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.

NUMENERA: JIHAD, "THE CROSSROADS"

EVERY STORY BENEFITS from twists and turns.  They are what keep us tuned in, turning pages, or--in table top gaming--turning up.  I have been trying to run Jihad in the style of television programmes like Buffy, Babylon V, or more recently Doctor Who, shows that contain distinct stories each week but in addition link into longer arcs.  Obviously, inside the stories themselves there are plot twists to keep the audience on its toes, but you also need a few in the larger arc to keep that interesting too.  Crossroads follows hard on the heels of just such a twist.  The Amber Pope prophesied the rise of a terrible threat in the north at the start of the first session.  Six more sessions in, it turns out the players themselves are responsible for releasing it.  

Now, the thing that is unique about table-top gaming is that the characters are people with minds and wills of their own.  The argument can be made--and I have often made it--that this holds true of characters in any tale.  In my experience at least, characters are feisty little buggers that happily rebel when the author foolishly tries to make them do what they think they wouldn't or shouldn't.  But in gaming, the characters are sitting right there staring at you instead of whispering in your head.  The good gamemaster (and no, I am not qualifying that with an "in my opinion") understands that everyone at the table is co-authoring the tale, and needs to let them cut their own path through the jungle.  Nobody likes railroading, the primary characteristic of the weaker GM.

So after having the equivalent of a narrative atomic bomb blow up in their faces, it was time to pull way back and turn over a session to them in which they could digest the twist in the narrative arc and figure out how to respond.  As all GMs know, this can be tricky...because the players are expecting a story as well.

Crossroads kicks off with one of my favourite GMing dirty tricks.  Since the party was split the last session, and because we were introducing a new character, I had two parallel threads  to bring back together.  So we start with Myrna, our Graceful Jack Who Fights With Panache, coming to from unconsciousness in a make-shift cell.  She is a prisoner of the Angulan Knights, along with a frightened twelve-year old girl from one of the local tribes, and a pale, red-eyed stranger.  She has no idea how she got there; the last thing she remembers was going into the Box that housed Bilu-sha-ziri. As her player couldn't make the last session, I used an intrusion here to put her in the cell and explain her absence.

And the dirty trick?  To keep the three other players engaged while their characters were off somewhere else, I put them in the roles of an Angulan Knight, her Knight Commander, and the Aeon Priest chaplain assigned to them.

In Jihad the Knights Angulan take the place of the Knights Templar.  Though they follow the Truth taught by the Aeon Priests, they are a separate order altogether.  The Papacy teaches the eventually re-ascension of Man; the Knights Angulan go a step further and claim that cannot happen so long as the race is "impure."  They are mutant hunters, abhuman killers, and ISIS-like zealots.  Historically, they have uneven relations with the Order of Truth, but with the Amber Pope's declaration of the Gaian Crusade, an agreement has been reached.  The Knights have put their considerable military muscle at the Order's disposal, in return for the Papacy's sanction allowing them to freely hunt the impure throughout the Steadfast.

Myrna, thanks to an artefact in her possession, has a mutation.  So apparently do the two other prisoners.  When she comes to in her cell, it is just hours before the Knights launch their assault on the Scorpion Sanctum.  The very first scene puts her in an uncomfortable position.  Two of the guards, not Knights themselves but mercenaries employed by them, decide that while the Knights are readying for the assault they have time to have a bit of fun with the prisoners. They decide the little girl is easier pickings.  But Myrna is having none of it.  Despite being injured and unarmed, she lays into the pair as they enter the cell she shares with the girl.  Deftly lifting a dagger from one's belt to slit his throat and then using his dropped sword to run the other one through.  

She fights with panache, remember?  It didn't hurt that her player got lucky with rolling a pair of 20s.

Lifting the keys from the fallen guards, she releases the third prisoner and a new protagonist; Hanna, an Exiled Glaive Who Siphons Power.  Hanna hails from the Beyond, and his mutation makes him an energy vampire, draining power from both numenera and living things.  Naturally, he doesn't disclose this up front.

The trio decide that discretion is the better part of valour, and led by the tribal girl, slip from the camp into the wastes.  Mid-escape, they are spotted by the Aeon Priest chaplain...but as a quiet sign that the alliance between the Order and the Knights is not entirely a  harmonious one, he turns a blind eye to their escape.

Now we shift scenes.  Several hours later, Lugar of the Marked Name (our Wasteland Glaive Who Knows Too Much), Karasht (our Charming Nano Who Works Miracles), and Beatrix (our Impulsive Jack Who Fuses Flesh And Steel), have just escaped Bilu-sha-ziri's extra dimensional prison, allowing him to escape as well.  They emerge in the midst of the Knights Angulan laying waste to the Scorpion Sanctum around them.  Bilu-sha-ziri effortlessly destroys the Knights before flying north, leaving his three "rescuers" to pick the cypher and artefact rich corpses of the fallen Knights.  Since they are on the edge of the Cloudcrystal Skyfields, in the lands of Lugar's own people--the Sha'sara--they decide to seek them out for help in escaping the wastelands.

