Chzo Mythos

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Chzo Mythos, also known as the John DeFoe Tetralogy or the Trilby Tetralogy, are a series of horror-themed adventure games by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. Yes, that one.

The four games are, in order of creation, 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice (in chronological order of events: 5 Days, Notes, 6 Days, 7 Days, though it makes more sense if you play 7 Days before 6 Days). There is also a tie-in game titled Trilby: The Art of Theft, which shares the hero and Player Character with half of the other games, but isn't connected to any of them with regard to subject matter.

Some Interactive Fiction by the name of the Countdown Trilogy and a tie-in short story called The Expedition, which expands upon the background of the universe and some of the lesser, yet still important, events within the storyline also exists.

With their old-school graphics, the games nevertheless manage to be surprisingly suspenseful. Can be found here, along with some of Yahtzee's other games. Special editions with useful author commentary, extra scenes and some other stuff were formerly available as donationware, but are free to download now.

The games use the following tropes:
"Yahtzee:"
 * And Then John Was a Zombie: At the end of 6 Days a Sacrifice,
 * Apathy Killed the Cat: Nobody bothers checking why
 * Abusive Parents: Sir Roderick DeFoe.
 * Action Survivor: Theo Dacabe.
 * All There in the Script Trilby's true name,  was never revealed in any of the games, but is revealed in the commentary of 7 Days.
 * And I Must Scream
 * Interestingly, Chzo is suggested to be this. He's the Last of His Kind, he's immortal but can't move or exist outside of a certain area, and all he can do is feel and cause pain.
 * Anyone Can Die: Oh, yeah.
 * The only characters to make it through the entire series are
 * Well, actually  does die,
 * Not so. The only one to survive the series is . Everybody else dies, though for the cases above their deaths are more likely due to natural causes. The games ARE set over a 300-year span, don't forget.
 * Apocalyptic Log: Trilby's Notes, The Expedition
 * Arc Words: "...and he knew the Name of the King".
 * it hurts 
 * Also an arc date: Most of the important events in the timeline occur on July 28th, as
 * Artifact Title: The characterization of the Player Character of7 Days a Skeptic changed drastically from its initial conception. As a result, the character is quite possibly the least skeptical character on the ship, making the title a bit of a misnomer.
 * Artistic License - Physics: Most notably the gravity issue in 7 Days.
 * As You Know: In 7 Days, the captain explains quite a bit of ship protocol that your character should already know.
 * Badass Abnormal:
 * Badass Normal: Trilby.
 * Not to mention the stuff he managed to pull off in Art of Theft - Let's recap: It almost makes his achievements later in the series less impressive.
 * Big Bad: Chzo,
 * Black Dude Dies First: Barry in 7 Days a Skeptic. Doubles as Retirony.
 * Black Magic: Subverted, since.
 * The Blank: The Tall Man.
 * Break the Haughty: What Chzo intended when it.
 * Breather Episode: The Art of Theft, and also the humorous short novel Trilby and the ghost.
 * Brick Joke: At the beginning of 5 Days, Trilby, wearing a three piece suit along with a smooth, featureless mask, runs into AJ, an intelligence agent, upon breaking into the manor. AJ seems to recognize him and flees, later to be found dead in the swimming pool. In Trilby's Notes,
 * Amazing how a guy mentioned to be completely inexperienced knows more about the Tall Man than you do until the middle of the third game, dispite being hired by the same ministry and being sent on the same arc day.
 * He found out slighty before the game and didn't take it well.
 * Chekhov's Gun: Played straight and literally in 5 Days.
 * In 6 Days a Sacrifice, talk to the priest and ask him about the Order. Read closely when they're talking about
 * The  in 7 Days.
 * Church of Happyology: Optimology,
 * Closed Circle: All the games have some form of it. Trilby's Notes has a literal one.
 * Coat, Hat, Mask: Trilby, in The Art of Theft and briefly in 5 Days.
