Kind folk, we have firm evidence that wizards have infiltrated us. Those who channel the eldritch forces through their body, mind, and soul – those who slowly lose their grasp on sanity and humanity have taken positions of power in our great country. They constructed towers from which to rule over the surrounding countryside and gathered minions by either creating them with foul enchantments or by corrupting their fellow citizens to guard their tower against intrusion.

Therefore, Be It Resolved

By order of Emperor Francis Joseph I, the country once again calls upon The Stygian Society in this dark time. You brave men and women are hereby charged with the task of keeping our Fair Austria free of these wizards. It is your goal to battle your way up the tower, encounter and defeat the wizard.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Last Updated: Sep 28, 2020

Q: How is luck gained?
A: Any time two or more cubes of any color or colors (whether hero or enemy) fall into the crypt during a single hero’s action; the team gains one luck (and only one, no matter how many cubes fall into the crypt). Adjust the luck marker on the status board. Heroes cannot gain luck above the maximum. Each luck can be spent as a cube of any color.

Q: The tower assembly instructions show level 5 as having a hollow center, but the actual level 5 game component has blockers in the middle. Is that right?
A: That’s right. We did last-minute testing on actual mass-produced components and found that the tightness of the tower caused cubes to bounce around a little more than the early production towers. This bouncing led to cubes falling through too easily, so we added blockers to level 5. We decided to not set production back another 3 weeks by updating the assembly diagram.

Q: The rules and cards mention ‘field’, ‘crypt’, and ‘field or crypt’. Can you clarify these?
A: The crypt is the fence-in area. If a rule talks about the crypt, then it excludes the field and means just the fence-in area. If it says ‘field or crypt’ then it means either the field or the crypt. ‘Field’ also means field or crypt since there aren’t rules that affect just the field and exclude the crypt. Remember, each cube spent from the crypt count as two cubes!

Q: Are Slasher and Ripper the same enemy?
A: Yes.

Q: What is the Stalker referred to on the Stalker Has Awakened chest card?
A: Replace Stalker with Weaver.

Q: Can you help me understand front and rear rank? The rules are confusing.
A: The front rank is the column on the left, and the rear rank is ‘behind it’ on the right. Or, if you turn the card 90 degrees anti-clockwise, the front rank is on the bottom and the rear rank above it.

Q: How do we use the Woes and Lamentations cards?
A: Woes and Lamentations are only in the Kickstarter edition of the game. They provide additional difficulty for players that somehow find the game isn’t challenging enough. Woe cards have one mask on the card back, while Lamentations have two. Lamentations are more brutal than Woes and are harder to get rid of.

At the start of the game, each character gets one Woe or Lamentation at random. Each card will have some negative effect, as described on the card. Players may discard Woes and Lamentations by paying the amount of hero cubes from the field or crypt at the end of their turn, as shown on the card.

Q: Some skills trigger before enemy actions. If I use such a skill that eliminates the last enemy, does the rest of the enemy phase still happen?
A: No, the game ends immediately upon eliminating the last enemy.

Q: How many treasures are on each floor?
A: (edited) The number of chests can be found on the room or mid-boss card. On room cards it’s the gem symbol and on mid-boss cards it’s the chest symbol. By default there are two treasures in each chest, but effects can change that.

Q: Should the Crushing Walls of Doom room have a ’12:’ between ‘8:’ and ’16:’?
A: Yes.

The Cursed Library Expansion

Q: Where are the additional wound tokens?
A: Contrary to the inventory list, The Cursed Library expansion was not produced with wound tokens. The base game includes large wound tokens worth five wounds each. There should be far more than enough tokens to play the Cursed Library using the wound tokens from the base game but let us know if you experience otherwise.

Q: Since heroes don’t level up, when do skills reset?
A: At the end of each level/room.

Q: What do I do if I encounter a room that contains an enemy that I’ve already defeated and have bought as a friendly character?
A: In this case, draw a new room.

Q: The Bumps in the Night room can add more hounds once peril rises. What if I defeated all of the hounds and bought the character?
A: In rooms where additional enemies can be added, like Bumps in the Night, only purchase characters after the entire room has been defeated.

Contents

Stygian Society contains:

1

Rulebook

Full-color, fun-to-read rulebook. Find rules here.

1

Tower Board

Tower board comes with a tower and crypt to assemble.

1

Status Board

All the tracker tokens will belong on this board.

36

Sheets

This includes hero sheets, mid boss sheets, wizard sheets, lower floor sheets, and upper floor sheets.

30

Wood Hero Cubes

10 white, 10 blue, and 10 green cubes.

30

Wood Enemy Cubes

10 black, 10 red, and 10 yellow.

165

Cards

60 hero cards – 15 for each hero, 30 chest cards, 20 lower floor treasure cards, 20 upper floor treasure cards, 19 enemy cards, and 16 status cards – 4 for each hero.

