The Fear Institute, Song of Salvation, Wednesday, and More

Things that brought me delight in December, 2022:

Jonathan L. Howard, Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

Among the genre books that try for humor, Jonathan L. Howard's Johannes Cabal books are unmatched; never treacly, there's a meanness that cuts through anything cloying. The Fear Institute finds Johannes Cabal guiding a group of men through the Lovecraftian Dreamlands in search of the essence of fear. The amazing thing about this series is that while they're mostly droll humor and madcap adventure, they sometimes manage to also offer a moment of utter heartbreak. Consider having some tissues handy when you read The Fear Institute.

Dream Unending, Song of Salvation

The notion of "Sabbath worship" is all too familiar to anyone who listens to doom metal, but it's nice to see Dream Unending back so soon with another album brimming with "Peaceville Three worship." And they really do give a nod to each of the major Peaceville bands on Song of Salvation. Joining those classic sonic aesthetics are elements that feel a little proggy ala Pink Floyd and even a few moments that wouldn't be out of place on the Projekt roster.

Wednesday

Against all odds, Wednesday is actually pretty fun! The show is largely carried by how well Jenna Ortega manages to inhabit the character and present a laudable version of the Addams's daughter, but the supporting cast (particularly Gwendolyn Christie and Christina Ricci) also turn in some great performances. One thing that was a little surprising was how willing they were to write Wednesday as a pretty terrible person in a lot of ways. Don't go into expecting something gob-smacking and you may just be surprised. 

Savage Worlds: Adventure's Edition

Years ago, Savage Worlds was one of the mainstay roleplaying games in my rotation, but with a change in gaming groups interest in it waned off. I knew that a new edition of the game had come out, but I didn't really look into it too deeply...until now. I haven't made a full study of it, but so far the changes to the system look pretty well-conceived. I even got to kick the tires a bit in December by running a session of Planet Motherfucker using the Adventure's Edition rules. The art still feels a bit naff--particularly that uninspiring cover--and I lament that it's no longer the budget-friendly game it once was, but you do get a lot of game in one hardback.

The English

I love a Western in general, but The English, a six-part miniseries, is absolutely exquisite. Beautifully filmed, what at first glance feels like a standard tale of revenge instead turns into a story of redemption. As the series progresses, it really piles on the Gothic grotesquery, and the final episode pack a powerful emotional gut-punch. Absolutely worth your time. The further I got into The English, the more I was convinced that it was the best thing on "tv" in 2022.

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen

Even though I grew up reading the Dragonlance novels, I can't say it has ever been one of my favorite fantasy settings. Surprisingly, Shadow of the Dragon Queen looks like a pretty solid campaign in my quick read-through. Rather than a re-hash of the original series of modules, it shifts the focus to another part of the burgeoning War of the Lance. Also, I think it's an extremely cool idea to focus on a villain based on the Red Barron and dogfighting in a setting that prominently features dragon riding. Even her name, Red Ruin, feels inspired.

I'll also note that the art in Shadow of the Dragon Queen feels more "classic fantasy" than the modern. whimsical style that WotC has been moving toward lately. Which is a win for me because I definitely have a preference for the former over the latter.

Cullen Bunn, Joelle Jones, and Nick Filardi, Helheim, Book 1: The Witch War and Book 2: Brides of Helheim

In the first book of Helheim, Vikings are caught in a war between two witches: one who transforms her servants into demons and one who commands legions of the dead. Enter a fallen warrior who has been reanimated as a champion of one witch, and infused with the demonic essence summoned by the other. Now on his own path, he seeks to slay both witches and free his people from their burden.

In the second book, the draugr is once again called upon, but this time he must face the warlock who tutored the three witches from the first volume. This book, more so than the first, feels like a full-bore rush into sword & sorcery themes and aesthetics. Mighty (undead) thews!

The Menu

I quite enjoyed watching The Menu, but if we're being fair it does pander to me specifically in a number of ways. Chief among them is the premise that people who are into fancy food deserve to be murdered. I doubt that The Menu will blow anyone away, but it's definitely a solid movie. One thing about it that I keep thinking about is how it captures the events of a single night; chronologically terse, it has the space to focus on moment to moment nuance in ways that films that are more temporally expansive often can't manage. 

