Through Monday, November 30 we present the Ker Nethalas Bundle featuring Ker Nethalas: Into the Midnight Throne, the single-player dungeon crawler from Blackoath Entertainment. Condemned to death in a decaying necropolis beneath the Alderworth Kingdom’s capital, you fight necromantic horrors, scavenge for resources, and manage your own light, fatigue, and sanity. Unpredictable perils lurk at every turn, yet mystery and the promise of power lure you onward. In the buried history of the once-glorious Vaelorian Ascendancy you may unearth magical relics – an Echo of Resurgence, Vitalbane Cinch, Wyrmfang, or the all-seeing Third Eye of Emaricus – that help you overthrow the mysterious Overseers and pave your path to new Masteries.
Funded in a November 2023 Kickstarter campaign, Ker Nethalas sets a high standard for fast-paced, immersive solitaire dungeoneering. Detailed rules use a unified percentile mechanic to handle ability and attack checks, initiative and surprise, weapon speed and hit locations, 14 damage types, and a terrible eight-stage infection, the Rot. Customize your character with any of 20 Masteries from Abyssal Reaver and Blood Adept to Thornbinder, Umbra Phantom, and Zealot. Control a lone survivor or team up with friends. The core rulebook’s detailed tables generate a unique labyrinth of caverns, halls, and buildings, and Blackoath’s published adventures take you beyond the labyrinth and across the time-scarred, turbulent planet of Iskandria.
Each game of Ker Nethalas starts with a d20 roll to choose the crime that led to your survivor’s death sentence – anything from Piracy and Witchcraft to Clandestine Marriage. You wake on a pile of corpses, hurt, exhausted, and with nothing but a half-spent torch. Then you creep through randomly generated Domains, some near the surface, some deep in the earth. You nurse your torch, track your light and hunger and fatigue, and inevitably run into Necropedes, Blightfang Rats, Rot Walkers, Plague Bearers, Pyre-Born, Tomb Crawlers, and any of three dozen more enemies, each acting from its own table of actions. Better hope you can arm yourself with weapons, armor, and powerful relics before you face the Domain’s Overseer, a boss-monster with a name like the Infernal Tormentor, Zephyrous Shadow, Carnage Devourer, Venomcloud Siren, Pyroclasmic Possessor, or Gorehoof. If you can kill this guy, you’ll weaken other foes in that Domain, find new relics, and maybe earn a new Mastery.
More insidious than the Overseers is the Rot. Fail an Endurance check against this necromantic infection, and it advances through eight stages that are both horrifying and tempting. Early on, the Rot grants immunity to Necrotic damage; later your skin turns black, but now you can see in the dark; later still, you regenerate wounds while you camp, and eventually you no longer feel Exhaustion at all. You’ll also starve constantly, go numb, and grow vulnerable to Sacred damage. At the eighth stage, your mind is consumed, and you become one more abomination for the next survivor to put down.
Ker Nethalas (the game, not the labyrinth) can be a challenge at the start. But when its systems start to click, the play moves fast, with many tense and atmospheric encounters. The random dungeon generation, the large bestiary, hundreds of loot items, and especially the meaningful character builds with their endless combinations, make the game highly replayable. Blackoath keeps the necropolis growing with new Domains and expansions.
This all-new Ker Nethalas Bundle gives you everything you need to send your Flamecaster, Gravecaller, or Mindbinder through infinite Domains and even to the legendary Midnight Throne. Pay just US$19.95 to get all five titles in our Ker Nethalas Collection (retail value $64) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete 255-page Ker Nethalas: Into the Midnight Throne Gravebound Edition rulebook (2026), the major expansions The Vaelorian Codex and The Book of Masteries, and the 80-page dungeon The Warren of the Ratkin. We also include Blackoath’s Carnage & Aether: Revenants of Veldonia, a single-player tactical arena game of detailed combat in the Crimson Coliseum of Veldonia.
Get this Ker Nethalas offer before the Obsidian Wardens seal the last entrance to the City Below Monday, November 30.
