By the end of the Mercy of the Icons – Part 1: Emissary Lost, the first part of the campaign, the Player Characters discovered starting revelations in the wake of the disappearance of the Emissary. These were the identity of the organisation behind the death and disappearances of mystics from aboard the Coriolis station, the so called ‘The Mysticides’, and more information about who the Emissaries are and that they in danger after receiving a vision of the Second Horizon. It seems that despite the Third Horizon having been long isolated from both the First Horizon and the Second Horizon, the former is attempting to make long lost contact and manipulate events in its favour, whilst the latter is trying to prevent it. The action having shifted from Coriolis station to tracking across the world of Kua below, the first part of the campaign ends with the Player Characters wanting to get off planet knowing that some of the most important figures in the Third Horizon are in danger.
By the end of Mercy of the Icons – Part 2: The Last Cyclade, the second part of the campaign, the Player Characters will have made a startling and almost alien discovery as to the nature of threat which has been operating in the dark between the stars and the portals, in a thoroughly unnerving dive on a submerged starship and returned to Coriolis Station to be feted as heroes. This brings them to the attention of numerous factions and notables, all ready to extend offers of employment as useful and capable agents in the turbulence following ‘The Mysticides’ and the reactions against the mystics. No matter which faction the Player Characters sided with, they find themselves investigating the activities of the Nazareem’s Sacrifice cult, originally a Firstcome faction, but long since reviled for its nihilistic and brutal practices, including alleged human sacrifice, performing dark rituals, and making unholy pacts with evil spirits and djinn. In the process the Player Characters make further horrifying discoveries about the origins of the Third Horizon. Meanwhile, the other factions continued to plan and plot and those plots and plans come to fruition against the backdrop of a hastily called election to the Council of Factions aboard Coriolis Station. As the results of the election are called, rioting breaks out, martial law is declared, and the Emissaries move in the open, attacking Coriolis Station, causing its shattered pieces to fall to the planet Kua below.
To continue playing the campaign, it is recommended that at least one Player Character be combat capable. In addition, a Player Character with the Data Djinn skill is definitely going to be useful and whilst a Mystic character is not mandatory, the presence of one will add an extra dimension to the campaign. The Player Characters do not necessarily need to have their own starship, but should have access to one. That said, they may able to recover their own spaceship, which they lost access to in Mercy of the Icons – Part 1: Emissary Lost, and carry one from there. One way in which the Player Characters can acquire a ship from the start of the campaign is in playing The Last Voyage of the Ghazali, a prequel scenario to the Mercy of the Icons – Part 1: Emissary Lost. It is worth running Last Voyage of the Ghazali before Mercy of the Icons – Part 1: Emissary Lost, but it should be noted that the connection between The Last Voyage of the Ghazali and Mercy of the Icons – Part 1: Emissary Lost is never really explored from the perspective of the Player Characters. However, it becomes much more important in Mercy of the Icons – Part 2: The Last Cyclade and then Mercy of the Icons – Part 3: Wake of the Icons. As with Mercy of the Icons – Part 1: Emissary Lost and Mercy of the Icons – Part 2: The Last Cyclade before it, the Atlas Compendium is likely to be useful in running the ongoing campaign.
The third and final part of the campaign, Mercy of the Icons – Part 3: Wake of the Icons, is like the first two parts, divided in three acts. The first act begins not long after where Mercy of the Icons – Part 2: The Last Cyclade left off. As the Player Characters begin to recover from the shock of the destruction of Coriolis Station, they experience a number of visions—waking and otherwise—that draw them back to Kua, the planet above which Coriolis Station long hung in orbit before falling to the planet. There is only a little time for them to pursue their own interests and perhaps for the Game Master to run other adventures, before they have to answer the call in ‘A Song For Kua’. The Player Characters find the world much changed, both the old order with its indentured servitude and the spire from which it ruled, shattered and waters that were once held back now flooding what is left. Chased by weirdly jerking, but precise attackers who are accompanied by the sound of shrill piercing and a chorus of whispers, the Player Characters work their way out into the jungle surrounding the spire and then underground. There they make yet another startling discovery: miraculously, one of the icons has survived, the Machine Icon. She called out to the Player Characters and has an amazing offer to make. This is for them to join with her. The Player Characters do not have to do so, but doing so not only grants them access to some amazing mystical gifts, it gives them protection against the threat posed by the Second Horizon’s control of the Mystics in the Third Horizon.
After ‘A Song For Kua’, the Game Master has one last period when it is possible to run content that is not part of the campaign before the action ramps up in the penultimate chapter, ‘The Tenth Icon’. Against a backdrop of mystics mutinying and stealing warships and taking them to Xene, the gas giant where the Emissaries first appeared, the Player Characters are contacted by a patron informing them that their presence has been requested. The Sadaal system has been closed to outside traffic, but is known to control a large flotilla of warships that would be very useful in the fight against the threats that the Third Horizon faces. Previous negotiations with the Sadaalian leadership have failed, but now it is prepared to accept a new delegation on the proviso that the Player Characters are part of it. ‘The Tenth Icon’ is as straightforward as ‘A Song For Kua’, but the stakes are much higher. What begins as a potentially hopeful situation is undone when Sadaalian security turns on the delegation and arrests its members, including attempting to arrest the Player Characters. On Sadaal below, the Player Characters learn the true nature of the system’s leader, Aremerat the Eternal, and what a monster he truly is as they race to ascend Crying Ziggurat atop which the members of the imprisoned delegation are to be executed. The scenario climaxes atop the building, facing both security and Aremerat the Eternal, all in front of the city’s faithful below. This is a challenging encounter and it helps if the Player Characters joined to the Machine Icon in the previous chapter.