THE SHA'SARA (A Wasteland Culture)

A nomadic people who roam the Fallen Fields and the foothills of the Black Riage, the Sha'sara survive by herding flocks of yols (see "Livestock," p. 12 of The Ninth World Bestiary) and gathering desert plants like the uwama.  They are not above supplementing their diet and supplies by raiding settlements along the wastes.  Matriarchal, men are considered too temperamental and emotional to lead, and instead serve the women as warriors and labourers.  Sha'sara women--either through mutation or contact with some numenera in the distant past--possess the ability to decide whether or not they wish to conceive, giving them ultimate power over the continuance of the tribe.  They are thus polyandrous, and wealthier matriarchs may have up to half a dozen husbands.

The Sha'sara do not follow the Truth, though they can speak Tru, the lower form of the language associated with it.  Instead, they worship the crystals of the Skyfields themselves, which they believe house the spirits of ancestors as well as the yet-to-be-born.  Their shamanesses, the Listeners, interpret the resonances of the crystals to predict future events.  The only men who hold spiritual positions are the half-insane Vajra-Ajari, who are regarded with cautious fear.  

The Sha'sara are easily recognised by their ochre colour robes, and the eerie phosphorescent body paint their employ drawn from uwama berries.  These intricate designs mark tribe, clan, and status. 

Lugar leads his friends across the wastes following Sha'sara trail markers, and by nightfall they make the encampment.  We discover Lugar's mother is actually the wealthiest and most influential of the tribe's matriarchs, but not particularly pleased to see him.  We also discover that Myrna and Hanna are here as well, since the little girl they rescued was Sha'sara as well.  Reunited, they catch up on all that has happened and consider where to go from here.

And this is where player agency comes in, and as a GM you need to be flexible.  Having designed a campaign in which a massive, epic crusade is slowly brewing, the group decided they want none of it.  Their plan is to find a pass across the Black Riage and strike out into the Beyond, as far away from the shifting politics of the Steadfast as they can get.  Putting distance between themselves and the fallen god they just released made sense to them as well.  The group's response to the plot twist was to escape it.

To that end they ask the tribe for help.  They need provisions and a good pass across the mountains.  But the Sha'sara have a price.  

Some of their men, on a raiding party, have been taken by the goatish abhumans known as Margr (p. 244 of Numenera).  Brutal and frightening prolific, I decided to borrow a page from my favourite Gloranthan monster, the Broo.  In Jihad there are no female Margr, and the males reproduce by rape.  They can rape any animal, male or female, and their hideous seed steals DNA from the host organism to create one to five hybrids.  Female victims have, on occasion, survived Margr birth.  Male victims never do, torn open from inside as their offspring wriggle out.  The Sha'sara want their men back.

The Margr, who like Games Workshop's Chaos Beastmen owe their inspiration to RuneQuest's horrifying Broo

The party then tracks the Margr to their nest, and engages them in battle.  Karasht, meanwhile, uses his Alleviate power to "cure" the impregnated male victims in a grotesque scene that liquifies the offspring and expels them as a stinking black goo.  Their end of the bargain upheld, they lead the male Sha'sara back to the tribe.

Next time...they cross the mountains.

CYPHER SYSTEM CONVERSIONS: The Doctor (Doctor Who)

The Doctor is a Rebel Time Lord Who Outwits Adversaries

REBEL

You have issues with authority. Willful and independent, you refuse to take orders from anyone but yourself. This quality doesn’t necessarily make you a criminal; you will follow rules and conventions if they make sense to you, but if they don't you have no trouble ignoring them. You may or may not be a freedom fighter, taking on what you perceive as tyranny. Regardless, you likely dress and act with unique style and air, not caring what others think. You gain the following characteristics:

Willful: +4 to your Intellect Pool.

Skill: You’re trained in resisting attempts to manipulate or intimidate you.

Skill: You’re trained in tasks requiring you to talk yourself out of trouble. Inability: Your ego sometimes gets in your way. When dealing with authority figures--leaders, bosses, commanders, etc--the difficulty of all social tasks is raised one step.

Initial Link to the Starting Adventure: From the following list of options, choose how you became involved in the first adventure.

- You threw in with the other PCs because you saw that they were resisting some form of authority.

- One of the other PCs convinced you that joining the group would be in your best interests.

- You’re afraid of what might happen if the other PCs fail.

- Helping the others inconveniences someone you are opposed to.

