Video Game / The Sunken City Collection

"The Blood. It binds us, makes us whole. It completes us."

The Sunken City Collection is the unofficial name for a large collection of Darkest Dungeon Mods, tied together thematically, through in-game lore, and by their shared author Marvin Seo. While mostly a homebrew class mod, there is a number of trinket ones (for the Crimson Court and Color of Madness) as well as a massive fanmade Expansion Pack, The Sunken City (the collection's namesake), which is still in development.

The mods in the collection include:

• The Falconer: A former bandit turned adventurer who fights with her bow and her trusted falcon companion. She serves as a disruptor, applying debuffs and distracting enemies to give her allies an upper hand. However, the Falconer is not a direct fighter. Her damage output is lower than most characters and if she is caught in an unfavourable position, her life may very well be at risk. The Falconer is best used as support, leaving the heavy hitting to other classes. In 2018 she received a substantial rework, including redone art assets, a new stance mechanic, balancing fixes, and a new feature that adds hunting Bandits to the game.
• The Thrall: A bloodthirsty gladiator who crushes anything that opposes the heir with his bare fists. The Thrall shines best in the thick of combat, where he can deliver devastating blows and punish any who try to defy him. Should the opponent be too far to engage in close combat, the Thrall can take a moment to hype himself up and charge back into the fray, trampling all who stand in his way. While the Thrall's body is unbreakable, his mind is fragile. Should the Thrall feel he is threatened, he'll quickly become Ferocious, entering a frenzy where friend and foe blur into one mass and the only priority is self preservation.
• The Lamia: A bewitching siren of unearthly beauty one second, and a hideous sea abomination another; the Lamia has a transformation mechanic similar to the vanilla game's Abomination, being a support class in her human form, and a damage class when transformed. Regardless of the form she takes, the Lamia is very fragile, relying on either her speed in beast form or her allies in human form to survive. Unfortunately, the hideous appearance of the Lamia can inflict massive stress to her party and such is her nature that as she attacks, she may disrupt her own party's formation. Without the proper protection, the Lamia can easily be rendered useless or, in the worst case, dead.
• The Seraph: A holy knight, burnt and broken, who wields the power of the divine flame, but holds a darker, more sinister nature hidden underneath. Wielding sword, shield, and flame, the Seraph is powerful as both a tank, and damage dealer, though she has a handful of support utility, but her true power is her Martyr complex, similar to the Flagellant; she gets more powerful as she takes more damage. The Seraph's weakness lies in her broken body and fanatical faith. The Seraph is nothing without her blessed armor, and any foe that can bypass her sturdy defense will quickly end the Seraph's life.
• The Sisters: Twin sisters, a general and a powerful scholar, whose body is possessed by the departed spirit of the other, though they give differing accounts as to who is possessing whom (there was memory-altering magic involved). Fighting for control over the body, the Sisters are the very definition of Difficult, but Awesome, as they have a very complex moveset based on a Stance System, but once mastered not much can stand against them. Each Sister specializes in different techniques for combat. The Scholar uses forbidden knowledge she stole from her Order's temple, manipulating the life essence of the world to aid herself and allies while hindering the enemy. The Warrior in contrast prefers the visceral feel of melee combat, passing from foe to foe in a bloody display of finesse and cruelty.
• The Wraith: An assassin from a distant land, the Wraith fights using a peculiar weapon of blade and chain. Master of this exotic tool of bloodshed, this heartless killer swings his sickle like a whip, lacerating and decapitating his foes from a range or delivering a brutal execution in melee. The Wraith is not an agile combatant. His body and mind are cold from a decade of remorseless slaughter and he has adapted a patient and calculating method to his combat tactics. He relies on ensnaring his victims or temporarily incapacitating them with the blunt side of his weapon, after which he can deliver an efficient and fatal attack.
• The Sunken City: An Expansion Pack in development, centred on the titular Sunken City. It's infested by uncountable gibbering abominations from the elder age. The area will be similar to the Darkest Dungeon and the Crimson Court from the base game, scripted areas that stretch the Nintendo Hard nature of the game to its limits, albeit much larger, with a huge swathe of new bosses, new mini bosses, enemies, new curios, new trinkets and more.
