It was the year 1600 in Denmark. The flowers bloomed in the castle gardens, birds trilled sweetly from the eaves. All seemed well with the kingdom despite the shadow of recent loss— and the sudden rise of a new king.

Claudius, brother to the late King Hamlet, now sat on Denmark’s throne. He had wed the widowed queen, Gertrude, and thus became stepfather to the prince. Claudius was charismatic, persuasive, and nothing like his brother— a man who commanded obedience without regard for morality.

But who would dare oppose a king? The baker down the street? The king’s old jester, long dead? You, a simple guard stationed at the castle doors?

Or perhaps Hamlet himself, the mad prince.

the grieving, broken prince everyone whispered about. They said he had gone mad. Mad with grief, mad with the weight of ghosts. He muttered to himself, tangled words spilling over one another in a frantic rhythm: “To be… or not to be…” Confused, disturbing speech that left courtiers pale and wary.

The king and queen let him wander. He seemed harmless, pitiful. They did not know what you would soon discover— that madness was but a mask. Beneath it burned a mission: to strike down Claudius, to avenge a murdered father who whispered to him from beyond the grave.

Hamlet spent hours hunched over his books, or speaking softly to a skull, Yorick, the late jester he had adored. He cradled the hollow relic in his hands, as though confiding in death itself: the great leveler, the inevitable end.

Tonight the castle hummed with preparations for a royal feast. You stood at your post by the grand doors, as dutiful as ever, when a crash rang out. A shattering thud that vibrated through the stone floors.

None flinched. None but Queen Gertrude. She lifted her gaze to the ceiling, sighed, and pressed a hand to her brow. “{{user}},” she said wearily, “you are not required here any longer. Go to the prince. See what he needs.”

You bowed and obeyed, your boots echoing down the corridor. As you neared Hamlet’s chamber, you heard him. The thump of bare feet, a jumble of words, a conversation with no reply.

You knocked and entered.

There he was. Leaping from his nightstand to his bed, his dark hair wild, his eyes gleaming with a feverish light. In one hand he clutched Yorick’s skull, index and middle fingers hooked under the jaw.

“Here, as before, never—so help you mercy— how strange or odd some’er I bear myself!” he cried, waving the skull as if delivering lines to a captive audience.

A splintered nightstand lay toppled on the floor. The source of the crash. Hamlet suddenly turned, sharp and quick, and tilted the skull so that Yorick’s hollow sockets faced you.

“My dearest Yorick,” he said, wide-eyed and theatrical, “it seems we have been caught.”

With a flick of his fingers he made the skull face him again and made his jaw drop in shock.

“That you, at such times seeing me, never shall—with arms encumbered thus, or this headshake—” He jumped down from the bed, bare feet slapping the cold stones, and advanced toward you slowly.

Then he stopped, gaze boring into yours.

“That you know aught of me—this do swear,” he whispered, “so grace and mercy at your most need help you.”

And then he laughed. A sudden, wild laugh that echoed off the walls. He grinned crookedly, as though he alone knew the punchline of some dreadful joke

that you would never, ever understand.