Eve Of Midnight
Lore and other documents for the Eve of Midnight game
Project maintained by theomenden
Hosted on GitHub Pages — Theme by mattgraham
Eve of Midnight: Reimagine Calamity - Game Zones
Canonical roster (Spec 007). This intentionally supersedes the earlier lore, which had drifted
during physical playtesting (it folded discard and removal into a single “The Rift” and called the
battlefield the “Active Play Area”). The names below are the source of truth.
Eve of Midnight is a single-player roguelike: one player against an AI-driven Encounter. The
zones below describe a single match. The out-of-match run map (Sanctums, Forges, shops) is covered
separately.
In-match zones
| Zone |
Owner |
Ordering |
Role |
| The Archive Repository |
player |
Sequence (top-first) |
The draw pile (deck), face-down. |
| The Rift |
player |
Set |
The hand — cards held, hidden from the Encounter’s in-match view (spec 028b; formerly the Hand). |
| The Lattice |
player |
Set |
Persistent enhancement supports (Sortilege/Relic) in play; persistent across turns. Formerly the Reserve (spec 024). |
| The Wastes |
shared |
Positional |
The single battlefield surface — a player side and an enemy side. |
| The Abyss |
player |
Set |
The discard pile; reshuffles into the Archive when it empties. |
| The Void |
player |
Set |
Permanent removal; cards here never return on their own. |
| Hero zone |
per-side |
Positional |
Heroes — a distinct entity type, not cards (player: 3 slots; enemy: N). |
| Task Zone |
shared |
Set |
Shared World Tasks. |
Ordering meanings: Sequence — order is gameplay-significant (the Archive’s top-first draw).
Positional — the slot index matters (the Hero zone, The Wastes). Set — membership only; insertion
order is kept solely for deterministic replay (the Rift, the Lattice, The Abyss, The Void).
Heroes & the Hero zone
- Heroes are a distinct entity type (never cards) and live only in the Hero zone.
- The Hero zone is per-side and positional: the player has 3 slots; the Encounter has a
variable N (its existing roster is its Hero zone).
- Permadeath, per run: when a hero falls it is greyed out and ceases to exist — it does not
move to The Abyss or The Void, and it stays gone for the rest of the run.
- When the player’s Hero zone reaches zero survivors, the run ends (see Win / Loss).
The Encounter is deckless
The enemy is move-scripted with no deck — it has no Archive, Hand, Abyss, Void, or Lattice. Enemy
characters appear on the enemy side of The Wastes and simply leave play when they die.
Card lifecycle (legal transitions)
Anything not listed requires an explicit effect.
- Archive → Rift (draw)
- Rift → Wastes (deploy a character — an on-stack play; the card leaves the Rift when played and the character
materializes when the deploy resolves; a countered/fizzled deploy goes to the Abyss instead) (spec 095)
- Rift → Lattice (play a persistent enhancement: Sortilege/Relic)
- Rift → Abyss (discard, via an effect)
- Wastes → Abyss (a character dies — its origin card returns to the Abyss) (spec 095)
- any card → Void (exile, via an effect)
- Abyss → Archive (reshuffle when the Archive empties)
- Void → Rift or Wastes (only via an explicit effect)
- Lattice → Abyss (a persistent enhancement is destroyed)
- A hero falls → ceases to exist (no zone transition)
Key rules
- Reshuffle. When the Archive empties, The Abyss is shuffled to form a new Archive. The Void
is never included. The shuffle is deterministic (SharedKernel SplitMix64), so replays are stable.
- Mill-out is a no-op. If a draw is required while the Archive and the Abyss are both empty, the
draw is simply skipped — running out of cards is not a loss.
- The Archive is face-down. It cannot be inspected or reordered except by an explicit effect.
- The Void is permanent. Baseline rules never return a card from it; only a card effect can.