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Freak Legions: A Player's Guide to Fomori

Man, for a product that I thought would suck...

Freak Legions covers the fomori - humans who have been mutated by the Wyrm, the ultimate source of all evil. You're essentially a twisted mutant freak, trying to survive in your battle against whoever the Wyrm thinks needs killing today. Your lifepsan is probably going to be about five months, probably less, depending on what happens, and you're probably going to be in a world of hurt in the meantime.

Which makes playing a damned character a bit more interesting - rather than the artsy angst of Vampire, you're essentially going through Monster Adolescence, with new abilities that happen to make you look awful. (Methinks this analogy is getting just a little too accurate.) Want to play a misunderstood brute who likes killing people with a chainsaw and has acid skin? Freak Legions is your resource. Want to eel through the tunnels underneath the city, dripping slime from every pore? A Nosferatu vampire can do that, sure, but it's somehow just more satisfying to be a monster.

In any case, Freak Legions doesn't spend a lot of time on subtlety; the introductory comic features a man who literally vomits streams of flesh-eating worms onto people - some of whom are his family. (It's also a tribute of sorts to Married with Children, which definitely puts a different spin on the show.) The first sentence of the book is "It is only fair to warn you that this book is gross", and that's true - it is gross, but it's handled with restraint. It also says "Don't take this book seriously", and that's good advice too. As a matter of fact, the less angst you include, the more fun it is.

The rules for creating player-character fomori are actually part of the fun - besides the ability to get ahold of stuff like cyanide gas and an automatic staplegun (loaded with pieces of tainted fomori) as equipment, you pick your unlucky monster's ability from a list of powers, creating a debt, which is then paid off with Taints - various unpleasant effects, like Rotting, or Addiction, or Atrophy, or the dreaded Crusties. Powers run the gamut, from enhancing stats to simulating the powers of the Garou (regeneration, Rage and Gnosis) to the truly weird, like Mega-Strength, Shadowalking, Gaseous Form and, God help us, Savage Genitalia.

No, that last one is not a joke.

The only problem that I found with this section is that there's not nearly enough Taints - there's about forty-odd Powers, but only twenty Taints. That's not entirely a bad thing, but I found it limiting when I was creating a sample character. Besides that, Taints are just plain fun.

In case you don't feel creative, there's also pre-generated fomori breeds - Brain-Eaters, Enticers, Gorehounds, Freakfeet, Hollow Men (nasty!), and others. Most are pretty good - for example, the Hollow Men are both inspired, gross and terrifying - while others, like the Sicklungs, strike me as a concept that should have died on the drawing board. (Ex-smoker Fomori who spread cancer, essentially. Yeah, I thought that it was silly too.) The Throwbacks are the most interesting - jocks who, in their quest for physical perfection, wind up as mutant neanderthals. That's the kind of pursue-your-own-ambition-into-monstrosity that attracts me to Freak Legions; you're not just randomly taken over by a Bane that hopped out of a soda machine, you got into it yourself.

Speaking of which, that's one of the problems of Freak Legions - or, at least, the conception of fomori as they were in the early days of Werewolf. To wit, it's mentioned in the introduction that fomori can be genuinly innocent people who just happened to have a Bane attach itself to them, turning them into bloodthirsty freaks. It removes the element of personal responsibility that lends itself well to guilt - you didn't just get jumped and converted; you got into this of your own free will, and now that it's snowballing out of control, you've got nobody else to blame. It's a minor misstep at best; ignore it, and it goes away. (The book makes a great analogy to the David Cronenberg version of The Fly - you feel great, but you're getting warped.)

You can also have Vampire fomori, which is definitely screwed up. Most Banes wind up slave s to the vampires that they possess, but the two included in the book are likely to discourage anybody who's trying to get ahold of them to increase their power. Garou Howling Shamblers are as pathetic as they sound, while mages lose their power as the Banes fully posses them; ditto Changelings. Probably the worst part of the book is the various organizations listed that can create fomori - they come off silly, rather than impressive. Homogenity, Inc. recruits homosexuals who are dissatisfied with their lives and try to get them to fosake their old ways, only to turn them into fomori as a result. The Brotherhood of the Serpents are corrupted Boy Scouts, while Registered Agents Worldwide turns their famous clients into Fomori. (I was waiting for a joke about how a Hollywood agent would probably corrupt a Bane rather than vice-versa, but alas, my dreams went unfulfilled.) There's also the excreable Action Bill tattoos and figures; I.E this toy will turn your kid into a homcidal Fomori, instead of this toy, which will just make him a Weaver-controlled pawn. The Fomori themselves are interesting, especially the blank-faced hunting ghouls of Homogenity, Inc, but the attempt at satire just falls flat.

The society chapter hits the right notes, and in a hurry. The fomori have their own society, both within Pentex and without - there's some great notes about how fomori relate to each other, and how Pentex relates to them in turn. (Hint: There's always somebody you can beat on.) The details of the way that the scientists in Pentex view the Fomori is especially chilling, and could make for a fantastic adventure. First Teams fighting in the Amazon are also described, which is a nice touch.

