Let’s cut to the chase on this one.

Why you should buy Lighting Strike – Behind the Veil: Twenty-eight vessels of the Venusian fleet – including exo-armors, capital ships, and drones – are described technically, narratively, and in terms of rules. This information is supplemented by a number of special case rules which modify the performance of Venusian ships in the game to match their actual strengths and weaknesses. That makes this book pretty much invaluable for anyone wanting to use Venus in their Lightning Strike games.

Why you shouldn’t like this book: In addition to the special case rules modifying Venusian vessels, a number of additional rules are presented for universal use in the Lightning Strike game – providing for grappling, new weapon characteristics, railguns, cluster munition missiles, stealth and cloak vessels, and external cargo. These are good rules, but their presence here suggests that Dream Pod 9 has decided on a design philosophy which will require you to pick up all the supplements for the game in order to have all the rules for the game. This type of methodology is extremely irritating to anyone on a limited budget – if I don’t want to play Venusian vessels, then I shouldn’t have to pick up a supplement on Venus in order to get four pages of rules.

And, now, the wrap-up: Ships and new rules. Although I may have some reservations about the direction the Lightning Strike product line seems to be taking, there’s really no doubt that this book does exactly what it’s supposed to do. A very solid product, and well worth the attention of Lightning Strike players.

Players of the standard Jovian Chronicles game interested in Venus might also want to check this one out: The Venus sourcebook for JC is still somewhere out on the horizon, so Behind the Veil (along with the Venusian volume of the Ships of the Fleet supplements) represents the only solid information on the second planet. This is delivered in the form of current political and military developments, including some tantalizing summary of the break-up of Bank power which took place in mid-2212.

Style: 4
Substance: 3

Author: Wunji Lau
Company/Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Cost: $15.95
Page Count: 32
ISBN: 1-896776-61-2

Originally Posted: 2000/10/14

As I mentioned in a previous review, the Jovian Chronicles universe took a weird turn with the Chaos Principle sourcebook by choosing to fast forward the setting by 3 years while not actually providing a full setting guide for the radically transformed solar system. Then Lightning Strike came along and decided to fast forward the setting again while also, inexplicably, flipping the entire premise of the game so that the Jovians were now the moustache-twirling bad guys. I largely point to this as the moment when Dream Pod 9 put a gun to the back of Jovian Chronicles and blew its brains out.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Campaign Notes – Props Packet

I’ve talked in the past about how useful it can be to build a second track of events into your campaign. Although Eternal Lies does not contain a fully-developed second track, it does include a large number of what it calls “floating scenes”. I’ve broken these floating scenes down into two types:

FLOATING SCENES: The ten floating scenes can be freely dropped into most or all of the locales in the campaign. Their primary function is to allow the GM to flexibly play out the cult’s (increasingly hostile) reactions to the PCs. This is particularly useful in Eternal Lies because the various locales are non-linear: By divorcing these floating scenes from any particular location, the authors allow the GM to independently ramp up the pressure being placed on the PCs. This is both naturalistic and effective storytelling.

SOURCE OF STABILITY SCENES: Eternal Lies doesn’t specifically separate these scenes from the other “floating scenes”, but I’ve done so for utilitarian purposes. The Source of Stability scenes are generally designed to be used between the various locales visited by the PCs: They’re the interactions they have with their friends and loved ones during their moments of respite. (Although, of course, many of these scenes are specifically designed to threaten that respite.) In my running of the campaign, these inter-locale scenes were played out either via PBeM or as a sort of “before the credits” montage at the beginning of the next session. (Or some combination thereof.)

The primary reason I separated the two types of scenes is that it made referencing the floating scenes during play easier: I wanted to be able to quickly reach in and grab a floating scene whenever I needed a cult response or a thematic cattleprod. And I didn’t want to have to sift through the Source of Stability scenes (which are generally not designed for mid-session use) in order to find what I wanted.

Go to 2.1 Bangkok

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

LIGHTS IN THEIR EYES: WISDOM AND LUNACY 1840 to 1899

Elizabeth Anne Worley

Published by an English press in 1902, this is a fairly ordinary narrative of the so-called “mystics” and “spiritualists” who swept western Europe in the latter half of the 19^th century, along with the nascent culture of debunkers who sought to discredit them. Three of the cases detailed, however, are strikingly different in their character:

Naacal Spirit Worship. A group of veterans who fought in the early days of the Eumerella Wars between European colonists and Deen Maar aboriginals of southwest Victoria, Australia, returned to England in the late 1940’s. They claimed to have brought back a number of strange artifacts, which receive some write-ups in minor archaeological journals of the time before being dismissed as forgeries. These artifacts, however, became the center of an English Theosophist cult which gained notoriety for summoning “spirits of Great Naacal”. Automatic writing among the “possessed” was used in an attempt to reconstruct the “great libraries of the Mayan sages”. These texts, however, were destroyed in a fire in 1868. Worley claims that the rites of the cult were taken from the Cthäat Aquadingen and reports local tales (collected roughly 30 years after the incident) that suggest a “dirge” from that volume was used to “sever the connection” between the cult and ancient Naacal. The severing reputedly left the entire Theosophist circle dead, with only the singer of the dirge bearing any sign of violence (an apparently self-inflicted dagger wound).

Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. Although most of Worley’s material on this cult comes from Egypt, its origins are reputedly primarily Sudanese and there are suggestions that it also has strange ties to political organizations in the Peloponnese. Worley also documents the cult’s queer obsession with the Red Pyramid in the Dashur necropolis. The Brotherhood seems to believe that the reddish hue of the limestone the pyramid is constructed from is due to the stones being “dipped in the blood of their god” (a forgotten Pharaoh of the Third Dynasty) and also seek a hidden entrance to the pyramid.

Cult of the Yellow Sign. Worley tracks the movements of a small group of theatrical players and technicians across Western Europe between 1873 and 1889. Although attached to (or perhaps reinventing themselves as) several different touring companies, the publicity material for their productions feature a small, curiously curved symbol which is always rendered in a yellowish hue. Following a series of murders in Lyon, the theatrical company disappears, although Worley suspects they may have escaped to America.

BENEFITS OF SKIMMING

• 2-point dedicated pool for any Investigative ability involving 19^th century cults

BENEFITS OF PORING

• Cthulhu Mythos +1

LIGHTS IN MY EYES: WISDOM AND LUNACY IN THE 20th CENTURY

Elizabeth Anne Worley

Although published in 1907, just five years after the first volume of this historical survey (Lights in Their Eyes: Wisdom and Lunacy 1840-1899), Worley’s second book nevertheless attempts to authoritatively document occult activities of the 20^th century. The mad scope of her attempt becomes virtually incoherent, however, as Worley begins simply inventing future events from whole cloth, creating a bizarre and fantastical narrative of future history.

However, it must be admitted that some of Worley’s predictions are uncanny in their accuracy. For example, she refers to the “damned Major Whittsley” who would “lead the 77^th into that land where man fears to tread, between the lines of Meuse-Argonne”. There, she says, “the star spawn seek to raise that tumult god who lies within the sunken mounts of Yaddith-Gho”. The rest of that section decays into a rambling account of geometric measurements purportedly belonging to the “megalithic temple of Argonne”, but it is true that on the morning of October 2^nd, 1918, the 77^th Division of the United States Army, led by Major Whittsley, entered the no man’s land of the Great War, became cut off from their supply lines, and entered history as the Lost Battalion.

Much of the text, unfortunately, is elliptical and, at, best, enigmatical. For example, one passage dated 1908 reads: “Legrasse presented himself before the council of wise men, and seventeen years hence the sleeper stirred and the slumber of the world was shaken.” If one could determine the identity of Legrasse, perhaps some meaning could be teased from this.

Where specificity (or at least clarity) can be found, Worley’s words only become more disturbing. She describes a “great protector beneath the lake of his own making” somewhere in the green fields of England, served by “bespined cultists”.

She names the “followers of the Bloody Tongue”, who worship a black mountain in Kenya and performed a ritual in 1916: “M’Weru whirled around the fire-lit circle, and as the blood flowed the apparition of the Herald of Azathoth came unto her.” Elsewhere she names the “Cult of the Bloody Tongue” as being responsible for a “campaign of terror” in 1952.

Towards the end of the book, she speaks of the “Cult of the New Millennium”. Founded in Maryland in 1990, the cult’s leader foretells the fiery destruction of the world in the year 2000. “Hundreds of people followed his vision into the welcoming maw of the end of days,” Worley writes. In fact, her writing in this section is generally more clear-cut and plainly stated than the rest of the book, and the reader is left with the eerie sense that all that she has written revolves around this singular point in a history which has yet to exist.

BENEFITS OF SKIMMING

• 2-point dedicated pool for any Investigative ability involving 19^th century cults
• 2-point Mythos Stability test

BENEFITS OF PORING

• Cthulhu Mythos +1

PRINCES OF THE DARKEST HOUR

Die Sphinx, the magazine which served as the official organ of the German Theosophical Society, published its last issue in June 1896 and was replaced, under new editorial control, by Rudolf Tischner’s Neue Metaphysische Rundschau. Despite that, this volume – custom-bound with bronze clasps between covers of golden velvet – purportedly contains two series of articles which ran in Die Sphinx starting with the February 1897 issue and ending with the January 1898 issue.

