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"I can't remember the last time I saw a wizard casting magic with a fucking smile on his face. It's always a grim, half-hooded scowl of disgust, like he's shaking off some stubborn ear-wax rather than the manifested power of the Fire Spirits. 'Ooh, I had to fight in a big war because I've got mastery of time and space; meh meh meh'. Why don't you magic yourself cheerful, you gloomy spod?"
Dark Fantasy is, generally speaking, a Darker and Edgier subgenre of fantasy. These kind of stories can be pretty much described as Standard Fantasy Setting meets Crapsack World, as opposed to the usually-lighthearted regular fantasy setting. Oftentimes common fantasy elements are deconstructed or played in the darkest way possible, and the best you can hope for is Gray and Gray Morality. Wikipedia goes a step farther, saying it's Horror meets Fantasy. It may have been originally, but now, with some linguistic drift, any remarkably dark fantasy story (it's sometimes enough if it's set in a Crapsack World) is often listed as a Dark Fantasy. While it's often a matter of marketing or abuse of terms, this entry assumes the latter, currently more common, definition.
Darker and Edgier Science Fiction isn't recognised as a subgenre as Dark Fantasy is; however, dystopic fiction often has markings of SF and thus gets an honourable mention here.
Also, if you want to write your own, check this out.
Magic
Politics and society
- There is a high chance that there is an evil, expansive and genocidal empire, which nonetheless is a seemingly better alternative to the rest of the lot, if only for the fact that everyone is too afraid of The Emperor to try anything funny. Which means that if the emperor is weak or ill, then all bets are off. When democracies and republics exist, they are corrupt and profit driven. Kingdoms and theocracies don't even need a description, and The Magocracy uses magic to Mind Rape the people into obedience.
- Wretched Hives of cities and The Dung Ages in the countryside is what you should expect of society. The lower classes are Medieval Morons, while the upper prove that Aristocrats Are Evil. The slave trade is the main source of income, both in terms of taxes and population. Expect the cute, fuzzy, Weak Willed ones to be targeted, such as Petting Zoo People or Hobbits. Conscription into the army may be present, overlapping with an Army of Thieves and Whores. Often, Hobbes Was Right.
- The Horde (often hailing from the eastern edge of the map) vastly outnumbers civilization. The Fantasy Axis of Evil is there, and is either even worse than you'd expect, or the "good" guys aren't really better than them. Expect a lot of Rape, Pillage, and Burn when they go raiding. Good chance someone (on either side) will say "The Women Are Safe with Us."
- Of the Five Races, the elves are all stuffed-up jerks who have either sneaked off, devolved into fancy-eared humans or gotten enslaved (the only kind who may thrive are the Dark Elves), the hobbits were the first to be subjugated or are just plain evil in the first place, the dwarves don't care about anyone else and thus shamelessly nickel-and-dime the other guys, and Humans Are The Real Monsters and actively persecute the rest. Abusive Precursors, if any.
- If Fractured Fairy Tale is being used, the darkest Alternative Character Interpretation possible will be used. Forget three little pigs building houses out of questionable materials because mum kicked them out, it'll be a horde of Orcs trying out new fortress designs so they have somewhere to store pillage from the village vs. a werewolf knight, or perhaps Puss in Boots is a shameless Con Artist Femme Fatale Humanoid puma or cat-demon, or Little Red Riding Hood and the Woodsman are a serial killer husband and wife team.
- In terms of politics, often there's an endless conflict between the civilizations. Wars of extinction are not uncommon and entire Worlds*
world, in this context, means both planets and planes of the multiverse are often put to the sword to ensure victory. Otherwise it is a fight to be the new figurehead of the old empire that had fallen eons ago.
Religions and deities
- The gods are all assholes who pass the time eating prayer chips and drinking soul-booze while placing bets and trolling the helpless morals, and The Legions Of Eldritch Abominations are mere days away from infesting into the Mortal Realm, or are there already. A God of Evil is probably the only active one, unless the point of the story is that he doesn't need to, because people will jump at any opportunity to do harm anyway. Demonic Possession is quite common. May even have Devil but No God, or an outright evil omnipotent running the show. If there are no "gods" per se, the Celestial Bureaucracy/Council of Angels have more red tape than a ribbon factory. Alternatively, the eldritch abominations might be destroying both sides.
- Any organized religion which is not a Corrupt Church or Religion of Evil is a Path of Inspiration. Expect Spanish Inquisition ripoffs run by Knights Templar, complete with a grimdark gothic Catholic theme, but turned up to eleven as a full-blown totalitarian State Sec. What else there is tend to be cults (often of Eldritch Abominations), paganic Scary Amoral Religions, or even more radical offshoots of the big ones. Often led by a Sinister Minister.
