Terms of Service

§01 The agreement

Parastoria is operated by Viral Host Digital LLC (“Parastoria,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), a limited liability company located at 1654 Calle Tulipan Ste 100, San Juan, PR 00927-6242, United States. These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your use of the parastoria.app website, the Parastoria desktop application, the player companion, and the subscription described below (together, the “Service”). You can reach us any time at hello@parastoria.app.

By downloading, signing in, subscribing, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service. If you're using Parastoria on behalf of a group or organization, you're agreeing on its behalf.

Two companion documents sit alongside these Terms and are part of your agreement with us: the Privacy Policy, which covers what we collect and why, and the End-User License Agreement, which covers the desktop app's license and who owns the worlds you make. Where the EULA covers the same ground as these Terms, the EULA controls for the desktop app itself.

§02 What Parastoria is

Parastoria is a desktop tool for Game Masters. Its companion, Marin, drafts prep, voices non-player characters, maps worlds, and shows the math behind every roll — for the tabletop system you choose. Marin is a co-author, not a replacement: she drafts, and you decide. Nothing Marin produces reaches your players until you approve it, and what she generates is a draft for your judgment, not a guaranteed fact.

Parastoria is local-first: by default your campaigns live in a database on your own machine, and you can export them as files you own. Some features you choose to use do send data off your device — running the hosted Marin, enabling cloud sync, or revealing a scene to your players. Those paths are described in §03 and §11, and in the Privacy Policy. The Service depends on software, model providers, and infrastructure that change over time; we may improve, add, or retire features, on the terms in §15.

§03 Marin, AI & your data

The plain version: when you use the hosted Marin, your turn is sent to third-party AI companies so they can generate the reply. If you'd rather nothing leave your device, run Marin on your own key or on a local model instead. Here's the precise version.

Hosted Marin. Each hosted turn transmits your message plus the campaign context needed to answer it — which can include GM-only notes, secrets, and world truths — to third-party AI providers, which generate and stream back the reply. Today the hosted Marin routes through OpenRouter (our primary provider) and Groq (a failover), and OpenRouter may in turn pass the request to downstream inference hosts it selects. How each provider uses or retains what it receives is governed by that provider's own terms, which we link to in the Privacy Policy; we don't currently offer a Parastoria guarantee that providers won't use prompts to improve their models, and we do not use your prompts or worlds for advertising. The models are open-weight and may change.

Your own key, or local. If you bring your own API key, requests go straight to your chosen provider under your account — not through us — and your key is stored encrypted on your device. If you run a local model, your prompts go only to the endpoint you configure (by default, your own machine). We measure free hosted use with a pseudonymous device hash that identifies a device, not you.

AI output is a draft. Marin's output can be wrong, incomplete, dated, or unsuited to your table, and it can include mature fantasy themes. It is not authoritative and is not professional advice — the ruling is always yours. If Marin ever produces something that seems harmful or breaks the rules in §10, you can report it by writing to hello@parastoria.app, and we review and act on what's reported.

§04 Eligibility & age

You must be at least 13 years old to use Parastoria, and old enough to form a binding contract where you live — if you're under the age of majority there, that means using it with a parent or guardian's involvement. Parastoria is built for adult and teen Game Masters. It is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. Because Marin can generate open-ended, mature fantasy content, the Service isn't suitable for younger children.

If we learn that someone under 13 has given us personal information, we'll delete it promptly — or obtain verifiable parental consent where the law allows. If you invite players to a session, please make sure they meet the same age requirement; what your players share when they join is described in the Privacy Policy.

§05 Your account

The desktop app and the free tier don't require an account. To subscribe, you create an account through our sign-in provider: you sign up with an email address, verify it, sign in, and are taken to checkout. You're responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials safe and for activity under your account. You can delete your account at any time — in the desktop app's settings or on the web at parastoria.app/delete-account; how deletion works and exactly what it removes (and the few things it doesn't) is set out in the Privacy Policy.

Your players don't need an account. They join a session by scanning a QR code or entering an invite code once, which gives them a standing seat on the player companion and asks them for a display name. That's covered by these Terms too.

§06 The free tier & the lantern

Parastoria is free to download and use, and the free tier includes the hosted Marin — the same full-power model, not a reduced version, with no weekly allowance and no usage meter. What the free tier measures instead is Marin's conjuring: each campaign has a lantern, a per-campaign budget for the content Marin creates in it. The places, characters, creatures, and items Marin generates each add to the lantern as they arrive; conjuring a world adds a single fixed amount, however far its map stretches; a ruleset Marin builds for you adds once, and the bundled systems are free. Everything you write by hand is never counted — nor are your players' characters, their gear, or playing itself. The current budget is shown in the app; neither it nor the amount each kind of content adds is fixed by these Terms, so that we can raise them without amending them.

