What's the (grim)darkest setting there is?

So living in a setting constructed around the twisted sex fantasies of the opposite gender (or gender preference) is bad...Who could guess it?

I mean, if they had wrote a monstergirl setting for gay guys, it would be a nightmare for straight man and probably for straight women too. If they wrote a lesbian monstergirl setting? Probably same thing. It's almost like...The only good thing to be in a setting built around someone's masturbatory fantasy, is the position occupied by the self insert of the masturbator.

Also, if you were a man and you lived in monstergirl setting, you woulnt be 'happy'. It's nice to fap to but...You know how porn looks disgusting after you nut? Imagine that sensation, but a hundred times worse because it's real life now, and you'll be forced to have sex even when you dont want it, several times a day for the rest of your life...For most of those creatures.

It's a toss up between Ghormengast (novel) and Cthulhu by Gaslight (setting).
Ghormengast is self-explanitory (just read the books!), while Cthulhu by Gaslight combines the grimness of Victorian England (slums, Jack the Ripper, crime, etc.) with the whole "We're doomed/damned" occult experience of CoC.

If you go with the theory Junji Ito's works all take place in the same setting, probably there. It's the closest thing you'll get to Lovecraft Madness in print. Distant Sky, while not as over the top is an underrated and extremely grimdark world.

>so just like berserk?

t. only read the first chapter, thought Guts was an edgelord, and dropped it without even getting to the Golden Age arc

Monstergirl Encyclopedia is pretty nightmarish even for a straight man, unless you luck into the one monstergirl that caters to your particular fetish.

The only thing edgy/grimdark/whatever is the rather deailed attention for failure.
Else it is a pretty standard fantasy setting.

LotFP's Carcosa? the only ray of hope is that you'll be defrayed quickly compared to the girl next to you being raped 16 times in a row with increasingly larger penises.

I feel like after the tower thing the story of Berserk toned down a lot on the grimdark and, thankfully, the rape.

Of course this might all just be a ruse so Falconia becomes the biggest sacrifice to turn Griffith into an even more powerful being or something

Shadow of the Demon Lord by far
>world starts already doomed
>can condemn your soul to hell just by looking in the general direction of evil
>almost every AP is about children dying horrifically

To be fair, oWoD has a canonical happy ending.

But yeah the entire settings, new and old, are incredibly grim. Sometimes I even think their interpretation of vampires is TOO grim. Like, I can't see anyone ever wanting to be a vampire, especially in NWoD, where the benefits of becoming ancient are greatly outweighed by the negatives, and you're more likely than not to just go into a coma and emerge as weak as you were on the day you were embraced. I can't imagine even the most power hungry types asking for vampirism. If I got the offer I'd be like fuck no, absolutely not, shit's insane, go find a werewoof to bite me instead.

>oWoD has a canonical happy ending.
Wait wut. I never played WoD but I read the gehenna book. All 3 scenarios were fucking violent

So... The night land?

Some of the Mage ones were alright (though there was a lot of unpleasantness on the way, and it also had some of the arguably worst bad ends of all)

I can't think of anything worse than Dark Sun
canonically there are at least two ways to escape the plane, but both are hidden and impossible to find for a normal person

The amazing thing is that it actually flows together, if you sit down and read the whole thing at once. I’d heard that later Berserk effectively becomes D&D, and assumed that Miura ran out of motivation and/or ideas, but this wasn’t the case at all; the emergence of more classical “high fantasy” elements was done in a compelling way, and Guts’ character progression is remarkably smooth and believable. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it elsewhere in manga.

Ours.

Claymore universe could be very Grimdark but we don't know enough about it even from the Manga. Its not really detailed.

>you'll be defrayed quickly
I’m not really sure what that would entail, seeing as I’m not any sort of expense, but it’s probably better than being raped.

Did you mean “flayed”? I’m not sure what word was supposed to go there.

>oWoD has a canonical happy ending.

>greatest heroes sacrificed themselves in attempt to avoid unavoidable dooming themselves to fight endless battles for no reason, except to prolong world's agony
youtube.com/watch?v=j6jxyQvynUI

ah hell, let's just dump my WoD edgefest collection

Pic related

...

Wtf

uh, I thought I had a lot more

Even Ellison's friendlier stuff is pretty grim.

