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"Can you hear the whispers, Jeremiah? Even another continent isn't far enough. Remember, I tried to go as well. I still heard them, even in Asian dens and German gutters. I figured it out, it's inside ... It won't be long until you cross the threshold, brother"
Aaron Covenant.

Clive Barker's Undying was a PC game released in 2001. Set in the 1920s, Patrick Galloway is a paranormal investigator who has been exiled from his native Ireland for unknown reasons. He receives a letter from an old war buddy, Jeremiah Covenant, who saved his life during the First World War. The Covenant estate has been terrorized by frightening and deadly paranormal events, caused by a family curse that claimed the rest of his siblings, and Jeremiah's ailing health makes him helpless to stop it. Owing a life debt to his old friend, Patrick breaks his exile and returns to Ireland.

Except ... the Covenant siblings aren't quite dead, and they're not happy about Patrick sticking his nose into "family affairs". The Covenant siblings were cursed many years ago when they childishly performed an ancient occult ritual at the nearby Standing Stones, dooming them to madness and death only to be resurrected as nightmarish abominations. Now they seek to awaken the evil being known as the Undying King so he can reclaim his dominion over the earth.

But the awakening of such occult forces has also drawn Patrick's nemesis, Otto Keisinger, who wants to use the Covenant estate for his own ends. Before Patrick can end the terrors of the Undying curse, he's going to have to square off with Keisinger once and for all.


This game contains examples of the following:

  • Alien Geometries: Mostly happens in Oneiros, but some parts of the manor also feature this. For example, when exploring the Widow's Watch (located in the east side of the manor), you end up on the great hall (placed in the west side). This was intentional, according to Word of God.
  • All There in the Manual:
    • The game comes with Jeremiah's journal, where he explains how the Covenants were cursed and how they all met their untimely end. Also, you can find a transcript of some chat with one of the game developers here.
    • A lot of plot details were cut from the game because of time constraints near the end. This is why the ending is rather confusing and incomplete. The basic mechanics behind the curse are as follows - The Undying King is basically an Eldritch Abomination (whose name derives from the fact that Standing Stones island looks like a crown when seen from a side profile) and the Celtic human sacrifice was essentially a seal to keep said Undying King locked away. When Jeremiah took his siblings to the Standing Stones Island and read from the book, he undid that old seal and recreated it in a specific way... the siblings became a living seal, both corrupted and rendered effectively immortal by the power of the Undying King.
    • According to Word of God, the brotherhood of monks was supposed to guard the different nexi across the world (mentioned by Patrick at the end of the game, when he says there are more gates). They also continue their watch after their death (that's why they haunt the catacombs).
  • Always Chaotic Evil: The Trsanti, a sort of pirate/arab/gypsy hybrid. Patrick's journals show that he relishes slaughtering as many of them as he can.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Keisinger's motives for getting Patrick to safety at the end of the game are left ambiguous, although it's rather doubtful it was due to any compassion on his part.
  • Amplifier Artifact; The game features disposable items known as Amplifiers, which can be used to take one of your magic spells up one level. There's also the Gel'Ziabar Stone, which boosts all your spells one level if you use it in concert (though you effectively have no gun if you choose to do this).
  • Ancient Tomb: Mausoleums, catacombs, crypts and the Tomb of the Undying King.
  • And I Must Scream: Aaron was chained up in a dungeon and eaten alive by rats, with his jaw removed so he couldn't scream.
  • Animate Dead: The game has the Invoke spell, which raises dead enemies to fight on your side for a little while. It also insta-kills skeletons. And makes a targeted male Trsanti kill himself, though not the female Trsanti. A journal written by a Trsanti witch specifically calls out the tribe's men for their weak-mindedness.
  • Another Dimension: Oneiros and Eternal Autumn, both magical realms either controlled or created by Keisinger and Bethany respectively.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: Patrick doesn't believe in magic. But he uses magic all the time, and owns a magical stone.
