Occult horror, decided one dice roll at a time.
The Orpheus Protocol plays out occult horror as a tabletop game, with players naming their characters, a narrator describing the carnage and the dice deciding how badly things go. Multi-part arcs such as The Chester Incident set grisly combat, ritual magic and narrated grief alongside table jokes and steady talk about bonuses and damage.
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The Orpheus Protocol turns a tabletop role-playing game into supernatural horror, and it never hides the game. Story episodes open on a short verse about word and lyre and fervor's spark. Next comes a roll call, with the players giving their names and characters, then a warning that the arc contains violence and that nothing is spared the heat of the crucible. A recap sets the scene. The Chester Incident, with parts numbered into the teens, shows the machinery at full stretch. Nick plays Ishmael Carnegie, Lilit plays Foylan, and a third player voices Mitch Hook, and between them they contend with a megastructure, a sigil of light and a tree made of flesh. The fights are granular. One player invokes a principle of saving people to justify a ritual strike. Another takes a flat plus two rather than keep a bad roll, and the table tallies degrees of success before throwing a d3 for toughness. Then a narrator turns the arithmetic into pictures: branches snapping like limbs, protruding bone, a creature forced to drop the companion it holds in its paw. The table keeps its own humour too, from a player cheering a clash to another describing a running leap as a classic attack dog situation. The cast is not fixed. Part X of The Chester Incident brings Alan, Ben Hatton and Arlie to the table, and War Anthems Part III seats Nick with Cameron, Sydney, Penn and Kit. Ishmael Carnegie crosses between those arcs, and a figure called the Architect is named in both. The recap in War Anthems Part III sketches a trek to central Indiana with a character called 401-I'm-Not-Okay, a resupply run in a fecundity-infested town and a Necrolord laid up after fighting to a standstill. Some of the strongest material is not table talk at all. Passages of narrated prose follow a character named Nevaeh through grief, a promise made with a whole heart and a turn toward vengeance. The feed also carries Lore, Lyres, and Liars: The Princess's Tale, where Rob and players look back at a Season 3 arc. That conversation covers a child character, 733, turning a children's stick game into a gambling operation, a paprika joke that kept growing and where the bug pirates came from. It lets a listener hear the people behind the characters laughing at their own choices. Episodes such as The Chester Incident Part XIII end with a preview of the next part and a request to tell a friend or a receptive stranger, plus a dry aside about not trusting algorithms. With episode numbers in the hundreds, the back catalog is large.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys hearing dice shape a horror story and who doesn't mind talk of modifiers and damage totals on the way to grisly scenes and grief-heavy narration.
What sets it apart: The rules stay audible: bonuses, degrees of success and toughness rolls sit right beside gory narration and passages of prose. The players change from arc to arc, while characters such as Ishmael Carnegie carry across them.
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A tree made of flesh and teeth is your cue to start counting damage.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brutal living-tree battle gives way to a tense negotiation over Ishmael's fate.
The Chester Incident, Part 13 shapes its battle around a grisly, readable problem: if the central flesh tree is holding the ritual together, destroying it may bring the whole nightmare down.
A savage rescue turns combat math into body horror, capped by one perfectly timed Chihuahua joke.
The Chester Incident Part XII turns a rescue beat into grotesque tactical comedy. In a room slick with blood, viscera, and bone, Foylan clamps onto an enemy's wrist, hangs on like "Satan's angry Chihuahua," and buys Lydia the drop she needs.
A bruising fantasy clash turns personal as vengeance takes hold.
The Chester Incident Part 10 keeps its focus on a battle that feels both cosmic and bitterly personal. Model 101 and Tez come close to wiping each other out, Notice is cast into a shadowy realm, and Pumpkin Pete is crushed as the hunt for the Fourth Eye of Tiamat starts to take…
A caravan pirate tale turns child-rearing trouble into paprika chaos, strange lore, and gently escalating fantasy nonsense.
