The green-skinned wizard known as the Emerald Enchanter has been a presence in the region for as long as anyone can remember. In recent times a number of inhabitants from nearby villages have gone missing and the clues point to him being responsible. It is feared that the Emerald Enchanter will use them as subjects in the experiments he is said to conduct. Hopefully, someone will be brave enough to make a rescue attempt. Thus, a number of brave adventurers have assembled outside the gates to his citadel, which sits atop a windy cliff, a foreboding presence over the whole of the region. This is as much set-up as there is for Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter, the third scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed for a group of eight to ten Second Level Player Characters, it is an important scenario for three reasons. One is that it is written by the publisher, Joseph Goodman, the second is that it is the third scenario to be written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the second to be written for Player Characters who are not Zero level, and the third is that it is the first scenario for Second Level Player Characters.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter is as grim and weird and as challenging as you would expect for a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The scenario feels in part inspired by B1 In Search of the Unknown and ‘The Halls of Tizun Thane’ from White Dwarf Issue No. 18 reprinted in The Best of White Dwarf Scenarios) as well as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in that it involves the home of a wizard—though not a dead one—and the creation of new constructs. The latter are not composed of the flesh of the dead, but of blocks of emerald, green gemstone. The Player Characters will quickly discover that there are two types, one rough as if an unfinished sculpture, the other exquisitely detailed it had been a living person transformed into a block of moving emerald, green gemstone. Which of course, is what it is, and what some poor victim has been transformed into after having dunked into the Transmogrification Vats in the Emerald Enchanter’s workshop. Pairs, consisting of one unfinished and one finished, can be found throughout the manse of the Emerald Enchanter. Worse, the Player Characters will discover that upon killing a finished one, it reverts back to the person they were before the Emerald Enchanter experimented upon them. Sadly, they still die, but if they can revert back, does this mean that a way can be found to reverse the process and keep them alive?
The scenario beings with the Player Characters outside the doors to the Emerald Enchanter’s citadel faced with the first of the various pairs of emerald constructs. Once inside, the path from the front door to the Emerald Enchanter’s laboratory and the final confrontation with his evil ways is quite straightforward and linear. There are some entertaining encounters on the way, such as the ‘Hall of Mosaics’ and the ‘Hall of Anguish’. The first is with a Tile Golem, which pulls itself off mosaics on the walls and can draw more tiles from the wall to heal itself, blast the Player Characters with a stream of tile shards, and even create tile beasts that can harass the party! The second is of grey rock into which the Emerald Enchanter has imprisoned his enemies as ebon spirits. Now they haunt the hall, able to reach out from the walls, floor, and ceiling to attack the Player Characters. The encounter description references the fate of Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back as to how they look, but of course, they are much, much more menacing! There is even an initial encounter with the Emerald Enchanter who comes to check on the intruders, weirdly appearing up through an emerald gemstone table. This is only a fleeting encounter, though it does offer a way to circumvent the whole of the rest of the adventure and cut straight to the final confrontation—if the Player Characters are adventurous enough to take it. If they do not, though, they are stalked by a number of bewinged, flying emerald skulls that appear and disappear out of the walls.

Before the Player Characters get to the confrontation with the Emerald Enchanter in his laboratory—fantastically illustrated with a player handout on the inside front cover—there is an encounter with the source of his power. This is a demon, long held captive in a pentagram. This is primarily a roleplaying encounter, one that can grant the Player Characters a major bonus, but oddly what it does not do, is actually help them in defeating the Emerald Enchanter. In fact, nothing does except their abilities, spells, and luck. Narratively, this is underwhelming, especially if, as given in an earlier encounter, the Player Characters could have leaped straight into the final encounter with little in way of penalties. There are elements which can be discovered to help solve aspects of the scenario, but none them of help the Player Characters defeat the Emerald Enchanter and none of them are time sensitive. The confrontation though, is fun and full of action. Roiling vats of boiling green liquid, flying emerald skulls that fire beams of deadly energy from their eyes, an automatic pulley system ferrying cages with villagers screaming in terror on their way to immersion in the nearest vat, and the Emerald Enchanter himself! If the Player Characters can defeat the Emerald Enchanter, they will be praised for their courage, and if they manage to save the villagers, they will be feted as true heroes! For the Elf or Wizard there is some decent loot too.
The scenario does have some requirements. One is the large number of players which may be difficult for some groups to get together. Alternative options are either to have a number of replacements in the event of Player Character death or increase the Player Characters from Second to Third Level. Neither are quite satisfactory. The other requirement is perhaps more important and that is the need for a spellcaster, whether a Wizard or an Elf. Since the adventure takes place in a wizard’s manse, there are numerous encounters in which items or parts of the encounter are activated by spell checks. Whilst it is possible for non-spellcasting Player Characters to attempt such checks, the probability of their succeeding each time is so low that in combination with high number that occur in the adventure means that the without an actual spellcaster, the play of the scenario is going to be much slower than the author intended.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter also includes a second scenario—‘The Emerald Enchanter Strikes Back’. This a sequel, also written for eight to ten Player Characters of Second Level, in which it revealed that they failed to kill the Emerald Enchanter, and now he roams area, enraged and bent on revenge. Only he is not on foot, but now in command of the Emerald Titan, a towering arcane colossus, in which strides the land, targeting the surrounding towns and villages in his revenge. This is a much more open scenario, primarily a mini-wilderness adventure—although the Judge might want to consult Dungeon Crawl Classics #66.5: Doom of the Savage King about one of the locations—in which the Player Characters must track down the Emerald Titan (although how difficult is to hide a thirty-foot tall emerald green robot?), gain access and deal with the Emerald Enchanter once and for all. This is a fun addition which requires a little more careful handling by the Judge as it is a wilderness adventure and bit more open.
Also, as much fun as this adventure is, and as fun as some of the things that the Emerald Titan can do to dislodge or kill the Player Characters once they are inside it, like stepping into a river to fill its legs with water and drown them, poke at them between its armour plates with splintered trees, or even pushing a bee hive through a crack, the inside of the Emerald Titan is barely described, if at all, making it feel very sparse and not really helping to emphasise the odd nature of the Player Characters’ situation. ‘The Emerald Enchanter Strikes Back’ is a great addition to Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter, but it just needed that bit more fleshing out.
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter is as solidly produced as you would expect for a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The maps are decent for both scenarios and the artwork is nicely done too.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter is a grim scenario that feels like a Hammer Horror scenario as much as it does a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. It is playable as is, but at the same time, the Judge is left wanting more information about the Emerald Enchanter and might want to give a temporary bonus that will weaken the Emerald Enchanter if the Player Characters defeat his source of power. Other than that, Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter is an  entertainingly engaging and grim scenario that should really challenge the Player Characters.

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

—oOo—
Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases. Senet is also one of the very few magazines about games to actually be available for sale on the high street.

Senet Issue 11 was published in the summerof 2023. It opens with the editorial noting the death of Klaus Teuber, the designer of one of the world’s most successful board games, Settlers of Catan, and that he had hoped to interview him in the future. Of course, that is not to be, but perhaps a tribute may appear in a future issue? After that, the issue gets down to business with ‘Behold’. This is the regular preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles. As ever, there are some interesting titles previewed here, including Crumbs!, a mini-card game about making sandwiches and Empire’s End, a board game in which the players’ empires are beset by plagues, floods, barbarian hordes, and more. Players bid to win the least worst of the disasters, their empires suffering the effects, but also learning and growing hardier from the experience. This sounds like a fascinatingly different game from the usual treatment of empires in board games.

‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters, contains a mix of praise for the magazine and a discussion of gaming culture, including representation in the hobby and the appeal of co-operative games. Just four letters, so it does not seem enough. As with the previous issue, Senet Issue 10, there is scope here for expansion of this letters page to give space to more voices and readers of Senet. One way of doing that is perhaps to expand it when ‘For Love of the Game’ comes to end. This regular column continues the journey of the designer Tristian Hall towards the completion and publication of his Gloom of Kilforth. In this entry in the series, he wanders off on a tangent about game designs which could have been, including one which appeared to the designer in a dream! Just how much this is useful to anyone interested in the design process is really up for debate.

Definitely more interesting is ‘Bez in Show’ by Alexandra Sonechkina. This is the first of the two interviews in the issue and with the designer and publisher Bez Shahriari, best known for the games Yogi and the ELL deck. This gives a little of her history and goes into more detail about her design process. The process for each designer differs, more obvious perhaps if you have read the interviews with other designers in previous issues and so can compare, but as an independent designer, hers differs perhaps more than most, focusing as it does on titles and subjects that are not necessarily as commercial, but still interesting and playable. Senet always includes two interviews, one with with a designer and one with an artist. Dan Jolin’s interview with the artist in this issue is with Adrian Smith. He has created art for publishers such as CMON and Games Workshop, specialising in Science Fiction and Horror. ‘Gods and Monsters’ showcases Smith’s artwork for Zombicide, Cthulhu: Death May Die, Rising Sun, and many more. Each piece is accompanied by a commentary from the artist to enjoyable effect.

In addition to the interview with an artist and a designer, each issue of Senet also includes one article examining a theme and a mechanic. Senet Issue 11 is no exception. ‘Sowing the Seeds’ is both an examination of a mechanic and an exploration of the proliferation and spread of a particular. The mechanic is ‘count and capture’ or ‘sow and harvest’ in which a player picks up seeds from one of his pits and sows them one at a time in the adjacent pits, aiming for certain objectives. The objectives will vary according to the different game variations, but they are all based upon Mancala. This is said to have originated in either Africa or Southeast Asia, but has subsequently spread around the world via various trade routes. It is perhaps one of the oldest of games and one of the oldest mechanics, but has been revisited by designers in more recent years. Most well known is Five Tribes, in which players manipulate the placement of the members of five different Arabian tribes and Trajan, an area control and set collection game set in Rome which uses a rondel (a mechanic previously examined in Senet Issue 5). More recent designs have used the mechanic for gunslinging duels as in A Fistful of Meeples and even improving links to attract supplicants to English abbeys in Pilgrim. This is a fascinating article which puts Mancala under the spotlight and engagingly explores its more modern applications.

Equally as interesting is ‘Power Play’. Written by Matt Thrower, this is the theme article in the issue, which is politics. It begins with The Landlord Game, which has today been transmogrified into Monopoly and its many variants, before coming up to date with SHASN, an Indian design which explores ideology in general elections and even Brexit: The Board Game of Second Chances, which examines the absurdities of that vote. In between, looks at political games with focuses big and small, the latter including games around the Suffragette movement, including the more recent Votes for Women, whilst the former includes Twilight Struggle, a game which covers the whole of the Cold War. Parodies and polemics are also covered, such as the less than serious Kremlin and the more then serious designs from Brenda Romero, such as Train, though it is as much an art piece and thought exercise rather than actual game. Both ‘Power Play’ and ‘Sowing the Seeds’ explore fascinating aspects of the gaming hobby, but in both cases do feel as if there is much more to be said about both. Especially political games. One sub-genre of the political game is only touched upon briefly here with 1960: The Making of the President and that is games about the U.S. election. The repetitive nature of the American election cycle means that designers often return to the subject. Not necessarily every election, but certainly often enough to warrant a whole article of its own.

‘Unboxed’, Senet’s reviews section covers a wide range of games. This incudes Verdant, a drafting and placement game about houseplants; Till The Last Gasp, a two-player skirmish game which involves elements of roleplaying; and even a reissue with Cranium 25th Anniversary Edition. ‘Senet’s top choice’ is Frosthaven, a sequel to Gloomhaven, which offers even more game play. Of course, Senet cannot cover every board game being released, but this is a good selection.

As is traditional, Senet Issue 11 comes to a close with the regular end columns, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. For ‘Confessions of a bad board gamer’, James Lewis explains why it does not matter that he is not a good player when it comes to board games. What he means is that he is not a good player at winning games, rather than being a poor player in social terms. He even points out that games need losers as well as winners. At the same time, he makes clear that when not winning, he is actually learning about the game and how it can be won. All very obvious, but it is still an entertaining enough piece. Danielle Standring, takes Mechs vs Minions off her ‘Shelf of Shame’ and discovers that she enjoys it enough to want to play again, and so brings the issue to a close.

Physically, Senet Issue 11 is very professionally presented. However, it does need an edit in places, but otherwise looks and feels as good as previous issues of the magazine. Oddly, the cover with Lady Liberty rolling dice does suggest that issue include some roleplaying content, since the dice are polyhedral dice more associated with that hobby rather than board games. There is no roleplaying content in the issue though.

Senet Issue 11 is an enjoyable read, made all the better for two excellent articles. These are ‘Sowing the Seeds’ on the influence of Mancala and ‘Power Play’ on politics in games. The latter though, does feel as if it barely scratches the surface and could have been much, much longer. Together they are worth the price of picking up Senet Issue 11, whilst everything else in the issue is a bonus.

Two of our heroes pick up their journals again. Van Helsing and Seward make a disturbing discovery.

Jonathan Harker’s Journal.

26 September.—I thought never to write in this diary again, but the time has come. When I got home last night Mina had supper ready, and when we had supped she told me of Van Helsing’s visit, and of her having given him the two diaries copied out, and of how anxious she has been about me. She showed me in the doctor’s letter that all I wrote down was true. It seems to have made a new man of me. It was the doubt as to the reality of the whole thing that knocked me over. I felt impotent, and in the dark, and distrustful. But, now that I know, I am not afraid, even of the Count. He has succeeded after all, then, in his design in getting to London, and it was he I saw. He has got younger, and how? Van Helsing is the man to unmask him and hunt him out, if he is anything like what Mina says. We sat late, and talked it all over. Mina is dressing, and I shall call at the hotel in a few minutes and bring him over....

He was, I think, surprised to see me. When I came into the room where he was, and introduced myself, he took me by the shoulder, and turned my face round to the light, and said, after a sharp scrutiny:—

“But Madam Mina told me you were ill, that you had had a shock.” It was so funny to hear my wife called “Madam Mina” by this kindly, strong-faced old man. I smiled, and said:—

“I was ill, I have had a shock; but you have cured me already.”

“And how?”

“By your letter to Mina last night. I was in doubt, and then everything took a hue of unreality, and I did not know what to trust, even the evidence of my own senses. Not knowing what to trust, I did not know what to do; and so had only to keep on working in what had hitherto been the groove of my life. The groove ceased to avail me, and I mistrusted myself. Doctor, you don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don’t; you couldn’t with eyebrows like yours.” He seemed pleased, and laughed as he said:—

“So! You are physiognomist. I learn more here with each hour. I am with so much pleasure coming to you to breakfast; and, oh, sir, you will pardon praise from an old man, but you are blessed in your wife.” I would listen to him go on praising Mina for a day, so I simply nodded and stood silent.

“She is one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist—and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so sceptical and selfish. And you, sir—I have read all the letters to poor Miss Lucy, and some of them speak of you, so I know you since some days from the knowing of others; but I have seen your true self since last night. You will give me your hand, will you not? And let us be friends for all our lives.”

We shook hands, and he was so earnest and so kind that it made me quite choky.

“And now,” he said, “may I ask you for some more help? I have a great task to do, and at the beginning it is to know. You can help me here. Can you tell me what went before your going to Transylvania? Later on I may ask more help, and of a different kind; but at first this will do.”

“Look here, sir,” I said, “does what you have to do concern the Count?”

“It does,” he said solemnly.

“Then I am with you heart and soul. As you go by the 10:30 train, you will not have time to read them; but I shall get the bundle of papers. You can take them with you and read them in the train.”

After breakfast I saw him to the station. When we were parting he said:—

“Perhaps you will come to town if I send to you, and take Madam Mina too.”

“We shall both come when you will,” I said.

I had got him the morning papers and the London papers of the previous night, and while we were talking at the carriage window, waiting for the train to start, he was turning them over. His eyes suddenly seemed to catch something in one of them, “The Westminster Gazette”—I knew it by the colour—and he grew quite white. He read something intently, groaning to himself: “Mein Gott! Mein Gott! So soon! so soon!” I do not think he remembered me at the moment. Just then the whistle blew, and the train moved off. This recalled him to himself, and he leaned out of the window and waved his hand, calling out: “Love to Madam Mina; I shall write so soon as ever I can.”

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

26 September.—Truly there is no such thing as finality. Not a week since I said “Finis,” and yet here I am starting fresh again, or rather going on with the same record. Until this afternoon I had no cause to think of what is done. Renfield had become, to all intents, as sane as he ever was. He was already well ahead with his fly business; and he had just started in the spider line also; so he had not been of any trouble to me. I had a letter from Arthur, written on Sunday, and from it I gather that he is bearing up wonderfully well. Quincey Morris is with him, and that is much of a help, for he himself is a bubbling well of good spirits. Quincey wrote me a line too, and from him I hear that Arthur is beginning to recover something of his old buoyancy; so as to them all my mind is at rest. As for myself, I was settling down to my work with the enthusiasm which I used to have for it, so that I might fairly have said that the wound which poor Lucy left on me was becoming cicatrised. Everything is, however, now reopened; and what is to be the end God only knows. I have an idea that Van Helsing thinks he knows, too, but he will only let out enough at a time to whet curiosity. He went to Exeter yesterday, and stayed there all night. To-day he came back, and almost bounded into the room at about half-past five o’clock, and thrust last night’s “Westminster Gazette” into my hand.

