Under a Waning Red Light

Since 1979, what has been fundamental to RuneQuest and to the world of Greg Stafford’s Glorantha, has been the integration and prominence of its myths, pantheons, and their worship into the setting and as part of everyday life for the Player Characters. Although the original RuneQuest—more recently published as RuneQuest Classic—mentioned the importance of cults, it only detailed three of them, offering limited choices for the player and his character. That changed with the publication of Cults of Prax, which presented fifteen cults and their myths and magics dedicated to fifteen very different deities. Fifteen very different cults and deities which held very different world views and very different means of approaching problems and overcoming them. Fifteen cults which provided their worshippers with a link to their gods and in turn their gods with a link from god time to the real world. Fifteen cults which provided their worshippers with great magics granted by their gods and with paths to become Rune Lords and Rune Priests and so bring the power of their gods into the world. Cults of Prax provided the RuneQuest devotee or Gloranthaphile with a framework via which his character could enter the world of Glorantha, giving form and function to faith and above all, making it something that you could play and something that you wanted to play. For at its most mechanical, a player and his character’s choice of cult works almost like a character Class of Dungeons & Dragons, giving the character benefits and powers in terms of what he can do and how he does it. However, to reduce the cults of Glorantha to such mechanical simplicity is to ignore the ‘why’ of what the character can do, and it is this ‘why’ where the world of Glorantha and its gods, myths, and cults comes alive. Cults of Prax did not ignore this ‘why’, but introduced it, and that is arguably why it is the most important supplement ever for both Glorantha and RuneQuest. However, in 2023, some forty-four years after its publication, Cults of Prax has a successor—or rather, a series of successors.

Cults of RuneQuest is a ten-volume series of supplements each of which is dedicated to the different pantheons of Glorantha. Each entry in the series details the gods—both major and minor—within their pantheon, along with their myths and cults, magics, favoured skills, requirements and restrictions for membership, outlook and relationships with the other gods, and more. Each book is standalone, but because each of the gods and pantheons has connections and often entwining myths with other gods and pantheons, the series will together provide a wider overview of all the gods of Glorantha as well as differing approaches to them. This is further supported by the two companion volumes to the series—Cults of RuneQuest: The Prosopaedia and Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology. The standalone nature of the series means that the Game Master or the player—and it should be made clear that each of the ten volumes in the Cults of RuneQuest is intended to be used by both—can pick or chose their favourite pantheon and use the gods and cults from that book. However, some volumes are quite tightly bound to each other and some are, if not bound geographically, have strong ties to certain regions of Glorantha. So, for example, the first two entries in the series, Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses are tightly bound to each other as the myths of their gods often combine and cross paths, not least of which is the fact that the heads of the pantheons in both books are married to each other. Geographically, Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses provide support for the region of Dragon Pass, including Sartar, Esrolia, Prax, and Tarsh, whilst Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way provides similar geographical support for the Lunar Empire and its client states. It also showcases a pantheon whose members are often diametrically opposed to the Gods of the Air and Storm as described in Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers, but then can also be said the pantheon detailed in Cults of RuneQuest: The Gods of Fire and Sky. This is not to say that the presence of the cults in these volumes will not be found elsewhere, but rather that these are the regions where their worship is most prevalent and if a Game Master is running campaigns in these locations, then the relevant geographical volume will be very useful. Lastly, of course, the Gloranthaphile will want all of these volumes because he is a Gloranthaphile.

Each of the entries in the Cults of RuneQuest series is well-organised. The introduction explains the purpose and subject matter for the book, highlights how the book is useful for player and Game Master alike, and examines some of the book’s themes and both their nature as myth and mature treatment of subject matters including death, sex, gender, survival, vengeance, and unconscious fears given form. It also notes that the artwork throughout the book is divided between depictions ‘in-Glorantha’, seen within the world itself, and those seen from without in reading the book. All of this is tailored slightly to the pantheon presented in the particular entry in the series. This is followed by a group depiction of all of the gods of the pantheon—which the book notably returns to a few pages later with a labelled version—and a hymn to them all, and then an overview of the pantheon, answering questions such as, “Where does the world come from?”, “Where do I come from?”, “Why am I here?”, “How do I do magic?”, and more. Lastly, there is a discussion of the relationship that the pantheon has with other pantheons and a listing of all of the gods in the pantheon or associated with it.

