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Exmortis

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As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

On Newgrounds, Exmortis was once hailed as "the scariest game ever made." Turns out there's good reason for this.

    Exmortis 
  • The intro for the first game displays the opening titles on a plain brown background with splattered blood, with only a Heartbeat Soundtrack and the sounds of the wind blowing in the background to accompany them... until the bloody bodies leap out at you, accompanied by a scream.
  • As soon as you enter the house, it's clear that something is amiss. The door seemingly locks behind you and there's a faint, unintelligible whisper at the entrance, while the interior of the house is concealed by darkness.
  • The discovery of each body (or body part) is followed by a Scare Chord. To say nothing of the bodies themselves:
    • In the attic, there's a torso strung up by its arms, its lower half torn away and nowhere to be found. The narration states that it's bad enough to make the player character retch at the sight of it. Apparently the blood stained the ceiling in the bedroom, as there's a huge bloodstain on the ceiling that the narrator questions how it got there.
    • A fresh human heart is found in the safe, next to the Book of Exmortis.
    • In the library/study room, which is already one of the darkest and most unsettling areas of the game, there's a severed arm, casually propped up on a table. "This house is turning out to be a graveyard," indeed.
    • The most apparently recent kill is a man who was decapitated, his head left inside a microwave with one of the five marks of Vlaew painted on his forehead in blood. What makes this one stand out from the rest of them is not only the image that flashes before your eyes, but also protagonist's realization that it's a fresh kill, and that the murderer must be nearby.
  • The Book of Exmortis itself. While unlike its namesake, it appears to be bound in non-human leather, and the revelations contained within are no less disturbing. It reveals that life on Earth as we know it today only emerged following an eons-long war between a race of omnipotent demon lords and their legions, who craved each others' dominion and whose war was so long and bloody that it literally stained the sky red. Once humankind emerged, they managed to overthrow the last of the demons and claim the planet as the dominant species, but this did not stop some from worshiping these entities and creating a rite by which they may one day return and usher in The End of the World as We Know It. In fact, the translation of this rite from Aramaic to English — or simply even reading it — was enough to grant the demons of the Exmortis some foothold into one's world, as we get to see of Xavier Rehayem and from the author of the diary. And after they've made themselves comfortable in your life, they will absolutely not let go, and will spend every hour of your existence tormenting you until you submit to their will.
  • After obtaining a key in the bloodsoaked bathroom upstairs, the player character ventures back down into the dark hallway, where he's confronted by a demonic apparition (or a hallucination, as he thinks) that emits a distorted and incoherent noise while twitching its head rapidly, Jacob's Ladder style. Then, following that, you can click on the portrait hanging on the wall, revealing the shape of an inverted pentagram, and for a split second, you'll see an image of a ghost.
  • The diary, which can be found on a coffee table near a couple of bloodstained chairs. It starts out with a hunter finding the same house you're in, growing obsessed with it, leading to nightmares, and trying to research the house's previous tenants. He finds the Book of Exmortis, and after reading the Rite of Charging the Hand, is tormented by Vlaew and his legion to the point of madness for over a year, until he caves and decides to become the Hand of Exmortis, murdering five campers nearby slasher movie-style and planning to willingly unleash the Exmortis upon the world.
  • Xavier's diary is both this and a Tear Jerker. It details how, after losing his wife to a fatal illness, he moved to a house in the woods with his daughter, Gwen, where he discovered and translated the Book of Exmortis into English, including the aforementioned Rite of Charging the Hand. After its translation, he's tormented by the Exmortis, who possess Gwen and make her almost unrecognizable as his daughter. Eventually, she briefly breaks free and begs him not to let them take her again, and he murders her in her sleep to free her from the demon legion torturing her soul.
  • When you try to enter the cellar, you'll be unable to enter, with demonic voices whispering harshly:
    ''YOU MUST FIRST REMEMBER. ONLY THEN SHALL YOU PASS.
  • The encounter with Gwen Rehayem. You'll hear sobs outside her bedroom, which was once inaccessible but has recently become ajar. When you go inside, you'll see her ghost standing by her bed, which — even a century after her death — is still stained with fresh blood. Upon clicking on her, she will stretch her mouth open and scream as the player character falls unconscious... only to be awakened by a deep voice.
  • The encounter with the killer. When finally allowed to pass through the cellar, you can travel in the tunnels in search for an exit. You then hear someone shout "I'll kill you, you son of a bitch!" and rush at you with a knife. Unless you use the fire axe at him at the right time, you'll be his final victim. And after you kill him by cutting off his head? A bloody symbol appears on his forehead. Turns out he wasn't the killer after all. You were.
  • The endgame.
    • In the primary ending, after killing the last of the campers and discovering that you're the man who wrote the diary, you submit to Vlaew's will and complete the ritual to become the Hand of Exmortis, while the incantation is recited in a garbled Voice of the Legion. Upon its completion, figures resembling rotting corpses flash on the screen, and the credits roll, showing a montage of newspapers revealing the horrible consequences of the player character's actions.
    • The alternate ending isn't a whole lot better. Instead of completing the ritual, you'll flee, which angers Vlaew, who sends the Exmortis after him. You have to be fast and run through the tunnels, or else you'll be dragged off to your death by unseen demons. Once you escape, you'll be back in the woods, seemingly safe and ready to return to civilization. Just when all seems well and you click the end of the pathway to get out of the woods, a figure pops up in front of you and screams, knocking you unconscious and back at square one, outside the house. The implication being that you'll be forced relive the events in an infinite loop until you submit and unleash the Exmortis upon the Earth Realm.