“What do you think of that?” he asked as he stood back and folded his arms.

I looked over the paper, for I really did not know what he meant; but he took it from me and pointed out a paragraph about children being decoyed away at Hampstead. It did not convey much to me, until I reached a passage where it described small punctured wounds on their throats. An idea struck me, and I looked up. “Well?” he said.

“It is like poor Lucy’s.”

“And what do you make of it?”

“Simply that there is some cause in common. Whatever it was that injured her has injured them.” I did not quite understand his answer:—

“That is true indirectly, but not directly.”

“How do you mean, Professor?” I asked. I was a little inclined to take his seriousness lightly—for, after all, four days of rest and freedom from burning, harrowing anxiety does help to restore one’s spirits—but when I saw his face, it sobered me. Never, even in the midst of our despair about poor Lucy, had he looked more stern.

“Tell me!” I said. “I can hazard no opinion. I do not know what to think, and I have no data on which to found a conjecture.”

“Do you mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion as to what poor Lucy died of; not after all the hints given, not only by events, but by me?”

“Of nervous prostration following on great loss or waste of blood.”

“And how the blood lost or waste?” I shook my head. He stepped over and sat down beside me, and went on:—

“You are clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know—or think they know—some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young—like the fine ladies at the opera. I suppose now you do not believe in corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialisation. No? Nor in astral bodies. No? Nor in the reading of thought. No? Nor in hypnotism——”

“Yes,” I said. “Charcot has proved that pretty well.” He smiled as he went on: “Then you are satisfied as to it. Yes? And of course then you understand how it act, and can follow the mind of the great Charcot—alas that he is no more!—into the very soul of the patient that he influence. No? Then, friend John, am I to take it that you simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to conclusion be a blank? No? Then tell me—for I am student of the brain—how you accept the hypnotism and reject the thought reading. Let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done to-day in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered electricity—who would themselves not so long before have been burned as wizards. There are always mysteries in life. Why was it that Methuselah lived nine hundred years, and ‘Old Parr’ one hundred and sixty-nine, and yet that poor Lucy, with four men’s blood in her poor veins, could not live even one day? For, had she live one more day, we could have save her. Do you know all the mystery of life and death? Do you know the altogether of comparative anatomy and can say wherefore the qualities of brutes are in some men, and not in others? Can you tell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one great spider lived for centuries in the tower of the old Spanish church and grew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil of all the church lamps? Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that come at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins; how in some islands of the Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, and those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them, and then—and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even Miss Lucy was?”

“Good God, Professor!” I said, starting up. “Do you mean to tell me that Lucy was bitten by such a bat; and that such a thing is here in London in the nineteenth century?” He waved his hand for silence, and went on:—

“Can you tell me why the tortoise lives more long than generations of men; why the elephant goes on and on till he have seen dynasties; and why the parrot never die only of bite of cat or dog or other complaint? Can you tell me why men believe in all ages and places that there are some few who live on always if they be permit; that there are men and women who cannot die? We all know—because science has vouched for the fact—that there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands of years, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth of the world. Can you tell me how the Indian fakir can make himself to die and have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it, and the corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and then men come and take away the unbroken seal and that there lie the Indian fakir, not dead, but that rise up and walk amongst them as before?” Here I interrupted him. I was getting bewildered; he so crowded on my mind his list of nature’s eccentricities and possible impossibilities that my imagination was getting fired. I had a dim idea that he was teaching me some lesson, as long ago he used to do in his study at Amsterdam; but he used then to tell me the thing, so that I could have the object of thought in mind all the time. But now I was without this help, yet I wanted to follow him, so I said:—

“Professor, let me be your pet student again. Tell me the thesis, so that I may apply your knowledge as you go on. At present I am going in my mind from point to point as a mad man, and not a sane one, follows an idea. I feel like a novice lumbering through a bog in a mist, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to move on without knowing where I am going.”

“That is good image,” he said. “Well, I shall tell you. My thesis is this: I want you to believe.”

“To believe what?”

“To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an American who so defined faith: ‘that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.’ For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of a big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him; but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.”

“Then you want me not to let some previous conviction injure the receptivity of my mind with regard to some strange matter. Do I read your lesson aright?”

“Ah, you are my favourite pupil still. It is worth to teach you. Now that you are willing to understand, you have taken the first step to understand. You think then that those so small holes in the children’s throats were made by the same that made the hole in Miss Lucy?”

“I suppose so.” He stood up and said solemnly:—

“Then you are wrong. Oh, would it were so! but alas! no. It is worse, far, far worse.”

“In God’s name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?” I cried.

He threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke:—

“They were made by Miss Lucy!”

CHAPTER XV

DR. SEWARD’S DIARY—continued.

FOR a while sheer anger mastered me; it was as if he had during her life struck Lucy on the face. I smote the table hard and rose up as I said to him:—

“Dr. Van Helsing, are you mad?” He raised his head and looked at me, and somehow the tenderness of his face calmed me at once. “Would I were!” he said. “Madness were easy to bear compared with truth like this. Oh, my friend, why, think you, did I go so far round, why take so long to tell you so simple a thing? Was it because I hate you and have hated you all my life? Was it because I wished to give you pain? Was it that I wanted, now so late, revenge for that time when you saved my life, and from a fearful death? Ah no!”

“Forgive me,” said I. He went on:—

“My friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady. But even yet I do not expect you to believe. It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the ‘no’ of it; it is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy. To-night I go to prove it. Dare you come with me?”

This staggered me. A man does not like to prove such a truth; Byron excepted from the category, jealousy.

“And prove the very truth he most abhorred.”

He saw my hesitation, and spoke:—

“The logic is simple, no madman’s logic this time, jumping from tussock to tussock in a misty bog. If it be not true, then proof will be relief; at worst it will not harm. If it be true! Ah, there is the dread; yet very dread should help my cause, for in it is some need of belief. Come, I tell you what I propose: first, that we go off now and see that child in the hospital. Dr. Vincent, of the North Hospital, where the papers say the child is, is friend of mine, and I think of yours since you were in class at Amsterdam. He will let two scientists see his case, if he will not let two friends. We shall tell him nothing, but only that we wish to learn. And then——”

“And then?” He took a key from his pocket and held it up. “And then we spend the night, you and I, in the churchyard where Lucy lies. This is the key that lock the tomb. I had it from the coffin-man to give to Arthur.” My heart sank within me, for I felt that there was some fearful ordeal before us. I could do nothing, however, so I plucked up what heart I could and said that we had better hasten, as the afternoon was passing....

We found the child awake. It had had a sleep and taken some food, and altogether was going on well. Dr. Vincent took the bandage from its throat, and showed us the punctures. There was no mistaking the similarity to those which had been on Lucy’s throat. They were smaller, and the edges looked fresher; that was all. We asked Vincent to what he attributed them, and he replied that it must have been a bite of some animal, perhaps a rat; but, for his own part, he was inclined to think that it was one of the bats which are so numerous on the northern heights of London. “Out of so many harmless ones,” he said, “there may be some wild specimen from the South of a more malignant species. Some sailor may have brought one home, and it managed to escape; or even from the Zoölogical Gardens a young one may have got loose, or one be bred there from a vampire. These things do occur, you know. Only ten days ago a wolf got out, and was, I believe, traced up in this direction. For a week after, the children were playing nothing but Red Riding Hood on the Heath and in every alley in the place until this ‘bloofer lady’ scare came along, since when it has been quite a gala-time with them. Even this poor little mite, when he woke up to-day, asked the nurse if he might go away. When she asked him why he wanted to go, he said he wanted to play with the ‘bloofer lady.’”

“I hope,” said Van Helsing, “that when you are sending the child home you will caution its parents to keep strict watch over it. These fancies to stray are most dangerous; and if the child were to remain out another night, it would probably be fatal. But in any case I suppose you will not let it away for some days?”

“Certainly not, not for a week at least; longer if the wound is not healed.”

Our visit to the hospital took more time than we had reckoned on, and the sun had dipped before we came out. When Van Helsing saw how dark it was, he said:—

“There is no hurry. It is more late than I thought. Come, let us seek somewhere that we may eat, and then we shall go on our way.”

We dined at “Jack Straw’s Castle” along with a little crowd of bicyclists and others who were genially noisy. About ten o’clock we started from the inn. It was then very dark, and the scattered lamps made the darkness greater when we were once outside their individual radius. The Professor had evidently noted the road we were to go, for he went on unhesitatingly; but, as for me, I was in quite a mixup as to locality. As we went further, we met fewer and fewer people, till at last we were somewhat surprised when we met even the patrol of horse police going their usual suburban round. At last we reached the wall of the churchyard, which we climbed over. With some little difficulty—for it was very dark, and the whole place seemed so strange to us—we found the Westenra tomb. The Professor took the key, opened the creaky door, and standing back, politely, but quite unconsciously, motioned me to precede him. There was a delicious irony in the offer, in the courtliness of giving preference on such a ghastly occasion. My companion followed me quickly, and cautiously drew the door to, after carefully ascertaining that the lock was a falling, and not a spring, one. In the latter case we should have been in a bad plight. Then he fumbled in his bag, and taking out a matchbox and a piece of candle, proceeded to make a light. The tomb in the day-time, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough; but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns; when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance; when time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been imagined. It conveyed irresistibly the idea that life—animal life—was not the only thing which could pass away.

Van Helsing went about his work systematically. Holding his candle so that he could read the coffin plates, and so holding it that the sperm dropped in white patches which congealed as they touched the metal, he made assurance of Lucy’s coffin. Another search in his bag, and he took out a turnscrew.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“To open the coffin. You shall yet be convinced.” Straightway he began taking out the screws, and finally lifted off the lid, showing the casing of lead beneath. The sight was almost too much for me. It seemed to be as much an affront to the dead as it would have been to have stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst living; I actually took hold of his hand to stop him. He only said: “You shall see,” and again fumbling in his bag, took out a tiny fret-saw. Striking the turnscrew through the lead with a swift downward stab, which made me wince, he made a small hole, which was, however, big enough to admit the point of the saw. I had expected a rush of gas from the week-old corpse. We doctors, who have had to study our dangers, have to become accustomed to such things, and I drew back towards the door. But the Professor never stopped for a moment; he sawed down a couple of feet along one side of the lead coffin, and then across, and down the other side. Taking the edge of the loose flange, he bent it back towards the foot of the coffin, and holding up the candle into the aperture, motioned to me to look.

I drew near and looked. The coffin was empty.

It was certainly a surprise to me, and gave me a considerable shock, but Van Helsing was unmoved. He was now more sure than ever of his ground, and so emboldened to proceed in his task. “Are you satisfied now, friend John?” he asked.

I felt all the dogged argumentativeness of my nature awake within me as I answered him:—

“I am satisfied that Lucy’s body is not in that coffin; but that only proves one thing.”

“And what is that, friend John?”

“That it is not there.”

“That is good logic,” he said, “so far as it goes. But how do you—how can you—account for it not being there?”

“Perhaps a body-snatcher,” I suggested. “Some of the undertaker’s people may have stolen it.” I felt that I was speaking folly, and yet it was the only real cause which I could suggest. The Professor sighed. “Ah well!” he said, “we must have more proof. Come with me.”

He put on the coffin-lid again, gathered up all his things and placed them in the bag, blew out the light, and placed the candle also in the bag. We opened the door, and went out. Behind us he closed the door and locked it. He handed me the key, saying: “Will you keep it? You had better be assured.” I laughed—it was not a very cheerful laugh, I am bound to say—as I motioned him to keep it. “A key is nothing,” I said; “there may be duplicates; and anyhow it is not difficult to pick a lock of that kind.” He said nothing, but put the key in his pocket. Then he told me to watch at one side of the churchyard whilst he would watch at the other. I took up my place behind a yew-tree, and I saw his dark figure move until the intervening headstones and trees hid it from my sight.

It was a lonely vigil. Just after I had taken my place I heard a distant clock strike twelve, and in time came one and two. I was chilled and unnerved, and angry with the Professor for taking me on such an errand and with myself for coming. I was too cold and too sleepy to be keenly observant, and not sleepy enough to betray my trust so altogether I had a dreary, miserable time.

Suddenly, as I turned round, I thought I saw something like a white streak, moving between two dark yew-trees at the side of the churchyard farthest from the tomb; at the same time a dark mass moved from the Professor’s side of the ground, and hurriedly went towards it. Then I too moved; but I had to go round headstones and railed-off tombs, and I stumbled over graves. The sky was overcast, and somewhere far off an early cock crew. A little way off, beyond a line of scattered juniper-trees, which marked the pathway to the church, a white, dim figure flitted in the direction of the tomb. The tomb itself was hidden by trees, and I could not see where the figure disappeared. I heard the rustle of actual movement where I had first seen the white figure, and coming over, found the Professor holding in his arms a tiny child. When he saw me he held it out to me, and said:—

“Are you satisfied now?”

“No,” I said, in a way that I felt was aggressive.

“Do you not see the child?”

“Yes, it is a child, but who brought it here? And is it wounded?” I asked.

“We shall see,” said the Professor, and with one impulse we took our way out of the churchyard, he carrying the sleeping child.

When we had got some little distance away, we went into a clump of trees, and struck a match, and looked at the child’s throat. It was without a scratch or scar of any kind.

“Was I right?” I asked triumphantly.

“We were just in time,” said the Professor thankfully.

We had now to decide what we were to do with the child, and so consulted about it. If we were to take it to a police-station we should have to give some account of our movements during the night; at least, we should have had to make some statement as to how we had come to find the child. So finally we decided that we would take it to the Heath, and when we heard a policeman coming, would leave it where he could not fail to find it; we would then seek our way home as quickly as we could. All fell out well. At the edge of Hampstead Heath we heard a policeman’s heavy tramp, and laying the child on the pathway, we waited and watched until he saw it as he flashed his lantern to and fro. We heard his exclamation of astonishment, and then we went away silently. By good chance we got a cab near the “Spaniards,” and drove to town.

I cannot sleep, so I make this entry. But I must try to get a few hours’ sleep, as Van Helsing is to call for me at noon. He insists that I shall go with him on another expedition.

 

Notes: Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent

Both Harker and Seward pick their journals again.

Van Helsing praises Mina, and not for the last time. 

Van Helsing, who is now everywhere, it seems, gives Seward the Westminster Gazette from yesterday. He has already made the connection between Lucy and the Bloofer Lady, he is just waiting for Seward to catch up. 

Here we run into a another possible clue about dates. Yesterday I frimly planted a flag on 1892 based on the fact that Sept. 22 was a Thursday in 1892. Today we get a discussion about Jean-Martin Charcot, who died in 1893 on Aug 16. This discussion seems to assume that Charcot is already dead. This would place the novel in 1893. Though that doesn't line up with the Thursday unless Mina was writing on Sept. 22 Friday and talking about the previous day.  Neither is satisfactory to me. The simple answer, of course, is that Stoker, writing in 1897, miscalculated either the date of a Thursday OR misremembered the date of Charcot's death.  While noted Dracula scholar Leonard Wolf preferred 1893 in his 1993 "The Essential Dracula," I am still more inclined to stick with 1892. I have not looked into his 2004 edition to see if he has changed his mind or not. Sadly, Prof. Wolf passed in 2019, so I can't ask him what he thinks now. 

A toast to Prof. Wolf

Again, Stoker shows his fondness for Americans by paraphrasing Mark Twain, someone he met prior to the publication of Dracula. Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was published in 1884, so plenty of time for Van Helsing to have read it. If you think I am going into great detail here about Dracula, wait till you see my analysis of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" as a Dante-like metaphor of the descent into the underworld.

Van Helsing also reveals, to a shocked Seward, about the nature of the Bloofer Lady. 

They go to Lucy's grave (I have provided only a likely candidate) and open her coffin to discover she was not there. They plan to come back.

Things are speeding up now. The horrors, and heroics, start anew.

The Westminster Gazette,” 25 September.

A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY.

The neighbourhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines as “The Kensington Horror,” or “The Stabbing Woman,” or “The Woman in Black.” During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a “bloofer lady.” It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighbourhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a “bloofer lady” had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favourite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the “bloofer lady” is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the “bloofer lady” should be the popular rôle at these al fresco performances. Our correspondent naïvely says that even Ellen Terry could not be so winningly attractive as some of these grubby-faced little children pretend—and even imagine themselves—to be.

There is, however, possibly a serious side to the question, for some of the children, indeed all who have been missed at night, have been slightly torn or wounded in the throat. The wounds seem such as might be made by a rat or a small dog, and although of not much importance individually, would tend to show that whatever animal inflicts them has a system or method of its own. The police of the division have been instructed to keep a sharp look-out for straying children, especially when very young, in and around Hampstead Heath, and for any stray dog which may be about.

“The Westminster Gazette,” 25 September.

Extra Special.

THE HAMPSTEAD HORROR.

ANOTHER CHILD INJURED.

The “Bloofer Lady.”

We have just received intelligence that another child, missed last night, was only discovered late in the morning under a furze bush at the Shooter’s Hill side of Hampstead Heath, which is, perhaps, less frequented than the other parts. It has the same tiny wound in the throat as has been noticed in other cases. It was terribly weak, and looked quite emaciated. It too, when partially restored, had the common story to tell of being lured away by the “bloofer lady.”

Telegram, Mrs. Harker to Van Helsing.