The Storytelling section is good as well - there's hooks for almost any fomori adventure that yoiu'd want to play, from First Teams in the Amazon to political machinations among the fomori. There's details for running splatterpunk games, which sound like fun, and for running more thoughful campaigns invovling love and/or redemption. ('Perpetual angst does not fit the tainted ones well" - amen, brother.) A quick list of the Banes that create the book's fomori, and then a somewhat underdone "Atlas"-style comic for bodybuilding, but the quotes from happy customers are hilarious - including one from Patricia Pulling. Heh, heh, heh.)

The art, though, is a different story. Truth be told, a lot of it is fantastic - the chapter illustrations detail the fomori as humans with one or two details horrifically wrong. (I loved the illo of a woman holding a cane in her tentacles at the beginning of Chapter Five - simulataneously elegant and monstrous, without resorting to the howitzer-blunt antics of the vampires.) There's some good line artwork, and then there's the relentlessly ugly, god-awful artwork by SCAR studios.

It's not that SCAR artwork is necessarily bad; it's just lacking...well, anything that makes for good art, I guess.

To wit: A picture of a guy getting his head split with a chainsaw manages to evoke no reaction except to wonder how you can suck the natural sense of motion out of a scene like that. Other artwork includes a bunch of half-naked female fomori with secondary heads replacing erogenous zones (gah) and a thirty-foot tall naked woman tearing a guy in half. And a woman licking some guy's eyeball out of his head, again with no sense of movement. And a woman eating some guy's brains. (Bet you that she's half-naked.) Begin to see the pattern?

There is some SCAR artwork that doesn't look bad - a potrtait of some bulge-eyed female fomori managed to creep me out a bit, although they are, of course, both naked as jaybirds. I _was_ thinking that SCAR's artwork just had a unique style that I couldn't quite get, but now that I look at it, it just looks flat, and BAD. Artwork by who I assume is Matt Milberger is pretty decent - a little repetitive in certain aspects, like goggles, but it captures the X-Men-on-crack feel that some of the fomori have.

Why did I think that this book was going to suck? I was counting on SCAR artwork and a "let-it-all-hang-out" attitude; I got one, but not the other. It's a damned good book, both for creating antagonists for your current player characters and for creating your own homebrew monsters. It is not perfect by any means, and there are flaws in what's otherwise a good product, but if you want to role-play somebody who can puke acid and whose lifespan is a week, this is the product for you.

