Video Game / Chzo Mythos

aka: Seven Days A Skeptic

"And wherever he found Man breaking or cutting or hurting the wood that was his Soul to be made into their constructions, he would strike down with great vengeance upon those who wronged him, and they would know the name of the King."

— Excerpt of "The Book of Victims", Trilby's Notes

The Chzo Mythos, also known as the John DeFoe Tetralogy or the Trilby Tetralogy, are a series of horror-themed freeware adventure games by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. Yes, that one. First released in 2003, the first game follows a Gentleman Thief named Trilby as he tries to burgle an old country manor, only to end up trapped inside with a bunch of other people and a lurking, homicidal being. The following games jump around in space and time (though Trilby shows up again), but all end up having some link to the secret of DeFoe Manor.

The four games are, in order of creation, 5 Days A Stranger, 7 Days A Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days A Sacrifice (in chronological order of events: 5 Days, Notes, 6 Days, 7 Days, though it makes more sense if you play 7 Days before 6 Days). There is also a tie-in game titled Trilby: The Art of Theft, which shares the hero and Player Character with half of the other games, but isn't connected to any of them with regard to subject matter. Trilby and Chzo also feature in the (mostly unrelated) Lovecraftian Survival Horror game The Consuming Shadow, the former as the supervisor and main contact at the Ministry, and the latter as one of the possible Ancients.

Some Interactive Fiction by the name of the Countdown Trilogy and a tie-in short story called The Expedition, which expands upon the background of the universe and some of the lesser, yet still important, events within the storyline also exists.

With their old-school graphics, the games nevertheless manage to be surprisingly suspenseful. Can be found here, along with some of Yahtzee's other games. Special editions with useful author commentary, extra scenes and some other stuff were formerly available as donationware, but are free to download now.

---

The games use it hurts it hurts it hurts:

