Old Gods of Appalachia, An RPG Review

There are places in this world that humanity was never supposed to see- walled in by mountains of burning black rock, isolated by a choking canopy of poison flora, woods where tooth, claw, and hunger still sit atop the food chain. Long before our kind ever set foot in these mountains, when the peaks of the Blue Ridge towered above the stars, and the heart of the plateau still rolled with ridges tough as pine knobs, darkness was brought here in cages made of fear. Our tongues do not have the shape to speak the true names of what they are . . . and that's are, not were. They are hunger, consumption, lust- all the things that settle under the heart and below the ribcage. They are the cancer that will one day eat the edges of this universe, and leave nothing in its place. They are not evil. They are not of Hell or the Christian devil. They simply are...

Old Gods of Appalachia, Season 1, Episode 0: "Prologue"

A Surprisingly Personal Connection

I don't often get to review a game that leads me to discover something about myself.

I was interested in Old Gods of Appalachia (the RPG) since I first caught wind of it. I love the Cypher System and have reviewed it extensively, as well as Numenera and VURT. In addition, I am a lifelong horror buff, though I had not originally listened to the podcast the RPG is based on, the premise of the game (so perfectly summed up in the quote above) sent shivers down my spine. When Old Gods finally arrived I started reading it, and simultaneously listened to the podcast...and that is when the sense of deja vu started to hit me.

When I was a boy of eleven, circumstance drove my family from suburban Arizona back east, to family. We moved to rural upstate New York, to a fairly isolated community in the Catskill Mountains. My great-grandmother had about 200 acres of land there, seven miles deep in one of the "small, sheltered valleys" Old Gods of Appalachia calls as a "holler:"

A holler has a head, a mouth, and often a creek, even if it’s only seasonal. The mouth is the least remote and typically broadest part of the holler, being its start; it’s also typically where the holler’s creek—if it has one—joins a larger creek or stream. The head is the most remote part of the holler, nestled near where the ridges meet. Houses are situated along the slopes of occupied hollers, with a road in the middle, running roughly parallel to the water source.

This was exactly where she lived, along a dirt road impassable in the winters. And it was--like all the narrow little valleys hidden in those mountains--called a "hollow." Bouck's Hollow, to be exact. Author's Note: before publishing this I ran it by a friend who grew up there. He reminded me that I was an outsider...I might have called Bouck's Hollow, Polly Hollow, Preston Hollow etc "hollows" but everyone else did indeed call them "hollers."

As I kept reading, and listening, it was like my childhood flashing before my eyes. The section on weather related disasters in Appalachia (p. 184) talked about flooding. In 1987, when I was sixteen, the Schoharie Creek flooded nearly the entire town, and has flooded several times before and since. In discussing the geology of the mountains, these were the mountains I remembered, shale and limestone, and impossibly ancient. You could climb those mountains and at their summits find the fossils of prehistoric sea life frozen in the shale, and not so far from where I lived was the Gilboa Fossil Forest, petrified trees 385 million years old and believed to perhaps be one of the first forests on the face of the Earth. 

As I read about the people, and listed to the stories, that was when I really began to relate. I knew these people...the townfolk, the farmers in the valleys...and the folk up in the hollows (hollers). In a July 18th article from 1991, the New York Times published a piece about them:

Along the sinuous West Middleburgh Road that makes its way through the rolling green hills lie crumbling old shacks surrounded by chickens, decaying barns, rusting farm machinery and tiny overgrown family plots. Here, families with names that have been known in these parts for more than 200 years live lives that often seem untouched by modernity… The insular life in the hollow has preserved old folk beliefs, arcane slang and diversions, like cockfighting, that are illegal in New York State. Nearly every dirt yard has at least one majestic rooster with a foot tethered on a string to a stake, waiting for the next cockfight. Foxes are kept in cages out in back of properties, which are often more than a hundred acres. Some houses lack indoor plumbing, but few lack American flags...

Now, if you hear a bit of Big City Contempt in some of that, you are not alone, and one thing Old Gods of Appalachia (the RPG) gets very, very right is avoiding ugly stereotypes about the people of the region. But the article is mostly right, and trust me when I say the people in the hollows had just as much contempt for the city folk. 

The point I am arriving at is the more I read Old Gods the more it echoed my own experience. But I grew up in New York, not Appalachia...didn't I? Didn't I?

Turns out, officially, I did grow up in Appalachia.

