The Descent

A free text adventure. A sampler of the world of Aurelon. The world that The Breaking and Aurelon: The Crosslands are set in.

— The world you are inside of —

The sky has been grey for months. A cycle is failing. Things from outside the world have begun reaching in — the Vreth'kai, fragments of an old hunger. People are still living below all of this. Most of them, anyway.

You are one of those people. A few minutes ago you were walking somewhere, doing what people do when the world is dying. The ground gave way under you. What you do next is up to you.

— How to play —

You can play this two ways at the same time.

Click the choice buttons that appear above the input bar.

Or type what you want to do — try look around, examine the rubble, take flint, north, inventory. The parser handles 30+ verbs and is forgiving of articles and casing. If it doesn't understand you, it will tell you so.

The buttons in the corner are your tools:

♪ ambient sound (off by default)
? a hint for the room. Escalates from vague to specific. The hardest endings give only the lightest hint.
☰ what you carry, and which prophecy fragments you have read. Click any fragment to read it again.
↶ take back the last turn (or type undo). Even works after death.
⟲ abandon this run and start fresh.

— What to expect —

You will die more than once. Death is permadeath. Every turn auto-saves. You can always undo the last one. Closing the page does not lose your progress.

Read carefully. The prose is most of the reward. Almost everything you find is canonical text from The Breaking — the prophecy fragments most of all. Twenty are scattered through the dark.

There are many ways out. Some are easier. Some you will need many runs to find. The four hardest will earn you a place in the unpublished books. The first reader to reach each one names a character.

Type intro at any time to read this again, or tutorial for a quick command reference.