TORG ETERNITY: A REVIEW

BACK IN 1990 a coalition of alien realities invaded Earth.  The territories seized by these invaders were altered, so that reality worked there like their home universes, rather than ours.  By converting our world to something more like theirs, they drained the planet's "Possibility energy," the very stuff that makes growth and change happen.  Their goal was to eventually drain the entire planet dry.

But reality forms its own antibodies.  Rare individuals were gifted with the ability to manipulate Possibility energy, and to resist the transformative effects of the alien realms.  Called "Storm Knights" they fought back against the invasion and eventually ended it.  These battles were called "the Possibility Wars," and the roleplaying game that portrayed them was called Torg.

Now, 27 years later, it is all happening again on a different, parallel Earth.  This isn't Torg Second Edition.  It's another Earth, another Possibility Wars, and Torg Eternity is not at all the same game.  If you are looking for a new edition of Torg, this isn't it.  

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and we've seen it before.  Trail of Cthulhu is not Call of Cthulhu; Heroquest is not Runequest (or 13th Age Glorantha for that matter).  These are very different systems that just happen to share settings.  Torg and Torg Eternity occupy the same multiverse--indeed, there is some suggestion that at least one refugee from the Torg parallel Earth has ended up in this one--but they don't have the same feel and they are not interested in the same things.

THE SECOND POSSIBILITY WARS

In Torg Eternity, the basic premise is the same.  Seven alien realities have invaded the Earth to rob it of its Possibility energy.  Each of these realities is governed by a High Lord, an individual bound to his or her own "Darkness Device," ancient engines that allow you to bend reality to your will while vampirizing that same reality.  Each High Lord, in their greedy little hearts, dreams of becoming the "Torg," a High Lord who drains enough Possibility energy to become one with his or her Darkness Device and ascend into a kind of dark godhood.

The problem is that like in Highlander, "there can be only one."  Only one High Lord will get to be the Torg.  Their uneasy alliance is masterminded by the most ancient of their number, the nameless "Gaunt Man" who has already drained countless worlds and now has his eyes set on Earth.  Unusually rich in Possibility energy, draining Earth is sure to make him the Torg.  Yet because Earth is so rich in Possibility energy, Earth's reality fights back harder against invasion.  This requires a coordinated attack by multiple High Lords and realities.  

The Gaunt Man's own reality is Orrorsh, a realm of Victorian, gothic horror.  Seizing the Indian subcontinent, he turns back the clocks there to the late 19th century and makes it a land of dark magics and fear.  Across the globe in North America, huge regions have been converted into a prehistoric, "lost world" reality of savagery and shamanism.  Northern Europe has been transformed into Asyle, a high fantasy medieval reality.  France and Spain have been claimed by the Cyberpapcy, a futuristic cyberpunk reality where the corrupt Avignon Papacy trumped over the one in Rome and now leads an Inquisition-style theocracy.  Russia has been carved up by a post-apocalyptic reality dominated by Nietzschean demons.  Much of Africa has been converted into a 1930s, pulp comic realm that is a cross between Casablanca, The Shadow, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.  And in East Asia, a realm of espionage, conspiracy, and Resident Evil type horror has taken hold under the auspices of the shadowy Kanawa Corporation.

People caught up in these reality invasions were stripped of their Possibility energy and converted into residents of that realm.  People trapped in the prehistoric North American Living Lands, for example, were turned into stone age tribesmen.  Each reality has its own Axioms--Magic, Social, Spirit, and Tech--that regulate what is possible.  Bring your smartphone into the African 1930s Nile Empire and it will simply start working...or be converted into a clunky phone from that period.  

Of course not everyone caught in these invasions was converted.  Reality fights back, and some rare individuals--namely the player characters--are gifted with the ability to resist the conversion powers of the realms and to impose their own will (to an extent) on reality.  Called Storm Knights, these characters can go dinosaur hunting in the Living Lands without being changed into cavemen.  They can also make their guns work there.  This risks creating contradictions, however, and can even lead to disconnection from your own reality.  The Storm Knights are recruited by a global agency called the Delphi Council, whose sole purpose is to coordinated the remaining forces of Earth to repel the invaders.

Aside from a few minor tweaks--moving Orrorsh to India or adding a mutating zombie virus to the high tech espionage reality in the Far East--Torg and Torg Eternity are largely on the same page.  The biggest change, really, is "Core Earth," the 21st century reality being invaded.  Unlike the Core Earth in Torg, Eternity's Earth is already a cinematic mirror of our own, where action films like Die Hard or The Fast and the Furious could actually happen.  In addition, because they come from a world so rich in Possibility energy, Core Earth characters are actually better at bending reality and resisting the power of the invading realms.

TORG VS. ETERNITY   

But for all that they share, Torg and Torg Eternity are very different.