People don't associate New York State with Appalachia. In a 1981 governmental study, only 20% of those surveyed identified the region as extending north into that state. Yet the Catskill Mountains are just as much a part of the Appalachian Mountain chain as the Blue Ridge Mountains are, and 14 New York counties are also official members of the Appalachian Regional Commission. When Congress created the Commission back in 1965, part of its mandate was to define what Appalachia actually "was" according to cultural, historical, and socio-economic factors. Their conclusion was that these 14 counties did indeed belong. I grew up in the one that forms the northeastern most tip of the region. The culture in the hollows/hollers of that mountain chain runs deep, and the more I looked the more I found. Linguistic connections. Common traditions. Shared beliefs. 

And...well, the weirdness.

There is something in those mountains. You feel it. Something impossibly old. Something deep. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the slopes of the hills where I grew up were all cleared for hops farms. In the 1910s, a hops blight came, and then Prohibition finished the job. The farms were just abandoned, and by the time I was there, the forests had swallowed them back up. You could walk through the woods and come across a wall of neatly stacked shale which had once marked the boundaries of a field, or come across the ruins of a farmhouse, the trees grown right up through the foundations. Then everything would go quiet, and you could almost feel something looking into you. The Green, if you were lucky...the Things if you were not.

But I get ahead of myself, Family. Let's talk about Old Gods.  

 

Part 1 "Where the Shadows Stir" and Part 4 "The Darkest Mountains in the World"

A 418-page PDF and book, Old Gods of Appalachia is full-color, profusely illustrated, and for the print version on thick, glossy paper. If you own Numenera or the Cypher System core books you know the general quality and style you will be getting. Kyle A. Scarborough's cover depicts "The Thing Whose Name Sounds Like Horned Head But Is Not," aka "The Beast," "The Maker of the Poisoned Promise," "The Liar Saint," "The Uncast Shadow," and my favorite--for personal reasons--"The Black Stag." 

The book begins with a full page introduction by the authors and creators of the original podcast, Steve Shell and Cam Collins. Click that link sometime and give it a listen. This Introduction, along with Part 1 and later Part 4, give you a general overview of the setting, so lets talk about that all first.

Set in a slightly alternate Appalachia in the early decades of the 20th century (with some episodes set later and some before), Old Gods of Appalachia (game and podcast) speaks of the powers in these mountains, and the effects of their interaction with the human communities living in them. Most dread of these powers is the Inner Dark. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when these mountains soared far higher and steeper than they do today, Those Who Sleep Beneath were imprisoned beneath them. Not gods, their power is godlike, and should they escape their prison it would be the end of humanity if not all life on Earth. As entire geological ages passed and these mountains were slowly weathered down into the rolling hills and hollers we know today, Those Who Slept Beneath were able to exert some of their power, calling humans to settle in this region, to seek them out, and to dig. The greatest servants of these eldritch horrors are the Deep Things, like the Blag Stag on the cover, the generals of the Inner Dark's armies. Next come the Middle Things, powerful horrors and servants, followed by the Low Things, mostly mindless animal-lever terrors used as hunting dogs and shock troops.

What locked the Inner Dark below the mountains? Possibly the other great power in these mountains...the Green. less malignant that the Inner Dark certainly, the Green is nevertheless the raw and untamed power of life and nature. Creation, destruction, recycling. The Green is the food chain and the breeding cycle, overwhelming instinct, but also health and healing. Folk in these mountains can sometimes use its magic to their own benefit, as well as against the Inner Dark.

There are other powers, independent ones. The Boy. Jack. The Railroad Man. The Dead Queen. But the ones above are the primary forces player characters will be dealing with.

The horror in the podcast and game leans heavily on folk horror, but I would argue it is more of a thing in itself. Folk horror is rooted in old superstitions, paganism, the isolation of a rural setting, cryptids, and folk magic/religion. All of those elements are indeed present here, but the inclusion of forces like the Green and the Inner Dark make Old Gods of Appalachia something different. Folk horror tends to be "us vs. them," with "us" being urban outsiders and "them" being the locals. Midsommer, The Ritual, Children of the Corn, and The Wicker Man are all excellent examples. The outsider comes to the region, gets caught up in the dark local magic, and horror ensues. Had Dracula just been the initial 40 pages of Jonathan Harker's journal, it would have fit the bill. 

But that is not really Old Gods of Appalachia at all. Instead, it is often a case of the rural local people drawing on folk magic, lore, and traditions (see below) against the eldritch power of the Inner Dark, or other horrific enemies. In this way I think Old Gods reinvigorates the genre by jettisoning some of its more tired tropes and at the same time seeing the folk of the hills and hollers as protagonists rather than antagonists.   

To that end, Part 4 digs deeper into the setting, with an overview of central Appalachia (the game does not extend south into Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia, or north into New York). The geology, geography, weather, flora and fauna of the region are summarized, as well as the history and origins of its people. there is a broad look at the people and how they lived, both in the hollers and in the towns and cities. Communication, transportation, entertainment, commerce, and because of the time period Prohibition, are all discussed Specific locations and characters from the podcasts are detailed here as well. 