The bulk of each book though is dedicated to individual entries in the pantheon. Each of these follows the same format. They begin with the Mythos and History of the god, the Nature of the Cult and its Organisation, its membership at various levels—lay member, initiate, God-Talker, Rune-Lord, Rune-Priest, and Chief Priest, and continue with subservient cults, associated cults, and subcults, and more. This will vary from god to god and from cult to cult. This follows the format seen in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, but in every case greatly expands what is included in the core rulebook, whether in terms of individual entries or additional entries. The number of pages dedicated to each god and thus each cult will also vary. A god whose worship is widespread—and also a popular choice for players to select for their characters to worship—is explored over the course of multiple pages whereas a less popular and less worshipped god many only receive two or three pages. All gods though, receive a full colour depiction at the start of their entry that includes their runes too, in addition to their being depicted elsewhere.

Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way is the third examination of a pantheon in the series. It is a slimmer volume than the previous two, detailing some just fifteen cults in comparison to the nineteen of Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and the sixteen of Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses. More importantly, it addresses a fundamental issue with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Since it published in 2018, the roleplaying game has been pitched as the one which would take Game Masters, players, and their campaign into the Hero Wars, the tumultuous conflict between two radically different cultures, worldviews, and pantheons that would profoundly change both and change Dragon Pass. Much anticipated and much anticipated for decades, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha still has not got there yet, but its publisher, Chaosium, Inc., has been laying the groundwork for it. What has been missing up until this point, is details of one of those participants in the Hero Wars—the Lunar Empire. Of course, details of the Lunar Empire and the Lunar pantheon have been published previously, but not for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Details about the other, the Orlanthi and their allies, and their cultures, worldviews, and pantheons were given in the core rules and have been greatly expanded upon since with both Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses. With the release of Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way, we get to learn all about the ‘enemy’. Except that ‘enemy’ is not entirely accurate.

In the Hero Wars and in the events leading up to them, both the Orlanthi and the Lunars are enemies. After all, the Lunar Empire invaded Sartar, the home of the Orlanthi, and attempted to annex it as another province of empire, whilst the Orlanthi put up fierce resistance that would lead to the Dragon Rise. Also true is the fact that the barbarous—and the book specifically refers to them as such—Orlanthi rebelled again and again, rejecting the civilising spread of the Lunar Way and the beneficence of the Red Goddess. It is also a matter of perspective, culture and belief. Fundamentally, what Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way does is allow the creation of both Player Characters and NPCs who belong to the cults it details. This expands greatly upon the single cult, that of Seven Mothers, given in the core rulebook. It opens up the possibility of more nuanced characters with different magics and different outlooks, though still loyal to the Lunar Empire, and it also provides a more detailed overview of the Lunar Empire.

The fact that the Lunar Empire invaded Sartar and the Sartarites rebelled is not the only reason why they and their gods hate each other. The primary reason is that the Red Goddess and the Lunar pantheon accept and tolerate Chaos as part of the natural order of the universe whereas the gods of the Storm and Earth pantheons do not and violently oppose Chaos. Worse, the Red Goddess has even harnessed the one of the worst creatures of Chaos as her personal mount—the Crimson Bat, which has its own cult detailed in Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way. The people of Sartar know this Chaos demon all too well, many having served as sacrifices to keep it bound to the Middle Kingdom, their souls permanently lost.

This acceptance of Chaos is not the only major difference between the Lunar pantheon and the gods of the Air, Earth, and many other pantheons on Glorantha. The main difference is one of Time. The gods of the Air, Earth, and other pantheons are trapped out of Time in God Time, whereas the gods of the Lunar pantheon are not. Before Time, there was a Moon Goddess, but she killed and dismembered, her parts scattered. Some four centuries ago, seven men and women came together to search for those parts and having found them, resurrected her. Though born a human, she would ascend to divinity as the Red Goddess and the Lunar Empire was founded. Other men and women would follow in her footsteps, becoming gods and demi-gods in their own right, part of the Lunar Way. The first of these would be the Seven Mothers, those who had resurrected the Red Goddess. There are other differences too, many of which will influence the outlooks of the followers of the Lunar Way.

Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way begins with an introduction to and overview of both the Lunar pantheon and the Lunar Empire. This includes a full list of the pantheon members, a description of the Red Emperor and the major Imperial families, and of the Red Moon. This hangs over the Lunar capitol, Glamour, and being actually accessible to followers of the Lunar Way, its full geography is detailed. There is some background information on the Moon Goddess and her faith, and the recovery of her fragmented mythology in the modern era. The bulk of the volume, though, is devoted to the fifteen cults of the Lunar Way. These are The Seven Mothers, The Crimson Bat, Danfive Xaron, Deezola, Etyries, Hon-eel the Artess, Hwarin Dalthippa, Irrippi Ontor, Jakaleel the Witch, Nysalor/Gbaji, the Red Emperor, the Red Goddess, Teelo Norri, Yanafal Tarnils, and Yara Aranis.

The examination of the cults in Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way begins with the cult of the Seven Mothers. This is the cult that will be familiar to most people outside of the Lunar Empire. It is not only the first cult dedicated to the Red Goddess, it is the “[o]fficial state organ responsible for keeping foes of the Empire out and for letting friends of the Empire in.” as well as spreading the Lunar Way far beyond the borders of the empire. It is also the cult that will be the most familiar to players of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, since it is the only cult described in its pages. But as much as Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way expands upon the Lunar faith and its associated cults from just the Seven Mothers in the core rulebook, the supplement expands greatly upon the Seven Mothers. This is because the cult is not so much one, but seven subcults—in actuality, most of them cults in their own right—that contribute towards the whole. The seven consists of Danfive Xaron, once an unrepentant murderer, now the god of redemptive suffering whose cult accepts criminals of kind and places them on a grim path to absolution; Deezola, favoured by Lunar nobles, poets, and healers, and the Lunar Goddess of Women, who shows that physical suffering and life are connected and in understanding this, one can be released by the Red Goddess into divine euphoria; Irrippi Ontor, the ‘Brown Man’, an outlawed priest of Lhankor Mhy who became the Lunar god of literacy, learning, and celestial lore; Jakaleel the Witch, the ‘Spindle Hag’, shamanic in nature and source of the Lunes of the Lunar pantheon, who serves mortal realm and the hellish world of spirits, insanity, and the dead; ‘She Who Waits’, a figure of mystery whose secrets and powers are known only to the Illuminated initiates of the Red Goddess; Teelo Norri, cupbearer to the Red Goddess, source of the Poor Fund movement, and Lunar goddess of youth, acknowledged more than worshipped; and Yanafal Tarnils, the ‘Ram and Warrior’, an exiled nobleman who still ruled his lands, and who would later defeat his master, Humakt, in battle before becoming the god of war.

It then goes on to look at the other gods in turn, from Etyries, the goddess of trade, roads, and merchants and also the Messenger of the Red Goddess, to Yara Aranis, goddess of the Glowline—the furthest reach of the Red Moon’s light, and patron goddess of the seven Temples of the Reaching Moon, who was born to terrorize and slay the horse nomads of Pent. Chief amongst these are the Red Goddess and the Red Emperor. Hers is the longest entry in the book, delving deep into her history and her seven steps to becoming a god within Time, able to bring about direct change when her enemies locked in God Time cannot, and so more readily and directly spread her spiritual freedom. Her initiates need to be members of another cult, Illuminated, and willing to accept the Chaos Rune! Just as the magics of all the gods of the Lunar pantheon wax and wane according to the phases of the Red Moon, the power and influence of the Red Goddess waxes and wanes over the course of a twenty-seven-year period. The Red Emperor is her son, resurrected over and over done the centuries, who is worshipped as a god in his own right. His initiates were also initiates of the Red Goddess, but highly loyal to him, so there is a path of worship through the Lunar Way, from the Seven Mothers, both the spiritual and geographical borders of the Lunar Empire, through the worship of the Red Goddess and her required Illumination to that of Red Emperor.  The Red Emperor is the supreme high priest for the Lunar faith and for the Yelm cult in the empire and his mother’s representative in the middle world. The path is also one of greater complexity in terms of play, the cults of the Seven Mothers being easier to roleplay and portray, whereas the inner workings of the Red Goddess, the path to Illumination, and then the Red Emperor, less so.

