The Outer Darkness

The Outer Darkness: A Solo Pilgrimage into the Unseen World

The Child-Queen was wounded to save us. Her light protects the Clearing, but the brilliance fades outside of these walls. Beyond its borders, the road bends through a forest of ancient silence–where pilgrims without a past walk toward truths no longer spoken aloud. Some go to atone. Others go to understand. All must go alone.

In this solo role-playing game of ritual, memory, and perilous travel, you take up the Oath of Ether and vanish into the forest that borders the known and unknown. You carry only fragments of identity, woven in thread by those who still remember you–and perhaps, if you’re fortunate, you’ll remember yourself. But each step deepens the silence. Each Rood traveled drains the light. And when you finally stand before the Final Silence… there will be no rules left, only what you bring with you. Will you walk the road until nothing remains? Or will you bring news of something other than trees?

The Outer Darkness draws deeply from the psychological work of Carl Gustav Jung, particularly his concepts of inner transformation. As you travel, you encounter not just enemies but archetypes–projections of the Shadow, fragments of the self long exiled to darkness. The game encourages active imagination, the process of dialoguing with these internal forces through image, ritual, and symbolic play. Advancement is not merely mechanical but metaphorical: an alchemical journey of individuation, where your forgotten self reassembles itself through trial, dream, and confrontation with the unknown. Just as Jung wrote that “the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek,” so too does each step into the forest bring you closer to the truth hidden at the heart of your own unraveling.