One of the more critical sections (as touched on above) is the discussion of Appalachian magic, ranging from the folk magic known as "witchcraft" and "granny magic" to the magic of the Green and the Inner Dark. Magic plays a bigger role than it might in a Call of Cthulhu adventure, because this is not the alien magic of Lovecraft's "cosmicism." Sanity, and madness, is not at much a part of the game. Yes, the magic of the Inner Dark is ultimately corrupting, but the folk magic of the hills and the power of the Green can often be called as a weapon against it. These are ultimately isolated, self-reliant communities that must look out for themselves when the monsters come crawling. They cannot wait on the learned men from Miskatonic to always show up on time.

Part 2 "Welcome to the Family"

This section then, a full 100+ pages, is character creation. This sounds like a lot, but if you know games powered by the Cypher System at all you will see it is really about offering you a selection of detailed choices rather than complexity.

But here is where I come to the first mention of what I am not going to be doing here. As mentioned earlier, I have a very detailed and in-depth review of the Cypher System here, so if you are not at all familiar with the game and you want to understand Old Gods of Appalachia's rules, I urge you to go there. Here I would prefer to focus on this incarnation of the system. 

At your core the characters in Old Gods are still defined by Might, Speed, and Intellect, with Pool, Edge, and Effort being important factors of those traits. There are still six tiers to rise through.

Characters are also still defined by Descriptor, Type, and Focus. Namely "I am an (adjective) (noun) that (verbs). The character Types are now Protectors (Cypher System Warriors), Sages (Adepts), Explorers (Explorers), and Speakers (Speakers). All have been give rewrites to make them fit better into the specific setting.

Some of the Descriptors are familiar, but a surprising number are new here, again, tying specifically into the Appalachian setting. For example, "Superstitious" comes with a boxed text of Appalachian superstitions your character likely subscribes to. The same is true of the Foci, with setting-specific ones like "Serves the Green" and "Fears no Haints" to others that resemble ones we have seen before, but are repurposed here for the period ("Cures What Ails Ya" or "Makes a High Lonesome Sound").

Through these descriptions, Old Gods frequently offers quotes from the podcast, tying these game features back to characters and situations in the anthology. The section finishes out with "Goods and Currency," which almost feels like it really belongs in the section on Appalachia for the amount of detail it gives on the setting.

Part 3 "Playing the Game"

This is really just the Cypher System rules...determining the task stat and difficulty, modifying the difficulty, and rolling a d20. Skills, assets, and effort all work the same way. It is still player-facing, meaning the GM doesn't usually roll any dice. Experience is still handing through intrusions, and the game includes a number of setting-specific character arcs to play through.

Part 5 "Running the Game" and Part 6 "Adventures"

After thorough and comprehensive advice on running the system, Old Gods of Appalachia comes back to the setting again with a really terrific assortment of just under 100 setting-specific Cyphers and about half as many Artifacts. Cyphers are one-use items, Artifacts can be used multiple times but often with a chance of "coming due," losing their powers permanently or needed somehow to be re-awoken. For me, these two sections really make the game unique. For example, the "Circle of Safety" cypher is a mason jar filled with churchyard dirt, ant eggs, seven nails, lye, gunpowder, and saltpeter. Pouring the contents in a circle around you and setting it alight will protect you with a nearly impenetrable barrier. A 'Fear Knot" is a hemp rope woven with animal hair soaked in spring water of seven days. Whisper your deepest fear to it, and the next 24 hours you are given protection against fear. The cyphers, and the artifacts, are all drawn from folklore and folk magic, giving tremendous flavor to the game.

"Haints, Spirits, and Revenants" come next, the chilling antagonists of the podcast and Appalachian folklore. The Powers mentioned earlier are all here (the Boy, Jack, the Dead Queen, etc) as well as a wide assortment of Things of the Inner Dark and a few "must-include" NPCs like the Witch Queen. I will not describe them because I want to spoil neither the podcast not the game for you, but for a game being called "eldritch horror" this is another area it distinguishes itself in.

The horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, as magnificent as they are, arise from Lovecraft's "cosmicism," that humanity is insignificant and without meaning in a vast, uncaring cosmos. The entities encountered are horrific because they are alien. Old Gods of Appalachia is different. The Inner Dark is about the horrors buried deep in the human heart. There is more a sense of Stephen King than Lovecraft to the podcast and it carries over beautifully to the game. These horrors will tempt you and corrupt you, because they seem to have an understanding of humanity that the Great Old Ones do not. It creates a very different sort of horror experience at the table.

