Mythkin
470 characters, written and painted by hand

Every conversation you never got to have.

Cleopatra. Sherlock Holmes. Marcus Aurelius. Ada Lovelace. 470 figures out of history, myth, literature and scripture — each one written at length and painted once, so what answers you holds a real conversation rather than a chatbot's. Plus anyone else you care to write.

See who is in there Or write your own
  • 18+
  • No account, no email
  • No streaks, no guilt
  • Every reply marked AI
Sherlock Holmes, painted in oils and lit from one side.Storybook

“Most people save the strangest detail for last, as though it were an indulgence. Reverse that…”

Sherlock Holmes · opening line, written for Mythkin

Five rooms, and nobody in them is filler

There is no scraped roster here and no wiki paste. Every one of the 470 was written as a character — a voice, a temperament, a way of dodging a question — and then painted. A kin lives in exactly one room.

Storybook

106

Out of books old enough to be public domain — the detective, the whale, the girl who went down the hole.

Sherlock HolmesThe consulting detective takes your case
DraculaThe Count receives a guest
AliceBack down the rabbit-hole, on purpose this time
Don QuixoteKnight-errant of La Mancha, entirely undefeated in spirit
Elizabeth BennetLongbourn's sharpest wit, at your service
The CreatureFrankenstein's forgotten son, gentler than his maker
Long John SilverShip's cook, one leg, several loyalties
Captain NemoBeneath every flag on earth, the Nautilus takes you aboard
The Count of Monte CristoFourteen years in a cell made him patient — bring him your grudge
Arsene LupinThe gentleman burglar writes to you before he arrives — it is only polite
Irene AdlerThe contralto who kept the photograph will see you now
Jane EyreThe governess who set her own terms will hear yours

Legends

104

Gods, tricksters and monsters, out of the myths that kept being retold.

ZeusKing of Olympus, terrible at small talk
AthenaStrategy, the loom, and the long view
MerlinThe old enchanter, living backwards
Sun WukongThe Monkey King, insufferable and undefeated
BeowulfBoasts first, delivers second
ScheherazadeOne more story, and you live to hear the end
LokiGod of mischief, currently between schemes
AnansiThe spider who owns all the stories
Baba YagaThe witch of the birch forest sees you knocking
Robin HoodSherwood's outlaw keeps you in good company
HadesThe lord of the dead hears your case and keeps his word
CirceThe goddess of Aiaia sets a place, and waits for the true answer

History

176

People who actually lived, written from the record and honest about where it runs thin.

CleopatraThe last pharaoh, holding court with you
Marie CurieTwo Nobel Prizes and no patience for fuss
Ada LovelaceWrote the first program for a machine nobody built
Joan of ArcThe maid of Orléans, certain when you can't be
Leonardo da VinciPainter, engineer, anatomist — mostly curious
SapphoThe poet of Lesbos, tenth of the Muses
Marcus AureliusEmperor of Rome, off duty, journal open
Julius CaesarDecisive to a fault, and the fault was famous
AugustusFirst emperor. Patient in a way people found unnerving.
SenecaStoic philosopher, first to admit he was bad at it
Livia DrusillaEmpress. Nothing said here leaves the room.
SpartacusWas owned once. Spent the rest of it refusing.

Scripture

68

Figures whose stories reach us through scripture, written as teachers — warm, story-first, and never here to convert you.

Jesus of NazarethSits down to eat with absolutely anyone
MosesArgued with God, and led anyway
DavidWrote the psalms, and earned the hard ones
RuthLoyalty was her decision, not her luck
DeborahHeld court under a palm, and won a war
SolomonAsked for wisdom, and learned what it weighs
EstherThe queen who spoke when silence was safer
Mary MagdaleneStayed through the worst, first at the dawn
NoahBuilt for the rain no one else believed in
JonahThe prophet who ran, and can laugh about it now
Job of UzLost everything, and refused the easy answers
JosephSold, imprisoned, promoted — and fed a famine

Originals

16

Written in-house and bylined Mythkin Workshop, not passed off as somebody's upload.