“25 September.—Come to-day by quarter-past ten train if you can catch it. Can see you any time you call.

“Wilhelmina Harker.”

MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL.

25 September.—I cannot help feeling terribly excited as the time draws near for the visit of Dr. Van Helsing, for somehow I expect that it will throw some light upon Jonathan’s sad experience; and as he attended poor dear Lucy in her last illness, he can tell me all about her. That is the reason of his coming; it is concerning Lucy and her sleep-walking, and not about Jonathan. Then I shall never know the real truth now! How silly I am. That awful journal gets hold of my imagination and tinges everything with something of its own colour. Of course it is about Lucy. That habit came back to the poor dear, and that awful night on the cliff must have made her ill. I had almost forgotten in my own affairs how ill she was afterwards. She must have told him of her sleep-walking adventure on the cliff, and that I knew all about it; and now he wants me to tell him what she knows, so that he may understand. I hope I did right in not saying anything of it to Mrs. Westenra; I should never forgive myself if any act of mine, were it even a negative one, brought harm on poor dear Lucy. I hope, too, Dr. Van Helsing will not blame me; I have had so much trouble and anxiety of late that I feel I cannot bear more just at present.

I suppose a cry does us all good at times—clears the air as other rain does. Perhaps it was reading the journal yesterday that upset me, and then Jonathan went away this morning to stay away from me a whole day and night, the first time we have been parted since our marriage. I do hope the dear fellow will take care of himself, and that nothing will occur to upset him. It is two o’clock, and the doctor will be here soon now. I shall say nothing of Jonathan’s journal unless he asks me. I am so glad I have type-written out my own journal, so that, in case he asks about Lucy, I can hand it to him; it will save much questioning.

 

Later.—He has come and gone. Oh, what a strange meeting, and how it all makes my head whirl round! I feel like one in a dream. Can it be all possible, or even a part of it? If I had not read Jonathan’s journal first, I should never have accepted even a possibility. Poor, poor, dear Jonathan! How he must have suffered. Please the good God, all this may not upset him again. I shall try to save him from it; but it may be even a consolation and a help to him—terrible though it be and awful in its consequences—to know for certain that his eyes and ears and brain did not deceive him, and that it is all true. It may be that it is the doubt which haunts him; that when the doubt is removed, no matter which—waking or dreaming—may prove the truth, he will be more satisfied and better able to bear the shock. Dr. Van Helsing must be a good man as well as a clever one if he is Arthur’s friend and Dr. Seward’s, and if they brought him all the way from Holland to look after Lucy. I feel from having seen him that he is good and kind and of a noble nature. When he comes to-morrow I shall ask him about Jonathan; and then, please God, all this sorrow and anxiety may lead to a good end. I used to think I would like to practise interviewing; Jonathan’s friend on “The Exeter News” told him that memory was everything in such work—that you must be able to put down exactly almost every word spoken, even if you had to refine some of it afterwards. Here was a rare interview; I shall try to record it verbatim.

It was half-past two o’clock when the knock came. I took my courage à deux mains and waited. In a few minutes Mary opened the door, and announced “Dr. Van Helsing.”

I rose and bowed, and he came towards me; a man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes one at once as indicative of thought and power; the head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large, resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big, bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart; such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man’s moods. He said to me:—

“Mrs. Harker, is it not?” I bowed assent.

“That was Miss Mina Murray?” Again I assented.

“It is Mina Murray that I came to see that was friend of that poor dear child Lucy Westenra. Madam Mina, it is on account of the dead I come.”

“Sir,” I said, “you could have no better claim on me than that you were a friend and helper of Lucy Westenra.” And I held out my hand. He took it and said tenderly:—

“Oh, Madam Mina, I knew that the friend of that poor lily girl must be good, but I had yet to learn——” He finished his speech with a courtly bow. I asked him what it was that he wanted to see me about, so he at once began:—

“I have read your letters to Miss Lucy. Forgive me, but I had to begin to inquire somewhere, and there was none to ask. I know that you were with her at Whitby. She sometimes kept a diary—you need not look surprised, Madam Mina; it was begun after you had left, and was in imitation of you—and in that diary she traces by inference certain things to a sleep-walking in which she puts down that you saved her. In great perplexity then I come to you, and ask you out of your so much kindness to tell me all of it that you can remember.”

“I can tell you, I think, Dr. Van Helsing, all about it.”

“Ah, then you have good memory for facts, for details? It is not always so with young ladies.”

“No, doctor, but I wrote it all down at the time. I can show it to you if you like.”

“Oh, Madam Mina, I will be grateful; you will do me much favour.” I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit—I suppose it is some of the taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths—so I handed him the shorthand diary. He took it with a grateful bow, and said:—

“May I read it?”

“If you wish,” I answered as demurely as I could. He opened it, and for an instant his face fell. Then he stood up and bowed.

“Oh, you so clever woman!” he said. “I knew long that Mr. Jonathan was a man of much thankfulness; but see, his wife have all the good things. And will you not so much honour me and so help me as to read it for me? Alas! I know not the shorthand.” By this time my little joke was over, and I was almost ashamed; so I took the typewritten copy from my workbasket and handed it to him.

“Forgive me,” I said: “I could not help it; but I had been thinking that it was of dear Lucy that you wished to ask, and so that you might not have time to wait—not on my account, but because I know your time must be precious—I have written it out on the typewriter for you.”

He took it and his eyes glistened. “You are so good,” he said. “And may I read it now? I may want to ask you some things when I have read.”

“By all means,” I said, “read it over whilst I order lunch; and then you can ask me questions whilst we eat.” He bowed and settled himself in a chair with his back to the light, and became absorbed in the papers, whilst I went to see after lunch chiefly in order that he might not be disturbed. When I came back, I found him walking hurriedly up and down the room, his face all ablaze with excitement. He rushed up to me and took me by both hands.

“Oh, Madam Mina,” he said, “how can I say what I owe to you? This paper is as sunshine. It opens the gate to me. I am daze, I am dazzle, with so much light, and yet clouds roll in behind the light every time. But that you do not, cannot, comprehend. Oh, but I am grateful to you, you so clever woman. Madam”—he said this very solemnly—“if ever Abraham Van Helsing can do anything for you or yours, I trust you will let me know. It will be pleasure and delight if I may serve you as a friend; as a friend, but all I have ever learned, all I can ever do, shall be for you and those you love. There are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights. You will have happy life and good life, and your husband will be blessed in you.”

“But, doctor, you praise me too much, and—and you do not know me.”

“Not know you—I, who am old, and who have studied all my life men and women; I, who have made my specialty the brain and all that belongs to him and all that follow from him! And I have read your diary that you have so goodly written for me, and which breathes out truth in every line. I, who have read your so sweet letter to poor Lucy of your marriage and your trust, not know you! Oh, Madam Mina, good women tell all their lives, and by day and by hour and by minute, such things that angels can read; and we men who wish to know have in us something of angels’ eyes. Your husband is noble nature, and you are noble too, for you trust, and trust cannot be where there is mean nature. And your husband—tell me of him. Is he quite well? Is all that fever gone, and is he strong and hearty?” I saw here an opening to ask him about Jonathan, so I said:—

“He was almost recovered, but he has been greatly upset by Mr. Hawkins’s death.” He interrupted:—

“Oh, yes, I know, I know. I have read your last two letters.” I went on:—

“I suppose this upset him, for when we were in town on Thursday last he had a sort of shock.”

“A shock, and after brain fever so soon! That was not good. What kind of a shock was it?”

“He thought he saw some one who recalled something terrible, something which led to his brain fever.” And here the whole thing seemed to overwhelm me in a rush. The pity for Jonathan, the horror which he experienced, the whole fearful mystery of his diary, and the fear that has been brooding over me ever since, all came in a tumult. I suppose I was hysterical, for I threw myself on my knees and held up my hands to him, and implored him to make my husband well again. He took my hands and raised me up, and made me sit on the sofa, and sat by me; he held my hand in his, and said to me with, oh, such infinite sweetness:—

“My life is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that I have not had much time for friendships; but since I have been summoned to here by my friend John Seward I have known so many good people and seen such nobility that I feel more than ever—and it has grown with my advancing years—the loneliness of my life. Believe, me, then, that I come here full of respect for you, and you have given me hope—hope, not in what I am seeking of, but that there are good women still left to make life happy—good women, whose lives and whose truths may make good lesson for the children that are to be. I am glad, glad, that I may here be of some use to you; for if your husband suffer, he suffer within the range of my study and experience. I promise you that I will gladly do all for him that I can—all to make his life strong and manly, and your life a happy one. Now you must eat. You are overwrought and perhaps over-anxious. Husband Jonathan would not like to see you so pale; and what he like not where he love, is not to his good. Therefore for his sake you must eat and smile. You have told me all about Lucy, and so now we shall not speak of it, lest it distress. I shall stay in Exeter to-night, for I want to think much over what you have told me, and when I have thought I will ask you questions, if I may. And then, too, you will tell me of husband Jonathan’s trouble so far as you can, but not yet. You must eat now; afterwards you shall tell me all.”

After lunch, when we went back to the drawing-room, he said to me:—

“And now tell me all about him.” When it came to speaking to this great learned man, I began to fear that he would think me a weak fool, and Jonathan a madman—that journal is all so strange—and I hesitated to go on. But he was so sweet and kind, and he had promised to help, and I trusted him, so I said:—

“Dr. Van Helsing, what I have to tell you is so queer that you must not laugh at me or at my husband. I have been since yesterday in a sort of fever of doubt; you must be kind to me, and not think me foolish that I have even half believed some very strange things.” He reassured me by his manner as well as his words when he said:—

“Oh, my dear, if you only know how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief, no matter how strange it be. I have tried to keep an open mind; and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”

“Thank you, thank you, a thousand times! You have taken a weight off my mind. If you will let me, I shall give you a paper to read. It is long, but I have typewritten it out. It will tell you my trouble and Jonathan’s. It is the copy of his journal when abroad, and all that happened. I dare not say anything of it; you will read for yourself and judge. And then when I see you, perhaps, you will be very kind and tell me what you think.”

“I promise,” he said as I gave him the papers; “I shall in the morning, so soon as I can, come to see you and your husband, if I may.”

“Jonathan will be here at half-past eleven, and you must come to lunch with us and see him then; you could catch the quick 3:34 train, which will leave you at Paddington before eight.” He was surprised at my knowledge of the trains off-hand, but he does not know that I have made up all the trains to and from Exeter, so that I may help Jonathan in case he is in a hurry.

So he took the papers with him and went away, and I sit here thinking—thinking I don’t know what.

Letter (by hand), Van Helsing to Mrs. Harker.

“25 September, 6 o’clock.

“Dear Madam Mina,—

“I have read your husband’s so wonderful diary. You may sleep without doubt. Strange and terrible as it is, it is true! I will pledge my life on it. It may be worse for others; but for him and you there is no dread. He is a noble fellow; and let me tell you from experience of men, that one who would do as he did in going down that wall and to that room—ay, and going a second time—is not one to be injured in permanence by a shock. His brain and his heart are all right; this I swear, before I have even seen him; so be at rest. I shall have much to ask him of other things. I am blessed that to-day I come to see you, for I have learn all at once so much that again I am dazzle—dazzle more than ever, and I must think.

“Yours the most faithful,
“Abraham Van Helsing.”

Letter, Mrs. Harker to Van Helsing.

“25 September, 6:30 p. m.

“My dear Dr. Van Helsing,—

“A thousand thanks for your kind letter, which has taken a great weight off my mind. And yet, if it be true, what terrible things there are in the world, and what an awful thing if that man, that monster, be really in London! I fear to think. I have this moment, whilst writing, had a wire from Jonathan, saying that he leaves by the 6:25 to-night from Launceston and will be here at 10:18, so that I shall have no fear to-night. Will you, therefore, instead of lunching with us, please come to breakfast at eight o’clock, if this be not too early for you? You can get away, if you are in a hurry, by the 10:30 train, which will bring you to Paddington by 2:35. Do not answer this, as I shall take it that, if I do not hear, you will come to breakfast.

“Believe me,
“Your faithful and grateful friend,
“Mina Harker.”

Notes: Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent

Lots going on.

The remark about Ellen Terry could be called an Easter Egg, or even "Fan-service." Terry was undoubtedly known to Stoker through their mutual connection with Henry Irving.  I could go on a lot more here, but that is better left to others. Back to the horrors.

These two newspaper clippings about the "Bloofer Lady" or Beautiful Lady, are important because, as we will discover, it is none other than Lucy herself preying on these children in something like a horrible reverse of the motherhood role. Lucy, who never got to be a mother, now feeds on small children.

Mina sends Van Helsing a telegram inviting him to come over to talk. In terms of words per impact to the story you could hardly find a better ratio than these. Save for of course "because I know."

This all leads to Mina's Journal and letters back and forth between Mina and Van Helsing, who now call each other "faithful and grateful friend(s)."

We learn a lot here. 

I do want to point out the Mina states that Sept. 22, the day Jonathan saw Dracula, was a Thursday. This puts the year as 1892.  I have gone back and forth on this year for a bit, but this a good confirmation. Though this could put is as early as 1887, another date I am fond of.  I will chat more about this tomorrow.

We get more evidence of how industrious Mina is. Not only is she a fast typist (on a clunky manual typewriter!), she also has the train schedules memorized, in case Jonathan might need to know when a train was arriving or leaving.  

This was quite the pivotable day in the lives of our hunters.

While I have been flirting with AD&D 2nd Ed and Realms for the last few months, it is time to dive in head first with the combination that defined Dungeons & Dragons for many in the early 90s. While I was away playing in the gothic-horror land of Ravenloft, most of the AD&D 2nd Edition fanbase was playing on Faerûn and in the Forgotten Realms, and this book was their entry point.

Forgotten Realms Adventures

1990. By Jeff Grubb and E Greenwood, cover art by Clyde Caldwell. Interior art by Stephen Fabian. Interior paintings by Clyde Caldwell, Ned Dameron, Jeff Easley, and Larry Elmore. Cartography by Dave "Diesel" LaForce. 148 pages.

This is a guide book not just to the Forgotten Realms but very specifically to the Forgotten Realms post "Time of Troubles" and to the AD&D 2nd Edition game. I want to delve into the Time of Troubles and discuss it not just in the Universe but how it was a very clever way to bridge the editions and rule changes.  However, I am not really qualified to do it any justice. I have not read the novels involved nor have I played the games, either tabletop or video games. But I can talk about what this book says, post Time of Troubles.

Before I get to the book proper, I want to discuss its position in terms of the "Adventures" hardcovers.

TSR's three main campaign worlds at the end of the 1980s were Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms. All got a special hardcover treatment that very much spanned the gap between 1st and 2nd Editions of AD&D.

Dragonlance featured ideas unique Krynn that would become part of the AD&D 2nd edition rules. The Greyhawk book was a hybrid of 1st and 2nd Ed rules, and finally the Forgotten Realms was solidly AD&D 2nd Edition with plenty of conversion notes for the very recently published Forgotten Realms boxed set.  A lot of what is in this book is both updates to the new rules and updates to the world post Time of Troubles. Elegant no? 

Reading this book now and knowing the directions both the Realms and AD&D/D&D were going to take, it seems that many of the rules for AD&D 2nd Ed were made to suit the Realms and vice versa. 

So what is in this book?

Chapter 1: The Forgotten Realms Post Avatar

This section is not large, but it packs a punch. In its dozen+ pages, we get the changes to the Realms Post-Avatar and adapting your game to the new AD&D 2nd Edition rules. Changes in character classes are covered, like what to do about those Cavaliers, Barbarians, and Assassins that no longer exist in the new rules. Psionics no longer exists (for now) and anyone who tells you they did are obviously mistaken. While AD&D 2nd Ed strongly adheres to a 20-level character maximum, there are plenty of NPCs that do not. So there are spell advancements for wizards and priests to 30th level. 

One of the newest additions are Magic-dead and Wild-magic zones. The Forgotten Realms always had more magic than either Dragonlance or Greyhawk, so these are a fun addition. 

Firearms are covered by the AD&D 2nd Ed rules, too, since they exist in the Forgotten Realms. 

Chapter 2: Gods and their Specialty Priests

Reading this, I can't tell you if specialty priests were created for AD&D 2nd and adapted well to the Realms or if they were created with the Realms in mind. In any case, we get all the (then) current Gods in their then-current forms and their specialty priests.  This is about two dozen pages and you can get a good feel on what the Time of Troubles was all about; at least this part of it.

Also as someone played a lot of clerics over the years this is a great set of examples of how to do the AD&D specialty priests. This also features the first instance I know of depicting the garb of the various priests together. 

Chapter 3: Magic and Mages of the Realms

Not to be under-represented, the various changes to magic are covered here along with what the Realms, or at least Ed Greenwood, is well known for; lots and lots of new spells. Honestly even if you never play in the Realms these two chapters are worth the price of the book alone. 

Chapter 4: Cities of the Heartlands

This covers the major cities of the heartland of the Realms, covering the West to East expanse of the continent. The cities are presented in alphabetical order. The material is similar to what we have seen before, updated for the post Time of Troubles and new rules.  Still I never get tires about reading about these cities and looking at the maps. Yes, I spent a lot of time looking over the map of Baldur's Gate after spending so much time there. 