Finally, the book closes with not one but two sample advantures, both exemplifying the kinds of stories Old Gods of Appalachia can tell.

Closing Thoughts

Neither Lovecraftian cosmic horror nor folk horror, Old Gods of Appalachia seems to be an alloy of both, making it neither. Lovecraft, I think, is "city horror," and more than that, "modern city horror." It is about a world that has lost meaning, or perhaps never had it...a world in which each new discovery takes us closer to madness.

Old Gods of Appalachia is different. "There are ancient powers...but listen to the wisdom of your ancestors so that you can deal with them. The game includes cities but is is deeply rural, and it expresses darknesses and secrets I think one can only understand if you embrace the setting, where modernity had been kept at bay and old truths remembered. 

I am particularly pleased that Shanna Germain and her team remained so committed to using the Cypher System here. I liked Invisible Sun but never fully grasped why a modified Cypher System was designed for it. Maybe because I grew up on Chaosium, I like house systems. Cypher was perfect for this. 

Buy this game if you are looking for a unique form of horror. Listen to the podcast and I can almost guarantee you will but it.

    

 

    

 

UNMASKED: A REVIEW OF THE NEW CYPHER SYSTEM SUPERHERO SETTING

Some are satin, some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on...

-Billy Joel, "The Stranger"

1986...

It's the year the Challenger exploded, the year Chernobyl blew.  It's the year Halley's Comet revisited us, and the first PC virus, Brain, made its debut. Thatcher is in London.  Reagan's in Washington.  Gorbachev is in Moscow. "Money for Nothing" and "Addicted to Love" are the two hottest things on MTV.  And your life, the life that you have been living, is about to change.

Just a few weeks before your first day of high school, you wake up different. You somehow are able to see. All around you, all around town, random little objects now pulse, shimmer, with power. A soupspoon. A broken shard of glass. A bird feather. The hands of a clock. Somehow you can see which objects have been imbued and which haven't...and if you touch these objects, you somehow know what they can do. Each one of them has a trick, a spell, a power. Use the power once and its gone.

But wait...

...some of these random little things call out to you, whisper in your brain. Not many; just a select few. Somehow you just know which ones you need to collect. Somehow you just know what they want you to do. You collect these charms and they teach you, they show you how to make it.

Your Mask.

When you put that Mask on you are not you anymore. You are something more powerful. Something greater. Something more than human...something superhuman.

And this is how it all begins...

Origin Stories

Unmasked (192 pages, $44.99 hardcover, $17.99 pdf) is the latest offering from Monte Cook Games.  Unlike Ravendesk's Vurt, this is not a stand-alone game powered by the Cypher System, but a setting and sourcebook for the Cypher System Rulebook itself.  You'll need that book to use it.

Unmasked is the welcome return of veteran game designer Dennis Detwiller to the superhero genre. Part of the team that brought the world "Cthulhu meets X-Files" classic Delta Green, Detwiller was later the driving force behind Godlike, a 2001 RPG that married superheroes to the gritty, "war is hell" setting of WWII.  Godlike was very well received as a fresh take on what was already a bit of a warn-out RPG genre.  It's protagonists, called "Talents," eschewed the costumes and the masks for a much more grounded, realistic take than we had seen before.  This is a bit ironic, because Unmasked is literally all about the masks.

Funny things, masks.  They seem to embody the very concepts of transformation and mystery.  Their earliest uses in the murky origins of human society seem to be shamanic; in putting on the mask, the wearer channels or even becomes a god or spirit.  Even the word itself, "mask," is problematic.  We have no clear idea where it comes from or what it really means.  It might derive from a proto Indo-European word meaning "black, obscure," the Spanish más que la cara ("more than the face"), or even the Arabic masakha, meaning "transformed."  All of this feeds quite nicely into the mythology Detwiller is creating here, marrying the mythic, almost religious mask traditions with the concept of the "masked man" or masked hero.  The result is a game about perfectly normally teenagers compelled to create and wear Masks that transform then, body, mind, and perhaps even soul.

That is something critical to understand here.  This is not a game about super beings who put on a mask (or pair of glasses) to conceal their identities.  The Teen and the Mask are two different entities.  A Mask might be a different race, a different gender, a different species from the Teen that crafted it.  It might have very different drives and agendas.  The protagonists in this game are more like Billy Batson than Peter Parker.  This is where the game's much promoted "horror" elements come in.  The Mask isn't you...or is it?

We Could Be Heroes

Because this is a Cypher System Rulebook supplement, from here on it we will assume you know that game.  If not, following the link above for any of what follows to make sense to you.

