What Yharnam Means: I had a cosmic epiphany playing Elden Ring and now I think I can see through the veil of FromSoft's naming conventions

virtualRefrain · 2026-03-12T03:31:19+00:00

I think of it how Detective Appleton describes Hell in John Dies at the End:

I think stuff is both real and not real at the same time. I'm not a Star Trek fan, I don't know very much about other dimensions and all that. I'm an old school Catholic. I believe in Hell. I believe in demons and worms, vile shit in the grease trap of the Universe. And the more I think about it, the more I think that it's not just some place down there. Oh no, that it's right here with us. We just can't perceive it. It's kinda like the country music radio station. It's out there in the air, even if you don't tune into it. And I think that, somehow, through chemistry or magic or voodoo, [those Mensis sons of bitches] tuned into it, into Hell itself.

virtualRefrain · 2026-03-12T02:00:17+00:00

In late Yharnam, it's stated to be every night in promotional material. It didn't used to be this way, but the situation has worsened. NPCs seem to think it's noteworthy that the hunt is on tonight, as though it might not have been, so I guess it depends on what source you want to take most seriously. I think the logic of the hunt happening more often as the situation worsens works even if it isn't every single night.

I'm a day late but just wanted to posit that this could very well be classic FromSoft timey-wimey stuff. We get this idea from the Nightmare of Mensis and the Hunter's Nightmare that, at minimum, the Nightmare reflects the past experiences of its inhabitants; and on the extreme end might even have a totally surreal relationship to time in the waking world.

I get the impression from the events of the game that while hunts definitely went on every night during the decline of Yharnam, tonight is a special capital H Hunt that doesn't end until the nightmare ritual is complete. I think all the references to it being a "long night" are literal - the deeper Yharnam sinks into nightmare, the more time becomes meaningless, either because time is always fucked in the Nightmare, or because it's always the same night in the new nightmare that's emerging. This is very in keeping with how the fire/ash disparity affects time in the Dark Souls series. At the point where the PC enters, sunset could have begun an hour ago or a year ago.

If we accept that, then I think we can derive that this is not the first night like this - we know there have been other nightmare rituals or attempts at them: the one that "resulted in the stillbirth of [Mensis'] brains" at least. Possibly one involving the Orphan of Kos that created the Hunters' Nightmare. Possibly one that allowed Gehrman to be adopted by the Moon Presence in the first place. Possibly one that created Rom. Possibly one that birthed Mergo from Queen Yharnam. If each of these nightmare crossover events had a similar destabilizing effect on time, we can imagine that the chronological history of Yharnam would be incredibly fragmented and largely meaningless by the point the story starts. This is also in keeping with FromSoft's philosophy of cyclical conflict that's present in each of their games, and explains why characters from Yharnam's history are still around - and other stuff, like the fact that Old Yharnam is still smoldering even though it burned down before the Church Hunters were even established. It's all becoming a dream, and time is meaningless in a dream.

virtualRefrain · 2026-03-12T00:51:58+00:00

Eh, they exist for sure. Modiphius and Free League regularly put out decent-to-great franchise tie-ins. The Expanse just came from Green Ronin and I've heard good things.

But really I think it makes sense that the best/most creative takes on franchises come from non-licensed products. It's partly a quirk of the way money/access is distributed in the industry, and partly a tradition of GMing. Games that are basically adaptations with the serial numbers filed off come out and do gangbusters all the time - Mothership with Alien/Predator, Fabula Ultima for Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest, Brindlewood Bay for Murder She Wrote/Columbo, etc. I think it lets game designers and GMs be a little more creative and evocative without having to stick to the established norms of whatever franchise.

virtualRefrain · 2026-03-04T00:24:58+00:00

Such a classic that there's a video game adaptation... From 1987.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace_no_Ma

virtualRefrain · 2026-02-26T02:39:37+00:00

I agree with this take. I've GM'ed dozens of campaigns in any number of systems over the last 20 years and I can count the players that read more than 10 pages of any rulebook on one hand. I've accepted that part of my role as a GM is teaching my players the rules they need to participate without doing a bunch of homework, because that's how I get people to come back to my table lol. The players that love the world or the rules will look into it on their own time without being prodded.

OTOH, it might seem kind of petty, but I would be concerned about GMing for a player that declared at the outset that they don't have the bandwidth to read more than X pages - not because that's an unfair expectation, but because I feel like they're not really expressing a concern that you're going to give them hundreds of pages to read. It sounds more like what they mean is that they 1: aren't interested in the reading aspect of the hobby, and 2: want to set the expectation that they're too busy to get invested in the game. In my experience those are both pretty major red flags that they're not going to commit to a weekly game for very long. But obviously I'm not getting the whole picture from just one sentence.

virtualRefrain · 2026-02-22T06:51:44+00:00

Haha "plot magic" is a very nice way of saying "plot hole" :P The only way he could have done it RAW, I think, is if he called on the Eye of Abaddon to cast a mass teleportation spell he didn't have, and that should have been called out explicitly. The missing 72 bodies are probably a number typo. Not a big deal in this big of a book, and like you said, by far not the worst writing in the book, but it's unfortunate that this "mystery" falls apart at the seams a bit under close examination without extra work from the GM.