-Darren MacLennan

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Freak Legions: A Player's Guide to Fomori
Author: Steve Brown, Phil Brucato and others Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Line: Werewolf Cost: $12.00 Page count: 110 ISBN: 1-56504-350-2 Capsule Review by Darren MacLennan on 04/27/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Modern_day Horror Comedy Conspiracy Vampire Gothic	Freak Legions: A Player's Guide to Fomori Man, for a product that I thought would suck... Freak Legions covers the fomori - humans who have been mutated by the Wyrm, the ultimate source of all evil. You're essentially a twisted mutant freak, trying to survive in your battle against whoever the Wyrm thinks needs killing today. Your lifepsan is probably going to be about five months, probably less, depending on what happens, and you're probably going to be in a world of hurt in the meantime. Which makes playing a damned character a bit more interesting - rather than the artsy angst of Vampire, you're essentially going through Monster Adolescence, with new abilities that happen to make you look awful. (Methinks this analogy is getting just a little too accurate.) Want to play a misunderstood brute who likes killing people with a chainsaw and has acid skin? Freak Legions is your resource. Want to eel through the tunnels underneath the city, dripping slime from every pore? A Nosferatu vampire can do that, sure, but it's somehow just more satisfying to be a monster. In any case, Freak Legions doesn't spend a lot of time on subtlety; the introductory comic features a man who literally vomits streams of flesh-eating worms onto people - some of whom are his family. (It's also a tribute of sorts to Married with Children, which definitely puts a different spin on the show.) The first sentence of the book is "It is only fair to warn you that this book is gross", and that's true - it is gross, but it's handled with restraint. It also says "Don't take this book seriously", and that's good advice too. As a matter of fact, the less angst you include, the more fun it is. The rules for creating player-character fomori are actually part of the fun - besides the ability to get ahold of stuff like cyanide gas and an automatic staplegun (loaded with pieces of tainted fomori) as equipment, you pick your unlucky monster's ability from a list of powers, creating a debt, which is then paid off with Taints - various unpleasant effects, like Rotting, or Addiction, or Atrophy, or the dreaded Crusties. Powers run the gamut, from enhancing stats to simulating the powers of the Garou (regeneration, Rage and Gnosis) to the truly weird, like Mega-Strength, Shadowalking, Gaseous Form and, God help us, Savage Genitalia. No, that last one is not a joke. The only problem that I found with this section is that there's not nearly enough Taints - there's about forty-odd Powers, but only twenty Taints. That's not entirely a bad thing, but I found it limiting when I was creating a sample character. Besides that, Taints are just plain fun. In case you don't feel creative, there's also pre-generated fomori breeds - Brain-Eaters, Enticers, Gorehounds, Freakfeet, Hollow Men (nasty!), and others. Most are pretty good - for example, the Hollow Men are both inspired, gross and terrifying - while others, like the Sicklungs, strike me as a concept that should have died on the drawing board. (Ex-smoker Fomori who spread cancer, essentially. Yeah, I thought that it was silly too.) The Throwbacks are the most interesting - jocks who, in their quest for physical perfection, wind up as mutant neanderthals. That's the kind of pursue-your-own-ambition-into-monstrosity that attracts me to Freak Legions; you're not just randomly taken over by a Bane that hopped out of a soda machine, you got into it yourself. Speaking of which, that's one of the problems of Freak Legions - or, at least, the conception of fomori as they were in the early days of Werewolf. To wit, it's mentioned in the introduction that fomori can be genuinly innocent people who just happened to have a Bane attach itself to them, turning them into bloodthirsty freaks. It removes the element of personal responsibility that lends itself well to guilt - you didn't just get jumped and converted; you got into this of your own free will, and now that it's snowballing out of control, you've got nobody else to blame. It's a minor misstep at best; ignore it, and it goes away. (The book makes a great analogy to the David Cronenberg version of The Fly - you feel great, but you're getting warped.) You can also have Vampire fomori, which is definitely screwed up. Most Banes wind up slave s to the vampires that they possess, but the two included in the book are likely to discourage anybody who's trying to get ahold of them to increase their power. Garou Howling Shamblers are as pathetic as they sound, while mages lose their power as the Banes fully posses them; ditto Changelings. Probably the worst part of the book is the various organizations listed that can create fomori - they come off silly, rather than impressive. Homogenity, Inc. recruits homosexuals who are dissatisfied with their lives and try to get them to fosake their old ways, only to turn them into fomori as a result. The Brotherhood of the Serpents are corrupted Boy Scouts, while Registered Agents Worldwide turns their famous clients into Fomori. (I was waiting for a joke about how a Hollywood agent would probably corrupt a Bane rather than vice-versa, but alas, my dreams went unfulfilled.) There's also the excreable Action Bill tattoos and figures; I.E this toy will turn your kid into a homcidal Fomori, instead of this toy, which will just make him a Weaver-controlled pawn. The Fomori themselves are interesting, especially the blank-faced hunting ghouls of Homogenity, Inc, but the attempt at satire just falls flat. The society chapter hits the right notes, and in a hurry. The fomori have their own society, both within Pentex and without - there's some great notes about how fomori relate to each other, and how Pentex relates to them in turn. (Hint: There's always somebody you can beat on.) The details of the way that the scientists in Pentex view the Fomori is especially chilling, and could make for a fantastic adventure. First Teams fighting in the Amazon are also described, which is a nice touch. The Storytelling section is good as well - there's hooks for almost any fomori adventure that yoiu'd want to play, from First Teams in the Amazon to political machinations among the fomori. There's details for running splatterpunk games, which sound like fun, and for running more thoughful campaigns invovling love and/or redemption. ('Perpetual angst does not fit the tainted ones well" - amen, brother.) A quick list of the Banes that create the book's fomori, and then a somewhat underdone "Atlas"-style comic for bodybuilding, but the quotes from happy customers are hilarious - including one from Patricia Pulling. Heh, heh, heh.) The art, though, is a different story. Truth be told, a lot of it is fantastic - the chapter illustrations detail the fomori as humans with one or two details horrifically wrong. (I loved the illo of a woman holding a cane in her tentacles at the beginning of Chapter Five - simulataneously elegant and monstrous, without resorting to the howitzer-blunt antics of the vampires.) There's some good line artwork, and then there's the relentlessly ugly, god-awful artwork by SCAR studios. It's not that SCAR artwork is necessarily bad; it's just lacking...well, anything that makes for good art, I guess. To wit: A picture of a guy getting his head split with a chainsaw manages to evoke no reaction except to wonder how you can suck the natural sense of motion out of a scene like that. Other artwork includes a bunch of half-naked female fomori with secondary heads replacing erogenous zones (gah) and a thirty-foot tall naked woman tearing a guy in half. And a woman licking some guy's eyeball out of his head, again with no sense of movement. And a woman eating some guy's brains. (Bet you that she's half-naked.) Begin to see the pattern? There is some SCAR artwork that doesn't look bad - a potrtait of some bulge-eyed female fomori managed to creep me out a bit, although they are, of course, both naked as jaybirds. I _was_ thinking that SCAR's artwork just had a unique style that I couldn't quite get, but now that I look at it, it just looks flat, and BAD. Artwork by who I assume is Matt Milberger is pretty decent - a little repetitive in certain aspects, like goggles, but it captures the X-Men-on-crack feel that some of the fomori have. Why did I think that this book was going to suck? I was counting on SCAR artwork and a "let-it-all-hang-out" attitude; I got one, but not the other. It's a damned good book, both for creating antagonists for your current player characters and for creating your own homebrew monsters. It is not perfect by any means, and there are flaws in what's otherwise a good product, but if you want to role-play somebody who can puke acid and whose lifespan is a week, this is the product for you. -Darren MacLennan Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)