A Norse Trilogy

Since 2003, the Miskatonic University Library Association series of monographs has been Chaosium, Inc.’s way of making other works available to players of both Call of Cthulhu and Basic RolePlay. Bar the printing, each monograph’s author is responsible for the writing, the editing, and the layout, so far the quality of entries in the series have varied widely and has led to some dreadful releases. Fortunately, The Ravenar Sagas: Three Viking Adventures for Cthulhu Dark Ages is far from dreadful in terms of both editing and layout, and far from dreadful in terms of storytelling and writing.

The Ravenar Sagas is the second campaign from Oscar Rios, a Call of Cthulhu author best known for The Legacy of Arrius Lurco, the Cthulhu Invictus campaign published by the late lamented Miskatonic River Press. His previous campaign, also a Monograph, was Ripples from Carcosa, a trilogy of connected scenarios set in the periods of Cthulhu Invictus, Cthulhu Dark Ages, and the near future of the End Times, but separated by millennia. The Ravenar Sagas marks his second return to the period of Cthulhu Dark Ages, the setting when the dread Necronomicon was freely distributed and the forces of the Mythos all but ran wild… Where Cthulhu Dark Ages focused primarily on mainland Europe as a setting, The Ravenar Sagas takes its adventurers to the edge of Europe and beyond…

Although the subtitle of the campaign suggests that The Ravenar Sagas consists of “Three Viking Adventures”, the Monograph actually contains three adventures for six Northmen who as friends crew the newly built small knorr, the Ravenar. Together, the six are men of action, well-armed, fearless, and eager to carve out legends for themselves, and over the course of three adventures and thirteen years, their heroic deeds will lend themselves to a great saga, one of love, betrayal, and horrors from beyond. In the course of the adventure the characters will age thirteen years, so versions are provided for each of the three scenarios that in turn will take the investigators to and from Norway to Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland.

The saga begins in 989 AD with ‘The Unsung Saga’, an action orientated scenario originally used as a demonstration adventure for Cthulhu Dark Ages. The six adventurers are tasked by their chieftain to go in search of his son, Svengar who has not returned from a hunting expedition to the Faeroes Islands. What the adventurers learn is that Svengar had other things on his mind than hunting and if they are to mount a rescue, they must strike a curious bargain and venture into the lair of some wholly wild creatures.

If ‘The Unsung Saga’ was a fairly straight forward affair, ‘The Second Saga’ is more complex and detailed, and thus a more interesting scenario. It is set three years later and Svengar has prospered, turning the failing settlement of Neskasyla into a welcoming and friendly place that looks to succeed for years to come. In the process, Svengar has made himself a popular leader as well as a growing family. Invited to spend Yuletide with Svengar and his wife in Neskasyla, the adventurers find themselves, along with the inhabitants of the settlement, besieged by the unnatural, both in terms of the weather and things that no man should have dealings with. 

The adventurers will have much more to do in ‘The Second Saga’. There is work to be done in Neskasyla as well as play, fellow visitors to rescue, and an enveloping storm to pierce if the adventurers are to thwart the ‘real’ danger to the settlement. Long-time devotees of Call of Cthulhu will recognise the entities used in this scenario, but they are appropriately used and challenging foes given the setting and what the player characters must face them with. Overall, this is an engaging and enjoyable affair with much for the player characters to do.

The trilogy comes to a close with ‘The Vinland Saga’, which takes place a decade after those of ‘The Second Saga’ in 1002 AD. The adventurers are ten years older and experienced ship captains who are called to war following the news that Svengar is dead! He had gone to the aid of his steward, Ozgar, who had established a colony of his own in Vinland that was attacked by an alliance of dark native tribes and rival Northmen. In their defence of the colony Svengar was struck down and killed and now his wife wants revenge!

Whilst ‘The Vinland Saga’ brings The Ravenar Sagas to a rousing climax, it suffers from being too combat-orientated. It consists of one combat encounter after another and the problem is that Call of Cthulhu is not very forgiving when it comes to combat. Nevertheless, some of them are nicely staged and are unlike any the players will encounter in a normal game of Call of Cthulhu.