The lantern only ever fills — what you've gathered stays counted, and deleting content doesn't empty it back out. A full lantern pauses new gathering in that campaign only, and nothing else: play, editing, and export carry on exactly as before, nothing is deleted, and nothing already saved is touched. A new campaign always begins with an empty lantern, and you can begin as many campaigns as you like. Subscribing lights the lantern and removes the budget entirely (§07). The free tier needs no account and no card, and it never turns into a paid charge on its own.

We measure hosted usage, and enforce each campaign's budget, with a pseudonymous device-level identifier and per-campaign counters that carry no world content — both described in the Privacy Policy. To keep the Service healthy, protective limits against automated abuse also apply, on both the free and the paid tiers; they're set well beyond what a real table reaches, and ordinary play doesn't meet them. If you bring your own AI key or use a local model, that usage is between you and your provider and isn't metered by us at all.

§07 Subscription & billing

A Parastoria subscription is one plan with two ways to pay: $99/year or $9.99/month, in U.S. dollars (USD), plus any applicable taxes. It lights the lantern in every campaign — no content budget on what you gather (§06) — and unlocks cloud sync between your machines. That's the whole menu.

The terms that matter, in one place: the subscription is a recurring charge that automatically renews until you cancel — yearly on the annual plan, monthly on the monthly plan. The amount is $99 per year or $9.99 per month today, and we may change it only on advance notice (below). The first renewal falls twelve months (annual) or one month (monthly) after you subscribe, and each renewal after that follows at the same interval. You can cancel at any time from your account, which opens the Stripe billing portal (see §08); cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you've already paid for, and cancelling any time before a renewal date means you won't be charged again. By subscribing you authorize us, through our payment processor, to charge your payment method the then-current fee plus any applicable taxes automatically at the start of each billing period — each year or each month, matching your plan — until you cancel.

How payment is handled. Billing runs through Stripe. Your card details are entered on Stripe's own secure, PCI-compliant checkout and never reach or get stored on Parastoria's servers; we keep only a Stripe customer reference and your plan status. If a charge fails, we may retry it or suspend the subscription's benefits until payment succeeds. Once payment succeeds, your entitlement syncs to the desktop app the next time you're signed in, lighting the lantern there.

Where you buy matters. Today subscriptions are sold and billed through Stripe, on the website and in the desktop app. If in the future you subscribe through a mobile app store — for example the Apple App Store or Google Play — that store may process the payment under its own rules, and you would then manage and cancel the subscription through that store rather than through Stripe. The cancellation path in §08 points you to the right place for how you signed up.

Confirmation, reminders, and price changes. After you subscribe, we provide a confirmation of your subscription on a durable medium (such as email) that restates these terms — including the recurring amount, the renewal, and how to cancel — for you to keep. On the annual plan, we also email you a reminder 15 to 45 days before each yearly renewal, with the amount about to be charged and how to cancel. If we ever change the price, we'll give you advance notice by email 7 to 30 days before the change takes effect; the new price applies only to a billing period that starts after the notice, and you're free to cancel before it takes effect.

§08 Cancellation & refunds

You can cancel anytime, on your own, with no need to contact support. If you subscribed through Stripe, cancel from your account, which opens the Stripe billing portal; if you subscribed through a mobile app store, cancel in that store's subscription settings. When you cancel, your subscription stays active through the end of the current billing period and then stops renewing — you keep access until that period ends, and you won't be charged again. Cancelling deletes nothing and locks nothing: your account and your worlds remain, every world stays fully playable, editable, and exportable, and you can still download anything you've synced — sync just stops uploading new changes. A campaign that has grown past the free lantern's budget pauses new gathering only, as in §06; new campaigns work normally on the free tier.

Refunds. Subscription fees are non-refundable except where a refund is required by law; you can cancel at any time and keep full access through the end of your current billing period.

If you're a consumer in the EU, EEA, or UK, you have an additional right to cancel and be refunded within a cooling-off period, plus quality guarantees and remedies if something is wrong — those are set out in §09. Nothing in this section limits any refund or cancellation rights you have under the mandatory consumer laws of your jurisdiction.

§09 Your rights in the EU, EEA & UK

If you subscribe as a consumer in the European Union, the EEA, or the United Kingdom, the law gives you rights that go beyond the sections above. This section describes them. They apply in addition to — and, where they conflict, ahead of — anything else in these Terms.