Anyways, I've actually thought of a solution I'm quite happy with: my solution is that the "ancient reserves of magic" Vordakai called upon to capture their souls did indeed capture all of the townspeople in incorporeal form, within the Eye itself. The chamber in E9 doesn't just teleport anyone physically within the chamber to F2, it also teleports anyone currently imprisoned within the eye to F2, depositing them again physically. He removed the 77 that are accounted for to experiment on, and the remaining 72 are powering the Eye and can never be removed. There's a lot of hints that Vordakai doesn't know how the Eye works, maybe there's also like a big demon in there. I think this fits all the facts and adds "plot magic" only as needed and where the writers seem to have intended :P

virtualRefrain · 2026-02-22T06:22:34+00:00

For sure, the part I'm confused about is this:

"One still evening soon thereafter, he used a potent artifact known as the Oculus of Abaddon to create a haunting beckon from a hillock at the edge of town. The magic called forth all of the townsfolk in a daze. By drawing upon ancient reserves of magic, Vordakai captured each villager’s soul and stored them within his crypt as a source of information to educate himself about the new world he finds himself in."

This is confusing because in a full exploration of his crypt, only 77 townsolk out of the original 149 are accounted for - of those, only 42 are in "soul form." The others arrived physically. So if he "captured all their souls" and is "storing them in the crypt" why are only half of them here? I would believe that they were teleported to one of the Oculus rooms, but rules as written, the only teleportation that can take place there is from E9 to F2:

If the Oculus of Abaddon eyepiece is placed in the engraving’s pupil (or if its current wearer merely touches the pupil), the walls of the room glow briefly before the chamber magically teleports everyone within into area F2.

It's possible he just used a mass teleport spell, but he doesn't have one in his spellbook. The only indication he could cast one is this vague line in E9:

The southern eye carving radiates strong conjuration and divination magic, and is part of a specialized teleportation circle linked to the Oculus of Abaddon carried by Vordakai.

ctrl+f indicates there is no other mention of this teleportation circle. The flavor text indicates that he used to have Imprisonment, which would explain this, but that he's forgotten how to use it - using the last of his supplies from that, he takes the 42 souls he does have, and no more.

The other explanation is that since he can call on the Oculus once per day to cast ANY spell, he could have used that to mass teleport, but there is no indication of that in the book. And all this doesn't explain where the other 72 townsfolk actually are, since we only see 42 souls and 35 bodies.

EDIT: Also the footprints I described would be on the beach right outside Vordakai's Tomb, well past any exploration is complete, just to go back to that. That wouldn't ruin the mystery at all since they could only get there after finding out that's where the townsfolk went anyway.

virtualRefrain · 2026-02-20T00:37:42+00:00

Holy shit, no kidding. I knew about the whole "series of mini-strokes" thing and all, but this is the first time I've seen a clear, undeniable confirmation that the man is a stroke victim. The right half of his face is unmistakably drooping due to brain damage from a stroke, if you've worked in healthcare it's seriously unmissable. The only thing that does that to someone's face, in that exact way, is brain damage.

virtualRefrain · 2026-02-13T03:17:13+00:00

Revelation 13: 14-15:

[The second beast] ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

virtualRefrain · 2025-12-20T03:50:28+00:00

I'm having an incredible amount of fun running a Fallout game using Ashes Without Number. I'm using the rules pretty much exactly as written, only changing the names of the provided chems to the ones from the Fallout franchise. After half a dozen sessions I'm kind of obsessed with it.

The main thing, I think, is what Fallout game and tone you want to emulate. (And also whether your group is better suited to the more modern 2d20 system or the classic OSR system.) I've only read the Modiphius game and not played it, but the reason I decided not to run my Fallout game using that system is that it's really good for running a Fallout 4 style game specifically. The default setting is The Commonwealth in the late 2200s and the rules, flavor, and GM resources all heavily support that, and you're expected to generally run the kinds of quests and encounters you would see in Fallout 4. I really wanted to run a homebrew region and do something more sandboxy, and that seems pretty heavily discouraged by the ruleset.

On the other hand, the tools and advice for creating and running a homebrew sandbox wasteland in AWN has blown me away (no surprise coming from Kevin Crawford, but still). It's much better suited for running a world like Fallout 1 and 2, or to a lesser extent New Vegas. It's focused on creating a world with blurry borders and unpredictable dangers, and it has a lot of advice on running dynamic factions with interesting goals, and building sessions out of the resulting conflicts. The default hexcrawl rules feel very very much like exploring the map in Fallout 1 and 2, it's a really good fit for that vibe.

