Three paintings from the St Petersburg’s Hermitage have been exchanged with three valueless copies. At first sight, this seems to be nothing unusual, seems to be a typical art theft like it happens everytime. However, Colonel Ostankovic, commander of the 12th department of Petersburg police which investigates artwork theft, knows more. He suspects a Finnish order of having committed these thefts.

The game takes reference of this order, which is pretty unknown outside of well-informed art circles. It’s their duty, as they understand it, to prevent certain paintings from becoming open to the public. They rely on an ancient Latin work called “Ars moriendi”, which dates back to the first half of the fifteenth century. It’s written here, that one can see the Angel of Death when tottering on the edge of life and death.

In history, many painters waited just for this moment, or even tried to exact it theirselves. Their goal: To include the image of the Angel of Death into their paintings.

The members of the secret order assigned themselves the task to anticipate this. If possible, researches discovered, they search the direct contact to the artist and try to argue him out of his intention. The order even doesn’t shrink from bribing, threatening or murdering.

So, the secret society has been managing for centures to spirit away artwork by artwork. With this knowledge, some of art thefts that happened in history suddenly appear in a different light.

Colonel Ostankovic knows about that, and so he sounds the alarm. He orders 32 years old Larisa Ivanova Svetlova, a pick of the bunch, to take over this case. Larisa again contacts 31-year old Maxim Durand, who has been arrested for forgery in the past. He’s in touch with this criminal scene and already assisted Larisa by being an informant a couple of times.

Memento Mori is developed by the Czech team, Centauri Productions and will be released in early 2008 under dtp's Anaconda brand.