Dread Delusion
is a Lovecraftian first-person open-world RPG made by LovelyHellplace and released in Steam Early Access on June 15, 2022.
Centuries ago, at the height of the advanced Emberian Empire, the world was ravaged by the World Rend, a magical apocalypse that tainted the surface with an undead curse and disabled all Emberian technology. The only survivors were the Empire's exiles, who eked out a living in the sky on the floating Oneiric Isles. Wikkans, occultists who worshiped one of a variety of corporeal gods in exchange for magical knowledge and power, attained dominance and enforced theocratic rule until the God War, an anti-occult uprising that expelled the Wikkans from several islands. The emergent Apostatic Union, governed by the Machine Monarch, quickly became a formidable kingdom thanks to its fusion of clockwork technology and human-formulated "cipher magic". The Union's fearsome Inquisition maintains constant vigilance against Wikkan influence and is tasked with regulating magic use, rooting out occult worship, and slaying gods.
The player takes on the role of Prisoner XVII, who has been wasting away aboard an Inquisition airship. The airship makes a stop to capture the occultist Vela Callose, leader of the Dark Star mercenaries and the most wanted criminal in the Union, but the assault does not go as planned and the Inquisition unit is wiped out. In a bind, the ship's chief inquisitor frees Prisoner XVII in exchange for taking up the mission his agents failed. In the course of their pursuit of Vela, the prisoner reluctantly receives the patronage of a forsaken god and becomes embroiled in a struggle with ramifications for all of the Oneiric Isles.
The game contains examples of:
- Academy of Adventure: A floating traveling one able to be accessed by the player after some questing. It features the game's Fast Travel system, lots of regrowing alchemy ingredients, and the scholars are hiding a small but very illegal god deep within in order to conduct research on it.
- After the End: A cataclysm of unknown nature scoured the surface of the world, leaving the only survivors those who were on the floating islands far above it. Books in-game state that one of the reasons this was so damaging was that the Precusor civilization on the surface made heavy use of Magitek to store information, which the cataclysm shorted out.
- All for Nothing: The end of the Emberian's quest. After fighting your way through an army of bandits and Emberian drones, both of you discover the Emberian vault DOES contain several of them in stasis tubes. And all of them long dead and rotting, meaning the Emberian will never get the answers she seeks about her past.
- Alien Sky: A celestial object known as a "Neuron Star" looms in the crimson skies above the isles. Rather than day and night being decided by the relative location of this star, it is decided by when the star dims and brightens, which the star seen in-game does on a 12-hour cycle. There are other Neuron Stars that illuminate other lands, and at least one has a cycle hundreds of hours long. There are also lands with no nearby stars that are shrouded in eternal darkness.
- Talking to the astrologist at the game's Academy of Adventure reveals that space itself is also like this, filled with a whole network of beautiful neurons.
- Artifact of Doom: One sidequest has you fetching this for a rich merchant from a missing airship. Said airship's crew seems to be still be alive until you pick up the artifact, revealing they've been Dead All Along. Delivering it to the merchant has him meet the same fate.
- BFS: The Emberian uses a Magitek version of Power Armor to wield a huge sword that's almost as large as she is.
- Boxed Crook: The setup for the game. You are a prisoner on a prison ship of the Apostatic Union, released on the condition that you hunt down a fugitive mercenary leader in what is stated to basically be a suicide mission.
- Clockworks Area: One of the planned areas currently able to be accessed via abusing the game's Super-Speed spell is the Clockwork Kingdom, a realm filled with gearwork, wiring, and giant farmhouses on tank treads.
- Cool Airship: The Inquisition airship is a metal hulk reminiscent of a cathedral with flying buttresses.
- Creating Life Is Unforeseen: The giant flesh pits that satiate the Breathless are non-sentient and serve as an ethical alternative source to human flesh. Except the flesh pits have become self-aware and intelligent, leaving the player with the Sadistic Choice of either killing a unique and entirely innocent creature or risking the army of intelligent revenant zombies from losing their only food source.
- Eldritch Abomination: The gods of this setting are massive, bizarre-looking creatures powered by belief and capable of warping the world around them.
- Fantastic Flora: A variety of them can be found throughout the game, and can be used to brew a variety of magical potions. Giant fungi abound.