• Absent-Minded Professor: Abed Chahal is one of these. Trilby pretty cleverly uses this to convince Abed that they were already acquaintances.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade:
  • The Welder's machete. Weapon aficionados would know better that machetes can't go through muscle, bone and sinew THAT easily. Would be justified considering who wields it, until you realize that said being is also a Body Surfer, so some host's limitations should be in effect.
  • Cabadath's staff. According to what Yahtzee's design and fanarts renditions of him (accepted and approved by the author, as well) would describe, the staff was supposed to come out as four, short-bladed scythes mashed into one misleading package◊. Note that Cabadath is just as willing to use the tip as the blades!
• Abusive Parents: Sir Roderick DeFoe chained his disabled son to a wall in his basement for the boy's entire life.
• Action Survivor: While Trilby is a straight up action hero in 5 Days A Stranger, his return in Trilby's Notes dials back his skill and his courage to the point that he becomes closer to this trope. Somerset in 7 Days A Skeptic and Theo DaCabe in 6 Days A Sacrifice fit even better, being people with no fighting skills out of their depth against an enemy they know nothing about.
• All There in the Script: Trilby's true name, Malcolm was never revealed in any of the games, but is revealed in the commentary of 7 Days.
• Almighty Idiot:
  • John DeFoe. Chzo's influence leaves him with a warped and destroyed mind even from birth.
  • It's implied by a tie-in short story that Chzo is actually barely-sentient, acting purely on instinct - it's just that the sheer magnitude of its magic power causes those instincts to manifest as clever-looking schemes in the outside world.
• Anachronism Stew: 5 Days makes references to Big Brother. The problem with that is 5 Days is later revealed to have taken place in 1993 while Big Brother debuted in 2000.
• And I Must Scream
  • The Trilby clone, and in a way, Theo DaCabe, and Cabadath.
  • The unfortunate soldier from The Expedition deserves a special mention. Mainly because he fleshes out just what horrible fate awaits Chzo's prisoners. By carving it into the walls of his cell with a sharpened button before moving on to his own flesh.
  • Chzo is suggested to be this. He's the Last of His Kind, he's immortal but can't move or exist outside of a certain area, and all he can do is feel and cause pain.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: At the end of 6 Days A Sacrifice, the hero, Theo DaCabe, is turned into yet another one of Chzo's weird-ass minions.
• Apathy Killed the Cat:
  • Nobody bothers checking why Malcolm looks a lot younger than a 65 year old.
  • At the beginning of the game, when they're considering the possibility of first contact, Angela mentions hoping not, her only justification? That they'd have to update the records.
• Anyone Can Die: Anyone who isn't Chzo or the player character is liable to die at any point in a game, and even said player characters may die in the epilogue or a later game. 5 Days A Stranger has the best survival rate, but those survivors then face further misfortune when some return in Trilby's Notes.
• Apocalyptic Log: The text parser and narration of Trilby's Notes is intended to be interpreted as Trilby writing down a report of the incident. The Expedition qualifies as well, as do the diary entries Trilby finds in the dark hotel.
• Arc Welding: The first two games are relatively standalone, but Trilby's Notes added significance to the "July 28th" date which caused them to retroactively fit into a bigger narrative than what had started.
• Arc Words:
  • "... and X knew the Name of the King".
  • it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
  • Also an arc date: Most of the important events in the timeline occur on July 28th, as that's the one day of the year Chzo can look in on the world of Technology, and the Tall Man can travel to it to exact vengeance on those who harm the wood of his soul.
• Artifact Title: The characterization of the Player Character of 7 Days A Skeptic changed drastically from its initial conception. As a result, the character is quite possibly the least skeptical character on the ship, making the title a bit of a misnomer.
• Artistic License – Medicine: Sir Clarence's apparent murder-suicide is disputed by his lawyer, who says "The last I saw Sir Clarence he was infinitely content. He would have never committed such an act. Plus there was no suicide note". None of this evidence rules out a suicide at all. It's very common for people who are having suicidal thoughts to put on a happy facade in order to not hurt the people around them, out of shame, or out of fear they may be prevented from ending their life. In addition, many people who decide to attempt suicide experience a sudden genuine improvement in mood, as they feel that they have an escape and their unhappiness may finally come to an end. Also, less than half of real life suicides are accompanied by a note.
• Artistic License – Physics: Most notably the gravity issue in 7 Days, in which player are able to walk around normally on the floor of a spaceship in deep space.
• Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Malcolm Somerset, after becoming the Caretaker. Now he exists as an agent of destiny beyond the concept of linear time.
• Asshole Victim: Theo's first victim as The New Prince is The Arrogant Man, the former Prince.
• As You Know: In 7 Days, the captain explains quite a bit of ship protocol that your character should already know. Though it makes sense when you discover your character is pretending to be someone else.
• Awesome, yet Impractical: The four-bladed staff wielded by the Tall Man wouldn't be an effective weapon in real life, having four short blades on top arranged perpendicular to one another with the sharp edges facing upwards, thus making it ineffective as both a slashing or stabbing weapon. Justified in that he's the avatar for a god who feeds on suffering, and thus is more concerned with inflicting massive amounts of pain rather than simply killing. And, well, when its user can Flash Step, has Super-Strength and is an unkillable lich who cannot take damage by conventional means, he doesn't need a weapon for self-defense...
• Badass Normal: Trilby. Who else has pulled a rug out from under the Welder? Or kicked the Tall Man in the face?
• The Bad Guy Wins: Chzo ultimately gets what he wants: a new avatar to send into the world.
• Big Bad: In the first and second games, the main villain is the vengeful spirit of John DeFoe, while in the third game, the primary antagonist is the Tall Man. The last game has them as a Big Bad Duumvirate.
