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Something Stirs

The village hasn't heard birdsong in a week. The constable filed his report — fever, almost certainly fever — and went back to the city. No one goes into the fen after dark. No one, except hunters like you. Something Stirs is a solo tactical roleplaying game set in Gothic Victorian England — 1887, the age of gaslight and steam, when the educated classes have largely stopped believing in monsters. They are wrong to have stopped. You play a hunter — one of the last operatives of the Vigil, a centuries-old order now reduced to a handful of aging members and fading correspondence. The institution is dying. The creatures are not. You go anyway. Solo play Built from the ground up for one player. An Oracle, investigation moves, and escalation tables replace the GM entirely. Gothic Victorian 1887. Fog, gaslight, a crumbling institution, and a rational world that stopped asking what moves in the dark. Breathless system Every roll costs something. Skills degrade under pressure. Rest has consequences. Tension never stops building. Monster variety 12 types, 10 traits, 6 instincts, 6 archetypes. No two hunts feel the same. No two monsters fight the same way. What's inside Three-act hunt structure Dark Omens horror system Four Hunt Questions + clue scaffolding Five combat actions beyond Strike Monster behavior phases + Desperate Moves Eight Hunter Edges for progression Eight hunting grounds with environment tags Full campaign rules + Boss Hunt framework Complete worked example hunt Printable Hunter Sheet Each session takes 30–90 minutes. All you need is a set of polyhedral dice, the Hunter Sheet, and a notebook. The game provides everything else — the monster, the location, the escalating dread, the silence before it moves. Powered by the Breathless system by Fari RPGs. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.