Nine prisons. One guttering fire. Someone is opening the doors.
Six hundred years ago the Lantern Orders sealed the Choir, things that wore borrowed voices and sang the living into their mouths, inside nine Silences scattered across Aldermark. The seals are failing, north to south. Each one you close brings you nearer to whoever is opening them.
A novel you play, at a table that keeps score
Emberfall is a fantasy adventure that reads like a book and plays like a night with friends who know the rules. The story is written in advance, scene by scene, not generated as you go. The dice are rolled by the game, in the open, never by the storyteller. And what you do is kept: a promise made to a boy in a moor village in chapter one is still a promise in chapter seven, and the world will ask about it.
There is nothing to install and nothing to learn first. Pick a chapter, gather a party, and read. When a choice matters, the page waits for you.
Seven chapters, written as prose, with choices that lead somewhere. A failed test sends you down a different road. Earlier chapters change later ones, and eleven side tales wait off the road.
One roll for everything: d20 plus a Stat against a Difficulty. Every roll is shown, with the die and the number it had to beat. Triumphs and Mishaps happen to you, not to the plot.
Play one hero, or up to three. Each member has a sheet, gear, spells and a voice in the log. Let the game play the ones you don't feel like playing tonight. Change your mind mid-fight.
Round by round, with everything in view
A fight is a stage above the page. Your party stands on one side, the foes on the other, and every strike, miss and wound lands where you can see it, with the die tumbling in the corner. Strike, defend, cast, use a knack, drink something, or run. The enemies answer.
Four difficulty modes turn the numbers up or down whenever you like. Fights scale to the size of your party, so three heroes still have to earn it.
Your people, played by you or by the game
Six Callings, six Folk, a spread of Stats and Talents, and a few dozen spells. Build a hero in a minute or take one of the ready-made ones and go. Story tests fall to whoever is best at them, so the Oracle does the talking and the Shadow does the sneaking, and the log says who rolled.
Give your own hero a drive (someone hunting them, an oath, a face they are looking for) and the road remembers it in every chapter. The six ready-made companions carry stories of their own, and each has a side tale that goes back to where their story began.
A continent that lights up as you cross it
Seven regions, from the peat and drystone of the Greymoor to the volcanic Sunder Isles. Every chapter opens a new one. Places you have heard of appear as rumours; places you have been are yours. Between chapters, the road you have walked draws itself across the map.
Ten minutes to learn. The rest you learn by playing.
d20 + Stat + Talent against a Difficulty. Meet it and you succeed. A natural 20 is a Triumph, a 1 is a Mishap.
Might, Grace, Wits and Presence, with twelve Talents on top. Skills, titles and a weapon with a name you earn along the way.
Get hurt, rest, recover. Reach zero and you are down, which is not yet the same as dead.
Casters have a pool. Tricks are free, Mighty spells cost six. No slots, no spellbooks to manage.
The first chapter is free. The barrow is singing.
Play The Whispering Barrow in your browser, no account needed. Your save lives on your device. The rest of the road, seven chapters and eleven side tales, is one purchase.
Word from the road
Only new tales and sales, a few times a year. One click takes you off the list.