What ‘A Song For Kua’ and ‘The Tenth Icon’ are doing is really setting up ‘The Horizon Wars’, the final part of both Mercy of the Icons – Part 3: Wake of the Icons and the Mercy of the Icons campaign itself. They are both linear in nature and deviating away from their storylines weakens the Player Characters in the long run and makes a lot of extra work for the Game master. The campaign more or less notes this when discussing briefly, the possibility of the Player Characters siding with the forces arrayed against the Third Horizon. It is also those forces that the players and their characters are being warned about in ‘The Tenth Icon’. These include the Second Horizon’s manipulations by their Emissaries of Mystics of the Third Horizon to make them run to Xene that are undermining the Third Horizon’s capacity to defend itself and the more insidious efforts of the First Horizon, led by the Eternal Emperor. Of the two, the First Horizon is a bigger threat than the Second Horizon, but ultimately both want to conquer the Third Horizon. Armed with this knowledge, the Player Characters are set-up for the finale of the campaign.
Where ‘A Song For Kua’ and ‘The Tenth Icon’ were both linear and location focused, ‘The Horizon Wars’ takes an entirely different structure and opens the campaign to the whole of the Third Horizon—and just a little beyond. ‘The Horizon Wars’ consists of series of metagame ‘War Turns’, each divided into two phases. The first consists of a standard mission, whilst the second is a conflict action. In the metagame action, the players direct the naval forces of the Third Horizon against those of First Horizon and Second Horizon, ordering the movement of fleets and rolling for the outcome of battles, assigning damage and assigning reinforcements as necessary—and it really will be necessary! A map is provided of the Third Horizon and where the starting positions are for the various fleets on all sides plus stats and details for them. This can be run as theatre of the mind, but there is scope to turn it into a strategic wargame with pieces moved from system to system. To that end, the Game Master will want to prepare some pieces to represent fleets as well as a good map that the players can access. It helps that a lengthy example of
At the start of ‘The Horizon Wars’, the Third Horizon finds itself on the backfoot with limited resources and capabilities, for example, constantly in danger of being overrun because of the possible influence that the Second Horizon has over the Mystics serving in the Third Horizon Fleets. Where ‘A Song For Kua’ and ‘The Tenth Icon’ were both linear and location focused, ‘The Horizon Wars’ takes an entirely different structure and opens the campaign to the whole of the Third Horizon—and just a little beyond. ‘The Horizon Wars’ consists of series of metagame ‘War Turns’, each divided into two phases. The first consists of a standard mission, whilst the second is a conflict action. In the metagame action, the players direct the naval forces of the Third Horizon against those of First Horizon and Second Horizon, ordering the movement of fleets and rolling for the outcome of battles, assigning damage and assigning reinforcements as necessary—and it really will be necessary! A map is provided of the Third Horizon and where the starting positions are for the various fleets on all sides plus stats and details for them. This can be run as theatre of the mind, but there is scope to turn it into a strategic wargame with pieces moved from system to system. To that end, the Game Master will want to prepare some pieces to represent fleets as well as a good map that the players can access.
At the start of ‘The Horizon Wars’, the Third Horizon finds itself on the backfoot with limited resources and capabilities, for example, constantly in danger of being overrun because of the possible influence that the Second Horizon has over the Mystics serving in the Third Horizon Fleets. The missions in ‘The Horizon Wars’ directly influence the outcome of the subsequent conflict phases in the metagame, but there are also several mini-missions that the Game Master can develop that can help influence the outcome of the main missions. Although it is stated that they are optional, their inclusion helps move the campaign along and it means that the players and their characters are always focusing on the metagame aspect of ‘The Horizon Wars’. The main missions in this chapter are shorter than in the previous chapters allowing for a wider and more interesting variety of tasks. ‘The Fifth System’ sends the Player Characters off in search of new allies that will test their negotiating and diplomatic skills as they find their way through a secret portal and into a hidden star system, whilst in ‘The Ghosts of Xene’, the Player Characters have to sneak and/or fight their way into getting an audience with the Emissaries to negotiate a way to end their directly interfering with Third Horizon’s militaries. The First Horizon finally makes its move in ‘The Legacy of the Founders’ as it triggers a Third Horizon-wide trap and launches strikes against key systems, and the Player Characters have to stop its forces gaining access to another fleet. In each multiple options are discussed in terms of possible outcomes and their consequences. Lastly, the Player Characters are given the means to strike hard at the forces of the First Horizon, so hard that it will change the Third Horizon forever. Again, there are multiple outcomes discussed, all in no little detail and all of which will change the Third Horizon to some extent, good or bad.
Lastly, Mercy of the Icons – Part 3: Wake of the Icons includes details of numerous spaceships that can be used in the latter part of the campaign, and beyond. More useful for the former than the latter and sadly the ships are not illustrated.
Physically, Mercy of the Icons – Part 3: Wake of the Icons is well presented. The artwork is excellent and the campaign is decently written, although it does need a slight edit in places.
Mercy of the Icons – Part 3: Wake of the Icons brings the Mercy of the Icons campaign to an epic conclusion. As much as it is an end to the Mercy of the Icons campaign, it may well be an end to the Game Master’s Coriolis: The Third Horizon campaign too, although there are notes on how a campaign might continue. The first two chapters of Mercy of the Icons – Part 3: Wake of the Icons are tight affairs, funnelling the story onto a grand stage in the third and final part where both players and characters have a big role to play. Players in the conflict phases, characters in the mission phases. This does add complexity to the campaign, one of mechanical complexity in addition to the campaign’s complexity in terms of setting and background. Especially political background. There is a lot for the Game Master to grasp in terms of that background and be able to impart that background to her players. As with the campaign as a whole, Mercy of the Icons – Part 3: Wake of the Icons warrants a high degree of commitment by both player and Game Master and in an exciting finale, it repays that commitment.
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