  • Author Appeal: Patrick Galloway is a handsome, muscular Irish occultist and WWI veteran. Considering the original protagonist of the game before Clive Barker signed on was supposed to be some bald German dude, one has to wonder...
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The Phoenix near the end: you can control the shot and use it to explore the level around, but it's too fast and difficult to send against a foe and it deals mediocre damage to the enemies. The Spear Gun you find before is much more practical to use by comparison.
  • Ax-Crazy: Most of the Covenant family are insane in one way or another, like with Ambrose beating his father to death with a pool cue simply because he was tired with him meddling in personal affairs, to Bethany settling a rivalry with her brother by gleefully removing his jaw, tying him up in the basement and setting a swarm of hungry rats on him.
  • Badass Normal: He may have some magical powers, but Patrick is more-or-less a normal man fighting evil undead siblings, powerful archmages and all sorts of demonic beings.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Well, not the main bad guys, but by the end of the game it seems Keisinger has not only survived his Wizard Duel with Patrick, but acquired the Gel'ziabar Stone and, with it, its vast occult power.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: The game does this with the final boss fight, no less than four times. Here we go:
    • First, you fight Bethany, who's been set up to be the final boss all through the game.
    • After killing her, your friend Jeremiah appears and reveals that he's been behind the whole thing! Looks like he's the final boss...but then Patrick just unceremoniously decapitates him mid-speech...
    • ...which results in the much-hyped Undying King being summoned, leaping out of the ground looking like a pissed-off mummy, as befit his name, only to disintegrate into powder upon hitting the ground...
    • ...only then does the real Undying King (the Celtic King was just a human sacrifice) raise out of the ground in the form of some odd-Eldritch Abomination-crab-spider-scorpion thing. After him, the game ends. Promise.
  • Ballistic Bone: The game has a spell (the game's equivalent of a rocket launcher) that pulls skulls out of the ground, charges them with magic and fires them when you release the button. The ammo is justified by the island having been a battleground for pretty much forever, "Not an inch of this ground where someone hasn't died". Doesn't explain how you can use it up on the roof of the mansion, though...
  • Batman Gambit: Jeremiah already became an undead years ago, and only called upon Patrick so he could kill off his siblings and Keisinger so nothing could stand in his way for his double-cross.
  • Beating A Dead Player: The game had a unique "kill-the-player" animation for every single enemy in the game (except for the Lesser Monto Shonoi: Word of God says there was no way the small ones could have looked right with the same animation as the large ones, so the developers had to block it from them).
  • Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Covenant family, even before the last members were horribly cursed. It's hinted that the Covenant family has a dark history involving untimely deaths, creating all sorts of bloody rumors.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Patrick manages to defeat the Undying King and subdue the evil pervading the Covenant Estate, but the entire Covenant family has been destroyed, Jeremiah is revealed to have been using Patrick to eliminate his fellow monstrous siblings and take the Undying King's power for himself, (and is in turn killed by Patrick for his treachery) and a robed man implied to be Keisinger has stolen the Gel'ziabar Stone from Patrick to use towards unknown (but likely less than benign) ends. Patrick's final monologue all but outright states he is traumatized by what's happened and, with the revelation that similar monasteries exist throughout the world, is terrified that he may one day be drawn back into the horror he witnessed.
  • Black Sheep: Even without the curse, Ambrose was a hellion that eventually joined up with pirates and even murdered his father before jumping off a cliff to escape arrest by the police (he gets better).
  • Blatant Item Placement: Pistol and shotgun ammo in a medieval monastery?
  • Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: Lizbeth is dressed in a shredded white gown heavily stained with blood.
  • Body Horror: Bethany got her final revenge on her brother Aaron by chaining him inside her private dungeon and letting rats eat him alive, removing his jawbone so he couldn't scream. Which also qualifies as Artistic License – Biology, since removing someone's jawbone does not affect his ability to scream - the vocal cords should be removed for it. As a matter of fact, he could probably do nothing but scream.note 
  • Boss-Arena Idiocy: Two bosses have this.
