SINCE it’s hard to get into the old forums I’ll post the whole thing here too and hope it’s not too cringe of me to continuously talk about my game on Nova’s game. Here we go.

Hello my friends!

It’s me, leah, longtime player and content creator over at Haven RPG. I THINK I logged in for about 4-5 minutes when Haven was still Inferno, then I logged in for another 10 minutes or so during Haven beta, then I logged in once more close to the start of Haven 1.0 and did not log out again until the middle of Haven 5.0. I played for about 10 years before parting ways with Haven and most of my best writing and much of my best reading was done there.

When Tyr (Now Nova) released the Haven codebase in 2024, I reappeared from the aether to capture and claim Ppurg (Now Pooch) from Haven to claim and build on a copy of our own.

There’s been a lot of hard work, a lot of learning, and a lot of days without motivation, when life was just bigger than what we could give to Duskholm, that led us to this point. What would have been a small project for Nova ended up being a very big undertaking for me and for Pooch, but all of the things we promised we’d put in our copy of Haven, now known as Duskholm, is in and mostly working.

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New Races:
Innocents <amnesiac unawares who the town itself resurrects each morning>
Experiments <island-jailed sandbox concepts, make what you like>
Reborns <give you two weeks to tie up your loose ends and storylines after you die>
Ghouls <we stole this from Vampire the Masquerade, I’m not ashamed>
Changelings <have all of the perks of Faeborn, but with some different flavors>
Pixies <we stole this from Peter Pan, I’m not ashamed>
Egos <we stole this from Sailor Moon, I’m not ashamed>
Mages <these are exactly what they sound like, expanding upon “gifted” from Haven>

The Angelborn and Demonborn you know have been modified marginally, they are now no longer born this way:tm: but instead invite angelic or demonic seeds through their actions and covenants and have some form of control over the catalyst of their activations. Angeltouched and Demontouched characters BOTH feel desires, AND dreads, AND suffers, and respond to them in their own ways.

Demigods, Vampires, Werewolves, and others have a couple of new names but <for now> are unchanged. Nova kinda perfected these on the first try.

Also new: Voidtouched. This is a T5 mage-type who is not as strong as its pure mage counterpart but has its own special perks.

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The BRAND NEW map built mostly by me is all in, I’m still missing like ~30-50 descs but I and my team are getting them banged out every day.

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We are finalizing the Lore which is actually more work than I expected, but we have enough of it framed out that we will be able to answer any and all questions you have at the time of the game’s launch

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The game is allowlist only. You can reach Pooch at pooch@duskholm.com or me on Discord @druidlock. You can also apply at duskholm.com, there is an application form as well as (soon) a list of our trustees — many of who(m?) also play Haven.

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We aren’t a replacement for Haven. We don’t want you to quit Haven to play Duskholm. Just give us a look when you aren’t too busy.

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Unconsent: Duskholm is an OOCly consent-based game. If you are ever engaged in roleplay which is too graphic, too gory, or too sexually explicit for you to handle, and your co-writer refuses to accommodate your discomfort, you are free at any time to use the UNCONSENT command which will teleport you to a safe room, in a forced QUIET mode, so that the other party cannot contact you, until staff can investigate the scene and address the other party. This will allow us to arbitrate whatever debts or issues are outstanding between characters, as well as provide a better common ground for the players themselves. If we judge a player’s actions as too egregious, Pooch and I will bonk that person accordingly.

We hope that this command does not see frequent use, because we’d like to facilitate an environment where players, both antagonistic and not, cooperate to at least a degree that shows player-to-player respect, if not necessarily character-to-character.

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Profile: This is an entirely OOC command that you can use to let other players know what scenes you really want, want scenes you could be convinced to do, and what scenes you absolutely want no part of. This doesn’t force anyone to respect your wishes and we really hope you won’t abuse it (any scene where I lose is an unwanted scene for me!!) but remember you and your co-writers all have access to unconsent if someone is ruining your fun (please don’t ruin each others’ fun)

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Doom: We have no doom mechanic nor any mechanics meant to undo a character’s progress. I think we will eventually(?) have character stagnation and address it when it comes, but for now, let’s just all party.

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Mana: Duskholm is a game about magic. Of course, characters can’t just fire off spells infinitely because that would be too much fun. Therefore, many supernatural abilities, powers, and rituals will cost mana. Mana is a resource on top of Life Force that players can use to do all the fantastical things they like. This means that players can be magical without suffering the debuffs associated with life force loss–to a point.

Mana is also what high-tier characters feed off first when they do high-tier feeding-like things to low-tier characters. A high-tier character will feed off of a lower tier character’s mana until it is empty before consuming their life force. We want to encourage RP between all players, and LF drain, we feel, has been too punishing to lower tiers for roleplaying with higher tiers.

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Contractors can now get up to 4 standing in the academy/clinic. The terms “college” and “academy” are used interchangeably and the commands should also work interchangeably.

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Wealth -1 havers don’t eat up an account paycheque.

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Demonic characters can offer angelic characters an adversary relationship, which is generally in the angelic characters’ interests (if not their best interest) to accept. Firstly, because demonic characters want them to, and angelic characters want to do things people want them to, but secondly, so that they can thwart their adversary (hypothetically). Adversaries can see when each other are being desired, suffered, or dreaded at, from anywhere on the grid. This relationship can be broken but it leaves the breaker ragged and soul-drained for a significant time.

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Forest monsters aren’t going to capture and murder you in Duskholm. They’ll bonk you, take all your mana, injure you (up to critical, so be careful) and toss you in the ocean, where you’ll eventually wash up on the beach.

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Neighborhoods replace territories. None of our factions are splinter cells engaging in spec-ops warfare, so assaults replace operations. Assaults run automatically, every 9 hours. If your faction wins a neighborhood, they get a bonus! These bonuses are outlined in HELP NEIGHBORHOOD BONUSES

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The promiscuity score sees its return in Duskholm, however, we have added a PRUDENCE habit, which will allow a character to set just how attractive they find promiscuous characters.

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Personal karma is now just that, personal. Personal karma is per-character and grows to a maximum of 125,000 (with diminishing returns after every 10,000). I want to see characters progress like a training montage! I like to see brand-new high-tiers come out of genesis too, but I’m a sucker for a zero to hero story.

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In Duskholm, you can join other folks’ rituals. Covens welcome. This will decrease the time a ritual takes and soon (pending balance considerations) I’ll give different rituals different “coven bonuses”

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In our game, players will be able to earn permanent karma on their account. This is karma that will persist through continued versions and player wipes, and will not be spent when tiering up or creating higher-tier characters. Think of this as a higher karma floor for your account. This karma can not be converted into exp or rpexp or anything, only used on archetype tiers. Players won’t get large amounts of permanent karma, but the value they’ll get from reuse will hopefully be impactful as time goes on. The soft cap for folks (after launch) will be 3000 Permanent Karma. You can get decent amounts more of permanent karma by logging in before launch (1/29/26) and hunting down stuff I’ve messed up or haven’t done! (and building shops, please build the shops for me)

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isleahon command – You can toggle this to get alerts every time I log on (even if I’m whoinvis!). Not that important but I thought it’d be fun to mention.

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In Duskholm, students will join one of four houses to exemplify or disappoint as they train to serve themselves or their causes, while interested parties outside of the school vie for control of one (or all) of Ordinary’s neighborhoods to strengthen their claim on the growing supernatural nexus. Unbeknownst to most, a grave threat looms closer than we know. Grave, but beatable. Gear up. Train up. Just don’t give up.

Duskholm: Magic In The Making