• Bittersweet Ending: At the end of the final installment, it eventually turns out that Chzo actually can't get into the non-magic universe, most of the Order of Blessed Agonies is put under police investigation after they nuked the English countryside, the Tall Man is killed or permanently incapacitated by his replacement, and John DeFoe is reduced to a mindless, bodiless soul trapped in an idol in space which we know will float around harmlessly for two centuries and eventually be destroyed for good (albeit after killing a handful more people, but it certainly could have gone a lot worse). Most of the threats to humanity are thus neutralised. The world survives, and we've seen that the human race is still doing pretty well a couple of centuries on, too. Trilby - the nearest thing the series has to a main hero - is mentioned to have lived long enough to die from old age and been immortalised as a figure of legend after a successful career. Malcolm Somerset eventually escapes his wrongful imprisonment and lives on as the immortal Caretaker. So far as we can tell, Jim and Siobhan from the previous games also lived out their natural lifespans without going insane (even although the last we'd heard from Jim he'd dropped out of school). But literally every other major character in the series gets murdered or worse. The last surviving Trilby clone gets tortured inside Chzo for some time before being put out of his misery. Theo DaCabe gets blown up and brainwashed into the New Prince. And there's still one big threat out there in the form of the New Prince, who can move between the worlds and wants nothing more that to keep Chzo - a being that lives on the pain of others - alive.
• Black Dude Dies First: Barry in 7 Days A Skeptic. Doubles as Retirony.
• Black Magic: Subverted, since you're required to use it to get a relatively happy ending in 5 Days, and nobody goes insane from using it.
• The Blank: The Tall Man, a being which has no face.
• Break the Haughty: What Chzo intended when it turned Cabadath into the Tall Man. Since Cabadath's soul was sealed within a tree, and years of torture, both by insanity from having a soul sealed in a tree, and the wood being cut and used for several other things, it's safe to say that it succeeded. Especially with how Cabadath went from looking like an old man, to a tall, skinny blank.
• Breather Episode: The humorous short novel Trilby and the ghost.
• Brick Joke: At the beginning of 5 Days, Trilby, wearing a three piece suit along with a smooth, featureless mask, runs into AJ, an intelligence agent for the Ministry of Occultism, upon breaking into the manor. AJ seems to recognize him and flees, later to be found dead in the swimming pool. In Trilby's Notes, we are introduced to the Tall Man, who is wearing a black trenchcoat and ruffled shirt and has a smooth, grey, featureless face.
• Cannibal Larder: Once the protagonist gains access to Taylor's room in 7 Days, he discovers that it's an abattoir filled with the mutilated parts of the other crewmembers. Not a straight example of this trope, as the other crewmembers haven't been butchered to be eaten: instead, Taylor is using them to construct a new body for John DeFoe.
• Catapult Nightmare: The protagonist wakes and suddenly jumps up about three times in 5 Days A Stranger, twice in 7 Days A Skeptic, and is scripted to happen twice in 6 Days A Sacrifice, but it also happens if you die — your death inexplicably becomes a dream, and you just wake up quickly in your bed with a minor scare note.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Played straight and literally in 5 Days, in which a gun on the wall (one of the first things the player is likely to see and try to pick up) turns out to be part of the final puzzle.
  • In 6 Days A Sacrifice, talk to the cultist and ask him about the Order. Read closely when they're talking about the three Blessed Agonies - and realize your character goes through all three of them during the span of the game.
  • The radio masts in 7 Days.
• Church of Happyology: Optimology, which is a front for the Chzo-worshiping Order of Blessed Agonies to boot.
• Closed Circle: All the games have some form of it, isolating the cast from outside help. Trilby's Notes has a literal one, where walking to one side only returns you where you started.
• Coat, Hat, Mask: Trilby, in 5 Days. He only wears the mask until you leave the first room, but retains the coat and hat for the entire game.
• Coincidental Broadcast: In 5 Days, Trilby can turn on the television just in time to see a news segment about the mansion he is trapped in.
• Continuity Nod:
  • One of the more subtle instances occurs when Trilby opens the safe in Trilby's Notes. Finding it empty, he comments "Just for once I'd like to open a safe that contains something" - a nod back to 5 Days, where the safe he opened was also empty.
  • Pretty much all characters across the series who share a surname are related. Yahtzee once described it as a descendant fetish.
  • Actively a plot point in 6 Days since Samantha Harty's death triggers the memory of Philip Harty's death from 5 Days, which is the key to getting the Trilby clone to cooperate with you.
• Contrived Coincidence: In Notes. During one of the flashbacks Trilby notices crates labelled O'Malley Shipping, and earlier in the game he meets a woman named O'Malley, and, by coincidence, they happen to be in the same family line.
• Controllable Helplessness: In the climax of Trilby's Notes, Trilby is unable to move, only alive by his own resolve, and being used for a summoning ritual. The solution is to enter the command "die" in the text parser and deprive the cult of a living sacrifice.
• The Corpse Stops Here: In both 5 Days and 7 Days the player character is suspected at one point of being the killer. However in the latter case, 6 Days suggests that the character did in fact carry out the murders, having been possessed by the Welder.
• Cosmic Horror Reveal: The saga does this at the midway point: The first two games were straight slasher horror stories with the single central antagonist, but starting with Trilby's Notes the series' focus shifts to the Cosmic Horror possessing the previous games' antagonist, the titular elemental god of pain. (This is because Yahtzee was making up more story elements as he went along.)
• Cosmic Horror Story: The last two games belong to this genre, with a pain god from another dimension being introduced as the Greater-Scope Villain.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: CPR does not help stab wounds! Unless you're given the replacement life force of your clone from the future.
• Cruel Twist Ending: The end of 7 Days. "Dr Jonathan Somerset", the Player Character, turns out to be an impostor who killed the real Dr Somerset (who we later discover is his own father) and was using his identity. Oh, and he gets arrested for 6 murders, out of which he committed only 1 (maybe).
• Dark World: Trilby's Notes has this as a game mechanic, with Trilby moving between the normal world and a horrific reflection of it in the Ethereal Realm. 6 Days has something similar, but the shift is gradual and irreversible.
• Dead Guy Puppet: A horrific version occurs at the end of Trilby's Notes when Lenkmann is killed and basically turned into a literal mouthpiece for Cabadath to communicate with. His corpse is last seen in 6 Days, as Cabadath doesn't need it anymore.