    • Aaron wields a chain that he uses as a whip against you. The only way to defeat him is to position yourself in front of one of the rings on the wall and dodge his attack. His chain will get trapped in the ring, and you can attack him while he's busy trying to get the chain out.
    • Ambrose is invulnerable because he grabs your magic Gel'ziabar stone and puts it in his axe. He's only killable when a giant Gel'ziabar dog comes out of nowhere and attacks him, and then you can only kill him by first shooting the stone out of his axe. If you don't rush up and kill him right away, the dog will vanish, and he will pick up the stone, put it back in his axe, and resume being invulnerable until the next dog attack.
  • Broken Bridge: Sure'n you'll be hearing Patrick's Oirish brogue declaring a door to be "Stuck!" or "Won't budge!" an awful lot, boyo.
  • Buried Alive: An ancient warrior is buried alive at the Standing Stones to seal the Undying King. Also, Lizbeth.
  • Cain and Abel:
    • All the Covenant children fell to the curse of the Undying King, only to be resurrected as monstrous forms of their previous selves. They're out to kill Jeremiah, the last surviving son, to complete the curse.
    • There are also Bethany and Aaron, twins who utterly despised one another and were in constant rivalry. Bethany won, by chaining up her brother in a dungeon accessed through her room to be eaten by rats, and removing his jaw so he couldn't scream.
  • Came Back Wrong: Those brought back by the undying curse are twisted shadows of their former selves.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Bethany studied under various mages to learn all she could from them and then dropped them as soon as they were no longer useful. She finally met her end when Keisinger betrayed her before she got the chance.
  • Circle of Standing Stones: There's a set of standing stones where an occult ritual unleashed a curse upon those who performed it. And that's just the start.
  • Clown-Car Grave: The game had a spell where you yanked skulls out of the ground and fired them like a rocket launcher. The manual explained that the area you were in had been a battleground for centuries, and there basically was not one square inch that something hadn't died on.
  • Corrupt Church: The monastery that discovers the Scythe of the Celt, thanks to The Corruption.
  • The Corruption: The undying curse. Not to mention just being near the Scythe of the Celt can cause someone to descend into bloodlust and madness.
  • Covers Always Lie: In the backcover, you can see images of Patrick fighting a Monto Shonoi in Oneiros (they don't appear there in the game) and a Howler in the manor with the Skull Storm spell (which is acquired after the part of the game with the Howlers).
  • Creator Cameo: Ambrose Covenant's voiced by none other than Clive Barker himself.
  • Creepy Changing Painting: Played for horror here where, near the beginning of the game is a large painting of all the Covenant children. Using the Scrye spell on it makes everyone except Jeremiah turn into their demonic forms on the picture, the exact same forms you have to bossfight one-by-one later in the game. As for Jeremiah, he's simply decapitated in the picture... foreshadowing the exact manner in which he dies. Both times.
  • Creepy Child: All of the Covenant children once they were cursed. A particular mention goes to Lizbeth, who bit her nanny and licked her lips afterward.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: Your character Patrick Galloway suddenly jumps like a flea through a stained glass window many feet away to escape danger. Normally he only jumps about as high as a normal man.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: It's revealed after the fight with Keisenger that the bird-like monsters, no matter how hideous they are, you have been fighting throughout the level are in fact just slaves under Keisengers control, and they thank you after you kill him.
  • Dead All Along: Jeremiah died in that battle with the Trsanti back in WWI, the same battle he saved Patrick’s life in. In a more figurative sense, the Jeremiah Patrick knew in life is dead, and the man who’s replaced is every bit the insane, fucked up monster his siblings have become.
  • Deadly Dodging: When fighting Aaron, he will stand in the middle of the room when sufficiently injured and keeps attacking with his chain hook. The trick is to let him attack then sidestep when you are in from of the door. If done right, the hook gets stuck in the door and Aaron can be "killed" by decapitating him with the scythe.