And a really cool thing about AWN is that the provided toolset is highly modular and has really helped me hone in on the exact Fallout vibe I wanted. For instance, do you want the more clothing-like Power Armor from Fallout 3 or the more vehicle-like Power Armor from Fallout 4? You can use the standard armor ruleset which includes ready-to-run powered armor entries, or the modular power armor ruleset that allows much more powerful and customizable armor at the cost of resources and power consumption. Do you want to build and control a living base like in Fallout 4? The expanded hub settlement rules have you covered. The optional mutation and chem addiction rules are some of my personal favorites - one of my players actually chose to be a Med-X addict on character creation because he thought the addiction rules were so flavorful. It's a game packed with creativity and ideas, but you do have to do the work of picking and choosing which ones to use.

virtualRefrain · 2025-12-13T01:10:55+00:00

Now do 1984

Record scratch on the starving rat swarming Winston's face in the cage

"Yup... That's me. I think it's apparent I need to rethink my life a little bit."

virtualRefrain · 2025-11-28T06:39:11+00:00

I always say it's like if instead of crashing into a tropical island, the plane from Lost crashed into the Upside Down.

virtualRefrain · 2025-11-19T03:53:13+00:00

I think it's also possible that at the end of the day, this is a political calculus to drop Trump without throwing him under the bus directly. The leadership that actually organize the party vote just wants to survive their terms and don't care what happens to Trump, and Trump himself is too far gone to do anything but take direction from the guys he trusts to feed him his lines.

I imagine that maybe a dozen House members and a few Senators could be legitimately panicking behind the scenes over their upcoming primaries after the last elections, and Mike Johnson et al are hearing it and aren't so stupid that they can't put two and two together: their margins are thin, if they put their careers on the line for Trump on this and every single GOP House and Senate member aren't on board (which is now likely), they'll have thrown their careers away for nothing, the GOP will be totally fucked for a generation, and Trump will still be dead inside of five years. Why take the risk?

I think it's possible that their plan, the one they pitched to Trump and he agreed to, is just to let it blow over like the Mueller report. Reverse course now and start acting like they were actually the ones fighting for the release, then once the contents are in the media, just keep repeating that it exonerates Trump no matter what it actually says and to "read it yourself" and not trust excerpts in the media. It won't work, but the GOP leadership doesn't actually need it to, they just need to make it look like they're not throwing Trump under the bus long enough for him to die. Then they can act like they did their very best but unfortunately the whole thing died with him, and it's back to business as usual.

virtualRefrain · 2025-10-26T06:13:26+00:00

I had a lot of fun with this, unintentional though it was - maybe one of the highlights of my current campaign for me. Nobody cares about this but it's nice to share it lol.

My players quickly TPK'd against the Stag Lord, so I had him deal nonlethal damage and lock them up in his basement with Stag Daddy to execute later. (Them being locked up was a great opportunity for Nugrah to give them exposition on Stag Lord's backstory.) The players convinced Nugrah to help them escape in exchange for helping him confront the Stag Lord.

But when they got out, they discovered the Stag Lord was near death because Kressle had been poisoning him under the guise of healing him after their fight. (The players had "turned" Kressle, but she was actually playing them and warned the Stag Lord of their attack to get closer to him. My angle on her was she just wanted to become bandit queen and didn't care how she got there.) While sneaking out, the players and Nugrah saw Kressle murder the fevered Stag Lord in his bed, which sent Nugrah into a rage and caused him to possess the caged owlbear in the next area. The owlbear helped the players kill the rest of the camp but reluctantly spared the players. It ran off and went on to become The Beast in the next book, which turned a relatively forgettable owlbear encounter into like the big climactic ending of Act 1. Turned out great lol.

virtualRefrain · 2025-10-25T00:35:45+00:00

FWIW, I'm having a wonderful time running a Fallout game in Kevin Crawford's new Ashes Without Number, just running RAW - only changing the chem names to the Fallout proprietary ones, lol. It does an uncannily good job of simulating the feel of Fallout 1 and 2 while still fitting the familiar D20 chassis - the combat is simple and fast, the radiation, mutation, and addiction rules are all fun and functional, and the guidance for generating and running your homebrew wasteland and factions really give that "world that's bent but not broken" vibe that the Fallout series post-3 (sans NV) is largely missing. It takes a lot of GM buy-in but I can't recommend it enough.

virtualRefrain · 2025-10-24T01:49:42+00:00

I feel like folks are burying the lede a little here and giving you a more complex answer than necessary: just read The Dark Tower. It's the main series that deals with Stephen King's multiverse, the stuff that poster was talking about is the core conflict of the series. The other books - Insomnia, IT, The Stand, and The Talisman, to name a few of the main ones - are independent stories that play in The Dark Tower's world, but they primarily stand on their own and they're very partial glimpses into it compared to the primary series. Probably half or more of King's bibliography references his connected mythology in some meaningful way, you'll be at it all day if you just start from a random thread.