The first series, printed on crumbling newsprint, appears under the byline of Nicolaus Kiefer. Kiefer describes his participation in J. Theodore Bent’s 1891 expedition to the lost city of Symbaoe, the Great Zimbabwe which stands at the heart of a vast network of ruins built from stones of marvelous size. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that Kiefer’s intent is not to aid in Bent’s research but rather to thwart it: He describes numerous ways in which he baffles Bent’s work, seeking to conceal a “große wahrheit” (great truth) which the reader is largely assumed to already be familiar with. Although Kiefer is unsuccessful in dissuading Bent from his belief that the fortresses of Symbaoe is possessed of a “great antiquity”, Bent is eventually left convinced that the city was built by “either the Phoenicians or the Arabs”, leaving Kiefer more than satisfied that the “secrets of Symbaoe” remain hidden from the undeserving.

Some elucidation of the nature of Kiefer’s “große wahrheit” may be offered by the second series of articles, which is presented as a German translation of a document taken from Great Zimbabwe by Kiefer. This mystifying historical chronicle claims that the leaders of the “three of the tribes of Shona” were approached upon the same day and upon the same hour by an identical man “pale of complexion and dressed in rich robes” with his hair covered by “a white Atef crown, bedecked with wondrous-strange plumes which some took be those of an ostrich, but of which others were not sure”.

The pale man told the three chieftains that he would show them the marvels of their heritage and the secrets to which they were heir. One of the chieftains refused his gift, and so the pale man removed his white Atef and the chieftain was struck blind. But the other two chieftains went with the pale man and he led them to the “black city of Nyhargo”. There he took them through the “secret entrances of the basalt towers” and showed them “all that had been forgotten”. There follows a strange sequence of primitive imagery, almost Dadaesque in its fractured simplicity. At the end of these “visions”, the pale man left them, but the chieftains returned to their people and “upon the bedrock of Nyhargo were their great works built”.

BENEFITS OF PORING

• Cthulhu Mythos +1
• 1-point Mythos stability test

SEEDS OF FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Infamously printed in 1887 as a limited run of 500 copies (virtually all of which were destroyed shortly thereafter), this volume is Sir Richard Francis Burton’s translation of a Chinese original. This copy has been intricately decorated with gilt and has a single ruby carefully recessed in its front cover.

Seeds of Forbidden Fruit begins as a variant telling of the Feast of Peaches, a common Chinese myth in which the Jade Emperor ensures the immortality of his chosen deities by feasting them with the Peaches of Immortality at the holy palace of his wife Xi Wangmu (the Queen Mother of the West).

In this telling of the tale, however, the Palace of Xi Wang Mu does not belong to a goddess. (The shift in conjunction is crucial, according to Burton.) Rather it is the Western Palace of the Nothing-Spirits. The gods of this tale are born from the Nothing; “skimmed from the golden skein of the not”. And rather than being given peaches, they fall upon the Jade Emperor (who is described in disturbing and alien terms) and harvest their forbidden fruit from its sacrificial flesh.

After the fruit has been eaten by the gods, they harvest its seeds and give each seed to a mortal messenger. The journey of each seed is then told in a separate tale, and each journey is studded by allegorical incidents of a terrifying character. Many are pourquoi (origin stories) for various plants, animals, and locations, each purporting that various phenomena of the natural world are the result of actions depraved, disturbing, and, ultimately, alien.

All of the seeds (save one) eventually arrive at the legendary monastery of Yian-Ho where they are planted to form a hidden garden. From time to time, one of the immortals who fed up on the fruit-flesh of the Jade Emperor will come to the garden, take from it the seed of a flowering sapling, and carry it out into the world “beyond the monastery”. Those who feed upon these seeds are “made part of the Immortal” (which, by implication, does not appear to be the same thing as becoming immortal).

BENEFITS OF SKIMMING

• 2-point Stability test
• Cthulhu Mythos +1 (if character does not already have Cthulhu Mythos)

THE TEMPLE OF FURTEA-NYA

Custom-bound with a clasped, bi-fold cover, this oversized volume has been printed on linen paper and features lush, 19^th-century watercolors that are almost completely at odds with the bleak text which accompanies them.

The book begins: “At the heart of the temple of Furtea-Nya there stands a grim altar of human skulls, smeared with grisly phosphorescence.”

The temple is said to “lie apart from this world”, but also to be “nestled within the honeycomb warrens of the worms of the earth” who were “sprung from the loins of the children of the night”. It was built to venerate the greatest treasure of the Children, which is described as “a decahedronal mass of flinty crystal, with the weight of foul nightmare”.