• Crimson Court Trinkets: Adds a host of new Crimson Court trinkets for the new heroes, along with support for the DLC.
• Colour of Madness Trinkets: Adds a host of new shard trinkets for the new heroes, along with support for the DLC.

The collection as a whole is most well known for its high quality, especially its art, being virtually identical to the vanilla games style, and internal balance; it has even received nods from Red Hook itself.

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This game provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Implied. The Banshee summons two unique monsters called Mother and Father. Father's skillset revolves around drinking and one of his attacks involves striking Mother.
• A House Divided: A gameplay mechanic for the Sisters. At 100 stress, they always end up with an unique "Discordant" affliction, where they end up fighting for control over their shared body. This translates into getting the worst traits of multiple afflictions, changing stances at random, and becoming less resistant against deathblows.
• Affably Evil: For an inhuman abomination that maintains her youth through Blood Magic, the Lamia is very personable, always speaking gently and politely to her comrades, with warmth and even genuine kindness occasionally. It doesn't change that she's a loathsome being underneath it.
• Ambiguously Human: It's not clear if the Lamia is a human cursed into becoming a monster (like the Abomination) and is trying to keep control over her monstrous side, or if she was always a monster and the human form is a guise she's desperately trying to keep. Regardless, she's obsessed with maintaining her beautiful human form at any cost.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The Sisters. Did the Scholar kill the Warrior, only for her curse to backfire and cause her to be haunted by the Warrior's ghost? Or did the Warrior kill the Scholar, who then came back as a ghost thanks to her magic? Each Sister claims that she is the one who survived, and the rightful "owner" of the body they're fighting over.
  • The Wraith's backstory comic shows him being impaled through the torso by his young lover, his flavor text on steam says "he died that day," his in-game description says that he was indeed believed to be dead for over a decade, and his class is named after a type of undead. It isn't clear if he "died" in the literal sense when his lover impaled him and he was actually supernaturally reanimated, or if he only "died" in the figurative sense and is just being particularly edgy about it. However, his Crimson Court Trinket set, a blade and some bloody entrails, lend credence to the former interpretation.
• Anachronism Stew: When taken in conjunction with the vanilla Darkest Dungeon's setting, which is a late Renaissance and early modern European setting. The Lamia and Thrall both hail from what appears to be an ancient Greek or Roman culture, complete with togas and gladiator pits. The Sisters come from an unspecified feudal Chinese region whose exact era is unspecified. The Wraith appears to be from a feudal Japanese region.
• Animal Motifs: The Falconer, obviously, uses falcons and other birds of prey as her motif, with her hood being shaped like a falcon's beak; the 2018 rework revealed this the motif of her Bandit Clan, who all have a very falcon-esque motif incorporated into their armor, fighting style, and fielding evil birds of their own. The Lamia uses aquatic snakes, eels, and lampreys as her motif.
• Anti-Hero: While all of the new heroes are not particularly savory characters, they do each have some degree of goodness in them. Even the Lamia, when virtuous, shows a glimmer of actual heroism beneath her otherwise monstrous nature. In addition, all of the heroes will suffer stress and horror if they harm the Talon hostages, and will heal stress if they rescue them.
• Artistic License – Biology: Many Talon brigand enemies have a forearm reduced to almost nothing but bone, and yet the fingers on that arm seem to somehow still be able to receive signals from the brain. They also ought to be bleeding pretty badly from a wound that serious, which would also get infected very easily.
• Asshole Victim: They Thrall may be a complete asshole to his teammates, but keep in mind that the guy is a slave who the Heir only recently bought and freed.
• Attack Animal: The Falconer and the Talon brigands are accompanied by birds of prey, with Talon champions and Mother Talon summoning flocks of crows and ravens, and vultures being among the enemies that follow the Talons into battle.
• The Atoner: The Falconer is attempting to make amends for her awful past as a bandit. One town event that lets you recruit Falconers mentions that most of the Hamlet doesn't trust them but are willing to accept their help because they're just that desperate. In fact, she accepts her fate calmly when selected to be killed by the Heart of Darkness.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • The Thrall takes this up to eleven. Not only is he a crazed berserker who gets stress relief from battering enemies to death with his bare hands, he has a special affliction, Ferocious, which gives him a heavy buff to damage at the cost of making it very likely he'll choose to attack a friend instead of a mob.