Although one aim of Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way is to counter the claims by the Storm gods and the Earth gods that the Lunar Empire is evil, but two of the entries in the supplement confirm it, each in their own way. One is the entry on the Crimson Bat, the chaos demon that Red Goddess rides as a beast of war and which its cult feeds twenty-five souls a week. When not used on the field of battle, it is used as a weapon of terror on the border. Monstrously evil, it is fully detailed in terms of stats in RuneQuest: Glorantha Bestiary, much like the Aldryami and the Mostali are for their respective cults detailed in Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses. However, the cult dedicated to the Crimson Bat is not one that a Player Character should casually consider initiating himself into, and further, the book recommends that no Player Character start out as an initiative, since it is a Chaos cult.

The other entry is dedicated to the Nysalor and Gbaji, the Bright One and the Deceiver, respectively. This is not a cult, but rather a philosophy that asks questions of the universe and in answering them, shifts the thinking of those that seek the answers onto the path to Illumination. Once Illuminated, such a person accepts the role of Chaos in the universe, seeing it neither evil or a threat. This is not the only thing that Illumination can change in a person—he can also overcome his own Runes and Passions, embrace Runic opposites and rise above them, and ignore restrictions on cult membership with reprisal from any god—but it is the most notorious. This is because Chaos is evil is a given fact by almost every Gloranthan bar Lunarites and the Illuminated. To say otherwise would be profoundly shocking. Worse, the sense of enlightenment is accompanied by a detachment from morality that can lead to selfishness and tip over into immorality. The Red Goddess is Illuminated, which enables her to summon and control the Crimson Bat, as difficult as it is, and use as a weapon of war and a means of punishment. She also encourages her worshippers to follow the path to Illumination. The chapter on Illumination is accompanied by some example fiction that engagingly illustrates the path, but it is not accompanied by mechanics or rules. This is intentional. “The writers despair of capturing the flavor of a revolutionary mystical philosophy in any game mechanics.” and “Illumination is less significant as a mechanical set of rules and far more important as a source of roleplaying opportunities—especially when it comes to heroquesting.” Helped by the examples, this is a very well written and engaging piece, providing a brilliant explanation of not so much how it works, but how it should be roleplayed.

In addition to the descriptions of the various cults, Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way also does provide a fair amount of information about the Lunar Empire. This is in addition to the overview at the beginning of the book. There is a more detailed, personal history for several of the daughters of the Red Emperor, such as Hon-Eel the Artess or Hwarin Dalthippa, and then again of the Red Emperor. It adds a great deal of flavour and feel to the Lunar Empire, but Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way is not a sourcebook for the Lunar Empire and is not intended to be. Perhaps that is the issue with this sourcebook, in that whilst it can easily be used as is, it is waiting for that sourcebook as a companion volume. Despite that, the book could have done with a broader glossary, since it does in places without explanation.

Physically, Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way is very well written and presented, but needs a slight edit here and there. As with the earlier Cults of RuneQuest: The Prosopaedia, Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers, and Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddessess, the artwork in this supplement is of an extremely high quality. From the incredible power of the Red Goddess riding the Crimson Bat to the rich depictions of the gods and demigods at the start of each cult write-up, this is a great looking book. Further, the illuminated seven steps of the Red Goddess, as well as other pieces of art in the book, would also serve as great handouts in play.

In comparison to the mythologies of the previous two books, that of Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way looked to be daunting, even impenetrable. Yet, with this volume, that is very much not the case. It brings to life the gods, their worshippers, and their beliefs, making them highly accessible and easy to grasp, even a subject as potentially difficult as Illumination, whilst also making clear the contradiction of the Lunar Empire’s willingness to bring its civilisation to others and also use a Chaos tool like the Crimson Bat to enforce that civilisation. Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way is the essential guide to the Lunar pantheon and outlook, that no RuneQuest: Roleplaying In Glorantha Game Master should be without.

Unknown Ukraine

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.

Mapping Your Gothic

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.

Friday Fantasy: The Dusk Bringers

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.

Friday Filler: Holi: Festival of Colours

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.

The Other OSR: Pirate Borg

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 ability 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 Crew includes 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.

Miskatonic Monday #299: Operation Hope

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.

—oOo—

Name: Operation Hope

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Marco Carrer

Setting: Post-‘the Stars are Right’ Germany, 2035

Product: 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 Nietzsche

Plot Hook: A search for sanctuary in a time when dreams are all that anyone has

Plot 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