 * Coitus Ensues: . Yahtzee himself had this to say (from this Let's Play) in regards to that:
 * Closed Circle: All the games have some form of it. Trilby's Notes has a literal one.
 * Coat, Hat, Mask: Trilby, in The Art of Theft and briefly in 5 Days.
 * Coitus Ensues: . Yahtzee himself had this to say (from this Let's Play) in regards to that:
 * Coitus Ensues: . Yahtzee himself had this to say (from this Let's Play) in regards to that:

"The King is a beast. That's the most foolish part of it. He has no sentience. His mind is nothing more than that of a fattened pig. He could be the most powerful entity in any universe and his actions are no more calculated than a dog chasing a bone. Randomness and magic turned a dumb animal into God."
 * Continuity Nod: Several throughout the games. One of the more subtle instances occurs when Trilby opens the safe in Trilby's Notes.
 * Another that a lot of people don't notice is that Art of Theft has a special unlockable outfit, "Clanbronwyn Classic", which is the exact same one that is used in Trilby's Notes.
 * In the official walkthrough, William Taylor from 7 Days is stated to be a descendant of Simone from 5 Days.
 * Actively a plot point in 6 Days since
 * Controllable Helplessness: In Trilby's Notes. The solution is to.
 * The Corpse Stops Here: In both 5 Days and 7 Days. Possibly subverted slightly in the latter since
 * Cosmic Horror Story: The last two games belong to this genre.
 * CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: CPR does not help stab wounds!
 * Cruel Twist Ending: The end of 7 Days..
 * Of course, if you take into consideration the Alternate Character Interpretation,
 * Dark World: The Ethereal Realm. Or at least the parts of it that are under Chzo's control.
 * Death By Origin Story: John DeFoe, Malcolm's father.
 * Death by Sex: Almost literally:
 * Death Equals Redemption: Happens to William at the end of 7 Days
 * Depraved Homosexual: Jack Frehorn, though notable in that his depravity only began Only afterward did he begin using his sexuality for evil instead of occult-nerdly good.
 * Deus Ex Machina: Frehorn's blade. Also, The Caretaker.
 * Downer Ending: The good news?
 * 7 Days also has one. After killing the mixmatched body,
 * The Dragon: The Prince,
 * : The Prince spends the entire series
 * Dream Sequence: Several throughout the series.
 * Dual World Gameplay: Going between a real world and a Dark World is used in Trilby's Notes. The player can switch at will to a certain extent and often encountered the "path open in another world" technique
 * Eldritch Abomination: Chzo
 * Easter Egg: Try playing and completing the games on Yahtzee's birthday,.
 * Empty Room Psych: The recreational room in 7 Days, which serves no useful purpose.
 * Also
 * Enclosed Space: All of them. It's perhaps creepiest in Trilby's Notes, as while you can go outside, all roads lead back to the hotel.
 * Eye Scream: Happens on the final day of 7 Days.
 * Evil Is Not a Toy: Everything started when a druid named Cabadath made the unbelievably stupid decision to summon Chzo to the Realm of Technology so that he could use Chzo to destroy his enemies.
 * Fan Nickname: 7 Days a Space Adventure!
 * A Fate Worse Than Death: The name of the game for
 * From Nobody to Nightmare: Happens three times in Chzo Mythos; chronologically, the first is, then , and finally.
 * Gambit Roulette: Chzo is the supreme, grand master of this. Sorry, Light.
 * The Scandinavian telepath, Ericsson, from The Expedition does however question this:

"Yahtzee: Chzo was, objectively, a Good Thing for me. There's no reason to be ashamed by past works because the only person who should be ashamed is the person you were when you made them, and that person no longer exists. It's said that every artist/writer/whatever creative type has 10,000 bad paintings/stories/projects in them, and it's just a matter of getting through them all. Chzo was part of that. So I don't regret anything about them. I can't make people forget about the rougher bits. But I can criticise them along with everyone else."