• Death as Game Mechanic: In Trilby's Notes the "die" command, normally just a Press X to Die feature, must be entered during the final scene of gameplay right when a mortally-wounded Trilby is about to be sacrificed in a ritual, which foils the villain's plan because the ritual requires the sacrifice to be alive. The game will also warn you with a "Not yet" if you enter the command too early in the scene, hinting that you must do so later.
• Death by Origin Story: Sir Roderick DeFoe, Matthew's father, who was murdered by his other son, John DeFoe.
• Death Equals Redemption:
  • Happens to William at the end of 7 Days
  • Also to Malcolm in 6 Days, though neither the "guilt" part nor the "death" one are straightforward.
• Death Is the Only Option: At the end of Trilby's Notes, the villain needs Trilby alive in order to complete his ritual. Fortunately, Trilby is already fatally wounded by this point, and you can simply type "die" to thwart the villain's plans. Even more fortunately, Trilby is subsequently revived by a mysterious benefactor.
• Demonic Possession: The vengeful spirit of John DeFoe can possess anyone who touches the African idol that was used to kill him with their bare hands.
• Depraved Homosexual: Jack Frehorn, though notable in that his depravity only began when he was tricked into murdering his lover, Wilbur.
• Deus ex Machina:
  • Frehorn's blade and by extension, The Caretaker Malcolm.
  • Trilby's car in 5 Days.
• Disney Villain Death: The New Prince inflicts this upon his predecessor, Cabadath.
• Distant Sequel: This happens twice.
  • 5 Days A Stranger takes place in the 1990s, ending with the death of multiple characters and the assumed defeat of John DeFoe. 7 Days A Skeptic takes place in 2385, aboard a spaceship, with only loose connections to the original game — otherwise, it's a new cast of characters being terrorized, once again, by John DeFoe.
  • Trilby's Notes is set only a few years after the events of 5 Days, bringing the series back to a focused, overarching plot. Although 6 Days A Sacrifice follows this overarching plot trend, and even adds some meaning to the events of 7 Days, it also takes place in 2189.
• Downer Ending: 7 Days has one. After killing the mixmatched body, Malcolm is arrested for six murders, only one of which he actually committed. Possibly averted in 6 Days, which implies that he may have committed the murders while possessed.
• The Dragon:
  • Cabadath, The Prince. Followed by the New Prince
  • Dragon with an Agenda: The Prince spends the entire series futilely trying to keep Chzo from replacing him. Ironically enough, the Prince's defiance of Chzo's will turns out to be the key factor in Chzo's final decision to replace him.
• Dream Sequence:
  • Several occur in 5 Days, mostly involving Trilby murdering everyone in the mansion.
  • Every time you "die" in 6 Days, the game cuts to Theo waking up. Granted, he is chosen by two different parties (with access to Reality Warper powers) to die in a very specific way, so death by any other form cannot go through.
• Dual-World Gameplay: Going between a real world and a Dark World is used in Trilby's Notes. The player can switch at will for most of the game and many doors can only be opened by unlocking them in the world.
• Eldritch Abomination: Chzo, a pain elemental from another dimension that causes most mortals to go insane just from interacting with him.
• Easter Egg: Try playing and completing the games on Yahtzee's birthday, May 24th.
• Empty Room Psych:
  • The recreational room in 7 Days, which serves no useful purpose.
  • The entire first floor of hotel rooms in Trilby's Notes. There is never any reason to go there, as none of the characters are staying in rooms on that floor.
• Enclosed Space: All the games take place almost entirely inside a single structure. It's perhaps creepiest in Trilby's Notes, as while you can go outside, all roads lead back to the hotel.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Everything started when a druid named Cabadath made the unbelievably stupid decision to summon Chzo to the Realm of Technology so that he could use Chzo to destroy his enemies.
• Expendable Clone: In 6 Days a Sacrifice Theo must enlist the aid of three Trilby clones to explore (the vision of) the DeFoe Manor. Every time Theo enters any room other than the foyer, the Tall Man will appear and break a Trilby's neck. Entering those rooms without a Trilby will lead to Theo being killed, sending him back to his bed and forcing him to enter the Manor again. Opening the foyer entrance doors replenishes the Trilby clones and can be done as many times as you like until this part of the game is completed.
• Eye Scream: Happens to William on the final day of 7 Days.
• A Fate Worse Than Death: The name of the game for Cabadath, Theo, Trilby... At least Trilby eventually gets put out of his misery when the man in the red robe comes by and kills him. Also, it probably isn't really Trilby, but a clone - most likely the one that set fire to the remains of De Foe Manor inside the Hub. Probably.
  • Also the expedition members, including the narrator in "The Expedition".
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Happens three times in Chzo Mythos; chronologically, the first is Cabadath becoming the Prince, then John DeFoe, on his death, and finally Theo DaCabe becoming the New Prince.
• Gaiden Game: The Art of Theft. It has Trilby as the protagonist, but is a different genre than the other games (stealth-based platformer rather than adventure game), and the plot has nothing to do with the Chzo Mythos.
• Gambit Roulette: While it's unclear exactly how intentional it is, there is a great deal of information implying that Chzo is running a giant Gambit Roulette spanning hundreds of years and requiring three different generations of characters.
• Genetic Memory: The Trilby clones, to a degree. Their memories are only jogged by Cabadath and Samantha's ID card, respectively, and they clearly haven't inherited the original's abilities.
• Genre Shift: The series goes from fairly conventional (but good) horror, to SPACE horror, to Cosmic Horror. Trilby: The Art of Theft is a completely different type of game altogether, being a platformer/Stealth-Based Game.
• Gentleman Thief: Trilby. Given the reason for his moniker, he also counts as a Classic Hat Burglar.
• Gory Discretion Shot: In Trilby's Notes, we never see what the Tall Man does to Lenkmann, we just hear Lenkmann's terrified pleading, followed by a ripping noise.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The Ministry of Occultism. The Special Talent Project could be described as this, although Word of God states it is "hired out" to various government agencies. invoked
• Greater-Scope Villain: Chzo is the real villain in the series, but is rarely confronted or seen. The more direct threats are the Welder and the Tall Man.
• Happiness in Slavery: Some of Theo's dialogue after becoming the New Prince implies this.