  • The Warrior part of the Sisters is terribly unhinged, announcing her presence after taking over with a loud promise of violence. She even has a perpetual Slasher Smile.
• Bandit Clan: The Talons are a clan of bandits whom the Falconer once worked for, and subsequently abandoned. They apparently specialized in kidnapping and slavery, and when the Falconer accidentally killed one of their prisoners, she fled the clan and now they are hunting her. They feature a bird of prey motif and will attack the Falconer and her party at camps in a manner akin to the Shieldbreaker. They also feature minions similar to those of the Cultists you fight elsewhere, and party members who fight alongside the Falconer during the ambushes may get a special "Marked by the Flock" quirk, meaning that the Talon Brigade will also attack them.
• The Big Guy: The Thrall is a mountain of muscle and barely contained rage.
• Blood Magic: The Lamia's magic comes from this, which she learned from the fishfolk.
• Body Horror:
  • The Seraph's body was burnt, and the results, as seen in her comic, are not pretty. In game, the only glimpse we get is when she uses Visage, a move that removes her mask and shows her Nightmare Face to the two front enemy ranks, stunning them. This is also highly unsettling to her allies, to the point of inflicting Horror on them.
  • The Lamia's comic shows her body becoming wizened and emaciated before she sacrifices a maiden.
• The Bully: The Thrall's entire issue is that he does this to the entire party. One of the Thrall's camping skills, Dominus, consists of him treating his teammates like shit, earning him a stress recovery but stressing out all of the others.
• Bully Brutality: Another camping skill consists of him beating the living hell out of another party member.
• Burn the Witch!: The Seraph was burnt at the stake as a witch, but was saved by timely Divine Intervention, although her body was charred and disfigured.
• Casualty in the Ring: The Thrall's comic shows him inflicting one of these to his opponent. According to the Lamia's journals, apparently, the opponent he killed was so popular and beloved that his death caused a riot.
• Chained by Fashion: The Thrall's collar still has a chain hanging from the back. The links look large enough that you could probably moor a boat with it.
• Coup de Grâce: The Wraith's Guillotine skill is a guaranteed critical hit against enemies that are at 25% hp or lower, meaning it will most of the time be used as a finishing blow.
• Covered with Scars: In the Thrall's defence, he's an escaped gladiator slave; it's hardly surprising that a lifetime of fighting with minimal armour would leave him looking like a heavily-used cutting board.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to the base game, whose heroes are mostly repentant people trying to redeem themselves for a past sin, Marvin Seo's classes are generally Nominal Heroes in it for their own benefit. Some, like the Falconer, are attempting to atone for their pasts, while others, like the Lamia, are purely in it for themselves. The Talon brigands are an even nastier version of normal brigands, who are accompanied by vultures and will even bring hostages and use them against your party.
• Death Seeker: When Discordant, the Sisters will start to shift toward this, with the Warrior damaging herself and making herself more vulnerable just so that she can end the feeling of lifelessness she experiences when the Scholar is in control of their body.
• Demonic Possession: The Sisters are a case of the "Possessed by a ghost" version of this trope.
• Depraved Bisexual: The Lamia is super flirty to everyone, regardless of the class's gender, as is expected considering her nature. If anything, she seems to like other women even more than men, choosing her next victim based on how pretty they look.
• Desperation Attack: When she's at 33% (or less) health, the Seraph can use Vengeance, arguably her most powerful skill. It does a lot of damage (even more if the target is marked), has a high crit chance, and to top it off, activates riposte when used.
• Distaff Counterpart: The Lamia and the Seraph are this for the Abomination (both can transform into a monstrous form) and the Leper (both are righteous warriors wearing heavy armor and suffering from Body Horror), respectively.
• Enemy Summoner: The vultures who accompany Talon brigands will feed on the corpses of enemies who are killed, and will fill any unoccupied slots on the enemy team with more vultures.
