Darth Wiki / The Neomeniaverse

The Neomeniaverse is an Urban Fantasy setting comprised of various Visual Novels created by Lily The Litten.

It currently consists of six games.

• AMors Sub Luna: A BL-themed mystery following Arthur Allen, a wizard tasked with solving a series of murders in Chicago.
• PARAGON: A seemingly mundane story following Ceri Keskin, a college student studying AI development who gets pulled into a conspiracy surrounding the eponymous PARAGON.
• Campout: A horror story following a camping trip Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Helsing High: A paranormal romance following Robin Emerson, a teenager whose ordinary school life gives way to their classmates' supernatural secrets.
• Paper Crane: A game following Parker Blackwood, a student at Seattle University who finds themself unexpectedly drawn into the magical underworld—and a plot decades in the making that threatens everyone. (WIP title)

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Tropes associated with this work include:

The verse in general

• Contrasting Sequel Setting: In addition to genres, the games change settings a lot, from the streets of urban Chicago to the woods of Russia to a small town in America.
• Crossover Cosmology: While the first game kept it to angels and demons, the second throws Chinese Mythology, Hindu Mythology, Pacific Mythology, and Norse Mythology into the mix, with Campout adding in elements of Slavic folklore. Even In-Universe, trying to make sense of it is headache-inducing and most agree it's not worth the time.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Averted as much as possible. None of the games have a canon ending. To keep to this, none are direct sequels to each other, instead all being self-contained while still set in the same world.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Some, although Arthur notes that only angels and demons can do it with any real consistency. Supernaturals and humans are genetically compatible, but the chances of producing children are much lower than they would be if they'd done it with a member of their own species. The exceptions, as mentioned above, are angels and demons, for whom the chances are the same as they would be normally. Half-angels are called nephilim, and half-demons are cambions.
• Genre Roulette: While the Urban Fantasy is always present, the exact genre tends to vary between games; AMors Sub Luna is a Mystery with Boys' Love elements, Campout is straight-up Horror, and Helsing High is a Paranormal Romance Teen Drama. Book of Shadows and Paper Crane come closest to being "pure" urban fantasy, while PARAGON starts out almost entirely mundane and the eventual fantastical elements are more sci-fi in nature than anything.
• Our Monsters Are Different: Sometimes. Some monsters are very different from how mythology portrays them, others are basically the same.
• Urban Fantasy: The entire verse is a world where monsters and magic exist, living in secret among humanity.

AMors Sub Luna

• Ambiguously Brown: While Gabriel and Russell are explicitly Argentine and Filipino respectively, Elias's ethnicity is...less obvious, adding to his overall air of mystery.
• Love Interest: Three in total: Gabriel Quiroga, Russell Malakai Limcuando Ponferrada^note It's a Filipino name, and Elias Ark.
• Nephewism: Arthur's parents, Cyrus and Thalia Allen, passed away when he was a baby, and he was raised by Thalia's brother Elwin.
• Plot-Triggering Death: The murder of Jade Quiroga is what leads Arthur to the Quiroga household, which sets off a chain of events that leads to him deciding to pursue the murderer personally.
• Serial Killer: The main antagonist, who is murdering wizards across Chicago for a sinister ritual.
• Sobriquet Sex Switch: Arthur is transgender and his dead name is Astra.

Book of Shadows

• Character Customization: Very, very downplayed. You can pick Ray's gender, which changes their full name^note Raymond if male, Rayanne if female, but that's all.
• Five-Token Band: The love interests consist of the Chinese Tianxin, the Indian Madhava, the Polynesian Leilani, and the Norwegian Sigrun.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The love interests consist of two males and two females.
• In-Series Nickname: The protagonist's full name is Raymond (male)/Rayanne (female), but most of their friends just call them Ray.
• Love Interest: Four this time: Tianxin Long, Madhava Valkar, Leilani Mahelona, and Sigrun Astadottir.
• Shout-Out: The ukupani are taken from InCryptid, though they bear little resemblance apart from the name.

PARAGON

• Artificial Intelligence: The plot largely centers around the development of a neural network called PARAGON. While Professor Bates insists that it's merely a simulation of an AI, most people, Ceri included, call it one anyway.
• Immigrant Parents: Ceri's parents are Turkish immigrants, which is mentioned a few times throughout the game.
• Love Interest: Wouldn't be a Neomenia game without them.

