Fear, Writing and Roleplaying Horror Games

 It’s that time again! The seasons have rolled over to orange and black and there is a chill in the air. That means it is almost time once again for the Delta Green Shotgun Scenario Contest, 2024 edition!  Yaaay. But what to write and how do you put together a Delta Green adventure, let alone a 1500-word-maximum banger as stipulated by the Shotgun Scenario Contest? 

Lots of people have difficulty writing horror and/or mystery scenarios, including myself. So, I wanted to share with you some of the most useful and inspiring books and essays that I have discovered that touch upon writing mysteries, the nature of fear, and tabletop adventure architecture.  Along our journey I’ll throw in references that help with Game Master advice as well.

Dance Macabre by Stephen King

First of all, to discuss what fear and the horror genre is, we should have a working framework; and Steven King’s book Dance Macabre provides this concretely as it makes a distinction between the gross out, horror and terror in horror media and fiction. Dance Macabre is a lovely book that goes over horror fiction in all sorts of media, but it goes into great depth on horror in film if you get the version republished after 2010.  The discussion on horror in film can be particularly of use to film students and Handlers who want to focus on cinematic descriptions in their game.

King’s breakdown of fear into the three facets of the gross out, horror and terror is well articulated in the book, and Handlers could keep in mind these three categories to figure out what emotion they want to evoke in their players with a given horror game description, plot point or set piece.  I read Dance Macabre a long time ago; the fact I still remember it is a testament to the clarity and impact of Stephen King’s analysis. 

Stealing Cthulhu by Grahm Walmsley

The second book that offers sterling advice is Stealing Cthulhu by Grahm Walmsley.  This book is amazing. Only $6 on DriveThruRPG, it is invaluable for Cthulhu Game Masters of any stripe.  What Grahm Walmsley has done is make an algorithm for remixing and permutating tropes and themes from a body of literature to come up with something new, yet firmly based upon the source literature.

 Applying this to Lovecraft’s work, Walmsley’s strategy generates new takes on Mythos monsters, interesting recombinations of HPL’s literary themes, and reworked scenarios that are fresh and new to even veteran Cthulhu players.  However, I call Walmsley’s strategy an algorithm because it could be applied to literature as diverse as Agatha Christie to Jim Butcher.  Just any author with a moderate to large body of work.

In addition to that, there are footnotes galore from leading Cthulhu adventure writers in the field (Kenneth Hite, Gareth Hanrahan and Jason Morningstar) giving invaluable gaming advice.  As if that were not enough, Walmsley also included a copy of his rules light game Cthulhu Dark in the appendices. I can’t recommend this book enough.

The Trajectory of Fear by Ash Law

The Trajectory of Fear by Ash Law is a 9-page essay that breaks down fear into four components and offers a roadmap for applying those components of fear in a roleplaying game using film as a model. Ash defines the components of fear as Unease (that spooky feeling), Dread (the uncertain possibility of certain danger), Terror (the immediate sense of danger, but the danger has yet to be exposed) and finally Horror (the primal fear that occurs when the danger is revealed).

Using the movie Alien and a couple other films as examples, Ash posits how those components of fear can be applied in the arc of a horror roleplaying game session to effectively scare your players.  He also gives examples of how horror games can be done poorly, specifically by referring to schlocky horror in film.  I think Ash’s advice is best applied by a cinematic focused horror Game Master.

The Trajectory of Fear is best found for free at the Internet Archive here.

Games of Fear by Delapore Media

Delapore Media, authored by Dr. Stephen E. Wall, wrote a three part blog series called Games of Fear focusing on fear from a physiological and cultural perspective, and how to apply specific fears such as disaster, social hysteria and fear of strangers to your roleplaying game.  The last essay contains a discussion and analysis on the weird and the eerie with advice for the reader on how to include those elements into writing and roleplaying horror games.

If one is curious about taking a deeper dive into the study and definition of fear then Delapore Media includes interesting references throughout the series of essays, including Margee Kerr’s Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear.  As a note, I disagree with Delapore Media on a few points, specifically that "Fear isn’t primal, its cultural." As an unresearched hypothesis I think that fear can have a definite genetic and evolutionary component; but does that affect writing to scare your players in games? No. I think the essays have useful elements, thoughts and techniques to help scare players at the table.

5 Node Mystery by The Alexandrian

Hand and glove with horror stories are mysteries.  Most Delta Green adventures, and that includes shotgun scenarios, will revolve around a mystery, at least in part. But writing a mystery seems daunting. How does one begin?

Many online roleplaying enthusiasts are familiar with The Alexandrian for his advice on game structure, but did you know that he also wrote an article titled the 5 Node Mystery?  Deriving his theory from the stripped-down essentials of a five-node dungeon crawl, the Alexandrian presents a framework for how to present a mystery scenario to player characters by asking five essential questions: what is the mystery about, what is the hook, what is the conclusion, what are the three locations/people linked to the mystery, and what clues are you using to connect the nodes in the mystery. 

When a Game Master decides to come up with clues to bind the mystery together, I would also argue that TheAlexandrian’s Three Clue Rule is also very useful.  Thanks to Lithobraker on the Night at the Opera discord for bringing the 5 Node Mystery blog post to my attention.

The Conspyramid by Ken Hite in Night’s Black Agents

You’ve run a successful horror game one shot. Great! But now the players are clamoring for more. What do you do?  How do you organize and manage a horror campaign? 

One framework I like a great deal is Night’s Black Agent’s Conspyramid. The Conspyramid is a portmanteau of “conspiracy” and “pyramid”.   Visualized as a six level step pyramid, the Conspyramid allows a Game Master to plan and organize their enemies resources, with the prime evil himself at the top, middle managers in the next few tiers and street/entry-level threats at the bottom.

The connections between the nodes of the pyramid allow for the Game Master to outline what methods of control exist between the nodes or what clues can lead the party from one node to another. It is a fantastic tool with many different applications outlined in the Pelgrane Press’ article here.  Constructing a narrative campaign from seemingly disconnected parts is easy to do when the Game Master can visualize the entire plot with a Conspyramid.

Want to know more about the vampires and spies’ horror game that birthed the Conspyramid, Night’s Black Agents? Take a look at the review of NBA by The Alexandrian, here. Night’s Black Agents, itself can be found here.   

Available here

Mythos Revelations by The Alexandrian

I’ve mentioned The Alexandrian’s blog above. This time I want to highlight The Alexandrian’s specific advice on how to handleMythos-style horror and forbidden tomes in game.  These advice blog posts came out relatively recently, August 25^th and 27^th of 2024.  The Alexandrian first tackles the problem of maintaining the horror and mystery of a supernatural being or Alien God by breaking information about that being into three levels of abstraction.  Then he suggests providing the abstracted and mythologically obscured information as scraps of revelation, namely clues, that can be found by players in accordance with the Three Clue Rule (discussed above).  This strategy is very cool, well described and makes intuitive sense to me.

Handling Mythos tomes is somewhat complementary to doling out clues to a Mythos being.  Specifically, The Alexandrian states that said tomes should be handled as a specific clue vector and/or research resource.   In addition, The Alexandrian continues with some musings on creating Mythos tomes for a campaign and gives examples that refer to his very excellent remix of the Trail of Cthulhu epic campaign Eternal Lies.

Creepiness, a How-To Guide and Delta Green: Making Horror Scenarios, both by Dennis Detwiller

Dennis Detwiller, along with John Scott Tynes and Adam Scott Glancy, created Delta Green. Needless to say, Dennis has some opinions on horror and how to apply it to roleplaying games.

The first of Dennis’ guide to horror is Creepiness, a How-To Guide which was published in 2013 and can be found on Delta Green’s official website. 