The Ravenar Sagas is rounded out with the ‘actual’ history of the Sagas and how they came to be uncovered from a burial mound in Iceland in 1884. Here they are also presented as a Mythos Tome so that a group of investigators could read them in the Gaslight, Jazz, or Modern Age and actually learn from them by playing out the events they are said to portray…

Physically, The Ravenar Sagas is decently presented for a Monograph. It needs another edit, but the layout is light enough to counter the lack of illustrations. If there is an issue with the book it is that the maps are indistinct. In hindsight, it probably would have been better had they been done by hand.

As a trilogy, The Ravenar Sagas does a good job of presenting a ‘Viking’ Saga. As a set of scenarios, it is an uneven affair in terms of investigation over combat, and of the three, the middle one, ‘The Second Saga’ is the most balanced and the best written. In fact, it would actually make a reasonable addition to any collection. It consisting of three scenarios, each several years apart, means that a Keeper could easily slot other scenarios in between the three included here. The Ravenar Sagas continues Oscar Rios’ penchant for untraditional Call of Cthulhu scenarios in terms of the investigative process and the action.

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Triple Ripple Yellow

Since 2003, the Miskatonic University Library Association series of monographs has been Chaosium, Inc.’s way of making other works available to players of both Call of Cthulhu and Basic RolePlay. Bar the printing, each monograph’s author is responsible for the writing, the editing, and the layout, so far the quality of entries in the series have varied widely and has led to some dreadful releases. Fortunately, Ripples from Carcosa: Confronting Hastur Across Time and Space is far from dreadful in terms of both editing and layout, or indeed storytelling and writing.

Ripples from Carcosa dates from 2005 and is Oscar Rios’ first campaign. As its title and subtitle suggests it presents a campaign against a single threat not in single era, but several. More specifically three eras, each of which at the time of publication were supported by Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, though not so currently. They include the Ancient Rome of CthulhuInvictus, then a fellow Monograph; the Dark Ages of Cthulhu Dark Ages, only recently translated from the German version; and End Time: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying At The World's End, a Monograph that detailed a near future in which mankind has fled the Earth as the stars have come right. As of 2013, Cthulhu Invictus is in print as a full book available at your local friendly, gaming store and indeed would be the setting for Rios’ well-received campaign from Miskatonic River Press, The Legacy of Arrius Lurco. Of the other two supplements, Cthulhu Dark Ages remains out of print and End Time is still only available as a Monograph. Fortunately, none of these three supplements are absolutely necessary to running any of the scenarios in Ripples from Carcosa.

The trilogy opens with ‘Adventus Regis’ or “Arrival of the King” in which various Roman citizens have come to Vestalanium to undertake a vacation, some with their children. Treated to every luxury, the highlight of their week’s stay is sure to be the performance of a new play, the first in five years by the famed playwright, Livius Carbo. The town is rife with rumours about the play, which will be staged at the town’s arena the following night and the characters will see the following night. Worse everyone seems on edge, but perhaps once the play has been performed, tensions will lessen? The scenario consists of relatively little investigation, initially there is little for the characters to discover and little for them to put together. Instead, everything is revealed in a bloody climax of madness, mayhem, and murder that interestingly sees the characters coming to the aftermath of a Mythos summoning.

It continues with ‘Herald to the Yellow King’, which is set in the kingdom of Shereborne in Wessex during the Dark Ages. Ten years ago, Lord Boniface made a promise to Wessex’s oldest man not to cut down an ancient oak, but now that has happened and as part of his household, Lord Boniface tasks the characters to ride out to Derek’s Holding and offer an apology upon his behalf. Setting out in the last few days before the Yule festival, what the characters find is a village in disarray, a scene of madness. As the weather draws in, they are sent out again and again in search of answers to what happened in Derek’s Holding, but what they find is more madness, more mayhem, and more murder. As the season draws in, they must return to Lord Boniface’s castle where they find that the answers they seek have arrived before them.

The last scenario in Ripples in Carcosa is ‘Heir to Carcosa’ which takes place in The United Colonial Coalition Asteroid Colonies in 2147. There, four asteroids are home to a secret alliance between humans, Elder Things, and the Great Race of Yith, trying to remain hidden from both an Earth abandoned following the rise of R’lyeh in 2045 and the remnants of mankind on Mars. The characters are the crew of the UCC Gladius, an armed vessel tasked undertaking various missions and with keeping the existence of the colonies a secret. Via a trade with the Mi-go, they learn of another vessel operating near the colonies. The crew is ordered to intercept the ship, disable and board it in order to learn what the crew knows and then repair the ship for UCC use. Repairing the ship and determining the crew’s objective involves an interesting trip into the past.