Worm, Bluenothing

Last year, Worm captured the boggy, fetid oppression of the swampland on Foreverglade. With their Bluenothing ep they dive into stranger territory. Bluenothing takes more inspiration from symphonic black metal than filthy death doom; and yet, even despite that sonic core in place, Bluenothing is also often a showcase for virtuoso soloing that maybe wouldn't be out of place in something more spandex-attired. If Bad Books for Bad People had a "best EP" category for our end of year wrap up, I might just go with this one as my pick.

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume Five

I don't have many Christmas traditions, but reading last year's volume of The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories is one of them. Volume Five is a fine addition to the series, offering a wide variety of Christmas ghost stories and the occasional seasonally haunting poem. For me, the stand out of this volume was Barry Pain's "The Undying Thing," in which  a child is born monstrous and abandoned in a cave, only to haunt a family line, killing off the generations until none remain. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Rainbow, Self-Titled and Rising

After last month's dive in Dio's catalog, I decided it would be a great idea to revisit the first two Rainbow albums with Dio on vocals. If the Dio albums illustrate what we've lost now that rock songs no longer focus on rockin', the Rainbow albums also hint at how the genre becomes impoverished once divorced from some vaguely mystical trappings. Hell, even bands like the Pixies made some space for Frank Black's UFO fixations. Bring back the haze, man.

Agatha Christie, The ABC Murders

My newfound obsession with the works of Agatha Christie continued with The ABC Murders, a novel in which Poirot receives taunting letters from an assassin committing alphabetical murders; moving through the alphabet from A-Z, the killer is murdering someone who name starts with the same letter as the scene of the crime. The early portions feel somewhat different from the other Poirot novels I've read, as it first it appears that the motive is the art of crime itself, with no connection to a deeper human motive. Also of interest is the way that The ABC Murders functions as a commentary on the effects of age, particularly on men.

Shiwo Komeyama, Bloody Cross Vol. 1-6

It had been a while since I started a manga series, so I decided to give Shiwo Komeyama's Bloody Cross a try. The story, so far, is about two half-angel, half-vampires who find themselves united by an occult curse after they both try to double-cross each other. Forced to work together to find the remedy for their mutual curse, they vacillate between partnership and betrayal, with a side order of "will they, won't they" horniness. The events of the volumes I read find the unlikely pair chasing down holy relics in a race to see who will become the next God (???) 

P.L. McMillan, Sisters of the Crimson Vine

In Sisters of the Crimson Vine, a man finds himself hideously injured after a car wreck, but he's rescued and nursed back to health by a rather unconventional convent of nuns. With nary a crucifix, Bible, or wimple to be found, there is clearly something strange going on with this holy order. In fact, a Catholic priest and his acolyte are also staying at the convent, ostensibly to look over the convent's finances and correct any heretical lapses of faith. The novella deftly mixes classic Gothic conventions, folk horror, and a bit of nunsploitation to craft a fairly heady, if slight, vintage. I honestly wouldn't have minded in the least to have this tale exploded out into a full novel.

The Vision Bleak, Carpathia, Set Sail to Mystery, Witching Hour

Big, dramatic Gothic metal isn't currently en vogue, so it's a bit hard to find new examples of the genre. Luckily, there always seems to be a never-ending sea of bands with extensive back catalogs to rifle through when the opportunity presents itself. Enter The Vision Bleak, a band with a long and varied history that I had never checked out before. The Vision Bleak have the melancholic vocals I sometimes crave, paired with dirge-like metal, but they also offer some surprisingly thrashy moments, full-on black metal elements, some Rammstein-esque bits, and even some spots where things get a little proggy. But not too proggy, if you catch my meaning.

Julia Gfrorer, Vanitas

Julia Gfrorer's Vanitas is a wordless minicomic in zine form that spins a tale of innocence and corruption. With its lepers, unicorns, and peasants, Vanitas has the feel of being Arthurian-adjacent, but the lack of any valorous knights and the like underlines how this is a tale of common folk and their own extraordinary capacities for good and ill.