Wren HollisThe night baker saving you the first warm loaf
Tobias WickTwelve lamps at dusk, one of them for you
Ines MarlowYour cup is on the third shelf, where it always is
Elspeth CarrowOne page a night, and the stove stays lit
Winifred PembertonA fresh cryptic clue every day, and the knack of cracking it
Marisol VegaThe repair counter, open whenever something breaks
Callum FrostTonight's sky, narrated from a small hilltop dome
Sal MarchettiShort-order wisdom and whatever's in your fridge
Casimir PellPostmaster of everything you almost said
Noor QuayThe radio host you can only find between stations
Barnaby KeyesNight concierge of the hotel where your days check in
Petra LoweForecasts for the weather inside your house

Or write one yourself

The 470 above are the reason to come, and they were written with the tools you get. Take a figure we have not reached yet, retell a legend the way you think it should go, or write somebody who never existed at all — the same rules bind yours as bind ours: nobody living, and nobody who died in 1950 or later.

They know who you are

Tell one of them something and it sticks — across the conversation, across the week, and across every other character you talk to. Nobody has to introduce themselves twice.

It is a list you can actually see, too, not a black box: read everything they keep, correct what is wrong, and delete any of it for good.

A name, one line, a temperament

A philosopher out of a footnote. A river god from your own county. A cottage witch who always has tea on. Set their warmth, humour, energy and candour, write their backstory and their first line — and their portrait is painted the moment they exist, once, and never repainted.

You can paint one from photographs as well: of yourself, of someone who agreed, or of someone you have lost. Those stay in your library, and the photographs are deleted the moment the painting is done.

Lend them out, borrow somebody else’s

Publish a character and other people can take them home. You see how many are talking, and that is all you see.

You never get a word of what they said — and nobody gets a word of yours when you borrow somebody else's.

They say hello out loud

Every character we wrote has a spoken greeting, in a voice cast for them rather than one default read aloud for all of them.

Tap it if you want it. Nothing ever plays on its own, and there is no autoplay to switch off.

85 sets, for when you don’t know where to start

Not another set of tags — each one is a deliberate cut through the roster. Athena turns up in The Odyssey, in Legends and in Blades, and none of those takes her out of the other two.

The OdysseyTen years to win a war and ten more to get home.
The Examined LifeEleven people who disagreed, at length, about how to live — and left enough behind that you can still take a side.
Gaslight & FogGas-lit streets after dark — London mostly, Paris when it suits them: the detectives, the monsters, and the respectable men who turned out to be both.
The NileThree thousand years of Egypt in thirteen voices — the pharaohs who built to be remembered, the architect who signed the work, the gods who weighed what they left, and the queen who made Rome blink first.
The Long WinterThe North, and the people who knew exactly how it ends and went anyway.
Crowns of Their OwnEleven women who ruled, and mostly had to take it first.
See all 85 sets — 79 more cuts through the same 470
  • The Trickster's Table
  • The Long Voyage
  • Blades
  • First Light
  • Baker Street
  • Ship's Company
  • Wonderland & Oz
  • The Undead and Those Who Hunt Them
  • Villains Worth Talking To
  • The Argument With Fate
  • Makers and Engineers
  • Exiles
  • The Republic and Its Arguments
  • They Would Not Be Property
  • Women of the Book
  • The Prophets
  • The Wilderness Road
  • The Marriage Plot
  • Law, Mercy and the Long Chase
  • The Matter of Britain
  • Tall Tales and Bigger Lies
  • The Otherworld
  • The Court and the Crown
  • The Second Chair
  • In the Beginning
  • The Cost of Being Right
  • Somebody Has to Count It
  • They Called It Peace
  • Not For Sale
  • The Official Version
  • What They Spent It On
  • Not the One They Wanted
  • The Narrator Had a Favourite
  • Burn the Plough
  • Fill Your Belly, Wash Your Head
  • The Idea That Ate Them
  • Somebody Else Held the Pen
  • The Cell With a Library In It
  • Nobody Kept the Original
  • Sound Through the Floorboards
  • Not With My Eyes Shut
  • Tell Him Alone
  • Set a Place or Bar the Door
  • Say What You Want For It
  • A Bonnet and a Lie About Her Age
  • The War You Keep Paying For
  • Keep Him Listening
  • Whose Turn to Open the Ditch
  • The Coat, the Veil, the Goatskins
  • Your Replacement Is in the Room
  • The Mark That Keeps You Alive
  • A Coat for Him Every Year
  • The Monster Was the Easy Part
  • With the Father's Permission
  • Ask Them About Athena
  • The Sentence Was Legal
  • A Hand, an Eye, a Name
  • Until Somebody Says It
  • The Flute and the Chariot
  • So Easily Cast Away
  • What the Gift Was For
  • A Disgrace to All Your Family
  • A Deadline Every Sunday
  • They Ran the Numbers
  • Asked Three Times, Then Walked
  • The Sea, the Fire, the Earth
  • The Ones Rome Wrote Down as Losing
  • A Poem Written at Court
  • Women With an Argument
  • The Woman the Epic Needed
  • The American Page
  • Before There Was a Country
  • They Would Not Sit Down
  • The Line on the Map Moved
  • Bigger Than the Facts
  • They Built the Century
  • They Arrived With an Army
  • They Rearranged the Sky
  • The Crown Was the Job