57

Tracking Tokens

4 crypt pieces, 1 max team wounds marker, 1 current team wounds marker, 1 needed xp marker, 1 current xp marker, 1 peril marker, 1 luck marker, 1 tower floor marker, 28 wound tokens, and 18 enemy tokens.

Description

The Stygian Society is a co-operative cube tower, dungeon crawl. Heroes work together to climb the cube tower; eliminating enemies as they work their way to the top and to the tower’s master.

Players take on roles of different heroes, all fighting their way up the wizard’s tower one floor at a time.

Instead of rolling dice to defeat enemies, players drop cubes into the tower. The cubes are dependent on which skills the player has selected for the hero.

Cubes are also dropped into the tower for the enemies they are battling.

Players perform actions for themselves and their enemies as cubes fall out of the tower. Cubes may fall directly down, or become dislodged only to fall out on a future turn. Some cubes may even fall into the crypt, where they will count double.

Beware of the mini-boss and wizard on the tower’s third and sixth floors!

If your heroes take too long to defeat enemies or receive too many wounds, the wizard may take the win. However! If the players defeat the wizard on the top level of the cube tower- you immediately win!

The Cursed Library Expansion

by Scott Almes

Scott Almes (The Great Dinosaur Rush) has created an entirely new Stygian Society experience with The Cursed Library.

The heroes are famous authors trying to fight their way through the Cursed Library in an attempt to defeat the villain who had brought the authors’ vilest characters to life. As they progress through the library and defeat foes, they can recruit good characters using ink. These characters will fight on behalf of the heroes, but are just as susceptible to damage, so the heroes must fight wisely as they climb.

The big change in this module is using ink instead of experience. When an enemy is defeated, the party now controls the book. In the game sense, this means the book is flipped over from the ‘bad’ side to the ‘good’ side, and the players can then take control of the good character by spending ink. These goods characters can help fight, and using them will be critical to bringing the library to order.

You can download the Cursed Library rules here.

Players, Ages  & Time

The Stygian Society can be played by 1-4 players, ages 12+. It can be played in about 30 minutes per player.

  • 1-4 players

  • ages 12+

  • 30 minutes per player

Designer and Artists

Kevin Wilson from USA is a game designer and game component developer who is known for designing games for Fantasy Flight Games. He previously worked for Alderac Entertainment Group and has a degree in artificial intelligence from the University of California, Berkeley. He first got into gaming with a Dungeons & Dragons box set at the age of 8. Bruno Faidutti has been one of his favorite game designers. Kevin’s notable earlier game on dungeon crawl scene is Descent.

Stygian Society Artist Jacqui Davis

 

Jacqui (the Logic Fairy) was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and moved to the UK as a kid.

She currently lives and works in Lytham-St-Annes, which is great for walks through the woods or ambles along the estuary.

She has been producing art for children’s books and board games since 2012, after studying Animation at Staffordshire University. She enjoys painting everything from adorable animals to villainous wizards, bringing life to characters is something she has always been passionate about. When she’s not painting she enjoys keeping the creative mojo going by doing a spot of writing.

Philip duBarry
Cursed Library Expansion Designer

 

Philip duBarry is the designer of Revolution!, Courtier, and several other board games and expansions. Philip has been playing and creating games since childhood and has done so on a professional basis for about the last six years.

Spirits has been in the works since 2010 and is perhaps his most heavily playtested game to date. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife and six children.

Scott Almes
Designer of The Stygian Society: The Cursed Library

 

Hello everybody! My name is Scott Almes, your friendly neighborhood designer of APE Games’ titles, The Great Dinosaur Rush and the Stygian Society: The Cursed Library.

Stygian Society News

Gen Con 21 Events

| Comic Book Bubble, Conventions, Dealers in Hope, Island Siege, Ivion, Legends of Crimson Bluff, One Card Wonder, Stygian Society, Vengeance: Roll & Fight | No Comments
APE Games is bringing a lot of games, both upcoming and released, to Gen Con this year (Sep 16-19). We have three event tables running all day long! Take a…

Stygian Society Production Tower Proof

| Stygian Society | No Comments
As mentioned in the last post, the production proof arrived last week. We assembled the tower and snapped some pictures for you! Cube Tower and Crypt Slotted into Field Board…

Join the discussion 4 Comments

  • Connor Weismandel says:
    July 5, 2020 at 3:22 am

    When is this being released?

    Reply
  • David Lane says:
    October 26, 2020 at 12:08 am

    The Kickstarter exclusive heroes, The Seer and The Hunter, bring the hero total to 6. Does this mean the game is a 1-6 player experience or they merely optional heroes to choose from?

    Reply
  • 'Nathan Smith says:
    January 26, 2021 at 10:39 am

    Quick question about one of the Knight abilities in Stygian Society: “Steel Fisticuffs.”

    The second half says “If the target dies, you may immediately repeat this action without adding any peril cubes to the tower.”

    So that can happen over and over and on one turn? Or can it only be repeated once? It’s not clear, as the action seems to include the “if it dies, go again” so doing the action again reads like it can happen until you run out of front rank enemies?

    Reply

Leave a Reply