Flash Scenarios

Short expeditions, brutal and playable tonight.

AITTIA Studio publishes its Flash Scenarios here for Shadowdark and the OSR: free or PWYW content, immediate reading, PDF download, and play promises tuned for tables that want to hit fast.

Format

One-shots

Cadence

Flash Scenarios

Access

Free / PWYW / Paid

Atmosphere preview

"LOOP — Every solution is a lie"

Scene glimpse

View from space of a fractured Earth woven into interlinked luminous networks, each node shining with a different light (blood red, cold white, pale gold), translucent entities with complex geometric shapes drifting between the nodes like space jellyfish, cosmic horror mood, midnight blue, quantum white, and alarm red palette.

SettingYZECompatible YZE (Temporal Horror SF)

"LOOP — Every solution is a lie"

System: YZE

Recommended level: All levels

Duration: Campaign (4-8 sessions)

Humanity survives thanks to a time machine. But every iteration brings the invasion back. What if the solution is the problem?

Atmosphere preview

Forge of Lost Souls

Scene glimpse

A vast ruined underground forge beneath a vault of black stone, the central furnace still blazing, hanging chains, anvils covered in glyphs, riveted black-iron constructs advancing through the smoke, a smith-wraith with ember hands behind a cyclopean anvil, four torchlit adventurers at the edge of a dark green quenching canal. Dark old-school mood, pulp engraving style, palette of charcoal, copper, black iron, burnt ivory, and furnace red.

PWYWSHADOWDARK RPGCompatible Shadowdark

Forge of Lost Souls

System: Shadowdark RPG

Recommended level: Level 2-3

Duration: 2-3 hours

Beneath the slag hills, a buried forge has begun to beat again without living hands. Lost weapons return by night heavy with whispers, while black-iron constructs hunt anyone who nears the old ventilation shaft.

Atmosphere preview

Phantom Protocol

Scene glimpse

Neon-noir corp tower under pounding rain, cracked windows, ghostly ad holograms still lit across the facade, four raincoat silhouettes before a forced access airlock, Asian cyberpunk 2087, cyan-electric, neon orange, and deep black palette, photographic grain.

PWYWYZECompatible YZE (Cyberpunk)

Phantom Protocol

System: YZE

Recommended level: Experience 0-1

Duration: 2-4 hours

A six-hour network blackout. An abandoned corp tower. Data tied to an AI that woke up - and does not want to leave.

Atmosphere preview

The Children of the Silo

Scene glimpse

Underground agricultural silo in a post-apocalyptic garrigue, semi-buried entrance beneath an ocher cliff, improvised solar panels, mutant vines climbing the walls, a group of PCs approaching under a dusty orange sky, a twisted road sign, Provencal wasteland mood, ocher-rust-mutant-green palette, low slanting light.

PWYWYZECompatible YZE (Post-Apocalyptic)

The Children of the Silo

System: YZE

Recommended level: Experience 0-1

Duration: 3-5 hours

A working agricultural silo. 300 survivors. A leader who refuses the outside world. But someone inside wants to leave - and is sending Morse signals.

Atmosphere preview

The Crypts of the Black Moon

Scene glimpse

A ruined Gothic abbey on a bare hill, its collapsed choir opening into circular crypts under the stone, shattered lunar mosaics, tilted sarcophagi, a great obsidian mirror hanging above an open tomb, silhouettes of funerary guards with spears, a spectral priestess in black veils, four torchlit adventurers in hard-edged light. Dark old-school mood, black-and-white engraving, dirty ivory palette, black ink, cold stone, and the glint of tarnished silver.

PWYWSHADOWDARK RPGCompatible Shadowdark

The Crypts of the Black Moon

System: Shadowdark RPG

Recommended level: Level 3-4

Duration: 3-4 hours

Beneath a collapsed abbey, astronomical crypts reopen as an unreflecting moon approaches. The dead do not merely seek to rise there: they want a living face to carry their night into the world.