The Princess's Tale turns a caravan near the end of its pilgrimage into a loose comic detour about parenting, gambling, and pirates who wear pants.
Dice, divine mysteries, and the trouble with good intentions.
Mitch battles the Nemophage, which transforms through multiple hosts before vomiting up Fwailin, restoring Mitch's lost memories.
In Part III of The Chester Incident, Rep Bordeaux attempts a risky memory merge between Nodus and Model 101, but the lance of Olyndicus interferes, causing a monstrous twist.
In Part 2 of The Chester Incident, Model 101 absorbs a mutation and connects across dimensions, nearly breaking, while a psychic psychiatrist helps him and a meeting of minds occurs at the Hidden House.
The Orpheus Protocol, Episode 340: The Chester Incident, Part XIII, puts Ishmael, Mitch, and Foylan inside a ritual fight around a central tree of flesh, bone, skin, tooth, and hair.
The Orpheus Protocol's The Chester Incident Part XII follows Mitch, Foylan, and Ishmael Carnegie through a corpse-lashed chase in the megastructure toward Darren Feldman, the transformed first expression with spikes, claws, and a tail that cracks the sound barrier.
The Orpheus Protocol's "The Chester Incident Part XI" follows a collapsing Chester megastructure, a void breach, and a boar-headed threat that keeps splitting the cast across different danger zones.
["The Orpheus Protocol's 'The Chester Incident Part 10' traps Rhett, Kathleen, and Notice in Aiden's shadow mirror of Chester, Illinois after the recap of Pumpkin Pete and Jack Kincaid.", "Alan, Ben Hatton, and Arlie introduce themselves as the players of Rep Bordeaux, Dota's Phoenix, and Kathleen while Aiden uses a psychic link to question Rhett about Foylan and Nadra.", "The negotiation turns into a fight when Kathleen shifts into gigantic stature, Rhett fakes a mind blast, and Notice claws his way out of the shadow zone.", "Aiden becomes a giant wolf of shadow and moonlight, the battlefield fills with parasitized soldiers and lunar fire, and the group leaves on saddled dire bats to keep chasing the Fourth Eye of Tiamat."]
The Princess's Tale turns 733's caravan story into a pirate farce where Captain Buss loses his head, man-sized bugs wear pants, and Winston blows up a ship while following orders too literally.
Notice’s intervention at Lighthouse Books interrupts Model 101 and Tezcatlipoka’s fight, but both suffer severe injuries.
The Orpheus Protocol's Chester Incident Part VIII follows Mitch, Fuelin, Ishmael, and Festa through a bloodied interstice.
Ishmael fights Lydia and her reanimated Caledonian boar inside a church, using Whispers of the Architect to collapse the creature.
The Orpheus Protocol's Chester Incident Part 6 opens with Mitch, Fuelin and Ishmael leaving Lighthouse Books and landing in the house of Mitch's childhood babysitter, James "Rusty" Russell, with a note signed Tez saying Mitch's "lesser reflections" have been "placed where they need to be." Rusty, a Gen X "never trust the government" type who cares for his ailing mother Judy, trades dark jokes with the group about DAS, pumpkin spice cold foam for Ishmael's tarsier Bart, and the team's weapons.
The Orpheus Protocol Episode 332 opens inside Lighthouse Books, where Mitch, Foylin, Ishmael, Notice, Rhett, Kathleen, Model 101 and four Einherjar-like figures meet proprietor Henry Colfax.
The Orpheus Protocol's Part IV opens as Jack Kincaid, Theseus, Navea, Model 101, Notice, Kathleen and Rhett suddenly appear beside the DAS strike team surrounding Fuelin, Mitch and Ishmael in Chester.
In this episode of the Orpheus Protocol, the group reunites and prepares to infiltrate the Architect's realm after a necrolord's intervention.
The DAS Long Range Team, after fleeing a battle, faces a silent father infused with the Expression's life-force, leading to Ramsay's death and the reunion with Sanctity.