 Goto [ Index ] |
The core Mage: The Awakening book suffers from having so many things to cover that it can’t cover anything in depth.
From the scant treatment in the core book, we know that the Abyss was created by the Exarchs when they kicked down the ladder from the physical to the Supernal realms and tore a hole in the fabric of the world. The Abyss divides the fallen world from the Supernal Realms, and is the source of Paradox and alien entities that, when they manage to escape, prey upon the world. Perhaps it gives a brief mention that the things of the Abyss are that which should not be. Intruders delves into the metaphysical nature of the Abyss, its greater purpose to the themes of Mage: The Awakening. It gives an overview of Horror and how to invoke it, and finishes by giving a wide sample of the mind-bending denizens of the Abyss.
For the campaign I’m now running, I wanted both large ideas to help explore the nature of the Abyss, and specific antagonists to enrich the campaign. With this in mind, I opened Intruders.
The Physical Thing
The general appearance of the book follow the standard aqua hardback format of the Mage line. The editing is pretty good (not perfect, but errors are generally not noticeable). Thankfully, most of the text is standard typed font. Some Mage book occasionally use headache- inducing “handwritten” fonts, but here, while the headings use the Mage cursive, everything else is clear and legible printed text. Not a revolution – but a very nice touch, giving the feel of a personal grimoire with the readability of printed font. The cover art is one of the few for Awakening that I really enjoy – someone being jumped by horrors barely distinguishable and yet terrifying. Like the rest of the line, the interior is black and white. None of the illustrations quite capture the mind-blowing awfulness of the Abyss, yet a number do convey the individual essence of the described critter. Every entry in the bestiary is closed by the Atlantean symbol for the Abyss, in stark black and with a large grey “shadow” behind it, which is reminiscent of the tendrils of the Abyss. The artwork reinforces the themes and content of the book.
Opening Fiction
I haven’t been too impressed by most of the opening fiction I’ve read for Awakening, but Intruders’ stands out as imparting inspiration and a good feel for the material right off the bat. It starts with surreal fragments of stories, and then gradually reveals what is actually going on; it captures the bizarre and alien logic of the Abyss, and pulls back to reveal the grotesque horror at the heart of any encounter with its denizens. The pervasive feeling of wrongness lingers. It’s an excellent mood-setter and inspiration, but sadly, not something easily taken and used in a game, due to the narrative methods employed.
Introduction
The Introduction talks about the Abyss’ metaphysical existence and its narrative role within a Mage story. As the result of the Exarchs’ hubris and intentional oppression of their fellow human beings the Abyss was created. By smaller acts of hubris, i.e., vulgar magic, and especially the casual abuse of Sleepers by using, it expands. The book does a good job of pointing out several reasons why mages need to worry about the Abyss and its impact on everyone. It goes on to explain why the book is called “Intruders”, using a virus metaphor for the corruption that the Abyss seeks to spread, and its attempts to make the Fallen World just like itself.
Over and over, the horrific effect of an Abyssal Intrusion on all the creatures of the Fallen World is stressed. Fighting the Abyss should have a cost, a steep one: moral choices, prices, and danger to one’s own soul. No one comes out unscathed, and even a win leaves deep scars.
The Introduction also lays out an alternate system for researching Abyssal intruders that replaces the core WoD rules. Not much is known about creatures of the Abyss, which increases the time and difficulty of research. These rules emphasize the importance of arcane libraries and the side effects of the paranoid secret-keeping that is part of the Mage experience. Overall, they slow down the research effort and prize esoteric knowledge. If this is in keeping with the feel of your game, you may want to give it a try.
They list their inspiration – most are what you might expect, and are all very good, but I will give a shout out to House of Leaves as the influence is seen in many of the space twisting critters.
Chapter One: Otherworldly Dread
This chapter is the general overview of how the Abyss insinuates itself into the Fallen World. It begins by discussing the various other metaphysical realms (the Shadow, the Underworld, the Astral Realms, etc) and how Abyssals may infiltrate these planes first, and progress from there. The book goes over the general stages of an intrusion, and what outward signs are likely. Sidebars give perspectives on the Abyss from mages, mortals, ghosts, and a host of others. The authors clearly strive to remind you of all the ways the Abyss works on the Fallen World – the holistic approach was valuable for me, as I was looking for how the Abyss impacts the game-world beyond the PCs. Bans (weaknesses) for Abyssals are introduced. The authors also warn you in a sidebar not to overuse HP Lovecraft because that gets old, quickly – and they give ideas for alternatives. It’s a helpful reminder, and the alternatives are hook-worthy ideas, reminding one that while mind-breaking horror is well and good, subtlety can be just as effective, and possibly more surprising and disturbing.