- God Needs Prayer Badly: The power of a god is proportional to the worship that it receives, growing weaker and physically smaller as their followers dwindle.
- Illegal Religion: All religions are banned within the Apostatic Union. Since this is a setting where gods are amoral Eldritch Abominations powered by worship, it's pretty understandable to want to limit them.
- Last of His Kind: Possibly. The Emberian was found as a young girl locked in a statis pod in a Precursor vault, and seems to have a greater understanding of their Magitek than anyone else in the world. They also dream of ancient cities and places long gone. At the same time, she's also not *sure* if she is an Emberian or just someone who was placed in a stasis pod for other reasons.
- Magitek: Emberian technology is a heavily Dieselpunk take on this, with rusting heavily metallic decaying machinery, ancient robots, and corridors that wouldn't look out of place in a gritty sci-fi shooter.
- The Apostatic Union also uses technology powered by magical ciphers and clockwork, creating things like airships and elevators that lack any cables.
- Muggles Do It Better: Lore example. The scouring of the surface destroyed all the Data Crystal magic used by the Precursors of the setting, meaning that surviving information was only able to be passed down via traditional print and paper books.
- Nay-Theist: The Apostatic Union, again. The gods objectively exist in this setting, but worshipping them gives them and their theocracy power.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Crypt Wyrms are giant winged and feathered monsters that are docile enough to leave mortals alone, but love going after and eating the Breathless. One side quest has a wyrm that has consumed so many undead souls that they're able to exert some level of influence on the creature, in the hopes of stopping its rampage against their kind.
- Our Gods Are Different: They hatch from crystals as larva and gain their power from the worship of their followers. They still embody some aspect of nature or existence and have control over that sphere, but many appear as strange abominations. In-game lore implies that centuries of warfare and horrors have gradually reshaped many of them into far worse versions.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: They're human-shaped echoes of a person's trauma, and are unable to interact with the world around them, though some are lucid enough to carry on a conversation. Interestingly, since they're made of a person's trauma rather than their actual soul, it is possible for there to be a ghost of someone who is still alive.
- Precursors: The Emberians, the previous dominant civilization on the surface world. They made heavy use of Magitek to the point where so much of their civilization was reliant on it that the World Rend rendered much of their records unusable. Their ruins and artifacts have a heavy Dieselpunk vibe to them.
- Prison Ship: The Inquisition airship. Prisoner XVII has spent "countless months" in their cell with only the corpse of a fellow prisoner for company.
- Sadistic Choice: All over the place.
- State Sec: The Inquisition. Aside from enforcing the Apostatic Union's ban on religion, they also serve as a national police force with jurisdiction over conventional criminal activity, like smuggling. The Inquisition is separate from the Union's military.
- Super-Speed: One spell that the player can cast can greatly enhance their jumping and running speed, along with removing fall damage. Combined with higher athletic skills and the player can move across the entire world in a matter of seconds.
- The Magic Versus Technology War: Downplayed but present with a Magitek angle. The biggest faction conflict is between the Wikkans and the Union, and while both use magic the Union tends to be more industrialized and advanced compared to the Wikkans, who tend to have more of a traditional magical aesthetic.
- The Theocracy: Prior to the Union, the floating civilizations of the world were ruled by various Wikkan cults of specific gods, who tightly controlled magic and were tyrannical enough to cause the Union's coup in the first place.
- The Undead: Called "the Breathless," they were the result of a ritual performed by an ancient king long ago. They are afflicted with an unending hunger for human flesh, and were forced to wage an endless war on the living in order to ensure a steady supply. They now sustain themselves on massive vats of non-sentient, constantly-growing flesh invented by one of their scholars, allowing them to coexist with the living in relative peace.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Union ruthlessly enforces the ban on religion and hunts down gods with extreme prejudice, but the gods in this setting are monstrous beings who only seek to have more followers at *best* and the Union legitimately seems to want the world and technology to flourish.
- World in the Sky: After the destruction of the surface world, all of humanity had to settle massive floating continents hanging in the sky.
- Zeppelins from Another World: One of the Union's most notable inventions is the airship. Before the airship, the only way to travel between sky islands was via a system of drawbridges.