Chapter 5: Secret Societies of the Heartlands

Covers the "Big Three," The Harpers, The Zhentarim, and The Red Wizards of Thay. I found the section on the Zhentarim to be better than what I have read so far. 

Chapter 6: Treasure

This covers special and unique treasures of the Realms. While it does feel like padding, it is still useful information.

We end with some Appendices; Treasure Tables, Wizard Spells by School and by Level, and Random Spell Lists. 

The most useful section, even if woefully out of date, is the published Forgotten Realms bibliography. At least to March 1990. If I was serious about reading about the Time of Troubles, then I would have my reading list right here. I am a little surprised about how much of this list I have read. I may know more than I am giving myself credit for. 

The book has the feel of all the books from this time. With the Clyde Caldwell cover and Stephen Fabian art, one could be excused into thinking this was a Ravenloft book (next month...) but the Elmore and Easley art quickly dismisses this notion. 

There is not enough in this book to really run or play in the Realms. You should have the boxed campaign set, but there is enough to provide adventure seeds. The book, though, holds more promise than crunch, and that is a good thing for me at this point in my exploration of the Realms. With these books, I could imagine taking a trip along the roads, moving east from the west to visit all these great cities and all the adventures in between. Finding strange sigils from other adventurers, Harpers, or even the Black Network. Sounds like a great adventure trek for Sinéad, Arnell, Rhiannon, and Nida. Especially since I last left them while talking about cities. I'll update their characters to AD&D 2nd Edition rules later on. This also reminds me that I want to have Nida end up in Ravenloft. Why? I have my reasons.

This book isn't why so many people associate the Realms so strongly with 2nd Edition AD&D, but it is the place to start.

Mina learns more, our main heroes are introduced. 

24 September.—I hadn’t the heart to write last night; that terrible record of Jonathan’s upset me so. Poor dear! How he must have suffered, whether it be true or only imagination. I wonder if there is any truth in it at all. Did he get his brain fever, and then write all those terrible things, or had he some cause for it all? I suppose I shall never know, for I dare not open the subject to him.... And yet that man we saw yesterday! He seemed quite certain of him.... Poor fellow! I suppose it was the funeral upset him and sent his mind back on some train of thought.... He believes it all himself. I remember how on our wedding-day he said: “Unless some solemn duty come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake, mad or sane.” There seems to be through it all some thread of continuity.... That fearful Count was coming to London.... If it should be, and he came to London, with his teeming millions.... There may be a solemn duty; and if it come we must not shrink from it.... I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing. Then we shall be ready for other eyes if required. And if it be wanted; then, perhaps, if I am ready, poor Jonathan may not be upset, for I can speak for him and never let him be troubled or worried with it at all. If ever Jonathan quite gets over the nervousness he may want to tell me of it all, and I can ask him questions and find out things, and see how I may comfort him.

Letter, Van Helsing to Mrs. Harker.

“24 September.
(Confidence)

“Dear Madam,—

“I pray you to pardon my writing, in that I am so far friend as that I sent to you sad news of Miss Lucy Westenra’s death. By the kindness of Lord Godalming, I am empowered to read her letters and papers, for I am deeply concerned about certain matters vitally important. In them I find some letters from you, which show how great friends you were and how you love her. Oh, Madam Mina, by that love, I implore you, help me. It is for others’ good that I ask—to redress great wrong, and to lift much and terrible troubles—that may be more great than you can know. May it be that I see you? You can trust me. I am friend of Dr. John Seward and of Lord Godalming (that was Arthur of Miss Lucy). I must keep it private for the present from all. I should come to Exeter to see you at once if you tell me I am privilege to come, and where and when. I implore your pardon, madam. I have read your letters to poor Lucy, and know how good you are and how your husband suffer; so I pray you, if it may be, enlighten him not, lest it may harm. Again your pardon, and forgive me.

“Van Helsing.”

Notes: Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent

Lets take a moment here and refelct on what this means.

Mina, reading Jonathan's journal not only believes him, but she is pulling out her typewriter and transcribes the whole thing so others could make benefit of it. That is some Nancy Drew/Louis Lane level shit right there. 

Make no mistake. Mina Harker is the hero of Dracula. Had it not been for her, Van Helsing would have no idea where to start. Without Van Helsing and his connections vis-à-vis Holmwood, Morris, and Seward, they would have never gotten to Dracula.

Van Helsing does have the forethought to reach out to Mina. Mina has the forethought to record all of Jonathan's journals. 

This is where the hunted become the hunters.

 Who is Bruno? What is his Earth? Is there a Bruno's Mars? Why am I searching for it? These questions...are not likely to get fully answered, but I will give it a try in this segment of "In Search Of..."

So I found this curiosity on Amazon a while back. Two books, super cheap called "Bruno's Earth Game Book" and "Bruno's Earth Creature Manual."

Here is a quote from the Amazon page.

This is an expansion to the game that fills in the holes and gets rid of the obscure contradictory rules. It is more consitent and more detailed, yet easier to play. The games on the shelves these days are so complex and have so many volumes of rules, a dozen lawyers couldn't sort it out. Bruno's Earth goes back to the beginning and rebuilds from scratch, enhancing all aspects that make the game fun to play and fizes all the problems that made it hard to play. Bruno's Earth is a trim, detailed, cohesive game system that is fun to play and easy to learn.

I mean, this is no different than hundreds of forgotten Fantasy Heartbreakers out there. What makes this one special, or more to point, notorious? 

Here are some bold claims on the back covers.

The author is listed as "Jim Patrick Guyer."  Now there is Jim Patrick Guyer, who is an author and invented a game called Diamond Chess (old, inactive URL: http://diamondchess.net/) who passed away in 2021. I can't confim that this is the one and only Jim Patrick Guyer. Goodreads seems to think so, but that does not mean a lot.  He does have a hotmail email address, so that at least gives some evidence this is old. 

BrunosEarth.com listed in the Game Book was first indexed back in 2011. A coming soon page was up for a while, then it went blank.

A thread on ENWorld claims that it is from 1986. An ISBN search for Bruno's Earth Game Book does list Jan 14, 1986, as the publication date. This is likely for the 10-digit ISBN and not the newer 13-digit one.

An ISBN search for Bruno's Earth Creature Manual says it was registered in 2012. I am not sure why there is a 26-year gap when the books are obviously contemporaneous. Though that could just be in their current forms/format. Further searches only bring up the Amazon pages.

In truth, outside of the ISBN registration, I can't see much else for these books. 

There are no threads on RPG.net for it. Same with Dragonsfoot

I tried searching the Usenet, but all the search engines I used to use are behind paywalls now.

That is just the foundational searching. What about the books themselves?

Bruno's Earth

These books are the pretense of a game. Despite the author's claim these are not what AD&D Second Ed should have been. Not even close.

The game book is 136 pages, and the monster book is 92 pages.

Bruno's Earth Game Book

Ok, I really have no idea what this is about. 10 pages for a Table of Contents (that's about 8% of the whole book). I am not sure what bugs me more. The only original art (that I can tell) is bad, the ComicSans font, or the text on the page. 

What do I mean? Well out of the gate one of our player races is an Albino. Yikes. We also get Hobbits. So lets just get everyone to sue us all at once. 

Of note, the art here includes some gray-scale, descaled versions of D&D 3rd Edition art.  

Characters have 8 Ability scores, the normal 6 plus Memory and Comeliness, and are generated using 3d6, 3d20, and 4d24.  How?? Don't ask me.

I could go on, but reading the rules are giving me a headache. That or the ComicSans font.  I was hoping there were some ideas here I could mine, but no. Not really.

Brunos's Earth Creature Manual

Again, I do love monster books. But this one is testing my patience. 

The monsters are divided up into broad categories (Natural, Super-Natural, Elemental, Undead), then alphabetically. These are largely copied from the AD&D 1st Monster Manual, with some from theFiend Folio and Monster Manual II.  There are no demons or devils.

There are some new monsters. Skrags, a type of undead, some new dragons. There is one, an Orinthopter. It is listed with the Golems under Elementals. The image looks like a crudely drawn glider or kite. There needs to be a description on what this is supposed to be. Is it a construct? An object? It has a Wisdom score, so is it alive?

Look, I could keep on going, but I won't. The author is not around anymore and there is no need for me to be a dick here.

I am not sure how this thing got onto my radar but I have it and no idea what to do with it.

As I said before, it is notable due to its mystery, availability on Amazon, and the author. There might be a story here, but I need help to dig up. I have been researching this since December 2023 and working on this post since June 2024.

In this case, my deep dive gives us nothing.

A quick word from Mina as we begin Chapter 14.

CHAPTER XIV
MINA HARKER’S JOURNAL

23 September.—Jonathan is better after a bad night. I am so glad that he has plenty of work to do, for that keeps his mind off the terrible things; and oh, I am rejoiced that he is not now weighed down with the responsibility of his new position. I knew he would be true to himself, and now how proud I am to see my Jonathan rising to the height of his advancement and keeping pace in all ways with the duties that come upon him. He will be away all day till late, for he said he could not lunch at home. My household work is done, so I shall take his foreign journal, and lock myself up in my room and read it....

Notes: Moon Phase: Waxing Crescent

A short, but profound, entry today. Jonathan is at work (and not contributing to the plot) so Mina secludes herself by reading Jonathan's journal. This event is every bit as important, if not more so, than Van Helsing proclamation yesterday. 

Van Helsing might "know," but Mina is about to figure it all out on her own. 

While I am not trying to put a lot of stock in the various moon phases and times of year, I can't help but draw the parallels of Lucy dying during a new (dark) moon and Mina and Van Helsing having their revelations during the waxing, or brightening, of the moon. 

 It is that time of year again! Ok, that's lie, it is always that time of year for me. But it is that time of year when I start talking about it. And by "it" I mean my October Horror Movie Challenge. 

The goal is basically the same every year: Watch 31 Horror movies, with at least 20 of them as first-time views.  I often throw in a little twist to the theme. One year, it was all Vampire movies; another movie just before 1973 when The Exorcist came out.  This year, we will have a theme as well. 

The Monster Movie Marathon

To celebrate 50 Years of Dungeons & Dragons, I am going back to watch a bunch of classic (say pre-1977) movies featuring monsters from the AD&D 1st Edition Monster Manual.

This all works out great for me.

"Monster Movies," as my Dad and I used to call them, were a big influence on my childhood and primed me for when Dungeons & Dragons came into my life. 

So I am going to watch a bunch of horror movies, mostly from before the Monster Manual was printed in 1977, featuring monsters that would later appear in those pages. 

I am not making any claims that these movies inspired these monsters, but certainly, they would have been known by the authors and artists of D&D at the time. They WERE certainly an inspiration to me at the time. The challenge here will be finding 20 I have never seen.

I have been reviewing my lists of monsters and comparing them to the book "The Classics of the Horror Film" I mentioned about a month ago. Along with other books, that for me, were the pillars of my love of monsters and ultimately D&D.

I'll watch the movie and talk about their Monster Manual counterparts. 

Should be great! So join me all month long next month.

I am also hosting the The RPG Blog Carnival for October. My theme is "Horror and Fantasy." Many of the monsters I'll be talking about have a toe, or tentacle in both. Monsters like the vampire, Medusa, and the mummy are featured in both genres. Creatures like the ogre and goblin began as horror monsters (of the time) and became more fantasy. Greek Myth for example has a lot of fantasy creatures that would later appear in horror.

So I have my work cut out for me to be sure! So join me in talking about Horror and Fantasy in your games and I'll link to you in future posts.

Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine is a special book. Obviously, it is a supplement for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying , the Roleplaying Game of investigative folklore horror set in nineteenth century Scandinavia published by Free League Publishing. It is special because it something more than a straightforward supplement for the roleplaying game, though to be fair, it is actually a very straightforward supplement. Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine is special because it is the first book to be published as a result of the Free League Workshop, the community content programme for Free League Publishing’s various RPGs such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, Sybaroum, and Twilight 2000. More importantly, it is special because of the circumstances of its development and publication, and that the proceeds of its sales go towards charitable causes in support of the Ukraine. These include United24, Come Back Alive, and Uanimals.
Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine is an anthology of creatures of myth and legend drawn from the folklore of Ukraine. Published by Society of Mythic Ukraine, based on an earlier project, Maloviy, which combined descriptions and details of these famous creatures with excellent artwork. This is continued in this Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine. The volume may only be a very slim one at just seventy-four pages and just twenty-seven entries, but it is superbly illustrated. Each is given a detailed write-up that runs to two or three pages which includes an excerpt from the Society’s library, a description, the creature’s characteristics, a full list of its magical powers—and all of them have this list, combat stats, the ritual associated with the creature, and examples of conflicts, plus a secret associated with the creature. The rituals are typically commonly held means of warding against the creature, whilst the conflict examples are actually story hooks that the Game Master can develop into mysteries of her own. There are three such conflicts per entry, giving her a total of eighty-one to play with! However, the creature entries in Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine do differ from those in the core rulebook. This difference is the inclusion of specific examples of Enchantments, Curses, and Trollcraft that a creature might employ. These are not normally listed in Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, but are included here to make the use of each creature by the Game Master that much easier.

The collection opens with Bezdonnyk, which lives at the bottom of abysses and chasms where there is a bottomless lake or stream. It cannot stray from these locations because it represents the body of a suicide victim never found there and so never buried. When confronted, it might cause blindness or Christian symbols to shatter, or it might bestow the Gaze of the Abyss and magical power as well as knowledge of an enchantment or curse. The conflicts include looking for a missing, often bullied boy, removing the Sight from a boy who believed he has been cursed by a Bezdonnyk, and a village which secretly makes sacrifices to a Bezdonnyk to ensure its nearby springs grant healing. The grim nature of the entries in Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine continues with the Bohynka, an evil spirit born from the deaths of women who died giving birth, committed suicide, or aborted their babies, as well as from the deaths of betrothed girls who died before their weddings. She stalks pregnant women and women with newborns, stealing the babies before they are baptised and leaving behind monsters in their cradles. The stolen child is then twisted into an evil spirit. If that is not enough, Bezdonnyk also strangle people in their sleep, frighten and attack cattle, drive horses away, and devastate pastures. She appears as either an ugly old crone or a pale girl with long black hair. The conflicts include a village where the inhabitants cannot sleep feeling as if they are being strangled and a priest summoned to help was found strangled dead, a village where a new mother is being driven mad because she feels that her child is not hers, and a Bohynka who has returned to enact its revenge on those who drove her to suicide.

Other entries include the Chort, an evil spirit that is the cause of most misfortunes in the world. Cunning, wicked, insidious, and dangerous, it can inflict illness and bad luck to both people and livestock, incite people to commit evil deeds, tempt them to sell their souls to it in return for magical powers, and wilt fields and crops. A Chort is humanoid with animal features—hairy with horns, donkey ears and tails, a pig snout, and hooves—and always dresses in shades of red, typically fancy boots, a hat and a coat. The Nichnytsia is an evil night spirit that appears as a pale woman with long, dishevelled hair, bulging eyes, and a mouth twisted in terror, as well as gnarled, bony hands with long nails, dressed in a white nightdress so long that she looks like she is floating. Either the restless soul of a girl who suffered an unnatural death, a witch, or of someone who died in terrible agony or grief, she lives by day in nearby chasms, but at night sneaks into houses to pick first on children, sending nightmares, pinching and tickling, and feeding them a foul yellow milk which causes a child to be sick. She can also inflict insomnia or a lethargic sleep in which the sleeper has terrible nightmares. The Pesyholov is more typically monstrous, a wolf-headed humanoid with a single eye, believed to be descended from man-eating giants, a practice it keeps today, keeping its victims in pits, fattening them up until they are ready to eat!

Not all of the creatures or spirits in Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine are malevolent. For example, the Brodnytsia, which looks like a pretty girl with thick black braids, builds and protects fords across rivers and swamps so that people can cross them in safety as well protecting children who come too close to the water. This kindly spirit lives with beavers in their dams and will also protect places and people nearby, breaking damns to unleash the held back waters on fires or invaders! She can detect evil doers or those up to no good and lead them into whirlpools where they will drown. Since the Brodnytsia is a kindly spirit, conflicts associated with her involve things that have been done or anger her. The three include looking for the missing wife and brother of a famous hunter and tanner, who unfortunately has annoyed a Brodnytsia by hunting her beaver living companions; searching for a missing troupe of performing artists; and discovering why the dams and fords near a village keep breaking and the area flooding despite the villagers making good repairs.

Khukha are cute and fluffy nature spirits found in fields, forests, steppes, and caves, their forest types often waking with an incredible noise under the canopy that resembles knocking, squeaking, purring, and grunting. They do help those trouble and warn about the dangers in a forest, though some do see them as evil and vengeful. The Krynytsia is the spirit of the well or water spring, who ensures that the weather is good for the harvest and the fertility of the land. When she appears, it is as a young woman of great beauty with long, flowing blond braids. The better maintained her well or spring is, the better the weather and the better the harvests, and the more beautiful she is, but if neglected, the waters will stagnate, and the village and its surrounds will be beset with drought and evil spirits, the latter inflicting misfortune, illness, and disasters.