- The dead find staying buried a little boring, and resist any and all attempts to keep them buried, short of cremation or dismemberment. There might even be a region so full of undead nothing in its right mind goes there.
Heroes
Sibling trope to Dungeon Punk, which can be just as grim and gritty, but Dungeon Punk has Magitek. May be the result of a disruption in, or Evil's turn, on the Balance Of Good And Evil.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- Tales of the Dragon Guard. Dragons naturally radiate The Corruption, which only virgin women are immune to. Entire villages are mutated into slavering, insane monsters, and if the dragon knights fail, a Fantastic Nuke is detonated, which turns the countryside into a wasteland. Some peasants are convinced that nailing a virgin vaccinates them against the corruption, so you can guess what happens. The dragon knights are followed closely by prospectors looking for dragon gastroliths and scales, who often won't wait for the dragon to be killed before prospecting.
- Black Moon Chronicles, a French series of comic books is essentially this as the tale is set in the war-torn quasi-medieval world where corrupted priests, misguided paladins, demons and indifferent mercenaries vying for power while an impeding doom looms on (or rather above) the horizon.
- Some albums from Thorgal series are set in definitely bleak and corrupted fantasy settings (especially Three Ancients of the Realm of Aran/Bottomless Lake).
- Requiem Vampire Knight is this in spades, and the world of Resurrection is as crapsack as they come.
Film
Forum-based Roleplay
Literature
- The Cthulhu Mythos along with the Cosmic Horror Story genre in general have evil cultists galore, and a whole plethora of incomprehensible Evil Gods. Magic or any reality-warping abilities are generally not used, as one wrong word results in Insanity or Mind Rape by an Eldritch Abomination. Success will usually either drive you insane(r) or get you eaten by an Eldritch Abomination. That said, if a wizard is mentioned, you can bet your ass he's a villain or will meet a tragic end. The only notable exception is a guy who reads a spell book For Lulz, and accidentally teleports himself to an Eldritch Location.
- The Witcher cycle, particularly in the later books of the Saga, when it began accumulating grimdark. The game and earlier stories are quite gritty, but lighter than late Saga.
- A Song of Ice and Fire.
- The Black Company cycle. The military kind of dark.
- All novels written by Feliks W. Kres, especially the Szerer cycle.
- Michael Moorcock's Elric saga, focusing on a doomed albino emperor with the mother of all Evil Weapons.
- Phenomena starts of as a fantasy and starts showing hints of becoming a Dark Fantasy in the 2nd book, by the 7th and the spin-offs is it really a dark fantasy with Body Horror, terror, Slasher Smiles and more.
- The Eye Of Argon, and not just because of the shoddy writing.
- The First Law series and really anything by Joe Abercrombie
- The Gentleman Bastard series is this applied to Heroic Fantasy thief protagonists.
- The Children Of Hurin could be one of the earliest examples, if only Professor J. R. R. Tolkien had't held it in Development Hell until his death.
- Miserere: An Autumn Tale: the purpose of the World is to hold off Hell
- In The Acts Of Caine it's one half of the setting. The other half is classical Dystopia.
- The Second Apocalypse series begins with about half the known world being destroyed by the No-God, and things continue in the same general tone from there.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer. Its more popular spinoff Warhammer 40000 can be summed up as Dark Fantasy turned up to eleven billion and In Space.
- As of 8th edition, the only thing on the list Warhammer lacks is organized religion comprised entirely of evil cults. Sigmar and Ulric have reasonable priesthoods.
- Unless you count the Cult of Khaine, the state religion of the Dark Elves, which for example has a murder holiday when its attendants go out and kill or kidnap victims to very painfully sacrifice. Then there are the Chaos gods that treat even their own followers like a psychopathic sadist child treats animals and those younger than him when he knows he can get away with it; what makes it so horrible is that the gods really don't care. Gork and Mork's shamans teach or more accurately encourage the Orcs & Goblins to destroy, kill and pillage anything they can all the time - the only bad fate you can suffer in that religion is to not get to do so. Then there is the Great Maw of the Ogres that drives their naturally savage, brutal natures to kill and eat everything. Want a break from the evil religions? how about the Skaven, whos Great Horned Rat devoured countless scores of its own followers when it was summoned and only then begun speaking - its way of choosing leaders for its people was to leave an obelisk and those who think they are marked by the Horned Rat touch it; the vast majority are reduced to cinders, the remaining ones killed by the ones who are already marked rulers, and that's what the god does to its own people - it made the unending civil wars of the Skaven that amused him stop only because it impedes its much worse plans for everything else. So yeah, about that no evil organised religions thing...
