Technocracy: Void Engineers
Sourcebook for Mage: the Ascension
White Wolf Games Studio
72pp - [sterling]6.99
The three Technocracy supplements to date - Progenitors,
Iteration-X, New World Order - have been (respectively) good,
excellent and so-so. Each one has explored the secret conspiracy of
Technomancers who are ushering in the soulless utopia of the future. Now
Void Engineers is here, to put some soul into it.
The Void Engineers are scientific explorers, boldly going where etc. etc. In a
nutshell, this means the Para-Dimensional Corps in vacuum suits exploring the
Pleiades star cluster, Earth Frontier Division on skis tracking yetis across
the Himalayas, magely Chrononauts navigating the time-stream, a huge Umbral
Construct in a Dyson Sphere built around Alpha Centauri A, Border Corps
Division "space marines" blasting Nephandic horrors; Neutralisation
Specialists cleaning up messy hauntings, vulgar backlashes and careless
vampires . . . Put it another way, there's enough here for a RPG in its own
right.
Format is as per usual, but better. The history of the convention is narrated
by a stranded Void Engineer, marooned on some mythical realm, and accounts for
the Convention's evolution from the Seekers who pushed back humanity's
frontiers when the species shambled out of the African savannah. This potted
guide eschews the usual alternative-history ("Gosh, so-and-so was actually a
mage, eh? who'd have thought it?") and concentrates on conveying the restless
spirit of discovery, the wanderlust that characterizes these mages. Indeed,
though their methods are technological, the Void Engineers aren't your typical
technomancers at all . . . with a code of conduct reducible to "survive at
all costs", these are pragmatic people who are as likely to be (temporary)
allies as enemies to Tradition mages.
Part two goes into magick rules, or "tecknology". This gives us the
Sphere of Dimensional Science (long-awaited Spirit rules for
Technomancers - how they cross the Gauntlet and what they experience on
the other side), methods for sanitizing nodes to turn all that mystical
hocus-pocus into tecknologically harvestable Tass, Personally Fuelled
Tecknologies (ie. rotes) and lots of big Devices. I'm talking Big Devices:
here are the Ectoplasmic Disruptor Cannons, Barrier Field Generators,
Tass-Powered Propulsion Units, Void Engines and the Qui La Machinae Marks X156
and X200. This is the street-level technomancy that most Mage PCs are likely
to be on the wrong side of and, indeed, that's the value of this book. Of all
the Technocratic Conventions, Void Engineers are the most prominent in a
typical chronicle: no labroom boffins or shadowy puppeteers here, these are
the guys that get the job done!
All the other Technocracy sourcebooks concluded with a pointless lab and
the dull NPCs that staff it; Void Engineers gives us the Umbral
deadnaught, the Anastasia X156-B58 and her intrepid crew. Based out of
Null-B, this dimensional warship might hove to over your nodes one day,
ready to suck 'em try and pulverize your chantry into the bargain.
Overall: Excellent. If you buy one Technocracy sourcebook for
Mage, this is the one.
Reviewed by Jon Rowe
Supplied by Caliver Books
