Gothic Horror

These are the villains who make people race the sunset home.

Villains who delve through library shelves for rituals in dead languages and have a separate section of their wardrobe for black cowls choose to make their home here, as will those who want a pack of Underlings who howl at the moon. Cackles are heard, but tend to be for a more interpersonal level of glee than the laughter of a finger hovering on a world-exploding button. Underlings can expect to find shades of existence between full life and death. Achievements are more likely to be accompanied by shrieks of “It’s alive!” than herald’s trumpets. Multi-eyed beasts are usually the result of experimentation rather than planar migration. The era of technology is broad and can range from galvanising frog legs, to magical blood bonds, to pseudoscientific potions that swap the drinkers’ memories.

The realm of Gothic Horror includes interference with the psyche and mental states, such as trances and magical suggestibility. It includes gore and bodily modification through mad science and magics such as vampiric bonds.

Villains move here to establish a base that is less bedecked in flashing lights and more claustrophobic, with elements of ruined grandeur and servants with suture lines and a fear of the full moon. Electricity is often copper spikes on rooftops rather than neon lights from a grid. Villains can benefit from the population’s expertise in the manner of coffin design, wallpaper in disconcerting shades of yellow, and alchemical apparatus that looks like the glassblower had hiccups.

These forests contain more decay and not-quite-faces in the gnarls than the sweeping majesty of The Tenebrific Mountains. Needless to say, trails of breadcrumbs are alighted upon by beasts to whom the word ‘wingèd’ can be applied. Was that bog there five minutes ago?

If you are looking for lightning to hit at just the right time and pathetic fallacy to ooze maliciously out of the walls, site your crypt here.

Countess Estella is a charming host, a well-travelled bonne vivante, and a cultured philatelist, with pretty pointed incisors and two drinks cabinets: one for spirits, one for sanguineous fluid. Her castle is bustling any time of the night, with a stream of guests here for sumptuous balls, erotic masquerades, dreary poetry recitals, and… dinner. In antique wardrobes in the cloakroom is a selection of crimson scarves to take as gifts on your way out. She wears a white dress with altogether too many ribbons.

• Brother Wranglepen (He/Him) - An up-and-coming summoner whose illuminated manuscripts catch the eye so strongly he has a jar of them in the herb garden. He resides in the Monastery of the Farflung Lady, which crumbles its stones over a mountain spine with precipices so steep that few pieces remain when unlucky Underlings hit the forest floor.
• Theodore Phineas III (He/Him) - Known for having house extended to make enough attics to keep all of his twin cousins with unsettling blink frequencies and Underlings who became unsupportive of his quest for the Salve of Saviour. His problem, apart from obtaining enough unicorn saliva, is that once attics have attics built upon them they simply become another upper storey.

Here we include more than Gothic Fiction: we include elements of older folklore plus supernatural content more modern than the classic 19th century works, such as the popular culture vampire and Frankenstein’s Monster lore that has evolved through Hollywood remakes.

• Dracula
• Frankenstein
• Gormenghast
• Uberwald of the Discworld
• World of Darkness
• The works of Edgar Allan Poe
• Non-Disney folktales e.g. Brothers Grimm stories