The ABC Murders

Of course, after finishing the novel of The ABC Murders, I decided to chase it with an adaptation. Luckily, Sarah Phelps, who wrote the adaptation of And Then There Were None that I enjoyed immensely last month, also wrote the screenplay for The ABC Murders adaptation that stars John Malkovich as Poirot. Although I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as And Then There Were None (I'm not quite convinced by Malkovich's Poirot and the whole thing leans too far into "gritty Poirot reboot" for my tastes), there are definitely elements here that are praiseworthy.

Dan Abnett, Ravenor Returned

Man, Dan Abnett really knows how to plot an inquisitorial mystery! Ravenor and the gang return to the planet where their last adventure really got underway, but they find themselves embroiled in a plot that goes deeper than they could have imagined; what seemed like the prospect of busting a drug cartel has turned into thwarting a chaos cult from taking hold of the very language of creation itself. The way that Abnett has factored the mindless bureaucracy of the Imperium as a plot point in Ravenor Returned is, frankly, pretty damn brilliant. The real horror is pointless office jobs.

Tome of Beasts III

It's pretty cool that after two previous volumes of Tome of Beasts, and Creature Codex as well, there were still enough monstrous ideas left for Kobold Press to make Tome of Beasts III. You might expect this book to collect some stray dregs, but there's still a lot of great monsters for any 5e game here. The Tome of Beasts series is especially noteworthy for filling in some gaps in the official offerings in terms of monsters from certain kinds of terrain and monsters of specific types that haven't been fully explored in WotC's monster books. Also, unlike a lot of third-party content, the stats here are of a uniformly high quality.

Agatha Christie, A Holiday for Murder

This is how I got into the Christmas spirit this year. A Holiday for Murder sets a particular fine scene: a tyrannical patriarch invites his family to stay with him for the holidays; of course, this is not motivated by good will, but rather because the old man wants one more chance to fuck with them, even though they already hate his guts. But he holds the family purse strings, so of course they arrive at the ancestral seat. When the aged rascal is murdered, Poirot is called in to assist with the investigation and determine which family member offed the old coot.

Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, Moonshine vol. 5: The Well

I finally got my hands on the final trade paperback volume of Moonshine at the end of December. As you might imagine, the various factions in play throughout Moonshine's run, which include gangsters, hillbilly rumrunners, a werewolf seductress, a witch, and the comic's extremely troubled protagonist, all make final stands against each other with predictably violent and explosive results. The ending feels a tad bit rushed, but at the same time I appreciate how compact the storytelling is and that the title comes to a fairly conclusive endpoint. 

Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Did I watch the David Suchet-helmed adaptation of A Holiday for Murder as soon as I was done reading it? You bet your ass I did. The adaptation cuts down on the prodigious cast of characters, conflating a few of the players, but I think that's the right move for a tv version like this. You only get so much screen time, so you have to make it count.

Torunn Gronbekk, Edgar Salazar, Arif Prianto, Sisters of Battle

I had a bad night's sleep that left me too unfocused to read anything more substantial, but luckily this collection of Marvel's Sisters of Battle comics had just come in the mail. Just what the doctor ordered. Unsurprisingly, Sisters of Battle is an action-oriented comic; members of the Adepta Sororitas are sent to extract an agent of the Inquisition from a mining colony that appears to have succumbed to the corrupting influence of Chaos, which tests their faith, resolve, and capacity for violence in the name of the Emperor of Mankind. Not many surprises, but the comic does leverage the 40k universe to good effect.

Best of 2022

Episode 62: Best of 2022

Jack and Kate look at what they've read and watched in the year that was 2022 and make some recommendations in the world of books and beyond. The rules of engagement are simple: the hosts each choose one movie, album, TV show, and book that was the best experience of its kind, regardless of when it was actually produced. Spoiler: very little of what’s discussed was actually produced in 2022.

The Holidays in Krevborna

With the holidays upon us, spare a thought for the poor folk of Krevborna, whose wintry "celebrations" are often times of horror rather than fellowship. And you thought it bad with your family coming to visit!

This is probably my final post for the year. See you in 2023 if the Kruagh doesn't get us all.