There is also a long subsection on creating horror in your game. If you haven’t read anything that touches on the elements of horror, this will be helpful. Isolation, alienation, despair, violation, and a host of other themes grace the pages. There’s even a sidebar on how to do isolation in crowded settings. The authors remind the GM to make use of atmosphere and to be aware of how you describe the setting. Experienced GMs won’t need this, but I appreciate the effort the authors make to help the GM get the most out of horror. They also have the sidebar warning GMs to be extremely careful when using elements of violation – again, an experienced GM has seen this before, but this needs to be said in books dealing with this topic.
The authors encourage subtlety, and give ideas on how to encourage it in play. They cover the metaphysics of why the Abyss is the way that it is, why it is always a force for awfulness, and that nothing good ever comes from it. This puts the edge into trying to reason with an Intruder, and into attempting to save the victims of the Intruder – a misguided attempt to save an innocent may put far more people at risk, but not attempting to save an innocent may damage the Wisdom of the mage. It’s potentially a no-win situation, again emphasizing the inevitability of the Abyss. Clever and resourceful mages may pull off a complete win – but never bank on that.
Overall, the authors try to give you tools and ideas for how to use the Abyss in your game in ways that aren’t just monster of the week. They emphasize that while mages can fight back, mortals are in for a world of hurt – and that often, that’s how a mage realizes there’s an Intruder, with mortals unfortunately acting as the mine canary.
By the end of the chapter, the GM should have a good feel for how to incorporate the Abyss into their game interesting ways – how to play upon the themes of the Abyss to reinforce themes in their own game, and how to describe the current scene with the maximum impact. The end result is a good guide to approaching horror in a roleplaying game.
Chapter Two: The Denizens
The rest of the book is devoted to fleshing out specific denizens of the Abyss, 24 of the horrid things. There’s a wide range of ideas to work with – everything from infectious memes to flesh-crawling horrors. However, the denizens are not things meant to be physically beat up as a way of ending the intrusion. Shotguns and katanas aren’t the way to go about dealing with these denizens, a boon for GMs looking for a change of pace from combat oriented antagonists. Those who like combat challenges will be able to adapt what is here, but be aware that, with perhaps one exception, this book presents the Abyssal Intruder as puzzles first and not primarily physical combatants.
The authors anticipate what a GM will need in order to incorporate a given denizen into a game. Each entry contains: introductory fiction, the intrusion’s form—including how it appears to mundane and magical senses – its means of passage into the Fallen World, what it does once it arrives, how to get rid of the Intruder, what research can disclose, a trio of story hooks, and where necessary, game mechanics and stats. The full “life cycle” of the denizen is reviewed, including what happens if no one interferes with the denizen and its plans. The entry ends with three story hooks; they are a nice addition, giving several disparate ideas on how to include the Intruder in one’s game.
The fiction that introduces each entry is usually quite good. Some of the fiction made me want to use the denizen, only to find as I read the rest of the entry that this denizen wasn’t going to work for my game. That’s a sign of good, compelling writing. The discussion on detecting the intruders usually answered my questions of why particular arcanae would or wouldn’t work. However, sometimes they don’t state which sensory arcana would reveal the intruder. Given the usefulness and ubiquity of sensory magic, that’s a significant omission, and while it doesn’t happen all the time, it happens just often enough to be worrisome to the GM, in need of some thought to houserule.
The next section of the bestiary entries discusses how the Intruder enters the world. In general, the Abyss creeps in when Paradox happens, and when acts of hubris or cruelty are committed. That’s great and reinforces the game’s themes. But it’s jarring to run across some denizens where instead “things just unfortunately align”. No intentionality caused the intrusion, nor is the intrusion an unintended consequence of anyone’s actions – they just happen. A building’s wiring system happens to form the right 3D space to allow something through (the Swarmer); a denizen happens to come through in a lightning storm (the Electric Animator). While the Swarmer at least is an interesting, fun antagonist, the failure to tie their intrusion to the larger themes of the game feels like a missed opportunity. Fortunately this sort of misstep is rare in the entries.
Mortal reactions and the full “lifecycle” are very nice touches, helping the GM know how NPCs react and how the world as a whole is affected by the intruder – a constant theme in the book. Plus they address what happens if players don’t follow up on finding out what’s going on.
The three story hooks are great efforts to show various ways to include the denizen in your game. Most of the time, I found them interesting, but difficult actually to adapt to my game without significant reworking – with one wonderful example detailed below. Given how hard it is to have an antagonists book where one can slot in without any tweaking by the GM, I was pleased to find one I could incorporate without any work on my part.
Enough said about format – what about the creatures themselves? Here’s a quick look at three of the Intruders. First, there’s the Anumerus, which twists numbers and anything connected to them, and feeds off the suffering this causes. Stocks, accounting errors, anything where the numbers really could be out to get you. And, of course, anything with computer software. Getting rid of it requires some fun creativity for the players; one of the suggestions is to trap the Anumerus in a magical manifestation of the constant Pi.