Torg was built around three key elements.  The first was a deck of cards that regulated the flow of combat, triggered special effects, and gave the player characters special tricks and stunts to perform.  The second was an innovative system of values and measurements, inspired by author Greg Gordon's previous work on DC Heroes.  This system meant that all the values in the game, like player character attributes or difficulty numbers, corresponded to an amount of weight, distance, time, or speed.  The third element, and the critical one in a game that is about alternate realities, was the concept of "World Laws."  Basically, when your characters entered different realms, the rules of the game changed.  Sessions played differently.  Fighting a zombie in the high fantasy reality of Asyle was very different than encountering a zombie in the gothic horror realm of Orrorsh.  In Asyle, the zombie was just another monster; in Asyle, the zombie would have a fear rating that until overcome crippled your characters as they fought it.  To overcome that rating, you might be forced to investigate it, gaining bonuses for the final confrontation.  Each realm had rules like this, changing the way the game played.  

Torg Eternity is really only interested in the card deck, which--though it is divided into two decks, one for regulating combat and one for player character stunts--still works the same.   Values and measures are no longer the heart of the game, but presented as a sort of optional afterthought.  World laws are still present, but work differently.  In many cases their effects have been shifted to cards that players can play in exchange for a reward of Possibility points (think hero points).  The effect is that each realm looks different, but pretty much works and feels the same.

The argument for this is the same one White Wolf made when it rebooted the World of Darkness line.  The original Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, et al occupied the same setting but had too many differences, too many individual rules.  Torg Eternity is governed by a more universal, seamless system, intended to ease play and make things more balanced.  It plays faster and more smoothly.  There are fewer charts and tables to consult and a lot less math.  Things that used to work very differently from each other, such as cyberware and martial arts, are now all handled by the same system and taken as Perks.  Eternity is easier to run and easier to play.

The cumulative effect of all this is greater consistency.  Torg Eternity--whose design team includes Shane Lacey Hensly of Savage Worlds fame--feels like Savage Worlds.  It's fast, furious, and fun.  On the other hand, using Savage Worlds as the engine for your Victorian horror game and your cyberpunk setting, both will still basically be Savage Worlds. This is the same in Torg Eternity.  Played in any of the realms, it is still basically the same Torg Eternity.  Each realm has the same high octane action movie feel.  There is nothing wrong with this, but it is a very different design choice than the one Torg made.

Given the choice, I will probably continue to play Torg.  Aside from the concept and setting, I am not sure what exactly makes Eternity different from Savage Worlds or the Cypher System.  It is, essentially, a universal rules system now which handles different genres pretty much the same way.  This is immensely disappointing, because the original game went to great lengths to make each genre different.  On the other hand, I don't think this opposite approach will make any difference to new players just coming to the game, who will enjoy it as a fast-paced action romp through multiple invading dimensions.  It's a good game.

I'm just not convinced it is a better game.

Three out of Five stars. 

STAR TREK DISCOVERY: SOME THOUGHTS ON ESPISODES 1 AND 2

BEWARE, AHEAD IT IS DARK AND SPOILERY UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE FIRST TWO EPISODES

Star Trek returns to the small screen by becoming something it hasn't been in a long time...relevant.

YOUR IDEAS ON STAR TREK probably depend on where you started.  Take, "continuity," for example.  If you began with The Next Generation, or any of the shows in that era like Deep Space Nine or Voyager, continuity is probably something you expect.  These were shows, after all, that adhered to a strict writer's bible.  If you began with the original series, however, continuity is not a big deal.  Star Trek was a show that made everything up as it went along. Klingons changing appearance?  Been there, done that.  Somewhere between The Animated Series and The Motion Picture they sprouted their bony brow ridges and somehow fans managed to survive.  Compare this with the Internet lamentations about the new Klingon appearance in Discovery.  

Continuity is one thing, but maybe the biggest difference between old school fans and those who started with the spin offs is what you think Trek is "about."  If the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Trek is a program about a bright, utopian future, where mankind has left savagery behind, you probably started with TNG.  The original series was a lot messier, often darker, with a Federation that struggled towards high ideals but was still plagued by very relatable problems.  Indeed, if you started with this Star Trek, your impression of the show is probably not so much a rosy vision of the future, but rather a social commentary on the difficulties of the present.  This is territory where The Next Generation was far more reluctant to go.

The first Star Trek was on TV in the middle of the civil rights era, and it did not shy away from tackling the hot button social issues of its era.  Racism, sexism, the Cold War, it's all addressed right there in the composition of the bridge crew. Female officers worked right alongside the men, from the first "Number One" to Lt. Uhura.  There was an Asian pilot and a black officer.  There was a Russian on board that no one was trying to kill.  Of the issues of that day, racism was perhaps the most commonly addressed, in multiple ways.  Sarek and Amanda had a mixed marriage and biracial child; "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was a blatant tale of skin color and prejudice; the first interracial kiss on television between Kirk and Uhura was not shown in many southern states.  We could go on and on, but the point is original Star Trek was social commentary in the form of stories about the future.  It was a mirror turned back on its audience.  

