been through hell and come out the other side just about intact. Caul's lines will often be cold to the point of callousness - we need you to communicate the humanity and dry sense of humour lurking underneath. We're imagining a rough hoarseness, a wry and wounded private smile.
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You're going to be monologuing about your afterlife experiences, and that's when we want to hear the hunger and passion come into your voice that's largely hidden in your dialogue.
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Dogged Morel
Pronouns: She/her
Age: 18-35
Single-session commitment
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Sore Morel’s favourite remaining foster-child. You’re everything your father ought to be; compassionate, brave, generous in spirit, a calm and thoughtful leader. You care for your sibling Timmer, you care for your father (although you are half-convinced he's descending into madness), and it’s clear enough to most of the company that you ought to take over from him - perhaps sooner rather than later.
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You’re not perfect, but you’re trying your hardest at every turn.
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Throughout the pilot of the show we will strongly establish you as one of its protagonists, before your untimely and horrible death at the end of the episode - which will cause a ripple effect throughout the series.
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What we’re looking for
Someone who can come across as authentically likeable and genuinely heroic in a very short space of time. Confident but conscientious; thoughtful and courageous. A good person, but still a textured person. Make us feel it when you go too soon.
Fann Arkhetarias
Pronouns: She/her or they/them
Age: 20-45
Core cast member
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You're the child of penniless exiles from a farflung country that no longer exists; now you're a translator on behalf of an ancient and ruthless king.
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You've survived this long as a foreigner by performing various con-artist's images of 'foreignness' - playing the exotic and haughty royal, the wise mystic, the wide-eyed innocent. You've learnt from these acts, becoming effortlessly quick-witted, flamboyant, charming and likeable. In private, you worry that your performance is a betrayal to an identity and a heritage you barely remember. You're very drily funny, and you are carefully concealing the fact that your latest career choice is making you fear for your safety.
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Speaking of which - you are also recently dead, and hiding it well, but you're privately traumatised by the experience. You will fall for Timmer Morel, and do your best to keep them alive, and it may end up destroying you both.
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The Eighth Earl Haa
Pronouns: Any
Age: 30+
Core cast member
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A well-heeled, eccentric, aristocratic lawyer and historian attempting to sift through the chaos of a new regime that has a dozen different dynasties all squabbling for control. You’re likeably no-nonsense, brisk, and quite certain of yourself, with a formidable intelligence, memory, and knowledge of languages and law underlying your confidence.
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You’ll recruit Caul early on in the series to help you investigate a murderous plot against the ruling class of the capital - but they will begin to suspect that you are in fact seeking to orchestrate a revolution.
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What we’re looking for
A voice (without becoming caricature) that makes you snap to attention. A strict-but-supportive suffer-no-fools teacher who can always command the class’ attention, a brisk and breezy general whose orders are always obeyed.
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You cannot be trusted, but we want a performer who can be so reassuringly authoritative, supportive and likeable that the audience won’t even begin to suspect it.
The Nameless Historian
Pronouns: Any
Age: 30+
Core cast member
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You're a disgraced academic and boozehound, chatty and slightly absent-minded, intellectually enthusiastic about the state of the world - and above all, lonely and looking for someone to talk to. (If you can find the clip, we're thinking of a tone in the vein of the opening monologue from The Third Man.)
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For most of the season we will use you as a disembodied voice to deliver expository monologues about the state of the world and setting - history and geography lessons - before revealing unexpectedly that you're a real character involved in the plot and the conspiracy against the dead state.
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Inkblot
Pronouns: Any
Age: 30+
Secondary cast member
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A botanist and linguist who has found themselves travelling with Morel’s mercenary company. You’re good-natured, kind, absent-minded, eternally out-of-place and never quite able to fit in. You frequently compose letters to great dead thinkers, imagining that they'll be pleased to hear from you. Your softness and academic naivety should be both amusing and endearing.
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Foal
Pronouns: Any
Age: 18-30
Secondary cast member
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A country kid half-grown up and likely to never grow up the rest of the way. You’re unpretentious, goodhearted and straightforward - and an absolutely murderous shot with a rifle. Your relaxed, lackadaiscal approach to life will make you obvious comic relief, right up until you become a terrifyingly impressive action hero in one key episode.
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Lively
Pronouns: She/her
Age: 30+
3 episodes
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An older member of Morel’s mercenary company. You haven't been paid in a long time. You feel unappreciated and pissed-off. You're vindictive and embittered, and you tend to mutter curses and accusations at a fast pace. You're going to do some absolutely terrible, cruel things - acting as a minor early villain in the show - but with absolute conviction that you are in the right and taking what you're owed. You will then die horribly.
The Pest Knight
Pronouns: She/her
Age: 25+
3 episodes
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A dying knight who knows she’s not going to make it to the object of her quest before her body fails - and who is therefore going to offer up her body as a vessel to a swarm of sentient blow-flies in exchange for their help.
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In a later episode, you will also play an inhuman swarm of sentient blow-flies occupying the same knight’s corpse who show up heroically to save the day. (This dual role should hopefully be a lot of fun).
The High Mischief
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Pronouns: Any
Age: 40+
2 episodes
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A small-town authority figure and community leader who hires Morel and company at the very start of the show. You'll be providing a long monologue which gives us an early introduction to much of the world - we need a calm, authoritative, pleasant voice that helps our audience sink into the setting and story. You'll need to display polite confusion and carefully-concealed distaste, followed by a cold and calm fury after you're wronged.
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Finick
Pronouns: He/him
Age: 18-25
Single-session commitment
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A small but crucial part - you're an earnest young man, dying in horrible pain during the first episode. We need someone who can rouse our sympathy and our shock, convincing both in your emotional turmoil and your pained cries.
Nametaker
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Pronouns: They/them
Age: 30+
3-5 episodes
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A wry, affable and generous gang-leader who specialises in the theft and sale of precious memories from the dead. A violent killer and a graverobber, one of the most dangerous characters in the show - but also a talkative, likeable, good-natured soul with a genuine curiosity and interest in the world around them.
Chorus voices
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We'll have a wide variety of minor roles and background lines to fill, from croaking corpses to regular folk to horrible monsters. Try your hand at as many or as few of the sample lines as you like. Have some fun and show us what you can do!
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