Willowkept is a place of the faithful. A peaceful town, fragrant with peach trees — preparing for a celebration of its 50th anniversary with a festival. A perfect place to move in, settle down, and start a dark congregation to pave the way for the destruction of humanity, don’t you think? Ever Graceful They Darken, a Tabletop Talespinners Network Production, is a prequel miniseries for All Our Faults. While All Our Faults, featuring Ari Winter as Mistress of Ceremonies or Game Master, focuses on supernatural teens trying to stop the oncoming biblical apocalypse, Ever Graceful They Darken, featuring RahRah as the Mixter of Ceremonies, will focus on how the end begins. This short series will set the stage for how the horseman laid the foundation for the apocalypse long before the teens are born. If you are curious about All Our Faults, this is a great jumping-off point into the series.
Audio: Great Quality, sound effects, clean audio
Vibes: Colonial Horror, Biblically-inspired Apocalypse
System: Monsterhearts 2
Average Episode time: 45 minutes
Platforms: Audio Only, Podcast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts
Language: English
The series will conclude in 7 episodes, and releases biweekly starting January 7th.
Like in All Our Faults, the show uses Monsterhearts 2, a game by designer Avery Alder based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system. Unlike All Our Faults, this prequel focuses on much older beings. Even though the game is meant to focus on teen drama and “explore the terror and confusion of having a body that is changing without your permission,” Ever Graceful They Darken instead zooms in on the demand of the designers to “keep the story feral.” The mechanical use of strings, representing the player’s emotional power over others, is a great tool for the players to use to manipulate people into evil, as strings can be pulled on characters and even other players. Monsterhearts 2 rules also focus on sexuality. If the horny teenagers are what you love about Monsterhearts 2, you will find plenty in All Our Faults. I don’t expect that this miniseries will focus as much on the sexual mechanics of the game, but rather on the dominance side of it.
The Book of Revelation, the final book in the Bible, is the rich in imagery — a macabre nightmare that terrifies people still today. I had the pleasure of spending time with Winter at PAX Unplugged, and we had a lively conversation about our shared experience taking Biblical Literature classes. She approaches her biblical references with curiosity and respect, even though she is not a follower of the religion. The same is emulated by RahRah, who also has a personal history with the source material.
RahRah, known for their award-winning podcast The Heart is a Dungeon, sets the mood perfectly with a distorted version of the Lord’s Prayer accompanied by a solitary bowed instrument. Producer and audio editor Emma Kocar allows the players to maintain the spotlight, the music and effects serving the same purpose as a few simple set pieces on a minimal stage. The narrator of this series is presented as the pages of a book, informing the listener that these events have already come to pass. The players follow suit by narrating their actions in the third person pretty consistently. Are these events recorded by the characters themselves? Perhaps a witness? How reliable is the narrator? The book also serves to provide a sense of time, printed by wood-carved blocks. Our players’ characters are introduced at first by poetic imagery related to their vocation as chosen champions of the four horsemen: War, Famine, Conquest, and Death.
The Fall
The first episode is a meeting of coworkers. Jeremiah Felling (Kendrick Smith) and V (Mia) arrive at The Fall, a saloon where Mary Warner (Tatiana Gefter) currently works. Their meeting is anticipated but strenuous, as creatures of discourse, they are prone to sowing their own. They even fight for dominance through mechanics like “shut someone down,” against each other. While they maintain they are no enemies, there is a thickness to their rivalry that informs us their alliance is just that. The fourth champion is missing, Abel (Logan), but they must carry on their work. The listener helplessly witnesses the plot to take over the town, using their own sins against them.
Jeremiah positions himself to lead the charge of raising the banner over the town — what raising the banner means to this group remains unsaid, but ominous. When raising banners is mentioned in the Bible, it can symbolize visible allegiance, a call to gather, or a proclamation of identity of a place. Smith plays Jeremiah as a charismatic southern traveling preacher, a wolf seeking to take over a shepherd’s flock.
Mary reveals she has been in the town for a time, collecting her secrets and using them to spread her conquest. Their interaction is pleasant, respectful even, but only on the surface. What is happening between the pleasantry is played out using the game itself. An unspoken game of chess. Gefter falls effortlessly into the role of a two-sided socialite with a dark past. Her words kick off the first rolls of the game in opposition to another player. This is not a party that wants to work together, but must.
V counters the others, using a few words and precise actions. We learn she is the newest member of the fray, a new champion of war, a knight. Mia’s soft and direct tone paints a clear picture of the stoicism in V. You can’t help but wonder why V is so new to the group. What happened to her predecessor? V’s inexperience can also indicate proximity to her humanity. A weakness?
While Abel, the champion of Death, has a delayed arrival, its impact is like a mudslide. Logan’s vocal fry gives Adam a sense of preservation, dried and aged. With Abel’s arrival comes a renewed sense of tension in the group. I emphasize again that this is a strained alliance. It is suggested that this is indeed Abel of Genesis, the son of Adam and Eve, killed by his jealous brother Cain.
The people of Willowkept are not pure by any means; they have their own sins to be exploited, and all our champions need is to “pull the strings.” The distant backdrop of their initial meeting is an execution and the dark omen of a timely eclipse. There is no shortage of biblically-inspired creatures carved into the landscape — using powers of divine light and hope to oppose the champions. Yet, the main obstacle may just be closer to home. What could the opposing force be for a group equipped to pave the way for the apocalypse? Heart. In Monsterhearts 2, advancement is achieved through experience and bolsters your influence. I am curious to see what that will look like in this series, as a few ways experience is gained through failed rolls and giving in to temptation when someone pulls strings on you. The message of this table seems to be that the further they are from humanity, the easier it is for them to carry out their dark purposes. Does advancement mean losing your humanity?
The winning combination of RahRah’s prose and Kocar’s careful editing manifests as poetry. Expect to see a lot of the story to be driven by the incredible cast against unforgiving dice rolls. Ever Graceful They Darken will conclude in only 7 episodes, but you can expect each of them to be extremely rich in flavor. I greedily devoured the meal that is both external and internal conflict that RahRah and the team laid before me.
Episodes for Ever Graceful They Darken, releases episodes biweekly on Wednesdays starting January 7th.
Images provided by Tabletop Talespinners Network.
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