  • Deadly Lunge: Demonic monsters referred to as "Howlers" pose the primary threat, at least early on. Roughly humanoid with canine features and some ape-like elements thrown in, howlers gallop towards the player until they get close enough to pounce. In this case "close enough" is about twenty meters or so. They always land ready to strike with their razor-sharp claws.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Ambrose Covenant, of all people.
    Father always said "self-reflection is the key to enlightenment". Allow me to reflect on this day. How could I have saved my father from a slow, painful death? I could have hit him harder.
  • Debug Room: The game features two testing levels "playground" and "smoketest" (only accesible using the game cheats), featuring, among other things, objects left out of normal gameplay and tiles with labels that tell what type of ground you're stepping on.
  • Demonic Invaders
  • Determinator: Patrick survives World War I, least decades of conflict with Otto Keisinger, gets through Irish customs unnoticed in order to fulfill a life debt, fights through wave after wave of unspeakable abominations that have racked up quite the kill count, handles the Artifact of Doom with fairly marginal damage, kills off the undead and superhuman Covenant siblings one by one, goes into HELL to defeat Keisinger, survives Jeremiah's betrayal, and even takes down the Eldritch Abomination that helped cause everything in the first place.
  • Deus ex machina:
    • Played with in the giant hellhound that makes it possible for you to defeat Ambrose. It seems like it comes out of nowhere, but read Patrick's journal and he'll mention that if you use the Gel'ziabar stone too much; you know, the one Ambrose just stole and is using against you; a "strange dog-like beast" might show up to menace you. According to Word of God, the stone was once used to open a rift between our world and the hounds' dimension that never closed. Also a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, since you can use the Stone all you want with no dog attacks.
    • If you're fast enough, you can look behind you at the very start of the game. The giant hound that helps you in the fight is standing right behind you on the other side of the gate before running off. It's been following you, thus helping to explain why it's there.
  • Disney Villain Death: Keisinger plunges into the abyss of the tower arena after you beat him.
  • Disposable Woman: The maids pretty much exist to get killed by Howlers. The male servants seem a bit better at living. The butler survives as well as you do.
  • Dumbwaiter Ride: There's a dumbwaiter in the kitchen area of the mansion that connects the upper and lower floors. In one level, Patrick must use it to travel between floors. Activating the dumbwaiter in another level will show that a Howler thought of doing the same.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Undying King, plus many of the creatures in Oneiros.
  • Enemy Mine: The skeletons in the monastery aren't actually controlled by Lizbeth, according to Word of God. That doesn't stop them from temporarily allying with Lizbeth and her Howlers to try to kill you.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Lizbeth kept the animated corpse of her mother in her lair, seated at a dining table and presumably "keeping her company". Becomes somewhat more tragic (but no less creepy) when you remember that Evaline Covenant died while giving birth to Lizbeth, making Lizbeth the only one of the Covenant children who never actually knew their mother.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Despite already having murdered her brother and pursuing the forbidden knowledge of the dark arts, apparently Bethany was still horrified at what Keisinger was planning to do with the power of the Gel'Ziabar stone. Any misgivings she might have quickly go away after Keisinger kills her and she resurrects as an evil undead intent on bringing about the apocalypse.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: Jeremiah’s parents and siblings all suffered various horrific and untimely fates, leaving him the last living member of his immediate family. Except Jeremiah didn’t make it out of The Great War alive, and is the very same undying monstrosity is siblings all are.
  • Evil All Along: Jeremiah Covenant.
  • Evil Gloating: Jeremiah attempts this, but is interrupted. By a scythe.
  • Evil Tower of Ominousness: One of the manor's towers has an unearthly purple halo stretching into the sky, marking the portal to Oneiros.
