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Introduction OK, I'm going to lay my cards out on the table right now. I love Unknown Armies. I have since I got hold of it just over a year ago, and I've seen nothing since that promises to usurp my affection for it. But I'm going to try my best to be honest and objective in this review.

So, what is this Statosphere? Well, it's the fourth supplement for Unknown Armies, and the sourcebook for the Invisible Clergy. If you've never laid eyes on Unknown Armies, then that won't mean a thing to you. But fear not, I will try to explain.

The Invisible Clergy Actually, I'm going to be lazy here. After all, why should I put lots of effort into explaining the nature of the Invisible Clergy when those nice men who wrote Unknown Armies did it for me?

"The cosmos is a living organism. Reincarnation and karma are real, but only on a cosmic level. That means that the cosmos is continually reborn from scratch and that each new incarnation of the cosmos represents the life that the previous cosmos deserves.

"These twin attributes are determined by the Invisible Clergy. The Clergy consists of a maximum of 333 human souls, all of whom have ascended from normal physical existence to a higher plane of existence. Each soul represents some fundamental archetype of our current incarnation of reality. Whenever a human fully represents an archetype that is representative of that incarnation of the cosmos, he ascends to the Invisible Clergy and is in place to adjudicate the nature of the next incarnation of the cosmos."

In other words, they're the nearest thing Unknown Armies has to gods. They manipulate the cosmos by tweaking with the probabilities that determine reality, the so-called Statosphere. They have followers called Avatars, people who emulate the Archetype and gain power from it. And try to ascend to the Clergy themselves. If you can become a better embodiment of the Archetype than the current Clergy member, then you get to replace them.

Background The rulebook didn't elaborate much further. It described eight Archetypes and the powers that their Avatars received. It also mentioned Godwalkers, those Avatars just one step below the Invisible Clergy. And inevitably, the whole area was subjected to a great deal of debate between players of Unknown Armies about the interpretation of it all. If you give someone a copy of Unknown Armies to read, you can lay good odds that they'll emerge with lots of difficult questions about the Invisible Clergy, questions that until now have had no definitive answers.

Contents So, what will you find in Statosphere to answer them? In short, quite a lot. The book is divided into four chapters, each concentrating on a different aspect of the Invisible Clergy and the Statosphere. Before that, you get the now-traditional short story to kick it all off, this time written by Greg Stolze, and it's every bit as good as those in previous supplements.

The first chapter gives plenty of background on the Invisible Clergy, fleshing out the concepts introduced in the main rulebook. It provides useful information for your campaign: how to represent them to your players, what life as an Avatar is actually like, and how to get yourself elevated to the ranks of the Clergy. In addition, you get to find out just what those Godwalker powers they hinted at in the rulebook are, and you're also provided with a set of rules that allow more mundane folk to tinker with the Statosphere. This tinkering, the sort of thing that those Clergy people do all the time, is called Tilting the Statosphere. It's ritualistic in conception, playing heavily on post-modern symbolism, and can provide some nice nuances to a campaign, as well as some potential plot-hooks. Particularly welcome are the rules for Bonding, which can give a group of characters extra cohesion and a bit of an edge.

The second chapter provides the things that everyone expected of this book. Sixteen new Archetypes and the powers to go with them. Each gets a two-page spread, but their behaviour and symbolism are described in the previous chapter, which means you get a good idea of their flavour before you see the game mechanics (assuming you're reading the book from cover to cover, that is). Like the schools of magick presented in Postmodern Magick (the previous Unknown Armies supplement), some of these will grab you by the collar, while others won't instantly strike a chord - though they may just be more subtle in their influence. Having said that, there is a variety to them that should make several very useful for just about any campaign imaginable.

Those first two chapters form the bulk of the book, but for my money the third is the most interesting. It deals with the House of Renunciation, which means I have to go into another round of explanation. The House is a magickal space that takes your core identity and turns it around, putting your life onto a different course. It doesn't just affect normal humans either - Clergy members who are supplanted come out through the House with their personalities inverted. Chapter 3 describes the background to the House, but also provides four nicely detailed Rooms within the House and the agents that serve them. In each case they are interesting, each taking on a common theme, and all of them can be neatly slotted into a campaign.

The final chapter is by far the shortest (at eight pages it only just beats the opening story), and it deals with Le Comte de Saint Germain, the First and Last Man, the mysterious immortal who exists in all incarnations of the cosmos and is always the last to ascend, filling the 333rd position in the Clergy just before the cosmos starts over. He's cropped up before in Unknown Armies products, but here the opportunity has been taken to give him some statistics (for those that need them). In fact, they've gone so far as to provide you with three different versions of the same man, just to show some different aspects of his nature.

