KULT: Divinity Lost - Dark Realms and Other Horrors

The gears of the Illusion keep on turnin'
22 days ago – Tue, Jul 28, 2026 at 10:26:51 AM

Hello Kultists, and thank you for your patience. We are on the last stretch, though the summer days keep slipping away faster than we would like.

To pick up the pace, we have brought in a second editor, Jason Fryer, the main author behind the gamemaster's guide Beyond Darkness and Madness and the scenario Atrocity Exhibition, as well as material for earlier editions of KULT. He will handle Hour of the Flame, while our regular editor, Jacqueline Bryk, takes on Metropolis.

Metropolis

The High Cults are in editing. At the same time, Martin Svärd is putting the finishing touches on the Citadels, building on older texts by Torsten Gatu and Petter Nallo. Each Citadel is being given its own character. We want to find a uniqueness to the streets and ruins that surround it, the lower floors, and the heights above, where you climb deeper into the Archon and the principle itself. Somewhere along that ascent comes the realization of how the Principle has been shaping you, and your life, all along.

We are also finishing one of the appendix chapters, which covers the strange relics and artifacts you may find in Metropolis. It goes into detail on what happens when you carry them back into Elysium, and how the Illusion works to reshape them.

We have spent a great deal of time on artifacts of different origins, so that objects belonging to mankind from when we were divine feel stranger and more lethal than the biomechanical technology used by our servants, or the relics carried by those who serve the Demiurge.

The Metropolis Archetypes are finished: The Nephilim (Enlightened), The Survivor (Aware), and The Entranced (a new kind of Archetype). And yes, with ‘The Entranced’ you will be able to play as one of the Entranced (KDL, p. 307). This widens the possibilities of what kinds of stories you can play in KULT, as they are based in Metropolis rather than Elysium and have their own unique views on reality and the Illusion (if they are Aware of that!). We hope you find that as exciting as we do, and of course are eager to delve deeper into these stories.

The Entranced Archetype works differently than others: it presents different roles one could fulfill in an Entranced community. You pair the Entranced with another Aware or Enlightened Archetype (called parent Archetype), replacing four of the parent Archetype’s possible Advantages with Advantages relating to the Entranced role. The final result is a unique blend, such as “The Entranced Fixer (Oracle)”. In this case: the PC is one of the Entranced, their role in the community is Oracle, but they are Fixers of deeper mysteries of Metropolis. Like a Elysium Fixer would seel guns and murder-scene-cleaning-services, maybe this Entranced Fixer has access to strange maps, ways to read Metropolis’s ebb and flow, or can contact fallen gods on behalf of others.

Beyond that, we are tying together the last texts before they're ready for editing. As for the art, we want the city to feel vast, mysterious, and endlessly varied. It is a monumental world that dwarfs every other. We feel we’re achieving that, especially as new artwork comes in! To close this section, here’s one finalized illustration:

Hour of the Flame

We are close to finalizing the last 'key location' (out of 29!). Among them: the Abandoned Rail Yard, where the homeless have been disappearing; the Closed Sky, a dream world slowly coming apart; and the Pink Paradise strip club with its hidden temple for blood spiritism. They range from the mundane — a tattoo parlor, a lawyer's office out in the suburbs — to the deeply strange, such as the Blue Labyrinth, a purgatory bleeding into the streets of King's Point.

Depending on the scenario you are running, a handful of these locations will matter directly to your story. The rest remain in the background.

Hour of the Flame also includes a chapter presenting a set of starting options. At the high end, you play Enlightened characters seeking out the mysteries surrounding the Lictor's murder. At the other, you are DEA operatives working to break the city's meth trade. You can play members of one of the cults — the Coq Rouge, the Prophets of the Third Temple, or the Children of the Night of the Heritage Family — or something more ordinary: police officers, the Rustborn, or members of the MC club the Fallen Saints.

