EREWHON

"Immortal Shadow of a mortal soul that perished with Eternity, Attend!"* With these words begins the strange journey of the Wandering Psyche, regaining consciousness in the Parlor of the Weatherleigh Hotel, a "popular hotel of distinction", and one of no fixed location. Guided by the Weatherleigh's Concierge, you choose a Vessel to inhabit, (initially) given a choice of The Academic, The Detective, The Occultist, and The Rogue, joining them in the year 1982 in the "real world", if such a thing even exists. FEATURE LIST - "Death Is Not The End...": Each time your Vessel dies, you return to The Parlor of the Weatherleigh Hotel, where you may choose to return to the Vessel which just perished, or inhabit a new Vessel and see their side of the story. The more you die and resurrect, the more avenues of the intersecting stories you can explore, and new encounters, opportunities, challenges and items as you navigate interlocking campaigns and interact with the same characters from different perspectives in a unique branching meta-campaign, with each 10-12 hour investigation having multiple endings based on your choices. - "...But Madness Might Be": However, while your body is replaceable, your mind is vulnerable, and terrifying events and inexplicable horrors erode your sanity, with permanent insanity carried over between reincarnations. When you lose what's left of your mind, the Wandering Psyche's journey is at an end. - An Exquisite Atmosphere Of Eldritch Doom: Explore haunting and immersive environments (an insane asylum with a sinister history, a cemetery where horrors dwell beneath the grave soil, a haunted hotel transcending time and space, and more) brought to life by rich lighting effects and meticulously designed ambient soundscapes. The mood is completed by a killer soundtrack with diverse tracks ranging all the way from dark synthwave emblematic of 1980s horror through psychedelic folk rock to vintage 1920s blues and jazz. - A Menagerie Of Horrors: A wide array of sinister foes, some of them even human, threaten not just your life but your sanity. As you combat them with a wide array of weapons, skills, and spells, you will find that some encounters provide entirely different choices from direct, full-on combat. - Deep And Broad Character Progression: As you gain levels, customize your characters by spending your AP on your six attributes, unlock class skills and passive abilities in the order you choose, and choose from dozens and dozens of melee weapons, firearms, enchanted weapons and weird artifacts to wield in your struggle for survival. Use what you find in the environment to craft everything from molotov cocktails to weird alchemical concoctions. - Access Arcane Powers At The Cost Of Your Sanity: As you find Eldritch Tomes and unlock the ability to learn dramatically powerful Mythos Spells and summon and bind unnatural abominations to serve you, you must balance the abilities gained thereby with the disintegration of your sanity that comes from wielding such Forbidden Magicks. - Creature Comforts And Bad Habits: Restore your health, power, and Sanity by using dozens of consumables, including alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, medical supplies, and even fine food and haute cuisine, balancing the complex benefits and drawbacks of all of the above. - In Investigation A: Tatterdemalion, the Academic is enlisted by detectives to help locate the Morgenstern Twins, actresses who disappeared following a catastrophic massacre that mysteriously erupted at the exclusive premier of a controversial playwright's new work. That playwright, Eugene Synge, has been committed to Brookhaven State Mental Hospital in Massachusetts, where you are headed to question him as he may be the only one with any clues to what went wrong at his play's premier, and where the Morgenstern sisters have disappeared to. The Occultist is infiltrating the same asylum, in search of the infamous and sinister text which inspired Synge's new play, and the carnage that follows. In Investigation B: True Dark, The Detective investigates a series of brutal serial slayings in New York's Lower East Side, leaving its victims dismembered and partially eaten. The trail of bodies leads to Stanton Street Cemetery, and the ancient, wealthy, and sinister family that owns and operates it. Meanwhile, The Rogue is an early suspect in the same murders, and is forced into aiding the investigation of Stanton Street Cemetery in an uneasy alliance with the forces of law and order. EREWHON is (if it wasn't obvious) inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos, the works of H.P. Lovecraft, his circle of pulp fiction, and all the work done by the generations of writers and game designers he inspired. Robert W. Chamber's "The King In Yellow" (an 1895 work preceding Lovecraft's writing by decades) is a particularly special inspiration. * From Ambrose Bierce's "A Vision Of Doom".