Short but useful, Dennis offers advice about five elements to maintain in a horror roleplaying scenario. These include: keeping the mundane as the background of the scenario, emphasizing uncertainty in the player’s mind, cementing the idea that Mythos horror is unable to be comprehended by humans, making death omnipresent, and introducing the idea that there are things much much worse than dying.

Dennis’s 2015 essay Delta Green: Making Horror Scenarios sort of springboards off of his 2013 guide but it is much more detailed and it focuses on how a Game Master can make a Delta Green specific horror game.  In this essay, he first presents his analysis on what horror games are about, then he moves on to describe the types of horror one can encounter in roleplaying games, and the structure of horror scenarios. The latter half of the essay is devoted to walking the reader through how he creates a horror scenario from first principles; including the Hook, how to make relevant and interesting horror NPCs, the connections of the mystery that Dennis calls Leads, creepy Moments or set pieces, Events that occur independently of the players, and finally Solutions for the problem introduced in the Hook.

Delta Green: Making Horror Scenarios can be found on Dennis Detwiller’s Patreon.

Write Delta Green Scenarios the mellonbread Way by mellonbread

mellonbread is the founder of the Night at the Opera, one of the largest Delta Green fan created discords, and a prolific writer.  His body of work includes over 100 Delta Green fan scenarios, which is hosted on his blog, The Rogue’s Wallet.

In May 2022, mellonbread published an essay for the free Delta Green fanzine Whispers of the Dead, detailing specific advice about his writing process, including how to link ideas together by layering a connective tissue of clues, adding reactivity, making interesting NPCs, and how to develop the hook of the scenario. mellonbread then goes on to discuss the philosophy he applies for running Delta Green games including his view that it is good to be generous with magic items, spells and the Unnatural skill points.  The latter opinion is derived from mellonbreads’s thesis that a Game Master should above all else make the scenario interesting, and push the interesting components to the fore. He ends the essay with a statement that I think rings true regarding writing scenarios. “Create the content you want that nobody else will write.”

Sources I Haven’t Read

In addition to the above references about fear in roleplaying games, there are additional veins of wisdom crystalized in various places on the internet.  Two of which I am aware of, but have not read yet as of the time of this writing are Call of Cthulhu d20 by Monty Cook and John Tynes and GURPS Horror (currently in 4^th edition) written by Ken Hite. ControllingCrowds from Night at the Opera discord brought Call of Cthulhu d20 to my attention and he recommends the Game Master advice in the book. I will point out that John Tynes is one of the co-founders of Delta Green and pretty much reshaped the Hastur Mythos with some of his ideas about the King in Yellow and Carcosa, and this was before Dennis Detwiller published Impossible Landscapes. So, I welcome, no am rabid for, any more advice I can find by John Tynes. The hitch is that Call of Cthulhu d20 was published in 2002 and is a bit difficult to get a hold of.

Another luminary of the field, Ken Hite, who I discussed when mentioning the Conspyramid (above), has written GURPS Horror and I understand the advice contained in there on fear in games is also very good. GURPS Horror is much more accessible because it can be found on DriveThruRPG.  

Forbidden Psalm: Endless Horrors From Between The Stars, Book Review

All Endless Horror art posted with permission

 Forbidden Psalm: Endless Horrors From Between The Stars is a skirmish wargame built with solo/coop/verses modes in mind about five cultists striving to awaken their Endless Horror and bring about the End Times.  Written by Will Rahman, of Forbidden Psalm fame, and illustrated by artist Vil, Endless Horrors was kickstarted June 1st 2024 and the digital copy was fulfilled August 28th 2024. I was a kickstarter backer and I have in my hot little hands a pdf copy of the 168 page grotesque and disquieting wargame.

It is really cool and I hope you find it exciting as well.    

It is not yet available from DriveThruRPG, but give it time. The Stars must become Right.

Edit: The STARS ARE NOW RIGHT! Endless Horrors is available at DriveThruRPG here and itch.io here.

Endless Horrors and Cults

One of the first things you do in Endless Horrors is create your titular Endless Horror!  This is the Great Old One or Elder God that your cult worships and commits horrible acts of murder and mayhem for.  The procedure for this is to roll 3d100 to determine your Endless Horror’s Description, Purpose and Desire.  There is one d100 table for each attribute.  Your Endless Horror’s Description is simply an evocative adjective. Purpose and Desire have game mechanical effects.

An Endless Horror’s Purpose gives every cultist of your cult a special ability. The Endless Horror’s Desire gives your entire cult a bonus to Rituals under certain conditions. These conditions vary from the thematically mechanical (+1 to Ritual for each Dead model on the table) to the silly (+2 to Ritual if you have eaten lunch today).  This is important because each successful Ritual casting during the game increases your cult’s Zealotry score, and your cult needs a Zealotry of at least 10 to attempt the Final Ritual to awaken their Endless Horror once and for all to successfully conclude the campaign. 

Next you have to choose the Era your unholy crusade is set in, and detail the advantages of your cultists and cult leader. There are three Eras to select for your tale of doom: Medieval, Turn of the Century, and Modern.  Each time period has its own set of weapons and equipment. So, the wargame could be a shooting war or a melee frenzy depending on what you pick. You can choose equipment from an earlier Era if you so desire.  Want to throw a slavering cultist into melee armed with a great knight sword and full plate against a firing line of enemy cultists armed with shotguns? You can do it.  Want to see how the humble crossbow fares against a cop with a taser? Go ahead. Your Endless Horror welcomes the entertainment, or at least drools and burbles to itself.

In addition to choosing a stat block for your cultists, you must also roll a Flaw and Feat for each cultist in addition to a name. Flaws are disadvantages rolled on a 1d20 table that make your cultists a little quirky. For example, it’s possible that Jimbob is delicious to all Horrors on the board or Uncle Frank turned feral and now can only bite enemies instead of using weapons. What. You are managing a cult, not a regimented warband of trained soldiers, so roll with the punches.

On the flipside of this, your motley crew of half-crazed miscreants does worship an Endless Horror with Godlike powers. Every cultist gets a Feat, also randomly rolled on a 1d20 table.  Your minions might have a body made of worms (essentially gains an additional point of armor), or be bestowed with a new mechanic. In the latter case, the Feat Take My Flesh allows a cultist to sacrifice a limb to succeed on a roll where they would have failed. Feats often open up new strategies for your cultists, however the randomness leaves it a bit gonzo.  Still, that is consistent with the game’s tone. After all, if you roll 99 on your Endless Horror’s Desire roll, It simply wants red balloons. Sing it with me now.

Choosing your Cult Leader benefit adds much needed focus to your warband and is the cherry on top of having a cult in the first place.  The player’s choice for cult leader range in benefits from having a hardy warrior that can bring the pain to your enemies, wizards that leverage the arcane power of Manuscripts in the battlespace, leaders who can guarantee your cultists pass their morale checks, and archvillains that enhance your chances to successfully cast Rituals.     

Mechanics and Actions

The central mechanics of the game are simple. If there is a test for something on the battlefield a success is a roll of 12 or higher on 1d20, unless otherwise indicated.  This is called a DR12 check. As is tradition, a 1 is a Fumble and a 20 is a Crit success.

When units are activated on the battleground, each unit can carry out one move, then one action. There are 10 distinct actions that can be carried out.  The ones unique to Endless Horrors are include: use a Manuscript, and convert a Civilian.  Manuscripts (magical scrolls) are one of the ways random weirdness is injected into the game, because each Manuscript has a Failure condition. In addition, a fumble when using a Manuscript invites a roll on the Calamities table, which may spawn a Cosmic Horror, or turn all your unit's items into Wooden Ducks.

