IKHON is an official supplement for Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance style roleplaying game designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. It forgoes the signature chromium yellow and the artpunk style of Mörk Borg, but not the physicality of presence of Mörk Borg. Instead, it comes as plain black box containing four black books. This plain black box and its contents, the ‘Profane Profound’, is ready to be discovered by the players and their characters in the play of Mörk Borg, and once they have, the Game Master can literally set the boxed set that is IKHON before them on the table. Then leave it there. Ready for them to touch, handle, and slip open, and be tempted by the contents…
When the book is open, both player and character will discover four, plain black books. They pick one. The first page tells which of the Profane Profound, the “age-old and nigh-forgotten folk gods”, shackled within the Player Character is communing with. The sacrifice of the willing and the sacrifice of one of the Player Character’s ‘significant’ body parts will grant a more potent response.
Mechanically, the player is rolling an eight-sided die and consulting the appropriate entry in the booklet. The sacrifices, whether of a willing human or the Player Character’s body part grants bonuses to this roll. For the Bilkherd, the response may be, “He summons his Herd. He summons his Herd. To the hateful goats, you are the field-poisoners, earth-salters, torch-wielders and slaughter’s heralds. A thousand thousand strong, trampling all in their path and leaving only blood, sorrow and the dust of crushed bones. All is obliterated under spiteful, churning hooves.” For the Old Dead, a sample entry reads, “The Old Dead coughs praise towards anyone wielding two (or more) weapons previously in the act of murder, increasing their maximum HP by d6.” There are sometimes consequences for the Player Characters rather than strangers or enemies. For the Becklure, one entry reads, “The Lure’s grimy ONYX-OMEGA DEATH FISH’s terrible piscine teeth crunch into a nearby kneecap. 1-in-6 chance a PC loses a leg as their patella is relentlessly chewed and shaken until it sickeningly pops. Otherwise, the air-breathing fish floats above with regal, quiet patience until commanded to strike.”
In some cases there are mechanical effects, in others there are none, and it is very much left up to the Game Master to decide the outcome, but the descriptions are never less than evocative and they should be more than enough for the Game Master to narrate an outcome.
Physically, IKHON is starkly, simply presented. It is a 6¼ by 4½-inch black, mat-finish box, with much of its flavour text given on the back, the instructions given on the inside lid of the box. Each god is a book. Each book includes a simple description and ten entries, each a double-page spread that consist of an image on one side, the description of a gift on the other. It is simple, clean, and unlike any Mörk Borg supplement to date.
Described as being for ‘misuse’ with Mörk Borg, IKHON is something that is going to sit on the table. Daring the players to have their characters look at it… It is a profane presence. Waiting.
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Free League Publishing and Loot the Room will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.
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