Tainted Grail: The Fall Of Avalon is a first person RPG videogame developed by Questline. It is based on the Dark Arthurian lore of the Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon boardgame by Marcin Ĺwierkot and Krzysztof Piskorski, and the second video game in the series (after Tainted Grail: Conquest). It is currently in Early Access.
In this incarnation of Britannian legend, an eldritch pandemic called the Red Plague forced King Arthur Pendragon and his kingdom to flee to the Avalonian Isles, conquering the Fae lands and banishing their source of magic, the Wyrdness, to carve out a home for themselves. In time, Arthur was killed, but swore to his people that he might one day rise again to rule Avalon. Six centuries have passed, and things are looking bleak; the Wyrdness has been slowly returning (as seen in Tainted Grail: Conquest), bandits and barbarians are rallying behind legendary outlaws into proper hordes, and the Red Plague has finally found its way to Avalon. The Red Priesthood, a secret order loyal to King Arthur, has been tasked with performing the rituals to raise the Once and Future King.
There's just one problem:
The Red Priests are assholes.
Across the ages, The Red Priests secretly brought King Arthur back from the grave, over and over, using weirder and Wyrder dark magics and increasingly monstrous ritual sacrifices, until he lost his mind and became a tyrant. He can save no-one, and he will doom thousands when he returns. As a former prisoner of the Red Priests, you have been saved from human sacrifice by an agent of powers unknown. The price of your freedom: You must kill King Arthur - and Make Avalon Fall.
- Awful Truth: King Arthur and Merlin betrayed the Knights. They used their loyal subjects as test subjects in a bid to gain immortality, sealing up the undead failures to languish in test tubes for eternity. Arthur's justification is that the war against the Fore-Dwellers was that bad, but it's clear that he's a Knight Templar.
- Barbarian Tribe: The Dal Rata are a Proud Warrior Race who seek independence from Kamelot, as their ways are constantly spit upon by the nobles.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Half the population of The Horns of the South are this trope.
- Those two slaves forced to mine rocks because they committed petty crimes? The former cheated on his wife and had an affair with a married woman, the latter was a spoiled brat who gambled his father's money away. If you confront them over this, they'll confirm their bitchiness and try to murder you. Their slavemasters are also Faux Affably Evil, as your attempts to convince them to free their slaves anger them to the point of trying to murder you.
- The impoverished druid wasting away in the shadow of the Horns of the South? He was a former con-artist who betrayed his lover, and when she committed suicide it caused enough drama to convince Kamelot to crack down on the druids. His ex-stepdaughter is furious and demands his head.
- Many of the keepers are secretly assholes, or are clearly not right in the head. Justified, as Kamelot has sent all their rejects to the Horns of the South because they don't give two shits about it.
- One keeper asks for your help finding a way to deal with the annoying seagulls that shit all over his post. He tries to pay for your help with ten coins.
- One keeper hires you as a courier to deliver flowers to a dying widow - which she reacts to with horror, as the flowers have been arranged in a Stealth Insult that reeks of spite and Fantastic Racism, which the keeper will gleefully admit to.
- A group of three miserable ex-keepers, while jerkasses, have generally taken to peasant life. Then you find out what got them canned: They betrayed a fourth member of their squad to save their skins, and then spent the rest of their lives ignoring it. Not to mention one of them indirectly murdered a refugee. By the end, all three can die by a combination of your help and their past sins come to haunt them.
- Came Back Wrong: Arthur has been resurrected too many times and with too many Wyrd methods, destroying his sanity. The player character has been tasked with stopping his resurrection, or he'll come back an insane psychopath - like the last few times.
- Excalibur: It's right in the center of the Horns of the South Keep. As the legends claim, King Arthur himself put the sword in the weird stone statue of hands, knowing that only the 'worthy' could claim it. As it stands, some past keepers could wield the sword - for about five seconds, before they started experiencing power drain.
- I Die Free: It is revealed you have become an Unwitting Pawn of King Arthur. You can still continue your journey by agreeing to serve or accept a truce in the hopes of finding a way to betray him. Or, you can defy Arthur at the cost of your life, for real, ensuring one of his SoulJars dies with you.
- It Is Beyond Saving: As far as your mentor Caradoc is concerned, the death of Avalon itself would be a boon to mortalkind.
- Knight Templar: Sir Galahad 'The Pure' has a very dim view of peasants and barbarians, and enjoys burning them alive.
- Arthur himself wants to save Avalon - and he won't take 'no' for an answer.
- Our Fairies Are Different: The Fore-Dwellers. They were a race of one-eyed giants who gained mastery over magic itself, and maintained the Background Magic Field that once covered all of Avalon. They were mostly wiped out by the invading forces of Kamalot, and the few surivivors are slaves to the Magitek they once created. They're little better than Kamalot; they enslaved their nature gods.
- Powers as Programs: Your magic comes in the form of scrolls. Equip the scrolls, equip new magic. Lose the scrolls, however, and you can't use that magic.
- The Plague: The Red Plague is lethal - and sometimes turns the victims into zombies.
- Time Master: The player character, as a result of merging with a lost spirit, gains a limited power to slow time around them. This isn't typical magic, as it refills by earning kills.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Your patron spirit? He's Arthur Pendragon.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: Ionia murders the sleazy con-artist who fleeced and betrayed her mother, only to discover she feels hollow. She notes that her mother was miserable long before her backstabbing boyfriend came into the picture, and she just killed one of the few people who helped her feel happiness. Still, the emptiness means that the inner anger powering her corruption is gone and she can finally get on the road to recovery.