Converting a Civilian is a critical action in Endless Horrors because success in this endeavor builds up your cult’s Zealotry level, which is crucial for successfully pulling off a Ritual and bringing down the End Times upon us all.  Functionally the cult’s Zealotry value also gives a cultist a bonus on converting further Civilians to their cause, causing a small but useful positive feedback loop because of the following rule:  if two Civilians are converted in a Scenario, then the cult gains one Zealotry. 

In addition to the previous rule, in Scenario 1, which your cult will likely repeat a couple times, for every five Civilians that are converted the cult earns an additional Zealotry point. So, converting five Civilians should earn the cult a net gain of 3 Zealotry (twice 2 Civilians are converted, and once 5 Civilians are converted) in Scenario 1.

The Infamy value for your cult is a measure of how well known your cult is and how much opposition they are going to attract in a given Scenario.  Infamy increases in value when your cult does horrible cult-like things such as completing Scenario objectives, killing/converting Civilians and killing any Knights/Investigators.  What are Knights/Investigators? Remember those nasty disruptive player characters from a Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green game that interfere with the glorious and transformative actions of a noble cult of the Outer Dark? Knights/Investigators are those guys. They are called Knights if you choose the Medieval Era to play in and Investigators if you play in Turn of the Century or the Modern Era.

When your cult’s Infamy reaches 20, all Civilians become Hostile to your cult, meaning that Civilians will be fully resistant to attempts to convert them, and try to attack your cultists. An Infamy value of 25 or more will result in one of your cultists being captured and taken away by investigators.  On the flipside, a cult with an Infamy higher than 10 gains an additional 100 Resources from “hidden donors” after each Scenario they complete.  Resources are cash, gold or whatever that can be spent to buy Equipment, Weapons and Armor.   I am not real sure what to think about the Infamy stat and the breaks it puts on cult growth. I’ll have to playtest this mechanic in order to come up with a valid opinion. 

Campaign Scenarios and Antagonists

I’ve already mentioned Knights/Investigators and Hostile Civilians.  Also opposing you are cults of enemy Endless Horrors, hostile mystic creatures, and the Cult of the Crawling Eye. It’s a busy occult underground, and danger lurks around every corner.  A note about the Cult of the Crawling Eye. Most enemy Endless Horror cults follow “normal” enemy AI behavior, but the Cult of the Crawling Eye is more insidious. Their members will move to convert Civilians into more cultists of the Crawling Eye, kill any unit that has been Downed on the battlefield, and try to start Rituals if they physically meet their cult brethren. These Rituals can summon all kinds of nasty Horrors into the area, including an Avatar of the Crawling Eye.  In short, the are a pain in the ass with attributes that make them more dangerous if they are ignored and time moves on in the Scenario. So, if you see them, kill them quick. Failure means your very eyes will be forfeit.

Every once in a while, a player of Endless Horrors might get the deviant idea that cults are a bad thing and should be stomped out. If you are a victim of this malaise of goodness and purity, rejoice!  The author has included full rules for you to play all 11 Scenarios in this book as Knights/Investigators.  They even have their own Feats, Flaws and names tables. This also opens up the possibility of playing verses mode where an Endless Horror cult takes on Knights/Investigators in a bloody confrontation. Carry out this gripping conflict in the middle of one of the prepared Scenarios for maximum violence and craziness where there may be third and even fourth parties with their own agendas.

There is a lot more I haven’t covered, like Artifacts, Avatars and their procedural creation, Blessings and Injuries in the Campaign system.  For 168 pages Endless Horrors is a meaty book. And I would be totally remiss if I didn’t mention the artwork. It is deliciously deviant, genuinely grotesque and eye-poppingly eldritch. In short, it is another great Forbidden Psalm art book that could serve as a lovely coffee table discussion piece in your cult headquarters.

Final Thoughts

I also must mention about the Tengoku Station expansion.  Hankering for a scifi Era Endless Horror setting where all of humanity is packed into a claustrophobically crowded orbital station where people can barely breathe unless of course you are one of the elites? Want to see it all burn? Get Tengoku Station. I’ve only read it once so far, but if you are a fanatic about Endless Horrors, it adds what you will like.

That’s all for now. I’m currently planning my cult’s weapons and equipment loadouts with the expectation to crush another cult in a verses game on Tabletop Simulator.  If all works out, I’ll detail that experience in an After Action Report next time I talk about Endless Horrors. Until then, go Burn the Sun.

Delta Green and Genetic Editing of Humans

 A Nature Briefing on the subject of gene editing slid into my emails a bit ago. It stated the following:

“In 2018, biophysicist He Jiankui kicked off a firestorm of controversy when he announced that he had edited the genomes of three embryos, resulting in the birth of the ‘CRISPR babies’ — an act that ultimately landed him in prison for three years. Nevertheless, some scientists are planning for a future in which gene editing babies eliminates certain diseases. Most scientists think it is unethical — at least for now — to introduce genetic mutations that can be passed to future generations. But the general public might be more sanguine: a survey [2023 published in Science] showed that 30% of people would edit their children’s genomes to improve the child’s chances ofattending a top university.”

The above addition in brackets is mine.

What this email linked to was a news article written by Antonio Regalado, published in the MIT Technology Review.  Regalado’s article was titled, “Beyond gene-edited babies: the possible paths for tinkering with human evolution.”

This is real. Regalado, a journalist specializing in genetic engineering, discusses the science of gene editing in embryos, the ethical considerations, what scientists are working on right now with CRISPR and other gene editing technologies, and potential genetic variants people may want to include in their genomes, or the genomes of their children.

Regalado also forecasts how people and governments could use or abuse genetic editing if it becomes widespread. The idea in our reality is terrifying.

Naturally my thoughts turn to the darker world of Delta Green. 

Below are some excerpts from the article “Beyond gene-edited babies: the possible paths for tinkering with human evolution.”  Additions in brackets and bolded sections are mine.

" “I would say my enthusiasm for what the human genome is going to be in 100 years is tempered by our history of a lack of moderation and wisdom,” he said. “You don’t need to be Aldous Huxley to start writing dystopias.” [By Fyodor Urnov of Berkeley]

…

At the Innovative Genomics Institute, a center established by Doudna in Berkeley, California, researchers anticipate that as delivery improves, they will be able to create a kind of CRISPR conveyor belt that, with a few clicks of a mouse, allows doctors to design gene-editing treatments for any serious inherited condition that afflicts children, including immune deficiencies so uncommon that no company will take them on. “This is the trend in my field. We can capitalize on human genetics quite quickly, and the scope of the editable human will rapidly expand,” says [Fyodor] Urnov, who works at the institute. “We know that already, today—and forget 2124, this is in 2024—we can build enough CRISPR for the entire planet. I really, really think that [this idea of] gene editing in a syringe will grow. And as it does, we’re going to start to face very clearly the question of how we equitably distribute these resources.”

...

Whether we encourage genetic enhancement—in particular, free-market genome upgrades—is one of them. Several online health influencers have already been touting an unsanctioned gene therapy, offered in Honduras, that its creators claim increases muscle mass. Another risk: If changing people’s DNA gets easy enough, gene terrorists or governments could do it without their permission or knowledge. "

Along with these ideas of gene terrorists or government gene controllers, consider that there could be gene scouts (an idea I’m taking from the book The Body Scout) that track down populations or individuals that have desirable genetic variants and obtain their DNA through any means necessary. Let your imagination run wild with that one. Do they use coercion or commerce to obtain the DNA? Who are they funded by? March Tech? Some cult like the Sowers? 