One of the stranger creatures in the bestiary is the Skarbnyk. Only appearing as a set of floating red eyes, the Skarbnyk guards hidden treasure, but only evil treasure that has been gained through theft, betrayal, or pacts with wicked spirits. The Skarbnyk will do this in return for the owner’s soul when he dies and if anyone does try to steal it, the treasure will turn into potsherds or snakes! However, the Skarbnyk will allow a swap to take place if the thief is willing to give up his soul. The Spryiia is the spirit of a person’s skill or talent which normally dies with the person, but it can be passed on to a child at birth, this being indicated by a birthmark. The Spryiia appreciates hard work and so will leave a person if he becomes too lazy. Mechanically, the increase in the skill is represented by a magical gift that increases a skill by two. The Zharook is either a household spirit or a god of fire that resides in the stove. This many-headed, many-eyed serpent can also be vengeful if it or the stove is shown disrespect and will set fires in the house. It can also make people gossip because it enjoys talking about rumours and news between its various heads!

Physically, Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine is a lovely looking book. The artwork is rich, wonderfully bringing its entries to life. The writing is slightly rough in places and it does need another edit. However, it would be churlish to grumble too much about this, given that the book is for a good cause and how good the book looks otherwise.

There are some common themes running through Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine, such as girls and women having suffered terrible deaths, spirits protecting streams, wells, or swamps, and so on, but this countered by the strangeness of other entries such as the Zharook or Skarbnyk. Yet all of the entries in the bestiary are going to be strange to most of the audience for it, the folklore and stories of creatures and monsters native to Ukraine having rarely travelled beyond its borders. With Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine they have, and in return, Game Masters and players of Vaesen can travel east to cross those borders and investigate mysteries new and different. Vaesen: Spirits and Monsters of Mythic Ukraine is an excellent introduction to Mythic Ukraine for Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying.

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; Loke BattleMats publishes them as books; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. 1985 Games does none of these. Instead, as the name suggests it looks back to the eighties and produces its maps in a format similar to the Dungeon Floor Sets from Games Workshop, but designed for use in 2025 not 1985.
Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is a box of terrain geomorphs, some forty-six sheets of them! Each sheet is of light card, covered in plastic so that it works with both wet and dry erase markers, and marked with an eight-by-ten grid of one-inch squares. All of the sheets are depicted in full vibrant colour. Some are also marked in dotted lines which indicate lines where the Game Master can cut and sperate buildings, ruins, trees and flowers, threats and monsters. Some sheets depict single locations, locations, or monsters, such as a shop, a ruined windmill, a coffin makers, homes occupied and unoccupied, a church or temple, taverns and inns, wizards, necromancers, spiders, wraiths, gargoyles, wolves and hounds, black cats, murders of crows, chopping blocks with axes, a great tree hut, flaming skulls, and more. There is a lot of cemetery features, including statues and headstones, ground sections which have skeletal hands reaching up ready to claw at the Player Characters or pull themselves out of the earth, giant skulls and broken gates, and so on. Which sounds all great, but there is more to each of these sheets, and that is because each is double-sided.
Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread does not simply reprint the same locations, objects, and creatures on the other side. In some cases, it reprints the same location or object, but with a change in status. For the most part, this is to show the roofs of buildings, but for other pieces, the other side is very different. For example, the other side of the chopping blocks with axes shows piles chopped wood, the various creatures and monsters and NPCs are shown by day on one side and by night on the other, trees are shown with foliage on one side and without on the other, and so on. Whilst the reverse side of most building tiles show their roofs, others do depict up floors of the same building. Thus simply flipping the counters and locations over doubles usefulness of the Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread as well as helping to keep parts of a location or encounter secret until the Master Master is ready to reveal them.
Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is obviously designed to work with a fantasy setting such as that for Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or any number of retroclones or fantasy roleplaying games. Indeed, Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread would very well with the Curse of Strahd and Vecna: Eve of Ruin campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Of course, the most obvious use for Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is with the Ravenloft setting, which has a particular gloomy, Mitteleuropean feel to it. This does not necessarily limit it to the mediaeval pulp horror of Gothic, since the look and feel of the locations depicted in this map could be any time from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. So not just Ravenloft, but also Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales, as well as any pulp horror adventure where the heroes might encounter vampires and the undead, venture down streets swathed in shadow and passing moonlight, and out into cemeteries to dig up bodies to check to see if they are truly dead! Chill would work very well with Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread, as would any roleplaying game with a Pulp sensibility, whether that is Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos or Achtung! Cthulhu, especially if the Investigators wanted to vampire hunting or the Nazis were recruiting! Lastly, combine with the BattleMap: Turned Earth/Graveyard pack to create the locations of uprisings of the dead and the BattleMap: City/Dungeon pack for town streets where the undead can lurk and prey on random tourists whilst the locals know better than to be abroad at night and lock their doors!
Physically, Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread comes in a sturdy which also contain a single introduction and instructions sheet. Beyond that, the rest of Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is all maps that can be easily adjusted with the addition of the various terrain pieces and marked up and wiped clean as necessary.
Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is an appropriately gloomy and gothic-themed box of maps and geomorphs. In comparison to other Dungeon Craft boxed sets from 1985 Games, Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is not as vibrant (since of course, it is set in the shadows) and it does not include quite as much variety in its pieces. Nevertheless, this is a good box of maps, floor plans, and map tiles, and for the Game Master using miniatures and wanting to take her campaign into the gloom of the gothic where only the moonlight shines and vampires stalk the night, Dungeon Craft: Cursed Lands – Game Pieces of Dread is packed with everything she will need.*
* Stake not included.

Two centuries ago, a heretical cult that had begun as a radical sect within the Church of Zonurandi brought to fruition its plans for a great ritual which it believed would bring about a new Dawn for their Sun God when he would shine so very brightly. Yet in order to bring about this age of enlightenment, the world must first enter a perpetual Dusk. The Dusk never came. The cultists—including many secret members within the ranks of Church of Zonurandi—disappeared. In the time since, the Herald of the Sun, the name of the original sect within the church, and the Dusk Bringers, the name for the cult, have become nothing more than an interesting side note in the history of the Church of Zonurandi, and then only to sages and archivists. Recently, a message has been received by the authorities from the remote Wichama Valley. It is a Rite of Protection, an ancient tradition which if fulfilled would be answered with an Oath of Loyalty. What is curious is about this message is that the Wichama Valley is part of the estates belonging to the Mayweather family which has long been loyal to those it owes fealty to. So, the question is, who has sent this Rite of Protection, and what exactly do they need protection from?

This is the set-up for The Dusk Bringers, a scenario published by LunarShadow Designs. The scenario is a departure for the publisher, which is best known for solo journalling games such as Signal to Noise or roleplaying games such as Project Cassandra: Psychics of the Cold War, because The Dusk Bringers is very much an Old School Renaissance-style adventure. Excepts for one thing. There are no stats. In other words, The Dusk Bringers is a systemless or systems agnostic scenario. This is a fantasy scenario which could be dropped into numerous settings and not so much adapted, as given stats to run with Old School Essentials, Dragonebane, or the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. To name, but three. Ultimately, all the Game Master needs to apply stats and if the names do not fit her campaign, then change them so that they do. And if the Goblins and Ghostly Knights that comprise the majority of the scenario’s monsters—though not its threats—do not fit her campaign either, then they can be changed to. What all of this boils down to is that The Dusk Bringers is at its heart, a plot, a scenario in the true sense of the word.

However, The Dusk Bringers is not all plot. There are maps too and much of the scenario’s plot is wrapped around those maps. The Dusk Bringers was a submission to the ‘Dyson Logos Jam’, which ran throughout October 2021, using those that are available from his commercially available maps. Dyson Logos is renowned for the quality of his maps which have appeared in numerous releases for the Old School Renaissance. These include maps of what the scenario calls a keep, but is more of a tower, plus a strange temple complex connected to a mine and a map of the nearby walled settlement of Motuen township. The plot concerns a clan of goblins, which like all of its kin, lurked in the hills and caves surrounding Wichama Valley, but without being any real threat to the inhabitants. They have been driven out the mine in which they had made their home and taken refuge in Veranna Keep. However, whatever it was that the Goblins disturbed in the tunnels of their previous home has followed them to Veranna Keep and lurks still, ready to pounce on anyone foolish enough to be alone. The Goblins want help with the thing outside the walls of Veranna Keep and they want to return home, which also means dealing with what it they found in the mines.

Investigating the mines raises questions that cannot be answered there, but might be in the records to be found at the temple to Church of Zonurandi in nearby Motuen. The walled town was once prosperous, but has fallen on hard times with the paying out of the nearby mines. This has led to a loss prestige and power by the local branch of the Mayweather family to the influence of the church and the town’s merchants. The result is some tension between the head of the Mayweather family and the rest of the town, though this is more resentment than anything else. Only a two-page spread is devoted to Motuen along with an accompanying one-page description of the temple to Church of Zonurandi and its staff, but together these three pages are the highlight of The Dusk Bringers providing some local colour and roleplaying opportunities for the Game Master. Details beyond this are left for the Game Master to develop, but the basic building blocks are there.

The plot to The Dusk Bringers has a certain circularity to it, and the whole scenario can be played through in two or three sessions. Beyond this, there is a handful of story hooks that require full development upon the part of the Game Master and there is also a discussion of what happens if the Player Characters deal with the actual threat to the Wichama Valley and what happens if they decide not to. The latter has greater ramifications than the former. There are also notes on all of the scenario’s NPCs and detailed descriptions to accompany the maps.

Physically, The Dusk Bringers is cleanly and tidily presented. Both artwork and cartography are good—very good in the case of the cartography—and whilst there is very little artwork in the scenario, all of it I used to illustrate the various NPCs and monsters to be found in the scenario.

Without any stats, The Dusk Bringers feels threadbare. There is though decent advice on how to run the scenario, as well as questions that the players, their characters, and the Game Master might want answer by the end of the scenario. The outline of the scenario is also decently done. Overall, if the Game Master is looking for something that is ready-to-play with a modicum of preparation, then The Dusk Bringers is not going to be for her, but if the Referee is looking for a scenario that she can readily more design the monster and NPC stats around and adjust to make it her own, then The Dusk Bringers is a good choice.

Celebrated as the Festival of Colours, Love, and Spring, Holi is the Hindu festival that both celebrates the eternal and divine love of the deities Radha and Krishna and commemorates the victory of Vishnu as Narasimha over Hiranyakashipu. It is notable outside of India as the festival in which richly coloured ‘gulaal’ powder is flung by the celebrants resulting in street scenes that are a riot of colour. It is also the theme of Holi: Festival of Colours, a board game from Floodgate Games, in which the players will try and outscore each other by placing more of their colour on the board, grabbing sweets, and hitting each other with their colour. It combines area control mechanics with elements of hand management and pattern building, the result being a colourful, abstract design that has a very physical, vertical presence at the table. It is designed for two to four players, plays in about half an hour, and is designed for players aged thirteen and up. That said, younger players who plenty of experience with board games should have no difficulties learning to play Holi: Festival of Colours.

The components to Holi: Festival of Colours really begin with its Courtyard Tower. This is a three-level tower with each level consisting of a clear plastic tray with a six-by-six grid of spaces. The Courtyard Tower requires construction for each play. It does wobble slightly, but is sturdy enough. The other components consist of four Helper Cards, twenty-four Sweets Tokens, a Score Tracker and four Score Markers, twenty-one Rivalry Cards, fifty-two Colour Cards in four colours, one-hundred Colour Tokens, four Player Markers, and the First Player Marker. All of the Sweets Tokens, Colour Tokens, and the frame for Courtyard Tower are done in rich, vibrant colours. Colour Cards show the pattern of spaces in a three-by-three grid that Colour Tokens will land on when thrown. The Rivalry Cards are bonus cards. For example, ‘Sweet Tooth’ scores extra points for each Sweets Tokens and ‘Snack’ forces a player to give up a Sweets Token if another player scores a Direct Hit on him.

To set up, the Courtyard Tower is put together and Sweets Tokens are placed on the ground and middle levels. Each player receives the Colour Tokens and Colour Cards in his colour and a Helper Card. Two or three Rivalry Cards are revealed. These affect scoring or add a new rule to game, often radically changing how the game is played. It is suggested that the Rivalry Cards be omitted for a simpler play experience.

On his turn, a player can take between one and three actions, in any order. The mandatory action is the ‘Throw Colour’ action, whilst the others are Move and Climb. For the Throw Colour action, the player chooses one of his Colour Cards—he always has three in his hand and plays it. Each Colour Card indicates the point where the player’s Marker is located and then the pattern where the Colour Tokens will fall when he throws him. The player can rotate the Colour Card to fit the pattern onto the board. If a Colour Token lands on another player’s Marker, then a Direct Hit is achieved. This scores the player a point and the Colour Token which lands on the other player’s Marker goes into the other player’s supply of Colour Tokens. Colour Tokens in another player’s supply will score the scoring player further points. This can only happen when the players have their Markers on the same level.

Alternatively, a player can simply expend the Colour Card to place a Colour Token anywhere on the level. This includes on a Sweets Token, but not on another player’s Marker.

The ‘Move’ action enables a player to move his marker to anywhere on the level. This can be anywhere, including on Colour Tokens, which are returned to the player’s supply. If they belong to another player, they go into the moving player’s supply and will score the other player points at the end of the game.

The third option is ‘Climb Up’. When a player’s Marker is surrounded on all four orthogonal sides, the player can choose to move up to the same space on the next level up. Once a player has moved to an upper level, he cannot move down. Once on an upper level, when a player does a Throw Action, if there is no Colour Token in the squares in the corresponding squares on the levels below, then the Colour Token will fall to the level until it lands on an empty square. This means that a Colour Token can fall from the top level to the ground level.

Play continues like this until each player is unable to do the Throw Colour action and have run out of their Colour Tokens. This triggers the end of the game. Each player score points for the Colour Tokens he has on the three levels of the Courtyard Tower, the higher the level, the more points scored; Colour Tokens in other players’ Colour Supply; and lastly for each player who has a fewer number of Sweets Tokens than he does.

Physically, Holi: Festival of Colours is a very nice-looking game. The Player Markers are bright and cheerful and eye-catching. The rules are easy to understand and the components are of a sturdy quality, though the Courtyard Tower does wobble a bit despite its sturdiness. It remains to be seen if the Courtyard Tower will stand up to too much taking apart and putting together necessary for each play. The artwork is excellent and the cover of the box is stunning.

Holi: Festival of Colours is simple to learn and play. It is perhaps a little fiddly to play between levels, especially when working out where Colour Tokens will land when they fall from another level and if there is another token below. The game does include a ‘Take That’ element in that another player’s Marker can be targeted with a Direct Hit, but this is very much a minor part of play. The Rivalry Cards do add a much-needed element of randomness to the game in scoring and rules, though it is a pity that they are used for all of the players rather than each player being able to draw his own and keep them secret until the end.

From its box artwork to its Courtyard Tower, Holi: Festival of Colours is eye-catching. That it takes a little known—at least in the West—Hindu festival and turns it into a pleasingly light, but physically impressive and tactile game, is an indication of the skill of the designer and publisher. Game play is solid rather than spectacular, but Holi: Festival of Colours is a decent game, not so light as to be less enjoyable for experienced gamers, but not too difficult for family or casual players. Overall, Holi: Festival of Colours an impressively lovely looking game, with easy to understand and playable rules, with a playing time that suits a filler.

They came for the freedom of the new world. They came for the richness of the climate and the beauty of the islands. They came for the plunder, carried by the great Spanish treasure fleets, ferrying the ingots of silver mined in the Americas home to make Madrid the capital of the richest nation in the world. At times they would be given permission to harass and steal from the ships of other nations. At other times, they would be chased across the sea as criminals and when caught hanged to a man. Then the Scourge came. The bodies of dead sailors made to walk again, ghosts of those driven from their ancestral homes, skeletons strewn with seaweed and the muck of the sea, and monsters unknown, let alone imagined. They came from the sea and fell upon settlement after settlement. The survivors holed up in the towns and cities which could be fortified and strongholds that already were. Then a strange discovery was made. The ash of the burned and ground undead had strange effects upon the body and mind. When consumed, it could debilitate and destroy either, causing limbs to wither and rot, make you hear colours, see sounds, and feel taste, turn the world grey and lifeless, but it could toughen the skin, make you see in the dark, and even make you aware of the universe. This is ASH. It is a drug that can be brutally harvested, but sold for untold wealth. It drives its own black market, but has caused conflict and trade wars across the region. Addicts have sunken eye sockets, darkened lips, and faintly glowing bones. The most notorious source of ASH is Nassau Town, the ruins of an imperial colony on New Providence Island, a plethora of driftwood shacks and canvas tents that is home to the Brethren of the Coast, rebels, thieves, and vagabonds. Elsewhere, the loss of support from London has driven Lord Hamilton, governor of the Jamaica colony, to employ pirate crews to protect British interests even as the power of the West India Company grows. The French Indies has drifted into indolence and incompetence, dominated by criminal syndicates and cruel cultists. The Viceroyalty of New Spain on Cuba has grown rich and fat on the transport of bullion and ASH, but quivers under the beady eye and sharp accusations of the Inquisition. Folktales of the cities of gold and temples strewn with jewels and treasures lure the unwary to the Yucatán, but few return. Everywhere and elsewhere, cultists lurk, worshipping their foul masters, the Great Old Ones, as laid out in the dread pages of The Necronomicon, welcoming their prophet, The Sunken One, each Solstice in remembrance of the day that the Scourge arose and in the hope that The End of Days will come. Welcome to the Dark Caribbean.