• Epic Flail: The Wraith's trademark weapon is a kusarigama, effectively combining this trope with Sinister Scythe.
• Ephebophile: The Wraith's lover in his backstory comic doesn't quite look like he'd be above the age of consent in most modern developed countries, which isn't helped by the fact that the Wraith himself looks old enough to be the guy's dad; possibly a case of Deliberate Values Dissonance.
• Fragile Speedster: The Lamia in Beast form.
• Friend or Foe?: When afflicted, the Thrall is as likely to hit an enemy as he is to pummel another member of your party.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The Talon Mother used to be a slave, until she got loose from her bonds with the help of crows, at the cost of her left arm being chewed by them. A Roaring Rampageof Revenge ensues, ending with her gouging out the eyes of the slaver's leader then taking over as the new leader of the brigand group that harasses the Falconer at the present.
• The Fundamentalist: The Seraph is this even when compared to the religious characters of the vanilla game (save perhaps the Flagellant). This is more evident in her camping skills, which are geared towards offering benefits towards religious characters and disadvantages to non religious ones.
• Heal It With Fire: The Seraph's Cauterize skill, which removes bleeds from a party member and grants them a huge bleed resist buff, at the cost of decreasing their speed and increasing stress damage taken for a couple of rounds.
• Heroic Build: The popular gladiator in the Thrall's comic is a straight example, up until his head is reduced to a red smear; the Thrall who kills him is an exaggeration, being a vaguely humanoid heap of muscle and scars that barely fits into one slot in the party lineup.
• Hostage Situation: The revamped Falconer mod introduces hostages that guard Talon brigands. Shoot the Hostage is strongly discouraged because attacking a hostage will raise the attacker's stress level while killing her will inflict horror as well as massive stress damage to the entire party. Keeping the hostage alive while killing her kidnappers, however, will greatly reduce the entire party's stress.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Lamia. Her transformed state is so monstrous it inflicts Horror on the rest of the party.
• Jerkass: The Thrall is horribly abusive to his teammates even when not afflicted, and when he is, he can turn against them in the blood frenzy just as readily as enemies. His camping skills are all based around making himself stronger at the expense of his fellows, except the one where they gang up on him and chain him up, and one specifically has him tie someone up to clobber for the night (particularly hilarious when combined with the Flagellant, who would probably demand he keep going).
• I Die Free: The Thrall's barks when afflicted, Also if selected by the Heart of Darkness
  Thrall: Come then, creature of creation! If I am to die, I will die free of my shackles!
• It's Personal: Party members who assist the Falconer during an ambush by the Talons will gain a special quirk "Marked by the Flock," meaning that their grudge against the Falconer has spread to those protecting her. The Talons will then begin appearing as random encounters if that hero is in the party, and they'll spread that quirk to other members of the party as well. If all four members of the party have this quirk, Mother Talon herself will ambush the party.
• Lover and Beloved: Possibly the Wraith and his lover. We aren't given info on whether their relationship was as one-way as this trope, but there was a big enough age gap between them.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Seraph has a greatshield that she can use to guard another member of the party, boosting her own protection status in the process.
• Magic Mirror: The Lamia wields one. It allows her to keep her human appearance.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Compared with the baseline Darkest Dungeon classes, each of them except the old version of the Falconer has a unique element.
  • The Thrall gains a small amount of stress every time he takes a hit. This makes stress management for him extremely important, as well as mitigating attacks against him. Additionally, he cannot use the standard camping skills, because he's too much of a Jerkass to ever encourage people, leaving him with only his unique ones: toughening himself up, bullying the rest of the party, beating the hell out of some poor bastard in the group, or being chained up so the rest of the party don't have to deal with his shit.
  • The Lamia cannot deal any damage in her human form, meaning she has to rely on her party to deal damage.
  • Though the Seraph uses vanilla mechanics, she is heavily dependent on Marks to deal significant damage. Since most classes who can Mark are not religious classes, focusing on her marking abilities means any party she joins won't benefit much from her religious abilities. This means she has to be built to either support a Mark-heavy party or support a religious party.