Mechanically, Unmasked builds on the rules Monte Cook gave us in the core game.  Characters are once again defined by being "An (Adjective) (Noun) that (Verbs)."  This time, however, there is a twist.  The character sheet is split into the Teen and the Mask.  The Teen is defined only by a Descriptor and some appropriate skills.  He or she might be a "Tough Teen," or a "Naive Teen," a "Driven Teen" or a "Weird Teen." The Teen then gets his or her own Stat Pools (each starts at 6, with two additional points to assign).  This is the unmasked character.

The game calls its protagonists "Prodigies," and as hinted at above, they are normal young men and women who wake up in a world that has suddenly changed, but only they can see it.  Some event--and the nature of that event is very much up the the GM--has littered the world with cyphers (in this setting, called "Mementos").  As in other Cypher games, these are one use objects each containing a single special power.  Prodigies are the only people who know a Memento when they see it, and when they touch it they know what it can do.  Likewise, they are also able to identify each other.  What transformed these teens and these objects?  That is part of the story, and Detwiller gives the GM specific rules to decide the nature of the changes (Psychic? Mutation?  Mystical?) and guidelines on how to reveal the answers over the ongoing campaign.  However, the Prodigies are haunted by dreams of a nightmarish figure, the monstrous Prester John, who seems to be hunting Prodigies the way the First was hunting potential Slayers in the final season of Buffy.

Some Mementos call to Prodigies more powerfully than others, compelling the Teen to assemble them and use them to create a Mask.  Each Mask is unique.  When the Teen puts the Mask on, he or she becomes a completely new character, this time with its own Descriptor, Type, and Focus.  These Masks also have their own Stat pools and skills.  Most importantly, perhaps, they have "Power Shifts" (Cypher System, p. 270).  These shifts automatically lower difficulty levels by one step each.  So a Mask with 4 shifts in "Feats of Strength" would automatically lower any difficulty of that type by four, even before effort or other assets are applied.  This is part of what makes them truly superhuman.

Descriptors:  Given the nature of the game and the genre, any Descriptor from the Cypher System Rulebook or even Numenera or The Strange might be acceptable with GM approval.  While the game introduces new Teen Descriptors (Metal Head, New Wave, Punk, and Show-off) there are none that are Mask specific.

Types: The four standard Types have been reworked a bit here into the Smasher (Warrior), Thinker (Adept), Mover (Explorer) and Changer (Speaker).  They Type determines your initial stat pools (still a total of 34 points, but with the base values altered a bit), suggests where you put your Power Shifts and what Focus you chose, and gives you additional Power Shifts and abilities as you rise through the tiers.  

Foci:  Surprisingly, Unmasked introduces relatively few new Foci; Flies by Night, Lives on the Dark Side, Travels back from the Future, and Wants to be Adored are the only new entries.  Groups will need to really on the core rulebook (and possibly Expanded Worlds) for these power suites, and given the nature of the genre, any applicable Foci from Numenera or The Strange as well.

What emerges is a superhero form that is an entirely different entity from the Teen character.  This recalls heroes like Shazam, Thor (in the old days), and the Hulk, and introduces all sorts of role-play contradictions.  The Teen and the Mask share memories, but do they share goals?  Values?  Agendas? Are they operating in concert or at odds?  These are character design questions each player will need to consider as they craft their Masks.

Once a Mask is made it forms an almost supernatural bond with its Teen.  It cannot be "lost," and will always somehow return to the Teen who made it.  It cannot be destroyed by anything other than another Mask.  If a normal human tries to destroy it, the Mask will miraculously survive.  Even for other Masks, it is a level 15 difficulty challenge to destroy a Mask; doing so unleashes an "explosion" of power only other Masks can sense, and creates a half dozen or so new Mementos (cyphers) in the area.  Removing a Mask from another Mask is also an epic task, with a difficulty of 10.  Note this means Unmasked follows the Superhero genre conventions in Cypher by expanding difficulties from 1 to 10 to 1 to 15.  Since normal humans lack Power Shifts, tasks beyond 7 remain nearly impossible.

Two other points need to be made about Masks.

First, a Mask cannot be killed.  It has a separate damage track from the Teen wearing it, and when its Pools are depleted, the Mask simply falls off.  It cannot be worn again until a recovery role is made, and though the Mask and the Teen have discrete damage tracks, they share their recovery rolls.  This could easily result in an exhausted and beaten Mask falling off of a Teen and leaving them vulnerable in the midst of battle.  Teens can be killed.

Second, the Mask advances using XP, not the Teen.  Despite this, the Teen can gain XP for the Mask by (for example) doing their homework and fitting in at school, keeping their connection to the Mask a secret, and keeping the whole Mask phenomenon under wraps.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Unmasked is very concerned with its setting, with the world the Masks inhabit and bringing it to life. More than half the book is devoted to this.

