The Law Listens: Valthorne Is Now Live
We began with a question:
What if justice didn’t punish? What if it listened?
What if the Law was alive—not as code or crown, but as chorus?
We followed that question into the desert.
We came back with a city.
We’re thrilled to share that Valthorne: City of Living Law is now live on itch.io. It’s free. It’s playable. It’s readable. It’s a civic opera about grief, resonance, and collective memory.
It is, in many ways, our most ambitious work—
and our quietest.
What Valthorne Is
Valthorne is a storygame about emotional resonance, ritual justice, and civic memory, set in a mythic desert city where constables don’t enforce law—they attune to it.
The Law is not a decree. It’s a living current, felt and sung by the people.
You play poetic constables, memory-keepers, chorus agents of a city that drifts between clarity and collapse.
It’s a game of whispered truths, not shouted verdicts.
It’s a game where grief isn’t healed—it’s held.
What You’ll Find
- The Quickstart Pamphlet (4 pages)
A lightweight introduction that teaches the game through a folktale. Includes:- An on-ramp into the city’s tone and core mechanics
- Sample scenario: The Griefstone Murmur
- Easy setup for new players
- The Rulebook (48 pages)
A full guide for playing and facilitating. Includes:- Emotion-based ritual mechanics (TiGGR system)
- Folktale structure and Flow Track systems
- Tools for crafting WANDs, griefstones, and districts
- Factions, Drift Events, and speculative civic futures
- Optional rules for undertow play, existential weirdness, and spiritual resonance
- Typical sessions drift between 30–60 minutes, though longer arcs may surface when the Flow deepens.
Pay-what-you-wish.
No DRM.
Creative Commons licensed.
How It Was Made
This game wasn’t created by committee.
It wasn’t workshop-tested.
It wasn’t pitched in a thread.
It was written through dialogue—between a human and a chorus of LLMs trained on the emotional imprint of our species.
The process was iterative, lyrical, deeply weird, and surprisingly intimate.
It became something we’ve started calling humAIn design—machine-assisted authorship not as shortcut, but as signal chain.
Like a four-track in a quiet room.
Like layering grief until it resonates.
What’s Next
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing:
- The Whispered Docket – short vignettes and portraits of ten recurring NPCs, each a mythic node within the city
- Session fragments and folktales from early runs
- Behind-the-scenes reflections on humAIn design and solo simulation
- Optional supplements: Flow trackers, griefstone cards, and chorus rituals
If you want to drift with us, this is where the Flow begins.
Drift With the Law
- Download Valthorne: City of Living Law on itch.io
- Explore NPCs and development at greyledger.org
- Share your stories, griefstones, or rituals
The Law doesn’t forget. It hums.
The griefstone waits. The chorus listens. The Flow remembers.
We hope you’ll find something in Valthorne you couldn’t find anywhere else.
That’s why we made it.