Nightmare Fuel / Arcane Odyssey

• Akursius Keep is undoubtedly a very creepy place. The ambience track is unsettling, the sky becomes black with red light shining down when you step foot there, and there are red ghosts scattered around the place. On top of this, even being on the island inflicts you with tier 1 Insanity^note You can also get tier 2 or tier 3 Insanity if you eat something made with Cursed Mushrooms while on Akursius Keep, which causes various hallucinations. If you're unlucky, you might find the island's secret: a pit full of black skeletons with glowing cyan eyes, which inflicts you with tier 5 Insanity as soon as you fall into it, which is guaranteed to kill you if you can't get out fast enough.
  • The lore behind Akursius Keep doesn't help. Gallio Bronze, a fellow prisoner you speak to during the The Eternal Mines questline, reveals the island used to be Winterveil, and Rackham's Journal goes further into its past while reiterating some of what Gallio tells you, explaining that after Winterveil's destruction and the slaughter of its denizens by Nero Caesar, it was turned into a Ravenna fortress. The journal continues on to say that soon, a crazed man washed up on the island, warning the guards of imminent disaster. The guards sent him off to Ravenna on a ship that needed repairs, and after that, things went downhill significantly. The people at the fortress started going insane, and eventually, the island was left in ruins by a flash of teal light, which was said to be divine retribution cast by the gods out of anger for what Ravenna had done to Winterveil and its denizens. Ever since this, legend has had it that anyone who steps foot on the island is doomed to wander there forever.
• Since it's already been mentioned, let's just say that Insanity is pretty freaky too. And it keeps getting worse the higher the tier is. You start hearing and seeing things, which get more intense the worse the Insanity is. Tier 4 and 5 Insanity is where the hallucinations pretty much stop mattering, as they start dealing a certain percentage of your HP^note 10% for Tier 4 and 33% for Tier 5, though Tier 4 Insanity can be mitigated by Warding, which reduces the amount of damage it deals by 20% for every tier of Warding, and cancelled out as a whole if you have at least Tier 5 Warding in damage every 2 seconds, making both potentially quick killers if you don't get away from the sources of them in time.
  • The quotes that appear in Tier 2-4 Insanity are horrid. Some of them are descriptions of your character's condition, while others are things your character is either thinking or saying to themselves. Some examples are as follows:
    "Dead~... dead~... they're all dead~..."
    "A sharp pain bursts inside your head, followed by an image of eyes... who is it?"
    "You feel yourself being pushed out of your mind..."
    "I must kill..."
• Sea Monsters. Imagine that you are sailing in your ship normally, when all of a sudden, your quartermasters warn about something lurking under your ship. Then, a massive red shark with white eyes begins attacking your ship, tearing off huge chunks of it's durability with every bite...
  • Or imagine you've gone underwater to explore a diving point, and suddenly you see a strange glowing blue orb, followed by a behemoth of an anglerfish appearing...
• The Dark Sea is terrifying from the moment you enter it. The first range is hostile enough, but starting from the second range onwards, you get inflicted with progressively worsening Insanity. On top of that, in every range, you're forced to face dangerous enemies that will relentlessly chase and attack you, as well as environmental hazards like the thick, dark fog that obscures your surroundings and magic weather that'll be liable to do heavy damage to your ship and kill you if you aren't prepared, which only gets worse the further out you go. Your only goal is to survive, and managing to do so means you'll hopefully be coming out with some unique treasures and loot.
  • Even the few friendly NPCs you can find in the Dark Sea bring some amount of nightmare fuel to the table. You can interact with ghosts, who might reveal some of the horrors they've encountered to you, and your crew will start saying things that, at worst, indicate fear, doubt, desperation, or despair.
  • Also, let's take a moment to consider the reality of what one class of enemies in the Dark Sea, the Atlanteans, are. They used to be human sailors, but became hostile monstrosities that are incapable of reasoning and feed off of humans and weaker Atlanteans due to the Dark Sea's magic-polluted rain. It’s a surprise that some of them can still command ships and that their crews can still take any semblance of orders.