Atmosphere preview

The Last Vigil

Scene glimpse

An isolated rural hamlet in the winter highlands, blackened wooden houses huddled around a small stone chapel, grim-faced villagers gathered for a funeral wake, tallow lamps, rowan talismans hanging from doorways, snow wind, a crypt hatch left ajar beneath the chapel slabs, a vague shape of roots, bones, and ancient hides surfacing in the shadow. Folk horror, dark engraving, black and white, dirty ivory, ink and wood texture.

PWYWYZECompatible Year Zero Engine

The Last Vigil

System: YZE

Recommended level: Beginners

Duration: 2-3 hours

In a hamlet clinging to the highlands, a winter wake demands that one living soul keep watch alone in the chapel until dawn. This year the watcher died too early, and something is already rising beneath the boards.

Atmosphere preview

The Market of Dead Lanterns

Scene glimpse

A dead-forest clearing turned into a night market, a twisted wooden gate covered in extinguished lanterns, stalls draped in black cloth, faceless silhouettes trading tokens beneath bare branches, a tall gaunt crier holding a cracked bell on a plank platform, four torchlit adventurers advancing through the mist. Stark black-and-white OSR mood, pulp engraving style, heavy ink contrast, dirty ivory, charcoal, and a faint ember glow.

PWYWShadowdarkCompatible Shadowdark

The Market of Dead Lanterns

System: Shadowdark

Recommended level: Level 1-3

Duration: 2-3 hours

At the edge of Hollowwood, an impossible market opens beneath extinguished lanterns. Shadows, names, and memories are traded there for promises no living soul should accept.

Atmosphere preview

The Tombs of the Thunderstruck King

Scene glimpse

A storm-lashed burial hill, nine menhirs blackened by lightning, three tomb entrances split open in the stone, an underground gallery lined with copper rods and broken sarcophagi, a crowned skeleton-king seated beneath a captive bolt of lightning, four torch-bearing adventurers in a terrible white glare. Dark fantasy OSR mood, pulp engraving style, black, ivory, burnt copper, and the flash of lightning.

PWYWSHADOWDARK RPGCompatible Shadowdark

The Tombs of the Thunderstruck King

System: Shadowdark RPG

Recommended level: Level 1-3

Duration: 2-3 hours

On the Hill of Nine Menhirs, three royal tombs have split open during the storm. Legend says a blasphemous king was struck down there by the gods. The truth is worse: he still holds beneath his crown the lightning that should have annihilated the whole valley.

Atmosphere preview

Tomb of the Silent Eye

Scene glimpse

A great barrow split like a stone eyelid beneath an ash-gray sky, black funerary ribbons lashed by the wind, four torchlit adventurers before the entrance, deeper below a megalithic hall drowned in shadow, an obsidian globe engraved with a shut eye, and blind cultists kneeling around a petrified oracle. Dark old-school mood, pulp engraving style, palette of wet stone, bone, tarnished copper, and ember red.

FREESHADOWDARK RPGCompatible Shadowdark

Tomb of the Silent Eye

System: Shadowdark RPG

Recommended level: Level 1-2

Duration: 2-4 hours

A cyclopean slab has split open on Embermist Moor. At the bottom of the barrow rests an obsidian relic that drinks voices, calls fanatics, and could doom the whole region to unnatural silence.

Atmosphere preview

White Signal

Scene glimpse

Mining station in Titan orbit, outer ring partially fractured, Titan's orange atmosphere in the background, a single lit porthole in the middle of the black structure, metallic corridor interior under red emergency light with condensation on the walls, cosmic horror mood, orange-brown, cold white, and deep black palette.

PWYWYZECompatible YZE (Space Horror)

White Signal

System: YZE

Recommended level: Experience 0-1

Duration: 3-5 hours

A 40-year-old distress signal. A station that is starting to remember. And something that should not exist but never stopped waiting.