Before you subscribe. The key facts you're entitled to have up front are here and at checkout: the trader is Viral Host Digital LLC, 1654 Calle Tulipan Ste 100, San Juan, PR 00927-6242, reachable at hello@parastoria.app; the product is a subscription to Parastoria as described in §02 and §07, billed yearly or monthly as you choose; the total price is $99/year or $9.99/month (USD) including how the recurring charge is calculated, plus any applicable taxes; the contract lasts for the billing period you choose — a year or a month — and renews for the same period until you cancel as described in §08; and the Service runs on Windows and the web and interoperates with standard hardware and browsers. When you place the order, the payment button is labelled to make clear it carries an obligation to pay.

Your 14-day right to cancel (withdrawal). You may cancel the contract for any reason within 14 days of subscribing, without giving a reason. To do so, tell us clearly — an email to hello@parastoria.app is enough. You may use the model withdrawal form below, but you don't have to. If you withdraw in time and the exception below doesn't apply, we refund what you paid.

Starting straight away, and what that means. The subscription's benefits begin the moment you subscribe. At checkout, you can ask us to begin providing the Service immediately — within the 14-day period — and you'll be asked to acknowledge that, by doing so, you lose your right to withdraw once the Service has been fully performed, and that for the part already supplied before you cancel you'll be charged in proportion. If you don't give that consent, we wait until the 14 days pass before starting, and if you do give it, you keep the right to cancel future renewals at any time under §08. We confirm this consent and acknowledgment to you on a durable medium (such as email).

The quality we owe you. We'll supply the paid Service with reasonable care and skill, and it will match the description we've given, be of satisfactory quality, and be reasonably fit for the purposes we've told you it's for and any purpose you've made known to us and we've accepted. We'll also provide the updates, including security updates, needed to keep it in conformity for as long as you can reasonably expect — installing them is up to you, and not installing them may affect the Service.

If something's wrong. If the paid Service doesn't conform, you're entitled — separately from the voluntary cancellation in §08 — to have it brought back into conformity at no cost to you. If we can't or don't do that within a reasonable time, or the same fault keeps recurring, you're entitled to an appropriate reduction in price or to end the contract and receive a refund for the non-conforming part, unless the lack of conformity is only minor. Write to hello@parastoria.app and we'll put it right.

If our content damages your device. If digital content we supply damages your device or other digital content, and that happened because we failed to use reasonable care and skill, we will either repair the damage or compensate you. This right cannot be excluded.

Your statutory rights come first. Nothing in these Terms — and nothing in §13 or §14 — excludes or limits the legal rights you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded or limited, including the rights described in this section and your right to bring a complaint. Where these Terms would give you less than the law requires, the law wins. You may also have access to out-of-court dispute resolution.

§10 Acceptable use

Parastoria is for running your games. In using the Service, you agree not to:

• Break the law with it — use the Service for anything unlawful, or to create or share content that is illegal where you or your players are.
• Abuse the infrastructure — probe, overload, or interfere with the Service; circumvent the lantern's budget, the protective limits in §06, or the device counter; or use bots or scripts to draw down hosted usage in ways these Terms don't intend.
• Resell or relabel it — rent, resell, or offer the hosted Service to others as your own without our written permission.
• Infringe others' rights — upload or import material you don't have the rights to, or use the Service to violate someone else's intellectual property, privacy, or safety.
• Feed it other people's sensitive data — don't put third parties' special-category or sensitive personal information into the Service (for example health, precise location, government IDs, financial data, or data revealing racial or ethnic origin, religious or political beliefs, sexual orientation, or biometrics). Parastoria is a worldbuilding tool; it doesn't ask for that data and shouldn't receive it — and remember that hosted turns are sent to third-party AI providers, per §03.
• Reverse-engineer the app — except where, and to the extent that, applicable law permits you to. The desktop license and content rules live in the EULA.

You're responsible for the content you import, generate, and share through the Service, and for making sure your use of it fits the rules of any tabletop system you bring. We may suspend or end access that breaks these Terms.

§11 Your worlds stay yours

The worlds, campaigns, characters, and notes you create in Parastoria are yours. We don't claim ownership of them, and Parastoria is local-first, so by default they live in a database on your machine and export as files you own. The full ownership and license terms — including that rules you import are treated as your own attested user content — are set out in the EULA, which controls if it ever conflicts with this section.