In broad strokes, this is a world in which Teens have gained impossible powers and are drawn into a secret war.  The game focuses on the 1980s as the backdrop, but other eras, such as the Roaring 20s, the 1960s, or even our own could be selected instead.  A modern campaign probably provides the biggest thematic challenges; how can we believe in a secret war in an age when everyone has cameras and the Internet?

Detailed rules are given to walk GMs through creating the town the Teens inhabit and the high schools they attend; rural like Smallville?  Suburban like Buffy?  Urban like Spider-man Homecoming?  Something else?  There is ample support in the book to craft these key elements of the setting however you like.  

Also to be considered is the nature of what is going on.  Where do these Masks come from?  Who is the villainous Prester John?  Are their evil Masks to fight?  What do the police know?  What does the government know?  Unmasked walks you through all of this, and your choices will make each campaign unique.  Your game could be a supernatural one like Buffy, connected to alien technology like Smallville, extra-dimensional like Stranger Things, or a half dozen other options.  

Unmasked offers guidelines for making these choices and then structuring the campaign around them, Tier by Tier, to build a satisfying arc.  To my mind, this is where Unmasked shines the brightest.  It painstakingly details how to guide the players through becoming Masks, mastering their powers, encountering their first threats, dealing with the Big Picture, and confronting the final foe.  Several model campaign arcs are outlined, as well as a complete example campaign setting.  Since the rules are already covered in the core rulebook, Unmasked devotes its bulk to actually using those rules to create a vibrant campaign.  It is a page count well-spent.

If you have been itching to play superheroes in Cypher, this is the perfect opportunity to do it.  Dennis Detwiller has proved the old adage wrong by making lighting strike twice.  While Godlike and Unmasked are light years apart in many ways, both are stories of ordinary young people dragged into massive and monstrous conflicts by powers they struggle to understand and control.  They are both extraordinary tales of superhumans (and come to think of it, Unmasked would work very well in Godlike's WWII setting as well).  I highly recommend Unmasked to lovers of the Cypher system and lovers of the supers genre.  It doesn't disappoint.

NUMENERA ADVENTURE: "THE SEVEN GEMINI"

THE SEVEN GEMINI

A Numenera Adventure Inspired by

Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai" and

Sturge's "The Magnificent Seven"

Andrew Logan Montgomery

Voice Over Narration;

"I AM DYING AN OLD MAN'S DEATH.  Some might say a "coward's death."  It is not clean or quick, it is without honor and empty of glory.  I've lost control of my bladder and my bowels.  My teeth are gone.  And the cancer devouring my insides has already taken most of me.  It is no warrior's death.  But then I have never been a warrior.  

Except, of course, that once.

All my recent memories are blurry and gray, but the long ago ones are clear, and more real to me than the faces of those passing in and out of my hut waiting for me to die.  I see them vividly.  I feel them.  As I near the end I relive them.  

And it's not the loss of my virginity, nervous and fumbling in the field behind the yol pens, it's not the feeling of my first child cradled in my arms, not even the last rattling breath of my wife on her deathbed that I remember.  No, it is them; the Seven.  I relieve the days them came to Sardaurar.

They were wanderers and killers, hands soaked with blood.  They had left a trail of death and ruin behind them.  They were adventurers who robbed ancient ruins for their bread.  Were they good?  Were they evil?  Even now I cannot say.  But they changed us, changed me.  They were bold and they were brave, they were things a farmer never dreamed of being.

And now, in my dreams, they live again..."

SARDAURAR is a small village located in the Beyond.  Where, exactly, is up to you, the game master.  As written, it assumes some place rocky, dry, and desolate, but there is nothing stopping you from moving the setting to a fetid swamp, frozen tundra, or somewhere even stranger.

Gemini is written with four to seven players in mind; seven would be iconic, but unnecessary.  The characters should be Tiers 2 or 3.  Knowledge of either The Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven is useful for the game master, but not required for the players.  Players who do know the story may enjoy the twists the scenario takes, however.

SCENE ONE: TWO-LEGGED LOCUSTS

The players start out as NPCs rather than their own characters.  This is a technique I personally love and that my players really get excited about, but may not be for every group.  I strongly recommend giving it a try.