And another thing. Since Delta Green is part of the government, would they be on the leading edge of technology to actually understand what is going on or would they be like some sort of bureaucratic dinosaur ham-fistedly enforcing the law through violence and torching any new technology they find like a luddite?  I’m not saying either perspective is better; it may be interesting for a Handler’s group to deal with a well-funded rogue biotech firm rather than a Mythos threat for a change of pace.

Also consider that with this new technology, you will always have its early adopters and fanatical adherents. Instead of a Cult of Yog-Sothoth, how about a Cult of Human Perfection? They could function like a Mythos/religious cult, but their enforcers may be supermen with enhanced muscle mass and endurance rather than tentacles.

If Handlers decide to go down the Cult of Human Perfection route and want inspiration, look no further than the Ultimates faction in the scifi/horror transhuman rpg Eclipse Phase by Posthuman Studios. In the first edition of the Eclipse Phase core book (there is also a second edition now), the Ultimates are described as follows on page 82 of the pdf: 

“The ultimates are a controversial movement that embraces a philosophy of human perfection. Decried by some as immoral or even fascist, ultimates are typically viewed as elitists.

…

The ultimates advocate the use of applied eugenics, strict physical and psychological training, and asceticism in order to improve their overall mental and physical stamina and environmental adaptability. Their social traits and entire subculture visualizes life in the universe as an evolutionary battle for survival and is built around the victory of the superior transhuman over both its opponents and peers. Their movement is heavily militarized, and experienced ultimates offer their services as mercenaries and private security forces to hypercorps, independent city states, or wealthy individuals in need of additional protection.”

This is a good description of a militaristic cult that could slot in perfectly to the horror saturated world of the Delta Green Mythos.  After all, a good human-based horror is a nice break from fighting supernatural Things from Beyond the Stars.  

But let’s revisit the ideas of gene terrorists, gene controllers and gene scouts. Part of the horror with these three ideas is future-shock.  Or in the Delta Green dystopia, horrible things done in the name of human advancement. We’ve already discussed gene scouts, so let’s move on to the other two.

Let’s define a gene terrorist as someone who inflicts a genetic based disadvantage on a target to harm the target or exploit it for financial gain. For example, a gene terrorist could hold an individual or population’s health for ransom.  This biological ransomware could require Agents to travel to some isolated place on the globe and rescue, say high value tourists. Or it could be more nefarious, in which the gene terrorist blackmails a third party’s health and forces the third party to cause problems for the Agents.

In contrast, the idea of a government gene controller would be more subtle. Imagine a government mandating that certain genes are turned on or off in its employees. The idea is terrifying enough, but how would this mechanically function?  A Handler could impose a malus to skills or attributes…or if the Handler is particularly twisted, give the target Agent a genetic benefit but require the agent to pay monthly or carry out certain undesired tasks to get another hit of that sweet, sweet genetic augmentation.  At this point a particularly devious Handler could consider that this transient genetic augmentation functions as a drug…and the unfortunate target Agent has an addiction (both physical and mental) that affects how they behave from day to day.

How would the other Agents react to having a “juiced up” superman in their group? Is it a burdensome secret the modified Agent needs to keep from his Delta Green circle or even home life?  Would the modified Agent eventually start to sympathize with para-humans like ghouls or Deep Ones or cultists that court their Gods for mutations?  What if there is a population of cultists that turned to the Mythos for power to make them on par with a genetically modified population.  Could you blame them?

Special thanks to Sammy J and Doubloon, both on the Night at the Opera discord server, for thoughts, discussions and recommendations for this blog post.  In particular, Doubloon made me aware of the book The Body Scout, and Sammy J suggested the Ultimates and Eclipse Phase.   

Delta Green, PISCES North Jam Entry

 

There was a jam or a not-a-contest on the Night of the Opera discord.  The jam’s prompt was to create a character for a PISCES outpost in the North, specifically Inverness, Scotland.  

For those who are not familiar, PISCES is the UK dark mirror of American Delta Green that defends Great Briton from supernatural threats. Their acronym stands for the Paranormal Intelligence Section for Counterintelligence, Espionage, and Sabotage.

The jam’s author posits that PISCES North is a backwater posting, and it is suggested that the characters must scrape together their own resources to deal with supernatural threats that their handlers hand them at arm’s length. 

I must thank fellow Delta Green aficionado, Sammy J, for helping me make a very silly idea into a character I actually enjoyed writing. 

Character: Mortimer 'Mort' Milton. Bureaucrat and Project Manager

Quote: “Have you seen my stapler?”

Someone has to do it.  In any organization, large or small, there is at least one individual who has a talent with filing, organizing, collating and stapling; a caretaker of the paper skeleton of that organization.  Without them, everything would grind to a screeching halt.  Mortimer 'Mort' Milton is that person for PISCES Scotland. 

Mort has been affectionately described as a turtle.  A bald man in his mid-fifties, Mort sports coke-bottle thick glasses that would have been only passingly acceptable in the 80s and the ubiquitous paunch and stoop of a desk worker whose exercise is occasionally going to the vending machine in between breaks.

Mort doesn’t believe in breaks. They interrupt his important work of collating. You see, to Mort, filing and organizing isn’t just a job. It is a walled castle where he can be absolutely certain that things are logical, concrete and absolutely not messy or terrifying like the outside world. 

You see, Mort saw Something. He will absolutely not talk about it (he may be unable to) but it is clear he is using the only tool he has, being a fiendishly excellent bureaucrat, to keep him from thinking about The Bad Thing. His survival in the face of unlikely odds and the strange twinge of compassion from PISCES staff landed him in the PICES pipeline … and his odd, almost OCD demeanor about filing got him sent to up north PISCES.     

Against all odds, Mort has “flourished”.  Absolutely indispensable at finding piles of hidden funds in the government for north PISCES operations and with the ability to layer meters upon meters of agonizingly boring red tape upon secret projects Man Was Not Meant To Know, Mort is the sole person holding the illegal conspiracy together with white-out and staples, albeit shakily.

Despite his off-putting social skills, Mort is fiercely loyal to PISCES and if treated gently and with empathy could be a very useful ally for PISCES Agents.  As long as they keep him close to his red Swingline stapler. That heavy and irreplaceable piece of office equipment has been with Mort as long as he has been employed by PISCES.  And its heavy enough to be used as a weapon to kill someone. Which it was on the fateful night Mort became subject to PISCES scrutiny.

Mort’s Mechanics
Mort has the following special rule: Fight, Flight or File. Fight (Struggle) and Flight (Flee) are described on page 69 of the Agent’s Handbook. File is a special rule for Mort. While most people would Freeze or shut down upon going temporarily insane, Mort externalizes his actions, immediately seeking to make more orderly and thus controllable.  He will begin to catalogue, organize, or alphabetize objects in the scene around him where he has gone temporarily insane, regardless of the danger to his person.  This is a very strong compulsion he must do because Mort feels that once he can categorize the environment, he can control it, and thus himself.  He is so very wrong though.

Mort also has a Totemic Compulsion with the focus of his personal Red Swingline Stapler.  This heavy metal stapler is a source of calm and focus for him and he will not willingly part with it. Also, it may hold evidence to Mort’s only crime of homicide just that one time that brought him to the awareness of PISCES.  If Mort flies into a violent rage, he will use the stapler as a club in preference to other weapons.  The heavy metal stapler does 1d6-1 damage.