Style Well, that's the content part done with, but there are people out there who think that style matters too, and they're probably right. Stylistically, Statosphere is a slight departure from previous Unknown Armies supplements. It's a little lighter in feel, and the illustrations are typically more mysterious (dare I say it, even mystical), which suits the subject matter. There are some nice touches, for example, each of the Archetype descriptions in Chapter 2 gets its own picture, but they're all done in the same style by the same artist. In short, the style brings the content into its own, and as far as I'm concerned that's the way it should be.

Like previous Unknown Armies products, typos are few and far between. There are some references in the text to other supplements, but if you don't own them you'll still be able to get 95% of the content.

Negative Points I said at the start that I'd try to produce a balanced review, and so far I've really only mentioned the good points. There are though, some points that could be seen as bad, but on the whole they're minor. Some 12 pages are taken up with detailing the behaviour and symbolism of the different Archetypes. Somewhat inevitably when you're dealing with 26 of them, this becomes slightly tiresome, but it's difficult to see how else this could have been done. Also, with the presentation of sixteen new Archetypes, a few are not going to be just the thing for your campaign or your players. Again, that's less of a criticism and more of an indication that just about anybody will find something of use to them. Finally, the last chapter leaves me wanting a little more. I can't help feeling that more could have been written about him (though what there is, is of high quality). I'm also of the school of thought that thinks it unnecessary to stat this type of character, but that's more of a personal gripe.