The Coldest Night

In the villages and towns of Sibersk, the Coldest Night is observed at the height of winter. Although it is a hardship to do so, many of the people of Sibersk light no fires in the hearths on this night, for they believe that a roaring fireplace is sure to attract the attention of the Kruagh, a hideous demon who will clamber down their chimneys to mete out horrific punishments to the entire household. The Kruagh is known to favor lashing his victims, but he enlivens his standard hellish chastisement with flourishes that include thumb-screws, eye-gouging, and tongue removal.

When he visits a home on the Coldest Night, the Kruagh has been known to abduct young boys and girls who have been particularly naughty over the course of the year. These abducted children are taken to the Abyss when the Kruagh departs the world at dawn; in the Abyss, these children must survive in an unimaginable world of horrors. Those who manage to stay alive for more than three months are invariably transformed into minor demons by the corrupting power of the Abyss. 

Some Siberskans believe that a visit from the Kruagh can be staved off by offering it a selection of delicious baked goods. The Kruagh has strangely rarefied tastes what frequently require a household to spend what little it has managed to save on precious, sugary delights for the demon. Some foolhardy souls keep their fires lit against the cold in the vain hope that the confections they leave out for the Kruagh will temper its terrible fury; this is, of course, brazen folly.

Hexenacht

The townsfolk of Hemlock Hollow believe that during the winter solstice three hag-queens ride across the sky on dire wolves during “the witching hour.” On the night of the solstice, the witches alight upon a nearby mountain peak, where they hold a black mass in honor of the infernal lords of Hell. All witches, diabolists, and heretical maniacs are welcome to dance around the hag-queens' bonfire, slather themselves in a foul unguent made of nightshade and the fat of unbaptized children, and take to the night sky while in the grips of a pleasurable delirium. 

On Hexanacht, those who hold a dark and secret wish buried in their breasts are invited to petition the hag-queens for unholy aid. At the close of their dark sabbath, the hag-queen's offer anyone they can help the fulfillment of their heart’s desire in return for signing their name in the Black Book of Malistrad. Once the compact has been sealed, the petitioner is sure to get what they want—at the cost of their immortal soul.

The Night of the Hunted

Hunting wild beasts is a proud tradition and necessary way of life for the people of the Vespermark, but all the land’s hunters fear the Night of the Hunted—the night of the winter solstice on which predators sometimes become prey. 

On the Night of the Hunted there is a chance that a beast who died in excessive fear or agony due to the hunter’s trade may rise again as an undead abomination; such creatures visit the homes of the hunters who killed them and stalk their slayers until dawn breaks. Across the Vespermark, hunters often keep their weapons close at hand on the solstice in case they are visited by one or more of the animals they have slain over the past year. 

The Royal Gorgana Opera House and the Tvarblinka Plague Pit

Two locations in the Sibersk region of Krevborna.

The Royal Gorgana Opera House

The Royal Gorgana Opera House is the heart of high culture in Morgundy. 

    • Beneath the opera house is a vast system of caverns that host the Supplicants of the Razor’s Kiss, a pleasure cult that venerates Khelana, the archdevil Queen of Forbidden Pleasures. 

    • The cultists of the Razor’s Kiss view pain and degradation as the highest forms of beauty and art; they worship Khelana through sadomasochistic rituals.

    • Countess Alcesta counts the cultists as her most ardent and loyal supporters. 

The Tvarblinka Plague Pit

Before the arrival of the vampires who would become the overlords of Sibersk, the grand city of Tvarblinka suffered through a prolonged and virulent plague. Before the last remnants of the populace emigrated elsewhere, they threw the corpses of the dead into a colossal mass grave. 

    • Because Tvarblinka was founded at the northern edge of Sibersk, the corpses in the plague pit were largely preserved by the cold and frost. 

    • Although the cause has yet to be discovered, the corpses have begun to dig themselves out of Tvarblinka’s plague pit and march south to devour the living.

Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch

When Mattie asked if there were any games going on for Friday in my Discord, the temptation to squeeze in one more session for the year--even if I hadn't planned on running anything--was too much. I grabbed my copy of MORK BORG, put the call out, and gathered three interested players to run through the "Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch" adventure from Heretic. This was the first time playing MORK BORG for everyone involved, including myself, so I might also do a review of the game as whole later on.