I dunno, Junji Ito stuff is more weird than grimdark. Yeah, you get grim stuff, you also get half naked buff dudes going around a graveyard groping tombstones and silly stuff. Not that this is bad, it's why I love the dude's work. It's actual Weird Fantasy instead of the tired "fantasy but with more cults and cthulhus" that what we get sold most of the time.

That being said.
>Hospital arc in Uzumaki
That one still creeps the hell out of me.

>Claymore universe could be very Grimdark
Lolwut?

to be fair there were long periods of not shit/less shit between the events of the games, you just play through the end of the line each time

I've always wanted to make a campaign located inside A.M. where his sadist cyber-ass tortures the players to no end but they manage to defeat him like in the computer game

What is this from?

Darkest (cape) setting.

>to be fair there were long periods of not shit/less shit between the events of the games
Not exactly, the peaceful periods was shorter and shorter everytime when someone rekindle the flame.
Not to mention how desecrated the ritual become.

That is a Necronica campaing waiting to happen. Brilliant.

Nechronica
Kingdom Death
Corpse Party

Every now and then I'll get the urge to re-read Uzumaki, usually when I'm looking at some other short stories I'm not familiar with. Then I remember the hospital arc and remember I never need to read Uzumaki again.

>Kingdom Death
Forgot about that, nobodies having a good time in that one

I haven't paid attention to it since I can't afford the game but in the lore every human is just a plaything for the Scribe right?

Don't Rest Your Head, Nechronica and Little Fears 1st Ed are all p.grim

thanks for the laugh

Link or PDF please. I love Carcosa and I love horror so plz link.

It still feels overly sanitised and clean compared to the intense, tactical battles that took place before.

I think so, the setting was basically a human farm for him or something

I think he got retconned out and theres a different or multiple different main villains now though, I really havent kept track

I don't get this, what is it referring to

but the rape is the best part...

I always though a setting based off pic related would be unbearbly awful...

Also I know im just a normie TV watcher when it comes to the Ice and Fire series but I have always found that so depressingly grim dark. Its just like all the regular shit conditions from the real middle ages plus ice zombies and the fact nobody shown in the series is ever genuinely happy at any point. Its one of those things that the depression is so prevalent that the minute anything nice ever happens to one of the characters you are just waiting for them to receive an entire truck load of missery any minute.

good old GRRM

Eärwa from the Second Apocalypse book series

Berserk.

Thanks. I've just watched the first 2 episodes of the anime and it's garbage so far.

Dark Souls.

The world is dying, everyone is lying to you, you have to kill innocent doggos (that are fighting you for your own good), and no matter what you do, it matters little.
After aeons of slowly dying the world is eventually destroyed by a sad old man knight in a red hood that kills and eats all cursed blood in the world to make magical paint for a little girl to paint a canvas before she dies in a fire.

1984

Good grief...

Both animes are much worse than the manga, but the 1997 one is the best one.

Not at all. In a universe wo light, sight (eyes and equivalents) will not develop. Other senses will be heightened instead. Nodoby will even know what they're missing.

>no matter what you do, it matters little.
It doesn't matter what you do because you're playing the bad guy trying to keep the world in a dying state and you can't win, when you eventually lose good shit will happen.

>BLAME!
I agree, even in the "happy" ending there is a single human capable of making a safe part of the known universe for humans to begin to create a safe settlement - and even then the safeguards still exist and fuck shit up.

But I would say the true ridiculous grimdark is from Pump which describes the reproductive cycle of what humans have become as the world is impossibly close to extinction.

You forgot the best part

>Pump
Never heard of it, could you fill me in?

>because you're playing the bad guy
Sweet-sweet nostalgia
youtube.com/watch?v=9piElENpvmM

the Maiden Astraea fight was fucking cool but it's hardly morally black and white, she sold her own soul to keep people alive, but in what amounted to perpetual suffering

>she sold her own soul
Well nope, the whole church if I remember correctly worshipped to Old One.

> and no matter what you do, it matters little.
Huh? Of course it matters. At the very least it drastically affects the next thousand years of history, and at the best completely transforms the world.

>and at the best completely transforms the world.
You mean..?

She is sitting on a pile of gold in front of a pile of corpses while being worshipped as some sort of goddess by the people of the Valley and spawing Plague Babies.
She isn't exactly good you know.

Dark Lord ending.