Campout

• Agent Scully: Lubomir maintains that everything going on in the woods has a perfectly rational explanation. A few of the others call him out on this, claiming that the deaths and near-deaths are clearly supernatural in nature. In his worse endings, he admits that they may have had a point.
• Anyone Can Die: If you make the wrong choices, they certainly can.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Downplayed. While the other characters are in their mid-to-late twenties, Vassili is noted to have turned twenty "only about a month ago".
• Bittersweet Ending: "Salt the Earth" sees Vassili overcoming his fears and burning down the throne room, killing the leshi and ensuring he can never haunt the forests again...but the others are all dead, and Vassili is clearly psychologically scarred.
• Bloodier and Gorier: AMors Sub Luna was already pretty bloody, being a murder mystery and all, but Campout manages to ramp it up. Almost every CG depicts a character's gruesome death.
• Cool Big Sis: Yuliya acts like this to both her actual brother Vassili (who she is older than) and the rest of the group (who she isn't).
• Don't Go in the Woods: The camping trip quickly devolves into a fight for survival against...something.
• Downer Ending: All the characters dying, though that's more a Game Over. A proper downer would be "Walk With Me", which is actually one of the harder endings to get.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: "Walk With Me". First, you have to pick "He must hate people" during the campfire segment. Then, while playing any character, you have to pick up the Ancient Leaf. Then, you have to get everyone except Vassili killed. Then, you have to, against all logic, return to the pit of bones, which under normal circumstances would be a Game Over. And then, for the very last choice of the ending, you have to pick "Don't resist". What do you get out of all this? The most nightmarish ending in the whole game.
• Final Girl: Can be played straight, subverted, or averted. It's entirely possible that, depending on your choices, everyone survives, no one does, or everyone except the obvious final girl survives. All three girls have some final girl traits, but the closest who comes to this archetype is the male Vassili.
• Gaia's Vengeance: Selinka offers this as a possibility for all the horrifying events. Vitomir, however, shoots it down, pointing out that they haven't done anything to deserve nature's wrath.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Three males, three females.
• Golden Ending: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ending where everyone escapes the forest alive. Funnily enough, this isn't the ending that reveals the most about what's going on, nor is it the ending where the villain can be properly stopped; those honors belong to Vassili's bad and good endings respectively.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: If Selinka is the last one alive, she lampshades this, fearing that the forest's attacks along with the loneliness will drive her insane. This, incidentally, was the fate that befell Svetoslav.
• Justified Extra Lives: There are seven friends on the camping trip, and you start off playing Gaspar. If he dies, control switches to the next character still alive.^note In order: Selinka, Lubomir, Stella, Vitomir, Yuliya, and Vassili.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's clear that something lurks in the forest, but what that something is is unclear. The obvious culprit is the demon in the campfire story Vitomir tells, but there's also the Tolbanov killers, a trio of serial killers who fled into the woods a year ago to avoid reprisal; in Lubomir's endings, he theorizes that it was a combination of being targeted by them and simple bad luck, and curses himself for not heeding the townspeople's warnings and cancelling the trip. Vassili's endings, however, reveal that it is very much magic, the "demon" being a leshi who went somewhat crazy from being alone for so long and became obsessed with the preservation of "his" forest. To the point of murder.
• Multiple Endings: There are several endings depending on how many people make it out of the forest.
• No Name Given: The leshi who lives in the woods is never named in most endings. Subverted in "Walk With Me", which gives him the name Svetoslav.
• Oddball in the Series:
  • Where the others are all in the modern day, Campout takes place in the 90s. It's also the only game so far to not be set in America, being set in Russia instead.
  • It's also the only game where you can control multiple protagonists.
  • It's also the only game with no explicitly LGBT characters, which can be justified by the aforementioned setting.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: It's a horror game set in Russia where all the characters are Russian. Speaks for itself, really.
• Sole Survivor: Make the wrong choices and the Player Character can become this.

