The Last Hours of Yhtill.
Prologue
“To approach Yhtill you must first board a gondola to cross the lake of Hali, for the city rises directly from the lake. The myriad canals of the city, pass between tall buildings built in as many styles a there are buildings. Each is grander than the last, they are detailed in marble and teak, and the walls are coloured with gold leaf and Lapis Lazuli. But it is all faded Façade. The lapis has been washed away and sun bleached, the gold scrapped away. The plaster walls are cracked and the bricks beneath crumble with age and neglect.
Through the city, the populous go masked, for each day is carnival. All manner of wickedness is done in this city, so all good people shun it. So it is that as you ride through its canals, alone and unmasked, all know you to be a stranger.”
- Marco Polo to Kublai Khan
Yhtill is a game about downward spirals and their eventual conclusion in tragedy. It is about inevitability, and it is about the king in yellow.
The Last Hours of Yhtill is a Hack of apocalypse world that draws on the king in yellow, a short story by Robert W. Chambers, that deals in part with the fictional cities of carcosa and Yhtill, and an entity names the King in Yellow. The Last Hours of Yhtill is about the coming of The King in Yellow to the city of Yhtill, and the cities transformation into Carcosa.
The Last Hours of Yhtill uses Apocalypse world to drive the Characters and the setting into a downward spiral of intrigue and decadence, while the MC introduces elements of the weird and the horrifying.
Core Concept: A game of Two Acts
Like the fabled play, The King in Yellow, The Last Hours of Yhtill is a game of two acts. The system drives the play through the first act and into the second. The games system changes significantly between acts.
The first act emphasises the self-destructive nature of humanity using agenda’s to push the players to enter a downward spiral of intrigue and decadence, while the using advancement system and moves reward them pushing deeper into this cycle. They can build power and influence, at the cost of everything becoming more chaotic.
In the second act, moves change and conspire with the agendas of the game to ensure that things only get worse for the characters, as the king in yellows approaches. Their influence is destroyed, their agency corrupted, and their grip of reality eroded, as everything they worked for is washed away in the fog rising from the lake of Hali.
Core Concept: The Clock Tower
The Last Hours of Yhtill starts 26 hours before the cities fall. These are not literal hours, but rather scenes. At the conclusion of a scene, the clocktower ticks forwards one hour, pushing the game closer to the appearance of the king in yellow. Certain moves, allow a player to advance the clock towers progress, in exchange of a benefit or success.
When the clock tower strikes thirteen for the first time, the Phantom of truth arrives, and announces the coming of the king in yellow. This ends the first act and begins the second act.
When the clock tower strikes thirteen for the second time, the king in yellow arrives, ending the game. Yhtill becomes Carcosa, and the king rules all, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.”