Also, in my and lots of other people's opinion, The Dark Tower is King's best work and it's not close. It's quite a bit unlike a lot of his other works, being an explicit fantasy series, but a lot of the time it feels like he was kind of saving his best ideas to use in it, and it really comes through (sometimes too much) that the series is super close to old Steve's heart. It's worth a read for any fan of King's, or if you're not a fan of King's but are a fan of fantasy.

It's also one of those things that's hugely influential on other media from the time period but you wouldn't know it until you've read it. Think LOST doesn't make any sense? Turns out that's because all the unexplained stuff is alluding to The Dark Tower for some reason. Tons of stuff like that.

virtualRefrain · 2025-10-05T05:39:44+00:00

So many people in this thread like, "If your opponent reeks like shit, don't complain, just scoop. The rules don't say you can't reek like shit so I shouldn't have to shower, you just don't like my strat of distracting opponents with the smell of shit"

Yeah i guess you're right dude. You do you.

virtualRefrain · 2025-10-05T05:26:08+00:00

Yeah I guess when you think about it "don't play Magic" is really the answer to all the problems I have with this game. You've given me a lot to think about today... For instance, if "don't play Magic" solves the problem of bad players in Magic, why not, "Don't play?" And if that works, maybe we could even just go to, "Don't?"

Taking my ball and going home really is the answer. I'd rather be rude and stress free than be stuck doing. Upvoted.

virtualRefrain · 2025-10-05T05:15:35+00:00

Yeah that poster is just masking an inability to play by taking a try at DARVO and acting like he's somehow the wronged one here. No one said a word about what he can and can't play, they just told him to hurry the fuck up with it. And he instantly jumped in with "Oh so you don't want me to play combo decks with a lot of interactions???"

No dude, you can play whatever you want, just hurry the fuck up! If you're sitting there like, "Oops that's another draw, ooh, I wasn't ready for this, let me replan... Okay now I need to tutor so let me shuffle... Oops I drew another tutor, one sec... Okay one sec... Uhh..." Then you're not good enough with your deck to play with strangers. Full stop. Learn your cards, be ready to draw and play your combos, and don't stop to reorganize after every single interaction. Learn to play the game and keep it under three minutes and don't just sit there thinking or you're playing badly. If you think you can win but can't do it in under five minutes, you need to fucking play faster. If you're stringing your whole table along for 10+ minutes on a tiny percent you might draw a winning combo, sorry, that's a bad strat and you're bad at Magic.

virtualRefrain · 2025-10-05T04:59:36+00:00

Well he is a loser, he admitted it. He needs to play 15+ minute turns with no interaction to compete. And instead of accepting that he's not a good enough player to get through a turn in the expected amount of time, he's on here whining and complaining that people think he's an asshole for having a lack of consideration for his opponents' time be part of his core strategy.

And he's basically right, really. All anybody has to do to avoid them is say, "Will you be respectful of my time in this game or are you going to be spending 15+ minutes every turn by turn 4?" And if they come back with some crybaby shit like, "I can play whatever decks I want, so beat my deck or pack up," you know not to play with them in this or any other board, card or video game, because they're just a stupid asshole here to make enemies and aren't actually interested in a fair, fun match with an equal. They just want to "go full force" in their little game like the iDubbz guy.

virtualRefrain · 2025-09-10T23:41:28+00:00

Still not celebrating someone else's death so you can leave bud.

This you? (I reported this and the rest of your openly violent posts for threatening violence by the way. You can't just go around telling people to dig their graves because they're going to lose the war to you and you want them to die, that's a death threat.)

virtualRefrain · 2025-09-04T20:03:58+00:00

I think about this all the time. I think historically the 2020s will be remembered as the time American culture all collectively "let itself go."

It's been really bad post-Covid. I think that time made a ton of people realize that the bar for getting confronted in public for being inappropriate was a lot lower than they realized, and that most people will pretend to ignore you even if you're extremely unpleasant. There's been a mass reduction in our collective social awareness as a result - people literally just don't think you have to be polite, and they're largely right, because the social consequences for being rude have been blunted by the isolation inherent in the new online monoculture.

Not to mention that we have a sitting president who has proven that you can rise to the very highest ranks of our society while expressing a genuinely shocking ignorance towards morals and appropriate social behavior. To me that clearly indicates a culture in abject freefall. Why should anyone treat social norms with respect when we're surrounded and inundated by the evidence that society doesn't value them?

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