  • Fan Disservice: Lizbeth is wearing nothing but a barely-there torn dress, complete with bouncing chest, which would look sexy if she wasn't a cursed undead and the sheer amount of blood staining down the front from her previous meal. She's so horrifying it's not even remotely attractive. This is driven home when you use the scrye on one of her pretty portraits. Although, both Lets Plays comment on her being attractive and her victory pose over Patrick makes it obvious she was intended to be hot in uncomfortable ways. Clive Barker's stuff tends to be "interesting" like that.
  • Flaming Skulls: The game has a spell called Skull Storm which allows you to throw not merely flaming skulls, but flaming skulls that chatter with each other and explode upon impact.
  • Floating Water: One part of set in Oneiros had vertical columns of water that you had to ascend and jump out of at the top to scale a dungeon.
  • Footprints of Muck: Scrying will sometimes show bloody footprints, showing you how to get through some puzzles.
  • Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The last section of the game takes place in an alternative universe ruled by Bethany Covenant, called "Eternal Autumn". The scarce vegetation there has dark colors, although it's mostly composed of rocky terrain.
  • Freudian Excuse: It is pretty clear that whatever the siblings did at the Standing Stones is responsible for a LOT of their behavior (especially what they did after they died).
  • Gothic Horror: Creepy house on the moors, a cursed family? Yup, sounds like Gothic Horror.
  • Green Rocks: The Gel'ziabar stone.
  • Haunted Castle: The Covenant Manor.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: The way Jeremiah describes their wartime encounter with the Trsanti by the standing stones at the end of the game seems to indicate Jeremiah was killed by the Trsanti shaman’s blast of the Gel’ziabar stone while saving Patrick’s life.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Ambrose holds Jeremiah hostage, demanding that Patrick hand over the Gel'ziabar stone. He uses it immediately after decapitating Jeremiah to dramatically increase his size, strength, and speed, rendering him all but invincible. But in the very first journal entry on the Gel'ziabar stone, Patrick mentions that prolonged or intensive use of the stone's power will summon a monstrous beast that attacks the user. Needless to say, Ambrose is tapping pretty deeply into the stone's power...
  • Hostage for MacGuffin: At one point, one of the villains demands a magic stone from the main character in exchange for his friend's life. Despite his friend's protests, and despite the fact that killing the friend has seemed to be the sole goal of the villains up to this point, he hands it over. This doesn't play out so much to standards of the trope, as to how it realistically would — the baddie kills his hostage, then uses the stone to enhance his powers.
  • Hub Level: The game had whatever themed enemies populated the next level begin infesting the Covenant estate as a hint of where to go next.
  • Hunk: Patrick Galloway is a grizzled and handsome ex-soldier with a very muscular chest.
  • Idiot Ball or Too Dumb to Live: Jeremiah. Let's go over his plans again: You are the weakest of the five undead siblings that no mortal weapon can kill for real. You trick the hero into finding a supernatural weapon that actually can and into using said weapon for killing your stronger siblings, their armies of demonic mooks and extremely powerful evil wizard. So far so good. Very smart of and good for you. Revealing everything to and mocking/threatening said hero while you have no demonic armies or powers to hurt him in any way? Not so much.
    • Possibly averted, as it's likely that Jeremiah was well aware that he could not win against Patrick, and so his only chance to be free from the curse (and from being an undead monstrousity for all eternity) would have been to lure Patrick into killing him with the scythe...something that Patrick may have not done had he knew that Jeremiah was the only "living seal" still standing to hold the king in its prison.
  • Implacable Man: The Covenant siblings cannot be killed by any mortal weapon, only with the Scythe of the Celt. Even then, Lizbeth's head snarls and spits at Patrick before he lights it on fire and throws it off a cliff.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: The skeletal monks will often throw difficult-to-dodge rocks at you.
  • In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: Clive Barker was brought in partway through development for a rewrite of the story, and he also ended up doing a character's voice. His name was attached to it because Electronic Arts thought it would sell. Unfortunately, despite being a very good game, it didn't — due in no small part to the sum total of EA's marketing campaign for the game being slapping "Clive Barker's" in front of the title.