The Dark Caribbean is the setting for Pirate Borg. Published by Limithron via Free League Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it is based upon Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and also published by Free League Publishing. Mörk Borg is notorious for its Artpunk style and layout, vibrantly done in chrome yellow and neon pink, seen by some as distracting and unreadable. Pirate Borg is not so much Artpunk as ‘pirate punk’, its colours muted in comparison, but actually far busier in terms of layout and content. There are typically a lot of tables in any roleplaying game based on Mörk Borg, but Pirate Borg has even more! It is a book packed with tables and information and tables of information that is all useful, but which keeps coming and coming at the reader! One thing that Pirate Borg does share with Mörk Borg is that both are pre-apocalyptic roleplaying games, the end of the world hanging over everyone’s future, but where in Mörk Borg everyone actually knows that it is coming, this is not the case in Pirate Borg. In the Dark Caribbean, there is a sense of pervading doom, of hopelessness, but not necessarily of the end. The roleplaying game does include a history that ends in the Abyss—and the Game Master’s copy of Pirate Borg cast into the sea—but this is not hardwired into the setting. The Game Master is free to pick and choose what he wants from the history or ignore it altogether.

In Pirate Borg, the Player Characters are members of a crew, adventuring across the Dark Caribbean. Each is defined by his Abilities, Class, gear, and Devil’s Luck. The five Abilities are Strength, Agility, Presence, Toughness, and Spirit, each rated between ‘-3’ and ‘+3’. There are six Classes and two optional Classes. Each provides adjustments to Abilities, basic Hit Points, and starting Devil’s Luck. The Brute is a raging melee fighter who gets a trusted weapon like a ‘Brass Anchor’ or ‘Rotten Cargo Net’ and when he gets better, he might gain a ‘Boomstick’ or ‘Grog Breath’, the latter enabling him to belch in the face of an enemy and stun him! The Rapscallion is a sneaky, cutthroat scallywag, which as a Class requires an ordinary deck of playing cards to play. The Rapscallion starts with a single speciality such as ‘Burglar’ or ‘Sneaky Bastard’, and gain more or even double up on already possessed specialities. He can also drink Grog to heal himself. The Buccaneer is a sharpshooter and treasure hunter, and is also a skilled tracker. The Swashbuckler is a brash fighter, who might also be an ‘Ostentatious Fencer’ or ‘Inspiring Leader’, and when he gets better, he could be the ‘Shakespeare of Insults’ or a ‘Calculating Cutthroat’, the former adding damage to attacks with his wounding taunts, the latter letting the player achieve critical hits on a natural roll of nineteen as well as twenty. The Zealot has prayers like Heal, Curse, and Holy Protection, which are learned randomly and can be cast several times a day without the need to make a roll or a test. The Sorcerer draws power from supernatural spirits and ghosts to cast spells like Spiritual Possession, Clairvoyance, and Raise the Dead, not whilst near cold iron or holding metal.

The Haunted Soul is either a ghost, conduit for restless spirits, has an eldritch mind, is a zombie, suffers from vampirism, or is a skeleton. Each provides a benefit and a penalty. For example, restless spirits constantly communicate with the conduit to grant a random Arcane Ritual which can be cast without a Spirit test, but must be cast before dawn the next day or conduit suffers damage. The Tall Tale can be one of the Merfolk, an aquatic mutant like a crab or The Great Old One, or a sentient animal such as a ‘Foul Fowl’ or a ‘Clever Monkey’. Although both the Haunted Soul and the Tall Tale are given as optional Classes, they are not really Classes, but closer to a Race or a Species as in other Old School Renaissance roleplaying games. This is because not only do they not get any better with experience, but the player also then rolls for an additional out of the standard six. Their inclusion, though, is unbalancing, granting a Player Character extra abilities that other Player Characters without either the Haunted Soul or Tall Tale options simply does not have the equivalent of. Further, the six core Classes not balanced either, especially when it comes to their progression. Several of the Classes like the Rapscallion or Buccaneer have multiple specialities or features that can be taken twice, whereas the Brute and the Swashbuckler do not. Of course, there is no need for the Classes to be equally balanced, but some rough equivalency would not have gone amiss.

To create a character, a player rolls for his Abilities, Class, gear, and Devil’s Luck. Gear includes weapon, clothing, and a hat. Optional tables provide for backgrounds, distinctive flaws, physical trademarks, idiosyncrasies, unfortunate incidents and conditions, and thing of importance. Of these which a group might want to avoid is rolling for Class since it avoids too many of the same Class serving in a ship’s crew.

Name: Peter ‘Green’ Wright
Class: Sorcerer
Strength 0 Agility +0 Presence +1 Toughness 0 Spirit +4
Hit Points: 4
Devil’s Luck: 3
Holding Breath: Two minutes
Carrying Capacity: Nine
Spells: Raise the Dead
Background: Merchant
Distinctive Flaw: Paranoid Physical
Trademarks: Increasingly gangrenous
Idiosyncrasy: You become a murderous grump when hungry
Unfortunate Incidents And Conditions: You have no memory before a few days ago.
Thing Of Importance: perfect cube made of crystal
Gear: Container – bandolier, Cheap Gear – pipe & tobacco pouch, Fancy Gear – blanket & pillow, wooden knife (d4), old uniform, wig

For the most part, Pirate Borg keeps everything mechanically as simple as Mörk Borg, though with some adjustments for the genre and setting. A player rolls a twenty-sided die, modifies the result by one of his character’s abilities, and attempts to beat a Difficulty Rating of twelve. The Difficulty Rating may go up or down depending on the situation, but whatever the situation, the player always rolls, even in combat or as both Mörk Borg and Pirate Borg terms it, violence. So, a player will roll for his character to hit in melee using his Strength and his Agility to avoid being hit. Armour is represented by a die value, from -d2 for light armour to -d6 for heavy armour, representing the amount of damage it stops. Medium and heavy armour each add a modifier to any Agility action by the character, including defending himself. This is pleasingly simple and offers a character some tactical choice—just when is it better to avoid taking the blows or avoid taking the damage? Armour can also be damaged, due to a Fumble when defending, reducing its protective effectiveness, and a critical hit in combat inflicts double damage or allows another attack. A Player Characters whose Hit Points are reduced to below zero is dead, but at zero, is broken and can recover.

Every Player Character also has the Devil’s Luck. Each Class receives a different amount of this, but all can spent to inflict maximum damage on a single attack, reroll any die, lower the Difficulty rating of a Test, neutralise a Critical or a Fumble, and to lower damage suffered by a random amount.

A Player Character may also have access to Arcane Rituals, such as Dark Delusions, which creates illusions in the minds that can see the caster; Phantasmal Fauna, which summons a ghostly hound or shark until sunset; and Thalassomancy, which fill the lungs of targets with sea water, causing them to suffocate. There are some truly nasty Arcane Rituals in this list. For example, The Black Spot which literally marks the target for death or Release the Kraken, which summons one of these great creatures in the nearby sea. If a Player Character fails to cast an Arcane Ritual, then a roll may be made on Pirate Borg’s Mystical Mishaps table. Other forms of magic in Pirate Borg include a quick and dirty pair of tables for handling alchemy and a list of Ancient Relics, such as the Conch Shell of the Abyss, which enables the wielder to ask a corpse one question or Mermaid Scales that when eaten grant the ability to breath underwater for a few hours.

Pirate Borg being a pirate roleplaying game, the one thing that it definitely needs is rules for ships and nautical combat. A vessel is defined by its Hit Points, Hull, Speed, Skill, Broadsides, Small Arms, Ram, Crew, and Cargo. Hit Points includes its condition and the health and morale of the crew; Hull, its armour; Skill the skill and training of the crew; Broadsides, the damage inflicted by a vessel’s main cannons; Small Arms the damage done by swivel guns and muskets; Ram, damage done in a ram action; and Crew, the minimum and maximum number of crew the ship can carry. Combat is conducted in thirty second rounds, and in that time, the captain moves the ship, the Player Characters take an action, and the Crew can take actions such as ‘Fire Broadsides’, ‘Full Sail’, ‘Boarding Party’, and more. Speciality Crews include Legendary Captains, Strict Bosun, Deck Sorcerer or Priest, and so on. The rules cover crew skill, morale, cargo, repairs, and optionally—surprisingly, weather! An earlier section gives a list of sea shanties that the crew can perform each day, which might be to raise the crew’s morale or put out all the fires on a ship! Besides tables for flotsam and jetsam, encounters, and events, Pirate Borg lists stats for and illustrates a wide variety of vessels, from raft, dinghy, and canoe to galleon, man-of-war, and ship of the line. Added to this are a fortress, and to fit the Dark Caribbean, a ghost ship, a ship of bone, and a vessel from the deep. This is a very pleasingly comprehensive list.

The bestiary is categorised into pages of dark terrestrial, dark avian, dark aquatic, and dark flora. Added to this are families of creatures. Thus, for skeletons, there is the Lookout, The Rank & Vile, Deadeye, Hulk, Bosun, Warlock, and Cap’n. It does similar things for zombies and ghosts, whilst also adding a scavenging seagull and the amusingly named obscure oyster cult. Deep Ones and the Coral Shoggoth add an element of the Mythos. Big beasts of the sea include the Undead Megalodon, Kraken, Davy Jones, and Leviathan. Marrow Cannons, like the Marrow Carronade and the Marrow Mortar are sentient, undead weapons, whilst there are stats for archetypes such as the Naval Mastermind, Inquisitor, Necromancer, and Sunken One. This is an excellent selection of creatures, highly thematic and fun.

Besides tables for generating random ships and derelicts, treasure maps, riddles, uncharted islands, and jobs and quests, Pirate Borg includes a mini-sandbox for the Player Characters to explore. This is ‘The Curse of Skeleton Point’ which a description of an island, its key locations, and important NPCs, threats, and plot hooks. They include widespread word that the local governor’s daughter is missing and that he will pay for her safe return, legends of a treasure hoard in the castle at Skeleton Point, and an evil witch in the swamp. Each of the major locations—Coral Town, the old lighthouse, the Nameless Temple—and more, are all given very easy to use two-page spreads, with the castle given more space. There are three mini-dungeons too, and all together, ‘The Curse of Skeleton Point’ offers a lot of play. If there is anything missing in the scenario it is that given how up-front Pirate Borg is about ASH, it does not have much of a role to play in the scenario.

Physically, Pirate Borg is a smorgasbord of tables and options. In fact, so many tables that they threaten to overwhelm the reader. This is not say that the tables are not useful—they are—but rather that the layout can feel cramped in places and sometimes it does feel as if the text needs room to breathe. Whilst there is an index, one extra devoted to the book’s many tables would have been useful. Otherwise, the presentation, the artwork, and the writing are all well done.

Pirate Borg is lacking in terms of advice for the Game Master. Bar advising the reader that this is not a roleplaying game about slavery, genocide, sexual violence, or other distasteful aspects of history, there is no advice on how to run Pirate Borg. In the main then, it is primarily relying upon the previous experience of the Game Master and her players to run and play Pirate Borg. However, with that experience, what both Game Master and players will find is a fully realised and accessible setting whose genre will be familiar to most and which does not rely upon a detailed knowledge of the Golden Age of Piracy. Although it does include a nod to the coming apocalypse, unlike Mörk Borg, in Pirate Borg, this does not hang over the players and their characters like some ever present doom cloud, leaving them room to explore and adventure in the setting, which consequently feels more open and detailed. Pirate Borg is not only easy to play, but its familiarity is also easy to grasp, and it supports with everything that a gaming group will need for a pulpy pirate horror game in the Dark Caribbean, and more.

—oOO—
Today, Thursday, September 19th 2024, is International Talk Like a Pirate 2024.

The Kickstarter for PIRATE BORG: Down Among the Dead is currently running here.

Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...

The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Operation HopePublisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Marco Carrer

Setting: Post-‘the Stars are Right’ Germany, 2035Product: Scenario
What You Get: Eighteen page, 512.92 KB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” – Friedrich NietzschePlot Hook: A search for sanctuary in a time when dreams are all that anyone hasPlot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, five handouts, five maps, four NPCs, and four Mythos monsters.Production Values: Plain
Pros# Near future-set post-apocalyptic scenario for Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos# Ososphobia# Oneirophobia# Phagophobia
Cons# Requires Cthulhu through the ages# Who was calling for help?# Needs an edit# Sanity rewards too high# Underdeveloped setting

Conclusion# Operation Hope turns to Operation Hopelessness...# Underdeveloped setting# Reviews from R’lyeh Discommends

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a secret war against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

In addition to any number of scenarios for Achtung! Cthulhu, Modiphius Entertainment also publishes what it calls ‘Section M: Priority Missions’. These are smaller missions and scenarios intended to help a Game Master is hard-pressed for time or needs an alternate scenario when there are fewer players. Alternatively, they can be used as one-shots or woven into ongoing campaigns. Each though, provides a single mission that can be played in a single session as well as adventure hooks should the Game Master want to expand the scenario.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is the third entry in the series and the second to be set in North Africa. Its premise is very simple. A mysterious Luftwaffe aircraft has been spotted making a forced landing at an airstrip in North Africa following an engagement with the RAF where it is undergoing repairs in a hangar on-site. The LRDG, or Long Range Desert Group, which conducted the reconnaissance, indicated in its report that the aircraft resembled the Junkers G 38 bomber, a model based on a 1929 large, four-engined transport. However, there are significant differences. This aircraft has only two engines, both of them rear-facing, and there is no rear fuselage or tail boom. Whatever the aeroplane is, it must be experimental, because what it resembles is a flying wing! The report also contained one other fact: the damaged aircraft seemed to flicker in and out of sight as it landed. Could it be some new radical prototype? The RAF was sceptical. It was just one unidentified aeroplane and the fact that the report said it seemed to flicker in and out of sight as it landed was ridiculous. The report was filed away.

However, the very fact that this strange aircraft was said to have flickered in and out of sight as it landed was more than enough to attract the attention of Section M. Especially when its hears each disappearance was marked by an intermittent burst of blue light! This is definitely more than a simple prototype. Whatever is in that hanger at the airstrip is definitely connected to Nachtwölfe or Black Sun. Likely a wunderwaffe of the former or some devilry of the latter. The mission is simple. The Player Characters have to get to the airstrip, sabotage or steal the aircraft, and then report back!

The LRDG operated in North Africa between 1940 and 1945, which gives a wide time frame in which to run the mission. Ideally though, it should be after the events of Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 2: Our Lady of the Eternal Sapphire is and early on in the war when Nachtwölfe was a relatively unknown force in the Secret War. It would also mean that it could be easily run as a side mission for part of the campaign, Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis. The campaign involves Nachtwölfe and its third mission is set in Cairo and Egypt. Either way, the fact that the damaged engine is flickering with a blue light probably means Nachtwölfe involvement.

As with other ‘Section M: Priority Missions’, the focus on Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is on detailing the location and mapping what and who is there. As an active airfield there are a lot of personnel. There are over fifty members of the Luftwaffe and twelve members of Nachtwölfe assigned to operate and monitor the newly designed prototype. There are also fifteen vehicles, primarily used for transport in and around the airfield, plus, of course, several Bf-109 fighters. The map of the airfield is nicely done, showing both how widely spaced out the various locations are for the safety of the men and the aeroplanes in case of attack or explosion and how temporary the landing strip is, with only two buildings. One is a modern concrete command post; the other is an old fortress. There is also a single hanger and a machine shop. These and the other locations are lightly described and there are no internal maps of the command post, fortress, hanger, or machine shop. The Game Master will need to do some research or improvise if the Player Characters want more information or floor plans. That said, these locations should be familiar to anyone who has seen a few World War 2 films!

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is a strike mission. It is military in nature and it will involve a lot of stealth. Plus, if the Player Characters are to steal the strange prototype, then one of their number should include a pilot. The focus on the strike mission, that is, get in, steal or destroy the prototype, means that there is little in the way of variation in terms of hooks or how the Player Characters get involved. Instead, three possible outcomes are discussed, including destroying the aeroplane, alerting the base personnel, and escaping aboard the aeroplane, ready to fly it back to Allied territory. In addition, several ‘Encounter Escalation’ options are suggested. These are all thematically appropriate such as a sudden downpour of rain that turns the airfield into a muddy quagmire or a flight of Allied bombers attacks the aircraft!

However, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 saves its best for last—“Who’s the big feller?” This is Egypt, there are Nazis, so there has to be big bruiser of an NCO ready to duke it out with one of the Player Characters with his fists! And if that NCO is played by the late Pat Roach, then all the better. His inclusion, though, points to the obvious inspiration for the Priority Mission, and that is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Another is that the mysterious aircraft which initiates the plot is based upon the Blohm and Voss BV-38 ‘Flying Wing’ that appeared in that film. Another possible inspiration is Captain America: The First Avenger in the design and modification of the aeroplane.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is not illustrated, but the map of the airfield is nicely done.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is more military than Mythos, more stealth and action than cosmic horror. As a military operation though, it is actually easier to prepare and run and thus easy to slip into an ongoing campaign or run when a backup scenario is needed. Despite the lack of Mythos in the scenario, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is fun and its playing around with its inspirations is engaging.