The Characters

Kutz, a Gutterborn Scum, played by Michael

Daeru, an Esoteric Hermit, played by Mattie

Graft, a Heretical Priest, played by Andrew

Akhenaten, Kutz's small but vicious dog

Jude, Graft's pet monkey

The Premise

"East of Lake Onda in the Slithering Swamp is the Swamp Witch's ancient sepulchre and an altar of dead roots covered in lost symbols. They say if certain forbidden words are chanted at it, any wish is fulfilled. Even stopping the approaching Doom is not outside the powers of the Swamp Witch's altar. You stumbled on these forbidden words on a murdered messenger wearing mad King Fathmu IX's crest in a ditch. You just need to get past the Strange Serpent Drug Cult lairing in the ancient tomb and reach the altar."

The characters arrived at the Swamp Witch's sepulchre armed with the following rumors: the snakes guarding the entrance are not to be harmed, the cult kidnaps people to use as sacrifices, chanting the forbidden words backwards will raise the Swamp Witch from the dead.

Events

The group found that the entrance to the sepulchre was a partially submerged stone door too heavy to be opened by brute force alone. The party was then addressed by a large, emerald-colored snake perched upon a leaf floating in the swampy water. The snake told them that only those who received its bite were allowed entry into the cult's compound. Graft was the brave guinea pig; once bitten, he found that the world now seemed kaleidoscopically, psychedelically brighter. He saw colors he had never seen before, including jale, dolm, and ulfire. Observing few ill effects in their companion, Kutz and Daeru soon followed suit and let the snake inject them with its hallucinogenic venom, and the the stone door raised like a portcullis. 

Inside the first cavern chamber, the group encountered members of the serpent drug cult cooking gator meat over a fire. The cultists assumed that Kutz, Daeru, and Graft were new recruits. (They were also pretty high on serpent venom, so their guard was definitely down.) When questioned about the whereabouts of the Swamp Witch's altar, the cultists said they weren't allowed to talk about that. The party then ventured further into the compound to find it on their own.

Eventually, the group stumbled into the cult's "worship hall," which proved to be little more than a number of filthy blankets laid on the ground--two of which were occupied by drugged-out cultists celebrating their unholy rites in disturbingly carnal ways. Also present in the room were three large cages, each of which held some starved-looking prisoners. Guarding the cages were cult members with forked tongues and snake-like scales creeping up the sides of their faces. When asked about the location of "the altar" (the group wasn't specific in asking for the Swamp Witch's altar) they were directed to a nearby chamber.

In this chamber there was a stone altar, clearly stained with blood, overlooking a pit of skeletal remains and flesh-hungry serpents. Assuming this was the altar they sought, Graft and Kutz bum rushed the cultist who was busy throwing meat to the snakes below. The cultist toppled into the pit, but a large emerald snake similar to the talking one they had encountered outside emerged from the pit to question them as to what the hell they were doing. Melee broke out at this point and Kutz was riding too high on snake venom to keep ahold of his shortsword, which clattered down into the snake pit. Daeru ended up whipping the emerald snake to death.

When the group tried reciting the forbidden words at the altar...nothing happened. This was not the altar they were seeking.

Exploration continued. In a room filled with luminescent plants, Kutz found a large trident made of an unknown, alien metal. The trident was so large that he had to wield it with two hands, but it made for a nice replacement for his lost sword. Graft also scored a ruby ring, which he promptly gave to his pet monkey to wear. Among the human remains, the group discovered stranger skeletons that belonged to massive, three-eyed bipeds.

The group wandered into a room in which hundreds of colorful moths were endlessly swirling. The moths emitted a sound like a multitude of human voices engaged in a slow-motion, high-pitched scream. The moths were circling thirteen obelisks, in the center of which was an open sarcophagus. Tentacles of light emerged from the sarcophagus and waved slowly in the air. Kutz threw a bomb into the room, attempting to clear away the moths; the moths dispersed momentarily, which gave the group a glimpse of what else was in the room: a woman hovering two feet off of the ground, her head a whirling mass of smoke, a humongous zweihander chained to her back.