  • Interface Screw: Being attacked by a Sil Lith Inhabitant (a bird-like monster first seen in the Oneiros level), will severely distort the protagonist' vision, and the crosshair will move around the screen instead of staying at the center, making it hard to hit anything with your weapons.
  • Jump Scare: Aaron will jerk to life one final time after he is killed, causing Patrick to pass out in shock and have another prophetic dream.
  • Kill One, Others Get Stronger: Happens to the Covenant brothers, according to Word of God. Bethany, the last to be killed, certainly had created a good army of creatures prior to her death.
  • Kiss of Death: If Patrick is defeated by a Trsanti witch, her finishing animation involves forcibly kissing him before stabbing him.
  • Living Statue: The game has a weird bit where to get to the upper floor of a room in magical alternate dimension, the player must use the scrying spell on the statue in the center of the room. This shows its heart exposed, which the player must then shoot with his gun. This causes blood to pour out and allows the player to swim to the upper level.
  • Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: According to Word of God, the Veragos that are seen in Oneiros are the remnants of great magic users who abused their power and ended up being corrupted and all but wiped out by it.
  • Mad Artist: Aaron Covenant is a skilled painter, and just as homicidally insane as the rest of the family.
  • Magic Is a Monster Magnet: It's mentioned in the backstory that excessive usage of the Gel'ziabar stone will cause the user to be hunted by the Hound of Gel'ziabar. This doesn't actually happen in gameplay that often- the only way to summon the Hound is to abuse the Stone's absolutely useless knockback attack, and even then the counter is reset between loading zones. The Hound does pop up during a couple pre-scripted events, as well. According to Word of God, creatures like Skarrows, Flickering Stalkers and Monto Shonoi are interdimensional squatters, magic scavengers, that were attracted to Oneiros and the manor, and later enslaved.
  • The Many Deaths of You: The game had the camera go 3rd-person and play a standard animation of whatever enemy dealt the finishing blow performing some kind of gory fatality on you.
  • Meaningful Name: The Covenant family, of course.
  • Merlin and Nimue: This was Bethany Covenant's modus operandi, learning everything she can from other magic users before betraying or abandoning them. She finally met her end when her final teacher offed her first.
  • Monster Closet: This happens with a skeleton while you're around the monastery catacombs.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: First Patrick discovers that, by using the Scythe, he's been unwittingly collecting the souls of the Covenant siblings for Jeremiah. When he tries to fix that by killing Jeremiah at the Standing Stones, he creates the necessary sacrifice to bring forth the Undying King. Oops.
  • Non-Standard Skill Learning: All spells are acquired by taking a magic scroll, except for the Lightning spell. For that one, you must take a lightning rod and put it in a orifice on a roof. A lightning will strike the rod and you will receive the electricity, which will give you the spell.
  • Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The entire Covenant family.
  • Nothing but Skulls: The Skull Storm spell pulls human skulls out of the earth and launches them like explosive missiles.
  • Not Quite Dead: It's heavily implied that the man Patrick encounters at the end of the game and who steals the Gel'ziabar Stone is Keisinger.
  • Occult Detective: Patrick Galloway.
  • Off with His Head!: The only way to destroy the undead Covenants, and it has to be done with a certain weapon at that. This is also one of only two ways to make a skeleton stay down for good, the other being Revive Kills Zombie.
  • Oireland
  • Ominous Latin Chanting
  • Paranormal Investigation: Patrick's current profession although, despite possessing the Gel'ziabar Stone and knowing some magic, he's rarely come across anything that couldn't be explained by mundane causes. Until now.
  • Parental Obliviousness: Joseph Covenant has no idea what has befallen his children until Jeremiah finally breaks down and confesses. Even though he tries hard to find some way to break the curse, he ultimately fails.
  • Place of Power: The Standing Stones.
  • Portal Pool: The method for traveling between the past and present versions of the monastery. Bonus points for each side of the pool reflecting the other: in the present day, the pool's reflection shows the past, and vice versa.