  • The Sisters feature a constantly-shifting Stance System. Like the Thrall, they depend on stress-healing because of the unique issues with their affliction if their stress gets too high. The Sisters can mitigate their stress by frequently changing stances, which both reduces stress and makes it so that the stress cost of their abilities doesn't increase. The drawback is that changing stances stresses out the rest of the party.
  • Through the Adapt skill, the new Falconer can change her other abilities into alternate versions - essentially giving her 13 skills instead of the usual 7. For example, Volley Fire can be changed into Flurry and back; both damage multiple enemies, but the former inflicts more damage, while the latter shuffles enemies around and reduces their accuracy).
  • The Wraith has an "execution" mechanic that gives him massive bonus damage to an enemy whose health is low. He also gains damage bonuses against enemies who are stunned or bleeding.
• Mighty Glacier: The Thrall has underwhelming speed, but his arms are nearly as big as the Highwayman's entire body, and they are not just for show. The "Mighty" part really gets emphasized when he turns Ferocious, as he gains a huge damage buff and can demolish enemy ranks with ease... while also having a chance to thrash his own teammates in the midst of his bloodlust.
• The Mistress: Implied in the Banshee fight. After beating Father and Mother, two new unique monsters will spawn named Wench and Husband. According to the Lore, the Banshee killed them in a fit of rage.
• Moral Myopia: The Talon Mother seeks you out to kill you in revenge for you killing her children. Her "children" were murderous brigands who attacks your players indiscriminately and use innocent women as hostages.
• Most Wonderful Sound: In-Universe, the Lamia's Arietta skill, where she sings a soothing song to a party member, healing stress, with a chance of removing Horror status.
• Mugging the Monster: In one of the journal collections for the Lamia, she mentions being mugged by bandits while going through the back alleys of her city. Naturally, it doesn't end well for her attackers.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • You can see the guilt and shame on the Falconer's face when she watches her fellow bandits rape and murder the girl she helped them track. In her new comic, she has this reaction when she kills an hostage by accident.
  • Coupled with a party-wide horror debuff, this is what happens if one kills a Talon Hostage.
  • If afflicted, the Lamia will openly lament the lengths she's gone to in order to keep her beauty.
• Nightmare Fetishist: The Warrior was a literal case of this. Her backstory reveals that she was a serial killer who handpicked male victims for their Mr. Fanservice qualities, and can even be seen groping herself as she murders them. This is actually a common motive for real life serial killers.
• No-Harm Requirement: It's explicitly stated that the Lamia's disguise immediately fails if she directly harms someone. In gameplay, this means that she cannot cause damage unless she's in beast form.
• Noble Bird of Prey: The Falconer's falcon.
• Nominal Hero:
  • The only reason the Thrall is at the Hamlet is because the Heir bought him from a slave auction; he fights the horrors of the Darkest Dungeon because it's the only thing he knows to do, and takes pleasure in it.
  • The Warrior half of the Sisters was actually an outright serial killer.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: One of the Thrall's camping skills has the rest of the party chain him for the night. This stresses him considerably, but everyone else loses stress because of the catharsis.
• Polar Opposite Twins: The Sisters. The Warrior was a soldier and serial killer of the type that gets sexual gratification form murder, whereas the Scholar was a perfectly decent bookish person who'd had enough of her sister's crap one day.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Lamia's beauty relies on human sacrifice.
• Princess in Rags: The revamped Falconer's second comic, posted on Marvin Seo's website, suggests she's this.
• "Rashomon"-Style: The Sisters each remember the night of the murder differently. They agree that the Scholar had had enough of the Warrior's serial killings and so put up some magical runes on the wall before confronting her, but form there the accounts differ; the Warrior remembers killing the Scholar, who in turn remembers killing the Warrior. Either way the Scholar's magic caused the slain sister to posses the surviving one, and since they were identical twins the appearance of their shared body is no help. It isn't clear what the source of the memory alteration is, but the mod author has confirmed that one of them was indeed murdered.
• Shoot the Hostage: Talon brigands will occasionally bring along hostages, who will be forced to Guard them. Killing the hostage will let you finish combat quicker, but doing so is discouraged, since killing her gives a large amount of stress to your entire party. Making sure she survives, however, gives your party a substantial stress relief.