Each player is given a farmer to play.  Start at the top of the list and work your way down;

1. Calen: Mid-thirties, the de facto "leader" of the village.  Calen is a quiet man, and timid, but the recent depredations by the bandits has pushed him to the every edge.  He wants blood, but knows he doesn't have the power to extract it.  His powerlessness torments him.  
2. Gemdar: Mid-thirties.  Gemdar is the closest thing Calen has to a rival.  He questions nearly all of Calen's decisions, sometimes heatedly.  It isn't hate that drives him, but jealousy.  Calen--in his opinion--has always been luckier than him, with better land and better livestock.  If Gemdar only had the same breaks, he'd be village headman.
3. Sejon: Around thirty.  Sejon is Calen's right hand man.  While not a yes man per se, he agrees with almost everything Calen says and very seldom questions his friend.  His favorite lines are "Calen is right," and "yes, I  agree" (when Calen speaks).
4. Vejris: Early seventies.  Still vigorous, he is the oldest man in the village and people are always looking to him for wisdom.  Calen never makes a decision without asking his zen-like bits of advice.
5. Hebro: Early thirties.  Rotund, jovial, and constantly cracking jokes, Hebro is nine times out of ten a bit tipsy on Huskerale.  He generally goes along with Calen's decisions unless they require him to stick his neck out or put in extra effort.  He then tries to brush these requests off with humor, and if forced to do them, sulks.
6. Toryu: Fifteen.  Toryu just passed the manhood rites in the spring and is eager to prove himself to the rest of the men.  A clever young man, he is still naive and inexperienced, and mixed with a short temper this is a dangerous combination.  
7. Venn: Nine.  Venn is Toryu's shadow, constantly following the older boy around, looking up to him, imitating him, trying to be more like him.  He is also a very bright and curious boy, always looking around while working in the fields wondering things like; "where do the mountains come from?"  "How hot is the sun?"

NPC STATS

Most of these NPCs are level 2 (6) with 4 (12) in Farming and Area Knowledge. Little Venn is 1 (3).  When players take on NPCs like these, assume they have a single Stat Pool equal to 10 + Target Number, with Edge = Level/2 and Effort = Level.  Calen is Specialized in Farming and Area Knowldge; Vejris is Specialized in Area Knowledge and Zen Like Wisdom; the others are all Trained in Farming and Area Knowledge.

BAKING UNDER THE BALEFUL ORANGE EYE OF THE SUN, the men of Sardaurar are tilling the thankless dust, planting Huskweed.  Huskweed is a hemp-like plant with all the medicinal and practical applications, as well as producing eggplant shaped seed pods that contain hundreds of kernels like corn.  These are used to make liquor and tortilla-like flatbread.  The village is extremely poor, eking out a living on Huskweed and a few flocks of Yols (Bestiary, p. 12).  They live in cool, domed huts made of adobe, with no luxuries and only modest possessions.  Trade with neighboring communities earns them a few extra shins used to purchase what they cannot make or grow.

And now their thankless lives have been made a hell.  A band of mercenaries and bandits, led by the alluring Augur exile known as Kala Vera, has descended upon them.  For weeks now they have camped in the jagged hills to the north, sweeping into the village to demand huskweed bread and ale, yol milk and meat.  They have demanded even worse.  To protect them after the first attack, and it's string of brutal rapes, the men have sent the women away.  They are trying to endure the bandits as best they can, hoping they will move on.  But so far, the bandits have stayed.

Kala Vera 5 (15)

Motive: Provide for her men, find Numenera for her clients, recover lost Augur artifacts for herself

Health: 25

Damage: 5 points.

Armor: 3

Modifications: Defends at level 6 due to a psychic energy shield.

Combat: Fights with a psychic blade that ignores physical armor.

Interaction: Kala Vera is cool and aloof but not arrogant or overbearing.  As a two-hundred-year old Augur she feels superior to humans, but knows they outnumber her people and acts accordingly.  She is currently working for the Angulan Knights, searching for the lost Gemini chambers buried somewhere in these hills, and determined to get them to get paid and feed her men.  She is loyal to them, and them to her.

Cyphers: 1d3+1

Artefacts: 1d2

Bandits 4 (12) (group of three)

Health: 18 (every six points lost, one bandit in the group dies)

Damage: 4 points

Armor: 2

Combat: There are eight groups of bandits (24 men total).  They can fight with both ranged weapons and melee.

Cyphers: 1d3 per group 

In scene one, Kala Vera and her bandits return to Sardaurar to demand more supplies.  The players assume the roles of the villagers.  Nearly all their food is gone at this point and they desperate.  After taking the food and drink they want, the bandits will demand some women.  These of course have been sent away.  When she hears this, Kala Vera says the young boys will have to do.  And sends her men to collect 1d6 of them.  The villagers may try to fight this.  Either way, it should be 

played to leave a bad taste in the players' mouths...

SCENE TWO: CHASED BY THE WIND

CROSSING THE WASTES the player character spy a cloud on the horizon.  It is a reddish mass, swirling in weird geometric patterns.  Rust red, it nevertheless catches the light of the sunset with thousands of metallic sparkles.  The cloud is moving against the wind in their direction.  The PCs might recognize it 3 (9).  It's the Iron Wind.