  • Power Tattoo: These act as powerups of a sort.
  • Psychic-Assisted Suicide: The spell Invoke allows you to reanimate monsters and destroy undead. If you use it on a male Trsanti, he will jerkily turn his weapon on himself as he begs for his life in terror, slitting his own throat or blowing his brains out. Doesn't seem to work on primitive humans.
  • Puzzle Boss: A lot of the bosses are pretty much invincible until they run out of juice. While you do fight Lizbeth normally, she eventually goes invincible with her Limit Break, and you have to wait for her to tucker out before you can take her head off. Ambrose gets all gigantimous, and you have to wait until he's distracted so that you can hit his weak point to stun him long enough for a decapitation. Aaron is invulnerable until one of his spears gets stuck, at which point you rush in and finish him off. Bethany likewise can only be decapitated after she becomes tired out from summoning a minion. In fact only Keisinger is fought as a straightforward boss fight with no puzzle elements.
  • Recycled Soundtrack: The entire soundtrack (with the exception of the Main Theme) was shamelessly copypasted from the obscure Jurassic Park FPS Jurassic Park: Trespasser.
  • Reverse Shrapnel: The Skull Storm spell causes cackling, burning skulls to burst out of the ground one by one and hover in front of you until you let them all go flying off to explode on their target.
  • Revive Kills Zombie: This is one way to kill the Skeleton Monks, until you get the Scythe and are able to decapitate them.
  • Reviving Enemy: The skeletons. Using the Tibetan War Canon sometimes prevents them from getting up and the Invoke spell instantly destroys them (although it uses a lot of mana). The scythe puts a permanent end to them.
  • Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns: Averted; Patrick Galloway is notable as one of the few FPS protagonists to hold most, if not all of his weapons in his left hand during gameplay.
  • Ring Menu: Weapons and spells.
  • Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Oneiros features a lot of them. The backstory implies they belong to former cities inhabited by the creatures that you fight, but it's not explained to depth in the game.
  • Sanity Slippage:
    • Journal entries show that this was inevitable for the Covenant siblings.
    • "Can you hear the whispers, Jeremiah?"
  • Scenery as You Go: This happens in the floating city of Oneiros. At several points you will see a floating platform of some sort, far out of reach of any jump, and a path on your current platform seemingly leading off into oblivion. Walk towards the end of it and, just as you reach the edge, floating tiles will appear.
  • Scenic-Tour Level: The short segment where a maiden guides you from the manor entrance to Jeremiah's bedroom, which allows you to have a glimpse of the manor.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The Undying King. who was actually the LID on the can, opening the door to the rest of the series. Unfortunately, this well done game bombed monstrously, so the series never materialized...
  • See-Thru Specs: Using the Scrye magic allows Patrick to see or hear the past, reveal hidden truths or creepy foreshadowing.
  • See You in Hell: The Trsanti usually utter these words when dying.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Ambrose beats his father to death with a pool cue, tired of him meddling in his affairs.
  • Sequel Hook: The ending has two.
    • Patrick is picked up drifting in the sea by a hooded figure in a boat, who takes the Gel'ziabar stone off him. Patrick says, "You! But it can't be!" Who is he? What does he intend to do with the stone?
    • Patrick's narration after the above scene mentions that the Final Boss was in fact a gatekeeper, which raises the possibility he inadvertently made things worse by killing it. He also says he did some research into the monk brotherhood, and found they have monasteries all over the world.
  • Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The game had a resurrection power, called Invoke. High cost and weak at first, but if you leveled it up and got into the habit of Invoking every creature you kill you'd soon have a small army of disposable minions following you around. They vanish after a time and attack you if you accidentally damage them, but are otherwise quite handy as meat shields against large numbers of enemies.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Patrick's former profession as a soldier left him with some psychological scars, the Gel'ziabar Stone, and a life debt owed to Jeremiah Covenant.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!:
    • "You know what Jeremiah? You talk too much" *slices off his head*.
