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In Amberthwaite, magic is not cast.
- ~51 min
- 11408 words
- 6 branch points
- 4 endings
- 27 plays
mature-17-plusfantasyacademyinstitutional-critiquebureaucratic-magiccontracts-and-obligationcoercionrecords-and-evidencewintermoral-ambiguityrestrained-fantasy-craftno-sexual-content
Content notice (8)
- A minor's signature taken in an emergency and relied on for four years
- Institutional coercion by procedure rather than by force
- A witness who cannot afford to withdraw consent
- A job that cannot be declined and cannot be left
- Public naming of private financial obligation
- Hunger written as money, fees and wages
- Loss of irreplaceable records, described without injury
- Chosen adult company, non-sexual, bounded, easy to decline
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
The Aldermere Valley is eleven miles long with one road in and no road out, and eleven small settlements in it, and at the middle of the valley, in the village of Ellet, there is a press that prints four pages every twelve days.
- ~43 min
- 9636 words
- 4 branch points
- 4 endings
- 37 plays
mature-17-plusfantasynewspaper-fantasyinformation-magicrural-valleytruth-and-liesreporter-protagonistinstitutional-ethicsmoral-ambiguityno-sexual-content
Content notice (12)
- A true report that functions as a lie
- A man who destroys himself on purpose
- Three men alive behind a wall, described as lost
- A request that a living man be printed dead
- A fourth person who knows and says nothing
- A false report that stopped a killing
- A death following a report that no man was hurt
- A mill closed and a village emptied by a printed line
- A house burned over a man who was not in it
- Detention on a priest's word
- Coercion by custom and by reputation
- Chosen adult company, non-sexual, fades before anything is depicted
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
Ostrow is a river capital, and its Civic Collection is a long low yellow-brick building in the Marsch Park that was a customs house until 1937.
- ~31 min
- 7027 words
- 4 branch points
- 3 endings
- 31 plays
all-agesfantasyarchitectural-magicmuseumswork-and-incompletioncivic-institutionsinstitutional-ethicsrestrained-fantasy-craftno-sexual-content
Content notice (5)
- A building begun and never finished
- A work site that failed under a boy at work
- Institutional pressure and a public committee
- A name removed from a public record in 1981
- A hard moral choice that no option resolves
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
In the Furnace Marches, war is not a spell.
- ~44 min
- 9816 words
- 4 branch points
- 4 endings
- 25 plays
mature-17-plusfantasyindustrial-fantasyinheritancesuccessioncoercionlabourledger-craftmetallurgical-magicinstitutional-ethicsmoral-ambiguityno-romanceno-sexual-content
Content notice (8)
- Inherited debt and coerced labour
- A magic system that draws years off a named person's life
- Institutional pressure and a public admission of fraud
- A death from occupational fume, reported
- War casualties, reported as a figure
- Mass layoff, lost wages, and a winter in one ending
- A final choice that strands the protagonist in her own body or her own house
- Chosen adult company, non-sexual, fades before anything is depicted
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
Bellwether is a market town of eleven thousand on a slow brown river, with a north ward, a river gate, and a bell tower whose hours mark the time the ward is shut.
- ~37 min
- 8237 words
- 4 branch points
- 4 endings
- 26 plays
teenfantasycivic-fantasyquarantinecontagion-magicmass-distrustsmall-townpaperwork-ethicspublic-recordinstitutional-ethicsmoral-ambiguityrestrained-fantasy-craftno-sexual-content
Content notice (7)
- Quarantine and enforced confinement
- Hunger and food rationing
- Mass civic distrust and a shared false agreement
- A public record used to erase a group
- Institutional pressure and a public vote
- A hard moral choice that no option resolves
- Illness described without any symptom being visible
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
Carrow is a wool village of thirty-nine houses on a ridge, with one tower, one bell, and one noon a day.
- ~11 min
- 2528 words
- 2 branch points
- 3 endings
- 33 plays
all-agesfantasyfolk-magicvillage-lifegriefsmall-townruralinstitutional-ethicsmoral-ambiguityone-sentence-magicliteraryno-sexual-content
Content notice (9)
- death of a child
- parental grief
- child death, non-graphic
- village guilt
- blame without malice
- mourning
- cold, dark winter setting
- no romance
- no sexual content
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
In Gallowmere, a northern town on the trade road, a body is a document.
- ~57 min
- 12723 words
- 5 branch points
- 5 endings
- 31 plays
mature-17-plusfantasymorbid-fantasyundertakerspaperwork-magicsmall-towninstitutional-ethicsinheritancegriefapprenticeshipmoral-ambiguityrestrained-fantasy-craftno-sexual-content
Content notice (7)
- Death and burial described at trade level
- Burned remains and their recovery
- A house fire with six adult deaths
- Financial ruin of four households
- Self-destruction offered and declined aloud
- Institutional pressure and a public naming
- A hard moral choice with no clean option
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
The Windward Reach is a hard western coast of sea stacks and low cliffs, fourteen miles long, with four lamps burning on it in a chain and four families who have kept them for six generations.