Cohors Cthulhu Tactics Prologue, Book Review

 

Modiphius is planning to release Cohors Cthulhu: Tactics, a solo and co-op skirmish wargame where you lead heroes and soldiers from the Ancient Roman world to battle against the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, very soon.  As a preview, Modiphius released a 32-page pdf called Cohors Cthulhu: Tactics Prologue on 5/10/24, which introduces the main mechanics of the wargame in three scenarios of increasing complexity.  Below I will highlight some of the more unique and interesting mechanics of the wargame preview. 

The first scenario is extremely basic with many common features of a wargame that uses d6s, including: rolling to hit, rolling saves, and charging.  Where it differs is that the Player's unit (not Heroes) have Fear dice.

In a single Round there are three Phases: Action, Mythos and End.  The Player activates (carries out 2 actions per Action phase per unit) and then the creatures of the Mythos activate in the Action Phase. A point of strategy is that the Hero unit can merge with the Legionaries unit to bolster them, but then you have one unit to carry out an action rather than two. 

If the Mythos monsters Charge in the Action phase, the defending Romans (Player's unit) can choose a Combat Response: Counter-Attack, Defend or Hold. Counter-Attack and Defend will increase your Fear dice number by 2 or 1, respectively; and that allows the unit to counter-attack or increase their Saves by 1, respectively.

In the second and third scenarios the function of the Fear dice is revealed. Fear dice simultaneously serves as a measure of morale for the non-Hero unit, and as a resource the player can use to get more actions out of the unit at the risk of increasing the Fear value and having models in the unit Flee.

The value of the Fear dice varies between 1 and 6.  If the unit’s Fear dice value is 6 then the unit is said to be Wavering. The only Action a Wavering unit can execute is Bolster, which reduces the value of the Fear dice by 1.  

The value of the Fear dice is also used in an action economy manner.  If a Player’s unit is within Leadership Range of Marius (the Ld value of 5” on Marius’ profile), and within 8” of a Mythos unit that has finished resolving an Action; once per turn the Player’s unit may make a Unit Reaction.  Execution of a Unit Reaction will increase the Player’s unit’s Fear dice value by 2, and can only be carried out if the resulting value of the Fear dice is not above 6.  Therefore, a Player’s unit cannot take a Unit Reaction if its Fear dice is 5 or 6.  

Unit Reactions can be: making a Move Action, making a Charge Action targeting the triggering Mythos unit, or a Loose Action (ranged action) targeting the triggering Mythos unit.  

In addition to Unit Reaction, in a Player’s Action phase a Soldier unit may increase their Fear dice value by 1 to take a third Action.  There is still a hard cap of two identical actions taken by a single unit per Action turn, so you can’t take three Move Actions for example.   Mastering management of your unit’s Fear values to get extra actions is one of the paths to victory for your plucky Romans.  

Panic is a mechanism by which Mythos units can frighten your troops, possibly increasing their Fear dice value above 6, which subsequently causes individual models in your unit to Flee the battlefield.  Panic occurs in the Mythos Phase.

Panic works in the following manner. If a Mythos unit is close to a Player’s unit (within 4”) then the Mythos unit causes Panic 1.  A Mythos unit may cause 2 Panic if the Mythos unit has at least twice as many models as the Player’s unit it is causing Panic in.  

Panic does not automatically convert to Fear. The Player’s units have a Grit score. Roll a number of d6 equal to the Panic value and see how many dice are less than the Player’s unit’s Grit score.  The number of Panic dice rolled under a Player’s Grit score are added to the Player’s unit’s Fear dice value.  For each point in excess of 6 Fear a Player’s unit suffers, one model in the Player’s unit Flees the battle.   The Panic value can be reduced by 1 if the Player’s unit is in the Close Order formation.  A disciplined Roman formation reduces Panic.  

Overall, I like the Fear rules because it more interesting and creative than just a mechanic that primarily decreases the sanity of your units over time, leaving them like burnt out candles at the end of the fight.  A game that is strictly inspired by the Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green sanity mechanics could have simply made a direct copy of their sanity rules, but Cohors Cthulhu Tactics turned Fear into a resource you manage to give your units strategic benefits in the wargame. That’s creative and cool.

Close Order is a buff to the Player’s Soldier units that allows for enhanced actions or new mechanics.  Close Order can be acquired by a unit if it meets a few criteria. First the unit must be of three or more models that has not moved through rough terrain at the end of a Move Action. In addition, a Player’s models in the unit must be arranged base to base in a straight line to qualify for Close Order. So, be disciplined Romans, don’t go charging through those trees! 

Close Order gives a unit a number of advantages. For the Roman Legionary unit, Close Order allows your men to lock shields, re-rolling Saves if you rolled a 1. Counter-Attacking while in Close Order allows you to do your damage first to the targeted Mythos unit rather than simultaneously, which can be a tremendous advantage. Also, making a Loose Action (throwing Pila) while in Close Order allows the Player to count hits twice against Mythos units when calculating whether the target unit is Staggered. The Roman Auxiliary Archer unit gains advantages as well to their actions if they are in Close Order. Also don’t forget that Soldier units in Close Order get a benefit to reducing Panic as described above.   

The Staggered and Stalled debuffs for Mythos enemies are one of the mechanisms that the Roman player must exploit to ride to victory.  Staggered means the Mythos unit loses one of its Actions next turn.  Stalled simply means the Mythos unit has two Staggered tokens and must use both of its Actions next turn to remove the Stalled condition.  The Player can apply a Staggered token by inflicting a number of Hits on a Mythos unit equal to the number of half of the models in the Mythos unit or more. 

Given that Mythos units can potentially take extra actions in the Mythos Phase depending on what the Player rolls on the Threat Level, take two Actions on their turn during the Action phase normally, and can Press the Attack; the Player needs to lock down their enemy unit’s action economy, if the Player cannot preferably destroy outright the gribbly Mythos unit in a given turn. 

The elements of solo play involve Mythos forces Spawning and accounting of the Threat die. The Threat die only applies in the Mythos Phase of the third scenario; and on average it escalates and makes things more challenging for the Player!  Fun! 

The Spawn Pool involves introducing Mythos units to the battlefield.  As described on page 17 of the book the Player rolls 2d6 on the Spawn table and on average a Mythos unit will spawn.  The higher the Player rolls on the Spawn table, the more dangerous the enemy is. 

The Spawn table and Pool are also influenced by the Threat die.  The Threat die is included in the third scenario because an inimical Place of Power is introduced to the battlefield.  The Threat die value increases by 1 (or 2 if the Place of Power has 6 Magic Points) every Mythos Phase. Also in each Mythos Phase, the Player must roll on the Threat table, in which results generally escalate the Mythos danger as the Threat value increases.  When the Threat level reaches 6, a very bad thing occurs in which a Chosen of Mormo (an elite and dangerous Mythos unit) appears on the battlefield. 

The Threat die value also increases the value of the 2d6 roll on the Spawn table every turn. Thus, as time goes on, there is a greater chance of the more nasty Mythos gribblies Spawning and attacking the Player’s troops.  

The Threat table can also increase the number of Magic Points in the Place of Power, which when the Place of Power reaches a Magic Point value of 6, causes the Threat die value to accumulate faster. 

All in all, the 32-page pdf Prologue is well referenced, designed to be a clear read, and provides three scenarios of which the latter two are interesting tactically.  The first scenario is a very basic introduction to wargames and the essentials of the system. The last scenario reads like it is very challenging, in that the Romans must survive for 7 turns in the face of increasingly accelerated Mythos threats.  

Solium Infernum After Action Report and Review

 

Solium Infernum (2024, League of Geeks) is a digital board game where you play as one of four to six Archfiends of Hell, vying with each other to succeed to the empty throne of Hell that Satan left when he vanished. 

It has solo and multiplayer mode, but it is currently best played in multiplayer, as no AI can compete with another human for sheer deviousness.  