    Exmortis 2 
  • The main menu shows what seems to be a dead body (or more likely, one of the Exmortis, as the same figure had been seen at the end of the previous game) with its eyes closed. As if that wasn't bad enough — and if the opening titles of the first game startled you — things get worse here as soon as you press play. The "corpse" opens its eyes and screams. Then the opening titles roll, where you can hear a distorted radio broadcast revealing that since the last game, the Exmortis had been ravaging the planet, slaughtering all in their path. The radio broadcast is slowly faded out and replaced by a woman screaming in pure agony and terror, likely about to suffer the Cruel and Unusual Death the Exmortis are about to inflict on her.
  • We get to see just what's become of the world after the Exmortis swept through. The sky is once again stained red with the blood shed during the Ancient Dominion War, and the Earth has become a barren wasteland, without a single blade of grass to be seen, and millions of corpses of humans and animals alike strewn across the plains. For all intents and purposes, the world from before is gone, and the Exmortis make their presence known by encroaching clouds followed by hideous shrieks. This is best demonstrated when, at the end of the first chapter, you die from waiting too long and letting the clouds cover the sky. A dark figure can be seen on one of the hills in the background, which then disappears... only to leap out at you. It appears as a rotting corpse with no lower jaw or arms, and it screams at you, "YOU WILL DIE!"
  • Our first real introduction to Mr. Hannay's then-unknown benefactor. He's initially completely invisible, but leaves behind bloody footprints as he makes his way to the confessional. When Mr. Hannay goes to the adjacent booth, he speaks to the entity, who is clearly not human, given the sound of his voice, and when he goes to the opposite booth, he can smell the horrible stench it left behind.
  • Speaking of the confessional, the parchment left behind details the prophecy of the Hand of Exmortis, along with the process of assuming its mantle, which sounds deeply unpleasant, to say the least. It's really no wonder the player character of the previous game suddenly had second thoughts.
    My soul ripped from my shell was flattened and became a pathway. It became a link between the ancient world and my reality.
  • The diary in this game, unlike the previous one, is much more of a slow burn and actually gives some insight into the characterization of both its author and his family. It starts out only vaguely unsettling, with strange occurrences taking place around Lochear Fields Ranch, while there's an apocalypse going on in the outside world, with marauding demon hordes roaming the nearby towns — and soon the planet — on a violent and bloody conquest of genocide, and the diary's author slowly loses his sanity, ultimately killing his entire family to save them from being butchered by the hordes of Exmortis, then kills himself.
  • In one room in the downstairs area, you get to see what became of the home owner's brother-in-law: he's been strung up by a noose — whether by the Exmortis or by his own hand is unclear — and he's had his eyes, heart, and limbs forcefully torn off, his mutilated corpse swinging almost effortlessly from the beam.
  • Upstairs isn't much better. First, you encounter a ghost, who later turns out to be none other than Xavier Rehayem. He's not too happy with your presence, ordering you to "get out" before causing all the doors to slam shut. Then you get to visit each room, each of which has an unpleasant surprise hiding behind it.
    • In the first room on the right, the corpse of a naked woman can be found with a giant hole in her chest. This also happens to be the room containing the game's obligatory Apocalyptic Log. From the suicide note found later, it turns out that the man had sex with her the night before, and killed her the following morning.
    • Speaking of the diary, the whole thing is a masterclass in slow-burn horror at its finest. Unlike the diary in the first game, it takes its time, building up its author's personality and his interactions with his family, but with some very strange happenings going on around the farm, until the Exmortis begin plaguing the countryside and, soon after, the rest of the world, until survival and protecting his family has become his sole priority while his sanity slowly deteriorates as the plague of demons destroy everything in their path and make their way back around to finish off the survivors of the towns and cities they've ravaged. By the time we find the author, he's dead by his own hand, after murdering his family to spare them the agonizing death the Exmortis would undoubtedly inflict on them.
    • In another room, you see an apparition of a little girl staring out her window at the vast emptiness outside, and her blood splatters on the window and she disappears. According to the diary, this was Claire, who had been despondent for quite some time, even prior to the invasion of the Exmortis. She'd apparently been seeing the ghost of Xavier in her room before having to change rooms because he kept frightening her. According to her father's suicide note, she continued to stare out the window as he shot her. The room's last use was for the diary's author to hang up a corkboard, where he pinned articles about the Exmortis, each of which showcase just how unstoppable they seem.
    • The bathroom is a textbook case of Nothing Is Scarier. Upon entry, ominous droning music plays, and there's a trail of blood leading to the bathtub which, if you open the curtain, you'll find exactly what you were expecting. The suicide note reveals that she suffered the most out of his family: he sent her to wash her hands and, while she had her back turned, he shot her, but found she was still alive, so he dragged her to the tub and shot her again.
    • Finally, there's the children's bedroom. The three children's bodies lay there, covered with a bloodstained sheet.
  • When you find a lighter to make your way through the ventilation duct, a woman with a disfigured face will jump out at you when you ignite the lighter.
  • The radio in the basement. There's only two functioning channels: first is the sound of someone on the run from the Exmortis, followed by bestial growls and his screams as he's ripped apart. Second is a familiar demonic voice speaking backwards. Not too scary by itself, but when you reverse the message, it says:
    Pitiful mortals of the Earth Realm, you have been chosen for extinction. Step in line. Resistance is futile. Your destruction at the hands of Exmortis is inevitable. Death. Destruction.
  • The return to the temple below the basement from the first game. While for the most part, a prime example of Nothing Is Scarier in the first game, here, it's strewn with gore and dozens of mutilated, naked corpses, and the Hand of Exmortis is at the end of the tunnel. Rather than the godlike harbinger of doom he'd imagined he would become, he has been reduced to a screaming, howling creature floating in mid-air, endlessly spawning demons who crawl on the walls and will rip your face off if you don't shoot them on sight. Luckily, you're given the means to destroy him and finally put him out of his misery.
  • Just when you think Mr. Hannay has saved the world and is free to leave, he encounters the same entity from the church, who initially congratulates him on a job well done, but ultimately reveals himself to be none other than Lord Vlaew, and asserts his plans to claim the world for himself, ushering in a new era of suffering for all life. And as a reward for his help, he kills Mr. Hannay.