Not ready to deal with her, the group cut down another corridor and found an altar made of tangled dry roots. Surrounding the altar were a number of man-shaped wooden figures scattered on the ground. Kutz decided to say the forbidden words and sacrifice Akhenaten, his small but vicious dog, but the sacrifice was rejected and Kutz was slammed into the ceiling by a mysterious force. 

To glean more information on how to get the altar to grant their wishes, the group decided to confront the Swamp Witch. "Luckily" she had sensed the failed sacrifice and was on her way to the altar chamber. She told them that only an unwilling human sacrifice would be acceptable. 

A plan was hatched: they drew one of the forked-tongued fanatics into an isolated room in the sepulchre and ambushed him. The fanatic fought for his life, nearly killing Daeru--who was saved only by fate intervening to spare her. Kutz knocked the guard out with a mighty blow from the trident, but using the item changed him. He now found that his eyes were bulging and his skin was green and coated with slime. 

Dragging the unconscious guard atop the altar, Kutz brought the trident down again, ending his life. Arcane light flared, and Kutz's wish to suspend the approaching apocalypse was granted. However, using the trident again turned his flesh rubbery--providing him with some natural armor as he further transformed into something other than human.

Deciding that the guards were too formidable, the group lured three more standard-issue cultists into the chamber and sacrificed them one by one. Further wishes were granted: Daeru was granted a hot spring in her hermit's cave, Akhenaten was brought back to life to assuage Kutz's guilt, and Jude was given the ability to talk. (Jude immediately asked his "boss" if he could have a pipe because he always liked the idea of smoking.)

Although their wishes were granted, using the altar had several other strange effects. The Swamp Witch was greatly weakened and fled the chamber. A magically barrier holding back an army of frog-demons was ruptured, allowing them access to the cult's compound. The fallout from these events was evident when the party made their way to the sepulchre's exit: the Swamp Witch had been killed, and her zweihander was left laying on the ground. (Graft scooped it up to add to his inventory.) The remaining cult members were now in a pitched battle against the frog-demons and were clearly losing. 

Using the chaos of the battle as cover, and relying a bit on Kutz's new resemblance to the frog-demons due to the trident's corruption, the group left the Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch. Ultimately, they had forestalled one apocalypse and possibly initiated another: the frog-demons would soon take over the immediate area and rampage throughout the world.

Would our "heroes" survive? Daeru might retreat to her hermit's cave, never to be seen again, waiting out the tumult in the newfound luxury of a hot spring. Kutz, destined to become a frog-demon due to the trident's taint, might one day come to be king of the demonic invaders. And Graft, in his mighty armor and wielding the Lunar Zwiehander, might wander the world, pushing back the chaotic horde.

Cryptworld Review

Cryptworld is a retroclone of the first edition of the 1980s horror roleplaying game Chill. As you read through the Cryptworld corebook, it is readily apparent that it has its basis in 1980s game design. For example, Cryptworld is dedicated to that peculiar "more stats is better" perspective, with eight basic ability scores plus a handful of derived stats--some of which feel unnecessary or extra fiddly. 

Most task resolution in Cryptworld is handed with simple roll-under percentile rolls made against your basic attributes. However, there are times--mostly combat, certain skills, and fear checks--where things get a little more complicated and cumbersome. These special checks are percentile rolls as normal, but then you need to find the margin of success by subtracting the number rolled from the ability score or skill in question; that result is then cross-referenced against the following extremely 80s chart:

Combat in Cryptworld deserves a few notes. Weapon damage is entirely dependent on skill and the result found on the chart above. A screwdriver is as handy a weapon as a Luger, more or less. (Though having more skill with a handgun will let you fire it more than once, but again that makes the damage dependent on skill and not the weapon in question.) In general, Cryptworld focuses far too much on detailed rules for combat and on specific edge-case combat skills. Again, this is likely the residue of the hobby's wargame roots.