Every one of these threads touches on the secret history of King's Point, and each can serve as the basis for a one-shot or a long campaign, seen from a very different angle.

This book has become an experiment with a new kind of setting book, one that opens up many types of play and lets you experience the same story from several perspectives.

In the Kickstarter description we wrote that it would run 60–90 pages. It is clear by now that it will be considerably larger than that. Exactly how much larger, we will know in the coming weeks.

And here's a collage of all new artwork we've received in these last few weeks:

That's all

We will continue working to bring you these books as fast as we can. Thank you for sticking with us and believing in this project.

July Update: In the final stages of Metropolis and Hour of the Flame
about 1 month ago – Mon, Jul 06, 2026 at 10:09:13 AM

Hello, Kultists! It's time for our monthly update. This one will be brief. 

First off, we want to thank you for your continued patience. We know this project has taken longer than expected, but we also don't want to rush these books at the expense of their quality. Like many of you, we often return to previous KULT books for inspiration, and we want these to be books you'll come back to for years to come. Metropolis, especially, has been reimagined for Divinity Lost, and we're committed to making it worthy of that legacy. 

Now, we continue to work on Metropolis and The Hour of the Flame. A handful of key chapters are left to complete, but we're almost there. This final stretch has required more work than we originally anticipated, but everything is steadily falling into place.

Metropolis: I'm (Gabe) currently handling the High Cults of Metropolis, the great conspiracies rooted in the Eternal City. The content is essentially complete, so there won't be any major additions or rewrites. We’re now polishing some of the older descriptions and streamlining how the High Cults are presented. I'm also assembling material for the new Archetypes, The Nephilim and The Survivor.

The Hour of the Flame: Petter is wrapping up the few remaining locations — really not much is left to be finalize, but he's the sole writer of those. To keep things moving, I'm (Gabe) now reviewing each chapter as it's completed. Some locations can serve as foundation for whole campaigns, and some are specific to the mysteries of the main conflict in Hour of the Flame. Meaning that some are quicker to finish... and some are trickier. Comparatively, these are mostly bigger and richer in detail than those written for The Illusion and the Borderlands.

Other books, edit, layout, ETA, (...): The remaining chapters are being edited as they're finished by Jacqueline Bryk, and she will continue to work on Metropolis. We might call an additional editor if necessary for The Hour of the Flame. Other books are in stasis for a final check-up once we can move on with the development (charge cards, begin printing, etc). Feedback has been implemented and we're placing missing artwork as artists deliver the commissions.

That is all for now. Below is a collage with some artwork for Metropolis ;) Hope you enjoy it!

Other News

Our collaboration with The Illusion Horror & Con to create a GM Guide continues. You’re likely tired of hearing this, but this is a dear project that’s been extremely rewarding to work on. We’d like to invite you to revisit their channel [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiNzbOE9xiNahDmYog7VDPcWPLCyScnsw] and check the released episodes.

The “next batch of episodes” will cover setting up stories (intrigue map, choosing themes, etc) and running scenarios. Thank you to everyone who’s participated in this journey, too!

The veil continues to erode...
3 months ago – Tue, Jun 02, 2026 at 11:39:35 AM

Greetings, Kultists. Hope all is well on your side of the veil. We come here with some news. 

Previous BETA PDFs

We got the remaining artwork for the books already released in BETA — in other words... a bunch of art. Below is Dominic, as seen in the character creation example in The Seeker's Testament. And part of the Sanger Slaughterhouse full page illustration, a location in the Borderlands. There is obviously more, but we'll keep it as a surprise for the full release.

The Hour of the Flame

We’re in the final stages of finalizing this campaign and city sourcebook. Since it has grown and transformed it has also been restructured to be able to hold numerous scenarios as well as function as a campaign setting for your own stories.