To reach the Temple of Furtea-Nya, one must find “a door of lilies” and present to it “a lotus in full bloom”. But it is also said that a “blood-soaked hand must be used to mark bare stone” in order to create “cracks which gloom with the nether of existence”.

The Temple of Furtea-Nya is, in fact, filled with these contradictory images, which are further highlighted by the unrelenting imagery of the watercolors, which seem drawn from the fancies of Richard Dadd and John Anster Fitzgerald through the distortion of a funhouse mirror.

The text, like the impossible temple it describes, also seems to pivot endlessly around the “greatest treasure”. Its “impervious strength” and “adamantine shell” are often invoked, but it is also described as a “seed” which will be “driven like a spike into the minds of men, and from those fertile fields swell in obscene pullulations that stretch forth to form the bridge”. A bridge, it is said, which will carry all those who are willing “unto the Castle in the Sky”.

THE WOMB OF THE BLACK STONE

Handwritten onto pages of limp vellum, The Womb of the Stone is a Hungarian translation reputedly transcribed from a folding book which is described in detail and almost certainly represents a Mayan codex similar to the Codex Dresdensis.

The content of the book, however, bears little resemblance to the other Mayan codices which survived the flames of Spanish intolerance. It takes the form of a mystical autobiography as the author performs the mental and physical preparations necessary for some form of momentous religious rite. Some of the acts described may represent actual practices of the Mayan religious caste (such as the application of face paints or tattoos using a queerly metallic substance), but others seem to be symbolic explications of the spiritual journey undergone by the “chosen” (for example, the visions of a “sky-born citadel” which hang in a seemingly hallucinogenic “empyrean void” which is “one with the skies of Earth”). Many of these acts are barbarous, involving acts of violence either committed by the author or done to them. (In one lurid passage, the author is forcibly castrated because his “seed which shall be transformed” has not been deemed “worthy of inheritance” (or perhaps “lacking of primogeniture”).

The ritual at the heart of the book consists of entering “the needle which his a dark (black? starless?) echo of the Stone”. It suggests the author’s religious beliefs revolve around some form of primitive animism: Life is a river that nothing from the universe can separate itself from. “That which is apart is illusion; all things are as one.” (More literally, “share a common pool (of blood)”.) This “binding of Life” forms a tenuous (nebulous? ethereal?) link “between worlds”.

After the author passes through the “transforming womb” of the ritual, he engages in what appears to be a dialogue with his god, an entity he names “Gol-Goroth”. The actual words exchanged, however, are rendered in a script apparently unfamiliar to the Hungarian translator (who instead merely attempts to duplicate the original characters). Studded around these incomprehensible words, however, are brief descriptions of the “chosen place (large land?)”. The author’s attention is apparently drawn repeatedly to the “great eye” which hangs in the “vastness” of their spiritual journey – above, but not of their god.

The last words of the book read, “Now do I speak with the voice of God.”

BENEFITS OF PORING

• Cthulhu Mythos +1

BOOKS OF THE LOS ANGELES CULT: ECHAVARRIA’S LIBRARY
(PDF Copy)

Go to 2.0 Act II – Floating Scenes

In February 2009, a woman named Samira Jassim in the Diyala province of Iraq confessed to organizing the rape of 80 women. The “shame” these women felt at being raped allowed Jassim to recruit them as suicide bombers to “redeem” their honor.

No less shocking are the thousands of “honor killings” that take place every year in various Asian and Middle Eastern cultures as men kill their sisters and their daughters for “dishonoring” the family. Even in countries where authorities have attempted to outlaw the practice, cultural imperatives often continue to create needless tragedies. For example, Turkey’s efforts to severely punish “honor” killings (by applying life sentences not only for the perpetrator but for all family members involved in the decision-making) have given rise to the increased practice of “honor suicides” among Kurdish girls.

The story of Lucrece reminds us that these practices are not some peculiarity of the East. These beliefs and practices are part of the cultural tradition of the West, as well. And, in fact, it was consideration of the Lucrece story itself which played a large part in the philosophical revolution in Europe that overturned the beliefs that led to Lucrece’s tragedy. (For example, Thomas Aquinas’ refutation of Lucrece’s ethical justification for her suicide had, and continues to have, a major impact on the Catholic perception of the issue.)

Shakespeare’s Lucrece captures and recapitulates the entirety of this ethical and moral debate, while simultaneously personalizing it into a moving and dramatic portrayal of Lucrece’s inner and outer struggles in coping with unimaginable trauma.

Originally posted on August 12th, 2011.