A full house of Archfiends

There are four ways to take the throne of Hell: two main ones and two methods that are more complicated, called Manipulation Victories, that I will explain later. The first method is to become ruler of Hell by Election. To do this, you simply must accumulate more victory points (called Prestige) than any other Archfiend and survive without being excommunicated until the end of the game.  The second method is to take the central city of Hell, Pandemonium, by force with a legion and then survive five turns while you are excommunicated and every other Archfiend is given sanction to enter your territory and try to topple your capital city (Stronghold).  This method of victory is called the Tyranny of the Usurper.  Excommunication means that you can no longer win by Election, you can no longer make purchases from the great Bazaar of Hell and you can no longer engage in diplomacy.  

True to its nature of simulating Hell, most actions lead you into conflict with one player or another.  For example, in order to enter another Archfiend’s territory and attack their legions or take over their territory, you must first have a casus belli.  These are generated by the diplomacy actions, the most basic of which are the Demand and the Insult.  A Demand allows you to aggressively request resource tokens from your opponent for a wager of your Prestige. If they refuse, you lose the wagered Prestige…but you may declare a Vendetta, which among other things allows you invade their territory, take over their Places of Power and slaughter their legions.  Albeit with a time limit in turns that you determine before the Vendetta takes place.  

Erzsebet responds to an Insult

An Insult is sort of like the opposite of a Demand. By hurling an Insult, you wager an amount of Prestige. If your opponent accepts your Insult, they lose Prestige and you gain twice the Prestige you wagered. Alternatively, if they reject the insult, you have manipulated your opponent into declaring a mandatory Vendetta against you.  This can be useful to draw a weaker opponent into a conflict they cannot win. 

Tactical nature of Hell's landscape

So overall Solium Infernum plays like a tactical wargame at one level, with a layer of diplomacy above the wargame table that is integrated within it.  In addition, there is the great Bazaar of Hell, where instead of buying outright legions, artifacts, manuscript pages and Praetors (infernal heroes), you have to bid on every item. If another player bids for the same item with more Hellish currency, then you simply lose everything you have bid and have to slink back to your domain empty handed.  Hell is not certain; Hell is not kind. Unpredictability lies around every corner and decision. Every action in Solium Infernum is uncertain, takes time, or leads to deceit.   These are also the very basics of play.  With higher rank and greater infernal attributes, one can steal legions outright from another player, throttle the number of actions an opponent takes, wreck their ability to cast spells outright, send a strike of infernal hellfire against an opponent’s legion and frame another player, and many more dastardly actions.

It is quite fun.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun documented a rather devilish multiplayer playthrough of the original Solium Infernum, created in 2009 by Vic Davis of Cryptic Comment. Although that version is no longer available, the story is still worth reading.

Now I’ll relate my first Solium Infernum experience. I joined a realtime game for four players, lasting at least 60 turns, in which each player had 3 minutes to complete each round.  Predictably I got crushed. However, I did learn a couple of devious moves by observation. 

Astaroth

I played as Astaroth (a war and conquest archfiend). My opponents were Belial (deceptive manipulator), Lilith (sorceress) and Mammon (lord of money). I started off with two Places of Power immediately next to me so I seized both (to benefit from their Prestige income per turn) and built up my only legion with a Praetor (infernal hero) and a piece of equipment.

An Angel in Hell

Fast forward a couple of turns and one of the Archfiends anonymously had executed an event card that eliminated my only legion and the resources I put into it. Then Belial and Mammon basically crushed me by taking away my Places of Power. But was I done? Oh no. Stunted and doomed though I was, as the least of the four Archfiends, I caused chaos in Hell by inviting an Angel unit from Heaven to go around Hell and eliminate one of each of the Archfiends’ units. Also, there were other shenanigans as I was boxed in to my little piece of territory.

Fast forward to the end. Belial's player had been hounding me incessantly and Mammon was winning the game at like turn 30 with 335 Prestige. The Lilith player wanted to secure some semblance of victory so she blood vassalized herself to Mammon, giving half her personal Prestige to her new master. Belial's player had been rather aggressive so I began weaving spells to hinder his colossal units like The Beast of Hell and a Walking Fortress, both units with over 20 hitpoints (average is 4-8 hp). Between the three of us Belial's player got his Titan units torched and he ragequit in response. Mammon was going to win. I was fine with that. When Mammon ascended the Infernal Throne, there was a shadow that parted from behind the throne. Lilith had a secret relic that she chose at the beginning of the game that gave her the ability to win if she correctly vassalized herself to an Archfiend who was going to win via her manipulation. Mammon with his 300+ prestige was just a pawn. Such is Hell.

This is called a Manipulation Victory of the Power Behind the Throne type in Solium Infernum, and that is one of two Manipulation Victory variants.  The other is a Crown of the Kingmaker victory, which requires a player to select the appropriate relic before the game commences, then requires you to choose another Archfiend as a “puppet” within the first 10 turns.  If the “puppet” Archfiend is Elected to the throne, you win instead. 

As I have said, nothing is certain in Hell. 

Entity After Action Report and Review

 

 I was jonesing for a solo game a couple of weeks ago and I came across a rather evocative image of an astronaut in DriveThruRPG under the “Most Popular Under $5” section. The title was Entity, and it advertised itself as a “Solo Storytelling Nasa Punk Game” which was immediately intriguing, in particular the Nasa Punk description.  Predictably, I bought it, and after one adventure which I have turned into a little story, I have some thoughts. In summary: It’s good! I like it. I find the game loop to be a little simple but the engine serves very well as a planet exploring experience, and it was significantly better than other solo “journaling” games I have tested. 

How does the game Entity play?

 In Entity you play a far future synthetic astronaut, piloted by an AI, that explores an alien world. Mechanically, your character is defined by three Traits (Technology, Analytics and Adaptivity) and each Trait has three distinct Edges (for example Physics, Biology and Chemistry are Analytics Edges).  The three Traits can vary in value from 3 to 5 and each Edge can have a value from 1 to 3.  These values come into play when your character travels to a location or discovers encounters on a location.  

 To pass through a travel or location encounter, you will be prompted by the encounter to add the value of your Trait to one of its corresponding Edges and then roll two d10 and compare each die roll to see if both, one or no die rolls under the resulting target number of your Trait plus Edge value.  A full success results in both dice rolling under or the equivalent of the target number. A partial success is defined as one of the two dice rolling under or the equivalent of the target number, and a failure is both dice rolling over the target number. 

 With a full or partial success, you may proceed to the next encounter and/or obtain the items the encounter delivers. However, with a partial success you also accrue a Strain. With a failure you suffer an Impairment. These matter because you start with 20 slots in your Spacesuit. Each slot can hold either a Strain, Impairment or an Upgrade.  Essentially this means you have 20 hit points per mission, except that some of these slots can hold Upgrades that augment your Edges. Strains are different from Impairments in that once you complete a Mission, Strains are removed from your Spacesuit’s 20 slots. However, Impairments are permanent from Mission to Mission. 

Speaking of Missions, Mission are completed by obtaining a certain number of Aspects (from 2 to 4) and Mission fulfillment results in the building of a Structure.  Structures give you and your successor characters bonuses from Mission to Mission and do not take up any Spacesuit slots. Aspects are rarely acquired (a roll of 10 or higher on 1d10 when you are determining encounters at a location) unless you spend Data to positively modify the location encounter roll. For example, if you have 4 Data, you can spend up to all 4 Data to add +4 to your location encounter roll, ensuring that you have the possibility of recovering an Aspect if you roll a 6 or higher on a 1d10 when determining encounters at a location. Data is most reliably found by carrying out the Side Activity: Collect Data which you can only do once per exploration to a location.  There are other Side Activities that can bolster your astronaut positively as well. 