    Exmortis III 

  • Mr. Hannay reemerges back into the world he once knew, but during all the time he's been gone, things have not gotten any better, even with the Exmortis banished forever. The Earth Realm is still a wasteland, with cities reduced to rubble during the initial rampages. Humans are just barely scraping by. Many have chosen to join Vlaew and contribute to the oppression of their own kind, punishing any displays of rebellion with torture and mutilation rivaling that of their demonic predecessors. All other species suffer, as well, with one document describing an encounter with a feral dog that the writer had to scare off with a gunshot to protect himself from being mauled.
  • The prologue catches us up to speed, both where Mr. Hannay had been and how he acquired his powers, and it's not pretty.
    • Between the second and third games, Mr. Hannay had been wandering through a seemingly endless, red limbo, strewn with nothing but rocks and clouds, only able to transport himself to areas that look just like it and seemingly unable to reach land. Through sheer luck, he does eventually manage to find solid ground, but there's a couple of dire implications behind this: first, according to the Apocalyptic Log found in the apartment, it'd been six years since the Exmortis came through. Who knows just what horrors humanity has endured within that time? Second, this is, in all probability, the only afterlife that exists. No fluffy clouds or beautiful gardens, nor even a place of torment and suffering, just endless wandering through a lifeless landscape. The genesis of the Earth Realm may have been grim, but this places the Exmortis games in a near Cosmic Horror Story.
    • Mr. Hannay discovers the fate of Azrael, the last survivor of the Ancient Dominion War beside his brother, Vlaew. Contrary to popular belief, Azrael was not killed when Vlaew deposed him. Instead, he was banished to a pocket dimension within the limbo that Mr. Hannay had been wandering through to be tortured for all eternity so that Vlaew can keep his power. He's seen constantly writhing each time he is struck with electricity by one of his chains. Keep in mind, he's been here since before time and life as we know it began. It's really no wonder he begged Mr. Hannay to kill him after transferring his powers to him.
  • In the ruins of Broughton City, Mr. Hannay stumbles upon a gutted building with a boiler in the middle and a furnace behind it. Whatever the building had been used for prior to the world's ending is left unclear, but the furnace is stacked with charred, blackened skulls. Just what exactly went on here?
  • The discovery of a nuclear bomb in the apartments. Mr. Hannay reacts with panic upon seeing it, trying frantically to find the right buttons to defuse it, failing each time, and fleeing when his efforts prove fruitless.
  • The subway level. A cannibalistic survivalist has taken up residence there, and left plenty of half-eaten, mutilated corpses in his wake to show for it, along with a few death traps that, if you're not careful, you could end up the victim of one of them, whether you get shot by a crossbow hidden behind a bathroom stall or skewered when you fall into a pit beneath the scavenger's lair. Also, you've now got the attention of the Reader, a demon appointed by Vlaew whose specialty is mentally breaking his subjects by exploiting their mental trauma.
    • On that note, the scavenger himself. He's a thin man with a fondness for knives who resides in a room in the subway filled with the hacked up body parts of several of his victims. When you talk to him, he proudly admits to having abandoned his humanity to survive following the death of his family, and clearly enjoys making his victims suffer.
    • The encounters with the Reader. First, Mr. Hannay finds his daughter in a hallway, and upon closer examination, she vanishes and a bunch of hooks are swinging from ropes and there's a huge demonic eye at the end of the hall. The next you see him is in one of the bathrooms, where the light flickers a few times after you switch it on, and then he appears in the mirror, his mouth gaping wide as if in a scream, then vanishes after the mirror cracks.