- I am fairly sure the first troper meant that not all organized religion is evil in Warhammer...
- Some Dungeons & Dragons settings (Ravenloft and Heroes of Horror spring to mind), and it really depends on the player's Character Alignment and the DM's mood when he cooked up the campaign whether it stays Heroic Fantasy too.
- The overall theme in Planescape is its moral ambiguity, and the bizarre settings only increase grim mood.
- The Midnight setting takes place in a rather generic fantasy world where the Forces of Evil won the final war and the protagonists are guerillas or simple folk trying to delay the inevitable. Imagine Lord of the Rings if Sauron had won.
- The Dark Sun setting takes place in a desert fantasy world where the Forces of Primordial (or whatever bad, bad guys the writers feel like throwing in an edition) won the war and the heroes (if you can call them that) fight out of necessity, not idealism.
- Gemini is set in dying world that succumbed to eternal twilight and the people are harassed by the demonic forces looking for hiding Prophet believed to be a Saviour of Man.
- Don't Rest Your Head: A group of insomniacs are slowly losing their minds, and gain access to a city built out of insanity, and populated by corporeal nightmares, which they fight off with Power Born of Madness. And, as the title suggests, if they do ever get to sleep, they are in deep shit (If they live long enough to wake up again, they lose their superpowers untill sleep deprivation drives them crazy enough to use them again).
- Kult: Humanity used to be immortal super-entities, but a jealous deity known as the Deiurge took away our powers and sealed them off, and imposed "mundane reality" on us. People who we think to be crazy are actually seeing through this veil.
- The World Of Darkness games are practically the trope codifiers for urban, Dark Fantasy.
- Atmosfear (AKA Nightmare), which has the players at the mercy of an angry, petty demon-god called the Gatekeeper. The players rp his minions, either his Herald, a monster beholden to him, or a "soul ranger" attempting to steal a key from a herald.
- Palladium Game's Nightbane, where you must save a modern-day Earth that has *already* been taken over secretly by monstrous shapeshifters- often by being one of them.
- Although the game itself has very little in terms of setting, the rules and artwork in the Lamentations Of The Flame Princess core books present a world filled with sex, black magic and the most gruesome violence imaginable.
- Exalted: Creation has pretty much been on a declining spiral since it was created, with one or two temporary exceptions. The Gods are corrupt, lazy, and/or addicted to games which are worse than crack, heroin, nicotine, and bacon combined. The world is threatened by no less than three sets of Eldritch Abominations, any of which would be happy to corrupt, unravel, or utterly destroy existence. The greatest weapons with the capability to fend off these enemies are humans stuffed with way more power than humanity was built to handle, suffering from a curse that causes them periodic psychotic breaks. The average mortal can expect either a long life of drudgery and toil or a short life of terror and pain. Oh, and those weapons? Two of the three sets of Abominations have their own versions working for them. Pretty much the only thing keeping the setting from being a Cosmic Horror Story is that the PC Exalted are fully able, if they act with wisdom, to actually confront and, potentially, solve the problems that face Creation.
Video Games
- Dragon Age: Origins: Kinda like Claymore, but one can play as a guy. The Grey Wardens are all Death Seekers, because they drink Darkspawn blood and risk becoming one themselves. Magicians constantly fight against the whispers of demons from the Fade trying to take them over (little wonder many of them choose to be lobotomized), and every so often, one succumbs and becomes a Humanoid Abomination, or makes a deal in order to learn Blood Magic. Elves are a Slave Race distinguished from humanity only by their long ears and the fact that they produce magicians slightly more. The Dwarves cower in their two fortress-cities. The local flavour of Orcs -which resemble muscular, horned Drow- called Qunari, are gearing up for an invasion. The Evil Empire is invading. And they're all under attack by Darkspawn, which God cooked up as divine retribution because Humanity tried to invade heaven. (according to the intro cutscene, anyways) Hauntings and undead are common.
- Diablo has elements of it. Moreso in Diablo II, where The Legions of Hell have The Horde of Undead, mutant wildlife, lesser demons, and Deal with the Devil types Vs. a morally dubious Necromancer, a Vain Sorceress, or a Paladin who belongs to a Corrupt Church. And it's all up to that one person, plus any minions s/he may hire/summon. Heaven won't help out because of a strict non-interference policy, except for one Angel who sells goodies and resurrects dead party members to pay rent — and who, in the third game, finally gets fed up and decides to become a mortal in order to help humanity directly.