 * The source should be taken into question, though. The source is a clearly insane man who has delved into the mind of a Lovecraftian-esque Eldritch Abomination. Some other abominations can drive a man insane on sight--delving into the mind of one? I think you know where I'm going with this.  And the Books of Chzo imply that Chzo is actually intelligent, and we damn well know that Cabadath wasn't the one to tell Frehorn what to write. A possible facade?
 * It's possible Chzo did all this on pure instinct.
 * The Books of Chzo are also not entirely accurate. They're penned by Jack Frehorn who, for one, is a fanatical follower, and for another, note the difference between the written account of and the actual flashback.
 * Genetic Memory:
 * Genre Savvy: Trilby, in 5 Days especially.
 * Genre Shift: The series goes from fairly conventional (but good) horror, to SPACE horror, to Cosmic Horror. Trilby: The Art of Theft is a completely different type of game alltogether, being a Platformer/StealthBasedGame.
 * Gentleman Thief: Trilby.
 * Given the reason for his moniker, he also counts as a Classic Hat Burglar. yeah...
 * Government Agency of Fiction: The Ministry of Occultism. The Special Talent Project could be described as this, although Word of God states it is "hired out" to various government agencies.
 * Hearing Voices: The soundtrack for the Dark Hotel in Trilby's Notes.
 * Hell Hotel: The setting of Trilby's Notes, and that's just the normal hotel.
 * Hilarious Outtakes: 7 Days offers some really funny ones.
 * If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten: Delia Reneaux, the main character in the second part of Countdown series, is asked to kill her ex-boyfriend, Jason, in order to
 * It's Up to You: In 7 Days a Skeptic, your role is supposedly ship's counselor and yet you end up running around doing everything, including tasks that should be someone else's responsibility. This is most glaringly apparent with Adam, the engineer, who seems to have no qualms at all in leaving someone far less qualified to take care of things he should be doing. Somewhat justified in that Adam was scared out of his wits.
 * In 6 Days a Sacrifice, you are sent to run around finding guns or looking for vital objects despite nursing some rather severe injuries following a nice little fall down an elevator shaft. Yahtzee both justifies and lampshades this in the 6 Days special edition commentary by pointing out how dull the game would be if the player character could only sit around doing nothing.
 * The Killer in Me:.
 * Kleptomaniac Hero: Justified in 5 Days, because you expect a thief to steal things.
 * Of course, you can still only take things which are relevant to the plot, even in the early part where you'd think he'd at least grab anything of value while he was looking for the way out. Still justified though in that based on some of the comments made by Trilby, there isn't really anything worth stealing.
 * Lampshaded in Notes: if you tell him to steal a painting, he reminds you he's no longer a thief. He has no problem stealing plot-relevant items, though.
 * Left Hanging: How did Trilby's car end up in the backyard or Serena's hand go from a closed storage area, down a floor, through a grate, out a maintenace shaft, and into a food dispenser, while leaving sizable blood stains almost exclusively on the walls?
 * Let's Play: The whole series, by DeceasedCrab and others.
 * Another, more recent, screenshot-based LP by Quovak. Featuring comments from Ben Yahtzee himself.
 * Locked Door: Quite frequent, and jammed glass windows as well.
 * Look Behind You!: Malcolm to Angela, she logically ignores him. What an Idiot!.
 * Madness Mantra
 * Meaningful Name:
 * Also plenty of meaningful surnames. It comes most into play in 6 Days as, but Yahtzee seems to be fond of descendents/ancestors: see Chahal (Barry in 7 Days, Abed in Notes) and Taylor (Simone in 5 Days, William in 7 Days). It is also implied in the SE commentary for Notes that the Somerset in Notes may be a long-distant ancestor of the Somerset in 7 Days - he reveals that.
 * Cabadath is also known as "The Arrogant Man" in the Order's holy writings..
 * Mind Screw: 6 Days.
 * Neck Snap: There's one in 7 Days which manages to transcend the graphics to be horrific purely on the merit of the sound effect. Necksnaps also show up in 6 Days,.
 * Nice Hat: Trilby, of course.
