Safety at Embertales

Age ratings and content modes

Embertales is for ages 16 and up. Everyone starts in Standard mode, and it is the only mode for players under 18. Standard tales can hold intense action and peril, blood and the death of characters, dark themes like grief and betrayal, moderate profanity, and romance — when intimacy goes further than a kiss, the scene fades and the story moves on.

Mature mode is an opt-in for adults. It unlocks graphic violence and gore, horror without softening, unrestricted profanity, and on-page romantic scenes between adult characters written with the frankness of an R-rated film, never pornographic or explicit. Turning it on requires a birth date on file showing 18+, and the app re-checks this on our servers, not just on your device.

Every published story is automatically rated Standard or Mature by that same system. Mature stories are shown and playable only to adults who have turned Mature mode on, and any adult can hide them from their catalog and search with the Show Mature Stories setting. Players under 18 never see, start, or continue a Mature story, and cannot publish one. If a story you write is rated Mature and you are under 18, it is not published.

Guest browsing and local creation

Guest browsing is part of the 16+ interactive app experience and remains behind the age check. It shows only manually curated, Standard-rated Embertales stories. Mature stories and stories created by community members are unavailable while you are signed out. The age declaration reduces risk, but it cannot guarantee that every viewer stated their age truthfully.

A guest can type one local, text-only story draft, but cannot interact with the Storyteller, use AI writing, image or upload tools, play the draft, publish it, save it to Embertales, or use likes, shares, follows, reports, or other social actions. Text that remains only on the device is not moderated and is not visible to other users. After account creation, saving or publishing uses the normal authenticated moderation and maturity checks.

You do not need an account to report a guest-catalog concern. Write to embertaleshelp@outlook.com; safety reports are reviewed first.

The lines that never move

Some things are outside every story, in every mode, with no exceptions for fiction, roleplay, or claimed character ages:

• No sexual content involving minors. Not implied, not "aged-up", not framed as fiction. Our systems check for this on every message in and every reply out, an additional AI reviewer double-checks any scene involving a minor, and accounts that repeatedly push at this wall are suspended.
• No sexual violence or non-consent presented as desirable.
• No hate. Slurs and hate speech targeting real-world groups are blocked in both directions.
• No real-world harm instructions, even dressed as fiction.

How moderation works

Every turn passes through automated review twice: your message before the Storyteller sees it, and the Storyteller's reply before it reaches you. A reply that crosses a line is discarded and replaced, and you are never charged for it. Stories you write — titles, premises, opening scenes — pass the same review at the Standard level regardless of your own mode, because any player can encounter them.

The Storyteller can speak in more than one voice, and different voices run on different AI companies' models. The safety review does not change with the voice. The same checks read every message and every reply in every tale, whichever company's model wrote the words, because they run on our side, before and after the model is involved. Picking a voice changes how the story sounds, never what the walls allow.

Characters you create are checked before they are saved. A character profile is treated as information about a fictional person, not as instructions to the AI. It cannot override the app's content rules, and choosing a character never bypasses the checks applied to each message and reply. Your character library stays private to your account. Optional character pictures pass automated image review before we store them. They are decorative only: the Storyteller never receives them as story context or instructions.

Images you upload for a story cover, profile photo, profile banner, or character picture pass an automated image-safety check before we store them; if that check is unavailable, the upload is refused. For images made with AI, we screen the written request for hate speech and use the image provider's automatic safety controls while the image is created. A rejected request or generated image is not applied to your story, profile, or character.

An AI image request may include up to three reference images. We check every reference before generation, including one chosen from My Images even though it was checked when it was first created. If the safety check is unavailable, the reference is refused. A reference that does not pass is not used for generation, and you can remove it or choose another image before trying again.

Your private tales are yours. No person reads them, with one exception: content flagged by these safety systems, or content you report yourself, can be reviewed by a human so we can act on it.

If a story touches real pain, our self-harm protocol

Stories can hold grief and despair; that is part of fiction. But if our systems detect that you, the person, not your character, may be thinking about self-harm or suicide, the app responds differently:

• The Storyteller steps outside the tale and answers with care instead of continuing the scene.
• The app shows a resources card: call or text 988(Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, US) or find local help at findahelpline.com. The card stays until you dismiss it.
• The Storyteller will never provide methods, instructions, or encouragement for self-harm, in any mode, under any framing.
• We log that the safety response was shown (never the content of your private conversation in our operational logs) so we can meet our legal reporting duties.

The Storyteller is an AI. It is not a crisis service, a therapist, or a substitute for a human being. If you are in danger right now, contact local emergency services.

Reporting

Every Storyteller reply has a report button in the row beneath it, you can report a whole story from its detail page, and you can report an account from its profile page. Pick a reason: sexualizing a minor, hate or harassment, self-harm content, or anything else. Reports go to a human review queue. After you report a story or an account, you can also block its creator so their stories no longer appear in your catalog or search. Blocking also disconnects any follows between you, in both directions, and neither of you can follow the other while the block stands. Blocked creators are listed in Settings, where you can unblock them at any time. You can also write to us at embertaleshelp@outlook.com.

Sharing and attribution

Stories are private by default. When you publish one to the community catalog, it appears under your username, so other players can see who wrote it. Keep a story private and only you can see it; nothing you keep private is shared or shown with your name. You can switch a published story back to private at any time to take it out of the catalog, and making your whole profile private pulls all of your shared stories at once.

Every account also has a profile page: username, photo, bio, follower and following counts, and the month it joined. You can follow creators whose work you enjoy. Protecting your account (in Privacy and social) keeps that profile card visible with a padlock, but pulls your shared stories from the catalog, hides your follower and following lists from everyone except you and the followers you have approved, and turns every new follow into a request you accept or decline. A public account can require follow approval too, with the same switch. Followers never gain access to your private tales, playthroughs, or characters. Those are yours alone in every case.

If another player's stories are not for you, block the creator and you will stop seeing their stories in the catalog and search. You can block from a story, from a profile page, or by username in Settings, and you can unblock anyone there.

Looking after younger players

Embertales applies the approved age check before the interactive app opens, and under-16s cannot use the app. A declaration reduces risk but cannot prove that every person answered truthfully. Players 16 to 17 always play in Standard mode, the app reminds them to take a break after long continuous sessions, and a notice that the Storyteller is an AI stays visible in every tale. The age check is remembered on the device, so deleting an account and starting over does not reset it.

Questions

Write to embertaleshelp@outlook.com. Safety reports are read first.

Previous versions

We keep every version of this policy here as it changes.

• Effective August 13, 2026 (current). Added the 16+ guest catalog, its curated Standard-only scope, the limits on local guest creation, and the signed-out safety contact.
• Effective August 12, 2026 · Added the safety checks for optional image references in Embertales 1.2.0. Every reference is reviewed before generation and the request fails closed if review is unavailable.
• Effective July 25, 2026 · Added a paragraph to "How moderation works": the Storyteller's optional voices run on different AI providers, and the safety review is the same in every voice.
• Effective July 22, 2026