• Shout-Out: The Thrall's backstory is one to the battle between Gregor Clegane and Oberyn Martell, with the popular handsome spearfighter getting his head horribly crushed to paste by the hated and brutish giant, much to the disgust of the audience.
• Shown Their Work: The Falconer's combat stance - leaning forward on one leg, bow pointed downward with an arrow nocked but not drawn - is the exact same stance that real-life archers take before drawing back the string on a high-powered bow to loose the arrow.
• Single-Minded Twins: Inverted by the sisters. Rather than a set of twins who act like a two-body Hive Mind, they were Polar Opposite Twins who's spirits were magically forced to timeshare a body.
• Split-Personality Team: The sisters, when they bother to cooperate. Partly Inverted, however, in that rather than being one personality who was split, they're two separate people, one of whom now has to share her body with the other's spirit.
• Stance System:
  • The Lamia can switch between human and beast, in a way similar to the Abomination.
  • The Sisters can switch which sister is currently possessing the body. Staying in a form increases the stress cost of that form's skills, while the cost for the other form's skills decreases. Switching forms heals some of the Sisters' stress, but stresses out the rest of the party.
  • The reworked Falconer can use her "Adapt" ability to change the secondary effects of her skills.
• Support Party Member:
  • In her base state, the Lamia cannot deal any damage at all. Instead she is entirely focused on helping her allies. She can heal and cure status effects, reduce stress, and pull enemies forward as well as break guard. It is only after she transforms that the Lamia can attack directly.
  • Similarly, the Scholar mode of the Sisters mostly focuses on support, either by using regeneration and stress heals, marking and blighting enemies, or setting up a Riposte on herself. He support abilities do help her set up the Warrior mode for high damage, as the Warrior's Trespass skill will automatically crit against any Marked enemy.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Scholar and the Warrior, despite hating each other's guts, fight together to ensure the survival of their common body. However, upon getting the Sisters' unique affliction (Discordant), any semblance of collaboration between both goes out of the window.
  • Also, the Thrall with anyone adventuring with him. Any partnership where three of the participants regularly keep the fourth chained to a handy tree in downtime rather than deal with his crap has problems.
• That Man Is Dead: The Wraith was once a master swordsman who was betrayed by one of his students (and lover). The former kindly master is explicitly described as being dead, with only a hollow, unfeeling killer remaining.
• Token Evil Teammate: The series as a whole is filled with morally dubious heroes, to the extent they make the vanilla Hamlet adventures look like saints in comparison, ranging from the ruthless Warrior to the utterly vicious and brutal Thrall. The Lamia herself is this to the rest of the group.
  • The Thrall himself is another example, in that he has absolutely no way of actually helping his teammates, and in fact will all too eagerly clobber them during fight or at camp to lower his own stress. It's to the point that one of his skills involves chaining him up so the rest of the party don't have to suffer from his antics, lowering their stress while he takes a hit to his own in the process.
• Token Good Teammate: The Falconer at least has some scruples, in sharp contrast to, for example, the Lamia or the Thrall.
• Use Your Head: The Thrall skill Gore has him headbutting the enemy with the blade in his helmet. It deals a lot of damage and stuns the enemy, but it also has a chance to stun the Thrall himself.
• Villain Protagonist: The Lamia is arguably this. The only reason she can even be considered a "hero" of any sort is that she is fighting on your side, but that doesn't mean she is doing it for any "good" reasons. She does have some Pet the Dog moments and is kind enough to her allies that it keeps her from being a full-blown villain though.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Banshee, as is to be expected from a monster with that name, has a moveset focused around suffering and grieving. What really pushes her into this trope, however, are the mechanics of her bossfight, all of which implies an immensely tragic life: First, she summons two unique monsters named Father and Mother. Father's moveset (when he's not beating you up) involves drinking from a jug and hitting Mother for buffs. After those are defeated, she summons two more unique monsters named Husband and Wench. Wench's moveset is mostly about buffing and supporting Husband. Finally, the Banshee has a gaping hole in her stomach, implying a violent abortion. And all this stemmed from before they were infected by the Fungus.