Helsing High

• Absurdly Divided School: Gameplay-wise, there are six cliques with ten students each, and no overlap between them. This only really serves as a way to sort the non-romanceable students, though, and doesn't have much of an impact on the story.
• Alpha Bitch: Reyes Perez is a Rare Male Example—popular, catty, manipulative, and comes with a Girl Posse.
• Cast Herd: The main purpose of the clique system. The main characters are the primary group, and then you have the Populars, the Jocks, the Nerds, the Artsies, the Troublemakers, and the Others.
• Dating Sim: Nine possible love interests, several activities with those love interests, and many ways for things to go horribly wrong. Worth noting that the "dating" aspect is purely optional, and everyone has a platonic route to facilitate that. For Merrill in particular, the platonic route is the only route.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: It's difficult, but possible to get your classmates killed. Just one death casts a pall over graduation and makes the ending incredibly bittersweet even if you did everything else right. The worst ending sees all love interests dying, which requires a lot of hoop-jumping and deliberate decision-making.
• Everyone Has Standards: Your various Love Interests aren't exactly role models, but none of them can stand cheating. If you get together with one, then start something with another, better hope you don't get caught.
• Everyone Is Bi: Robin can be male, female, or non-binary, and all love interests can be wooed regardless. Averted with Merrill, who is gay, though a male Robin can't romance him regardless.
• Everytown, America: Ringbrook, a forested town that's not far from the beach.
• Expy: Helsing High takes heavy inspiration from Monsterhearts, and it shows in the characters, all of whom are based on the various Skins.
  • In order: Robin is the Mortal, Alastor is the Ghost, Aurora is the Fae, Damien is the Infernal, Yijun is the Vampire, Luna is the Werewolf, Mara is the Ghoul, Merrill is the Witch, Reyes is the Queen, and Summer is the Hollow.
• Featureless Protagonist: Robin only appears in silhouette form when selecting what gender you want to play. Aside from that, we never see what they look like.
• Five-Token Band: The class is surprisingly diverse for a small town high school. In addition to all the love interests being bisexual, there's also quite a bit of ethnic diversity: four white characters^note two of whom are Irish and British, an African-American girl, an Asian boy and a South Asian girl, a Hispanic boy, and a mixed-race white/Japanese boy.
• Fur Against Fang: Inverted. Luna (a werewolf) and Yijun (a vampire) are actually friends, and one of three platonic pairings among the romance options.
• Girl Posse: Reyes, of course, has one, comprised of Cordelia Turner, Jacqueline Rose, and Kimball Glynn. It's worth noting that the "girl posse" in this case is comprised of two girls and a non-binary person.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The protagonist's name can be changed, the default being "Robin Emerson".
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Damien has these, reflecting his being an asocial loner. It also serves to cover his red eye.
• Internal Reveal: It's pretty clear to the player what their classmates are, but Robin themself doesn't learn until a month into the school year.
• Invisible Parents: Robin's parents are never shown in person, despite being acknowledged to exist. Averted for everyone else, though.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • While he's catty and rather demanding of them, Reyes does genuinely appreciate his Girl Posse, and is the first to jump to Jacqueline's defense when Merrill makes a snarky comment about her.
  • Yijun comes off as cold, but he's got a softer side and treasures his relationships dearly.
• Love Interest: Nine in total: Aurora O'Connor, Alastor McMillian, Damien Gowen, Jong Yijun, Luna Lawson, Mara Burns, Merrill Palmer, Reyes Perez, and Summer Kaur.
• Mistaken for Junkie: Damien is believed to be a drug addict by much of the school, which is why he's shunned at best and viciously bullied at worst. The truth is much stranger.
• Mr. Exposition: Nathan Murphy gives Robin exposition on the Love Interests.
• Muggle Love Interest: Robin, of course. Reyes also counts, being the sole romance option that's fully human.
• Nonstandard Game Over: Downplayed. Upset someone enough and they'll cut contact with you, their profile in the contacts menu graying out and becoming unavailable for interactions. This isn't a game over per se, but if it's a romance option that's cut contact, you'll be unable to continue their route and thus be locked out of the best ending.
• Oireland: Averted with the Irish-American Aurora O'Connor. She lacks anything in the way of a temper, is about as violent as a bunny, and isn't even a redhead, her hair being platinum blonde instead. The most Oirish thing about her is her surname.
• Parental Abandonment: Aurora and Damien both lack fathers, Aurora's having disappeared before she was born and Damien's having died when he was young. Reyes lives with his father and it's unclear what happened to his mother, and Alastor and Summer don't have parents at all.
• Red Herring: One related to the romance options. Robin's phone has bars under certain characters in the contacts menu, and the game tells you that anyone with a Romance bar can be romanced. The game is lying to you. Merrill, despite having a Romance bar, has no romantic route, and can never fall for the player under any circumstances due to crushing on someone else.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Hot-Blooded, hot-tempered Luna Lawson is the Red to cold-bordering-on-cruel Jong Yijun's Blue. Similarly, reckless Thrill Seeker Mara is the Red while the more cautious and deadpan Alastor is the Blue.
• Relationship Values: There are sixty-nine characters with a Friendship bar, and nine with a Romance bar. Raising these values lets you see more events, reveals more about the characters in question, and in some cases, is required to progress a character's route.
• Relationship Upgrade: In your junior year, you can have one with your chosen guy/girl if the Romance bar is high enough.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Merrill figured out that everyone sans Reyes was some sort of supernatural creature a while ago, but hasn't told anyone. After Robin catches him hexing Reyes during gym, he lets them in on the secret.
• Slice of Life: It's possible to play the game this way by avoiding all the Dramatic Events. There's even a unique ending for it.
• Those Two Guys: Six of the nine romance options are paired as close friends, and any scene with one has a high chance of involving the other (romance scenes excluded). The pairings are Aurora and Summer, Alastor and Mara, and Luna and Yijun, with Damien, Merrill, and Reyes as the outliers.
• Time Management Game: Has elements of this. A major chunk of gameplay involves the calendar and limited time, especially on weekends, which give you a variety of things to do but only two days to do them. Of particular note is that getting the Golden Ending requires you to complete all nine routes over the three years available, which requires a lot of advance planning.
• Token Rich Student: It's repeatedly mentioned that Reyes's dad is loaded, which is evident in their very large house and the way Reyes casually spends large amounts of money. Quite a few people wonder why he's going to public school if he's so rich (or, for that matter, where Mr. Perez's money comes from).
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Go ahead, strike up a romance with two people at once. See how that ends for you.
• Wacky Homeroom: Robin's homeroom consists of themself, eight supernatural beings, the most popular boy in school, and a smattering of side characters.
• We Used to Be Friends: Merrill was formerly friends with Jesse. Very close friends. So close, in fact, that the two were subjected to rumors in freshman year about their sexuality, and the resulting bullying led Jesse to break off their friendship.
• Wham Episode: The "Dramatic Event" that kicks off every character's route. The game tells you when it's happening and you don't have to be part of it, but you miss out on the route if you decline (the character remains available, but their story can't be pursued).