What about darkest dungeon?

The Thrones setting isn't really grimdark because the good guys can actually win, though. In fact, Daenerys is pretty much guaranteed to be victorious, I've never seen plot armor so freakishly obvious in book series that's meant to be gritty. For a setting to be grimdark there can be no chance of good triumphing.

Is that a Black Mirror episode?
I know it isn't, but it kinda has hits the same notes.

>Dark Lord ending.
Yeah, meet your future

And why's that bad? The Four Kings were doing pretty good before you showed up.

I realize it's a lot to ask, but could you unpack all that?

>She isn't exactly good you know.
Except she cleared the Valley

...

Just binge watch the best Collated Dark Souls Lore video series on YouTube. Every vidya has one. Nearly ran a Destiny campaign off of what amounted to six hours of Lore-dumping without ever touching one of the games or a wiki.

>The Four Kings were doing pretty good
Yeah except the part of midless hunting for humanity

Not him, but can contribute.
The world has a power-source, "The First Flame", which is going out as flames tend to do. In practicality this means that the gods are losing power and lots of undead people (not zombies, but people who are always resurrected upon death and eventually turn into mindless zombies) are being spawned.
Most of these undead people end up imprisoned or exiled and thrown into the game's setting, a cut-throat place where almost everybody has degenerated into a zombie.
The ending has you either sacrifice yourself to the First Flame (nice and all, but it'll go out eventually anyway) or say "fuck it" and become Dark Lord of a world without fire (which could be very bad).
The red-hood old world destroyer man refers to a mind-fuck segment in the third game where you're magically transported to a completely annihilated version of the world and fight the old guy.
He killed all the people and such because he was looking for magical blood that is used to paint other worlds, but when the painter girl starts painting the world that she lives in (also a painting) has to be destroyed by fire.
I realize now that it all seems completely insane, but it makes sense in context.

And then it turns out that regardless of which choice you make, it’s the same after thousands of years. Turns out that even if you go Dark Lord, the flame doesn’t completely go out & is stil linkable. Which during an age of the dark, some desperate undead might actually consider linking it which starts the cycle again. By DS2 & 3, this cycle happened hundreds of times.

Fan fiction peddled by Dark Souls 2, not canon.

>Turns out that even if you go Dark Lord, the flame doesn’t completely go out & is stil linkable.
Nope, if we talk about Dark Souls, someone else wil relink the Flame (Solaire).
You fight Gael at the moment when Flame became so weak that it cannot be rekindle anymore

spotted the soylet

You leave my Red-headed middle child alone! I'm one of those who liked DS2, especially when considering the Souls franchise for a campaign. The cycle of the Ages means you can do pretty much whatever you want for the setting and still make sense. I want to run a Souls campaign that manages to reach a Renaissance era fueled by Da Vinci tech before the age of Darkness? I absolutely can, then wipe the slate clean for the next era without breaking Canon.
Plus, it's a Dark Souls game. If there's an opportunity to chew more gorgeous Scenery, I'm going to take it.
One of these days I'll find a group who's willing to learn BRP in order to run a Dark Souls campaign...

Vendrick and Lothric both decided not to link it and it still stayed.

Night Lands is a pretty grimdark world

Yeah, but that's the reason you're resurrected - somebody's gotta do it.

I read Requiem Vampire. Pretty edgy but all together fun. Basic premise is the more morally just you are life the shittier the afterlife is, and vice versa. So Hitler and Dracula and the Nazis rule over suburban dads and priests and shit. Good detailed art.

What system do you use?

Can you even get more 90s than Requiem Vampire?

If more of the characters had frosted tips maybe.

>Vendrick and Lothric both decided not to link it and it still stayed.
Yeah because it wasn't out yet. DS3 is the only game where you can really end the Age of Fire.

DS3 canon sort of shows at the end of time, the very notion therof becomes muddled, distorted and, once the flame goes out, loses substance entirely. "Time" as you know it doesn't exist when the flame isn't lit. But every time it dies, it comes back. There isn't one, single line of history in DS. There's several, interwoven lines with the connections between them being too distant to comprehend except when they all meet at the beginning and the end, where time and space begin to lose their value as solid, immutable concepts.

The ending in DS3 show that one can try to extend their timeline, snuff it out, or break the cycle entirely, creating a new, unknown means for reality to play out.