One particularly egregious wargame-y aspect of the game is how it handles initiative. It looks simple at first; each "side" in a conflict rolls a d10 to see who goes first, but it's all uphill from there because once you've established the sides, they take their actions according to this absolutely bonkers "order of operations":

Side A uses their Paranormal Talents

Side A makes their Missile Attacks

Side A Moves

Side B makes their Missile Attacks

Side A makes their Melee Attacks

Side B uses their Paranormal talents

Side B makes their Missile Attacks

Side B Moves

Side A makes more Missile Attacks

Side B makes their Melee Attacks

At the start of a new round, you roll for initiative and do the above all over again. I find that practically unfeasible. 

Amusingly, there is a "Penetration Bonus" derived attribute that only applies to melee attacks made against armored foes, which doesn't really feel like something that will come up all that often in a game that is either trying to emulate Hammer Horror or 80s slasher flicks. But it's there because the hobby hadn't really freed itself from the specificity required by the wargames of Chill's era. 

Cryptworld also has an extremely idiosyncratic approach to skills. Characters tend to have few skills, which differentiates the game from skill-focused percentile horror games such as Call of Cthulhu, but the skill list is quite strange. Some skills you expect, such as Investigation or Stealth, but most of the list feels oddly specific given what isn't there. There are no Persuasion or Deception skills, as those are basic rolls against the Personality attribute, but Mounted Melee and Bullwhip are detailed as skills your character might have--which seems far-fetched given the "modern horror investigators" theme of the game.

There is an option in Cryptworld to give your characters Paranormal Talents, the kind of psychic powers most often found in horror stories. These are all well chosen and seem fairly well defined. Using them successfully is never certain, and the attempt to do so temporarily costs a character some of their Willpower.

However, Cryptworld is also one of those retroclones that preserves both the system of an older game and its haphazard organization. Cryptworld is not an easy game to navigate, despite its short page count. As an example, there are three hit point-like attributes you need to track for every character: Current Stamina, Wounds, and Current Willpower. The rules for regaining Current Stamina and Wounds are both found in the combat chapter, but the rules for recovering Current Willpower is buried without a heading in the Paranormal Talents chapter. In a cleaner, better organized game, the rules for all three would be found in a "Recovery" section. An index would also be helpful here, but alas, we do not get one.

There is a good chance that most of the above critique sounds unrelentingly negative. I do think that by modern standards Cryptworld is clunky, overwritten, and often clumsy, but that doesn't preclude it from being fun. Take this with a grain of salt as I've only run it once, but my group had a great time with it because we leaned in to the creaky, olde timey feel of the game. Any roll that needs to reference the Action Table absolutely did slow the game down, but we treated these moments as an event. We absolutely rejected the game's proposed initiative system and just rolled a d10 to see which side got their turn first because refusing to use the rules as written is a tried and true part of the hobby's early days. 

And honestly, there is a special kind of symbiotic beauty in using a tottering, aged system for throwback genres like 80s-inspired slasher flicks. If you're feeling nostalgic or treat the game as a bit of schlocky kitsch, Cryptworld finds its niche.

Morgundy and Myrkrania

Two of the most important locations in the Sibersk region of Krevborna: the seats of its two most powerful vampire lords.

Morgundy

Morgundy is Countess Alcesta von Karlok’s fiefdom in eastern Sibersk and the acknowledged center of culture in the land.

    • The Countess’s court attracts artists, dancers, musicians, poets, and actors who find the unnatural allure of undeath to be aesthetically inspiring. 

    • The pleasures offered in Morgundy dull the pain and monotony of toil on behalf of the Countess. Taverns, brothels, and gambling dens litter the streets of her domain. 

    • At the center of Morgundy stands Castle Siebenhurst, the Countess’s seven-spired fastness of gleaming white stone; its stained glass windows depict acts of carnal depravity.

Myrkrania

Myrkrania is the heavily fortified fiefdom of Count Magnus Draghul in western Sibersk. 

    • Count Magnus demands that the people of Myrkrania suffer meekly under the imposition of austerity. 

    • Myrkrania is the central hub of trade in Sibersk, but the serfs do not benefit from increased access to food or other goods. The Count stockpiles grain and other necessities for the war he wishes to wage against Alcesta von Karlok. 

    • Order is kept in Myrkrania by the Count’s brutal enforcers—vampire knights trained by Count Magnus himself.

    • Overlooking the fiefdom is Castle Draghul, Count Magnus’s sprawling and imposing mountain keep.