(when examining Chzo) my king. protect him always.

• Hearing Voices: The soundtrack for the Dark Hotel in Trilby's Notes.
• Hell Hotel: The setting of Trilby's Notes, and that's just the normal hotel.
• Hilarious Outtakes: 7 Days offers some really funny ones.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The special edition of 6 Days reveals this to be the case with Cabadath/the Tall Man. Chzo's big plan was to replace him with someone superior, and he knew it. His final thought was likely that of poor John DeFoe, whose death (at the hands of a father who hated him and had another son he loved) he took advantage of: FATHER WHY
  • In the final scene of Trilby's Notes, Trilby asks Lenkmann why he thinks he can complete the ritual to summon the Tall Man before Trilby bleeds to death. Lenkmann responds by saying that a man like Trilby would only die on his own terms. A couple minutes later, Trilby does die on his own terms. Before the ritual is completed. As a result, Lenkmann is killed.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Delia Reneaux, the main character in the second part of Countdown series, is asked to kill her ex-boyfriend, Jason, in order to suffer the Blessed Agony of the Soul and become a fully accepted member of the Order of Blessed Agonies. This is literally the first action you're forced to perform in that episode, and Delia regrets it almost immediately.
• Improvised Imprisonment: In 5 Days a Stranger, Trilby is caught attacking someone and so is locked up in the shed with Simone as his guard. However, he has no memory of doing these things beyond a nightmare or two, and the player has to navigate some Dialogue Trees and successfully trick Simone into letting them go.
• It's Up to You:
  • In 7 Days A Skeptic, your role is supposedly ship's counselor and yet you end up running around doing everything, including tasks that should be someone else's responsibility. This is most glaringly apparent with Adam, the engineer, who seems to have no qualms at all in leaving someone far less qualified to take care of things he should be doing. Somewhat justified in that Adam was scared out of his wits.
  • In 6 Days A Sacrifice, you are sent to run around finding guns or looking for vital objects despite nursing some rather severe injuries following a nice little fall down an elevator shaft. Yahtzee both justifies and lampshades this in the 6 Days special edition commentary by pointing out how dull the game would be if the player character could only sit around doing nothing.
• The Killer in Me:
  • In 5 Days, Trilby gets possessed and ends up killing a fellow prisoner. There was foreshadowing earlier in the game.
  • Actively a plot point in 6 Days, as it foreshadows Theo DaCabe's eventual destiny.
• Kleptomaniac Hero:
  • Barely justified in 5 Days, because you expect a thief to steal things, but you can still only take things which are relevant to the plot, even in the early part where you'd think he'd at least grab anything of value while he was looking for the way out. Still justified though in that based on some of the comments made by Trilby, there isn't really anything worth stealing.
  • Lampshaded in Notes: if you tell him to steal a painting, he reminds you he's no longer a thief. He still has no problem stealing plot-relevant items, though.
• Left Hanging: How did Trilby's car end up in the backyard or Serena's hand go from a closed storage area, down a floor, through a grate, out a maintenace shaft, and into a food dispenser, while leaving sizable blood stains almost exclusively on the walls?
• Let the Past Burn: At the end of 5 Days A Stranger, the mansion as well as the recently re-animated body of the then-unnamed DeFoe child is burnt down, freeing those that had been trapped within. Except for AJ and Philip Harty, who were dead before the fire started.
• Locked Door: Quite frequent, and jammed glass windows as well.
• Look Behind You: Somerset warns Angela that the killer is behind her, and, believing Somerset to be the killer, she ignores him. He wasn't lying.
• Loophole Abuse: Being killed by Frehorn's Blade turns you into a powerful spirit, but also makes you subservient to the one who killed you. Theoretically, a loophole exists where you can kill yourself with the blade and become a powerful spirit subservient to yourself, thus eliminating the downside, but nobody has been brave enough to try it to see if it actually works. Until Malcolm Somerset, who becomes the Caretaker as a result.
• Madness Mantra: "it hurts", used by those who have been driven insane by Chzo.
• Maternal Death? Blame the Child!: Sir Roderick blames John for the death of his wife, causing him to lock him away for 15 years until he decides to end it by killing him.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Theo DaCabe's name, if rearranged, is phonetically very similar to Cabadath, aka The Tall Man, hinting at Theo's eventual fate as his replacement. What's more, his full name is Theodore, which mean "loved by God".
  • Plenty of meaningful surnames. It comes most into play in 6 Days as the combination of the name "Harty" and "dead" triggers a response in the Trilby clone you are trying to get on-side, but Yahtzee seems to be fond of descendants/ancestors: see Chahal (Barry in 7 Days, Abed in Notes) and Taylor (Simone in 5 Days, William in 7 Days). It is also implied in the SE commentary for Notes that the Somerset in Notes may be a long-distant ancestor of the Somerset in 7 Days - he reveals that he had originally planned to keep Owen Somerset alive, leading to a theme of "Somersets always survive", but changed his mind further down the line.
  • Cabadath is also known as "The Arrogant Man" in the Order's holy writings. Much of the plot is driven by the fact that he's trying to prevent his god from replacing him; efforts which, ultimately, are what cause said god to decide to replace him.
  • Lenkmann in Trilby's Notes: "link-man". At the start, this may seem to refer to his being Trilby's contact with the Ministry of Occultism. However, it turns out to refer to the fact that he's trying to recruit Trilby to the Order of Blessed Agonies. Also, Lenkmann in German means "steering man". Fittingly, he steers Trilby through his quest in the Clanbronwyn Hotel.
• Mercy Kill:
  • In 6 Days, the Caretaker does this to the Trilby clone. The purpose is not only to save the victim from an eternity of suffering, but also to take his life-force and use it to revive the real Trilby when he is dying at the end of Trilby's Notes.
  • When Chzo reached into the Realm of Technology and took Cabadath, Cabadath begged his friend Galdn to kill him. Galdn was terrified and ran, and Cabadath ended up in immortal slavery to Chzo.
• Mind Screw: 6 Days a Sacrifice, in its effort to tie together the previous three games, includes such bizarre events as a character suddenly reappearing after their on-screen death, multiple realities blending together, characters unexpectedly finding themselves in locations from the distant past or future, the protagonist Theo abruptly waking up in bed every time he dies, and a mystery man who appears out of thin air to discuss fate and refuses to give Theo a straight answer. The plot centers on Theo trying to make sense of everything that's happening, while trying to survive someone—or something—that's out to kill him and his allies.
• Mind Screwdriver: The 6 Days Special Edition's commentary and extra content explain Chzo and the Tall Man's behavior throughout the entire series, which is otherwise obtuse. Chzo's plan, which the Tall Man knew about and tried to thwart from at least Trilby's Notes onward, was simply to make a better prince. His own existence as the original Prince may have been part of the plan from the start.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Who names a space ship the Mephistopheles?