Time Lord (Prydonian Chapter)

Are the "Time Lords" a race, or a profession? The television program has never made it clear. Certainly, not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords. In both the classic series and recent episodes, some live comparatively primitive lives in the wilderness outside of the Citadel. This version, then, assumes that Time Lords are not born, they are made by attending graduating the Academy. Obviously, other assumptions are possible.

Based on the Doctor, we might call this the "Prydonian" build (his Chapter at the Academy). Noted for their manipulativeness and political skill, we are suggesting a Speaker with the Technology Flavor.

Regeneration: Time Lords can bear two cyphers. However, we are counting "Regeneration" as one of them. Time Lords are imbued (or promised they will be) with Regeneration energy at several points in the series, and it is clearly something that is expended once used. This ability then is treated as a subtle cypher with twelve "doses." When the Time Lord reaches death, or near death, it can be voluntarily triggered. Doing so simultaneously triggers all remaining recovery rolls in a burst of energy. The character assumes a new appearance (possibly even gender), with a new set of personality quirks. He or she cannot regenerate again until resting and restoring all recovery rolls (thus the Time Lord can still die unless retreating from danger). The power can be used twelve times, after which further regenerations can only be obtained from the Time Lord High Council.

Outwits Adversaries

This is simply "Calculates the Incalculable" with a new name.

Might: 15 (Edge: 0)

Speed: 20 (Edge: 2)

Intellect: 33 (Edge: 5)

Effort: 6

Skills: Resist Manipulation/Intimidation T, Talk Your Way Out Of Trouble T, Seeing Through Deception T, Persuading T, Time Capsule Piloting S, Time Capsule Repair T, Practiced with Light and Medium Weapons

Abilities: Encouragement (1 Int), Fast Talk (1 Int), Spin Identity (2 Int), Understanding (2 Int), Hacker (2 Int), Scramble Machine (2 Int), Tinker (1 Int), Tool Mastery, Babel, Impart Ideal (3 Int), Grand Deception (3 Int), Mind Reading (4 Int), Confounding Banter (4 Int), Flee (6 Int), Jury Rig (5 Int), Predictive Equation (2 Int), Predictive Model (2+ Int), Subconscious Defense, Cognizant Offense, One Step Ahead Of Everyone (6 Int)

Sonic Screwdriver (Artifact): Pick Locks T, Gather Information T, Turn On/Off Machines T

TARDIS (Artifact). A time capsule that can travel anywhere in time and space, is infinitely large on the inside, and can blend into its surroundings to escape notice.

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NUMENERA: JIHAD - "THREE SANCTUMS" and "FALLEN STAR"

I don't often run published scenarios or campaigns.  As a gamemaster, I get the same pleasure building my stories from the ground up that players get from making their own characters.  Published scenarios are like pre-generated characters; you can put your own "take" on them, but they are never really going to be your own.  As a kid, of course, I ran things like The Keep on the Borderlands and The Isle of Dread, and later I took a stab at classics like Masks of Nyarlathotep and The Great Pendragon Campaign, but 99% of my games the last thirty odd years were my own invention.  

With the Numenera core rulebook adventure "Three Sanctums" I made an exception, not because it is a particularly brilliant scenario (it's good, but not great), but because it clicked into the story of Jihad so well.  Jihad begins with the Amber Pope's declaration of a Crusade against the Gaians, and the mysteries surrounding that.  The Order of Truth claims these simple animists and nature worshippers beyond the Cloudcrystal Skyfields are a threat, heretics who imperil the Nine Kingdoms of the Steadfast and the Truth. Yet anyone who has ever actually been in the far north finds these claims dubious at best.  So are the Order's motivations simply cynical and political?  Is it a scare tactic to strengthen power over the Nine Kingdoms?  Or is there something more to it...

In writing the campaign I decided to give the Order of Truth a "god" of sorts, the Eidolon. When Calaval entered the Amber Monolith he found himself transported to the heart of the Sun, a citadel called "the Throne."  A disembodied intelligence there--the Eidolon--revealed itself to him, taught him the Truth (both the language of the Men Who Went Before and the philosophy of the Order of Truth), and sent him back as the first Amber Pope.  The Eidolon claims to have been created by ancient humans in a previous world, humans whose science made them like gods, and further claims its agenda is to raise men up again to their former state.

Now, in Jihad the Eidolon is not simply an AI living in the Sun...it is the Sun, turned by these ancients into an actual intelligence. It was this decision that made "Three Sanctums" irresistible to me.

