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.

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.