Scare The Storytellers

The theme of this year's Scare the Storytellers was "misunderstood legends." We've challenged players to identify a mob or experience in game and create a legend about it from the perspective of an in-game character that doesn't fully understand what they've seen.

The winning entries will have their legend brought into the game, and the menacing creature of legend will be available to fight next Rapadruk as a NIGHTMARE.

Read the entries on our wiki and then cast your vote for your top 3 on Discord under ANNOUNCEMENTS.

Scare the Storytellers 2025

An alien looking figure with intricate facepaint points toward the viewer. They're lit with blue and red hues.

Entry: Repak, the Stealer of Keys

Entry: Bad Dog, a Fatar serial killer

Entry: The Brood Mother

Entry: The Burrower Beneath

Entry: The Ghost Children of Tranquility

Every bounty hunter worth their mercenary listing in the sector has traversed the halls of Tranquility Deepness at some point or other, though not all have witnessed the ghost children of the station.

Those who have, might recall the innocent giggles and quick, pattering footsteps that echo down the barren halls, distorting into shrieks and groans. The children's likenesses seem to flicker with the lights of the station, their bodies bending in ways they shouldn’t, their faces expressing an almost-believable facsimile of childlike joy.

Read the full story:

https://wiki.starmourn.com/Ghost_Children_of_Tranquility

Entry: Second Hand Spectres

Occasionally you hear about these popping up in the sketchiest of pawn shops, and the dark backroom clinics around Reynolds. As I hear it they were made by, and for, some old mining corp. They got hit with some legal troubles, or something like that, and the whole corp got scrapped and sold off. They came with an inbuilt prosthetic-to-mindsim system to help the adaptation feel as natural as possible; no phantom limb, just real feel.

Read the full story:

https://wiki.starmourn.com/Second_Hand_Spectres

The history of Scare the Storytellers

In October of 2020, the Starmourn team launched what they hoped would be the first in a yearly tradition of Halloween writing contests. The goal of this contest is to bring a little spine-tingling space horror to the universe during the spookiest month of the year, along with letting players contribute their own creative twists to the game’s lore.

Prior years' contests asked players to come up with a frightening story whispered about by members of their character’s race. Check out the entries below!

The following winning stories should be considered, if not true, at least canon.

Scare the Storytellers 2024

A reflective orange pumpkin sits centered in a spooky backdrop, surrounded by encroaching black spiders and spiderwebs.

OVERALL WINNER: Svatlina - The Twisted Soulhunter

Dovic is a groundbreaking mutagenic pathogen that redefines the boundaries of biological manipulation. This extraordinary organism possesses the uncanny ability to shapeshift into a myriad of microbes, each with its insatiable appetite for genetic diversity. It replicates the DNA of any living organism it encounters, allowing it to integrate seamlessly into its host. Once established, it takes complete control, transforming the host into a puppet capable of complex behaviors and environmental adaptation. One of its most infamous hosts is known only as: The Twisted Soulhunter.

https://wiki.starmourn.com/The_Twisted_Soulhunter

OVERALL WINNER: Picram - The Haunted Site

Scare the Storytellers 2023

OVERALL WINNER: Picram - The Lys

Poet Yi'jaru- Arrick the Everdying

Stelil V'lani - The Creeping Black

Adazay - Stern Emmaliare

Scare the Storytellers 2022

OVERALL WINNER: Asteyr Dreya - Katsyi, Lost to the Depths

Around the end of the War of Extinction and before the birth of the Amaian race, a wounded and shaken Lha Ti by the name of Katsyi fled everyone, and everything, to Delphi and secluded itself in its madness at the bottom of the Keter Ocean where it relived the horrors of a 1,500 year war in its mind alone. Unfortunately, the young Amaian race encountered Katsyi. Having no interest in this new race, Katsyi lashed out with void kith, ate the brave who got too close, or ignored the Amaians.

https://wiki.starmourn.com/Katsyi

Arissa Moonchild - The Barrel-Eyed Whale

Desmond Lockhart - The North Star

Akiko - Shadows of the Undercity

Shulamit Moonchild - Questioning Terraworm

Scare the Storytellers 2021

Human in a red hoodie against a black, shadowed background holds their fists up by their temples, their face obscured by a glowing orange LED mask with Xs for eyes and a jagged line for the mouth.

OVERALL WINNER: Afesotinuilar Matar - The Sorrow of Suaha

Nyx - The Fereshteh

Alder - Sapropheratu

Many non-Decheeran are familiar with the Tal, but very few are even aware of, let alone intimately familiar with, the horror this force allows the Decheerans to combat. There is a reason Decheerans cannot be forcibly ejected from a grove--to bud without a sufficient emotional connection to other Decheerans dooms the resulting proto-Decheeran to succumb to an emptiness that consumes its mind and warps it into a ghostly white and parasitic aberration known widely as a Sapropheratu.

https://wiki.starmourn.com/Sapropheratu

Bugbo - The Unfathomable

Lilias - The Butcher of C-Block

Scare the Storytellers 2020

Overall Winner: Kass Stareater - SM-SKR-03: "RUST"

"Hey, It's Kass,

I found what seems to be a confidential file while I was installing a backdoor on a facility that my old family company, Engram, was contracted to build, I don't know what all of this could mean but it could be something dangerous. Word needs to get out.

I'm going to see if I can't dig up more files from this facility while I'm here."

https://wiki.starmourn.com/SM-SKR-03: RUST

Victoria T’rvati – The Shades of Callisto

Mairon T’rvati – Annavara, the Deathless

Seth - The Kershk

Zarrach - The Abyssinian

The Abyssinian takes various forms, but seems to prefer a humanoid shape, albeit one made of obscuring, blurry shadows making it difficult to get a sense of what it truly is. The Abyssinian's eyes are atramentous pools of the void itself held in a bone-white sphere, seeming to draw you in should you stare for too long and it lacks a discernible mouth. When moving it unnervingly does not demonstrate any ambulatory actions like walking or floating, it just seems to exist in one spot at one moment and another the next.

https://wiki.starmourn.com/The_Abyssinian

Shardclaw - The Akkinova

The Akkinova possess three large limbs around their torso, each a mix between bat wings and clawed hands. On one end of their body are three tails that are each ended in a foot long harpoon, sharp and powerful enough to pierce spaceship hulls and rend flesh. They do not possess a head, but instead many tentacles come from where one might expect a head to be, surrounding a maw of endless teeth. Their bodies are as black as space, though thousands of “eyes” that glow like distant stars cover their skin, appearing like the void itself until it is too late.

https://wiki.starmourn.com/The_Akkinova

Ninvahn - A Choral Brainjacker

Perceived only by the faint twangs of sound, a choral brainjacker lurks here restlessly. Composed entirely of waves of dissonance, the brainjacker is perceived only by the faint rustlings of sounds as it zips around without a visible form. On occasion, a SONAR may capture the aura of the brainjacker when in modulates into audible ranges. On SONAR it appears like a restless cloud of ever-shifting energy, its form constantly evolving into ambiguous shapes as it violently reacts to any and all sounds in the environment.

https://wiki.starmourn.com/A_Choral_Brainjacker