In addition to the three scenarios, Ripples from Carcosa includes an examination of Hastur, the King in Yellow, and the play of the same name. Initially it only compiles what has been seen before, bearing in mind that this Monograph was published in 2005 and the Great Old, his avatar, and The King in Yellow have been revisited several times since. It expands upon this in supplementary chapters by examining the worship of Hastur in both the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages, including several adventure seeds also. Instead of presenting the worship of Hastur in the period of the End Time, the supplement instead presents enough background to run ‘Heir to Carcosa’ without recourse to owning the End TimeMonograph. That said, all three scenarios could be run without reference being made to their setting sourcebooks.

Each scenario in Ripples from Carcosa comes with a set of six pre-generated investigators, and whilst they can be used to play each of the scenarios as a one-shot, they are fundamental to playing the trilogy as a campaign. Variations upon each of the six characters appear in three scenarios and exposure to the Mythos of Hastur allows an investigator to recall dimly the events of a previous scenario to gain insight as to his current predicament. Whilst it would be possible for the Keeper to add further scenarios, these three – and it has to be three with Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! – do intentionally take place a millennium apart and the Keeper would have to develop the characters in each case.

Physically, Ripples from Carcosa is well produced. If the artwork is perhaps a little scrappy, there is at least some effort made to give the book a little style, and there is evidence of some editing. It feels cramped in places, especially the investigator sheets for each scenario.

Campaigns through time and using the reincarnation concept to provide continuity between eras have been done since the release of Ripples from Carcosa, most notably the Dungeons & Dragons influenced Red Eye of Azathoth from Open Design, but arguably Ripples from Carcosa was the first. The three scenarios here show a progressive spiral into madness that are the hallmarks of Hastur’s influences as well as what has become the author’s trademark avoidance of Call of Cthulhu’straditional investigative methods. As a campaign, Ripples from Carcosa is far from a traditional Call of Cthulhu campaign – it dispenses with the onionskin format and there is no climax to the campaign, instead has the characters face the same threat, or rather variations upon it, again and again. In a sense this is unsatisfying for both the players and the Keeper because of this, but each scenario in Ripples from Carcosa is satisfying enough to stand on its own. Together though, they impart a sense of continuing despair across the ages as Ripples from Carcosa: Confronting Hastur Across Time and Space.

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Old School Distilled

Originally published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1977, Chivalry & Sorcery was written as response to the medieval fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons. Instead its focus was medieval chivalry and roleplaying in a feudal society, though one that did not wholly ignore fantastic elements such as magic and non-human races. Since then, the game has gone through a number of editions, never quite losing its reputation for possessing complex rules, but now it has been out of print for almost a decade. Almost thirty-five years on from its original release, Brittannia Game Designs Ltd. is re-releasing Chivalry & Sorcery Essence, the revised introduction to the game.

Available as a forty-five page, 6.78 Mb PDF, Chivalry & Sorcery Essence comes with everything necessary to play. This includes rules for character generation, combat, and magic, equipment, skirmishes, a setting, and an introductory scenario. The rules themselves are supported with examples throughout.

Character creation in Chivalry & Sorcery Essence involves rolling dice to generate the numbers to assign to attributes, and then choosing a Social Class and a Vocation. A character’s Social Class provides some base skills, some skill points to spend on skills, one or more attribute bonuses, and some equipment and money. His Vocation will grant extra skills. The process is quick and easy, with the five Social Classes given – Serf, Freeman, Townsman, Guildsman, and Noble combining easily with the eight Vocations, Warrior, Forrester, Bandit, Thief, Friar/Priest/Shaman, Mage, Physician, and Mountebank to give the players plenty of choice. For example, Wilf of Gotham is a serf who had to fight for his lord in France. He was injured in battle and lost his right ear. The injury denied him the opportunity to loot the enemy and he has returned to England almost as penniless as when he left. Not wanting to return to the farm, he still knows that he has little choice but to continue serving his lord. Wilf is renowned for his prestigious strength.

