Chronicles

Eschaton is a literary dark-fantasy Soulslike-RPG, with operatic boss fights and moments of quiet reflection in a vast, punishing world. Arcadia, once a paradise, lies in rotting, bloody tatters. A vampiric plague has reduced its people to a mindless brood, ruled by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, a fallen angel waging his final crusade; Famine, a brood mother feeding her children with her own flesh; Pestilence, whose face no one has ever seen; and Death, who comes for all at the very end.

You play the Shaded, a vampire who wakes with broken memories and no place among your kin. Combat is quick, visceral, and underpinned by the laws of vampirism: feed on blood to heal, shun the sun or burn, and cross no threshold uninvited. Guided by Ashriel — a pale, beautiful stranger who offers themselves as your blade — you hunt the Horsemen to end the Plague that devoured the world.

Et in Arcadia ego. Even in paradise, Death is here, and they wait for you.

Before the Plague took them, the Shaded had a name, a family, a life. Those fragments remain, returning as broken memories as the story progresses; throughout the game, the player discovers who they were. Name, appearance, and background may be customised, along with a path of combat from three traditions — the heavy weapon of a soldier, the bow and dagger of a hunter, or the staff of a magician.

Whichever path they choose, the Shaded is bound by the laws of vampires: they must feed on blood to heal; they must shun the sun or burn; and they must be invited in before they can cross certain thresholds.

Ashriel is Death, the fourth and final Horseman of the Apocalypse — and unlike their kin, Death is neither malicious nor selfish. They walk Arcadia under a borrowed name: genderless, ethereal and tall, long pale hair and paler eyes, a voice both masculine and feminine at once.

Ashriel finds the Shaded in the ruins of Noxfell shortly after their awakening and offers themselves as guide, vowing to help cleanse Arcadia of the Plague in exchange for restoring the Shaded to who they once were. What they do not say — what they have known from the moment they laid eyes on the Shaded — is that Pestilence thrives inside them, and that the only true mercy is for both Shaded and Horseman to die together.

Death is witty and disarming, offering the Shaded both levity and tenderness. The player may choose to romance them, unlocking further dialogue and cutscenes through the main story and at its end. Whether or not the player chooses romance, Ashriel is the Shaded's executioner, their potential lover, and the only one in Arcadia who cares to see them made whole.

Once a war angel from the highest hosts of Heaven, Gadreel fell with his brothers upon the unmaking of Heaven with Lucifer's rebellion. Recognising his ferocity and cunning, the Hell-King dubbed him a Horseman of the Apocalypse, and branded him War.

He takes the form of a leper-king, masked by a radiant sun, his billowing robes the white and red of crusader's vestments soaked in blood. He rules Noxfell, dragging its citizens into his fabricated crusade, revelling in the violence and slaking his thirst with blood. When the Shaded arrives at his gates, he greets them with the easy familiarity of an old friend:

"Is it that time already?"

The formless Horseman, and the Shaded's oppressor throughout the game. Pestilence is the cleverest and most patient of his kin. He has ridden in the mind and body of the Shaded since the Plague took them, and has been watching, waiting, and learning about the soul he has inhabited. To the Shaded he speaks as a lover would — intimate and seductive, claiming to be the only one who truly understands them.

If the Shaded chooses to confront him at the end of the journey, Pestilence will not appear in a form of his own. He will assume the shapes of those the Shaded loved in their human life — mother, father, lover, or child — and force the Shaded to fight them as punishment for rejecting him. The alternative is surrender: to embrace Pestilence as willing host and continue his age of Plague.