 * No Name Given: Trilby claims he doesn't have one anymore; trilby's the type of a hat he wears, and "as a name, it suffices".
 * Also, there's AJ, whose real name is never stated. The tie-in fiction suggests it's Andrew Jarvis.
 * Confirmed in the extra materials of the special edition of 6 Days.
 * Non-Indicative Name: 7 Days a Skeptic is actually eight days long. Whoops.
 * Yahtzee addressed this by stating that the first part of the game does not count as a day, since it does not have an intro like the others and should just be seen as a "Day 0".
 * Also, the Player Character is the least skeptical one on the crew.
 * In addition, 6 Days a Sacrifice takes place over the course of five days.
 * Non-Lethal KO: In 6 Days, anything that would have given you a Game Over in previous games (i.e. ) now instead has Theo simply wake up in the sleeping quarters, ready to pick up right from where you left off.
 * No OSHA Compliance: The ship's escape pods in 7 Days take several hours of automated preparation to use. I'm going to repeat that. The devices which are intended to be used in case of dire emergency cannot be used until several hours after they're activated.
 * Nothing Is Scarier:
 * Odd Name Out: Trilby's Notes, although it is different from the other three games in a few key ways.
 * Old Dark House: 5 Days a Stranger takes place in one.
 * Old Shame: The Something Awful Let's Play of the Mythos was quite scathing of 5 Days and 7 Days, and had its complaints about Notes and 6 Days as well. Yahtzee himself joined the thread fairly early on, took its criticism very gracefully, agreed wholeheartedly with nearly all of it, and noted that it was a growing experience for him.
 * Old Dark House: 5 Days a Stranger takes place in one.
 * Old Shame: The Something Awful Let's Play of the Mythos was quite scathing of 5 Days and 7 Days, and had its complaints about Notes and 6 Days as well. Yahtzee himself joined the thread fairly early on, took its criticism very gracefully, agreed wholeheartedly with nearly all of it, and noted that it was a growing experience for him.

"Theo: It's a... I think it's a... it hurts..."
 * Parasol of Pain: Trilby's grapple hook/taser/umbrella - the grolly.
 * The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Most of the crew in 7 Days rely on the counselor to do everything.
 * Poor Communication Kills: Oh boy...
 * Power Floats:.
 * Pure Magic Being: Chzo.
 * Put on a Bus: Jim, possibly literally - after  in Notes, Trilby advises him to go into hiding. This is the last we ever hear of him.
 * Some of the extra material suggests that he will eventually become a paranormal investigator, and given that Yahtzee has a tendency to name his main characters 'Jim'...
 * Railing Kill: In 7 Days, the means of getting rid of.
 * Random Event: The hallucinations in Trilby's Notes. Chances are you will run into at least one or two over the course of the game, but which ones and where you are when they happen are random: the game is coded so that every time you take a pill, there is a chance that a random hallucination will trigger two screens later. Granted, it is possible to take advantage of that fact by trying to trigger them on purpose, but chances are it'll take several pills and a lot of patience to trigger them all.
 * Rant-Inducing Slight: Try repeatedly making Trilby look at doors in 5 Days. Just try it.
 * Reality Warper: Also,
 * Recycled in Space: 7 Days A Sceptic is mostly 5 Days A Stranger inside a spaceship.
 * Redemption Equals Death:
 * Religion of Evil:
 * Retcon: Oh so very much!
 * The DeFoe twins' birth was changed to a month later to match the July 28th significance.
 * The letter in 7 Days describes things very differently than how they happen in Trilby's Notes.
 * At the beginning, 5 Days and later 7 Days were going to be stand-alone games. When Yahtzee had the idea of Chzo, he had to work it out this way. 6 Days is basically a gigantic Retcon to put the whole series together.
 * Retirony
 * Ridiculously Average Guy: Theo DaCabe.
 * Room Full of Crazy: Trust Gladn to describe it - "Cabadath, what is this madness?"
