Review of Legions of Carcosa

Full disclosure: The original Yellow King Roleplaying game (YKRPG) did not win my allegiance, despite its hugely successful Kickstarter and sumptuous production values. For my taste, it was rather too fey and whimsical for the Yellow King Mythos, the surreally horrific 1890s cosmos created by Robert W. Chambers, and revered by H.P. Lovecraft and his descendants. But I don't have any such reservations about Legions of Carcosa; this is a menagerie of monstrosities just dripping with insidious psychological horror. In fact, it recalls nothing so much as The Book of Unremitting Horror, Pelgrane's earlier book of truly chilling modern horrors.

Other disclosure: The interior artwork of this volume was, as its credits explain, "Created by Robin D. Laws using the Stable Diffusion AI art software." I leave it to readers to decide their own position on this. Pelgrane Press is renowned for the artwork of its books, and has more than one ENnie win and nomination to its credit for Best Art, so it definitely has a solid track record of supporting living artists. Plus, Pelgrane has written its own explanation here: https://pelgranepress.com/2023/03/07/legions-of-carcosa-ai-art/.

This explains the policy of avoiding any images that recall currently living and in-copyright artists. I won't comment any further on the artwork, or the issue, except to say that the interior artwork was one of the first things that attracted me to the book.

With that out the way, let's continue to the meat of the book itself. Legions of Carcosa describes and stats 86 threats and abominations, divided chronologically into the four period settings of YKRG: 1890s Paris, the appallingly prolonged trench warfare of The Wars, the Aftermath of the uprising against the surreal domination of Carcosa, and the irruption of the abnormal into present-day normality in This Is Normal Now. The types of abnormality are correspondingly tailored to the flavour of each setting: Paris has Dollmakers and Dressmakers, while The Wars has Angels of Mons and Translated Soldiers, and modern days have Copycat Killers and Talking Heads. All the grotesques have the stats and mechanical details for the Quickshock variant of the GUMSHOE system used in YKRPG, including the specific Shock and Injury cards for the unfortunate player-characters affected by them. All of them have guidance on how to incorporate the horrors from one period setting into the other periods of the game. YKRPG was written to deliver 'reality horror', the surreal distortion and subversion of the present day captured in Robert W. Chambers' work, and Legions of Carcosa more than achieves this goal. Not every Foe in this volume is a monster, but all are monstrous. Many are embodiments or personifications of especially vile and frightful aspects of their setting or period: the Yellow Carnation exudes the sickly stench of Nineties Decadence, the Little Ones mimic the hollow-eyed waifs seeking refuge from The Wars, the Ooze recalls chemical agents used by oppressive regimes against insurgents, and so on. These personifications or evocations of our worst nightmares are often horribly compelling - far more so than a typical fantasy monster with random numbers of limbs and claws. Their threats are all too believable. There's a J-horror or Black Mirror feel to many of the modern-era menaces in particular.

All in all, this is an inspirational and occasionally disturbing bestiary that will give GMs ample fodder - and nightmares. I'd happily adopt some of the most inventive ones into horror games for other systems, they're that good (or awful). Recommended as a companion volume for YKRPG, or just for any horror gaming enthusiast in need of fresh frights.