We cannot wait for you to experience the rusted industrial landscape of the Cooper Steel Mill, the mystery that is below the Anshei Emunah synagogue, the twisting Blue Labyrinths that stretch into the realm of dreams and many other locations. The fictional city of King’s Point has a plethora of hooks for many stories. We want this to be a sandbox-style campaign that you can choose which chapter to explore, and follow freely into other chapters when it’s needed. Now we are tying the threads together and await editing and layout. 

More art sneak peeks:

Metropolis

The first chapters of Metropolis have been edited and should soon be layoutted. As part of this “wrapping up” process, we’re polishing some of the key elements and mechanics — mostly the writing and structure of the text. Revitalizing these texts after everything that’s been done is the cherry on the top… if some horrors can be described as such. They are much more atmospheric and clear now.

Erophantasmagoria: Terror and Passion in… your city?

For those of you who picked up Exiled Terrors, it’s worth knowing that this campaign framework is dirty. Then again, that’s probably why you’re here. So let’s talk about it for a moment.

This project took quite a while to be finished, but it's wrapped up now. Originally, the idea was straightforward: PCs are members of the Coq Rouge (KDL, p. 258) and character creation would follow a structure similar to The Black Madonna. We kept this idea, but as you know by now, KULT projects tend to develop lives of their own. It didn't take long before the character creation chapter was overflowing with concepts and hooks, and restricting all of that material to a single story felt wasteful… so the scope of the scenario became broader, the ideas kept multiplying, and eventually the notion of writing a traditional scenario simply collapsed under its own weight.

Erophantasmagoria evolved into what we're now calling a campaign framework, for lack of a better term. Following in the footsteps of Black Skies Over Brixton, it offers a central conflict to explore and detailed descriptions of the factions involved.

Of course, describing the factions wasn't enough. Potential story developments were added. Then came NPCs. Then locations. Then events and NPCs tied to those locations. Then more complications, more secrets, and more possibilities. Somewhere along the way, a ten-page scenario became this monster of a setting that spans fifty or so pages… and you can place the conflict anywhere in Elysium.

So what exactly is Erophantasmagoria?

The player characters are members of the Coq Rouge and find themselves caught in the crossfire between three powerful factions:

• A fallen Passion magician who created an artifact of immense powerful in a desperate bid to evade the forces of Inferno.
• A Passion magician and his cult building on the legacy of the former.
• Servants of Chephali, a nepharite of Gamaliel, hunting both the artifact and its creator.

The framework is intentionally flexible to suit a “sandbox” style of game. The player characters may choose to pursue the artifact themselves — or ignore it entirely. They can focus on the larger conflict or become entangled in smaller struggles on the margins. The only constant is their connection to the underworld of the Coq Rouge: a world of transgression, violence, addiction, exploitation, and obsession, where Passion runs rampant in its most lurid and destructive forms.

In Erophantasmagoria you’ll get:

• A deeper look into the Coq Rouge: its ultimate goal, organization, and what truly threatens it.
• Character creation process for Aware members of the Coq Rouge.
• Description of three major factions of the Coq Rouge, plus some more.
• Rules for using the legendary artifact “Erophantasmagoria” and its strange dark powers.
• A ton of story hooks and developments to keep your campaign going.

Exiled Terrors-only: Because of the sensitive themes, Erophantasmagoria will be available only in print.

Other News

There's a new episode of the GM Guide, a collaboration between us and the Illusion Horror & Con folks. We're really proud of what we created here, and the feeling intensifies every time someone comes forward saying this has helped them. A new "batch" of episodes will be filmed soon, this time about building stories and running them... with a focus on investigation, which is a heavily requested topic.

We invite you again to engage with us through comments and the form in the videos' descriptions. Let us know what you want to see in this guide, but also feel free to give us feedback on what we're missing, what has helped, and if you have a different way of doing this. We appreciate all exchanges, and more than once we've seen fellow Kultists help each other out by expanding the topics explored in the videos in their own conversations.

It's almost time for The Hour of the Flame!
4 months ago – Mon, Apr 27, 2026 at 06:40:14 AM

Kultists!

