A horror text adventure that does not flinch for you
The storm closed the pass behind you, the monastery took you in, and the brothers who met you at the gate have been dead since before the first snow. You have somewhere to sleep and no way down the mountain.
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No account, no card, nothing to install. The world's lore is already built, so it starts in seconds.
Horror dies the moment the narrator starts protecting you
The commonest failure in AI horror is that nothing is ever really allowed to happen to you. What your character attempts is ruled on separately from how the scene gets written, so a bad plan in a bad place is allowed to go badly — and an injury carries on hurting after the scene that caused it.
The world
Stranded by a blizzard, a handful of travelers shelter in the cliffside monastery of St. Anselm—only to find the brothers gone, the chapel sealed, and something still ringing the bell.
St. Anselm clings to a frozen mountainside, cut off by snow for months at a time. Its halls are old beyond record, and the things the monks walled away in the lower crypt did not stay walled forever. Faith here is less comfort than ward.
Who is in it
- The Snowbound
- the trapped survivors, fraying as the nights grow longer.
- Order of St. Anselm
- the vanished monks, whose journals hint at terrible vigils.
- The Walled Thing
- whatever the order kept sealed beneath the chapel.
Where you go
- The Sealed Chapel
- its doors barred from inside, the bell still tolling alone.
- The Lower Crypt
- a frozen vault the monks bricked over generations ago.
- The Refectory
- the only warm room, where the survivors huddle and accuse.
What already happened
- The Vanishing
- the disappearance of every monk, weeks before the travelers arrived.
- The First Bell
- the night the chapel bell began ringing with no hand to ring it.
Who you can play
-
Dr. Helena Frost Skeptic physician
A rational woman whose certainty is the first thing the monastery sets out to break.
At the start: the group's voice of reason, for as long as reason lasts.
-
Brother Matthias The last monk
A trembling survivor who may be the group's salvation or the reason they are doomed.
At the start: half-mad, half-holy, and the only one who knows the truth.
Or write your own character — the setup form takes a name, a background and what you are good at, and the game master works from that instead.
How a turn works
- You say what your character does, in your own words.
- What you attempted is weighed against your character sheet and the state of the scene — and the outcome is settled before the scene is written, so the part telling the story does not get to decide that you succeeded.
- The game master narrates what happened, grounded in the world's own characters, factions and places, and remembers it for the rest of the run.
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