Next, the Nativity is a child born of a sleeper witnessing Vulgar magic where paradox manifested; the child’s soul is torn and the Abyss leaks in through it. Bad luck follows the child everywhere, and everyone gets a bad feeling from it – except the mother, who is fiercely protective. Magic tends to fail around the child. The obvious and awful solution works to get rid of the child; or you can beg a Master of Spirit and Death for help. This is one of those Intruders where there’s going to be pain one way or another.
A third example is the False Demesnes, which makes a place appear to be tied to one of the Supernal Realms. Paradox from spells of that path is mitigated – and sleeper disbelief doesn’t work either. The natural laws of the Fallen World are twisted more and more, until the resonance with the paths’ magic is dangerous; an Aether False Demesne has fire that burns without fuel, visual images shift and blur, and later on, nuclear radiation can spontaneously arise or disappear, magnetic pulses frying anything electronic. Getting rid of it takes cleverness and research – and reinforcing the rules of the Fallen World, which at a certain level is heartbreaking for a mage.
And what of the other critters? There are a number that muck with mental perception and communication, a number of spatial distortions, a couple of Innsmouth-style bad bloods, and a few that are useful if you have a crossover game with either Vampire or Werewolf. (I was especially fond of the main Vampire crossover critter – too bad I don’t do crossovers.) There were a few duds; I don’t find MMO’s a threatening thing, so while some of the ideas involving the abyssal masquerading as an addictive MMO were clever, I’d never use that in a game. Many of the denizens I found most interesting key strongly on separation/alienation, playing with the idea of what “home” is, in a way that is more alien and disturbing than the “threat to body” or “bad blood” themed denizens do.
I had the opportunity to use The Twisted Maze in a game I ran. It is a denizen attracted to places that are already cut off from the normal flow of people; a prison, a high security installation, or a half-abandoned building of condos all are possible points of access. Once there, it gradually warps space, then time, to the point where people can step up the stairs and come out three floors lower. The warping is minimal, but ramps up in gradually until the last 1-3 days, where the weirdness gets dialed way up. Then it disappears back to the Abyss, taking the affected area and all within the area. Mortals don’t remember there was a building there, and remember relatives dying somewhere else.
I liked all this, and I thought my players would, too. One of the three provided hooks was perfect; set at a prison, the presence of the Twisted Maze allowed prisoners to get the drop on the guards, and now there’s a prison riot and hostage situation. This was easy to work into the game; they heard about it over the radio, and Fate magic indicated it was far more important than it appeared. The presence of police required very clever use of magic for them to get in. The one downside was the research angle; they went in having not done any research, and I didn’t want to penalize them for being proactive. From the feel of the other listed intruders in the book, this may be a common concern for GMs; the research needed to understand how to defeat the Intruder is steep, and GMs will want to consider how to modify the research element for their game. Between the ghosts of murdered guards, Space/Time not working correctly, prisoners gone mad with freedom, and the general awfulness of a max security prison, it was a tense scene – and they got to see all of it, because the only way to get rid of the Twisted Maze is to walk all of it, even as it tries to confuse you. Some of the players wished there was something they could punch (they nearly took care of the prisoners themselves). I was very pleased with the results of using the Twisted Maze. Why am I gleefully pleased with most of the denizens in this book?
There’s almost always going to be horrible collateral damage. By the time a mage notices a denizen, often the mortals around have already been badly affected. And while the Intruder may then be banished, it takes a lot of effort to undo the damage – and even then, that’s not always possible. If you strongly link the Abyss to the themes of hubris and man’s inhumanity to man, this is a powerful lesson about the repercussions of thoughtless magic and the pathos of the Fallen World. The Abyss is a direct consequence of the shattered silver ladder, and it expands with each paradox. To fight it is to stave off the worst of the unconscious consequences of the sundering – yet Mages’ action are what expands the Abyss. Involvement with the Abyss tempts the players to reenact, on a small scale, that the actions that lead to its creation in the first place.
Further, many of the Intruders present the PCs with a horrible moral dilemma. In cases of possession, killing the host can end the intrusion – but is that the only way? What is kinder to the infected host? This book is all about setting up intense and memorable situations, impacting the world around the PCs and bringing the reality of the Abyss and all its implications home.
Style: a solid 4, with good editing, a clear format, and the feel of an old stitched grimoire while being very legible. Each entry is laid out in the same clear, easy to follow manner. It only misses a 5 because the art too often fails to fully evoke the horror of the listed Intruders.
Substance: A full 5. Intruders succeeds on two fronts. First, the book explores the metaphysics of the Abyss in a way that left me thinking; I was coming up with new connections and ideas for my game as I read it. My greater understanding of the Abyss improved my understanding as a whole of the Awakening metaphysics. Second, the writeups of the denizens display a good range of ideas and stress how mortals are affected by the intrusion of the Abyss. Each contains useful tips for how to use the Abyss and its denizens.
Intruders the best book I’ve read in the Awakening line thus far. If you have no interest in using the Abyss in your game, this book might change your mind. If you want to include the Abyss in your game, I highly recommend picking it up.
Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