- The Dept Heaven series in general. As if the mortals weren't bad enough by themselves, all mortals are by design stuck in the middle of the war between gods and demons, both sides of which will actively screw you over in the name of their own victory. Defectors from either side generally don't get very happy endings either.
- Drakengard, which later jumps feet-first into a Cosmic Horror Story.
- Overlord series are both a pastiche and a parody of this genre.
- Brütal Legend has elements of it (Humans opressed by demon overlords and both sides under attack from The Undead), but it's mostly masked by the sheer awesome.
- Amea features a world overrun by zombies, yetis, and darkness. And by the end of the game, Amea, Inglor, and Garrik are shown to be the only good guys, and Garrik gets killed fairly early.
- Valkyrie Profile is an example of one. Slavery, war, and general atrocities is the order of the day. More often than not, humans succumb to the worst part of themselves. Not to say that the gods are any better. Ragnarok is just around the corner, and things are falling apart. Your job is to recruit the soul of worthy mortals to fight in that final battle, and there is no shortage of death and despair to make it very easy and guilt-free for you.
- The game seems to borrow a lot from Berserk. Amongst your first recruits is a blatant expy of Guts.
- Castle Vania. Gothic horror-inspired enemies (zombies, skeletons, vampires, demons, Frankensteins Monsters, etc.), and some installments have a magic system. The Chronicles Of Sorrow and Lords of Shadow games have the protagonists eating their enemies souls to gain their abilities.
- Demon's Souls takes place in a kingdom completely overrun with demons, and it's up to you to feebly try to destroy them.
- Meanwhile in Dark Souls, the Fire that lights the word is dying, and it's up to you, cursed to never fully die and to slowly lose your humanity every time you fall, to travel through the undead and demon filled ruins of Lordran to do something about it.
- Avadon totters on the edge of the trope without quite falling off, allowing for both humor and heroism in a totalitarian, ends-justify-the-means society that's one broken treaty away from bloody ruin.
- Dwarf Fortress moved from Low Fantasy into this genre in its 2010 edition. Staying outside at night is tantamount to suicide by hordes of bogeymen, other evil creatures casually kidnap and murder people, and Hidden Fun Stuff occasionally breaks free to take over religions and civilisations. The 2012 edition, with its necromancers, divine curses such as vampires and werebeasts, and evil Death Worlds nastier than ever, cements its status as Dark Fantasy.
- Heretic
- Most of the games of Yasumi Matsuno (Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, Crimson Shroud) fall under this category. War-torn lands, oppressive governments, Corrupt Churches, and vengeful gods abound.
- The Under the Burning Suns expansion for Battle for Wesnoth.
- The Deception series tends to be set in a world that invokes this feel. Though as the main character is usually limited to a small area, it's mostly shown in outside cutscenes and enemy descriptions.
- Warcraft3, the undead scourge have overrun the region and it is seemingly hopeless for anyone to stop the Scourge and Frostmourne.
- Heroes of Newerth. Maliken's betrayal has caused many Legion strongholds to fall to the mercy of the Hellbourne forces who plans on destroying it so they can bring forth their Sacrificial Pit.
Web Comics
- Drowtales. Murder and Demonic Possession are very common. One character whose life is in danger comments that she doesn't want to end up Undead (and another has her zombified little sister as a bodyguard). Cannibalism is completely legal due to a resource shortage, as is rape, incest, paedophilia, and Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique. Schools don't mind the students killing each other, as long as they do so quietly and dispose of the bodies themselves. And those are the "good" guys. On the surface world, nobles bathe in elven blood because they think it'll make them immortal. Magic is fairly neutral though, but some are allergic to Blood Magic.
- Ark The Improbable. The main characters are an Elf and a Frankenstein's Monster belonging to a Bounty Hunters guild, fight hideously mutated creatures, developed from The Virus working it's disgusting magic on mundane animals, plants, humans, and fantastic creatures, including Werewolves and Zombies.
- Parts three and four (and possibly part 5, we're not sure since it hasn't been posted yet) of A Modest Destiny, although they manage to inject some humor. It also seems to be getting better (due to one character, a frost-elf Vampire/ Necromancer, being stuck in the Heel Face Revolving Door.)
- Draconia Chronicles, although it's more of the "Society is in the toilet, none of the races can get along or see their so-called "allies" are about to stab them in the back, and there's constant, unceasing warfare, atrocity, and bloodshed" sort of dark.
Web Original
- Demons Due: An illustration based web series where an evil sorceress unleashes all kinds of evils upon a local lordship. Magic is fairly neutral here, too, but dang is it can't be misused for all kinds of horrors in this one.
- Above Ground
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