 * Rule of Three: Features very heavily in Notes and 6 Days:
 * Notes gives us the trio of Body, Mind and Soul. The most obvious way this is used is with ) but there are other more subtle uses of a Body/Mind/Soul trio that the "Special Edition" highlights. Firstly, the three main characters at the hotel form such a trio (Trilby as the Body, Abed as the Mind and Siobhan as the Soul). Secondly, the three pictures in the Dark World's bar (the Tall Man, blank and broken) sum up the three elements of the Prince. Finally, if you
 * 6 Days adds to the above with a Past/Present/Future trio and, specifically, how the two events in 5 Days (Past) and 7 Days (Future) created ripples across the timeline that collide in the Present in which 6 Days takes place. It also expands a little more on the Blessed Agonies and in the Special Edition, Yahtzee suggests that Canning, Samantha and Janine were abandoned alive in order to provide Blessed Agonies to tempt Chzo.
 * Also features in 5 Days, though in less meaningful ways (at least at the time the game was made) - both with the body-finder device, which comprises of three components, and in the final puzzle with the welding gear, knife, and . There's also the fact that of the five in the house, three survive and it is only by utilising all three that you can.
 * Hell, John DeFoe's attire is, in itself, part of the Rule : a mask, an apron, and a knife.
 * Sanity Slippage: In 6 Days a Sacrifice, as you go deeper and deeper into, the look-at-info of the doors changes. It goes from "I think it's a door, but I can't think straight. Being in this place feels like having huge weights on my head.", to "It's a... I think it's a... it hurts...", then to a simple "it hurts".
 * Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: 7 Days revolves around a locker found floating in space in a distant galaxy. For one, finding anything this small in an entire galaxy is so mind-bogglingly unlikely that it can only be expressed with large numbers of exponents. The locker was also launched several hundred years ago with no method of propulsion, somehow traveling millions of lightyears since then.
 * Lampshaded when one of the crew notes the extreme unlikelihood that a small locker floating around for only 400 years would end up in a completely different galaxy. The ensuing conversation implies a supernatural force is responsible - which makes sense when you consider that it has
 * Secret Test of Character: The added dialogue in the special edition of 6 Days reveals that the entire series was a Secret Test of Character for
 * Shout-Out: Given the many parallels between 7 Days and Event Horizon,  seems like it may be a homage.
 * Yahtzee actually outright says it's a Shout-Out in the walkthrough he made for the game.
 * There are also shout outs to that movie in the first game,
 * Somerset in "7 Days" cites regulation code 1701.
 * Jim namedrops Treasure Island and Terry Pratchett in 5 Days. In his Let's Play, Quovak complains that there's no real significance to the Shout-Out, it's just there; Yahtzee admits that he never intended any deeper meaning, younger-him just thought it would be clever to drop it out of the blue, and were he making the game today he wouldn't have been quite so injudicious about it.
 * The Slender Man Mythos: Oh boy.
 * Solve the Soup Cans: Some puzzles are definitely of this sort.
 * Spear Carrier: The unnamed main character in Countdown 3.
 * Stable Time Loop: In 6 Days, a seemingly supernatural bald man in a red robe appears and helps the characters out. It is revealed that this character is none other than
 * In the Special Edition of Notes, the scene where Trilby is is expanded on, with
 * Straw Vulcan: The helmsman and first officer in 7 Days A Skeptic are indoctrinated in the ways of "logic", but it's more along the lines of an irrationally extreme version of Occam's Razor than logic. They refuse to even investigate any leads that don't have an obvious rational explanation.
 * The first officer then proceeds to arrest the  on the grounds that it was "awfully suspicious" that he discovered all the bodies. She refuses to listen to him, even when   She had also ordered him to investigate.
 * Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: survives the events of 5 Days, but a time capsule letter in the distant-future 7 Days reveals that the character was actually killed very shortly afterward. Trilby's Notes goes back and is set a few years after 5 Days, and its prologue/tutorial ends with the discovery of the character's body.
 * Also, to the great shock of the player, the very first puzzle of "6 Days" results in.