In a nutshell, "Three Sanctums" has the player characters robbed by the shadowy Convergence, as the group needs an artefact in the characters' possession.  The title refers to the Convergence's strongholds in the Steadfast, the Empty, Golden, and Scorpion Sanctums.  The characters go in pursuit, ending up at the Scorpion Sanctum.  There, the Magisters of the Convergence are using the stolen artefact to complete the Venerator...a device harnessing the power of something held in a black, room-sized box.  The twist?  The box (like the TARDIS) is bigger on the inside, much bigger...spanning hundreds of AUs (astronomical units) across.  It contains "Bilu-sha-ziri," the red giant star we know as Antares.  At some point in the distant past, the ancients stole the star and tucked it inside this box.  The Magisters think tapping it will give them some sort of ultimate power.

The previous paragraph sums up the published version.  Once I read it, however (and I didn't actually read it until the latter stages of writing Jihad), the Amber Pope's crusade all fell into place.  Ideological rivals of the Order of Truth, the Convergence has been persecuted and hounded for centuries in much the same way the Inquisition hounded heretics.  Despite their own power, they have never been able to get the better of the Order, because the Order has an actual god on their side.  When the Magisters discovered Bilu-sha-ziri, what they found wasn't just a "star."  It was another "uplifted" stellar intelligence, a being exactly like the Eidolon.  They made a pact with it, and the Venerator was a device to channel its power.  

Unfortunately for the Magisters, Bilu-sha-ziri was imprisoned in the box for a reason.  Unlike the Eidolon, this stellar AI is psychopathic.  What it really wants is a way out of its prison.

My players and I went through this story in two sessions.  The first, "Three Sanctums," was a straightforward running of the published adventure.  The artefact taken was a bronze automaton in the shape of a young boy, an artificial intelligence the characters discovered back in the first scenario.  The Venerator (in both my version and the published one) currently is powered by human brains, but these are unstable and burn out.  The Magisters need a dependable AI that can bear the strain.  

The players go in pursuit.  At the Empty Sanctum they get separated; most teleported on to the Scorpion Sanctum, but the Nano, Emerson, getting transported to the Golden Sanctum.  It turns out the Magisters of the Golden Sanctum are not quite down with the whole plan to harness Bilu-sha-ziri's power, and send Emerson back to help stop them.

At the Scorpion Sanctum we find our trio of Magister conspirators, Mnoma, Iom, and Juthes.  Mnoma and Iom are still basically following the script; harness the star's power and use it for their designs.  Juthes, secretly, has fallen completely under the star's influence and worships him like a dark god.  He is going along with his cohorts until such time as he can betray them and release his new master.

It doesn't play out this way.  The player characters kill off Iom, who is outside the box manning the Venerator, and then go inside the box to see what it is.  Just as with the published version, getting into the box is easy, but once you do, you find yourself millions of miles from the nearest wall.  The way out is Mnoma and Juthes, who are inside the box.  But at this point Juthes makes his play and the characters end up killing both he and Mnoma...leaving themselves stranded inside the prison with Bilu-sha-ziri...

The next session was called "Fallen Star."  With two players unable to make the game (the Nano, Emerson, and the Jack, Myrna) it was time for a clever Intrusion.

The group awakes on the rocky surface of a planetoid in orbit around Bilu-sha-ziri...now near the centre of the box and much farther from escape.  The star itself seems to have brought them there, and its influence over one of the characters--Lugar--is growing.

Lugar, an outlander barbarian from the Cloudcrystal Skyfields, was created with the "Knows Too Much" focus from the sourcebook, Celestial Wisdom.  In essence, at some time in the character's past he fell under the influence of a god who is guiding him towards some purpose.  Our basic understanding was that this god was Vajra Ajar (see the photo below).  But now, in flashbacks, we see that the boy Lugar was left raving and mad after his encounter with Ajar...until a young Magister from the Scorpion Sanctum, Mnoma, came to collect him.  The god guiding him has been Bilu-sha-ziri all along.

The party is led to caverns beneath the planetoid's surface, where they are eventually attacked by nasty, spider-like robots.  These turn out to be the defence mechanisms of another Magister, Uwan, who opposed Juthes, Iom, and Mnoma and was imprisoned here in the box as a consequence.  He has a way out, but needs their help.  Working together they escape...

Re-emerging, they find the Scorpion Sanctum under attack by the airborne Angulan Knights.  The Order has made an alliance with these racial purists, and they have expanded their attacks from mutants and abhumans to heretics as well.  They have devastated the Sanctum, and it looks like the player characters have gone from frying pan to fire.

Until Uwan simply waves his arms and all the Xi-Drake riding knights fall burning from the sky.  Uwan reveals his true nature--he is none other than Bilu-sha-ziri himself in a synthetic humanoid vessel.  He thanks the players for liberating him, promises to not "forget" them, and vanishes. 

The player characters, then, are the harbingers of the Apocalypse.  The Amber Pope's Crusade was based on the Eidolon's projections of a godlike power rising in the North to challenge the Order.  Now that Bilu-sha-ziri is free, he is heading north to fulfil that prophecy.

And Jihad shifts into high gear.