§ 01
Ten Measures
Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Perception, Charisma, Patience, Will, Knowledge, Psyche, and Destiny define the hero. Extreme scores awaken traits: a 5 grants a gift, while a 1 gives the dungeon a weakness to press.
Turn-Based · Roguelike · Card-Crawler · RPG · Survival
A living dungeon of a dying Old World.
“The dungeon is not your enemy. It is your mirror. You will find your limits there.”
— High Healer Avra Somphe
I.The Descent
Turn a card. Live with it.
Ethernalis is a turn-based roguelike card-crawler set in the Old World on a verge of destruction. Rooms, monsters, relics, even the merchants - everything in Ethernalis is a card. At any moment you stand at the center of a five-card cross, reading the chamber you occupy and the four uncertain directions around it.
The game draws from classic roguelikes, MUD-era event prose, tabletop character sheets, and survival simulation. Dungeons are generated at runtime, then filled with authored threats, materials, locks, flooded rooms, roaming enemies, and quest events. What waits ahead is procedural. What happens to you sticks.
Hunger, thirst, the weight on your back, the dirt on your boots - the dungeon notices all of it.
9
Races
10
Measures
III.The Laws Beneath
Ten Measures, and Their Costs
Ethernalis treats survival, personality, gear, and motion as one connected problem. Strength helps. So does a dry pair of boots, and a companion who has not run out of bread.
§ 02
Action Points
Movement, attacks, crafting, interaction, and inventory actions spend AP. Your cap comes from Dexterity, Perception, and Psyche; overburdened characters begin the turn with only one point to spend.
§ 03
Distance Combat
Enemies track range by card slot. A melee attack from distance closes the gap before it wounds. Ranged weapons need space, ammunition, and discipline; close enemies can make a bow feel like a bad idea.
§ 04
Runes and Sockets
Rooms and non-consumable gear can become socketed. A rune in a weapon changes violence; a rune in a chamber changes the place itself, heating, chilling, blessing, darkening, or warping what happens there.
§ 05
Materials and Quality
Quality scales power from Dismal to Masterful. Materials shape description, small equipment bonuses, durability decay, crafting inheritance, and vulnerability checks against creatures marked by old fears.
§ 06
Comfort and Need
Hunger, thirst, cold, dirt and gear-fit all push your stats around. You can lose a fight in the dungeon before you ever enter a room.
IV.The Old World
Empires, Halls, Forests, Wastes, and the Dark Below
The Old World is old enough to remember every people who believed they would be the last. The human Empire of Laungenburgh is younger than it pretends. Older powers - the elven Ethos, the dwarven cliff-halls of Rotha, the abyssal Drow of Oxhe - were here long before its first stone was laid.
V.Those Who Wander
NPCs Don't Wait for You
NPCs carry gear, eat, sleep, and remember whether you have cheated them. They move through rooms, trip traps, attack doors, offer work, trade, and react to the conduct you bring into their world.
§
Companions
Cards That Follow
Recruited NPCs become companion cards. You can send them to explore, ask them to stay, exchange equipment, request healing, and rely on them in combat if they have the strength to stand.
†
Merchants
Trade Has a Memory
Merchants carry their own coin, judge the scene through personality traits, and become harder traders the longer you deal with them. Buy, sell, or steal; each method has a consequence.
*
Timelines
Delayed Events
Events know how to wait. A quest can hang in the air until you have killed the right thing, entered the right room, or crafted the right blade - and only then announce itself.
VI.From the Current Build
Screens from the Descent
The interface is built as a dark play table: character state, card field, chronicle, inventory, crafting shelves, and region-scale choices all stay close to the act of play.
The Chronicle
Every Action Leaves a Line
leaving towards north
You have reached the Underground Swamp.
A hidden trap reveals itself before your foot finds it.
The merchant catches your hand. The deal is over.
Dancing flames whisper of safety.
You feel safe here for now...
Alpha Access
Closed Alpha
The alpha is rough. The dungeon kills you in ways we have not finished documenting yet. If that sounds like a feature, send a raven.