Conclusion With the appearance of Postmodern Magick, the Unknown Armies universe felt slightly biased towards magick-users. Statosphere has redressed that balance and provides what Unknown Armies aficionados have come to expect - a high-quality product that enhances those that have come before. If you're not interested in running an Unknown Armies game, then it probably won't be much use to you, though it contains ideas that can easily be cannibalised and incorporated into other games. I'm certainly happy with it, but then, that was hardly ever in doubt.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Statosphere
Author: Tom Adams, Tim Dedopulos, Kenneth Hite, Daniel Ksenych, Andy Lucas, Michael Mearls, Rick Neal, James Palmer, John Snead, Greg Stolze, Tim Toner, John Tynes, Chaf Underkoffler and Ian Young Category: Company/Publisher: Atlas Games Line: Unknown Armies Cost: $19.95 Page count: 125 ISBN: 1-887801-84-7 SKU: AG6004 Capsule Review by Chris Milne on 07/11/00. Genre tags: Modern day Horror Conspiracy	Introduction OK, I'm going to lay my cards out on the table right now. I love Unknown Armies. I have since I got hold of it just over a year ago, and I've seen nothing since that promises to usurp my affection for it. But I'm going to try my best to be honest and objective in this review. So, what is this Statosphere? Well, it's the fourth supplement for Unknown Armies, and the sourcebook for the Invisible Clergy. If you've never laid eyes on Unknown Armies, then that won't mean a thing to you. But fear not, I will try to explain. The Invisible Clergy Actually, I'm going to be lazy here. After all, why should I put lots of effort into explaining the nature of the Invisible Clergy when those nice men who wrote Unknown Armies did it for me? "The cosmos is a living organism. Reincarnation and karma are real, but only on a cosmic level. That means that the cosmos is continually reborn from scratch and that each new incarnation of the cosmos represents the life that the previous cosmos deserves. "These twin attributes are determined by the Invisible Clergy. The Clergy consists of a maximum of 333 human souls, all of whom have ascended from normal physical existence to a higher plane of existence. Each soul represents some fundamental archetype of our current incarnation of reality. Whenever a human fully represents an archetype that is representative of that incarnation of the cosmos, he ascends to the Invisible Clergy and is in place to adjudicate the nature of the next incarnation of the cosmos." In other words, they're the nearest thing Unknown Armies has to gods. They manipulate the cosmos by tweaking with the probabilities that determine reality, the so-called Statosphere. They have followers called Avatars, people who emulate the Archetype and gain power from it. And try to ascend to the Clergy themselves. If you can become a better embodiment of the Archetype than the current Clergy member, then you get to replace them. Background The rulebook didn't elaborate much further. It described eight Archetypes and the powers that their Avatars received. It also mentioned Godwalkers, those Avatars just one step below the Invisible Clergy. And inevitably, the whole area was subjected to a great deal of debate between players of Unknown Armies about the interpretation of it all. If you give someone a copy of Unknown Armies to read, you can lay good odds that they'll emerge with lots of difficult questions about the Invisible Clergy, questions that until now have had no definitive answers. Contents So, what will you find in Statosphere to answer them? In short, quite a lot. The book is divided into four chapters, each concentrating on a different aspect of the Invisible Clergy and the Statosphere. Before that, you get the now-traditional short story to kick it all off, this time written by Greg Stolze, and it's every bit as good as those in previous supplements. The first chapter gives plenty of background on the Invisible Clergy, fleshing out the concepts introduced in the main rulebook. It provides useful information for your campaign: how to represent them to your players, what life as an Avatar is actually like, and how to get yourself elevated to the ranks of the Clergy. In addition, you get to find out just what those Godwalker powers they hinted at in the rulebook are, and you're also provided with a set of rules that allow more mundane folk to tinker with the Statosphere. This tinkering, the sort of thing that those Clergy people do all the time, is called Tilting the Statosphere. It's ritualistic in conception, playing heavily on post-modern symbolism, and can provide some nice nuances to a campaign, as well as some potential plot-hooks. Particularly welcome are the rules for Bonding, which can give a group of characters extra cohesion and a bit of an edge. The second chapter provides the things that everyone expected of this book. Sixteen new Archetypes and the powers to go with them. Each gets a two-page spread, but their behaviour and symbolism are described in the previous chapter, which means you get a good idea of their flavour before you see the game mechanics (assuming you're reading the book from cover to cover, that is). Like the schools of magick presented in Postmodern Magick (the previous Unknown Armies supplement), some of these will grab you by the collar, while others won't instantly strike a chord - though they may just be more subtle in their influence. Having said that, there is a variety to them that should make several very useful for just about any campaign imaginable. Those first two chapters form the bulk of the book, but for my money the third is the most interesting. It deals with the House of Renunciation, which means I have to go into another round of explanation. The House is a magickal space that takes your core identity and turns it around, putting your life onto a different course. It doesn't just affect normal humans either - Clergy members who are supplanted come out through the House with their personalities inverted. Chapter 3 describes the background to the House, but also provides four nicely detailed Rooms within the House and the agents that serve them. In each case they are interesting, each taking on a common theme, and all of them can be neatly slotted into a campaign. The final chapter is by far the shortest (at eight pages it only just beats the opening story), and it deals with Le Comte de Saint Germain, the First and Last Man, the mysterious immortal who exists in all incarnations of the cosmos and is always the last to ascend, filling the 333rd position in the Clergy just before the cosmos starts over. He's cropped up before in Unknown Armies products, but here the opportunity has been taken to give him some statistics (for those that need them). In fact, they've gone so far as to provide you with three different versions of the same man, just to show some different aspects of his nature. Style Well, that's the content part done with, but there are people out there who think that style matters too, and they're probably right. Stylistically, Statosphere is a slight departure from previous Unknown Armies supplements. It's a little lighter in feel, and the illustrations are typically more mysterious (dare I say it, even mystical), which suits the subject matter. There are some nice touches, for example, each of the Archetype descriptions in Chapter 2 gets its own picture, but they're all done in the same style by the same artist. In short, the style brings the content into its own, and as far as I'm concerned that's the way it should be. Like previous Unknown Armies products, typos are few and far between. There are some references in the text to other supplements, but if you don't own them you'll still be able to get 95% of the content. Negative Points I said at the start that I'd try to produce a balanced review, and so far I've really only mentioned the good points. There are though, some points that could be seen as bad, but on the whole they're minor. Some 12 pages are taken up with detailing the behaviour and symbolism of the different Archetypes. Somewhat inevitably when you're dealing with 26 of them, this becomes slightly tiresome, but it's difficult to see how else this could have been done. Also, with the presentation of sixteen new Archetypes, a few are not going to be just the thing for your campaign or your players. Again, that's less of a criticism and more of an indication that just about anybody will find something of use to them. Finally, the last chapter leaves me wanting a little more. I can't help feeling that more could have been written about him (though what there is, is of high quality). I'm also of the school of thought that thinks it unnecessary to stat this type of character, but that's more of a personal gripe. Conclusion With the appearance of Postmodern Magick, the Unknown Armies universe felt slightly biased towards magick-users. Statosphere has redressed that balance and provides what Unknown Armies aficionados have come to expect - a high-quality product that enhances those that have come before. If you're not interested in running an Unknown Armies game, then it probably won't be much use to you, though it contains ideas that can easily be cannibalised and incorporated into other games. I'm certainly happy with it, but then, that was hardly ever in doubt. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)