Wilf of Gotham
Social Class: Serf Vocation: Warrior
Strength 20 Constitution 15 Agility 15
Intelligence 8 Wisdom 13 Discipline 13
Appearance 6 Bardic Voice 8 Piety 10
Body Points 35
Fatigue 35
Skills: Bargaining 1, Brawl 2, Craft (Carpentry) 1, Craft (Farming) 2, Detect 1, Dodge 2, Flail 2, Language (English) 1, Language (French) 1, Knife 1, Willpower 1
Equipment: Threshing flail, clothes he is wearing, and two days’ worth of food

Mechanically, Chivalry & Sorcery Essence relatively straightforward. To do anything, a character needs to roll under a target number with a twenty-sided die. The target is invariably the total of an appropriate attribute plus any suitable skills, bonus, or penalties. Higher rolls are better than lower ones, and a critical result is scored if a character rolls the target number exactly. The penalties are quite harsh though, running from -1 for even a “Very Simple” task up to -24 for a “Seemingly Impossible” task. These penalties are worse if a character does not have the required skill for a target and will vary according to how much it costs to buy a level in that skill. For example, if Wilf had to swim across a still pond on a warm day, a “Very Simple Action,” he would suffer a -2 penalty to his Constitution before he rolled against it. The Swim skill is cheap to buy though, a much harder task such as identifying even a relatively common poison for someone without the skill would face a -9 penalty.

Combat uses the basic mechanic, but adds a number of factors in. The number of attacks or Blows a character can make per round or minute is determined by the Weapon Class of his chosen weapon and his Agility. Lighter weapons are much faster. So for example, if Wilf attacked with a knife, he could attempt to stab his opponent five times in a minute because it is classed as a Light weapon. Wilf’s threshing flail is much heavier and thus much slower, so he can only make three Blows with it. Critical Successes with swung weapons or a defensive manoeuvre such as Dodge, weapon parry, or Shield use cause an opponent to be bashed backwards with the chance that he might fall over. Making a defensive manoeuvre requires the expenditure of a Fatigue point or the foregoing of the defender’s next Bash.

Damage inflicted is determined by the weapon type, half of a character’s Strength, and by how well he rolled. Both armour and shield reduce this damage, with any leftover being deducted from an opponent’s Fatigue and then his Body Points. Critical successes on an attack mean that the damage is deducted from the Body Points instead. For example, Wilf, facing a French knight in combat, must roll under his Strength plus Flail skill, plus a bonus from his Craft (Farming) skill, for a target of 23. He rolls 19, getting a Critical Success (target numbers over 20 grant better Critical Success ranges), whilst the knight chooses to try and get his small reinforced shield in the way of the farmer’s weapon and does so with an 11. Wilf inflicts a maximum damage on the knight, some 24 points! Fortunately, the knight’s shield and coate of plates armour stops 13 of that, but the remaining 11 points are deducted from his 30 Body Points. In addition, Wilf’s Critical Success inflicts extra damage which is not stopped by the armour, losing him another 8 points from his Body Points. Lastly, the knight was hit by a swung weapon on a Critical Success and must roll against his Agility to remain standing. On a result of a 16 he fails and is knocked to the ground, losing another horrible 10 points from his Fatigue. At this point, the knight is down, has lost half of his Body Points and a third of his Fatigue. The knight might not be out of the fight, but he is at a serious disadvantage!

Magic use in Chivalry & Sorcery Essence varies according to the type. Prayer and Shamanism both use the Piety attribute and the Prayer skill as the basis for the Target, with the actual Difficulty Factor being determined by the prayer being made. In addition, any Prayer attempt also costs a priest Fatigue which increases for each extra Prayer made. In general, Prayers are low and supportive in nature, such as Bless, Lay on Hands, or holding a Mass. Shamanistic prayers are not regarded as being civilised and let a shaman Converse with Spirit, Purify Blood to remove disease or poison, or Animate the Dead, for example.

Magic itself is more complex, each mage having a limited number of Spell Points with which to spend on spells that he knows. Actually casting a spell will cost him Fatigue – and even Body Points if he casts too many, modified by his Magic skill and his Spell Focus. This Spell Focus, a device such as a ring, staff, or wand, also allows a Mage to store fatigue for use in spell casting. In addition, extra Fatigue can be spent to enhance a spell’s range, duration, intensity, and the number of people affected. The mage also receives the longest list of spells, from which he must choose carefully. Further spells can be purchased with Experience Points.

Alternatively, a mage could use the Enchant spell to implant other spells into devices. This is expensive, not only in terms of the materials required – which can actually resist the enchantment attempt, but also in terms of the mage’s Magic Skill. The mage actually expends Magic Skill levels to carry out the enchantment.