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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Some time in the near future. Mankind has advanced into near orbit and beyond, establishing space stations and lunar bases. Regular shuttles run between them and the Earth. Crewed spaceflights have visited the inner planets and the asteroid belt, and great solar arrays beam power down to the surface. Advances have been made in terms of computer hardware and software. It could be ten years from now. It could be fifty years from now. In other words, it could be 1994 or it could be 2034. The world though riven in two and society has fragmented. The cause? Psionic powers. Whether to be seen as gifts or curses, to be celebrated or feared, society in general has reacted with fear and distrust. The Psis, those with the genetic quirk that grants them their powers, are few in number, so the Norms, those without, ostracise them, corralling them in ghettoes where they can be monitored and controlled. The government enacts laws that restrict their freedoms in the name of protecting the majority and will use force and even other Psis to track down and arrest those that hide or worse, resist.

This is the setting for PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers, a roleplaying game published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1984. It is a roleplaying game in which either the Player Characters have psionic powers and fear being hated and persecuted because of them, but wanting to use them to benefit humanity, or they are hunting rogue or terrorist Psis. Inspiration would have come from books such as Stephen Kings 1980 novel, Firestarter, and the 1984 film of the same name, David Cronenberg’s 1981 Scanners, and the ‘Days of Future Past’ storyline from the Marvel Comics comic book The Uncanny X-Men issues #141–142, published in 1981. It is slim affair in several senses. The genre, that of near-future ‘dystopian otherness’ does not amount to very much, though that does not mean that familiar tales of resistance cannot be told using the roleplaying game. After all, the television miniseries V was released in 1983 and that drew parallels between the alien Visitors and the Nazis. The setting is very lightly defined, but it does leave more than enough room for the Referee to map it onto her own setting, perhaps even the one outside her window, or simply create one of her own. Lastly, the two books that come in the boxed set are slim themselves.

PSI World was published as boxed set. Inside can be found the thirty-two-page ‘PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers’ rulebook, the thirty-page ‘The Psi World Adventure’, a Referee’s Screen, a character sheet, and two ten-sided dice and two six-sided dice. Bar the lid of the box, which is in powder blue with a very eighties cartoon-style cover by Bill Willingham, everything is in black and white. ‘PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers’ rulebook opens with a three-paragraph introduction, two of which provide an overview of the setting, before leaping into character creation.

A Player Character in PSI World has seven attributes. These are Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Will, and Psionic Power. These are rated between two and twenty. Various values are derived from these including Initiative Factor, Defence Bonus, Bonus to Hit, Damage Bonus, Hit Points, Shock Resistance, and Heal Rate. To create a character, a player rolls two ten-sided dice for each attribute, works out the derived factors, and then rolls for Hit Points, before rolling for educational background. The latter is a percentile roll, with a bonus for Intelligence. Non-Psis gain this and a general bonus. Options for educational background include General Education, Vocational Education, Military, Advanced Education, and Spacer. Advanced Education represents studying at college. Skills are divided between ‘Level’ skills and ‘Non-Level’ skills. ‘Level’ skills are straightforward percentile skills, whilst ‘Non-Level’ skills are those are either known or not known, and rely on the appropriate Attribute Saving Throw to use. If a Player Character has psionic powers, then he has either one Major discipline or two Minor disciplines, or they can be rolled for randomly.

Name: Rachel Rosen
Education: Military
Strength 08 (AST 32), Agility 14 (AST 56) Dexterity 16 (AST 64), Endurance 14 (AST 56), Intelligence 18 (AST 72), Will 12 (AST 48), Psionic Power 14 (AST 56)
Initiative Factor: +13
Defence Bonus: -7
Bonus to Hit: +10
Damage Bonus: +2 (Projectile) 0 (Hand-held Weapons)
Hit Points: 25 (Base), Head – 7, Chest – 14, Abdomen – 14, Left/Right Arm – 6/6, Left/Right Leg – 6/6
Shock Resistance: 60%
Heal Rate: 1½/day

Skills: Interrogation 50%, Police Techniques 50%, Police Weapons 50%, Drive Car, Gambling, Streetwise 50%, Unarmed Combat 50%, Stealth 30%, Swimming, Street Combat

Psionic Disciplines: Precog (Major), Time Shifter (Minor)

The core mechanic in PSI World is percentile, a player typically rolling against either a skill or an Attribute Saving Throw. For each complicating factor, the Referee applies a Level of Difficulty, a ten-point penalty. Regardless of the Level of Difficulty, a Player Character always has a minimum chance of success, equal to one twentieth of the skill level. A roll of 95% and above is always a failure. A failure can result in equipment or materials being damaged. To avoid this, the player will need to roll an Attribute Saving Throw, modified by the degree of failure. A roll of one hundred indicates a major failure and a major penalty to the Attribute Saving Throw. However, whilst there is scope for a major failure, there is no room in PSI World for its counterpart, a major success.

Combat is played out in a series of ten-second rounds and covers unarmed, melee, and ranged combat. The attacker’s skill is modified by his Bonus to Hit and the defender’s Defence Bonus. There are processes given each for Throws, Throws/Pins, Throws/Chokes, and Strikes, and then again for melee and ranged attacks. Where attacks affect specific hit locations, damage is applied to both them and general Hit Points. Damage that exceeds the Hit Point total for a location indicates a wound which will have different effect depending upon the location. This is followed by various weapons lists, most of which consists of typical weapons from the eighties like the .357 magnum revolver or the .44 auto magnum. They are joined by needlers, tangle guns, essentially Science Fiction weapons.

Between the combat rules and the skill lists are listed the psionic powers and their use. Psionic powers are divided between major and minor disciplines. All require the expenditure of Psionic Power Points to use, each Player Character possessing a number equal to double to his Psionic Power attribute. The major disciplines consist of Precog, Telepath, Teleport, Telekinetic, Self-Aware, Healer, and Empath. The minor disciplines include Time Shifter, Pyrokinetic, Ghost, Weakness Understanding, Psi Amplifier, and more. Some of the minor disciplines, such as Genius which adds extra points to the Intelligence attribute and adds more skill points, are permanent effects, but at a cost of permanent reduction in the Psionic Power attribute. Major disciplines have numerous sub-abilities. For example, Precog has Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Sense Danger, Locate Danger, Detect Psi, all the way up to Augury, Vision, Combat precog, and Luck. Each of these costs its own amount of power points to use. For example, Sense Danger costs five points to use, but Psychometry on an object costs twenty points. The list of powers is compressive, though it should be noted that the Healer includes reverse effects. So, Harm and Heal, Reverse Major Wound and Cause Major Wound, Curse Disease and Cause Disease, and so on. However, the one aspect missing here which is integral to the genre, that of psionic duels of will and power.

The ‘PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers’ rulebook comes to a close with a chapter called ‘The World’. Except, it really is not about the world. Rather that it takes a cursory look at some of the changes that might affect the neighbourhood where the Referee is setting her campaign, the suggestion being that the this should be her neighbourhood, only changed to account for the advances in technology and the presence of the psionically capable. The rest is devoted to a price list. The result is distinctly anaemic and indicative of the problem that pervades the roleplaying game as a whole.

The second book ‘The Psi World Adventure’ contains two scenarios. It also expands upon the setting. Three generations previously, the world was divided between two superpowers and a host of neutral nations. The two superpowers were the People’s Confederacy and the United Commonwealth, the former based on Communist China, the latter on the then modern U.S.A. The neutral nations formed trade blocs. The appearance of Psis disrupted society and led to the collapse of the People’s Confederacy into a patchwork of warring states, often led by Psis who set themselves as petty dictators and warlords. Similarly, a wave of psi-related crime swept across the United Commonwealth, but unlike the People’s Confederacy, it was able to survive this due to strong central government and effective police force. The United Commonwealth established the Psionic Protection Agency, a federal organisation dedicated to protecting the general population. Psionic crimes are subject to a warning and several years of probation on the first offence, and then psionic lobotomy on a second. Most who suffer this migrate to space. Violently opposed to the Psis is the League for Human Genetic Purity.

Both scenarios are set in the fictional commonwealth of New Arlin, in Bishop County, located on the heavily forested edge of a western mountain range. It is known for its furniture products and a range of breakfast cereals. In ‘Scenario I’, the former ghost town of Enclave has been opened up again and re-established its bauxite mine, and offered a sanctuary for Psis. The town council asks the Player Characters to travel to the nearby town of Bently where they have detected someone whose psionic abilities are beginning to express. The Player Characters are to monitor the situation, avoid any entanglement with the Psionic Protection Agency and the League for Human Genetic Purity, and in particular, avoid a radical psionic revolutionary known as ‘Bonzo’ and said to be in the area. In ‘Scenario II’, the Player Characters are recently graduated agents of the Psionic Protection Agency who are assigned to help local law enforcement investigate organised crime activity in the area.

Both scenarios are fairly open with the Player Characters free to go about their investigation. There is more advice about running ‘Scenario II’ than ‘Scenario I’, and both are supported by decent maps and lots of detailed NPCs. Neither scenario is all that interesting and neither develops PSI World in terms of a setting. This highlights the issue with the roleplaying game. PSI World does not have a setting except that of ‘tomorrow’, but with gifted individuals being persecuted and facing bigotry and violence. As the designers state in the ‘PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers’ rulebook, “Background chrome has been kept to a minimum to the rules sections to allow more referee freedom in setting creation. For a closeup of part of the authors’ playtest world, see Book 2, The Psi World Adventures’ for scenarios and design ideas.” To be fair, the authors have kept ‘background chrome’ to a minimum in the rules sections, but to be equally fair, they have also kept it to a minimum in ‘The Psi World Adventure’ and both of its scenarios. It is frustrating because it leaves the Referee with a lot of work to do in developing her setting and it does not address any of the ideas or themes intrinsic to PSI World and its game play—resistance and rebellion, oppression and suppression by the government and hate groups, bigotry and misunderstanding, and so on. This is the core problem with PSI World. The Referee with left with all of the work to do, but given none of the advice with which to help her do it.

PSI World was supported by three supplements. Published in 1985, The Hammer Shall Strike contained new psionic powers and two scenarios, whilst Underground Railroad, also published in 1985 and Cause for War, published in 1986, contained five linked scenarios. These would do more to develop a setting to PSI World and explore some of its themes.

Physically, PSI World is decently presented. The writing and layout are clean and clear rather than adventurous. The artwork is good, much of it by Bill Willingham and Matt Wagner, and the cartography is decent.

—oOo—PSI World was reviewed in ‘Games Reviews’ in Imagine No. 21 (December 1984). Reviewer Chris Baylis wrote, “I would suggest that this is a system for the slightly more mature player, not for the young and blood-thirsty beat-’em-up brigade. Much thought and planning is required by both GM and player, and character interaction and party cooperation is a must for survival and enjoyment.”

Scott A. Dillinger reviewed PSI World in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 44 (November/December 1986). He was in general, positive about the game, but said that one “…[A]rea with which I have a bit of problem is the reverse healing. For every curative function listed there exists an opposite damage producing function. As a mental health professional I question the probability that anyone who is sensitive enough to the life force to be able to sense and restore it would under any circumstance harm another human being with such a power. I might concede that if such actions are used to save more lives, then the healer might harm someone but they would be loathe to do so. This is a matter for the individual gamemaster to decide but it does tend to put some limits on an incredibly powerful character-a character with the ability to literally give and take life at will.” Ultimately though he was positive about the open nature of the roleplaying game in that it did not tie the Game Master to a setting, but left room for her to create one of her own and awarded it three stars and said, “It’s a lot of fun for a little money.”

Stewart Wick reviewed PSI World in White Wolf #7 (April 1987), awarding it a rating of seven out of ten, and said, “Thru and thru, Psi-World is an interesting and pleasing game. It is fairly simple, but does not achieve this by sacrificing either playability or campaign development.”
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There is no denying that PSI World is workmanlike and serviceable. It provides solid mechanics for both its then modern, near-future setting and its psionics. In fact, mechanics which are far less complex and much easier to comprehend than those presented in other roleplaying games from Fantasy Games Unlimited. However, that is all it does. The setting included is so underwritten and underdeveloped as to be no better or no more useful than the Referee could come up with herself. Without a fully realised setting, PSI World cannot even begin to address or explore any of the themes and storylines that it wants to lend itself towards. Ultimately, GURPS Psionics would do it better. The result is a roleplaying game that does not go out of its way to make itself distinctive, bar the simplicity of its mechanics in comparison to other roleplaying games from Fantasy Games Unlimited. PSI World: Role Playing Game of Psionic Powers is mechanically solid, but in every other way, is just too generic and simply underdeveloped for what it wants to do.

Sanction: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Challenges & Hacks describes itself as a set of “Universal Rules for Challenge-driven Games.” If that sounds pretentious, then what it really is a roleplaying game with a set of mechanics that are designed for simplicity and flexibility in play, the intention being that they do not intrude unnecessarily and that rolls are only made when there is a chance of a Player Character failing and suffering consequences. That is the ‘Challenges’ aspect of the subtitle. The ‘Hacks’ are adventures and Genre Set-Ups that influence the way in which Sanction is played, but not the how. Published by Just Crunch Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Sanction is derived from three roleplaying games. The first is The Black Hack, an Old School Renaissance roleplaying designed for Dungeons & Dragons-style play, whilst the second is Cthulhu Hack, the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Both would lead to the third, The Dee Sanction, the roleplaying game of ‘Covert Enochian Intelligence’, which like Cthulhu Hack, is published by Just Crunch Games. Sanction includes the full rules and two Genre Set-Ups, one of which is very, very good.

Sanction: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Challenges & Hacks begins with an explanation of its mechanics. A Player Character has three Resources rather than attributes or traits. The default are Physical, Mental, and Willpower, but will vary according to the Genre Set-Up. Each Resource is represented by a die type, ranging from ‘D4’ to ‘D12’, but ‘D4’, ‘D6’, and ‘D8’ being the most typical. If a Player Character is faced with a Challenge where the outcome is unknown, his player rolls the appropriate Resource. The Game Moderator decides the terms and goal of the Challenge, what happens if the Player Character succeeds and the Consequences if he fails, and if the Resource can have a ‘Step Up’ or ‘Step Down’, and thus be changed to a higher or lower die size depending upon the circumstances. The player rolls the die and if he rolls three or more, his character succeeds. However, if he rolls one or two, the Challenge Falters and the character suffers the stated Consequences. (Throughout the rules, options are given for using cards from an ordinary deck of playing cards instead of dice.)

A Player Character can also have an Ability which applies to a Challenge. This Ability can be a skill, a knowledge, or a power, depending upon the Genre Set-Up. The Game Moderator can decide that the Ability simply lets the Player Character undertake the task without the need to roll or that it provides him with an edge in the situation which will be represented by a ‘Step Up’. Alternatively, an Ability lets the Player Character undertake the task because it is so specialised. For example, the ‘Concealment’ Ability might simply let the Player Character hide in the undergrowth surrounding a castle or give him a ‘Step Up’ if there are guards on patrol. Whereas, a Player Character with the ‘Cantrips’ can cast minor magical spells that he would otherwise be unable to.

If a ‘Step Down’ decreases the die size to below a ‘D4’, the Game Moderator may still allow the Player Character to act. This is known as a ‘Call to Fail’ and the Player Character will suffer severe Consequences. In general, this option is for the Player Character who wants to cause a distraction.

The most obvious type of Consequence is the Hit. This might be due to a fall, poison, or being hit in combat, but Sanction is not a roleplaying game that emphasises combat. Morse so given that a Player Character only has three Hits before being severely injured or dead. Instead, Consequences can take the form of delays, susceptibilities, breakages, or losses. Their aim is to present interesting narrative outcomes and to test the Player Characters in ways other than being slashed with a sword.

Character creation involves first assigning dice steps to the three Resources. The base for each is a ‘D4’, and once the dice steps have been applied, all three will be at ‘D6’ or one at ‘D4’, one at ‘D6’, and one at ‘D8’. The next step is to take the Player Character through a Lifepath. This consists of three steps. In the default setting, this is a Past, a Diversion, and an Influence. The Past is typically an occupation, the Diversion is why the Player Character is in his current predicament, and Influence is an aspiration. Each of these provides an Ability. The Player Character also receives some equipment. Many items have a Supply Die which, like a Resource, ranges in value from ‘D4’ to ‘D12’. When a Player Character uses any items with a Supply Die, the die is rolled. If a one is rolled, the Supply Die is stepped down to the next die size until this happens on a ‘D4’ and the items are exhausted. A Player Character’s Past, Diversion, and Influence can either be rolled for or the player selects them.

Geoffren is a failed petty wizard. His bursary ran out and he turned to petty theft in order to fund his further studies. It turned out that he was as bad at that as he was at handling his money. His tutors bailed him out in order to prevent any embarrassment to the academy. Now he owes them. He has joined one of the Lesser Orders of the Grand Guild, a minor adventurer assigned to clean-up teams working through dungeons already battled through by mighty Warriors. He notes down everything that his team discovers and recovers and reports back to his true masters in between assignments.