First of all, thank you for your patience! Let’s cut to the chase here: We are deep in the final stretch of the three remaining books — Metropolis, Hour of the Flame, and Exiled Terrors. Below is more info on them. Before that, a side note: Scarlet Bride & Other Tales remains open for feedback!

Metropolis

The Metropolis book is close. We are aiming to send chapters for final editing during next week.

This has without doubt been the hardest TTRPG book any of us have worked on. The Eternal City and its mysteries carry a particular weight, and getting the written word to do justice to that without flattening it has been a constant challenge. How do you write rules and guidance for something that is supposed to resist full understanding? That tension has been with us through every draft.

We have had a core writing team of four people, meeting every three to four weeks to go through texts, work out contradictions, and pull the whole thing into a coherent shape. Right now we are working through the Citadels. Martin Svärd is rewriting and re-editing the existing texts that Torsten Gatu wrote at the beginning of the Metropolis project, many years ago, and threading them into what the book has become since.

Hour of the Flame

Hour of the Flame has grown well beyond its original shape. What began as a fairly contained investigative scenario, where player characters portray Enlightened serving a lictor, has become a sandbox and setting book in its own right.

The fictional city of King's Point now has real density to it. You will get detailed information on Coq Rouge, the Prophets of the Third Temple, and the cult of the Saturn King. The original scenario concept is still there, with a main plot you can follow through, but the city has accumulated enough that a GM can tell many different stories within it. There are two sets of pre-made characters, as well as guidance for building stories that only touch part of the conflict, using King's Point as a longer campaign setting. You are also free to play from inside any of the factions and examine events from that angle.

In feel, it sits closest to Black Skies Over Brixton among the previously released scenarios, but broader in scope. If you know the city sourcebooks from the World of Darkness line, that gives you a rough sense of the format, though the content is something else entirely.

We are hoping to have a beta version out before the end of May.

Exiled Terrors

The final parts of Exiled Terrors are being assembled. This is a book of more explicit and sensitive scenarios and Horror Starters, and it will not be available in stores. We do not have the final page count yet, but it is going to be a substantial volume, larger than The Forbidden.

Right now our own Herald, Gabe, is finishing a campaign framework in which the players portray members of the Coq Rouge caught in a war between Inferno and Passion magicians. The story is about broken people and disturbing desires, and it takes place in run-down motels, seedy bars, backroom dealings, and the kind of spaces where the Illusion wears thin. 

The Night Shift, in which the player characters clean out a hoarder's apartment during a heat wave while the Illusion begins to come apart around them, has been through edits and is heading into its final pass. Nearly done.

Other News

The collaboration between Gabe and our friends from The Illusion Horror & Con (IHC) continues. They’re now covering combat. You can check the GM Guide out here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVq3Yo9KFEM

Martin and David have also been dissecting The Black Madonna. They share insight on running the campaign chapter-by-chapter. You can check their project here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAiv--2Hhk

Speaking of, they’ve also opened a channel in their Discord server called “Writer’s Corner” where you can go to discuss your own writing projects. There you’ll find some help in shaping your KULT stories, if you happen to be writing one! They are currently thinking of events like writing workshops as well, so feel free to tune in and ask more!

Invite link for the server: https://discord.gg/DVRqMD9k9d

Rebecka Falk, Art Intern

We have an art intern at our studio. Rebecka Falk is studying concept art in Hjo, Sweden. You can follow her work here: https://www.artstation.com/rebecka— below are some images she’s crafted for the upcoming books.

That is all for today!
/ Helmgast Team

A bloody arrival — The Scarlet Bride is now with us.
5 months ago – Wed, Mar 18, 2026 at 02:03:22 PM

Salutations, Kultists! We hope all is well on your side of the veil. Let’s get straight to it: the BETA PDF for The Scarlet Bride and Other Tales has now been uploaded to your accounts (for everyone who backed or pre-ordered it). At the end of this post, you’ll find a step-by-step guide on how to access your digital downloads.