The only sane choice is to run.  Roll a 1d3+3.  This is the number of rolls it will take to escape.  These are Speed rolls, and to represent the erratic nature of the Iron Wind, each time the Level is random (roll a d6).  After two failed rolls, the Iron Wind is upon them.  A third failed roll results in hideous death.  Play up the horrific effects of the wind as it mutates the landscape and plant life behind them.

The final Speed roll is a leap across a narrow chasm.  The Iron Wind cannot (or will not) cross this.  Once safely across they spy a small village ahead.  This is Sardaurar.

SCENE THREE: A PEOPLE BESIEGED

The player characters now get to interact with the NPCs they played during the introduction.  The villagers are understandably shy when these wanderers come in, and have little food and drink to offer.  They are stand offish and sullen, and it is soon easy to notice that there are no women present.  Winning Calen’s trust will get him to open up about the bandits.

To spice things up a bit, have the player characters make Level 3 Intellect rolls (Jacks step this down to Level 2).  Success means they have heard of Kala Vera…she is not a bandit, but a well known Numenera hunter.  If she is loitering in the area, it is likely she is after something big.

The villagers will pretend to not know what this is. They could be persuaded by a die roll (Level 5) but it would be much more satisfying to have the PCs win he trust of the villagers first.

SCENE FOUR: A HARD LIFE

This is a roleplay-heavy section.  The PCs sleep and spend the next day in the village, seeing how the villagers live.  If they haven’t noticed the absence of women, it should become obvious now.  Also, the town has a small Order of Truth Sanctum, but it looks recently abandoned and has no Aeon Priest.

The PCs may also wish the scout the hills for bandits.  This is a Level 4 task.  With a success, they find Kala Vera’s camp and are able to survey it from the hills unnoticed.  On a 19 or 20, the GM might have the character spy a pair of young girls gathering water at a stream as they return the the village.  If they follow these girls, they enter a jagged ravine in the hills and vanish through a holographic door in the sheer wall of the cliff.  See “Scene Five” for details.

OPTION: Teaching the Villagers to Fight.  

It is entirely possible that the PCs, true to the spirit of the films that inspired this story, will want to train the villagers to fight back.  This could be a fun roleplaying opportunity.  Glaives are obviously the most qualified for the job, but Jacks might teach dirty tricks.  The villagers only have hoes and farm tools, but ingenious players may want to design traps of various kinds.  Take your time and enjoy playing this out.

SCENE FIVE: THE SEVEN GEMINI

Kala Vera is looking for an ancient cavern in the hills, a series of smooth round passages and dome shaped rooms bored into the living stone.  In the largest chamber are seven crystal standing stones, each about three meters tall and one meter wide.  These are the Seven Gemini.

The village’s Aeon Priestess, Kinara, is here, along with all the women and girls of the village.  They are hiding out in the caves and also keeping guard over the Gemini.  The Gemini possess a strange and terrible power, an ability that makes them attractive to army builders.  They clone, instantly, anyone who stands facing one of them with their eyes closed and palms pressed against the smooth crystal surface.

Except these are not clones…the crystals actually abduct an alternate version of the summoner from a parallel universe.  The abductee appears inside the crystal and soon emerges.  There is no limit to the number of times this can be done.  Thousands of alternate versions of people could be conjured from them.

Unfortunately, it is a one-way trip, and if the summoned “twin” attempts to use the crystals, he or she is instantly destroyed.

Be sure to have fun with this.  The GM should prepare notes on alternate versions of the player characters, just in case one or more of them decides to try the device.  These could be slightly different versions of the characters (A Jack who became a Nano in his alternate universe, a straight warrior whose alternate is gay, etc) or full on “evil twins” as in the Star Trek “Mirror” universe stories.  It is key though that the GM run these characters…each is free willed with his or her own agenda, and probably not happy with having been ripped from their existence and stranded in this one.

SCENE SIX: CONFRONTATION  

At some point, the players will want to storm Kala Vera’s camp, or more likely, repel her next attack against the village.  If the villagers have been trained and fight alongside the PCs, lower the effective level of the Bandits one step.  

Kala Vera will try to negotiate if things are going against her.  It turns out she is being paid by a wealthy faction (the Knights Angula in my campaign, but the Convergence is another likely candidate) to recover the Gemini and is willing to split the profits.  Failing this, she will try to escape with her life, especially if more than half her forces are killed.

AFTERMATH:  If the villagers fight, at least a few of them should die to keep the drama up.  One of the survivors--preferably one of the young boys--should be revealed to grow up to be the narrator of the tale, however.