In addition to the core book for Entity ($5 on DriveThruRPG), I purchased Advanced Storytelling for Entity, which is a 30-page pdf with a plethora of additional tables (also $5).  However, after adventuring with the core book, I find it alone produces enough information and prompts for journaling that additional detail is unnecessary. Understand, that this is not a failure of Advanced Storytelling for Entity.  The tables provided there are descriptive and very useful if you wanted to go into more specifics with your Entity story, or just rip-off the tables wholesale for some other scifi rpg. 

An Entity Story: Game One

Without further ado, here is the story of my first Entity game. 

 

The rhythmic rise and fall of the violin’s notes roused me from my reverie. By the time the drum beat played my focus was awake and analytics flooded my sensorium. Alien constellations wheeled above me in the vast expanse of void as I listened to the last strains of a forgotten song from an ancient place named Scotland.  Funny that. The song was immortalized in digital film but the unknown questions as to its origin mirrored the unknowns of this planet’s alien landscape that stretched out in leagues beside me, dwarfing me. 

 Heh. Enough maudlin ruminations. Although this land was defined only by a meaningless string of numbers and letters, unknown shores are nothing new to the human race, or even the memories of one. Time to get to work. 

 The long dead newsman’s audio came in clear as I surveyed the wreckage of my creche, the technological marvel that had once streamed from star to star, carrying me and my explorer’s soul. 

 “…remember. We are not descended from fearful men.” Defiance surged through me. So much was damaged, broken or a wreck. Right. Start from the beginning then.  I waved my hands to activate the translucent orange overlay that defined input to my electronics.  Daunting. My touch feedback haptics for robot controls were fried. That’s it then. My first mission would be to fix that.  I strained against the planet’s gravity and heaved a chunk of metal and technology to the side, staring at what I had uncovered. Then I looked up. I would need to find resources and other assorted things on this barren planet.  Correction, I thought, musing over the gigantic pyramid that orbited in the sky.  Suspected barren planet. 

***

 My local sensors and what was left of my creche’s scanners filled my sensorium with reams of spooling data. A particular image of a desolate craggy outcropping was zoomed in on and overlayed with pinks and greens, telltale markings of rare minerals, essential for the robotic repairs I so badly needed to function on this planet.   As my telescopic sensors keyed in on the outcropping objective I began to march across the alien plain, leaving a line of footsteps in the dust. My vision resolved a more high-resolution image of the spar of the outcropping as my effort brought me ever closer.  Telescopic sensors swept up and down the glimmering metallic material of the spar as the stars winked overhead. 

 CONFIRMED. TITANIUM DEPOSITS in bold yellow letters flashed in the lower left of my vision. Then the announcement scrambled into letters, numbers and static. What the Hell? I gasped as my sensorium glitched, stuttered and nearly cut offline. I held my helmet in a humanlike-coping manner, shaking my head as if to clear my vision.  

 Then I felt it. The static and the pulling. I started running. Flickers of bright blue and white-yellow sparks started emanating up from the ground as I accelerated away from the rocks and dusty trail I had started carving through the alien landscape.  Visuals were immediately fixed on my local area, the titanium spar forgotten in the panic of flight. I did not stop until I had broken far away from the sudden electromagnetic storm.  My hands were on my knees in relief, a remnant reaction of the human brainwave patterns my silicon mind was based on.  Instincts die hard deaths it seems. Fortunately, survival is one of them. 

 Thankfully the sprint hadn’t cost me any oxygen. It did, however drain some of my batteries. One of the main cells was flatlining. I switched to draw more energy from my auxiliary stores and put unnecessary functions on standby, just in case.  I looked forward. The spar twinkled in the starlight.  I surged forward, this time a little more warily. 

 After traversing a sparkling white ridgeline and reaching the shadowed side, I stopped cold. Then as I stood, I slowly smiled. At the base of the titanium spar was, for lack of a better word, a construction worksite, clearly alien.  

 

 As I approached the location I felt a sense of peace in the dormant machines, curled cast-offs of titanium metal on the ground here and there, and Platonic solids of unknown manufacture simply hovering silently in the air off the ground at about at eye-level.  Metal twinkled in the starlight, and everything just looked … well, abandoned. Like several someone’s had just walked off the scene and were waiting in the wings, grabbing coffee and whiling away the minutes, ready to retake up their tools at a signal from an invisible director. 

 A compressed sine wave appeared before my sensorium, and moments later moved to the very bottom of my vision, repeating over and over.  I turned my hearing on; it was an audio waveform. Did that sound like…hissing? 

 I did an about-face, spinning about quickly. Then I looked down. The ground rumbled and cracked open in various places. Hissing bio-luminescent vivid green fog began to swirl around my knees and rose to my chest, pouring out of the earthen rents in the ground. Was the very surface of this planet trying to kill me?  NON-TOXIC ORGANIC my sensorium responded to my unasked query as my vision filled with the green fog. I looked up and it was swirling ever higher, blotting out the dome of constellations above me.  

 

 I took an exploratory step. The ground held. I took another and nearly wedged my foot into one of those vents in the surface. Then, I held out my hands to stabilize myself and walked out of the fog, step by careful step, navigating purely by dead reckoning until the fog wall began to become thinner and thinner.  

 I arrived unmolested in the center of the alien workshop when another rumble occurred. The hissing stopped abruptly and I looked back. A plume of beautiful vivid green organic fog danced in the starlight. Was this some sort of pollination on this alien planet? I stared in wonder, knowing that likely I would never find out. I turned back to the dormant construction droids fallen in a nearby heap and what looked like broken tools of alien make and manufacture strewn across the workspace.  I salvaged what resources I could, stowing away strips of electronics to repurpose and carefully mining the titanium from the deposits in the craggy glacier I had finally reached. 

 

 After hours of diligence, I was satisfied with my harvest and scanned my surroundings for a more lucrative site.  

***

 I spotted it through my telescopic sensors. I saw the mirage above it before I understood what I was gazing at.  A mirror of the cosmic wheel above, the river was embedded in the ground and curving in a sinusoidal pattern beyond a plain of an ash grey spotted with a pungent orange color. That degree of reflective sheen on the surface could only mean one thing; I was looking at a river of pure quicksilver.  The liquid mercury would be very useful to my repair project, so I nodded to steel myself and began the long hike to the desolate valley where the river lay. 

 I began to traverse the ash grey plain, careful and slow to pick my way around the bright orange spots here and there.  The sound snuck up on me. There was a faint crackling behind me so I turned my head.  My eyes grew wide and I fell onto my hands and knees, suddenly struggling with the ground crumbling beneath my feet and turning what was once a flat plain into a 70-degree incline in front of me. Every footprint in the grey ash plain behind me was emanating with long trails of choking grey dust.  The bright orange spots began moving; crawling over the plain with little tendrils and merging into each other in their haste to converge on me. 

 This, this was some sort of cryptobiotic soil, it wasn’t a lifeless plain.  And I had disturbed it. Swiftly I righted myself and ran up the incline in front of me and I didn’t stop pushing forwards even as my boots sunk themselves into the earth up to mid-shin.  As I moved frantically forward, my sensorium was filled with image after image of cryptobacteria until a molecular model was pushed to the foreground.  The cryptobacteria commonly interacted with chemical signals. If I could exude some chemical signals that mimicked the cryptobacteria signaling pathways it might, just might, consider me “friend” rather than “foe” and stop trying to engulph me in this fragile earth.  