• Neck Snap: There's one in 7 Days which manages to transcend the graphics to be horrific purely on the merit of the sound effect. Necksnaps also show up in 6 Days, where the Tall Man uses this method to dispatch the Trilby Clones in the late stages of the game. His reason for doing so is because it's a relatively painless death. He's trying to operate under Chzo's radar by this point, and Chzo would be alerted to his actions if pain were involved.
• Never Given a Name: The wraith that haunts DeFoe Manor was never given a name in life, due to having been locked in the basement by his abusive father from the day he was born. The characters across the games, as a result, refer to him by a variety of names, with the most enduring being Trilby's "John DeFoe".
• No Name Given:
  • Trilby claims he doesn't have one anymore; trilby's the type of a hat he wears, and "as a name, it suffices". Yahtzee gives it away in the 7 Days SE commentary. Turns out his real name is the same as "John Somerset"'s.
  • Also, there's AJ, whose real name is never stated. The extra materials of the special edition of 6 Days confirm it's Andrew Jarvis.
• Non-Indicative Name: 7 Days A Skeptic is actually eight days long. Whoops. ^note Starts on Sunday, day one...then goes Monday (day two), Tuesday (day three), Wednesday (day four), Thursday (day five), Friday (day six), Saturday (day seven), then back to Sunday again for day eight. Yahtzee addressed this by stating that the first part of the game does not count as a day, since it does not have an intro like the others and should just be seen as a "Day 0". On top of that, the Player Character is the least skeptical one on the crew.
  • In addition, 6 Days A Sacrifice takes place over the course of five days. The sixth day (fifth chronologically) takes place 200 years in the future.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: In 6 Days, anything that would have given you a Game Over in previous games (i.e. any time you get caught by John DeFoe or DeFoe-possessed Janine) now instead has Theo simply wake up in the sleeping quarters, ready to pick up right from where you left off.
• No OSHA Compliance: The ship's escape pods in 7 Days take several hours of automated preparation to use. I'm going to repeat that. The devices which are intended to be used in case of dire emergency cannot be used until several hours after they're activated. While their ship, the Mephistopheles, is an old vessel by the game's age standards, so there's a lot of design flaws which John DeFoe's spirit uses against the crew in full effect, the fact that this was greenlit even by last year's code is really jarring.
  • Yahtzee addresses this in his playthrough, and says he probably should have just called it a shuttle.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Much of the tension in Trilby's Notes comes from just how empty and utterly silent the normal hotel is.
• Odd Name Out: Trilby's Notes, although it is different from the other three games in a few key ways.
• Old, Dark House: 5 Days A Stranger takes place in one.
• Parasol of Pain: Trilby's grapple hook/taser/umbrella - the grolly.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish":
  • The captain's override code in 7 Days a Skeptic is Barry's birthday. At least the game forces the player to do some digging to figure out just what day that is.
  • The code to open the safe in 6 Days a Sacrifice turns out to be the word "OPEN".
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Most of the crew in 7 Days rely on the counselor to do everything.
• Plot Hole: AJ's death in the first game happens before anyone touches the wooden idol. When asked how AJ died before the murders could conceivably have happened in Quovak's playthrough of the game, Yahtzee admitted that he didn't have any clue how or why it happened either. invoked
• Power Floats: The New Prince, Theo DaCabe, seems to float everywhere, despite the fact that his predecessor did no such thing.
• Press X to Die: At any point in Trilby's Notes, the player can enter the command "die" to have Trilby die immediately. Exploited in the endgame puzzle: with Trilby on the verge of death in a ritual that requires a living sacrifice, the player must enter the "die" command just as Trilby is about to be killed, causing him to let go of his last remaining thread and die, which thwarts the villain's plan.
• Psychometry: Trilby's Notes gives Trilby this power, allowing him to view the history of the Tall Man in service to Chzo by touching old artifacts. It seems to have been granted to him by Chzo itself as part of its plan.
• Pure Magic Being: Chzo. It can't even survive in our relatively mundane dimension.
• Put on a Bus: Jim, possibly literally - after Simone's death in Notes, Trilby advises him to go into hiding. This is the last we ever hear of him. Extra material states, however, that the Ministry of Occultism has placed interest in him and possibly will be a future member.
• Railing Kill: In 7 Days, the means of getting rid of the possessed starship captain.
• Random Event: The hallucinations in Trilby's Notes. Chances are you will run into at least one or two over the course of the game, but which ones and where you are when they happen are random: the game is coded so that every time you take a pill, there is a chance that a random hallucination will trigger two screens later. Granted, it is possible to take advantage of that fact by trying to trigger them on purpose, but chances are it'll take several pills and a lot of patience to trigger them all.
• Reality Warper: Malcolm Somerset as the Caretaker (but only on Destiny's orders). Also, the Tall Man and the Welder somewhat (given that he has no problem handing out oddly prophetic dreams).
• Recycled In SPACE: 7 Days A Skeptic is mostly 5 Days A Stranger inside a spaceship.
• Redemption Equals Death: Delia Reneaux again. She dies in a car crash at the end of Countdown 2, trying to escape from the cult.
• Religion of Evil: The Order of Blessed Agonies, whose members worship Chzo, a pain elemental.
• Retcon:
  • The DeFoe twins' birth was changed to a month later to match the July 28th significance.
  • The letter in 7 Days describes things very differently than how they happen in Trilby's Notes.
  • At the beginning, 5 Days and later 7 Days were going to be stand-alone games. When Yahtzee had the idea of Chzo, he had to work it out this way. 6 Days is basically a gigantic Retcon to put the whole series together.
• Retirony: 7 Days was to be Captain Barry Chahal's last mission before retirement.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: Theo DaCabe. Unlike his fellow protagonists, he's just an ordinary building inspector that happened to show up on the wrong day.
• Ridiculously Long-lived Family Name: Almost every character who has a last name has an ancestor or descendant (or both) in the form of another character. And in each and every case, these characters all share the same last name, despite being separated by up to five centuries.
• Room Full of Crazy: Trust Galdn to describe it - "Cabadath, what is this madness?"
• Rule of Three:
  • Notes gives us the trio of Body, Mind and Soul. The most obvious way this is used is with John DeFoe (the Bridgekeeper) but there are other more subtle uses of a Body/Mind/Soul trio that the "Special Edition" highlights. Firstly, the three main characters at the hotel form such a trio (Trilby as the Body, Abed as the Mind and Siobhan as the Soul). Secondly, the three pictures in the Dark World's bar (the Tall Man, blank and broken) sum up the three elements of the Prince. Finally, if you ask Lenkmann about the ritual after Trilby's been stabbed, he will offer the first explanation about the Blessed Agonies, with Trilby as Body, Lenkmann himself as the Mind and Siobhan sufficing for Soul mainly on account that no-one else is left.
