Mage: The Awakening - Shadow People

After the events of Asleep No More, the Gatekeepers cabal eventually pieced together information they gained through Libram's remaining documents to form a thesis on the Shadow People phenomena.  Together with the Reliquary, the cabal submits a document to the 3rd Level of the Vault, where it will be kept with other information regarding these spirits and related artifacts.  To represent this, the game information for Shadow People are presented here.

Further, all members of the Gatekeepers cabal are granted general access to the Reliquary Vault, up to Level 3.  Relations between the cabals aren't stretched as you'd think - but the Gatekeepers owe the Reliquary a great deal.

Shadow People (Spirit Host)

These malignant spirits are born of loss and lonliness.  They are the shadows of those gone missing and are never found.  They represent, embody and prey upon all the various fears of the unknown.

Once, a powerful spirit was captured by a now-defunct cabal of left-handed mages calling themselves the "Shadow Wardens".  How they captured it is unknown, but most likely they have either unearthed binding rituals or created an entirely new grimoire related to it.  It has been implied by vetted sources that such a book might indeed exist, and would be of high concern to an Awakened community should it surface in the hands of someone who might use it.

The spirit was imprisoned in a mystical artifact the mages had designed, called simply: the Cell.  This artifact is described as being an ornate stand with Egyptian style iconography, with a huge smoky jewel suspended between two outstretched wings.  The current whereabouts of the artifact is unknown.

The Shadow Wardens cultivated the spirit into one of Death and Nightmare.  Now called the Shadow of Night, or just "The Shadow Lord" it's power and influence grew.  Under the control of the mages, who used it to attack their enemies, the spirit developed a court of lesser shadow spirits to serve it.  These are the shadow people we have encountered.

We have indentified three bans common to all of these shadow entities.

• Shadow People are repelled by direct light or scrutiny.
• Shadow People cannot stand the presence of cats, who can see them.
• Silver does Aggravated Damage to Shadow People.

Wisp of Shadow

Rank 1 Spirit

Appearing as small balls of shadowy substance, these are motes that have been created to serve the Shadow Lords' court.  They are the first to come across the Gauntlet during an infestation.

• Power:  2
• Finesse:  3
• Resistance:  2
• Initiative:  5
• Defense:  3
• Size:  2
• Willpower:  4
• Corpus:  4
• Essence:  10
• Influence:  Shadows (1)
• Numina -
• Clasp
• Concealment
• Drain
• Innocuous
• Ban of Power

Shadow Person

Rank 2 Spirit

These spirits resemble humanoid shadows, though they are distended and strange in their appearance.  They are solid black, with no eyes or features.  These are the stronger of the Shadow Lords' servants, and tend to congregate in the Shadow near the infestation.  These creatures will drag unsuspecting people into the Shadow and devour them - creating, in some cases, a new mote that the Shadow Lord or his mage allies cultivate into a Wisp.

• Power:  4
• Finesse:  4
• Resistance:  5
• Initiative:  9
• Defense:  4
• Size:  5
• Willpower:  9
• Corpus:  10
• Essence:  15
• Influence:  Shadows (1),  Fear (2)
• Numina -
• Clasp
• Concealment
• Drain
• Innocuous
• Ban of Power
• Abduct
• Chorus
• Reaching

The spiritual properties of the Shadow of Night are unknown, as this entity was not directly encountered.  Therefore, this case remains a spiritual threat to the Free City.  Any activity resembling the modus operandi of this spirit court must be immediately reported to the Gatekeepers for summary dispensation and archiving.

One final note:  We as Awakened beings cannot be carried across the Gauntlet by a normal shadow person.  However, the human population is in danger of falling victim to the predations of these spirits.  Any missing persons cases with certain telltale marks will be reported by the Progressional Forum.  This sort of activity might go on unnoticed as far as Sleepers are concerned, since they lack the ability to perceive the threat.  We must be vigilant until this extant threat is terminated.

Rulebook Ruminations: Ronin - Skirmish Wargames in the Age of the Samurai

As many of you know, we've been looking for a good system to base our Clan Strife mod upon.  We have been working for about two years and have several working systems, but we never actually carried out the plan to fruition.  Something about the published rulesets hindered the design process as we cleaved to various conventions that made those rulesets unique.  For most of that development time, there were no games based in the Sengoku-Jidai that had enough production value for us to consider.  By the end of 2013, several games were released into the game-o-sphere that were the answer to our prayers.