As with our other BETA releases, the downloaded file includes a link on the first page to a shared Google Drive document where you can leave comments directly in the text. We’re mainly looking for typos, layout issues, strange phrasing, and similar small errors. Content will only be edited if there’s a critical mistake or missed opportunity, meaning that only writing flow will be adjusted.

Your help is incredibly valuable and makes a real difference in polishing the final product. A big thank you to everyone who has already contributed feedback on previous BETA PDFs — your usernames will be listed in the credits as “BETA PDF Proofreaders.”

What’s Next?

The next BETA PDF will be The Hour of the Flame. It should be ready late April at the earliest. We’re currently finishing the writing, and it shouldn’t take long before everything moves through editing and layout. Artwork tends to be the longest step, but it isn’t essential for the BETA stage, and we already have most of it completed. Right now, our main focus is making sure the text and layout are solid.

Metropolis is a much larger project, however. We’re currently expecting its BETA PDF to be ready sometime in June. It requires extra attention since we’re introducing some new layout elements.

Some projects just keep growing...

Petter has decided to include a set of special character sheets in The Seeker’s Testament. Each one is designed to evoke a different theme and atmosphere, with a few artists contributing their own unique versions. As a small sneak peek, Gabe (yours truly) has put together a military-styled sheet, which you can check out below.

These projects mean a lot to us. We hope that you enjoy that they keep evolving as time goes on. Thank you all for your patience throughout this process — and a special thanks to those who have taken the time to email us with feedback, kind words, and thoughtful opinions. It’s genuinely heartwarming to read about your experiences with the BETA material released so far.

FAQ

Below are some frequently asked questions I’ve answered via email that you might also find helpful.

I can’t find the BETA PDFs.

You will only receive the BETA PDFs for the books you’ve backed or pre-ordered. To access them, you can either use the download link sent to your email, open the original survey link, or follow the step-by-step guide below:

Click on your profile picture in the top-right corner, then select “Your Pledges & Surveys.” From there, locate this campaign’s survey. You’ll be able to review and edit your full order there, and you’ll also find all your Digital Downloads.

When will payment be collected?

Our goal is to release the BETA PDFs for The Hour of the Flame and Metropolis before collecting payments.

We will give at least one month’s notice before orders are locked and payments are collected. At the moment, we’re unable to lock individual orders or collect payments separately, as it would add significant complexity to the logistics for our small team.

Once payments are collected, how long until books are shipped?

Production and logistics vary, but you can generally expect two to four months before shipping begins. This is a large project — after all, we’re producing nine new books.

All items will ship together in a single wave, including any previous releases added to your order. Splitting shipments into multiple waves would add too much logistical complexity, and it’s also significantly more cost-effective to include multiple items in one package rather than shipping several separate ones.

When will I receive the PDF copies?

Physical books include a tag inside the plastic wrap with a PDF code you can redeem in Helmgast’s webstore. This applies to previous releases as well. For example, if you added a physical copy of The Black Madonna to your pledge, the PDF will be accessed through that code.

If you backed or pre-ordered digital-only copies, you’ll receive those when we begin shipping.

KULT: Divinity Lost GM Guide

[Quick edit to the post!] The folks of the Illusion Horror & Con have posted the second part of our Gamemaster Guide collaboration! You can find it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIA6hxCLNXc

In this one we talk about Keep it Together and See Through the Illusion.  We are very happy with the feedback received so far and trust you will enjoy everything that is to come. Feel free to continue participating in this project by leaving a comment under the video, interacting with the form (linked in the description), and passing the word around!

That is all for now. 

Thank you again all for your continued support and for helping us refine these books before they reach their final form. We hope you have fun with the dream worlds that await.

See you when the first signs of The Hour of the Flame are witnessed in the waking world!