Which brings me to Discovery.

That there was actual Internet outrage over the diversity of the new cast shows us how necessary it is for Discovery to turn that same mirror on the modern Star Trek audience.  We are not, as a society, as evolved as we thought.  Fortunately, Discovery doesn't shy away from this, and stands right up alongside Star Trek in confronting our most pressing social issues.  It is right in your face with it.

Of course there is diversity; the two senior officers are women, one Asian and one Black, and we will have the first openly gay couple on Trek played by gay actors.  But frankly we expect by now Star Trek to beat the drum for diversity.  Diversity is just assumed to be part of the genre package, and we know Trek will always champion it, despite the noise made by Internet trolls.  Fortunately Discovery goes much further and is more specific in wrestling our present demons.  Nor does it waste any time.  Right there in the first two minutes it jumps right in.     

Would-be Klingon messiah T'Kuvma opens the series with a  speech that could easily have been made by any of the "very fine people" who brought their tiki torches to Charlottesville over the summer.  It's a monologue that would roll off the tongues of any of Europe's far right.  It could easily show up on Trump's teleprompter.  What it amounts to is a call to arms, a struggle between "nationalism" and "globalism."  T'Kuvma is arguing that traditional values of the Klingon Empire are under threat by a cosmopolitan coalition of diverse cultures (the Federation), that his people should reject diversity and "remain Klingon."  Embracing what the Federation represents would be "losing purity" awash in the "muck" of mixed races and cultures.  The Klingons must protect their uniqueness and their "heritage." 

This new Star Trek ain't playing around.  

And in First Officer Michael Burnham, we are thrown the second major curve ball to deal with.  "Where is the line," her story demands of us, "between mutiny/treason and doing the right thing?"  When does conscience and best intentions trump the letter of the law?

We can argue with her decision to run around Captain Georgiou and seize control of the ship, but in the wake of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, of whistleblowers and the near constant leaks of information from the White House, this is an issue that the original Star Trek would have taken on too.  Sometimes, if you believe in a course of action powerfully enough, right or wrong you break the chain of command.  "I thought saving your lives was more important than the principles of the Federation," Burnham tells us.  No, this is probably not something Will Riker would have done, but need I remind fans out there it is exactly something that Spock did.  To Kirk.  To bring his previous captain to Talos IV.  Maybe it all has something to do with the way Sarek is raising his kids?

It is too soon to tell where all this is going, but I found "The Vulcan Hello" and "Battle at the Binary Stars" a welcome return to classic Trek, not just in the old school swoosh sound effect of the doors or the beeps and whoops on the bridge, but in the challenging spirit of it.  Yes, this is a very modern Trek, with Abram's Kelvin Timeline effects, dizzying shots, and lots of movement--the entire thing looks like a big budget film--but it doesn't feel anything like the cinematic reboots.  It doesn't feel much like The Next Generation either.  It feels like a Trek ready to get its hands dirty again, a Trek ready to make us uncomfortable and to make us think.  Will it follow through on these difficult issues?  We have to wait and see.  

But I can't wait to see where it goes next.

  

  

        

GODZILLA RESURGENCE (SHIN GODZILLA) : A REVIEW

IT'S EASY TO FORGET, after decades of rubber-suited wrestling matches and plucky Japanese kids, that the original 1954 film Godzilla was a horror movie.  Most of you have likely never seen it.  Ishirō Honda's tale about a gigantic, radioactive monster that emerges from the deep to terrorise a nation is an exorcism. Just nine years after the end of the Second World War, Japan was still traumatised not only by the tens of thousands killed by the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but by the hundreds of thousands killed by the carpet bombing of its cities.  This was a country that had seen a staggering number of men, women and children burned alive, blasted to pieces, and crushed under rubble. A titanic, unstoppable monster with radioactive breath was the war personified, the collective echo of a million terrible memories.  It's a frightening movie, and a melancholy one.

The one that some of you probably do remember is the 1956 Godzilla! King of Monsters.  This was Honda's film severely edited, with all the social, nuclear, and anti-war elements carefully removed and English speaking Japanese Americans and Raymond Burr added in.  All the horror of the original was gone from this American-friendly adaptation; it wouldn't do, after all, to try and sell those "horror of war" bits to the very country that had bombed you.  A commercial success, this is the film that kicked off the "dumbing down" of Godzilla.  Soon there would be a crowd-pleasing match up against King Kong, followed by a long series of marauding kaiju, or giant monsters.  But throughout these Godzilla got cuter and cuter, dancing his little victory jig after saving Japan from the bad guy beasties, while adoring school kids cheered and yelled out his name.  This feel-good Godzilla wasn't just an international crowd pleaser, it was a proud Japanese export in an era where the country was known largely for cheap toys and transistor radios.  Godzilla became a kind of symbol of the rising Japan to the post-War baby boomer generation.