Paper Crane

• Character Customization: At the beginning of the game, you choose Parker's name, pronouns, and appearance.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Parker's father vanished when they were very young, and Parker can't even remember his face.
  • Jeremiah's dad died of lung cancer when he was eleven.
• Expy: Much like how Helsing High was inspired by Monsterhearts, Paper Crane is inspired by Urban Shadows. Four of the five main characters are all versions of the archetypes found in that game: Rashid is the Aware, Tori is the Wolf, Maria is the Oracle, and Jeremiah is the Tainted. Unlike Robin, though, Parker takes after no archetype in particular.
• Five-Token Band: In this case, there actually are five people: Parker is mixed-race and can be non-binary, Jeremiah Sheahan is white (specifically Irish), Rashid al-Madani is Middle Eastern (specifically Iraqi), Maria Alvarado is Hispanic (specifically Mexican) and Tori Nakamura is Asian (specifically Japanese).
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Like Robin Emerson, the protagonist can be named, with the default being Parker Blackwood.
• Sixth Ranger: By the time Parker learns about the supernatural underworld, Jeremiah, Rashid, Maria, and Tori have been working together for three weeks.
• Starter Villain: Zavier Carthel, a werewolf trying to claim the entirety of the university as his territory. Arlenez wants him gone before his recklessness draws the attention of more powerful creatures, and given that he's an arrogant Jerkass whose pack has already tried to kill someone, the protagonists are happy to oblige.
• Token Non-Human: Tori is the sole non-human among the main protagonists^note Jeremiah and Maria both have powers, but still count as human.