  • 6 Days adds to the above with a Past/Present/Future trio and, specifically, how the two events in 5 Days (Past) and 7 Days (Future) created ripples across the timeline that collide in the Present in which 6 Days takes place (the colors used for the illustrations in the end credits for 6 Days reinforce this trio, with the 5 Days/Past pictures in red, the 6 Days/Present pictures in blue, and the 7 Days/Future pictures in green). It also expands a little more on the Blessed Agonies and in the Special Edition, Yahtzee suggests that Canning, Samantha and Janine were abandoned alive in order to provide Blessed Agonies to tempt Chzo.
  • Also features in 5 Days, though in less meaningful ways (at least at the time the game was made) - both with the body-finder device, which comprises of three components ( stick + string + possession belonging to the dead person in question), and in the final puzzle with the welding gear, knife, and remains of John DeFoe. There's also the fact that of the five in the house, three survive and it is only by bringing together all three that you can avoid getting killed by the now quasi-mortal DeFoe and get the true ending.
  • Indeed, John DeFoe's attire is, in itself, part of the Rule: a mask, an apron, and a knife.
  • Also, the series as a whole has three protagonists: Trilby, Malcolm Somerset and Theo DaCabe. The end of the credits in 6 Days shows three illustrations alongside the "The End" text, one for each of them.
• Sanity Slippage: In 6 Days A Sacrifice, as you go deeper and deeper into DeFoe Manor, the look-at-info of the doors changes. It goes from "I think it's a door, but I can't think straight. Being in this place feels like having huge weights on my head.", to "It's a... I think it's a... it hurts...", then to a simple "it hurts".
• San Dimas Time: The events of 5 Days A Stranger, 7 Days A Skeptic and 6 Days A Sacrifice all take place at once, despite being separated by several hundred years. This is explained as Chzo perceiving time as nonlinear, and the events of the games sending ripples throughout time.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Galdn does this Cabadath, but very politely, and with damn good reason. It's hard to blame him after seeing Chzo appear in the rift and grab Cabadath by the legs.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: 7 Days revolves around a locker found floating in space in a distant galaxy. For one, finding anything this small in an entire galaxy is so mind-bogglingly unlikely that it can only be expressed with large numbers of exponents. The locker was also launched several hundred years ago with no method of propulsion, somehow traveling millions of lightyears since then. Lampshaded when one of the crew notes the extreme unlikelihood that a small locker floating around for only 400 years would end up in a completely different galaxy. The contents of the locker being supernatural in nature may be the only real explanation.
• Secret Test of Character: The added dialogue in the special edition of 6 Days reveals that the entire series was a Secret Test of Character for Cabadath aka the Tall Man engineered by Chzo. He failed it.
• Sent Into Hiding: Roderick DeFoe left his mentally handicapped son John in a secret cellar behind the kitchen, often beating and neglecting him out of hatred for him "killing" his mother during birth. Not even his other son and John's twin brother, Matthew, knew about this for much of his life. When Matthew did find out, Roderick tried to convince him that there never was a boy behind the kitchen.
• Sex Signals Death: In 6 Days a Sacrifice Theo and Janine, tired and terrified by recent events, hop into bed together in the sleeping quarters and have sex. Shortly afterward, John DeFoe possesses Janine and attacks Theo, which leads to her death. When Theo encounters the Caretaker afterward, the latter tells Theo that Janine was "tainted" by their encounter, which "weakened her defenses" and allowed DeFoe to fully take over her mind.
• Shameful Source of Knowledge: There are a lot of culprits of this throughout the series but special mentions go to Adam in 7 Days, who chooses not to let anyone know about the letter in the locker warning of the dangers of keeping said locker and Samantha in 6 Days, who decides that preserving her integrity is far more important than explaining what she knows of the cult, the complex and in particular the Trilby clones.
• Shout-Out:
  • Given the many parallels between 7 Days and Event Horizon, William tearing out his own eyes seems like it may be a homage. Yahtzee confirms this in the walkthrough he made for the game.
  • A bloodthirsty, mute, masked person goes around killing anyone in earshot with a machete. Sure you don't remember anything familiar?
    • There are also shout outs to that movie in the first game, in the form of the player walking into some horrible situation only to realize it was a hallucination or dream.
    • In another shout-out to slasher movies, the music in 7 Days that plays after William dies and you have to fight John DeFoe on your own is strikingly similar to the main theme of Halloween (1978).
  • Somerset in 7 Days cites regulation code 1701.
  • Jim namedrops Treasure Island and Terry Pratchett in 5 Days. In his Let's Play, Quovak complains that there's no real significance to the Shout-Out, it's just there; Yahtzee admits that he never intended any deeper meaning, younger-him just thought it would be clever to drop it out of the blue, and were he making the game today he wouldn't have been quite so injudicious about it.
  • The ship scene in Trilby's Notes is an obvious parallel to the ship scene of Nosferatu.
  • The space ship in 7 Days is the Mephistopheles.
  • When Philip is called a thief, he retorts that he is a treasure hunter.
  • Shifting between the regular and horrifically distorted versions of reality in Trilby's Notes is a clear nod to Silent Hill.
  • The same game has several to Eternal Darkness: being plagued by random hallucinations meant to take you off guard, while exploring the influence of a great evil throughout history through the eyes of several people in different time periods. Said evil even has a Lich in his service in the form of the Tall Man, similar to Pius Augustus becoming an undead servant to the Ancients.
• Solve the Soup Cans: Some puzzles are definitely of this sort.
• Spare a Messenger: After a man cuts down his tree, the Tall Man kills him, but lets his son live to spread the word.
• Spear Carrier: The unnamed main character in Countdown 3.
• Stable Time Loop:
  • In 6 Days, a seemingly supernatural bald man in a red robe appears and helps the characters out. It is revealed that this character is none other than the Somerset from 7 Days, revealed to be the son of the real Dr Somerset, in a mental asylum for the 7 Days murders. He kills himself with a ritual knife, which ends up turning him into the bald robed man. After the ending scenes of 6 Days, taking place 196 years before 7 Days, he goes to urge his younger self to kill his father, thus triggering the events that got him thrown into jail in the first place.
  • In the Special Edition of Notes, the scene where Trilby is brought back to life is expanded on, with the Caretaker talking to a resistant Trilby and telling him he has no choice but to return, on account of the events that have already taken place in the future requiring Trilby to still be alive.