This review originally appeared in the October 2000 issue of Games Unplugged.

Where’s the beef?

I hate to sound so flip, but that’s the question that was bouncing back and forth through my brain as I finished reading through my copy of the Enchanted Worlds: Starter Kit boxed set.

What you get: A slim booklet containing rules and setting information, a half-size booklet with an introductory adventure, a reference sheet, two eight-sided dice, a handful of character sheets, and a full color map.

The system is a standard Attribute + Skill deal, rolled against on 2d8. Character creation involves picking a race and then distribution roughly 250 points across your attributes and skills. Combat is handled using the standard resolution system (contested actions are handled by subtracting the defender’s skill from the attacker’s roll), with damage determined by weapon type and severity (the latter is determined randomly). Magic also relies on the standard resolution mechanic. It’s a simple, clean system – but nothing you haven’t seen a dozen times before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but those other systems you’ve seen probably came with more extensive equipment, spell, and skill lists (in other words, more depth and breadth).

The World of Unlond is a standard Tolkienesque fantasy – you’ve got your Dwarves (Earth and Stone), your Elves (Dawn, Twilight, Sun, and Moon), and your humanoids (Goblins and Hobgoblins). You’ve also two or three paragraph descriptions of the various geographical locations of the world (for example, the Eastern Marshes or the Thengold Empire). The “official backdrop” for the game is the Andarian Baronies – for which you are given a column of historical info, two columns of info on the government and society, and a three page overview of the Town of Greenway. The main book wraps itself up with a six page Bestiary (with all your standard fantasy fare – Giant Rats to Goblin Warriors).

The other major component of the boxed set is “Autumn Harvest”, a short introductory adventure. The adventure consists of a farmer asking the PCs for help because a terrible monster (a Giant Spider) has infested his farmhouse and hurt his little girl. Although the cover of the adventure seems to promise some political intrigue (“On the borders of Darkon Andar, a little girl is attacked. Now, you must find out why she was hurt and who or what is protecting the secrets of the past.”), in truth it is just a simplistic and mundane dungeon crawl: You go to the farmhouse, kill some monsters, find a hidden underground complex (consisting of six rooms), and kill some more monsters.

The color map and reference card are both well done – certainly within expectations.

So I ask again: Where’s the beef?

The material found here would make a really good pitch for a fantasy RPG: “We’ve got this good idea for an RPG… here are some rough ideas of the direction we’re thinking of taking.” But it’s not enough. Simply put, there’s no motivation for me to pick up this package.

I live in a world where I can pick up a Hogshead New Style game (and get a comparable number of pages, although of much higher quality and content) for six bucks. I also live in a world where I can pick up the two hundred page Player’s Handbook for D&D (and get a far more complete and well supported fantasy RPG) for twenty bucks. So why am I going to pick up a generic fantasy game which gives me neither a thorough set of rules nor a well-developed background for $14.95?

And I’m afraid the answer is: I’m not.

Grade: D

Writers: Matthew Rodgers and Daniel Price
Publisher: New Worlds Gaming
Price: $14.95
Page Count: 40
Product Code: EWRSK1

After the initial appearance of a review, Games Unplugged would run a short recap of the review in subsequent issues.

Recap: Where’s the beef? I hate to sound so flip, but that’s the question that was bouncing back and forth through my brain as I finished reading my copy of the Enchanted Worlds boxed set. You get a fairly standard system (which doesn’t really go very far beyond the most basic requirements) and an under-developed Tolkienesque fantasy setting.

I live in a world where I can pick up a Hogshead New Style game (and get a comparable number of pages, although of much higher quality and content) for six bucks. I also live in a world where I can pick up the two hundred page Player’s Handbook for D&D (and get a far more complete and well supported fantasy RPG) for twenty bucks. So why am I going to pick up a generic fantasy game which gives me neither a thorough set of rules nor a well-developed background for $14.95?

And I’m afraid the answer is: I’m not.

As I mentioned last week, after unexpectedly receiving review copies of this game I ended up writing two different reviews of it: The one for Games Unplugged that you just read and another for Gaming Outpost, which you can find over here.

Tony Lee, the editor of Games Unplugged, was not happy with the review. He didn’t want to publish a review which was as negative as this one and he asked me to rewrite it. I declined: It was a mediocre game sold in a dress shirt box with an inkjet-printed 8.5 x 11 cover taped on top. I gave it the shitty grade that it deserved. (And to give you some idea of how doomed this game was: The 3rd Edition D&D Player’s Handbook was reviewed in the exact same issue of Games Unplugged.)

The version of the review that was published in the magazine was heavily edited, although my letter grade remained intact.