 I engaged my multitool to the chemical emitter on my suit’s side and began modulating different input valves as mentally I guided the emitter through the complicated heating, cooling and chemical washes necessary to mass produce the cryptobacteria signaling molecule in question. 

 Then I heard a ping and the emitter began spraying yellow water, stinking of sulfur. Shit. I frantically tried to get the multitool to seal the venting emitter, which was exuding chemicals far too early in the reaction to produce a viable cryptobacterial signaling molecule. 

 I was slowly drowning in porous grey earthen matter. And that did not even count the bright orange clumps of bacteria saturated crusts that collectively jumped down into my deepening hole, serving to make my flailing forcing me to sink deeper still. 

 I had one chance; I needed to go back. I had no idea how much further this cryptobiotic soil extended, but I did know I had enough energy and suit integrity to return to my point of origin. Where I could gaze at the subtle shifting of the liquid mercury river, but not reach it. 

 I began my retreat. 

***

 It was very clear to me now, if it wasn’t apparent before, that I could take nothing for granted in this truly alien environment.  Marching away from the cryptobiotic infested plain, I set my sensorium to complete a full analysis of a deep environmental scan. A couple hours later I had cogitated and correlated my next plan of action. To the south, the fissures extended into a network of subterranean cave structures, weaving and crossing their ways into the deep underground. Far-ranging chemical sensors suggested there were useful microorganisms hidden in these structures. Clearly, understanding of the local microflora and fauna was essential for survival on this planet. I checked my batteries and clicked on my suit’s headlamp. It was time to go caving. 

Bioluminescence. Available here

 I entered the first underground aperture and squinted. Then I turned my suit’s lights off. The darkness was still illuminated. Not by the warm yellow of my headlamp and LEDs, but by a cool aquamarine luminescence that coruscated against the rock walls. The humidity external to the suit began to peak and I flicked on my lights with a thought. Pools of water, captured in pockets in the rock, lay before me, coated in floating algae of some sort, glittering with the bioluminescent aquamarine glow. I picked my way carefully among the pools, weaving over a delicate land bridge that creeped further in to the stygian depths, the bioluminescence guiding my way. 

 There were egg-like protrusions of rock on the ceiling of the cavern in irregular clusters, usually of about five or seven. As I continued down the now widening land bridge, the egg-like rocks became more clustered on the upper walls, adjacent to the ceiling.  Wary and not willing to take a chance in this unusual environment, I set my sensors to scan one of these rock clusters in detail.  

 There was a response to the sensor ping. One rock egg crackled and unfurled like the petals of a flower, revealing a grey interior shot through with crimson-orange veins.  I stared, mesmerized, as my suit began to register a steady stream of packets of data from the open rock egg…rock flower?  Then there was another sound of crackling. One more egg unfurled. Then another and another. 

 Red warning symbols decorated my HUD as the packets of data became more numerous, then completely chaotic as my suit began being bombarded with the data explosions from these alien plants? Rocks?  Reeling from the data impact, I made the drastic decision to cut all local communications except for a very long-range ping from my creche’s remaining scanners. Silence engulfed me. I navigated by the cheery yellow glow of my headlamps in the deepening dark cavern and that distant pulse of my creche by which I could approximate my position.  

 Running through my navigational memories I noticed several discrepancies between my current location and the tunnels I had been. At least I think I had been there. The tunnel crossovers were all wrong and I couldn’t draw a straight-line path from where I entered the caverns and where I was now. Were the paths shifting?  

 Unsettled by that thought, I relied on dead reckoning again and that very faint ping from my creche to navigate to a deeper cavern that was not covered with those data-spewing rock eggs or the bioluminescence of the algae-like life in the pools.  

 After hours of hiking in the barely illuminated stygian blackness, I had found my quarry. I risked rebooting my sensorium to active and fortunately, though there were a few glitches, the HUD and my electronic monitors were not the worse for wear.  What appeared before me was a cloud of hazy white in the light of my headlamps.  The long-range chemical sensors were dead on the money. I began taking copious samples and running every test I was equipped to run on the biological spores.  The life in this area was data-sensitive? Or at least somewhat capable of interfacing with my electronics and nanotech? Strange. I collected extra milky-white samples and headed back towards my creche for more analysis and hopefully greater answers. 

***

 I stood around the ruins of my creche, watching patiently as the functioning (thankfully) genetic sequencer took the alien genome of the hazy white spores and rendered them into familiar and understandable data: the A, G, C, and T nucleotides of DNA.  I took the white spore’s sequence and entered it into my GLADIATOR simulator, a software tool for simulating microorganisms and their interactions, and compared it to the sequence of that cryptobacteria that had colonized the soil and nearly eaten me alive.  Extensive biochemical charts filled my sensorium, marked in black.  Then I began to dig deeper, looking for conserved biochemical pathways between the two organisms.  Looking for what common biochemistry the two alien species had for identifying food.  

 The swirling haze of data in my sensorium began to thin out and red marks of chemicals in common began to be displayed here and there. I consolidated these red colored chemicals, and set GLADIATOR to find the most likely chemical that received the “food” signal and develop a synthetic ligand that would bind to the “food” signal receptor and shut down the pathway. “I have you now,” I whispered under my breath. With luck, a little bit of this synthetic ligand spread about the cryptobiotic zone would prevent the cryptobacteria from seeing me as eatable and allow me to navigate the path to the quicksilver river unmolested. Think of it as crop-dusting an alien field to bend the biology to my will. 

 Long range telescopic sensors locked onto the serene waters of the quicksilver river. I stared at the ash grey plain with bright orange spots in my immediate focus. Hell yeah. Time to try this out. With a thought, my suit started releasing a faintly white-tinged cloud of gas.  The synthetic ligand had been deployed. I took an exploratory step. The ground held solid. No boots sinking into the ash grey plain. So far, so good.  

 From there it was a welcome stroll down to the embankment of the liquid mercury river.  A field of strange plants with elongated tear-drop shaped purple fruits hugged the shore.  I scanned them, wary for a data burst that would scramble my sensors, but happily the readout just indicated a collection of heavy metals in the fruits. Useful. I collected as many of them as I could carry and gathered up multiple liters of the quicksilver in the river.   

 I sighed in relief and sat upon a nearby rock, just marveling in the silvery mirror sheen of the mercury waters.  The orbiting pyramid was rising on the horizon, alien and enigmatic. I couldn’t help but smile as I looked up at the stars. I finally had enough base elements and materials to repair the haptic controls for my robotic interface. I’d be able to assemble the necessary mechanisms back at the crash site of my creche.  But for now, I indulged in the absence of a goal, simply enjoying the vistas of this strange and uncanny planet.

from Entity

Behind the Scenes: The rolls and decisions made in Entity

When I wrote up the above story, I took the salient details from the Entity game and tried to weave them in a narrative. 

Part of an Entity round looks like this: 

Identify Location, Roll:19

Result: Titanium Glacier - A unique glacier formation made from ultra-dense ice mixed with titanium deposits, gleaming metallically under the stars.

Travel, Roll: 2

Result: There is a Travel Challenge.

Travel Challenge, Roll:38

Result: You are caught in a sudden electromagnetic storm. It’s scrambling your suit’s systems and draining your power. Use Physics or Survival (used Survival)

Target Number 8 or less, Roll: Partial Success

Result: +1 Strain = 1 total strain

And so on.

Incidentally I rolled Location “Quicksilver River” and Encounter Challenge “You cross a patch of cryptobiotic soil that becomes hostile when disturbed” twice. So, I felt I had to make it front and center in the story plot. 

The rock eggs, and looking for conserved biochemical pathways between the milky white spores and the “cryptobacteria”, and a few other things were my ideas.