An idle RPG of dark academia and spellcasting dread. You signed the indenture, the page is still warm. Scry the mirror, stoke the umbra, attend your disciplines, and survive ten years. Do not feed the staircase.
Half of it idles honestly while you are away. The other half wants your hand on the glass.
Scry the Obsidian Mirror to unlock your Disciplines and advance through the school year. Feed the eight Sources of Umbra and the numbers only go up. Spells can be cast to move faster, but the ledger balances, and everything is paid for.
Spells are not bought. They are learned and trained by hand at the Lectern, where a masterful, near-perfect trace pays five times the practice. Trace a spell's mark on the glass to cast it: instant Maledictions, sustained Litanies, and Bindings that scry in your place.
Then take them to the Proving Grounds: a road through the vale with a hundred and one of the dead standing on it, from the Kept-Back in the Academy's yard to the black mere and the shore of the sea under the world. Pick one. Unmake it, mark by mark. Every cast is done in the dark's own way, in smoke, ash and dried blood.
At rank 20 a mark's Mastery opens: a tree in a shape of its own, inscribed with umbra and reagents and spent with Insight. Each of the twelve marks grows one, with three Keystones that change what the mark is. The Unlidded Eye's Second Sight makes every 7th cast burst half again as strong. Its Held Open lets one trace open the Eye and the next shut it, striking for all it burned in between. Held past six seconds, it turns on you.
The Academy took a drowned lord's keep in payment, and the Headmaster secretly gave you the key. Raise Hollowmere out of the black mere one work at a time: ten buildings that change shape as they grow, tenants to house and feed, and nightwine to keep them from grumbling. When the Keep can rise no higher, let the mere take it back and build again on the old foundations.
Under the water, every building has a twin, and the dead keep it. The first flood opens the way down to the Sunless Sea.
Fifteen fields of forbidden study, from gravebotany and cryptmining to bonebinding and the Vampiric Council, and the strangest of them keep rooms of their own, painted in the castle's hand: Sister Plot's Poisoned Garden, the Dead Stars over the observatory, the Loom of Crows, the Reliquary where Wardens are bound, the Choirmaster's Well, and the Chapter House where a Council with no master sits. The first time you enter, the Garden, the Stars, the Loom and the Reliquary each open on a narrated film.
Every action builds its own Attunement, and every Discipline feeds another: herbs to potions, bones to Devotion, finds to the Bursar.
Close the game and the school goes on without you. The Sources seep, a Discipline works through the night, and the Bound Gardener tends your plots. When you come back, the clerk has it all in a ledger, down to the last Chapeau Noir. Counted honestly, up to a day at a time, and longer under the Night Watch.
When the umbra runs deep enough, sign a new Indenture. It shatters the mirror and voids your contract, and pays you for both: Seals that bless every life after this one, and Oaths spent down a permanent tree. You keep the power. You keep signing.
The Winding Stair is a well cut down through the earth: 233 Fragments of Memory across fifteen acts, lit where you have walked it and dark below. Earn Tenure and raise your ceiling across 120 levels. A second realm opens beneath the Stair, the Undercroft, and below that, what the lore will not decipher. All stairs here go down.
In Early Access the school is complete and stable, playable from the first scry to the endgame. The two deepest doors, the Cave and Hellplore, stay sealed until 1.0.
- 8Umbra Sources
- 12Draw-to-cast spells
- 68Mirror upgrades
- 101Dead on the Proving road
- 15Disciplines
- 10Buildings in Hollowmere
- 23Night Errand zones
- 120Level cap
A Mastery tree for every spell, 10 tiers of the dead on the Proving road, 5 floods and 20 tidings at Hollowmere with the Sunless Sea below, 12 dungeons and 92 monsters on the Night Errands, the Dark Summon's 12 doors, a 16-node prestige tree, a ledger of 347 deeds, 31 familiars, 233 Fragments down the Winding Stair, and honest offline progress with a Welcome Back ledger.
The Sunless Sea, under Hollowmere
Ninety-four deeds to earn.
Some are named. Some are hidden until you commit them. 347 in the ledger, all told.