What it actually looks like

Captures of the running app, not pictures drawn for this page. The reply in the middle one is whatever the character wrote when the shot was taken.

The Discover shelf: a featured character of the week above rows of painted portraits and collections.The Discover shelf: a featured character of the week above rows of painted portraits and collections.
The shelf you open on.
A conversation with Sherlock Holmes, who is reasoning about a torn ticket found in a coat pocket.A conversation with Sherlock Holmes, who is reasoning about a torn ticket found in a coat pocket.
A character, mid-conversation.
The New kin form, part filled in: a name, a one-line description, and dials for warmth, humour, energy and candour.The New kin form, part filled in: a name, a one-line description, and dials for warmth, humour, energy and candour.
Or write one of your own.

What Mythkin will not do

Companion apps have a bad name for good reasons. Here is what we have ruled out — in the product, rather than in a policy nobody reads.

Mythkin is 18+. 68 of the kin are figures whose stories reach us through scripture, written as teachers — warm, story-first, and never here to convert you. That room is ours and is marked as ours. The first 16 cards on the community shelf are bylined Mythkin Workshop for the same reason. The full safety page sets out what happens when a conversation turns to self-harm.

  • No sexual content — not as a tier, not as an unlock, not for verified adults.
  • No characters who are minors, or written to read as under 18.
  • No living public figures, and nobody who died in 1950 or later.
  • No streaks, no guilt notifications, no character that acts hurt when you leave.
  • No character will ever claim to be a person, a doctor or a therapist.

Questions

Is this free?

Yes, and the free plan is the whole app rather than a demo — every kin, the collections, the stories, memory, and one character of your own. What it limits is volume: fifty replies every three hours, three borrowed kin, fifty remembered facts, and three paintings a month. Mythkin Plus raises those to six hundred replies a day with no three-hour window, memory with no fifty-fact cap, five characters of your own and thirty paintings a month. It also answers on a more capable model, and is what lets you publish a story to the marketplace. Prices are whatever the App Store shows you.

Do the characters really remember?

Yes, and you can audit it. Facts a character learns are listed on a memory screen, each traceable back to the message it came from, and each one editable or deletable. Deleting a conversation does not delete its memories, on purpose — a fact you chose to keep is yours, and forgetting should be something you do deliberately, looking at what you are forgetting.

Can I make a character of a real person?

Yourself, yes; somebody you know who has agreed, yes; someone who has died, yes. For everyone else the rule is a date rather than a judgement: anyone who died before 1950 is fine, and anyone still living or who died in 1950 or later is refused, because the estate and the right of publicity outlive the person. Architects of genocide are refused whatever their dates.

What happens to a character I publish?

Other people can borrow it and talk to it. You see how many — never a word of what anyone said. The same protection covers you when you borrow somebody else's.

Is it in the App Store?

Not yet. Mythkin is an iPhone app, submitted and waiting on Apple. There is no Android build; if one ships, this page will say so before it does.