    • Also tossing Lizbeth's burning head off a thousand foot cliff in the middle of her ranting.
      Lizbeth: "The family will be reuniteeeeeeedddddddddd!" *splash*
      Patrick: "Yeh were sayin'?"
  • Sibling Rivalry: The twins Aaron and Bethany, who were bitter rivals. Bethany won.
  • Sinister Scimitar: The game has the Trsanti militants attacking you with very large scimitars.
  • Sinister Scythe: One of these becomes a vital weapon, both for plot reasons and as an emergency healing source (it's a vampiric weapon). You probably won't use it unless you have to, though.
  • Skeptic No Longer: Patrick started his career as an Occult Detective trying to "debunk folklore and mysticism". Presumably he stopped trying to disprove the supernatural at the latest by some point between obtaining the clearly magical Gel'ziabar stone and gaining a German wizard as an archrival.
  • Spooky Painting: Just scrye a few of the paintings. Like the one at the top of the page...
  • The Starscream: Jeremiah plotted to use Gel'ziabar stone to drain energy from the Undying King and become a god himself.
  • Time Travel: Patrick travels back to the monastery of the past for a Fetch Quest.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: What started the curse.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • There are still servants working at the Covenant Manor, despite the fact that many have died from demonic beasts. One guy finally decides he's had enough and leaves, only to get killed at the front gate.
    • Also Jeremiah, who mocked and shoved Patrick around, the very same man who killed all of his other siblings. And who is at that very moment holding the only weapon that can destroy him. Assuming, of course, that the corruption of the Undying King isn't More than Mind Control.
    • Hey guys, you know what sounds like fun? Let's read a ritual out of this weird occult book near some creepy standing stones. Nothing could possibly go wrong!
  • Torture Cellar: Bethany has one connecting from her bedroom.
  • Uncanny Valley: Bethany's Handmaidens, who were her own creation. If you look up close they have porcelain masks like victorian dolls. Behind it there is a grotesque mockery of a face. They were her demented version of servants. Must have missed all the hired help around the mansion.
  • The Undead: The Covenant siblings are trapped in a constant state of undying, not living but never dead.
  • Unstable Equilibrium: Your healing items are never reset, and there's no limit to how many of them you can carry, so if you can save them up early on with skillful/cautious play, the later levels become a cakewalk as you have way more healing items than the devs intended when designing the levels.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Patrick Galloway.
  • Utility Weapon: Dynamite can be used to blow open certain walls.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Throwing motolov cocktails on humans will make them run around screaming until they die. The player can also amplify the Invoke magic which causes male Trsanti enemies to kill themselves against their will.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Yes, the remaining servants are doomed. No, that doesn't mean it's okay for you to shoot them.
  • Video Game Flight: The flight power only worked outside the mundane world, and only for short periods (as opposed to the two other sorcerers you fight, who are admittedly much more experienced.)
  • Wipe That Smile Off Your Face: Tiring of her brother's smart-aleck comments, Bethany chained up Aaron in a dungeon and ripped off his jaw before leaving him to be flensed alive by rats, then hid it in her cottage! The PC, while being repeatedly attacked by hoards of things sicced on him by the tormented Aaron, must find the jaw, break into the dungeon Aaron is chained up in, and place it back on Aaron's corpse.
  • Wizard Duel: The battle against Keisinger in Oneiros. Both of you have an identical and sizable array of spells (with the exception of flight, yours is limited, his is not) which you've painstakingly acquired through the length of the game, you're both flying around at the top of a ziggurat floating in his insane pocket dimension, ducking behind columns, using shield counterspells and charging up blasts of lightning and fireballs to cast at each other with distinct gestures for each hand in first-person.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Jeremiah planned to sacrifice Patrick to awaken the Undying King now that he had unknowingly done all his dirty work.
  • Zombify the Living: You can use the Invoke spell on some living enemies, which makes them commit Psychic-Assisted Suicide.

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