- ~56 min
- 12346 words
- 5 branch points
- 5 endings
- 28 plays
teenfantasycoastalcost-magicquestions-and-answersfamily-obligationfound-documentinherited-institutionmoral-ambiguityworking-class-protagonistrestrained-fantasy-craftno-sexual-content
Content notice (7)
- Destructive magic with a named, unrefusable price
- Loss of a family word and a family name
- Institutional habit of thirty-one years examined in a public meeting
- A boat and a season of work lost, described
- One branch spends a year of another living person's life
- Sleet, gale, and a winter deadline
- Chosen adult company, non-sexual, nothing depicted
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
Ashcombe keeps its bees on a south wall above the low orchards, and a hive that one family has tended for six generations becomes a small god with a job, and the job is the orchard.
- ~16 min
- 3637 words
- 2 branch points
- 3 endings
- 34 plays
all-ageseveryonefantasypastoralrurallabourobligationcontract-lawsmall-godsbeekeepingmoral-ambiguityno-romanceno-sexual-content
Content notice (7)
- An unpaid debt owed to a small god
- A family that read a contract wrongly, then rightly
- A sixteen-year-old worker, never a romantic interest
- Institutional pressure and a collector's office
- A blight year and a lost crop
- A bound four-year labour term with no exit
- A permanently unanswerable question
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
In Ashcombe, an oath is not a promise.
- ~34 min
- 7664 words
- 4 branch points
- 4 endings
- 30 plays
mature-17-plusfantasycourt-intriguecoercioninstitutional-fraudobligationaccountingmoral-ambiguityadult-leadsno-sexual-content
Content notice (6)
- Coerced or uninformed labour used as a debt instrument
- Institutional fraud in a household's books
- Self-harm and self-destruction proposed as a solution
- A public reading of a private roll
- Reported deaths of supporting characters, not depicted
- A character who has never once been asked and never says so
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
The Low Wetlands are a drowned valley of causeways and peat-cut islands, and the world took the water out of them forty years ago.
- ~44 min
- 9795 words
- 5 branch points
- 4 endings
- 31 plays
teenfantasyquiet-fantasysmall-godsadministrative-magicresource-allocationdrowned-landscapelabour-and-ledgersinstitutional-ethicsmoral-ambiguityno-sexual-content
Content notice (7)
- Inherited obligation and a lapsed civic right
- Unpaid and uncounted labour
- Institutional closure of a service and a public list of places that stopped asking
- Property loss: a third of a peat island and a standing ground
- Financial loss for a work crew of two pence a load
- A hard moral choice that no option resolves
- Chosen adult company, non-sexual, bounded, fades before anything is depicted
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
Marrowgate is a walled city cut into seven terraces, and each terrace holds sixteen named doors that the city keeps locked as promises.
- ~26 min
- 5886 words
- 4 branch points
- 4 endings
- 53 plays
teenfantasycity-fantasycraft-and-apprenticeshiplockwork-magicinstitutional-negligencerecords-and-evidenceconsent-and-refusalcity-politicsmoral-ambiguityrestrained-fantasy-craftno-sexual-content
Content notice (6)
- Institutional negligence and an uninspected record
- Nine years of confinement in a room nine feet by one, described without injury
- A threatened demolition of an occupied room
- A clock of eleven days and a hard moral choice with no clean option
- A career and a stipend placed at risk
- A dated mention of an adult's action as a minor, not depicted
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
In Pell, a market village of four hundred and six people on the River Wray, the magic is in the baking.
- ~9 min
- 2061 words
- 2 branch points
- 3 endings
- 26 plays
all-agesfantasyvillagefood-and-craftsmall-townquiet-mysterydebt-and-obligationdomesticfound-familymoral-ambiguityno-sexual-content
Content notice (5)
- A four-year debt of four coppers a day, kept in a tin and never mentioned
- A mother's departure and a shop bought out from under a girl of fourteen
- A customer who stopped coming because she got a job, and the ordinary shame of it
- A crumb read aloud in a market square with a name attached
- A hard moral choice that no option resolves
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
Verrin Hollow is a hill town built around a wizard's glasshouse: one long room under a pitched glass roof, two hundred and forty feet from the fire wall to the cold end, standing on the shoulder above the town where the hill gives up and the streets stop.
- ~5 min
- 1257 words
- 2 branch points
- 3 endings
- 26 plays
all-agesfantasyworkplacehorticultural-magicquiet-fablemoral-ambiguityrecords-and-ledgersinstitutional-ethicsno-sexual-contentno-romance
Content notice (5)
- A falsified official record and a cut page in a bound ledger
- Institutional pressure and an admission of wrongdoing
- A hard moral choice that no option resolves
- Labour conditions and a rota with a named person on it
- A child character, non-sexualised and in no adult role
· art review pending · play time estimated from word count
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