 * Surreal Horror
 * Story to Gameplay Ratio: Although the games are very heavy on story, one instance where gameplay was chosen over story stands out because of the Fridge Logic it causes. To be more precise it is.
 * In the Special Editions, Yahtzee admits to several instances where story was sacrificed for gameplay. Another example is how the days in 7 Days become ridiculously short towards the end, which creates plenty of Fridge Logic of its own if you think about it too much.
 * Super Strength - The Tall Man can, among other things, gut people alive with his bare hands.
 * Ten Little Murder Victims : The premise of all four games, to a certain extent, but since they have the largest casts 5 Days a Stranger and 7 Days a Skeptic fit it best. In the former, you're locked in a manor; in the latter, you are on a spaceship, which obviously prevents you from leaving it, save adrift in a vacuum.
 * That Was the Last Entry: Both Roderick and Matthew Defoe's diaries. Also the diary in Trilby's Notes, which ends with the Arc Words "it hurts."
 * There Was a Door: Trying to climb through a window on the ground level from the backyard in 5 Days results in Trilby remarking that "[t]here's a perfectly serviceable door."
 * Timey-Wimey Ball: The premise of 6 Days. Its present is simultaneously (maybe the word is jointly? A little help, Dan Streetmentioner?) caused by the past and the future.
 * Title Theme Drop: In 7 Days, the title theme returns at the start of the final day, where you are . It continues to play over, echoing the opening segment of the game.
 * Token Minority: All the games bar 6 Days have at least one.
 * 5 Days: Simone is the only female in a cast of five
 * 7 Days: Barry Chahal is the only non-white character
 * Trilby's Notes: Abed Chahal is the only non-white present-time character. Siobhan is the only significant female character, past or present (all of the flashbacks are male-centric), though the hotel clerk is female and features briefly, though never alive.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Imagine this: you're trapped on a spaceship with a psychotic murderer. Half the crew is dead. You've just gained access to the escape pods. What do you do? If your first guess is to, please never end up in a horror movie with me.
 * At least they are not alone in this regard. Almost everybody in the series is Too Dumb to Live except Chzo. Most of them do end up dying or suffering a Fate Worse Than Death.
 * Who the hell designs spaceship escape pods that require hours of preparation before they can be launched?
 * That could be blamed in the fact that the ship is described as being old to the point people wondering why it is still in service.
 * Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth:
 * Tragic Monster: John DeFoe and Cabadath both. John was tortured and abused from day one. Cabadath made a mistake while trying to save his people from the Roman invaders.
 * Understatement: The intro to The Expedition. "Warning: LONG. Also not funny. One wonders why you'd want to read it at all. Oh well."
 * Unwitting Pawn: Everyone. Except Chzo, of course.
 * What Could Have Been: In the commentary for 6 Days, Yahtzee mentions he originally wanted every playthrough to be completely random: Every time a player started a new game, the order of days would shift so sometimes you'd play day 4 before day 3 and so on. He scrapped the idea because he wanted to be "ambiguous, not impenetrable."
 * White Magic: Several times in 5 Days a Stranger.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome??: Tilby's Notes gives you paragraphs of text for looking at the slightest thing. Is it really that hard to just say, "It's a door"?
 * Window Love: Used oddly in 6 Days a Sacrifice. Dacabe does the rare "through an opaque wall" variation, trying to reach Janine.
 * You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Try looking at the doors in in 6 Days a Sacrifice.


 * This is actually a callback to two running gags: Trilby's issue with the doors in 5 Days, and the aforementioned Arc Words in Notes.
 * You Can't Fight Fate
 * You Fail Logic Forever: Angela arrests the only person willing to do anything because he finds the bodies after being told to do so. She also won't fall for the Look Behind You! trick from a unarmed person behind a laser fence.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
 * Happens to Will at the end of 7 Days, except for the eyes
 * You Shouldn't Know This Already: In 7 Days, entering the Captain's password before getting the clue on what it is causes the computer to reply "This isn't the Olympics, cully. Cheaters don't prosper".