What can leave your device, and when. By default, nothing does — until you take an action that sends it. Three features do send data off your machine, and only when you use them:

• Hosted Marin — your turn and the campaign context are sent to third-party AI providers to generate the reply, as described in §03.
• Cloud sync — a paid, opt-in, desktop-only feature. When you enable sync, your campaign snapshot and its images and maps upload to Parastoria's account-scoped cloud storage, encrypted at rest on our servers. Because that's server-side encryption, it isn't end-to-end — we and our cloud provider can technically access it to run the feature. Free or lapsed accounts can pull their own data down but never upload.
• Playing with others — when you reveal a map or scene to your players, that player-safe projection is pushed to them through our relay, with GM-only material stripped out first.

For each of these, you grant us only the limited, purpose-bound permission needed to run the feature you asked for — to pass your prompts to a model provider, to store and sync your content when you enable sync, and to transmit to your players the projections you choose to reveal. We don't sell your campaigns, and we don't use your worlds to train our own models. The Privacy Policy describes each of these paths, and their retention, in detail.

§12 Copyright & the DMCA

We respect intellectual property, and we ask you to as well. When you import a ruleset or other material into Parastoria, you confirm you own it or otherwise have the rights to use it. Parastoria's own rules engine ships original mechanical scaffolds alongside limited, attributed excerpts of open-licensed reference material used under those licenses; the attributions are set out in the EULA.

Reporting infringement. If you believe material stored, synced, or transmitted through the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent that includes: a physical or electronic signature; identification of the copyrighted work; identification of the material claimed to infringe and enough detail to locate it; your name, address, phone, and email; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use isn't authorized by the owner, its agent, or the law; and a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you're authorized to act for the owner. We'll remove or disable access to infringing material expeditiously, and we terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

Counter-notice. If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or misidentification, you can send us a counter-notice with your signature and contact details, identification of the removed material and where it appeared, a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief it was removed in error, and your consent to jurisdiction as the law requires. Unless the original complainant files a court action, we may restore the material in 10 to 14 business days.

Designated agent. Copyright notices and counter-notices go to Viral Host Digital LLC, 1654 Calle Tulipan Ste 100, San Juan, PR 00927-6242, at hello@parastoria.app (subject line “DMCA”). Our agent registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is being completed; until it is, please use this contact for copyright matters.

§13 Disclaimer of warranties

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

We don't warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that Marin's output will be accurate, complete, or suited to your table. Marin drafts; you're the Game Master, and the ruling is always yours.

This section doesn't take away rights the law says can't be taken away. In particular, if you're a consumer, nothing here affects the non-excludable statutory rights described in §09 or the mandatory consumer laws of your jurisdiction; and some other jurisdictions don't allow certain warranty exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

§14 Limitation of liability

First, what we never limit. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you — including the consumer rights in §09.

Subject to that, and to the fullest extent permitted by law, Parastoria and Viral Host Digital LLC will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, worlds, profits, or goodwill, arising out of or relating to your use of — or inability to use — the Service, even if we've been advised such damages were possible.

Also subject to the first paragraph, our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for the Service in the twelve months before the claim arose, or twenty U.S. dollars. Some jurisdictions don't allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

§15 Changes to the service and these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make a material change, we'll update the effective date at the top and, where appropriate, give you notice. Changes take effect when posted; by continuing to use the Service after that, you accept the updated Terms. If you don't agree to a change, stop using the Service and, if you subscribe, cancel before the next billing period.

Changing the Service itself. Beyond fixing problems and keeping the Service working and in conformity, we'll only make a change that materially affects the paid Service for a valid reason — for example, to swap or update the AI model providers behind the hosted Marin, to adjust how the free lantern measures a campaign, to evolve cloud sync, or to meet legal, security, or technical requirements. If such a change would more than minimally degrade the paid Service you're using, we'll tell you in advance on a durable medium (such as email), and you may end your subscription and stop paying, free of charge.

We may also suspend or discontinue parts of the Service, and we may end or limit access that violates these Terms. If we discontinue the paid subscription entirely, we'll let you keep the benefits you've already paid for through the end of your current billing period.

§16 Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute relating to the Service or these Terms will be brought in the courts located there — except where the mandatory consumer-protection laws of your home jurisdiction give you the right to the protections and remedies of your own courts and law. A choice of Puerto Rico law does not take away subscription, cancellation, privacy, or other mandatory consumer rights that apply where you live, including in other U.S. states, the EU, the EEA, and the UK. If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, it's limited or removed only to the minimum extent needed, and the rest stays in effect.

§17 Contact

Questions about these Terms, your subscription, or anything else? Write to us at hello@parastoria.app, or visit the support page. We read every note.

Viral Host Digital LLC · 1654 Calle Tulipan Ste 100, San Juan, PR 00927-6242