In the end, we chose Ronin, by Craig Woodfield and published by Osprey Publishing.  This is a small skirmish game that focuses on about a dozen models or so.  This ruleset not only addresses most of the basic Japanese-flavored rules you'l need, but also has a unique and interesting mechanic to set it apart from other games.  We have had the basic book for a while now and have been making modifications for Clan Strife, so today we'll talk about the rules themselves.

First of all, this book is small.  Weighing in at 64 pages, it's smaller than most publications you'll pick up unless they are small dungeon modules.  However, it packs a lot of bang for it's small size.

The production level is high, with awesome paintings by Wayne Reynolds, courtesy of Osprey's sizable library of historical military books.  There aren't a lot of glaring errors, and the text is easy to read and not muddled with a lot of background (the paintings do that well enough).  Besides, there's always plenty of stuff to read about medieval Japan.

The rules themselves are very easy to grasp.  Functionally, it's very similar in many ways to The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, which was one of the rulesets we had intended to modify for Clan Strife.  There's a priority step, followed by Move, Combat, Action and End phases.  All that's pretty self explanatory, as they are pretty standard wargames fare.  The Action phase is used for stuff like cutting off heads, and you can shoot in both the Move and Action phases.  However, the real gem of the system is the combat system.

The game uses counters, drawn in secret, to form Attack and Defense pools.  Each model gets a certain Combat Pool, and must decide how many points from his pool he will allocate to attack or defense.  Each player reveals their counters at the same time, and then the counters are spent during the ensuing combat.  For instance, for each Attack Counter, you can make an attack.  Defense counters help your warrior avoid damage.  It's an interesting mechanic that adds a certain flavor to the proceedings that really puts you into the cut and thrust of swinging katanas and chopping off necks.

Also included are various lists for factions.  Almost everything conceivable has been covered, and it has drastically reduced the amount of overhead material needed for Clan Strife.  Rules for ashigaru, samurai, ninja, sohei and even Koreans and Ming Chinese have been covered, including many weapons and special abilities your soldiers can select.  All in all, the tome is small but very complete.

Osprey has been offering some very interesting alternatives for wargamers.  Ronin is the first one we've picked up, largely because it was relevant for our ongoing project.  It retails for $17.95 USD, and even if samurai hack and slash isn't your thing, they probably have something that is.  Check out their webstore for more cool stuff, and get your Clan Strife buntai ready!

Welcome to the Dungeon: Texas Edition!

 Our Lord of the Rings campaign, The Halls of Moria, is running strong in both Oklahoma and Texas!

Today we wanted to share some pics from The Smith, of our Texas chapter, showing off some dungeon terrain they have been using in their campaign.  These dungeons are fully 3d, and make use of some nifty sets you might not have thought to use. The dungeons look cool, and the chambers and corridors are clearly demarcated.

Our tandem campaign looks to be working out great!  We'll be rolling out more campaigns in tandem with the Texas chapter later this year.  We'll be sharing their progress as well as ours - and the Wargate's titles for those campaigns can be won by players in any chapter!

For this campaign, the forces of darkness are currently losing - even though Zkud's Elf-Killers have the most treasures, the Delving Dwarves have the current high score.  This means that the forces of Good are in the lead currently, but we've got a long battle ahead of us.  Both of those teams have done a great job representing their chapter during the competition so far!

As we plan and complete more campaigns with our chapter, we'll be updating game systems and implementing new rules as well.  The guys at the Texas chapter have been enthusiastic and were quite boisterous when we met for lunch at the beginning of the year.  They have some cool events and interesting plans coming up as well, and we're very excited to share some of these projects with them.

In Moria, blades and bows are drawn and ready.  Treasures are rare, and the battles are bloody.  Will the forces of darkness win, and thus gather strength across the lands of Middle-Earth?  Or will the forces of Good maintain their lead, stifling the corruption where it gathers?  This campaign will affect our ongoing 3rd Age narrative, and will be reflected in future rpg and wargame scenarios - so fight hard, and win the campaign for your team!