• Story to Gameplay Ratio: Although the games are very heavy on story, one instance where gameplay was prioritized over story is the "find the bodies" puzzle in 5 Days.
• Straw Vulcan:
  • The helmsman and first officer in 7 Days A Skeptic are indoctrinated in the ways of "logic", but it's more along the lines of an irrationally extreme version of Occam's Razor than logic. They refuse to even investigate any leads that don't have an obvious rational explanation.
  • The first officer then arrests the sole investigator on the grounds that it was "awfully suspicious" that he discovered all the bodies. She refuses to listen to him, even when she was given the "Look Behind You" warning just before her death. She had also ordered him to investigate.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome:
  • Simone survives the events of 5 Days, but a time capsule letter in the distant-future 7 Days reveals that the character was actually killed very shortly afterward. Trilby's Notes goes back and is set a few years after 5 Days, and its prologue/tutorial ends with the discovery of the character's body.
  • Also, to the great shock of the player, the very first puzzle of 6 Days results in the very gory death of an inexplicably present Trilby.
• Summoning Ritual: In the backstory, Cabadath performs one in an attempt to call Chzo into the human plane to fight off the Roman invaders. Trilby's Notes and 6 Days A Sacrifice have the plot culminate in two attempted rituals.
• Super-Strength: The Tall Man can, among other things, gut people alive with his bare hands.
• Ten Little Murder Victims: The premise of all four games, to a certain extent, but since they have the largest casts 5 Days A Stranger and 7 Days A Skeptic fit it best. In the former, you're locked in a manor; in the latter, you are on a spaceship, which obviously prevents you from leaving it, save adrift in a vacuum.
• That Was the Last Entry:
  • Both Roderick and Matthew DeFoe's diaries. Also the diary in Trilby's Notes, which ends with the Arc Words "it hurts."
  • Dying in Notes gets you a Non-Standard Game Over in this form.
• There Was a Door: Trying to climb through a window on the ground level from the backyard in 5 Days results in Trilby remarking that "[t]here's a perfectly serviceable door."
• The Metric System Is Here to Stay: Strangely Averted in 7 Days. At one point an object is described in Yards instead of Meters, despite the game taking place in the 24th century on a spaceship capable of intergalactic travel.
• Title Theme Drop: In 7 Days, the title theme returns at the start of the final day, where you are hiding in the maintenance shaft, the rest of the crew murdered save for the ship's doctor who on the previous day was all set to butcher you for body parts. It continues to play over the ensuing conversation between you and William, echoing the opening segment of the game.
• Token Minority: All the games bar 6 Days have at least one.
  • 5 Days: Simone is the only female in a cast of five
  • 7 Days: Barry Chahal is the only non-white character
  • Trilby's Notes: Abed Chahal is the only non-white present-time character. Siobhan is the only significant female character, past or present (all of the flashbacks are male-centric), though the hotel clerk is female and Simone features briefly, though never alive.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Imagine this: you're trapped on a spaceship with a psychotic murderer. Half the crew is dead. You've just gained access to the escape pods. What do you do? If your first guess is to have all the survivors go take a nap in separate rooms, you should be in this story.
  • Almost everybody in the series is Too Dumb to Live except Chzo. Most of them do end up dying or suffering a Fate Worse than Death.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Chzo can't actually even enter the Realm of Technology, or he would die.
• Tragic Monster: John DeFoe and Cabadath both. John was tortured and abused from day one. Cabadath made a mistake while trying to save his people from the Roman invaders.
• Two-Part Trilogy: Despite ostensibly being one continuous story, 5 Days A Stranger and 7 Days A Skeptic contain no references to either Chzo or Cabadath, and work well enough as a self-contained story. It's not until Trilby's Notes that the connections between these stories start revealing themselves.
• Undead Author: "The Expedition" has a particularly nasty example. The story is being told in the first person by the protagonist, which means that he's going to make it out of the Ethereal Realm no matter what else happens, right? Except it turns out that in the end he is trapped by Chzo, watching his fellow expedition members getting tortured, carving his story into the walls of his cell. And once he runs out of room there, he is so far gone from sanity that he keeps going on his own skin.
• Understatement: The intro to The Expedition. "Warning: LONG. Also not funny. One wonders why you'd want to read it at all. Oh well."
• Unusual Euphemism: "[They will know / They knew] the name of the King" is a recurring expression most often used when a character dies. Word of God states that it doesn't actually refer to death, but someone undergoing one of the "Blessed Agonies" required for initiation into The Order. It just so happens that "endure immense physical pain" is the most common one, which often results in their death immediately after.
• Unwitting Pawn: Everyone. Except Chzo, of course. And assuming the Almighty Idiot assessment in "The Expedition" is correct, Chzo may even be an unwitting mastermind.
• Villain Protagonist: Jack Frehorn is the protagonist of Countdown 1, showing how he becomes the prophet of the Order.
• Weight and Switch: The crux of the main puzzle in Countdown 2 - Frehorn's Blade is on a pedestal, and if you attempt to pick it up, Delia will notice the blade is on a weighted security stand and will back off. You need to acquire a similar-sized and weighted knife from the kitchen to replace it. This is once of the instances where the ploy actually works.
• Wham Line: In 7 Days A Skeptic: "Dr. Jonathan Somerset is 65 years old. More to the point, he's dead. He was killed six months ago by an unknown assailant. We only discovered last week that an individual was using his identity."
• White Magic: Several times in 5 Days A Stranger.
• Window Love: Used oddly in 6 Days A Sacrifice. DaCabe does the rare "through an opaque wall" variation, trying to reach Janine. She's actually inside the wall, dead.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form:
  • Try looking at the doors in DeFoe Manor in 6 Days A Sacrifice. This is actually a callback to two running gags - Trilby's issue with the doors in 5 Days, and the aforementioned Arc Words in Notes.
  Theo: It's a... I think it's a... it hurts...
  • Theo has a similar reaction to the glowing pickaxe, noticing that looking at it gives him the impression that it is more an idea of a pickaxe than a tangible, physical object, and that thought alone makes his head hurt.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Quite literally, as fate creates an avatar to ensure things go as planned.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • "And the Arrogant Man knew the name of the King."
  • Happens to Will at the end of 7 Days, except for the eyes
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: In 7 Days, entering the Captain's password before getting the clue on what it is, causes the computer to reply "This isn't the Olympics, cully. Cheaters don't prosper".

---

it hurts

---