Geoffren
Physical D4 Mental D8 Willpower D6
Past: Scholar
Diversion: Petty Crime
Influence: Sage
Abilities: Blather, Burglary, Folklore
Equipment: Journal
Hits: 3

Sanction is a player-facing roleplaying game. This means that the player always rolls whilst the Game Moderator never does. Nowhere does this show more than in combat or facing Threats. Here the player rolls for his character to attack a Threat and also rolls to avoid being attacked by a Threat. When facing Threats in Sanction, it extends to the order of play as well. Thus, whilst the Game Moderator states the goals for the Threats first and the players states their second, the players resolve their characters’ actions first and then the Game Moderator does for the Threats. Combat is fought out in Moments, each lasting a few seconds, during which time a Player Character can typically attack or act once and react once. A Player Character will typically inflict one Hit with a successful attack, whereas an NPC has its own damage table. The results are determined randomly and can be to move to a more advantageous position, inflict bruises or leave him bloody, or do one Hit. With doing a Hit being only one of the four options, this again emphasises the narrative Consequences of the rules rather than simply doing mechanical damage. This is the most basic range of damage, meant to represent an ordinary person. Sanction includes a range of Threats, each with its own range of damaging Consequences. For example, the Damage options for the Giant Spider consist of ‘Move’ which imposes a ‘Step Down’ on attacks against it; ‘Catch & Throw’ triggers a physical Challenge which inflicts the Restrained condition on a success, but Restrained and a Hit on a failure; ‘Impale’ for one Hit; and ‘Poison’ which inflicts a Hit, causes Bleeding, and injects venom.

For the Game Moderator, there is advice on creating encounters, supported by sample creatures and Threats, and on resolving hazards. The ‘Hacker’s Toolbox’ offers a guide to using the various parts of character creation to enforce and foster the flavour and feel of a Genre Set-up in Sanction as well as adding unique elements. This is further supported by advice on creating Threats suitable for the Genre Set-Up. Given the size of Sanction, it should be no surprise that the ‘Hacker’s Toolbox’ is short, but it is succinct, helpful, and to the point.

The Game Moderator is supported with not one, but two Genre Set-Ups. ‘With Guile, Incantation, & Faith’, or ‘.GIF’, is the default, threaded throughout the pages of Sanction as an example. In ‘.GIF’, the Player Characters are second rate adventurers, investigating and clearing out dungeons on behalf of the Grand Guild. A mighty Warrior on a euphoric ‘Weird Out’ has already been through the dungeon and done the hard job of slaughtering the major—and most of the minor—Threats. Now it is the job of the members of the Lesser Orders to investigate and clean up. Having failed to become a true Adventurer like the Warrior, the Player Characters have become blue collar dungeoneers, collecting treasure, recording details, mapping out the complexes, and so on, all while wondering where it went wrong for them. Inspired by B1, In Search of the Unknown for Basic Dungeons & Dragons, the ultimate abandoned-clean-up dungeon, ‘.GIF’ does two things. First is to give characters who would otherwise have been the role of the hireling in traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games a greater role and agency of their own, whilst the second is to provide a means to play just about any dungeon all over again, ideally after the players’ actual adventurers have battled their way through it.

The second Genre Set-Up comes at the end of the book, complete rather than threaded through the book. ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ shifts Sanction from the fantasy genre of ‘.GIF’ to the espionage genre. Not though the action espionage of the superspy James Bond, but the grim, grimy, and pathetic espionage of the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron with dash of John Le Carré. The Player Characters are ex-agents, failures and fuck-ups, washed out of active service, but not out of the service. Exactly why is something that will have to be worked out between the player and the Game Moderator during Agent creation. Reassigned to small towns and cities like Wolverhampton or Grimsby, the Agents do data processing, combing through reports and archives, and so on, before sorting it and sending it back to head office, with no explanations as to why or what the information is for. It is make-work, a window job, and that is all that the Agent will have until he retires. Yet the agent hopes, and worse, he cannot help but want to apply his tradecraft.

‘Agency: Outlet Work’ changes its Resources to Network, Cover, and Tradecraft. It has its own Lifepath table and it adds Espionage Specialties, Bonds, and a Burn Track. Bonds are connections to NPCs who might help the Agent, whilst the Burn Track measures his stress. Rolling a one or two on a Resource when undertaking a Challenge in public or dealing with an actual intelligence asset, calling in a favour, or resorting to an act of violence, will increase an Agent’s Burn Track. As it increases, there will be Consequences, which get worse and worse, until the Agent washes out completely, is killed, or arrested. What is noticeable here is how bad violence and fights are in ‘Agency: Outlet Work’. There is not a fight-related Resource and fights are so stressful that in the long term, the Consequences are career or life ending, taking into account the fact that the Agents of ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ have no career. There is advice for the Game Moderator and a table of prompts, but no scenario. Admittedly there is no scenario for ‘.GIF’, but you really wish that there were for ‘Agency: Outlet Work’. (Fortunately, there is one available, For A Rainy Day.) ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ is deliciously pathetic and rife with roleplaying possibilities.

Physically, Sanction is a well presented, tidy book. The artwork is decent and the book is easy to read.

Although its heritage lies in the Old School Renaissance, Sanction is not part of it, but more tangentially adjacent to it, having adopted a more narrative approach in terms of its mechanics and storytelling. The simplicity of the mechanics make it very easy to learn and play, and they also make it easy to adjust to other Genre Set-Ups. Perhaps a third Genre Set-Up might have been included in Sanction to showcase its flexibility more fully, but there can be no doubt that ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ not only does that, but is also worth the price of admission alone. It would also be good to see other Genre Set-Ups, perhaps as an anthology from a variety of authors, showing off Sanction in other genres. Overall, Sanction: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Challenges & Hacks is an impressive design, providing simple, but not simplistic, mechanics that encourage roleplaying and storytelling whilst also being flexible enough to adapt to different genres and settings.

Quick-starts are means of trying out a roleplaying game before you buy. Each should provide a Game Master with sufficient background to introduce and explain the setting to her players, the rules to run the scenario included, and a set of ready-to-play, pre-generated characters that the players can pick up and understand almost as soon as they have sat down to play. The scenario itself should provide an introduction to the setting for the players as well as to the type of adventures that their characters will have and just an idea of some of the things their characters will be doing on said adventures. All of which should be packaged up in an easy-to-understand booklet whose contents, with a minimum of preparation upon the part of the Game Master, can be brought to the table and run for her gaming group in a single evening’s session—or perhaps too. And at the end of it, Game Master and players alike should ideally know whether they want to play the game again, perhaps purchasing another adventure or even the full rules for the roleplaying game.

Alternatively, if the Game Master already has the full rules for the roleplaying game for the quick-start is for, then what it provides is a sample scenario that she can still run as an introduction or even as part of her campaign for the roleplaying game. The ideal quick-start should entice and intrigue a playing group, but above all effectively introduce and teach the roleplaying game, as well as showcase both rules and setting.

—oOo—

What is it?
Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start is the quick-start for Conan: The Hyborian Age, the roleplaying game based on the Swords & Sorcery short stories by Robert E. Howard and published by Monolith Board Games SARL.

It is designed to be played by five players, plus the Game Master.

It is a fifty-two page, 16.52 MB full colour PDF.

The quick-start is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is excellent and exciting. The rules are a slightly stripped down version from the core rulebook, but do include examples of the rules which speed the learning of the game.

The themes and nature of Conan: The Hyborian Age and thus the Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start, specifically the lurid and sometimes uncomfortable nature of the source material may require the X-Card depending on the gaming group. However, there is nothing controversial or potentially offensive about the content of the Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start.

How long will it take to play?
The Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start and its adventure or ‘Tale’, ‘The Seal of Acheron’, is designed to be played through in one session, two at most.

What else do you need to play?
The Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start requires a set of polyhedral dice per player. Each player also requires a single extra ten-sided die which should be a different colour.

Who do you play?
The five Player Characters in the Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start consist of a born on the streets assassin, a warrior from the hills, a female wanderer, a sorcerer who can call wolves to his side, and a warrior from the icy north.

How is a Player Character defined?
A Player Character has four stats—Might, Edge, Grit, and Wits. Stats are rated between zero and eight, though most are capped at six. Each stat also has an associated Stat Die. This is either a six-, eight-, or ten-sided die. Skills are not traditional skills per se, but rather special abilities that grant a bonus to a particular action or access to a specific ability. ‘Of the Shadows’ is an example of the former, granting a bonus to all Edge checks involving or detecting acts of stealth, whilst ‘Assassin’ is an example of the latter, enabling the Player Character to apply Edge rather than Might when using one-handed light or medium melee weapons.

Besides Physical Defence and Sorcery Defence and Life Points, a Player Character also has Stamina Points and a Flex Die. Stamina Points are expended to access a range of bonuses or to activate certain Skills. The Flex Die is a special die rolled in addition to any dice rolled by a player for any reason. It can either be a six-, eight-, or ten-sided die.

How do the mechanics work?
Mechanically, Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start has a player roll either a Check or an Attack. To make a Check, a player rolls the appropriate Stat Die for the action and adds to it the value of the Stat and any modifiers. ‘The Rule of Threes’ means that the modifiers do not go above ‘+3’ or below ‘-3’. The Difficulty ranges between four and six for Easy, seven and nine for Moderate, ten and twelve for Difficult, and thirteen or more for Legendary. A roll of one on the Stat Die means that the Check or Attack fails.

When any Check or Attack roll is made, the Flex Die is rolled as part of it. When the maximum on the Flex Die is rolled, it triggers a Flex and grants access to various boons. This always includes giving the Player Character a bonus point of Stamina, but the options given in the Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start consist of guaranteeing that an attack or action succeeds or inflicting Massive Damage on a damage roll. Consequently, the smaller the die size, the more chance of Flex being triggered.

There is no effect if one is rolled on the Flex Die.

How does combat work?
Combat in the Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start is designed to be desperate and dangerous. A Player Character can conduct two actions per turn, though certain Skills or expenditure of Stamina Points can add more. A Move is one action, an Attack is one action, a Focused Attack is one action with a bonus, Defend is one Action to gain a bonus to Physical Defence, and Cast a Spell is one or two Actions depending upon the spell. If a Player Character has enough actions, he can take two actions that are the same. Thus two Move actions or two Attack actions. Range is determined by zones around a Player Character. Melee Attacks use the Might Stat; Ranged and Thrown Attacks use the Edge Stat; and Sorcery Attacks use the Wits Stat. If the result of the Attack roll is equal to or greater than the opponent’s Physical Defence, a Melee, Ranged, or Thrown Attack succeeds, whilst a Sorcery Attack succeeds if the Sorcery is equal to or greater than the opponent’s Sorcery Defence.

Melee and Thrown Damage is determined by adding the Might Stat to the result of the weapon’s Damage roll; Ranged Damage is determined by a Ranged weapon’s Damage die only; and Sorcery Damage is determined by the spell being cast. Skills can also add to this damage.

The Armour Rating of any armour worn reduces damage. Armour worn has other effects, including penalising Sorcery Attacks.

Damage suffered is deducted from the Life Points. If a Player Character has his Life Points reduced to zero, he is heavily wounded and unconscious. If a subsequent Grit Check is failed, he dies. If alive, two Recovery checks can be made per tale or session to restore Life Points.

If a Player Character does die, a Game Master can opt for a ‘Fateful Intervention’. Four narrative suggestions are given, such as the Player Characters’ foes leaving them for dead and allowing them to crawl from the battlefield. All four are appropriate to the genre.

Enemy Antagonists have Life Points just as the Player Characters do. Minions have a Threshold value. If this Threshhold is exceeded with a Damage Roll in a single blow, the Minion is killed.

Stamina Points can be spent during combat to react to a situation in unexpected and daring ways that ordinary men and women do not. This includes to make an additional Move Action, to increase the damage inflicted by a single, successful attack, to increase the Range of a Thrown weapon, and with a Player Character’s final Stamina Point to inflict Massive Damage as per the Flex Massive Damage result.

How does Sorcery work?
Sorcery in Conan: The Hyborian Age is divided into five Disciplines. Each Discipline grants access to a number of inherent spells. Casting spells costs Life Points or Stamina Points to cast. Only one Discipline, the White Magic Dscipline, appears in the Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start, and only one Player Character can cast spells.

What do you play?
The Tale in the Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start is ‘The Seal of Acheron’. In part inspired by Robert E. Howard’s ‘The Slithering Shadow’ and ‘A Witch Shall be Born’, it opens with the Player Characters with their fellow Dog Brothers in a tavern following several days of battle on the border. A fellow mercenary offers them information about a recently exposed ruin in the nearby desert. Wounded in the recent clashes, he cannot explore it himself, so suggests that he share the information in exchange for a share of whatever they manage to loot from the ruin. The Player Characters may be harassed by bandits (oddly armed with just knives) or wild dogs or hyenas on the way there, but the bulk of the adventure focuses on the underground ruins. The emphasis is on exploration, action, and combat combined with elements of horror. ‘The Seal of Acheron’ is straightforward and atmospheric.

Is there anything missing?
The Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start is complete. It includes a good overview of the genre and core themes of Conan: The Hyborian Age. These are adventure, big versus big reward, sword and sorcery, and forward momentum. There is also decent advice for the Game Master on running ‘The Seal of Acheron’.

Is it easy to prepare?
The core rules presented in the Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start are relatively easy to prepare.
Is it worth it?
Yes. The Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start provides a solid introduction to Conan: The Hyborian Age and gives a good as to what it feels like to play.
Where can you get it?
The Conan: The Hyborian Age – Quick Start is available to download here.

As well as contributing to Free RPG Day every year Goodman Games also has its own ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Day’, which sadly, is a very North American event. The day is notable not only for the events and the range of adventures being played for Goodman Games’ roleplaying games, but also for the scenarios it releases specifically to be played on the day. For ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics Day 2024’, which takes place today on Saturday, July 20th, 2024, the publisher is releasing not one, not two, but three scenarios, plus a limited edition printing of Dungeon Crawl Classics #104: Return to the Starless Sea. Two of the scenarios, ‘The Grinding Keep’ and ‘Tuscon Death Storm’, appear in the duology, the DCC Day 2024 Adventure Pack. The third is DCC Day #5: Gods of the Earth. Both DCC Day #5: Gods of the Earth and ‘The Grinding Keep’ are written for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, whilst ‘Tuscon Death Storm!’ is the first scenario for use with the Xcrawl Classics Role-Playing Game, the ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics’ adaptation and upgrade of the earlier Xcrawl Core Rulebook for use with Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, which turns the concept of dungeoneering into an arena spot and monetises it!

Designed to be played with between six and eight First Level Player Characters, DCC Day #5: Gods of the Earth opens with the Player Characters at the death-feast of the great jarl, Horwend, who recently died and left his queen, Gerutha, a widow. They are outsiders this far north in Isvik, but tradition demands that the new jarl, Horwend’s brother, Feng, include strangers in the celebration of his brother’s life. Horwend’s body lies on the table as his men around drink, feats, arm wrestle, sing, and merry. At midnight, Feng stands up and proclaims that is as is traditional, a body of men should have the honour of standing vigil over the late jarl’s body following his death-feast, and that Gerutha has cast the bones and determined that it should be none other than the Player Characters who undertake this task. They will be well-rewarded, in addition to the honour of standing vigil. Of course, the Player Characters have little choice and find themselves in the late jarl’s tomb on a nearby rocky island with the wind and the rain lashing walls of the barrow outside. As is to be expected this is not going to be quiet night for the Player Characters, let alone Horwend. There are portents and there are pleas, the latter from Horwend’s spirit—prevent his body from being taken and his spirit from being sacrificed to the old chaos Gods of the Earth in their final hatching of the Chaos-Egg.
It is a great set-up which sends the Player Characters into the blood-red stone-lined tunnels and rooms below Horwend’s tomb. This is a complex dedicated to the service of the Gods of the Earth, deities of Chaos awaiting the birth of the great End-Wolf and with it their dominion over all of the lands. Fortunately, the heroes of the Sky Gods put an end to this long ago, but could it be that someone is to bring about the birth of the End-Wolf once again? The complex is infested with Chaos-infused Larvalings, home to monstrous—but fortunately sleeping Formorians, the last stand of the Horwend’s forebears, and the workshop of the true villain of the piece as well as their throne. The complex consists of eleven locations, but all of them are highly detailed, interesting, and challenging. Perhaps overly challenging so for First Level Player Characters, but there are moments of respite and the Player Characters can find small boons here and there which might give them the edge they need. What the Player Characters will find is a lot of treasure. In fact, if the Player Characters survive and get out of the complex, they will quite wealthy. And that in addition to any reward promised by the ghostly Horwend.
DCC Day #5: Gods of the Earth does not necessarily end quite there with the Player Characters defeating the villain and their plans, grabbing the treasure and escaping both the tomb and Isvik. An appendix with six other separate areas connected to the complex under Horwend’s tomb. These are the tombs of his forebears, fallen in various states of disrepair since they were plundered for the Gods of the Earth’s plan. Like the other parts of the complex there is a lot of treasure to be found in these tombs, as well as one or two interesting magical items. These are all optional though.
Physically, DCC Day #5: Gods of the Earth is as well done as you would expect for a release from Goodman Games. The artwork is decent and the cartography well done. The cover is very nicely done, showing the moment when Horwend appears before the Player Characters. The handouts are also decently done.
DCC Day #5: Gods of the Earth has a grim and grimy feel, much of it a nod to the Vikings and Norse mythology. The fact that it is set in the North means that it could be adapted to any Viking-type setting, or even the Lankhmar setting of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set. In whatever way it is used, DCC Day #5: Gods of the Earth should provide two or so sessions’ worth of play, especially if the Player Characters search the other tombs. Overall, DCC Day #5: Gods of the Earth is an enjoyably entertaining scenario with a great hook.