Our sample mage is an itinerant book binder who travels from court to court repairing books. This enables him to look for interesting works, not only to read, but also to copy for their spells. He also works as a tutor and translator when his book binding are not required. He learned his magic from his first master with whom he travelled to Paris.

Richard le Lieur
Social Class: Guildsman Vocation: Mage
Strength 10 Constitution 10 Agility 11
Intelligence 18 Wisdom 10 Discipline 14
Appearance 10 Bardic Voice 8 Piety 6
Body Points 25
Fatigue 20
Spell Points 18 (9)
Spells Known: Charm, Light, Sense Magic, Strike
Skills: Craft (Book Binding) 2, Detect 2, Dodge 1, History 1, Language (English) 2, Language (French) 1, Language (Latin) 1, Lore (Astronomy) 1, Magic 2, Read/Write (English) 2, Read/Write (French) 1, Read/Write (Latin) 1, Sword 1, Willpower 1
Equipment: Suit of clothes, two shillings, a sword, book binding tools, and spell focus ring

The GM receives little advice in Chivalry & Sorcery Essence bar some suggestions as to alternative skill use. He does get though, a short bestiary and a set of ready-to-play heroes and villains, both of the latter with a set of adjustments to make any one of them more of a challenge. There is also a setting in the form of “Darken Expansion,” which is taken from the publisher’s The Dragon Reaches of Marakush campaign setting. The nation of Darken is ruled by the Great Queen Dragon Shugaloth, who is attempting to establish a feudocracy despite the temples devoted to her wanting to maintain a theocracy in her name. Shugaloth’s chancellor, the lich known as Ingravain funds the “The Queen’s Falconeers,” not to support a sport that she has no interest in, but as his personal spies and enforcers. Used to check the efforts of the temple, it is suggested that the player characters be members of this group.

Darken is also home to other races including Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Dark Elves. These are available as player character races. Two new Social Classes are available, the Darken Warrior, more slave and militia overseer than true warriors; and the Mystic, which combines elements of the Priest and the Mage Vocations. This is continued with the Shaman Vocation, which gives a character access to both prayers and spells.

Chivalry & Sorcery Essence also includes a scenario, “The Serpent Of Paun-I-Tawe,” which takes place in a village in a border region recently annexed by Darken. Its set up is that the player characters are forced to stop at the village due to bad weather and must find shelter either with the villagers who resent being occupied by Darkic soldiers or with the soldiers who prefer to be stationed elsewhere. Into this situation will enter a thief prepared to take advantage of the tensions between the soldiers and villagers.

The problem with the scenario is that it is entirely possible for the player characters to wander through unaware of what is really going on. Now this intentional, the idea being that the characters should be the stars of their own particular stories and that often, there will be events going on in which they are only marginally involved in, and never get to see the whole picture. Whilst this is laudable in a longer campaign, in a short scenario, especially in one designed to introduce and showcase the new edition of your RPG, this is a mistake. The GM needs to get his players involved in the scenario as quickly possible and then keep them involved. Otherwise the likely result is that the players will not have been involved enough to play again.

The other reason why this was the wrong scenario to include is that it has very few ties to setting background given in Chivalry & Sorcery Essence. Had there been a scenario included that involved members of “The Queen’s Falconeers,” then the player characters would have had more of a drive to explore this or any other scenario.

Rounding out Chivalry & Sorcery Essence is a quick and dirty means of handling skirmish combat, plus a character sheet, a guide to character generation, and a sample character. Surprisingly for a supplement of this size, Chivalry & Sorcery Essence actually comes with an index!

Physically, Chivalry & Sorcery Essence is nicely illustrated and generally well presented. It could have been slightly better organised though, as some of the elements of the game are explained before the rules for them. For example, how arms and armour work is explained before combat. It does need a closer edit too.

Putting aside the poor choice of scenario – and it should be made clear that it is not necessarily a bad scenario, but rather not a suitable for either an introductory product or the background given – there is much to like about Chivalry & Sorcery Essence. Neither the rules nor the mechanics suffer from the complexity that Chivalry & Sorcery is supposed to suffer from. They are instead a nicely balanced mix of simplicity and brutalism, with a magic system that firmly and successfully aims for low fantasy rather than high. Overall, Chivalry & Sorcery Essence is a pleasing introduction to the game’s mechanics.

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