  • Upon infiltrating the Resistance's base, Mr. Hannay finds himself in a booby-trapped room where he is gassed and falls unconscious... awakening in front of his house, back when the Exmortis invaded. He enters the house and it's become a hellish mockery of itself. In one room, there's a pair of ghoulish figures trapped inside gibbets. After the puzzle is solved, they'll start twitching. Once both puzzles are completed, the house tears itself apart, revealing a roaring Big Red Devil behind a pile of skulls. The house reassembles itself, and Mr. Hannay is faced once more with the Reader, who gives him the option to have either his wife or his daughter returned to him in exchange for abandoning his quest to destroy Vlaew. If no other option besides skewering the Reader with a curtain rod is chosen, then Mr. Hannay will end up leaving humanity to certain doom, with the strong implication that he would be trapped in a delusion.
  • After escaping from his trance, Mr. Hannay will find himself in a cell, where he's been laying catatonic for three whole days. Turns out that actually saved him, as he finds out when he escapes the cell and gets to see the Shadow Army's cruelty. Several soldiers lie impaled, beaten, dismembered, and eviscerated, and their heads can be found on pikes, as a warning that Vlaew has no tolerance for rebellion.
  • The Shadowlands. While the crimson limbo and Mr. Hannay's home in his hallucination may have been Eldritch Locations in part because they weren't truly corporeal, the Shadowlands are both a physical location but also utterly bizarre and unnatural. There's a bell tower and the decrepit, ominously-named Falls Church, beneath which lies a winding pathway to the citadel, which is watched over by guards in their sentry towers who will pick off anybody who tries to get close.
  • If you thought the Shadowlands were weird, just wait until you see Shadow Citadel. A tower that looks more like a natural rock formation from a distance, that nonetheless somehow is an amalgamation of places that you would not expect to see inside such a formation, including an elevator, an antechamber that resembles a hospital, and a hallway leading to the throne room. Satanic and demonic imagery is scattered throughout, from the golden goat head above the door to Vlaew's throne room to the chimeric statues, it's like it's trying to look normal, but can't quite pass off as such.
  • As is a tradition with this series, the ending is also disturbing, although perhaps less so than the previous two. Mr. Hannay has destroyed Vlaew and seemingly truly saved the world this time (maybe)... but to escape from the crumbling citadel, he has to jump through the portal that Vlaew opened. He does, and he's transported to eons back in time, where the Earth Realm is crawling with monsters of all shapes and sizes and the sky is still red. And unless Azrael was spared so he could keep the Ancient powers, there's no way Hannay is ever getting out of this alive.
  • Some of the dialogue options are their own variety of Nightmare Fuel, combined with Fridge Horror. Hannay, despite being the prophesied savior of the human race, can still show himself to be just as cruel as the demon lord he's trying to fight, and prone to abusing the Ancient powers bestowed upon him. Not only can he spare Azrael and leave him to be tortured to keep these powers, but when interrogating the scavenger, he can stick him with serrated knives, even after he's already given him all the information he needs, and then blow him up when he begs for his life. Luckily, we only see him using these powers against truly bad people who deserve it and demons who pose a threat to the safety of humanity in the long run, but one can't help but wonder if Vlaew may have been onto something when accusing Hannay of having totalitarian aspirations himself.

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