The chronicle and the story

In short: every morning the game writes a short chronicle of your previous day, says whether you kept the word you gave the evening before, ends with a rumour to chase, and greets you with it on the dawn screen. Come back after a break and it tells everything since your last visit, under a While you were away card: who duelled you, who honoured your cairn, and what changed in the realm. Everything you read, from a fight's outcome to a step through a swamp, is drawn from a library of hand-checked lines with several versions each, so the story varies from day to day without ever waiting on a machine to write it.

How it works

The daily chronicle

When a new day begins (see The daily loop), the game looks back at what you did since your last reset and writes a few sentences about it. It is the first thing you read that day, on the dawn screen, where Listen has the narrator read it aloud (see The narrator). If you have not read it there, it waits at the top of the screen under Yesterday until you close it, and it stays in your journal with everything else.

A chronicle always opens with a line about setting out (or, after a break, how many days it has been since you last set out), then covers, in this order:

1. Duels fought against you: other heroes can challenge you while you are away (see Crossings and cairns). If one did, you read who, whether you held, and the gold that changed hands. This comes first because it is news you could not have seen.
2. Stories shared: a hero who stopped to trade stories with you.
3. Your cairn honoured: who paid their respects where you fell.
4. Your fights: how many you won and the toughest foe among them. With no fight won, the foe you slipped away from if you did (Warily, see Combat), or else that no blade was drawn, which is left out on a day when someone duelled you or you fell.
5. Bosses slain, one line each (see Bosses).
6. Your word: if you chose one of the day's rumours the evening before, whether you reached it (see Sites and rumours). A missed word is told gently: plans change on the road.
7. Beginning again: if you slew the dragon and began again (see Bosses), a line says so. It is the day's great news, so the five-line limit never cuts it.
8. A death: what killed you, if anything did.
9. Levels: the level you reached, if you gained any (after beginning again, only the new climb's levels count).
10. Gold: how much fuller or lighter your purse is. Everything you won or spent counts: fights, encounters, sites, the cache, beds, shopping, the dice and duels against you. Gold moved into or out of the bank does not: it is still yours; nor does the gold a Rebirth leaves behind.

It keeps to five lines at most, the opening line included, so on a busy day the later ones give way, then ends with a rumour for today, one waiting on your rumour board: the one you chose last evening, first on the board as Your word, or, if you chose none, today's treasure-cache rumour, the last one on it (see Sites and rumours). If you are partway through a quest, a last line says where its trail leads next (see Quests). The chronicle is there so each day starts with a sense of story and a reason to set out.

If a monster killed you on a hunt, it becomes your nemesis (see Nemesis): after the day's lines, and before today's rumour, one line reminds you that it still prowls and where. If another hero slew it first, the line says who; if it left unslain, the line says it is gone. This line is never cut by the five-line limit.

If nothing happened to you at all, there is no chronicle. A day you did not play still gets one if another hero duelled you, shared stories with you, honoured your cairn or slew your nemesis.

A season's last day has no next morning, so its chronicle is written when you first open the game between seasons, and waits on that screen as The last chronicle (see Seasons). It tells the day like any other, without a rumour for a morning that will not come or a nemesis still prowling.

After a day you slew a boss, a letter from the dragon follows the chronicle on the dawn: Ashvarr, writing to you about it (see Bosses). The chronicle does not mention it; the letter speaks for itself.

After a break

Miss a whole day or more and the next chronicle covers everything since you last played. It opens by saying how many days it has been, and the dawn titles it Since you were last here instead of Yesterday.

Above it, the dawn shows a While you were away card: each duel fought against you (who, whether you held, and the gold won or lost, and whether they came back for a rematch after you beat them), who honoured your cairn, and up to three lines of news from the realm: the bosses other heroes slew, who leads the hall, and how many new heroes joined. The card appears once, on the dawn after a break, and only when it has something to say. The duels and honours are in your journal too; the realm's news is not. Each duel offers Ignore, so a hero who keeps challenging you never meets you again (see Crossings and cairns).

How the prose works

The game never calls an AI while you play. Every line comes from a library of short, pre-written variants, and the game fills in the details: the monster's name, your weapon, the place, the gold. Each situation has at least five versions, and one is picked at random each time.

• Fights are described by how close they were. A win where you barely got scratched reads differently from one where you won on your last legs; a loss where the monster was nearly dead reads differently from a rout. A monster's trait gets its own opening line, so you learn what you faced (see Combat).
• Travel: every step gets a line for the land you arrive in, or for the site or lair you have reached. The weather is the same across the whole realm for the day, so "a grey drizzle" follows you everywhere until tomorrow.
• Encounters fill their story from the people, creatures and places involved (see Encounters).
• Rumours keep the same wording all day, so a rumour doesn't change when you look at it again.
• Quests, settlements, the temple, cairns, the dice and other heroes have their own lines: a quest's clue, trail and foe, a settlement's gossip and its waystation, each blessing, a stone added to a cairn (and, for the hero under it, who added it), a game of dice won, lost or tied, a duel won or lost.

Each season can bring new lines or replace old ones through its content pack (see Seasons), so the realm can sound different from one season to the next.

Tips

• Read the chronicle before setting out: its closing lines are today's rumour (your word, or the cache), with coordinates, and your quest's next stop.
• Your journal keeps old chronicles, so you can scroll back through your season as a story.
• The prose tells you things: a trait line before a fight result names what made that monster dangerous.