This isn't to say that there haven't been attempts to bring real terror back to the Godzilla franchise, or that some of the films didn't manage to sneak in social issues and concerns.  Yet the recent 2014 American Godzilla is pretty typical of what the films have become.  There is more action and thrills than pathos or terror.

シンゴジラ, or Shin Godzilla (plans to call the English release Godzilla Resurgence have apparently been scrapped by Toho and it will be released under the Anglicised spelling of its Japanese name) is the first Japanese Godzilla movie in twelve years, and a fresh reboot of the series.  The story bears no relation to the 2014 Hollywood version, or any of the Japanese versions before.  Writer-Director Hideaki Anno's film (co-directed with Shinji Higuchi) is a break with all the others, and the spiritual ancestor of the original Honda movie.  It is not a kids movie.  It's not a feel good movie.  There is more political drama than guys in rubber suits knocking down fake buildings.  It is a shockingly realistic film (half the time it looks like a documentary) that seems to ask one very compelling question...what the hell would really happen if a giant monster came shambling up out of the sea?

Like Honda's movie, there is a lot of collective soul searching, conscience wrestling, and trauma facing.  The film comes just five years after the historic earthquake and devastating tsunami that left more than ten thousand dead and a city irradiated.  It comes at a time when neighbouring China is flexing its military muscle right on Japan's doorstep.  It comes in the midst of an American election when one of the Presidential candidates seems ambivalent about looking out for his allies, and Japan fears having to go it alone.  And yes, it comes when the conservative leaning Japanese government is starting to think its long-standing "pacifist Constitution" needs amending.  All of this uncertainty, this fear, feeds into Shin Godzilla, making it a much deeper and richer film.

The plot is simple.  The sudden devastating collapse of the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line, a bridge and tunnel allowing traffic to cross the bay, leaves the government scrambling to figure out if this was a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.  Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Rando Yaguchi (played with steely certainty by Hiroki Hasegawa) has reason to believe it might actually have been caused by a giant creature.  No one believes this idea, of course, until a monstrous tail emerges from the waters of the bay, and later, the creature comes ashore.

One of the most frightening Godzillas ever

I say "creature" because this is not your father's Godzilla.  Drawing on the elements of alien body horror he fuelled his Evangelion series with, director Anno gives us a Godzilla that is a sort of colony organism, a sickening fusion of multiple forms of life bred in the polluted and irradiated depths of the Pacific.  The monster is constantly mutating.  He emerges first as a slithering, limbless horror and gradually, over the course of the film, evolves into something more similar to the Godzilla we know.  But this is not our irradiated dinosaur.  It is a hideous mess of rippling tendrils, ragged teeth, and even the suggestion of little eyes, mouths, and fused spines in the tip of its tail.  As it rampages, it keeps growing and adapting.

Note the tip of the monster's tail

Like Spielberg's Jaws, however, Godzilla actually has surprisingly little screen time in the film.  As with Jaws, Shin Godzilla is far more concerned with the repercussions a disaster like this might have and the way people might respond to it.  The beginning is a long political debate over the use of force, with politicians going head to head over it.  After the Japanese Defense Force fails against the creature, there is mounting pressure from the international community--and especially Japan's neighbours, who worry once this thing is done tearing up Japan they might be next on the menu.  What would happen if Beijing, fearing Godzilla might head its way, might decide a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Tokyo was in order?  These fears are intensified as the nature of the monster becomes clear, and the possibility that just blasting pieces of it off might cause them to grow into separate Godzillas.  All this leads to a long subplot with the Americans, who eventually arm twist the beleaguered Prime Minister into agreeing to a city wide evacuation of Tokyo so that a nuclear weapon can be dropped on it, and Japan--which is strongly against such a strike, races against time to find a solution before it comes to that.

I won't give away the ending, but it should be clear by now this is unlike most of the other Godzilla films before it.  That is a good thing.  It is not a flawless movie--Satomi Ishihara's character, "Kayoko Ann Patterson" who is the American President's special envoy, has some cringe-worthy moments when she tries to play her image of what a brassy American girl should be like--but it is probably the best Godzilla movie since Honda's.  It's effects, a mixture of CGI and traditional Japanese model making and guys in rubber suits, are excellent and have the feel of an authentic Godzilla film. Shirō Sagisu's score is excellent, and incorporates several notes from the original 1954 movie.  All in all this is the right blend of contemporary drama and nostalgia, a surprisingly adult and profound giant monster flick.

We give it four out of five stars.

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.